Torna – The Golden Country

Torna – The Golden Country is the expansion for the great, ambitious, and overly complex Xenoblade Chronicles 2, acting as a poignant prologue that works even better when experienced before the main game. Its revamped combat system giver a faster pace to the battles, and its story benefits from being more tightly structured than the original.

This time, the protagonist is Lora, a young warrior who grew up alongside her Blade, Jin, after he cut off the arm of her abusive father to protect her. Lorna is a mercenary, and the first time we see her she’s in a forest battling a group of monsters alongside Jin. Lorna, however, is in a personal quest to find out the whereabouts of her mother and, during her journey, she encounters the heir to the kingdom of Torna, the outgoing Addam, and his Blade Mythra, who are looking for Malos: the person responsible for the destructions of numerous villages and towns around the land of Alrest.

The Golden Country has a more focused narrative than the main game, benefiting from its smaller length – it takes approximately 20 hours to do almost everything. The group’s objective is to defeat Malos and save the kingdom of Torna from his attacks. They stop first at the continent of Gormott to discover the whereabouts of Lora’s mother and then travel to Torna to face their nemesis.

Lorna’s story is a fascinating one, despite being very simple, due to its thematic connection with the villains of the main game. Malos continues to be a one-dimensional force of destruction in The Golden Country, with his nihilism standing out only because it’s supposed to be the fruit of divine – or his Driver’s – will. The nihilism of the other Xenoblade 2 antagonists, however, is the result of past experiences: they have witnessed first-hand the cruelty and selfishness of humankind and have lost loved ones to unspeakable acts of violence. This leads them to a path of general hatred, becoming part of the problem that originated them. Lorna, on the other hand, despite also suffering the consequences of the lack of compassion of some people, never loses sight of what’s right. She never loses her optimism. On the contrary, when faced with despicable bigotry and hatred, her will to help others only strengthens. If violence bred nihilism in the antagonists, it breeds only more empathy in Lora.

Mythra’s growth as a character is also directly related to her growth as a person: she becomes more and more compassionate as the story unfolds, caring more about the well-being of those around her. The element that makes her character arc more interesting is the reason the narrative establishes for that growth: Mythra becomes a better person because of her constant interaction with her Driver, Addam. The characters discuss how friendship and positive social contact can be catalysts of kindness, putting the act of distancing yourself from the world as fuel for cold, cruel, selfish acts – which sheds new light on Malos’ nature, as his Driver set him loose, alone in the world to destroy everything.

Addam, like Lora, is a paragon of virtue, who also seems to be always eager to offer a hand to those in need. His conflict is related to his position of power, having been trusted with Mythra as a Blade, who – being a “sister” to Malos – also holds the means to destroy the world. The narrative, then, has a general feeling of optimism due to the personality of its main characters – and here, scenes in which they just hang together, cooking and making fun of each other feel more natural because of that – but offers a constant reminder of how things could very wrong in an instant – which makes the final events in the game even more striking.

The smaller focus on just two main areas – Gormott and Torna – also benefits the narrative, as it allows the player to establish a deeper connection with their inhabitants. The sidequests, for example, are all about Lora and her friends helping everyone they meet, and the fact that these characters eventually return in other quests to offer aid as well – the last missions having large groups of people being formed to assist just one individual – help establish a strong sense of community. Again, this makes the final events more impactful, as they closely relate to the well-being of those people.

One could argue that The Golden Country works much better when experienced before the main game, as it solves one of the main problems of the story in Xenoblade 2: Jin’s character arc. The problem was a simple one: Jin’s reasons to act the way he was were tied to his relationship with his former Driver, Lora, who, in the main game, we never get to properly know. By putting Lora as the main character, this expansion corrects that, constructing the necessary build-up to his tragic character arc, focusing on Jin’s resistance to one of the saddest elements regarding Blades: the fact that, despite being immortal, they have their memories erased with their driver’s eventual death to allow them to bond with and become Blades of other Drivers.

The Golden Country, therefore, works both ways: playing it beforehand gives a huge amount of needed context and pathos to Xenoblade 2, while playing it later will give this one a bubbling sense of dread, similar to Halo: Reach.

That is not to say that the narrative in The Golden Country doesn’t have its share of faults. The mischievous brother of the king of Torna, for instance, doesn’t do much despite having “treason and trouble” written all over his face. He serves only as a logical reason for Mythra ending up in Addam’s hands, since, if he had gotten her instead of Addam, more chaos would have surely followed. Another character without much function is the third member of Lora’s party, the king Hugo, who is also a gentle soul but is never tested by the events of the story in the same way Lora and Addam are.

Moreover, late in the game, progress is blocked if the player hasn’t completed a certain number of sidequests (almost forty of them), which wouldn’t be such a problem if the game didn’t outright lie in the beginning, stating that “Regular quests are not necessary to progress through the game’s story.”

The combat system, in turn, is a bit different from the original. It remains in real-time, with the main character auto-attacking, while the player worries about positioning and using arts at the right time to build up specials. Arts can also lead to the same combo: first you “break” your opponent’s defenses, then you “topple” the creature, “launch” it into the air, and finally use specific arts to “smash” it back down to the ground.

The difference comes from the ability to switch to your Blades mid-battle with the press of a button. This switch functions as an art, dealing damage with its own properties and effects. Lora has an art that inflicts “break” on an opponent, for example, and after it lands, it’s recommended that the player make the switch to Jin, since their “switch art” can cause the “topple” status. The characters’ health bar also has a “red damage meter” that recovers when the switch happens, encouraging the player to keeping changing characters during battle – and, therefore, making it more dynamic than in the base game.

Presentation-wise, The Gould Country meets the standards set by Xenoblade 2: it boasts a striking art direction – although one hampered by the problematic resolution in handheld mode – and makes the whole package have one of the best soundtracks in the entire industry. And its level-design continues to be more intricate than it initially seems, due to its emphasis on verticality that cleverly hides several secret paths, areas, and bosses.

Torna – The Golden Country is a great expansion for Xenoblade 2, adding so much pathos to the overall story that it may work even better when experienced first.

June 16, 2020.