XB3 Future Redeemed might be good but also might be a harbinger of the end
(originally posted May 3, 2023)
I wasn't terribly impressed by the DLC Heroes and I wasn't really into the idea of a prequel campaign, but I ended up enjoying Future Redeemed a fair bit.
I had some shit to say about the ending of the base game when I first played it and I'd say the DLC did in fact address my issues, however briefly. TL;DR is that I felt the base game undercut its message about believing in an uncertain future by having the ending simply restore the two worlds to their previous (separate) states; the ending of Future Redeemed makes it clear that they did then proceed to fuse together safely and that whatever animating intelligence controls Origin does care to somehow preserve the lives of those in the City.
As for the actual content of DLC itself, it's solid IMO. Wild how they could cram a fully-featured microcosm of Xenoblade into 20-30 hours and hey, maybe they should just do that more often. Make shorter JRPGs please.
Cast-wise:
- Matthew has a some actual character depth despite being a punching meathead consigned to a side-story.
- I didn't play Xenoblade 2 and so I continue to hate Rex's whole isekai harem protagonist shtick.
- It didn't even click with me that Panacea and Linka are meant to also be the kids of other characters because they are so tangential to the rest of the cast despite being the actual other two founders.
- Shulk's okay, I guess. I'm ambivalent on how he's just Dunban 2.0 now.
- Glimmer sucks in a good way because she's basically a bratty teen who doesn't want to go camping or fight god, dad.
- Nikol sucks because he's just Shulk lite.
- A is broadly meant to be a returning character but I don't remember anything about Alvis' personality, so instead they're just a standard cool-headed anime sword person.
- I genuinely appreciated how the game is sympathetic towards Na'el and Alpha's motivations.
While I did go "oh shit dude, Colony 9!", it feels like they decided that here was where they could really indulge in references in ways that were mostly around the periphery in the main game, and it gets a little tiresome. Yes, it is the thing from the old thing, I get it, fine, get it out of your system. I tolerated the rain of references because it's presumably the final -blade game, not realizing I was about to get sprayed with a fire hose in the final hours.
The conflict of the campaign is broadly about how Alpha and Na'el wish to abandon the current world of conflict and move forward with new life, untainted by the sins of the past. Z and Moebius want the endless now, which need not concern itself with the past nor the uncertain future; the current status quo is fine. Matthew (and the main game's cast) wish to push forward, accepting the sins of the past, building upon them, and forging a new future hand in hand.
Consequently, Future Redeemed establishes that the entire Xeno metaseries (including Xenogears, Xenosaga 1-2-3, Xenoblade 1-2-3, and Xenoblade X) is in fact the same series, which, I mean. Okay.
(I've only played Xenogears, Xenoblade 1, and Xenoblade 3. I bought X on Wii U but that was during perhaps the lowest part of my life so far and I never actually played it.)
To be clear:
- I hate how everything has to be big shared universes with capital-l Lore now, we've been over this, you shouldn't have to be entrenched into a whole-ass other ecosystem to understand what's going on in a seemingly separate work, and this was a big problem with XB3 that's even worse in the DLC
- This is hilarious, actually
Maybe Tetsuya Takahashi is a threat and needs to be stopped. The sheer audacity to make Xenoblade the Diebuster to Xenosaga. Sure dude, pay off Xenogears' ridiculous "EPISODE V" end card 25 years later. Give double middle fingers to Shenmue and Dept Heaven. Fuck it, man.
Presumably they'll put out something along the lines of an X Definitive Edition first (probably for the Switch-2?), but I'm really interested to see where Monolith Soft goes from here.
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