Xenoblade Chronicles has been my favorite game since before I played it. Prior to its release stateside, I watched the trailers, pored over the concept art, and listened to the soundtrack, and I just knew.
Describing why Xenoblade Chronicles is good is easy. Describing why it’s my favorite game is hard, because it’s good for the same reasons hundreds of other JRPGs are good. The world is interesting, the story is exciting, the gameplay is fun, the characters are likable. So what? Swap out Xenoblade for, say, Chrono Trigger, and the same descriptors apply, except Xenoblade doesn’t have the distinction of being a landmark game that perfected and revolutionized a genre. It’s just good. Yet I like it more than every other game I’ve ever played, including games that are better.
Nostalgia undeniably casts a rosy tint over my Xenoblade experience. When the game came out, I was 16. I’d recently decided that I was interested in writing fiction. To me, Xenoblade, with all its undaunted grandeur, was proof positive that if an artist has an idea, they can, against all odds, make it a reality. The game is a spellbinding, fully-articulated opus, released in the twilight hours of a console that could hardly contain it.
Yes, Xenoblade was released on the Wii. The Wii! The underpowered, gimmicky, “even Grandpa can play” Nintendo Wii. A great console in its own right, but far from the preference of those who were after larger-than-life games with “open worlds” and “skill trees” and “graphics.” Wii exclusives on the scale of Xenoblade were practically nonexistent; developers didn’t want their work compromised by technical limitations, and the audience for grandiose role-playing experiences among the Wii’s install base was, at least compared to its contemporaries, fairly small. Like it or not, Grandpa doesn’t care about anime.
Monolith Software, helmed by JRPG maestro and maverick theologian Tetsuya Takahashi, said to hell with Grandpa. Nintendo acquired the studio as a subsidiary in 2007, and development on Xenoblade began not long after. Monolith’s devil-may-care approach was not without obstacle: according to Takahashi, the dev team very nearly pared the project down considerably in order to meet their deadline. In the end, though, they were told to take their time, so long as they could realize their vision. And realize it they did.
In every sense, Xenoblade Chronicles is a labor of love. It is a game about love, made lovingly. The least I can do is love it back.
PART 1: “THAT’S OUR WORLD”
In late 2011, a video titled “Xenoblade Chronicles: It’s not that big. It’s even bigger” was uploaded to YouTube. This video, a sped-up recording of three characters running from the starting area of the game to its midpoint - no story content or dialogue whatsoever - was the first piece of Xenoblade media I saw, and it was enough to spark a lasting obsession with a game I wouldn’t even get to play until the following April.
Xenoblade’s world is its centerpiece. It towers over the characters, ever-present and seemingly unshakeable. It ignites eager fascination and curiosity through premise alone, a premise so simple yet so immediately compelling that it seems sprung directly from the frenzied margin scribblings of a starry-eyed high schooler’s creative writing notebook: “Following an intense duel, two continent-sized titans - the organic Bionis and the robotic Mechonis - are trapped in an eons-long state of rigor mortis, their bodies host to sprawling landscapes and teeming civilizations.” Already, one’s imagination runs wild. To the unsuspecting customer casually reading the back of the Xenoblade box in the corner of an overcrowded Gamestop, the human form suddenly becomes a canvas upon which to graft the topography of an intricate, large-scale fantasy environment. They can’t help but envision the possibilities: a city on the leg? An ocean on the head? A mountain range on the arm? The answer to all three is “yes,” because Monolith knows what the people want.
It bears repeating that this is a Wii game - graphically, it doesn’t look as good as it deserves to. But through every chunky piece of level geometry, every sweeping vista rendered in native 480p, the passion of its developers can be deeply felt. Xenoblade’s commitment to and belief in its own artistry is infectious; it’s difficult to not buy into it completely, filling in the visual gaps when necessary, intuiting what its aspirations are and meeting it halfway. In that spring of 2012, I played Xenoblade late into the night, every night, for weeks, and the majority of that time was spent wandering aimlessly, absorbing my surroundings, getting lost. The game and I had reached an understanding.
And such an understanding is crucial, because as imaginative and distinctive as it is, Xenoblade’s world is indifferent. Not hostile, necessarily, but indifferent. It contours to the needs of nothing but itself. Players are presented with immense stretches of beguiling terrain, and the game, with a shrug of the shoulders, sets them free. Reckoning with this, learning to love the world not in spite of, but because of its indifference, was key to my enjoyment of Xenoblade.
Eryth Sea, the game’s oceanic region, comes to mind. Traversing it isn’t especially time-consuming, since the islands hovering over the sea are equipped with transporters that warp players around instantaneously. But the ocean itself is not off-limits - you’re free to jump in at any time and swim around unrestricted. Exploring the area via the water instead of the transporters can take hours, and there’s no reward for doing so (outside of a complete map). Nevertheless, the option is available, and why shouldn’t it be? Eryth Sea isn’t there for you. It’s just there, every bit as uncaring and inscrutable as the rest of the Bionis.
I’ve heard complaints that Xenoblade is too spacious, too vacuous; points of interest are often bridged by open areas that take several minutes to cross, sometimes with little in the way of interactivity. But a smaller Xenoblade, a Xenoblade encumbered with distractions, would be worse. It needs to breathe. The player needs to breathe. Exploring Xenoblade’s world is secondary to existing in it.
PART 2: “EVERYONE, YOU’RE THE BEST!”
But also, this is A Video Game. There are Characters in this thing. They talk to each other, they fight monsters. They soliloquize at length about the ethical snares of vengeance while having dope anime battles. They have flaws, internal conflicts, goals, etc.
On the surface, nothing about Xenoblade’s cast seems particularly noteworthy: you’ve got the chosen one guy, the hotheaded guy, the really cool katana guy who comes out of retirement to join all the other guys. There’s an aloof mage princess and an annoying mascot character who looks and sounds like an overripe helium balloon. The only real deviation among the core group is Sharla, our resident healer, who cures her teammates by shooting them point blank with a magic sniper rifle.
This admittedly simple paradigm quickly reveals itself as a springboard for something far more affecting. Put simply, Xenoblade’s characters are friends; they love one another. Their conversations - bolstered tremendously by the quality of the voice work, which features a stellar lineup of both Japanese and British talent - are warm and naturalistic. Story beats, sidequests, and even battle dialogue are frequently punctuated with open expressions of affection. There’s an intimacy here that transcends simple camaraderie, one suggesting shared desire for honesty and protection in a decaying, war-ravaged world.
Xenoblade isn’t apocalyptic, but it’s getting there. Players are continually reminded that, amidst all the verdant beauty, whole societies teeter on the precipice of annihilation. A sense of melancholy impermanence blankets the experience. It’s against this harrowing backdrop, with the knowledge that what little they have could be stripped away at any moment, that Xenoblade’s characters exist only for one another; the less welcome they feel in their surroundings, the stronger their interpersonal bonds become. Over the course of its story, as Xenoblade defamiliarizes itself to players and protagonists alike, repeatedly contrasting the macro with the micro, wondering aloud how so few individuals could possibly affect meaningful change in a world so vast, it circles back, repeatedly, to love.
...But also! This is, again, A Video Game; it has, in addition to Characters, Gameplay. And in the trickle-down design economics of Xenoblade, “love” manifests mechanically as “affinity,” a relationship-building system woven throughout the game’s architecture that encompasses both the party and the world at large. As party members explore, fight, and complete quests together, their affinity grows, improving their compatibility in battle. Similarly, by talking to named NPCs and helping them solve problems, a visual index of every named NPC in the game called the “affinity chart” is gradually filled in. If two named NPCs know each other, a line - which brings up a description of their relationship when highlighted - links them. Eventually, this chart becomes an expansive lattice, spanning five of the game’s major regions and connecting dozens of NPCs. The more NPCs the party befriends in a given region, the better their reputation will be in that region, resulting in more available quests and items. In summation: love - between party members, and between the party and the communities they navigate - produces material gains. Players are encouraged to forge meaningful connections with Xenoblade’s characters, both major and minor, and are subsequently rewarded.
Multiple subsystems complement this, and though describing them all in detail would bore us all to tears (even I barely know how gem crafting works), the battle system warrants special mention. An active party in Xenoblade consists of three members: a player-controlled leader, and two computer-controlled companions. Leaving two-thirds of the party to the whims of the game’s AI is a bold choice, but in doing so, the designers slyly rope players into identifying with and trusting the characters, often subconsciously. When you initiate a combo starter with your leader, you have faith that one of your teammates will follow up with their own corresponding attack sans any direct input. When you get knocked down, you expect them to help you up (and give you a few words of reassurance, which they always do). Cooperate enough, and you’re rewarded with a “chain attack,” during which you can control all three characters’ actions - only by depending on them can you ultimately understand them. I’m inclined to agree with the common labelling of Xenoblade as a single-player MMORPG: to make any meaningful progress, players need to rely on their companions as though they were real people. This trust begets attachment, and attachment begets love.
Of course, the effectiveness of this design is contingent on the characters themselves being lovable. Good news: I’d die for any of them. I love these characters. I love their enthusiasm, their kindness, their curiosity. I love how funny they all are. I love that they’re all best friends. Above all, I love that the game knows I love them, and gives me an opportunity to know them even better via “heart-to-hearts”: miniature, digressive, entirely optional cutscenes that exist solely to provide the player with more character interactions. Some of Xenoblade’s best, most revealing dialogue is tucked away in heart-to-hearts, and one’s motivation to pursue them hinges entirely on how invested they are in the cast. If the game’s magic works as well on you as it did on me, you’ll get them all. You’ll also main Shulk in Super Smash Bros. for six years.
PART 3: “SEIZE YOUR DESTINY”
Xenoblade Chronicles loves other games every bit as much as it loves itself. It’s a passionately written, floridly calligraphed Valentine’s Day card to the genre, coaxing players into its dense, protracted plot with the tantalizing promise of familiarity. Familiarity is comfortable, and comfort is okay. It’s okay to take a break from reinventing the wheel and just let it spin for a while. It’s okay to look at Xenoblade and think, wow, this sure reminds me of Japanese role-playing games. Playing it is like taking a crash course in JRPG narrative history: it opens on a young boy, the chosen wielder of a legendary weapon, seeking revenge in wake of a mysterious attack on his idyllic hometown. Throughout his journey, he uncovers the world’s most ancient secrets, wrestles with what it means to be human, falls in love, and visits a forest with a giant tree in the middle of it. On some innate level, this all makes perfect sense. Braided into the game’s DNA are evocations of hallowed, timeless, instantly-identifiable video game conventions, granted the spectacle they deserve by a skilled team of veteran developers.
Xenoblade is Dragon Quest III, it’s Secret of Mana, it’s Tales of Phantasia, it’s Grandia. It’s Skies of Arcadia, thank God. It’s 90% of JRPGs released between 1986 and 2001, microwaved on high for five minutes and served with a side of Ultima Online. It’s all these games because the developers love all these games; I know they love all these games because of how much they love Xenoblade. And Xenoblade, with how distinct, how utterly realized it is in its design and presentation, is worth loving - as a video game, and as a grand, personal artistic gesture from Tetsuya Takahashi.
Takahashi’s creative career, up until Xenoblade, was a series of false starts. His first directorial project was the PSX JRPG Xenogears, co-written with his wife Kaori Tanaka (who now goes by the pen name “Soraya Saga”) and published by Squaresoft. I resent mentioning Xenogears only as a footnote in this piece - the game’s story, a millennia-spanning epic replete with philosophical and religious allusion, is one of the most ambitious in the medium. It’s also, tragically, half-finished. Takahashi’s relatively inexperienced team, facing imminent deadlines, relegated the events of the game’s second disc to a series of scrolling text boxes, interspersed with boss battles and the occasional dungeon. The result is a bizarre, moody, truncated hodge-podge that strains against its own concessions, wanting desperately to be something greater.
In 1999, Takahashi and several members of the Xenogears team split from Square to form Monolith Software, which released its first game in 2002. Xenosaga - another collaboration between Takahashi and Tanaka - is completely insane. Originally intended as an indirect Xenogears successor, it eventually spun off into a wildly different, even more illegible strain of sci-fi. (Just for fun, check out the page on the Xenosaga wiki for Jesus Christ. He has a 3D model and everything.) Ultimately, due to staff changes and underwhelming sales following the first part’s release, the series spanned only three games out of a planned six.
Going into Xenoblade, every large-scale project Takahashi had previously attempted was, to some extent, compromised. He understood well the potential of video games as outlets for thought-provoking fiction, but his efforts to express himself were continually cut short. And here, at last, was a fully realized experience, developed under the aegis of a producer who fully believed in Monolith’s talent. Xenoblade (originally titled Monado: Beginning of the World, later renamed to echo Takahashi’s past work) is fittingly celebratory: of itself, its influences, its genre underpinnings, and the curtailed projects that paved the way for it. It’s a triumphant feather in its creator’s cap, the result of decades of fervent work.
And it succeeded. First as a cult hit, bolstered by a massive letter-writing campaign advocating for its international release (and that of two other Wii games, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower), and eventually as an esteemed, widely beloved title in its own right. Since its unlikely European localization in 2011 and even more unlikely North American localization in 2012, Xenoblade has received a 3DS port, a digital Wii U re-release, a spiritual sequel (Xenoblade Chronicles X), a direct sequel (Xenoblade Chronicles 2), representation in two Smash games, and an HD remake on the Switch, subtitled Definitive Edition.
I suppose Definitive Edition is, technically speaking, my favorite version. The quality of life improvements do wonders for the game’s flow (especially with regards to the once-tedious sidequests), and the revamped graphics electrify its environments in ways the Wii never could. When it released earlier this year, I wound up sinking over a hundred hours into my first playthrough alone, nearly as enchanted by it as I was in 2012 - but not quite.
The original Xenoblade Chronicles released when, unbeknownst to me, I needed it most. I was stumbling through the miasma of a teenage identity crisis. Most of my spare time was spent getting lost in my own head, mentally crafting elaborate fantasy stories and populating them with characters that I’d describe as underwritten if I’d ever actually written anything. I wasn’t confident enough to make the leap from self-indulgent reverie to actual artistic productivity, so I opted to wallow. I played plenty of games, not necessarily because they meant anything to me, but because they were something to do. A fun distraction to take my mind off itself.
Xenoblade was a revelation. It struck me as a near-faultless execution of everything I’d ever wanted to make, developed with total conviction by people who knew their ideas, however absurd, were worth caring about. Despite its technical limitations, despite its tremendous scope, it was whole. Imagination, I realized, was only the first step. Someone sat down and wrote this, conceptualized this - what’s my excuse? I could, and should, create. So I did, and still do. Not as a distraction, but because I have things I want to say. Everyone has things they want to say. Tetsuya Takahashi had things he wanted to say, and, with great effort, he said them. In Xenoblade, he posited that the collective endeavors of a few have the power to reshape the future, that the world is what we make of it.
Thanks, man. Loud and clear.