Responding to a hater (regarding Saga III)
Appetiser before the main course, sirs and madams?
SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE XENOSAGA TRILOGY. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. Oh, and… P5R 3rd Semester spoilers, I guess…
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EDITORS NOTE (27/3/23): My Xeno Scaling account got suspended for reasons unknown to me (…thanks Musk, very cool…), so the hyperlink mentioning Cross will now take the form of an Imgur album. Take any Twitter links that redirect to my suspended account with a grain of salt while I get to rounding up what I can. Thanks in advance.
With my retrospective on my playthrough of the Xenosaga Trilogy back in July of 2021 (and respective diatribe on the state of the third games’ narrative) just over 18 months in the making (with reconciliation of notes still ongoing, might I add), I think it would be prudent (at the implicit request of… certain individuals) to give some insight into what I think of a small selection of the subject matter of these games. Off the cuff, if you will.
As you could probably infer by the sub-title of this article, I’m going to try and be brief about some of this series narrative conceits and execution (or lack thereof), like a wheel-by cart of starters at a fancy restaurant. Our family don’t enjoy our Pizza without some garlic bread, and others don’t eat their Oreo’s without milk (I don’t mind them, personally, but anyway).
Now, as much as I want to be brief about today’s topic, I do think it’s worth it to do some more housekeeping before we start, specifically that the individual that I’m ‘responding’ to has A) been in my mentions before (with a ‘rebuke’ of a previous assertion of mine (one that I could bellyache about for hours on end)), and as a result B) has, by extension, requested the subject of today’s article. Cross, the individual I was attempting to discuss similar said subject matter with before her adjudicate intervened, was last seen accusing my defence of Gaignun Jr’s character arc as ‘ablest’ before blocking me. No nuance, no clarification, no fulfilment of my request for further debate, just… ‘Jr is ablest’… nice.
I’m also going to take the request to answer what my umbrage with Saga III is in very broad strokes, as the higher detail contained within my notes will remain reserved for the video to come. If anything, it should make writing this here article that much easier. Starting with…
Saga III’s Gameplay ‘improvements’ - 1 step forward, two steps back.
For as much as I’ve taken a hatchet to many facets of this game, it’s not *entirely* without merit, particularly when compared to it’s predecessors in the same trilogy.
The first thing that does come to my mind is the Quality of Life improvements in the hand-off from II to III, when it comes to TP/SP gains of inactive party members. It should be obvious why this is an improvement, as it means that any characters who are not your top 3 favourites to build around are no longer sitting in the back gathering dust over the course of a playthrough. I remember quite vividly getting far more mileage out of switching during actual combat encounters and bosses this time around, which coupled with the returning boost turn system tied to a shared resource felt quite fluent and at least remotely fun to use.
There was also a valiant attempt to re-balance individual characters this time around, as to not make one individual character (Jr. in I, Jr/MOMO in II) feel like an all-dominating beneficiary of the games mechanics. Ziggy is the closest to being an outright beneficiary of these mechanics, but that might just be because Choke’s break multiplier was that high, and, even in spite of the fact that I couldn’t quite replicate the same results (for reasons that I’ll get into shortly), Enel has speedrun this game so many times, you’d swear Duke Cubeman XIV was effectively powderized (…technically that’s a Xenoblade 2 Crit joke, but you get what I mean).
Oh, and buff skills (Quick, Offensive etc.) are now de-facto AOEs, which for better or worse, makes this game feel similar to Persona/Megami Tensei buffs in game flow in application. Sadly, this is about where my praise of the gameplay systems in Saga III ends.
The first problem that I take with the execution of Saga III’s gameplay systems is how, in tandem with the alleged ‘red herring’ of EX Skills independent from the main skill trees, everyone in the game feels like they hit like a wet flannel. Don’t misunderstand me, I have seen ‘higher damage’ builds, but that means tunnel-visioning one specific route on the tree, which leads to this alleged new power you find lying around meaning nothing (I assure you, it happened to me), leading to a sort of ‘Orange Listerine Ring’ situation (fans of Zero Punctuation will get that one). Couple this with the way that break gauges are handled (something I’m willing to go into more detail on in the video), and the otherwise limited decision making when it comes to boost timings here, and it turns most boss fights (read: Yuriev and Gnosis Winnicott) from sluggish battles of attrition, to mindless RNG checks that can 100-0 you if you don’t have Safety/Best Ally taped down (which makes your MP costs look like a socialist energy bill in the process).
Something that I’ve neglected to mention is also the E.S combat (basically the giant mecha of this game), and it’s… not terribly involved at the best of times (I’ve even gone on record to call it mindless). Bulk builds and the equipment that allows you to double guard healing completely trivialises any mid-late game boss fights, as it’s the only thing that can survive the sixth hit of Richard’s big f**k-off laser cannon, and simultaneously slows fights like E.S Dan (Voyager) to a crawl (no joke, that fight took me north of an hour to defeat, because of all the guard spam when it came to the 1v1, due to his gimmick of changing weakness spreads).
“B…but Weakness scanner disc! BlunZ used the Weakness scanner disc!”
Yeah yeah, again, scrounge around for the Orange Listerine Ring!
All of the above is the Tl;dr of my thoughts on the combat of Saga III (more pending soon). Now we get to…
…Retcons, retcons everywhere.
I’ve already left most of the evidence of offending parties in the notes for the video, so I’m not going to linger too much on it, so the best way to go about this is to ask ‘who’ these offenders are. In order of certain priority, that list contains:
Shion Uzuki (and her related mental faculties).
Luis Virgil (for the events of the chapel being fake).
Juli & Joachim Mizrahi’s (basically a way of implicating the ENTIRE time travel plotline)
Gaignun Sr. (Nigredo) (What happened to the U-DO immunity?).
And to a lesser extent…
MOMO Mizrahi (by implication, as nothing is said by her when facing Yuriev down).
Margulis (get your war wound story straight, shellhead!).
Among others.
The ones I want to highlight today are the Mizrahi’s and a bit of Shion (her relationship with Kevin Winnicott will be the second half of that sh*t sundae).
Firstly, the Mizrahi’s have been a crook of crap ever since the start of III (even Juli’s place in II is questionable, as she precludes accountability for a cover-up regarding Old Miltia, but more on that another time). The main reason I say this? Because there alleged ‘divorce’ has been a lie propagated for the longest time.
We start with the known ‘date’ of the 3rd Descent Operation of the Miltian Conflict, T.C 4753 (working back from Shion Uzuki’s current canonical age of 23, back down to 8). What we need to keep in mind is that there are two sources for what happened to Sakura Mizrahi (the terminally ill daughter of Juli and Joachim, and the mannequin that you saw Joachim working on during the events of the time-travel plotline). One (the Saga III Database, bastion of air tight articles that turned out to be! /sarc) claims that an experiment at the hands of Dmitri Yuriev (likely alluding to another one of the U-DO experiments) resulted in the death of Sakura. Another, however, in Episodes 1 and 2 (and by extension, Orbo Ab Chao), argue that Sakura found a way out of bed (be it by the Encephalon) and she was able to save Albedo from himself, leading to his current day insanity. Notice anything yet? I won’t hold it against you if you don’t.
…Figured it out yet?
Right, OK, so… didn’t the 3rd descent operation (as proven by early scenes in Saga II of the aftermath of Miltia) happen before Sakura was supposed to be dead? Because Albedo isn’t insane until (again) Sakura died (hence, his obsession with the Kirschwassers, either that, or Albedo being tagged by U-DO is the reason that Sakura needed to save him). Sure enough, during the forming of the Spiritual Link atop that one Miltian Building (which was more than likely after or as a result of the 3rd Descent Operation, as proven by chaos and Cannan being in the state at the time), Albedo gets caught by U-DO, and goes insane (as proven by his monologue in the Song of Nephilim in Saga I). And the kicker to all of this? Margulis gets his war wound from Jin from these exact events! Yes, *THAT* war wound, that is seen nowhere in the retcon/time travel plotline of the first disc of Saga III! Go search for it!
Oh, and just so we’re covering all bases: it’s entirely impossible that chaos and Cannan took multiple trips into Old Miltia after the fact, because chaos (and those that briefed Cannan) literally comments on the aerial security above the Miltian state before arriving.
So, with all that said: why is Joachim trying to recreate the daughter that isn’t even dead (at that point in time, anyhow)? Shouldn’t he have a line of communication with the ‘divorced’ Juli, who has custody of Sakura? Well that can’t be right on account of Joachim being dead (something that is at least remotely consistent with the KOS-MOS Encephalon Dive in Saga I).
Now that we know that the events of the retcon cannot be trusted, let’s touch a bit on Shion Uzuki’s mental faculties:
To start, I find it funny how her fanboys (as mentioned with Cross earlier), seem to think that any criticism of her character is either some form of ‘ableism’, or think that you ‘don’t understand mental illness’ (and no, I’m not referring to any articles against her you might be thinking of. The lack of substantiation is discredit-by-association).
Here, let me show you something:
(And yes, these were scribbled on notes)
“the idea that there is on singular uniform way to respond to trauma is honestly really ignorant and closed minded”
Putting aside the blatant strawman argument… huh, funny, it’s almost like I gave you guys examples around a week prior to this conversation of four or five different characters that do her trope of trauma better. Not *ONCE* did I say they were the same:
Now that we’ve given the walking cognitive dissonance something to chew on, how about we discuss her behaviour in relation to the Gnosis summonings she didn’t actually commit (as mentioned by chaos, and several other detailed factors that I probably don’t have much time to get into). In fact…
*[sigh…]*
Jr’s arc was about ‘escapism’, away from the U-DO experiments.
Yoshizawa’s arc was about ‘escapism’, one that Maruki basically gift-wrapped her because of his own trauma.
Kirito’s arc was about ‘escapism’ through VR, only for him to end up with several arcs worth of crippling survivors guilt.
NONE of them behaved as lowly as Shion did. You want to know why?
First thing to note is Shion’s job in a logic-based field. Now before you ask, I’m not saying that everyone in that field is some unfeeling robot (hell, that was kind of the cost of narrative admission at the start of I), but when you consider her head deep in her technology of monitoring KOS-MOS, not only would she have a glut of ‘other coping mechanisms’ (read: helping Realian divisions), but a lot of the trauma before her (see mostly the Gnosis attacks) is (or was) impersonal (not to say that there’s no personal trauma, I’m aware of the other U-DO experiments within Labyrinthos regarding Aoi, and Kevin ‘dying’). Why do I bring up any of this? Because the Gnosis attacks ‘became’ personal, when it had no impetus to do so.
As alluded to in the Mizrahi’s segment, if any part of the time travel was true, wouldn’t that just mean that everyone on Old Miltia ended up dead? Sellers should be dead on account of being shot in both legs, Jin should be dead because he left his E.S in the city itself for some dumb reason* (of which for this reason, Shion should also have been caught in any visual blast, and be dead for it)… need I continue?
*EDITORS NOTE (scene 216):
How the hell did I mistake the ‘younger’ Jin for chaos? Either I’ve found yet more incriminating evidence, or The Daily Beagle was right about temporalism and time travel!
The point I’m trying to make is that Shion has had two 50+ hour games to catch onto any obvious plot BS thanks to what she’s been able to deduct before (again, her exp. at VECTOR Industries). And based on the ‘tabloids’ that Jin offhandedly implies are plot viable, all it would take was one journalist in *either* of the big cities (assuming everyone, including Shion, hadn’t died in the attacks on Miltia) to ask her ‘hey, you look like that one little girl who was located multiple times within Labyrinthos / ID’d as Suou’s daughter at the time of the attacks, do you care to comment?’. Just. Once. And then it’d either come rushing back, or she’d calmly deny it. And no, ‘rtg’, “Deep Memory” is not an argument for this reason, atop the idea that this is somehow more traumatic and less incriminating to in-universe media classes than the ex-boyfriend in Kevin Winnicott she ‘lost’ (but that will be reserved for the video).
Oh, and 2nd memo to ‘rtg’: Tiamat didn’t spurn Abel’s Ark into action, and apparently neither did Almadel from AMY. If everything ‘past Abel’s Ark appearing in Miltia’ was the lie, and not the Gnosis summonings itself, wouldn’t that mean that the younger Jin ‘saving Shion’ was also BS?
Last thing: when it comes to how smart (or dumb) the plot had to make Shion in order to facilitate this, I find myself reminded by the video Overly Sarcastic Productions made on ‘Idiot Plots’, of which the 3-pronged distinction she makes (Ball, Plot, Setting) implicates… a bit of everything when it comes to Saga III’s titular retcon. I recommend giving it a watch:
With that, I’ve put everything I wanted to say for now in enough detail, and yet saved enough for the Retrospective in question. On that bombshell, I’ll see you all next time:
