Among all the Switch 2 excitement, we didn't want this to get lost: Xenoblade Chronicles is now 15 years old! To celebrate, Alana recalls something which turned the game from a great one into a special one.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles, so be wary if you haven't at least made it to the final hours of the game.
The Bionis and Mechonis. Two great titans, eternally locked in battle until time wore them both away and left them in stasis. Two corpses, dead, but home to various living races, whose populations are at war with one another.
This is the setting for Xenoblade Chronicles, a world that has become forever etched in my memory. Monolith Soft’s Wii game completely tore up the rulebook as to what an RPG 'world' could be. Planets, islands, recreations of real-life countries – who needs any of those when you can set your entire game on the carcasses of two gods? I’ve spent over a decade and a half marvelling at all the different worlds I’d thought impossible until this game came along. But still, the Bionis and the Mechonis, and the simple dichotomy of nature and technology, has always remained at the top.
I’ll always remember the first time I walked out of Tephra Caves and into the huge, sprawling fields of Gaur Plains, where stone plateaus tower over acres of grass and rivers. And you’ll never speak to anyone who didn’t awe at the nighttime glow of Satorl Marsh. But for all of its spectacular moments and enticingly creative landscape, my favourite place in Xenoblade Chronicles remains its 'quietest': the Fallen Arm.
The Fallen Arm isn’t the first place people think of when you talk about Xenoblade, unless that person is me. The beautiful, dangerous landscapes of the Bionis rightly take centre stage, but the Fallen Arm — the severed left arm of the Mechanical titan’s body — might be the most important place in the game. Not for its simple beauty, its serene, sorrowful music, or its brief moment of respite, but for its place in the story and the tonal shift that takes place.
One of the most prominent themes in Xenoblade Chronicles is revenge, and for about half of the game’s runtime, protagonist Shulk’s rage in particular propels the plot forward. It’s hard to shake the opening hours, where Shulk’s childhood friend and love interest Fiora is brutally murdered by the Mechon Metal Face, particularly as he removes his blood-soaked claws from her 'corpse'. It's this that sets Shulk’s — and Xenoblade’s — quest for vengeance in motion.
From the Organic titan’s foot all the way to its neck, it’s a constant barrage of anger and suffering, of revenge against these supposed bloodthirsty mechanical enemies. Until you reach Prison Island, where you find out Fiora isn’t dead. Instead, she’s been turned half-Mechon, and she doesn’t remember her friends.
That revenge doesn’t go away, but it is joined by a desperation to find out why Fiora is how she is throughout the arm (Valak Mountain) and Mechonis’ sword (Sword Valley), where the Mechon stronghold of Galahad Fortress sits. There, Fiora’s consciousness manages to break through, and in a desperate attempt to save Shulk from certain death, destroys the fortress.
A few cutscenes and a sepia flashback later, Shulk awakens on the serene shores of an unfamiliar location, with a gigantic, collapsed claw protruding out of the sands, and the remains of Fiora’s mech, the nemesis, left in tatters in the waters. This isn’t how I’d expected to arrive on the Mechonis — a blistering attack or kidnapping into a huge mechanical structure had played out in my head multiple times, but a calm, quiet beach was far from my mind.
This was the moment Xenoblade Chronicles went from a game I loved to a game that was special to me.
Finally, we get to see Shulk and Fiora together again. We get to see him fluctuate from fear to focused concern as he pulls her limp body out of the water and saves her life by giving her water and mouth to mouth. Finally, the awkward, kind Shulk is back again, for a brief moment.
Fiora, and the Fallen Arm, bring a new side to the plot that the game had gone great lengths to hide – empathy, not just for the Homs, Nopon, and High Entia, but also for the Machina, the residents of Mechonis. There was no other way to arrive in Mechonis — a place that has suffered just as much as the Bionis — than a peaceful, calm beach, populated by the very people who are supposed to be our enemies, but aren’t.
This was the moment Xenoblade Chronicles went from a game I loved to a game that was special to me.
Reuniting with my lost party members, discovering the Hidden Machina Village and its rusty walls and pipe pathways, meeting Linada, Miqol, and all the other Machina and finding out why they’re not fighting for, or with, Egil — the leader of the Mechon army — few other moments in the game have stuck with me as clearly as these. And the quests for the Machina in the village that you get for the rest of the game help develop relationships that hate and anger would never foster. It’s a stepping stone towards Xenoblade Chronicles’ eventual fight for hope, and for a united future.
Fiora can’t bring herself to hate the person who was inhabiting her body because she was kind, but Shulk’s immediate reaction is anger. She sways him against that path for a moment, and Shulk remains his more level-headed self. As Miqol, leader of the Machina Village, asks Shulk and his party to kill Egil, his son, I felt the weight of that decision, the impact of those words.
This isn’t just about revenge, it’s about pain, too. And this tiny little metallic haven in the centre of the Mechonis’ collapsed claw is where so much forgotten, unchecked pain has lain.
Revenge hasn’t gone away at this point, but those bubbling questions I had from Prison Island all the way to Galahad Fortress were now effervescent at the top of the pool. The threads of vengeance were fraying, waiting to be re-knotted in a new strand that becomes obvious at the top of Agniratha and the Mechonis’ head. This isn't the Machina's fault, it’s not Egil’s fault — who himself is a victim of rage and revenge — but it’s those who are in charge of the world who are to blame. The eternal battle that the gods went through, and later the people, is the cause of the pain.
Without the Fallen Arm, Xenoblade Chronicles’ tonal shift just isn’t possible. This beautiful, understated landscape serves as the gentle bonfire that will spark the rest of the game’s events. From here on out, everything I’d understood was slowly flipping on its head, and it made me look at past events in a new light.
It also paved the way for those questions of faith and philosophy that Tetsuya Takahashi, Monolith Soft’s head and one of the writers on the game, is so well known for, which he’d established in Xenogears and Xenosaga before. No longer was Xenoblade Chronicles a strictly angry game with a beautifully crafted world to explore – it evolved into one that was chiefly concerned with people, no matter their background, of Godhood and responsibility, of power and corruption.
The beautiful images of this series’ worlds will stick with me forever; Mira, Alrest, and Aionios all have mesmeric qualities to them, biomes full of mystical plants, unusual fauna, crumbling buildings, and glowing corals and structures, that all deserve to be celebrated.
But the Bionis and Mechonis go beyond sheer beauty and awe; they're the conduit for a plot structure that follows a journey up and down two bodies in stasis, an emotional up and down of loss, revenge, hate, relief, fear, empathy, and hope. And all aided by a rusted, broken arm that lay in the seas and sands.
Can you believe Xenoblade Chronicles is 15 years old? Are you excited for the series' future on the Switch 2? Share your memories in the comments below.