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!

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.