Poll of the Day > Xenogears

(+) Yeah! (+)

where have you been all my life?

This battle system is awesome, and the character design cool. Oh and chrono trigger-esque music? This game is not relevant anymore?

Dmess85 posted...

This game is not relevant anymore?

Depends what you mean by "relevant." You're not going to see a formal sequel, now that Monolith is owned by Nintendo and Squenix doesn't want to share, but Monolith is still making games (Xenoblade being their flagship titles these days, but they're quite heavily involved in a lot of what Nintendo's been doing, including BotW and TotK), the Xenoblade series is a spiritual successor in a lot of ways (mostly thematic), and it's still generally quite highly regarded.

adjl posted...

the Xenoblade series is a spiritual successor in a lot of ways (mostly thematic), and it's still generally quite highly regarded.

Ah yeah you're right, it harkens back to monolith soft. What a great team. Amazing they Square let them use Yasunori for the soundtrack.

Dmess85 posted...

Amazing they Square let them use Yasunori for the soundtrack.

Square doesn't own Mitsuda (or otherwise have any sort of exclusivity deal). He's worked on a ton of other games over the years, most of which weren't published by Squenix. It's not a matter of Square letting them use Mitsuda, they just hired him for the project (though he only composed one track in the first Xenoblade game, only becoming the lead composer for 2, Torna, and 3).

Dmess85 posted...

This game is not relevant anymore?

There are generally two things that keep people from really talking it up much these days.

First, a lot of players who absolutely loved it in the beginning of the game got hugely disillusioned once they hit disc two, and the deadline crunch/lack of budget/etc kicks in, and the plot becomes almost completely linear, rushed, and it feels like all the massive build-up of the first half is just rushed to an awkward conclusion because everyone just wanted to finish the damned thing (see also, KotOR2). So it always had a slightly more niche following than some of the other popular RPGs of its era.

Second, even the players who were obsessively in love with it and kept talking it up years after its release as a fantastic RPG (and begging for someone to continue the franchise) tended to lose interest once Xenosaga came out, because Xenosaga was meandering shit with no focus that kind of damped down a lot of the passion for the series/creators.

Xenoblade is pretty much the current spiritual successor, and some people really like it, but most of its fans now are newer gamers who got into it on its own merits and not old Xenogears fans who see it as a direct continuation, so it kind of overshadows the original.



The real shame is that Xenogears was supposed to be part of a larger series (it was originally supposed to be part 5 of 6, with the intent to go back and fill in various backstory elements as full prequel games later), but Square lost interest in the idea after the first game.

Xenosaga was supposed to be an attempt to start over (with the first game telling the story that was supposed to be Chapter 1 of the Xenogears story, and then continuing on), but during development they decided Chapter 1 wasn't interesting enough so Xenosaga 1 is basically just Chapter 2 of the original story plus a bit of Chapter 1 worked in (mainly the intro).

And then instead of continuing to tell the original story (with Xenosaga 2 being Chapter 3 of the original plot, Xenosaga 3 being Chapter 4, etc), they just kept stretching out and prolonging the "Chapter 2" part until it became boring and uninteresting and felt like it was never really going anywhere meaningful or interesting. And people basically just stopped caring about the series.

It's interesting to think about how things might had been different if we ever actually got the other Chapters of the original story properly as well (3,4, and 6) rather than what we actually got.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

First, a lot of players who absolutely loved it in the beginning of the game got hugely disillusioned once they hit disc two, and the deadline crunch/lack of budget/etc kicks in

Woah, sounds like a story within a story... is it really that noticeable when you get to Disc 2?

Dmess85 posted...

Woah, sounds like a story within a story... is it really that noticeable when you get to Disc 2?

Fuck yes.

No one is entirely sure what the real reasons behind it are, but things take a radical shift once you hit disc 2. The world map becomes almost pointless and the game goes very heavily onto rails. The pace of the narrative radically accelerates as well, and not necessarily in a good way (but like a final season of Game of Thrones sort of way).

Fans have always assumed it was a budget/time issue or something where the publisher was pushing the devs to just finish the damned game, but I don't think anyone has ever explicitly said "Yeah, this is why it happened."

Dmess85 posted...

Woah, sounds like a story within a story... is it really that noticeable when you get to Disc 2?

Absolutely. Itd be impressive to *not* notice it.

Still an overall fantastic game despite its shortcomings though.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

a lot of players who absolutely loved it in the beginning of the game got hugely disillusioned once they hit disc two

not to those extremes ("absolutely loved" and "hugely disillusioned") but this does roughly describe my experience with the game IIRC

I think I ended up dropping the game around late disc 1, dunno why. The last concrete memory I have is wandering around through some shitty dungeon and then something about four generators.

disc 2 is pretty much just a visual novel

Hard_Light posted...

disc 2 is pretty much just a visual novel

No, visual novels have choices.

except for the many that, uh, don't

A visual novel without choices is just a cutscene.

Hard_Light posted...

except for the many that, uh, don't

Those aren't visual novels, those are kinetic novels.

po do you want to debate me on what is or isnt a vn based on an individual designation the higurashi devs decided on like 20 years ago

reminder: this is me: https://vndb.org/u2568/ulist?l=7&mul=0&s=32w

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Those aren't visual novels, those are kinetic novels.

kinetic novels are, uh, just visual novels lmao