Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X - OT

I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, but I can't say definitively you are correct either. Xenoblade was always about its world and plot....waaaay more than the characters. The characters are fine, but you could replace half of them with different characters and much of the story would work exactly the same. At least for the cutscenes.

This is acceptable (if obviously not ideal as you would hope to have comparably great characters). Character interactions and how you use them in gameplay and battles do a ton to get you to connect to characters if you do it well, and Xenoblade is pretty great at that. Sharla and Dunban don't have much personality but I still care about them simply because they work well as party members/heroes in story while also being fun and memorable in battles for both their quotes and actual attacks. I mean, the amount of characters in Smash Bros characters that I care about because they were well written fictional characters I could count on maybe one hand. Do you think I was happy about Dedede or Megaman because of their memorable character arcs? PFFFFT

And tbh, even though I love JRPGs, it has been a really bad thing watching them try to be anime. Because it totally exposes how much nearly every JRPG cannot hope to have characters of great anime, at least in terms of writing and characterization. If a JRPG had characters I loved anywhere near as much as the main cast of One Piece or something, it would have a significant chance of being my favorite video game story of all time. Naruto is an anime that is very frequently criticized and have many problems with what they do with the characters, but people I feel would be waaaaay more forgiving if you took the exact same story but it was in a video game instead.

But that's why Xenoblade worked, because it didn't just take a traditional story and copy+pasted it to video game form. I mean, much of it is linear cutscene focused storytelling but it had a vast world and let YOU explore it, it had character based scenes and let YOU decide what you saw and even some dialogue choices. You are in the battle where Reyn says it's Reyn Time forever, sometimes because you decided to do a thing. Good examples of stuff that makes up for any issues I have with the story aspects of the game. I mean, I love traditional narrative in gaming, most of my favorite stories in gaming are that and Xenoblade is excellent at its JRPG plot. But it's probably never gonna be on the same level as other mediums, at least on average, if they just do this. And even stuff that seems fairly obvious "yes you can explore more in a game because you control where you go" really does make a difference. Also helps that despite not being a Journey level of "using gameplay to tell the story" it does use elements of its story directly and intelligently in the gameplay and enhance it as a video game (especially the Monado). It's why Chrono Trigger is a 9.5 game for me and yet I feel many 8/10 anime have better (probably way better) storytelling.

^Oh, I agree to an extent. I didn't really care much that a lot of the characters didn't have personality, because I was way more engrossed in other parts of the game. And because of the story, I did back the characters enough for it to work.

But I generally like character driven narratives the most. I've seen very little anime, but that's the reason I will watch Teen Titans or Spectacular Spider-man any day before I watch Justice League. I like to feel like I know the main characters personally. So if XCX offered something like that, I'd definitely appreciate it, even though I recognize it's not necessary.

I'm more of a plot person (or at least more than most people) but characters are needed more than anything. I do entirely agree the characters could've been better. I think we would get the best JRPG ever if we got the writer/s of Xenoblade and the writer/s of The World Ends With You to make a game. TWEWY has fantastic characterization and themes but the plot and world and story are silly and had too much thought put into it and outside of establishing the world early on, don't matter (outside of making everything as stupid as Bayonetta's world once you get to post-game and some vague sequel baiting). Xenoblade has a brilliant world and a brilliantly paced story but the characterization needed work and the themes just exist to be an enjoyable JRPG story (though I did read a great article that highly praised the themes of the game...). I want them both combined and it would be my perfect JRPG (maybe with a couple things from Mother 3 added too).

While I adore Xenoblade, I'll be the first to argue for improving certain aspects. The fact that most of the game is brilliant makes me desperately want to see the next game have way more compelling characters and to fix the few problems the sidequest system has (mainly the lack of WRPG (or Majora's Mask for that matter) level compelling sidequests and the randomly generated item sidequest bs). But I am glad that the gameplay was able to make the characters as fun as memorable as it could even if the actual writing didn't as much.

Xenoblade does fall for the "overcomplication by the end" problem too though.

The entire explanation of where Zanza and Meyneth came from, and what would happen going forward, and who Alvis was made virtually no sense.

Yeah, but it wasn't focused on long enough (and more importantly, wasn't presented entirely through notes). It just came across as a silly surprise ending that means nothing and can be kinda ignored. To be fair, that was honestly only a minor problem I had with TWEWY too, I just felt it worked to contrast them. TWEWY gets the angsty teen trope (and similar things) right where so many get it wrong. Mostly because it actually has some level of relevance to real people instead of having magical amnesia who hates his alien daddy or some other nonsense.

I hope so, those were pretty neat and showed off the character's personality.

As for xenoblade's characters, they aren't anything extraordinary, at least where I am at, instead it's the world that's extraordinary imo.

Now this is a game that needs to get the super crazy advertising that Destiny got that made you feel cool for buying the game. Like seriously... XCX is gonna need some special advertising to appeal and attract people who wouldn't normally go for a grand JRPG. XCX doesn't have Final Fantasy's "legacy" where people just buy a FF because FF is attached to it. XCX needs help....

I said over and over again that loyal Nintendo fans just don't buy everything Nintendo makes. That's a good and bad thing. There's Nintendo fans really hyped for Starfox U but couldn't care less about the new Kirby or Yoshi or Captain Toad or maybe Smash or Bayonetta 2 or whatever but they ARE still loyal Nintendo fans. Meanwhile on PS4... Sony says get hyped for a game and the PS4 fanbase happily jumps at it no matter what it is. That's not an insult to the PS4 fanbase because they are incredibly loyal....

And yes... Legend of Zelda U and this game shouldn't be near each other at all... Make XCX a Summer 2015 game and Legend of Zelda U a November release. Starfox U can release in like September.

^ Are we still guessing dates?

So director Tetsuya Takahashi has been tweeting lately about the game, revealing bits and pieces about the game's development team and the concepts behind the Dolls (mechs).

Big things noted are that the game's story had help from an anime screenwriter who was a Gundam screenwriter at one point, and that Takayuki Yanase, who worked on Gundam 00, Tenkai Knights, and other anime, as well as Metal Gear Rising, is one of the mechanical designers working on the mechs in XCX.

This game also allowed Takahashi to finally meet a personal challenge he has had to "create an RPG in which humans and robots can co-exist".

So essentially, this is possibly shaping up to be one of the best RPGs of all time.

Right now I literally don't have an opinion of this other than "yep that's the Kill la Kill composer alright".

Kill la Kill is the first anime OST I've gone out of my way to pick up since Baccano in 2007, so this thing is good.

I think Xenoblade could stand to have a story more like Knights of Sidonia. That anime had some really interesting sci-fi concepts, like photosynthesizing humans, and always made my stomach tighten into an uneasy ball. Not through gore, mind, but thought the sheer stakes and tension involved in fighting disturbing monsters out deep in space with limited resources.

Xenoblade Chronicles by comparison... always seemed a bit off, I guess. The writing was bad at times and the plot and setting never really resonated with me.

I disagree. I dunno, maybe it's because I know how bad it can get, but I can't consider the writing in Xenoblade to bad at all. Even at worst, it seemed to almost always do what it was supposed to competently enough at least. There was one scene early on that was a bit eye roll worthy but even as someone whose been rewatching it recently via LP, I don't see a lot of big issues with it.

I feel characterization in the main storyline was the biggest issue it had. Whatever personalities the characters had were usually irrelevant as they became "hero person who wants to stop bad thing also!" and they were saved for heart to hearts and the like...

To be fair, Xenoblade wasn't story focused to begin with...

lolwut? It's a JRPG

If it wasn't story focused then why were there numerous plot twists.

Xenoblade was an experiment to see what kind of gameplay would resonate well, so said gameplay could be implemented into what is now XBCX. Takahashi said something about it in an interview a while ago, but I'm too lazy to find it. So believe me or not, that's your choice. Also, if you think jrpgs are always all about the story, and that plot twists are a dead giveaway to being story focused, Pokemon would like to have a word with you.(cheap shot, I know.)

Hey guys, remember that JRPG with a great story?

Lol, ya, me neither.