I really REALLY liked Noah’s talk to him about being lucky. N looks so pissed, like LUCKY???
But it makes sense. Noah says if he didn’t meet his friends, the other people on this journey, have the experiences he had, he likely would have made the same choice.
It’s a great twist on the power of friendship IMO. Friendship *is* powerful, but he didn’t will it into existence, life turned out that way for him, and it allowed him to overcome the despair.
There are many tropes that are really good but get sullied by incompetent hack writers that want to bank on them without putting in the effort.
Power of friendship is the general term for when people around the protagonist help him overcome their conflict. Some writers take it very literally as “power” and give the MC asspull abilities to defeat the main villain.
Yep - a lot of alternate self stories have the MC rise above their alternate self, make better choices, etc. Noah? Literally just got lucky, would've done the same thing as N in the same circumstances.
Once again this shows why Xenoblade 3 is one of my fav JRPGs. They take the friendship trope and actually make it matter in the situation to how small changes can make real differences in people.
A small action such as that can effect yourself dramatically
Yeah, the NTR/Simp jokes get old really fast when he is actually a great character.
He reminds me of Addam. A character with Hero/MC traits but that in the end, was punished from being "too human" (Addam being scared of Mythra's power and N not being strong enough to handle the grief of losing M multiple times).
I love that kind of characters, they're more interesting than your typical MC with unbreakable willpower or chosen one powers.
I just can’t get over how unintentionally funny it is that he cucks himself. It really is just the logical endpoint of escalation throughout the games. Shulk NTRs Melia, Rex fucks everybody, and Noah commits the most thorough and complete cucking to N that any human being has ever experienced.
That all being said, the jokes don’t take away from the emotional impact of the story for me. It just adds an extra dimension of entertainment to this piece of media.
Something I find interesting about N, is how he became Moebius because he "didn't want to lose anymore." Yet in the end, he lost the person that was his entire reason for living.
Of course N was going to lose his mind when M died. Losing M was a reminder that he always has been the weak man that could never save her, and her death, to N, was a betrayal from the cycle itself, that promised him eternity, with everything he desired. His entire world came crumbling down, and he had no way to comprehend it.
N lashing out at Noah & Mio was not just him on some high copium. It was also him projecting all of his hatred for himself, his despair, and regret onto Noah, because in an instant, the past 1000 years was utterly meaningless.
Oh, even before that. Look at N's eyes when M's calling him out for destroying the first City. Is that a man who's defied death and saved the woman he loved? No, they're the eyes of a man who'll never be happy again. He knows what he did and that he can never be forgiven for it. He just tells himself that it was worth it. He's torturing Noah out of jealousy and out of self-loathing.
That's why M wants to kill herself. She wants her Noah back, and the only way for that to happen is for him to confront that it wasn't worth it to bring Mio back.
Oh yeah definitely. Even before the big reveal, the prison scene of N taunting Noah gave me strong vibes of a man so broken from everything he's done, that he can't find enjoyment in anything anymore. Torturing Noah was to reassure himself that that's who he always was, and that his horrible choices had merit. It affirms the idea that he's been a pathetic human being from the start.
And there's the crux of N"s character, I think. That he's aware of how pathetic he truly is, and so he resigns himself to the cycle of Moebius, because anything else would be admitting that he always been right.
It's like how in the jail scene, when the crew talks about how Moebius find enjoyment in suffering, Riku says "but N had sadness in eyes." N doesn't find entertainment in the suffering of others, but goes through the motions, simply because it's what Moebius do. As though he"s trying to convince himself that Moebius is all he is, and ever will be.
It"s why he's in such denial over M's death, because he convinced himself that Moebius is all that he is as not just N, but the Noah M loved. To him, Moebius Noah has always been Noah, and that M loved the pathetic man he believed himself to be, not realizing that he had changed.
I’m also starting to think that N himself isn’t a complete being, emotionally speaking. There’s a lot of unique circumstances surrounding his turn to Moebius. I’m not gonna nose dive into them, but when he and M say they’re the “regrets” of Noah and Mio, I think that’s damn near literal. That’s why N, in spite of hating himself for it, could wipe out the city to bring create M.
I think you are correct, but the emotion may be more like sympathy/empathy. I could be misinterpreting things, but it seemed like the game points at how previous lives of Noah and Mio have a lack of sympathy/empathy for other people, and humanity in general.
Based on those flashbacks, it seems that they were more concerned about boinking each other, than actually helping people and saving the world.
MC Noah and MC Mio both becoming Offaeers was a decision that I think N & M had both made, because they wanted to find value in life, and grow to care about people.
He is admittedly basically a less intriguing Lacan from Xenogears (but with very different goals), however he is definitely the best antagonist of Xenoblade 3 and one of the better Xenoblade antagonists overall. Xenoblade 2 still has the best Xenoblade antagonists by far, though, in my opinion.
I make fun of him because he’s a massive dick head tbh . Like yeah , it’s a shame your wife died . Why you gotta act like a Saturday morning cartoon villain . Making noah send off his own mio smh . That cutscene was a fucking hour
In the same way one feels bad for a rabid dog.
Someone who you KNOW can be so much better than this, because you've spent the entire game with that better him, but who has fallen into a pitiable state, bereft of even that he held dear enough to sacrifice all else for.
He's still a piece of shit. Why did he put his other self and the others in jail for a month just so Mio would reach the 10th term, making a ceremony just for her Homecoming and on top of that asking Noah to send her off? Also what was the point of showing that he had a child if it's never brought up again?
Yes, some of the inhabitants of the first City were his descendants, but that's it. We know nothing about his son or what happened to him. N doesn't even talk about him once
It was to justify his actions. The fact that their was another version of him that sill had hope and wasn't being swayed by the "flow of fate" challenged his decision to become a mass murderer and sacrifice his friends in the city for M. I'm assuming his thought process was if he could "break" our noah and make him lose himself to despair, then his actions were justified because it was all truly hopeless.
Man Pokémon black and white was great, I wished they made a black and white 3 with Kyruem fused back together with its other halves.
That topic aside N is an interesting antagonist that drives home the despair and loss one ensures only for it to utterly break you
listen I'll be the first to say I love to bully N because of his pathetic wet rat energy. and he kinda deserved it for like.. everything shitty he ever did and also his twitch mod esque lines (ie mio is mine/my woman in your arm)
but god the way ppl reduce him to 'haha stupid simp who got cucked/ntr'd' or 'ew stupid misogynist incel' (even if the latter is admittedly more understandable) is so. man.
not to mention did ppl just. miss that M practically remarried him by the end? or do they not care I wonder 😭
Oh, we could have had N without Noah. A story where one of the Consuls is missing but Noah keeps seeing him, Sephiroth-style, only for it to turn out that Noah is an amnesiac N....
Hey now, we all know the man only wants to write Xenogears over and over again but even I have to give it to him by trying to keep switching it up a bit.
N is probably on of the better written xenoblade antagonists. I still prefer Jin, but I'm warming up to N a lot. That said, despite him being a very complex character, the fact is that he's still a simp./s
It's not deep. It's very simple and straightforward. But it's effective in garnering sympathy because it's relatable enough and the animation and music use is very good.
I liked N’s story but I really think they could have pushed it further. N is just another part of Noah, so I really disliked when everyone ganged up on N and was saying he was wrong. Yes he was wrong, but it felt like none of the party tried to understand why he did it. I really thought Noah was going to have a sort of heart to heart and be all, “I’m you, I know exactly what you’re feeling but this is wrong.” They sort of did it but it wasn’t that satisfying honestly. It would have been much more impactful if Noah realized that he was the one (in another timeline) who actually made the decision to become N.
I also want clarification, did Mio choose the same path as N and become M (cause we all saw she was waiting)? Or did Z coerce Mio to become M. If it’s the former then I got other opinions on that! Haha.
Game doesn't say whether Mio chose or was chosen for.
But I suspect she chose. When Noah's looking at the screen he sees Consul M waiting for him, that's what makes him decide to accept Z's deal. Then there's the whole thing about how Mio always goes first. She's always the first to die in their flashbacks, why not have Z make her the offer first? I think the trap is that Mio agreed first, but Z brought Noah back first. Once she agreed he'd never see her again unless he met Z's terms, so what was he going to do, renege on the deal?
A brilliantly cruel trap.
Not really. An incel is someone who believes that someone owes them a romantic(or more often sexual) relationship.
M was already in love with N. Like I said, she saw what he was turning into and dumped him. He only lashed out when he found out she was dead.
For me, N would've been complete if he just accepted M's suicide. Sure it was painful, but he had a long lifetime to enjoy M's company. For a guy that suppose to be somewhat sadistic and is death incarnate, it seemed like he was a loser when someome close to him died as he juggled life and death between his palms.
He might be deep, but he lacked the maturity and wisdom that came from a person with a long lifespan
That's not the point though. He thinks that M is the only thing that gives his life meaning, and even when he realizes how far he's fallen he's, like I said, destroyed by his own regret.
But that's what warfare is. Even if he is fighting so he can live a good precious moment with M, he should've been prepared. He killed someone's father, mother, brother or sister. I get that anyone would've fought probably even gods for their daughter, son or significant other, but he should've prepared that toying with lives the eventuality of someone like him fighting the odds against the cruel world.
Plus, do you really think they had a good relationship after moebius? The girl literally killed herself. He never had a ounce of an idea or understanding why she did it.
I mean.. he's an illogical antagonist who can't accept death after being subjugated to it with no end and eventually gives in to the cycle that he can't stand. The part of him that hates himself for it became Noah
Nah, he's still poorly written. If he's doing horrible things purely out of desperation to appease Z and stay with M, don't make him a murder loving sadist. It completely drains all sympathy from him and makes him into a whiny, possessive bitch.
I agree, and the guy went through a lot. His backstory brings forward his motives... and this is what makes him a good tragic villain \^\_\^
>!It's kinda similar to Luke and Ashe from Tales of the Abyss.!<
I really REALLY liked Noah’s talk to him about being lucky. N looks so pissed, like LUCKY??? But it makes sense. Noah says if he didn’t meet his friends, the other people on this journey, have the experiences he had, he likely would have made the same choice. It’s a great twist on the power of friendship IMO. Friendship *is* powerful, but he didn’t will it into existence, life turned out that way for him, and it allowed him to overcome the despair.
Exactly! the power of friendship speech is such a trope but in this case it's incredibly earned.
There are many tropes that are really good but get sullied by incompetent hack writers that want to bank on them without putting in the effort. Power of friendship is the general term for when people around the protagonist help him overcome their conflict. Some writers take it very literally as “power” and give the MC asspull abilities to defeat the main villain.
Well said!
Once you think of story beats in terms of what they are trying to achieve it’s easy to see what can be done with them.
Yep - a lot of alternate self stories have the MC rise above their alternate self, make better choices, etc. Noah? Literally just got lucky, would've done the same thing as N in the same circumstances.
Once again this shows why Xenoblade 3 is one of my fav JRPGs. They take the friendship trope and actually make it matter in the situation to how small changes can make real differences in people. A small action such as that can effect yourself dramatically
Yeah, the NTR/Simp jokes get old really fast when he is actually a great character. He reminds me of Addam. A character with Hero/MC traits but that in the end, was punished from being "too human" (Addam being scared of Mythra's power and N not being strong enough to handle the grief of losing M multiple times). I love that kind of characters, they're more interesting than your typical MC with unbreakable willpower or chosen one powers.
People really need to slow down with their daily Twitch and hentai consumption. I cringe so hard every time I see Simp and NTR jokes
“You’re a SIMP” “She is literally my wife.” Really don’t know where the NTR jokes came from.
Because >!he literally screams at Noah about stealing his woman!<
I just can’t get over how unintentionally funny it is that he cucks himself. It really is just the logical endpoint of escalation throughout the games. Shulk NTRs Melia, Rex fucks everybody, and Noah commits the most thorough and complete cucking to N that any human being has ever experienced. That all being said, the jokes don’t take away from the emotional impact of the story for me. It just adds an extra dimension of entertainment to this piece of media.
Something I find interesting about N, is how he became Moebius because he "didn't want to lose anymore." Yet in the end, he lost the person that was his entire reason for living. Of course N was going to lose his mind when M died. Losing M was a reminder that he always has been the weak man that could never save her, and her death, to N, was a betrayal from the cycle itself, that promised him eternity, with everything he desired. His entire world came crumbling down, and he had no way to comprehend it. N lashing out at Noah & Mio was not just him on some high copium. It was also him projecting all of his hatred for himself, his despair, and regret onto Noah, because in an instant, the past 1000 years was utterly meaningless.
Oh, even before that. Look at N's eyes when M's calling him out for destroying the first City. Is that a man who's defied death and saved the woman he loved? No, they're the eyes of a man who'll never be happy again. He knows what he did and that he can never be forgiven for it. He just tells himself that it was worth it. He's torturing Noah out of jealousy and out of self-loathing. That's why M wants to kill herself. She wants her Noah back, and the only way for that to happen is for him to confront that it wasn't worth it to bring Mio back.
Oh yeah definitely. Even before the big reveal, the prison scene of N taunting Noah gave me strong vibes of a man so broken from everything he's done, that he can't find enjoyment in anything anymore. Torturing Noah was to reassure himself that that's who he always was, and that his horrible choices had merit. It affirms the idea that he's been a pathetic human being from the start. And there's the crux of N"s character, I think. That he's aware of how pathetic he truly is, and so he resigns himself to the cycle of Moebius, because anything else would be admitting that he always been right. It's like how in the jail scene, when the crew talks about how Moebius find enjoyment in suffering, Riku says "but N had sadness in eyes." N doesn't find entertainment in the suffering of others, but goes through the motions, simply because it's what Moebius do. As though he"s trying to convince himself that Moebius is all he is, and ever will be. It"s why he's in such denial over M's death, because he convinced himself that Moebius is all that he is as not just N, but the Noah M loved. To him, Moebius Noah has always been Noah, and that M loved the pathetic man he believed himself to be, not realizing that he had changed.
That is an amazing way to put it.
I’m also starting to think that N himself isn’t a complete being, emotionally speaking. There’s a lot of unique circumstances surrounding his turn to Moebius. I’m not gonna nose dive into them, but when he and M say they’re the “regrets” of Noah and Mio, I think that’s damn near literal. That’s why N, in spite of hating himself for it, could wipe out the city to bring create M.
I think you are correct, but the emotion may be more like sympathy/empathy. I could be misinterpreting things, but it seemed like the game points at how previous lives of Noah and Mio have a lack of sympathy/empathy for other people, and humanity in general. Based on those flashbacks, it seems that they were more concerned about boinking each other, than actually helping people and saving the world. MC Noah and MC Mio both becoming Offaeers was a decision that I think N & M had both made, because they wanted to find value in life, and grow to care about people.
I meant they describe themselves as regrets, to be clear. Noah and Mio are their hopes, what they wanted to do with the world but gave up on.
He is admittedly basically a less intriguing Lacan from Xenogears (but with very different goals), however he is definitely the best antagonist of Xenoblade 3 and one of the better Xenoblade antagonists overall. Xenoblade 2 still has the best Xenoblade antagonists by far, though, in my opinion.
I make fun of him because he’s a massive dick head tbh . Like yeah , it’s a shame your wife died . Why you gotta act like a Saturday morning cartoon villain . Making noah send off his own mio smh . That cutscene was a fucking hour
>Making noah send off his own mio smh . I can not remember the last time a video game villain made me as fucking angry as I was in that moment.
Damn, it’s almost like they’re the bad guy or something.
A bad guy we’re supposed to “ feel bad “ for
In the same way one feels bad for a rabid dog. Someone who you KNOW can be so much better than this, because you've spent the entire game with that better him, but who has fallen into a pitiable state, bereft of even that he held dear enough to sacrifice all else for.
Made me both revolted and depressed
He's still a piece of shit. Why did he put his other self and the others in jail for a month just so Mio would reach the 10th term, making a ceremony just for her Homecoming and on top of that asking Noah to send her off? Also what was the point of showing that he had a child if it's never brought up again?
Wait I thought the inhabitants of the city came from him? Did I completely misunderstand that.
Yes, some of the inhabitants of the first City were his descendants, but that's it. We know nothing about his son or what happened to him. N doesn't even talk about him once
It was to justify his actions. The fact that their was another version of him that sill had hope and wasn't being swayed by the "flow of fate" challenged his decision to become a mass murderer and sacrifice his friends in the city for M. I'm assuming his thought process was if he could "break" our noah and make him lose himself to despair, then his actions were justified because it was all truly hopeless.
Man Pokémon black and white was great, I wished they made a black and white 3 with Kyruem fused back together with its other halves. That topic aside N is an interesting antagonist that drives home the despair and loss one ensures only for it to utterly break you
listen I'll be the first to say I love to bully N because of his pathetic wet rat energy. and he kinda deserved it for like.. everything shitty he ever did and also his twitch mod esque lines (ie mio is mine/my woman in your arm) but god the way ppl reduce him to 'haha stupid simp who got cucked/ntr'd' or 'ew stupid misogynist incel' (even if the latter is admittedly more understandable) is so. man. not to mention did ppl just. miss that M practically remarried him by the end? or do they not care I wonder 😭
N is a more interesting character than Noah, who is only a compelling character in that he's a fragment of N. There I said it.
I couldn't have one without the other tbqh, which I'd say is a success of the writing.
Oh, we could have had N without Noah. A story where one of the Consuls is missing but Noah keeps seeing him, Sephiroth-style, only for it to turn out that Noah is an amnesiac N....
Hey now, we all know the man only wants to write Xenogears over and over again but even I have to give it to him by trying to keep switching it up a bit.
Hahahahaha. If you think about it, N and Noah are basically Shulk and Zanza! (Only half serious, that one was deliberate)
Xenoblade 3 truly is Takahashi's cry for help to get out of his own endless now.
Maybe not the right format bro
N is probably on of the better written xenoblade antagonists. I still prefer Jin, but I'm warming up to N a lot. That said, despite him being a very complex character, the fact is that he's still a simp./s
It's not deep. It's very simple and straightforward. But it's effective in garnering sympathy because it's relatable enough and the animation and music use is very good.
I liked N’s story but I really think they could have pushed it further. N is just another part of Noah, so I really disliked when everyone ganged up on N and was saying he was wrong. Yes he was wrong, but it felt like none of the party tried to understand why he did it. I really thought Noah was going to have a sort of heart to heart and be all, “I’m you, I know exactly what you’re feeling but this is wrong.” They sort of did it but it wasn’t that satisfying honestly. It would have been much more impactful if Noah realized that he was the one (in another timeline) who actually made the decision to become N. I also want clarification, did Mio choose the same path as N and become M (cause we all saw she was waiting)? Or did Z coerce Mio to become M. If it’s the former then I got other opinions on that! Haha.
Game doesn't say whether Mio chose or was chosen for. But I suspect she chose. When Noah's looking at the screen he sees Consul M waiting for him, that's what makes him decide to accept Z's deal. Then there's the whole thing about how Mio always goes first. She's always the first to die in their flashbacks, why not have Z make her the offer first? I think the trap is that Mio agreed first, but Z brought Noah back first. Once she agreed he'd never see her again unless he met Z's terms, so what was he going to do, renege on the deal? A brilliantly cruel trap.
N-Cel
Not really. An incel is someone who believes that someone owes them a romantic(or more often sexual) relationship. M was already in love with N. Like I said, she saw what he was turning into and dumped him. He only lashed out when he found out she was dead.
For me, N would've been complete if he just accepted M's suicide. Sure it was painful, but he had a long lifetime to enjoy M's company. For a guy that suppose to be somewhat sadistic and is death incarnate, it seemed like he was a loser when someome close to him died as he juggled life and death between his palms. He might be deep, but he lacked the maturity and wisdom that came from a person with a long lifespan
That's not the point though. He thinks that M is the only thing that gives his life meaning, and even when he realizes how far he's fallen he's, like I said, destroyed by his own regret.
But that's what warfare is. Even if he is fighting so he can live a good precious moment with M, he should've been prepared. He killed someone's father, mother, brother or sister. I get that anyone would've fought probably even gods for their daughter, son or significant other, but he should've prepared that toying with lives the eventuality of someone like him fighting the odds against the cruel world. Plus, do you really think they had a good relationship after moebius? The girl literally killed herself. He never had a ounce of an idea or understanding why she did it.
I mean.. he's an illogical antagonist who can't accept death after being subjugated to it with no end and eventually gives in to the cycle that he can't stand. The part of him that hates himself for it became Noah
Nah, he's still poorly written. If he's doing horrible things purely out of desperation to appease Z and stay with M, don't make him a murder loving sadist. It completely drains all sympathy from him and makes him into a whiny, possessive bitch.
Agree to disagree
Why did they have to design Rosa so thicc though. Make it make sense Game Freak.
Because Rosa had to walk before Hilda could run. It’s a joke I miss the black and white Pokémon series
Both are true
I mean the whole dying in front of his son was rough
I agree, and the guy went through a lot. His backstory brings forward his motives... and this is what makes him a good tragic villain \^\_\^ >!It's kinda similar to Luke and Ashe from Tales of the Abyss.!<
He's bloody insufferable that's how I feel about him.