Tag Archives: Xenoblade

Gameplay vs. Story: The Catch-22 of Permanent Missables

If villains didn’t destroy cities, half the universe’s game heroes would sit on their sorry bums. We’d have no Mario, no Link, and not even Cloud. He helped Tifa and company for the money at first, but even a selfish motive required bad guys to battle; no one would have paid him otherwise.

I had this topic in mind well before Xenoblade, but its leaping cornucopia of sidequests demands that I write about it sooner than later. Xenoblade pushes incentive to thwart an imminent threat and pushes freedom to devote ages to exploring an expansive world—and that means it takes on the catch-22 challenge. The greater the major story events, the tougher the justification of minor events.

If a girl asks the party to collect honeybees and afterward her town is set on fire by dragons and run over by tanks, anyone will have trouble suspending disbelief that she still cares about those honeybees, owns amazing rewards to heap into players’ hands, and holds enough altruism in her heart to dish out those treasures instead of selling them off to help the reconstruction efforts. Permanent missables can have powerful story-based reasons for existing; it requires no suspension of disbelief that this same girl’s quest could only be fulfilled before her town’s untimely demise. Conversely, an experienced player who finds no hint of sidequests in a new town will be immediately alerted that it’s a worthless and doomed location doomed; the solution is not to cut the girl from the game’s final draft.

Many players hate permanent missables and feel cheated by them. Fair enough, but the point of this blog will never be to spread negativity. We should learn from them and the designer’s dilemma: an important NPC fated to die can’t issue a sidequest without introducing permanent missables; if no important NPCs die, the story loses its sense of danger; if only nameless NPCs issue sidequests, the story risks taking on a frivolous feel; if a game has no sidequests, it becomes linear. The only question for game developers, game designers, and even players is which they consider the lesser evil. From my time with Xenoblade so far, it sides with throwing away the danger; no matter how trumped-up the threat level of the villains, there’s always time to find a missing animal or fix a broken watch. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask had a similar feel; because Link could press an in-universe reset button, no one questioned whether he would eventually prevail.

A game without permanent missables isn’t better for being designed that way, nor is it worse; it simply chose its path and left the player to decide whether to follow.

Xenoblade 4-Hour Impressions: Twelve Things I Already Love

My first four hours with Xenoblade: exceptional. It’s been a mashup manticore of Monster Hunter, Majora’s Mask, Dragon Quest I, VIII, and IX, Ys I, and a hint of Chrono Trigger.

I’ll start with what I can’t talk about:

    The characters. By my choice, I haven’t spent more than two minutes with any of them.
    The story, for the same reason. Other than the story-opening scenes and taking my first party member back to town, which I think was mandatory, I haven’t met the goals to see a single cutscene.
    Item creation, again for the same reason. The machine that creates orbs to slot into my equipment teases me by being broken and I don’t believe I can do anything yet with materials gathered from killing monsters. I assume I’ll eventually run into in-depth item synthesis.
    The battle system. Since I only have one character right now, I don’t consider it fair to judge. The power of various Arts depends on the hero’s positioning behind or to the side of enemies, but with no other characters around to distract monsters, I’ve only faced them head-on except for a single strike from behind to initiate the battle.

Even without those factors, I’ve already found at least twelve things to love to death.

See that door there? You don't? That door on the house right there? What do you mean you don't see a house? Well, anyway, the house has a door and Xenoblade's main character, Shulk, would be a little smaller than that door if shown here. Even so, I've covered nearly every inch of sea, shore, and slope in this landscape and quite a bit outside of the shot... And I've only just gotten started!
Explore it all. Every last step on land and every last kick of the legs at sea.

    1. The greatest fantasy game environment I’ve ever had the honor to play. Every hour I’ve spent with Xenoblade Chronicles has only been in the starting area around Colony 9 and even though I’ve only been slaughtering small-scale monsters like rabbits, mosquitoes, flamingos, and armadillo-cows, the seamless world around them is as awe-inspiring as any area of Dragon Quest VIII, which featured possibly the most impressive overworld in gaming until now. Every piece of land clicks; every untraveled pathway invites. Ever heard people say that they believe in a creator because nature has such a majestic quality that they can’t believe it came about by chance? I don’t find it logically convincing regardless of my personal belief, but I perfectly understand how it can be emotionally convincing.
    2. Ubiquitous instant warp points. For two and a half hours, I didn’t realize that every Landmark—a point where a fallen Shulk will respawn—was also an area that I could warp to in about three seconds at any moment I pleased. When I found out what I’d missed, I didn’t curse myself for my ignorance; I had no reason to. Every minute to and fro on foot had shown me a new path to travel, opened item collection possibilities I didn’t imagine, and wowed me with gorgeous scenery. Even so, the freedom of open teleportation across a supersized landscape doesn’t settle for boggling the mind; it expands the mind. True freedom unfurls the welcoming carpet of potential—not a red carpet, but white, an empty canvas across which the brush of the pioneer spirit cannot help but sweep, for the heart cannot long tolerate it to remain blank and must begin its strokes, each more thickly layering on a paint crafted from the liquid mix of dreams, ideals, and the soul.

Ten more lovable things after the jump. Is each one better than the last? You'll have to find out, won't you? Aren't you curious?