Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

@Jhena aw man you’re only two chapters away from the end! and you can race through it since you’re at a pretty high level. chapter five does have so much emotion packed into it it can be overwhelmeing

@OctolingKing13
Yep it was just a bit too much for me. Thanks for encouraging me, to keep playing. I caught myself again. Just needed some time to digest it all. I guess, I am just really invested in the characters and everything else. Now I know how Noah feels, and I just want to end this never ending nightmare and give him and his friends a future of peace.

Well, I will continue the journey.

@Jhena I might be missing some context, but are games with heavy, mature plots and subject matter not really your thing? I'll agree the end of Chapter 5 is VERY bleak and emotional (and beautiful, where music is concerned), but it's one of the reasons why I love the game so much. It turns some standard JRPG tropes on its head, such as no deus ex machina to save the group and has a HECK of an emotional impact. Though it does take some time to digest. For me, this is THE collection of scenes that drives home how dystopian the world of Aionios is.

You are drawing towards the end of the game; if I were you I'd take a short break, then continue.

Ahahaha, I LOVE seeing people get to the end of Chapter Five. It's so emotionally raw, and nobody is ever prepared to handle it at first. Peak video game writing.

I was already in love with it, but Ch. 5 - 7 put it over the edge for me.

Chapter 5 is awesome, and I’m glad I saw it spoiler free, though social media posts alluded to something big happening there. As some have said I found it super powerful because of the lack of deus ex machina. There’s no last minute heroics, no last minute rescue, it’s meant to wreck the player. But what happened after was expected, totally. From a game point of view it made too little sense to kill a character off though, so I knew they’d find a way to reverse it, just like how the Avengers were snapped away in Infinity War.

@Tyranexx
It was just a bit too much in a short time. And to be honest, I would not call any jrpg I played mature. Crazy, wild and emotional sure, but not mature. To me, misery and dark stuff is the opposite of mature. I would not call wars mature or wise, the opposite in fact. And this is exactly why I want to finish this game, to give the characters a peaceful life.

It is just so, that I do not want to jump from one nightmare (game in this case) to the next. Let jrpgs be serious and mature, does not mean, they can not be very fun and uplifting.

Edit: Of course, I will finish the game now.

By the way how did the group, stop X from suppressing their abilities? I must have been thinking too much, about what happened before and missed it.

@Jhena I do agree mature doesn't always mean dark/edgy. But compared to many JRPGs I've played, I think XC3 handles its subject matter well without relying on too many tropes or being edgy or dark just for the sake of it. I do agree that wars are rarely "mature", depends on how and why they're started. XC3's cycle of war isn't mature; Aionios's "endless now" is, after all, basically born from the fear of change. It's how it handles some of the underlying subject matter within that fabric that I think is.

What's refreshing to me about XC3 is that it isn't a "by the books" JRPG. Sure, the cast is trying to save the world and dismantle the status quo, but it isn't the usual "chosen one", "power of friendship", and surface level motivations with little to no depth. Things aren't always as they appear and have many layers. As for fun, XC3 does have a few fun moments, though I'll admit the Xenoblade that takes the cake there is XC2; sadly, 2 leans WAY too much into anime tropes sometimes IMO.

@Tyranexx
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is interesting. And about 2. Just watched the scene again where Poppie awakens and had a good laugh again. Do not get me wrong, I do think the scene is silly and might not even be appropriate for an age 12 rated game, but it was fun.

What is more important to me is, how vibrant and alive the scene feels, unlike 3's more depressing tone. And is it just me, or does 2 look better than 3, weird.

2 looks far worse than 3 imo. The graphics and art style felt stiff and muddy. 3 feels like it's effectively a combination of 1 and 2's art styles- and it creates a more fluid and crisp picture due to it. I like how mature the characters look, and how detailed their eyes are specifically. The way that lighting hits their models also makes it very appeasing to look at.

As for mature games, I remember you mentioned a bunch of earlier Final Fantasy titles. A lot of those games didn't really have happy ends to them or really happy moments. Especially not VI and VII. I just got done playing VII, and the game ends off on a pretty depressing note. The characters end up walking away from the main villain basically saying "Welp, we did all that we could do," and Meteor basically nearly obliterates the entire world, with Holy being barely powerful enough to actually stop it. You don't actually get a good sense of finality towards the end either. The ending is completely ambiguous.

@VoidofLight
Final Fantasy 7 is a happy ending, as is 7-10. They do feel a little bit bittersweet, especially 10 though. Regarding 7: Sephiroth is defeated. Cloud wants to meet Aerith in the Promised Land. Group escapes the vulcano and Meteor hits Midgar. People evacuated to the slums, meaning they are under the pizza. This is the bitter part of the sweet, because I can guess alot of People died in Midgar.

I just think Xenoblade 3 looks dead compared to two, and I get that this might be subjective.

And thanks for making me watch the ending of 7, really made me realize how depressing the tone in modern FF is.

@Jhena Regarding XC2, Poppi's first activation scene isn't bad on the whole, though the subservient maid bit didn't hit too well with me. Especially since Tora is essentially a child (unless he wants lying when he said he didn't add that mode. To be fair, the game does call out his "cutesy girl" expectations later on. It's not the only trope-y scene that sticks out in my mind.

As for 2 looking better than 3....Weeeelllll....2 has its high points, but I'm gonna agree with @VoidofLight on 3's art style being a great marriage of the slightly more realistic XC1/DE and XC2's more cartoon-y style. I like the aesthetics of all the games to varying degrees, though XC:DE is a clear improvement over all previous versions of XC1 IMO.

3 for story, 2 for combat, 1 for both... was such a blast playing these (b ' ' )b

XC3 also had some big improvements to the engine, finally enabling a sharp output at 1080p when docked and 720p handheld, rather than rendering everything sub-native. It's still doing a lot of upscaling, of course, but it's a lot smarter about how it does it.

Without a doubt 3 is the best looking in the series by far, the character models and environments are incredibly clean, and the art style is the best, both from an aesthetic perspective and a character design perspective, the art team really reigned in the fan service compared to some of 2’s characters and especially the female Rare Blades. It has 1’s realistic proportions and 2’s expressions and mixes them super well.

I’d conversely say 2 is the ugliest game, it also doesn’t run well and the game’s environments looks super muddy even docked.

@Tyranexx @Matt_Barber @jedgamesguy
I agree with you. 3 has the best graphics. Looks sharp, clean and looks better in handheld. It must be the artdirection, which makes 2 look better to me. Aside from the (fanservice) designs, the world is just much more pleasant and alive, with all the big cities. It feels natural, fantastical and romantic, makes me want to go on a big adventure.

@Matt_Barber I’m pretty sure XC3 doesn’t output at 1080p in docked mode but it’s still very good looking all the same

@SplatRay001 It certainly outputs at 1080p. Read here and watch the linked Digital Foundry video for some evidence to back that up.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/07/video-digital-found...

As before though, it's still rendering well below that at times. It's just that the upscaling is a lot smarter.

I can't wait for XC4 on the next switch console, since that means that the game will probably have the same resolution and graphics as the cinematic cutscenes.

@Matt_Barber Yeah you’re right. The dynamic scaling must have thrown me off a bit. Monolith Soft are truly wizards, and this game is a masterpiece on all fronts, including technically