So I just beat the game and that ending was a huge cliffhanger that I wasn't expecting. As opposed to the ending of the original Xenoblade, this one was a let down for me leaving too many plot threads open and creating more questions than it answers. I doubt that there will be DLC for the game and the director already said that he wants to move on and make something different moving forward erasing the chance of a direct sequel. But I'd love to hear what everyone else thought as well! :D

I thought the overall ending was good but parts of it were bad, especially the, what seemed like, endless conversation with Luxaar and Lao before fighting, when the whole context of the mission is "we have 15 minutes of power left then we all die". Also Lin went from a pretty level headed kid and good character, to traditional anime-level complete breakdown in the last bit, and made me lose some respect for her.

As for the big reveal at the end, I totally suspected it. I knew there was no way humanity's bodies were on that thing, and I knew somehow they would pull the whole "out minds are trapped in the robots" angle, but I still liked it. I am sad that there probably won't be resolution to the bigger questions, especially about Mira, since a lot of side quests also bring up the fact that something about Mira is wrong and the laws of physics/time don't exist properly there.

Did like the final few boss battles though. Fun, challenging, and the monster design on Lao was pretty neat. Seemed like something out of Bloodborne to me.

Do you know how deep the side quests go into any of this stuff? And are they moreso the affinity missions or just normal missions that you find?

@ross: They don't go super deep but the Professor B quests bring up the fact that something fucked up is going on in Mira. That and at some point every non-native Xeno species you get in NLA says they can't actually leave the planet for some reason. Thus why the Ma-non ship seems to take permanent residence in NLA.

I seem to recall a single line of dialog being said either to or by Luxaar about a "possibility space" or something centered on Mira that's keeping everybody there. It's been a while since I saw that scene, but at the time they made it sound like it was linked to the destruction of Earth somehow.

@takayamasama: One cutscene with Luxaar says the Ganglion were dragged to Mira, or they were teleported, or something to the fact that they didn't "follow" the humans there. Yet they still blame the humans for the Ganglion existing on Mira.

I'm guessing the planet is UDO seeing as the chimera, telethia, and cantors all seem to be religious aliens/mutations, just like the Gnosis were in Xenosaga. I think we'll hear that the chimeras are the children of men or something silly like that, and not what the defense system should have been. I have no idea why they brought Telethia back. And they need to explain the cantors and their weird ass parasitic nature better.

Every story sequence in which Skell is referred, replacing it with the word Gear makes the whole game make a hell of a lot more sense. I always preferred Doll to Skell, but even I'm wrong about changing it back, we just need Takahashi to get the rights from Bamco for his Perfect Works project.

All of the Life Points are modeled after Zohars. Lao was approached by a dude in a Testament outfit, Lao will come back as a mysterious cloaked figure working for the higher up BBEG. Lu-Syphe aka Lucifer might just be a wandering God, sorta like chaos, and either becomes an enemy or is truly just looking for knowledge.

My hope for the next game is we go blatant JRPG and deal with Gods just hanging out with large robots. Maybe something to explain why a Gear made out of Dark Matter is important. Who the hell is the Great One? Will the Samaarians show up? Will more Qlurians show up? How many planets will we end up exploring? Will the next game be large areas, or more linear like Xenogears and Xenosaga? Do the other seeds of the future have chimeras or just the White Whale because of plot reasons? Why did Homs, get shoved into Xenoblade Cross lore when they said it wasn't a sequel? What's up with those corrupted things that only really get mentioned once AND THEN NEVER SHOW UP AFTER A TELETHIA FIGHTS THEM? Will Mira continue to get tainted by Dark Matter stuff, or what?

@subliminalkitteh: I've never played any of the other games or the creators works, so all I can do is take stuff as it's presented in game within it's own lore, but I still really like the world and story in the universe they made.

As for some of your questions, don't they say the Whale was unique in it's workings? I remember Elma saying the other Seeds actually had people in stasis, and the whale was the only one that chose the digitized path, due to it's controversy back on Earth. Also I didn't get the impression those thing in Noctilus were corrupted, as much as feral. I just assume they were Mira's equivalent of rabies infected things, and people knew to avoid them. If they do make a proper sequel to X, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still on Mira. There has to be more landmass, and with the whole "nothing can leave the planet" thing still going on, they don't have to make a new planet, etc. I wouldn't mind a game set maybe a year in the future, NLS has been further constructed as an actual city, humanity has some settlements elsewhere, etc, and the main goal is figuring out how the hell humanity still exists.

Also Telethia proper is a bitch to fight....not entirely sure how Im gonna take him down.

@takayamasama: Honestly playing the other games, and having watched the Japanese version of this game when it was leaking before the Japanese release date, the story in this game feels like a Kojima MGS game without the rights to MGS. Did you know that at the end of the game, most of chapter 12, is new-ish to the American version. In Japan the ending the DLC characters never had screen time unless you bought them, and the scene where Elma finds the broken servers, it slow pans up to a Zohar that is connected to the servers, meanwhile that was cut in our version.

As for the escaping the planet, I feel like someone or something, maybe the Samaarians, can freely move out of Mira's field.

For your Xenogears lore, sadly enough, A Rope of Robots/ What Does God Need With A Starship, even though it's a parody site, is the still the best explanation of the plot. As for Xenosaga, you'll need to peruse the wikis, and maybe watch a walk-through. I still have never found a clear concise explanation of that series' plot. Episode II is objectively one of the worst sequels to any game of all time, but Episode III is so very very underrated even if it is a compressed version of what Xenosaga Episodes III-VI would have been.

it certainly did leave a lot of questions left unanswered, felt like the final twist was put there to counter the scientific approach they were sort of going with to recreate humanity, like they were being trolled by some greater godlike entity that is still keeping their mimeosomes alive.

Did they ever explain who the ganglion were fighting at the beginning before the earth was destroyed(unless it was just elma's species trying to protect earth)?

@marz: Not explained, some other alien forms that are left mysterious. It's possible they'll appear in the next one.

Also just went back to the core, and only five Zohars are missing on the outside, so no rogue Life Points to deal with, they are all found in this one. The two destroyed in the story, black, white and whatever the fifth one is that I haven't got the quest for.

Hey, so umm, I haven't seen much discussion on this topic... but what do you think will be the reason for the amnesia that the main character has at the beginning of the game, and is never talked about again except in one Elma H-H.

Is MC the chosen one? An avatar for the obligatory Takahashi Wave Existence? Totally just a lame explanation for silent protag?

@subliminalkitteh: I feel like there's a possiblity the MC might not be human, possibly not even exist outside of their mim. It would explain not having any memories of anything before waking up, because you never existed before that.

Of course we might never ever get any answers to any of these questions.

Finally beat it today, that ending. Interesting how many games that came out last year were so interested in human consciousness.

I am sad they never explored more in depth about what made Mira so weird, since as was pointed out the Ganglion mention being drawn in there, Professor B couldn't escape despite being from like 50 zillion years in the future with crazy tech/knowledge, etc. All of the secrets of the game that are still unabsolved are wrapped up in the strangeness of the planet, from why all the races can talk to each other, to why no one can leave, so how is humanity still alive when they should have died without the database.

Actually an interesting question, assuming the head/wherever the copy of the memories are stored is intact, could they still restore any dead mims where they recovered the bodies to humans/new mims, or are they just screwed without the DB?

I wasn't huge on the story, or the characters surrounding the main plot (some side stuff was a bit better). There were a few interesting plot points though, like the whole cyborg thing, or when they actually talked about the whole deal about who could or couldn't get on the escape crafts from earth. Mostly though I thought the story just didn't do enough to explore the more interesting parts of the setting. It seemed content being your average middleschooler's anime plot. Bleh.

I would have been fine with the ending, if not for that last part. It made me think that this was some kind of LOST-like scenario where they're all in purgatory or whatever.

I'm glad to hear the OP say that they're moving on from this for the next game, as I really don't feel like I'd be interested in seeing them trying to dig the plot out of the corner hole it's in. They'll just end up burying it deeper.

It had some neat ideas that was fun, and I finished it, but I hope they do something different next.