Trivia / Xenoblade Chronicles 3

• Acting for Two:
  • Characters with evil duplicates — Noah, Mio, Melia, and Nia — share voice actors with their doubles (N, M, and the fake Queens). This is taken further in Melia's and Nia's cases, as the fake Queens also use the same models as the real ones in most instances, only with the masks added on, although the fake Melia also has a separate model with her SkeleBot 9000 face underneath the mask.
  • In the Japanese audio, the Nopons Sunny and Cheerio are voiced by Taion and Eunie's voice actors, while Paroro is voiced by Sena's. Likewise, the City couple Jake and Tessa are voiced by Lanz and Ino's voice actors respectively.
  • The Nopon Archsage is voiced by Akio Ōtsuka in Japanese, who also voices Big Bad Z, and Adam Howden in English, who voices Secret Character Shulk with a combination of his voice lines from Future Redeemed and a few new ones.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • While the designs of the protagonists for Xenoblade Chronicles 1 were generally well-regarded, they received some criticism for being unexpressive, owing to the hardware of the original Wii at the time resulting in rather flat character models, resulting in a change of style for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which were chosen specifically to correct the expressivity issues of 1, but which proved to be divisive in their own right, with many accusing them of being too "anime" along with plenty of arguments over whether certain outfits were too immodest or otherwise weird/ugly and thus hard to take seriously. 3 brings 2's designer Masatsugu Saito back, but this time the characters are deliberately given more realistic proportions in the style of 1 and outfits that aren't as out-there, while still being distinctive in their own ways, which Tetsuya Takahashi has stated was intentional for the sake of avoiding making it hard to take the story seriously.
  • A related complaint was that the optional Blades, which were designed by a variety of different guest artists who were given completely free reign, were frequently criticized for looking very out-there to downright Unintentional Uncanny Valley due to the clash of different art styles. It got to the point that the developers openly admitted to wishing they provided more concrete direction to the guest artists in 2, and sure enough the various optional Heroes of this game are designed to have appearances and costumes that are more consistent with one another and the characters around them.
• Blooper:
  • At the end of the Melia’s Hero Quest, the members of the party from the original game and Future Connected make brief appearances via flashback. A Windows mouse cursor can be seen when Nene appears.
  • Gameplay related: For the first month after release, Manana's cooking, which provides the party with various buffs, did nothing. The first post-launch update rectified this.
• Casting Gag: This isn't the first time that Noah has attempted to kill a queen. This was even lampshaded by the former when he streamed his playthrough of Xenoblade 3.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Jenna Coleman is back as Melia, now the Queen of Keves, after gaining worldwide fame as Clara Oswald in Doctor Who. Specifically, she voices both the real Melia and her robotic fake seen for the first half of the game.
  • Z is voiced by Harry Lloyd, best known for playing Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones.
• Children Voicing Children: A majority of the child characters (including the younger versions of the Kevesi trio) are played by teen actors. Notably, child actor Mack-Keith Roach voices Valdi, who is in his 6th term (roughly 15 years old).
• Content Leak:
  • In June of 2021, Jenna Coleman let it slip during an interview with Din's Meteorite that she was doing work on another Xenoblade game. When the clip resurfaced in August of the same year, Fanbyte corroborated the existence of the new game, adding that it was slated for release in 2022 and that it would be set in the futures of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
  • For a while, the closed captions of the release date trailer refered to the Queen of Keves as "Melia", although it later was corrected to "Queen".
  • The official English infographic previewing the recruitable Heroes, originally included and later removed the very first recruited hero: Silvercoat Ethel.
  • Some retailers broke the street date and gave out copies on July 20th, a full nine days before release. A few days later, the entire game was dumped on the internet, and spoilers for the entire game were let loose.
  • A render of Masha was datamined from the version 1.2.0 update, four months before she was released.
• Creator-Driven Successor: In classic Tetsuya Takahashi tradition, while the Xenoblade franchise as a whole is one for Xenogears and to a lesser extent Xenosaga, this game incorporates a great deal of overt plot elements from said games, and in more depth than Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which was also a very Broad Strokes remake of Xenogears.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Riku and Valdi are voiced in the Japanese dub by Sayaka Senbongi and Yuu Kobayashi, respectively.
• Demand Overload: When pre-orders for the special edition went live on the Nintendo store, the amount of traffic caused it to crash the website, leading to the store being under maintenance several times with long queues for buyers. Eventually Nintendo decided to do another round just because of the technical problems, which led to the same thing happening again.
• Development Gag: Noah shares his name with Project Noah, the Working Title of Xenogears.
• Dummied Out: Party member data, Chain Attack art (albeit placeholders), and weapon icons exist for Joran and Nimue, indicating that they were at one point Heroes. Chain Attack art for the Agnus characters in their military uniforms are also present, suggesting that Chain Attacks were going to be introduced earlier in the story.
• Fake American: As with the previous games, the English dub is entirely UK-based, but like XC2 features a handful of characters with American Accents, though again like in XC2 some, such as Sena, are voiced by American actors living in the UK. This trope is very noticeable with some characters such as Alexandria, who constantly suffers from Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping.
• Fake Australian: The British Pippa Bennett-Warner voices the Australian-accented Monica in the English dub.
• Playing Against Type: Megumi Han is often typecast as either Genki Girls or young boys, but in this game, she's the voice of Eunie, who is incredibly rude and vulgar.
• Promoted Fanboy: Louise Stewart, voice of Shania, admitted to being a huge Xenoblade fan and was ecstatic to be cast in the game.
• Prop Recycling: In Xenoblade Chronicles X, Elma, Lin, and Rook find Tatsu in a bin full of potatoes. The model for these potatoes are reused in the cutscenes where Riku and Manana search through the supply crates at Alfeto valley and where the Tirkins run off with the group's food.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Juniper is listed in the code as nonbinary^note Male characters are given a gender value of "0" and female characters are "1", but Juniper is listed as "2", in a manner similar to Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Roc and uses they/them pronouns. Their voice actor in the English dub, Lilly Hart, is also nonbinary.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • As far back as Xenogears, Tetsuya Takahashi had been wanting to make a game that was a Distant Sequel in a series of titles that were set across a timeline of sorts, such as Xenogears having a sequel set centuries after it. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the first time he has been able to use this idea in any way to do so, with the game being set somewhat after the previous titles.
  • Due to who one of the founders is revealed to be in Future Redeemed, Shania's Traitor plotline comes across as a version of one of the earliest drafts of Xenoblade 1's plotlines, in which Reyn was supposed to betray Shulk, in a way that made more sense than said draft.
• Release Date Change: When Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was originally announced in February 2022, it had a target release month of September 2022. Two months later, it was given a revised release date of July 29, 2022; a very rare instance of a video game being pushed up instead of delayed. The original September release was swapped with Splatoon 3.
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: In the English dub, Agnians who appear in flashbacks have the same voice actor as their older selves. This is notable since Kevesi characters have younger VAs in flashbacks.
• Shrug of God: After many fans were left confused by the game's Ambiguous Ending and how the processes of Aionios and Origin function, Tetsuya Takahashi would go on in the Aionios Moments art book to address these questions... by saying that he can't provide any answers to them, because it would go beyond the scope of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's story, which he doesn't want to do until the next game's release.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Data in the game suggests Mwamba, Joran, and Nimue were considered for Hero characters, as evidenced by the three having file names and icons in the same general storage as the other Hero units. Mwamba is the only one with more than just some data and icons, likely on account of being a Guest-Star Party Member during Chapter 1. Shania appears in the official artbook under the "Heroes" section, indicating that she was also meant to be a Hero at one point.
  • Early concept art (one such example here) indicates that Eunie was originally going to have studded leather boots and a leather biker's jacket that more closely resembled that of the Lost Numbers. Other art indicates that her lime-green jacket was originally intended to be bright yellow. Likewise, Taion was going to have orange-colored socks to match his scarf and jacket, but they ended up as gray in the game. Lanz's tank top shirt was planned to be blue rather than black, while Sena would have worn a blue zip-up jacket and white leggings instead of a cropped vest and black leggings. The scabbard of Noah's unsheathed Lucky Seven was at one point dual-wielded as a second sword instead of worn on his arm as a gauntlet. Dirk, M, and N would have worn capes just like the rest of Moebius, and Joran was at one point conceived of as a thin rather than chubby.
  • Juniper's concept art shows them having ether lines going up their neck◊ in addition to the Core Crystal in their shoulder, suggesting that they were originally going to have stronger Blade attributes. Juniper doesn’t have the ether lines in the actual game.
  • Concept art for Mio's Ouroboros form reveals an unused prototype design which would have retained much more humanoid features. That design would be reused as the Soloist's Cowl costume set for Fiora in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Definitive Edition.
  • Unused concept art for Mio depicts her with a very different Core Crystal, more specifically one based off of Pneuma. While the game ultimately leaves her ancestry ambiguous, it is all but stated that she is the daughter of Nia, with Rex as the most commonly speculated other parent. This concept art suggests that at some point during development the plan was for her to have some connection to Pyra or Mythra, either a familial one or that she'd act as their avatar like Na'el was for Alpha.
  • Concept art of Moebius O and P show their faces under their masks, which were never revealed in-game.
• You Look Familiar: Some of the voice actors from previous installments return to do entirely new roles for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. For the Japanese dub in particular:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Sharla is now Monica.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Azurda is now Gray, Dromarch is now Y, Bana is now Z and the Nopon Archsage, Agate is now Ethel, Gorg is now Isurd, Perun is now Alexandria, Nim is now Ashera, and Finch is now Fiona.
  • Both Xenoblade games: Xord and Vandham are now Guernica Vandham. In English, XC2's Vandham (Simon Thorp) also plays Guernica Vandham.
  • Xenosaga: Mary Godwin is now Juniper.
  • In the English dub, Shulk is now the Nopon Archsage, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Cole (Eric Meyers) is now K, Vale and Zenobia (Jessica Preddy) are now X, and the attack announcer (Stanley Townsend) is now Triton.
• Voiced Differently in the Dub: In the original Japanese dub, Riku is played by Sayaka Senbongi, who gives him a high-pitched voice befitting a Nopon. Meanwhile in the English dub, Tarinn Callender gives him a much deeper voice that you wouldn’t expect, just by looking at him.

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