an article by Neosmith
This is going to be the beginning of a (hopefully) long, insightful, critical examination of the reasons why the "Xenosaga" series had failed to deliver the grand, epic story that everyone was expecting. My intention for the most part is to analyze the narrative of Xenosaga: Episode I and determine why it failed to connect with audiences, ultimately leading to the death of the entire franchise. This won't exactly be a professional analytical essay, but perhaps more of a review. I will be posting it in various chapters, and probably editing them over time, as I haven't written the entire essay/review out yet. I find this necessary, as it would probably take me too long to actually have the whole thing ready quickly and I'm not sure how much time I can devote to it. It is possible that I might drop this whole thing part way through its development, but for now, I am committed to getting this column up and running. I want to begin by posting my first retrospective observations about the game.
Note that the posts will be SPOILER-ish, so anyone who hasn't played Episode I yet to the end should not read this unless they want to know things in advance. Note that I have nothing against Xenosaga - I am a huge fan of the game series. Back in 2000-something, I was at a store, possibly Best Buy, when I saw Episode I. I remembered reading something about it in a game magazine, but didn't remember anything, except that the review was positive. So, seeing that it was an RPG, I decided to buy it and play it. What I found out later on was that the game was pretty unconventional, to say the least.
The gameplay was interesting, but the story and world building was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Long cinematic CGI cutscenes that featured voice acting and an orchestral score came in so often that it was more interesting to just watch the game than actually play it. Every time I thought the movies were over, they just kept going and going. It gave this game a unique feel already. But the details of the sci-fi story, with its multiple plot-threads, dozens of characters, engrossing mysteries, philosophical and religious references, made me realize that Xenosaga was something truly special.
So I became a fan, the kind that studied obsessively over many details of the game, including its database, hoping to understand its strange concepts and figure out where the story was headed. It inspired me to read a whole new slew of sci-fi literature, including that of Asimov, Kuttner, Simmons, Heinlein and especially, Zelazny. It made me interested in the concepts of Gnosticism and physics, which was a subject I loathed in school. I eagerly awaited Episode II and was like many bummed by the sheer degradation of every aspect of the game, including story, gameplay and visual presentation.
Episode II overall resembled a half-baked rush job of a game, and this became apparent with the behind-the-scenes turmoil that occurred following the release of Episode I. It was shocking to learn that commercial interests resulted in the ambitious and high-concept story that began in the first game getting dumbed down and butchered. I was quick to assign blame to the new team at Monolithsoft and the game's low quality to the lack of input from Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga, arguably the two most important creative personnel in the series as a whole.
Episode III was a welcome return to form, and perhaps my favorite game right now from various perspectives, which I might discuss later. But it was clear at the time that Takahashi's singular vision was no longer driving the series. Because of that, Episode I in my eyes became the example of Xenosaga at it best, a sample of the pure unadulterated version of Takahashi's story. But as time passed, and I became more versed in film and television, which Xenosaga was obviously influenced by (the comparison 'Hashi made with Episode I cutscenes being equiva- lent to 26-episodes of television is a pretty accurate example), I came to realize that the story of Episode I was never as well-structured, delivered or planned out as I initially believed. As I examined its narrative, which I revered, closer and closer, I realized that in fact it was quite a mess, perhaps even moreso than the much-maligned Episode II.
Episode I was still ambitious for sure. It tackled such concepts as internet, convergence, theoretical physics, cloning, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, God-like possibly-alien/spriritual beings, order and chaos, etc. It tried to approach its world from a multi-focal perspective, showing the interactions of characters from many different backgrounds, including that of the working class, the Navy /Military, the politicians, the religious zealots, the scientists, the Gods, etc. It still held a lot of interesting ideas. But those ideas really weren't coming together into a single whole, constantly contradicting each other and stepping over one another.
This made me come to the conclusion that in fact the reason for the series' failure as a whole was always right there in Episode I. Namely, I posit that it was Takahashi and Co's inability to gel all of his interesting and theoretical concepts into a single coherent narrative in Episode I that really made Xenosaga inaccessible to mainstream audiences, leading the crew of Monolithsoft to try to re-conceive and streamline/commercialize it with the future installments.
Not the terminology, not the graphics, not the esoteric references (although these factors and many others contributed) but really the story itself and its presentation was largely at fault. This is what I will try to prove over the course of this multi-chapter essay /review. What follows will be an examination of the Episode I characters, story structure and narrative. I will show just why many of the game's story points do not work well with each other and that the character development and motivation is often quite weak.
The order of the chapters will probably change over time as I don't have all of them worked out yet and will want to revise, edit, and expand/shorten some of them. I hope to get lots of comments and suggestions, and improve the posts over time. Eventually, I do hope to preserve this essay on the study guide, if the administrators will feel that it deserves a spot there.
Anyway, on to the actual material ...