Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean... like, he's not like Rex, who becomes an absolute black hole of narrative agency, both doing nothing and causing everything to happen -- I think both Noah and Mio are given decent amount of narrative agency during Chapter 6 and 7, but the way Noah and Mio are suddenly the only characters whose presence truly matters to the plot in such an ensemble-driven game really left a sour taste in my mouth =__=)
I didn't mean it in a "disliking Noah" sense, I meant it in a "disliking how everyone else got shelved in favour of Noah", because no matter how interesting the ending would have been, it was let down by the characters I cared the most about having almost entirely passive roles. Eunie and Taion don't even get it the worst, tbh -- in fact, I think Sena is probably the worst done by how her presence literally stops mattering the moment she and Lanz try to sacrifice themselves to save everyone from N. If they had died there, it would change nothing about the ending, and that's pretty criminal in a game that is trying to be an ensemble piece.
Both Xeno 2 and 3 having literally nothing for the extended cast to do by the end, compared to Xenoblade 1 where Shulk's lack of specialness was critical to the finale working out the way it did, is honestly just a sign of market-research led writing. I'm sure the first drafts of both these stories came back with "no, no! The hero needs to be More Heroic!" or something, because something something it's not a power fantasy if our hero is hindered by anything in his way. My name for the tendency for the protagonist to eventually dominate an ensemble Special Boy syndrome even outside of Xenoblade. I didn't mean to imply it hurts Noah's character as much as everyone else's character is hurt at the expense of him (and Mio, to a lesser degree, although Noah being the Monado Wielder of this game does ultimately make him the most narratively important character for the ending)
I do like that interpretation of N. Our Noah is so painfully earnest and bad at lying, it's funny to imagine that he suddenly gets much better at literally performing the role required of him once he's out of Morality Juice to tell him it's bad to deceive people XD
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: (This is gonna be a wholeass essay lmao)
Date: 2023-07-16 08:36 pm (UTC)From:Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean... like, he's not like Rex, who becomes an absolute black hole of narrative agency, both doing nothing and causing everything to happen -- I think both Noah and Mio are given decent amount of narrative agency during Chapter 6 and 7, but the way Noah and Mio are suddenly the only characters whose presence truly matters to the plot in such an ensemble-driven game really left a sour taste in my mouth =__=)
I didn't mean it in a "disliking Noah" sense, I meant it in a "disliking how everyone else got shelved in favour of Noah", because no matter how interesting the ending would have been, it was let down by the characters I cared the most about having almost entirely passive roles. Eunie and Taion don't even get it the worst, tbh -- in fact, I think Sena is probably the worst done by how her presence literally stops mattering the moment she and Lanz try to sacrifice themselves to save everyone from N. If they had died there, it would change nothing about the ending, and that's pretty criminal in a game that is trying to be an ensemble piece.
Both Xeno 2 and 3 having literally nothing for the extended cast to do by the end, compared to Xenoblade 1 where Shulk's lack of specialness was critical to the finale working out the way it did, is honestly just a sign of market-research led writing. I'm sure the first drafts of both these stories came back with "no, no! The hero needs to be More Heroic!" or something, because something something it's not a power fantasy if our hero is hindered by anything in his way. My name for the tendency for the protagonist to eventually dominate an ensemble Special Boy syndrome even outside of Xenoblade. I didn't mean to imply it hurts Noah's character as much as everyone else's character is hurt at the expense of him (and Mio, to a lesser degree, although Noah being the Monado Wielder of this game does ultimately make him the most narratively important character for the ending)
I do like that interpretation of N. Our Noah is so painfully earnest and bad at lying, it's funny to imagine that he suddenly gets much better at literally performing the role required of him once he's out of Morality Juice to tell him it's bad to deceive people XD