Xeno meta series lore qustions + speculation

55 It's an individual mind's imprint in UMN, so assuming the CU and UMN have a connection somehow then the tech is just drawing that info out. I concur we haven't seen it used on any not android/realian personages. Does it work the same on "those within the norm of organics?" Come to think of it what was Canaan doing to get the Y-Data out of his head after Ep 2's prologue?

You know, I just thought of something. Does the place Sakura interacted with the URTV boys in their youth count as a kind of Encephalon? I totally forgot about it until just now. If so, I guess it does work within the norm of organics.

56 They were built for to collect data to build MOMO, who was originally supposed to serve as Sakura's surrogate body. Both MOMO and the Kirschwassers then would have most likely been built sometime during Sakura's lifetime. I estimate 4741 as Sakura's birth and Momo was born 12 years after her (and given new purpose), so the Kirschwassers were likely made during that intermission.

Ahhh, I hadn't thought of that. You're probably right, then. Joachim Mizrahi probably would have started building them as fast as he could the worst Sakura got. (My memory of XS2 is terrible because I always remember the frustrating parts first and the story later.)

58 I gravitate toward KOS-MOS/Mary Magdalene and chaos archetype Enneagrams which are type 2 affectionate/sociable/self-sacrificial/grandiose and 9 (calm/makes people relax/inattentive/distant) respectively. Type 1, 6, and 8 have admirable traits but I don’t identify with them.
I also empathize with Type 4 (self-expressive/quiet/introspective/tempermental) like Emerelda. Type 5 (detatched/analytical/extreme/convention-breaker) like Kevin or Krelian. It’s unfortunate that type 5’s tend to be the antagonists. But then again so are Type 3’s like Yuriev and Rasmus driven/efficient/conveniently principled/adaptable goal-oriented, ambitous, diplomatic, charming. Deep anxiety about personal value. So katimus are you also drawn to Yuriev?

Oddly enough, I didn't feel much for Yuriev. He was wrapped up in one of the plots I wasn't all that interested in, but I feel much more sorry for the URTV boys (even Albedo) because I got to know them better, even if they aren't my favorite characters. A lot of Yuriev's deals made him seem similar to Krelian to me, so that was a bit of a dealbreaker. I'm sure if I went back and watched all the cutscenes again, I'd have a much clearer picture of the situation (which I intend to do as soon as I'm done with my Gears fic). Even if Yuriev was shown getting wrecked to the extent that Ramsus gets wrecked in Gears, it'd still be different. I have a little bit of a Florence Nightingale thing going on with Ramsus and Cherenkov, and even though, when both at their best, Ramsus and Yuriev are Type 3s, Yuriev doesn't get wrecked in a way that makes me feel sympathetic towards him.

59 yes he always been interested in religion, I’m skeptical on him doing something like historical fiction or near future though. He has gunslinger characters who fit the cowboy persolaity who are likely Type 8's (brave/self-confident/coercive/confrontational) Bart/Jr but can he really do a Western?

I always thought that a western was much more Soraya-san's style, but hell, honestly, regardless of genre, I'd watch it.

60. Considering the first two parts of the Xeno-series were supposed to be parts of a six part tale, what do you think of other video game narratives being told in this large scale episodic way? Shenmue was supposed to have 11 episodes. Is it a viable way to tell a story?

Speaking as someone in the industry, I think rigging the framework for the universe and the framework for the gameplay and sticking with it from title to title is a much more viable way of creating an environment where a multi-part saga can flourish. Listening to feedback based on what players are saying is really, really important. A lot of people really didn't like how hands-off and cutscene-heavy XSI was when it came out, and the response from Monolith from XSI to XSII wasn't a drop in cutscenes, it was a battle-system overhaul and character redesigns (when really all it needed was the XSIII treatment). When playing with things like budget and deadlines, it's easy to lose confidence from Title 1 to Title 2, but I think the way to make a sequel-jump higher than 3 is to stop reinventing the wheel every time it's time to just continue the story. Once a studio achieves this, then I think telling a long story in this manner is viable.

61. What's your opinion on the term spiritual successor, how it applies to the Xeno meta series, and can it be compared to the reincarnation concept we're familiar with in the xeno-narrative ?

I think the series reincarnating itself is a very appropriate comparison.

62 Does anyone know what is meant by Wilhelm and chaos conquering death?
63 Who works as a "main" protagonist for you?

samarishim wrote:62 Does anyone know what is meant by Wilhelm and chaos conquering death?

My perception of chaos and Wilhelm might be incorrect, but I always thought since they were both from the higher dimension, death just wasn't applicable to either of them by default?

samarishim wrote:63 Who works as a "main" protagonist for you?

I don't usually go in for main protagonists in most stories, but Shion definitely managed to win me over the most out of Fei, Shion and Shulk. As a nerd girl, I identify the most with the nerd girl, who would have thought? XD

I was totally on board with Shulk until the 7th party member showed up, but he kinda lost his edge after that.

While I don't actively dislike Fei, he ends up my least favorite of the main protags because his story moved me the least. I was very interested in the characters around Fei and Id was very interesting, but I can relate to Shion and Shulk a lot better.

You may or may have not seen all the times I've said how I don't particularly like Shion all over the various threads in this forum. However, regardless of all that, I believe that she is a more interesting character by miles and bounds than both Fei and Shulk are combined. (In Shulk's case, he started losing points with me when he dropped whoever he has been before in favour of the shonen protagonist he became as soon as the story started going.)

Or do you mean as in who the story is actually about? Because in Xenosaga, for example, everybody that are not chaos or Wilhelm are kind of... inconsequential to the overall plot. Yet those two spend the vast majority of the games either being incomrehensibly mysterious or are not there at all. So...

Hm that is a good pt, I meant the characters leading the story, but feel free to talk about the other option of protagonists being the truly important players Yikari.
64 What makes Xenogears and Xenoblade (Chronicles) so acclaimed? Did they do anything differently from the bog standard JRPG if so what?
65 What are your opinions on the rivalry between the Xeno meta series and the Final Fantasy series?

You'd need to define what a 'bog standart' jrpg is first, I think. The big names are, from what I understand, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, as far as gameplay mechanics and narrative tropes go, but that doesn't even begin to cover the rest of the market.

Personally, I found the settings and characters that inhabit them of those games interesting. Less focus on 'kid' characters (relatively speaking) was a refreshing change of pace for me. I won't be able to answer that for other people though.

What rivalry? The usual kind - competing for customer's attention and money? That is a constant tug of war for all videogames everywhere. If there is anything else beyond that, I am not aware of it.

Sorry for falling behind with these.  Real life has slammed me in the face lately.  ^^;

64 What makes Xenogears and Xenoblade (Chronicles) so acclaimed? Did they do anything differently from the bog standard JRPG if so what?

Xenogears is enshrined in a lot of older gamers' memories because it was one of the first games that came out in the US that tackled truly mature issues like the capability for religion and religious figures to be false, and featured characters that weren't ashamed of things like sexuality.  A lot of previous games kinda upheld moral and physical purity standards, but Xenogears just kinda throws all of that off a cliff.  Saga or Blade haven't truly shown as much of a loss of faith as Gears did.  When Ormus turns out to have been a construct, it doesn't affect any of the playable characters except Jin by proxy of his relationship with Pellegri and his rivalry with Margulis.  In Gears, when the Ethos religion is unveiled as a front, it directly impacts Billy, and since Billy is part of the main cast, a lot of effort is shown in showing him working through the loss of his faith, where in Saga, all you really see is the Ormus characters suicide themselves.  Also, there's Elly's defense of her supposedly questionable purity.  Not a whole lot of female protagonists involved romantically with another major character walk up and say, "Hey, if you're going to judge me for my choice to have sex with the person I love, deal with it."  That obviously wasn't verbatim, but you get the idea.  Saga or Gears has no one like that. When Madonna (the singer) came out as a very sexually liberated woman in the 80's, a lot of people were shocked, and even though Elly wasn't super-brash or a pop star or anything, she was the closest the JRPG genre had at that time to being a sexually liberated female character (while still kinda caged by all the heteronormative stuff, I think Elly's a lot more liberated than other female jrpg characters during the late 90's). Take FF7. There's Aeris, whose whole thing completely rides on her purity, and Tifa, who was clearly designed with the male gaze in mind, and Yuffie, who is the manic pixie dream girl. Not one of those characters had Elly's depth. Take Cloud Strife and compare him to Ramsus' backstory, and there you have the depth for the protagonist of FF7 equal to the midboss of Xenogears, who never ends up even playable. A lot of gamers remember and are moved by the depth of the characters, and especially over time, having forgotten how truly difficult this game was, remember the parts that they loved much more than the parts that they hated.

Xenoblade came with a new level of accessibility, which has been embraced by many new fans, but not so with a lot of the older ones. Xenoblade's story is much denser and nicer than any Final Fantasy game after X that I've played, but it's not as intricately documented as Saga or Gears' (although I really, REALLY wish it was!). I also find it an extremely fun and addictive game, and so do a lot of other people. I also think that Monolith was treated better at Nintendo, so it came off a lot more polished and a lot less rushed of a product.

Xenosaga broke the mold when it came to cutscenes, I think.  XSI and II were regarded for a very long time as "more movie than game," which the critics loved to slog mud for.  But in breaking the mold, I think it caused other games to seriously consider things like cutscene viewers and info databases.  I think XSIII broke even on the gameplay-story scale. Some of my Gears friends still say that Xenosaga was like Xenogears Disc 2, sans chair. There was a huge amount of nostalgia in anticipation of XSI, but it ended up disappointing the original fanbase because of how sparse, short, and cutsceney it was. I mean, I still love the shit of it, but Xenosaga continued to be a hard sell, and I was very pleasantly surprised when Xenosaga III was announced, because I thought Namco had given up on Monolith after hearing all this bad press.

65 What are your opinions on the rivalry between the Xeno meta series and the Final Fantasy series?

I definitely think there is a rivalry between Squex and Monolith, but I don't really know enough about Square's side of things to assess the nature of it. I don't know if Monolith started because of an angered Takahashi that was moved to create a studio with his own hands, or if the split from Square was mutually respectful. I think the fact that Square hasn't done anything with the rights to Gears in such a long time even though they could have says something, especially contrasting how Bamco seemed to want to draw fans by sticking KOS-MOS into every other fighting game before Saga's corpse was even cold. I think Final Fantasy kinda lost a good bit of its soul when Xenogears was too dark to be FF7. Think of the Figaro Brothers, and think of the Fatimas, and the URTVs. Think of the art direction in FF6, and then the art direction in Gears, Saga and Blade - is that kind of direction present in FF8+? It's not, and I think Square lost a lot more talent than it realized. There hasn't been an FF game since 7 that's been up to Xeno's depth. When I was playing FF13, I thought..."wow, this is like watching an amalgamation of everything Squeenix misses from Monolith." I'm not really sure how to end this paragraph, but uh, there's my spiel. ^^

Yikari I think you got the gist of what bog standard JRPG means to me, meaning those influenced by FF/Dragon Quest. By rivalry I was talking about each franchise's fans having a rivalry with each other.

Hello, everyone ! I'm back from my vacations (where I tried to write a first episode for a Xenogears comicbook... with the idea that I'll keep Alice alive in it... honestly, I think the story would have been even more interesting if she had survived instead of Dan).

Yikari wrote:
I prefer to think that Elly - the person she was before the game's start - was being gradually but steadily overwritten over the course of Xenogears with no trace remaining. (Just in case there was not enough horror in Xeno for your taste.)

The outro kind of gives some hope on that front though. Her promising to (maybe) not jump at the first opportunity to sacrifice herself for others next time looks like a marked improvement to the complete lack of self-preservation she exhibited before.

It's true that it's a pretty horrific interpretation. I enjoy to see the Antitype in a different light myself. You know, if you believe in the concept of the soul, then... maybe it's not such a huge deal that Elly was given the WE's will. Since she was born this way... it's the basis for who she is as a person. We were all given a specific personality ourselves at birth and there is little we can do to change this fact. And if we believe the concept of the soul, then, we probably had the same basic personality in another life.

The game has this free will theme (that all Takahashi games have). Even Fei and Elly's relationship is questioned, the concept of soulmates, by Krelian. But real life truly doesn't give us free will over certain things. Why do you like this color ? Why did you fall in love with this person ? Why do you believe in god and choose this religion and not another ? Why do others like different things than you do ?

There is no answer. It's just... who you are and you can't fight it.

When it comes to love for example... you can't control your feelings. At all. Your only "free will" lies in whether you will act on them or not.

So, when I look at Elly... I don't think she's being rewritten. I just think she was born to be a certain way, like everyone in life (and considering that Takahashi wrote the characters using the Enneagram, it makes it even more true, each character is designed to act according to his/her type). She's the same type of woman in all of her incarnations (mother figure in ep 2, nurse and a mother to a robot in 3, religious figure/mother to her people in Ep4 and while she's a soldier in Episode 5, it's interesting to note that she's not comfortable in this role, much like her responsabilities as Holy Mother were hurtful to her *people were killed because of her existence and she wanted to die until Krelian showed up*... besides seeking her father's approval, I think Elly may have joined the military because of her need to "protect"... as the mother persona... but killing people traumatized her and she was deeply troubled by her orders of dropping bombs on Nortune... and in the end, she quit)... but with different lives in different eras.

Miang is also interpreted differently. PW indicates that she is a contradiction, that she's not just a program. But lots of fans only see her as... well, a program. A mindless monster. But we all remember moments in the story where she displays human behavior, going against her "nature".
I think her relation with Elly, the Antitype, is fascinating. BECAUSE Deus kind of hijacked the Wave Existence's creation to make Miang. So, in the end, there was probably a bit of the WE's will left in Miang, this will/desire to free herself. But because of the hijacking, it also means that Elly's existence is binded to Deus (as well as all of humanity born from Zohar)... as the "other side" of Miang.
Not sure if I'm explaining myself well here. In short, I'll say that :

- Miang is a machine/program with a bit of humanity buried.
- while Elly is a "human" with a fixed personality and binded to a machine/program (like every human in Xenogears, who are supposed to go back to Deus).

samarishim wrote:
58 Is there a character archetype you like the most in Takahashi's works?
59 Do you think Takahashi could write for another genre?

58 Honestly, I think I like a lot of his Type 8 characters. Can't help it. And even if it might get old after a while, I always end up liking his samurai type characters. As for the girls, it's nice when they're not Type 2 "caretaker" characters (like Shion or Emeralda... who supposedly are type 7 and 4, respectively... I also suspect that Dominia might not be a Type 6 like Yuriev classified her on his website... she's so forceful and proud that I can only see her as a 8... my issue with how Yuriev typed the Element girls is that he did it according to the group's role... that is to assist Ramsus... instead of typing each one of the four women according to their different behavior *Dominia is forceful, fiery and goes against orders, Seraphita is happy go lucky, Kelvena is level headed and Tolone is sarcastic*).

59 Another genre ? Well, Takahashi did some fantasy with Xenoblade. I would enjoy him to do some modern time stuff... just... you know, science-fiction that actually takes place on Earth (something he never did before, since Earth is always lost). Something like Shadow Hearts (which is more fantasy and revisit history but you get what I mean)... or MGS/Ghost in the Shell/SMT series.
I guess, it's not exactly a genre lol... but yeah... something that takes place on Earth would be cool. Science fiction or not.

samarishim wrote:
60. Considering the first two parts of the Xeno-series were supposed to be parts of a six part tale, what do you think of other video game narratives being told in this large scale episodic way? Shenmue was supposed to have 11 episodes.  Is it a viable way to tell a story?

I think it's complicated if you don't have the support and money behind this. Look at FF7 and its compilation. Or Kingdom Hearts as a series. It works for them because the original games were insanely popular. Unfortunately, neither the KH series nor the FF7 compil are of the same caliber as the planned and aborted Xeno series. For one reason : because Square Enix added on games that didn't have sequels/prequels planned for them (and did it in poor taste for a few titles). The FF13 series is also an example... of a series built on a FF that a lot of people hated. Hence sequels that make no sense, change the gameplay and throw the mythology of the first game out of the window (which is an insult to the rare people who saw lost/untapped potential in the original FF13 and its mythology). The FF13 trilogy went similarly as Xenosaga, it seems... with the difference that FF13 wasn't planned to have sequels at all.

katimus_prime wrote:
Speaking as someone in the industry, I think rigging the framework for the universe and the framework for the gameplay and sticking with it from title to title is a much more viable way of creating an environment where a multi-part saga can flourish. Listening to feedback based on what players are saying is really, really important.  A lot of people really didn't like how hands-off and cutscene-heavy XSI was when it came out, and the response from Monolith from XSI to XSII wasn't a drop in cutscenes, it was a battle-system overhaul and character redesigns (when really all it needed was the XSIII treatment).   When playing with things like budget and deadlines, it's easy to lose confidence from Title 1 to Title 2, but I think the way to make a sequel-jump higher than 3 is to stop reinventing the wheel every time it's time to just continue the story.  Once a studio achieves this, then I think telling a long story in this manner is viable.

Katimus also brings up a good point. One of the problem with Xenosaga... or FF13... is that each title is built so very differently than the previous one, when they're direct sequels. It's confusing for players. It's okay to make different games if they're like main FF titles, unrelated storywise. But if you want to tell a story with direct sequels... you need some continuity... storywise and gameplay wise (though, it's always nice to have a few new things and improvements... like the Shadow Hearts games... the first one was nice but the second improved on the gameplay and added a lot to the story... I heard that Shadow Hearts 2 could have been a different game with Yuri as an antagonist so I'm not sure that a sequel was ever planned from the start... but if it wasn't, then SH2 is even more brilliant than I thought, one of those rare unplanned sequels that doesn't ruin the original and make it more engaging instead).

samarishim wrote:
63 Who works as a "main" protagonist for you?

Generally, I like the anti-heroes better. And if I have to comment on the Xeno main protagonists... I ended up relating more to Fei and Shion than Shulk. Far more. Fei's personal story resonated with me because of my issues facing reality and Shion's depression resonated with me because that's also something I had/ve to face (plus the strained relationship with a family member and her being a geek and making emotional decisions despite her smarts and not being the nicest person to be around because of her problems... it's tons of things I can relate to... and also, she's a main female character and I'm a female player so it's even easier to relate).
Shulk is nice but... I can't relate at all. I don't think I can do this with any Xenoblade character, in fact. At most, people will feel closer to Melia because the writers did everything to ruin her life and she has the unrequited crush going on (the unrequited crush thing is the easier way to make a character relatable it seems lol... from Eponine to Tifa to Melia). But aside from this... I can't relate to anyone, even if I like some of the characters quite a bit (like Fiora or Riki).

katimus_prime wrote:

64 What makes Xenogears and Xenoblade (Chronicles) so acclaimed? Did they do anything differently from the bog standard JRPG if so what?

Xenogears is enshrined in a lot of older gamers' memories because it was one of the first games that came out in the US that tackled truly mature issues like the capability for religion and religious figures to be false, and featured characters that weren't ashamed of things like sexuality.  A lot of previous games kinda upheld moral and physical purity standards, but Xenogears just kinda throws all of that off a cliff.  Saga or Blade haven't truly shown as much of a loss of faith as Gears did.  When Ormus turns out to have been a construct, it doesn't affect any of the playable characters except Jin by proxy of his relationship with Pellegri and his rivalry with Margulis.  In Gears, when the Ethos religion is unveiled as a front, it directly impacts Billy, and since Billy is part of the main cast, a lot of effort is shown in showing him working through the loss of his faith, where in Saga, all you really see is the Ormus characters suicide themselves.  Also, there's Elly's defense of her supposedly questionable purity.  Not a whole lot of female protagonists involved romantically with another major character walk up and say, "Hey, if you're going to judge me for my choice to have sex with the person I love, deal with it."  That obviously wasn't verbatim, but you get the idea.  Saga or Gears has no one like that.  When Madonna (the singer) came out as a very sexually liberated woman in the 80's, a lot of people were shocked, and even though Elly wasn't super-brash or a pop star or anything, she was the closest the JRPG genre had at that time to being a sexually liberated female character (while still kinda caged by all the heteronormative stuff, I think Elly's a lot more liberated than other female jrpg characters during the late 90's).  Take FF7.  There's Aeris, whose whole thing completely rides on her purity, and Tifa, who was clearly designed with the male gaze in mind, and Yuffie, who is the manic pixie dream girl.  Not one of those characters had Elly's depth. Take Cloud Strife and compare him to Ramsus' backstory, and there you have the depth for the protagonist of FF7 equal to the midboss of Xenogears, who never ends up even playable.  A lot of gamers remember and are moved by the depth of the characters, and especially over time, having forgotten how truly difficult this game was, remember the parts that they loved much more than the parts that they hated.

You make lots of good points. But I think FF7's female characters are more than how you describe them. I don't think Yuffie is a manic pixie dream girl. Not in the original game (she's a little shit who steals and lies to you... and many people hated her for this... I think the manic pixie dream girl thing was more apparent in Dirge of Cerberus where her characterization was more Rikku-esque). Aerith is also more than "the nice innocent girl". She is a strong bold girl with flaws who grew up in the streets (like, she's not very tactful and she can be rather harsh sometimes *Tseng comments on this in the Temple*). Yeah, Aerith is basically FF7's Eliza Doolittle (well, just comparing the characters, not their respective storylines of course). The purity thing is the only thing Square Enix and some fans remembered her for alas. As for Tifa... yeah... I had a talk with someone lately and we realized why some people seem to think she's the deepest character in the entire game when really... her backstory is almost entirely Cloud's and her passive/motherly/fanservicy side is a total male wet dream. And the answer seems to be that she's a self insert, a character that is really easy to project into. She's a female and more attractive Allen Ridgeley, to make things short (or a mix between Reyn, Melia and Sharla). They're the human guy/girl next door.
Geez, this person explained it all better than I'm doing but it was real interesting to read. All I'm saying is that FF7 had an interesting female cast at the time that many people nowadays misinterpret (including Square Enix unfortunately).

katimus_prime wrote:Xenoblade came with a new level of accessibility, which has been embraced by many new fans, but not so with a lot of the older ones.  Xenoblade's story is much denser and nicer than any Final Fantasy game after X that I've played, but it's not as intricately documented as Saga or Gears' (although I really, REALLY wish it was!).  I also find it an extremely fun and addictive game, and so do a lot of other people.  I also think that Monolith was treated better at Nintendo, so it came off a lot more polished and a lot less rushed of a product.

True. Though, I think the "addictive" side of Xenoblade is a problem for me. What happened to engaging sidequests and varied mini-games (it's not just Xenoblade, it's an issue in many modern games) ? Because addictive things aren't necessarily quality things. And that's the case with Xenoblade's side quests. I heard it's the same thing in Dragon Age (the last one in particular). Someone with OCD like me can't help doing every single quest in Xenoblade... to the detriment of my general appreciation of the game (especially the plot... because the quests ruin the pacing... the story and characters end up getting diluted... just try doing the endgame sidequests, it's the perfect example... because you have to grind and pause the story before the last boss to do them... I stopped playing my third and last playthrough after I finished the last endgame quest *which was underwhelming considering how long it was* and while I could have felt the need to finish the story before those quests, I ended up not caring anymore after I did them).
Talking about Nintendo, wasn't Iwata's influence important when it comes to Xenoblade games ? It was sad to learn his death. I didn't exactly expect it despite knowing he was sick.

katimus_prime wrote:Some of my Gears friends still say that Xenosaga was like Xenogears Disc 2, sans chair.

I don't think that this comparaison is appropriate. Xenogears Disc 2 is not just "cutscenes and a chair". Disc 2 is more like reading wikipedia pages between boss fights than watching cutscenes. Disc 2's weakness is not that there are too much cutscenes. Its weakness is that there aren't even proper cutscenes during important story moments (returning to Kislev or what happens to humans for example).

The thing with PS2 games and beyond is that most of them lost the textboxes in favor of full directing with voice acting. Movies where you don't need to push a button to read the dialogue anymore. If Xenogears was remade... oh boy... Some dialogue scenes would turn into very long cutscenes... and the game would be wayyyy longer (based on the notes I took about the cutscenes, there are 4 hours of them until the Kislev part starts... now imagine this with full directing and voice acting, not to mention how it's not even half of Xenogears... jRPG's stories used to be longer than current ones). Same with FF7 and any jRPG from the PS1 era. I used to think FF7 was one of the shortest FF story  but is it, really ? We'll see with the PS4 remake, I guess.

katimus_prime wrote:I don't know if Monolith started because of an angered Takahashi that was moved to create a studio with his own hands, or if the split from Square was mutually respectful.  I think the fact that Square hasn't done anything with the rights to Gears in such a long time even though they could have says something, especially contrasting how Bamco seemed to want to draw fans by sticking KOS-MOS into every other fighting game before Saga's corpse was even cold.  I think Final Fantasy kinda lost a good bit of its soul when Xenogears was too dark to be FF7.  Think of the Figaro Brothers, and think of the Fatimas, and the URTVs.  Think of the art direction in FF6, and then the art direction in Gears, Saga and Blade - is that kind of direction present in FF8+?  It's not, and I think Square lost a lot more talent than it realized.  There hasn't been an FF game since 7 that's been up to Xeno's depth.  When I was playing FF13, I thought..."wow, this is like watching an amalgamation of everything Squeenix misses from Monolith."  I'm not really sure how to end this paragraph, but uh, there's my spiel.  ^^

I saw what you did there   .
I guess Takahashi wasn't too happy with Xenogears 1 not being greenlight. But I think he and Soraya Saga probably have more resentment towards Namco than Square these days. I remember reading an interview with Takahashi and Sakaguchi back when The Last Story and Xenoblade were released and they seemed to get along well.
Well, I'm really fond of FF9 myself to be honest. Replaying it is a great experience. As a story, it's told really really well. It's not too complex and it takes a lot from past FF (as it was meant to do) but it's just... very well done. Like some 3d Disney (or good Don Bluth) movie in video game form. Little details everywhere (like, Lani writing in the inn's journal at Lindblum and participating in the hunt festival long before you're introduced to her). Of course, there are WTF moments here and there but what kind of story doesn't have plotholes ? Not many.
I think Final Fantasy lost its touch with FF12. The characters were underdevelopped and the storyline's pacing was horrendous after a while. I don't dislike the game. I didn't back in the days. I quite liked Ivalice. The mature atmosphere. The voice acting. The basic characters (I just wish they did more with them). The strong StarWars vibes. And I appreciate the gameplay more now (the license board for example, I try to use it smartly in order to give my characters specific classes... back in the days however, I unlocked everything for everyone and it was boring... I guess playing wRPGs made me appreciate building characters on my own instead of unlocking every classes for them).
But I remember thinking, as I approached the end of the game, that the story felt much smaller than previous entries and when I beat the last boss, watched the ending and realized I didn't care... that's when I was like "wow, maybe this series isn't for me anymore". And then, I discovered and played Xenosaga 3 and Xeno became my main favorite jRPG series instead. Because unlike with FF12, I cared again deeply for characters and their stories in a jRPG.

As for FF13... yeah. I had the strange feeling that Square Enix tried to copy some stuff from Xenogears and Xenosaga (some endgame scenes with Fang and Vanille reminded me of some endgame scenes with KOS-MOS and Shion in Episode 3... you know, the torture scene). Then, they did FF13-2 and I was like "now, you're going Chrono Trigger?". And with Lightning Returns, I was like "yeah, Valkyrie Profile was cool, I want the series back by the way".

Little questions of my own I started asking myself lately (because of my project, which forces me to look deeper into the story) :

- Why/How do you think Elly managed to stay at Gebler as long as she did considering she failed her first mission (in various ways) and helped Margie and her rescuers escape the Gebler base (this one is weird... there is no way the base wasn't filled with cameras) ? The second one would be enough to brand her as a traitor... What do you think happened ? Did Elly replace some datas to cover herself ? Did someone else do that ? Miang ?

- Speaking about the first failed mission, do you think Elly reported Fei and especially Citan to her superiors ?

- Grahf in Lahan : was he on Kislev side or Solaris side here ? Did he accompagny Elly's team or was he the one chasing after her team ? Because it's clear that soldiers respected him enough to follow his orders and open fire on Timothy.

- What do you think each "country"/city of Xenogears is inspired from (besides having jewish names) ? Like, Bledavik and the desert towns seem very much arabic, Aquvy seems western (north american) inspired. But what about Lahan for example ? When I look at their clothes (especially Alice's wedding dress), I think of an asian country. I thought about Mongolian inspiration but maybe it's just old rural China. But then again, what about Lahan's houses ? In what part of the world do you see such houses ?

- talking about Dazil and the likes... do you believe that a variant of Islam exists on the Xenogears planet ? Do you think it may have been Sigurd mother's religion ?

...Take FF7. There's Aeris, whose whole thing completely rides on her purity, and Tifa, who was clearly designed with the male gaze in mind...

Katimus, if you are gonna bring this in, I think it would be prudent to mention that both of these also happen to be almost the opposite of what their visual design and first impressions suggest.

And Elly, for all the awesome stuff she does, also happens to have those goddrat awful psycho drug scenes and a mech that spews out cartoony hearts when it pummels someone into paste in her repertoire as well.

I'm not trying to imply that one game is inherently better than the other here, but, let's be fair, both have their ups and downs. Just because a lot of people flung a lot of poo-poo over the internets on the subject of Xenogears and/or FF7 doesn't change the games themselves, does it?

Take Cloud Strife and compare him to Ramsus' backstory, and there you have the depth for the protagonist of FF7 equal to the midboss of Xenogears, who never ends up even playable.

I will pretend that I didn't read this. *idly strokes his Cloud fanart folder*

XXX

As for Elly's offscreen activities and not being sacked / processed into *insert some terrifying fate fit for the setting here*, I think her dad was involved. Or, if he wasn't, then it would at least make sense for him to be.

Referencing her animated PTSD flashback (or whatever the hell it is supposed to be) that seems to be related to her ether manipulation abilities and some unsavory individuals' attempts to muck about with them - and how it might affect Elly's trust in other people in the military hierarchy - might be appropriate as well.

If there is not!islam in Xenogears' setting, then it should include things like very strict and entrenched gender roles and other stuff indicative of being formed quite a long ways ago when survival was much harder for people than it is in the present (core rituals like being inducted into the faith or divorcing being very fast and simple, customs, taboos, etc, etc being dictated by necessity of survival first and foremost). In short, a lot of stuff I don't see in Xenogears.

On the other hand, if the key part of this is supposed to be that this faith has been formed long ago, it could be the other way around. If the previous civilization of Zeboim is what has spawned this faith, then... The closest idea that I can come up with is a 'cargo cult' kind of situation, as tvtropes puts it.

Eheehheh, FF7 and I have had a little bit of a falling out. ^^; I have a lot higher of a regard in my head for Gears than FF7 at the moment, so I poked at the easiest thing I could that I thought people would understand.

Having played (and once loved) both titles, I do actually like all the characters I used as examples before, but I just think they're a lot flatter than Xenogears. I went through a really really bad rash of internalized misogyny when I was in my teens, so I didn't pick up on all the awful gender politics in Gears for a really long time, and that's something I regret. That stuff isn't prominent in FF7 at all, or at least not in comparison to Gears. What I was trying to say was that I hadn't seen a story built with the same depth as Xenogears before I played it. Sorry for any hurt feels. ^^;

katimus_prime wrote:Eheehheh, FF7 and I have had a little bit of a falling out. ^^; I have a lot higher of a regard in my head for Gears than FF7 at the moment, so I poked at the easiest thing I could that I thought people would understand.

Having played (and once loved) both titles, I do actually like all the characters I used as examples before, but I just think they're a lot flatter than Xenogears.  I went through a really really bad rash of internalized misogyny when I was in my teens, so I didn't pick up on all the awful gender politics in Gears for a really long time, and that's something I regret.  That stuff isn't prominent in FF7 at all, or at least not in comparison to Gears.  What I was trying to say was that I hadn't seen a story built with the same depth as Xenogears before I played it.  Sorry for any hurt feels.  ^^;

No hurt feelings, don't worry   .
I can get pretty annoyed at the FF7 fandom and SquareEnix. There are so much retcons and misunderstanding about the characters and the plot, especially these days. But I guess you know the frustration already... knowing you were a Hojo and Lucrecia fan and Dirge of Cerberus and the fandom probably ruined things for you too. So you know... I understand where you stand about FF7. I'm not quite there (though, when I think about Crisis Core, I do feel pissed... Aerith was destroyed and ZackJesus is freaking annoying *I don't even like the ending, especially with the pop song that ruins any feelings you may get from the scene*... and then, there is Genesis *shake fist*) but if this remake takes away stuff I liked about the original, I may feel like you at the end. It's really a shame when you genuinely enjoy the original material and it's ruined for you by the company and the fans.

I also agree with you. The characters (and their relationships) are flatter in FF7 (in fact, once you played Xenogears, FF7 feels so small next to it... many jRPGs do actually, as fun or well executed they may be). I just wanted to defend them on their own merits, you know.

I certainly can't discount FF7's importance for bringing the JRPG (then just known as RPG) to the forefront and popularizing it. Without FF7, we probably would have never gotten any of the Xeno titles in the states.

It also affected me on a very personal level - too personal for me to be able to interact with the fandom anymore. Until Dirge of Cerberus retconned it, I was working under the impression that Hojo and Lucrecia loved each other, and that even though he was a jealous person and a mediocre scientist, that all his crazy came from exposure to JENOVA. Dirge kinda took all that and was like, NOPE! I'm scared of what this remake will do, and I'm scared of what being a fan of Hojo will be made to look like. I'm already pretty self-conscious about being a Hojo fan post-Dirge of Cerberus, because they've stripped out the parts that made him matter to me. Whenever I admit that I'm a fan of Hojo, people go right to how he's portrayed in the newer titles and I have to take hours explaining myself. Square has a habit of throwing glitter on every subsequent re-imagining of FF7 canon, and it makes me so mad, and I'm too old to be getting mad about things like this. I might break this off into another thread, because I do think it's worth talking about. (My attempts to talk about it on Tumblr have upset people.)

I think the closest thing that's ever come close to my anger about FF7 with the Xeno metaseries is when they wrote Cherenkov's drama out of the anime. Replacing him with Virgil would have been fine if they'd done something creative with it, like completely switch out or combine their scenarios and relationships - Virgil being the one behind the Ariadne thing and connected to U-TIC and still have the thing with Febronia but maybe not all the personality reconditioning stuff and the Wife problem.

I find Xenosaga animated series painful to watch. Even carefully pacing myself, I still can't get to the end yet.

Allen in a suit does look kind of nice though. Ignoring how the artstyle also makes him look older and more... physically fit than what I think he should look like, IMHO.

Also, totally a fan of Hojo here. As an antagonist, I mean. ^_^

65 I thought you would pick up on how the FF series and Xeno meta series were generally competing against each other; XG being an alternate FF7, maybe misplaced anger over FF8 possibly taking the budget away from XG's second disk, XS vs FFX, and XBC vs FFXV.

66 Any history/lore on how Shevat was built?
67 Can anyone clarify on what Kahn Wong was doing when he was out traveling the world?
68 What was Fei's original hometown before Lahan?
69 Any ideas on what Rico's larger purpose might have been?
70 If there was ever going to be a making of documentary for the series, should it focus on one game or all of them?

samarishim wrote:65 I thought you would pick up on how the FF series and Xeno meta series were generally competing against each other; XG being an alternate FF7, maybe misplaced anger over FF8 possibly taking the budget away from XG's second disk, XS vs FFX, and XBC vs FFXV.

About Xenoblade, it was more compared to FF12. It's Xenoblade X that is having a competition with FF15 (someone who is working on FF15 was impressed by Xenoblade X and considered it good competition... while FF15 and XBX supporters are being more nasty with each other).  
But overall, I've seen more competition/fighting between FF fans about their own series. Same with Xeno fans. Each title attracted/pleased different fans (see how FF6 fans reacted to FF7, then how FF7 fans reacted to FF8, then how FF9 was ignored, then how FF10 was too different for some but loved by other fans... etc... until FF13 where the reactions were similar to FF10's, only 10 times worse stronger).

samarishim wrote:66 Any history/lore on how Shevat was built?

Perfect Works explains (page 48) that the basis for Shevat is the HLV plant that was loaded onto the Eldridge (basically, I think it means what used to be the top of Babel Tower) and that Babel Tower used to "contain all of its territory". So that means that the entire tower used to be Shevat. But after the Diabolos war (caused by Lacan's madness after his imperfect contact with Zohar), Shevat somehow found out they could detach the top of Babel Tower and that's how they ended up living on a wandering flying city (I think it is explained that they managed to escape the Diabolos disaster this way, sheltering people at the top... though I don't know if they found a way to protect the city with a gate yet back then).

samarishim wrote:67 Can anyone clarify on what Kahn Wong was doing when he was out traveling the world?

When exactly ? There is the part where he was eaten by his job (supposedly to get stronger), away from his family, and didn't notice that his wife was possessed. And then, he chased after Grahf and his son. After Grahf began to use his body, he managed to stay powerful enough to keep control of his self as Wiseman. In PW, Wiseman is stated to be an agent of Zephyr who is supposed to "seek out Fei's activity". Guess he had a similar role as Citan, except that Citan was a born solarian and reports to Cain (and wasn't possessed by a destructive ghost... if we can call Grahf this).

samarishim wrote:68 What was Fei's original hometown before Lahan?

Good question. Perfect Works indicates that Khan was a lieutenant from Shevat and that he married Karen, a Nisan Orthodox postulant (from a Nisan parish in Aquvy). Then, they moved to the surface and Fei was raised there. But where on the surface ? From the look of it (the style of the house and trees), it looks like the Lahan region. That would be sorta clever, like in Lahan, everyone wondered where he came from but maybe he was raised in a neighboring village all along. Or maybe they lived on Aquvy, like Billy's family did. It's possible, considering Fei's mother was from Aquvy. I'm not sure we're given an answer but we can guess. One thing for sure is that the Xenogears world had more towns/cities than what was shown in game.

samarishim wrote:69 Any ideas on what Rico's larger purpose might have been?

Becoming the new emperor and making peace with his father, I guess. Meaning he would have had an active part when the party goes back to Kislev to use the ship. Maybe Latina was a friend of his and helped a bunch. Maybe Rue Cohen was going to be an actual antagonist. Maybe Sigmund was going to die and have a last talk with Rico. Looking at things this way, it would have made Rico closer to Bart... a symbol of Kislev and Aveh being allies after years of a mindless war. Well... I guess everyone has his headcanons about all this.

samarishim wrote:70 If there was ever going to be a making of documentary for the series, should it focus on one game or all of them?

There is no real series legally (I mean besides Xenosaga itself and Xenoblade and XBX *as spiritual successor only though*) but... I guess if there was a documentary... there should be a part that takes both Xenogears and Xenosaga in consideration with Xenoblade and XBX (and other Takahashi games) as a different era inspired by new things and past Xeno/jRPG tropes. Mainly because Xenoblade and XBX are their own things while Xenosaga was really planned as Xenogears Episode 1 at first... so it means Gears and Saga have a special bond (remember how Ziggy, Shion and MOMO were planned to be Xenogears 1 characters) that Xenoblade and XBX don't have with them.

Personally, I assumed that Fei's previous residence was in the barely mentioned groundside mutant country Dominia's supposed to be from. That's wholly based on that one flashback of Ramsus' where he has a run-in with Id though, which I may or may not have interpreted incorrectly.

Yikari wrote:Personally, I assumed that Fei's previous residence was in the barely mentioned groundside mutant country Dominia's supposed to be from. That's wholly based on that one flashback of Ramsus' where he has a run-in with Id though, which I may or may not have interpreted incorrectly.

Hmm, that's Elru, I believe.  If Karen Wong Miang was taking Fei someplace local to experiment on Fei, it would make sense for them to remain close to their old home, but unless the Wong residence was completely secluded, I don't think Kahn and Fei would have been able to stay in the town they lived in after Karen died such a violent death.  The weird thing about Elru's destruction is that, according to the PW, Id was actually on the same side as Ramsus when they landed on Elru.  I think Solaris was trying to invade and Id just went completely berzerk and flattened and burned everything.  How Id (who was 12 at the time?!) got into the hands of Solaris, I don't know offhand, (my attempt to look it up on the PW translation was stymied today by Flicker becoming unresponsive) but if Id was in Solaris' hands, it could mean that the Wong family could have been from anywhere.  

My personal guess is that the Wong family resided somewhere on the surface near where Shevat crossed often (Perfectworks - Page 48 - see the map in the upper right corner).  On the map, Elru is the continent in the bottom right (XG World Map - Elru labeled エルル (literally Elulu/Eruru, after the Hebrew Elul.  They tried, they really did.)).  As you can see, Elru doesn't appear on Shevat's path, but if Kahn Wong had a Gear, that wouldn't have been an issue.  I actually really like the idea of the Wongs originating near Elru, but I also think they could have come from somewhere within Kislev, outside the central city of Nortune, though.

I'll try to reply more in depth later this week!

65 I thought you would pick up on how the FF series and Xeno meta series were generally competing against each other; XG being an alternate FF7, maybe misplaced anger over FF8 possibly taking the budget away from XG's second disk, XS vs FFX, and XBC vs FFXV.

While I'm not sure there was all that much direct competition after resources from square with XG, I think a lot of people enjoy XS and FFX with no problems, and I think the same will happen with XBX and FFXIV. FFXIII vs XB was a joke to me, but I don't care for FFXIII myself.

66 Any history/lore on how Shevat was built?

I tried to look up existing lore on Shevat the other day, and aside from that it used to be part of Babel Tower, there really isn't much. I think the Shevat residents probably started out as Aquvy citizens that started migrating up to living in Babel Tower to escape some form of oppression or another, but that's just a headcanon.

67 Can anyone clarify on what Kahn Wong was doing when he was out traveling the world?

I imagine if he was originally a citizen of Shevat, he may have been placed on the surface to spy on some emerging conflict somewhere. I think it's possible that he may have worked with Jesse in some scheme to undermine Solarian influence on the surface. Again, just speculation on my part.

68 What was Fei's original hometown before Lahan?

See above. :3

69 Any ideas on what Rico's larger purpose might have been?

I think he could have served better as a naysayer throughout the story instead of being shunted to the back of the bus as The Big Guy trope. I think they could have gone a similar route as they took with Bart in an epilogue, taking his rightful place as Kaiser and being open about it. I think there was a lot of opportunity to forge a deeper friendship with Bart because of the Aveh-Kislev conflict, and a pledge to push for peace once the surface regained some stability.

70 If there was ever going to be a making of documentary for the series, should it focus on one game or all of them?

I'd love to see a documentary about all of them. It could be an episodic miniseries, with each episode about each title, so every potentially infighting fan could get their share. I'd love to hear interviews from former Gears team members from Square and Monolith, and to hear everyone's current feelings on the subject and the state of the rights of the game, same with Namco and Xenosaga. I would also love to see what's possible to talk about with XB and XBX because Nintendo is a much more stable studio, so more footage could be obtained.

71 Anyone have any ideas on what KOS-MOS Archetype basis theory might have included beyond the blueprints for KOS-MOS's body, black boxes, and how to fish a consciousness out of the UMN?
72 Speaking of which any idea on what those black boxes could include/be?
73 Anyone feel like discussing the Gnostic influences on the Xeno-series?
74 Does anyone know if enneagrams were used in writing XCX characters?
75 Speaking of XCX any interesting parallels between it and past games?

Welcome back, Samarishim!

71 Anyone have any ideas on what KOS-MOS Archetype basis theory might have included beyond the blueprints for KOS-MOS's body, black boxes, and how to fish a consciousness out of the UMN?

Hmm, the Archetype definitely felt much more like a weapon and much less like a vessel for a soul.  Too much of its humanity was obscured or not thought about.  I imagine Wilhelm might have had a heavier hand in its design so his will could be carried out through the KOS-MOS archetype, but it's a stretch.

72 Speaking of which any idea on what those black boxes could include/be?

If it's Wilhelm's work, I imagine these black boxes could have been weapons or another type of device that had power to push the Eternal Recurrence forward.  Or possibly contact with U-DO?  Wilhelm doesn't seem too connected to the whole U-DO subplot in XS, though.  Seeing that Ormus had the plans for the Archetype/T-elos on board one of their ships, and Joachim Mizrahi's deep interest in communication with U-DO and his affiliation with U-TIC, maybe something would be there. Connecting the U-DO storyline to the Eternal Recurrence storyline so that it worked smoothly would take a very intricate and well-researched piece of fanfiction to make me understand it.

73 Anyone feel like discussing the Gnostic influences on the Xeno-series?

While not a religious scholar myself, I'm game if someone wanted to lead a discussion.  If I weren't so busy I'd try to read up about Gnosticism on Wikipedia, but from a glance, I've noticed that the series has gone from taking overt names from the Old and New Testaments in Xenogears, a bunch of stuff from the New Testament in Xenosaga with a much heavier base in gnostic terminology (gnosis, pleroma).  Xenoblade actually uses quite a lot of gnostic terms just as widely as Gears and Saga used the more well-known biblical canon terms, but not a whole lot of people are readily familiar with gnosticism to notice.  Monad => Monado, Aletheia => Telethia

From Wikipedia:

In many Gnostic systems, various emanations of "God" are known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos ("depth or profundity", βυθός), Proarkhe ("before the beginning", προαρχή), Arkhe ("the beginning", ἀρχή), and Aeons. In different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described, but emanation theory is common to all forms of Gnosticism. In Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες huiotetes; sing.: υἱότης huiotes); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called syzygies (Greek συζυγίαι, from σύζυγοι syzygoi, lit. "yokings together").

This source of all being is an Aeon, in which an inner being dwells, known as Ennoea ("thought, intent", Greek ἔννοια), Charis ("grace", Greek χάρις), or Sige ("silence", Greek σιγή). The split perfect being conceives the second Aeon, Nous ("mind", Greek Νους), within itself. Along with male Nous comes female Aeon Aletheia ("truth", Greek Αληθεια). These are the primary roots of Aeons. Complex hierarchies of Aeons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These Aeons belong to a purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate, they form Pleroma ("region of light", Greek πλήρωμα). The lowest regions of Pleroma are closest to darkness—that is, the physical world.

Just in that tiny little block, I think of Elly/Miang's split inside of Kadomony, and Zanza and Meyneth and Alvis.

74 Does anyone know if enneagrams were used in writing XCX characters?

I don't think there were any articles about it that came out in english, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were used. I don't quite have the time to research-roleplay as an XCX character while taking an enneagram test, but it seems like a cool thing to do.

75 Speaking of XCX any interesting parallels between it and past games?

Hokay, this is going to get spoilery!

Spoiler:

76 Anyone feel like discussing transhumanit ideas in these works?
77 Will Takahashi explain how XCX's universe works?

samarishim wrote:76 Anyone feel like discussing transhumanit ideas in these works?
77 Will Takahashi explain how XCX's universe works?

XBX has a really interesting take on transhumanism!  I have trouble starting such a broad topic on my own, though.  ^^  I do think it's interesting that

Spoiler:

78. With the release of XB2, &

Spoiler:

any musings on what makes KOS-MOS an iconic/recognizable character? Even people who don't know of the Xeno-series are said to be able to recognize her.

any musings on what makes KOS-MOS an iconic/recognizable character? Even people who don't know of the Xeno-series are said to be able to recognize her.

I think she certainly has a very recognizable silhouette (I see her quite often when I try to roll for her in XB2 but never get her), and even in a world full of blue-eyed anime girls, people remember her because she's just so pretty. She's also the only one that seems to be repeatedly ported over into other series despite the fact that she's not even the main character.

Spoiler:

However, since it's always only ever Just KOS-MOS, I find myself a little disappointed when I see that it's just her in something. My favorites were the Ormus characters and there's very little to connect that story group to KOS-MOS, so whenever it's just her it's like, "Oh look, there she is, everyone else's favorite!" But I don't think I'm alone in this. None of the male characters in Saga (except for maybe Allen once?) ever seem to get crossed over into other series. I'd have expected Jr, chaos, Ziggy, Jin, or even Albedo to have shown up somewhere by now, but it seems like all they're interested in is re-marketing the pretty woman robot.