time to ramble about Xenoblade a bit following wave 3 showcase and wave 4 teaser.
Don’t really like Masha’s design very much at all. I know we saw it early via leaks anyway but like yk lol. I think the problem is that, Xenoblade 3 has honestly a super consistent art direction, right? And it’s very immersive because of that. Like, all the characters in the entire game look like they come from the same world(s). It pushes a bit past realism obviously, one of the main characters is permanently on fire lol, but it’s still relatiely grounded and it’s very easy to look at 2 characters and know instantly that hey, they’re from the same game. And I think Ino was already pushing that quite a lot, but it was fairly possible to suspend my disbelief a bit even if only because her specific unique origins are justified enough for me to kind of give a pass. Now, we’re obviously still to learn what Masha’s deal is, but just at a glance like, come on dude. I don’t even want to make any specific “uhh this part looks stupid” or “vtuber lmao” comments, my problem really is just that I look at her and she doesn’t look like she belongs to 3 at all. If 2 had a character like this it’d get away with it because 2 from the outset has insane design variety thanks to the Blades - it’s the fact that that variety is a constant that would let Masha’s design be okay. Xenoblade 3 being more uniform makes Masha just stick out like a sore thumb.
Beyond her design though, we don’t actually learn anything about her class whatsoever lol. Kevesi healer is most people’s hope because fuck we need more of those, and like sure I’m happy to agree lol. Hope the class is better than Ino’s because christ but also yeah ideally not having power creep would be nice too, basically you know have balance, yeah? Though as a specific gameplay function she offers beyond her class, Masha will allow you to craft accessories with something called enigmatter. That’s actually all we learn about it here but hey sounds cool. No clue if the accessories you’ll be able to craft are gonna like, be better than the endgame accessories already on offer or not, but tbf even if they’re like early or midgame if the process to get them isn’t insane that could work well on repeat playthroughs and such. We don’t actually learn anything else about this system at present so it’s just gonna be a “wait a week until she comes out” to find out the rest I suppose lol.
I do think once all the DLC’s out I’d like to replay the game with it all on a fresh save file. Because when DLC comes out for a game I kind of always want to judge it on the basis of how much it feels like it integrates itself into the base game, right, but that’s obviously hard to judge when you consume the DLC so “separately” from said base game, I suppose. But as it stands I already don’t feel like Ino does a great job at this. Gameplay wise she’s implemented just okay - there’s precedent for classes with unique mechanics by way of Soulhacker so it doesn’t feel like they limited the special things just to DLC (good thing) but then HD Ether Cylinders+ only really exist once Ino does and in the first place you have to like, go into the DLC menu and activate the ability to unlock her first lol (bad thing). Past that she also suffers from the fact that she doesn’t really interact with the world very much? By which I mean, basically every hero has quite a long quest chain associated with them, and for the vast majority of them you’ll end up doing quests where 2 different heroes are now interacting with one another, if not even more. The world ends up feeling very alive and connected because of all these questlines crossing over in that way, and it’s dope! But Ino just doesn’t do that at all, and it kinda sucks. Kind of, expecting Masha to be the same lol. We’ll see.
you know honestly this reminds me of a thought experiment I occasionally have - can DLC make a game worse? Generally when you play a game that has DLC you want to have all the DLC because hey, that’s the complete package, that’s the version of the game with the most content. But it takes you out of the experience to finish the tutorial and then have the game magically insert like 10 quests into your journal or whatever saying “you’ve somehow heard of this new DLC thing”. Is the game actively worse because of that? Xenoblade 3′s DLC isn’t like that specifically but I really do think more could’ve been done to fit at least the new heroes into the world. This is probably a topic for another post.
But hey, the other big Wave 3 thing is the Archsage’s Gauntlet! Yeah so “new challenge battle rules” went quite a lot further than I ever would’ve expected, huh? Pick one character, work through way more stages of a battle, and get some heroes and unique buffs to go in your party along the way? That sounds fucking dope! Way more replayability than the Wave 2 challenge battles too lol. Opportunity to have multiple heroes in the party as well is badass, naturally. It doesn’t seem like this entails playing as Heroes necessarily which is a little upsetting, but I am very interested to see how this plays, because it sounds really fun lol. And hey, throwback outfits? Hell yeah. We got fanservice as in swimsuits last time and now we get fanservice as in callouts to past entries, neato. This is something I think is harmless and fun and the game makes very clear is “separate” from the main game hence it being not in the earlier discussion of DLC making game worse thing. It does specificy Throwback A on the armour btw, so would Throwback B be different modelled outfits entirely? Tbh probably not I imagine they’d still be reskins but hey I can dream. Can’t wait to play Shulk outfit Noah with Monado accessory.
Now honestly I fully expected they’d stop there, right. Last Nintendo direct they showed us wave 2 and gave wave 3 a thumbnail tease and that was it. I expected much the same here. Show us wave 3 and maybe tease wave 4′s thumbnail or something. But. No. In fact we got an admittedly extremely brief cutscene teaser of Wave 4! Featuring fucking Shulk and Rex all grown up and looking absolutely badass, Rex especially holy shit dude’s a fucking tank dual wielding Aegis swords, kid’s come such a long way I’m fucking hyped. yk it’s kinda funny lol that Rex’s redesign is so much more drastic than Shulk’s - obviously it does make sense given his age compared to Shulk but also like duh it’s because marketability and that’s just funny lmao. But yeah they’re clearly fighting Alvis. Alvis. In the presumed sequel story to a game that conspicuosly lacked a Consul A. Hmmm. And then following them is presumably an older Noah? With an interlink form Mio forming by his side? Logic but also marketability and swords in the key visual imply it probably is Noah but he makes mention of a granddad that Aionios Noah wouldn’t have but that which he would have out of Aionios though there is also the question of how the ages would add up if it’s Noah since he is a child at the start where Shulk should be a decent amount older than he looks at least so like uhhhhhhhhhh. Doesn’t necessarily sound too much like Noah but also I don’t want to underestimate Harry McEntire so who knows how much weight that has. I do hope it is Noah because getting our 3 protagonists is a lot cooler than getting 2 protagonists and basically an expy of the third protagonist, but then Torna made me care about Lora a lot in a very short amount of time so even if wave 4 protag isn’t literally Noah I’m sure I could still come to love him. I feel weirdly hung up on this point even though I imagine I might be missing something obvious? We’ll see. I’m excited. I’m glad it’s looking to be a sequel story since that was something up for debate, really just round out the trilogy and give it a more conclusive ending than the base game aimed for. Just sounds dope. Really this just looks absolutely sick as all fuck lol. Cannot fucking wait.
also pour one out for xenoblade x fr fr
