The Story of Xenoblade Chronicles X

Here some atmospheric music to listen to while reading. I really love how goa inspired this song is:

Xenoblade Chronicles X (XCX) is without a doubt one of the games that left me with the best impression ever. Finsishing the game left me with a feeling which may only be compared to finishing a Zelda game. This feeling resembles somewhat the feeling of when something very important is missing in your life, however, at the same time you feel happy that you have finally finished the adventure which was given to you. It is a feeling only very compassionate games experience. Maybe one could question whether you beat the game or the game beat you?

For Zelda games I believe this reason follows directly from the subtleness of the story, since the story is given to the player mostly through gameplay. In general it is more about impressions and how oneself percieve the world and atmosphere around you, and not the dialogues and cutscenes. It is also from the mystery of the story, eg. why is there a temple here, who built it, etc.. It really adds alot to the your experience with the game.

Now what does all of this have to do with XCX. I mean, XCX has a story, namely that about humanity trying to survive on a planet, and the conflict between humans and ganglions. The reason behind the comparisson between Zelda games and XCX is because XCX has alot of subtleness in its story and that is what makes XCX's story one of the best stories ever that I have encountered in a video game. Below is a concept art picture of Noctilum, one of the game's many beautiful areas:

While playing XCX I could barely think about anything else except its story: As a sidenote this not so good for your everyday life or your studies, however it is still a very nice feeling to completely sink into an unknown imaginary world. I was surprised to say the least when I began reading reviews about the game after beating it. It seems most people really hated the story and saying things similar to "from beginning to end, I never liked the story". While I may be able to admit that the story is off to a slow start, the story sure does picks it up along the first plot twists. Moreover, when a game is as complicated as XCX I do not mind a slow start on the story when I have my hands full of getting a hang of the gameplay and all of the games many mechanics.

However, I think I know why people did not like the story in XCX. For one thing we have Xenoblades Chronicles (XC), the predecessor of XCX. Now do not get me wrong, I really like XC and everything about it, but XC feels like the top of the line masterpiece of fantasy jrpgs. And hence, its story is that of a fantasy jrpg. The story in XC is much more available for everyone: in due time everything is explained, there are alot of great plot twists and good characters, etc.. However the story in XCX is as different as it could get, eg. one does not play as the main character (Elma is the main character), the "real" story is subtle and hides itself under the conflict between humanity and ganglions. In fact, I have never played a game, seen a movie, watched a series, etc. that has a story similar to XCX. And this is one of the reasons why I think that XCX not only has a great story, but moreover a better story than XC (and probably the best story I ever experienced in anything).

Below this point I will discuss the story in high detail, thus spoilers! I feel like I have some explaining to do. Let us begin with the conflict between humanity and ganglion. This is probably the sole reason why many consider XCX to have a bad story. This conflict may not be as deep and complex storywise as the story in XC, however it is still a good story.  However, this is not what XCX is about. XCX "real" story is in fact about the planet, Mira, itself. One of the earlier hints to this is in chapter 4, where Elma asks Tatsu which language they are speaking. We learn that every xenon (ie. every race in the world of XCX) on Mira speaks its native language, and that they hear aliens speaking in the same language as their native one. This is probably the point where I understood that it is going to be alot to the story in XCX. It is a shame though that so many has overlooked these kind of stuff while they were playing the game. Below is a picture of Elma suspecting the planet to be the reason why xenos can communicate with eachother:

In the same chapter we also learns about one of the most interesting plot twists ever, namely that all humans are in fact cyborgs with their consciousness constantly uploaded from something called the lifehold. With the explanation that follows it makes sense. Of course, you need to think about how to counter what could be generations of space travels. There is alot to this, but I want to discuss the planet and not the cyborg thing with XCX in this post. I am sure I will cme back to XCX several times in this blog. One of them may or may not cover some more on the cyborg thing.

From this point on, you will learn all kinds of things about the planet both in story missions and in side missions, and that is why XCX has an awesome story. No matter what mission you do (except basic missions of course), you will always learn more and more about the planet, and hence the story constantly develops and not only under story missions. You learn things like eg. all of the xenons seem to be stuck and moreover attracted to the planet involountarily. Some Man'ons say that they cannot leave the orbit of Mira even though they have a giant spaceship, and Elma (I think it was her) once said that Mira seemed to come out of nowhere when they were attacked on the White Whale by ganglions and needed to crash land. Moreover did Elma mention that Mira is not on any star charts and Professor B (a side charcter) even travels to the future with the time machine you help him fix in a side mission (that guy is a boss!), and when he returns he says the future holds no references to Mira what so ever. Below is a picture of Professor B, he is the one to the left:

In the next mission with Professor B he builds a new car (his time machine was a car too), which are supposed to discover all the secrets of Mira. While it is running it suddenly stops right before the secrets are revealed. Since the car (lol) was not malfunctioning it seems that the planet stopped Professor B from finding out what kind of planet Mira is, hinting the planet to have a mind of its own?

This is just mentioning a few of the weird things with Mira. They are literally everywhere in the game. As you probably understand by now is the story in XCX very subtle, but also extremely interesting and it really leaves you with alot of questions, unlike the story in XC (the story in XC is interesting, but it does not leave you with as many questions throughout the game). Now one last thing I want to mention is a part of the ending, which btw is extremely epic! At the very ending (this is not the whole ending) of the game you learn that database holding the humans consciousness is destroyed and has been destroyed ever since the humans first crash landed on Mira. It seems that the planet somewhat wants to protect all life, and thus are giving the humans their consciousness. This theory is also hinted in chapter 6 when a telethia saves you and your team, and the telethia, according to natives from Mira (L and nopons) seems to be singular creature, i.e. there exist only one of those on the planet. With all this questions about the planet Mira, I really found XCX's story to be extremely fascinating. The cliffhanger ending may be somewhat of a drag, but it will be all worth it if we get a game answering all of our questions about Mira (as well as maybe giving us ome more questions about Mira).  Below is "Professor B's theme", which is a instrumental version of Wir Fliegen, i.e. the song that plays under overdrive. This song is very catchy and it feels very experimental in some weird way, just like Professor B's experiments.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank DeoxysPrime for uploading XCX's glorious and epic soundtrack, as well as for uploading tons of different ost's from videogames I love.