autumn

writer (derogatory)

  • they/them

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unfortunately, they keep paying me to play games and watch anime

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  • 🧑‍💻 Freelance writer, editor

  • 📰 Columnist @unwinnable

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autumn
@autumn

Two weeks ago I was in a frenzy finishing Future Redeemed. Yesterday morning I was getting yelled at by gamers for posting the most tepid and recurring criticism of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Last night and this morning I was getting emotional revisiting Aionios while doing the added hero quests. Last summer I played some 140 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in less than two months (reviewing it as a big freelance project and very depressed from being laid off). Playing that game without guides and only getting to really talk about it with a roommate unfamiliar with the series while she passed through the living room made it a unique play experience and forced me to focus in on location names and the fauna of environments just to figure out where the heck to find items for collection quests. And then there's the themes. There's a post in my drafts here that still says "nothing really forces you to confront the self like sitting with the ending of a 100 hour JRPG by yourself for two weeks, and therapy." I haven't felt the same nostalgia for Aionios as I have for Bionis and Alrest despite spending the most time and attention in it, but I'm starting to.

Waterfall in Aionios

In May 2022 I was laid off from my staff writing job at WGTC. I took a few weeks off — hiked in Asheville, skanked in DC. I had started lining up work when Nintendo announced a bumped-up release date for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and I got my commission squared away. It was a Friday night a month before launch when the code finally came in, and my friend was throwing a graduation party in Astoria. The G train wasn’t running up there that night, so I only got home around midnight after biking all the way back to Brooklyn. And I decided it would not be totally irresponsible to start a game from a series known for 10 hour tutorials and started playing it. I am, checks notes, 25. I have been writing about games in some professional capacity for 4 years now. I am extremely jaded. But oh my gosh I was so excited I felt like a bit of a dork, a fan girl, etc. The embargo was worded in a way that felt like it was trying to avoid spoiling me while telling me what not to spoil. It didn’t matter too much that I couldn’t speak in detail about half the story. There was already too much I’d have to say with too few words to say everything.

they really made Satorl Marsh a desert and I ate it up

There is an arc to all Xenoblade games I've experienced. A few months ago my friend Ben was still working through XC2 and not yet meshing with the story. I also didn't, but my adoration for XC1 pushed me forward to where I could get hooked, and at this point the lyrical themes of XC2 can tug on heartstrings they didn't in game. "The story hits about three months after you finish the game," I told him. And XC3's soundtrack is undoubtedly responsible for kindling my nostalgia for Aionios over the past year. May I suggest listening to a good rip of the game's area themes with some decent speakers (not your Switch's or my TVs)? These tracks range from fun instrumentation and ambient synth work to sweeping orchestral tracks that are joyful listens to focus in on. Like do you hear this oboe?? Xenoblade does great environmental design, but even better than that is the feeling of place in its soundtracks. Ben did finish XC2 despite all my warnings, by the way. He is now thoroughly Xenopilled.

cliffs and castles at sea

My thoughts on the themes, the tone, the writing, the characters, and all that are much the same as in my review that is written much better than this blog post I promise. But I was also, as I expressed in the aforementioned tweet, dismayed by some of the fanservice thrown in at the end. And what was I to do with that? XC3 ultimately became a massively popular JRPG, and I think part of it was cordoning off its fan service to end credits sequences and putting all the deep sci fi lore bs in a DLC epilogue (which does manage to complicate original characters to XC3 while bringing it all down to Earth, ifykwim). I decided for the review to let the 100 hours of community building and mutual aid speak over the conclusions themes I may have disagreed with, and I'm glad 'cus I still feel like I'm trying to come down on the conclusion one way or another. And I knew holding off for Future Redeemed would be the best move because, as it certainly did, it recasts the greater battles and themes of the games and essentially reverses my biggest gripe with how that game ends. (But here we are talking around spoilers again. I'll surely write about this in detail one day when I'm getting paid to.)

there's a lot of waterfalls in this game huh

The only other thing I should add since I am writing about working in this hellish industry is that Polygon is great, paid me well, and was a joy to work with.



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