#but also. how nia found a family in torna. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

calamitaswrath · 6 years

Text

Okay, so in the past I’ve already made posts about my ideas for a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Abridged series as well as my ideas for an AU in which Lora gets resurrected, but I think it’s about time that I get to the big thing: How I would rewrite the main game’s story/what I’d change around. I should point out, some of these ideas aren’t really that refined yet, and I don’t have that many ideas to give some characters that deserve more spotlight the attention they need, but regardless.

Everything’s under the read more, because this obviously gets long.

Torna - The Golden Country, Malos after that and a bit about Pyra

First things first, I’d keep the story of Torna - The Golden Country pretty much the same, with the exception of one thing in regards to the ending. Namely, rather than simply falling into the Cloud Sea being damaged, Malos is forced into a “repressed form”, similar to what Pyra is to Mythra. For this repressed form, it’d be a water element Blade going by the name of “Hydros”, to continue the trend of Malos’ element mirroring that of Pyra. This would also make it a bit more believable that Jin would join up with him, which I felt was rather iffy in the base game, since, y’know, Malos is responsible for a lot of shit that happened to him?? On a more general note, this would also make it more believable that Malos would be able to lay low for 500 years, because everybody just forgetting about the Aegis that caused the death of several titans feels just a bit too convenient. In terms of ideas on his design, the concept I have in my mind is that Hydros’ hairstyle is essentially what Malos’ hair would look if it got really wet, and was a dark shade of blue, to really drive home the point of him being water-elemental. Additionally, since he is a “broken” form of Malos, a could have an immediately obvious physical disability, such as missing an eye, hand or arm. This last point is something that I’d also apply to Pyra, since her design was supposed convey that she was an incomplete person. But since this is XBC2 we’re talking about here, it only really conveyed that Saigo and the entire development was way too horny. So it should go without saying, but most of the female character would be wearing more sensible clothing, with Pyra and Mythra in particular going fully armoured in a style similar to Malos.

Backstory for Rex, Tora and Vandham

Another thing that I’d change before the actual events of the game’s story would, of course, be the background of Rex. One of the biggest issues with canon Rex is that he has (with the exception of Azurda) no relationship with any of the characters of the main cast before the start of the game. This makes him feel extremely disconnected from all the events of the plot, and just makes it seem like he has no personal connection to anything. Therefore, I’d have it so that he didn’t grow up in Fonsett village, or even the Leftherian Archipelago. Since his Leftherian heritage is a plot point, that aspect of him is kept. However, rather than Rex’ parents suddenly showing up and dying with an infant Rex in Fonsett is changed to them doing the same thing in Torigoth. The person that his parents entrust him to is then also not just some NPC who has exactly one (1) scene of importance, it’d be a character with an actual role in the story - Vandham. This adoption would be taking place before Mor Ardain conquered Gormott, with Vandham’s presence on the titan being justified by him and some of his mercenaries being hired by Gormottian officials to help protect the people of Gormott in the increasing tensions with Mor Ardain and Uraya, which would be rather lengthy mission that’d allow Vandham to stay around long enough to actually raise Rex. Also, since Rex and Vandham are already in Torigoth? Vandham also takes in Tora after his father and grandfather disappear. Since the main game was rather vague about the point in time at which this actually happened, I’ll say that this happened when Rex was still a young child, meaning that him and Tora grew up together. Another thing that then happens while Rex and Tora are growing up is that Mor Ardain conquers Gormott, which would eventually lead to Vandham returning to Uraya because he needs to finally return to Garfont, leaving Rex and Tora in the care of Azurda. . . .Which I’ll just flat out say, this is a point that I have yet to work out some more for myself. Vandham just leaving Rex and Tora is rather irresponsible, and Azurda comes out of nowhere. But really, I currently have no real ideas on how to justify Azurda leaving Fonsett and getting to know Rex, except for maybe him having travelled along with Rex’ parents, and sticking around out of a sense of having failed them. Either way, the important part here is: Rex considers Torigoth to be his home, and having witnessed Mor Ardain conquering it and Gormott leaves him with a personal grudge against Mor Ardain, that he eventually needs to overcome, by the time of the main story he still spends most of his time out in the Cloud Sea with Azurda, salvaging. That, and Vandham is his dad.

Now, for the actual main story: Prologue

The opening scene remains unchanged, since it is a good enough introduction to the setting. However, the trip to Goldmouth is, all things considered, really just unnecessarily padding things out, and introducing things and concepts that don’t really matter that much. And even from a gameplay perspective, the mechanics introduced there could’ve just as well been shown off at Torigoth. So instead, let’s say that rather than returning to Goldmouth right away, Rex and Azurda stay in the Cloud Sea til nightfall, at which point they’re surprised by a storm - the very same that in canon happens before the Torna discover the sunken ship. Accordingly, Rex and Azurda come across the Torna and their party, and, realizing that Rex staying on Azurda would be pretty dangerous, have him come aboard. Jin, Malos (who I’ll keep referring to by this name instead of Hydros as I’ve called the sealed form he’d be in at that point, because it’s more convenient) and Nia are introduced much like they are in canon, and upon noticing Rex’ eyes, they recruit him for their expedition. As a small side note, Rex would here be able to open Addam’s seals because he explicitly is a descendant of Addam, which however wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Over the course of 500 years, it shouldn’t be too unbelievable that Addam’s line has spread out, so that there’s more than just one of his descendants running around. From here on, much of the prologue chapter would play out the same: The ship is found, raised, Pyra is found, Jin stabs Rex, Rex becomes Pyra’s Driver, over-the-top anime battle, Azurda escapes with Rex, Pyra, Nia and Dromarch. Of course, Nia’s initial bond with Rex is a bit weaker because they don’t share that little heart-to-heart on the ship’s lookout, but that shouldn’t affect Nia’s actions when seeing Jin stab Rex. On to the next chapter.

Gormott

The party still crash-lands in Gormott as in the base game, and gather around as they do there as well, complete with Azurda being forced to regress into his young form. However, dynamics and interactions are shifted around: Rex and Pyra actually use the moment to get to know each other a bit, because, y’know, they only really had the scene in the Dream-Elysium before that. Towards Nia, Rex is a bit more wary, since she was a partner of the guy that killed him, and her (and Dromarch) insisting that they don’t want anything to do with that sort of thing. Regardless, Rex can still trust them enough so that they travel together. In terms of Rex’ initial relationship with Pyra, they have some starting difficulties, which are also going to take some time to resolve. While Rex is willing to help Pyra get on her way towards Elysium, he sees no point in travelling there himself, figuring that it is no place for him, and that he’d rather stay with the people he considers family. He also considers using Pyra’s power to drive Mor Ardain out of Gormott, which she obviously shuts down immediately, seeing as she was born of Mythra’s fear of her own power. So since they can’t really send Pyra off to Elysium from their current position, and since Azurda still got them to Gormott, Rex figures that they best head to his home, so that they can properly weigh their options, and maybe contact Vandham about getting some help. The arrival in Gormott happens much as it does in canon, with the big exception of course being that Rex considers the place home, and isn’t too happy to see the recruitment for the Ardainian military going on. Regardless, the confrontation with the soldiers and Brighid still happens, Nia is captured, and Rex, Pyra and Azurda get away. Instead of blindly running away however, Rex leads them more directly towards his and Tora’s home, banking on Tora noticing what’s going on, and helping them out, which of course is what happens. Now, for Tora, one general thing right of the bat: The maid fetish thing is gone. Entirely. Doesn’t happen. If anything, he considers Poppi is daughter regardless of her form, which can be the replacement comic relief, since he’s still a child himself. As for Poppi’s further designs: Rather than “big tiddy anime maid” and “sexy robot woman”, they can instead be based off Nopon myths about creatures like bird people and dino beasts. Now, upon meeting Tora, Rex has a lot of catching up to do, which culminates in Tora chewing him out for going out to experience all this cool shit, while he was stuck at home looking after the house and doing some hopeless tinkering on Poppi. With that out of the way, the party comes to the conclusion that they can’t just leave Nia behind, and, as in canon, they get to rescuing here, complete with finishing Poppi first. While the canonical reason for Poppi not being complete was that Tora simply couldn’t afford the parts, this reasoning doesn’t really work as well with him living with both Rex and Vandham. So instead, the reason why Poppi isn’t functional yet is because, well, getting a functional AI with the exact powers and functions of a Blade isn’t exactly easy. Tora simply hadn’t been able to figure it out until Rex left for the trip where he would wind up finding Pyra. With this done, the party heads onto the Ardainian warship, where the rescue of Nia happens as it does in canon, up to and including the battle with Mòrag, which they just barely escape, leading to them fleeing Torigoth. In a departure from canon however, Rex isn’t too happy about having to flee Torigoth, and Tora isn’t too happy, either. This has been their home for most of their lives, and now they have to run away from it because they’re wanted - and Rex in particular feels like ever since he met Pyra, they’ve only ever been chased around. He does kind of blame her for this, both on the other hand, since she has saved his life, he’s of course still going to help. Tora, in contrast, is not as bothered as Rex is, because he sees this as a big opportunity to get out in the world and search for his father and grandfather, especially since he finally completed Poppi. In regards to Nia however, Rex is now more willing to trust her, since she does owe him for saving her. Keeping things more similar to canon, Tora still suggests that they head on over to his uncle on the other side of the titan, so that they can get a ship to head off towards the World Tree.

Lora getting resurrected

At this point however, I’d finally introduce a more major departure from canon, in using my premise for an AU in which Lora is resurrected. So instead of just fully typing that out again, I’ll just shortly summarize things. For a more detailed version, I refer back to the original post I linked up at the top. -The Torna organization has already tracked Pyra and the others down to Gormott, and has landed with the Monoceros around the area where Tora’s uncle lives -The party just barely manages to avoid all of the Torna minus Patroka as they head further onto the titan to search for them -Realizing that they’ve got an opportunity, the party decides to enter the ship and sabotage its engine, to make it easier for them to escape -While roaming around the ship, they come across the room where Jin keeps Lora’s body along with a Core Crystal (Haze’s) -They unfreeze Lora’s body, and Nia, noticing that this is a person that is only very “recently” dead and well-preserved, resurrects her while no is looking (like Niall in canon) -It works, Lora lives again, has amnesia (as in, she has no idea about her identity other than her name), but still (re-)resonates with Haze’s Core Crystal and joins the party -The party sabotages the engine and leaves the ship, but not without encountering, fighting and defeating Patroka -With this done, the party visits Umon, who gives them a titan ship to escape on -On their initial trip towards the World Tree, Lora and Haze get to properly know the party, who they are, and what they’re doing, with her coming very close to remembering something when the topic of discussion is on Pyra, but not quite getting there; Pyra and Azurda keep quiet because they need to figure out how to deal with this; Lora ultimately resolves to travel with the party in the hopes of uncovering who she is that way and because she feels like she owes them -Meanwhile, in the Torna organization, Jin, upon learning what happened, orders Patroka to keep quiet about what happened because he wants to figure out himself what to do about this; he’s especially not trusting Hydros (whose true identity as Malos he doesn’t know) out of a hunch -Unrelated to the premise of Lora being resurrected, at some point around this time, Rex drops the question of why Pyra wants to go to Elysium, anyway, which she dodges for the time being.

Uraya, Vandham, Minoth and Mythra

The party getting attacked by Artifice Ophion and swallowed by Uraya then happens as in canon, just as the events up to and including the encounter with Vandham. This encounter then is of course far different, since Vandham actually has a backstory with Rex, Tora and Azurda. And while he is surprised but overjoyed to see his “sons”, he still fights them, because he wants to test out just how good they are as Drivers now. After the battle, they all head over to Garfont, where there is a lot of catching up to do, especially in regards to Vandham being filled in about Pyra, Nia and Lora. On account of Rex and Tora’s relation to Vandham, the rest of the party also gladly heads to Garfont. For Rex and Tora, this’d also be the first time that they’re seeing it for themselves, which would cheer Rex in particular up a great deal. Most of the events in Garfont would still largely play out the same, only with the party also trying to figure out if anyone there has any clues as to who Lora is. Pyra and Azurda would still keep quiet about this, because, well, a lot of shit went down, and they’re not sure how to really tell her about this. Either way, the party, now with Vandham and Roc, decide to seek out Cole/Minoth, after fighting and defeating Akhos. The encounter with Zeke and Pandoria is then exactly the same. The only thing I’d ever change about that is them being acknowledged as a very legitimate threat to the party. Then, in Fonsa Myma, after watching the play about Addam, Lora gets her first flash of resurging memories, which let her remember that she was a knight of Torna who knew Addam, but not much beyond those basic things. When meeting Cole/Minoth however, things quickly turn into a four-way reunion. Minoth is not too terribly shocked to see Pyra and Azurda again, but Lora is another story entirely. In his surprise, he blurts out some things that Pyra and Azurda specifically kept to themselves, such as it having been 500 years, and just what happened to Torna, and what they thought had happened to Lora. Overwhelmed with everything she’s learning/remembering, Lora steps out for a while, with only Haze by her side. The others leave her be, because there really is a lot that she’s going through now. With Lora away for the time being, the events that lead to the confrontation at Olethro Ruins happen, Pyra realizes that this Hydros is beyond any doubt Malos, and the battle against him and Akhos goes as badly as it does in canon. One thing to note however, is that with Haze being a party member, Obrona takes her place in Indol, due to their similar powers. The spot as Akhos’ Blade could therefore be filled by a rare Blade that canonically has strong powers, because Obrona’s specific powers honestly don’t matter that much to this scene. So the initial battle against Malos and Akhos is lost, and Vandham dies, which is the point when Lora, having learned what’s going on, returns and gives everyone a second wind, just as Mythra also reawakens. Malos and Akhos are forced to retreat, and the party is safe, for now.

Aftermath

But for the aftermath, there is a lot to unpack. First off, with Mythra absolutely wrecking half the platform they were fighting on, Vandham’s body fell down into the Cloud Sea. Since Rex and Tora are absolutely devastated by his, they spend an unreasonable amount of time at the place, with Rex trying everything he can to retrieve Vandham’s body from the Cloud Sea, and Tora doing everything he can to help him. This is despite them both knowing that it’s pointless, since not only Uraya is constantly moving, but also because of currents in the Cloud Sea. They ultimately don’t even have Roc’s Core Crystal, because he fell down into the Cloud Sea with Vandham. Lora meanwhile has another painful returning memory after seeing Mythra, namely how the Tornan titan was killed and sank into the Cloud Sea. With enough of her memory having returned, Lora can finally have a proper talk with Mythra, Azurda and Minoth about the past, and what happened at the meantime, but she still does not remember Jin. The others also only fill her in on some basics, that she had a Blade other than Haze, but don’t specify - because really, how do you have the kind of situation where you tell her that the most important person in her life is now the leader of a terrorist organization, and most likely did some pretty disturbing things to you? One question that however starts to come up during all this, is how Lora is alive after all this. Pyra/Mythra accordingly has some thoughts about that, and about Nia, but only really tells Nia that if she wants to talk about anything, she’s there for her. With all this emotional bagagge adressed, the party gets ready to move on, although Rex and Tora are very reluctant about this. They do however move on nonetheless, with Rex in particular being more resolved now, because he figures that Vandham definitely wouldn’t have wanted him to be all half-hearted about helping Pyra/Mythra. As in canon, Minoth tells them that their best shot at figuring out how to get to the World Tree is to seek out Amalthus, making Indol their next target.

Everything from Goldmouth to Mor Ardain, Leftheria, Indol, Temperentia and Tantal

The party then moves on to Goldmouth to get on their way to Indol, making it the first time the place is visited. The filler story about Roc’s Core Crystal is cut for obvious reasons, and instead, there could be a bit of an interlude where Bana wishes to see the Aegis, which would also give him an opportunity to act a bit ominously when he sees Tora and Poppi, for a bit of foreshadowing for the next chapter. With this done, the party moves on to Mor Ardain.

. . .And now I gotta be honest, I don’t have much in the way of specific ideas on how to change things around for the events/story parts mentioned in the headline here, so I’ll simply make note of a few stray thoughts.

Rex is not particularly thrilled about having to go to Mor Ardain, but after seeing the situation of the titan and allying with Mòrag, he’s starting to come around on his grudge towards them.

The party does actually meat Niall face-to-face (which I think didn’t happen in canon), during which Lora regains her memories of Hugo, Aegaeon and Brighid, leading to some confusion for her.

The artificial Blades that Tatazo was forced to build for Bana are not maids. Cut that shit out.

During the encounter with Patroka and Mikhail at the end of the Old Factory, Lora does not recognize or remember Mikhail, but he very much recognizes her, which takes him extremely off-guard since Jin didn’t tell him about it.

The trip through Leftheria and Fonsett village is also the first time that Rex actually gets to visit the place that his parents came from, making the entire thing very interesting to him personally. Lora and Mythra likewise have a personal interest in the village, since it was founded by Addam, and a good deal of its population is directly descendet from him.

Meeting Amalthus leaves both Mythra and Lora extremely wary. While neither of them really know that he’s personally responsible for attacking the survivors of Torna, between him still being alive, Malos’ Driver and just generally giving off a bad vibe, they have more than enough reason to distrust him.

Zeke has a personal interest in Lora, because in Tantal there actually exist some records of her, about how she was a knight of Torna and everything. Plus, she knew Addam.

Now, the first major confrontation with Jin. . . I’ll admit, thinking of ways how this could play out with Lora there is tricky. Before I even get to this, I’m going to address Jin’s own personal goals, since him just joining up with Malos of all people to basically carry out Amalthus’ will really just comes of as a huge leap in logic to me. I would handle it so that Jin has two basic goals: First, destroying Indol and the entire world order it has created, and second, meeting and confronting the Architect about the state of the world, and the nature of Blades and titans. He’s not explicitly aware that Hydros is Malos for the longest time of them staying together (which, considering the timeline, could’ve been several centuries), but he does eventually find out during the events of the game, and grows more wary of him, while not changing his behaviour towards him. Jin’s reasoning for this is that in all the time he has known this sealed Malos, he hasn’t really noticed any of Malos’ genocidal and destructive tendencies. On Malos’ side, things are kept similar to canon in the regard that he basically views Jin as a surrogate Driver, while however still retaining his personality and ambitions. Due to his sealed form, he is more “docile”, but he still seeks to return to his previous form, which is just another reason why he wants to get his hands on Pyra/Mythra: He needs the data of her Core Crystal to reconstruct his own.

So, the confrontation with Jin. Obviously, meeting him first-hand would return a large chunk of Lora’s memories to her, potentially up to and including her death, and Jin becoming a Flesh Eater (I say potentially here because having these memories would definitely turn her against Indol right away, and while that’d be interesting, it’d be a bit difficult to account for writing-wise). Despite Lora being the entire reason behind Jin’s motivation however, he nonetheless opposes her along with the rest of the party, albeit reluctantly. As in canon, he pursues his goals knowing full well that Lora does not approve of them, with the exception here just being that, well, less idiotically genocidal. As far as the rest of the party is concerned in this encounter, Rex'd be a bit scared seeing as this is the guy that killed him, Mythra'd be even more confused as to why Jin went down this path, Nia’d more questionening just how much of his kindness towards her was real, and Zeke could very well be dropping the reveal that Jin was once the strongest Blade in all of Torna. This would only leave Tora and Mòrag with no personal connection in this fight, and. . . honestly, thinking of one for Tora to have is a bit tricky. The only thing that could still work would be if Soozoo’s disappearance could be worked into the plot more, with him being kept by the Torna organization. As for Mórag, she really doesn’t need a personal connection of any kind to Jin, and could instead point how regardless of how he was or what he did in the past, what he’s doing right now is pretty damn shitty and they had better stop him. Regardless, Jin is fought, defeated, and escapes after killing Obrona, who’s taking Haze’s place in the story, since Haze is Lora’s Blade again.

In the event that Lora regained the memories of her death, the following burial of Obrona and return trip to Indol could be used to get the full party to be more wary of Indol, and only rely on Amalthus as much as they have to. Before the party moves on to their next target in Tantal, Rex could address some personal parting words to Amalthus, about how he as Malos’ Driver should take more responsibility of his actions, which does actually get to Amalthus. . . but not exactly in the way that Rex’d hope.

Small note: The filler story bit about Bana’s return and Niall’s temporary death is cut. It’s entirely unnecessary, and direct foreshadowing of Nia’s Blade powers was already done by her resurrecting Lora. And hell, as I’m typing this out, I don’t even remember at which exact point this all took place.

All the story events in Tantal can essentially play out the same, with the exception of the climactic confrontation with the Torna organization at the end. For one thing, Jin’s anime power bullshit of being faster than light and controlling all particles is just. . . it’s absolutely stupid. I don’t have any specific ideas on how this could be changed, but it’s just better if it’s not there. Maybe all of the Torna could simply have the superior teamwork? Something like that. The other thing that’d need changing is Jin’s choice of words for breaking Rex. In canon, it was something about “Ummm do you even really pay attention to what Pyra wants??? I think not!!! Checkmate!!!”. Here, it could instead be something about any real personal ambition, only helps Pyra/Mythra out of obligation, and how Jin can tell that even now, Rex would rather be at home. Rex’ defense would of course be that this is a personal thing to him as well, since he wants to get back at Malos for killing Vandham, to which Jin asks the ever important question “And then what”. So, long story short, Pyra/Mythra is taken, Rex is broken, and Lora tries and fails once again to get Jin to explain why the hell he’s doing any of this.

Spirit Cruciple Elpys and Morytha

However, rather than snapping back to normal right away after getting a bit of talk from the other party members, Rex remains unwilling to get back into action. He does travel with the party back to Leftheria, and open up the Spirit Cruciple Elpys, but instead choses to remain behind in Fonsett. After some internal back-and-forth among the party, Nia decides to stay behind with him to still change his mind. Tora doing the same/taking Nia’s place is briefly considered, but the party figures that with the area’s Blade-hindering atmosphere, it’s best to have Tora and Poppi with them. So while the party advances deeper and deeper, cutscenes would keep cutting back to Nia and Rex, with Nia herself opening up to him and revealing her backstory to him, which in turn would lead to Rex opening up more to her as well. The rest of the party would meanwhile go through similar story beats as in canon, with Zeke talking about him being a Blade Eater, while additionally, Lora could tell the others about her time with Addam and Mythra. The battle with Addam’s phantom-things would then play out at least comparable to canon - the party gets backed into a corner, until a big twist happens, which in this case would be Rex and Nia dropping in to help them, with Nia being already in her Blade form, as a conclusion to her time spend with Rex. (Side note: I very much don’t care about any potential pairings for any of the characters, so this should not be taken as this being changed around to make room for a Rex/Nia pairing) With Pneuma’s sword then, both Rex and Lora have a little chat with this spirit-Addam, with Rex being told more or less what he was told in canon, and him wishing Lora that she finds in this time what she couldn’t 500 years ago. After all these events, party then has some obligatory talks back in Fonsett: Nia confirms to Lora that she brought her back to life, Nia apologizes that she could do nothing for Vandham (though that’s nothing that Rex or Tora blame her for), and everyone’s still not sure what to do next. Rex would be willing to just chase right after the Torna organization, but everyone else just heavily discourages him from that, considering how well last time went. This is when a message from Amalthus would reach them, stating that he has taken Rex’ words to heart, that he will personally take care of things, and that they will meet him at the Cliffs of Morytha. This does of course raise some red flags for Lora, but right now, the party simply doesn’t have any better options, and so they do just that.

Over at the Cliffs of Morytha, they then find Amalthus along with a contingent of Indolese troops, who ask them to go on ahead, with Amalthus following the party after some preparations that he still has to make. Again, with not much of a choice, the comply. The initial battle with Malos would here be cut, and instead the only real battle would be with both Jin and Malos right at the end. However, rather than being finished with reconstructing his Core Crystal before the party even gets there, Malos is still busy “downloading” while they fight. But then, when Malos is finished, and he can finally return to his actual normal form from his Hydros form, Amalthus shows up. He’s not here to fight Malos. Instead, for probably the first time, him and Malos properly synergize as Driver and Blade, and announce their plans to head to Elysium together - without Jin, the party or the Torna. An obligatory over-the-top anime battle happens, during which Mythra reawakens, and begins to start using her true power - but without becoming Pneuma just yet. In the end, the battle destroys the platform, and the party, along with Jin, falls to Morytha, while Amalthus and Malos get ready to cross over to the World Tree, which does however take some time.

Down in Morytha, rather than the overly Rex-and-Jin focussed story bit from canon, I’d instead propose a situation similar to how the party in XBC1 is split up after they fall off Galahad Fortress and down onto the Fallen Arm. As in, everyone gets their moment in the spotlight, showcasing their own character growth, current motivations, and so on. For Rex’ own part of this, he’d start out alone, find himself under attack from the mutated zombies, and then find a Core Crystal just in time to save himself - Roc’s Core Crystal. For Lora’s “episode” in this, she’d be the one to end up with Jin around the corpse of the Tornan titan, and it would lead to him finally properly talking to her, and ultimately joining her - and by proxy, the party.

Finale

Now, for events that could happen while everyone climbs to World Tree. . . I’ll admit, I don’t have much in the way of ideas. The big battle between the titans and Torna organization could still happen, but with the different scenario here, I’m not sure if it would still work. Rather than that, what could happen is that Malos uses his newly reawakened Aegis powers to send his mechs to attack the titans, causing destruction similar to what is shown in the very last cutscenes before the canonical final boss, with all the various characters the party has come across shown defending themselves. The members of the Torna organization - that is, Akhos, Patroka and Mikhail - wouldn’t even necessarily have to die while the party climbs the World Tree. Instead, they could at one point just hold off Indolese troops.

Now, for the actual big, final moments: The reveal of Elysium works as it is in canon, so there’s nothing to change here. The dream sequence where all the party members turn against Rex would still take place. But instead of Pyra and Mythra being the ones that finish things off, it would instead be an appearance by ghostly Vandham, who question Rex about his growth, ambition, goals, and whether he really stands behind everything he does. Simply put, Vandham’s last goodbye to his “sons”, since Tora would also join in on that talk after a while. The meeting with Klaus would be similar, but not quite the same: Amalthus and Malos would also be present during the big exposition, which would end with Klaus basically telling everyone that he has no right to make any more decisions for the world, and that they should decide between them who’s in the right. The final battle would then be as follows: Amalthus with his ridicilous amount of Blade Eater powers as Malos’ Driver, with Malos himself assuming a full-power form as Logos - essentially, a counterpart Pneuma. For a later phase, the battle would then be against Artifice Aion.

The various ending cutscenes could then stay mostly the same. However, Pyra and Mythra are not resurrected as two seperate entities, and are instead either just Mythra, or just Pneuma. And last, but certainly not least: While some parting words from Klaus along the lines of “Live in a world with no need for gods, titans or Blades” are heard, all currently inactive Core Crystals all awaken, and all Blades simultaneously lose their Core Crystals, making them actual living beings that don’t have any need for a Driver to live.

And. . . yeah, that’s all I got. Obviously there’s still plenty of room for improvement here, especialyl in regards to the development of characters other than Rex and Lora, or the state and politics of the world, and how the conflict between Uraya and Mor Ardain could be adressed. But more than anything, I just want to get these ideas out there first.

#xenoblade #xenoblade chronicles 2 #xbc2 #xenoblade 2 #long post #like not actually a long post #but definitely very fucking long after the read more #. . .should I tag this as xbc2 critical? I'm really not sure #someone send me a message in case I should

12 notes · View notes