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The writing in Xenoblade Chronicles X feels so damn passionless & is borderline silly

S

skypunch

Banned
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It really feels like 80% of the characters in this game exist purely to waste my time. Every character is defined by one single trait that the writers decided to beat you over the head with.

I can't fathom how there are people who are genuine fans of these characters (Alexa, Frye, Boze, H.B., etc) because they're all really shallow. There's a real lack of urgency & gravita in the game's writing. It's like the writers were having a competition of who could write the silliest, most pointless characters.

What happened to the writers inbetween Xenoblade & Xenoblade Chronicles X?
 
I dunno, I had some missions where aliens put eggs in some bodies and killed some people. There are serious missions and silly missions.
 
You missed the X in your title.

also some of those characters you listed are throwaway DLC party members in the JP version.
 
I really enjoyed Hope as a character and her storyline was really well done. I also loved the relationship between Phog and Frye.

Just because the writing is more low-key doesn't mean it isn't done well for what it is. It seems like you expected something totally different, which is fine, but X has perfectly fine writing.
 
Loved the graphics. Really the most impressive Wii-U game I will ever see. Loved the loot, enjoyed the combat on foot and in the skell, the mp stuff was also really interesting, even the VO was pretty solid... shame the rest was overhyped. Outside of a few tracks, music was forgettable, writing was slapdash. Overly big just for the sake of being big, just to tick some PR boxes.

Would play it again on NX if they do a HD remix down the line.
 
Really? Because that's not my experience so far, there are loads of characters with relatively interesting stories from drunks and racists to sadistic bitches and stuck-up geniuses. Plenty of good dialog too. I feel like many people are ignoring a lot of good characters and stories because they're not mandatory.
I mean, I'm not saying there's a lot of layered, deep, three-dimensional characters- there aren't- but I don't find that any different from the first one or... almost every other videogame. The actual dialog I found an improvement over the first one, or maybe it's the translation.
 
Haven't played the new game yet but the characters in Xenoblade Chronicles were always somewhat one note. The only thing they had going for them was seemingly endless buckets of charm. The only character in the whole game with any real depth was Shulk.
 
sensui-tomo said:
Aren't the 4 characters op listed the dlc characters? Whom all were lackluster.
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Yup.

Question for the OP. Outside doing the missions to get the DLC characters are you doing the affinity missions for all the characters (each has several)?

I don't see how one can see the characters as one note after doing those. They are the things that flesh out the characters and it's in those missions you see different sides and aspects of their personalities due to the situations you end up inn. Things you wouldn't get in the main mission/story line because of the events that are taking place there. Even in regard to the main story characters aren't one note I feel.

That's not to say things are oscar award winning but better then what is being implied.

The DLC characters however are very likely a different story compared to all the other characters that are apart of the base game. The DLC was added after the game originally came out in Japan. They're extra.
 
The Boat said:
Really? Because that's not my experience so far, there are loads of characters with relatively interesting stories from drunks and racists to sadistic bitches and stuck-up geniuses. Plenty of good dialog too.
Click to expand...

That's also what makes it so silly. Those drunks, racists, & stuck up geniuses are BLADEs.
 
BY2K said:
Open-world happened.
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The Witcher 3 has some of the best game writing ever and it's open-world, no excuse.

I agree, OP. I'm 40 hours in, and loving the game, but purely for it's mechanics, gameplay, and exploration. Nearly anything on a narrative or aesthetic level isn't working for me.
 
Well the game is mostly meant to be lore and world building for Takahashi's next project which would supposedly be mainly a full story instead of the barebones narrative we had in Xeno X. It was mostly an experiment for what they could do in their first Foray in HD gaming technologies. They weren't sure what they could do and wanted to test the waters.
 
Who needs good writing or a plot or whatever when you can have your main characters run around in bikini's and bunnysuits?

On a more serious note - the writing and character development were definitely a major step down from the first game but it didn't really bother me. I spent so much time just exploring everything and discovering everything about the combat system. Those are the game's strongest points. If you're just in it for the story then I can imagine this being a dissapointment.

To me it was one of the best games I played last year though.
 
Yeah, it's not really good. The story isn't its strong point. But some of the missions have some funny dialogues, it's not completely bad.
 
You're a cog in the machine and not a golden god. the entire game is survival and community and there are different types of people in a community. Writing is much more low key because not everyone has the same urgency, skill traits or personality. Some do have a sense of urgency, some don't, some worry they might be a hindrance, some only wish to help assure others.

I also had the first interspecies marriage in the game. So that's neat too.

There are a lot of characters that I genuinely enjoyed with interesting backstories and personalities.
 
They went with a different approach and then spread the characters way too thin. In the original, party members were always in your party and everything was a group effort sort of like a family whereas X, you only get a couple team members at a time and everyone is more like your neighbor or coworker. They then spread it too thin over the course of the game. Most of the characters only partially develop through their missions
 
You're using all the weird DLC characters.

I don't think the game has amazing writing by any stretch, but I enjoyed the schlock of the main questline and characters (Elma and Lin).
 
When you turn a cast of 7 into a cast of 18 something is going to give. It also doesn't help that the heart to heart system was not only made as obscure as possible (it being changed to not visible where you have to go unless you found a yellow speech bubble and don't have them in your party) but the lack of a reload option meant the only way to see the alternative dialogue would be to quit to title screen that has about a minute of loading associated with it.

The side cast managed to be a lot more interesting in this game at least.

Maybe some of the main cast being relegated to NPC status might have helped things a little.

sensui-tomo said:
Aren't the 4 characters op listed the dlc characters? Whom all were lackluster.
Click to expand...
Are you calling HB distinctly lackluster?
 
skypunch said:
That's also what makes it so silly. Those drunks, racists, & stuck up geniuses are BLADEs.
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That's the point.
Even the people they managed to save as the last of the human beings are falling apart because the whole fucking planet and human race were exterminated and they're running from their exterminators in outer space.

It's expected that you'd see people reacting to that and other people with actual personalities. They take who they can because everyone needs to chip in.
 
Chacranajxy said:
Compare it to Xenoblade Chronicles, though. X is so incredibly generic, by comparison. The best songs are the Noctilim themes, and those would be middling by Xenoblade standards.
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X's soundtrack was typical for Sawano, but I'm not sure you can call it typical for the genre. I loved the first game's soundtrack, but it's absolutely a generic RPG score stylistically.
 
I remember reading an article about one of the devs saying that they purposely toned down the story since this was their first HD game and they didn't want to get in over their heads with the game's development. They chose to focus on the core gameplay.
 
Inferno313 said:
The Witcher 3 has some of the best game writing ever and it's open-world, no excuse.
Click to expand...

This. I'd say that customizable, silent main character happened instead.

And yeah, clear focus on mechanics vs. story happened as well.

And: lack of British voice actors hurt as well (yep, still bitter about than one) /jk
 
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