I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I CAN'T SEE YOU.

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Mega64: May 23, 2008; I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

Before we begin, I do my first hack to change our name and take advantage of some extra space. Normally we only get ten characters, but with the magic of XCXGecko (spoilers) I can expand that to twenty.

It's all I do for now, but I'm sure I'll be abusing it heavily by the end...

Was there every any doubt?

https://mp4.mega64.net/xcx/u003/002.mp4

No fall damage in this game. Our bodies are made of strong stuff, apparently!

By taking the leap, there's an obvious structure to grab our interest.

Here's a tiny camp with a random BLADE soldier. Some characters you can actually talk to, while others like this NPC will automatically pop up some text.

He's just telling us what Elma already said, that the indigens down here are a bit nasty for our levels and are best avoided. Sounds like a good plan to me!

We're collecting a bunch of these weird collectibles, so might as well learn more about them!

A lot of these are basically "thing like on Earth but different". Like, what if a mosquito was a giant ball of hairy mouths (Ball Mosquito)? What about a cranberry full of jelly (Cranjelly)? A burdock that tastes like a strawberry (Strawlenny)? Or a golden fish that tastes like a sardine (Golden Sardine)? I'll summarize the ones I come across as I come across them.

We also pick up a Mining Probe from this broken-down vehicle. We'll put that to use later though.

It's not that far a walk from here to our destination. Getting up there, on the other hand...

Collectibles can be pretty much anywhere, including simply floating on top of the ocean.

I end up finding a few more while exploring. First is the Lacey Potato, which is bitter and is used to supplement other foods with protein. I also pick up an Ajira Melon, a nutritious and tasteless melon with a black ring. Then there's the Starlight Apple, a black apple that glows due to the seed within.

My mind's blown that so many of these have pictures and little bios associated with them.

Weather's dynamic, so it starts raining on us again.

I eventually swim to a tiny outcropping near where we're supposed to go.

Elma is way in the distance. It seems being in hibernation hasn't slowed down the powerful swimming prowess of Dash Rendar Jr.!

I assume this is the way to climb up, but nope, it's too steep to even Skyrim-jump up.

There is always another way, though. Moving to the right a bit we'll eventually find a place among these crystal structures to climb up, and despite looking like decoration these are actually designed to let you travel up them to get to your destination.

It's a really clever feeling, that you're getting away with something you're not supposed to do. Little wonder that Nintendo brought them in to help with Breath of the Wild, as Monolith Soft excels in building worlds that are fun to explore. Before BotW, this game was probably my favorite one to explore. It's only when I ran out of things to explore that I stopped playing the first time...

I finally learn how to zoom out, which kinda sucks for screenshots but, trust me, helps out immensely with jumping compared to how close the camera defaults to your character. Fortunately there's no gaps to fall through, so it's more annoying than frustrating to navigate this area.

Also you can jump, and you have a really powerful and impressive jump, moreso if you jump while sprinting. If nothing else, this is a game that knows how to make jumping feel cool.

You can actually walk up that back wall to get up to the next "level" of these crystals, which lead you close to your destination.

At first I thought I needed to make a leap of faith here to reach the other side.

I fell off before I could realize how wrong I was.

Instead, there's another route that we can jump from, and we conveniently end up right in front of our destination! How about that?

This giant city is just a chunk of a space ship. Still a pretty impressive chunk, though.

Elma blathers on for a bit until...

Grexes? And they're riled.

We've got another miniboss battle to take on.

There's...so much to go over, but I guess I'll do a brief summary of combat. Let's just focus on stuff that's relevant to us.

Right now, we have three techs.

Assault Hammer does damage, and if the enemy is Staggered, this will inflict Topple. This is the base combo of the early Xenoblade games, as it will stun the enemy and let you do some extra fun stuff. Our character cannot Stagger a foe, but Elma can, and she will usually opt to do so early to let us set up Topple.

Next is Flame Grenade. It deals thermal damage, inflicts a status effect called Blaze, and if targeting a Toppled enemy, boosts damage dealt.

Finally, Chrome Armor simply buffs one character's Physical Resistance.

Soul Voices are kinda weird, and I don't fully understand them, but basically the idea is that you fulfill some objectives in combat, some given by your allies sometimes, and you will trigger a button prompt. Nail the timing, and you'll shout and activate extra effects like buffs, healing, extra damage, that sort of thing.

I'll likely go into more detail on that later once it's worth knowing about. For now, all we care about is hitting that B button when it pops up.

Oh, I guess I have a fourth combat art now. Slit Edge is a simple damage tech, but it'll do increased damage if you use it on the side of an enemy. Yep, positioning is also a big deal for combat down the line, so we'll have to worry about aggro and all that nonsense.

https://mp4.mega64.net/xcx/u003/062.mp4

Anyway we send the last of these things flying twenty feet into the air before it dies.

You can tell Dash Rendar Jr. is already getting tired of Elma's "why can't we all get along" nonsense.

Really tired of it.

Some new armor in that grex's guts.

There's an option to disable showing headgear, which I've got on for now. I didn't see an option in this menu to enable them, so I think it has to be done in Settings.

The Worn Survival Shirt looks exactly like the Prototype Shirt, so I'm showing us wearing Elma's armor instead. We're too low-level for it right now, sadly, so the Survival Shirt will have to do.

On the Wii U gamepad, there's an option to execute a variety of emotes. I'll try my best to use them at the most inopportune times.

Anyway, instead of taking the actual entrance, we have to spend an extra thirty seconds taking an elevator to a slightly different entrance so we can have a slightly cooler cutscene at the end of this update.

It's a nice view, alright.

I want to go in at morning though so I decide to kill time exploring some more.

I find a Keppo Carrot, which is an eight-pronged carrot that is basically an edible version of Russian Roulette. There's also a Stretching Locust, which is a locust that can't jump, and an Amidresian Tomato, which is a really watery tomato.

There aren't just insects and food items, though! We also find some debris from the White Whale, like the L-002 Fuel Tanks that propelled the White Whale when it still flew, and the Centrifugal Beam Generator which created gravity in a zero-gravity environment.

Otherwise, some more breathtaking views, as usual.

We also discover a lake.

Getting back to the West Gate, we fight some bats or something, I don't know. A lot of the indigens around here won't aggro around us, but these do. Their funeral.

I get a nice set of Dual Guns that I cannot use, as generally your character is limited to one specific gun type (in our case, assault rifles) and one melee weapon type (a single knife).

We take the elevator again and this time enjoy the view from early morning. If you can avoid being eaten, this seems like a really chill planet to relax on.

But for now, let's end the prologue by entering the city.

Video: New Los Angeles

The first thing to catch the eye is that giant tower showing "60%" on it.

For a giant beached spaceship, anyway.

This is our hub for all of the game. It's a pretty large place in itself, and we'll be spending a lot of time just exploring the city we'll soon call home.

After this, the voice that narrated the intro video jumps in again.