Trivia / Xenoblade Chronicles 2

• Acting for Two:
  • Shino Shimoji and Skye Bennett both voice Pyra, Mythra, and Pneuma. Justified, since they are all technically different personalities occupying the same body.
  • Several voice actors also provided additional voices, but aren't listed under Additional Voices in the credits. For example, Al Weaver plays two sidequest characters^note A Tantalese miner in Wulfric's sidequest, and a Urayan in Floren's sidequest, and Skye Bennett plays three sidequest characters (Astelle^NoteZeke's cousin who plays a prominent role in KOS-MOS's blade quest, Misimisi^NoteThe Nopon mineral appraiser who plays a prominent role in Agate's blade quest, and Omulette^NoteThe Tirkin princess who plays a prominent role in Finch's blade quest). Additionally, both of them voice Nopon in the "This Year's Heropon" Challenge Battle (Yamama and Satsu^note one of Tatsu's siblings, respectively). Catrin Mai-Huw also voices Mefimefi in that same battle.
  • Jules de Jongh voices Brighid, Finch, and Boreas.
  • Laila Pyne voices Patroka, Herald, and Agate.
  • Eric Meyers voices Sever, Cole, and Tatsu.
  • Teresa Gallagher voices both Azami and Queen Raqura.
  • Naomi MacDonald voices both Sheba and Obrona.
  • Clare Corbett voices both Floren and Electra.
  • Jessica Preddy voices both Vale and Zenobia.
  • Kerry Shale voices both Perceval and Cressidus.
  • Caitlin Thorburn voices Nim, KOS-MOS, and T-elos.
  • Todd Kramer voices both Roc and Mikhail.
  • Adam Howden voices the Tantalese Soldiers^note As verified by Chuggaaconroy reaching out to him; according to Chugga, whether Howden voiced the soldiers was apparently a rumored matter of debate until then as well as both the Architect/Professor Klaus and Shulk. Considering what was established about Shulk in the original Xenoblade Chronicles 1, this is justified.
  • In the Japanese version, Keiji Hirai voices both Dughall and Perdido, and Saori Hayami voices both Haze and Lora. In Torna - The Golden Country the two of them have a number of lengthy conversations with each other.
• Acting in the Dark: Enforced in the English dub according to Skye Bennett, the voice of Pyra, who claims the actors weren’t given either voice direction or the proper context for the scenes. This is a significant part of the issues fans have with regards to the game's questionable VA work, alongside that they weren't able to do retakes if they felt they delivered a line poorly.
• Ascended Fanon: Pneuma was never officially the name of the combined form of Mythra and Pyra. They had no official name until they appeared as a Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate under that name.
• Billing Displacement:
  • In the end credits, Aegaeon is listed with the Rare Blades (and near the end) despite being a Legendary Blade with a small amount of story importance.
  • While Jin has been stated to be the protagonist of the Torna DLC, Lora is billed first, being his Driver. This seems to just be a formality as Drivers are always listed before their Blades, and also reflects the fact that Lora is usually better to start with in gameplay due to her Driver Combo potential.
• Breakthrough Hit: The other half of Monolithsoft's big break. While XB1 was the first game of theirs post-Squaresoft to get real critical reception and praise, XB2 is the one that sold like gangbusters and proved Monolith could make "real" hits.
• Colbert Bump: Pyra and Mythra being announced as playable fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gave a boost of publicity for this game, to the point that the stock in Japan completely sold out after the reveal.
• Creator-Driven Successor: While the Xenoblade Chronicles series as a whole serves as one to Monolith Soft's past franchises and is technically related as part of a Thematic Series, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is essentially a cross-company remake of Part V of Perfect Works, aka Xenogears.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: While all of the game's characters are done by actors residing in the UK (both British natives and American expats), Elma remains an exception, with the Texas-based Caitlin Glass reprising her role.
• Descended Creator: According to Skye Bennett, Padraig and the Ardainian soldiers are voiced by one of the game's dub voice directors (listed as Matt Roberts and Jimmy Livingstone, the latter of whom is also mentioned in the credits as "Other Voices").
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • In the Japanese version, Shigeru Chiba is one of the voice directors as well as the voice of Azurda/Gramps.
  • In the English version, Jimmy Livingstone is a member of the "Additional Voices" and was one of the voice directors of the game. According to Skye Bennett, he provided the voice of the Ardainian Soldiers, but this has never been officially confirmed.
• Dummied Out: According to the videos in this playlist, The party member blades have unused voice lines for certain blade arts, and even field actions. (Jumping, searching, falling)
• Fake American: Much, though not all, of the English voice cast for many of the American accented characters in the game, as comes with using a large pool of voice talent based in Britain.
  • One such actress is Skye Bennett, the English voice of Pyra, Mythra, and Pneuma, despite being born from an American family^*Though she was born and raised in London, she normally has a British accent that she hides while voicing her characters. Her natural accent can be heard on other characters she voices such as Misimisi and Astelle.
  • Arina Ii, voice of Poppi and Monopon, is an interesting case: she was raised in Japan but went to an international school where she learned to speak American English, and lives in London as of the game's release.
  • Freddie Fox, the English voice of the expansion pass blade Corvin, is also another actor who hides his British accent behind an American one while voicing him.
  • Kerry Shale, the English voice of both Perceval and Cressidus, is a Canadian actor based in England, and puts on a Big the Cat-like voice for Cressidus.
• The Other Darrin:
  • While KOS-MOS retains her Japanese voice actress, Mariko Suzuki, neither Bridget Hoffman (I, III), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (II), or Luci Christian (anime) return to voice her in English. She is instead voiced by Caitlin Thorburn.
  • Caitlin Thorburn also voices T-elos instead of Bridget Hoffman.
  • Tatsu is not played by Chris Cason, but by Eric Meyers.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The wide array of stories and designs of the rare blades was done because most of the game was outsourced to other development studios due to Monolith being severely understaffed. Monolith would receive the parts back for editing and piecing together. According to Monolith, the reason most of the rare blades are women is because they only gave the outside contractors minimal descriptions of what they wanted, so the outside character designers usually chose to create hot girls on their own.
• Refitted for Sequel: More like refitted for DLC expansion, but a lot more backstory involving the Aegis War five centuries ago was originally conceived early on in development, only to be put aside due to budget and time constraints. When Nintendo signed off on some DLC content, this cut backstory was expanded upon and made into a new playable story campaign, big enough to warrant a separate physical release.
• Role Reprise:
  • Mariko Suzuki returns to voice KOS-MOS and T-elos.
  • Shintaro Asanuma (Japanese) and Adam Howden (English) returns to voice Klaus and Shulk.
  • In the Expansion Pack, Fiora returns with Carina Reeves (English) and Eri Nakao (Japanese) voicing her.
  • Lastly, Elma returns with Caitlin Glass (English), surprisingly enough^*Xenoblade Chronicles X was dubbed in America with numerous high-profile voice actors already well-known for their anime and gaming dub work as opposed to the primarily British and low-profile (by comparison) cast of this game and the first one, making Elma's case a unique one especially considering KOS-MOS didn't get any of her previous American voice actors, and Houko Kuwashima (Japanese).
• Sequel Gap: Ignoring Xenoblade Chronicles X, there's a seven-year gap between this and the original 2010 release of Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
• Troubled Production: According to Tetsuya Takahashi in an interview the developers had struggles and some of their team were moved over to work on other projects like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, explaining the bugs and memory leaks the game previously had before they managed to fix it later on through patches, as well as the heavy reliance on guest artists to create rare blades.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: There have been many theories as to how common certain rare blades can be, with various possible factors other than the outright stated luck stat and not-mentioned-but-still-obvious booster items, as well as how many rare blades have already been pulled so far. Some people suggested that releasing unwanted rare blades would increase the likelihood of getting a different rare one. Once the game was datamined, it seems that a number of theories were indeed true and false. ^NoteAmong the factors not commonly assumed by players are the five different templates for each blades' frequency that's set upon starting the game and the presence of "pity" blades that are given to the player when through enough dud draws.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A developer interview states that the game was originally conceptualized with the Blades being giant Kaiju who resembled Ultraman but that it was too difficult to implement and thus scrapped in favor of the Blades being the same size as their Drivers.
  • According to an interview, the original ending would've been an "Inception-style" where, rather than see Pyra and Mythra return, the player would see Rex's core crystal glow and then the game would end. However, they decided to give a clearer sense of closure and a happier note.
    • In the final game are transcripts associated with Pyra and Mythra's unvoiced lines in the final cutscene in the game. There are two sets, one in which Pyra/Mythra say "Hello, Rex" and one where Pyra/Mythra introduce themselves. The presence of both types of subtitles implies there was an alternate ending planned where Pyra and Mythra return but have lost their memories.
  • Torna ~ The Golden Country was intended to be a chapter in the main game between chapters 7 and 8. However, after realizing how expansive the story of Torna was, they decided to use the DLC to tell the story instead.
  • Zeke was originally planned to be more slender and wield a katana, similar to Citan Uzuki, but this was decided against due to redundancies with Jin. An unused palette swap would have given him Citan's colors.
• Word of Saint Paul: In an interview with Gayming magazine, David Menkin (Malos' english voice actor) has stated that he interprets the relationship between Jin and Malos as a gay one.

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