An interesting interview with creator Tetsuya Takahashi from February this year by the Japanese denfaminicogamer site has been translated by Lugalbanda, and while it is not specifically a Xenogears or Xenosaga interview, it is a general Tetsuya Takahashi interview that goes into some interesting stuff about Xenogears and his time at Square and so I've decided it belongs on the study guide.
The information revealed in this interview has also compelled me to update the History of Xenogears article, adding some of the new information and quotes.
There may also be more interviews coming up from the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamphlet from the same translator, so stay tuned for that. Accordingly, I will re-arrange the interview order slightly and divide them up into more specific Xenogears and Xenosaga related interviews, and I will place the Xenogears interviews at the top since the latest interviews mostly concern Xenogears as well as Xenogears being the more popular work.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Xenogears and Xenosaga mirroring analysis returns
Of all the things I've contributed to the Xeno fandom over the years, I think this is the one achievement I am the most pleased with and proud of. There's a lot to discover in this article/analysis and it manages to provide an overview and idea of what Xenosaga might've been like if the original story and plan was left intact. It also manages to communicate how similar these two works are in style and substance and why they differ from the later Xenoblade games in a way that is more effective than any argument could ever be. It also provides a decent analysis for how Xenogears follows classic story architecture since I originally wrote this article in conjunction with the plot analysis.
This was another article I started working on restoring back in November 2016, but the amount of pictures needed to be added delayed the article for similar reasons as the Xeno Emission pages. Since then I've figured out how to do it faster, working mechanically within a formula while listening to podcasts, and before I knew it the article was finally finished. It's been edited with some spelling mistakes fixed and grammar changed or improved, as well as getting rid of some commentary I kept repeating more times than was necessary. But otherwise the article remains the same since it was pretty solid from the beginning (although I might add some things in the future). Enjoy!
This was another article I started working on restoring back in November 2016, but the amount of pictures needed to be added delayed the article for similar reasons as the Xeno Emission pages. Since then I've figured out how to do it faster, working mechanically within a formula while listening to podcasts, and before I knew it the article was finally finished. It's been edited with some spelling mistakes fixed and grammar changed or improved, as well as getting rid of some commentary I kept repeating more times than was necessary. But otherwise the article remains the same since it was pretty solid from the beginning (although I might add some things in the future). Enjoy!
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Xeno Emission pages return
It's been a while but I've made an update and added Gwendal's translations of the Xeno Emission books (under Xenosaga resources) that were on the study guide.
I actually began working on them back in November 2016, but converting these pages to the blog format was not so easy as I'd hoped, which led me to just leave them unfinished. Since then I've found a way to go about converting the code a bit faster and so I decided to get it done.
But I'm asking myself whether there really is any point in restoring these particular pages. The study guide is not Xenotensei and was never intended to store things like the sourcebook translations or game scripts. I only added them to the previous site because they complemented the links to other material from other fan sites in the vein of a Xeno material connection network of sorts. Since then, however, sites that hosted things like the Xenosaga: Pied Piper script, translations of the official Xenosaga guides, and more, have disappeared from the web.
So with all the material being dispersed and fading it would make the most sense to just focus on the articles analysing the subject matter, or attempt to put everything that was on other sites onto the study guide. But unfortunately I'm no longer willing to do the work of keeping track of all the Xeno material. This is part of the reason why I got tired of Xeno in the first place. I never was passionate about everything Xeno, even back in the Xenosaga days. Information on things like spin-offs (Xenosaga Freaks), production designs, game play mechanics, etc, never interested me. And the Xeno Emission books contain mostly information on just that sort of thing.
So, for the sake of experience in designing blog pages, I don't mind adding these books to the study guide. But I think from now on I will leave translations of official material out of the blog. I know the description of the blog is "preservation of information and interviews," but I think that's an ambition I can't fulfill and should probably update that description to be more specific regarding the aims of the study guide.
I actually began working on them back in November 2016, but converting these pages to the blog format was not so easy as I'd hoped, which led me to just leave them unfinished. Since then I've found a way to go about converting the code a bit faster and so I decided to get it done.
But I'm asking myself whether there really is any point in restoring these particular pages. The study guide is not Xenotensei and was never intended to store things like the sourcebook translations or game scripts. I only added them to the previous site because they complemented the links to other material from other fan sites in the vein of a Xeno material connection network of sorts. Since then, however, sites that hosted things like the Xenosaga: Pied Piper script, translations of the official Xenosaga guides, and more, have disappeared from the web.
So with all the material being dispersed and fading it would make the most sense to just focus on the articles analysing the subject matter, or attempt to put everything that was on other sites onto the study guide. But unfortunately I'm no longer willing to do the work of keeping track of all the Xeno material. This is part of the reason why I got tired of Xeno in the first place. I never was passionate about everything Xeno, even back in the Xenosaga days. Information on things like spin-offs (Xenosaga Freaks), production designs, game play mechanics, etc, never interested me. And the Xeno Emission books contain mostly information on just that sort of thing.
So, for the sake of experience in designing blog pages, I don't mind adding these books to the study guide. But I think from now on I will leave translations of official material out of the blog. I know the description of the blog is "preservation of information and interviews," but I think that's an ambition I can't fulfill and should probably update that description to be more specific regarding the aims of the study guide.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
The Xenogears translation guide returns
I have started to put up various resources from the study guide, such as the Xenogears translation error guide, in the right sidebar.
Saturday, November 5, 2016
The Study Guide returns!
The "Study Guide for Xenogears and Xenosaga" was a Gears and Saga information preservation site that existed between September 2010 and October 2013 and was hosted by XenoTensei.
However, due to malware attacks on the site and "a domain registry mix up" the host went down in October 2013 and since that time I made a decision not to upload the study guide elsewhere despite getting some offers from kind people that were willing to host the site. The reasons for this were many, but the main one was that I wanted to revise and improve a lot of the content before putting the site back up anywhere and, being a bit tired of the study guide, the fans, and the series at the time, I decided to take a long break before making any final decision about what to do with the study guide.
However, just a little over three years have passed and I now have regained some interest in going over the original study guide material and putting the good parts back up on this blog where I will not have to rely on a host. There's been a need to recreate the study guide a bit from scratch since when the guide was originally conceived in 2009 there was still some rumors that Xenosaga might continue (see the end of the "History of Xenosaga" article) and when the site finally went up in 2010 the release of Xenoblade had generated much confusion that I felt forced to deal with on the study guide. In addition to that were feedback from the fan community as well as a series of new translations that kept expanding the guide - with the result that the content ended up a little all over the place and has since that time been in need of reorganization. Add to that some new perspectives during the past three years the study guide has been down and it became even more important to put the material back together in a new way.
Right now I have only put up the translated interviews since it'd be a shame if Gwendal's translation work was lost, and the History of Xenogears and Xenosaga article since that seems to be the most popular one from the study guide. As time goes by I will probably get to most of the other information as well, but don't expect it to be back up soon. I'm not in a rush to put it all back up and some of it might get thrown away, or will need some improvement and revisions and updates. I also need to familiarize myself with this blog format. But for now, enjoy what has been restored.
However, due to malware attacks on the site and "a domain registry mix up" the host went down in October 2013 and since that time I made a decision not to upload the study guide elsewhere despite getting some offers from kind people that were willing to host the site. The reasons for this were many, but the main one was that I wanted to revise and improve a lot of the content before putting the site back up anywhere and, being a bit tired of the study guide, the fans, and the series at the time, I decided to take a long break before making any final decision about what to do with the study guide.
However, just a little over three years have passed and I now have regained some interest in going over the original study guide material and putting the good parts back up on this blog where I will not have to rely on a host. There's been a need to recreate the study guide a bit from scratch since when the guide was originally conceived in 2009 there was still some rumors that Xenosaga might continue (see the end of the "History of Xenosaga" article) and when the site finally went up in 2010 the release of Xenoblade had generated much confusion that I felt forced to deal with on the study guide. In addition to that were feedback from the fan community as well as a series of new translations that kept expanding the guide - with the result that the content ended up a little all over the place and has since that time been in need of reorganization. Add to that some new perspectives during the past three years the study guide has been down and it became even more important to put the material back together in a new way.
Right now I have only put up the translated interviews since it'd be a shame if Gwendal's translation work was lost, and the History of Xenogears and Xenosaga article since that seems to be the most popular one from the study guide. As time goes by I will probably get to most of the other information as well, but don't expect it to be back up soon. I'm not in a rush to put it all back up and some of it might get thrown away, or will need some improvement and revisions and updates. I also need to familiarize myself with this blog format. But for now, enjoy what has been restored.
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