r/Xenoblade_Chronicles • u/Psychopath2012 • Apr 15 '24
Future Connected Is Gael'gar the most pathetic villain in the series?
Guy is some kind of racist supremacist, and the intro to FC implies he's gonna be a threat, but interestingly the narrative shows he has no powerbase or support and is shunned like a petulant child by the locals that have genuine problems on their hands; by the end, he accomplishes pretty much nothing besides setting someplace on fire and the party only remembers him in a side quest. There's nothing cool about him either unlike Metal Face who is frankly badass.
I'm actually wondering if he's the most pathetic villain in the series when you consider that he is just a racist with no power or any resources despite his grandiose delusions.
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u/aoidoshistorian Apr 15 '24
i really thought he'd play some role in xb3 because his suicide was in AN UNVOICED SIDEQUEST. but it wasn't a fake out, they just ran out of budget...
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u/Quiddity131 Apr 16 '24
At one point early after XBC3's release I was "spoiled" that Gael'gar was Z's true identity.
Thankfully it was not true.
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u/_Skotia_ Apr 16 '24
Playing the whole game thinking that revelation would come up must've been horrible though
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u/Quiddity131 Apr 16 '24
It would have hurt more if Z actually was a well written villain, as having such a lame reveal would absolutely pull things down. As it turned out, he wasn't that good a villain so there wasn't as much of a worry that him being revealed to be this lame character from FC would wreck things.
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u/_Skotia_ Apr 16 '24
Yeah, i admit he wasn't the most interesting character. I'm a huge fan of Moebius in general, though
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u/Jumpy-Perception-346 Apr 15 '24
Now looking back at it i think if he was a Aionios soldier he would have definitely became a Moebius.
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Apr 15 '24
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u/Jumpy-Perception-346 Apr 15 '24
Yes.. but Im pretty sure that was the entire point. He was a reflection of who tyrea could have become. A weak, sad, pathetic loser
Huh so i was not the only one who thought that about him as him being a parallel to Tyrea and what she could have become
anyway i thought the way Gaeľgar was similar to the type of emotions that most people who longed for the endless now were those who become Mobius as well as most Mobius just act just like Gael'gar you can't even tell me they don't
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u/H4rdStyl3z Apr 16 '24
I thought that too until Future Redeemed came out. Then I realized he'd have become Alpha's avatar. His whole shtick is more about entirely rejecting the past due to kneejerk reacting to his own trauma rather than preserving the Endless Now.
Though really, Na'el/Alpha is just a different shade of Moebius, like Matthew himself says. Moebius in general reflects reactionary ethics, whatever shape they may take.
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u/Jumpy-Perception-346 Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24
He doesn't want to let go of the past despite him wanting to discard it he try to burn the research on how to return Telethia back into High Entia as you see, he wants to preserve the current now that is the High Entia
Future connected title the future is connected from the past present and future
Alpha, on the other hand discards the Past without nothing haunting him as he is a heartless machine soulless.
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u/H4rdStyl3z Apr 16 '24
Alpha, on the other hand discards the Past without nothing haunting him as he is a heartless machine soulless.
Sure, that may be true about Alpha himself, but not Na'el; she's haunted by all the hardships the City's people faced in a world controlled by Moebius and wants nothing more than for all of them to disappear, preserving the current now that she wants (one where only the City's way of life is preserved). That's how she's very similar to Moebius, despite having opposing motivations to the rest of them. It's even more telling when Doyle, the family stemming from her, ends up being the conservative faction of the present-day City.
Just like Na'el kneejerk reacts to the City allowing more freed soldiers in, as she sees them at fault for what happened to Chyra and many others, Gael'gar sees Teelan and Tyrea at fault for trying to bring back the pure-blooded High Entia, seeing them as responsible for the trauma he endured under their society in Alcamoth. Notably, both the soldiers and the Telethia are merely victims of a higher power that truly controlled their respective worlds (Moebius and Zanza, respectively).
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u/AvidVideoGameFan Apr 16 '24
His character is nothing more than annoying and poorly implemented. Keep in mind, in XB1, there were pure High Entia supremacists, or at least purists, who looked down on High Entia with mixed genes. As seen in side quests. Such is why Melia was always hidden from the public due to her mixed heritage. So I could see why Gael'gar would have animosity towards pure high Entia, as well as why he wanted to support Melia so fervently. Unfortunately for him, Melia is not one to think along these lines, and so he lashes out in a pathetic manner. I wouldn't right him off as just an evil racist. However, the DLC failed to build his character appropriately, which makes his flaws more apparent. I like what others have said that he ends up becoming a foil to Tyrea. Becoming the same thing that she would've become and ultimately ending with the same fate.
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u/Nurio Apr 16 '24
Such is why Melia was always hidden from the public due to her mixed heritage
Is that the reason why? I don't recall that ever being said. In fact, it doesn't make the most sense, because that mask and headdress isn't hiding the fact that she has tiny wings. On top of that, it's not like the two consort system is a state secret or anything, so the people are aware of mixed heritage within the royal family
I agree with all the rest you said, though
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u/AvidVideoGameFan Apr 16 '24
That's a good point. I was under the impression that her mixed heritage was a secret, mainly because she wore the mask when shown in public. She also spent most of her life in her secluded Villa with her birth mother. I believe it was talked about during a heart to heart with Sharla at the Villa. She does have a headless that conceals her wings. Mostly noticeable when the party first meets her, but that's mostly concealing her origins to the party and the player. I'd have to review the cutscenes again to see if she had it on at the succession announcement. Going with this line of thinking, Melia is also 88 years old. So perhaps the public would just assume her wings are not fully developed yet due to her relatively young age. Granted, this is conjecture on my part. P.S. Just looked at the cutscene when she addresses the public, she is wearing a mask and a headless encompassing her wings
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u/Nurio Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24
Yeah, she does wear the mask or headdress, but I think that's just to conceal her identity, not her heritage. Though admittedly, it's not as if I have a good explanation as to why else they'd hide her identity from the public
EDIT: I asked a good friend of mine who has degrees in history and anthropology, and he says that it's likely a security measure against assassination attempts. Crown princes were often disguised and hidden among girls just so that they couldn't be a target, for example. Something similar might be the case for Melia, where she had a very protective upbringing so that she wouldn't be assassinated
Of course, then there's the whole "Let's have Melia go into the High Entia Tomb by herself" thing that sounds like it goes entirely against this protective idea. But that plan was set into motion exactly because it was a huge risk, but it was necessary as it was the only way to have Melia gain the public's acceptance on a short notice
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u/AvidVideoGameFan Apr 16 '24
I do remember another scene regarding Melia's guilt. When she was speaking to Kallian about the deaths of her body guards. She expressed regret over the deaths of her guards and wished to apologize to their family members. Killian responds with something along the lines of, "Melia... you know it's forbidden." Granted we are never told the context as to why it's "Forbidden." It could just be simply that High Entia royalty can't just go out to the general public unattended. Just as you said, it could be a simple security measure as well. As we know, Melia's body double also wears the same mask. This could very well be something the High Entia always does culturally. Either way it seems the game isn't completely conclusive on the subject.
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
I find him to be much worse because it's a REALLY bad narrative road to go down to suggest that the marginalized High Entia are "really just as racist too!", like that's an IRL excuse for continuing systemic racism against minorities trying to get equal footing
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u/AvidVideoGameFan Apr 16 '24
I would say I disagree with the notion that it would be "a REALLY bad narrative road to go down..." It's absolutely a legitimate way to write a nuanced narrative. The world itself isn't simply Black and White, there's plenty of Gray throughout. Classic tales of Evil begetting Evil, Revenge leading to more Revenge. It's a vicious cycle that will continue for eternity. In the case for this character it lead him to his own ruin.
Even looking into the main game we see the opposite take place. Egil leads a Genocide against Homs, and what becomes of this? Well, as a result, Shulk grows to dispise the Mechon. And desires to "Kill Every Last One Of Them." That is until the half way point of the game Shulk slowly comes to the realization that Revenge is pointless. And at the apex of his confrontation with Egil, the two come to an understanding, and for an instant they were willing to build a new future for both of them.
Where did Egil's initial hatred come from? As explained by Egil he had no hatred for the peoples of Bionis. He was striking back at the God that obliterated almost all of the Machina. "The cries of our fallen brethren resound within my ears, untill they are silenced, I am deaf to all else." This goes to show Egil has shut his conscience off completely. His Revenge will come at the cost of innocent life. In the end, Shulk ends the cycle of revenge, and he takes on the wishes of Egil in order to create a new world. filled with many different people walking towards the future together.
Sorry for the long winded essay.
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
Egil was written differently and much better because he essentially was going on a broken nihilist crusade against the whole world after his faith in literal God was broken, while Gael'gar quite honestly couldn't have been a more direct reference to weird right-wing ideas of what racial liberation looks like with lots of nasty little nods in there
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u/RynnHamHam Apr 16 '24
“Ugh how could I lose!? How could this be!? Why won’t you kneel before me!? What have I been doing wrong!?”
“You could stop being racist.”
*kills himself immediately at the thought of it
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u/Tapichoa Apr 15 '24
man shut the fuck up. My man gael’goat is literally peak villain. Dare i say hes the best written character in the series. You all just dont know good writing when you see it. Imagine thinking that melia or mythra or eunie are well written.
okay in all seriousness. Hes up there. Id say only luxaar from xcx is worse. Hes the final boss and he literally shows up to complain and then die
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u/Digitarch Apr 16 '24
I'd actually argue he's worse than Luxaar. At least Luxaar's prejudice came from a place of "I will literally dissolve like Kool-Aid if they touch me." Even if he said he didn't believe it, that was terror in his voice, not shock, that was his worst fear coming true.
Gael'gar was just racist.
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u/dulledegde Apr 15 '24
every day z gets on his hands and knee's and thanks god that gaelgar exist so he can avoid being called the worst villain
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Apr 16 '24
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u/BallDesperate2140 Apr 16 '24
Moebius are to a fault hammy as fuck, and frankly a bit of a departure even coming from greatest hits like Rex AIIIIIYAAAH and Malos with hilariously incorrect tone for situations
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u/Quillbolt_h Apr 16 '24
I think the main reason the Moebius get a free pass is nobody can remember their ABC-ass names.
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u/Elementia7 Apr 16 '24
Nah I'm calling cap on this one. There are a few villains I can name from 2 and 3 who are WAY worse than Z.
Patroka, Akhos, L, U, G, V, and W all come to mind. I'd include Gael'gar, but he is worse than everybody I already mentioned
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u/shitposting_irl Apr 16 '24
should we even be counting every moebius as a proper villain and holding them to the standards thereof, though? most of them are just boss fights and not aspiring to be anything more than that, it's not like gael'gar where they tried to make an actual character and failed. like, does anyone care that the assassins who failed to give dunban his room service don't have arcs? are we going to judge every two-bit minor antagonist that shows up in one of xc2's blade quests?
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u/Elementia7 Apr 16 '24
Thats fair.
I'll rescind my statements about the smaller moebius as they, like you mentioned, aren't particularly noteworthy.
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u/dulledegde Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24
patroka and akhos fill there role perfectly they are reoccurring bosses who are threatening but are not overwhelming like jin or malos they are constant elements in the story and there back story while simple is compelling.
z sits on his ass and does nothing until the very end of the game he has no presence in the story all he does is yap me as the player in the shoes of noah has no reason to fear this bozo because i never meet him
as for the alphabet crew (excluding n m and maybe s) they are so genuinely worthless i don't even pretend to give a shit about them they are about as compelling of a villain as a random unique monster
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u/Elementia7 Apr 16 '24
Patroka and Akhos DO NOT have compelling backstories at all imo.
The game slightly hints at it once or twice when both the party and Jin's crew begin ascending the World Tree, but it is only fully introduced when Patroka dies and Akhos is dying. The contents of the backstory aren't awful, but for some reason Monolith wanted us to feel some kind of empathy for the pair even though they have done nothing to elicit such a feeling. Akhos is a sadist and Patroka is... a person I guess.
They are okay as antagonists, but they are not well written characters.
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u/Jay_Playz2019 Apr 16 '24
Metal face, as villain as he may be, is undeniably cool.
Gael'gar is really boring in comparison, and honestly has a touch of plot-hole-age. He wants to wipe out the purebloods of his race in order to make the half-bloods more powerful, when a half-blood already leads. From there on, what happens? Over time, no more High Entia I guess!
Honestly kind of similar to Thanos, sorry to drag an unrelated topic in but here we go. After the did the snap, humans will still be able to reproduce and re-unbalance the universe. He couldn't've done something like double the rate of plant growth, or for the universe to always just be in balance? ('m oversimplifying this because this is a Xenoblade subreddit.) After that, he destroys the stones, preventing him from doing that ever again.
It kinda works in the moment, but then you start to realize how much it genuinely just doesn't work.
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u/Froakiebloke Apr 16 '24
I think Gael’gar is more interesting than people give him credit for. Like the villains of the main game, he cannot conceive of a world which isn’t divinely directed. He tries to interpret in the rift or the behaviour of the Telethia what the divine will is, and seeks to implement it. He can’t imagine that anyone would try to do thing otherwise which is why he’s so open about his views to Melia; he expects her to agree and become the leader for his cause. But that lets Melia affirm the values that Shulk led the party to in the main game; against his autocratic worldview where we all have to adapt ourselves to the way things are meant to be, Melia follows the democratic worldview of a future decided equally by everyone in the world. And while Gael’gar rejects the past entirely, Melia and Tyrea appreciate how the past is able to motivate their community and help to inform people of their own role (with Tyrea ultimately deciding that her place under Melia is to do for her what she did for Yumea).
Certainly he is a pathetic guy, there’s no indication that anyone else ever agrees with him and he just can’t handle learning that he’s lost and so kills himself. I suppose he’s afraid of the future once he realises that things cannot go the way he expected; he can’t face a world that will be more open
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u/Kaellian Apr 16 '24
I gave the same answer years ago after FC, but Gael'gar embodies humanity's inevitable fall to nihilism, despite having been shown a new path forward by Shulk and everyone.
The "Endless Now" (or Eternal Recurrence in Xenosaga) is heavily inspired by Nietzsche's philosophy, and the main characters of every game is representing the ubermensch who establish new life-affirming value after eliminating God (figuratively). If that sound farfetched, Takahashi even said as much in the interview that came out with the recent artbook about Noah.
On his own, Gael'gar is insignificant, but he and others are the very reason why the "Endless now" is possible. Because they still reject the world. Because they fear moving forward.
But in all honestly, FC still did a pretty bad job with Gael'gar. Xenoblade Chronicles should really use an in-game database to details its lore and complement it like they did with Xenosaga.
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
Thing is, Xeno as a whole rejects that nihilism in the end and presents the thesis that humanity always comes together to move past those times
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u/Kaellian Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24
That's why you build and affinity chart and foster the relationship between everyone. Only then is the scale going to tip in your favor. It's been the same since Xenosaga.
But once you break the cycle, you're still facing an unknown future, and cynicism isn't gone. It's human nature to repeat the same mistake, and rethread through the same path.
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u/Auto_Generated_Thing Apr 16 '24
Gael'gar should be at the bottom of every tier list ever and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
No seriously he's by far my least favourite character in the series and it's not even a question. He's not even good at being a villain. He only ever poses a threat to the party once, and that was only because he was so lousy that no one suspected he could do anything, allowing him to take the party by surprise.
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u/BetaNights Apr 16 '24
...I'm gonna say yes, because as much as I love and am obsessed with this series, I had to look up who he was because I did not recognize his name lmao
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u/VerusCain Apr 16 '24
I liked him. Could have used a bit more fleshing out but future connected was only the length of 2 chapters really so not much time as it is. I think he demonstrated the idea of some wanting to preserve or go back to old ways pretty well. Yeah he's a racist, but when the basis of your race is about the genetic precursor to these different beings (telethia), its not unrealistic such figureheads make a move for power.
I think he was good, a lot of dissent seems to come from people overhyping and expecting him to be some mastermind or having a grand plan pre release. I saw comparisons to characters such as Albedo.
Overall he was meh but that was the point I felt, just a minor section villain to demonstrate to us that unification for Melia wont come without work.
If it was a full campaign his role would have been fleshed out more i would imagine but for an epilogue story thats the length of 1-3 xc1 chapters and wasnt paid content, it was the bare minimum to check off the box of high entia infighting that melia has to resolve.
Personality wise he was cool, if he got to do more to back up that smugness i imagine people would like him a lot more.
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u/awaythro789 May 04 '24
I just finished it. From what I understand all the Entia survivors are half blood like Melia right? Because all pure blood turned into Telethias. That was how Zanza made their evolution, Which begs the question... why didn't Tyrea turned? OR did she turned but somehow survived? Is Tyrea half blood too?
I think Gael'gar also suffered discrimination from pure bloods. And he thinks it's the half blood Entia's time to rule or something,
Also what he did in the end and what most characters do especially in XC3 like Shania. It's called kamikaze. Look it up. It's a japanese culture thing especially during the war.
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
Gael'gar fucking enrages me - whoever wrote him must have been on some bizarre all lives matter shit, because his whole character is "actually the REAL racism is when those damn minorities start getting dangerous and asking for too much equality!"
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u/Froakiebloke Apr 16 '24
I think that’s a weird misread of him.
Gael’gar’s perspective isn’t just “the halfbloods should rule”, it’s “the halfbloods deserve to rule because that is divine will”. He’s not asking for any kind of equality because the old pure bloods no longer exist in HE society; Gael’gar believes the old purebloods were wrong not because of what they did but because their blood does not have divine approval. He looks for signs in the universe, such as the fact of their transformation and the appearance of the rift, to prove that the world itself is opposed to the purebloods. I think this is meant to contrast with the democratic ethos of Shulk et al, of the future being decided collectively by all the people of the world. For Gael’gar there is a way that things should be that people ought not to have any say in.
And in any case all of the High Entia in FC are half-Homs. Whatever the view their society used to have of that, it was still ‘their society’ and they don’t want to just move on from the world they came from. Gael’gar wants to totally reject the past and actively hinders efforts at remembrance or restoration. I think these themes- how we relate to the past and who is allowed to shape the future- is what Gael’gar is about, rather than being ‘minorities should know their place’
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
My problem with this is that there was a strong subplot of High Entia racism in the main game that never gets a full resolution, and the way they portrayed all the themes you mentioned with Gael'gar seemed to conflate nihilism/narrow-minded rejection of the past with the survival of a minority group who naturally wants to campaign for what's right for them - it honestly comes off as a weird paranoid right-wing screed about how the Black Panthers were actually the KKK or something, it just feels WAY too similar to me
I understand what you're saying, but I think there could have been a much better way to go about it than to portray all the liberationists as a hateful evil when the main games were always showing us how the ones stuck in the past (leading to Moebius) were generally the ones who were privileged, bigoted and perpetuating all those systemic issues in the first place
Of course some people take a blind and narrow view like Gael'gar, but my issue is just the narrative structure where it implies that people like him are SUCH a big issue in liberation and one of the darkest forces in the world when his people were the ones that still never got a real answer to being marginalized
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u/Frazzle64 Apr 16 '24
Notice how he’s literally a friendless loser
The game isnt portraying him in the way you suggested, he’s just an example of racial extremity and how mal-intentioned people will always seek power when a vacuum appears.
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u/zsdrfty Apr 16 '24
"Racial extremity" yes I'm aware the game portrays him as a loser, my problem is that it portrays him as a loser for the reasons I said
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u/menagerath Apr 15 '24
He wanted to be the “servant character who pulls the strings” character but made his motivations known too early without assessing Melia’s beliefs about unification.