I Don’t Know How to Feel About Xenoblade X’s Epilogue
Goes without saying, but I will be spoiling the ENTIRETY of Xenoblade X Definitive Edition's new story content here, so don't read too far ahead if you haven't gotten that far yet.
I don’t really know how to feel about Xenoblade X’s epilogue, honestly. As an experience witnessing it unfold in the moment, I loved it. I liked going through it, I connected with the characters, I enjoyed the moments. I felt this was the perfect way to tie X into the broader xeno-verse aspects set up by Xenoblade 2, with it directly mentioning the Conduit (albeit in the context of its Samaarian origins), and how it allows the game to tie in with not just the main trilogy of Xenoblade games, but also with Xenosaga, even if it’s perhaps only in its principal themes.
But… I don’t like how it feels as a direct follow-up to Xenoblade X. I think it’s unfortunate that after an entire game’s worth of story of building new life on mira, planting seeds for generations to come, and truly just being able to settle on the planet, the story immediately pivots to killing it off and forcing the entirety of humanity off the planet. It doesn’t feel good, and in a lot of ways it goes against a lot of the central theming set up by the game’s previous 12 chapters. Xenoblade X always felt like more of a standalone game with its own universe and its own priorities, and much of it had to do with the mystery of the planet. What the epilogue achieves in connecting X to the rest of the series I believe came with the cost of much of its own uniqueness.
Many of Mira’s biggest mysteries (the presence of xenoform from across the galaxies, the universal inter-species translation, the actual purpose of the planet itself and why it seemingly seems to “trap” its inhabitants in there even if they attempt to escape) remain, for the most part, unsolved, and instead we’re led to believe that the planet itself houses no real significance whatsoever. This feels like a bit of a cop out, mainly because for the past 10 years we’ve only had this much to go off of! Fan theories would spiral into so many batshit insane conclusions to where the thing we did end up getting in the end just ended up feeling… very underwhelming? Don’t get me wrong, it answers a lot of questions, just not necessarily the ones we wanted answered.
And even then, I understand that in a lot of ways the ‘mysteries’ behind mira are part of what make it what it is; it gives it this specific vibe and feeling to it, but to that I say; I don’t necessarily need nor want these questions answered. Frankly, I don’t want a dragged out technobabble explanation behind the planet’s mechanisms at all (unless they’re interesting enough to hold greater thematic significance), but I at least wanted a chance to see the characters ponder these mysteries at all in a proper epilogue chapter—to see them bask in a period of ‘unknowing’ as they struggle to find an explanation behind their continued existence—before eventually making their peace with the planet, mysteries and all. Instead, chapter 12’s big question is immediately followed up by chapter 13’s de-mat events and the invasion of the ghosts, and Mira's ultimate demise is set in stone from that point.
However, I don’t think that all of these issues I have are necessarily the fault of the plot in itself. I've seen many people treat chapter 13 almost like a retcon or a rush job ending hastily put together to make Xenoblade X house more significance in the broader series, but I heavily disagree with this criticism (and in fact, find it outright nonsensical). I find it totally plausible that escaping from Mira would have been part of Takahashi’s initial vision for the story itself in the initial drafts 10 years ago–in fact the lyrics to a lot of the vocal songs in the game's soundtrack seem to make a LOT more sense now, with Black tar specifically mentioning ghosts ("Seeing ghosts scatter, as they pour out, we can handle them") and In the forest ("He was drifting along in the universe. That was the last time I saw his face") seemingly making reference to Al being sent to the Rift after the events of the opening—it’s enough evidence for me to personally believe that this had always been the intended order of events from day one, and that Sawano’s songs were written with this bigger picture in mind.
That said, Chapter 13 in its entirety feels like they had condensed what could have been an entire sequel game’s worth of story and build-up into just a couple of additional mini-chapters, and as a result the new content feels very haphazardly put together, thus contributing to everything feeling rushed and lacking in much depth–almost like they had to cut down on so much narrative development for the sake of fitting it into Definitive Edition. A friend described it to me as 'another Xenogears Disc 2 situation', which honestly tracks in a lot of ways.
Had the efforts of the second Project Exodus been spread out across another 6-8 or so chapters, I’d want to believe I could’ve jived with it a lot more. It would’ve at least felt a lot more believable than them somehow putting together an entirely new arkship in what feels like a week or two–but as it is, I’m simply left wishing it could’ve been a lot more than what we got. I really believe that, had this been an entire game of itself, they would have been able to pull it off easily, but I understand it would have been a huge risk that I personally don’t blame them for not taking; a direct X sequel, set on the same planet, with largely the same characters, won’t really have any lasting appeal or even have a real selling point, and I honestly doubt the developers and designers would’ve wanted to make that game anyway.