I played Xenoblade Chronicles 3

[Finished June 14th, 2023. Rating: 9/10]

Man.

It’s been a while since I played a game this straightforwardly good. Sometimes it feels like the majority of my favorite stories are the kind of avant-garde pretentious metanarratives destined for controversy; ones that either get torn apart by mainstream audiences or entirely ignored. I know that’s definitely an exaggeration on some level, but when even my opinions on popular media like Metal Gear or Evangelion feel so distant from the common consensus about them, I start to wonder if I’m just incapable of appreciating popular media in the ‘standard’ way, like my preferences just fundamentally clash with the type of stories that get all the warm reception and praise. So, it’s just really nice that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was this incredible for the exact reasons I’ve seen so many agree upon. It feels like a miracle existence that somehow works to satisfy everything that anybody could possibly be looking for from a Xenoblade game, while also having strikingly intelligent commentary on its predecessors. It made me more actively emotional than literally any other story I’ve experienced. Would recommend to essentially anybody.

Because of all that, it’s kinda tough to know where to actually start while describing why it’s so good, but I think the best place to begin is the world — the first major strength of the game to be introduced, in my opinion. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that has a noticeably less vibrant and inviting world than either of its predecessors, and I’ve seen it get its share of criticism online for this. It’s sometimes cited as ‘dull’ and ‘boring to play through’. But honestly, I think those looking to be wowed by spectacular scenery and hyper-detailed worldbuilding lore are missing the real appeal of Aionios, one that’s much more important to me: it feels alive. You can hear and see and feel the desperate beating hearts of its whole population. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 was also pretty adept at this, but I think XC3 takes it to an entirely new level because of how much stronger its thematic focus is. Even the most minor of characters come together with everyone else to paint a picture of life in this world that’s extremely cohesive yet impressively varied. An endlessly looping war dominates the land. Some believe they’re born fighters, embracing the battlefield in an abandonment of deeper thought. Others are gentler creatives, indulging in escapism from their bleak reality through art. Still others try to think critically, feeling disillusioned with their place in society but not fully understanding how to change it, unhealthily repressing their emotions all the while. All of these differing perspectives on life are arguably the backbone of XC3's thematic brilliance, giving so much weight to everything the story has to say about how the value of life is distorted by systems of oppression and stuff like that.

The themes, of course, are absolutely fantastic. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 uses the framework of ‘a world defined by infinite conflict manufactured by the ruling class’ to explore a huge variety of powerful things, from how being unable to sort out internalized oppression can poison one’s attempts to rebel, to the tragedy of viewing one’s own trauma as a necessity that the status quo must be maintained for the sake of reproducing, to an unchecked desire to protect the beauty of the present being able to destroy one’s desire to strive for a better future. In fact, it even goes as far as to interrogate and rebuke the toxic gender roles present within both the society of Aionios and, implicitly, the series’ prior entries.

I think one of the things I like most about these themes is that the writing is never afraid to humanize everyone involved in the conflicts it sets up, yet never comes close to trying to ‘both-sides’ the issue. The game consistently puts its foot down telling you not to make excuses for the oppressors, that their actions are unambiguously evil and should be treated as such. And then it also insists that understanding the unhealthy motivations people have for perpetuating this oppression is vital, because to ignore how an evil ideology takes root by appealing to flawed human tendencies is to implicitly allow it to win.

Honestly I think this even applies to the way it deconstructs past Xenoblade Chronicles games lol it’s so cracked. So often, XC3 will feel like it’s simultaneously a rebuttal of Xenoblade’s ideas and a love letter to them. For example, Noah’s drive to push forward into the future and fight for free will is very clearly an homage to Shulk’s similar motivations, but his possessive savior complex and flawed treatment of the women in his life feel like Shulk’s worst writing flaws turned around and actually given meaning and critique within the story. This technique is the norm for nearly all of its character and thematic deconstructions — it takes the most potent parts of the prior entries and expands upon them while integrating their previously flawed execution into actually explored nuance that the characters themselves have to grapple with. And honestly, I think that’s a perfect fit for a game about needing to confront the wrongs of the present to move into the future.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has far and away the best cast of any Xenoblade game. Nearly the entire main party is fleshed out with strong personalities and intricate motivations that make them feel real in a way the rest of the series rarely achieved before. Noah takes center stage as the driving force behind most of the plot, but justifies that better than any of his protagonist contemporaries by having an absurdly compelling journey of sorting out his repressed emotions and desires while untangling his toxic learned behaviors, giving his battle for the meaning of life so much more weight with all of the struggles he’s had to overcome behind it. He’s not the only one, though! Mio’s story is nearly as impressive, with her struggle to conceptualize the purpose of her own existence beyond a vessel to uplift others, finding her own personhood and value within her rapidly dwindling days and outright rejecting the trappings that so many of the series’ female characters fall into. I’m not going to go into the rest of the main party as much, but they too are great explorations of the premises the game lays out, with Lanz and Taion learning to not let their lives be defined by their guilt and death anxiety respectively, while Sena learns to give up on revolving her identity around those she holds on a pedestal as ideal people. Eunie is also there. I don’t really like Eunie sorry Eunie fans.

Interesting villains are in no short supply here either, with XC3 having the best lineup of antagonists in the series as well. Discussing Moebius involves revealing a ton of spoilers implicitly, so I tragically can’t elaborate very much on why they’re so great, but I think my favorite aspect that I can mention here is that the lines are way more blurred between what constitutes a ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ within the story than in any other Xenoblade game. Sure, there’s a decent amount of one-note villains of the week in there, but the most focused-on Moebius are characters who could just as easily have been heroes in another life. They’re simply people, just like the protagonists, who carry their own trauma and struggles that drive them to make the flawed decisions they do, and are allowed to show so much dimension to their writing in walking through how any person might fall into the trap of clinging to an oppressive status quo for security because of its appeal to deeply human desires. Even when getting to the top of the ladder and confronting Z, the story goes out of its way to offer a substantial amount of depth to his decisions that makes him feel like a satisfying conclusion to the ideas present within both the game and the entire franchise.

This game makes me really fucking sentimental, man. I genuinely don’t know how to conclude this review because this is such a hard thing to put into words, but I’m going to try anyways. It is so, so excellent at integrating incredibly relatable and heartfelt experiences into the messages it wants to put forth, not just in terms of the actual story content but also in what it can easily be taken as an allegory for. Maybe this is just me, but playing this game about people fighting for security and to be able to express their true emotions and genuine selves in a world designed to push them down, it made me feel seen as a trans person (not even mentioning the multiple explicitly transgender/nonbinary characters in the game, lol). I’m sure that if I can get this kind of meaning out of what the story was going for, it can be the same way for so many others in so many different circumstances, because Xenoblade Chronicles 3 just feels built for these incredibly compassionate allegories about life and humanity. The scenes in Chapters 5/6 about trying to create a family and the struggle of passing on the beauty of life to new generations and finding happiness no matter how much the world hates it are just, augh. I feel like I’m going to cry writing this. Fuck!!!

Please play this game. I swear it reshaped my brain chemistry. Xenoblade fans get to be right about this one because it is so special to me and in my top 10 favorite stories of all time, and I can’t possibly express how good this was and how much I enjoyed my time with it. The series is absolutely worth it to get to this one (or honestly, you could play it on its own if you don’t mind missing out on some of the subtler ways it weaves the prior entries into its narrative, though I’d recommend playing the first two if you have the motivation). Xenoblade Chronicles 3 makes me so excited to see what’s next for the series with how phenomenal the writing has proven to be capable of being.

And I haven’t even played Future Redeemed yet! I gotta get on that!! Aaaahhh!!!!