LogFAQs > #967928742

XB3:

Mac: I absolutely understand the "it was pointless" feeling but I think that's a lot of what makes it work thematically. It's part of what Z was saying and Mio refutes the idea that it was all meaningless and doesn't matter in the final battle that even if their lives are fated to disappear and be replaced that they were still real and what they did and felt still mattered. There are some games where I think this kind of resonance between what the player is likely/hoped to feel and the game's narrative is accidental but I think Takahashi knew what he was doing here and it just works *really well*. At least for me.

Z is... complicated. I'm not sure if I like the reveal that he's a concept and not a person. I think it muddies some of his character towards the end there and while it works in bringing the theme together with the ending it doesn't do any favors for him as a character. I was a lot more interested in him before that reveal, for example.

Quinton: I know. I really am going to cry later LOL. I can sympathize with Mac hating the ending precisely because I feel like if the game hadn't struck the right balance there's a good chance I'd be right there with him hating the ending. Even now, a good part of me is upset and sad at the bittersweet ending of the worlds separating after all they went through. You do not build up those relationships and have me so emotionally invested in these guys to tear them apart dammit. ...But that was exactly the message the game had been telling the whole time. That feeling *is* also wishing for the "endless now" and so there's a strong resonance between how the characters are feeling and how I was feeling and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

TRE: I don't think the question of "can Blades have children" is ever answered in 2. The Blade lifecycle, as intended, appeared to be that Blades eventually became Titans which gave birth to more Blades. But Zeke very strongly implies there's a black market for "attractive" humanoid Blades with all that implies and Nia herself is a Flesh Eater Blade which might change things even more.

And yeah, they were just passing by one another. Klaus's experiment split the world in two - the Bionis/Mechonis one and Alrest. But Nia says that that connection also means the two are attracted to one another and so they were on a literal collision course. I don't think it's so much physical as kinda metaphysical (although the imagery at times makes it appear such but I think that's less an actual impact event and more symbolic.) However she also describes the worlds as "plus" and "minus" and so when they intersect/meet one another they'll cancel out and destroy everything in their respective worlds. Now this is me theorizing but it seemed solidly rooted but that's what I'm pretty sure the Annihilation Events are. I had thought of it in my own head as a kind of matter-antimatter reaction kind of phenomena. Anyway, furthering the physics analogies, Nia also states that the only thing that will survive this destruction is a kind of "light" and so they devised Origin as a way to convert all life and data they could into that light so it could survive the destruction and be recreated. The nucleus of Origin has those giant Core Crystals which is almost certainly the storage medium they're using. But since Z hijacked things the worlds are being held together artificially/time was frozen. When the party removes him from the picture and allows time to move forward once again, the worlds continue moving on their paths which we see the results in the ending.

As for the Stinger scene, I think the timeline actually goes more like this:

The scene as shown in the Intro depicts Noah and friends well before the events of the game, minutes before the intersection occurs. But as we know, Z hijacks the process and freezes time. For some reason kid Noah here experiences a glitch in the matrix and for a short time has awareness and can move in the frozen time and "see" Alrest loom large in the sky about to intersect with Bionis.

It's at this point the "Endless Now" begins and Noah/N goes through his countless reincarnations, etc. And of course the events of the game.

When we cutback to the scene post-credits, we see time resume again indicating that what we're seeing is happening after the ending and Origin has succeeded in rebooting Bionis to the state before the Intersection. No one except Noah noticed that glitch before so from everyone else's vantage point everything was seamless. Only then Noah hears the off-seer tune and Mio's version of it which is where I start getting confused myself.