Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition announced for Switch (2020)

[Jumpin]

HoangNhatAnh said:

Jumpin said:

I'm going to disagree on story. I found Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 to be fairly unremarkable and unoriginal in the plot department. They were rehashes of much more interesting and thorough Takahashi/Soraya Saga stories (both games are like vertical slices of the vastly superior Xenogears).

I think, in the end, the reason I like XCX's story more is the scope of the story. XC1 and XC2 are not only much more linear, but they're a lot smaller in scale. Basically each one is a heroes journey story (which are like a dime a dozen in RPGs). XCX is significantly original, it puts the player in the center of a larger story, an entire city and its struggle against an alien planet - as the player, you go to various parts of the city and help them with the struggle, and it's all part of the whole.

As well, Xenoblade Chronicles X had a better world than XC1 and a significantly better world than XC2 (which wasn't terrible, it was actually better than most RPGs, but fell well below the bar set by the other two Xenoblade games).

My main issue with Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 are that they felt a little too on-the-rails in both map and story design. The outer maps of XC2 lack the spectacle of XC1 and XCX, although the cities are nice. XC1 has some great areas (Fallen Arm, Makna Forest, and Frontier Village) but it's a mixed bag with some very bland and sterile areas (Sword Valley, Mechnonis interior, Bionis interior, the snowplains/mountain maze place, Prison Isle, Eryth Ocean, and the High Entia Tomb, the colony 6 mines) which, unfortunately, take up a significantly larger portion of the game. The worst area in a Xeno-game still remains the Encephalon from Xenosaga, but some of the locations of XC1 come painfully close.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is kind of like 2 games. The first 6 or 7 chapters, and then the last 3 or 4 chapters. The last 3 or 4 chapters are basically one large dungeon that's reminiscent of The Tower of Babel from Xenogears, and a little of Zeboim civilization from Xenogears. While the World Tree (or whatever it was) is more fun than the Tower of Babel (particularly the lower portion with the annoying platforming), the ruins of Zeboim Civilization are SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting than Morytha, though. None of the games have a "dungeon" type area as interesting as Solaris, which IMO is (to this day) the best "dungeon" in an RPG ever (I put dungeon in quotes, because it's not really a dungeon, it's more like a country inside of an Archology).

IMO Torna the Golden Country was better than the first half of XC2, but not as good as the second half. New Game+ of XC2 is the most fun experience I had with the game.

Anyway, XCX is a much larger game than the other two Xenoblades. But DESPITE being larger, XCX was fairly remarkable in how much more manageable the play sessions were. Since it was non-linear, players were presented with options for short, medium, long, and really long bits of the game they could do. Then there was also a lot of random curiosity stuff, exploring some new area with your new Skell/Gear. The non-linearity is refreshing, XC1 and 2 don't really do anything better, storywise, they just shove more into the critical path; and for the most part, you're forced into the same experience, while the experiences you can have with XCX are vastly different depending on which paths you take.

The big difference with XC1 and 2 vs XCX is in XC1/2 the story is spoonfed to you as you go along the rails. In XCX you seek out your own way to move through the story of a city from earth and its struggle against the alien planet it has been plunked down upon.

Story of 1 and 2 are nothing new but still good enough, even great. XCX story maybe original, but still lackluster and barebone as an individual. XCX story/characters maybe better in the end (who know?) but it needs at least another game or a remake/addition for the plot while 1 & 2 story/characters are completed. We are comparing each game here, and no doubt that X story/characters as a single game is the weakest

I wouldn't say call XCX bare bones at all; especially not compared to Xenoblade Chronicles. There's typically a lot more going on at any particular time in XCX than there is at a particular time in XC. In XC there's usually only one thing for you to do in the story at a time, in XCX there's always a lot of different things to do in many different areas of the city. I find XCX to be much more robust in terms of story as a result, while XC is more single-threaded and on the rails; yes, there are side quests, but they're just fetch quests with a bit of flavour text and the majority of them are independent and disconnected from anything else. In XCX, even the generic guild quests are tied into the greater context; while the actual quests are far more robust and tie very much into the development of the city of NLA and the expansion of human influence and relations on Planet Mira, or the various sub-conflicts that arise as a result of the expansion, it's a more cohesive package.

But as I said at the end of my last post, what I enjoy more about XCX is that you really have the opportunity to choose the direction of where you take the story, it's a much bigger and grander scope of a story than the linear plot spoonfed to you in XC1 and 2: you're told "go to Mechonis for revenge" or "Go to the World Tree so Pyra can go home" which is essentially tells you exactly where you're going, while XCX leaves it to you what you're going to do in the story, there's a lot more mystery about what's happening in the big picture, and you escalate the conflict by uncovering what's going on rather than by simply getting closer to the place you've been walking to.

But in regards for XC1 or XC2's story (more so XC1), I can't say I was particularly enthralled by the story of either when I can get all they offer (storywise) and much more by replaying Xenogears... which I REALLY hope it gets ported or remade/remastered on Switch.

The part of Xenoblade Chronicles that interested me was the vertical world and some of the beautiful locations which was a fairly new thing when the game first came out in 2011, but the value of that design was more fully realized in games like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which IMO are much more interesting games.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 09 September 2019