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Digital Torture: Xenogears (PSX) - Week 2

CyclopticInsight - writer/webmaster - posted on Saturday, 07/21/07 16:05:22 EDT

Thursday, July 12 (continued)
SPOILERS ABOUND!!!

Here’s a quick recap of everything thus far: Weird anime in which a spaceship is destroyed by something which contaminates it (with religious references), guy from small town named Fei meets up with Doctor Citan Uzuki (who throws around religious references), Fei goes berserk (with a weird anime sequence and religious references) and destroys the town, Fei gets exiled and goes into the forest. Welcome to part two.

In the forest, Fei meets a red-headed woman who speaks gibberish, then shakes her head and starts speaking normally, all while holding Fei at gunpoint, though she's shaking while doing so. She mentions that Kislev soldiers are after her as well, but has orders to kill all surface dwellers, who she calls "-Lambs-" that she comes in contact with, although it's nothing personal. Then she asks how to get out of the forest. Fei tells her to shoot him already if she's gonna do so, because he feels that his life is no longer worth living anyway. A blue monster attacks her from behind, and Fei tells it to keep its hands off of "Elly" (On a side note, according to the combat which follows, the "blue monster" is actually a forest elf). Fei, ever the softy, decides to make camp and take care of the mysterious redhead, who is still intent on killing him despite the help, since he is a -Lamb-.

Just to recap: thus far, we've heard about "The dark destiny of god", "Living as a son of man", and "-Lambs-", had videos of a swinging cross, and I'm only just outside the first town. This isn't subtle symbolism, this is as if someone ripped a few pages out of the New Testament and threw random lines pertaining to Jesus on the end of sentences. It's hardly what I'd call subtle, at the very least, but I'll go along with it and see if this changes. I seem to remember that the game isn't entirely so blatant about it throughout, but I could be wrong. The way things are going, though, either somebody's gonna ask Fei to be born again or half the plot will probably be revealed before I reach Generic Capital City #1.

A little banter between Fei and the redhead ensues, in which she keeps calling him a -Lamb- (clearly, her mastery of somehow pronouncing hyphens eludes Fei here!), which is a term we've seen before in the cockpit of the Gear. Fei reveals that his full name is Fei Fong Wong, and she reveals that her name's Elhaym, though her parents call her Elly. Of course, Fei claims to somehow already know that, and the two eat and camp out until morning.

Hey, look, more anime! This time we have a child Fei crying while shadowy people trudge through a desert without him. He falls to his knees, still sobbing, and a mysterious red-headed woman wearing a cross (similar to the swinging one earlier) around her neck shows up. He awakes with the dream-redhead's speaking to him fading into Elly calling his name in the present, and now I get to control Elly in battle as well, who commands more magic than Fei (of course) and fights with a magical rod that sorta looks like a sword.

In another cutscene, Fei explains that his life is now worthless since he ran away after the destruction of Lahan, and we see a flashback of Elly (given the surname Van Houten, now) in a Gear that's being persued by enemies, is damaged, and makes an emergency landing in Lahan (before the town was destroyed). Back in the present, Fei is unknowingly giving her a guilt trip by wishing that the Gears hadn't come to his town. and blames them for what happened. Elly calls him a coward, since he's blaming the Gears that landed rather than himself for trying to operate a Gear without the knowledge to do so. Fei says that he acted without thinking, calling himself a coward that just did what he wanted, which was to help others. As Fei feels sorry for himself, Elly walks away and we see yet another anime clip of Elly and Fei's dialogue, with Elly blaming herself for saying it, interspersed with scenes of Elly in a metal corridor, surrounded by corpses and blood, acting similarly to Fei in the previous scene. Suddenly, a really blocky 3D dinosaur model walks up to her awkwardly, and we hear her scream.

I'm not writing this to make fun of the graphics of a 9 year old game, but holy crap, that was the worst polygon dinosaur I've seen in a long time. It looks (and moves) like someone took an AT-ST out of Star Wars and slapped a cheesy dinosaur costume on it,. Very hard to maintain any sort of emotional scene there when you get the cheesiest lizard you've ever seen showing up in the middle of it. Wouldn't you know it, a boss fight ensues, with Fei beating up stupid dinosaur (a Rankar Dragon, as opposed to Star Wars’ rancor) with his fists. A note to whoever wrote this story: there's a good reason dinosaurs aren't often used as a literary device in the middle of religious allegory. The fact that Citan shows up at that moment to drop off the Gear for Fei to use in a Kaiju-esque battle definitely doesn't help with the suspension of disbelief either. While the boss turns out to be immune to Fei's chi powers, his one magical attack is much cooler in the Gear - in normal fights, it's a tiny homing ball of energy, but here it looks like a cross between a Hadoken and a Gundam's cannon. After beating up the dino, it humorously falls sideways onto Elly, though that isn't really the case. We find out that the Gear is called Weltall.

In another camping scene, Citan discusses damages to Weltall, then has a conversation with Elly in another language about how she had landed her gear on the outskirts of town. Citan explains that her comrades were given proper burials, asks if Fei "knows about Elly" yet, and says that they shouldn't pry into each others' pasts anymore. Citan asks Elly to steal away in the night while Fei's asleep, because unfortunate things keep happening around Fei and Citan wishes to protect him. Elly explains that she owes Fei an apology, since she accused him of cowardice when the destruction of Lahan is due to her as well. Citan says that she's strange for her people, who think of land dwellers as domesticated animals. She responds that "The Shepherds -Abel- took control over the surface dwelling -Lambs-, possessing the right to give life and death to them as they see fit." She was taught that surface dwellers are stupid, but feels differently due to Fei's compassion (and power), as well as the fact that a servant in her home was secretly a surface-dweller. She also says that she and Fei are the same, but leaves as Citan asks, though we soon find out that Fei heard half of the conversation.

As Citan and Fei leave the forest, they see an arial battleship of Aveh (or more likely, Gebler) overhead, which kinda resembles a giant dragonfly. Here, Citan mentions that Gebler originally comes from the Sacred Empire of Solaris. The two head to the desert town, Dazil, which features music which sounds appropriately Middle Eastern. Here, the two deal with the Ethos for new parts for Weltall, and also hear all sorts of rumors of war with Kislev and Aveh. Desert thieves referred to as "Sandmen" are also mentioned, and if Tusken Raiders show up on a Bantha, sadly I wouldn't be surprised.

Upon arrival at the Ethos workshop, Fei's informed that they don't carry the latest military Gear parts, which makes Fei happy since that means Weltall won't be repaired, and thus he won't have to pilot it again. He also wants to rebuild Lahan, rather than hiding from Kislev in Aveh. It becomes clear that Elly was working with Gebler to steal a Kislev gear which featured new technology, since Kislev seemed eager to get it back. In the bar, Citan and Fei meet up with a bunch of guys who go on about stealing things from the ruins behind the excavation teams, as well as Big Joe, who wants to drink in peace and scares the thieves off. Citan rents a Sand Buggy and goes out in search of wrecked Kislev gears to salvage, while Fei stays in town for a bit at his request. Soon enough, everyone tells Fei to go out looking for Citan, so I did. The first random encounter was against two green sand sharks. In another strange bit of foreshadowing, the sharks jumped Fei (literally).

I figured this was as good a place as any to save and end. More to come.

At this point, it is pretty clear that the game was greatly inspired by pop culture in general, with special attention to anime and some western science fiction, with a smattering of religion thrown in. That’s not bad in itself, but the game takes this stuff somewhat seriously. Think of Earthbound – you had a great bunch of western pop culture references (including the Blues Brothers), but it was all clearly a parody of its subject matter. Square’s own Secret of Evermore (another game I’m not too fond of) had a similar concept. The difference here is that Xenogears throws in what’s meant to be a deep story and some obscure religious references which felt ripped out of a random episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s disconcerting to say the least, and the dinosaur battle I described earlier is a perfect example of what I mean by it. I know that this is the beginning of the game and is meant to be somewhat more lighthearted, and thus this kind of thing is forgivable (look at FF6, where you start off using Biggs (or “Vicks”, due to a translation error) and Wedge). It’s just that I know how this game goes, and so I’ll try to pay special attention to this as it goes on.

An Ongoing Analysis:
While I know a few things further in this game than the average first-time player would, I'm viewing this experiment as a clean slate in that I'm attempting to view it from the perspective of a gamer playing it for the first time. That being said, Xenogears has good music so far and while the graphics are dated they aren't at all horrible...just pixellated and/or blurry. The fighting system seems decent, but aside from throwing in a very rudimentary combo system, it's still turn-based just like the other RPGs of the time and doesn't even seem to feature Square's own Active Time Battle system (which would work damn well here - think about it, you'd be able to counter an enemy's attack with some strength of attack at the right moment, perhaps working like Killer Instinct's combo breakers). None of this is really the basis for this experiment, however, and I'll leave such areas as graphics and sound aside in most cases, because the thing people love about Xenogears is the story.

As of three hours into the game (half of which was writing this opinion piece down), we've learned a few things about key characters:

Of all of that, I'll make a simple checklist, which will be carried over for each recap at the end of each Digital Torture segment. New characters will be added as they come up. I'll keep track of where I come up with an observation, and denote a confirmed fact in bold text. Something I'm wrong about will be underlined:

Fei:

Citan:

Elly:

Gears:

Solaris:

Thus far, that is certainly a lot of character exposition for a few hours, and I'll give the game credit on that since that's a lot to cram in a short time. Unfortunately, as far as I can remember, I've also almost pinned down many of the main points of the plot already through simple deduction. If it turns out that I've figured out plot twists in advance, my criticism of the story of Xenogears will carry weight.