Hello fellow Xeno fans! I am super stoked and happy about XC:DE right now. Over and over in the past two weeks, every little fear I had about ways they might fail to improve DE or might make it worse has been allayed by diligent leakers (thanks community!). Future Connected, by all reports I've heard, is very good. We can now zoom in to first person. The models look great. The more I hear about all the QoL improvements, the happier I become. It really doesn't seem like they've made any big goofs yet, or failed to deliver any important QoL fixes we really needed.
But I want to talk a bit about the recent dust-up about the resolution and graphics of XC:DE.
Trouble in Paradise
I have seen a lot of threads on this sub by some jaded fans-- some of these people seem to have transitioned from expressing rancor over the new art style to grousing about the new graphics. There is a lot of talk about things such as visible pop in with the 3D models for grass and the game having trouble rendering lots of 3D models or having draw distance issues.
For the record I think the criticisms of the new art style are valid and legitimate. Things were changed. The characters look different, and I won't pretend that some kind of flavor of the original may be argued to have been lost. I personally like the changes but I get that some people might not. I didn't play XC1 when it was first released, so I can't know how people who did might feel about the new game.
But seeing the graphics of this remake get dumped on has kind of gotten on my nerves. I am now seeing reports that the game's graphics are getting dumped even on by "normie" nintendo fans in the Switch subreddit. Honestly, that doesn't surprise me, and there's a reason I never post or participate in discussions in that subreddit. I'm not at all surprised that most gamers will turn their noses up at content that isn't in 1080p. This mentality is nothing new. "PC masterrace" has been a meme since about 2003 during the Xbox era. There are some gearheads in the community into modding who now resolutely believe that their own custom emulated setup of the game on PC is visually and aesthetically better than XC:DE. I'm not here to change that view, but I wanted to make this post because I think the Xenoblade community needs to take a minute to reflect on this matter and learn from what happened.
"Not Just a Remaster"
many a time, in countless threads, on Youtube, and on twitter, many Xenoblade fans took up the crusade against those who called XC:DE "just a port." This was in some way understandable. Some people were saying the game was just a port, and those people were wrong.
But I honestly think we were misguided in getting so invested in this debate. By endlessly harping on the fact that this was "not just a remaster but a remake" and vigorously and hotly debating this topic, we communicated very high expectations to the rest of the world. We endeavored to equate XC:DE with recent big budget remake projects such as resident evil II and FFVII. The reality has always been that a Wii game, one that sacrificed some degree of visual performance to deliver an expansive world, was being re-made for the switch, a console which, like the Wii line of consoles, does struggle with performance relative to other platforms. Any Switch game, even the greatest masterpieces like BotW and Astral Chain will chug and drop frames. The resolution will dynamically blur. This is the nature of the switch: it is the little engine that could of home consoles. Even games with simpler graphics and less moving parts such as Fire Emblem Three Houses and Disgaea 5 can chug and drop frames if you do a lot of stuff in combat rapidly. And these are turn based games where the action is at a standstill. Disgaea 5 even has 2D sprites and you can still get it to chug. The switch is a weak console-- it makes up for this weakness by being a platform that's very easy to develop for, leading to wonderful ports of games such as dark souls, the Witcher III, the bayonetta games, DOOM 2016, and on and on. Do these ports have resolution and framerate issues? sure. But they are still really fun titles to own on this console. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna the golden Country output at 720p. And we had been told that the engine for XC:DE was based on Torna the Golden Country. Why anyone thought the game was outputting in anything other than dynamic 720-540, the same as their other titles, is a mystery to me. Obviously they were re-making the game using existing technology. And this was always the stated mission from the get go.
By endlessly harping on this "remake vs. remaster" debate, we attempted to claim some kind of graphical "wow" factor for Xenoblade Chronicles 1. The fact of the matter is that xenoblade chronicles has never been about graphics. you can take any one of the three games in the mainline series and tear apart its performance. All of the games have issues with resolution, framerate, and handling a lot of enemies on the screen and environments with lots of rendered objects. It's the story, the lore, the characters, voice acting, the music, and fundamentally the thirst for adventure and imagination that make this series great. not the capabilities of the hardware. Just ask anyone who played this title on the 3DS what they thought of Xenoblade Chronicles. It's a phenomenal title, even if you're playing it on a literal potato, or emulating it on a smartphone. But the engine that monolith built to make games on switch in is what it is. We should be happy, and excited that XC1 is getting remade in that engine. I personally keep feeling like I'm having a very good dream, one that I do not wish to wake up from. It vexes me to see that some people are now having that feeling of a dream shattered, as they are underwhelmed with the visuals, or frustrated that other gamers are unimpressed.
The Search for Mainstream Recognition
In my view, there has been something a bit sour underlying our constant debates with others about the Remake vs. Remaster thing. In the current gaming environment, big budget "remakes" are in vogue. Many of these remakes of course alter the original game so much that they aren't really even re-makes. they are entirely new games that just take the story and content of the original as inspiration, delivering a new title that basically just surfs off of the story and the fandom of the original. There's nothing wrong with this at all, but it's important to note what's going on. It's not the gameplay of the original titles that drives interest for these remakes, it's nostalgia for those titles combined with the wow factor of seeing them re-imagined with new graphics.
There is a sense among many of us, particularly long term fans, that the original Xenoblade Chronicles was in some way "robbed." We had to literally beg and plead Nintendo through operation rainfall for the game to even get a release internationally. It did not make it to north america until the end of the Wii's life cycle. Few people played it. To this day, it remains an obscure hidden gem of a game. And to this day, nintendo of america is conspicuously failing to adequately promote the game, almost as if they're embarassed about it. The result of this is that usually at a party, you will be the only one who has ever played it (or any other Xenoblade title for that matter). I have only ever met one other Xenoblade fan IRL in my life, and it was a TSA agent at an airport who asked me to take my wii U out of my suitcase to check it for bombs. (I was transporting Xenoblade Chronicles X on a transcontinental voyage.)
I feel there has been this subconscious hope, or desire of many fans of the original that Xenoblade chronicles DE is going to have breakout sales success, catapulting Xenoblade Chronicles out of obscurity and finally getting our series the attention and recognition from "the mainstream" that it deserves. This may yet happen. The future isn't set after all. I personally don't really think Xenoblade is the type of game most gamers would have the patience for, but I've been wrong about things before and I could easily be wrong about that.
But XC:DE is not a remake like the FFVII remake or Resident Evil II remake. While the game was extensively remade, the core of it: the gameplay and the story are for the most part exactly the same. It was developed and released on a tight schedule, and it was not given much hype or promotion by nintendo. This is in many ways admirable. Monolith did an incredible amount for this game and for us in a short amount of time. They did so while conserving resources, and remaining focused on their other projects. If you read Takahashi's latest famitsu interview, it is abundantly clear that his passion for xenoblade is by no means exhausted. he is very much still focused on building this series and refining Monolith's approach to RPG design. XC1 is a treat for us, a dalliance. It will not signal a shift by monolith to putting all their energy into ports of XCX, or Xenosaga, or Gears or some other old game, because monolith under Takahashi is still focused on the future and on creating something new. This is a good thing in a gaming environment where innovation isn't always easy to come by.
The Future Belongs to US
My conclusion to all of this: the project was always advertised as a remake of XC1 in an engine based on Torna the Golden Country. That means dynamic 720-540p. It's a big project too. XC1 is a massive, massive world. Torna by comparison is tiny. Monolith delivered to us exactly what they had been promising the whole time. By allowing the attention to be focused on graphics and performance, particularly in a comparative sense with other contemporary big budget remakes, we have done takahashi a disservice I feel. It's really not graphical performance that makes a game inspire people. Who among us has ever been impressed by the graphical performance of a Xenoblade game? I know I haven't. In fact Xenoblade reveals that it isn't technology that produces an immersive fictional universe. it is Lore, Characters, and inspiring fictional universe, the music. (and by god does Xenoblade Chronicles have badass music.) Xenoblade Chronicles is a philosophical exploration masquerading as a traditional JRPG series. It is misunderstood and ignored by the mainstream not because it never got enough promotion or because the graphics are crummy, but because it is simply a very complex game, emotionally, mechanically, and it terms of what it asks you to reconsider about your assumptions in the course of playing it.
So if you do find yourself in a discussion with some mainstream gamers on r/nintendoswitch or something (not that I would bother, personally), consider pointing out that, graphics simply aren't what makes Xenoblade inspiring. In fact, the strength of the game comes from the focus on the fundamentals of what makes a good game. Monolith is not trapped in some quest to create more and more powerful photorealistic graphics or a movie-like plot that echoes trends in current cinema such as TLOU, they have their own story to tell. In that context, them remaking the game in the new engine is a massive favor they've done for us. 720p or not, we can now look at things In Xenoblade clearly. We can now hear orchestrated music instead of ultra compressed MIDI. People, this remake is glorious. And it was produced on a tight timeline and not stuck in development hell. Monolith will now move on to the next project, toward the future, and that's a good thing. While the technology of xenoblade is a decade behind current generation games, the vision for an RPG and a story remains decades ahead.
So I'm super excited for DE, and I hope everyone else is too. I hope anyone who is crestfallen or disappointed by "Resolutiongate" is at least convinced by the point that This is what monolith told us we were getting the entire time, and as such is no cause for surprise or disappointment.
Thanks for reading. Now go use your power to fell a god, and seize your destiny!
Submitted by donikhatru | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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