#If I had just been able to play the game without Rex and Shulk present

[honestlyvan]

man i agree future redeemed WAS disappointing. i enjoyed exploring the giant map. i REALLY enjoyed nichol and glimmer trying to kill each other. but basically everything after that? sigh.

especially compared to just how much i enjoyed the rest of xc3, especially the beginning of the game before the characters get the ouroboros power.

Glimmer is the most disrespected character in the entire franchise and the way the entire game just completely ignores that she does not know Rex and keeps treating his behaviour towards her as anything but grossly inappropriate was the main thing that made FR completely intolerable for me, yes. Like, the game just seemed to have no fucking awareness of how profoundly creepy it was that this grown-ass man, was acting so entitled and controlling towards someone who had no reason to trust him or respect him or even respect his authority.

And the game just expects that because I know Rex is her dad, I'm supposed to feel bad for Rex??? It's supposed to be oh so tragic and symphathetic that he's constantly harassing and belittling this girl who does not know who he is, and even if she knew, she does not know what a parent is and he is literally Just Some Guy who was her LITERAL ENEMY JUST FIVE MINUTES AGO??? It's supposed to be funny-relatable oh-ha-ha teenage-daughter-rebelling and I'm supposed to cheer for his (dogshit) attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter instead of wanting her to fucking mace him for being a creepy entitled stranger to her????

If anything else about FR had been stellar and perfect, I would still hate it just on the principle of how fucking badly it fucked up treating Glimmer like a real person. I cannot describe my loathing for the way the story literally just forgot that she doesn't know who he is, so I had to watch a character I used to like turn into just some guy who feels entitled to harassing a teenage girl for her attention.

But the rest of FR was just... it was just so bland, it was just pandering to nostalgia and going "ooh look at this!! you know what this is!! Isn't it cool to recognise franchise iconography!" and no! I don't give a shit about that! "I recognise that thing" is not a source of emotional engagement for me, it's just irritating and boring that the game has nothing new and is instead just focusing on bringing back old elements for us to feel like we have to keep going for "the good old days". And also doing that part badly, to be clear, both Shulk and Rex were just some random guys wearing the skins of the characters I liked, and since all of the new characters had to be totally enamoured with the Special Xenoboys so everyone else's characterisation is suffering from being a doormat for Rex and being a suckup to Shulk.

Even the Xeno3 characters just.... we didn't see anyone??? We didn't get to fight any of our playable characters?? Any of our Heroes??? Anybody except Kite?? And the City just kept getting fucking disrespected in that the City's story is now all about N, too, he has been elevated to the status of Special Xenoboy and his presence is supposed to mean something to me, like his mere presence in the story is supposed to make me feel like it connects to our Ouroboros gang even though even the main game explicitly made clear that N and M are not our Noah and Mio and I ALREADY DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT VILLAINS, I DID NOT PLAY THE GAME AS N, I PLAYED THE GAME AS NOAH!!!!!

Matthew is the one who kind of breaks my heart because he just never got to live up to his potential, like. Everyone knows I hate Addam. This is an Addam Origo Hater Household. But The Golden Country was about Addam, he was the protagonist and the lead and the central focus and MATTHEW DOESN'T EVEN GET THAT!!! HE DOESN'T EVEN GET TO BE A SPECIAL XENOBOY BECAUSE FUCKING N IS ALREADY HOGGING THAT SPOT.

Xenoblade is now just another series about Special Boys with Special Destinies (and even then, the special boy of Xenoblade 3 isn't even the one we played as) and whatever emotional investment I had in the series is dead. I have no more reason to care about anything that goes on in the franchise, my emotional investment in the cast of 3 is soured because I knew that there was never any plans for them to be full characters rather than filler. It's so crushing to know that as much as I care, as deep as my feelings run, the story doesn't care as much as I do.