Xenoblade Chronicles 3, all the news from Nintendo Direct

Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is already a legend: highly anticipated by Nintendo Switch owners, it begins to attract the curiosity of players who do not own the hybrid console but who love the JRPG genre, of which the franchise developed by Monolith Soft is a proud representative. Now among the most important and prestigious brands of the great N, the creature of Tetsuya Takahashi has made itself noticed even more in recent weeks when, in a more unique than rare case, it was brought forward by a couple of months instead of postponed as happens more and more these days.

Nintendo even dedicated an entire Direct to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which for 20 minutes summarized everything we already knew about the game due out in late July and revealed new information on content, gameplay and even support after launch. We watched and re-watched the new trailer and decided to put together some thoughts in this in-depth study.

A whole new adventure?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, this member of the Consul goes by the name of D The Nintendo Direct entirely dedicated to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 began with a new trailer of the story that took us by surprise, because it anticipated some themes that neither the previous trailers, nor the promotional material released to date, had even just touched. We have thus discovered that in the shadow of the world of Aionios plots the Consul, a committee of mysterious masked individuals who wear strange armor, are named after the letters of the alphabet and seem to have the ability to take the form of the Ouroboros, the same in which can change, in pairs, the protagonists of the game.

Tetsuya Takahashi fans will have immediately heard a bell ringing in their heads because the Consul are very reminiscent of the Testament of XenoSaga, the JRPG trilogy developed for PlayStation 2 many years ago: hooded and masked, they stood out for their shape and color of their costumes and they plotted in the shadows exactly like the Consul.

However, there is more. Not only D - the member of the Consul who transforms into the monstrous opponent already seen in the previous trailers - in his humanoid form wears a helmet that is reminiscent of Grahf from Xenogears, but the armor he and his companions wear had us remembered something that we had not been able to frame at the time, until we remembered the ending of Xenoblade Chronicles X and the mysterious character who rescues Lao - the antagonist of the game - on the beach: a hooded individual that the cinematics did not openly frame , but of which the players had found the 3D model in the code. Guess what? Not only did the so-called "Black Knight" wear armor similar to that of the Consul members - albeit black, of course - but on his chest he sported a virtually identical luminous crystal.

One of the Consul members, wearing a masks and holds a weapon very similar to the Monad, it really looks a lot like an "anime" version of Lao, but also an adult version of the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 protagonist, Noah. The HTML code corresponding to the illustration on the Japanese official website calls it エ ヌ, which in katakana reads "en" ... that is, N. The promotional material talks about "an epic story that connects past and future": that there are half time travel?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, N is a mysterious antagonist who looks like Noah These considerations can mean everything and nothing: we know that Takahashi likes to play with themes and visual cues that pop up repeatedly in his games (just think of the character design of Fei and Elly, protagonists of Xenogears who then reappear in XenoSaga with totally different roles) and in fact we know that in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 there will be a new version of Vandham, supporting actor already appeared in Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and that he will be the one to convince the young protagonists to unravel the mysteries of Aionios. Furthermore, the new trailer is titled The Flow of Fate, in Italian, but in English Nintendo has chosen "Passage of fate", quoting literally a character from Xenoblade Chronicles, Zanza, who also has an indirect role in Xenoblade Chronicles 2: not it may be a coincidence.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the inhabitants of Aionios live 10 years fighting continuously As you may have understood, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a very special title, because since the announcement there has been official talk of a link between the futures of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, complete with an illustration on the cover to symbolize the intersection of the two worlds. In reality, the two previous titles had little in common from a narrative point of view and seemed to be two distinct and separate universes, until the final lines of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had not revealed a very important link between the two games that could have had fundamental implications just in case. the series continued.

Now we don't know how and how much Xenoblade Chronicles 3 relates to previous titles, so it's not easy to answer the question that will probably be whirling in your head, and that is: "Do I have to play the first two to enjoy this? ". In the past, we would have told you that the previous Xenoblade Chronicles could be played independently: completing the first helped to better understand the twist at the end of the second, but the narratives remained largely distinct. Will the same be true for Xenoblade Chronicles 3?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the combat system seems very rich We will have to wait a few weeks to find out, because obviously Nintendo is keeping its mouth shut on this aspect of the game - especially after the controversial additional episode titled "A Common Future" which closed the Definitive Edition of the first title - and the new story trailer, if possible, muddied the waters even more.

The trailer, in fact, touched on a completely new aspect of the narrative when we discovered that the inhabitants of Aionios, divided into the two factions of Keves and Agnus, are literally made to fight. Their lives repeat themselves in ten cycles of ten years each, and if they don't die first on the battlefield, they disappear in the so-called "Return ceremony" in the presence of their queens, the two masked women who strikingly resemble Melia from Xenoblade. Chronicles and Nia from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

It therefore seems that the six protagonists, three of Keves and three of Agnus, will put aside their differences to free themselves from this cycle that imprisons them in the service of their factions. Nintendo Direct ran through the characters - Noah, Miyo, Lanz, Yunie, Sena and Taion - although we already knew them, but we're sure these trailers have only scratched the surface of a story that feels like returning to Takahashi's favorite catchphrases. : the cycle of life, life after death, rebirth, mourning and so on.

Heroes already seen?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the Heroes will accompany us in battle but first we will have to recruit them The Nintendo Direct has explained to us, in addition to the combat system, also a new feature that until now had only been left to the interpretation of the fans. Monolith Soft called them Heroes: they are what in many JRPGs we would call "guests", the guests, the characters who help us but we cannot control.

The Hero or Heroine we have selected will accompany us on the battlefield, attacking enemies or helping us as the seventh party member. The two friendly Nopons - an alien species that have appeared in all Xenoblades as a kind of mascot - Riku and Manana are an anomaly, because they fight together as one character. The new trailer has unveiled new Heroes in addition to those we had glimpsed in the photos and videos published previously: in addition to a couple of which we do not yet know the names, there will be Zeon, Ashera, Alexandria, Fiona and Gray.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, we have already seen Gray somewhere ... The latter caught our attention because he looks a lot like Yelv, a character from Xenoblade Chronicles X who wears a very similar haircut and it has a strange mark on the right side of its face, exactly where Gray wears a blindfold to cover it. Gray's class is also called Full Metal Jaguar, just like a class of Xenoblade Chronicles X and like the special level IV technique that Elma - the protagonist of Xenoblade Chronicles X - uses after unlocking her as Gladius in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Yes, because in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 there will be a robust class system that the new Nintendo Direct has explained better to us. The six protagonists will be able to change classes at will, and as they grow up they will learn the so-called Masterful Techniques, which can then be equipped and used while using different classes. This will allow players to experiment with tons of combinations, but there's more, because Heroes will also have their own specific classes, and Noah and the others will be able to use their classes as well after recruiting them.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 , there are three Heroes under lock and key in this image The fact that the trailer suggests recruiting as many Heroes as possible to expand the possibilities of the class system - which moreover revolves around the use of tools that in the game are called Gladius, such as weapons sentient beings of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - makes us think that a good part of these Heroes will not join the protagonists spontaneously, but that we will have to unlock them by fulfilling certain requirements or completing optional side missions.

In the trailer, some of these Heroes remain Obscured: We spotted three, and while the super deformed silhouettes are hard to tell apart, rumors have begun to spread in the fan community that one of them looks like to Juju, Sharla's little brother in Xenoblade Chronicles, although it is more likely that just Gray is still under lock and key.

Pass Expansion

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Alexandria is a recruitable Heroin The Nintendo Direct also revealed that Monolith Soft intends to support Xenoblade Chronicles 3 at least until the end of 2023 with an Expansion Pass that will cost € 29.99 and will guarantee, at least initially, only a few consumables and additional cosmetic options. The first exclusive content should then be available by the end of this year, with an unspecified Challenge, a new Hero to recruit and additional outfits.

A second very similar content should be released by spring 2023, while a last update will arrive by the end of next year with what the official site generically defines "new content for history". This last step aroused many perplexities, because the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass doesn't seem so different from that of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which unlocked various extra contents such as secondary missions and Gladius that paid homage to the other games in the series. br>
Xenoblade Chronicles 3, obviously there will be tons of secrets to uncover However, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Torna ~ The Golden Country expansion was a real DLC sold separately that deepened the story of the game with a campaign of about thirty hours that Takahashi and his team could not implement in the original adventure in the form of a playable flashback. It is therefore necessary to understand if the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass will offer similar content, but above all how important it is to fully understand the history of the game and its possible connections with the other Xenoblades: Nintendo has in fact published the cover of the Pass Expansion, which sees together, in the same illustration, the Monad of Shulk from Xenoblade Chronicles, that of Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and the one that holds Noah in the new title.

Someone has already ventured that this could be the long-awaited climax in which the protagonists of the three games finally cross arms, but if so, it would be a terrible way to exploit the affection of the fans. We struggle to imagine that Tetsuya Takahashi, Monolith Soft or Nintendo may have concocted a similar ploy, and we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Not much is missing, and to find out if the story is complete or not just wait for our review of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which will arrive in the next few weeks.

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