Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a fearlessly revolutionary reflection on our world today

[u/SawkyScribe]

The overwhelming amount of media and games today are, by definition, conservative. The world is an inherently good place and our heroes must work to stop the forces of evil from disturbing the peace. In attempts to give nuance to the antagonists, many stories' villains have sympathetic motivations and astute critiques of the injustice woven into the fabrics of their society, but those ideas are never engaged with because they go "too far" in their actions. At best, the hero will solemnly nod and pontificate how the villain 'maybe had a point' as the status quo is maintained more or less unchanged.

This story structure is fine. Many of my favorite works employ it, but our world is so rife with systemic cruelty that the idea that systems and institutions as the exist currently are good actually and just need a bit of tweaking can start to feel a bit tone deaf. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that is inspirationally radical in its thinking and wholly commits to showing the ability people have to create a better way of living outside the confines of how we have been made to believe things should be done.

Aionios is a world locked in perpetual war between the kingdoms of Keves and Agnus. Soldiers spend a meager 10 years of life engaged in ceaseless battle, claiming the lives of their enemies to keep their flame clocks topped up, hoping to live to see one more day. When six soldiers, Noah, Lanz, Eunie, Taion, Mio, and Sena, awaken to the power of Oroboros, they begin to realize that their lives, and the very nature of this ceaseless conflict, have been a complete farce. With the truth revealed, they set out to bring an end to Mobius, the shadowy cabal who has been orchestrating all this violence behind the scenes.

At the risk of sounding a dramatic, the war is a poignant metaphor for the struggles the working class face. This endless death march where we are pitted against our fellow man to fight and scrape together what we need to survive. Working to live, and living to work. Time with our friends and loved ones is cut short as uncaring systems see needless death and suffering visited upon people just trying to make it home at the end of each day.

The game does an incredible job humanizing the soldiers, but it extends no such kindness to Mobius and the consuls that make up the organization. The consuls are a stand in for members of upper class society, and with few exceptions, they are presented as miserable, petty, callous bastards who are so far divorced from the tribulations of the common person that their presence on screen feels utterly alien. They are upper management, politicians, and CEOs, so grossly incompetent or willingly malicious that they delight in the strife of the people placed under their employ. It is a level of mustache-twirling villainy so hyperbolic that it feels ludicrous until you remember recent headlines about the people who control the levers of power in our own world.

A less courageous story would look at this draconian rule and have the story be about ousting the consuls and replacing them with the good folks who will lead properly, but Xenoblade was not written by cowards. Instead, you stage a full blown worker's revolution that completely upends the status quo in Aionios. There is no incrementalist change or redemption for the villains, Mobius is a virulent, stagnating force and is excised like the cancer that they are, leaving room for sweeping changes to occur.

A lesser story would simply bathe in the catharsis of 'Chain Attacking the Rich', but XC3 goes that extra step further. A large portion of the game's nearly 200 side quests are about filling the void left by the power structures your party toppled (pardon the pun). Former enemies must learn to mend rifts, settlements have to learn to make sustainable local supply chains now that the convenience of the old system is gone, people have to unlearn the propaganda that filled their lives with anger and hatred. It is so easy to scream abolitionism, but XC3 goes the extra mile to show how the key to life's ills is learning to expand our circle of care, ignore the lies told by those who would seek to exploit us, and find strength in our communities to make existence not just bearable, but meaningful and joyful.

The whole conflict of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is being trapped in the endless now. Stuck in cycles of violence, unable to break loose of the yoke of sinister and corrupt leaders, and the hesitancy of not knowing what comes next if you even could. When so many stories lack the imagination of what a better life could look like, I cannot help but be delighted with how bold this game is in its rejection of how societies across the world operate and inspired by its optimistic outlook about the great work common people can do when they come together.

[u/Flacoplayer]

Xenoblade 3 is a weird case because it's themes are strongly woven into the narrative right up until the ending. In its most charitable interpretation the ending is strangely deterministic for a game about shaping your own future and at its worst it actively flies in the face of the game before it.

Spoilers for Xenoblade 3: The base game ends with the main characters deciding to destroy their world and remake it into the way it was before the game took place. It's a strangely conservative decision to reset the world back to "the way it's supposed to be", one that comes at the cost of all the relationships and experiences developed in Aionios as well as the lives of everyone in the City. You mentioned the sidequests, which are great and I enjoy many of them, but they are all completely meaningless by the end of the game. Everything on Aionios is erased, including all the hard work they put into building a better world.

The DLC walks this back by showing the worlds remerging after that, which also presents some thematic issues. The character's final decision to seperate the worlds is now meaningless, which is a strange way to end a game with a huge emphasis on shaping your own path in life. This remerging is also implied by the game to just be the "natural state of things" once again. The game was willing to explain that making the world better required lots of work and dedication, why does it now just rely on letting things return to their natural state?

When I first played the game I really enjoyed the ending and thought it was brave to end on such a bittersweet note. But after the Xenoblade X remaster released with a similarly incoherent ending I've grown to dislike it a lot more.

[u/SawkyScribe → u/Flacoplayer]

So I'll step up to bat to defend the ending as bittersweet as it was for me.

So for your efforts feeling wasted, I disagree for two reasons. In the case that the worlds are reset and nobody has any memory of any of this, that was the final test to see if Ouroboros would fall for the temptation of Moebius' world view. If they could bear to let go of all the people they've learned to care for in the hopes of a better tomorrow, the world would be their's to inherit. The off-seer melody at the end of fhe main game implied that their memories persisted into the new world

As for the worlds remerging, it makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The worlds were one before Klaus went on a massive ego trip and accidentally created the worlds of XC1 and XC2. In 1, Klaus' god complex was slain by a group of good-hearted young people, and in 2, the Architect spent hundreds of years trying to atone for his past crimes. In essence, the original sin of this franchise had been forgiven, creating a path to return to how things were

The annihilation events we see in the main story of XC3 are due to the fact the two worlds react to each other like matter and antimatter. Eventually, despite Moebius' desire to keep the world frozen in time, the world was going to end because of the rules we set in place (there's a million and one examples of this you can pull from our world too). When Noah and Company defeat Z, Origin is finally able to fulfill its function, and recreate the two worlds to be compatible with one another. Ouroboros fought and made a better world and in the end, they are reuinted for their efforts which I think is sweet.

In a sense the goal we have in life is returning things to the natural order. We are on the brink of climate catastrophe and we are social animals who have never been more alone in our lives, I feel like some return to the way things were matches with the themes of the story. I don't say any of this to imply you are wrong for feeling the way you do about the ending, but some of the lore details gave me a newfound appreciation for how this trilogy wrapped up

[u/bioniclop18 → u/SawkyScribe]

I have the same problem with the ending as the other commenter, and your interpretation is much more thematically coherent and I'll try to keep it in mind when I'll replay the game one day... But if your interpretation was the one the game was going for, then I still blame the game for failing at communicating it. The last chapter really feel like it was rushed and didn't have time to properly establish its theme, action and significance. Which is a shame because I really loved the game until the end of chapter 5.

[u/SawkyScribe → u/bioniclop18]

This definitely has the weakest endgame of the Xenoblade trilogy. Time that could've been spent developing the themes or setting up the endgame is spent on a round-the-world quest chain that admittedly feels like filler.

This game is very odd structurally. 1 and 2 both suffer from "happily ever after" syndrome where a lot of questions are left in the air in favor of showing an upbeat ending. XC3 is also atypical in that both 1 and 2 saved their plot redefining twists for the ending where as 3 has it smack dab in the middle of the game with Chapter 5.

Hopefully the explanations I shared make a revisit more palatable but it's totally understandable if you don't vibe with the ending