—WARNING—
SNESSER

Videogames are for media perverts.

Really, is it not enough just watching a character perform an action from the comfort of the living room sofa? We’ve got the written word, the stage, the projector, illustration and sound, but for the weirdos among us, that doesn’t cut it. No, we just have to crawl into the screen and take up residence in their skin. We need to feel their digital knuckles scraping against the robo-flesh of their adversaries. We need to breathe the air of that post-apocalyptic wasteland and go fishing in the little streams that have formed between the cracks in the asphalt. In "A Play of Bodies," games researcher Brendan Keogh (the man responsible for my treatment of "videogame" as a single word) writes that video-gameplay creates a circuit between the player and the software. We enter the machine, and there is a “meshing of materially different bodies into an amalgam cyborg body through which the player both produces and perceives the play experience” (41).

It’s a little twisted, isn’t it? Just the slightest bit deranged?

I think about that whenever I consider recommending NieR: Automata to another person, because even if it didn't mean asking someone to take control of an android soldier inexplicably dressed as a blindfolded french maid in a billowy skirt and heels (“Taro just likes girls, man”), it still demands a degree of investment which isn’t remotely common in media. For games, it’s a high bar. I have to remind myself that even in 2023, the year when my Mom called in to rave about HBO’s The Last of Us, picking up a controller to actively involve oneself in a play experience of this kind is still a lot to ask. That show managed to reach an audience of people who had never considered conversion into one of Keogh’s cyborgs. If even one of them asked me which videogames to start with, Automata wouldn’t make the shortlist. You’ve already gotta be quite a ways down the rabbit hole. You have to love giving yourself over to and becoming entwined with these things for hours at a time. You have to be aware of their conventions. It’s one for the video-perverts.

Luckily, there are plenty of us to go around if you know where to look. Media literacy is an odd thing. I’m enough of a ridiculous videogame/media cyborg person that I might’ve written off Automata — of all things — as passé. A little too indulgent in some unfortunate tropes and well-trodden themes.

If you’re just joining us, the premise is this — In the future, aliens have sent a mechanical army to conquer the Earth, forcing humanity to take refuge on the moon. We’ve constructed a squadron of android soldiers to take back the planet, resulting in an ongoing proxy war between the two robotic factions on the surface. You, the player, follow androids 2B and 9S in their righteous quest to drive back the alien menace and reclaim the world.

Incidentally, this is pretty much the plot of DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. You have the right to remain suspicious.

I’d played my share of JRPGs, done some hacking and slashing, wasn’t terribly impressed with 13 Sentinels, seen Evangelion, Lain and Ghost in the Shell. I’ve had Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked in my queue since that one Hazel video, alright. I wasn’t…pressed. I didn’t discount what I’d heard about its excellence and experimentation, but I was pretty sure I knew what I’d find. No matter how you slice it, the broad questions of existential philosophy can only have so many possible conclusions. Either everything is futile, or it’s not. To paraphrase Albert Camus, you either live for some reason, or you don’t. Viktor Frankl narrowed it down to three: one might live for a goal, for someone else, or to overcome suffering. Paring it further down, you either accept the beauty that you can find in whatever corner of this world you inhabit, or else rage against it and build a better one.

Really, I hoped it was hiding a perspective or a problem that would change my mind. I want to be wrong and I want to learn. My diagnosis of existentialism is so broad as to be useless. But Automata didn’t show me “The Gospel of the New Age,” it didn’t pretend it could arrive at unique conclusions about life and its meaning. Rather, it’s frustrated with the answers that have been given. It just doesn’t know how to escape from them.

SYSTEM MESSAGE
(It's gonna be a long one)

The opening says as much, states in no uncertain terms that we’re “perpetually trapped” in The Wheel of Samsara, and then drops us into a top-down arcade shoot ‘em up. I watched the rest of my squad get picked off one by one, and knew I was in the hands of a director. So let’s talk Taro. Yoko Taro, the all-but undisputed creative force behind NieR, has spoken loudly about his love for 2D shooters, and that inspiration isn’t limited to gameplay. It comes through in Automata’s premise, themes, and looping narrative. Shoot ‘em ups are about dying again and again, setting one’s own goals, finding meaning in their madness. They’re about lone pilots in their last stands to save already doomed worlds. Their characters never escape the five to seven manic stages that contain their stories. Yoko Taro may have wanted to make ZeroRanger (and if he had, it’d had said all he’d wanted to say), but given Square Enix’s requirement that it be an Action RPG, I think the team came to a solid compromise.

Automata’s control scheme is cleverly designed to seamlessly shift between 2D shooting and 3D action without twisting the fundamentals. Melee attacks, specials and evasion are all mapped to the same buttons no matter the perspective, and that’s a powerful gesture. NieR: Replicant was bent on shocking the player out of their comfort zone with shifts into text adventuring and fixed camera Resident Evil…ing, its parts as cobbled together as any of Automata’s machines (and make no mistake, I love it for that). Automata, meanwhile, is sleek. Its mechanical consistency more readily invites the player to slip into a state of cyborg-dom, even as the shape of the game morphs around them. Nowhere is this better felt than the final stretch of The Tower, and those who’ve played the game will know what I’m talking about. Whatever form it takes, whoever you are, your index finger is for shooting. Customizable chips inform your abilities and interface, and it does plenty to contextualize game elements as features of the android protagonists. Whether or not it measurably contains “zero unintended ludo-narrative dissonance,” Automata goes the distance.

But few players I know would accuse Automata of “consistency,” and for good reason. Its narrative structure is easily one of its strangest features. I wouldn’t call it subtle so much as…selectively cryptic? Curious. I wouldn’t say there’s anything presented in the critical path that doesn’t serve at least a thematic purpose, but events rarely build directly on top of each other throughout the A/B playthroughs, and only the barest threads actively cause the events of Routes C/D. Much of this is by design, seeing as the player is taking direct orders from their commanding officers as soldiers of YoRHa, simply doing as you’re told without the agency to decide your path, but I wouldn’t argue if someone found Automata “half-baked.”

I’m getting ahead of myself — I’ve seen it discussed that the mystery of the machines’ sentience is badly handled, that it’s too obvious and heavy-handed right from the get-go, but I think it’s clear that’s not the question being raised by the story. It’s not “do the machines really have emotions,” it’s “why are the androids so bent on deluding themselves into believing that the machines lack emotion?” What’s so qualitatively different about the two robot factions? What drives people to ignore the pleas of others and deny their personhood? We find them in distress in the desert, quite literally birthing two beings called Adam and Eve. It takes just three hours to encounter a village of machine pacifists, and, when he’s no longer able to deny their sentience, 9S just pulls out some lame excuse to maintain his worldview. This might be frustrating as a player, to be required to carry out actions you don’t believe in for the sake of progress through a story. You could call it stupid, maybe cruel, or you might appreciate that your doubts echo those of the characters.

But some cracks begin to show as you await each revelation.

_________________________________

After a climactic battle with a gargantuan mech results in the loss of your sidekick, you follow a trail of breadcrumbs to a rusted elevator in the depths of a dimly-lit cavern. You’re warned it may be a trap. Both you and your character shrug off the suggestion.

At the bottom of a long descent, you emerge beneath a subterranean sky, a void of white. Before you, an eerie facsimile of civilization. The architecture is reminiscent of a metropolis that once stood, but colorless and incomplete. One of the top three songs in the game starts up.

Pressing forward, you find the bodies of androids strewn about the scenery. Further and further, until you come face to face with the perpetrator. You have a dramatic rematch with Adam. Philosophy is spouted, combat ensues, and you kill him. You retrieve 9S.

You then…report back to the Resistance Camp and receive your next assignment.

The Copied City never becomes relevant again.

_________________________________

(Tangentially, Adam and Eve confront our heroes a total of three times, which doesn’t give them much room to interact beyond being born and dying. This is interesting on the face of it, but none of these interactions shake up the status quo. Killing Eve supposedly alters the machine network, but not in a way that interferes with its normal functioning. 9S then enters the machine network during the first ending, and little seems to come of it beyond perhaps the intermittent vignettes you receive before and after boss fights during Route B. Tragically, none of these vignettes seem to influence 9S’ thoughts or actions later on)

I’m not here to slap a “bad writing” stamp on NieR: Automata, despite what I'm about to say. Honest. All of this is kind of fascinating to me. The fact that Adam and Eve’s story doesn’t affect the characters as much as it should might speak to how little regard the androids afford machines in general. The fact that the status quo is not affected by any of these wild moments sort of makes sense when you consider the cyclical state of the setting. Maybe. But a certain thought cloud began to hang over me as I continued playing, and then it grew as the story revealed itself.

Any suspicions I had were confirmed by Taro’s 2014 GDC Talk where he lays bare his process. Before arriving at any character or premise, he whips up an emotional climax. He decides where he wants his audience to cry, and then works backward to create context for that moment. I’d like to be charitable, everyone expresses themselves differently, but it’s hard not to look at this and find some Hack Behavior. Taro does explore themes and questions and characters, but it’s obvious when a moment is crafted in isolation for the sake of shock value, and it doesn’t help that many of them lack long-standing consequences. Of course there are great, hard-hitting scenes (the intro to the game’s second half comes to mind), but I know when I’m being punked. And as it pulls this sort of thing again and again, it becomes easier to see the mirrors behind the smoke. Final Fantasy VI’s opera setpiece might be very obviously tossed in there, but the development that happens in and around it, before and after, makes it worthwhile.

And so is Automata, just not for the same reasons. I was convinced at one point that it had actually been about the conflict between A2 and 9S all along. Whatever inconsistencies there’d been or questions that had gone unanswered, everything had been built to explore how they’d end up as ideological opposites. But for that to be true, A2 herself would’ve needed more time. I’ve got just enough of a speedrunner’s brain that I enjoyed replaying the first third as 9S, especially for recontextualizing his role in the duo and containing late-game reveals only he was privy to. Likewise, we’d have needed to see what made A2 who she was at the beginning of the story. After ages of aimless rage and rebellion, it should have taken more than just one late-game subplot to alter her worldview (2B-pilled or not). It’s a testament to the music, pacing and performances that I was able to buy her character, but it would be a stretch to say that the story is squarely about her.

Maybe it’s become clearer as Taro has progressively dominated this write-up, but I don’t feel this is a game about its characters, but a mind at odds with itself. It won’t be obvious if you’re only reading this review without having played the game, but NieR is the story of a man grappling with existentialists, admitting that none of their perspectives have managed to convince him or offer a satisfactory route to purpose. Maybe he’s frustrated that none of them click. Whether you’re driven by fear or beauty or selfishness, spirituality or revenge, we’re all made of the same stuff, and we’re all going to the same place.

I don’t think it’s unfair to criticize Automata for failing to thoroughly explore those avenues of meaning. Fair or not, I’ll posit this dismissal comes from the honest place of a person who’s become lost and resentful toward structures built to fabricate meaning at the expense of others. Religion and love and community are all represented in unflattering extremes, and having one’s purpose stripped away is immediately met with violence against oneself and others. Even when I disagreed or wanted more in the way of nuance, I had to admit that I could sympathize with the author. I realize I’ve come to take God’s absence for granted, that meaning is self-made. Around the time I played Automata, a close someone told me that life would not be worth living without God. Happiness would be impossible. Only the involvement of an Eternal Being can give our existence weight.

Well, It’s a good thing He’s up there, then.



…

So we play as this torn mind, inhabiting both characters and driving them toward opposite objectives. These androids are only granted agency by the player, after all. Whichever of the two you gravitate toward, each must be defeated by the other. You must kill both of your selves.

It’s a bleak lens, and it’s not shy about that. Maybe it shouldn't be any sort of surprise that Automata’s ending invites its players to rebel against its worldview, unite and collectively destroy it. It wants us to demonstrate that we can find purpose in each other. As far as I can tell, Taro wants to be proven wrong. He wants to learn something. Of course, it could be that I only found what I wanted to see.

But that’s not what I saw in the moment. Ending E didn’t hit as hard as I’d wanted. I nodded in acknowledgment of the gesture, knew that it was a modern Shigesato Itoi finale. Automata contains some real sparks of bottled magic, but it rarely managed to pull me out of my own head, maybe because the mind behind it was made so painfully visible. It never brought me to tears (TieRs?). Despite the gorgeousness of its soundtrack, I felt more distant than I’d have liked to be. I became uncomfortably aware of myself in that desk chair, holding a plastic videogame controller, watching my screen flash with the light of real people who’d given up their save data to help me, someone they’d never meet.

It felt like getting caught in the act.

You don't owe forgiveness to the people who wronged you in your life, but you still are able to move forward and start anew. The cycle of hatred and tragedy will ultimately benefit no one the further and further it goes on. It's not easy to do all of this alone however, especially if you were mistreated by many people in your life. One day though you will find someone who will sympathize and give you the empathy you've needed for years. They can help and reach out their hand to pull you out of the darkness you've been swallowed up by. The people who did do you wrong and their actions can never be excused and it's understandable if they aren't, but knowing the whole truth and the different perspectives can put everything together. The point is to release, not to destroy anymore.

I don't need to do a story summary - this entire game is a story summary of the major Kingdom Hearts games unto itself.

Through the premise of probing Kairi's memories for new information, players are treated to a run through of all of the classic music that has accompanied the Kingdom Hearts games over its two decade history. It covers the original trilogy as well as Chain of Memories, Birth By Sleep, Dream Drop Distance, and even has like two?? songs from Re: Coded.

The structure is simple: you are tasked with clearing out the many worlds of the Kingdom Hearts franchise by completing rhythm game sequences set to the wonderful world and battle music that's been implanted in my brain since 2002. Each song has 3 distinct goals that you must hit by completing different tasks and each one has three distinct difficulties that you can work through to appropriately challenge yourself. Progress is gated by how many goals you clear which grant stars for progression, and a boss battle is plopped onto the tail end of each of the main 3 games.

The rhythm game component of Melody of Memory, designed by the team who develops the Theatrhythm titles, attempts to approximate the combat of Kingdom Hearts by sending Sora, Donald, and Goofy down a track that tasks them with pressing the A or shoulder buttons to hit enemies, the B button to jump upwards and occasionally glide, and the Y button to activate special abilities to....also attack enemies. Instead of the clean UI and track design of Theatrhythm, you just charge onwards into countless heartless from the franchise to....mixed success. This main game mode feels imprecise, and the use of enemy models instead of button prompts can make it difficult to determine what speed you need to hit the heartless at. There isn't very much in terms to feedback to help guide you when you've missed enemies, and on proud mode this can lead to utter disaster. It works, but it doesn't feel spectacular in terms of precision even with game mode enabled on my LG C1 OLED television.

Man. They should have just made a normal Theatrhythm game with these tunes.

There are also boss battle sequences that switch things up by having notes move at you in more or a pseudo 2D perspective and cutscene sequences in which you do more traditional Theatrhythm-like game play, but there's like 3 boss battles are 5 cutscene sequences in total, which feels like too little, too late. The lack of boss battles in a game celebrating Kingdom Hearts, which is chocked full of bosses, also feels like a huge omission, especially since those sequences are a big step up in terms of clarity and responsiveness.

It's a great premise, but the execution is middling at best. Thank god we have Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line to wash away the taste.

     ‘In those dreams, I loved one woman... No matter the day, no matter the era…’

My adolescence was marked by the exploration of video games and RPGs already had the strongest attraction over me. There was an evocative quality to them that made them convenient getaways, places of reverie and poetic fables. Final Fantasy VI (1994) was certainly the first big shock of that time: in this universe torn between magic and technology, the adventures of this peculiar company resonated with me and I still consider Celes to be one of the characters dearest to my heart. Many other games have punctuated these adventures in those fictional lands, but Xenogears (1998) holds a rather distinctive place.

Final Fantasy VII (1997) didn't have any of the much-vaunted charm on me, certainly because it wasn't the story I needed, probably because the characters didn't speak to me that much. Xenogears, on the other hand, proved to be a rough gem, which I didn't know I liked that much. Perhaps it was because I had shared the experience with my then girlfriend. She and I shared this infinite love for literature and a melancholic soul. For various reasons, Xenogears was a game that moved us: from the story told to the clever use of the PS1's limitations with an art direction that embraced the very geometric aspect of the graphic assets, a poetic breath ran through the title. The silence of the final seconds in the ending cutscene was a testament to the contemplative force that fed Xenogears. Yet, as important and grandiose as this game was, I always found it difficult to place it among my favourite games. Was it because it reminded me of an era that is painful for me today? Was it because the memory of my tender love crushed my heart whenever I thought of Elly?

While playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3, all these memories gradually rose to the surface of my consciousness, bursting into nostalgic recollections. For Tetsuya Takahashi, Xenogears is the one project that never came to fruition, for editorial reasons. Although the Perfect Works book gives a glimpse of what this titanic project could have been, the idealised Xenogears lives only in our minds, and those who played the game nourish this unrealized title with their speculation and love. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks like a way for Takahashi to move on and rewrite a Xenogears, while also taking on the legacy of Xenosaga and the Xenoblade Chronicles. Since the release of the first Xenoblade Chronicles (2010), Monolith Soft has confirmed its prestigious position within the JRPG genre. This success has put the studio back in the spotlight, and it is involved in the development of major Nintendo titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), to name but a few, while continuing to work on the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015) served as a counterpoint to the original opus, borrowing its structure, but moving towards a very sci-fi story, under the writing of Kazuho Hyodo (Gundam SEED). The second numerical opus reveals the definite influence of japanimation on the development team - surely, because of its youth compared to the industry average. While Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017) was very well received, the sexualisation of the female characters did not go unnoticed and offended a part of the community.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus appears to be a title that synthesises all of Monolith Soft's work. By presumably concluding the Xenoblade Chronicles series, it asserts that it learnt lessons from its predecessors. At the same time, it operates a return to the origins, since the title made no secret of being a retelling of Xenogears. Even the name of the protagonist, Noah, echoes the original name of the first game: Project Noah. For veterans of Xenogears and Xenosaga, the references are undeniable, right from the first few minutes. From similar exposition scenes to passages reused almost word for word, it is obvious that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game of mourning: that of a project that never came to fruition, that of an era that is now over, that of a producer who must look to the future. It is therefore necessarily also a game that propels Monolith Soft towards new horizons and towards a breeze of renewal.

     ‘A tiny ripple has just been born in the world that surrounds them.’

The sequences that I find the strongest in JRPGs are those that manage to recontextualise the gameplay into a unique narrative proposition. Those who played Final Fantasy VI will of course remember the passage where Celes is on the solitary island, which opens the second section of the game. The Xeno franchise has always sought to impress through exploration. Cinematography has been a strength of the studio, and the most recent titles place a particular emphasis on the gigantic world, which overwhelms the characters, particles moving with the flow of time. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes these approaches and adds a large tinge of nostalgia and intertextuality, constantly referencing elements from previous titles, using players' memories to invoke particular emotions. The discovery of the Dannagh Desert or the Erythia Sea is bound to strike a chord with players who have done the first two Xenoblade Chronicles. In addition to the sense of vastness, both horizontal and vertical, these regions are also filled with a wistful quality. The edges of the map help to circumscribe this magic, making this universe a moment cut off from time: chasms that soar into a sea of clouds or waterfalls that flow to who-knows-where do not allow for a grasp of the horizon. What the player sees is infinity.

To make exploration more fluid, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 opts for a more direct narrative breakdown. The side quests and the main story rarely mix, so that it is possible to finish the game fairly quickly, ignoring the former. The strength of the game comes from the positioning of these side quests. They form, for each colony, a slow evolution towards the future: despite uninteresting objectives, they contextualise individuals within communities that seek to survive and find meaning in existence. Moreover, each quest directs the player to new locations, contributing to the organic nature of the exploration. Some may regret this approach, which makes exploring relatively linear, if you attach it to the resolution of side quests. As a corollary, finishing the exploration before the side quests empties them of some of their purpose. Nevertheless, it is an ideal way to get the player to interact with the world and to become familiar with hundreds of minor characters, whose lives make up and depict humanity in all its forms. This is probably why the side quests in Chapters 6 and 7 are the most compelling, as they have a solid narrative base to tell their story. Although still too short, these little vignettes of human life in Aionios work when put together.

While the game design is geared towards accessibility for the general public, with Monolith Soft understanding that several dozen hours is an investment that is increasingly difficult to make for the completion of an RPG, it is apparent that the ideal experience requires total completion – prior to passing the point of no return. This is perhaps one of the pitfalls of Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Apart from the assiduous player who fully completes the side quests before tackling the final hours of the main story – which I did – the title fails to combine the contemplation of the world with its thematic discourse. Haunted by the question of existentialism and the future, like the other Xeno games, it takes a very similar setting to Xenogears with two nations at war and the couple of Noah and Mio, largely echoing Fei and Elly. The same questions are asked, especially from the beginning of Chapter 6. The issue with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 could be the density of its cast, preventing us from dwelling too long on the trials and tribulations of each character. The protagonists' side quests are completed in barely an hour, resulting in personality changes that are sometimes a little abrupt. Sena's quest is a perfect example of this problem, as it has very little to do with Sena, but seeks to conclude a narrative thread explored in the previous two chapters. The heroes' quests are also too short, although they suffer less from this: some even manage to be very effective, within the narrative structure of their colony. Colony Mu is certainly the most successful in this respect.

The protagonists also engage with each other much more and always offer feedback, even in very minor quests, which helps the game to be more digestible. Admittedly, the relative silence of Noah and Mio, due to their propensity for introspection, can clash with the pace of their development, especially when compared to the very strong personalities of Lanz, Eunie or Taion. A real arborescence of relationships is created by a very rich voice acting. The English version I chose continues the tone of the previous games, with definite English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh accents; the writing adapts to it and one could almost believe that the game was first written in English, so much the mannerisms and idioms are naturally used. They also help to enliven the world by bringing an extra touch of humanity, with characters being rougher in their diction and speech. The English version of Eunie is completely different from her Japanese counterpart, much more focused and less expressive. It's a personal choice, but I think that playing in English – even if one can lose some cultural nuance – contributes to the singularity of the adventure that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 offers.

     ‘Your fate was sealed when you rose against us!’

The combat system is also smoother and clearer than its predecessors. Xenoblades Chronicles 3 introduces the concept of Fusions Arts, which allow battles to always have a steady tempo. The title combines the systems of two Xenoblade Chronicles – Agnian attacks are charged with auto-attacks, while Keves' ones are on a fixed timer - to provide a welcome variation in gameplay. Each battle benefits from the player's attention to the positioning of the various characters, as well as the combination of different abilities, to maximise damage via the effects created by combos. The result is almost cinematic sequences, sometimes lasting for dozens of seconds, in which the player finds themselves switching between characters very quickly to unleash a series of coordinated attacks. In particular, it is very easy to mix up attacks thanks to the cancel animation of the Fusions Arts. The Interlink is also a mechanic that keeps the fight very aggressive. It can be used in two ways: either the player uses it when they are level 3 to maximise the damage output, or they can use it defensively to protect a character whose life has dropped severely, as the Interlink provides invincibility.

The show really culminates in the Chain Attacks, which are much more understandable than their counterparts in previous Xenoblade Chronicles. The concept is simplified to opening each round with a damage dealer, then using a healer before closing with a tank: a simple formula that encourages the use of Chain Attacks. The influence of Persona 5 (2016) seems obvious, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes a much more grandiose route with its catchy musical theme and cinematography that supports the power of the blows dealt to the enemy. One might regret that these attacks are so powerful that they become a convenient expedient for finishing any fight quickly: boss fights often come down to surviving until their life drops below two-thirds, before unleashing a powerful Chain Attack – unless the player is already crushing the opposition with their level difference.

In essence, the combat system allows for a real sense of empowerment during battle, without being difficult to pick up. While it is possible for veterans to build a very custom team by changing the classes of each character, the game gives clear advice for those who are not adept at the genre: simply keep a balanced formation (two damage dealers, two healers, two tanks and the hero as a joker) to create an effective team and cover one's back. In the same way, if it is possible to spend long moments choosing skills, arts and other accessories, the title leaves the possibility of using a standardised build, with regard to the acquired skills and equipment, by pressing the Y button in the character menu. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 pursues Monolith Soft's broad-based philosophy, reversing the mistakes that previous combat systems have made; at the same time, the title still offers difficult challenges for the most seasoned players. Excluding the Challenges, the ultimate peak of difficulty is found in the hunt for Aionios' biggest monsters. Four of them must first be killed before the game's most powerful enemy – whose base level is 120 – can be faced.

The variety of side quests, which sometimes require a specific hero in the team, contributes to the diversity of the combat system, as the composition of the party often changes. In the same way, since skills and arts are shared between classes, it is strongly advised to switch from one to another often, in order to unlock all the abilities. Meanwhile, raising a hero class to level 10 unlocks its Ascension Quest, a convenient reason to constantly try new compositions. Thus, it is quite unlikely that the player already has a fixed team in the first part of the game: personally, it was not until chapter 6 that I did not change classes anymore, having already gained enough experience to unlock all the Ascension Quests.

     ‘It's okay not to feel whole. A part... is better than zero.’

In 2016, my girlfiend passed away. It was a few months after we had played Xenogears together. The golden age of JRPGs established character development as a central part of its plot: if one must save the world, one must also save oneself. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that balances between the quest for the future and the chains of regret. In 2016, I was still a teenager whose life was difficult and whose ordeal of grief was a silent acid burn. Even today, something is missing. There is still a hole in my chest that won't close: you can throw words, thoughts, emotions into it, but it is a black hole that refuses to fill. The pain of mourning is one of the most existential, because it is at the intersection of life and death. It is felt only by beings who are essentially separated: some are still living, others have left the world. Nothing can bridge this fundamental divide. The living are not meant to live with the dead.

My thoughts on this subject are not settled. My mourning is not over. On the scale of my life, six long years represent an interminable pilgrimage in search for an answer. Nevertheless, I have managed to find some truths that content me, if not fully satisfy me. When I think of my self of a few years ago, I see a creature that has been so painfully wounded by fate. It's hard to understand, at that age, why life can be so unforgiving. The resentment I harboured at that time was directed at myself. Doubts and guilt threw me into the throes of loneliness and despair. 'What if...' asks the cracked soul, in the hope that events that have already happened would have turned out differently. When drifting on this sea of darkness, any wooden plank is a salutary reef, at least to hold on a little longer. I regret that my self could not experience Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as my still developing mind could have found answers in the game's narrative.

If the title continues in the anime turn of the 2010s, with a generally juvenile writing style, it does so with a real sincerity. The questions asked are those of teenagers or young adults: they echo those I have experienced myself. As such, some sequences are particularly touching and give a glimpse of a terribly sensitive humanity, if not subtly expressed. The climax of Chapter 5 presents the emotions of the protagonists, taken on the spur of the moment. It is a torrent of emotions that pours out in a few minutes, after the silences and the unspoken words that punctuated the previous chapters. Of course, not everything works. Some scenes are too brief and superficial. Where Taion's quest works because of its pace and the poetic composition of its setting, Eunie's quest seems too hasty and too cheap to be convincing.

This gives the impression of a somewhat convenient sentimentalism, which is not exclusive to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as it seems almost part of the DNA of modern JRPGs. This turn is noticeable in the 2000s, but has recently resulted in the placement of maudlin scenes in key sections of a game. Final Fantasy XV (2016) has several moments of great emotional intensity, but they seem almost disconnected from the rest of the experience. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 doesn't fail at the same pitfall, because the characters constantly interact with each other, even if some have to wait until the last few chapters for their development to finally begin - this is especially true of Sena. But because the characters are these teenagers, caught in a world they didn't choose, the doubts, the tears and the joys feel genuine. It is hard not to be touched by their experiences.

     ‘The future, it really is a foreign country...’

These experiences seem natural, because they echo those of post-Fukushima Japanese society. Through a web of parallels, Aionios evokes, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser accuracy, the difficulties of Japanese youth in the face of capitalism and the feeling of abandonment experienced over the past several decades. At the beginning of the 1990s, Japan experienced a major economic slump, caused both by the bursting of the real estate bubble and the weakening of banks' investment in businesses [1]. With the failure of Keynesian policies, Japan found itself trapped by its overspecialisation and its tendency to invest only in its domestic market. This psychological closure of Japanese companies to foreigners, despite government trends towards deregulation and the effects of globalisation, has deeply affected Japanese society to this day. From being an economic model for the world, Japan has become synonymous with structural problems, a discourse echoed by the Japanese themselves. This declinist impression is also fuelled by the country's demographic collapse and the failure of educational reforms in Japan. These reforms have increased inequality and divided the country in terms of access to employment: as a result, the number of applicants to universities has fallen, and with it the quality of the education system [2]. For young people, the consequences are manifold. The difficulty in accessing employment has created a distrust of the education system and of globalisation. Because traditional solidarities have also been eroded, young adults are waiting longer to enter into a relationship and a significant proportion of them are struggling to integrate into society, which official discourse wrongly groups under the term hikikomori.

Recent studies have pointed out that Japanese youth generally consider themselves happy, but without any hope for the future [3]. This essential contradiction is echoed in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where armies of teenagers and young adults seem to find contentment in the relentless fighting, but without ever really thinking about the future. They survive in a universe imposed on them by various authorities. If the Castles illustrate the weight of government (in)action in their lives, the Consuls appear as a representation of the corporatist spirit in Abe's Japan, where everything is a question of productivity and efficiency, to the detriment of the employees' very well-being. Soldiers in the various colonies must continue their task - attacking other ones - at the risk of being destroyed by the system to which they contribute. Unable to develop their individuality, they do not find solidarity beyond the battle lines. Throughout the game, the terms 'culture' and 'family' are foreign to the characters. It is through the exploration of their repressed emotions that they are able to describe these concepts, associating them with a positive valence. As such, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is part of a precise ideological discourse, which challenges the Japanese policies of the last decades and tries to suggest ways forward for the Japanese youth.

Aionios is a world that is riddled with the notion of risk. In addition to the constant fighting, the threat of the Annihilation with the Black Fog clouds is an echo of the doubts that have plagued Japanese society since the Fukushima accident. This was caused by a combination of natural hazards and the myth of the total safety for Japanese nuclear power plants: for a country already accustomed to earthquakes and tsunamis, the Fukushima disaster has aggravated fears and discredited the political class. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the theme is never discussed in depth, but it serves as a framework for the universe, whose existence is always endangered by nature or human action. It is not surprising that the Annihilator works on the model of the Annihilations.

Building on these elements, the title also seems drawn to the fantasy of a traditional Japan. The image of cherry blossoms - Saffronia, in the game - recurs repeatedly to evoke a peaceful existence. As mentioned above, the representation of the nuclear family is widely emphasised. The birth of infants is a new vision for the soldiers of Keves and Agnus, to the point where the game makes conception sacred, through several quests and cutscenes. These elements must be understood in the context of Japan's demographic decline. The failure of Japan's recent birth policies can be explained by the Abenomics, which have done little to address gender inequalities in the workplace [4]. The difficulty for women to support themselves pushes back the idea of having children. This idea is present in the game, where some female characters seem concerned about procreation, which is largely ignored by their male counterparts. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 thus struggles to construct a discourse on family that corresponds to the aspirations of youth: it advocates a traditional, heterosexual nuclear family and never manages to break out of this framework. If Noah and Mio's relationship seems to be attached to a critique of patriarchy, it is only vilified in its most extreme forms. The title never features homosexual relationships and perpetuates a conservative ideology, under the guise of defending the future. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, because it is a game about forced change, is shrouded in the ghosts of Japanese conservatism and traditionalism.

     ‘It's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away.’

Just as Xenogears was a foundational experience in my relationship with my girlfriend, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game that allows me to let go of the teenager regrets I still feel. Despite the revamps brought to life by projects like Octopath Traveler (2018), the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection (2021) or the Live A Live remake (2022), the golden age of the JRPG is a thing of the past. These games fail to fully capture the atmosphere of the 1990s and early 2000s, as the socio-cultural context has changed. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is not a mindless throwback, but a synthesis of the themes carried by Xenogears and Xenosaga, the game design philosophy at the heart of Xenoblade Chronicles and current Japanese society. There are many things that don't work completely in the game, in its narrative or the way it presents its universe, and it is sometimes regrettable that the title doesn't go through with its intentions. But for me, it has a nostalgic aura to it, without giving in to archaism. It's a game of mourning, situated in the gap between the past and the future. The 'now' that Moebius so ardently defends is destined to come to an end, like our present time.

There are so many things I would have loved to do with you. So many discussions I would have wished to have with you, but you are no longer here. Or rather, you reside in me and it is through my future actions that I can pay tribute to your existence. One day we will meet again, that is a promise. But it's now so clear to me that you're still far away – a step away. For now, this is where we belong. Good night, my Claire, my beloved.

_________
[1] Kobayashi Keiichiro, 'The two 'lost decades' and macroeconomics', in Barak Kushner (ed.), Examining Japan's Lost Decades, Routledge, London, 2015.
[2] Kariya Takehiko, 'The two lost decades in education', in Barak Kushner (ed.), op. cit.
[3] Carola Hommerich, 'Anxious, stressed, and yet satisfied? The puzzle of subjective well-being among young adults in Japan', in Barbara Holthus, Wolfram Manzanreiter (ed.), Life Course, Happiness and Well-being in Japan, Routledge, London, 2017.
[4] Mark Crawford, 'Abe's Womenonics Policy, 2013-2020: Tokenism, Gradualism, or Failed Strategy?', in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 19-4-4, 2021.