I enjoy the interpretation that the Black Fog is the result of the two worlds fighting against origin to merge. From a narrative and thematic standpoint its meant to show that Moebius and Z's "Eternal Now" will inevitably fall apart all on its own, the only difference is that way would grauntee full annihilation. It just goes to show that no matter how hard you try and stand still, time will march on and if you don't change eventually, you'll get crushed.

Personally I disagree. I think fog is created by the “friction” between the two worlds (xenoblade 1 and xenoblade 2). Interlinking for too long creates fog as it is a union between the two worlds (or rather their inhabitants)

I think there's something to be said about how the enemies in Origin strongly resemble Xenoblade X's Ghosts. Add to that the fact that the Ghosts' antimatter cores triggered matter-antimatter *annihilation events* that destroyed the Earth, and a connection starts to become clear

One detail I've observed is how similar Annihilation Events look and act to Malos's power. Right before you fight him for the first time at the Cliffs of Morytha he "Annihilates" the area where the party is standing forcing everyone to have to dodge. Tora even falls into the hole created by the attack and Poppi has to catch him.

The black fog exists because it amuses me

This really helped me understand what the black fog is AND you managed to tie it in with the rest of the Xeno lore. I am very impressed by this video and would love to see more Xeno videos like this!

Everyone thought that the Fog King’s model being an Infernal Guldo (from XB2) was just a placeholder - then XB3 comes out and…yeah it really was just a Guldo the entire time lol

You make some of the highest quality and production Xenoblade videos it’s amazing

Unrelated but I wanted to point out something that happens in one of the final cutscenes in the game and how similar it feels to something from the end of xenoblade 1. At the end of xenoblade 1 Alvis talks one on one with shulk and even creates reconstructions of his friends to help shulk reason things out. During the ending of xenoblade 3 we get to one part where the party plus Nia and melia are all on some random grassy plain in a far off view getting to see the two worlds apart from each other, and iirc everyone was asking Noah about what they should do now and I believe nothing would progress until Noah answered. Even Ghondor and Monica showed up too when Noah was taking to long to answer. That scene is was too strikingly similar to Alvis' talk with Shulk, only if Alvis didn't reveal himself.

Thank you for teaching me how Nopon reproduce, it changed my life

Nice video, these lore explanations are gonna be really neat

I wish the game focused on it more heavily because the gameplay is affected by this as well. The limit on oroborus being that it would cause an annihilation event is interesting but only put into focus like once or twice in game

This really cleared up a lot of confusion I had with the black fog, thank you so much for making this! As a fan of the Xenoblade franchise since it originally released on Wii in the US, I REALLY need to get around to playing Gears & Saga, I always hear such good things about them. Also Eunie glitching out at 4:27 lmao.

4:26 did Eunie find a four leaf clover or something?

Nice, def a couple things I didn’t put together fully in my mind after playing through the game for so long

The fog also appear in XCX .(Chapter 6 dark matter)

bro I have been looking for one of these videos ever since I finished the game two days ago, thank you so much

wait holy shit this actually makes so much sense. i already love this game a ton but this made me appreciate it even more. great video.

I'm hoping we get some more info or confirmation with a DLC, something on the scale of Torna

I think the black fog might play a bigger role in future xenoblade titles and this game and FC might be alluding to this as possibly an antagonistic force cropping up as a result of the conduit disappearing and the worlds wanting to merge

Thank you so much for making this I was wondering what the relation between future connected and three was or just the fog in general :)

I’m still over here thinking about the theory that Alvis is in 3. Chapter 6, Noah’s memory sequence. That random kid that is talking to him, revealed to be Noah’s kid, just……sends him into a purgatory magical dream world, and has a conversation about the future, his wishes, his past, etc. Seems veeerryy familiar. Theory is that it was Alvis talking to Noah in a “divine realm” just like he did with Shulk in 1. Taking the form of Noah’s kid to get him to be more personal, emotional and reflective. The way he talks and what they talk about, also sounds just like a good ole Alvis conversation. At first, I didn’t even think about it one bit. Brushed it off as Noah having a bit of purgatory before being revived. But when you replace, “Random, unexplained and never talked about again moment of purgatory” with “Alvis,” it makes way, way more sense. IF this is true, it’s implications could be massive.

I figured the Black Fog was some kind of Gnosis concept ever since Shulk used the poor Hom’s version of the Hilbert Effect to phase the Fog King into reality. I also feel like there is some definite Jungian kind of explanation for the Black Fog if we look in the right places. Especially concerning things like collective unconscious, the recycling of souls, and Ouroboros. Monolith may have toned down the overt philosophizing in Xenoblade but it’s still there.

Awesome video JB

You eluded to this earlier and I'm glad you brought up Xenosaga - I was going to say that the Black Fog seems kind of like a modern variant of U-DO

The idea of the black fog being a correction also makes sense in context for Klaus. You can clearly see a ton of black fog uniting into his left half, acting as a link to the battle with Shulk and Zanza in the cutscene. This would imply Klaus's remains was the entry point for the fog in FC as it kept trying to correct the split between Klaus's two halves, erasing the half that escaped into the new world through the removal of the Telethia. There is just one slight problem for this: Xenoblade X. If the Black Fog was trying to correct the Telethia's existence due to them being the white blood cells of the Bionis, then why is a Telethia in Mira? is Mira going through a similar sort of stasis? It would certainly explain a lot about how everyone is still operational in NLA and how the Telethia hasn't been eradicated by black fog. But then what is causing the freeze? The only two things so far that have been capable of halting the black fog so far are the Conduit and Moebius.

Thanks, the black fog was really confusing

Nice video!

If Nopon are ripen Bright Figs, then Riki must of fed his hungry kids the other lesser kids haha. The Nopon race is savage.

Great explanation

I love that you used that clip from Pawn Stars as an example, I remember thinking that seeing that episode lol

I don’t think the black fog is actually autonomous (spoiler warning by the way) Nia tells the party and the player that if the two worlds merged they would cancel each other out, mobius stopped time in that one second before that occurred and created aionios from the two worlds (though it might be better to say they slowed down time dramatically) essentially annihilation events are parts of the two worlds coming into contact with each other and the black fog is the beginning of that process which also explains why it happens when mobius and ouroboros interlink for two long because both sides require a person from agnus and keves to perform an interlink the overheating and subsequent annihilation events that happen afterwards is the process of the two individuals of the interlink fully merging and canceling each other out. To that end the mobius description of Aionios being an endless now was a false one they had simply subjected everyone to an extremely drawn out inevitable destruction

This is EXACTLY the type of video I was hoping to see! There's a few more questions about the world that I have, but I was really hoping there were just. Parts of the game I straight up didn't register or glossed over, cause at the end I felt really empty and hanging on a lot of important plot points. Stuff they brought up several times through the story, put a stress point on, and then did not bother to explain. It irks me to see that, and it's been putting a damper on my takeaway from the game as a whole. Which is an absolute shame, cause Xenoblade is my favourite series at this point. It moved me to Japan, and the moment to moment story and gameplay of 3 was indeed great - just the ending left so many hanging threads that leave me unsatisfied. :(

This is the part of the story that was hoping to get more of I kept asking for the game to “get all Xeno-y” and start to explain things a bit more like Xenoblade 2. But it seemed to go into a more Xenoblade 1 route where there’s SOME explanation but not as much. But maybe this is held off for DLC.

That thumbnail is genuinely incredible

How do nopon reproduce? That random japanese guy running through the tunnel: SEEEEEXXXXXX, SEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXXXX

There's a misunderstanding of matter vs antimatter here. Matter isn't positively charged vs antimatter being negatively charged. Protons are positively charged, but in their most stable state have the same number of electrons orbiting them which are negatively charged, making the atom's overall charge neutral. Same with antimatter, instead with negative antiprotons and positive positrons, again ending up neutral. So matter and antimatter aren't magnetically attracted to eachother. They annihilate eachother if they make contact, but they don't seek eachother out and that's not what causes the conversion of matter into energy. If it was pushing opposite ends of 2 magnets together would explode

There is one detail you missed though. Also there is some spoilers here for anyone else that reads this. Every moebius has fog spill out of them, so it comes from them. You see it when Consul K dies and just before P & O explode, the fog spills out first before being drawn in. Why fog is inside them but also hinders their sight is weird but then again, Nia says everyone has a bit of Moebius in them and the final battle with Z is just him as a giant black foggy head. I could be very wrong but Moebius seem to be fog itself, given form.

The idea of the world's recombining is like the existence of quantum fluctuations, positive and negative atoms that pop into existence for a brief moment before snapping back into nothing, leaving behind energy

I saw the black fog as Xenoblade Minovsky Particles. It never occurred to me that it could just be some force or pressure.

Nopon growing on trees makes sense, if you think about it...I mean, why else is the Nopon Village in XC1 inside a giant tree?

Fog king hell, the Xenoblade world is sparking Immersive. I hope we get more Xenoblade games, like Chronicles X on Wii U but ported to Switch or whatever.

Pretty good video. That adds a lot about the Black Fog theory that i had playing the game. My theory was that the fog was a reaction of the two worlds colliding. And the Mobius/Ouroboros transformation is kinda an aceleration of the world state of fusion and distruction. Fighting "D" in early game he says that a Mobius must be a union of a Kevesi and a Agnus. In the fight with P and O, they made an alegory saying that a Mobius is a fusion of "two worlds". And just like the worlds colliding, the reunion of the black fog resulting on the Anihilation Effect, the extended effect of a Mobius, and an Ouroboros also results in it. That was the realization i came alone with. My theory alone don't explain the reason why the Black Fog manifested as an Guldo in Future Connected, and why manipulated other beings. The only thing i try to think with was the Black Fog was still weak, and could'nt just cause distruction by itself, so manipulatin the surroudings was the only way of manifestation, and the Infernal Guldo appeared because was the only creature who could be manifested in Xenoblade 1 universe. Since Klaus claimed that Guldos were human who still got attached of life. The remains of his former life was in this universe.

Very well done with the observations and such.. As we do know that Aionios is a Temporary world (This concept can be a double-edged sword) so I think the writers delibirately make alot of the concepts vague or rather other-wordly.. See Aionios shouldn't be made in the first place and just a result of constant unfortunate events (Which is a very theme in his game as well "Luck") hence they would rather have this world to be covered with mystery rather than definite answers, you get what I mean?? Yea like I said it can be bad or good but Imho incorporating a cohesive narrative alongside such complex scientific concept is REAAAAALLLY hard to do.. And them incorporating the expositions in the Side Quests (It's not perfect tho) is a really good decision rather than having the players be bored on Long-boring-expositions... Thumbs-up for Monolithsoft for this one.. The best course of action for the New Story DLC is an epilogue for sure or else they will f*ck up this "Closure" theme they are going after... Also looking forward to your more Lore videos.. You earned a sub and a share to my friends. 😊👍

Love the video! Is it possible you can explain Lucky Seven? Or at least how it’s able to sense Moebius?

Future connected foreshadowing how much bosses would've sucked Music was fantastic

X: So are we gonna do anything about the Nopons Z: just ignore them X: You sure? Z: oh please they just a bunch greedy fluffy balls what the worst that can happen.

It would be cool if the black fog got explained in further games Also I would like to see a Xeno game set before the universe restart

Great video, I was really curious about the fog, and I think you explained it pretty well. That being said I am still not sure what the Fog King has to do with XC3. If the Black Fog appears to fight the worlds merging, then it doesn't neccessarily come from the Fog King right? Maybe I'm overlooking something.

Huh...is it possible the origin sword and sword of the end are made from forged black fog?

45 seconds in and I’m yelling I knew the black fog was Nopon farts!!!

The fog is the event itself. Since time is frozen and if move you a little to fast in frozen time (aka create energy) the atoms will restart the time on that specific location and boom betwen 2 worlds will happen. The world is slowly dying in xenoblade 3 and it will not be possible to keep it in frozen time forever as more and more will dissapear over time, returning back to original timeline (and blowing up in process since it hits the other world) Mobius have a warning system, so they dont hit the critial mass and cause it. Heck i would say they have generators to move that energy away from their bodys so they dont cause the event. I mean even Dio in Jojo has a time limit. They are laws you cant break.

4:27 Eunie lmao

This explains a lot, it all makes sense now. Thank you for this video

0:00 this opening statement is news to me

4:26 lol you ok there Eunie?

Any relation to the fog creatures from X?

4:19 is peak eunie performance. The fog will soon be coming to erease her.

I just see the Fog as a consequence from the worlds merging, thing that happened since XC1/2 ending, the Fogbeasts were the first reaction to worlds being in the same universe I also think that with FC starting it, XC3 forgetting the fog and XCX having Dark Matter i think that Takahashi is foreshadowing them as the eventual biggest threat on the Xenoblade Universe And i think that before XC4 comes out XCX will receive a port for the next Nintendo console with a new epilogue FC style and finally connect it to the other games In the end i think that everything leads to the Gnosis in the Xenoblade Universe honestly

I immediately saw the parallels to antimatter with the annihilation events, and surmised that Xenoblade 1 must have taken place in an antimatter universe. But the black fog was a lot more ambiguous. Probably would've helped if I had context from Xenogears to compare it to.

Do we know why z has an army of enemies made from the fog in origin?

is the black fog connected to the taint from Xenoblade X in any way?

Great video, I just have one question. At 2:11, you mention that the entire events of Xeno 1 are a part of Alvis' memory space. I was under the impression taht the only tie we see Alvis' memory is when shown the events of Klaus creating the new universe, and showing Shulk what would happen if nothing was done and recreating Shulk's memories to spur him on. Am I just recalling events incorrectly, or is there more evidence for all of Xeno 1 being in "Alvis"?

Ya, XB3 is basically Xenogears remake. They may as well just play the Fei and Elly love story theme when Noah and Mio are on screen.

For a lot of the game, I figured that Annihilation events were the result of the mass within getting teleported away, likely back to their original XC1 or XC2 reality. Thus, things were kept suspended midair because, technically, all of that stuff still remained in the same X-Y-Z coordinates of reality, just on a new plane of existence, thus keeping everything else propped up across planes. In the aftermath of fighting D&J, the cannon explodes, but Taion says that the two must still be alive, as he can still detect his origami creature. I figured that this was foreshadowing this aspect of teleportation, and Taion was detecting them across planes of reality. Then, later on, when Lanz and Eunie were about to sacrifice themselves to trigger an annihilation event on N, I was suspecting them to actually succeed in going through with it, resulting in those two being the first to cross the threshold into the worlds the annihilation events have been sending things to. Of course, none of this ends up being true, as I'd soon learn with D&J returning in the encounter with the real Queen of Agnes. Would have been cool, though, maybe could have given a glimpse at some other places that didn't show up in Aionios proper, like Agniratha, Colony 6 or 9 from the Bionis, Temperantia, or Indol.

Whoa you can’t just end the video on that cliffhanger

been rewatching these videos after completing Future Redeemed. I was hoping FR would explain the difference between black fog and rift fog better. I used to think black fog was purely friction between worlds, but starting to warm up to the idea there is more to it, especially since annihilation events can happen without black fog. And i can buy into the idea of mobius being made from it. But what i dont get is how is black fog both a hindrance for mobius but also something that is in their cores? why do interlinked mobius annihilate but unlinked the black fog doesnt pose a risk to themselves? i know you mentioned releasing a new video on fog

This video is literally the only way the Fog King actually means anything to the overall plot. Oof. Still the worst Xenoblade villain by far.

Are you going to update your ideas on the fog beasts now after Future Redeemed? Just curious 👀

I'm curious if we'll ever find out what being controls the black fog and fate in general.

Xenoblade 3 isn't the conclusion of a trilogy it's not certain most likely its not gonna happen bcz tons of things from the 3 games yet to be answered and shown

After playing I never noticed that the black fog had correlation to future connected I hate myself I keep forgetting things or not noticing things from the two first games I hate it so much

The fog is a concept. Like the final boss. *drops mic, walks away*

Not a bad idea but do explain this to me then, why did the 2 worlds drift apart from each other at the end? Seriously it makes no sense, the whole time everyone was saying "the worlds are still crashing together, if origin is stopped they'll collide". But then origin is stopped and the 2 worlds randomly just do the exact opposite? Feels like it should have ended with origin causing the 2 worlds to interlink properly or something, fitting the theme of the whole game

4:26 Eunie going apesh*t

Kind of wish there was a spoiler tag in the intro

4:30 i fuckjng love eunie

So basically the blackfog is a countermeasure of reality to reshape itself similar to the counterforce of the fate series

I'm still disappointed that there's no Fog King explanation in the game :(.

Thank you for this video, it made me understand black fog more as the game glance over it to much, which makes sense since the character can't understand everything about the world, much less the black fog. It been the universes will trying to right thing makes sense, *SPOILER!!* more so in a world were the main enemy is also a embodiment of sort of emotions (fear the most present) so makes sense the universe has a will and will make sure things move according to it (one way or another).

now a lot of things make sense...

Doesn't all of this mean that eventually the two worlds would collide and cancel each other out anyway? If the opposite polairites keep attracting each other, there is no way to change that. How does Origin prevent this outcome? and if the two worlds would come into contact without merging, wouldn't that also be against the will of the universe and spawn the Black Fog again?

She Noahs on my flameclock

From now on I won´t eat plants to not harm Nopon, thank you

can we get a source on that Nopon reproduction thing?

can u make a video about Tyrea?

First off of course Nopon are fucking cannibals. We knew this since XC2 when Boreas revealed he has licked Tora's feet as a mean to taste test their species in his heart to heart lol. Jokes aside this was very helpful and informative. Since I have same brain cells as Lanz, I honestly didn't comprehend the significance of the fog with Aionis and FC. This really does well to explain what was going on in the game and give me a better understanding of the significance of the fog in the story.

You neglected to mention electrons and positrons. There are also antineutrons and antineutrinos, as well as W- bosons, which are the antiparticle of W+ bosons. There are even quarks and antiquarks.

The Fog King was Meyneth. The exact same model was used for a boss in Xenoblade 2, where Rex and co. discover Galea's ID card after killing it. The name of that boss was "The Infernal Guldo". Incase you may not have noticed, the "Infernal Guldo" doesn't actually demonstrate any signs of being on fire or having any firey accents. What does? The "Fog King". This is clearly not a coincidence. The Fog King is a Gnosis of Meyneth/Galea. The portals through which the monsters appeared through the fog (tainted mobs) are identical to the portals in Xenosaga where Gnosis would come from. The Fog King plotline was meant as a bookend to Meyneth' story, post-Zanza.

The Annihilation events remind me of Ghosts from X exploding on Earth when destroyed. Perhaps bringing it into focus at the crux of the trilogy is meant to set up a tie in antagonist, in which Mira and X in general is the end goal.

black tar! Stuck on a whole different planet...I need a bigger gun

how did you think of that whole bright fig Nopon thing lmao

I always saw the black fog as the worlds (correctly) merging in small spaces, essentially replacing parts of aionios with empty space from both worlds. Another interpretation I have is that the black fog is the new universes answer to Logos, as his role as Malos was that of a destroyer. I thought maybe his residual ether was included in Origin’s database, causing him to be “revived” in Aionios as a force of nature.

Wow. And here, I thought I was the fog guy in this community. XD

so... you just prove that Tatsu IS a good damn potato!

Hollow purple

sick thumbnail just gotta say

If the world is frozen in time, why is there still a day/night cycle ?

The nopon being like plants is confirmed? Or is just a joke that i think he said seriously?

One interesting theory I came across on Reddit is that the fog is just a plot device in one of the most poorly written stories in video games.