an article by Neosmith
Before I go any further, I really must say that I don’t wish to anger anybody. I understand that some of my dissections of the Woglinde chapter and its related points might seem more like a rant, than constructive criticism, than. But it does have a point that I simply haven’t written out yet because this whole project is very much on the fly and is incomplete.
And I will admit that writing those two entries did help me vent out some of my frustrations with the way the story had been handled. This is however, because I still respect Xenosaga and I constantly see potential for greatness in it that the series simply hasn’t realized. In this entry I wish to give an approximate outline of how I will proceed with this project. I will first list a number of claims that I will try to prove and argument with further analysis and examples from the game over the course of the next few entries. My earlier discussion of the Woglinde chapter will factor into this.
My claims:
First however, I really must take a bit of a detour to discuss serial television. When a television series is first conceived, it is sold to a network via a pilot episode. A ‘pilot’ is essentially the visual equivalent of a story pitch, the material that will convince the network heads to greenlight the series and order more episodes (it is called that as far as I know because it will determine whether or not the series will ‘fly’ or ‘air’ on television). Networks also demand something called the series bible, a special document of reference materials that let the executives understand that the developers of the show have a firm grasp of what the show is about and what it will be doing.
Normally, a bible contains such things as biographies of the main characters, including their backstories and their ‘front stories” (my personal terminology), namely the stories that they will partake in the future. At the same time, a bible might typically contain an outline of the first season of the show, with a synopsis of all the episodes that charts out to various degrees the main story beat the season will have as a whole. This element of the bible becomes especially crucial in the case of serialized shows, which aim to tell a continuous story. The bible demonstrates just what sort of overarching narrative the showrunners are planning to execute over a season’s worth of episodes.
The pilot in many ways then finds itself in a precarious situation. Because it is the first episode, it has the unenviable task of among other things setting up the main story, the characters whose lives the audiences will follow and the world that those characters inhabit, etc. Within the allotted time that it has, be it half an hour, one hour or two hours, it has to grab viewers, appeal to them and convince them that the show it represents is worth watching. However, despite these qualities, a pilot very rarely manages to demonstrate just what exactly the show is or what the right elements are needed for it work best. That’s why a good deal of pilots, even going from pilot to series are either re-shot, revised or completely thrown out the window.
Many showrunners also admit that when a series starts out, it needs time to establish itself, to learn what works and doesn’t work, to figure what storylines are actually prospering, what character relationships and dynamics are engaging, to figure out what tone the series requires and just what story it specifically wants to tell and how to tell it. Some refer to it as a series finding its voice and going through growing pains.
Because of that, the first season of a television show often depicts a process of discovery for the show’s writers and for the viewers and the quality of the initial episodes will probably be inconsistent in terms of plotting, characterization, tone, etc. Television critic Todd VanDerWerff once aptly remarked that “If pilots are there to show us what a new series might look like, then the earliest episodes of a series are there to show us the varied tones the show is capable of pulling off.”
Some shows need just a few episodes to figure out just what works and what doesn’t. Others can take an entire season. For example, Daniel Knauf once remarked in an interview about his show Carnivale that despite having a fully developed backstory and mythology, during season one he and his writing staff “… were still learning how to write the show. We really started hitting our stride around episode 1.08. But getting there involved few stumbles, and the show was occasionally confusing rather than mysterious. I'm just glad the fans stuck with us.” Furthermore, the development process of any written work, be it a novel or a script for film or television is an organic one.
Ideas that initially may have seemed interesting turn out to no longer be workable and other stories that you wanted to explore fall victim to time constraints or poor execution, necessitating that they be dropped. Even with story outlines that detail the opening scene of the first episode and the last scene of the final episode, many things are bound to change on the fly as new ideas come in and others are discarded. An outline in that sense is a general understanding of a story. It is only when the writer is in the process of writing that he concretely sets the story down into actual, specific actions.
There is no doubt in my mind that Tetsuya Takahashi was facing all such issues when he was writing and then directing the story of Episode I. Der Wille zur Macht in that regard would function as a sort of testing ground for the series, a learning curve that would allow its maker to realize just what the story was and what the game was about. One only needs to look at the many scene differences between the 8-minute trailer and their corresponding scenes in Episode I or the changes that he implemented to the Episode I portion of the DS release, as well as the many holes and inconsistencies in Episode I’s narrative that I had pointed out earlier, to witness the fluid nature of the creative process. Because of that, I really do not agree with the belief that Takahashi from the very inception knew exactly what story he wanted to tell in Episodes I-V.
I’m not saying that Takahashi didn’t have a roadmap or an outline of the story direction of Episode I, but it seems to me that he hadn’t fully worked out a single direction to take the series in as a whole before Episode I went into production and ended up pulling it in too many different directions at the same time without realizing how poorly they related to one another. The Woglinde chapter aptly demonstrates this in its disconnect between the KOS-MOS/Shion and the ZE storyline that I discussed earlier.
In his Gamespot interview, in fact, he claims to have plotted out the story “in his mind.” This means he basically had ideas for stories he wanted to do in theory, a general sense of the stories he wanted to tell, but it doesn’t mean he knew everything, every character, every plotline down to the last detail. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say he had a written outline for all 5 episodes. He ultimately would come to realize that it was the story of Shion and KOS-MOS, with the DS remake of the first two episodes and Episode III reflecting this new mindset.
One could draw comparisons between Takhashi and George Lucas, who in the last 10 years or so had become famous for stating that he knew the Star Wars story from the very beginning. Michael Kaminski’s excellent study of the development process of Star Wars clearly illustrates that Lucas never had any master plan for the series at all and constantly retconned the series’ continuity. Kaminski makes a statement that one could apply to any story-heavy long-term narrative: “It takes many agonizing drafts, many bad ideas, and many transformations before the final story is made clear. The best of ideas are stumbled upon by accident, inspired by outside sources and made in a continuing evolution, as a story like the Star Wars series was written over many decades, from 1973 to 2005 (and beyond). Whether it is written by a Sarah Lawrence, anthropologists like Joseph Campbell or a small-town north Californian who happened to like poorly-written sci-fi serials, it is what it is.” (225)
Now I know plenty of people had remarked earlier that in fact the Xenosaga characters in general were very vague. That is not entirely true. Upon closer examination of Episode I, I’ve come to the conclusion that in fact most of the series’ vague characters are in fact the ones written by Tetsuya Takahashi.
Shion’s characterization is indicative of his character writing in general - he saddles far too many people with ‘mystery motives’, making many actions that they undertake rather hard to follow or understand, while also creating an emotional distance between them and the audience. We often have little to no idea as to why the likes of KOS-MOS, Chaos, Margulis, Pellegri, Cherenkov and many others are behaving the way they are or what it is that they stand to lose or gain from what they do (not to mention the sheer number of times these characters behave illogically and rather idiotically, but that’s another matter altogether).
When it comes to film and television, the task of a writer-director is not to always spell out what everyone is doing and why they’re doing it, but to convey it through visuals and action, through storytelling. And Takahashi unfortunately fails at this quite often, which only magnifies the difficulty of getting into the dense, plothole-filled contradictory narrative that he places the characters in.
Why, for example, does KOS-MOS want to go to Second Miltia or what do her orders entail? Why exactly was KOS-MOS placed on the Woglinde anyway, despite being not in finished form? Where precisely was the Woglinde originally heading with its cargo and why was it going there? What was the deal between Vector and the Federation Fleet? What does U-TIC want with the ZEs and why does it want them? What did U-TIC stand to gain from stealing Archetype KOS-MOS from the Carioca (originally Ariadne) facility?
On the other hand, he creates a fascinating world - one that feels lived in and immersive. Within Xenosaga he paints a retro-stylized future that feels like a true extension of our own. Details of how the ships work, where the Hilbert Effect is from, the backstories of minor characters like Lt. Vanderkam - these are exactly the details that make this world seem real, convincing and immersive. This is a world with its own elaborate history, its own wars and politics, a world that has already gone through the stages of space travel, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and faster than light travel. It’s also an excellent stage for the theoretical, psychological and philosophical concepts that Hashi wants to explore. It’s the kind of world that you want to get lost in, the one where you want to peak around the corner the game won’t let you look just to see what’s there.
And the problem is that Hashi devotes so much time to the details of the world his characters inhabit, with all those numerous techy devices, terms and various concepts, that he almost completely neglects basic questions of logic and motivation.
I find that in Episode I, no chapter better epitomizes Hashi’s strengths and weaknesses than that of the Cathedral Ship, which presents a philosophical, heavily symbolical, meta-physical, existential journey for Andrew Cherenkov, directly tackling the Nietzche-ian concept of the ‘will to power’. I love its visual presentation - the surrealistic vibe, the excellent music, the creepy atmosphere of the Alien-like Ship interiors, the editing and the ambiguity of Cherenkov’s past. Sure, the dialogue is grandiloquent, especially in scenes with Margulis, but the setting is still just damn cool and the cutscenes are quite in the vein of David Lynch in my opinion.
And yet, I cannot help but consider all the implausible story twists and illogical character behavior that allows us to get here. Let’s backtrack to the Dock Colony. The entire sub-story here, wherein Cherenkov leaves the ship, ends up nearly killing some hooligans, while the others go looking for him, in retrospect is really rather stupid. First of all, consider the fact that Cherenkov for no apparent reason decides to leave the ship. Presumably, he’s looking for a “charter flight”, as Hammer mentions. Now, the problem with this set-up is that Cherenkov leaves without actually informing anyone that he is leaving or why, which immediately is bound to raise people’s suspicions about his intentions.
Given the fact that he’s “skipped dinner again” and “has been acting strangely” as Shion states, Cherenkov comes off as this point as a rather inept undercover U-TIC agent. I understand that Margulis asked him to return to HQ asap, but seriously, his behavior here is pretty damn stupid, especially considering that he’s already been told by Matthews that the Elsa could drop him off on Senir, a plot point that apparently everyone’s forgotten by now. (If you add his outburst on the Woglinde, his dumbass attempt to shoot a transparent Golem and his near-shooting of Shion to the laundry list of gaffes he’s made so far, he’s a really inept double agent. Given how routinely he messes up, it’s baffling that he’s actually managed to remain undetected for several years, or even that Margulis would assign him to really important missions, such as the Emulator mission, in the first place.)
Even worse though is the idea that conveniently nobody in the Elsa crew, apparently other than Matthews had any idea that the Dock Colony was hostile towards military personnel, otherwise they probably would’ve informed Cherenkov that he shouldn’t go outside, despite the fact that this probably isn’t the first time the Elsa has been here. Furthermore, the moment Hammer mentions Cherenkov wanted to look for a charter flight, for some reason nobody present logically asks as to why Cherenkov would want to leave or where he would be going so urgently. In fact, nobody even asks him that after he returns to the Elsa, which is really damn contrived. But the biggest idiocy on the part of all involved - Shion, Ziggy, Momo, etc. -is that everyone immediately accepts the rather lame excuse Cherenkov gives that the Hooligans “…started fighting among themselves”.
I mean, honestly, they’ve seen four people beaten savagely half-to-death, with blood everywhere. Did Cherenkov somehow manage to clean himself up so much that he doesn’t have any evidence that he himself has been involved in a vicious fight, such as bloodstains, bruises, etc.? Shouldn’t it occur to anyone at this point that Cherenkov’s story is bullshit by virtue of the fact that ALL of the hooligans over there were nearly dead and Cherenkov was the only one in good condition to leave the crime scene? Shouldn’t they at least ask how many men cornered him just to clarify that there were more men than they found injured (plus Ziggy would’ve detected heat signatures of other people leaving the crime scene)?
Shouldn’t they ask, as to why the hooligans started to fight amongst themselves or over what? Shouldn’t Ziggy, with all of his law enforcement background be able to deduce that Cherenkov is lying by examining the crime scene? He’s a cyborg with advanced computer systems that in theory would probably allow him to measure people’s heart rates and scan their DNA, and he completely buys Cherenkov’s story? Plus, what ever happened to Cherenkov’s handgun? It looked like he constantly carried that sidearm with him, yet he didn’t have it on hand to use against his attackers?
To sum up, there’s a whole slew of illogical character behavior that arises here. And there is no real consequence to what happens on the Dock Colony in the greater scheme of events, no event that has a key influence on the larger overarching plot. So, honestly, there doesn’t seem much of a point to the Dock Colony sequence, except to expand on the world building and maybe raise some more mysteries about Cherenkov. And the world building is interesting for sure, but it really comes about at the expense of a precipitous drop of every major character’s IQ. But that doesn’t even compare to the utter lunacy that transpires just so that the main characters end up inside the Cathedral Ship.
So, first of all, the Elsa is dragged out of hyperspace. How, why? Well, nobody knows for sure. And no one in the game seems to care either. Then, to add to the list of the inexplicable, the Elsa is pulled inside the Cathedral Ship. By the Gnosis? By something else? Who knows? Then, a bright light engulfs everybody and five of the main characters - Shion, KOS-MOS, Momo, Ziggy and Chaos - inexplicably disappear off the Elsa and wake up in the center of a Gnosis.
So, numerous logical questions arise that nobody bothers to tackle: “How did this happen? Why did this happen? How can anyone breathe air inside a Gnosis? Why did only the five aforementioned characters vanish, while others didn’t? Did the others see them vanish? Why didn’t Cherenkov appear with the main characters, even though he apparently vanished too? Why did they reappear so far away from the Elsa? But most importantly, why isn’t anybody asking these questions? Why don’t they discuss this once they get back to the Elsa? Wouldn’t Allen be curious about what happened to Shion?”
I would understand that Chaos, who knows a lot more about this than he lets on, would not bother to pose any questions and maybe Shion too, given that she seems to accept everything at face value. But why is it that neither KOS-MOS, nor Ziggurat 8, two of the most logical and rational characters in the story to date, seems baffled by the rather inexplicable series of events that have taken place at this point? Shouldn’t their systems be confused by this? If you think about it, confronting a rational character with irrational phenomena is an ample opportunity for that character’s development. Yet neither one of them undergoes any development at all over the course of the Cathedral Ship Chapters that would be in line with their established personas. Their behavior in the situation is thus completely out-of-character.
Added to which, the main characters really have nothing to do in the Cathedral Ship story, except, much like Shion in the Woglinde chapter, to wonder around and explore it. As much I like Cherenkov, I really find that this whole chapter completely wastes all of the main characters. We learn nothing new about them and none of the story points established here really have any long term effects or consequences on their development (perhaps with the exception of Shion’s fear of becoming a Gnosis, but that issue would be swept under the rug shortly). I’ve also discussed previously how the entire ZE story had really nothing to do with the established main characters’ personal storylines and none of them had any personal interest in it. (At this point the only main character who has any interest in Ariadne’s fate, as well as that of the ZE is Jr., so why isn’t he the one getting to explore the ship and find it?)
By now Hashi had seemingly realized how poorly the KOS-MOS/ZE plotlines came together, so the only way to get back to this story was to force it upon the characters, leading to all of the inexplicable disappearing acts. Understanding that they would have no actual incentive to explore the ship and find the ZE, he must’ve figured the only way to actually give them something to do, to drive forward the action was to separate them from the Elsa, so that they would have to find it again and get out, which allows them to stumble upon the ZE in the process, which really showcases how weak he is in terms of actual plotting.
So what happens then is that Hashi now makes all five protagonists into ciphers, privileging world building and the philosophical, conceptual ideas he gets to explore over their development and coherent story. Nothing here also has any long-lasting story consequences (except maybe the ZE recovery and Jr. finding the main characters, but these could’ve easily happened under different circumstances). Overall, since it has no major consequence on the main narrative, the entire Ariadne/Cathedral Ship story is completely unnecessary in the larger overarching narrative. It therefore represents what one calls ‘wheel spinning’ in terms of Episode I’s story as a whole, since it throws off the pacing of Episode I and destroys the narrative momentum.
(225)