(Note: This post will contain spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. I advise playing the game and/or reading up on its story up until the end of Chapter 15 before continuing.)
You all remember me making Xord a few weeks ago, right? Well, a couple things. First, I’ve made a few changes since the last time you’ve seen this guy, mainly for the sake of accuracy and greater ease of acquiring parts–I haven’t made a new render yet so these changes are not apparent just yet; furthermore, some of these parts are still quite difficult to acquire and I have not yet found a way to redesign the build with easier-to-come-by parts without significantly altering the design. Secondly, at the end of July, to celebrate the then-upcoming release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I decided to make MOCs of the other prominent Face Mechon from the game.
What are Face Mechon? Well, Mechon are the battle droids that make up the army of the Mechonis fighting against the Bionis. Face Mechon are a special type of Mechon that cannot be destroyed by the Monado, a legendary sword with unimaginable power, until it is upgraded about 1/3 of the way in the story. The reason these Mechon hard-counter the Monado until then is revealed during the first major twist of the game.
Note that I did try to be purist with these in the sense that as many of these parts as possible actually exist in those colors, I forewent structural stability in favor of aesthetics, so I have no idea how well any of these figures would stay together or even stand up. Other than Xord I have no intention of building any of them irl tho, so let’s just get onto the mocs.
Face Unit 20814 - Codename: Jade
Surprisingly, the first Face I made after Xord is the last new one you meet in the game (even after meeting and fighting the leader of Mechonis more than once), Jade Face.
Because he was the first one I made after Xord, the other Faces are all derived from his construction. Jade’s torso is Xord’s doubled up and his limbs are all Xord’s with extensions so he has actual elbows and knees. I chose dark green as his primary color (since most of Bionicle’s green characters used dark green rather than Mata green, really handy since the Rahkshi spine is available in that color), but I had little choice but to sprinkle Mata green in simply because some of the essential parts are not yet available in dark green.
As with Xord, I opted to make what I believe was gold on the original characters tan, and tan ended up unifying all of my Faces together.
I’m especially happy with how the shoulder covers look and I honestly wanna see if I can replicate that design on an irl MOC at some point in the future.
Face Nemesis
Nemesis is the first Face you meet after Xord’s demise(?), first seeing her about 1/4 of the way through the game. Carrying the heart of Mechonis, there’s definitely more to her than meets the eye.
Nemesis proved to be quite a toughie to design; particularly her skirt-like armor and her mask proved especially difficult.
Her skirt isn’t as large as it should be–I settled for length over width–and her head, while it looks the part, is much more fragile than it ought to be (a victim of Flickr MOC syndrome). If I ever revamp Nemesis, this is what I’ll target first.
Unlike Jade, Nemesis’s lower torso is heavily modified, removing the Rahkshi shoulder plate in an attempt to match her slightly slimmer proportions in-game.
Her swords are probably a bit smaller than they should be, but I figured these Antroz blades were too perfectly shaped to pass up.
Metal Face, the Traitor of Bionis
This is the one you’ve been waiting for. Metal Face is the bad guy that reels you into the game, and serves as the main antagonist for over 1/2 the game before his boss and later the true antagonist take over. He harbors a personal grudge against both Dunban and Shulk and wants nothing more than to see them and everyone they love suffer. In many ways, he’s similar to Nidhiki, I think.
Metal Face was by far the trickiest one to design, almost entirely on account of those wings and his horns (the latter of which I’ll probably redesign later). In the end, he’s probably my favorite MOC of the bunch and, other than Xord, is the one I’m considering building irl.
As with Nemesis, his build is derived from Jade’s, though almost everything changed, including his legs which are upside down from Jade’s, his arms which are upside down and widened a bit, and his back which was modified to incorporate the wings and his cannon.
Now I did make Yaldabaoth and posted him elsewhere, but frankly I’m not happy with that MOC at all. Ignoring the fact that he’s gold and most of the parts I need don’t come in gold–subbing gold for tan as I had done previously won’t help much either–the build isn’t purist by any means and the final result isn’t even very good. It’s still online if you really want to look for it but I desperately need to revamp that thing and I have no idea where to start.
But anyway, those were my Face Mechon. I started this series because I realized that Xord’s limbs look an awful lot like Rahkshi backs and everything worked itself out from there. Though they might not be the best, I’m really proud of how these four came out. I hope Lady Meyneth will be pleased with my work.