People......thought that Xehanort was redeemed....? As said above there's such a thing as facing the facts. I was honestly fine with Xehanort's death. I feel people expected Xehanort to die horribly like Marluxia & Vexen did in COM. Or just just have that same flashy death Ansem & Xemnas has and everyone can live happily ever after just like the other two games. (Well...2.) I....don't see it. At all.
The end of Xehanort *SPOILERS*
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Yeah a lot of people on YouTube and Tumblr saw his death as a redemption. I even saw a few complains about how the death scenes of the True Organization were all handled in this game, and I was pretty much thinking the same think you're talking about here. It feels like a lot of people were expecting every Organization boss in KH3 who wasn't Xion to be mercilessly struck down without pity or sympathy.
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I mean, Xehanort had the worst kind of defeat FOR HIM. He was a meticulous schemer, spent his entire life planning for this moment to not fail; and he did to the "dull, ordinary boy". It wasn't even like it was Eraqus or Aqua or even Riku, Xehanort lost to the boy that wasn't even chosen by the keyblade (at first) and wasn't even a keybade master. Not only that, but Xehanort lost so badly that he actually ADMITTED defeat. I thought that was a more powerful death scene than some flashy explosion or some utter beatdown that lead to his demise.
Xehanort was not redeemed. He admitted defeat. And I think that was a lot more powerful and a lot more thematically appropriate. Xehanort has already died in a grandiose fashion before. Ansem and Xemnas are not separate entities. They are extensions of Master Xehanort. When they exploded at the end of their respective games, so did MX. That applies to every other failure MX experienced through his other semblances as well, like Young Xehanort and Terranort.
Xehanort has failed, and even died, over and over again. He didn't need another big laser-beam explosion death scene. Him finally admitting that he lost signified the ultimate defeat for his character.
Xehanort has failed, and even died, over and over again. He didn't need another big laser-beam explosion death scene. Him finally admitting that he lost signified the ultimate defeat for his character.
This. This right here. It stings him even more given that all his grand design, the one thing he has built up, for years has been undone by the very kid he calls a 'dull ordinary boy' as someone mentions above. A boy who understood so little as Ansem better summarizes.
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Meanwhile, if you're an imprisoned/incapacitated good guy - expect to be there for years, to jump through hoop after hoop to escape, etc.
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Unless you have a Keyblade......and Magical Powers......and I'm not sure they're some sort of magical sea chain to nullify their powers.............BESIDES THE FACT THAT YOUR KEYBLADE'S BASICALLY ALSO A BOOMERANG.Meanwhile, if you're an imprisoned/incapacitated good guy - expect to be there for years, jump through hoop after hoop to escape, etc.
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With all these years of KH hammering it into my brain that no matter how much someone is derived from someone else, they're their own person, this statement is difficult for me to process.
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The problem with Xehanort's death is its framing, simply put. There seems to be a tendency to lean too heavily on the literal text of the moment instead of reconciling how "what is supposed to be happening" actually plays out on screen. If Nomura wants us to believe that Xehanort is being "rebuked" in some way for his misdeeds and is on the receiving end of the worst possible outcome for him, there are a lot of ways to communicate that as a writer by showing it. And we know Nomura knows how to do that, because he's done it before. He elected to give Xehanort a death that has zero emotional urgency to it. Not for him, or any of the people around him who suffered (some of them for decades, some of them through lives too briefly lived) as a result of his designs. It's easy to read redemption into his final moments because there's nothing leaning dramatically against that reading. His death is peaceful, unhurried, and arguably even elective; he could have continued fighting and gone down swinging that X-Blade until his last breath left his body, but instead he makes peace with his loss and hands the symbol of his entire life's work over to the boy who beat him with a smile.
Redemption is not forgiveness. Anybody can ask for forgiveness, and still be at war with themselves when they get it (see: Namine, Riku). Redemption is about acceptance; it's about acknowledging one's own actions and the ideas which drive them for what they are, and reconciling the agendas or conflicts one pursues as ideologically "true" or "untrue." It's not about good or evil, or right and wrong; it's about that internal moral compass that guides a person's actions. Compare Xehanort's ending with Ansem SoD's or Xemnas's and this becomes abundantly clear; both of them die (in their initial respective games) without ever coming to accept or even understand how thoroughly out of line they were with the nature of the world they sought to have power over. Ansem SoD can't even comprehend the depths of his own failure to grasp the real nature of things because they so directly oppose his core dogma, and Xemnas dies still believing that "nothingness is eternal." It's not just that they are wrong, because other characters are deeply mistaken about the order of the universe (like AtW) and yet display an inner resolve to undo their wrongs, but that Ansem SoD and Xemnas set themselves apart from the actual order of things through their pursuit of false power and are thus rejected by the world itself. In KH1, the light of the KH that Ansem SoD spent the entire game constructing is the force which ultimately destroys him, and in KH2, it's the worlds which collectively create the necessary pathway for our heroes to cross into Xemnas's realm as a clear renunciation of his destructive worldview. The framing is unequivocal; whatever their intentions or personal motivations, they nevertheless posed an unrelenting, existential threat and had to be stopped, because they could not and would not stop themselves.
By contrast, Xehanort does stop himself. Through the urging of others, yes, and only when he's as good as defeated, but it's at exactly this moment that the entire story equivocates on his moral compass. What's revealed to us is that Xehanort, as Eraqus once knew him, was a good person, and some of that goodness endured within him--just enough to accept his position and end the conflict he began. Not only because he's defeated, but because through being defeated, he realized he was wrong all along. Let's be clear about where the agency lies in this scene: it's entirely with Xehanort. Nobody takes the X-Blade from him. Nobody strikes him down. Xehanort chooses to offer the X-Blade to Sora, and he chooses to depart with Eraqus as he sees that his life has reached its end. That is literary redemption, the same as Ansem the Wise's at the end of KH2: nobody would argue that Ansem the Wise's death in KH2 is a happy moment or an ideal ending for him (from his own perspective), but it's a moment that reveals him as having reconciled the disparate values that were driving moral discord within him and picking a side that he actually believes is right, rather than choosing to continue assigning false justifications to his own hatred and bigotry. It doesn't have to make him a good person who is forgiven of all his crimes; redemption is not about forgiveness.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with giving Xehanort a redemptive moment (although I prefer the tragedy of his circumstances, which I'll get to). Again, it's about framing. The reason that AtW's redemptive act sticks is because he chooses it free of coercion: he's not cornered into it, he makes the choice to give his own life in the hopes that it will enable others to live, which makes it an act of spiritual self-sacrifice that can be understood to transcend the ills of his life. Saix's redemption doesn't work in KH3, for a whole host of reasons, but primarily because he never transcends or even makes any earthly account for his own wrongdoings, and the same is true for Xehanort. Again, it's all heavily equivocal, and that's why some folks don't regard it as redemption; the truth is it's just poorly written redemption (surprise). Xehanort dies having a thin veneer of moral recompense papered over his saga of abominable actions; he's spared the (literally) universal rejection of Ansem SoD or Xemnas and is instead regarded and framed as if he is only accountable to Sora. Not Kairi, who he just murdered. Not Aqua, who he condemned to Hell for a decade or more. Not Terra, whose body he stole and whose heart he cast out and imprisoned as his spiritual slave. Not Xion or Roxas, who he (through his existential proxy) committed to psychological abuse and worse, etc. etc.-- he's never held to account to a single one of them. They don't undo him or ever get to address the immeasurable harm he caused them. They have no agency, and there's no catharsis to offset all the pain they went through, which is a problem because their conflicts drove the narrative for most of its run until KH3 flattened the whole sum of it into Sora's and Xehanort's Keyblade Measuring Contest. The problem is not whether the ending is "bad" or "good" for Xehanort; it's about whether it holds him to account for what he's done through a demise that is emotionally reflective of the kind of harm he's caused, and how the people he's hurt are empowered on the other end of it. There's no sense of that dynamic in his death scene. He drifts off, laughing with Eraqus, and nobody except Sora seems to be involved in the moment. There's no denouement for them because there was no climax for them; they weren't really there.
If Nomura wanted tragedy, it's an easy thing: dramatize the tragedy. i.e. Have Xehanort flee Sora and resist his death until the bitter end. Have him refuse his own failure. Have him drop the X-Blade; simply showing it fall from his hand would go a long way towards giving the scene some gravitas-- again, it's the symbol of all his efforts, so let him lose hold of it. Have him cornered by the other Guardians (maybe in the chess room) in his last, vain attempt to keep going and, realizing all is lost, let him collapse and die knowing he was defeated but still wanting to believe that everything he worked for was meaningful in some way. You could even have Eraqus, his one friend and the only person who could ever see him for who he once was, holding him as he passes and keep working that boyfriend angle-- better yet, have Eraqus deliver the finishing blow, like a compassionate but also hugely judgemental beam of light that renders Xehanort's heart from his body. Let them have an honest conversation about what passed between them (not this "checkmate, Xehanort" drivel that's too cute by half) and when he finally goes it could be more like Eraqus is taking him so he can't cause any more harm-- which is like the one responsible thing Eraqus has ever done in this series. I mean, talk about a character who could use some redemption.
The point is, give it some urgency, give it some teeth. Give it something. I might not ever feel bad for Xehanort, but at least try to convey how badly he feels for himself. "Sorry I killed your gf, here's the key thing, off to being dead now hee hee ha ha" doesn't quite do the trick.
Redemption is not forgiveness. Anybody can ask for forgiveness, and still be at war with themselves when they get it (see: Namine, Riku). Redemption is about acceptance; it's about acknowledging one's own actions and the ideas which drive them for what they are, and reconciling the agendas or conflicts one pursues as ideologically "true" or "untrue." It's not about good or evil, or right and wrong; it's about that internal moral compass that guides a person's actions. Compare Xehanort's ending with Ansem SoD's or Xemnas's and this becomes abundantly clear; both of them die (in their initial respective games) without ever coming to accept or even understand how thoroughly out of line they were with the nature of the world they sought to have power over. Ansem SoD can't even comprehend the depths of his own failure to grasp the real nature of things because they so directly oppose his core dogma, and Xemnas dies still believing that "nothingness is eternal." It's not just that they are wrong, because other characters are deeply mistaken about the order of the universe (like AtW) and yet display an inner resolve to undo their wrongs, but that Ansem SoD and Xemnas set themselves apart from the actual order of things through their pursuit of false power and are thus rejected by the world itself. In KH1, the light of the KH that Ansem SoD spent the entire game constructing is the force which ultimately destroys him, and in KH2, it's the worlds which collectively create the necessary pathway for our heroes to cross into Xemnas's realm as a clear renunciation of his destructive worldview. The framing is unequivocal; whatever their intentions or personal motivations, they nevertheless posed an unrelenting, existential threat and had to be stopped, because they could not and would not stop themselves.
By contrast, Xehanort does stop himself. Through the urging of others, yes, and only when he's as good as defeated, but it's at exactly this moment that the entire story equivocates on his moral compass. What's revealed to us is that Xehanort, as Eraqus once knew him, was a good person, and some of that goodness endured within him--just enough to accept his position and end the conflict he began. Not only because he's defeated, but because through being defeated, he realized he was wrong all along. Let's be clear about where the agency lies in this scene: it's entirely with Xehanort. Nobody takes the X-Blade from him. Nobody strikes him down. Xehanort chooses to offer the X-Blade to Sora, and he chooses to depart with Eraqus as he sees that his life has reached its end. That is literary redemption, the same as Ansem the Wise's at the end of KH2: nobody would argue that Ansem the Wise's death in KH2 is a happy moment or an ideal ending for him (from his own perspective), but it's a moment that reveals him as having reconciled the disparate values that were driving moral discord within him and picking a side that he actually believes is right, rather than choosing to continue assigning false justifications to his own hatred and bigotry. It doesn't have to make him a good person who is forgiven of all his crimes; redemption is not about forgiveness.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with giving Xehanort a redemptive moment (although I prefer the tragedy of his circumstances, which I'll get to). Again, it's about framing. The reason that AtW's redemptive act sticks is because he chooses it free of coercion: he's not cornered into it, he makes the choice to give his own life in the hopes that it will enable others to live, which makes it an act of spiritual self-sacrifice that can be understood to transcend the ills of his life. Saix's redemption doesn't work in KH3, for a whole host of reasons, but primarily because he never transcends or even makes any earthly account for his own wrongdoings, and the same is true for Xehanort. Again, it's all heavily equivocal, and that's why some folks don't regard it as redemption; the truth is it's just poorly written redemption (surprise). Xehanort dies having a thin veneer of moral recompense papered over his saga of abominable actions; he's spared the (literally) universal rejection of Ansem SoD or Xemnas and is instead regarded and framed as if he is only accountable to Sora. Not Kairi, who he just murdered. Not Aqua, who he condemned to Hell for a decade or more. Not Terra, whose body he stole and whose heart he cast out and imprisoned as his spiritual slave. Not Xion or Roxas, who he (through his existential proxy) committed to psychological abuse and worse, etc. etc.-- he's never held to account to a single one of them. They don't undo him or ever get to address the immeasurable harm he caused them. They have no agency, and there's no catharsis to offset all the pain they went through, which is a problem because their conflicts drove the narrative for most of its run until KH3 flattened the whole sum of it into Sora's and Xehanort's Keyblade Measuring Contest. The problem is not whether the ending is "bad" or "good" for Xehanort; it's about whether it holds him to account for what he's done through a demise that is emotionally reflective of the kind of harm he's caused, and how the people he's hurt are empowered on the other end of it. There's no sense of that dynamic in his death scene. He drifts off, laughing with Eraqus, and nobody except Sora seems to be involved in the moment. There's no denouement for them because there was no climax for them; they weren't really there.
If Nomura wanted tragedy, it's an easy thing: dramatize the tragedy. i.e. Have Xehanort flee Sora and resist his death until the bitter end. Have him refuse his own failure. Have him drop the X-Blade; simply showing it fall from his hand would go a long way towards giving the scene some gravitas-- again, it's the symbol of all his efforts, so let him lose hold of it. Have him cornered by the other Guardians (maybe in the chess room) in his last, vain attempt to keep going and, realizing all is lost, let him collapse and die knowing he was defeated but still wanting to believe that everything he worked for was meaningful in some way. You could even have Eraqus, his one friend and the only person who could ever see him for who he once was, holding him as he passes and keep working that boyfriend angle-- better yet, have Eraqus deliver the finishing blow, like a compassionate but also hugely judgemental beam of light that renders Xehanort's heart from his body. Let them have an honest conversation about what passed between them (not this "checkmate, Xehanort" drivel that's too cute by half) and when he finally goes it could be more like Eraqus is taking him so he can't cause any more harm-- which is like the one responsible thing Eraqus has ever done in this series. I mean, talk about a character who could use some redemption.
The point is, give it some urgency, give it some teeth. Give it something. I might not ever feel bad for Xehanort, but at least try to convey how badly he feels for himself. "Sorry I killed your gf, here's the key thing, off to being dead now hee hee ha ha" doesn't quite do the trick.
Really liked everything you said, alexis. There is one thing that I do think wasn't addressed with Xehanort that should've been, and that's that it doesn't feel like he answered for his crimes or properly held accountable. I always felt that the characters, by that point, were ready to move on and simply wanted Xehanort gone. And I felt that was in-character for them, to not feel like Xehanort needs to be burned at the stake, and to simply look at him and see a tired pathetic old man at the end of his rope. One of those "I'm not angry, I just feel sorry for you" kind of moments. However, there is still the lingering sense that Xehanort wasn't held accountable enough. Even if the characters had simply said something to him, acknowledged how he wronged them to his face, it would've been a lot more satisfying.
Yes, but I think one could only consider Ansem and Xemnas a truly separate entities once they were pulled from the past and into KH3. A heart grows with time until eventually it forms its own identity, as we've seen with Roxas and Xion. So, though I could be wrong, I'm of the mind that Ansem and Xemnas in their respective games were still extensions of their original self, and had not yet become separate beings with their own minds and feelings yet. By the time we reach KH3 though, then yeah, they've probably ascended past just being fragments of Xehanort and become their own unique people. But by then, they're still being used as pieces in Xehanort's chess game and so their deaths still constitute a failure for him.
Yes, but I think one could only consider Ansem and Xemnas a truly separate entities once they were pulled from the past and into KH3. A heart grows with time until eventually it forms its own identity, as we've seen with Roxas and Xion. So, though I could be wrong, I'm of the mind that Ansem and Xemnas in their respective games were still extensions of their original self, and had not yet become separate beings with their own minds and feelings yet. By the time we reach KH3 though, then yeah, they've probably ascended past just being fragments of Xehanort and become their own unique people. But by then, they're still being used as pieces in Xehanort's chess game and so their deaths still constitute a failure for him.
I mean, I do get what you're saying, and I think you've got very good ideas, but I have to hit back against this strangely prevalent notion that Xehanort DIDN'T get properly punished for his actions. Lest we all forget, Sora literally BEAT THE OLD MAN TO DEATH. We can argue about whether the bastard could have put up some last semblance of a fight, but in the end, Sora took the old man's life. I would call that a feasible punishment. And I feel like anybody who wanted more than that is simply bloodthirsty, and that wouldn't adhere either to the characters or to the tone of the series.
Sora may have "literally" done that, but that's not represented dramatically in how his death scene plays out. His death is positioned as a matter of his agency, choosing to depart with Eraqus and find peace with his loss instead of continuing to pursue his agenda at any cost. If we're talking about the tone of the series, we also have to acknowledge its broader motif: KH is not a series that utilizes literal logic to underscore its dramatic intentions, instead it leans into metaphor, symbolism and, as I've said, framing to convey its themes to the audience. All of the important moments in KH are couched in buckets of context: the surface level text is secondary.
What is the context to Ansem SoD's death? As I've said, he spent the entire game progressing towards a goal, only to ostensibly reach it and have it act as his own undoing. He doesn't die as the result of a "literal" fight with Sora, but as the result of an ideological difference which is indicative of how Sora has grown and deepened in his connection to the world around him while SoD regressed into an insular, wrongful worldview that kept him acting in opposition to the truth. His dying moment comes not with Sora striking him with the Keyblade, but with Sora identifying the true nature of things as he's come to understand them and seeing that truth validated. It's thematically rewarding because SoD has spent the entire game telling Sora he "knows nothing," and pursuing "knowledge" of the universe as his highest calling: only for it to be revealed that he's nothing but a charlatan who was fooling himself with dogma. His own foolishness and arrogance kills him, Sora is simply an agent of the narrative pushing things to that point. I could make a similar case for Xemnas, but suffice to say, he dies because he overreaches in his own pursuit of power, and while Sora and Riku do strike him down, it's because they are acting as surrogates of the will of the worlds themselves-- they ascend into a heightened state of symbolism for the duration of that struggle and Sora even caps that with a universal identification of their role in the aftermath when he tells Riku, "If the worlds are made up of both light and darkness, we'll be the darkness." At that point, they're just part of the essential makeup of things: not people, but elements. In that sense, Kairi performs the same magic she does bringing Sora back in KH1 by restoring Sora's and Riku's humanity through the power of her letter, tethering them to the "world of the living" so-to-speak.
If we compare that to the context of Xehanort's death, it follows the same trend of KH3 as a whole in that it's largely devoid of that kind of symbolic, added value. It's not thematically gratifying because it's not really grounded in the language of the rest of the series: there's no clear dramatic reason why Sora has to be the one to bring about Xehanort's end, and even when he does Xehanort just kind of strolls away from all the wreckage he caused arm-in-arm with his best buddy. It's not that Xehanort necessarily has to suffer, but that his death should feel impactful and decisive: not a choice he makes but an inevitable consequence to his actions. Death is not the ultimate price to pay in KH; "loss" is. The loss of connection, of humanity, of emotion. Xehanort ends the series reclaiming all of those things-- he loses in his misguided agenda but wins back his connection to Eraqus, his humanity through his own acceptance of how the story played out, and his spiritual/emotional core is restored as he reverts back to his youthful self, the person he was before he became corrupted by time and whatever other forces may have been at play. There's never a moment of real symbolic condemnation of his character: he isn't forced to reconcile with the universe, and he never faces most of the people he harmed over the course of his life. It's a moment of resolution for Xehanort and Xehanort alone, like a page taken out of a story we were never privy to, and as a result it doesn't resonate as a substantive illustration of closure for the many protagonists who were leading this narrative up until KH3 sidelined them into irrelevance.
So we can insinuate readings about what literally occurs in that moment all day long, but it's the argumentative equivalent of banging a nail and telling someone you're banging a nail. The question is, are you building anything worthwhile in the process?
Again, you're presenting a lot of really deep insight into the game's stories (which I appreciate), but I reject the premise that there's nothing metaphorically or symbolically resonant about KH3's climax. Somebody else put it a nice way: at the end of everything, we have Sora, a young and inexperienced boy who relies on his friends to overcome all his obstacles, against Xehanort, an old master with a brilliant mind and vast knowledge who took the opposite path in life and chose to change the entire world completely on his own, going so far as to create extensions of himself to achieve his ambitions. This whole dynamic echoes all the way back to Sora's first encounter with Xehanort as a disembodied heart in Destiny Islands, when Xehanort/Ansem taunts Sora as naive and defines himself in opposition to him as a character of deep experience but little empathy. In other words, this very climax acts as the thematic resolution to a character conflict that was present since their very first scene together in the very first game.
Friendship (cheesy as it is) and the way hearts connect has always been one of the core concepts in Kingdom Hearts, so at the climactic battle here it's fitting that the main antagonist represents the antithesis of that message—a loner who rejects connections and friendship so that he can do everything on his own. And that's precisely why he fails. The most illustrative moment of this is when Donald and Goofy rescue Sora from death and the three of them Keybeam Xehanort to death. That's no less symbolically resonant than Ansem being killed by the light behind the Door to Darkness or Xemnas being felled by "the worlds' champions."
The one thing I keep hearing that I do agree with is that none of the other secondary characters seemed to have any point of relevance in that climactic battle, and that none of them got a chance to confront Xehanort directly for all that he'd done to them. Well, I see your point partly, but I have some caveats.
You see, only a few of the characters would have ever had any actual reason to confront Xehanort at the end point there. Most of the other characters did end up confronting one of his manifestations that had a more direct impact on their lives. For example:
1) Roxas, Xion, and Axel—none of them ever knew Master Xehanort, so a confrontation with him directly would not hold much weight, as none of them had ever met each other. Xemnas was the incarnation of Xehanort that had the deepest impact on their lives, and RAX did have a confrontation with him which was much needed. Could there have been more there? Absolutely. But my point is, Xemnas is a more appropriate person for those three to confront than MX.
2) Riku and Mickey—again, prior to DDD, Riku and Mickey had never met MX, so they wouldn't have any connection to him. Riku's strongest conflict was with Ansem, and that conflict was fulfilled very well I think.
3) Terra, Aqua, and Ventus—now, these three are probably the most deserving of a confrontation with the old man, which, true, they didn't really get. Terra poofed Eraqus out of his chest and then the three of them just kind of forgot Xehanort was there. I agree they could have added more with them there, but I would believe that they'd just be so taken with their master coming back from the dead that they wouldn't want to waste time or energy on castigating Xehanort, especially when he was clearly about to die anyway.
I get that people wanted Xehanort to face this massive retribution, but I still think what they did was sufficient, and Xehanort didn't exactly get away with nothing. Not only losing your life, but finding out in your last moments that it was all a waste, is a pretty bitter pill to swallow for anyone, much more so for somebody like Xehanort. We can't discount that.
Not to mention, would you really want a whole scene after a final battle like that with the characters just airing their grievances at the old man for ten minutes? I wouldn't. It would slow things down too much, regardless of how deserved it might have been.
Xehanort not only got what was coming to him, but it had a lot of metaphorical weight behind it, and it carried a lot of meaning. And saying that Xehanort in the end "chose" his fate is REALLY stretching it. At that point, he was more in denial than anything else. There was no way he would have had the strength to do anything at that point, so his choice isn't really a factor in how the end played out. The only real choice he had was either to accept his fate with grace or go down screaming, and I think it's actually more thematically fulfilling, and it shows more of Xehanort's character, that he chose to accept it at the end.
Perhaps I missed something in your reply, but doesn't this go both ways? If we're going by the time of their meeting as a means to justify a confrontation, Sora never once met or spoke to MX prior to the very end of KH3. That's actually less time than Riku or Mickey, and about the same as Roxas, Axel, and Xion. If there's any incarnation of Xehanort Sora had his most important conflict with, it would probably be Young Xehanort, who personally engendered his downfall in DDD and directly took advantage of his weaknesses. That said, I don't see why it wouldn't be just as appropriate for pretty much any of the protagonist, aside from the BBS trio of course, to confront MX directly as it was for Sora.
Also, while RAX "confronted" Xemnas, what exactly did they confront him about? None of themes or existential questions surrounding their journey in Days & KH2 were actually addressed. Nothing felt it was coming to a head, or coming to a close. Roxas, despite being Xemnas' central enemy as far as I'm aware, didn't say anything beyond giving replica exposition, as well as vague acknowledgements of the people who helped bring him back (which for the most part, is all knowledge he shouldn't even know). Xion never proves Xemnas wrong about her status as a "puppet", as even when she's fighting back, that's all he views her as. A "useless puppet." And then he runs away before she even gets the chance to start fighting back properly. Nothing
about Xion's sacrifice is ever acknowledged here either (which should be central in proving her identity and value as a true individual). It doesn't feel like there's really any closure there about much of anything, so I'd be hard pressed to say their confrontation had much weight beyond surface level appeal. Hell, Roxas, Axel, and Xion barely even talk to eachother in that scene.
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Sora has the climactic showdown because A) he's been the key thorn in the side of each one of Xehanort's incarnations, and B) because Sora acts as the antithesis to Xehanort, as I explained in my last comment. Also, it wouldn't really be satisfying or rewarding from a gameplay standpoint to play for Sora the entire game only to switch to some other character for the final boss.
As for the scene with RAX and Xemnas, I agree there could have been more there, and judging by the ReMIND trailers, it looks like we may be getting more scenes in that regard, so that might help. But, I will say this: it WAS the first time Roxas, Lea, and Xion actually stood up to Xemnas, and as a team no less. Of course, more could have been done at that point—I'm not defending the game too much—but at least their conflict was addressed. Again, let's wait until ReMIND comes out to see if they patch up the lack of screen time with these characters.
It's true that Sora and Xehanort are meant to represent one anothers' antitheses, and sure, broadly speaking we can assign that symbolic function to any confrontation between them in theory. Again, we all understand and acknowledge what the narrative was intended to convey. The problem is, as I've been saying, the framing and context: in previous encounters with Xehanort's incarnations, Sora was always prompted and enabled through universal means to take up the good cause in a way that was reflective of his powerful connections with others, while Xehanort's incarnations met their end as a result of their own design and self-serving worldview rebounding to usher in their demise. Sora's actions and agency working as an extension of the KH cosmos is what makes them contextually "good," while Xehanort's opposition to the will of the worlds is the determining factor in how he comes to be proven wrong, time and time again.
That context is absent from KH3. Sora is spurred to pursue Xehanort (initially by himself) by way of a personal blow (the loss of Kairi) which dramatizes his conflict with Xehanort as personal. This is what I mean when I say that Xehanort is ultimately only accountable to Sora at the end: he's not held to scrutiny by any higher power or through a narrative culmination of all his ill doings (represented by the protagonists who have survived him) which are the strongest indications of his selfishness and his corrupted worldview. Instead his philosophy is rebranded as a pursuit of purity for the betterment of the world while Sora is left to chastise him with a kind of automatically conferred authority and entitlement that isn't grounded in anything. Sora is only "right" here by virtue of the fact that Xehanort is "wrong," which doesn't resolve the thematic gap between them so much as it revises the nature of their defining dichotomy altogether into a contest of personal will rather than one of universal intent. And that serves to undermine, not enhance, the relevance of Sora's connection to others in this climactic moment: we know that 'connection" is the source of his power because previous, better games have established it and his earlier journeys have consistently centered that dynamic, yet despite containing an embarrassment of potential riches in the form of this revived ensemble KH3 continually atomizes Sora's heroism and focuses his agency away from the collective and towards the individual context until, finally, he's the sole interlocutor passing judgment on the villain's antagonism.
For Xehanort's part, I would just be repeating myself, but suffice to say it's not his lack of connection that is his undoing, but his connection to one person that is his salvation. That's the note on which his story closes. That may be "good enough" for some and everyone is entitled to feel the way they do about it, but trying to revise it into a moment of pathos is a stretch that isn't earned by the scene on its own merits.
Isn't it just so easy to set up an obviously bad idea for which nobody has advocated and then knock it down. No, the whole progression of this narrative should have been framed to better incorporate the ostensible protagonists into the conflict so that an expository sequence like that wouldn't be necessary. The ending of this game doesn't exist in isolation to the rest of it-- or, rather, to the extent that it does, that's just one of its many problems. One of the reasons Xehanort's death feels lackluster, aside from it being a misguided waste of his potential as a character, is that his presence is so divorced from the narrative as a whole. He's not actively engaged enough, either through his flashback appearances or in advancing the threat he supposedly represents in realtime, to develop or reconstruct our understanding of his intentions. They're never grounded properly, so the revelations as to what he was trying to accomplish and the rationale motivating his agenda don't land. He ends up feeling confused and half-baked, like most of KH3's attempts to culminate the narrative: the same could be said for all of the trio reunions, and even its own internal plotting like the PoW and Anti-Aqua's arc.
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Imagine if Return Of The Jedi ended with Vader telling Palpatine, "Checkmate"; Palpatine sparing Luke and giving up; Vader and Palpatine holding hands and vanishing together; and Ghost Sheev smiling with Ghost Kenobi, Ghost Yoda, and Ghost Anakin at the Endor party.
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Meanwhile, if you're an imprisoned/incapacitated good guy - expect to be there for years, to jump through hoop after hoop to escape, etc.
Pete has Maleficent, someone adept at using the darkness and is a powerful Mage in her own right. Aqua basically had to go solo for a decade cause nobody's had the means to go save her without running risk of being trapped themselves.
It sucks, but, it does make sense. Had Aqua been necessary for Maleficent's plans, she would've bailed her out the next day.
The way this line is dropped is aggravating in its own right, because the use of chess throughout KH3 was obviously intended to indicate that Xehanort and Eraqus are intelligent strategists constantly making moves in an effort to oppose one another's agendas, but Eraqus does less than nothing prior to coming out of the woodwork at the last minute just to deliver that line, and Xehanort doesn't fare much better considering he's supposedly the man with a million back up plans but, really, his only success here is predicated on the unpreparedness and lack of coherent strategy that afflicts the protagonists. Xehanort never has to work to outwit these bozos, much less Eraqus; there's no satisfaction to be drawn from placing him in "checkmate" absent a corresponding example of actual intellectual triumph. It's almost like the whole framing device exists merely to justify the use of this line at the other end because Nomura needed to make it seem as though Eraqus was a part of the action instead of, um, actually framing the narrative or these characters or the progression of the conflict so that it would be clear how Eraqus's preparations were paying off in retrospect, and how they effectively countered Xehanort's influence.
But that would require writing a story with clearly defined acts representing rising and falling tension, and deliberately laying out plot beats so that they delineate a clear trajectory from the opening moments to the final scenes. You know, really difficult concepts to grasp like, cause and effect. "This happened due to action proposing narrative movement," rather than, "It's arbitrarily time for this to happen because the script says so!"
I think you're underestimating just how strongly your feelings about Darth Sidious would have been changed if you could have just seen him and Obi Wan playing a couple rounds of dejarik aboard the Millennium Falcon in their youth. He's really a tragic figure whose intentions were misunderstood.
Honestly, this just makes me wonder if Eraqus was actually influencing any of the events from way deep inside Terra inside Xehanort. Like, maybe he subconsciously influenced amnesiac Apprentice Xehanort to send Kairi to the Destiny Islands, or maybe he put other things in place that did actually facilitate the Guardians' gathering together. Of course, we'll never know, but I think there's enough ambiguity there where we could assume.