But with the City finally revealed, I’d say that enough of Xenoblade 3 has now been unveiled for me to finally be able to talk about the game’s content from a culture war/cultural and moral perspective. Yep, it’s finally time for my Based Morality Score for Xenoblade 3, and boy, is there a lot to go over here.
On Fedi in particular, Xenoblade 3 has caught a lot of flak for essentially being the first Xenoblade to truly surrender to the SJWs and significantly alter its content to conform to the GloboHomo Judeo-Leftist standards. This is the downside of the Xenoblade franchise seeing its popularity grow so much after Xenoblade 2 came out – and predictably, despite Xenoblade 2 being so popular, Xenoblade 3 in various ways feels like a rejection of its predecessor. That said, other people have passionately argued that this game actually boasts some of the best, most moral and most wholesome themes and content in the entire series, as well as being surprisingly spicy and countercultural in various regards. As for my own take? I’d have to conclude (and sorry if this comes across like the boring, safe answer) that both sides of this argument are largely correct. Xenoblade 3 for me is the quintessential +2/-2 game on the Based Morality chart.
Since I like to get the bad news out of the way first, let me start by going over the chief objections to Xenoblade 3, and to what extent they’re legitimate. Probably the three most common criticisms I see are the presence of a “non-binary” character in Juniper; the overall Blacking of the Xenoblade franchise, represented above all by the presence of Taion and the widespread race-mixing; and the dramatic nerf to fanservice and a general unwillingness to let female characters truly show skin.
Starting with Juniper, this one is truly weird – before Xenoblade 3 even came out, the threat of “non-binary” representation seemed very real, due to one of the Heroes being referred to by singular they pronouns – but that Hero was Valdi the prodigy mechanic, not Juniper! When Juniper was first revealed, she was referred to using female pronouns in English-language posts, and looked like another quality Xenoblade Waifu – in this case a green-haired catgirl tomboy. Valdi by contrast arguably did look somewhat androgynous – though without the Twitter trannylator using they/them pronouns for him, I think pretty much everyone would correctly have assumed he was just a somewhat youthful-looking Machina boy.
Then the actual game came out, and it turned out that Juniper was a fucking enby! Or, was she? Note that the character NEVER talks about her “gender identity”, ever, let alone has it play a part in either of her Hero Quests. The entire “Juniper is non-binary” thing basically amounts to the main party referring to the character using they/them pronouns a couple of times, mainly right after a brief battle with Juniper and some of her soldiers, during which they obviously never stopped to ask for her “preferred pronouns”. For what’s supposedly the first notable “non-binary” Nintendo character, they sure don’t play up that fact, let alone celebrate or affirm bullshit genderblob identities.
But IS Juniper even an “enby” at all? It does seem like that’s what the wokealizers were going for (and apparently her voice actress is one, which is completely irrelevant unless you for example also now consider every movie character ever played by Ellen Page to be a tranny, including the famously pregnant Juno), but they clearly just had NO material to work with here. And even the datamining that apparently classified Juno as neither female nor male has since been proven to classify multiple 100% female characters the same way, so that ultimately means nothing. It seems we might just be looking at some predictably shitty and agenda-driven localization here, rather than the game itself being corrupted at the source.
It should also be noted that lore-wise, Juniper being “non-binary” makes no sense (and yes, those scare quotes are here to stay). As far as I understand that nonsense, “enbies” reject the gender binary altogether, insisting that they neither identify as male or female – but Aionios soldiers only have the most rudimentary understanding of what males and females even are! Basically, they are aware that men and women have different private parts, and refer to male and female characters using proper pronouns – but they have no concept of WHY men and women are different, or why this should matter (note that all Kevesi soldiers use technology in the form of power frames to enhance their strength, while both male and female Agnians tend to naturally boast super-human strength). This means that Juniper shouldn’t even have enough of an idea of what a woman is for her to reject her female identity in the first place, ESPECIALLY prior to being freed from the Flame Clock! For you to seriously buy into her “non-binary” identity, you have to believe that the Ouroboros (who lack a basic understanding of gender differences) were able to magically intuit that a character they didn’t even know (and who has even LESS of an understanding of the two sexes) explicitly rejects a gender binary that should be meaningless to her.
Hilariously, even if you DO buy into Juniper being “non-binary”, she really doesn’t come across like the kind of representation the LGBTP can applaud: Her first Hero Quest revolves around her being a Failure of a colony commander who has essentially given up on living, and who is just waiting around for her Flame Clock to empty out and for her life to end – essentially, she’s about to join the 41%. Also, her Class is seriously flawed, and she’s generally considered to be one of the worst, if not the single Worst hero in terms of combat utility. Not exactly owning the chuds there...
