So after we got a little bit more of a taste about this game's enemies in the last Japanese direct, I decided to look back at a few trailers to piece together more information about the story and what we should expect thematically.
First, I want to say that we should expect things, words, phrases, etc to have more than one meaning and a lot of symbolism. This is just how the Xeno games are. Even Xenoblade's less convoluted (and consequently layered) story had many words, phrases, and plots devices which mixed many different ideas.
An example is if we look at the acronym BLADE.
Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Emancipator
On the surface this just seems to represent humanity trying to find its future after the devastation they've experienced.
But if we look at each word separately, rather than in a gistful sense, we can come to other conclusions.
So now the key words are Logos and Destiny. I won't go too much into destiny as Takahashi has played with that theme a lot, and we should know what to expect there, thematically. But the word logos has many, many. many different meanings. We should definitely expect both the religious and various philosophical meanings for the words to pop up in the context of this story. And of course Takahashi has used a lot of psychological concepts in past games (especially from Carl Jung), so the psychological meaning of the word should have hints in there as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos
"Although the term "Logos" is widely used in this Christian sense, in academic circles it often refers to the various ancient Greek uses, or to post-Christian uses within contemporary philosophy, Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung."
This brings us me to the next point. It seems to me as if the Growth is genocidal. This brings strong Xenogears vibes, in my opinion, as that is what a lot of the conflict in that game was fueled by. This seems even more explicit than that.
Quotes form the trailers which seem to support this.
"We'll wipe you out. That is the duty of Growth.." 0:58
"Humanity should be wiped out of existence." 1:38
" We wiil purge this cancer. That is the destiny of Growth." 1:30
^Notice that destiny comes back, and BLADE specifically phrases itself to emancipate or free oneself from destiny. Obviously Growth and BLADE are the two main opposing forces (from the player's perspective.) You also seem to have a conflicting theme of free-will vs. determinism found among humans. .
"Maybe it would be better if we dissapeared from the universe!" 1:05
"So does that mean we're basically dead already?" 1:12
Then you have Elma representing the opposing view, that humans should surpass these projected "destinies" with:
"I will not let this tragedy be repeated." 1:35
in the most recent direct we have the Growth woman say.
"Oh, too bad. You apes sure are attentive." 28:45
"You earth pigs disgust me." 28:59
