I've been trying for years to write what it is exactly these games makes me feel. Concisely, without all the lore. Lex let me contribute this small and vulnerable essay to Start Menu's Winter Spectacular, so here’s what I got. The reasons you should play Xenoblade.
I played Xenoblade 1 - 3 this year (not counting an earlier attempt at the first one on 3DS) and they reminded me of how I felt as a teenager looking up fanfic about 90s RPGs years after they were relevant.
I've been thinking a bit more about the actual ideology of the games and that's like a whole proper length essay right there but one of the key things I'd point out is how Keves and Agnes ultimately fight for nothing. They don't fight for land or resources or even the reasons people make up for stealing land through violence (religion, civilization, etc.). It's a centrist fantasy that lets them imagine that we can just chose to stop the cycle of violence.
There's a great essay on Nebula by Innuendo Studios about Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke that feels far too relevant right now, about how there are good and bad things on both sides of that film but that violence is one sides. Eboshi does good things for women and lepers while destroying the forest but if Eboshi stops destroying the forest, there would be peace. If the forest stops resisting her encroachment, then they'll be destroyed. The moral of Ashitaka's character is that he does have to pick a a side. I've been thinking a lot about Brecht's interrogation of the good. Eboshi is good. Whom is she good to?
XC3 gets away with its faux conflict because it's about the Consuls. There's really good anti-capitalist readings of the game that deal with how a lot of division/difference is prescribed on workers by capitalists (the kind of thing the rainbow coalition is all about). There's more teeth to Xenoblade 1 with Zanza instigating the conflict and Egel's humanization, but i think why XC2 hits despite everything else it does is cus there's some capitol H history in the world. It's cycle of violence is not so literalized in the world the way it is in the other games. There's been wars for resources (blades), for land (titans), and murder for those things. This isn't an essay so I don't have any thesis to end on, but like, I hope if I don't write that essay someone else does!
