I was visiting the Xenogears gamefaq forum lately and I came across this question :
"What is the longest Xenogears cutscene ?"
And it made me think about the game as a whole. How long are the cutscenes put together ? What about comparing them with Xenosaga's ? And finally, what ended up to be my main motivation for what I'm doing "How many TV anime episodes (basically around 22m40/24m40) Xenogears would have if it was turned into an anime ?"
I also might try and see how many movies Xenogears would need to tell the story, ahah (too much I guess, especially if you add the missing story stuff and missing episodes).
So yeah, basically, I'm taking notes about cutscene lenght for each chapter of the game (and I'm giving a name for each cutscene because "Why not? Xenosaga 3 did it, after all." and it's kinda fun). It's not perfect because the game has mainly text boxes and is not entirelly voiced but I think it gives an idea.
So far (I almost finished the Stalactite Cave chapter), I can tell you that the longest chapter is "Desert Attack!" (from Fei getting lost in the desert to Fei/Bart Gear fight and getting sucked into quick sands... overall 20m55... could be a TV episode on its own) and the longest scene is the one where Elly blames Fei in the forest (before she leaves him, feels awful about herself and gets attacked by a Rankar). It's just only slightly longer than the opening anime sequence (5m31, the opening being 5m15).
It also made me think about which scenes should/could be rewritten, moved/switched or completely cut off if the game had a shot at the anime thing. Even a remake. I honestly have no doubt that if Takahashi and co. could and wanted to work on Xenogears again, they would change/edit and of course add stuff (and I'm pretty convinced they didn't have much time to edit the cutscenes nicely when they made the game *look at Disk2 rushed state*... which is probably why the game has some pacing/writing issues). But even while thinking about that, I still do enjoy watching the story unfold as it already is. Despite the flaws, the story, characters and music (even the sometimes neat character sprite animation *like Fei leaning against the wall of his cell when he talks with Citan*) are still so lovable and enjoyable to me.
If you are interested, I can post all my notes.
"What is the longest Xenogears cutscene ?"
And it made me think about the game as a whole. How long are the cutscenes put together ? What about comparing them with Xenosaga's ? And finally, what ended up to be my main motivation for what I'm doing "How many TV anime episodes (basically around 22m40/24m40) Xenogears would have if it was turned into an anime ?"
I also might try and see how many movies Xenogears would need to tell the story, ahah (too much I guess, especially if you add the missing story stuff and missing episodes).
So yeah, basically, I'm taking notes about cutscene lenght for each chapter of the game (and I'm giving a name for each cutscene because "Why not? Xenosaga 3 did it, after all." and it's kinda fun). It's not perfect because the game has mainly text boxes and is not entirelly voiced but I think it gives an idea.
So far (I almost finished the Stalactite Cave chapter), I can tell you that the longest chapter is "Desert Attack!" (from Fei getting lost in the desert to Fei/Bart Gear fight and getting sucked into quick sands... overall 20m55... could be a TV episode on its own) and the longest scene is the one where Elly blames Fei in the forest (before she leaves him, feels awful about herself and gets attacked by a Rankar). It's just only slightly longer than the opening anime sequence (5m31, the opening being 5m15).
It also made me think about which scenes should/could be rewritten, moved/switched or completely cut off if the game had a shot at the anime thing. Even a remake. I honestly have no doubt that if Takahashi and co. could and wanted to work on Xenogears again, they would change/edit and of course add stuff (and I'm pretty convinced they didn't have much time to edit the cutscenes nicely when they made the game *look at Disk2 rushed state*... which is probably why the game has some pacing/writing issues). But even while thinking about that, I still do enjoy watching the story unfold as it already is. Despite the flaws, the story, characters and music (even the sometimes neat character sprite animation *like Fei leaning against the wall of his cell when he talks with Citan*) are still so lovable and enjoyable to me.
If you are interested, I can post all my notes.
