Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Part 1: The Young Salvager in the Skies of Alrest
6I have published this video on April 6th, 2022. That is 10 year past the original US release date of the first Xenoblade Chronicles.
I feel like that was the date that set the entire Xenoblade franchise’s future in stone, and part of that future has included this very sequel.
As such, I will be uploading videos of my progress through not only this game, but also the Nintendo Switch remake of the first one.
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So here's the start of this game's story:
It takes place in a world known as Alrest, and is marked by its massive Cloud Sea. Many continent-sized beasts, known as Titans, live and swim through these clouds. They're so massive that they can carry entire communities of life on and sometimes even inside of their bodies.
Back to the Cloud Sea, it has a similar consistency to water. People can swim and dive into it like water.
And much like a real sea of water, the Cloud Sea contains countless numbers of treasure for professional divers to find. These divers are known as Salvagers.
This story starts off with focusing on one of them, a young, 15-year old boy named Rex. For someone of his age, he was quite skilled at his craft of finding useful things from the Cloud Sea to trade and sell for a profit.
Rex has his own little house, but not only that, this house was perched on the back of another, smaller, but still quite large Titan, Azurda, whom Rex endearingly calls his "Gramps".
Rex has just recently fished for a heavy tank in the Cloud Sea. He pried it open, and it turns out it was hiding an aggressive King Crustip.
Rex didn't get any treasure, this time, but with the help of his handmade Broadsword, he could now prepare for his lunch!
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All you need to do here is just kill the crab enemy that stands in front of you.
If you approach your target and stand still, you'll do a 3-hit Auto-Attack, with the next hit dealing more damage than the last. You can also go for some cheese and use the Control Stick to constantly cancel your Auto-Attack animation back to its first hit.
You also have use of Arts, or Driver Arts. As you do Auto-Attacks, a Driver Art's gauge will increase. When it gets full, you can use that Driver Art, but then you'll have to rely on your Auto-Attacks again if you want to use that same Art, again.
And what exactly is a Driver? I’ll explain that soon enough.
Rex's first Art is the Anchor Shot. When he shoots it out and tugs on it, HP Potions will come out of the target for you to use for healing. I suggest NEVER taking this out of his sword kit.
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So after defeating the King Crustip, Rex cooks it and eats it for lunch, just as planned.
During his lunch, Rex narrates about the world of Alrest and what it has, much like what I've already explained.
Beyond that, Alrest's entire existence is owed to a divine being, a god known as The Architect. Long ago, many people used to live alongside him at the very top of the World Tree, the core center of Alrest.
At the peak of the World Tree was said to lie the perfect paradise known as Elysium. This did not last, however, as for some reason, everyone was ejected from Elysium and forced to live in Alrest.
When it felt like the survivors of this fallout couldn't last much longer, The Architect gave them his blessings and summoned the Titans to give them new land to live on: Themselves.
But it seems that even that wasn't going to last, because now... the Titans, themselves, were slowly dying out. Rex and Gramps had just witness one such Titan falling into the Cloud Sea below, never to be seen, again. Anyone that may have lived there has likely evacuated by now, fortunately, off to live on another Titan most likely.
But more and more Titans were dying out by the day. Eventually, there wouldn't be any valid land to live on anymore... What would happen to the people of Alrest, then...? This was slowly starting to cause tensions and potential wars between certain nations desperately trying to survive against this inevitability...
The myths and legends regarding the World Tree, Elysium, and The Architect, himself. Did they really all exist as they have to make this possible? That's something Rex hopefully gets the answers to, one day...
In the meantime, Rex was finished with his salvaging for the day, so he decided it was time to take a trip to the Argentum Trade Guild to sell the haul he was able to get before that nasty crab creature.
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the story of how one day out of a young man’s work life evolved into a massive adventure of hardships, friendships, trust, and love, all alongside discovering the deepest myths of his world…