Disc 2

So! My sister and I have been playing Xenogears... we've just made it to Disc 2, only to find that what we had heard was 100% true-- budget and time cuts forced the game to drop a lot of the, well, gameplay, and summarize massive plot events that should be given proper time.

Basically, what I'm wondering is... will it return to regular story business?? Or will it remain "Gears Storybook" for the rest of the game? (A truly disappointing thought! I want more information on the characters
-coughSigurdcoughcough- but... all I'm getting is depressing mutant business. D:)

It's especially a shame, because the plot was getting so good at the end of Disc 1! This feels like such a drop in quality, and it's rather painful...

All I can remember is one small dungeon and then I think what's left is final dungeon, maybe there was something between them but I don't remember it XDD

There are a few "dungeons", but not many (my favorite dungeon happens to be on disc 2; Anima Dungeon #2). Disc 2 also tends to throw you into a few boss fights after lengthy cutscenes with no dungeon in between at all. But at the very end of disc 2 the game surprisingly goes back to normal, giving you access to the world map again. Sadly there aren't many places to visit anymore; 2 optional dungeons/areas (Lighthouse and Duneman Isle), the Kislev Battle Arena, Citan's house and the final dungeon (and the area you start out in before reaching the world map again, but that's a spoilerific one).

So yeah, not much, but at least the game still goes back to a traditional RPG experience before the story is wrapped up.

God, that's just... that's a flatout shame! My problem lies with the fact that even the lengthy cutscenes aren't fleshed-out dialogue-- most of the time they're just gross summaries of things that ought to be major plot events! D: I love myself some long cutscenes-- but not when said cinematics are just the shell of a real storyline.

Alas. Thanks for answering. Sounds like there's some hope on the horizon, if not much!

I remember back when Xenosaga first came out, a lot of my Xenogears friends just couldn't get into it because they said the whole game played out like Disc 2 of Xenogears, albeit with much much much more good looking cutscenes. I think what Square did was pull the plug on Xeno Team's budget near the end, so they tried to cut corners for whichever bits got deemed unimportant. I keep on saying that if I ever won the lottery, I'd pay Monolith to finish the parts of Disc 2 that got Citan-Chaired.

The ending and the dungeon before the ending are really great, though, but I think I'm mainly interested in them the most because they touch briefly on more of Ramsus' backstory and I am a completely and horridly predictable fangirl.

Now see, I think there's a major difference between the way Saga works and the way Disc 2 works. My problem with Disc 2 is not that there are a ton of cutscenes (I love myself a ton of cutscenes! Storylines are one of the major reasons I play games. I understand that this isn't true for everyone though. ^^') but the way in which cutscenes work. They aren't so much dialogue and plot progression, but more giant, sweeping summaries of huge plot events. It reads like a Wikipedia summary! Not a video game cutscene. It's a shame too, because the 'Xeno' plot elements were really just getting going at this time... I would've liked to see them given proper story development, not the Sparknotes plot summaries. D:

My goodness, Ramsus is fantastic. We just watched him kill Cain, and all I could think was-- "God, his whole life has been a lie."

He's delightfully screwed up and mentally unstable, and at this point, I'd like to see him just curl up with some hot cocoa... and Sigurd.

QuiteBrilliantIndeed wrote:He's delightfully screwed up and mentally unstable, and at this point, I'd like to see him just curl up with some hot cocoa... and Sigurd.

SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME.

QuiteBrilliantIndeed wrote:Now see, I think there's a major difference between the way Saga works and the way Disc 2 works. My problem with Disc 2 is not that there are a ton of cutscenes (I love myself a ton of cutscenes! Storylines are one of the major reasons I play games. I understand that this isn't true for everyone though. ^^') but the way in which cutscenes work. They aren't so much dialogue and plot progression, but more giant, sweeping summaries of huge plot events. It reads like a Wikipedia summary! Not a video game cutscene. It's a shame too, because the 'Xeno' plot elements were really just getting going at this time... I would've liked to see them given proper story development, not the Sparknotes plot summaries. D:

This. That's the problem with Disk 2. Xenosaga has a lot of long cutscenes but they're not summaries of events (like, Shion isn't reading the abridged version of the game script to you, sitting in a chair).

QuiteBrilliantIndeed wrote:My goodness, Ramsus is fantastic. We just watched him kill Cain, and all I could think was-- "God, his whole life has been a lie."

He's delightfully screwed up and mentally unstable, and at this point, I'd like to see him just curl up with some hot cocoa... and Sigurd.

Ramsus has become such a big woobie at this point, huh. I'm not complaining. I love how he slowly changed (or should I say "revealed his damaged true self"). I just wish he had gotten additional/optional final scenes, you know...

Spoiler:

.

I must admit that when I first came upon the Story Chair, I've let out a sigh of relief. By the time I've managed to get through Disk 1, the random encounter rate got unbearable for me and seeing a dungeon crammed full of 'em getting skipped in favour of the plot cheered me up.

I soon changed my tune of course, but, IMHO, curtailing the amount of dungeons made the game better in the end if they were just going to end up filled with dark, labyrinthine corridors chock full of monsters and puzzles. It may be just a pet-peeve of mine I have no business throwing in the face of a game released in 1998, but anything that brings back the memories of classical dungeon crawl instantly gets a thumbs-down in my book.

Disc 2 is... yeah.

I abandoned my first attempt to play through the game because I couldn't take anymore of it. Too much was happening too fast with too little explanation and immersion. There was a reason why, years later, I could remember much of Disc 1, but so little of the game after the reins are taken from you. I was talking to my bro the other day, and he mentioned that when you're in D Block, "you feel like a prisoner." As annoying as the D Block segment is, I couldn't disagree. Playing through that part of the game made you feel trapped in a way that just having it narrated in summary to you wouldn't have achieved.

So, when Fei or whomever talks on Disc 2 about massive decisive battles so decisive that NO ELLY YOU CAN'T COME ALSO I'M A SEXIST JERK, and we the players don't get to be a part of that, it is difficult to appreciate the stakes. Things also seemed to happen with surreal abruptness and it was rather difficult to string events together. For example, I am certain that I read every word, but I was completely lost as to why Elly feeding her blood to a mutant was so significant as to be the first anime cut scene in forever. (Seriously, these Sufal things were never mentioned before then, and the entirety of the significance they carried after was to be common mobs once you got map access back.) I was also so hopelessly lost as to why this "Deus" thing that the game had been building up to from the start ended up being this wacky rotting skull-faced thing that we're suddenly thrown into a boss battle with, where it effectively destroys itself and then disintegrates off-screen. It was so eerily nonsensical that I think I just stopped playing after the Raziel scene. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY ANYTHING IS HAPPENING ANYMORE, SCREW THIS GAME! (Frankly, I still don't understand the Mahanon Deus sequence at all, but... another thread.) I had been able to tolerate all the Citan, Cain, and Gazel Ministry nonsense of Disc 1, but Disc 2... was just too much. Or too little, as the case may be.

Although I don't count on it ever happening, I would very much like to see a more... fleshed-out Disc 2, where the appearance of a menu prompt does not feel like a miracle from on high. I love stories in my RPGs, but, you know, one of the strengths of a video game, rather than a book or movie, is being able to actively explore an environment and collect information at your own pace. Dungeons can be much more than padding -- just look at Karellan's Lab; imagine being able to explore Mahanon! -- and towns can be a great place to decompress and absorb the story. Not to mention, there was a bit more to our party than Fei and Elly, and Disc 2 kind of forgot about them!

(In a hypothetical Xenogears remake, can Chu-chu be replaced with Margie? Pleeeeeeease?)

On another note, according to the rather impressive History of Xenogears & Xenosaga, there were never any budget cuts. The budget was small to begin with (Xenogears was an unproven property, after all) and Square actually allocated more funding than it originally planned so that more anime sequences could be produced. The state of disc 2 appears to be a result of overambition and schedule conflicts.