That's a fun background to have for this project. Are you aware that they the remaster added new a new version for each song, with some pieces even having significant instrumentation changes? That sounds like something that could be fun to dive into.
I can also add another XBX fun fact here: As part their WRPG experimentation they actually ditched their usual composers and hired a tv/movie guy instead, giving it some very distinct musical vibes from the rest of the franchise.
Ah the Xenoblade Chronicles. I had a lot of fun with these games. Out of all of them 2nd is my favorite but the first is rather good. Third I have a few problems with but I had fun with it too.
I can also add another XBX fun fact here: As part their WRPG experimentation they actually ditched their usual composers and hired a tv/movie guy instead, giving it some very distinct musical vibes from the rest of the franchise.
vgm nerd nitpicking incoming (These games having some of my all time favorites)
Eh... I don't quite know if I'd characterize it that way. While it's true the "main" Xenoblade series (the numbered one) has the shared link of the composers being ACE+, Kiyota, and Mitsuda - I don't think you could really characterize them as the "usual composers" at that point since it was just XC1 at that point. You could argue Mitsuda as an exception here having composed for Xenogears and Xenosaga 1 but IIRC he was not part of Xenosaga 2 and 3 and I believe his sole composition in Xenoblade 1 was the Ending Theme.
Xenoblade X does bring in Sawano who did not work on any previous Xeno game before (or since) to my knowledge but honestly it also wouldn't be the first time that Takahashi brought in one of the biggest names in anime composition to work on Xeno- titles. Sawano, at the time, would have been coming off composing for series such as Gundam Unicorn and, probably most popularly, Attack on Titan. By comparison, Kajiura (who worked on some of Gundam SEED as well as .hack//SIGN) was brought in to compose the cutscenes of Xenosaga II as well as all of Xenosaga III.
Really, if anything, you could make a credible case that "at some point a big name composer who worked on a contemporary Gundam soundtrack will end up involved in composing for the series" is the real pattern
Anyway, vgm aside, Xenoblade is a pretty fun ride, looking forward to reading your experiences!
Eh... I don't quite know if I'd characterize it that way. While it's true the "main" Xenoblade series (the numbered one) has the shared link of the composers being ACE+, Kiyota, and Mitsuda - I don't think you could really characterize them as the "usual composers" at that point since it was just XC1 at that point. You could argue Mitsuda as an exception here having composed for Xenogears and Xenosaga 1 but IIRC he was not part of Xenosaga 2 and 3 and I believe his sole composition in Xenoblade 1 was the Ending Theme.
Really, if anything, you could make a credible case that "at some point a big name composer who worked on a contemporary Gundam soundtrack will end up involved in composing for the series" is the real pattern
Well, uh, oops. Been busy for a bit. I'm back now! Any suggestions that the Nopon got to me and have been holding me captive for the past two months are of course unfounded.
... what were we doing again? I know Reyn had asked me to do something at the end of the cutscene, and oh yeah, by the way, Fiora left the party—a fact I am very disappointed by. Also, there was something about ether canisters, I think??? Oh shit, my screenshots from the last five minutes of the previous play section are gone because it's been so long.
Let this be a lesson, folks. Even if your motivation is "having to deal with family and work things" never take an unplanned hiatus from an RPG. Even near the start.
I spend several minutes running around. This turns out to be mildly unproductive. There's a couple cool bits of dialogue around town, including a Nopon offering me "fresh Nopon veg" but never actually being available for trading, but that's not getting me any closer to remembering what I'm actually supposed to be doing here.
Alright, clever idea: I know that I've triggered the "what are we doing in the plot right now" function a couple times on my controller before, I just need to find the right button. Let's see. It was a trigger, I think...?
Now this right here is a QoL feature.
... I love this functionality, incredibly useful stuff. Thankfully, the brief synopsis significantly jogged my memory, and it all came back in a flood, assuming if by flood one means vague recollection of a scene or two.
Reyn is on punishment duty. I... don't recall what exactly he did? But it was something that, it seems. He's really pissed Vangarre off—something that admittedly doesn't seem that hard to do in practice—so he has to go fetch Ether Cylinders from the Mag Mell Ruins to power the mobile artillery (which, as we saw before, is in a bit of a bad way, at the moment). Why these cylinders are stored in ancient ruins outside of town, I'm not certain; maybe they're, like, lost, ancient technology?
Oh yeah. Also. I now distinctly remember that Shulk is seeing visions. Oh dear. That's probably going to end up being important.
Regardless, while I could go do all that cool story related stuff immediately, we of course have more important things to deal with: new town dialogue. I also need to go get my rewards for a ton of quests.
There's plenty of new people around town, or at least ones I didn't meet on the initial pass; they mostly convey some new information. One notable example is the venerable Unnamed Colony 9 Resident, who drops this absolute banger of a terrifying offhand comment:
Why no. No I didn't. Helpfully, he expands on this: "It happens when the same type of ether gathers in a large quantity. The heat it generates is intense!... The ether stream under Colony 6 is a prime example of all this."
Well, definitely filing that away as a potential Landmark Where Things Will Happen Later.
Also, like. Hypothetically speaking. If Shulk shoves enough ether in his inventory, would his travel bag go supercritical?
... I wonder if this ties in at all to my earlier wondering about the use of the terminology colony. It hasn't escaped notice that Colony 9 is basically built in a hole in the ground, with near-vertical ridges surrounding it. Why is that? It's a weird place for a town to pop up. And on top of some sort of runaway magical reaction sounds even weirder. Unless, of course, building towns in those places is the point.
Anyway. I make my way back to the workshop to fix a watch for a certain Desirée, who broke its chain and asked me to fix it when I first arrived at Colony 9. On the way there, we meet a very prescient man; Richard Stallman levels of prescient, even, as we'll get to in a bit.
What a silly guy, that Jan. The war is over! Why is he so worried?
(I'm sure this won't end up being any sort of foreshadowing for part II of this post.)
You know, this game is really drilling into our heads just how bad the C9DF is without the Cool Crew. Like, their portrayal as amateurish, disorganized, and unprepared is both at odds with their initial portrayal during the war cutscene that started the game and fully consistent in literally every single scene afterwards. This is absolutely going to come back to bite everyone in the ass, and probably sooner rather than later.
After Mr. Jan's riveting analysis of the Colony 9 Defense Forces' appalling lack of readiness, I head down into Shulk's lab to fix the chain and make my way back into town to Desirée. On my way there, night falls, so of course the Reportedly Potentially Troublesome Youths I Would Like To Join Actually are back at it again.
And this time, they actually seem to be plotting something. Despite this, there is still an unfortunately lacking amount of trouble involved in that something.
They're... sitting in a circle. Discussing who should join their club while they plot something "big".
One of the candidates is Giorgio of the famed curry that I have still not gotten to try. Respectable option, really. However, I am still disappointed in the lack of hoodlumry.
Buddy, you ain't missing nothing.
Look, I'll start a secret club with you, okay? And we'll get up to actual mischief. Real shit. Like playing League of Legends. It'd be more interesting than whatever these guys are doing. Admittedly, that bar is, ahem, low.
I spend the next fifteen minutes wandering town because I am terrible with the mini-map indicators. Every time I see the red exclamation mark on my map, it seems to be on a different height of the area than I am; this turns out to be incorrect, I'm just terrible at spotting Desirée, it seems, though I'm pretty certain she also moves.
Eventually, despite my inability to read, I track her down. She thanks me talks a bit about the watch, etc. etc., good quest completion vibes. Also she jokes about having broke it on purpose. Why you may ask?
She then brushes it off with an "I was only joking."
Of course, it could be a joke. If not, though, it's just kind of sad? She notes when we first take on the quest that her father's been dead for a year. At least for me... this feels like. Maybe she's trying to find an excuse to interact with people? Which, ouch.
Hopefully we can get to interact with Desirée more, I think she might need it.
Anyway, I finish canvassing town and begin to head my way out. That, however, is when I see the H2H on the mini-map. In Dunban's house. Heck yeah! So I walk up to Dunban. Chat with him. "Be wary of the dangers of Tephra Cave, young padawan," to very loosely paraphrase. Nothing terribly exciting. So I walk downstairs, poke around the kitchen... and...!
Behold!
Well that's mildly disappointing.
I immediately go into the menu to check the H2H list. This H2H is between "???" and "???" with no guidelines on how to unlock it. Alright, I think. Weird they just show inaccessible H2Hs on the mini-map, but it's not a big deal. I'll just have to come back here later.
Little did I know that this dialogue would be the origination of my slow descent into insanity over the course of the next hour.
Anyway, with town essentially done, I make my way on to Tephra Cave, which is up the other path heading out of Colony 9 (i.e., near where we first met Shulk, but heading the other way). Along the road, I pick up some items and start filling out my compendium, where I view quite possibly the best item we've collected yet:
This is terrifying. It says it's "snow," but Fiora named it when she was little. Presumably it has not melted. What is this? How is this? I don't know, it doesn't have a sprite. Maybe it's a plate that looks like snow? Maybe it's snow with a plate-like phase diagram? I don't know, it's a mystery. Perhaps a mystery best left unsolved, too.
Anyway, we make our way up the hill, complete a challenge or two, warp back into town to turn in those challenges, and then... I spot an H2H! Huzzah! Maybe we will get a cool extra discoverable character moment today!
Noooooooooooooooooo - !
Oh well. It's fine. Another "???" meets "???" for our H2H list. I can always just come back. It's fine.
Our erstwhile adventurers approach the cave, which triggers a cutscene. I hear the voice speaking and everything is put back to rights.
Eyyyy! Fiora is coming with us! Let's go! Not gonna lie, I feel like I might be suffering from a bit of favoritism regarding our main trio, but look. Sue me, alright? I fully acknowledge it.
Reyn complains, saying "I knew she didn't trust me," but look, dude. You're the cool one. But she's the one carrying most of the practical braincells (as opposed to Shulk's braincells, which are devoted purely towards engineering and the power of Science). Like, no offense, but this might be for the best.
This is where the game drops its next bit of mechanical complexity on us to build up on the combat system, and oh boy, it's a doozy. I'm honestly really impressed with the way it's been layering on the mechanics; I'm starting to sort of see an outline of the whole, now, and honestly, it's really fun real time team combat. I love Ys, but even Memories of Celceta didn't really have anything on the implementation of team play in this game.
Anyway, behold: the Party Gauge!
It basically boils down to "builds up slowly during combat, decreases slowly out of combat," in practice. When you have a single notch of Gauge, you can use it to revive downed party members (incredibly useful). When you have a full Gauge, the party can initiate a Chain Attack, where you queue up on Art for each party member in their current rotational position, get the most badass zoom-in I've ever seen (Zack Snyder, eat your heart out), You then have to hit a QTE to begin a new chain, or else the attack sequence ends.
First time I've seen a oood QTE since Paper Mario, actually. It... genuinely works amazingly here. Chain Attacks feel so damn good to use. Genuinely, whoever designed the combat system for this game did a brilliant job.
For me, however, there is a slight problem. When the QTE comes onscreen, it indicates you should hit it by showing a B button and closing a ring around it. Except, uh, I have my controller mapped with A -> B and B -> A.
Now, this is no fault of the game. This is a personal problem 100%. The developers could not have anticipated my personal buffoonery. But also, it means I now must admit that I will die at one point while initially navigating the upcoming first dungeon.
On the plus side, though, I learned that death is essentially just a reverse fast travel. You even keep your gained experience and levels. Wild.
Anyway, before we get to that and diving into the cave, I discover something interesting: another H2H, right outside! Oh boy! I bet you're meant to spot this one, it was a little hidden but it only makes sense—!
I'm actually kind of angry at this point. I am being fucking SCAMMED.
... note to self: figure out how to level up your damned in-party affinity (since I assume you can't do quests for party members).
Sigh.
It's fine. It's fine. We'll. We'll come back to it. It's on the mini-map and in my H2H log; I'm not going to forget about it. It's fine. Let's just head into the cave.
We walk in and get a very smooth pan across the zone:
It's Reyn Dungeon Time!
I'm guessing our destination is that opening into a more industrial area, and come across it early enough; it's right at the end of the initial tunnel. However, the cave bifurcates, and I naturally must explore all the crevices along the way before making my way to the actual plot.
The monster designs in the cave are pretty fun. Weird frogs, burrowing caterpillars the size of minivans (which I die to once, pain and suffering), and...
I am uncertain if that is a stick or like a caterpillar corpse and I am a little afraid to ask.
This fight? This one right here is fun as hell. Get to actually use positional play, the enemy HP takes a bit to descend, they have decent maneuverability to mess up my intended gameplan.
And it's a random-ass rabbit carrying a stick bigger than it is in a cave on a fetch quest to get a couple cans of gas.
This game's gameplay is going to be so good holy shit.
Anyway, after a moment, I finish navigating the area (it loops around with a neat vertical passage) and we are deposited back at the entrance to the Mag Mell Ruins. They are, in fact, very much, uh, tech-y.
And this. This is where lore things take off in this part, and they never really stop coming.
Fiora wonders if the Mechon might have built it. Shulk, having exactly the encyclopedic knowledge of this kind of place one would expect from him, says no; he notes the paths for people to get in, the ancient provenance of the site, and then drops all casual-like the note that it ay have been a vehicle of some kind.
This. Underground. Complex. May. Have. Been. A. Vehicle.
Oh my god. Is there going to be like. Mechs on my mechs in this game? Can we get a mech? If not, like, a mobile magic weapons platform works too. This is fantastic, I love it.
Anyway, the ether cylinders are up ahead, so back to it!
Huh. It doesn't show well in the pictures, but there's a red, blinking light.
Now, based on my expertise in the software engineering sector (which barely applies here, but I know a sysadmin so that's basically a hardware specialty), a red blinking light is usually used to convey some kind of warning to end users.
Eh, it's probably fine.
The Mag Mell Ruins turn out to be fairly short; a few battles with lizards (Mell Lizards, at that), and then one taller, nastier, bipedal lizard, and we're through. Nothing much to worry about. Dunban really didn't need to warn us.
Ignore the fact I died to a massive pokémon reject earlier.
But, with that, we're out!
The ruins give way to a beautiful open zone high in the cliffs above Colony 9 called the "Cylinder Hanger". You can straight up look down on town from all this way above.
Holy shit the vistas in this game are so gorgeous. It genuinely astounds me that they got stuff like this to render on a Wii.
Oh, also. I am glad to report that my fears of potential sexism in the sparser clothing were unfounded. In fact, Shulk's current best outfit is to wear literally no shirt at all. This greatly increases his current PhysDef, but at the cost of slightly decreasing his Agility.
Yes, that is not backwards. Going topless increases your ability to not get stabbed but makes you slower. You heard it here first, folks.
Anyway, I turn away from the cliff face and make my way towards the Cylinder Hanger. Along the way, however, something catches my eye.
My god. Can it be? Has my patience finally paid off? It's in plain sight, right before the plot relevant cutscene chamber. Surely... surely...!
I. I can't. I give up, You know what. Fuck it. I'm. I'm just gonna go do the plot now.
Anyway, Reyn goes in and starts doing, like, Ether Cylinder things, I guess. Fiora then asks the right question, in retrospect, considering the gem forge and such down in the colony: "Why do we have to come all this way here to get them? Isn't there an ether cylinder fuelling station in the colony?"
Shulk responds that firstly, the refining process takes a long time back down in the colony, which is... interesting. Can't they just haul this tech up here down there? But also he notes that sometimes "cylinderisation" fails, so this is the more efficient option.
The way they talk about it makes me think that the cylinders up here are, like, some kind of finished product? Like an ancient stockpile, sort of. Which makes me wonder why they haven't simply hauled all the cylinders down the mountain; maybe they're, like, in big containers and they leech off of them, or something along those lines? Regardless, The conversation trundles on, before eventually Fiora notes how well-preserved this all is despite being incredibly old.
Cue Shulk going back into hyperfocus mode.
"It might be that there's some form of technology being used to preserve it," he says. "It's just a shame we don't understand its secret. But I'll solve it one day and show you. If it's just technology that someone created in the past, it's not incomprehensible."
This man. This man really, really, really easily slips into his head. He's so... thoughtful. I'm not used to that in a video game protagonist, let alone almost to a fault. I genuinely wonder where they're going to take this after using so much of his script real estate to establish it in this opening arc.
More focusing on what he's actually saying though—I think my man has some sort of pet theory about all of this ancient technology. I don't know what it is, yet, but just based off what he's said I think we can very safely assume that Shulk does not think any of this was built by the Homs(nor presumably the Nopon). But, it's also not the Mechons, either.
Someone else was here first.
This tails in nicely to the question of "why is this called a colony," I think. It very much seems like, in historical scale terms, the Homs are recent arrivals to this region of the Bionis. Why that is, I'm not yet sure; maybe Colony 9 was built after the discovery of these ruins, and played some sort of role in either technoology recovery or in gathering these ether cylinders? But if so, why are there so few other scientist/engineer types within the town?
Also, that raises another, potentially even more interesting question: where did the colonists come from?
We haven't heard any tell of a homeland or a central authority of any sort; during the early dialogue in town, it's made clear that Coolony 6 and Colony 9 worked together as separate entities. It doesn't seem like they're part of any combined authoritative political structure.
Hmm.
Anyway, Reyn doesn't take that long with the whole cylinder gathering thing and rejoins the group.
That's when a low buzzing fades in.
We're not alone in here.
And our new friends have zero qualms about dropping in and immediately going incredibly aggro.
Next time: beating up suspiciously weak retro computers... and then Colony 9 experiences intense deja vu (colourized)
Btw, for quests markers, I think you have a little arrow on the top or the bottom of the markers which show you if your objective/character you are looking for is upper or lower than you. It helps to find it sometimes. Or I am mixing with another Xenoblade, but I think in the last version of this game, they have put it. Before you had no indication and in some places, it was a purge to find where to go.
I believed the rabbit which was a strong opponent was named no ? Usually, these monsters are stronger than their usual counterpart.
And finally, yeah, death is absolutely fine in Xenoblade. They want people to explore and to take stupid risk, and a good way to help this mentality, is to be sure that death is not a punishment. And that's why exploration becomes one of the funniest thing of Xenoblade.
Glad to see the journey continue!
Heart2Heart are just sweet little bonuses, so there's no need to worry much about them. Their mechanical impact is minimal so it would even be a totally reasonable path to ignore them while playing and then watch a YT compilation.
And finally, yeah, death is absolutely fine in Xenoblade. They want people to explore and to take stupid risk, and a good way to help this mentality, is to be sure that death is not a punishment. And that's why exploration becomes one of the funniest thing of Xenoblade.
It took me a bit to remember which H2H was the house one, and... yeah.
When it eventually becomes available, it'll be obvious.
(Assuming I'm thinking of the right one)
Comedic talking up of my real love for mech media aside. I have received a revelation.
Silent Hill 2 is, to quote the standard wikipedia format, a mecha-based vehicular combat game with heavy puzzle elements. I mean, it's got tank controls, and we're clearly playing as the gooey brain stuff what with all the perception of things that may or may not be real!
Oh, also. I am glad to report that my fears of potential sexism in the sparser clothing were unfounded. In fact, Shulk's current best outfit is to wear literally no shirt at all. This greatly increases his current PhysDef, but at the cost of slightly decreasing his Agility.
While there's a lot of things I could say about some of the armor decisions (adding cosmetic equipment slots is far and away the best change in XB1DE), I'll just reference the one funny thing (spoiler is solely mechanical, for Chapter 5): There is a character who gets tangible mechanical benefits for running around buck ass naked, to the point of it being a viable endgame strat, and they're a guy.
Back to it! (Not really, I already had the images for this lined up from last play session. But ya know.) This is going to be a bit shorter than usual, but due to both image constraints and topic shift it seemed sensible to split it off into its own post. And also I suspect that I'll have quite a bit to say at the end of this, because structurally we are shifting gear from the hook and establishing scenes to plot point one, to be Wellsian about it.
So, last we left off: getting jumped by ancient guardian robots.
Narrator voice: these were not, in fact, Mechon.
The fight against the Ancient Machines is... oddly straightforward; they more or less melt in under twenty seconds. I'm not entirely certain to what degree this is due to me faffing about doing a lot of sidequests and wandering all about the Tephra Cave dungeon versus the 'bots going down easily being intended in-narrative; I could see an argument for either, on story grounds, so I'm kind of curious what other people's experiences were like here.
Regardless: Slit Edge, Shadow Eye, Back Slash. Problem solved.
After we finish beating the stuffing out of some poor newly-reactivated defense measures, Reyn remarks on how he's never seen anything like them before. This explains the surprise at the sound earlier, then, and Fiora's confusion about whether they're Mechons or not; none of the party has seen things like these, even when Reyn and Shulk have previously come on canister runs.
Interesting. So why are they here now?
Shulk, being Shulk, immediately plops down to start poking at the thing. Very on-brand, you love to see it. He notes that they were probably left behind by the civilization that built the vehicle inside the caves, and then stands back up.
... that's... interesting. Good guess, probably. But it isn't people coming up out of the ruins that does it, because the C9DF has been up here many a time, it seems, and nothing along these lines have happened in the past.
Huh. I wonder if it's related to the warning indicator from earlier? It was already live by the time we got there. Though that's a weirdly large gap between "light going off" and "defenses being deployed". So... presumably detecting something quite far away, maybe?
... or maybe not that far away at all.
Our protagonists, being of curious and heroic inclination, immediately charge out of the hanger, trying to spot whatever it is they heard. Now, if this was me, I would have unironically retreated back into the caves. Like, is that not terribly protagonisty of me? Sure. But also, I think you would have to have not been paying attention for the past ten minutes to not realize that shit is about to hit the fan.
Welp.
Old Man Jan Apology Form To: Jan From: Basically Everyone But Vangarre (And Even Him For The Wrong Reasons) Date: Idk Today Reasons For Behavior:
I didn't realize it's only paranoia if you're wrong ✓
Vangarre made me think that the contemporary C9DF is a vanity project ✓
I didn't actually ask Dunban what happened a year ago ✓
The Homs' sense of object permanence does not apply to Mechon field armies ✓
Ohhhh boy they're here. That's actually fascinating. Does Colony 9 not have any sort of early warning system? What exactly happened a year ago? If they knew the Mechon were advancing then early enough to be able to have a front line not directly at the Colony, how did they get surprised this time?
And again, and this keeps coming up—why did everyone think the Mechon were either a non-issue or at least a distant one now!? What happened?
... Fiora do be answering none of that, despite essentially wondering about the same topic. Regarding this, I'm assuming they could just, like, construct new ones? However Mechon are made? Surely not literally every Mechon ever was in that valley. It's really, genuinely curious that everyone seems so sure that they were gone or reduced to being unimportant.
Anyway: they're dropping in, Oh god.
On the plus side—this seems like an occupation, not a genocide. Given they just waltzed up to the Colony, they could have just bombed the hell out of it immediately if the goal was to raze it.
... which makes me think, of course, that they're here for a reason. Gonna put that in the back pocket and come back to it in a moment.
Meanwhile, on the ground, people are starting to realize what's going on.
Oh, but it can! Might wanna go take your positions, things are about to get gnarly.
And the Mechons fall from the sky.
Most of them appear to be mass-produced, identical or near-identical models, much like in the initial prologue cutscene. However, it quickly becomes clear that there is an exception.
... oh nice, found the boss for the upcoming plot beat.
Alright, Shulk. I know you're not super genre savvy or anything. But this is it. Target acquired. Evil droid armies always have a single point of failure for some ungodly reason. You just have to bop the command unit. We got this!
Meanwhile, things are (unsurprisingly) getting tense down at the C9DF.
Like, "Vangarre is going to spend years in court dealing with lawsuits" tense. He is (understandably) pissed at no one having spotted these before they literally started dropping into the colony but the reaction: an aide notes that "an unknown number of units [are] emerging from the carriers!" But his reaction. I just. Is... is this soldier okay?
I don't think necks are supposed to bend like that. I wonder if the C9DF medical plans are decent. Hope so.
To Vangarre's credit: he immediately orders the soldiers to start evacuating civilians to the shelters. Makes sense to me. Everything has gone unbelievably fucking off the rails at this point; I imagine it's about all they can do.
Especially given that, when he gives the order to the AA batteries to fire, uh.
Oh they're fucked. This is catastrophic. Basically the worst case scenario.
Guess you should have spent more of the year really pouring the R&D funding into those flaks. Well, too late now.
Aaaaaand there goes the AA. Good game, lads.
The colonists begin to panic. People scramble, flee. It's a mess. There is no order. The mechons are here. God only knows what they want, but they're here.
Shulk is up a mountain, at the moment. The AA is dead in the water. The Defense Force is catastrophically disorganized and underprepared. Dunban is still stuck in bed.
And the Monado is unprotected. Which, if that was one of their targets during the initial scene... that bodes quite poorly.
Or, actually. Hang on. Roll that back a bit.
Nothing can keep Dunban down, holy shit. What a guy.
He doesn't even have a weapon. He doesn't even have a shirt. He might not even have a functioning dominant hand. But here he is anyway. Is he actually going to die during this? I feel like he might. Maybe that's what is going to motivate the forward momentum out of the inciting incident? I guess we'll find out shortly. Regardless.
That beautiful vista from earlier isn't looking all that beautiful anymore. Guess we got a colony to save. But... before that...
Pit's Conspiracy Theory Corner
So... the Mechon aren't actually here for the Homs specifically, I think? They want something. Well, let me preface that. They aren't here for just any Homs. They might be, like, kidnapping people, if I'm correct about Mumkhar, but that doesn't necessarily seem related.
Back to the topic, though—obviously, the nature of this war is fairly one-sided. This doesn't seem to be a more traditional "fight over something that both parties want" setup, nor some really straightforward "robots with no motivation beyond wanting to bleed humanity dry" situation. If it was, there would have been no apparent retreat during the prologue to lick wounds and bounce back, and there certainly wouldn't be this kind of occupation behavior during the invasion; they would have just blown it from the sky while they could. Hell, you could probably destabilize the cliffs, or something, and do it really efficiently before picking through the ruins to take out the last few.
So, presumably, the Colony and the Homs more broadly are probably either in possession of something that the Mechon want, or pose some sort of direct threat significant enough for the Mechon to decide that "seize control and stomp out dissent" is the optimal strategy. I could see it either way; if it's the former, this is probably going to be related to all this ancient tech / the apparent progenitor species that used to populate this area. Maybe that's why they're called "colony"—each is positioned above some ancient resource that's going to play a significant role in the backstory of the setting. Maybe at one point they were Ancient colonies, and the source of the name is just lost, actually.
I think there may actually be some good reasons to believe this to be the case—after all, if Mag Mell is a military vehicle of some sort, that probably indicates that the whole "Mechons invading" thing isn't terribly new, since that implies Colony 9 has been a defensive position for a very long time.
On the other hand, though. The latter option seems very possible, and it hooks in more neatly to the characters as established. It's clear that Shulk is being borderline predestined for something. We don't know where these visions come from, but they have been definitively associated with the +2 Sword of Brainwashing that happens to also be the signature defensive weapon of Colony 9. I think it's obvious that we are intended to distrust whatever it is pushing him towards, but Shulk, bless his ever-curious investigative soul, is not going to look at it critically. He's going to see it either as—depending on how the arc concludes—an opportunity to gain knowledge, or just another tool to be used against their adversaries. It would not surprise me at all if it turns out that whatever the guiding force behind this is is one that is arrayed against the Mechon more directly, and indeed, that even if every Homs died the sword would simply find its way to another suitable individual (perhaps one of the many fine Nopons populating Bionis). This case is actually very concerning, since it would mean the colonies are... kind of stuck in the middle. I guess we'll see.
Anyway, next time: uhhhhh hopefully saving a colony oh shit
I'm not entirely certain to what degree this is due to me faffing about doing a lot of sidequests and wandering all about the Tephra Cave dungeon versus the 'bots going down easily being intended in-narrative; I could see an argument for either, on story grounds, so I'm kind of curious what other people's experiences were like here.
I don't remember my experience with that fight in particular, but I will say that my experience was that doing all sidequest and explorations (which I am hardwired to do lol) left me feeling pretty overlevelled for main story beats.
IIRC Definitive Edition gave you a "level down" feature where you could lower your level and convert that EXP to Bonus EXP (which you could use to give yourself back those levels if you wanted) which was probably one of my favorite QoL additions because I distinctly recall back during the OG Wii days that one of my favorite gameplay experiences was tackling an area that was a few levels ahead of me (admittedly this was towards the end of the game so I had the full suite of combat options available) which had become a fairly novel experience since I felt perpetually overlevelled and just seeing how far I could cut my way through.
IIRC from 2 onwards they also default sidequest and discovery EXP to the aforementioned Bonus XP feature, which presumably helps. Level Down tends to be a NG+ feature though.
