Player vs. Player: Elma & Lao

Thanks to Cart Boy for help with edits, and spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

As the black sheep of my favorite series, Xenoblade X spent most of its history as just a victim of the Wii U’s failure. Considering how few people actually played the game, it couldn’t be seen as much more by the larger Nintendo fanbase, so its diehards made sure to sing its praises whenever possible. And I’m glad they did, cause that made for great preemptive marketing when it finally made its comeback on the Switch! Though, part of said push included celebrating certain aspects and downplaying others. Surprisingly, X’s story and characters were in the latter category, which is unheard of for a series as plot driven as Xenoblade. Having just played and loved it for myself, I think it’s worth examining this cast, spotlighting two of its most memorable faces, and hopefully seeing if Mira’s pioneers deserve their spot in the Xeno multiverse.

X’s premise is simple and inherently exciting, but full of intrigue. Alien armies tear into each other atop Earth, destroying it and forcing its survivors to seek refuge on the enigmatic planet Mira. Beautiful regions await discovery, xenoforms hostile and friendly enter the fold, and humanity races against time to establish a new home in a world that has big plans for them. To start, they prep their home base of New Los Angeles and form the military outfit BLADE, which our subjects play pivotal roles in. Where Elma serves as the unofficial protagonist and a renowned Reclaimer, Lao Huang sticks to the background and pulls his weight as a Mira-trotting Pathfinder. The latter’s way of debuting in a tutorial popup really sells his normalcy, but his regular appearances throughout the chapters imply there’s more to him than that…

For the most part, it’s true that X doesn’t put as much stake in the plot as its contemporaries. With NLA as their hub, players’ self-inserts spend most of their time blazing through the open world in their Skells and tackling its many side quests. Thankfully, it’s through this formula we get some phenomenal worldbuilding! I love hearing all the details and struggles behind Project Exodus, and never has a Xenoblade been this committed to fleshing out its races. My beloved Nopon remain on top, but I’m also partial to the goofy Orphe and their extensive folklore (after Xenoblade 3 homogenized the High Entia, Gormotti, and the like, I started to miss these sorts of oddities). Our BLADEs aren’t exempt from all this, as we soon learn Lao’s family were among the billions left behind on Earth. It’s tragic, but he at least has comrades like Lin—Team Elma’s resident prodigy—to help him cope. Meanwhile, Elma plays a big role in befriending some aliens and fighting off others, namely the genocidal and criminally boring Ganglion.

With combat in mind, let’s discuss X’s strange use of party members. In this game, create-a-character Cross can outshine all others to the point that having anyone else tag along is virtually cosmetic. Their exclusive access to every weapon and skill means it’s easy to put the most broken combo together and watch Mira’s strongest fall in two hits. Sure, Elma’s Full Metal Jaguar class is a decent one that puts her in the upper half of teammates, but there’s really no need to invest any time or gear into buffing her. If you like her dual swords and guns, just run them yourself. Lao fairs even worse, as his Partisan Eagle class’s spear and rifle don’t have a place in the meta. Okay, the latter recently got a great Art, but our subject can’t use it. This is all to encourage recruiting other fans’ Crosses, but I tend to avoid that mechanic in games. X’s resulting emphasis on one character and their use of allies’ traits reminds me of Crisis Core: FFVII, actually. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s weird seeing the Xenoblade with the largest playable cast discourage trying them out.

Partway through the campaign, Lao’s mediocrity ends up not mattering very much, as a sketchy mission puts him out of commission anyway. Couple that with some suspicious behavior, and Elma manages to guess he’s a Ganglion spy before his heel turn. It turns out the loss of his family wounded him deeper than he let on, and his vendetta against the exclusive and exploitative Project Exodus led to him wanting humanity’s rotten remnants wiped out. Besides, part of the interstellar travel included replacing everyone’s organic bodies with robotic ones, so he thinks it’s time they all stopped pretending they’re even alive. He isn’t completely wrong, and I’m surprised Elma withheld this much from Cross and Lin, but fighting inequity by siding with the universe’s least equitable faction is quite the leap. Trashing his stolen Skell makes him admit to that and his chronic depression, spurring Lin to vouch for him and give him a reason to keep going. He even returns the crucial intel he swiped, but not before sneaking a smile that made me think he was betraying the team yet again…

Although X’s main quest took a while to give us more substance than “Ganglion bad,” this confrontation with Lao is one of its best scenes. The Pathfinder’s grievances frame our efforts in a harsher light, which I really appreciate. He’s right to question a system that falsely promised his family’s lives in exchange for his services, and it gets even worse when you meet all the thieves, racists, and serial killers who made the cut instead. It’s no wonder Lao became such a nihilist and set the standard for divorced villains like Jin and N! On the other hand, Elma went through her own share of heartache and adopted a realist’s approach. She fights for humanity and mentors her peers, but isn’t above keeping secrets or giving in to her anger. They both could learn something from Lin’s optimism, choosing to see the best in the few people she has left. And it’s not the worst outlook, because NLA also shows us the good that’s come from our union with the xenoforms. Optional teammate Bozé starts off a bigoted old-timer, but eventually overcomes that and starts offering lessons to his neighbors. The fandom still hates him, but at least Lin’s mindset holds water.

That brings us to the climax of X’s base game, which I really enjoyed! Battling the Ganglion’s ominous Vita Skell and Earth’s grotesque chimeras is exciting and challenging, but main villain Luxaar remains a black hole of charisma. I can sorta respect how committed he is to blasting the Lifehold, and he makes a great target for Lao to plunge his javelin through, but he truly goes out with a whimper. Afterwards, while a decade of cultural osmosis told me Lao would be the final boss, how he gets to that point caught me off guard. He stopped the Ganglion ruler for our sake, only for a dip in the Lifehold’s protoplasm pool to turn him into an uncontrollable monster. The beautiful “So nah, so fern” song contrasts his towering build, creepy shoulder fingers, and fractured mouth, but the worst part is he’s still fully conscious. I like to think this represents him getting swallowed by humanity’s knack for secrets and playing God, so now it’s our job to literally pry him out of it. Funny how we do so after he’s already seen the error of his ways; I guess that’s the price he had to pay to redeem himself. Although stopping him secures our heroes’ future and rolls the credits, it costs the turncoat his life. And Elma is an alien, apparently.

Cart Boy brought an important piece of Elma lore to my attention: she’s a literal xeno-BLADE!

So, it’s about time I admit Elma and Lao are an atypical pair of rivals. They have some unspecified history and fight more than once, but those alone aren’t anything special. Since X’s focus on Cross means there’s less screen time to go around, my argument that the duo actually counts relies on more thematic stuff. For one, the story makes us question whether humanity has a place in this strange universe by pitting us against the toughest xenos around. And yet, our most interesting foe is one of our own, while our greatest ally is a foreigner who deemed us worth protecting. In general, Elma’s competence and intrigue help her stand out next to the series’s other leads, all of which spend their journeys growing and learning. Conversely, I’d say Lao has the best arc in the game! I liked his last-minute acceptance of the Mimeosome bodies he previously detested, equating them to seeds rather than ghosts. And in his chimeran form, he spends his last moments giving us all the valuable info he could pry from Luxaar’s memories. This might not amount to my favorite fictional redemption, but I rooted for it nonetheless.

I’ll need more than that to justify this rivalry, so it’s time to enter tinfoil hat territory! One of my favorite tracks in all of Xenoblade is “Uncontrollable,” which accompanies fights with Tyrants. Its lyrics depict an argument between the male and female vocalists, likely that of a feuding couple. Notably, their talk of both a lost connection and uncertain future can be applied to Mira’s new residents. On top of that, maybe the man and woman’s strife represents that of humans and xenoforms? If so, that would match the human male Lao and xeno female Elma, so I’m a fan of this interpretation. The singers’ sadness and eventual willingness to start over are relevant to both BLADEs, after all. Speaking of guys and gals with dubious relationships, I’m reminded of the ultimate Tyrants Telethia and Pharsis. The former is a “he” and the latter an “Everqueen;” I guess men and women are just constantly at odds on this planet. Okay, my mini-analysis kinda went off the rails, but that’s how it ought to be with this series.

Getting back to the plot, if X’s post-credits stinger is to be believed, Lao survived! The follow-up took a decade to release, but Definitive Edition’s brand-new epilogue finally shows us what destiny has in store for him…he’s dead. Yeah, what we saw in the original game was just the afterlife. This screams of rewrites and abandoned plans, but the talk he has with Alois Bernholt—a missing hero from Earth—is a good one. As ready as the Pathfinder is to reunite with his loved ones, he genuinely regrets what he put Lin through. His betrayal and death really shook her, so he asks Al to keep her going in his stead. I enjoy the new guy and what he brings to the party, but it’s too bad Elma takes a backseat from here on. All we got were bits of her origins and relation to the badass Ares Prime Skell, only for said mech to be more associated with Al and Cross. Unfortunate, but she’s still cool, and now we can officially add her to the “last of their kind” pile.

Voice actress Caitlin Glass keeps returning as Elma for the likes of DLC or an epilogue. It’s about time she made a bigger comeback.

DE might’ve underwhelmed us in terms of Elma content, but another entry picked up the slack. In Xenoblade 2’s attempt to rep as much of the canon as possible, its DLC added our favorite Reclaimer as an optional Blade. This was my first time meeting an X character, and I was so excited to hear “Uncontrollable” in game! But that euphoria quickly turned to despair as she mopped the floor with me over and over again. This superboss taught me elements had more to them than Chain Attack combos, such as Dark Blades’ ability to stop Elma’s Ghost Factory. The obligatory rematch somehow ups the difficulty, but upon beating it, we fully gain access to one of the best Blades in the game. She even brings X’s Overdrive feature and her signature theme to our Unique Monster fights; this all ensured I was dead set on playing her game someday.

Definitive Edition doesn’t add much to Hiroyuki Sawano’s amazing soundtrack, but what we do get matches its previous heights. That’s saying a lot.

If I could delve further into the epilogue, I wanna bring up some of my favorite parts. Void is far from the peak of Xenoblade villainy, but I still appreciated a couple aspects. For one, his backstory as a Klaus-like Conduit researcher saved us from what would’ve been a “concept” villain hat trick (after Z and Alpha, we really needed an actual person). Moreover, his line parading his intelligence, but admitting he doesn’t see the difference between knowing and understanding, is very Xenoblade. The series’s whole ethos encourages people to try and understand others’ viewpoints, so it’s cool how Void has all but the most crucial part of that. Though, let’s be real, the finale’s actual highlight comes when Lao helps us pilot the Prime from beyond the grave. His return is accompanied by an incredible “The key we’ve lost” reprise, which is now my favorite X song! I get why this conclusion and sudden loss of Mira rubbed fans the wrong way, but I’m glad it went out with such a bang.

Moving on from Mira was still a blow, though. The planet hosted incredible continents and creatures, full of mysteries we’ll simply never hear from again. The aforementioned Orphe and Telethia had this whole plot brewing, but apparently the latter was just wiped from existence? So much for both that and the theory everyone ended up on Mira for a reason, I guess. As for Lao, I can’t help but feel he was this close to becoming a fan favorite. The push was there, considering he’s voiced by industry veteran Matt Mercer, headlines some of the best music X has to offer, and was the only non-Team Elma member to get a Smash Spirit. Meanwhile, we can at least be fairly certain the Reclaimer and friends have a bright future. They’d have stayed on Mira if that wasn’t the case, right? How that might coincide with mainline Xenoblade or even Xenosaga is anyone’s guess, but it’s been a long time since X fans were allowed to be this hopeful.

On that ambiguous note, we reach the end of a surprisingly jumbled “Player vs. Player.” I’m always quick to call Xenoblade one of my smoothest and favorite topics to write about, but capturing X with words wasn’t as easy as it is with the others. Flying through breathtaking scenes, toppling behemoths, and getting wrapped up in absurd quests are what make the game special, while its party are mostly fun tour guides. Even so, my two premier series on this site are about characters, so I did what I could with Mira’s two standouts. It’s a good thing Elma and Lao still had plenty of material, but only if I was willing to jump between plot synopses, guest roles in other games, and Sawano glazing. The landscape of Nintendo content creation is about to shift, so I’m very glad I managed to spotlight every Xenoblade beforehand. Mind you, I’ll keep pushing the series whenever I feel like it, but it’s still a nice milestone!