Xenogears

[bloodedhunter]

Xenogears is my favorite game of all time. One of the best written video games out there. The Xeno series as a whole is ******* fantastic.

Xenosaga is a bit rough around the edges, much more so than Gears, but I like it more so for what it was trying to be, rather than what it was.
The Xenoblade games are all great too, and I think they get better with each entry. (Barring X which I never finished as the story didn't compel me.) They're also the most competent as actual video games. Whereas Gears and Saga leave a lot to be desired in the gameplay department.

Xenosaga tried to copy the star wars movies since there was originally 6 games planned and they just kept writing and writing. Forgetting that vidya is an interactive medium. Not even an anime adaptation and two VN spinoffs were enough for the writers and the cutscenes were so frequent and verbose that they make Kojima's writing seem curt. it genuinely made a better 4 and a half hour cutscene compilation/movie per series entry on youtube than a video game series.

They had something innovative with the in game codex with episode 3 and leaning more towards Xenogears gameplay with the in game mecha, even including the main protag from gears, but needing a 100% save from the previous 2 games to use the one aspect of the game that would help people catch up in the story? Autistic as ****. Saga deserved the mercykill and Mass Effect 1 would implement an in game codex better just 2 short years later in 2006.

I did not like the xenoblade games at all. Mainly its the auto attack part of gameplay just made it feel like the game was fighting you the entire time just on basic gameplay. **** that noise. I also don't a loiscence for a Skell or wannabe gundam when I can just spam PPC blasts and missiles and dodge incoming fire without any gay anime ******** in MechAssault 2. It even has a survival mode where you can actually destroy buildings and terraform the map with nuclear mech detonations that do chain react into any nearby mechs.

[Gastrick]

Half of the cast of characters are basically background the moment they join the party, like really their story is absolutely over and they could have been completely removed from the game and no one would even realize.

And yeah, that syndrome of games that have a character story arc as an NPC but once it joins they disappear really sucks. Same thing happened with Final Fantasy Tactics. Agrias, Mustadio, Meliadoul, Rafa and Malak. All of them disappear from the plot as soon as they join. I guess in that game is because there's permadeath but, it just sucks.

Have seen people complain about these things before, but would say it's based off of misconceptions taken for granted. Naturally character arcs can't go on forever and have to end somewhere, so rather than have them all go piece by piece slowly over the course of the long game, some authors opt to condense it all at once. With over a dozen characters, giving them all ongoing subplots is more messy than giving them devoted arcs, and having their climax be within that arc. For Xenogears, Disc 2 being rushed as it is, this alternate approach would make the impact of it being unfinished worse than it already was. The pacing of how each character arc flows slows down the more arcs you have ongoing at a time, think Game of Thrones. Some authors try putting the arcs on hold until the ending to get around this, but even then people complain about it in the same way.

[Cipher]

Half of the cast of characters are basically background the moment they join the party, like really their story is absolutely over and they could have been completely removed from the game and no one would even realize.

And yeah, that syndrome of games that have a character story arc as an NPC but once it joins they disappear really sucks. Same thing happened with Final Fantasy Tactics. Agrias, Mustadio, Meliadoul, Rafa and Malak. All of them disappear from the plot as soon as they join. I guess in that game is because there's permadeath but, it just sucks.

Have seen people complain about these things before, but would say it's based off of misconceptions taken for granted. Naturally character arcs can't go on forever and have to end somewhere, so rather than have them all go piece by piece slowly over the course of the long game, some authors opt to condense it all at once. With over a dozen characters, giving them all ongoing subplots is more messy than giving them devoted arcs, and having their climax be within that arc. For Xenogears, Disc 2 being rushed as it is, this alternate approach would make the impact of it being unfinished worse than it already was. The pacing of how each character arc flows slows down the more arcs you have ongoing at a time, think Game of Thrones. Some authors try putting the arcs on hold until the ending to get around this, but even then people complain about it in the same way.

Its not about continuing their character arcs, its about them still existing.

They 100% disappear from the plot and they still could have weigh in on what was going on at different times. Also, Game of Thrones is *** and Martin just flew by the seat of his own pants. In his own words, he "accidentally" killed a character that turned out to be instrumental to the ending and that's why there's no Winds of Winter yet, nevermind the final book, a Dream of Spring.

Like I said, in Tactics, that was done because of permadeath, so Agrias and Mustadio could just die for real the very next random encounter after they join. I mean, the devs could have created flags but they didn't. It was a corner that was cut and that's fine but its still a mark against the approach.

For Xenogears, there is no permadeath. If the characters are just going to disappear after joining then might as well not have them join and leave them as NPCs. It's not like the party needed them, we already had a full team. Compare to something like FF7 when only Vincent and Yuffie feel tacked on and that's because they are optional. And even then, Yuffie has her entire side quest on Wutai that is centered around her.

[Magick]

I wish they'd make Xenogears into an anime. They have the amazing music, character designs, plot and pretty much everything they need right there. Heck the cutscenes are even in anime style already.

[BannedForBeingSane]

Xenogears used to be my favorite JRPG (alongside FF7 and Grandia II) back when I was ... around 19 years old? Both me and my brother loved it. That said, it had a lot of anime tropes which I would consider tedious today. But it had good characters. Solid PSX game.

[spookyheart]

Its pretty much the jrpg that really got me more into other niche types of square jrpgs imo.

[rusty_shackleford]

Originally planned as part of a six-episode story, Xenogears represented the fifth episode in the saga

who does this

[Stack of Turtles]

Originally planned as part of a six-episode story, Xenogears represented the fifth episode in the saga

who does this

George Lucas


no I don't believe it either

[Magick]

Originally planned as part of a six-episode story, Xenogears represented the fifth episode in the saga

who does this

George Lucas


no I don't believe it either

Dunno about Star Wars, but the Xenogears timeline / episodes were actually planned (but not fleshed) out. It's all documented in their "PerfectWorks" dev book.

It is weird though, yeah lol.