About colony omega. I get that they were performing flame clock experiments, but I don't get how they are able to bring people back to life in what seems to be a consequence free way. Like, they were dead, we sent some of their husks and cammuravi got his eye back so clearly these are new bodies, but they are still tenth term even though they are new bodies? I'm betting the term thing won't be sufficiently explained. The bodies are probably ether bodies instead of natural ones to begin with and they are bound together by something that only lasts for 10 years, but I don't really get why they can't just renew it or why the bodies have to start from a young age to begin with if they are essentially made of condensed ether.
Gameplay wise I got all the main game heroes (I hear there are two post game heroes, and I think I can guess who) and am set to work grinding out the last 5 on all characters. I managed to beat the double 102 UM in the non interlink cave with my random assortment of level 1 classes and one healing soulhacker at level 20 with sacrifical heal on the first try somehow. I've only got a handful of soulhacker skills and arts left to unlock, but still a decent amount to upgrade. The damn healing one took ages to finally upgrade and it doesn't even increase healing. Sad.
I'm thinking about running a kamikaze soulhacker squad. Theres an ability that gives everyone in the party 4 random buffs when an ally is revived and then for the kamikaze member, sacrificial heal which full heals the whole team when they go down, the skill that does 1600% AoE damage on death, and the skill that target locks all enemies when you get revived. I think it could actually be super powerful. Too bad theres not an art that kills me. Soulhacker is so cool though. I just wish the tank and healer souls had better tanking and healing stats respectively.
Omega: Their bodies undergo accelerated aging in capsules already, so I think Y was just continuing that process till their final term and use mind hax to force a fight to see if the life force harvested was worth it. Hard to say whether it was a success, considering they all regained their sense of selves
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Gameplay wise I got all the main game heroes (I hear there are two post game heroes, and I think I can guess who)
dorin and bambam lesss goooooooooooooo
i'm missing one right now, the machine assassin one, but i'm prioritizing not being overlevelled over completing everything asap. apparently there's nothing actually missable in the game, which is incredibly nice
YoukaiSlayer posted...
I'm thinking about running a kamikaze soulhacker squad. Theres an ability that gives everyone in the party 4 random buffs when an ally is revived and then for the kamikaze member, sacrificial heal which full heals the whole team when they go down, the skill that does 1600% AoE damage on death, and the skill that target locks all enemies when you get revived. I think it could actually be super powerful. Too bad theres not an art that kills me. Soulhacker is so cool though. I just wish the tank and healer souls had better tanking and healing stats respectively.
this game does seem like there's a LOT of really powerful memey setups, especially with soulhacker. i'm waiting till around postgame to seriously focus on it, but i've got one character with the skill to learn from NM's
did you know there's a way to guarantee full party invincibility and 100% all buff uptime using 1-2 character slots
Noah's short invincibility after he uses his unique talent art counts as a buff and can be spread by Aureole and have its timer paused by Troubador's Glittering Melody. So you slap Glittering Melody on a Signifer (give Noah Aureole if he's not the Signifer), give Noah a gem or accessory that lets him start with aggro, equip those accessories that allow asap master art and talent art usage on both, then go invincible, spread it, and pause it
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
It doesn't at all. She could have done that in a way that didn't involve all that garbage. She also could have done that at any time to any person undergoing homecoming. She could have used her brain sync super power to tell noah and friends. Not to mention the party has dispatched like a half dozen moebeus at this point. There's plenty of ways for her to die and avoid the flow or more practically she should help us until we win and then she can fade away. How many innocent kevesi and agnian and lost number soldiers died during that month we were imprisoned? She stole a month from the rest of the cast who only have like a year or two left anyway.
Had she done it to a random other person undergoing Homecoming, odds are N would have clued in and just stabbed that person the old-fashioned way. By swapping with her alternate self - who understands her feelings, beliefs, and intentions because she holds the same ones - putting together a convincing ruse becomes significantly more feasible. I could also very easily believe that M was only able to perform a complete swap because Mio is her alternate self and there were so many pre-existing similarities to help line everything up and avoid conspicuous resistance.
Homecomings are also pretty rare, and I don't think it's normal for M to hang out at them (I could be wrong, but I don't think N was present at the Kevesi one we saw), so attending a normal one would arouse suspicion. Finding an opportunity to do that at the same time as there's a set of Ouroboros candidates running around that stands a genuine chance of winning (if there weren't, N would massacre most of the world in his ensuing rage) seems astronomically unlikely, to the point that her seizing this one good opportunity makes perfect sense.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
N's beyond redeaming. How can you redeem eons of genocide? He doesn't deserve to have his time move again.
Noah is N's redemption, just as Mio is M's. They represent their past selves' regret over making the wrong choice (to become Moebius, in N's case, and M's failure to keep N from falling to such despair). The only reason Noah didn't fall to despair like N did is because M made sure Mio was around to keep him on the right path and remind him that he was fighting for something so much bigger than his personal feelings (through the flashback sequence). He passed that test, and in doing so redeemed N by re-committing to the goal of saving the world instead of being led astray by despair (seen when N merges with Noah after the fight with him in Origin, which is loosely analogous to Egil in the Mechonis Core fight in that it amounts to "we want the same thing, let go of your hate so we can actually achieve it").
Basically, Noah had to watch Mio die and overcome that, because failing to do so is what gave birth to N. If Noah had failed that test, he'd just have become another N (or merged with the existing one, I'm not sure). If Noah had been given an easy out and Mio's life had been extended without him ever truly having to face was her death would mean for him, he likely would have faltered when faced with the reality that Ouroboros had to separate the worlds and say goodbye to each other.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
There's then a bit of technical mess up. When the blade calling was sealed, it wasn't stopped completely, it just disappeared before being fully formed. Seems very plausible to at least try to attack in that moment when it's partially formed to destroy the iron bars. Also, they explain earlier but the circles on lanz armor is because it's a powerframe and the circles are still lit up so he and probably sena should have been able to bash down that door without calling blades. Especially if it was just iron. The gaps are also easily large enough for the smaller party members to slip through, especially the nopon.
The whole "power frame" thing is kind of a silly mcguffin to begin with that only exists to address the "plot hole" of how much more powerful a nation of blade/flesh eaters would be than normal people (never mind that those normal people were blocking hits from 400-ton robots on a regular basis), but I'm pretty comfortable accepting that whatever was done to seal their blades and Ouroboros powers also weakened power frames and blade genetics by enough to give the observed effect. Even if it hadn't and they were able to escape somehow, they'd near-instantly be arrested again, so call it a matter of convenience to avoid animating that process.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Why did the lost numbers not show up until right AFTER the eclipse? The had like a week of prep time and showed up minutes too late for no reason and didn't even attempt to destroy the annihilator cannon.
If they'd destroyed the annihilator before the eclipse, it would have tipped N off to M's betrayal, since they should have no way of knowing about it. They should also have no way of knowing about the homecoming or even that the party is still alive, given that everyone that could have known about the outcome of the battle was captured afterwards, plus the whole event was so heavily guarded that attacking before the chaos of Noah's breakthrough would have been pretty suicidal.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Finally, why didn't noah attempt to draw lucky seven? It's not a blade. Riku even tells him to draw it, Noah breaks free for a moment, and...doesn't even try. Wtf? I was so angry watching that. Every damn xenoblade has to ruin it's story in the latter half.
Presumably because he was too overcome by despair to try (especially in the context of "here's the flute that's given you such comfort and peace for your entire life, use it to destroy your new favourite thing), but it also ties into the nature of the Sword of Origin (which seems to be tied to Lucky Seven because Riku is just ordinary nopon): It's a weapon meant to destroy the world that Moebius created. Until he truly committed himself to doing that - regardless of what he would have to lose in the process - he wasn't able to use it. It's never outright stated, but N seems to have had access to a sword of similar power (which is why Z was so personally interested in him) that ended up being corrupted by his desire to protect the present. It stands to reason that the replacement that was built into subsequent Ouroboros stones was designed to prevent that corruption by only becoming available to those that were sufficiently determined.
I'm also not sure where you're getting that every Xenoblade ruins its story in the latter half. 2 basically doesn't even have a story until the last ~25% of the game, unless you were really attached to "we're going to steal your girlfriend because we're evil" "Oh no please don't steal my girlfriend." Virtually all of 2's story value is loaded into huge dumps of worldbuilding and exposing characters' motivations (particularly on the villains' side) and having the party reconcile that information with their beliefs, and almost all of that happens in or after chapter 7.
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It feels like there is actually a super easy solution for energy that presumably wouldn't make people upset. Let people reincarnate into 10 year bodies, die, then keep their memories and bring em back. At that rate basically everyone is immortal and moebeus keep getting energy. The only things bad about the system is that they have to fight for no reason and that they don't keep their memories, except when they do in colony omega, and also keep their bodies that already become husks, but were somehow unhusked, or something?
As a fundamental matter of thermodynamics, there really isn't a solution for energy within the paradigm Moebius established. The fundamental concept of "let people kill each other, then reincarnate them, then repeat, all while skimming a little life energy off the top to sustain ourselves" is a closed system out of which Moebius keeps siphoning energy, which means it will eventually run out because of the first law of thermodynamics. Whatever tricks are employed to improve the speed at which life energy can be harvested (as was happening in Omega or that colony where everyone is a first-termer), they're never going to be able to get out more energy than was involved in creating those lives in the first place. While it's never explicitly stated, I expect this is part of where the annihilation events come in: By turning large volumes of matter into energy, the deficit is fixed and the world can continue to function, though obviously this is still a finite solution.
That said it's really never implied beyond an outside understanding of physics that that is the case. In-game, it's implied that annihilation events are a consequence of the parallel worlds being held in stasis just before they would have naturally annihilated, and they happen when too much of one world leaks through into the other (as indicated by the black fog, which arose for similar reasons in Future Connected). This is where the power of interlinking comes from (for both Ouroboros and Moebius): It taps into the power of Origin to bring entities from the two worlds closer together than they otherwise could get, releasing significant amounts of energy by holding them just on the brink of annihilation. This is also why there's a time/energy limit, since that state can only be maintained for so long before the pair collapses in on itself and annihilates. I've seen some other theories that talk about the black fog as an autonomous natural entity that tries to erase dimensional abnormalities, such as the remaining Telethia (pieces of Zanza, who shouldn't exist outside of the memory space that Xenoblade 1's world occupied) in Future Connected, but I'm not sure if that means the black fog causes the annihilation events or is just associated with them.
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Harem labyrinth continues to be exactly what I want it to be. I'm gonna be sad when the season ends. I hope it gets a second season before long. It seems to be pretty popular on the sites I watch anime on.
In xenoblade 3 realm, I've beat the first 4 superbosses now. Sacrificial heal, the soul hacker skill, is so good. It really should have a cooldown. The only superboss I didn't first try was the level 95 one, but I still have the level 120 one remaining.
I've at least unlocked all main game classes on all characters and gotten almost all of them to at least 10 on everyone. I've upgraded all soul hacker arts I have and every skill that doesn't require just beat x amount of enemies. You can get the healing ones insanely fast with sacrificial heal. I decided to check a list of all the UM locations and I only missed like 4. Got 3 more and then all the rest are found in the final area.
I've also discovered how insane smash is. I don't actually fully understand what determines the damage it does. Using aquaball and sumo press (the soul hacker arts) I managed to over 10 million with a single smash, but Noah with his unlimited sword's launch+smash did way less, only like 5 million at roughly the same damage percent in the chain attack.
My only guess is that when used in a fusion art, it takes the damage value of both combined to scale the smash damage? The more than 10 mil smash was even done by a healer, not an attacker, and without any damage boosting skills. I guess I should test smash at some point, or just look it up, to try and figure out exactly how to manage it. Can practically oneshot superbosses.
As a fundamental matter of thermodynamics, there really isn't a solution for energy within the paradigm Moebius established. The fundamental concept of "let people kill each other, then reincarnate them, then repeat, all while skimming a little life energy off the top to sustain ourselves" is a closed system out of which Moebius keeps siphoning energy, which means it will eventually run out because of the first law of thermodynamics. Whatever tricks are employed to improve the speed at which life energy can be harvested (as was happening in Omega or that colony where everyone is a first-termer), they're never going to be able to get out more energy than was involved in creating those lives in the first place. While it's never explicitly stated, I expect this is part of where the annihilation events come in: By turning large volumes of matter into energy, the deficit is fixed and the world can continue to function, though obviously this is still a finite solution.
That's kind of the thing though. It implies that reincarnating these people into new bodies isn't losing energy, it's gaining it somehow, completely flying in the face of thermodynamics. Like ultimately, they have all the energy and are just funneling it back into the system for what should be no gain, however, they do seem to be gaining.
Anyway, I'm still on chapter 6 so I'm not going to read further.
Anyway, I'm still on chapter 6 so I'm not going to read further.
My bad, I thought you'd finished. I encourage not reading more of the other things I said, then, and this next spoiler block won't cover anything beyond there.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
That's kind of the thing though. It implies that reincarnating these people into new bodies isn't losing energy, it's gaining it somehow, completely flying in the face of thermodynamics. Like ultimately, they have all the energy and are just funneling it back into the system for what should be no gain, however, they do seem to be gaining.
Hypothetically, I could see it not really being any different from farming animals for food: Some manner of plant life grows and is harvested, that's used to feed the animals so they grow up, then we eat them for energy. The implication, though, is that there's some nebulous "life energy" beyond that that is collected by the flame clocks and sustains Moebius and grants them additional powers, far beyond what they'd get if they just ate the people directly (or better yet, skipped the trophic level losses and just ate vegetables). Maybe there's some sort of spiritual energy that's gained over the course of a life similarly to how plants absorb the sun's energy, and that's what's being collected and consumed, but it still seems to me like there are issues with how closed the system of Aionios is, and there are a couple of consuls who make comments to the effect of suggesting that the world is dying because of how Moebius is exploiting it.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
I've also discovered how insane smash is. I don't actually fully understand what determines the damage it does. Using aquaball and sumo press (the soul hacker arts) I managed to over 10 million with a single smash, but Noah with his unlimited sword's launch+smash did way less, only like 5 million at roughly the same damage percent in the chain attack.
My only guess is that when used in a fusion art, it takes the damage value of both combined to scale the smash damage? The more than 10 mil smash was even done by a healer, not an attacker, and without any damage boosting skills. I guess I should test smash at some point, or just look it up, to try and figure out exactly how to manage it. Can practically oneshot superbosses.
Yeah, Smash is ridiculously broken this time around. I don't know the exact formulas, but I know damage is highest at the beginning of a launch (which makes it particularly good in chain attacks because launch duration doesn't tick down), and it does take the damage of any fused arts into account (I believe in the form of applying whatever multiplier is used to determine the damage of the Smash itself to the damage of the other art, since there are multiple damage lines for fused Smashes, so this may actually end up being patched out). That all adds up to mean that fusing a Smash art to an art with a high damage ratio can pretty easily push the damage cap (which is just shy of 10 million), if you're set up properly.
It's one of the greater strengths of Kevesi attacker classes, since they can set Lost Vanguard's Smash art as a master art. That's somewhat balanced out by Agnian attacker classes generally being better (better skills, more reliable access to Power Charge), but if you're looking for game-breaking damage, Smash is the way to go.
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Picked up NIS Classics volume 3 this week, which has Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure & LA Pucelle: Ragnarok. And just like with the first two volumes, it has a noticeable glitch right out the gate. Classic NISA.
Also not really on topic, but I only just found out that both Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman were canceled. I could give or take Batwoman, but losing Legends hurts. Now there's only three fucking shows left in the Arrowverse, and one isn't even directly connected.
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Official King of PotD You only need one T-Rex to make the point, though. ~ Samus Sedai
Did you pick up anti-mechon weapons for everyone? The downgrade in attack values feelsbadman, but not having to use Enchant in every single fight to avoid your entire party becoming depressed is extremely valuable. There'll still be a substantial number of enemies you're better off avoiding until you're at-level with them, since that's just the nature of the whole "storming the castle" schtick, but by and large Mechonis shouldn't be too much of a difficulty spike.
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Did you pick up anti-mechon weapons for everyone? The downgrade in attack values feelsbadman, but not having to use Enchant in every single fight to avoid your entire party becoming depressed is extremely valuable. There'll still be a substantial number of enemies you're better off avoiding until you're at-level with them, since that's just the nature of the whole "storming the castle" schtick, but by and large Mechonis shouldn't be too much of a difficulty spike.
I had to fight then right away since most of the locations are inaccessible later. I had to call out yesterday so had a bonus day of playing.
been trying to get the meme afk auto burst setup going and wow not having soulhacker at 20 cuts a lot of skills effectiveness down. guess i need to go finish getting that ascension quest before anything else
also got a proper ogre break setup going and how the hell was i managing to live without this
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
another spoilery endgame xenoblade 3 thought: I think for sure 3 is my favorite game of the series, and possibly in my top 3 games of all time (RF4 and Rance 10 (if you count gameplay heavy vns) are hurdles man). It isn't a perfect game by far, but it hits so well so often. End of ch5 -> early ch6 is absolute peak Xenoblade moments. Throws an infodump at you but also challenges you to think about why this is even being relayed to you, until time resumes and the gambit pays off. So much begins to make sense during the most bleak phase of the entire series. Noah faces despair and- unlike N, because he faces it in a different way- doesn't succumb to it. edit 2: i see a lot of why youkaislayer doesnt like specific things and i agree on a lot of it (like losing battles in jrpgs when ur cranked and ezwin) but ultimately, EVERYTHING IS SO GOOD
edit: yes i'm drunk
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
I had to fight then right away since most of the locations are inaccessible later.
If you just reached Mechonis, you've got a ways to go before anything becomes inaccessible. The boss fight at the end of Agniritha is what triggers the first large wave of stuff becoming inaccessible, so until you get there, you're fine and you can take your time.
There also honestly isn't that much reason to go out of your way to kill every UM in 1, except as a personal challenge. You get more than enough skill coins to enable the more powerful builds even if you miss every single missable UM (there are 33 missables, I believe, out of 157 UM's and a maximum of 256 skill coins per playthrough, and even then I'm pretty sure you have to kill some of those 33), so unless you're trying to be a completionist, you don't have to be concerned about missing a few.
agesboy posted...
also got a proper ogre break setup going and how the hell was i managing to live without this
Given how much combat strategy revolves around Breaking, I feel like they just should have lowered everybody's Break resistance across the board by the same amount as the Ogre skill does and removed that skill (or maybe reclassified combos as something other than reactions so Ogre could keep the "I'm good at knockback and blowdown" niche they were obviously going for). That, or given a few other classes similar mechanisms to increase break chance. As it stands, you all but need an Ogre in your party to take advantage of anything related to combos when dealing the the more difficult enemies in the game, and given that there's a strong incentive to make Sena that Ogre, it really works against the incredible flexibility the game otherwise offers.
agesboy posted...
another spoilery endgame xenoblade 3 thought: I think for sure 3 is my favorite game of the series, and possibly in my top 3 games of all time (RF4 and Rance 10 (if you count gameplay heavy vns) are hurdles man). It isn't a perfect game by far, but it hits so well so often.
I'm inclined to agree. It's got its share of flaws (like STOP OVERRIDING THE AWESOME BOSS MUSIC THAT I'LL NEVER HEAR AGAIN WITH THE CHAIN ATTACK THEME THAT I'VE HEARD 578,000 TIMES) and I can see why some would prefer a longer, more direct story over this fairly short story that gets most of its value from making you contemplate it afterwards and relate it to the worldbuilding from sidequests and the like, but I'm really, really enjoying myself. Whether it stays at the top after I've had more time for the experience to settle remains to be seen, but for now I think it's dethroned Xenoblade 1 as one of my favourite games every. It's just so good in all the right ways.
One thing that definitely won't change with more time: This is absolutely the best Xenoblade party and quite possibly one of the best video game parties full stop. Individually, some of the characters might not necessarily measure up to others (though they're still fantastic and genuinely believable in their own rights), but the chemistry they have with each other and the way their relationships develop has been nothing short of an absolute joy to participate in. This game has been an epic journey with a bunch of people that I've genuinely loved hanging out with and being able to immerse myself among, which in turn has made their personal struggles and experiences hit that much harder, and that's really been incredible.
Chapter 5/6 spoilers:
agesboy posted...
End of ch5 -> early ch6 is absolute peak Xenoblade moments. Throws an infodump at you but also challenges you to think about why this is even being relayed to you, until time resumes and the gambit pays off. So much begins to make sense during the most bleak phase of the entire series. Noah faces despair and- unlike N, because he faces it in a different way- doesn't succumb to it.
Indeed. I especially love just how much more layered everything gets with the relevation of M's gambit and what that meant for all of the interactions surrounding it. The one that really gets me was Mio acknowledging that, after spending time with Noah and everyone else, she no longer felt ambivalent about her own survival and had decided that she really wanted to live. In context, it was a beautiful moment (reminiscent of Pyra/Mythra's "I love this world because you're in it"), made excruciatingly tragic by her impending execution and ultimately seeing her die and therefore never getting to really take advantage of that newfound love of life.
Except it wasn't really Mio. It was M, who had spent countless eons wishing for death because N chained her to an immortal existence that she didn't want. She finally found and seized a way to end that torment, but after sharing Mio's memories and within a few short days of hearing Noah on the other side of the cell wall, she came to love her life enough to want to live again (with "my Noah," which takes on a whole new meaning now). Instead of Mio's broad ambivalence, M went from actively seeking death to wanting more time with Noah, making the tragedy of her sacrifice even more pronounced. I just cri ever tim.
Bonus points where I went to bed after the post-Chapter 5 save, which resulted in genuinely losing sleep over speculating how they could possibly get out of it (or if they even could). I knew there was still game left and that the same people were still around for the endgame in some capacity, so they weren't *really* going to kill off the entire party, except for the part where they had established the cycle of reincarnation and also vaguely hinted at some sort of time loop deal with N and M's existence. They very easily could have killed everyone off and picked up the story a few years later with their reborn selves trying again. They could have sent Noah back in time to try again. There were enough plausible possibilities for killing everyone off without having to invent a solution that had no foreshadowing that I genuinely couldn't tell whether or not they were going to go there, especially where the time for "last-minute save because anime" had already passed when apparently-Mio evaporated. Some absolutely fantastic storytelling there, easily the highest point of the whole series.
agesboy posted...
like losing battles in jrpgs when ur cranked and ezwin
By and large, I don't mind that too much. Scripted losses can be a bit lazy as a storytelling mechanic, but I generally accept the ludonarrative dissonance of facerolling the boss but still taking a scripted loss if I've gone out of my way to be far more powerful than I'm supposed to be at that point in the story. In that case, I've chosen to break the game, so I don't mind the game being broken.
What I'm less forgiving of is when it happens when I'm not doing anything special, which happened several times in this game. I deliberately stayed at-level with the story content for the whole game and picked classes according to what needed levelling instead of anything min/maxed, but I was still pretty consistently able to take bosses from 50% (or higher) to dead with a single chain attack. That made for quite a few instances where I killed them with that chain attack, but then still "lost" in the cutscene. I'm pretty sure that's just an issue with HP cutoffs for scripted losses not interrupting chain attacks, which should be an easy fix, but it was still pretty annoying.
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If you just reached Mechonis, you've got a ways to go before anything becomes inaccessible. The boss fight at the end of Agniritha is what triggers the first large wave of stuff becoming inaccessible, so until you get there, you're fine and you can take your time.
There also honestly isn't that much reason to go out of your way to kill every UM in 1, except as a personal challenge. You get more than enough skill coins to enable the more powerful builds even if you miss every single missable UM (there are 33 missables, I believe, out of 157 UM's and a maximum of 256 skill coins per playthrough, and even then I'm pretty sure you have to kill some of those 33), so unless you're trying to be a completionist, you don't have to be concerned about missing a few.
Yeah I already beat all of it before you posted. I just have end games side quests left and the main quest. I probably could have best Mordred on normal mode since I cheesed it by attacking from the ledge but too late now. I should have been using Dunban from the start too. Right now I have Fiora in to get some bonus affinity.
I didn't even know that Dragon Ball Super Hero was in theaters. I've never seen DBZ in theaters before so I feel like I have to go. I haven't even watched Broly yet, but I'll have to get through that today because this is the last weekend for Super Hero.
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Official King of PotD You only need one T-Rex to make the point, though. ~ Samus Sedai
Bonus points where I went to bed after the post-Chapter 5 save, which resulted in genuinely losing sleep over speculating how they could possibly get out of it (or if they even could). I knew there was still game left and that the same people were still around for the endgame in some capacity, so they weren't *really* going to kill off the entire party, except for the part where they had established the cycle of reincarnation and also vaguely hinted at some sort of time loop deal with N and M's existence. They very easily could have killed everyone off and picked up the story a few years later with their reborn selves trying again. They could have sent Noah back in time to try again. There were enough plausible possibilities for killing everyone off without having to invent a solution that had no foreshadowing that I genuinely couldn't tell whether or not they were going to go there, especially where the time for "last-minute save because anime" had already passed when apparently-Mio evaporated. Some absolutely fantastic storytelling there, easily the highest point of the whole series.
Yeah the ambiguity of it all left me in far more suspense than fiction usually accomplishes. I felt threatened by the prospect of a 2nd cycle the entire game honestly. and it was pretty cool that death for once wasn't the worst outcome. Usually I only like the beginning of stories because possibilities get minimized as time goes on, but that definitely wasn't the case here. I wasn't even sure if the split was actually going to happen at the very end.
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
I should have been using Dunban from the start too.
Yeah, Dunban's pretty great. Reyn isn't bad, by any means, and he can actually do some of the best burst damage in the game if you set him up right and take control, but Dunban is easily one of the best party members.
Revelation34 posted...
Right now I have Fiora in to get some bonus affinity.
If you're looking to grind affinity, the best way to do it is to find the level ~88 unique in the Kromar Coast area of Eryth Sea (Stormy Belganon, iirc). He's got a sleep spike, so if you put 100% debuff resist on the character you're controlling and remove all arts from the other two, they'll fall asleep every time they autoattack and you can mash B to wake them up for an affinity boost. Run away before he dies (you can also respawn it, but running away is generally faster and doesn't require you to kill the adds again), repeat until maxed out. For most of the game, cycling party members in to gain affinity more naturally works pretty well, but once you get to the endgame stuff and you're just finishing off the last few affinities, specifically grinding it works a lot better.
*Xenoblade 3* agesboy posted...
Yeah the ambiguity of it all left me in far more suspense than fiction usually accomplishes. I felt threatened by the prospect of a 2nd cycle the entire game honestly. and it was pretty cool that death for once wasn't the worst outcome. Usually I only like the beginning of stories because possibilities get minimized as time goes on, but that definitely wasn't the case here. I wasn't even sure if the split was actually going to happen at the very end.
Yeah, and then the ending remains just as ambiguous in the question of whether or not Origin merged the worlds or just recreated them and sent them on their way. I know there are a lot of people who want the story DLC to be an epilogue that confirms that Noah and Mio and everyone manage to reunite and live happily ever after, but I kind of like it being left open-ended. A more definite ending would fly in the face of the game's core message of "life's uncertain. Deal with it." The story being so ambiguous through the entire game kind of ties into that as well, which is really quite nifty.
hera posted...
so many redacted posts
Is good game. There be much to talk about, but nobody that deserves to live wants to spoil a highly-anticipated game that's only a month old, so much concealment.
Revelation34 posted...
Are they going to do a definitive edition for 2 too?
If they do, it won't be for a while. 1 really needed the definitive edition, given that that's the only proper release it's ever seen (the Wii version was hamstrung from the start by NoA not wanting to release it and the Gamestop exclusivity deal, the 3DS port was New 3DS exclusive and only like four people bought those, the WiiU VC release had absolutely no promotion around it) and it gave them the opportunity to make a couple tweaks to retcon it into being part of a series instead of completely standalone (not to mention substantial graphical improvements, because the original game pushed the Wii to its absolute breaking point). 2, however, was properly promoted and released on a system that was popular enough to not hinder sales (poor X), so it did quite well. It's already set up to be part of a series (it's the one that retconned 1), it doesn't leave a ton of room for extra story content that wouldn't be better presented as a prequel to 3 (which is likely what 3's story DLC will be), it's already had extra story content added by the DLC...
All I'd really expect them to do is make a few graphical and maybe QoL improvements and roll the Expansion Pass in. I expect they'll probably end up doing that on Nintendo's next system, but not before. If you're wondering whether you should buy it now or wait for a Definitive Edition, I'd say buy it now because you'll be waiting quite a while. If you're okay with a digital copy, the base game pretty routinely goes on sale anyway such that you can get the game and the DLC for close to the same price as the base game would normally be, which would be the main benefit of waiting for a remake.
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Yeah, and then the ending remains just as ambiguous in the question of whether or not Origin merged the worlds or just recreated them and sent them on their way.
I thought it was clear from some exposition somewhere that the worlds were recreated again and split for a time, destined to eventually merge again, but Noah retained something from his connection to Mio that allowed him to find his way to Alrest. He disappears when the birds on the screen obscure him from vision in the final scene. If the worlds were merged, it wouldn't have been portrayed as being spirited away.
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
I thought it was clear from some exposition somewhere that the worlds were recreated again and split for a time, destined to eventually merge again, but Noah retained something from his connection to Mio that allowed him to find his way to Alrest. He disappears when the birds on the screen obscure him from vision in the final scene. If the worlds were merged, it wouldn't have been portrayed as being spirited away.
Spiriting him away is itself pretty ambiguous. He was in a large crowd and could just have disappeared into that, maybe he poofed to another world, maybe the worlds merged and he ended up poofing to where he was supposed to be in the merged world, maybe he was always an anomaly that came into existence for the sake of resolving the events of the game (hence he didn't freeze when everything else did) and was subsequently erased once that purpose was filled... Like a lot of the game, it's left pretty open, with little to go on except a vague "he probably didn't have to live without Mio so don't be sad."
Either way, the ambiguous ending works. I'd love to see a conclusive happy ending for everyone because I just loved these characters and their interactions so much, but I'm not surprised the game didn't give that based on how central the theme of "you're not going to know what the future holds and that's okay" was to the overall story.
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I'm not too far from being able to join in that spoilery conversation. On chapter 7. Did all hero quests and side stories finally. There are SO many quests in this game. IMO possibly the best quests in a video game. While a lot of stuff is just fetch or kill, theres always story to go with every part and it fleshes out the world and characters so well. I feel like I know 100+ named characters and their personalities. That's wild. Also this game made me sad about a tirkin.
I'm not too far from being able to join in that spoilery conversation. On chapter 7. Did all hero quests and side stories finally. There are SO many quests in this game. IMO possibly the best quests in a video game. While a lot of stuff is just fetch or kill, theres always story to go with every part and it fleshes out the world and characters so well. I feel like I know 100+ named characters and their personalities. That's wild. Also this game made me sad about a tirkin.
Indeed. I think X still takes the cake for exploration in terms of having more interesting environments and navigation tools, but it's definitely been dethroned as the series' king of side quests. The worldbuilding is so incredibly rich this time around and does such a good job of exploring and expanding on the game's underlying themes, and the whole experience is made so much greater for it. Bolearis has a moment in the events surrounding the final boss that is fun on its own, but holds so much more meaning having done the side quests to help him grow into the role of Acting Commander and is really quite genuinely touching despite being kind of silly.
Revelation34 posted...
Should I buy Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or wait until a definitive edition?
I'd say buy it, but it's gone on sale for $30-40 in late November/early December for the last 3-4 years, so you'll probably be best off waiting a couple months for that. I recommend getting the DLC as well, but it's not mandatory (despite being a prequel, Torna is better played after playing the main game because the main game contextualizes a lot of it).
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As a side note to Xenoblade 2's DLC, buy the expansion pass, not Torna: The Golden Country. The expansion pass includes it as DLC to the main game, but you can pay more money to just buy Torna standalone, but don't do that. The expansion pass also includes the other waves of content, which includes the fun postgame shenanigans like what is basically a challenge arena, but the main draw is Torna.
Imo wait until you beat the game (or at least until you're thoroughly enjoying the base game) to get the expansion pass. $30 might seem like a lot but Torna is basically whole ass another game and you will probably be left wanting more after beating the game. The extra blades you can unlock are mostly endgame or postgame stuff.
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
I finished xenoblade 3 and oh my god that might be the worst ending I've ever seen. I'm actually angry. The surface plot collapsed so hard to make room for the emotional themes of the game, but those themes are not good and the plot making absolutely no sense just makes it feel like those messages don't hold up to reality. Further complaints will be spoilers of course.
I'm still unclear on what origin was originally supposed to do? It sounds like, the two worlds of xenoblade were going to collide and all the people on it die. We see this in a scene of the worlds literally colliding. Origin was supposed to "restart the world" after that. Wtf does that mean? Are they basically allowing all life on both worlds to die but they are content with creating life again afterwards? Thats not even a solution. Everybody dies, no one is saved (except the queens somehow).
Anyway, origin's power is somehow activated coalescing the dying peoples fear of being killed by the planet collision and freezes time right then and somehow creates a 3rd world that is a combination of the two in a frozen instant during collision. Somehow restarting origin just harmlessly splits the worlds back apart? How? If you restart origin shouldn't the two planets just immediately collide killing all life? Are these two worlds the restarted worlds that origin somehow makes with space magic power?
The main theme of the game falls completely flat, because the only bad thing about aionios is the perpetual war. There's parts of Aionios during the game that are totally fine and good like the city and the lost colony. Nothing is inherently wrong with living on Aionios. Restarting origin and defeating moebius are unrelated.
So let's talk about the true villain, Z, Wtf. Firstly, he's not really a being at all, just a physical manifestation of human fear (but then also regret for some reason). So then WHY does he make everyone suffer for his amusement? That makes no sense and is the crux of the entire plot. If his goal was to save humans from fear and let them exist in an endless state of contentment, that might make some sense, but then Aionios would be a paradise. Even IF you need people to die to harvest energy to keep the worlds from colliding, you can do that pretty peacefully. The amount of life energy they harvest has nothing to do with how fast they die, only how many get brought to life, since all of them will eventually die anyway. If you didn't erase their memories, they have eternal life effectively, and just have to swap out bodies every 10 years. There was literally no reason for the world of Aionios to end up in the state it is, other than "lol z was bored".
For extra badness, we get the scene were N and M sacrifice themselves to kill Z because apparently he's literally invincible to us and we can do nothing to hurt him making our involvement pointless and M who already regretted all this could have just killed him at any time apparently. Also, how the fuck is M still around? She escaped the flow with the homecoming, only to still exist because she and Mio are the same person, except they aren't. The fact that Noah is trying to beg N to stay, the same N responsible for committing genocide and torturing many people on this planet and perputating this awful pointless cycle of pain and killing because he was sad, it's fucking pathetic. Why do jrpgs want so badly to forgive genocidal maniacs?
All of that was enough to take me out of the experience, but it wasn't what made me mad. What made me mad is that despite being stupid and nonsensical, they STILL give us a sad ending where the good romance was built up throughout the game, quite well, just has to end up as literal starcrossed lovers and be split up for no reason. It makes extra no sense because both planets still exist in the same universe, they were literally hitting each other. and creating explosions instead of the weird black spherical annihilation. These motherfuckers could have just lived happily together on Aionios and still moved forward, just like they were the whole game.
And wtf happens to Aionios natives like the city folk? Do they just get annihilated out of existence?
I remember I was quite angry at the ending of xenoblade 2 but this far and away takes the cake and at least in xenoblade 2 despite having some atrocious writing and pointless sacrifice, it's magically undone at the end and they get a happy ending so I don't have to keep thinking about it.
Can't edit but also why the fuck do they let you skip the credits but have that also skip the post credit scene? I didn't even realize I'd missed something until reading topics on the ending. Not that the post credit scene helps anything, but still.
I'm still unclear on what origin was originally supposed to do? It sounds like, the two worlds of xenoblade were going to collide and all the people on it die. We see this in a scene of the worlds literally colliding. Origin was supposed to "restart the world" after that. Wtf does that mean? Are they basically allowing all life on both worlds to die but they are content with creating life again afterwards? Thats not even a solution. Everybody dies, no one is saved (except the queens somehow).
Bionis and Alrest and their constituent parts are essentially matter and antimatter. If they collide, they would annihilate each other and nothing would be left. Origin was meant to be a way to allow the worlds to merge or coexist without annihilation. The process failed partway through due to Z's meddling, so the current status quo at the end of the game is a temporary delay measure.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Even IF you need people to die to harvest energy to keep the worlds from colliding, you can do that pretty peacefully. The amount of life energy they harvest has nothing to do with how fast they die, only how many get brought to life, since all of them will eventually die anyway. If you didn't erase their memories, they have eternal life effectively, and just have to swap out bodies every 10 years. There was literally no reason for the world of Aionios to end up in the state it is, other than "lol z was bored".
Uhhh, no? The world as it is was running out of energy very slowly over time and wouldn't ACTUALLY last forever. What do you think annihilation events are? It's "matter and antimatter" colliding. The world is very, very gradually being destroyed. I feel like this is the biggest thing you aren't getting. The "eternal now" is a soft lie.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Also, how the fuck is M still around? She escaped the flow with the homecoming, only to still exist because she and Mio are the same person, except they aren't.
The part of M that she entrusted to Mio was still around. M both merged and swapped at the same time. Soul shenanigans isn't a zero-sum game or Mio would never have been born from M's regret to begin with.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
These motherfuckers could have just lived happily together on Aionios and still moved forward, just like they were the whole game.
Being content to living on Aionos inherently isn't moving forward. The whole game, they were fighting to dismantle the status quo, which was stillness as provided by Z. The current situation is like sitting on a BSOD until your computer craps out.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
And wtf happens to Aionios natives like the city folk? Do they just get annihilated out of existence?
Ghondor and Monica made some kind of comment about hoping to be reborn in the separated worlds. Their souls were recorded by Origin, so it's definitely possible. Might be part of the final DLC plot, which I'm guessing is going to be a sequel, not a prequel like Torna. Though prequel is entirely possible, covering the City's founding.
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
Bionis and Alrest and their constituent parts are essentially matter and antimatter. If they collide, they would annihilate each other and nothing would be left. Origin was meant to be a way to allow the worlds to merge or coexist without annihilation. The process failed partway through due to Z's meddling, so the current status quo at the end of the game is a temporary delay measure.
But we see them physically collide and not annihilate. They show us this in a cutscene. So I don't believe this is correct.
agesboy posted...
Uhhh, no? The world as it is was running out of energy very slowly over time and wouldn't ACTUALLY last forever. What do you think annihilation events are? It's "matter and antimatter" colliding. The world is very, very gradually being destroyed. I feel like this is the biggest thing you aren't getting. The "eternal now" is a soft lie.
How much of the world was destroyed over the course of more than 1000 years? Not that much. On top of that, they clearly created an annihilation converter for use with the cannon that sucks up all the black fog. They even mention in one of the discussion topics that it's almost certainly still being used to power the castle and thats why annilation events never take place near the castle despite all the black fog. So basically, they've already solved this problem, and even if they didn't, theres no reason to end things now instead working on a better solution over the next 10k+ years before Aionios fully annihilates anyway. If origin's purpose is to somehow resolves the annihilation to begin with, they could do that from within Aionios instead of basically rewinding time putting them back in the same position which by all rights should just result in another Z anyway.
agesboy posted...
The part of M that she entrusted to Mio was still around. M both merged and swapped at the same time. Soul shenanigans isn't a zero-sum game or Mio would never have been born from M's regret to begin with.
Yeah, thats complete bullshit. Them being physically born of an emotion makes no sense to begin with either and is stupid. M went through all the trouble of basically torturing the main party for a month just to disappear and she didn't even actually disappear making that section of the game even dumber and more pointless than it already was. Doubly so when we explicitly learn that moebius cannot come back and are gone forever when they die.
agesboy posted...
Being content to living on Aionos inherently isn't moving forward. The whole game, they were fighting to dismantle the status quo, which was stillness as provided by Z. The current situation is like sitting on a BSOD until your computer craps out.
It isn't though. I understand that they want staying on Aionios to represent stillness, but it just factually doesn't. There's nothing more still about the life on Aionios than on alrest or the xenoblade 1 world. People are born and live their lives and make choices and move forward constantly. We are a witness to it for the entire damn game. Just because the world will eventually end someday doesn't mean that theres no hope of finding a solution and frankly the message of fuck the consequences, thrust yourself into the unknown and hope is shit advice and theres probably a reason the story can't wrap that into a message that complies with the world they've built up.
agesboy posted...
Ghondor and Monica made some kind of comment about hoping to be reborn in the separated worlds. Their souls were recorded by Origin, so it's definitely possible. Might be part of the final DLC plot, which I'm guessing is going to be a sequel, not a prequel like Torna. Though prequel is entirely possible, covering the City's founding.
Being reborn is what was already happening to the people in Aionios to begin with and unless they keep their memories, it's basically just a clone of what you could have been. Your memories and personality are what you are. I'd be so pissed to be a lost number and find out what we were actually fighting for was to kill me and everyone I love and hope that someday our souls reincarnate. They clearly expect to still exist after defeating moebius. The whole plot is around freeing the people from moebius control, not killing all life on the planet and forcing the planet to cease to be. It's so fucked.
I'm still unclear on what origin was originally supposed to do? It sounds like, the two worlds of xenoblade were going to collide and all the people on it die. We see this in a scene of the worlds literally colliding. Origin was supposed to "restart the world" after that. Wtf does that mean? Are they basically allowing all life on both worlds to die but they are content with creating life again afterwards? Thats not even a solution. Everybody dies, no one is saved (except the queens somehow).
In a nutshell, the worlds were going to annihilate into energy upon coming in contact with each other (even if other collisions don't involve annihilation, fully overlapping would cause it). Origin is a sort of Ark (in a game where the protagonist's name is Noah, because Takahashi) that contains a comprehensive record of the worlds and every person living in them that will harness the energy of that apocalyptic annihilation recreate the worlds instantly in the same state they were prior to impact (except presumably more stably to prevent them from having the same problem again). That does mean everybody dies (including the queens) but identical copies (complete with memories) are created instantly after their death, so calling it a practical solution isn't inaccurate. It's like ideas of teleportation that rely on destroying your local self and recreating you elsewhere: It means you die, but nothing about you is actually lost, so it's fine. The alternative is that everyone just dies, so...
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Anyway, origin's power is somehow activated coalescing the dying peoples fear of being killed by the planet collision and freezes time right then and somehow creates a 3rd world that is a combination of the two in a frozen instant during collision. Somehow restarting origin just harmlessly splits the worlds back apart?
Aionios exists because Moebius used Origin's power to freeze time, then force the two worlds as close as possible to overlapping before actually annihilating, allowing them to exist without having to fear what might happen if Origin didn't work (which is what coalesced into Moebius in the first place as a consequence of compiling everyone's thoughts and wills inside Origin). When Moebius was defeated and Origin was set back on its original course, they separated and went back to their original states and collision course (and then were recreated by Origin).
YoukaiSlayer posted...
So then WHY does he make everyone suffer for his amusement?
Because when your existence consists of eternally repeating the same experiences and actions out of fear of facing unforeseen adversity, you're pretty inevitably going to start trying to come up with ways to have fun with that process.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
Even IF you need people to die to harvest energy to keep the worlds from colliding, you can do that pretty peacefully. The amount of life energy they harvest has nothing to do with how fast they die, only how many get brought to life, since all of them will eventually die anyway. If you didn't erase their memories, they have eternal life effectively, and just have to swap out bodies every 10 years.
Given the thermodynamic implications of eternally respawning people, I'm guessing the "life energy" that is harvested is based on their memories and emotions and other such things that don't typically get carried over. That means carrying them over would make the system unsustainable (even more so than it already is), especially given the need to store that information somehow (everyone's birth states are roughly based on how they were stored in Origin when Aionios began). As for the life spans, letting people live out full lives would mean 8-9 times as much life energy would be tied up in the system at any given time, and I could believe that a monster born of the collective unconscious' fear of change would rather limit people's lifespans than choose to leave 85%+ of people out of the new world.
That, and there's a strong undercurrent of anti-capitalist themes in the game, and one of the more harmful trends in capitalism is giant corporations taking advantage of their scale to make enormous amounts of money from making tiny profit margins many times over. That paradigm works really well for those collecting those profits, but strongly encourages treating workers like trash. Moebius collecting their take from a large number of shorter, lower-yield lives that are treated as being throwaway instead of a small number of longer, higher-yield ones that are more valued falls very nicely in line with that.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
For extra badness, we get the scene were N and M sacrifice themselves to kill Z because apparently he's literally invincible to us and we can do nothing to hurt him making our involvement pointless and M who already regretted all this could have just killed him at any time apparently. Also, how the f*** is M still around? She escaped the flow with the homecoming, only to still exist because she and Mio are the same person, except they aren't. The fact that Noah is trying to beg N to stay, the same N responsible for committing genocide and torturing many people on this planet and perputating this awful pointless cycle of pain and killing because he was sad, it's f***ing pathetic. Why do jrpgs want so badly to forgive genocidal maniacs?
Consider those more abstract representations of N and M. Just as Noah and Mio represent the parts of N and M that regretted the way things turned out, N and M represent the parts of Noah and Mio that are afraid of the future and want to keep things the same, which Noah and Mio had to let go of to defeat Z. When Noah incorporated N, that wasn't a matter of forgiving N for the genocide, it was a matter of accepting that N's attitudes and beliefs were a part of him that he had to deal with instead of denying.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
On top of that, they clearly created an annihilation converter for use with the cannon that sucks up all the black fog. [...] So basically, they've already solved this problem
Unfortunately, you can't really design a world in which everyone has the freedom to choose how to live their lives around the fundamental requirement that a handful of people have nuclear artillery that you just have to trust they won't misuse or lose control of. The Annihilator also doesn't really redirect annihilation events that would otherwise happen so much as it induces new, controlled ones, so I don't think it could really solve the issue.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
There's nothing more still about the life on Aionios than on alrest or the xenoblade 1 world. People are born and live their lives and make choices and move forward constantly. We are a witness to it for the entire damn game.
That's only *because* we give them that freedom, though. It's a recurring theme with every single colony that they want to live differently but can't because filling up the Clock takes all of their time and energy. If the Clocks are a requirement for the world to exist (as they seem to be, since Moebius needs to maintain the world and the Clocks maintain Moebius), then the world prevents people from living their lives freely.
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Imo wait until you beat the game (or at least until you're thoroughly enjoying the base game) to get the expansion pass. $30 might seem like a lot but Torna is basically whole ass another game and you will probably be left wanting more after beating the game.
I'd agree with this. The DLC is emphatically worth the cost, but it's more of the same and expands on what the base game offers, so if you don't feel like you want more, it's not worthwhile. Even though it's a prequel, the "official" right time to play Torna is between chapters 7 and 8 (of 10) in the base game, since it was originally conceived as a playable flashback sequence and got cut because it would have thrown off the pacing, and playing it after playing most/all of the main game is generally going to be a much better idea than playing it first. The challenge battles are great, but they're very much a late-/end-game thing in that they really require you to understand and exploit the combat system to its full potential.
agesboy posted...
The extra blades you can unlock are mostly endgame or postgame stuff.
The non-challenge mode DLC blades are available right from the start, so you could make a case for recommending it early based on that. That said, while they're quite strong and it's nice to have guaranteed decent blades right out of the gate instead of having to get lucky, they're far from necessary to have a good time.
I would, however, recommend buying the DLC before you try to grind affinity to max out blades. It unlocks an item that's much, much better for increasing affinity than anything the base game has to offer, and if you're sufficiently invested in the game to want to max blades out, you're sufficiently invested for me to say that the DLC will be worth buying.
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In a nutshell, the worlds were going to annihilate into energy upon coming in contact with each other (even if other collisions don't involve annihilation, fully overlapping would cause it). Origin is a sort of Ark (in a game where the protagonist's name is Noah, because Takahashi) that contains a comprehensive record of the worlds and every person living in them that will harness the energy of that apocalyptic annihilation recreate the worlds instantly in the same state they were prior to impact (except presumably more stably to prevent them from having the same problem again). That does mean everybody dies (including the queens) but identical copies (complete with memories) are created instantly after their death, so calling it a practical solution isn't inaccurate. It's like ideas of teleportation that rely on destroying your local self and recreating you elsewhere: It means you die, but nothing about you is actually lost, so it's fine. The alternative is that everyone just dies, so...
I don't think that's any better than just dying in the first place. Definitely not a solution by any means. I also feel like the game doesn't say most of that and it's just you filling in the blanks with headcannon. It's also just the same concept they explored much better in X, despite every other aspect of X's plot being horrendous.
adjl posted...
Aionios exists because Moebius used Origin's power to freeze time, then force the two worlds as close as possible to overlapping before actually annihilating, allowing them to exist without having to fear what might happen if Origin didn't work (which is what coalesced into Moebius in the first place as a consequence of compiling everyone's thoughts and wills inside Origin). When Moebius was defeated and Origin was set back on its original course, they separated and went back to their original states and collision course (and then were recreated by Origin).
Why does origin have the power to freeze time? And if it does, why aren't melia and nia using that function to stall so they have time to come up with a solution that doesn't involve killing everyone anyway? Why does a desire to not die result in a world where everyone constantly dies? That seems antithetical to what Z should be doing.
adjl posted...
Because when your existence consists of eternally repeating the same experiences and actions out of fear of facing unforeseen adversity, you're pretty inevitably going to start trying to come up with ways to have fun with that process.
If you are human maybe, but Z isn't. He is just a coalescence of human fear.
adjl posted...
Given the thermodynamic implications of eternally respawning people, I'm guessing the "life energy" that is harvested is based on their memories and emotions and other such things that don't typically get carried over. That means carrying them over would make the system unsustainable (even more so than it already is), especially given the need to store that information somehow (everyone's birth states are roughly based on how they were stored in Origin when Aionios began). As for the life spans, letting people live out full lives would mean 8-9 times as much life energy would be tied up in the system at any given time, and I could believe that a monster born of the collective unconscious' fear of change would rather limit people's lifespans than choose to leave 85%+ of people out of the new world.
They presumably are leaving way more than 85+% out of he world. There's only like 40 colonies with at most like 100 people (probably closer to 50). There should be way more than 4000 people just from alrest, much less xenoblade 1's world 100+ years into their future.
Consider those more abstract representations of N and M. Just as Noah and Mio represent the parts of N and M that regretted the way things turned out, N and M represent the parts of Noah and Mio that are afraid of the future and want to keep things the same, which Noah and Mio had to let go of to defeat Z. When Noah incorporated N, that wasn't a matter of forgiving N for the genocide, it was a matter of accepting that N's attitudes and beliefs were a part of him that he had to deal with instead of denying.
I don't care what metaphors there are, N committed genocide and is functionally a clone of Noah, not the same person. You can't just abstract away reality. They physically exist in 2 separate places doing separate things.
adjl posted...
Unfortunately, you can't really design a world in which everyone has the freedom to choose how to live their lives around the fundamental requirement that a handful of people have nuclear artillery that you just have to trust they won't misuse or lose control of. The Annihilator also doesn't really redirect annihilation events that would otherwise happen so much as it induces new, controlled ones, so I don't think it could really solve the issue.
Um, we do that now in the real world. They mention in some info discussions but the black fog converter is used for more than just the cannon and is the reason agnes castle can exist in the black fog area and not be annihilated. Shoot it into space if you have to.
adjl posted...
That's only *because* we give them that freedom, though. It's a recurring theme with every single colony that they want to live differently but can't because filling up the Clock takes all of their time and energy. If the Clocks are a requirement for the world to exist (as they seem to be, since Moebius needs to maintain the world and the Clocks maintain Moebius), then the world prevents people from living their lives freely.
Yeah but ouroboros is just as much a part of Aionios as Moebius. The world continues to exist just fine despite our destroying of the clocks and the world does not immediately destabilize after we beat moebius. It's not until we restart origin that that happens.
However, this brings up maybe the most frustrating thing about the whole setup. Everything we do is pointless. Freeing the colonies doesn't mean anything if we just obliterate them in a few weeks. Helping colony 9 become self sufficient by dealing potatos for 5 hours was a complete waste because colony 9 doesn't exist anymore. Helping the people in the city? Pointless, they don't exist anymore, There's over 150 side quests and all of that is just deleted with the ending of the game. Why the hell would make a game like that? How many of the lost numbers would have helped us in the fight if we told them they and everyone they care about will be destroyed if we succeed? As far as I'm concerned, Z was right, Ouroboros were traitors who did bring ruin to the world, and their reward for doing so is oblivion with everyone else. They are convinced they will meet again in the ending but they won't, because even their originals will die in the collision. What a shit world and a shit story, that wasted 150 hours of my time.
Adjl is gonna have to continue taking up to Xenoblade Defense Force mantle because fuck trying to quote shit on mobile but tldr for me: 3 best Xenoblade game, and 1 was my second favorite game of all time before this
both the plot and musical themes kicked all kinds of ass
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http://i.imgur.com/LabbRyN.jpg raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.
Why the fuck did they make rebuff resist only available from a shitty high level dinosaur and not have it drop every time?
Because postgame grinding. It's an extremely powerful gem, so it makes some amount of sense to have it be hard to get. If you set up your gem crafting right, you should only need 4 copies of the crystal to outfit the entire active party and 8 copies to give one to everyone (which is convenient but not necessary), and those crystals can also give Double Attack (which you should have 3-4 copies of) and Unbeatable (which is good to put on everyone), so it's fairly productive farming. If you save scum the chest dropped by the unique version (Magnificent Digalus), you'll get enough of all three gems pretty quickly.
Xenoblade 3 Spoilers: YoukaiSlayer posted...
I don't think that's any better than just dying in the first place. Definitely not a solution by any means.
It solves the practical issue of "these people are no longer present in the universe," which is better than not solving that issue if we start from fundamentally valuing their presence. There's room to debate the philosophy of what it means to exist as a person, but this is definitely the best available solution to ensure that the worlds don't disappear permanently, considering what would be involved in "solving" unbreakable laws of matter.
I also feel like the game doesn't say most of that and it's just you filling in the blanks with headcannon.
That applies to a lot of this game. It very much employs a "show, don't tell" approach to much of its storytelling and worldbuilding, with things not necessarily being explicitly explained but making sense if you think about how everything fits together.
Why does origin have the power to freeze time?
A wizard did it. It fits well enough into the other omnipotence shenanigans shown throughout the series that I'm fine to leave it at that.
And if it does, why aren't melia and nia using that function to stall so they have time to come up with a solution that doesn't involve killing everyone anyway?
Maybe they don't have the power to access it. They are also mortal (exceptionally long-lived, but most of the reason they're still around now is because they were held in various forms of stasis), so "freeze time for everyone else until we figure out a way to fundamentally rewrite physics" isn't necessarily a safe bet, especially if maintaining time in that frozen state requires additional energy input (such as, from a synthetic world where people's life energy is routinely harvested to keep the system running).
Why does a desire to not die result in a world where everyone constantly dies? That seems antithetical to what Z should be doing.
From the perspective of an immortal god, nobody's ever really dying in Aionios (with the sole exception of Homecoming, which is uncommon and Moebius tries to avoid outside of a handful of cases that are used to motivate people). Sure, you end up collecting their life energy in chunks every now and then, but then they come back, so what does that matter in the grand scheme of things?
Mostly, that's the point: When somebody at the very top tries to maintain the overall status quo without caring about what it costs, those on the ground level often end up suffering on their more personal scales. Z's too detached from the individuals to recognize that outside of a handful of examples that he sees as validating his beliefs that he's making things better than they'd otherwise be, so he believes himself to be acting for the greater good.
If you are human maybe, but Z isn't. He is just a coalescence of human fear.
Into a human-ish form. A central theme of all three Xenoblade games has been to explore the implications of gods being limited by human thinking and weakness. Whether as Zanza or the Architect, Klaus was still fundamentally a human and made mistakes accordingly. Z is not Klaus, but he was created by the will of humanity (intentionally or otherwise), so it stands to reason that he'd fall prey to the same problems and idiosyncrasies inherent in that will.
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I don't care what metaphors there are, N committed genocide and is functionally a clone of Noah, not the same person. You can't just abstract away reality. They physically exist in 2 separate places doing separate things.
And the N that exists as a separate, genocidal maniac has met with the appropriate stabbity death to prevent further maniacal genocide. Anything past that stabbity death is a matter of Noah learning how not to end up following the same path, since they are in fact copies of the same person (with the same personalities, beliefs, and attitudes). The difference is that our Noah ended up meeting the right people to support him through losing Mio (including M sacrificing herself in Mio's stead), allowing him to break the cycle of despair that created and sustained N.
Um, we do that now in the real world.
Political commentary? In my Xeno game?
They mention in some info discussions but the black fog converter is used for more than just the cannon and is the reason agnes castle can exist in the black fog area and not be annihilated. Shoot it into space if you have to.
The heavy black fog presence around each castle is mostly *because* of the Annihilator, which inherently attracts black fog (the same way interlinking does, so it probably works on a similar principle). It's loosely implied that black fog is a symptom of an impending annihilation event, rather than the cause. While having lots of black fog around is correlated with a higher risk of an annihilation event, it does not itself seem to create one just by virtue of existing in an area.
Think of it like white blood cells: They don't cause infections, but they do congregate around potentially infectious material and trigger inflammatory responses if needed to prevent further infection. Analogously, black fog congregates around spatial abnormalities (interlinking, bits of the worlds that overlap a bit too closely, etc.) and trigger annihilation events as needed to remove them.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
The world continues to exist just fine despite our destroying of the clocks and the world does not immediately destabilize after we beat moebius.
The game covers a pretty short time span in Aionios' history. A couple months of instability won't destroy the world, but I doubt it's going to survive indefinitely without Moebius maintaining it.
YoukaiSlayer posted...
However, this brings up maybe the most frustrating thing about the whole setup. Everything we do is pointless. Freeing the colonies doesn't mean anything if we just obliterate them in a few weeks.
You already touched on why it isn't pointless: If the colonies were left alone, Moebius would be reborn as soon as the worlds' collision resumed and we'd have to start all over again. Freeing the colonies was a vital part of helping them all cope with their fear of an unknown future so they could move forward into it.
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both the plot and musical themes kicked all kinds of ass
Except the chain attack theme overriding everything else. It is in fact a great song in its own right, but so is every single boss theme it runs over that I never get another chance to listen to in-game. That was made even worse by the system of having multiple versions of each boss theme that increase in intensity as the fight progresses, which I almost never got to hear because I was listening to a chain attack from 50-0 on the vast majority of bosses (the chain attack theme also changes based on remaining hp, but that's less exciting the 400th time I've heard it). You'd think they'd learn from Wir Fliegen, but alas. I'm really hoping they patch in a toggle for it like they included for <Redacted>'s battle music.
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