Christi Junior on Nostr: 2/8 Now, ALL this relevant backstory is stuff that Xenoblade 3 barely even ...
2/8
Now, ALL this relevant backstory is stuff that Xenoblade 3 barely even acknowledges in the main story (a postgame sidequest goes into *slightly* more detail about Alrest), only briefly alluding to it in the vaguest possible terms. Acceptable enough I suppose, if your priority is not completely overwhelming Xenoblade newcomers (which is a creative choice I disagree with, but whatever). However, what comes next are the events making up Xenoblade 3’s own, specific backstory – and here the lack of specificity and details really becomes a problem:
- We have no real idea of WHEN the actual merger of the two worlds takes place. It *seems* to be only a little over 10 years after the events of the first two games, because Mio is HEAVILY hinted to be Nia’s daughter, who we know Nia had only 2-3 years after Xenoblade 2 ended (given how Rex by that point had hit his growth spurt, but had yet to truly begin bulking up), and we have to assume she and Kid Noah (from the game’s opening scene) are pretty close in terms of age. Tora the Nopon (these little guys generally have lifespans comparable to humans) being hinted to still be alive and instrumental in designing Origin also suggests that our pre-release “100 years in the future” estimate was way off.
However, that’s actually a real problem for Xenoblade 3, because these two worlds merging only 10-20 years since we last saw them genuinely doesn’t add up for a whole host of reasons: the Machina race already having become so much more organic in appearance; Blades having already become the dominant race in Alrest while ALSO undergoing a general design change seemingly reflective of extensive and long-term race mixing; the obvious “demographic shifts” in general. Then there’s the fact that Melia, who as a High Entia ages at like 1/5th the rate of humans, having gone from being the High Entia equivalent of a teenager to now looking like she’s firmly in her 30s – which lines up perfectly with the original “100 Years in the future” theory, but makes no sense if only 10 or even 20 years have passed. It also makes no sense that Nia would be Alrest’s leader if Rex, Morag and Zeke are all still around, which I think even hardcore Nia fanboys should be able to acknowledge.
- Likewise, we don’t really know *when* the people in the two worlds become aware of each other, though given how we have Fogbeasts causing problems after a mere year has passed, I assume it’s not that much later that first contact is established, maybe after 2-3 years. I also think it’s safe to assume that something like Origin would take many years to build. A BIG question for me has to do with the state of the two worlds right before they merge – you’d certainly *think* they be approaching a full blown breakdown due to the ever-increasing strains on them, with Fogbeasts all over the place, and maybe even objects, people and entire locations accidentally crossing into the parallel world, but no: We saw what Noah’s world looked like right before the convergence, and it was downright idyllic. So what actually happened here, did the gradual breakdown of space and time really have no other negative consequences besides the initial Fogbeast invasion, and once that was dealt with, everything was hunky dory right until the moment the two worlds collide and instantly erase each other from existence? Or is this some kind of calm before the storm situation?
- The game explains that the people in the two worlds became able to communicate ”through the medium of light”, which strikes me as weird and abstract, and in chapter 7’s opening we certainly see *some* form of technology being used to facilitate communication between Melia and Nia, though the screen Nia uses does seem somewhat low-tech, so harnessing the light that the two worlds have in common might have been less resource-intensive than I first imagined. How this form of communication was first discovered is anybody’s guess, ESPECIALLY if there had been no more bizarre incidents after the Fogbeasts arrived, but in the grand scheme of things this is a very minor nitpick.
- Once contact has been established and the leadership of the two worlds (more on THAT later) realize that the ultimate cataclysm is approaching, they eventually come up with a solution to save their universes, namely Origin – since the worlds colliding is an event that is impossible to stop, and which WILL erase all of existence, the only option left was to create an Ark that could safely store all the two worlds’ data, and then “reboot” (that’s the term used by the game) everything without skipping a beat, so smoothly that nobody even notices what happened. The way this works (I think) is that, since we see each world constructing one half of Origin, once the worlds do merge, they will erase each other yes, but they will also unite and activate Origin, and this machine will in turn 1) save and safely all store the data, souls and memories of the world, and then 2) restore them to their state right before the worlds merged. As Melia says: “We will all be gone, and then reborn”.
Note one thing that Origin ISN’T doing (and this I actually like about it) – it doesn’t simply make copies of everything, allowing the originals to perish and be replaced by clones. A twist like that would have completely ruined Xenoblade 3’s story for me, and I’m certainly glad that Origin works very differently from a comparable device in Xenoblade X (if you finished that game, you know what I’m referring to).
That said, Origin is definitely the kind of technology that’s so ridiculously advanced and all-powerful that it seems indistinguishable from magic – it’s definitely leaning HEAVILY into the “Fantasy” part of Fantasy Sci-Fi. This is however arguably justified, due to the core crystal of Ontos (a godlike being in the Xenoblade 1 world) being a core component of Origin in the XB1 half, while the XB2 half of Ontos heavily draws upon more general core crystal technology (originally created by The Architect himself, the god of that world). And indeed, humans in Aionios DO share various traits with XB2 Blades, especially obvious being the way they can summon their chosen weapons in and out of existence at will. Moreover, looking at how their lifespans are artificially shortened and determined by forces outside of their control, and effectively being turned into living weapon denied the chance to form and pass on a culture of their own, instead exploited by others for their benefit, the way that humans are used by Moebius does also remind me of how Jin portrayed the status of Blades in Xenoblade 2. Z might well have twisted the Blade technology specifically for his own purposes, inadvertently causing history to repeat.
Now, ALL this relevant backstory is stuff that Xenoblade 3 barely even acknowledges in the main story (a postgame sidequest goes into *slightly* more detail about Alrest), only briefly alluding to it in the vaguest possible terms. Acceptable enough I suppose, if your priority is not completely overwhelming Xenoblade newcomers (which is a creative choice I disagree with, but whatever). However, what comes next are the events making up Xenoblade 3’s own, specific backstory – and here the lack of specificity and details really becomes a problem:
- We have no real idea of WHEN the actual merger of the two worlds takes place. It *seems* to be only a little over 10 years after the events of the first two games, because Mio is HEAVILY hinted to be Nia’s daughter, who we know Nia had only 2-3 years after Xenoblade 2 ended (given how Rex by that point had hit his growth spurt, but had yet to truly begin bulking up), and we have to assume she and Kid Noah (from the game’s opening scene) are pretty close in terms of age. Tora the Nopon (these little guys generally have lifespans comparable to humans) being hinted to still be alive and instrumental in designing Origin also suggests that our pre-release “100 years in the future” estimate was way off.
However, that’s actually a real problem for Xenoblade 3, because these two worlds merging only 10-20 years since we last saw them genuinely doesn’t add up for a whole host of reasons: the Machina race already having become so much more organic in appearance; Blades having already become the dominant race in Alrest while ALSO undergoing a general design change seemingly reflective of extensive and long-term race mixing; the obvious “demographic shifts” in general. Then there’s the fact that Melia, who as a High Entia ages at like 1/5th the rate of humans, having gone from being the High Entia equivalent of a teenager to now looking like she’s firmly in her 30s – which lines up perfectly with the original “100 Years in the future” theory, but makes no sense if only 10 or even 20 years have passed. It also makes no sense that Nia would be Alrest’s leader if Rex, Morag and Zeke are all still around, which I think even hardcore Nia fanboys should be able to acknowledge.
- Likewise, we don’t really know *when* the people in the two worlds become aware of each other, though given how we have Fogbeasts causing problems after a mere year has passed, I assume it’s not that much later that first contact is established, maybe after 2-3 years. I also think it’s safe to assume that something like Origin would take many years to build. A BIG question for me has to do with the state of the two worlds right before they merge – you’d certainly *think* they be approaching a full blown breakdown due to the ever-increasing strains on them, with Fogbeasts all over the place, and maybe even objects, people and entire locations accidentally crossing into the parallel world, but no: We saw what Noah’s world looked like right before the convergence, and it was downright idyllic. So what actually happened here, did the gradual breakdown of space and time really have no other negative consequences besides the initial Fogbeast invasion, and once that was dealt with, everything was hunky dory right until the moment the two worlds collide and instantly erase each other from existence? Or is this some kind of calm before the storm situation?
- The game explains that the people in the two worlds became able to communicate ”through the medium of light”, which strikes me as weird and abstract, and in chapter 7’s opening we certainly see *some* form of technology being used to facilitate communication between Melia and Nia, though the screen Nia uses does seem somewhat low-tech, so harnessing the light that the two worlds have in common might have been less resource-intensive than I first imagined. How this form of communication was first discovered is anybody’s guess, ESPECIALLY if there had been no more bizarre incidents after the Fogbeasts arrived, but in the grand scheme of things this is a very minor nitpick.
- Once contact has been established and the leadership of the two worlds (more on THAT later) realize that the ultimate cataclysm is approaching, they eventually come up with a solution to save their universes, namely Origin – since the worlds colliding is an event that is impossible to stop, and which WILL erase all of existence, the only option left was to create an Ark that could safely store all the two worlds’ data, and then “reboot” (that’s the term used by the game) everything without skipping a beat, so smoothly that nobody even notices what happened. The way this works (I think) is that, since we see each world constructing one half of Origin, once the worlds do merge, they will erase each other yes, but they will also unite and activate Origin, and this machine will in turn 1) save and safely all store the data, souls and memories of the world, and then 2) restore them to their state right before the worlds merged. As Melia says: “We will all be gone, and then reborn”.
Note one thing that Origin ISN’T doing (and this I actually like about it) – it doesn’t simply make copies of everything, allowing the originals to perish and be replaced by clones. A twist like that would have completely ruined Xenoblade 3’s story for me, and I’m certainly glad that Origin works very differently from a comparable device in Xenoblade X (if you finished that game, you know what I’m referring to).
That said, Origin is definitely the kind of technology that’s so ridiculously advanced and all-powerful that it seems indistinguishable from magic – it’s definitely leaning HEAVILY into the “Fantasy” part of Fantasy Sci-Fi. This is however arguably justified, due to the core crystal of Ontos (a godlike being in the Xenoblade 1 world) being a core component of Origin in the XB1 half, while the XB2 half of Ontos heavily draws upon more general core crystal technology (originally created by The Architect himself, the god of that world). And indeed, humans in Aionios DO share various traits with XB2 Blades, especially obvious being the way they can summon their chosen weapons in and out of existence at will. Moreover, looking at how their lifespans are artificially shortened and determined by forces outside of their control, and effectively being turned into living weapon denied the chance to form and pass on a culture of their own, instead exploited by others for their benefit, the way that humans are used by Moebius does also remind me of how Jin portrayed the status of Blades in Xenoblade 2. Z might well have twisted the Blade technology specifically for his own purposes, inadvertently causing history to repeat.