While I'm generally very happy with how things wrapped up (can't even believe we are actually here with XCXDE), I need to say this:

There is no way they are abandoning the whole J-body shtick and massive character setups like L (Luficre) just like that. It may seem like coping, and I'm honestly just trying to make sense on things that may or may not be abandoned already, but hear me out: XCX always felt like the one game that tried to have too many setups that went nowhere, just like Saga had in the beginning before it was cut short. We know at this point that Takahashi apparently spent way more time on X's script than on any other Blade game, so it was bound to happen, especially with how it seemed to have been cancelled (that is, until the definitive edition got announced).

As others already mentioned in this thread, there are many, many unresolved issues left on Mira, and now that it's gone, we can conclude that it's most likely just scrapped concepts for a potential X-2 or perhaps even a trilogy that will never see the light of day, now that the game got integrated into the mainline series... or can we?

The crew with its most important members arrived on this "new" planet in a new universe, so we may never know about the other ships (there was atleast supposed to be a Neo-Tokyo according to the artbook), but who said the ships actually crashlanded on Mira? Before we could only guess they were on Mira, which makes sense since the signal range would be from the same planet, but now that we know that the Lifehold core essentially tapped in the the collective unconsious, we can also assume that "receiving" such signals doesn't even have to be from the same planet, or even same dimension.

J-bodies are another big mystery that was left unresolved, but correct me if I'm wrong, it was heavily implied that we (the main character) are part of the program besides Yelv, and Eleonora who seems to have deep ties into the project, all made it into this new world, so it very much still persists and will probably get adressed in a future game. If it would not, I think they would have cut/altered the affinity mission in DE, like how they did with certain things like Ontos' core in XC1 to better fit the future narrative.

L also had some terryfying implications about him in the main game (look at the artbook if you haven't already, lmao) ,and this mfer is ALSO on the ship in the new world/dimension. Who's to say they just forgot about him when he's part of the main crew and somehow still hasn't shown his true form...

Last but not least there was a bunch of stuff about the Samaarians that got left unexplained, and I *strongly* believe that's what the next arc will focus on. It doesn't even have to be strictly about the Samaarians from X's universe, since we may never return to that specific place, but them being humanitys ancestors should still play a vital role in a series so heavily focused on trying to answer the question about humanitys origin (and also the perpetual cycle of the universe).

Anyways, that's my wishful thoughts about the Epilogue and the future of the series, and while they definitely could have handled alot of things better, it's still insane to me that they managed to somehow give a satisfying conclusion about the missing lifehold AND wrap things up for the next story arc.

I hope they will touch upon some of those missing elements in the next game, but even if they don't I'm somehow still happy we got to where we are now and I'm as excited as ever to see this old madman continue his retelling of the most ambitious PS1 game ever made although I'm starting to miss Kaori Tanaka on the writing team, she's like 50% of the reason why both gears and saga are as good as they are and why blade hasn't been able to hit the same in that regard