This is my first review for the Heroic Episode, so I wanted to create a great review and to set a precedent, and for that I needed to select carefully, to select a game that I was very familiar with and liked, that had a lot in it to review, and so I chose Xenogears [1].

Spoiler warning: As with all reviews in this publication, if you tend to worry about a review spoiling the story before you play the game or read the book, then don't read further. To get the optimal effect from the game it probably is best if you play the game first, but the intent (though I don't yet know how successful it will be) was that the review be of worth both to the person who knows nothing about the game and to the person who is friends with it, it's intended to understand and examine the game experience rather than be a replacement for it.

Size warning: This is the longest game review I've ever written: 100 plus pages. I regret not being able to condense it any more than this, but since it's the first review for this magazine I decided it was better to do too much than to do too little. I also paid in writing quality in exchange for thoroughness. My future reviews will not be this long. After some experimentation I finally favored a topical block-type organization. The review is arranged into 14 parts, each of those containing from two to ten titled blocks of text, which can be treated as very short chapters, which if in print would range from half a page to five pages of text each.

The subtitle of this review doesn't appear in the game; I think giving reviews an appropriate subtitle gives some indication of how the reviews here should be approached. It is a quote (in Latin) of Francis Bacon's:

"It is true greatness to have in one the frailty [mortality, delicateness] of a man and the security [fortitude, invulnerability] of a God."

Preface to the first edition.
Contents.

01-02. Xenogears overall.
03-09. The world of Xenogears.
10-11. The characterization of Xenogears.
12-17. The characters of Xenogears.

18-28. The plotting of Xenogears.
29-33. The scenes of Xenogears.
34-40. The style of Xenogears.

8 - The game of Xenogears.
9 - The battle engine of Xenogears.
10 - The music and sound of Xenogears.
11 - The visuals of Xenogears.

12 - The meaning of Xenogears.
13 - The effects of Xenogears.
14 - The making of Xenogears.

Notes.
References.

Xenogears, in spite of being rushed to completion and having some opposition between the actions and words of the characters, is top notch. The skillfully directed structure of it has not yet been repeated in any game of its size. And what size: it has at least five-hundred pages of dialogue, and runs between 60 and 100 hours on average.

Xenogears, in spite of being rushed to completion and having some opposition between the actions and words of the characters, is top notch. The skillfully directed structure of it has not yet been repeated in any game of its size. And what size: it has at least five-hundred pages of dialogue, and runs between 60 and 100 hours on average.

Xenogears is essentially literary (and for that reason I only with reluctance apply the term videogame to it); its primary aesthetic value is its story, which is supported by its game, music, and visual art. I do of course think games can have artistic value apart from their story, it's just that here the main value here is the story. It is obvious the director knew this: there is no place where those supporting elements overshade the main element. It is not that those supports are done poorly, only that they know their place in this game, unlike many games where the visual element steals primacy, or where primacy fights back and forth between game and story. So I will move first into an examination of the main beam of the game (parts 1 and 2 of this review), and then to its supports (part 3), and then to what unites them all (part 4).

The existence of the gears, after which the game is named (the 'xeno-' prefix refers to the foreign or alien nature of the gears), is likely the most important element of the game. These gears are giant robots that humans pilot for battle and other purposes. The 'Giant Robot' motif is a common one in Japanese anime, manga, and games, and has been used very extensively and is almost a genre. Xenogears uses its giant robots in a way distinctive from other giant robot fiction: to highlight the difference between vulnerability and invulnerability. Throughout the game the contrast and comparison between these gears and the humans that ride them is returned to, in the story, in the gameplay, and in the visuals. No exaggeration: the gears are the single most constant and spectacular part of the game, always a reminder of what the game is, and as we look into each branch we'll the gear-human relation will be ever-present. The game's name selection is wonderful.

Xenogears is set in an imaginary world, and like all imaginary worlds the world itself is a type of 'character' (or set of world elements which can act as characters) just as important as -- and often more important than -- the rest of the characters. What made Tolkein's Lord of the Rings books so popular is mainly how detailed and inventive the world that it takes place in is; what makes many generic fantasy novels so boring is mainly how shallow and unoriginal the worlds they take place in are. So how well the world works, and how interesting it is to get to know, can make or break the story set in it.

When you write a story set in an imaginary place rather than one based set on this earth (either future, present, past, or alternate history), the creation of the imaginary world is usually the first thing that has to be considered: you can't very well create a cast of characters or plan a sequence of scenes if you don't know where the people and actions take place in. Whether you specifically design the world for a specific plot or theme (as was done in the C.S. Lewis Narnia novels and as was done in Xenogears), or make the world first and figure out what kind of story you'll tell in it afterwards (as is more usual, but dubious), the construction of the world must precede the full expression of the plot.

The world of Xenogears is masterfully detailed, not overdetailed with extraneousness but detailed just enough to completely complement the story. The world's origin, its countries and their histories, its timeline of events, even its measurement system were invented carefully. There are more background details than what is presented in the game, but they were presented selectively so as not to overwhelm -- this is good practise, to paraphrase J.K. Rowling, the author should know more about the world of the story than the audience does. When I heard that the game's design document is over several thousands of pages long, it didn't surprise me. The quantity and quality of work put into imagining and presenting this world, and also how inherently dramatic the world is by its makeup, easily surpass most science fiction and fantasy novels I've read; only a very few are on its level: Dune, The Lord of the Rings, the Thomas Covenant series, and any multi-book series by Orson Scott Card. The nice feeling of being in a world atmospherically different from the real world is constant.

Permit me a perhaps too-lengthy tangent on just what exactly is involved in "cosmopoesis", or fictional world creation.

World-creation on this scale is a very complex and rare talent, it's not a skill that can be taken up lightly, but one that can only be done by those who are obsessive about world-creation (usually this starts very young, in the first decade of life) who devotedly hone their world like a sculpture over several years, or decades. There has to be genuine interest in and love for the world that the game or novel takes place in. And there of course has to be thorough documentation: lists and notes on various aspects of the world, maps drawn of it, sketches of its buildings and creatures, if needed a grammar and lexicon of its languages -- lists and lists, and sometimes even lists of lists. But above all it has to be imagined internally with vividness, the author has to at times almost live in the imaginary world mentally through purposeful daydreaming. In my experience through this process only is a great imaginary world made.

A created world it ultimately comes out of a re-arrangement of what the person knows and values, an expression of the kind of world they would find interesting to live in. In some ways, world-creation for a fantasy or science fiction novel or game is the sine qua non of the greatest fiction artists. Oz, the Wonderland of Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Star Trek, and the Harry Potter world are classics and are cherished not primarily for the plotting or characterization or style of writing of those novels, but for the imaginary world they take place in; enclosed in the presentation of those world is most of the aesthetic value of those works is contained. It is one of the greatest rewards of the artist to create a world of their own, to see that world in a novel or game, and to see it enjoyed by others.

However, a warning: the presentation of such a world, no matter how great, is not to be taken as the primary purpose of a fantasy or science fiction work; inasmuch as they are stories they should keep the story the goal, and inasmuch as they are games they should keep the game the goal. Created an imaginary world and presenting it is wonderful, but just be sure that what happens in does justice to it. For example in some areas of Tolkein's books, and perhaps in some of the books themselves, the world steals primacy from the stories; this is particulary clear in the last parts of the third of his trilogy: it was as if he didn't want to leave the world after the climax had happned, and slowed down the ending to a crawl and a series of anticlimaxes in order to present more of his Middle Earth. There was even an index for the world containing family trees and the like -- interesting as an appendix but it doesn't in itself add value to the novel, no more than Perfect Works (a book containing a series of notes about the world Xenogears) adds value to the game itself.

Additionally, it's important to recognize that no world-creation is done ex nihilo, it is only a re-arrangement. It is a creation based on what the person finds aesthetically pleasing, the kind of elements included are those that make the author feel primarily 'now this would be an interesting world worth thinking about' and secondarily 'this would make sense in this world I'm making'. It is based on the real world, it is not an 'escape' from it, nor a replacement world, but a world composed of the timeless universals of the real world given different physical form. In this sense, a fictional world can often be "truer" than the real one (in the sense of seeming more real), and at the same time can make one more sensitive to the best of the real world.

In this case of Xenogears, the world that the author found interesting was one that was created by a 'higher being' called Deus, a type of artificially intelligent world-destroying weapon, which rebelled against its creators, sustained damage from the attempt, crash landed on a planet, created a humanity solely for the purpose of repairing itself, and for thousands of years directed all of the world's major activities (through its human puppets). The rest of the world's construction revolves around that first fact. It effects culture design and country design: some countries are on the side of Deus, some against it, some ignorant of it. It effects character design: there are basically three classifications of characters in the game (although some characters mix each side and change sides): a first, of those who accept its direction, a second, of those who that rebel against it, and a third, of those who do not know about Deus at all or believe in it only as a legendary benign creator -- the great mass of humanity. It effects the monster design: many of the enemies are 'wels', mutants needed for the repair of Deus. In short, that first fact is the backbone of a volume on which all the pages are attached and turn on.

The world of the game does have 'inspirations' and precursors. The main precursor is the world of Chrono Trigger, many of the details of this world are evolutions of details in that world, and not only in details [5]. The idea of a world with giant robots is also not new, a huge genre exists for it in Japan, a lot of which is popular in translation, e.g. Voltron. The idea of a the dystopic totalitarian city Solaris has earlier equivalents in the world of 1984 by Orwell and the world of Brave New World by Huxley. But the world newly-created here is entirely an original, it uses some elements that other fictional worlds have used but they are necessities and arranged in such a way that they are irreplacable: there is almost nothing that is in the world just because it was in another fictional world, which can't be said for most other imaginary worlds created for games, where original elements are the fractional part and stolen elements are the bulk.

There are six widespread cultures in the game, each corresponding to a different country: Kislev (a German-like militaristic country that thrives on competition), Aveh (a large desert country, with the most freedoms but troubled by a recent coup), the Ethos-Etone Church (a Solaris-controlled mass religion which also creates and hunts down mutants), Nisan (an independent religious community), Shevat (a hidden, isolationlist, anti-Solaris city in the sky which virtually no one on the land knows of), and Solaris (also a hidden city, the most powerful and long-lived, and the main institution of Deus' control). There is also smaller ones, like Lahan (where the game begins, a small peasant village), and city-sized seafaring excavation groups. The cultures are all quite nicely created, they're very colorful, and 'organic' in the sense of having the atmosphere of being designed by emergant evolution rather than planned design, they do feel like real cultures. There are also a number of cultures which do not exist anymore but existed in the game's past, presented in flashbacks and computer recordings, these give the game even more depth by adding a feeling of history to the world. This is actually a great achivement -- I can think of only a few other games with original cultures this well done: Chrono Trigger, the Suikoden series, some of the later Final Fantasy games, and that's about it. Most tend to use generic dragon-and-kingdom cultures which all resemble eachother and feel like they're all the same place over and over again in new disguises.

Solaris is particularly well done, it is mind-controlling in accordance with the goal of the Deus revival. It's a nicely done dystopia, in its flag (which reminds one of a bee hive), in its class system, in its food (they eat mutated humans from the surface world), in the vapid shallowness of its citizens, in its being an upside-down city with reversed gravity, and even in the actions of its better citizens: notice how so many of its best and most talented citizens (Jesiah, Citan, Ramsus, Sigurd, Elly, Ramsus, the elements, even perhaps Krelian) dislike how it is run and eventually either try to change it or defect; like all totalitarian nations it rules by fear; only the most dutiful and decadent citizens remain loyal to it, the more self-respectful people want nothing to do with it.

The people of the world are human in appearance but there are some mutations called demi-humans and 'wels' as well. As Deus awakens it begins to turn humanity into wels -- horrible mutants to be used as elements of its regeneration and repair -- but even before this begins, mutant variations of humans -- called demi-humans because of their half-animal apperance -- exist as a result of the activities of Solaris and Ethos religion. 

At first I was not sure what to think about the inclusion of demi-humans in the game, for although they include are interesting mixes not often done: penguin-like people, a walrus-like person, a camel-like person, etc., they seemed at first to be for visual variety only, and I questioned whether the game would have worked much worse if Hammer or Rico were human in form. It certainly is a common mistake of other RPGS: in the Breath of Fire series, in the Suikoden series, and in Final Fantasy XI and X, there there are demi-human mixes without much or any explanation or purpose other than to add color to the world (not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a bit arbitrary). But I eventually realized that these are in fact a very important part of the story, they dramatize what distortions of humanity are possible as humans lose their will and are owned as pawns, and the wels are important as the 'true form' of humans (true form in the sense that they were created to ultimately become that form and repair Deus with their bodies as parts).

Unfortunately there is also a "people" called the Chu-Chupolin (they resemble mice-like stuffed animals but can grow to giant size) who were the world's original sentient (or almost sentient) inhabitants, they look like stuffed animals and seem to be there only for the sake of cuteness and of comic relief. I'm not alone among the game's fans in thinking that they (along with their playable representative character) are pretty pointless inclusions. But the wels and demi-humans parts are certainly good.

The non-human and non-mechanical 'monsters' of the game are an odd bunch. There are dinosaurs living in forests, gryphons that can fly "1000 kilometers per hour", elves, kobolds, dragons, dwarves, golems, as well as some newly invented monsters. Most RPGs [4] and games in general and fantasy novels in general make this same dumb mistake of just selecting monsters arbitrarily based on what they think makes a cool scary monster and what have been oftten employed as monsters in other RPGs; I prefer some principle uniting the monsters of a game into a whole. The best examples of this are Kingdom Hearts and Ico: the 'heartless' of the first and the shadowy creatures of the second, despite being similar to eachother thematically are still distinct and have individual characteristics; you don't need to have a grab-bag set of monsters to give enemies individuality. This is not to say that the individual monsters are designed poorly -- a lot of them are interesting, such as the mutants (called wels) -- just that the rest of them have no unifying principle. I would have simply made all of the monsters in the game (besides the humans and mechanicals) forms of wels -- according to the game they do wander the wild and are a big enough problem to have a whole institution (the Etone) to combat them, so they could easily have had all of the monsters in the game be different types of wels. But as it is, the monsters don't even have the consistency of all being original creatures (as in the Mario and Zelda game monsters): some are new creations and some are copies of actual animals or monsters in other games. So this is probably the worst-designed part of the imaginary world.

The world of Xenogears has a heavily technological basis, and so it has an element of science fiction, but it's a science fiction that is used to explain many things normally found only in fantasy. Reincarnation exists, but is explained (sort of -- see below) through a type of DNA code which can transmit memory and personality. Immortality exists, but it is explained as a consequence of nanotechnology. Magic exists but that is also explained by the hypothetical ether (which used to be a scientific theory but has lost its explanatory power). Giant human-piloted robots exist, and don't require fuel; their power source is explained by the Zohar Engine, which also powers Deus. Angels exist, but are explained as being like robotic white blood cells for the god-like weapon.

The technology of the world is designed with above-average competence (the whole makeup of the Deus system and its elements is brilliant, as are the gears' master-slave generators system and the city of Solaris), but Takashi is no scientist, so there are a couple of weird things that seemed objectionable to me (but as a former biochemistry major with an interest in nanotechnology this is to be expected, much science in fiction comes out laughable to specialists), and though they may be unimportant to most of the game's audience it's my contention that if you are going to write a story with sci-fi elements, keep the science believable.

The big unbelievability here is: why would Deus need to use humans as organic parts to repair itself and build Merkaba? The game makes it seem as if nanotechnology was something later added to Deus, but that's pretty unbelievable considering the high technology level of the humans that built Deus in the first place. Was the planet's own Zeboim civilization more advanced than a star-travelling civilizations of humans? If Deus had nanotechnology at its disposal, it wouldn't need to create a human civilization to repair itself, it could just use base elements. If it didn't have nanotechnology, then the Zeboim civilization which it created was more advanced that the civilization which created it. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a deep oversight.

Another one is: a particular person's personality is supposedly stored in DNA introns via the Uroboros** ring, and so that person can be 'reincarnated' through that DNA, but how does the DNA of people unrelated to that person store the memories of the person who died, at the moment the person died, even if they don't have children and there is no chance to transmit that information? There is a part in the game where that person dies and then 'reincarnates' herself a few minutes later in another person, apparently with all memories intact - and this is explained as being a DNA transmission of memories. How? (And for that matter, how can DNA store memories in the first place? From what I know of how memory works, that's kind of improbable, memories aver very brain-specific.) The idea of reincarnation through DNA intron storage is a good idea, it just wasn't explained in enough detail to call it anything other than fantasy. Reincarnation is very much essential to the plot and had to be in the world somehow, and Xenogears has three seperate mechanisms of reincaration: via DNA introns contained in all women (for Miang), via the Wave Existense's will (for Fei and Elly -- which is even more poorly explained), and by direct impression of a person's soul into a new body (for Grahf, which isn't given an explanation at all). I think this absense of explanation places the story as a fantasy with science fiction elements rather than a true science fiction story. This distinction doesn't really matter, I mention it only because I think it's slightly disappointing that it was intended as science fiction but forced to turn out as fantasy due to the oversight of not better explaining its three methods of reincarnation.

Another oddity: the nanomachines installed the 'limiters' which can supposedly control thoughts, but I don't see any way that this is feasible; nanomachines only work on the molecular level, they wouldn't be able to distinguish one type of thought from another on the basis of chemicals (since at that level, as far as I know, all thoughts look alike); although possibly it could do something to limit thought by making the brain work more inefficiently, similar to how some drugs work -- but it couldn't prevent people from having rebellious thoughts per se -- I don't think it is at all possible to use nanotechnology to selectively see when a person is thinking about resisting authority, and to target the thought of resisting the Geblar and Cain in particular, as the game claims.

As mentioned in the first section the most visible and striking part of the world of the game are the gears, the cultures are all gear-using cultures, all influenced by their existence and use. They're used for construction, for treasure salvaging, for war, for entertainment, and so on. Much of the townspeople's lives and careers revolve around them, the most common careers seem to be gear pilot and gear mechanic. They're very visible, you see gear arms moving around in shops, gear docks everywhere, they're as much a part of daily life in the game as television, cars, and computers are in the modern world. So this part is very well done.

The most important realization about the world of Xenogears though, is that it was created in close concordance with the plot; the world's origins, its potential end, its power institutions, its wars, its religion, the giant gears piloted, all the elements of the imaginary world are there because they are are required by either the story and/or by other elements of the world. The idea of a world of creations slaying their creator Deus is the skeleton of not only the plot and also of the world. The world proceeds from but also allows the plot: it is circular but an asymmetric circle: the plot segment of the circle determined the curve and size of the rest of the circle. The game world exists so that its events can take place, and this means mainly so that something called Deus can have created humanity and can be destroyed by it. Poetically speaking, the world Nietzsche's announcement that god is dead developed into a Japanese giant robot world -- and it is very likely that the author of the game has read Nietzsche, the episodes of his current game series Xenosaga all use Nietzsche book titles as subtitles. To finish off this section let's have Nietzsche's original pronouncement (translation from Walter Kaufmann), since it works so well with the climatic plot event for which the world of the game was constructed.

"Whither is God" he [the Madman] cried.  "I shall tell you.  We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers.  But how have we done this?  How were we able to drink up the sea?  Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?  What did we do when we unchained this earth from the sun?  Whither it is moving now? Whither are we moving now?  Away from all suns?  Are we not plunging continually?  Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?  Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?  Do we not feel the breath of empty space?  Has it not become colder?  Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning?  Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?  Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition?  Gods too decompose.  God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him.  How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?  What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives.  Who will wipe this blood off us?  What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?  Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?  Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it?  There has never been a greater deed; and whoever will be born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." ~Friedrich Nietzsche [6]

Characterization, that is, the organization of the characters and the principles by which they were created, rather than the individual characters (Part 4), is what I'm concerned with here.

The characters, like the world, were created for the plot, but unlike the world the characters plan and do actions, the world is just acted in and so influences those actions. Being as this is a 'romantic' plot (a purposeful sequence) plot rather than a 'naturalistic' plot (no tangible change from beginning to end) the story's focus is on the plot and not the characters or world. So in generating characters for the story the concern was probably something like: what in the plot must these characters do, and therefore what should their personality and character be like to make these plot actions true-to-character, believable? And also: how many characters should there be? And also: how do we make these characters interesting, vivid, so they are not boring to be around? And then: given the above, what are their motivations, conflicts, troubles, strengths and weaknesses? What do I name them, how do they know and relate to eachother, what do they think of eachother? The process incompletely sketched above is the same for all plot-focused stories, inasmuch as they are plot-focused. Most casts of characters, at least in romantic stories but not exclusively those, can be divided up into a protagonistic side (sometimes composed of only one hero) and an antagonistic side (sometimes composed of only one villain): bascially, a good side and a bad side. If there are multiple conflicts in the game, each conflict has its opposing sides (not every character is used in every minor conflict, but the main conflict should involve every character in some way). In the main conflict, the protagonistic side is seeking some goal and are (either loosely or tightly) allied to eachother, the antagonistic side opposes them and are likewise in concert. This is true in the Xenogears cast also, the goal organizing the two sides can be discovered empirically:

On the good side, in the front of them all is Fei, the current incarnation of the sole survivor of Deus exile ship crash, who overcomes more relentless problems than anyone else in the game: among them his own fear of fighting and having multiple personalities (which is presented quite accurately, if stereotypically). There is Elly, who is like Fei continuously reincarnated by the Wave Existense, and also like him overcomes great problems: being raised to see all surface-dwellers as sub-human "lambs" she later becomes a paragon of equality for all, she also overcomes the aftereffects of force-feeding her violence-inducing drugs. There is Citan, a literal doctor and a figural guardian-angel, who overcomes among other things his own pacifism; Bartholomew, an outcast prince forced out of his kingdom, who after a long struggle regains that kingdom; Billy, a young priest who believes he is purging evil but later realizes he's been working for evil, and despite this shock manages to change sides and destroy his former group (joining his up-till-then hated father Jessiah who had long ago realized the group's evil nature). There is Rico, a criminal who fought for the amusment of spectators, who didn't actually want to escape until he realized fighting was not an end in itself but there has to be something to fight for; Emeralda, an artificial human, called the "ultimate 'work of art' ", created using nanotechnology by one of the Fei's previous reincarnations, who overcame her brainwashing by the enemy side. There are many others, but that suffices to note how each of these work: the common element is overcoming some imposition to gain freedom from it -- the conflicts vary, as does the form of slavery they freed themselves from, but together constitute a rainbow, each conflict a different color combining to make the whole rainbow (the plot arc).

On the bad side, we see the opposite function: the enemy side is composed of those who don't want people to make their own decisions and choose their own purposes, composed of those who favor slavery in its various forms, and work against the characters above. Most important and subtle of these is Krelian, on a 500-year quest to bring himself and humanity to a perfect dimension, one without problems or suffering. Also important is Grahf, on a 500-year quest to bring himself and humanity oblivion, so that all problems and suffering will end. There is Miang, who has no real free will, knows it, and was built that way. There are the Gazel, who probably don't have free will, but think they do. There is Hammer, who hates his weaknesses and inabilities and tries to compensate by giving up his free will in exchange of taking strength from others. There are many others but the common idea is that they don't want freedom, they work against it, often in a revolt against the possiblity of suffering, but sometimes because they simply are afraid of or are incapable of forming goals of their own and working toward them. Again, all of these form a rainbow, or really a negative rainbow, of different ways to revolt against volition and different reasons for doing so.

Another thing to mention: the sheer number of story characters in this game is probably the highest of any game's story -- it has about as many named characters as 1000+ page novels like War and Peace. Amazingly, unlike some of the characters in those types of novels it's never difficult to tell them apart or to remember who did what, though this may have to do with the visual aids -- in novels you don't get distinctive portraits of each character when they speak.

Besides the pictures, just how did they become so precisely and clearly defined? I think it's just plain skill in placing them; with only one or two exceptions each minor character does his role in the story and then gets out. People who are only in one or two plot scenes in the entire game (Yui, Midori, Alice, Timothy, Dan, old man Maison, Big Joe, the Captain of the Thames, the Captain of the Eldridge, Primera, Samson, a bunch more) actually are more developed and memorable than main characters of most other RPGs; it's not just their characters that are interesting but it's the amazing way the game manages to condense such a high degree of character in so little time on screen. They are almost archetypes, but not quite because they have unique characteristics. The Captain of the Thames (a walrus demi-human), for example, is in the 'man of the sea' captain archetype, honorable and jovial who helps out cast-aways, but gains individuality through his extremity at being that and by way of (when asked why why he does anything) his memorable "That's because... // I am! // A man! // Of the sea!"

It's in the less major and in the very minor characters, actually, are where I think the game shines at its full brightness. I have never in any other RPG seen 'ordinary townsperson' dialogue as interesting, as coherent, and as wonderfully styled as in here (though coming close would be Nintendo's Earthbound and the Wind Waker Zelda game). Examples. A shop's sign: "Lahan's General Store. You want it? We got it... (maybe)!" -- A doctor's sign: "Injured, sick, all accepted. But no deceased please." -- Advice on travelling: "If you're lost, then be lost! There is no need to rush, is there? Nor do you have to explore the world using someone else's maps! Explore the world by using your own eyes and ears! That is how you make the gains in your life truly your own!" -- An advertisement: "Power is explosive beauty! Power is overflowing love! Fly young people! At the Battling Arena!" -- Even when the point is to give information about the gameplay, it's well written: "To make a long story short... This bobbing, spinning thing is called a 'Memory Cube', right!? You must be cool, calm and collected to superimpose yourself with it and boldly open the Menu Screen. If you accomplish that you will be able to save successfully. You should always save without hesitation whenever you find one of these in the dungeon. In life, you never can tell what may lie around the corner!"

Since the number of characters is so large and I only lightly grazed them above, instead of trying to give them all the time thy require I'll go in greater detail into a few of the more essential characters: Grahf, Krelian, Ramsus, the Gazel, Hammer, Cain, Citan, Fei, Elly, Miang, the Wave Existence, and Deus. I regret that I skip over the minor playable characters entirely; perhaps in the next edition I will include them.

Grahf is the most nihilistic and the most tragic character. He was originally Lacan, one of Fei's past incarnations, but was unable to save Sofia from being killed by Solaris, and blamed his own lack of power. Taking her dying words (for him to live) in a strange way, decided:

Grahf: ...as long as humans still inhabit this land, Miang... Elhaym, will be born time and again. Then all living things may as well perish along with Deus itself. That's the only path to freedom. The path to release us from the eternal cycles of life, the tragedies of history and the spell of fate! Once I awaken Deus as a weapon, I'll obliterate all living things... Then I'll use your awakened self and that machine to return everything to nothing... That's what I concluded.

In the game Grahf's plot role is to appear periodically to give "the power" to different obstacles in Fei's path, in an attempt to make him stronger by giving him ever-increasing obstacles to defeat. He appears as the enemy but it becomes clear later that he doesn't wish to kill Fei, only to train him, and there is one part where he saves Fei's life anonymously.

In the end Grahf abandons his 'solution' to the ever-repeating never-ending necessity of human suffering and spends his life to merge with Deus temporarily to buy Fei the time to kill it.

I've no objections to Grahf, he's one of the more attention-grabbing characters, he 'steals the show' whenever he's in the scene.

Krelian is the character designed most inventively by far; much of the genius of the plot owes itself to him. Like Grahf, he was in love with Sophia and was not able to prevent her death. Also like Grahf he revolted against the very idea of suffering. His solution, though, was a bit different:

Krelian: Sophia said, if you just have faith the path to what you hope for will open. But look at reality. God didn't answer our prayers... Is that because we didn't have enough faith? Even if we didn't have faith, Sophia did. Why did she have to be sacrificed? Is god dead...? Is he just not there...? Maybe god never existed to begin with! ... Ha, ha, ha, ha... I see... That's it... If god doesn't exist in our world, then... I will create god with my own hands! 

Eventually, Krelian alters Deus' program such that it now doesn't destroy some of humanity and use the rest as parts, but uses everyone as parts without discrimination (and it doesn't just use their physical bodies but their mentalities/souls as well). In Citan's words: "The fact that the people who are meant to be destroyed are being taken in as well. ... Krelian called Deus the mother. If god is the mother, then those motives are coming from the Great Mother... Impeding of its child, enveloping it, to bring the child back to the womb to become one with it." The game doesn't seem to specify, but I can only assume that all the people that went into becoming parts of Merkava also went with Krelian to the higher dimension in the end.

Krelian is in the background for a lot of the game; he's the last main character introduced and nothing but his name is learned about him until the player reaches Solaris about two-thirds through the plot, but even through this lack of presence he's characterized. He is someone who works by light touches at key points, his actions have a consistent style to them: he knows more than everyone else and uses that to his advantage, and he is very careful to assure that others' impressions of him work to his advantage but never -- as far as I can recall -- lies. This, combined with the idea of a 500-year long secret quest to bring humanity to final perfection, creates a level of nobility to him that none of the other characters, noble as they are, approach.

Incredibly, despite his goal Krelian is the character who above all other characters wasn't put where he is by birth or by outside forces but is self-determined and used his will to rise from nothing. In the beginning he appeared to be a mere thug. In his words:

Krelian: Even so, there was a time when I did some pretty vicious things... I lashed out at random... Everyone around me feared me... Even my friends. I lived a life surrounded by people who looked at me with fear in their eyes. But [Sophia] was the only one who wasn't afraid of me. She would just smile. Peace of mind... She was the one who taught me what that was and how I could receive it... She taught me how to live as a human...

Grahf and Krelian, properly understood, work as two sides of the same coin -- both confronted the same "problem" (in fact, the exact same concrete example of the "problem"), both rejected what they saw as the human 'weakness' of being at times fallible and destructable, and each chose a seperate way to fix the "problem" -- the problem with that is that the "problem" wasn't really a problem, but something necessary to humanity's nature. Besides Deus, they are the main two antagonists of the game for exactly this reason: they are on the antagonistic side of this conflict between acceptance of and rebelion against and human nature.

Ramsus is a character who was in appearence made for a purpose and then abandoned because that purpose could better be fulfilled by another:

Ramsus: I was originally created to be the integration of all human abilities... ...To be able to align with all of the Anima Relics... I was created to have the powers equivalent to those of Emperor Cain. You could say I was to be the ideal form which all people strive to become... However... ...once he was born... I was ...rejected... ...I was given life in a pile of trash... ...Born in the dark, cold abyss of worthlessness...

He dramatizes the notion that creatures made for a purpose, by a god or by anyone else, aren't really loved or admired by their creator as themselves but only as inasmuch as they fulfill their purpose of their creation, and that after they fulfill that purpose they have no further use. His character has four stages: early in the game he operates as a person who knows his purpose and never questioned it -- later he sees his purpose of creation threatened by the existence of another and becomes enveloped with pure destructive envy -- then he sees that he was tricked, and he sees his purpose of creation fulfilled finally, yet it still doesn't bring him happiness -- then at last, he realizes his assistants (the elements), like him for him own person and not for his purpose, and so is healed from the need to work for other people's goals.

One small error in his presentation is that I think the second stage was a bit overboard -- his near-insanity at having no purpose wasn't very well presented but consisted of repetitive melodramatic phrases. It didn't destroy his character but it did cheapen it and make his scenes annoying. Another error is that his final stage isn't wel dramatized, probably much of it was cut out due to time constraints. But other than those two things he's an excellent and original character of a type I've not seen in literature anywhere else, he's an embodiment of the problem with 'being born for another's purpose'.

The Gazel Ministry were the twelve first humans besides Abel, Cain, and the first Miang-Elly, they rule Solaris along with Cain, and function as the pushed pawns of Deus. They really have no personality other than that, which is appropriate because people who reject or give away their free will away to others usually don't have much personality. They started out as humans and eventually became mere computer data, with a nice twist: their belief that they were using Deus to gain eventual power over the universe was put in their minds by Deus itself.

They do not actually do anything in the game besides some vague giving of orders, and the player's characters never meet them. This I think was a mistake: it would have been nice to have played some part in their destruction, or for them to have a more direct role in opposing the players. This would be difficult to do since they are only computer data seeking to get fleshy bodies back, but as it is they're just shut down by Krellian without much fanfare.

Hammer is a surprisingly interesting character. He meets Fei in Kislev, helps him through the gear battles and aids them in their escape, a very slight hint of betrayal is planted early on but soon forgotten about, as planted things should be. During the escape he aids you yet again by shooting down Grahf (after which he says his famous "mad skillz" line). He helps the heroes from then on in the background, until much later in Solaris, where he has his big almost out of the blue betrayal scene:
 

Hammer: I really don't want to do this to Miss Elly either. Really, I like her very much. But, but I... I... have no other choice! Because I'm no good... I don't have the strength like bro, or the smarts like the doc! I, I know everyone thinks of me as some annoying handyman who talks too much... I know that... I'm different from you all! I'm not special like you! A "normal" guy like me has no choice but to do this! 

[Medena steps towards Hammer. Hammer panics and points the gun at her.] 

Hammer: D...don't move!! Stop! Stop! 

Medena: I won't stop. Ever.... My child is in danger... and I'm her mother! I was born and raised in a normal family. I'm not a soldier like my husband and daughter. I never touched a gun before, much less have one pointed at me... Thats why I'm shaking... But I can't stop it. I'm a "normal" mother. So there are things I must protect... Elly, slowly come here. Don't worry, I'll protect you no matter what. 

Why did Hammer fail to make the right choice and Medena able to avoid the wrong choice (aside: themes in plots are always expressed through its characters' choices)? Simply, Medena was acting out of love (toward her values), whereas Hammer was acting out of fear (movement away from his values). Hammer's cognitive mistake was that he thought power is useful if it's someone else's and serves their will; that fails because as soon as he wants to do something other than what the person who gave him the power wants, it's not really his power anymore, but his emotional mistake was letting his cowardice of powerlessness overwhelm his liking of his friends and of himself. He lost focus on which was more important and payed the consequence, which he recognize at the end, when he said it was end he deserved.

Cain is the oldest human alive, at almost 10,000 years in the same body, and leads the Gazel Ministry. From early on he spread the first religion in order to control the people, best said in his words: "We are the people expelled from paradise and forced to live on the cruel surface of the earth. We who fill this land will once again return to the presence of God in paradise and live there eternally. That is the -Time- of the -Gospel-. That -Time- is at hand. We, the Gazel, must find God's resting place by then and resurrect him. That is our final prayer." It is unclear whether he actually believes that reviving Deus will bring paradise or not, but those he rules do believe it.

Cain, true to his name, kills the character Abel (the first incarnation of Fei) for objecting to Cain's religion and with the first Elehaym (the first incarnation of Elly) attempted to spread the idea of free will for humanity -- which makes interesting sense since a god based on destruction rather than creation (Deus is a weapon, afterall) would probably have favored Cain over Abel. Also true to his name, he is given immortality by Deus. But unlike the legendary Cain, this one did come to regret the murder and it eventually led to him favoring humans over Deus, as is seen here:

Citan: Yes. Humans have the potential. Managers are no longer needed. 

Emperor: Then I leave it up to you... I atone for my crime by doing so... 

Citan is the 'guardian angel' of Fei sent by Cain to look over him, determine if he's a threat, and act accordingly. He's quite possibly named after Satan, which makes sense because he (with Cain) eventually goes against Deus. Citan's one of the major characters in the game, in fact I think he has the most text in the dialogue of any character.

Plot-wise, he guides and helps Fei through most of the game, being the role of the knowledgable advisor -- all while keeping most of his past and his knowledge of what Fei is secret from him. On a second replay of the game, you can see little clues where he tried to indicate Fei's nature to Fei -- for example, in his first scene next to the music box that he discovered in a ruin, he says in response to Fei's recognition of the song: "that may be because there is someone living inside of you." Thoughout most of the game Citan provides a lot of the texture to many of the scenes, while only rarely being a major actor in them.

His as far as I can see has only two value conflicts. First is that he does really like the heroes of the game but still, for their and his best interest, is forced to keep a lot secret from them. This one is done well. Second is that he is a pacifist and restricts killing to an absolute minimum, but then later realizes this is an error (he says it is unfair to be the only "innocent one") and takes up his sword again. Gameplay-wise this is very dramatic (it's like suddenly getting a whole new and more powerful character), but story-wise it wasn't prepared for very well or executed very well. He's supposed to be a doctor and heal life instead of harm it so that may add something to the conflict but this also wasn't highlighted enough to notice. Although it was a good idea that both of those conflicts were solved at about the same time (in his 'substory's' climax at Solaris), they weren't tied to eachother or solved with the same action or decision so there was room for improvement.

His characterization is very great though. He speaks formally and without contractions (an attempt no doubt to emulate the high politeness level of his Japanese), he has a large vocabulary, he sees things to the point and explains things succintly, he's at least to me the most likeable character in the game.

Fei's the main character but, like Elly and Miang, he's a re-incarnated character and has the (story presentation) advantage of being both one person and several people -- even moreso than Elly and Miang, because of his multiple personalities: there are at least four seperate personalities of Fei: Id, the normal Fei that you see in most story scenes, a catatonic personality who apparently does nothing, and 'the Coward'. I already discussed Lacan under Grahf and since his much earlier incarnations aren't too elaborate I'll just stick to the living Fei.

The major two of his personalties (Fei and Id) are analogs of the Fruedian system of mind: the trichotomy of the id, the ego, and the superego (German words meaning 'it', 'I', and "more-than-I", respectively). I personally disagree (and more than disagree: dislike) Freud's psychological system; even though it was admirable as the first real attempt at a systemization of psychology it is often completely unconnected with reality, so I was a bit disappointed to find it play such a major part in the game (and it is major). The three elements named above are supposed to be the three basic parts of the mind, sometimes in conflict with eachother: the first is impulse and emotion, basic biological needs and desires, short-term amoral will; the second is recognition of reality's limits, rationality, the conscious part of the personality (what we normally think of as the self); the third is morals, familial and social rules, interpersonal relations, duty; the idea is that the second mediates between the first and the third, but is weaker than either (except in those with very strong egos). There is more to it but since the author of the game doesn't seem to know about the 'more to it' as far as this review is concerned we don't care.

Anyway: 'the Coward', may or may not be the superego, spends most of the game in hiding in the back of Fei's mind, playing a video of happiness over and over, forcing all the bad memories on Id. Fei himself has no memories of his past before the beginning of the game (which I've noticed is used a lot in games, likely to simplify exposition to the player). Periodically during the game Fei, when unconscious, becomes Id and does violence toward that which threatens, which the player can only guess (actually the secret was kept quite well). This ties in with his dislike of fighting. My question though is that this doesn't really tie in with the point of the game: I can vaguely see how free will and multiple personalities are related: it's only when you gain complete control of various parts of yourself and don't push blame and responsibility on to others -- or other parts of your mind -- that free will is maximized. But I don't know if this was intentional or is my retrospective interpretation, or if the relation is strong or weak.

What I do know is: 1) this is Fei's main internal plot conflict, the source of most of his troubles is the fact that he isn't a real person but a type of shell (like DOS-Shell on DOS?); 2) when he does eventually solve this conflict in this conflict's climax at the Wave Existence he does mention that he should take responsibility for it; 3) if Id and Grahf had won Deus would have been revived just to destroy everything and free will negated; 4) if 'the Coward' had won Fei would have hid from responsibility and likewise free will would be negated. Therefore my tentative hypothesis is that the main two villains of the game -- Grahf and Krelian -- have their direct analogies in Id and 'the Coward'. Id and Grahf are almost identical personality-wise, but the connection between 'the Coward' and Krelian may be harder to see (and may not exist at all, but right now I think it does), since Krelian's goal amounted to trying to create a state of being of absolute 'Mercy' where no suffering occurs. The main difference between 'the Coward' and Krelian was that Krelian was actively pursuing such a state whereas 'the Coward' simply passively pretended he was in such a state, creating that state in his mind by not dealing with the outside world at all. Fei, the new Fei, is sort of like 'the ego' which operates on 'the reality principle'. It knows that you can't hide from reality nor can you just destroy everything, but that happiness is incompatable with either. And in the end this Fei is victorious, forces Id and 'the Coward' to 'live in the real world', and combines the three, gains his old memories, and gains Xenogears.

A friend of mine remarked that the more they play the game, the more they like Fei -- I agree with that, the first time through the game Fei seems kind of boring and weak, sort of standard and personality-less, but with each time I play the game I see there is a bit more too him, he's intentionally opinion-less and reactive because all his opinion and action is given up to Id for the majority of the game, and also in many of the scenes in the game he just goes along with what his party members (mostly Citan) decide to do. We don't get to see much of him after he's combined his personalities, that's probably a mistake since the game kind of presents the trouble without presenting very much of what the solution looks like. His last few actions: destroying Deus, going after Krelian, bringing Elly back to earth, go by so quickly and are overshadowed by how externally awesome the events are that there is no time to notice Fei's increase in inner strength -- it is there of course, Fei wouldn't have been able to do those last few things otherwise, but I think an extra scene in Merkava with Fei and Elly talking about something (there are lots of possibilities as to topic) would have been a good addition.

Miang comes into existence like a virus, a complete overlay of a Deus-programmed personality taking control the previous person in that body. She is the most frequently recurring antagonist in the game and I imagine the most terrifying, since she can't really be killed and can enter even into who the person most trusts (as she does in the game to Fei's mother Karen and later to Elly). In a real sense Miang is Deus in human form. 

Elly comes into existence whenever Fei is reborn, and is the opposite of Miang in that she exists as a so-called 'Mother's Will', given life by the Wave Existence. She is one of the major protagonists though for a lot of the game she works with the antagonists.

The relationship between the two is important but is very sketchy described. I believe the first woman in the world was Miang and Elly in one person, and that it thereafter split, half being dominated by Deus and the other half being given free will by the Wave Existence. Miang is dominant in the sense that she is reborn once per generation, whereas Elly is only reborn once in awhile (perhaps five times in 10,000 years), and is always killed by humans under Deus' control. In the end Miang again takes over Elly's body for the first time since the first woman, but is fought off in the last battle with the help of (this is also sketchy) Krelian (indirectly), and Fei and Xenogears (directly).

I think both of these characters could have been made more interesting.

Miang was done well in that she is so villainous and inhuman even though she is basically God's human incarnation. But she isn't in enough dramatic scenes -- her flashbacks are good but in the actual game she doesn't do much besides hypnotize Elly and stand at Ramsus' and Grahf's shoulders for most of the game -- only at the end of the game does she directly oppose the protagonists in something besides a 'shadow/assist another antagonist' way. I suppose that makes sense but I think she appears too much to do so little: either her appearance should have been decreased (like Krelian she could have appeared only at the end of the game), or, and this is my preference, her actions should have been increased: for example, if she has such a strong power of hypnotism that she can tell Elly to damage the engine of her allies against her will, surely she could have used that power against them in other places, at different times?

Elly was done well in that she is so just and kind (perhaps even overly so in some respects), and most of her big scenes are well dramatized: her meeting of Fei in the Blackmoon forest, her eventual rejection of Solaris in Kislev, and the whole part involving her parents in Solaris. Some of her minor scenes are well dramatized too: that part where she puts some Wels out of their misery using Citan's sword, etc. Her scenes are good, but her "stage-presence" is weak. She's never really the focus of any scene except for in one ultra-well done flashback of Sofia's death. This may also make sense but as a heroine she's kind of forgettable -- the characters of Final Fantasy X are generally about ten times more poorly made than those of Xenogears but its main heroine Yuna is a good example what Elly should have been like: more heroic and willful, more scene-stealing and present. Part of this may be that Yuna was essential in FFX's the battle system and had giant monsters on call whereas Elly in this battle system was trivial and almost useless, but I don't think that's all of it. (Incidentally, Shion in Xenosaga is likewise weak in the same respects as Elly is, to an even greater degree, and it's less excusable there because she's the main character). So how could this have been avoided? One: give Elly some quest where she exhibits strength on her own, apart from Fei. This could easily have been one of the dungeons that was cut out on the second CD, where she went to dispense the nanomachines into the atmosphere while Fei went to protect Nisan. This would have given her opportunity to show strength on her own. Two: have more scenes about her activities in Nisan on the second CD, where she, according to the 'summary' she gives, does great things for both the Wels and the non-mutated people, and is supposedly an inspiration -- this should have been dramatized more directly rather than summarzied and taken on faith. Three (perhaps minor): her final Omnigear and her final Omnigear battle in Krelian's trap for her should have been playable. This would have shown her at her full strength and made her capture more sympathetic to the player. Four: I would adjust the scenes she was in to place more emphasis on her decisions rather than on the events surrounding her; for example in most of them she's always being taken care of rather than taking care of (by her parents in Solaris, by Fei in Blackmoon, by Taura when he rescues her, etc.), there should be more of a balance here, she should come to the rescue of the party more often -- she only does so once, in Kislev, and even there it wasn't very resolved of a rescue and soon after she had to be rescued herself (by Grahf, of all people). So her basic (story presentation) flaw may be that same common flaw of many RPG female protagonists (and literary female protagonists in general) of always needing to rescued. I don't think that's very attractive of a trait to have, very especially in a game about freedom of the will from predestined fate, faith in higher powers, and authority/force.

The real "star" characters of the game are actually Deus and the Wave Existence.

Dues has the most space in 'Perfect Works' (an information book about the game released only in Japan), is the most complex, and the other main characters, and the plot itself, all revolve around Deus. All of them except Fei were created by it, and either serve it or are fighting for it; and in some cases they are a direct part of it. As Deus says in the first lines ("I am the alpha and omega"), Deus is the first character in the first scene of the game, and his death ends of the game; so in effect the game can be thought of as being a 'tragedy', of Deus's death, and his 'tragic flaw' is the theme of the game.

System Deus consists of four parts. Its brain Kadamony is made up of an organic-indeterminate part (composed of Persona, Anima, Animus) and a mechanical-logical part -- I disagree with the insinuation that organic brains are less logical than computer brains, but it's not a main point about Deus and only really mentioned in Perfect Works so I'll overlook. The bulk of its body is Merkava, which is a huge organic ship for use as transportation trhough the stars (and also severs as the last dungeon of the game), which is protected by Seraphs (angels) who act like white blood cells defending it. The weapon system, just called Deus, is an organic being that is the whole system's actual purpose (a weapon to destroy planets). And its power source is Zohar, which contains a being from another dimension, the Wave Existence, which has been 'captured' and used to convert energy from its dimension to this one.

In effect the Wave Existence has a will of its own and opposes Deus by acting through the 'Contact' (the main character Fei). So Deus's goal is to repair itself and turn the planet into an embodiment of its body, and then (probably) to return to the humans who created and exiled it and destroy them. The Wave Existence's goal on the other hand is to escape its confinement and return to its dimension, using the free will of humans as its ally; the player controls characters who are the highest expressions of human free will. So the conflict between Deus and the Wave Existence which is captured within its engine is the source of the plot, world, and characters. These two 'characters' are dramatizations of the conflict between slave-master-like imposition of one will over all beings vs. autonomous wills free of eachother, on the largest scale.

How good is their dramatization? Deus is excellent, in his organization into parts and everything else about him. I can think of only one problem with the Wave Existence -- it is portrayed as having a will of its own at times, but there is also evidence that that will wasn't its own to begin with, but that it gained it from contact with the first human (Abel). It's not very clear about this -- did it decide to escape Deus only after coming into contact with Abel -- i.e. was it given its free will by is contact with humans? Now that the prequels of the game won't be made as originally planned we can only guess, but if so, this part of the Wave Existence's character would be very important to understanding the story, if not the very key to it. In any case, the Wave Existence is the real hero of the game, and Deus the real villain, because they are the clearest and also the most powerful champions of each side of the main conflict of the game: one wishes to use the other for its purposes, even to the extent of making the other a part of itself, and the other wishes to be free of its captor to do its own bidding, and to leave the other alone to do its on its own.