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-Veré magnum habere fragilitatem hominis securitatem Dei- First edition review (c) 2003 Rinku Hero. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Printable Full Version |
| Part 12 - The meaning of Xenogears.
I only now, after three times through the game and a final time reading the script, gained real certainty what the theme it is. This difficulty derives from one of the game's troubles: there is a discrepancy between what the characters say and do. |
| What is said versus what is done.
The expressed theme of Xenogears (that which is the spoken claim of motive of by the characters) is largely lame when taken at face value: the idea that humans are non-perfect and should be proud of that non-perfection, and moreover that this aspect of humanity is its defining feature, and gives rise to the essential nature of humanity and its other human qua human characteristics: kindness love friendship justice etc., and moreover still that if we were to reach perfection we would no longer be human -- and this is held up as the difference between humanhood and godhood. Let the game speak: Well that's alright too... We don't have to be perfect. Actually, being imperfect makes mankind live by helping each other... That's what being human is... That's mutual understanding! That's 'unity' and 'love'... I'm glad... no, I'm proud... to be human!To me this is a false but all-too-common theme, oft-repeated but still oft-repulsive; I see nothing necessarily non-perfect about us, any non-perfection comes from a person refusing his human nature as a perfect being: maybe this is a self-delusion, as some say, but I have not seen a single scrap of evidence, in this game or anywhere else, that humans are by nature non-perfect. Quite the contrary, I see people as born perfect and distorted to non-perfection by an inhuman culture. Sorry to go off on a tangent but I'm just establishing that another view on this is possible and that I don't share sympathy with the expressed theme of the game. But a quite competing event theme (that which comes out of the plot of the game, through action) carries a different tune, here we have a glorious "Stand Tall and Shake the Heavens!" theme about humanity breaking itself free of an authoritorial and controlling god which created civilization, riding in technology (gears), a creation of Mankind, and slaying god, which is somehow supposed to be emblematic of a rejection of an outside gift of perfection and immortality and standing on one's own feet. I don't get it, or rather didn't at first. Look at what the game is doing and saying -- two different things. On the one hand we have humans being more perfect than god (they were able to slay him, afterall), and on the other we have this rejection of perfection. This dismayed me, and I sought for a solution for a day and a half, and finally, I had it: I now realized how these can be reconsiled. |
| Rejection of Perfection.
The concept 'perfection', in this game, is often obfuscated with the concept of 'imperviousness and indestructability': while similar, they are not the same, and this concept confusion weakens the theme and is the game's ultimate literary flaw. Compare "Humans don't need perfection, their imperfection is what it is to be human," and "Humans don't need indestructablity, the possibility to be destroyed is what it is to be human." The latter is true, the former is not. Humans can be and should be 'perfect' (I'm using the term in the moral sense here -- that of acting perfectly right according to the standard of their life), but can not and should not be 'impervious' -- or more exactly, should not be protected by any higher power (either god or otherwise) so that their lives are so controlled such that their choices cannot harm them. Our conditional nature, that is, the fact that we need to work hard at living and will cease to exist if we don't act, is an essential feature of humanity and is what, at least in part, gives rise to kindness love friendship justice and so forth. In other words, the game is not about religion (rejectiing and killing god) nor non-perfection as human nature, but about the full nature of free will, and its conflict with forced will. God and religion are used as a way of illustrating one aspect of free will in a dramatic manner. Likewise, the whole thing about non-perfection and the difference between invincible invulnerablity and vulnerable one-winged mortality is there because that is what free will is, and a explanation of free will better include something about why choice is made necessary because we can be destroyed and for no other reason. In fact the whole idea about the universe of the game being a 'mere' 4th-dimensional imperfect universe and the 'perfect and complete' universe of the Wave-existence is probably likewise included -- if the universe was all intricately planned and perfectly organized there would be no free will. Who'd want such a place? Krelian, yeah, but only because he revolted against the possibility of suffering and failure -- the possiblity itself -- and sought to reach a universe without it. It's understandable that he did so: in his life he acted perfectly but still failed to prevent Sophia from dying at the hands of circumstances beyond his knowledge and reasonable control. He then thought -- why does this happen, why do bad things happen to good people?: Krelian: We were sacrificed as pawns... In order to protect their own authority... Sophia was... Is this the ideal world we've been searching for? What have we been doing? Heading toward Sophia's ideals? Is this our salvation? This isn't fair... Sophia was sacrificed... for those bastards... 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!But it was only because of this rejection, a rejection of a world where a god doesn't do everything for everyone and make everyone infinately happy, that he tried to bring humanity with the Wave Existence to its dimension (but even at the end he knew that it might not have been the right decision, he just wasn't able to stop himself since he, very much like Grahf, had destroyed most of his humanity in his pursuit). |
| Here it is.
Anyway: this meaning of Xenogears as a whole, as I understand it, is a very agreeable and important one. It can be stated like this: that humans are not 'perfect' beings in the sense that happiness is automatic and suffering is banned, but are 'imperfect', they can fail even through no fault of their own, but this is not a bad thing, for if it were not so free will and humanity itself would be impossible, and so we should rejoice in this, because the possiblity of failure, and not being guided step by step in our actions by anything but ourselves, is an essential part of what makes life worth living, it is what allows love, it is what allows all of our great human attributes. If this is taken away from us, either metaphysically taken away by moving us to a hypothetical universe where infinate happiness is automatic, or physically taken away from us by some type of authority that guides, directs, and 'parents' our actions for our best interests, then we wouldn't have our humanity left to us. In sum, the game isn't about perfection or free will so much as a one important and necessary precondition to free will: not being handed perfection on a silver platter. In other words, the whole game can be looked at as a dramatization of the following recognition about humanity: [T]ry to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals. ~Ayn Rand [6]Despite the fact that this isn't consistently adhered to everywhere in the game's dialogue, it does make up the main line of plot events and is the idea that the story as a whole -- and therefore every scene, location, character -- embody, and with almost geometric exactitude; it is the whole point of the game. Elements of the game can all be thought of as expressions of the above meaning; the story is not a tale or a yarn, but an organism: in it every tone tacitly holds all the others. The Solarian slaves and the mutated Wels and Miang illustrated people who were completely guided and lost their humanity; Cain, Ramsus, and many others illustrated people who almost lost their humanity but regained it, Deus was there as the ultimate authority that wishes to take free will away, Krelian was there as the person who rejected the very question and sought a way out of humanity's nature destroying his humanity as he went on, Grahf similarly rejected the question and sought a solution in a different way (namely, destroying all human life), Elly and Fei were there, playable, as they who do wish for free will, and the 'gears', especially the gear called Xenogears, were there as instruments by which humans fight for free will -- I could go on but you likely get the point, if the above meaning is held in mind everything in the game makes complete organic sense, each part just so. |
| A well-studied summary.
Perhaps the best summary of it is stated negatively, by Krelian at the end. Understand this part fully, and why he is wrong, and the whole game is understood: Krelian: And what if that 'Will' itself was predetermined? What then? Oh what folly!? Humans are just primitive life forms that have no such thing as free will... Mankind has merely been allowed to live in an imperfect state... "as is", "as will be"... It is for this very reason... because humans have this wretched 'will' or whatnot... that humans must experience sadness and loss. ... So I came to the conclusion that everything must be reverted back to where it all began. To go back to when all was one... waves, and nothing else... ... What meaning can be found in living out such a short existence... hurting others, hurting yourself, grinding one another down... only to inevitably die and return to dust? Why, everything we could ever desire is here... No need to be troubled by the need for love... For this place is filled with the love of god. |
| The accompaniment.
Okay. Now that the above has been said (it was the real height and core of this review, what remains are only descending resolutions) I'll take a medley approach and go over the 'sub-themes' of the game, which are not necessarily logically connected to the above theme but which are still there as background abstractions, usually localized to a particular subset of the story. |
| Consistency fails at this point.
First, an annoying contradiction. Egalitarianism fights and wins out over meritocracy. There is one flashback where Ramsus sought to reform the way Solaris is set up, going from a system of favoring being born of certain parents to a system of favoring those of skill. Citan liked this at first, but later rejected it: "But then I realized his way of thinking was not that much of a change from the previous system. Basically, the only difference was whether they stressed people's rank and class, or their skill. The words had changed, but it was still no different from what Solaris itself had been doing until then. He had no intentions of bringing everyone a better way of life."Bart agrees with this, calling it an elitist system, and not likable. Now, I can understand the idea that the skillful should not gain absolute power over the unskillful just by virtue of having worked harder, and am of course in favor of equal rights, but it sort of gives the impression that people who have greater ability have some type of duty to those of lesser ability. This is even more clear here (and forgive the length of this passage): Dominia: What the Gazel do or whatever happens to the Lambs, are not my concerns. Each of us have our own obligations to fulfill. We don't have time to deal with affairs concerning you weak and inferior people.Well! This speaks for itself, doesn't it? But let me just warn that the egalitarianism espoused here is totally opposed to the game's own main point, which is that people should not be made perfect but should be left alone and free by higher powers. It's pretty inconsistent to then say that this is suddenly okay if the 'higher powers' are the 'haves'. Kelvena, in what she says above, is what the game is about, and Elly, in what she says above, is actually closer to the position of Deus and Solaris than to that of the Wave existence and Nisan. A bit contradictory there -- if you're in favor of freedom, be consistent please. |
| Results are the acting agent's doing.
Next, and this is perhaps a logically necessary branch of the main theme, the game favors individual responsibility rather than blaming things on situational circumstances or on outside forces or on others not giving the person a chance. This is nicely exibited here: Wave Existence: You have experienced much loss and deprivation in your life. It is very tragic. Our contact, and the resulting transference of power and will between you and I, most likely played a part in splitting your personality. |
| Metaphysical-cosmological outlook.
The game's metaphysics (in the cosmological sense) are not very fleshed out but what is there is interesting. First there is the idea of two seperate 'dimensions', a perfect one where the Wave Existence comes from (and from which arises the energy powering all of the gears sans Xenogears) and an imperfect, limited, 4-dimensional one where the game takes place. As said, this is compatable with the idea of free will as requiring limitedness, not much more to it except to say that it's a pretty good touch as a fantasy element. Second there is the odd idea that this perfect world obeys the 'uncertainty principle', and is thus altered by observation, and ultimately is what anyone wants it to be. For example: Voice: I am defined by how people observe me. You are actually talking to a virtual version of me that you yourself create... I am 'your perception' of me.For another example: Citan: Zohar itself involves the principle of uncertainty. The observer's perception of Zohar determines the entity it actually becomes. In other words, I believe that those angels are incarnations of the spirits of people... ...The people who have been absorbed by Deus to become parts of it.And there's that whole thing about Abel (Fei's first incarnation) giving structure to the Wave Existence by being the first being to observe it. Now this metaphysical theme I'm questionable about -- I don't see how a dimension that changes based on what a person wants to see is more perfect and complete than a stable, 'limited', dimension. I rather think it'd be a pretty boring and maybe even an insanity-producing place to live. But the game is clear: this principle of uncertainty is of a higher dimension and what allows the infinite energy source of Deus; and this is the universe Krelian seeks to reach, a 'heaven'-like place where you don't need love even though it's unlimited and where there is no sadness or suffering, and no free will, either, and no certainty, either. The humans (sans Krelian and Grahf) *do* make the right decision and prefer their so-called limited world, but the troubling thing is the relation between the worlds: the game is saying that the limited world of certainty is a mere outgrowth, a minor one and perhaps a mistake, of the unlimited anything-goes world. This I think contradicts the theme; if the game takes the side of free will why have a cosmology where the dimension where free will is allowable is subsidiary and in a sense a mere burp of the dimension where free will doesn't exist? If I ever meet Tetsuya Takahashi, I intend that to be the first question I'll ask him. |
| Religious statements.
Finally, what is the game's real position on religion? For that we look at the difference between the mainstream religion (where salvation comes only from god) and the Nisan sect (where salvation comes from yourself). This is best expressed by Elly here: Elly: Anyway, we have things we have to do too, now. And, while we do them, let's prey that everyone comes back safely.Margie then verifies that that is indeed the essence of Nisan. In other words, the game favors 'faith in yourself' rather than 'faith in an outside power' -- and makes the first the honest and true religion of the game and the second the decietful and false religion. A second important clue about the Nisan religion happens early in the game: Margie: Did you notice that the two great angels only have one wing each...? According to a legend handed down in Nisan… God could have created humans perfectly... But then, humans would not have helped each other... So that is what these great single-winged angels symbolizes... In order to fly, they are dependant on one another.I was actually inclined to agree with Bart the first two times I played the game (it sounds a bit and undeniably does include in part the idea of just replacing 'god' with 'society as god': where we can't be perfect alone but only as a group); but the idea of it, understood as I described it earlier (where humans gain their humanity from not being automatically given perfection by a higher power but instead having to work for it) is valid. I would only disagree with the idea that we need other people to fully achieve perfection -- other people make it easier, and a person who never came into contact with any other person would be very handicapped, but I don't believe working with others is the only way to perfection nor even the most important way; empirically if you look at the most perfect people in actual history they are typically people who didn't fit in with their group or culture and usually lived solitarily, with an aura of aloneness, and of being complete in himself/herself, even when in a crowd. Even within the game, some the most perfect people didn't always gain that through others: Fei and Elly did through eachother, and Ramsus did from the Elements, and even arguably Grahf and Krelian gained their strength from Sophia, but what about the gear of Xenogears itself -- it wasn't a group of one-winged gears flying together that defeated the final enemy of the game, but one gear flying on its own -- which, I may add, had infinite energy. |
| Part 13 - The effects of Xenogears.
Here I'll highlight some of the effects of the game since its release -- this is not a typical part of game reviews but I think it should be, since in large part the measure of a game's worth can be guaged** by its actual effects. It is however extremely hard to get much data on the effects, but I'll take what I can find. |
| Expected effects are uninteresting.
The game's fans appear to be fewer in number than the most popular RPGs, but still pretty numerous***; there are the same types of effects other RPGs have: fan fiction, fan sites, fan art, fan novellizations, people dressing up as game characters, people naming their screen names after characters, and the like. This seems to happen for RPGs a way other types of games don't, individuals after playing them desire to communicate about the game and add to the game expirience; many writers start out writing fan stories with the world and characters of stories they like, many visual artists start out by drawing characters they like. Let's note this as the expected and move on, instead I want to concentrate on some of the more subtle but interesting effects on players, and effects on games made after it. |
| Direct experience.
I can speak best of my own experience: when I first played the game (late 1998) it was before I knew anything explicit about philosophy of art and before I knew that I was going to be a game designer; this game changed both of those. It is one of the few RPGS, if not the only RPG, which I played twice in a row, and went through it very quickly, playing sometimes 6 hours a day. It wasn't a sudden 'aha, I think I'll learn philosophy and treat game design more seriously and make games this great', but it was a large push in the right direction. Ever since that time, I have thought of Xenogears as the game to beat, as the game to look up and at the same time aspire to surpass, sort of like how someone training for the olympics thinks of the world record holder, or how someone learning chess thinks of the world chess champion. Likewise among my friends and acquaintences who have played the game, it's usually at the top of their list of favorites or very near there. *** |
| Effects over and over seen.
During the preparation of this review, I read through several hundreds of reviews of the game, and as I recall not one of the reviews evaluated it in a mundane fashion, or called it 'average' (this is not to say the reviews were good -- here as everywhere the mass of reviews can be boiled down to variations of 'what I liked and didn't like about the game' -- but there was always a strong impression on the reviewer), a good percent of them awarded it the 'best game I've ever played' or the 'worst game I've ever played' status; in short, the reviews were extremely polarized. Christian reviewing sites had the most interesting reviews; along with the expected 'this game is evil incarnated into a game' type of reviews there were actually some positive reviews that felt the game was very pro-Christian (especially the Nisan church element of the game), and even someone who said he was converted to Christianity by the game (!). To give some small indication of how strong the effects of the game are, there are people who claim to have played this approximately 100 hour game seven times; to put that in perspective, that is almost as much time playing Xenogears as the time high-schoolers spend in a full year of high school. The common result is that virtually without exception everyone who has played the game has a strong stance on it, and not just a moderately strong one. It has been said of the novel Atlas Shrugged that reading it will either change your life or scare you to death, and while I wouldn't say the responses to Xenogears are exactly as strong as to that book, it is reminiscent of that type of phenomenon, and one of the only games I can think of where it happens at all. I attribute this to the game's dealing with a wide and important issue through plot means. Yes, other RPGs have had wide meanings, but they were usually worn-out meanings, such as love conquering all, or the importance of teamwork, or good vs. evil. And when other RPGs do have unique themes, they often are usually not dramatized or expressed well, so the game feels a bit pointless (in the literal meaning of not having a clear point to it). The two distinctive characteristics of 'higher' stories is first that the point of it is something new but still important to everyone's life, and second that this is expressed in exciting and origianl ways, so that it's old neither at the surface level of the actual types of characters and events or at the deeper level of the universal values therein contained that apply to daily life. |
| On what games have learned from
Xenogears.
Now for the game's influence on games appearing after it. First and most obviously giant robot games started making more of an appearence (previously they were almost never translated): Front Mission 3, Vanguard Bandits, and many others followed Xenogears in this. Also I believe the average RPG game length increased, perhaps in part due to Xenogears showing that three-figure hours long games are marketable. Legend of Legaia obviously adapted (and in some ways improved) the button-combination attack system, and Chrono Cross did have something like that as well, but in general games have (unfortunately) continued to use the old one standard physical attack system. A strange influence is that games started using religious symbolism a lot more (most recently, this is seen in Final Fantasy 10) -- I guess it's expected that the bad of a good game will be copied along with the good of it. But besides these, I don't think the game was very influential, perhaps due to the difficulty in replicating what was good about it, and perhaps because it didn't innovate much in any gameplay sense, so there wasn't much new about the game aspect of it to have an influence. |
| Part 14 - The making of Xenogears
Here I am concerned with how the game was made, from what little information about that exists publically. |
| Tetsuya Takahashi
Not much is known about this game's author relative to other game authors of similar skill -- there exist very few interviews with him. But he was the director and scenario writer, he came up with the original story and world of the game and he had the final say on what went in the game or and what did not. What I most like about him, gathered from what interviews do exist, is the level of his dedication to getting everything exactly right. Like many great directors he is involved with the game at every level, not only mere supervision but detailed work as well. He even wrote the lyrics to one of the songs, which in the game is sung in Bulgarian (it's the second-to-last track of the second CD on the game's original soundtrack), which translated into English (courtesy of the original soundtrack information booklet) reads: They are alone in the oppressing dark, but |
| To be added.
-rankar: unability to kill it as
a human, gear can kill it
"There are 5 of the main staff workers from Xenogears working on Xenosaga, being Tetsuya Takahashi (the Big Cheese in both games), Yasunori Mitsuda (Music Composer in both games), Kunihiko Tanaka (Character Designer in both games), Tukumi Sakura (1 of the three Production Designers for Xenosaga, but was the Gear Designer in Xenogears), and Yasuyuki Honne (Art Director in both games). Honne and Mitsuda both worked in Chrono Chross, and both of them, including others, worked on CT." Q: In Xenogears, the items you got after boss battles depended on what you did and how long you took to win... T: It's the same way this time, too. The fewer turns you take, the more experience points and bonus items you can acquire. I want players to pursue the limits of what's available to them strategywise, both in and out of battles. With all the skills and finishing moves players can build up their own personal style of fighting; there's a lot there for players willing to put in the time. |
| Notes.
1. Xenogears, sometimes with the subtitles Stand Tall and Shake the Heavens (American release) or God Only Knows (Japanese release) was released for the Sony Playstation in 1998, copyright Squaresoft, now Square Enix. 2. Unfortunately I took some of the screenshots used in the visuals section from other websites and don't remember where they all came from, but they are most likely among websites mentioned in the below references section. This isn't really a technically legal problem because the screenshots are all (c) Squaresoft 1998. Since I do find it impossible to review the game's visuals without showing actual visuals, and had no other way to acquire screenshots, I included these, but I meant to use screenshots only as quotations from books are used. 3. The game series Xenosaga, by Monolith Software, and its relation to Xenogears will be discussed in my forthcoming (very distantly forthcoming) review of the full Xenosaga series. 4. For more on the nature, concept, and definition of "RPG", I have decided to write a forthcoming article on that genre. 5. For more on the relationship between Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, look for my forthcoming review of Chrono Trigger. 6. From The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand. Relatedly, from her letters: "A robot, capable only of "good" actions, is neither good nor evil." 7. From The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche. Excerpt translated by Walter Kaufmann, contained in The Portable Nietzsche. 8. I invite commentary on any part of this review, and will read them all. This is only the first edition of the review, so comments may be taken into account when I revise. To comment on this review, go to: 9. The review mentioned is on workingdesigns.com, by their RPG critic. The first CD of the game got an "11" and the second CD a "0", averaging to a "5.5". |
| References.
Websites consulted:
Consulted bibliography:
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