Characters That Break the Mold and Phenomenal Voice Work
On its face Xenoblade Chronicles falls into many tropes of the JRPG genre, with characters like the stalwart hero and mascot. However, across Xenoblade’s 60-80 hour run time, the characters grow tremendously and show real depth, even subverting tropes to a degree. Whether this is the truth behind Shulk’s existence, or the hotheaded character Reyn that has a much softer side that shows the more you get to know him. Each character, and their relationship with other characters, are expanded upon by a heart-to-heart system. As characters’ relationships grow by battling together, or completing quests together, you can view special scenes between them revealing pieces of backstory and personality. The main story has a ton of development for each character, but there are numerous heart-to-hearts that expand greatly on the characters for anyone who wants to know more.
The other way that adds onto this is that Xenoblade Chronicles has some pretty exceptional voice work across the board that really adds emotion and personality to the characters, especially with the main leads. The main character Shulk in particular has some really strong voice work that represents his anger and emotion at key points in the story. Interestingly, for the North American version of the game Nintendo kept the European localization in, along with the European voice actors. This surprisingly worked wonders, as the character’s accents seem to fit them and the world perfectly, something that many fans agree on. This is why Xenoblade Chronicles 2 once again gives its characters British and European accents, as it’s almost become a thing with the series at this point.