An examination of what other video games have, or may have, influenced 2002-2006's Xenosaga series
[Last updated 2026.08.04]
Many works from games, Japanese animation, cinema, and literature have influenced the Xenosaga series. This page focuses on games that have had (or may have had) an influence on Xenosaga. For links to the other sections, visit the main page for Works that influenced the Xenosaga series.
During the examination I will be using a lot of images in the style of charts that compares other video games with Xenosaga to make the case for similarities and thus potential influences. Since these works must have been released prior to 2002 to have been an influence, those images will be displayed to the left while images from the Xenosaga series will be displayed to the right of them.
* This article will obviously contain spoilers for both the Xenosaga series and the works that influenced it.
Xenogears (1998)
Final Fantasy VI (1994)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Chrono Trigger (1995)
Xenogears (1998)
To no surprise, the game that had the most influence on the Xenosaga series is its direct spiritual predecessor, Xenogears, developed at Square right before Monolith Soft was formed. Xenogears is more or less to Xenosaga what Final Fantasy VI was to Xenogears: In both cases director Tetsuya Takahashi was working on writing a sequel to the previous work and retained a lot of the style and tropes, but ended up launching the final project into a new title with a new universe.
Since I have already written a lengthy analysis examining how the Xenosaga series uses the same style and mirrors Xenogears almost scene for scene, there is no reason for me to repeat that here. Even though the focus of that article is on the shared style and mirroring between the two works, those words can simply be replaced with "influence" and you basically already have an article of how Xenogears influenced Xenosaga. And since Takahashi and Soraya Saga both wrote Xenogears and Xenosaga, while only Saga wrote for FFVI, the similarities and influences are even more numerous here than between Xenogears and FFVI.
Whether Xenogears stops at merely being an influence or if there is a structural intention related to Takahashi's early works as an art form in their many similarities, is not something I need to go into here. Even if Xenosaga resembles Xenogears because it is based on ideas for a Xenogears prequel, or whether it aimed to reimagine the whole Xenogears universe concept, does not change the fact that Xenogears is still an influence, and naturally so.
More interesting to me in that regard, is whether or not the primary influences for Xenogears would have continued to influence the ideas Takahashi had for Xenogears Episode I and Xenogears Episode VI, and if so, whether they also carried over into the Xenosaga series if such was the case. And it turns out they did.
Final Fantasy VI (1994)
With Final Fantasy VI being such a huge influence on Xenogears, and in particular on its story structure, an interesting question arises: Would FFVI have continued to remain such a prominent influence for the other episodes Takahashi had planned? There is certainly reason to suspect that when Xenogears was originally going to be divided into Episode IV and V at the start of development, the story structure would likely have resembled Final Fantasy VI even more with Episode IV corresponding to the World of Balance from the first half of FFVI and Episode V corresponding to the World of Ruin from the second half of FFVI. But what about the other episodes?
FFVI was just one game, and had Xenogears been completed it would have gotten at least three main games: Episode I, Episode V (IV-V), and Episode VI. Therefore it does not seem logical that FFVI would have continued to be the main influence for each game, unless Takahashi aimed for a similar story structure for each main episode, assuming he had thought that far ahead at the time. Still, not every idea from FFVI was exhausted in Xenogears, and even though FFVI may not have continued to be such a major influence, it is also unlikely that its influence would disappear completely. We thus have reason to suspect that a Xenogears Episode I, for example, would have continued to borrow ideas from FFVI. And if the Xenosaga trilogy really is a modified or reimagined version of the Xenogears Episode I concept, as Hirohide Sugiura's 2020 interview implies, then ideas borrowed from FFVI are highly likely to recur.
But some of the influences from FFVI that show up in Xenosaga are one game removed from the original source and filtered through Xenogears, as they were already used in that game. For example, KOS-MOS serving as a protector to the main character in the Xenosaga trilogy appear influenced by Citan serving as a guardian to the main character in Xenogears, who in turn was influenced by Locke serving as a protector to main character Terra at the start of FFVI. We could therefore say that KOS-MOS as a protector was influenced by Locke from FFVI. But I do not think Takahashi and Soraya were thinking much of Locke anymore while writing KOS-MOS but rather Citan from their previous work. So I will not repeat those secondary influences here. Instead I will mostly focus on influences from FFVI that were not present already in Xenogears.
| Vector - capital of evil empire | Vector - main antagonistic organization |
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When Xenosaga used the name "Vector" for the giant industry that exerts a lot of influence in the Xenosaga universe, players who were familiar with FFVI really should have guessed or picked up on the clue that this might be a reference to their role in the story. But back in the day I heard nothing. No mention or reminder of there also being the name Vector in FFVI. I had played FFVI only once and had gotten to Vector, but by the time Xenosaga was released I had already forgotten most of FFVI as I never really got into it at the time.
Knowing now that FFVI had a big influence on Xenogears, the reuse of the name of the evil empire's capital city from that game, for a key organization in Xenosaga, really sticks out. It would be absurd for this to be a coincidence, and it only makes sense that the name would also have been used in a Xenogears Episode I.
The similarity is not just the name, but the fact that the name is tied to the main antagonist group in both works: Emperor Gestahl and Kefka in FFVI, and Wilhelm and the Testaments in the Xenosaga trilogy. And unlike the many similarities between Xenogears and FFVI, this one is a bit unique in that it directly reuses a name from FFVI. Arguably it might even be a direct reference, intended for people to notice and contemplate the spiritual connection between these works. It brings the idea of Xenogears as the true successor of FFVI also over to Xenosaga, which is kind of cool.
The one objection to this link would be to suggest that both FFVI and Xenosaga independently arrived at the name "Vector" being a suitable word-name for these antagonistic bases of operation, and that the developers had forgotten about this name appearing in FFVI for the capital of that evil empire. But the term "vector" does not have a particular meaning to either the FFVI evil empire or the key organization in Xenosaga and could be used for any organization that has magnitude and direction. Yet it is not a common name for evil organizations either. And with all the influence FFVI had on Xenogears, would this similarity really appear by unconscious chance?
| A main antagonist wants to become a god | A main antagonist wants to become a god |
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Another similarity, and potential influence, is the presence of a main antagonist in both FFVI and Xenosaga Episode III who wants to become a god, and is using the powers of ages past in an attempt to achieve this. In FFVI this is Kefka, and in Xenosaga this is Dmitri Yuriev. While this trope has become something of tired cliché in JRPGs - especially after both Kefka and Sephiroth had this same desire two Final Fantasy games in a row - there actually was no antagonist in Final Fantasy who outright tried to become a god prior to Kefka. Though I don't know much about other JRPGs prior to 1994.
So with Kefka from FFVI being one of the earliest, and arguably the most iconic antagonist with the desire to become a god, I think elaborating on that concept and making it more in the style of sci-fi and detailed characterization is what may partly have influenced writing the character and motivation of Dmitri Yuriev. Especially since Xenogears Episode V passed over this idea, leaving it unused, despite the many other similarities between Kefka and the Xenogears antagonists discussed in the games that influenced Xenogears article. And this is not the only similarity between these two antagonists since both Kefka and Yuriev were also early test subjects who went mad as a consequence of experiments. Albedo, a clone of Yuriev, is also similar to Kefka in the way he is flamboyant, reckless, comedic, and has a characteristic laugh.
While it has become a cliché, I think Dmitri Yuriev is a rare example of this trope being done in a relatively compelling and realistic way. He may not be the most layered or multi-dimensional character, but he still has more dimensions to him than other antagonists of this trope I have come across, even with the compressed Episode III that diverged from the original scenario. Kefka differs from Yuriev and only rules this trope because he actually becomes a god whom you are forced to suffer under before becoming strong enough to defeat him. But Kefka as a character is too cartoony to take seriously. Albedo is that kind of "mad" character done better.
I would like to add here that Dmitri Yuriev may also have been partly influenced by Xande, the main antagonist of Final Fantasy III, as both are major antagonists who are driven by fear of mortality and death. But the similarity beyond that is not strong enough to justify a FFIII section in this article since Xande is not human and was robbed of his immortality, rather than being mortal from the start. Perhaps a comparison with Wilhelm and Xande can also be drawn though, since Wilhelm is also not really a human. And Wilhelm is sort of robbed of immortality through the looming destruction of the universe, and attempts to loop time in order to "freeze" history; just like Xande tries to freeze time to preserve his immortality by disrupting his world's balance of light and darkness. To achieve this they both made use of powers related to crystals.
| Story of tortured, stoic family man | Story of tortured, stoic family man |
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Both FFVI and Xenosaga has a tortured and stoic playable character who lost his wife and son to an antagonist, and who is being tormented by those memories and by a cloaked antagonist who collects souls and can traverse into people's minds. Ziggy's backstory in Xenosaga is basically Cyan's story from FFVI but done with more detail and in the style of sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and Brainstorm. Besides being family men with some similar interactions with their wife and son in the brief flashbacks we see of them together, both Cyan and Jan (Ziggy) are also men tasked with protecting citizens: Cyan was a faithful warrior of a kingdom, and Jan was a police captain. Even their personalities are similar, being respectful in conversation and helpful and personable to their allies while coming across as slightly archaic older men. They are deeply depressed but remain stoic.
And while Cyan's wife and son are victims of Kefka's actions, Cyan is primarily victim of an enemy called Wrexsoul (Alexsoul in the Japanese version) who, like Ziggy's personal enemy Voyager in Xenosaga, is a cloaked enemy who has a special interest in feeding on Cyan's guilt and despair. "I am fed by his sorrow... by his anger... and his hate!" Voyager, in his last encounter with Ziggy, also seems to take delight in feeding on Ziggy's torment. Wrexsoul appear to live in people's minds, and Voyager dove deep into the Collective Unconscious through the U.M.N. and also directly interacted with people's minds. Wrexsoul is said to be an amalgamation of souls that lost their minds in the War of the Magi, and Voyager collected people's souls he murdered 100 years before the present in Xenosaga.
Cyan's story felt so much like Soraya Saga's writing that I had to check to see if she had also written that character. But apparently Cyan was created and written by Hiroyuki Ito. There was supposed to be more to Cyan's character, such as taking on a surrogate father role to Gau, which sounds similar to Ziggy becoming a surrogate father to MOMO. And perhaps Ziggy's relationship with Juli Mizrahi was also partly influenced by the deleted character Angela from FFVI who was intended to act as a "big sister" to Cyan.
With all the other similarities between early Xeno and FFVI, I doubt those between Cyan and Ziggy are a coincidence, even though some of the influence may have been subconscious. Because Cyan was Hironobu Sakaguchi's favorite character in FFVI, which Takahashi and Soraya would no doubt have been aware of, since he was their boss. And there are also other similarities with Xenosaga in Cyan's story, such as a storyline taking place inside the mind and soul of a character, like the Encephalon dives we see in Xenosaga. The way the dreamscape in Cyan's mind is depicted, with doors leading to other memories and parts of the psyche, resembles the inner mind of Cherenkov at one point in Xenosaga. The "alienness" of the dreamscape also has some visual similarities with the inside of the giant Gnosis, which is a kind of soul creature.
In fact, the whole idea of diving into the mind of a character - like a series of dungeons, fighting strange enemies in there, and having the other party members directly witness and react to flashbacks of the character's past - do come across as a seed idea or prototype for the whole Encephalon and U.M.N. dive concept used in the Xenosaga series. Which involves diving into people's minds through the Imaginary Number Domain and the Collective Unconscious...
| Enigmatic mind space children | Enigmatic mind space children |
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Inside these mind spaces, many strange and enigmatic people also appear; such as the three Dream Stooges in FFVI, and Nephilim, Cecily and Cathe in Xenosaga, whom all appear in the form of children. Beyond these minor details, there is not much else that makes these characters similar. But I thought it worth mentioning since something about the three Dream Stooges children seemed familiar to me, though I could not put my finger on it. Perhaps they remind me a little of the three URTV children (Rubedo, Albedo and Nigredo) when they appear inside the mind of MOMO as memories of their time playing with Sakura. But if the Dream Stooges were an influence on the three URTV boys then Soraya turned them into something completely different. One of the three Dream Stooges is named Moebius, a name that appears in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but apparently FFVI's Moebius was named Sueño (Spanish for "dream") in the original Japanese.
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While I am starting to reach a bit with the Dream Stooges and a possible link to the URTV children, and probably should have left it out, I decided to mention it anyway in light of the strong similarity between Soraya's story for Ziggy and Cyan's sidestory, which is the part of FFVI that resembles Xenosaga the most. Cyan is also the character to speak of a theme that became very prominent in Xenosaga, that of humans having trouble letting go of the past. In FFVI, when tracking down Cyan in the World of Ruin, you can read one of his letters that says: "There is a human tendency to become shackled by things past, which leadeth us to squander the time we have left. I implore thee not to let this happen."
Besides Cyan from FFVI, there is also Ashley Riot from Vagrant Story (a Square game released in 2000) who shares some similarities with Ziggy. But since Soraya Saga had already come up with the story of Ziggy and MOMO by around 1999 based on reports from her messageboard back then, it is more likely that Vagrant Story also borrowed from Cyan's story and this shared influence is what makes both Ashley and Ziggy appear similar in some regards.
| A girl used in experiments by father figure | A girl used in experiments by her father |
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When I played through FFVI I missed this similarity since there was no flashback or deeper background story to accompany it. But after recently watching a YouTube video that brought attention to the disturbing fact that Cid, when Celes was but a child, did dangerous magic infusion experiments on her - the girl who he also had a father-daughter relationship with - I was struck by how similar this is to something happening to Xenosaga's Nephilim in her past when her own father did a dangerous connection experiment on her with the Zohar. We do not think about how disturbing this is in FFVI since the experiment was successful and Celes became a powerful Magitek Knight. But Celes just happened to be the first successful result while previous test subjects (such as Kefka) had gone mad, so Cid must have been aware there would be a high chance of failure.
Similarly in Xenosaga, we do not think much about Nephilim's backstory since it was only available in an obscure flash movie on the official website. But there are several similarities here. In both cases you have a scientist (Cid and Grimoire) conducting dangerous experiments on a small girl who was, or was regarded as, their own daughter. In both cases, the experiments tended to produce madness in people but not in these girls. And finally, both female characters were also mirrored in Xenogears as high-ranking female soldiers who deserts their empire and are playable main characters in the story. I am talking about Celes and Elly. And Cid was also partly mirrored with Elly's father Erich as examined in the corresponding Xenogears article.
While Nephilim is not Xenogears' Elly, it is clear that Nephilim was based on Elly (her character model is even named "elly" internally on the Xenosaga Episode I discs), and so it would make sense that when Takahashi was coming up with a new origin story for this character, he may have gone back to one of the primary inspirations for Elly's character - Celes from FFVI - and taken influence once again from Celes (this time her backstory) to create a new origin for Xenosaga's "Elly" - Nephilim. This could also mean Takahashi intended to keep the Celes influence going with Nephilim in future story arcs we never got to see, which in turn would potentially make Nephilim also similar to Xenogears' Elly since these three characters appear to share a "spiritual" connection.
Why Nephilim's father Grimoire would use his own daughter in a connection experiment like that never made much sense and has not been explained in the Xenosaga series or lore books. But it would make some sense that the story was written like that if Takahashi was primarily influenced by and attempting to mirror Celes' backstory from FFVI.
| A sealed place - a sealed ancient power | A sealed place - a sealed ancient secret |
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As with Xenogears, we have in Xenosaga a theme of ancient sealed places playing an important role in the lore. And while these similarities in Xenosaga could be mostly influenced from Xenogears, there are some aspects to this in Xenosaga that actually resembles FFVI more than Xenogears did. One example is the Gnosis who are powerful entities that wreck havoc on humans very similar to what the Espers do at one point in FFVI, whereas in Xenogears the equivalent to Espers were Gears and human test subjects (Wels) made for war and unification with Gears, which obscured a lot of the Esper (summon beasts) influence. Like the Espers, the Gnosis in Xenosaga also come from a separate realm, and both Espers and Gnosis can resemble humans in form while others look more like animals or mythological creatures. But to humans they are all threatening "non-human beings."
And connecting these separate realms is a sealed off place that leads to ancient powers and secrets. In FFVI, the entrance to the separate Esper realm is a sealed gate, and beyond it (within the Esper realm) sleeps the ancient gods - the origin of the existence of Espers and magic. In Xenosaga, the homeworld of Lost Jerusalem (Earth) is sealed away in imaginary space (the "realm" of Gnosis), and from both Lost Jerusalem and within the imaginary realm originate powers and artifacts equivalent to that of magic in FFVI.
While we do not know what secret still lies on Earth in Xenosaga, there is a high probability it is something related to imaginary space and the Relics of God. And that is part of the purpose of examining other works that influenced early Xeno, to perhaps find clues and ideas that might reveal something Takahashi had in mind for the untold parts of Xenogears and Xenosaga.
| Non-human beings from another realm | Non-human beings from another realm |
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I think that the link between the Espers and their realm from FFVI with the machines in Xenogears and the imaginary realm existences in Xenosaga is not trivial and actually runs through a lot of the DNA of early Xeno and their lore, constituting a very important core influence. We also have direct quotes from Takahashi that the Gears in Xenogears sprung from the concept of summon beasts in a proposed FFVII script, which was clearly an evolution of the Espers from FFVI. Espers were called "Phantom/Mystical Beasts" in the original Japanese, which would not be an inappropriate term for the Gnosis either. Even the Japanese word 幻獣 (genjū) sounds similar to the word "Gnosis."
The Zohar almost represents a kind of connecting tissue for this DNA, with an aspect of the Warring Triad being the Zohar's equivalent in FFVI, since just like the Warring Triad the Zohar is often a sealed away object of great power and danger.
| Power (Magic) from ages past disappear | Power (Technology) from ages past disappear |
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Similar to Xenogears (and also mirrored with Xenogears as well as FFVI) we have at the end of the Xenosaga trilogy a new status quo when the power and technology people were used to is suddenly disappearing from the world, after defeating the primary antagonist. In FFVI, magic and Espers disappear. In Xenogears, Zohar's power disappears. And in Xenosaga, the U.M.N. disappears (along with the Gnosis and some other things). During this ending, you also have additional similarities, such as collapsing locations, a female character using her remaining strength to help the others, and an escape sequence.
| Protagonists escape on a ship | Protagonists escape on a ship |
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In particular, when I saw the Falcon ship escape the collapsing Tower in FFVI's ending I immediately thought of how E.S. Asher escapes the Michtam structures and then the Elsa escaping the domain shift at the end of Xenosaga Episode III. While there is no character guiding the ship like Terra does in her Esper form in FFVI, I still think this might constitute an influence from the ending of FFVI, or at least a subconscious influence. Especially since the captain of both ships make a comment about the ship's speed: Setzer says "I told you, didn't I? She's the world's fastest ship!" and Matthews reveals the Elsa's secret overboost. Yet there is also a high probability of pure coincidence or shared influence from Star Wars since a ship would be the most natural way to escape at the end of Xenosaga. So I leave this up to other Xenosaga fans to decide if they think it is an influence from FFVI or not.
I think that is all for the similarities between the Xenosaga we got and FFVI. But should more occur to me I will try to add them.
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Final Fantasy VII shares an interesting relationship with early Xeno, just like Final Fantasy VI did. Takahashi was not only involved with the development of Final Fantasy VI, he was also involved with Final Fantasy VII at the start of its development, and was even tasked with coming up with a story for the game together with Tetsuya Nomura according to Hiromichi Tanaka. Although Takahashi's early draft ideas for FFVII were rejected and evolved separately into Xenogears, some of his and Soraya Saga's early ideas did make it into FFVII. We have confirmation in an interview and magazine article that the character Cloud Strife and the Shinra company in FFVII derive from early ideas by Takahashi, ideas which in Xenogears evolved into Fei and the Holy Empire of Solaris. But these are just the ideas from Takahashi that have been confirmed. There could be more things in FFVII that originated from Takahashi and Soraya Saga.
Because of this shared development history between Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears, any similarity discovered might not be an influence. It could actually be a case of Takahashi being the originator or a shaper of the idea and that it may have showed up in Xenogears and possibly future Xeno even if FFVII would not have used the idea first. That is why I decided not to include FFVII as an influence on Xenogears in that article. There actually is one influence from FFVII that is known - that of Junya Ishigaki using the command Materia as a reference point when designing the globe shaped designs on the chest of El Renmazuo, as he states on page 128 in the Xenogears: Perfect Works~the Real Thing~ design book. But since that is a minor design influence unrelated to the story, lore, and characters, I decided to skip it in the Xenogears article.
There are a number of similarities between FFVII and Xenogears that could have influenced Xenogears, though I am more inclined to suspect that these similarities occured due to Takahashi's involvement in shaping the world of FFVII, or the ideas came from FFVI. So I have decided to briefly list all of these similarities here, just to have them written down somewhere, and because it might be relevant to the rest of this section of the Xenosaga article.
The similarities between FFVII and Xenogears include: A main character with multiple personalities (Cloud and Fei); an oppressive high-tech society (Shinra Inc. and Solaris); a female parasitic alien threat (Jenova and Deus/Miang) that arrived in prehistoric times and becomes a threat to the planet; genetically modified human beings and monsters born from genetic manipulation; a segment where the protagonists are stuck in prison and the main character has to compete their way out; losing the main character for a portion of the story (probably influenced by FFVI in both cases); the loss and unavailability of playing with the main heroine (Aerith and Elly) for the end of the game; a talented bishōnen main antagonist with long blonde hair who is a former comrade and hero fallen from grace that sides with the "alien" Mother (Sephiroth and Krelian); and a story featuring reincarnation as part of the world structure.
While the first two similarities are confirmed to be partly Takahashi ideas, and losing the main character for a portion of the story was no doubt taken from Terra in FFVI, I could see the loss of both Aerith and Elly for the end game be a coincidence given what we know of the two games' development history. Jenova and Deus mostly have different influences or share influence from FFVI's Warring Triad and Chrono Trigger's Lavos, but the interesting similarity here is that both are female entities, an aspect I think might have derived from Soraya's idea since Deus/Miang was definitely not influence by Jenova. This is of little interest for the rest of this article though, since Deus is absent in Xenosaga. The inclusion of genetically modified humans and monsters is probably a shared influence from Phantasy Star II via Chrono Trigger or contemporary shows like The X-Files and other sci-fi works, so also not very interesting. But I think Sephiroth is highly likely to derive from an early Krelian draft, especially with the Jewish Tree of Life connection ("Path of Sephirot") that surrounds both main antagonists and yet seems strangely unjustified in FFVII unless stolen from Takahashi's ideas.
The most interesting similarity here, however, is the inclusion of reincarnation as a feature of the world in both FFVII and Xenogears, which is of particular interest when it comes to Xenosaga. Because both the concept of the Lifestream in FFVII and the Collective Unconscious in Xenosaga are very similar, and not something we really saw in other Final Fantasy titles from that period.
| The Lifestream and reincarnation | The Collective Unconscious and reincarnation |
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Even the way the Lifestream is illustrated in-game, which was unusual for a Final Fantasy game, resembles how the Collective Unconscious is illustrated in the Xenosaga Episode III Perfect Guide. When Tifa and Cloud ends up in the Lifestream, the unfiltered thoughts of other souls in the stream intrude upon Tifa the same way the Collective Unconscious in Xenosaga is described to cause discomfort in recently deceased souls who sometimes reject merging with the Collective altogether and become Gnosis. In both works, these natural systems are exploited and utilized by corporations. And like Yuriev and Voyager, Xenosaga's antagonists who became travelers in the U.M.N. (a communication network using the Collective Unconscious as part of its infrastructure), FFVII's antagonist Sephiroth became a traveler in the Lifestream where he learned the knowledge and wisdom of the Ancients.
But it does not stop there. Perhaps the most intriguing similarity between the two concepts - the Lifestream and the Collective Unconscious - is how both are tied to a seemingly inevitable end for all life in their respective worlds. In FFVII this end or death is localized to one planet, while in Xenosaga it is localized to our Dimensional Universe (one of many lower domains within a higher multiverse). Xenosaga's take on the concept is grander, as per Takahashi's tendency to go bigger, but the concepts are similar. The planet in FFVII is going to eventually die as the Lifestream diminishes, and our local universe in Xenosaga is going to collapse as the Collective Unconscious diminishes. Both Bugenhagen (FFVII) and the Xenosaga Episode III Perfect Guide states that this death or collapse is inevitable, and could happen soon or after a long time, but will happen.
| The planet is going to die | The universe is going to die |
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I find it hard to believe there is not a link here. If this was pure coincidence it would be uncanny. The nature of this link, however, remains unclear. If a link exists, it is either a case of Takahashi coming up with both ideas (from his original FFVII pitch), or Takahashi was influenced by FFVII's Lifestream for Xenosaga which was written a few years later.
There are certainly reasons to believe Takahashi drew influence from FFVII, since drawing influence from the earlier FFVI already proved successful with Xenogears, so why not take some from FFVII too? Especially since that game was such a massive commercial hit and, in fact, Takahashi seems to be drawing influence from FFVII quite a lot in his later Xenoblade Chronicles games. Even some Xenoblade fans have pointed out that the first Xenoblade Chronicles game has a blonde male protagonist with a huge sword slung on his back like FFVII's Cloud, and also opens with a lone shot of it. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 seems to recycle FFVII's antagonist Sephiroth with the characters Malos and Jin - the former who even imitates Sephiroth's iconic Nibelheim shot - and Diamond Weapon's design for Acting God Amalthus. Xenoblade Chronicles 3's Alpha further borrows from Sephiroth as a silver-haired one-winged angel with a giant katana, and Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition seems to borrow the concept of its beastly Ghosts as a defense system created by the universe from FFVII's beastly Weapons who were a defensive system created by the planet.
Ever since Takahashi's original pitch for FFVII was rejected and he got the opportunity to create his own work, it seems he (and later Monolith Soft) has been in competition with Final Fantasy. In his Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert Interview, Takahashi says that "[If] I was going to do it, I wanted it to be better than FF" while Hirohide Sugiura said in a 2005 Hamamura interview that "our goal [with Xenosaga Episode I] was "FFX", but rather than matching it, I think we fell short."
So I think there is little doubt that the Final Fantasy series, and especially FFVI and FFVII, has been a constant source of comparison in the minds of Takahashi and the other former Square employees at Monolith Soft. Whether this is due to habit, work nostalgia, the Final Fantasy series' position as prestige gaming, or Takahashi trying to reclaim his original ideas that became famous through FFVII, we can only speculate.
I would not be surprised if Takahashi came up with parts of the Lifestream idea, or had a hand in shaping it. The concept of the Lifestream is often attributed to Hironobu Sakaguchi by the developers themselves, but the FFVII developers also always seem to leave out Takahashi's contributions. For example, in a 2007 IGN article quoting Tetsuya Nomura, he says that "Sakaguchi came up with the specifics on the Life Stream in his original plot, but this also saw some work by Kitase and crew before finally being placed in the game." But in the same article Nomura also says that "Kitase and Kazushige Nojima came up with the sections on Avalanche and Shinra." Takahashi is not mentioned, even though Nomura and Takahashi were tasked with coming up with FFVII's world together, and Takahashi was part of the FFVII team up until it started development past the script stage since he had disagreements over not using full 3D for FFVII. Takahashi is even credited in FFVII as Concept Artist.
So, at the very least, Takahashi would still have been around when "Kitase and crew" refined Sakaguchi's idea, since what Nomura is referring to is a very early draft by Sakaguchi that read more like a detective story, a draft Nomura said was "completely different" from the final version of FFVII. So how much did Sakaguchi really have to do with the Lifestream as we see it in the game? Considering the concept we see is fairly simple, my guess is Sakaguchi's original concept was overly technical, personal, and quite different. In a FFVII interview from the Computer and Video Games magazine's October 1997 Issue, Hironobu Sakaguchi says he attempted to "analyse 'Life' in a mathematical and and logical way," citing his background as an engineering major. There is nothing particularly mathematical about the Lifestream which simply resembles the Force from Star Wars. Though it would be interesting if Sakaguchi's engineering approach had an influence on the more technical detail Takahashi employed for Xenosaga's world structure.
One also wonders why Sakaguchi would write a story and script of his own while tasking Takahashi and Nomura with the game's story and world creation. What exactly is the timeline here? Soraya came up with the original concept for Cloud/Fei with "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities" in 1994 according to her 2005 FAQ. Sakaguchi says the seed for FFVII began in August 1995 with a CG demo experiment in the aforementioned Computer and Video Games magazine. Perhaps Takahashi and Nomura got tasked prior to August 1995, but Sakaguchi does not consider their early suggestions to have been relevant to the final FFVII, even though Soraya's pre-1995 idea seems very relevant as a seed for FFVII. Perhaps Sakaguchi decided to pitch an idea himself after rejecting Takahashi's suggestions. But would that mean Takahashi was suddenly dismissed from story ideas altogether up until he left the team, or did he remain tasked with shaping FFVII's world in some capacity?
From the information we have, I frankly do not trust the FFVII developer interviews much when it comes to the game's origin and influences. I don't think they are lying or trying to rewrite history, but I do not think they recall or are fully aware of where every idea came from. Had reincarnation not already featured in Xenogears, I would have been more inclined to believe Takahashi drew influence from FFVII's Lifestream for Xenosaga. It is of course possible that Takahashi refined the concept of reincarnation in Xenosaga by borrowing from FFVII's Lifestream. But there are enough clues in Xenogears that suggests something like FFVII's Lifestream and Xenosaga's Collective Unconscious was already in play in Xenogears' universe. Xenogears: Perfect Works page 171 mentions Carl Jung's concept of the Collective Unconscious, and in the game script Fei recalls "A vast nebulous... With no boundaries..." between lives. Furthermore, the planetary disappearance incident in the Episode I timeline of Perfect Works, as well as the urgent 10,000 year time-limit for Deus to complete some kind of mysterious mission, strongly hints at prototype ideas for both Xenosaga's Imaginary Number Domain and the eventual collapse of the universe already existing as early as at least 1997, if not earlier. Takahashi said in the Hakoere Vol.20 Special Interview that the lore in Perfect Works was something he had come up with at the very beginning of development, and the script itself early on establishes the ominous time-limit in Cain and Citan's first dialogue.
Thus I think reincarnation was part of Takahashi's original pitch, along with a world structure explanation for it, since Takahashi already had the desire to create "the entirety of a universe" when he started on Xenogears, which is what gave that work such a detailed world. The Lifestream concept likely developed in relation to his early ideas, even if not from them directly. We find the concept of reincarnation in all of Takahashi's works, but much less in the Final Fantasy series. It is his thing.
Related to this, there is an interesting visual similarity between Tifa and Cloud falling into the "watery" Lifestream of souls in FFVII and Jr.'s nightmare where he falls into the "watery" and almost "firey" cracking of souls from U-DO's vision of the end of all existence in Xenosaga Episode I.
| Falling into souls | Falling into souls |
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The framing and angles for these two scenes are very similar. It could indicate an influence. But I am inclined to think this similarity can simply be explained by Norihiro Takami being the cinematic supervisor who also worked on CG animation in FFVII, and so Takami may have reused the same angles and framing for this scene in Xenosaga Episode I.
| Main antagonist is an engineered human | A main antagonist is an engineered human |
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One more similarity that occured to me is the presence of a main antagonist who has a background story of being an engineered human. In FFVII, Sephiroth was created by infusing a human child with Jenova cells, and in Xenosaga both Albedo and Yuriev are engineered "Designer Children." This is one of the major differences between Sephiroth and Krelian, who otherwise share several similarities, but where Sephiroth has more in common with some of the antagonists from Xenosaga. That and their desires to join the rank of gods. But this too could simply be a shared influence from FFVI's Kefka, which I find more likely, since Kefka too was the result of experiments.
So while Takahashi seems to have taken influence from FFVII for Xenoblade Chronicles, we still have no convincing reason to believe Takahashi took any influence from FFVII for Xenosaga, and that the similarities are either Takahashi's ideas from the start or shared influences from FFVI. But I still think it is worth including and considering FFVII as a potential influence.
Chrono Trigger (1995)
With Chrono Trigger having had some influence on Xenogears, and having shared several staff members, we should also consider Chrono Trigger having had an influence on the Xenosaga series, since several of those staff members also moved to Monolith Soft. And during my last playthrough of Chrono Trigger I did spot a few similarities. Whether these are a coincidence, subconscious influence, or a direct influence I leave up to other Xenosaga fans to decide. But there are two similarities in this list I consider to be highly likely influences.
| Female inventor character | Female inventor character |
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As with the similarity between Chrono Trigger's Lucca and Xenogears' Citan Uzuki, there is also a similarity between Lucca and Xenosaga's Shion Uzuki in that we have two scientist or inventor type characters among the playable protagonists, and with Lucca and Shion they are both female characters who wear glasses. Shion Uzuki is a bit more of an engineer than an inventor, but the similarity is still valid. But the similarity could be a coincidence or the result of Shion Uzuki being based on Citan Uzuki, right down to their names. Not only are they both glasses-wearing and sciency type engineers with an identical last name, but Shion's given name is obviously inspired by "Shitan" sharing the same first letter kana シ (Shi) in Japanese: シオン (Shion) and シタン (Shitan/Citan), with both names taken from plants - a Japanese flower and Japanese rosewood.
(If you have heard that Shitan is a reference to "Satan" then you have been misinformed since nowhere is Satan or the Arabic "Shaitan" ever spelled シタン in Japanese, and Xenogears already references Satan - or more specifically the devil - in Deus, Miang, and Grahf.)
| Good morning, robot | Good morning, robot |
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In both Chrono Trigger and Xenosaga there is a robot character among the playable characters. When they are first seen booted up, a female character greets them by saying "Good morning." Marle says it to Robo in Chrono Trigger, and Shion says it to KOS-MOS in Xenosaga. There is only a slight variation in that Shion simply says "Morning" followed by KOS-MOS' name. But the original Japanese might be identical to the line in Chrono Trigger, I have yet to confirm. But either way these are similar enough to possibly indicate an influence, unless the Japanese phrase is something more common and standard in Japanese culture.
| A pendant serves as ignition device | A pendant serves as ignition device |
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Now we come to the big one. Both Chrono Trigger and Xenosaga feature a pendent worn by a female character as a key item. In the story of both works it functions as an ignition device for an ominous machine. In Chrono Trigger the pendant is worn by Marle and Schala (referred to as Schala's pendant) and serves as an ignition device to activate the Mammon Machine (Demon Machine in Japanese) and open seal doors. In Xenosaga the pendant is worn by Kevin's mother and Shion (referred to as Shion's pendant) and serves as an ignition device to activate the ancient Zarathustra machine.
I genuinely think this is an influence, whether conscious or unconscious, since having a pendant as an ignition device for a machine in Xenosaga is not very sci-fi and is one of the weaker and less sensible lore aspects of an otherwise fairly grounded space opera compared to other JRPGs. Yet this particular aspect feels like it is straight out of Chrono Trigger, right down to the female's refusal at using it. Schala says, "But without me, the Mammon Machine won't work. I have turned my back on that evil device!" There is likely some mirroring here with Karen's and Sophia's pendant from Xenogears too, but that could originally also have been influenced from Chrono Trigger.
| Wielder of the pendant key has light-blue hair | Wielder of the pendant key has light-blue hair |
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Another similarity here, albeit a weaker one, is that two main females who wields the key - Schala in Chrono Trigger and KOS-MOS in Xenosaga Episode III - has similar light-blue colored hair. While KOS-MOS is not the intended wielder of the pendant key, it seems she can as a proxy for Shion, but like Schala she refuses to use the pendant. However, I am leaning towards coincidence when it comes to the blue hair similarity here.
| Protagonists experience the past | Protagonists experience the past |
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One more similarity I think is worth bringing up between Chrono Trigger and Xenosaga is that both works, and especially Xenosaga Episode III, involve time travel with the main protagonists experiencing and interacting with places and people of the past. While Xenosaga tricks the player, and does not actually involve time travel, the similarity of having the player and protagonists interact with events of the past in some form still constitutes a similarity, comparison, and possible influence. Combine this aspect with the pendant, and I find it highly likely that Takahashi was influenced by Chrono Trigger and that he was still trying to implement and improve upon ideas from all of Square's classics even when working on Xenosaga.
The approach he started with in Xenogears would naturally have continued in Xenogears sequels, and since the Xenosaga series seem to be mostly a modification of those it makes sense that the same approach was used in Xenosaga. That's why I am inclined to believe Wilhelm and Zarathustra really was influenced partly by Xande from FFIII, because otherwise, why crystals? Why did Xenosaga begin as almost pure sci-fi and end as something closer to fantasy?
The game that mostly influenced Xenosaga, however, is Xenogears. And because of that, there is not much else to explore in this article. There may be something from Phantasy Star II and other Square classics, but they tend to be sparse, like with Chrono Trigger.
Back to Works that influenced the Xenosaga series.
