Jumpin said:
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. |
The story of 1&2 was linear, you only have one goal most of the time but a lot of things happened in that journey, including people and their past, and the sorrow in the end of both game, especially with the addition of XC2 Torna story, the pain was even bigger. 1 had many plot twists while 2 had more tragic deaths with both good and bad side, each have their own story and reason. With X, the plot was very unique and original, but without the real answer, it only gave a big question to people about Mira and everything on that planet. What really happened in the end? Need at least one, even two more gmes to solve everything. Then as a single game, the story was quite confusing and not really gave us any moment to think or feel about it like the other games, especially XC2. In that perpective, the story of X as an individual was really lackluster and barebone. Sure, the open wolrd, the side quests and combat gameplay could be the best but for a Xeno game, the plot wasn't that good at least for now.
