Keeping the intro short. Xenoblade Chronicles X has been one of my favorite games and I was really excited when they announced the Definitive Edition for the Switch. They've implemented a ton of QOL features that make the game infinitely more playable, and I'm very grateful for them. The art style change I don't care much for, but I don't really mind. I've been playing it since it came out and I'm loving it all over again.

A couple days ago I came across a post on Tumblr that said chapter 13 sucks so bad that "the whole fandom" is pretending it doesn't exist, and some are outright refusing to play it. First of all when people say "the whole fandom" they oftentimes mean "me and I'm being really annoying about it", so I didn't put much thought into it. Now that I've actually reached chapter 13, though... unfortunately I kinda get it.

I haven't finished yet, I only got up to the point where you save Omomo from the creature and leave her to die on Mira.

Spoilers Below

I have no problem with the actual content of the chapter, but the way it's presented is just kind of insufferable. It starts off with them doing the whole thing of implying we knew about the Ghosts all along - which is partly true but I'd always assumed the second army in that cutscene was Samaar and the name Ghosts was never in use until now. Considering they remade the whole game they could have at least added the name to those cutscenes if they really wanted to sell the gaslight campaign, but I get why they'd be apprehensive messing with the original story.

The whole importance of the Ares too is like... it's not coming out of nowhere. It was set up, Elma does look shocked when Lao steals the Prog Ares, and the craftable ares are strong as fuck for no reason, but again, implying that we all knew that the ares was special (even if we didn't know why) all along is kind of strange.

Void being the one to create the Ganglion isn't unbelievable but it does seem really redundant? Like, why would Samaar create Void to create the Ganglion instead of just making the Ganglion themselves? Maybe I missed something, but this seems unecessary. Void himself seems kind of shallow at face value but you can extract something if you really want to. The concept of whole universes being destroyed by the Ghosts (?) instead of just the planets it's pretty overkill but I do like it. If it was done right, it could further play up Mira as a planet where other civilizations literally go to die, but I don't know if they're doing that because it feels like Mira's importance is getting kind of shafted.

And then... Al.

The idea of a hero that sacrificed himself to ensure the White Whale launched is, again, very believable. I fucking hate Al though. Everyone loves him, he's got in jokes with the whole crew, he's (heavily implied to be) Elma's ex boyfriend, he has the most powerful Ares that only he can pilot, he has all the values of a true hero with his only flaw being... being too awesome, I guess? We used to have a word for this kind of character, I think (then again it was only actually used to be misogynistic). He doesn't like the whole hero thing, but he is literally the key to save humanity.

And the way he just... expositions the whole plot in every cutscene he's in. Once again, the actual content of the exposition doesn't bother me and seems pretty consistent so far, but he just keeps fucking talking. They just reveal the whole plot as they're standing around, just reveals the truth of the multiverse as a fun catch-up activity. And when he goes outside and suddenly remembers he met Lao in the afterlife and he relays his heartfelt message to Lin? Sure, fucking sure, but at least save this for a dramatic moment or something? No, he just thought about how nice Mira was for one second then went on that dump unprompted. Fucking, come on.

It feels like the player character got benched even harder now too. I kind of get it, it's hard to have a compelling character that only gets 2 choices of dialog at a time, so it's easiest to just have a traditional Xenoblade Guy take the lead, but come on. It might just be because I picked the wrong choices, but Elma has been treating the PC like a baby every time they say something. Kind of fair, since you did rise to be the coolest most awesomest guy in just 12 short chapters, but come on we literally saved the Lifehold and you're still calling me rook? The developers definitely knew how this all sounded since half of your dialogue choices regarding Al refer to how envious you are of him, too.

I can't wait to get to the credits and see who the writers are, I want to know what happened for Al to have turned out this fucking awful. The original writers are more competent than this. Elma is (was) a little on the flat side but she's definitely not the most important person on the planet. Lin has flaws. Rex has flaws. Shulk is like, a real person. Xenoblade 3 is a literary masterpiece if all the comments from my friends and youtube thumbnails are to be believed. I don't know anything about the DLCs from 2 and 3, is the Torna guy like this? Surely not or I'd have heard the complaining. What could have happened for them to have created the Alex YIIK of Xenoblade?

Predictions

I don't fucking know at this point. The more I play this chapter the less competent I think these writers are. The initial post made it sound like they shafted Mira entirely, which makes me think they fully leave Mira at the end. I kinda don't believe it since they wouldn't, you know, make you unable to take more sidequests in the game whose meat is doing sidequests. My most optimistic prediction is that the White Whale 2 is gonna fail and they're instead going to move the entirety of Mira into the new universe. Or they do leave Mira to be destroyed and use the Ma-non ship to go into the Xenoblade 3 universe, I fucking guess.

I really want them to elaborate on and build up Mira's importance after Al's loredumps just overshadowed it entirely. I do believe they're going to show us something since Neilnail's affinity mission brings light to the Qlu's presence in the planet, unless that and chapter 13 are written by different writers who really don't care about collaborating. Which might be the case.