I finished xenoblade 3 and oh my god that might be the worst ending I've ever seen. I'm actually angry. The surface plot collapsed so hard to make room for the emotional themes of the game, but those themes are not good and the plot making absolutely no sense just makes it feel like those messages don't hold up to reality. Further complaints will be spoilers of course.
I'm still unclear on what origin was originally supposed to do? It sounds like, the two worlds of xenoblade were going to collide and all the people on it die. We see this in a scene of the worlds literally colliding. Origin was supposed to "restart the world" after that. Wtf does that mean? Are they basically allowing all life on both worlds to die but they are content with creating life again afterwards? Thats not even a solution. Everybody dies, no one is saved (except the queens somehow).
Anyway, origin's power is somehow activated coalescing the dying peoples fear of being killed by the planet collision and freezes time right then and somehow creates a 3rd world that is a combination of the two in a frozen instant during collision. Somehow restarting origin just harmlessly splits the worlds back apart? How? If you restart origin shouldn't the two planets just immediately collide killing all life? Are these two worlds the restarted worlds that origin somehow makes with space magic power?
The main theme of the game falls completely flat, because the only bad thing about aionios is the perpetual war. There's parts of Aionios during the game that are totally fine and good like the city and the lost colony. Nothing is inherently wrong with living on Aionios. Restarting origin and defeating moebius are unrelated.
So let's talk about the true villain, Z, Wtf. Firstly, he's not really a being at all, just a physical manifestation of human fear (but then also regret for some reason). So then WHY does he make everyone suffer for his amusement? That makes no sense and is the crux of the entire plot. If his goal was to save humans from fear and let them exist in an endless state of contentment, that might make some sense, but then Aionios would be a paradise. Even IF you need people to die to harvest energy to keep the worlds from colliding, you can do that pretty peacefully. The amount of life energy they harvest has nothing to do with how fast they die, only how many get brought to life, since all of them will eventually die anyway. If you didn't erase their memories, they have eternal life effectively, and just have to swap out bodies every 10 years. There was literally no reason for the world of Aionios to end up in the state it is, other than "lol z was bored".
For extra badness, we get the scene were N and M sacrifice themselves to kill Z because apparently he's literally invincible to us and we can do nothing to hurt him making our involvement pointless and M who already regretted all this could have just killed him at any time apparently. Also, how the fuck is M still around? She escaped the flow with the homecoming, only to still exist because she and Mio are the same person, except they aren't. The fact that Noah is trying to beg N to stay, the same N responsible for committing genocide and torturing many people on this planet and perputating this awful pointless cycle of pain and killing because he was sad, it's fucking pathetic. Why do jrpgs want so badly to forgive genocidal maniacs?
All of that was enough to take me out of the experience, but it wasn't what made me mad. What made me mad is that despite being stupid and nonsensical, they STILL give us a sad ending where the good romance was built up throughout the game, quite well, just has to end up as literal starcrossed lovers and be split up for no reason. It makes extra no sense because both planets still exist in the same universe, they were literally hitting each other. and creating explosions instead of the weird black spherical annihilation. These motherfuckers could have just lived happily together on Aionios and still moved forward, just like they were the whole game.
And wtf happens to Aionios natives like the city folk? Do they just get annihilated out of existence?
I remember I was quite angry at the ending of xenoblade 2 but this far and away takes the cake and at least in xenoblade 2 despite having some atrocious writing and pointless sacrifice, it's magically undone at the end and they get a happy ending so I don't have to keep thinking about it.