Part 1: Xenogears
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part 1: XENOGEARS
- Origins of the story
- Developing the game
- Consumer reception
- Perfect Works / Episode I -- Transition towards "Xenosaga"
Part 2: XENOSAGA
- MonolithSoft's Project X
- Unveiling the XENOSAGA project
- Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht
- Official Design Materials
Part 3: XENOSAGA II & III
- A new stance -- series cut down to 1/3
- Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose
- A(nother) remake
- Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra
Part 4: The Future of These Works
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[Last updated 2024.11.24]
This first part of a series of articles that chronicles the development history of Xenogears and Xenosaga will assume that the reader has experienced both Xenogears and the Xenosaga series. If you are only familiar with Xenogears then be aware that there are also a few spoilers for the Xenosaga series towards the end of this article, specifically in the segment about Perfect Works / Episode I as some comparisons are made between the two works.
These articles will also contain spoilers for other works, such as Star Wars, Childhood's End, and others that have influenced Xenogears. So use your own judgment and stop reading if something you want to experience unspoiled is named and compared to Xenogears in the article.
Part 1: XENOGEARS
Origins of the story
The original story idea for the work that would become known as Xenogears was invented by Kaori Tanaka (from now on referred to by her pen name Soraya Saga) in 1994. At that time, Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga had finished their work on Final Fantasy VI at Square, and Takahashi was working on Front Mission and Chrono Trigger while Soraya was working on Romancing SaGa 3. They would later get married in 1995.
Soraya with Director Ron Howard (unknown date)
The original concept was a story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities" that Soraya wrote that year. Soraya have given at least two accounts of what followed:
"Takahashi proposed the plan to our boss. Though the plan was rejected because it was too sci-fi for RPG, the boss kindly gave us an advice "Why don't you make it into a new game?". Then I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet. Takahashi refined the idea into more deeper and mystic love story."
- Soraya Saga (Fringe FAQ, Mars 05, 2005)
"I and Tetsuya Takahashi originally submitted it as a script idea for Final Fantasy VII. While we were told that it was too dark and complicated for a fantasy, the boss was kind enough to give Takahashi a chance to launch a new project. Then Takahashi and I wrote up the full screenplay which contained cutscene-dialogues in final form, thus the project was born."
- Soraya Saga (Interview with Siliconera, June 11, 2010)
Xenogears, as a story, is a work primarily about anthropology, psychology, religion, science, and ideology in a future space science fiction setting. The ideas of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Carl Jung, and (to a lesser extent) Friedrich Nietzsche are the most obvious influences along with Gnosticism, and happened to be part of common interests Soraya Saga shared with Takahashi. "Xenogears is basically a story about 'where do we come from, what are we, where are we going'. In that respect, we were inspired by those concepts a lot," says Soraya in the Siliconera interview. Xenogears also draws a lot of influences from cinema such as Star Wars and giant robot anime such as Gundam, thus it has a lot of pop culture references.
Clearly many of these ideas had to be at the back of Tetsuya Takahashi's mind when he started writing for their project that would become Xenogears. One does not proceed from merely two ideas and then write up a full screenplay like the one in Xenogears filled with multiple references to psychoanalysts, philosophies, religions, literature, history, and science, without a lot of reading.
Born on November 18th, 1966 in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan, little is known about Takahashi's childhood and adolescence other than that his family "was always full of intense competitiveness," and he would avoid, or try to escape from such social matters. Even in his later adult life he found himself becoming avoidant sometimes without even realizing it, which he expressed in the Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-. In a revealing 2018 interview with denfaminicogamer he also said that "I've been someone with low self-esteem ever since I was a child, so it might be that I want to play god, within the world that I create. There's also the desire to be in that world I create, and to try and create the entirety of a world, so to speak."
His desire for imaginary worlds and artistic temperament also appears to be connected with his social difficulties: "I don't really like people, so I like being alone. I don't really feel comfortable in [interviews], to be honest. I don't really want to show myself, if that makes sense." Other people's first impression of him tends to be that he is shy, quiet, gentle and a bit mysterious, but Takahashi himself says that's mostly a social persona or facade.
Takahashi was a pretty small kid, so he was better at study than sports. Chemistry and physics were his favorites, "but I was awful at math" he recalls in an interview on Sony's Website in 2002. For art he would sometimes get good grades, sometimes bad, depending on teacher. "I used to read a lot of manga and those science fiction novels with the blue spines from Hayakawa Publishing" he says, referring to the publishers of Japanese translations of Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov, which have clearly influenced Takahashi.
In fact, Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke was directly referenced in Xenogears in the naming of the character "Karellen" (localized as "Krelian" in the North American version) who, according to Soraya Saga on Yggdrasil's Periscope Club BBS back in 1999, was the name of Takahashi's favorite character in Childhood's End. The title of "Guardian Angel," given to the character Citan Uzuki, was another reference. Clarke's idea for Childhood's End began with his short story "Guardian Angel" (1946). Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey is referenced with the "SOL-9000" computer that houses the Ministry, and also in Xenogears: Perfect Works with the discovery of Zohar - a monolithic artifact - on Earth in 2001. A similar event was later used as the opening cinematic in Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht.
No doubt Childhood's End served as one of the main inspirations for Xenogears. Many have assumed that the concept of evolving mankind into a singular being was taken from Evangelion, but it was actually from Childhood's End ideas such as humanity's evolution into a vast cosmic intelligence were borrowed from. In the book, human children begin to display telekinetic powers a few generations after the alien Overlords arrive on Earth. In Xenogears, human children like Midori are displaying telepathic powers. Only 500 years before the present, humans in Xenogears began to evolve an ability called 'Ether'. The Gazel Ministry and Karellen are supervising humanity in Xenogears just as Karellen and the Overlords are supervising humanity in Childhood's End, and both Karellens take control because they know humanity will not evolve if left to their own devices.
However, the style and themes of Takahashi are in some ways radically different from those of Clarke. Most notably is Clarke's more optimistic view of science empowering mankind's exploration of the solar system, and his images of Utopian settings with highly developed ecology, and society, which were based on Clarke's ideals. Takahashi has a much darker vision of the future, with humans continuing to force their strong wills and ideals upon the world with the consequence of being trapped in darkness, unable to see the truth of things. But where Clarke's vision of humanity often ends with them getting help to evolve to a more mature and wise existence, Takahashi's vision is that humanity remains imperfect but should be proud of that non-perfection, and allow ourselves to appreciate what is without ideologies or judgments.
But as a child, Takahashi had less of a dark outlook on the future, often due to Clarke's and others' more optimistic views. He says in the denfaminicogamer interview, "I was a child that really looked forward to the future. When I was a kid, there were a lot of books about a positive future, and I loved to think about how this and that would happen in the future. That's probably where [dreaming about fantasy worlds] started for me." In an Iwata Asks interview about Xenoblade Chronicles 3D in 2015 he also said that "When I was...I think it was in middle school...there was a sci-fi magazine called Starlog. I read sci-fi magazines and armed myself with all the knowledge I could. I really started to express myself then, thinking up my own stories and things like that."
In terms of his own ideals, Takahashi said in the Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials- that "I have this ideal of how carefree it would be to just ignore social matters and live like a child who doesn't think too deeply about things." There is a part of him that seems reckless, which is often reflected in his main protagonists, and is further supported by his view of death. He would say "I'm what you could call not very insistent regarding life, in that there's a part of me that doesn't care if I die. Especially when I was still single." He is known to have taken risks, with the breakaway from game company Square being one of them. On what kind of child he was, he recalls "It seems my relatives called me a strange child. Basically, I never listened to what anyone said. My parents must have had a pretty tough time." Takahashi reveals that the messages in his works are also reflections of his own life:
"The many messages in the game are also reflections of my own life. Having said that, I am a selfish human being and when I'm creating I only say what I want to say."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-)
On Yggdrasil's Periscope BBS, while talking to fans, Soraya once stated that Elly, the main heroine of Xenogears, was Takahashi's ideal woman. The webmistress of Xenogears: Guardian Angels fansite recalls it on her Livejournal in 2007 while ranting on feminine stereotypes:
"Elly of Xenogears is the ultimate feminine stereotype (and not just the mother of a small family, but an entire bloody religion), and I remember Clio Saga commenting that she was the director's ideal woman."
- Amber Michelle (Livejournal, Jan 01, 2007)
If Elly was not only the product of Soraya's female A.I. concept, but also the result of Takahashi projecting his own ideal woman into the story, then perhaps those two characters who were to be in love with her - Fei the protagonist and Karellen the antagonist - would carry aspects of Takahashi himself. Especially with the character Karellen being named after his favorite character from Childhood's End.
Although Takahashi himself has said that Ramsus is the character that reflects him the most, the main antagonist Karellen is a character that is thoroughly treated with dignity and intelligence, despite the atrocities he commits on a global scale. It is usually expected in RPGs to get a chance to fight each of your opponents, and usually the main antagonist is saved for a final epic battle, but Xenogears breaks off from this tradition, and not once do the player get a chance to fight it out with this character.
Karellen's actions are the result of the sorrow of having lost Sophia, his resentment at those who caused her death, and his lost hope (mixed with a love) for people, which turns him into a hardened scientist and holy man in search of a real God to save human beings from themselves. His ultimate plan is an Ark plan that the character refers to as "Project Noah," which would turn out to be an early working title for Xenogears.
Karellen is an intense and sensitive character that tries to suppress his emotions, but ends up having a really hard time doing that, ultimately having to face the guilt of what he has done. Takahashi says of himself:
"My daily emotional life is pretty intense. If you look at it a certain way it's a burden to be going to the office, working, and meeting with a lot people. There's a part of me I have to suppress."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-)
He goes on to say, "Even if it's something you can't do [in society], you can always instead incorporate it into the story and the game." His unexpressed emotions can thus be seen pouring out in his writing in Xenogears (and also later in Xenosaga), which sets the tone of the story in many ways. He has said that "My motivation is fueled by negative emotions," and his friend (and composer for the series) Yasunori Mitsuda, when asked what he thinks of Mr. Takahashi, said:
"It's hard to put into words, but I really feel that there's a hidden anger inside him. Like, "Why the hell don't they realize this?!" That anger has been poured into this game, and people who resonate with it will be sucked in. My impression was that I sensed he was very similar to me. He's probably a dark person too, Mr. Takahashi (Laughs) But he's diligent."
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-)
Like Karellen, Takahashi also likes to read, though it is unknown if a woman had inspired this in him as Elly had inspired Karellen. Likely, Takahashi was always a curious man who would read everything he could to satisfy his desire for knowledge and understanding. Takahashi recalls:
"As a child, in the middle of a meeting with the chief priest of a Buddhist temple near my home, I began having vague doubts myself on, "What is religion?" That's when I started having an interest in religion and I did research by reading various books."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-)
Combine his interest with religion and reading from an early age, along with his hobby of manga, science fiction novels, and finally cinema, it is not strange that he would (for a brief time) end up being known as the "science and ideology" game director who attempts to "create game experiences that outdo films." The elements of romance, mystery, horror, and strange quirks that were frequently felt in Xenogears may have some influence from Futaro Yamada, prominent author of romantic, detective, horror, and bizarre ninja novels, as Takahashi recalls being a fan of his. But I am not familiar with Yamada's work, and not everything in the game were conceived by Takahashi alone, as we will see.
As for robots, Soraya Saga explains:
"I'm of an older generation who grew up with classic giant robot anime by Nippon Sunrise (e.g. Raideen, Gundam, and Votoms). Besides the guy who enthusiastically created gear/AMWS/AGWS/ES mecha is more Takahashi than me. (His room is filled with vintage Chogokin Toys.) ;) "
- Soraya Saga (deviantART, July 7, 2008)
Finally, once getting in to college, Takahashi says he "began to grow up and started reading books on philosophy and ideology." He says he read a lot of Friedrich Nietzsche during university. And from Nietzsche came some of the influences of Norse mythology also seen in the games. "He [Nietzsche] was connected with Wagner, so I pulled it from there," says Takahashi in a 2001 interview with GameSpot Japan translated by video-senki website.
"With religion there are many different denominations with many adherents. These people carry an ideological bias. The status quo is to ignore this bias, but ever since I was a student I couldn't be satisfied with that response."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-)
All this knowledge and passion for these and many other subjects would finally be given an outlet for expression after Takahashi joined Squaresoft as a Graphics artist and subsequently met and became romantically involved with Soraya Saga, who was to come up with the original story idea that Takahashi would turn into the game known today as Xenogears.
What lead Tetsuya Takahashi to aspire to become a game developer were his fond memories when Xanadu, an action RPG released in 1987 by Falcom Japan, was released. "When I played it on the PC-8801, I became interested in the game industry." He goes on to add in the 2018 denfaminicogamer interview, before continuing in the Sony 2002 interview, that he had used up all his tuition funds by purchasing a PC Engine (known as TurboGrafx-16 outside Japan), "and that was going to really piss of my parents, so I decided to work part-time, and [...] Falcom Japan happened to be hiring part-time employees at the time, so I came to Tokyo and started working there. I was living alone and supporting myself."
Switching between the interviews again, he says: "I liked games, and I liked to draw, so I thought [the videogame industry] was a good fit. [...] I entered right when Y's II came out, and I started working as a designer. I only knew BASIC at the time, so I helped out, learning as I worked. [...] It was pretty much like a mom-and-pop shop at the time. You would do everything from development to customer support. [...] The first [game I participated in] was the fonts for Sorcerian. We had to make our own fonts for our games in those days. If we used the standard system font, things would look all blocky, so we had to rewrite everything."
What made Soraya Saga interested in the gaming medium was similar. In an interview with LuminoMagazine.com in 2011 she states that "The Legend of Zelda (1986), Dragon Warrior (1986) and Final Fantasy I (1987) inspired me a lot. Those [games] let me know a new type of fun that differed from what other media e.g. books and movies had."
Takahashi, when giving his reasons for leaving Falcom Japan, said: "The designers were at the core of Falcom Japan as a company. Also, there were a lot of opportunities to learn. But with our first computer, the PC8801, we could only use oblong dots and 8 colors for character designs. So we were pretty frustrated by that. At that time we ported Ys III to the X68000 and used sprites. It had a large memory capacity and allowed us to use a lot of colors. Because of that I became interested in doing sprite work. At just the same time, Falcom Japan itself moved away from taking shortcuts on their games and released unusual games such as Brandish and Lord Monarch. I thought I'd like to try making games on home consoles if given the chance, so I left Falcom. I read a job listings magazine and looked for a part-time job. Right then Square was recruiting for part-time jobs. That was when Final Fantasy III had been released on the Famicom. I thought I'd give it a try, so I applied."
When Takahashi joined Square he started work on Final Fantasy IV. "I had a strong impression I'd joined an organization that was the polar opposite of Falcom Japan. Even though we were using the Super Famicom, memory used by the program was given priority over memory used for the image. So at best we could only display 8 colors at the same time. 'This isn't very good!', I thought." Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, recalls in an interview with Iwata in 2011 (Iwata Asks: In Conversation with Takahashi & Sakaguchi): "Back then, [Takahashi] was the top graphic design man in the FF team. I can still clearly remember being really taken aback by how realistic his design for the stone wall in the background was. I remember thinking: 'That's really something!'"
Takahashi had been a fan of titles Sakaguchi had been responsible for, such as Cruise Chaser Blassty, "So I thought of [Sakaguchi] as someone who had created games that I had spent a lot of time playing," says Takahashi in the same interview. "I advocated strongly for [graphics on Final Fantasy IV]. When we wanted to make the graphics better, the designers advanced that opinon about the contents of the game, and the programmers and planners changed its specifications. The director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, helpfully approved of us working that way," Takahashi continues in the Sony's Website interview. "This might be one of my good sides, or maybe it's annoying from other peoples' point of view, but I'm the type who changes my environment to make it easier to do my job. So when I joined Square, I constantly let them know my opinions so I could work more easily."
Tetsuya Takahashi and Kaori Tanaka (Soraya Saga) around the time of FFVI
Takahashi was on the Final Fantasy team up to VI. The impetus for wanting to create his own game was that he was growing frustrated with Final Fantasy. "When it came to making a role-playing game, I had the planning ability, and I wanted to try my hand at presenting a world, character modelling and things like that," he continues. In fact, Takahashi was quite insistent on it, going so far as to reveal in the 2018 denfaminicogamer interview: "I used to start fights all the time. Confronting my superiors at the top of my voice. [...] I wanted to make a universe. At the time, Final Fantasy VII was using pre-rendered CG, and I thought, 'You can't make a world with this approach'. So, I wanted them to use 3D for everything."
During Final Fantasy VI he had worked together with Soraya Saga and, as I cited at the beginning, Soraya came up with a sci-fi story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities." But both of them used to downplay Takahashi's rebellion and insistence on making a different project. Takahashi relays his version in an interview with the Xenogears staff in 1998, stating: "In the beginning, when the base plot itself was first in production as a 'FF' or something like that, I sent a proposal [to the higher-ups] saying 'How about this?'. Then they told me, 'Well, if there's something you want to make, why don't you give it a try?' So that was how it all got started in the first place. [...] there wasn't a name yet, and at the stage of that first proposal I presented, we had summon beasts instead of mechas. That's where we had started. When it was decided that this would be its own game, we decided to replace all of that with mechas."
Takahashi also explained in a Xenogears 1997 preview interview in Weekly Famitsu that the idea of using mechs originated from a conversation he was having with Tetsuya Nomura while working on Final Fantasy VII and concluding that it would be cool if the game had robots appear, a sort of evolution of the "Magitek Armor" lore that had shown up in Final Fantasy VI. They then felt like using the summoned beasts from the Final Fantasy series like robots, exchanging the beasts for mechs. Takahashi also adds that, because of this, the Gears in Xenogears were referred to through the codename "Odin" until even quite late into development. He also gave a bit more details about the initial ideas he had for Final Fantasy VII, explaining that "a protagonist concept which I submitted in the early days of Final Fantasy VII's development [...] was a protagonist who had been administered a mock personality, who breaks away from a society subjected to tight control, and goes on to live an adventure in the world of genesis." Part of these ideas would eventually go into Cloud Strife and Shinra in Final Fantasy VII, and Fei Fong Wong and the Holy Empire of Solaris in Xenogears.
And so Takahashi decided to leave the FFVII team during its early development. He states in the 2018 denfaminicogamer conversation: "I think the reason why I left the FFVII team had to do with the misanthropy I talked about earlier. I can't go along with someone who doesn't want to go in the same direction as me. I was also young then, too. So, I questioned myself, 'Why am I making something I don't even want to?' We didn’t really fight or anything. We're good friends, and we went to go out and eat together. I don’t hate them. But I just didn't feel right about it. That took a toll on me, so I wanted to leave the team and make something else." Takahashi also mentions in the 2011 conversation with Sakaguchi that he recalls "going to see Sakaguchi-san and telling him I was looking for a new challenge" in the middle of FFVII.
So the original idea appears to have been a "FF VII," that was "too dark," too "sci-fi," and "too complicated for a fantasy," with either a young soldier who suffered from "multiple personalities" or a protagonist "who had been administered a mock personality" breaking away from a society and could possibly ride "summoned beasts." Given the influence Takahashi had in the Final Fantasy team back then, being friends with both Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura (the latter whom had also joined Square during development of Final Fantasy IV), it is perhaps not surprising that the game which would eventually become Final Fantasy VII (directed by Yoshinori Kitase) would feature many similarities with this initial concept that Takahashi proposed. Final Fantasy VII has far more science fiction concepts than previous FF, the soldier hero (Cloud Strife) suffers from serious identity confusion, there is a segment where the heroes are stuck in prison during the story and have to compete their way out, and supposedly Sakaguchi's original script for Final Fantasy VII was completely different from the finished product. Hiromichi Tanaka says in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert interviews, "At the time, Takahashi-kun was with the FFVII team, and he was tasked with building the world along with Tetsuya Nomura. It looked to be a story that was about robots, an extension from Magitek Armor, but it was so drastically different from the world of FF, so we decided to do it as a different game."
Final Fantasy VII marked a real turning point in the Final Fantasy series, and for someone like Takahashi, who was such an integral part of Final Fantasy, to start out on their own, was a bit of a blow to the continuation of that series. Sakaguchi himself says that he felt a little lonely afterwards. "One really clear memory I have is that no sooner had [Takahashi] formed a separate team than his desk became completely covered in Gundam models and toy guns. It was then that I realised he'd always wanted to work on this kind of thing." Sakaguchi comments in the same 2011 interview that "[Takahashi] has always had a talent for motivating people and bringing them together as a team," and that "back then those teams would always be dividing into smaller units. If someone displayed leadership skills, they would be given the independence of having their own team. At the same time, they would often ask me: 'Is Final Fantasy all this company can let me create?' I used to worry about that. But [Takahashi] had some really good people working for him, and I think it was for the best that he got to head his own team."
Hiromichi Tanaka had just finished work on Seiken Densetsu 3 and was tired of working on games with multiple storylines. According to him, Square "decided to rearrange all the teams, and Takahashi-kun and I ended up working together." He also said, in a March 1998 Famitsu PS interview, that "Takahashi told me about a concept he had and asked for my help with development. So, a team was put together... that's how things started." Takahashi was given the "Chrono 2" team for his new project, which had originally been set up for a sequel to Chrono Trigger, and it seems that the concept for Deus might have come after the initial proposal, since Soraya goes on to say in the same FAQ entry; "Then [after Takahashi proposed the plan] I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet."
This suggests to me that the religious symbolism and greater maturity came to fruition after the initial proposal, once the project was independent from the FF franchise. It is also possible that it was at this stage that the project may have been developed as "Chrono Trigger 2," when you consider the initial similarity between Soraya's concept and that of Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Takahashi states in the 2002 Sony interview, "With Xenogears, in the very beginning we started from the point of making a sequel to Chrono Trigger. But as various arguments with the publisher piled up, some practical difficulties came up... Thanks to Sakaguchi-san's great efforts on our behalf, we were allowed to make it an original title. So when we started development, we had parts that wouldn't fit in a fantasy world, and I was worried about the motivation of the staff. To an extent, we made Xenogears as a cross [between sci-fi and fantasy]." Mitsuda added, in the 2018 Anniversary Concert interview that, "At the time the team was supposed to be responsible for a Chrono Trigger sequel [...] But Takahashi-san wanted to make his own world, so it wasn't going to be 'Chrono 2'." This suggests that Takahashi himself was resistant to making his project a part of the Chrono series, and that it was not just issues with the publisher.
Takahashi further talked about the birth of the project in the 20th Anniversary Concert interviews, stating that "I liked mechs and pop culture characters, and I wanted to make a game combining the two. And if I was going to do it, I wanted it to be better than FF, too. I wanted to try my hand at the popular fad at the time of littering the plot with foreshadowing and having all of those storylines coming together for the central story, too." For the philosophical aspects of the game, he said that "Humans want a reason for their existence. If someone defines it for you, you think, 'So this is why I feel the way I do.', and you're comforted by that. I wanted to deliver that philosophical message in a way that could be understood easily."
Regarding the actual title, 'Xenogears', it is not difficult to guess where the second part of the name comes from - Gears. However, according to Takahashi, they came up with the word 'Xeno' first. "From the beginning, we decided on the word 'Xeno' between the staff. In itself, that has the implication of 'Something strange or alien', but what kind of title could we draw from that? So I made a few alternatives for things we could put after 'Xeno'. After that, we finally decided on 'Xenogears'." In a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Gameplay Demo during E3 2017 he further explained that "I think in life when we're living you meet different people and they have different [or strange] personalities, different backgrounds, and it's the interaction between those people that create the drama of life. And I thought that it would be great if I could drop that drama into video games, and that's why I add Xeno to a lot of my games."
Developing the game
Starting with Soraya's original story idea in 1994, Xenogears would not be released until February 1998. In the official source book, Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, released about 8 months after the game, Takahashi states in the "Main Staff of Xenogears" section, that "From the beginning, we spent just over two years working on Xenogears (there's been some rumors saying it's been in development for more than three years and the like, but that's just hearsay)." Hiromichi Tanaka says in the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview that development took "Two years and three months."
So what happened between 1994 and February 1998, during the planning, which would have ended in late 1995, and the development of Xenogears, which would have started around November 1995? How big was the story going to be? When did Takahashi decide on a 6-part episodic structure similar to that of Star Wars? Although we don't have that much insight into Takahashi's story-writing process, we will have to examine the little we know, and make educated guesses based on various information and quotes.
Xenogears Staff:
Junya Ishigaki, Kunihiko Tanaka, Tetsuya Takahashi, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Yasuyuki Honne, Yoshinori Ogura (1998)
Some evidence actually suggests that Xenogears was going to begin with "Episode IV." In 2008, a list of "random facts about Xenogears" appeared on a now defunct Xenogears: Perfect Works scanlation site called Razael Central, which said that "At the beginning of its development, the game was going to be divided into two separate games -- one covering Episode IV, and the other Episode V."
While at the time these "random facts" were met with some skepticism by Western fans, most of them could later be verified as more old and previously forgotten interviews were translated into English. The "random facts" are these days considered authentic:
"Random facts about Xenogears:
- Xenogears was called Ura FFVII (Bizarro FFVII) in Japan because development on the two games began around the same time, as well as the fact that while FFVII had polygonal characters with prerendered backgrounds, Xenogears had polygonal backgrounds and hand-drawn (prerendered) characters.
- Xenogears was considered a possible FFVII during the latter's planning stages, though Hironobu Sakaguchi decided against the idea. It was then developed as Chrono Trigger 2, but various circumstances meant it was reformed into Xenogears. This is also a reason why it shares a number of similarities with Chrono Cross, in addition to sharing some staff members.
- At the beginning of its development, the game was going to be divided into two separate games -- one covering Episode IV, and the other Episode V.
- Xenogears was not an offered choice in the recent 100 Items Representative of Japanese Media vote, but it did make the #3 write-in spot in the Entertainment category.
- Square had decided that a sequel to the game would be made if it sold 1 million copies, but in the end it only reached just shy of 900,000, so the plan was dropped."
Even though it is common and verified knowledge today thanks to this study guide, as late as 2010 Western fans could find no sources to confirm that Xenogears originally entered production as a possible "Chrono Trigger 2." Apart from the previously cited "Creator's Talk" interview on Sony's Website in 2002, this fact can also be verified with the DVD that came with the Xenosaga Fanbook with DVD where the developers talked about Xenogears and Xenosaga during a Monolith Soft conference that was held in the summer of 2001. More recently in 2018 it was mentioned again in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamphlet. Square has also gone on the record as identifying a connection between the two games in the Chrono Cross Ultimania, and the Japanese Wikipedia on Chrono Cross stated that Xenogears began development as Chrono Trigger 2. Also, in a demo movie of Xenogears the following line was used:
"So let love's blood flow! Like the seas of hell, it runs red and deep...!"
This line appear in Xenogears' system files, as a deleted part of the script when Fei wakes up after having destroyed Lahan, a part of Xenogears that was primarily written and staged by Chrono Trigger's script writer Masato Kato (possibly the line was meant to appear just before Fei wakes up, or while staring at Weltall, or after leaving Lahan behind), translated as:
Now, Fei, allow me to spill the blood out of love... Like the sea of hell, crimson, deep...!
Presumably this is Id speaking, but the line was removed for unknown reasons. Instead Masato Kato later used it in Chrono Cross' script, for Dark Serge, translated as "Now, let love bleed! Darker and deeper than the seas of hell!" Furthermore, Lucca, a character from Chrono Trigger, appears in Xenogears as a guest, whose last bonus line makes a reference to the Silbird (The Epoch).
So then, we must assume that the project began to be referred to as "Project Noah" some time in 1995, as well as the idea of turning it into two games. In the 2018 Concert interviews, Hiromichi Tanaka revealed that the world Takahashi was creating kept expanding, saying "We had initially planned it as a one-disc game, but we ended up having two discs thanks to Takahashi-kun's ever-expanding world. Even with that, two discs didn't seem enough to him, and he wanted to separate it into a part one and a part two." Takahashi had claimed in a 1998 interview in Hakoere that he already had the lore for the game that you see in Perfect Works worked out as they started production: "The lore in that [book] was something that I had already come up with at the very beginning of development. But I'm not a good communicator, and I tend to hold things in. So I think there were only one or two people among my staff who knew all of the details inside and out." But he later implied that not every detail of the lore was invented that early, explaining in the 2018 Concert interviews that "I had come up with a basic structure of the world from the beginning" and that "The ideas in Perfect Works were things that I had already thought about, but that book was the first time I had written it all out on paper."
"I was coming up with [the story's foundation] as development proceeded, but that was really inefficient, looking back. For a typical RPG, for the sake of efficient you would work on the foundation while you wrote the script, and then everything would be made after that. Everything started at the same time for development at the time, so that's pretty inefficient. If the script is lagging behind, everything slows down with it, and you have to keep on making the game without having a feel for what kind of game it is that you're making. This was not a good structure, and I have bitter memories of it."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert interview)
"Like human history, I want people to see Xenogears as just one piece of the entire history of that world," he explains in the Concert interviews. "I wanted to start off with something that was easy to get into. And thus, you begin with a pastoral setting, and that slowly begins to change as the game progresses... I had planned that from the start." In the Hakoere interview, Takahashi also said that, "It was pure sci-fi for me at the beginning. But because of the change of course that I mentioned earlier [from FFVII to Xenogears], and considering the staff's own tastes and what they specialized in, I thought it would be better if we had certain elements from fantasy genres."
On February 11, 2024, Yasuyuki Honne shared some early development material for Xenogears on his Twitter/X account, which included a rough idea for Av (Aveh) that he drew early in development, and an early days lore draft written by Takahashi. Honne's upload does not show the whole paper, so some sentences are cut off, but a YouTuber named "Will Bill" (who also translated the Japanese Xenogears novel "A God Slaying Story" in 2023) did a translation that I will transcribe here:
"Why is [Grahf] the Count of Solaris? He seems to be working alongside Myyah exclusively, not with the Emperor or the Ministry. Grahf knows about Myyah's purpose and what she intends to do with the world. It's the reason he decided to work with her. Myyah has 4 other Guardian Angels besides Grahf, working behind the scenes across the world.
Av: One of the Great Powers of Ignas
A fortified city-state, located in the vast desert stretching from south to south western sides of the main continent. Formerly, the country had a monarch, but after a coup, is now controlled by Prime Minister Laverne's military regime. Av used to be a peaceful nation, centered in an oasis, but after Laverne's usurpation, they began invading other countries, in search of more fertile land.
Ramsus, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, is currently in the area, having entered an alliance with Av on behalf of Solaris. Av is at war with Iyar, but so far there haven't been any direct invasions into each other's countries. Even so, there have been non-stop battles between the three kingdoms.
Prime Minister Laverne was formerly of Iyar, same as Bishop Stone, although the two wouldn't appear to be from the same country. After being forced out of Iyar, Laverne effectively infiltrated Av's politics, gradually gaining power. For him, this invasion is about more than simply gaining resources or land, he wants revenge on Iyar for his exile. In order to facilitate his invasion, he allied with Solaris. Neither Av nor Iyar stand a chance against Solaris. He's a selfish ruler who only seems to care about his prideful ambitions. He would stop at nothing to quash even the slightest perceived mutiny from a trusted subordinate. Laverne has reached the point of no return, choosing now to act with tyranny.
Bart and his comrades are the last remnants of Av's old monarchy. They're working to take back the country, though they don't seem to have much interest in restoring a King to the throne."
- Translation by Will Bill (YouTube)
In this early draft it seems Shakhan was named "Laverne" and the Kislev empire was named "Iyar," which is the name of another month in the Hebrew calendar. Though it is possible that Iyar was a mix of Kislev and what became the Ethos institution (the Church) since the draft says that Laverne and Bishop Stone were both from Iyar. Laverne's story of revenge was also changed when the character became Shakhan, since Shakhan is never actually exiled from the Ethos or anywhere else.
"[Iyar] isn't the only case of a country that was scrapped in early development either. Looking closely at the page that was posted we can see little bits of the page behind it poking through. I really can't make out what any of this text says, but one thing that did stick out to me was the katakana spelling out 'Tevet.' This most likely would have been another country but, again, was scrapped early on."
- Will Bill (Xenogears Development Documents Revealed, YouTube)
Grahf was also considered a Guardian Angel in this draft and Ramsus was one of four "Heavenly Kings," the most generic name in Japanese for a group of 4 powerful entities. In the final game Ramsus is also a Guardian Angel, as is Miang (Myyah) herself. According to Perfect Works page 26, Guardian Angels are the fourth rank in Solaris' Upper Class hierarchy, headed by Gebler and the Church that handles commands from the Emperor and overseeing the operation of other mangers entrusted with maintaining Solaris' governing power. But the only characters confirmed to be Guardian Angels in the final version are Citan, Ramsus, and Miang 0998.
The exact year the game settled on the title "Xenogears" is unknown. Takahashi's profile on the official website would eventually read:
"He supervised the graphics division from Final Fantasy V until VI. With the switch in hardware, he's decided to start working on an RPG with a new style and taste, Project"NOAH" (Development code name, it was later given the title Xenogears). With the style and sense of the graphics and the cohesion of the scenario, he's aiming to make a game where the total balance will be outstanding."
- http://www.playonline.com/archives/psgame/Xenogears/staff.html
A "Project NOAH" logo is hidden on the game discs
The game later switched to the working title "Project X" presumably after the title had been settled on, as can be seen in the 1997 preview interview.
Although Takahashi did have some experienced people working for him, since he was given a new team most of his project was made up of young, new, and inexperienced staff members. Takahashi told Jason Schreier, from the website Kotaku, during E3 2017 in Los Angeles (through a translator) that, "Xenogears as a project was staffed pretty much entirely out of new staff members, young staff members. [...] So on top of developing the game, we had to nurture and teach and grow these younger employees. Things like 3D were extremely new, which led to some delays in the schedule."
Takahashi also felt that the budget was limited, and soon Final Fantasy VII was in full swing right next door to his team, "and they had a quite different budgetary scale. So I couldn't help asking for [money for animation]," Takahashi told Sony in 2002.
Takahashi wanted to see whether they could make a game entirely in 3D, not simply the event scenes. His initial motivation was to try to make games that achieved that. "I felt that the company needed to develop knowledge on how to utilise 3D in a different way from that of [FF] VII. I wanted to make levels entirely three-dimensional and allow the player to freely alter the angle they view the game world at. Ninety percent of my team were actually new kids who didn't know the first thing about 3D. The most difficult thing was the psychological side: helping people adjust to the team, talking through their worries and concerns with them, and so on. It was then that I realised that Sakaguchi-san had been dealing with this kind of thing all along."
Despite facing the immense challenge of running his own team with inexperienced staff, Takahashi had a strong sense that he would be able to pull it off. But, "Now when I look back at it, I realise that if I'd done more to inspire that same feeling in my staff, it would have been easier to build a team," he says in the 2011 Iwata interview.
He also let his true feelings about the development be known in a message to fans in The PlayStation magazine in March 1999 where he said, "Frankly, I remember not having a very good feeling at the beginning of development. We were squeezed in between the two big titles Square were promoting heavily, Chocobo ['s Mysterious Dungeon] and Parasite [Eve], so like water flowing from a high place, the world's attention was totally focused on them. In that situation, if we'd had an owner who showed the proper sensitivity, we might not have fallen into a mental state where we were liable to get everything from stomach ulcers and twisted intestines to hernias and spot baldness. But even if we hadn't been squeezed between those two games, the company's intentions were like that anyway, so it might not have made much of a difference in practice. In addition, there was naturally a significant 'divergence' between the direction Square was aiming to take with their exisiting games as represented by FF and the direction I wanted to go in. [...] and for a company to push things to the extent that there's such a divergence isn't just reckless, I knew [about] that from the start - that is to say, I think they were aiming for that to a certain extent. All that said, considering how it all ended up, while I honestly thought I might go bald, in the end I didn't lose any hair, and my health wasn't ruined."
Masato Kato, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Yasuyuki Honne, Makoto Shimamoto and Yoshinori Ogura had already worked with Takahashi on Chrono Trigger. Kato would serve as an Event Planner (possibly the lead Event Planner) responsible for staging and also contributed with script writing (more on this later). Uchiyama was in charge of modeling for the Gears (ending up modeling around 190 Gears all by himself), while Honne did background art supervision and texture mapping (credited as "Art Director"). Shimamoto served as Battle Planner along with Hiromichi Tanaka, and Ogura did sub-mecha design.
"Battle Gear modeling is figuring out how the sliding polygons come together in a system.
20 years ago, my heart was touched watching the technique of modeling various devised prototype robots. And there were many TV programs showing robots. It was my dream when I grew up to create the Super robot.
So here I am today, my job is making robots. For me, Xenogears is an unforgettable experience."
- Hiroshi Uchiyama (Xenogears: Perfect Works, Main Staff page 289)
Hiromichi Tanaka supervised the battle system, and Tetsuya Takahashi handled everything to do with direction and "writing the scenario" (according to Staff interview in 1998). Hiromichi Tanaka says that "I was focused on how to reflect the world and lore of Xenogears that Takahashi had envisioned into the actual game. I would do some of the conceptual and structural things, and not interfere with anything other than that. As a producer, I wanted to focus on staff management, but when it came to UI, it was easier to just do it myself rather than explain it to someone, so I did that. Thinking back, I interfered quite a bit."
Tetsuya Nomura was also on Takahashi's team at the very start of the project, since Takahashi really wanted to continue working with Nomura and have him as the main character designer for the game. Takahashi says in a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 interview with time.com that "when I was about to start on [the] new game, and the name "Xenogears" wasn't set yet, for that new title I needed a designer. [While developing the Final Fantasy series] Mr. Nomura and I were in the team together doing character design. At the time, Mr. [Yoshinori] Kitase was handling Final Fantasy and I was doing this new title, and I wanted to work with Mr. Nomura. So I was waiting for the final call to be made, whether he was going to be working on the Final Fantasy series or on this new title of mine. And then Mr. Sakaguchi came and said 'Tetsu is going to do Final Fantasy.' So I thought 'Okay, I've got to find myself a new designer.'"
Tetsuya Nomura gave his version of the event in a 2022 WE DISCUSS VANA'DIEL interview with Nomura when the subject of Mr. Sakaguchi's "bold leadership and reckless behests" came up, saying "I had a similar experience before joining the FFVII project. Around the same time as FFVII, Mr. Takahashi was in the planning phase for Xenogears, and I was asked to join that project as well. So I had a meeting with Kitase from the FFVII team and Mr. Takahashi from the Xenogears team to decide which team I'd be joining. As we were still talking it over, Mr. Sakaguchi suddenly came into the meeting room and said, 'Tetsu will work on FF,' and left without another word. And that was the end of the meeting. (laughs)"
Tetsuya Nomura, the character designer who replaced Yoshitaka Amano for Final Fantasy starting with Final Fantasy VII and later directed the Kingdom Hearts series and the CGI animated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, actually came up with the original idea for the character Citan Uzuki during his brief time on Takahashi's team. "Our old friend Tetsuya Nomura was in the team for a short time at a very early stage of development. He said 'Don't you guys think there should be an Asian, tactician type of a character in the game?' Takahashi came up with Citan from that remark. It was fun working together with friends," says Soraya in a comment to fans on deviantART in July of 2008.
While there are clearly some influences from Chrono Trigger in Xenogears, especially in Masato Kato's parts of the story (Lahan and Shevat), there were also a few influences from Final Fantasy VII which Masato Kato also contributed script writing for. The globe shaped designs on the chest of El Renmazuo came straight from the command 'Materia' in FFVII as a reference point according to Ishigaki in Xenogears: Perfect Works. As the two games were in development at the same time they also referenced each other. In Solaris there is a poster of Final Fantasy VII's Tifa, while Cloud, when recovering in Mideel, says among gibberish:
"A billion mirror fragments... small... light... taken... angel's... singing voices...zeno...gias"
As Kato wrote this scene he was obviously making a reference to the ending song Small Two of Pieces which he wrote the lyrics for, and "zenogias" is the romanized spelling of "Xenogears."
Not being able to work with Tetsuya Nomura, Takahashi then reached out to an acquaintance, Kunihiko Tanaka, whom he had known since his days at Falcom Japan. Kunihiko explains in the 20th Anniversary Concert interviews, "We knew each other from the Nihon Falcom days. When I became a freelancer and Takahashi-san had moved to Square, he asked me if I could draw for Live A Live. The game has a lot of different worlds, and I drew with that in mind, but none of my artwork was used." Kunihiko claims in the Hakoere interview that Takahashi first reached out to him about Xenogears around the summer of 1995 but Kunihiko was unsure he wanted to do it. Then Takahashi asked him again around April 1996 and he took on the job since Takahashi seemed serious about it.
Timeline wise this seems a bit late, but Takahashi may have been without a main character designer for several months. Becoming the main character designer for Takahashi, Kunihiko Tanaka wanted to try something more serious for the art in Xenogears, describing his past art as "very comical and very anime," so he studied the art styles found in manga that was targeted at a more mature audience. In his Concert interview, composer Yasunori Mitsuda do say that they mostly worked on the 3D technology and figuring out the new hardware at first while Takahashi "was working behind the scenes writing up the plot," and that after the first six months or so "characters could move a bit, you could move the camera, and Lahan Village was completed." Mitsuda also says that it was around that time he "had started to truly grasp the plot." And it would have been around that time Kunihiko Tanaka also joined the team, with the original deadline to finish the game set somewhere in the summer of 1997. Meaning at that point when they had only finished Lahan Village they had little more than a year left to complete the rest of the game.
For the beginning of the game and the protagonist Fei, Takahashi says in the 1997 preview that he found himself to be deeply dissatisfied with the ideas behind video game characters up to that point. "Novels and movies can reliably build characters, but videogames leave me with the impression that they are still not there yet." Motivated by such sentiments, Takahashi attempted to create better justification for some of the prevalent character tropes in video games, such as heroes with amnesia. "I gave Fei his amnesia on purpose," he explains in the same interview. "Characters built around the idea of amnesia have been featured in other works up to the present, but I think that the justifications have been horrible. Among them, you might even find characters who've 'fallen, and hit their heads'... and so, thinking 'Enough of half-baked forays, isn't it about time for creators to learn and create?', this time we purposefully built our protagonist Fei with that very same idea of amnesia, as an antithesis. Its significance was that of 'how deeply can we probe into a single character idea?'." While Takahashi certainly explored a deep and comprehensive character idea with Fei, little of it actually has to do with amnesia in the end, which is probably what he meant by Fei being an "antithesis" to that trope.
About Lahan Village, Takahashi says in Perfect Works that "The quick death of all the Lahan Villagers that appear except Dan, was not ordered specifically by me," and further explains that "Alice is the first main event's character as ordered, and after the destruction of Lahan, while Timothy's death as her fiance sounded good, we thought about leaving her alive to follow Fei around. A woman like that couldn't come between Fei and Elly's path to love, so she died off right away with the other villagers."
Kunihiko Tanaka goes on reflecting on what it was like to work with all the staff in a single room. "At first, I was sitting with Takahashi-san while I do my work. Although that's just a technicality, because it was a looooooong desk, and I sat in one corner, and he sat in the other. (laughs) As you would expect, you get a lot of inspiration being so close to the team, so it was a lot of fun. Like the event planner Masato Kato, everyone had so much passion and tried to put as much content as they could into the game. I think it was hard for Takahashi-san to control that, but Takahashi-san competed with everyone else and tried to put in as much as he could of what he wanted, too."
For the design of the main characters' Gears, Takahashi reached out to Junya Ishigaki, but the details are unknown. Ishigaki was likely picked because he has designed mechs for the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, of which Takahashi is a fan.
Rough draft of Weltall (named "Odin" at the time), the first Gear to be designed
As previously cited by Takahashi, the codename for the Gears was "Odin," which appears to have come from one of the summon "beasts" in Final Fantasy called Odin. But Odin was also the original name for the protagonist's Gear "Weltall." The Xenogears Postcard Book has sketches of the design evolution of Weltall in all its forms (including Grahf's Gear "Original Weltall") in which all the sketches use the name "Odin" instead of Weltall (such as "Original Odin," "System-Id Odin," "Second Odin," etc.). This suggests that the name Odin for the main Gear was changed to Weltall rather late in development. If they originally were intent on going with Odin as the name then perhaps that explains why there are other aesthetic but seemingly irrelevant name references to Norse mythology such as the sand cruiser Yggdrasil in the game. It makes sense for an "Odin" to be stationed onboard an "Yggdrasil," but beyond that it does not make much sense for the sand cruiser to be named after the World Tree in Norse mythology.
"The Gear Weltall, piloted by Fei, Xenogears' protagonist. Originally named 'Odin,' the design was divided into 4 modes, with the details evolving daily over many rough sketches. The timeline of Weltall's completion is very interesting."
- Xenogears Postcard Book
The Gears were initially 2D renderings just like the human characters, but the team "found out mid-development that there was a limit to the amount of 2D objects the PlayStation could display," and were lucky because one of the staff members, Hiroshi Yamauchi, "had already familiarized himself with 3D, and he liked mechs. That's why the gears are 3D if I recall," Takahashi explains in the Concert interviews.
Continuing with the character designs, Takahashi goes on in Perfect Works to say of Fei; "In relation to the past Fei, because of time considerations for the main illustrator Tanaka-kun, the designs were made in-house," probably alluding to having to come up with a design before they even had a main character designer. "At first, [Kim] had japanese style clothing, intending to show that Zeboim was very close to the present day world. As a doctor [Kim] had a white lab coat. Originally Lacan was to have had a separate design, but during [development] there wasn't a lot of time to draw new characters, so it couldn't be helped, he had the same clothes as Fei, and with Fei having the memories, his point of view as the main observer kind of had it make sense - at least that's how it comes out."
Being without a main character designer at first, it seems the team held mini art contests for characters that Kunihiko Tanaka later took into consideration, and we also know that Soraya Saga had a hand in designing the characters she wrote. In the Concert interviews Kunihiko explains that "I started with Fei and Elly and worked on characters with the highest priority. [...] There were mini art contests at Square within the company, so sometimes I would absorb what other people did and use some of their ideas. There are designs I worked from scratch, but there were indeed some designs done by other people within Square that I thought was good. While it is in my style, Bart, Margie, and Billy were all designs that I felt like would be wasted if I had altered it, so I tried to leave as much as I could of the original art. Billy especially is mostly unchanged. It's a very delicate and wonderful design."
Takahashi says in Perfect Works that "Elly was originally envisioned with a lighter version of her clothing. It had a strong pastoral feel. Elly is different from Fei, and more direct by comparison, which I wanted Tanaka-kun to reflect in his drawings. The past Elly, Sophia, was drawn like Fei for the same reasons inside the company. The same for each time period's concept. There wasn't really a design for Sophia's clothes, and finally getting down to it, the staff helped to make an outfit that suited her perfectly. Tanaka-kun wanted to draw the Zeboim Elly (nurse) himself. (Heh, heh)." Kunihiko adds in the Concert interviews that "For hair, Takahashi-san wanted it very long. She was first wearing a coarse, black jacket. But Takahashi-san wanted something like a race queen, and that's when the design started to change. She wore something that showed her curves. For the colors, I went with white, as that matches Solaris well. Takahashi-san and I both really like Star Wars. If I was asked who I would be in the Star Wars universe, I would say Storm Troopers. That's how much I like the black and white mechanical design that it has. So I designed Elly's military uniform with that in mind."
"The concept of her clothes was something sleek, (like a race queen). The slit in the hip area wasn't there at first, but we wanted it (heh, heh). And the shoulders were on a draft that we liked - for a total costume that we liked the most. On the other hand, too complicated and the cosplay guys would have real problems! (Hah, ha!) And the stockings couldn't get too colorful, (hah, hah). They were more of a undercoat (leotard type thing) and it came together. However, compared to most stockings, these might be really expensive (luxury item). And normally would have been like the clothes, white also."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~)
For Citan, according to Takahashi, the team had this "crazy idea of making him a character that would use sophistry to defeat enemies on the battlefield." But they couldn't pull it off with the system they were working with.
"Citan's clothing also ended up pastoral. It didn't bug me as much as Fei's, so we went with this. There weren't any revisions in the design process, and the original got an O.K. On the surface, he's a traveling doctor. A protecting presence in the party. He gives the impression of great knowledge - kind of old fogeyish - as ordered. I increasingly felt that this was perfectly suited to the character."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~)
Kunihiko Tanaka goes on to say, "To give you an idea of what goes into character design, I'll see if I can describe it. Let's start with Fei. As he's the hero he has to have a distinctive hair style. When people see him, they have to say 'Ah, he's different'. And for this reason, Fei was given a very "different" hair style. There are a lot of results from this. The concept of the heroine, Elly has her with long hair. I wanted to see it go straight down to her knees. And Bart's outfit I thought, 'what kind of jumper to put him in?'. Maria's goggles are swiss goggles. Seraphita is of the house of rabbits. Emeralda as an adult? Margie as stubborn. Big Joe's chin. Rico's chin, too. Zephyr as a calm and serene beauty. Citan's glasses like [the mech] 'Scopedog's' [from Armored Trooper VOTOMS] and Ramsus having the belly from Gundam F91. Really...I mean it!"
Kunihiko Tanaka struggled very hard to design Karellen. As a symbol of holiness in Western culture he was given a head band, and apparently Takahashi wanted him to be good looking. The design of Karellen as leader of Nisan's Monastery army was made by the interior staff. The only directive for Maria's design was sending out the idea of "How about the fastest to be made is a girl?" along the staff, "and everyone got the drift," Takahashi says. Kunihiko Tanaka calls her "a female version of Daisaku Kusama," the main character of Giant Robo. He took the design made and added the curly hair to make her stand out more, and to contrast from the royalty look he gave her pilot goggles. For Chu-Chu a koala type animal was ordered, and until she was finally finished it caused unrest. "A real pinch" says Takahashi. Kunihiko went with a design "that combines hamsters and Ewoks." Regarding the female characters, Takahashi says in the 1998 interview: "This is my fault, but we focused too much on having male characters that we ended up hardly having any girls. By the time we realized it, the only girls besides Elly were an animal, a child, and an artificial human. (laughs) There was still room left for some girl power, I think."
Bart was designed around the same time as Fei, "and by now we didn't want a hint of anything pastoral" says Takahashi, "so the clothing is really sci-fi style with strong colors just as I remember ordering. As a result, both Bart and Elly are decked out rather 'expensively'. Out of all the male characters, I like his clothing the best. And that's just the clothes", he continues, suggesting he became real fond of the character. "The eyepatch should be on the left eye, so when it sometimes show up as the right eye, that mistake was on Square's side. My appologies to all the gamers."
Rico was the fastest character they designed. "If he looks familiar from other games, that's just in your mind, the first I've heard of it. Anyway, we'll let that one go," says Takahashi with a laugh, alluding to the fact that Rico looks like the character Blanka from Capcom's Street Fighter series. Kunihiko Tanaka explains the similarity further in the Concert interviews: "Takahashi-san is a huge fan of the fighting genre, and in the Falcom days he would often bring the arcade system board for Street Fighter II and play all night. I think from those memories, I just have an image of human beasts= Blanka. By the way, Takahashi-san was super strong, so I could never beat him." Kunihiko also says in the same interview that Rico's leather jacket with metal parts might have had some influence from Michael Jackson's "Bad."
"Billy's appearance is a remnant of the lost civilization in the Aquvy area (partly excavated in the present). Originally, he was to have had long hair, but we wanted him to come off as a little more cool than that when compared to Bart. So can a bishounen with a pretty boy face be a 'cool and dry' kind of character? That's the concept of Billy. Why a holy man bearing guns? That's what we were asked all the time, and for the gun bearing holy man (shepherd) this is a popular image in some cultures (assuming Billy is a son of God).
From the beginning, [Emeralda] was Tanaka-kun's design along the lines of a [Key the Metal Idol] character, and was created as an artificial life that has no heart. Her clothing was destroyed when she didn't like what was supplied to her in Solaris, at least that's what Tanaka-kun says, and she asked for [the clothes she wears in the game]. Originally, because she was able to transform her body, her face was the result of the personal data collected from Fei and Elly, the desired child they had always wanted (expected looks of their child) - and this might be why she is very precious to them."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~)
It seems that it was always the plan for Emeralda to grow into an adult, since Kunihiko Tanaka was told this when he was requested to design her. "So I designed her outfit in a way so that it would be fine if she became bigger. I designed it thinking she must be in an environment where there are only adult clothes laying around, and she just picked out what she liked out of that. She has big metal shoulder pads, but Emeralda herself is heavy so I thought it was alright and put it on her," he says in the Concert interviews. "I designed her thinking she was going to be like Key and not be very emotive, but when I saw her in the game I was a bit surprised at how she was very emotive, saying the name Kim over and over. I thought it was a bit different from what I had imagined her to be."
Sigurd was designed almost completely by Soraya Saga, and because of schedule conflict Tanaka was only able to draw the official face portrait. Maison was ordered to have an impression similar to that of Batman's Alfred, or the actor Max Von Sydow. Ultimately he became closer to Alfred. Margie was a playable character at a very early stage in development, but the plan was dropped. Takahashi asked for Miang to have short hair to contrast Elly's long hair. "There is absolutely no genetic between her and Elly and as one of 'those awakenings 'as Miang',' Tanaka-kun requested a woman reminiscent of Elly around 26 years old or so. He directed her clothing be a grade up from Elly's. The tight skirt gave a more adult look."
The rough designs for the Elements girls were done by Takayama and were not totally solidified. In particular their lower halves' clothing. "Dominia was drawn as a forceful character. Kelvena regardless was a character as service to the boys," explains Takahashi. Not much was expected of Tolone other than she's a cyborg, and she came together quickly. Seraphita was ordered as a 'demi-human' and Kunihiko, who loves bunnies, came up with the design while also being influenced by Roomi from Galaxy Fight: Universal Warriors.
Emperor Cain was vizualized with a silver skeleton look but ended up in gold color. "The face behind the mask would probably have Ramsus' style of beauty," says Takahashi in Perfect Works, although "Ramsus himself was fused with Solarian Kahran, so even though he is a copy of Cain, he doesn't have his exact appearance," Takahashi continues. In the 1997 preview, he also said that "there's not one pointless individual among the humans that make up the villains of the game. Each and every one of them has their own feelings. Also, not one of them is intrinsically evil."
From the beginning, the story had centered on a protagonist with multiple personalities, and so it became necessary to make him appear as different persons. "While maintaining a hint of Fei, I focused on the kind of colors I used so it wouldn't be immediately obvious who Id actually was," says Kunihiko in the Concert interviews. "At first, I had an idea in my head of Id having flames in both of his palms, so I don't know if it's because of graphical limitations to animate the fire, but it's not in the game. I thought it was cool."
"Unlike Fei, [Id] is really out there. The first drafts were really hard, and after much thought, Tanaka-kun made him much better looking. For the clothing, at that time, Tanaka-kun adopted something along anime lines. When Fei changes to Id, how the clothes changes too is still a mystery to me."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~)
Fei's father, Kahn, came together pretty fast due to Tanaka-kun's love of martial arts movies. A designer from Square's Front Mission team, Hamaeda, came up with Hammer's appearance. "Hammer and Rico's relationship was aided by asking the input of FF designer Yashiro-kun. Hamaeda-kun says "crap!" often," Takahashi explains. In the course of writing, Kunihiko Tanaka asked for the addition of an awesome non-playable character and thus Big Joe was created.
Rather than just CG, the game would incorporate animation scenes into various parts of the game, because "I just like it personally," says Takahashi. "That, and it's hard to turn Tanaka-kun's art into CG (laughs). Anime was the most natural way we could present it." However, according to the video-senki interview in 2001, Takahashi eventually felt, around the point the 3D screens and maps were completed, that he really wanted to go for 3D instead. For this reason he would make Xenosaga Episode I entirely in CG later on. But apparently, according to Hiromichi Tanaka in the 1997 preview, they had quite the heated argument within Square about the use of anime scenes in the game. But Takahashi said "we are going with this." Takahashi felt the use of animation was necessary for the core of the story and the psychological depiction of the characters, which was hard to pull of any other way at the time or with the budget they had.
In the 2018 Concert interviews, Hiromichi Tanaka also added that "Takahashi-kun insisted that we do animation, and so we decided to go ahead with it. At the time, however, there was not that much precedent for having animation in a game. For FFVII we used CGI made by the company, but we didn't have anything within the company for 2D animation, so we had to outsource it to an anime company. The animation was half CGI, one of Production I.G.'s strong suits."
About the use of the 3D engine for most regular story scenes, Hiromichi Tanaka says in the 1998 Staff interview: "If you've played the game, you'll know this, but Xenogears has a lot of cutscenes that aren't pre-rendered. It's something like real-time 3D anime that's being calculated on top of the actual game screen. That was the biggest reason we didn't use CG movies this time. 'Xenogears' uses 3D maps, and if it had been 2D we wouldn't have been able to move the camera freely, effects would have to been processed in 3D anyway, and so for those reasons [the game's] engine itself was suited to have cutscenes that played in real-time, as opposed to it being pre-rendered."
For the camera movement when traversing the maps, Takahashi says in the 1997 preview that they "purposefully put in some time lag in the camera's movement when the characters walk. This was done for the purpose of making it more human-like. When turning around or when changing your gaze, it takes a little time, don't you think?" He wanted to be able to allow players to relish in such atmosphere. The risk of getting lost when first arriving in towns and dungeons appears to have been part of his intention. "I believe that's how it works even in the real world, if you repeatedly move through you'll eventually grasp where things are, but until you become familiar with the environment, you might just get a bit lost..." and (in the Hakoere interview) "In a real town, if you go from the opposite direction that you usually come from, it can look like a totally different place. It's small, but I wanted to do something like that in this game." In the 1998 Staff interview he added that with a 3D map "everything feels more alive. If you've walked around on the map, you know how easy it is to get lost. (laughs) but I wanted to have that sense of realism. I wanted to keep that feeling of the first time you walk into a town you've never been to."
In the Hakoere interview he also said, in a rather regretful way, that "During development, we had ideas for hiding things in certain places and the like, and those ideas ended up taking priority." This priority may have come at the expense of some other things he would have like to have included in the final game. He touches some more on how experimenting with 3D environments led to many things not being implemented in the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview, saying "Final Fantasy VII uses a CG prerendering for the backgrounds. Each one takes about two to three days to create. On the otherhand, with the full, interactive backgrounds for Xenogears, each one ended up taking around two to three weeks to make. On top of that, we had to keep cutting and scrapping ideas to fit the game within the hardware specs and capacity. It was a very time consuming process." In the same interview, Hiromichi Tanaka adds that "Unlike traditional maps, we had to put time into the backs of buildings and other structures. We weren't able to cut any corners. The staff members in charge of the maps had a very time difficult."
Hiromichi Tanaka had designed the battle system for Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana, so the battle system in Xenogears is an evolution of those. Supposedly an old promo reel of Square's from mid-1996 contained footage of a "Chrono Trigger 2" which showed early footage of Xenogears. If this is true, then development on the game had definitely begun before they settled on the title "Xenogears." This would explain why the "Chrono Trigger 2" rumor echoed among English speaking fans for so long even without access to translations of confirmed sources.
Early screenshot when "chibi" versions of characters were used as battle portraits (unknown date).
"I let Takahashi-kun do the plot, and I did the combat system. I ended up doing the menu, the combat UI, and the camera regarding battle events. To get even more specific, I worked on things like the status screen, punching in bits for the battle UI, and the map compass," Hiromichi Tanaka says in the 2018 Anniversary Concert interviews. In the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview he also said that "It seemed like Takahashi was inspired by Sabin's "Blitz" command in Final Fantasy VI, and after some trial and error, we eventually settled on this system."
The combat system became a command-input system, like a fighting game, which probably had something to do with Takahashi being a fan of that genre. In the 1998 interview with Xenogears staff, Hiromichi Tanaka says that he "didn't want to do the whole 'choose commands from a menu' thing." He also wanted to "build on the great feeling you get punching things," but he couldn't have commands like a fighting game, "because some people wouldn't be able to play it." He spent around six months to a year just coming up with the concept. "I couldn't come up with a solution that I felt confident in, but I eventually ended up with what you see today." For Gears there was at first not going to be much of a difference in terms of commands between on-ground combat and Gear combat. "But I couldn't make all Gear movement the same because of the different designs, so I went for something between regular battle commands and the Combo mechanic in on-ground combat," he explains.
They also made a minigame with Gear battling similar to a fighting game, and Takahashi explains in the same interview that "We wanted to do a minigame that was completely different from the main game. But it wouldn't have worked if we just used the same combat system, so we had to form a separate programming team, and we treated it like it was its own separate game." A lot of stuff was put in this minigame to make it look like a standalone game, and Takahashi says that ended up taking a whole year to complete.
Returning to the episodic structure of the grand story, which was likely established very early after the initial proposal, Takahashi says in the Hakoere interview: "Xenogears was originally planned to be a story of space that spanned 15 billion years. So the actual game of Xenogears covers Episode V of that. Initially, we had separated the events of 500 years ago as Episode IV, and the modern era as Episode V, with IV being Part 1 and V being Part 2, but the company told us to bundle it into one. I want to release II and III in a different medium. I don’t care if it's a novel or a manga or an anime, but I began with V because I thought it would be the easiest to grasp and would be the most interesting."
I suspect that the Hakoere interview have made an error or misprint when replicating Takahashi's supposed words of "15 billion years" since page 2 in Perfect Works says "The time scale involved is more or less 15,000 years." In both places the number 15 reoccurs, suggesting both sources are supposed to state the same time scale Takahashi had in mind. I find it highly unlikely that Takahashi really meant 15 billion years when most of the episodes in the original outline are only a few thousand years apart, and indeed encompass roughly 15 thousand years. And if he was including the time since the Big Bang (in the Hakoere interview but not in Perfect Works for some reason) then we have 13,787 billion years up till the start of Episode I followed by 15 thousand years up till Episode VI. That still leaves 1 212 985 000 years for Episode VI to cover. I find that very unlikely.
In the 2002 Sony interview, Takahashi was also asked about how much of the tale beyond Episode V he had planned out inside his head, to which Takahashi responded by saying: "There's not that much left in the form of [actual] documents, but I've come up with a lot." He further made the following comment at the beginning of Xenogears: Perfect Works:
"The world of Xenogears can be divided into three episodes, broadly speaking. The first takes place roughly 5000 years into the future from our present real-life era, a story playing out in the vastness of outer space. The second is the content of the game itself, the story of the world inhabited by Fei and his friends. It follows that the third would be the story of what comes after that.
Within that framework, the second episode can be further broken up into four smaller sub-episodes. We originally intended to release these sub-episodes taking place in the various time periods of the second episode in several completely different forms, such as a simulation game, a novelization and so on, but in the end we crammed all of it into a single game. That means the game Xenogears consists of Episodes IV and V mixed in with bits and pieces from Episodes II and III.
The result of this, then, is that the unreleased Episodes I and VI become the main points of interest, or rather, they become what I'd very much like you all to focus on. What will happen regarding these Episodes depends on how circumstances unfold, I suppose. To help nudge these circumstances and possibilities in a more favorable direction, I'd like you all to please try wishing upon the Zohar."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, Director's Comment, page 3)
The above Director's Comment by Tetsuya Takahashi is one of the most revealing comments he has ever made in regards to Xenogears' story and the grand vision of it. It supports the idea that the game is about Episode IV and V, and so it makes sense that it was originally going to be two games with spin offs for Episode II and III. It is also very clear that Takahashi didn't have a developed plan for what Episode I and VI were going to be about, but mostly left them open to future possibilities - which explains why all the focus is on the four episodes in the middle of the story.
By the end of development, however, Takahashi would feel that even after having four episodes crammed into the game, if only by fragments, it was still barely one third of what he wanted to tell with this story on Fei's planet. "I have to face up to the truth that we didn't include a third of the full story," he says in the Main Staff of Xenogears in Perfect Works. In addition to this, Episode I and VI were now visualized as being the size of the four combined episodes each, and the scale of the story and the Xenogears universe must have had expanded in scope. It was no longer just a story about a soldier with multiple personalities, or a "mystic love story," or even a story about the history of just one planet... It was a huge scale space opera that involved the entirety of our human history in this fictional representation of our cosmos.
The three large parts of the Xenogears universe.
From a philosophical standpoint, it is not surprising that a story about humanity, religion, and the nature of existence, would evolve into a larger canvas. Especially since there were apparently other human civilizations out there in the vast universe who had to have created the "female A.I." that gave birth to the civilization in Xenogears. The idea that Takahashi came up with everything from the beginning seems unlikely, despite what he says, because of how uneven in scale he made the episodes. This would cause a problem for Takahashi, since now people see "Episode V" appearing in the game's credits, and Takahashi would not be able to deliver five more episodes on that scale, but rather just the two; Episode I and VI, with Episode II-IV absorbed into Episode V. Because of this, he would update the episodic structure for Xenosaga, where three similar large parts would be divided into two episodes each instead. But we'll get back to that later.
As the story of Xenogears was originally written, Takahashi first had his core ensemble of main characters; Fei, Elly and Karellen. "I had everything already figured out for the main characters. Fei, Elly, Citan, and Bart were there from the beginning," he says in the 1998 interview with Xenogears staff. "The others got added to diversify the cast." While Takahashi does not mention Karellen, likely because Karellen is not a playable character, he must have come up with him early on since he originally wanted to start with Episode IV where Karellen would have been a vital party member. Fei was the central character with multiple personalities that Soraya conceptualized with her original story. Elly (and Miang), were Soraya's female A.I. that gives birth to a new mankind. Bart was also created by Soraya while Nomura originated Citan. But the major character Takahashi created by himself - Karellen - would naturally also play a part in this mystic love story. As Takahashi refined Soraya's ideas into the core story of these three characters, the most logical approach to the development of Xenogears would indeed have been to start with "Episode IV," the period of 500 years before the game would actually be set. Not only is this logical from such a conceptual standpoint, it is further supported by the statements made by Takahashi. Thus Lacan, Sophia, and Karellen would've been the main characters and supported by Roni, Rene, and Zephyr as the main protagonists. Lacan and Karellen would then "turn to the dark side," so to speak, and become the central antagonists for "Episode V."
However, most likely the story Soraya originally wrote centered more on Fei as he appears in the final game. Episode IV was then added as a prequel story similar to George Lucas' Star Wars prequels. Once development began, the idea of beginning with Episode IV must have been appealing, since "Episode IV" is both the numbered episode of the first Star Wars film, and centered on the relationship and struggles between the story's three core characters Lacan, Elly, and Karellen. When that did not work out and Takahashi was asked to stick to just one game, he went back to the original story idea beginning with Fei and his multiple personalities (Episode V).
As a fan of cinema, Tetsuya Takahashi would of course be very familiar with George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy at the time, and influences can clearly be seen in the game. The biggest one is obviously the character of Grahf as a homage to Darth Vader, and Takahashi is not subtle about it. In Xenogears: Perfect Works he states, "[Grahf] looks like Darth Vader - as ordered. In terms of the masked design, we had a hard time with this one. The mask, because it was worn, had fairly complicated lines, and it is hard to find another example of such careful balance. However, behind Id and Grahf, there are many tears in the drawing process (Ha, ha)."
The "dark father" aspect of Xenogears, as well as the possibility of Fei giving into his dark sides (Id and Grahf) are clearly reminiscent of Luke, Darth Vader, and the "dark side of the Force" in Star Wars. The game, just like the original trilogy of Star Wars, begins with an orphaned hero with little knowledge about his parents, who is also under the supervision of a wise and knowledgeable guardian - who becomes a sort of mentor figure - and soon after the hero's farm-like home is destroyed he sets out with his guardian and finds himself in a lively desert town, becomes involved in a war between an Empire and a rebellion, befriends a pirate with a heart, and encounters a masked man in black as a central antagonist; who turns out to be the hero's father and his potential fall to darkness, but who ends up sacrificing himself for his son. Fei would even be frozen in Carbonite at one point. The episodic structure of a six-part saga also screamed "Star Wars."
However, Takahashi's style and themes are far more complex and adult than George Lucas' rather simple fairytale. Star Wars is not intellectual sci-fi, and was mainly aimed at children and teenage boys. It seems unlikely that Lucas would even be capable of including heavy philosophical discourse and scenes of human beings turning into zombies and eating each other, or have a mother torture her child, an insane man waving a knife in front of a little girl, or soldiers shooting a woman's face at point-blank range in Star Wars. Even the dark Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would not come anywhere near the often disturbing and morally grey stories that Xenogears and Xenosaga presents. The pachydermically good-natured Lucas has often been concerned that even some of the smallest things, like Vader revealing himself to be Luke's father, or Han "shooting first" at Greedo, could have a negative impact on children.
Tetsuya Takahashi doesn't shy away from dealing with mature and dark subject matter, as the graphic content of a sequence in Xenosaga Episode I with a character cutting his head off and then stomping on it (in the Japanese version), along with the symbolic rape of an artificial girl, illustrates the sort of content that would never make it into a bloodless, PG-rated Star Wars picture. Xenogears and Xenosaga also more explicitly portray sexual relationships. In Xenogears, for example, the characters Ramsus and Miang appear in bed together, clearly indicating they are lovers. Furthermore, several dialogues are quite suggestive of sex, such as one where the character Billy mentions that he almost sold his body for money.
In some ways Takahashi might be more, or at least equally, comparable to other film directors like Stanley Kubrick, director of such radical films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, or fantasy author George R.R. Martin who wrote the books the adult TV-show Game of Thrones is based on.
In the 1998 Hakoere interview, Takahashi does comment a bit on the morning "bed scene" with Elly and Fei on Disc 2 in which it is implied they had sex that night, saying: "I put it in for a reason. There was no ulterior motive. However, I did think it was odd that no company had done it before. In movies, you see it all the time. Because it's something that you can't avoid as a human, it should be something that's fine to put in video games."
Other cinematic influences, apart from Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey, are the 1973 film Soylent Green and the 1991 Rutger Hauer film Wedlock. In the 2018 Concert interviews, Kunihiko Tanaka says, regarding the character Rico's design, that "There's a movie called Wedlock, a prison break movie set in the near future... In that movie, prisoners wear a choker, and it has a bomb in it. When I asked Takahashi-san, 'Wedlock?', he responded, 'I'm surprised you knew!' Rico has other chokers on his arms, and the story for that is that he has the chokers of the people he defeated. I like metal parts, so I designed with a focus on that." The Holy Empire of Solaris is also a reference to the novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem which was also made into a movie in 1971. Another novel that may have influenced Xenogears is Assemblers of Infinity from 1992 which was one of the first science fiction novels to use the term "nano" robot technology.
There are also a lot of influences from anime in Xenogears, such as "Super Dimensional Gear Yggdrasil IV," which is a references to Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The bridge of the Eldridge in the opening movie along with its captain also resembles the style of Macross, as does the term "Overtechnology," describing parts of the Deus System in Xenogears: Perfect Works, which in Macross is a term referring to the scientific advances discovered in an alien starship. Similarly, the description of Kadmoni as a "Living Cyberbrain" in Perfect Works seems to be a term reference to Ghost in the Shell. G-Elements is a reference to Voltron. Maria and Seibzehn are references to Giant Robo and Daitetsujin 17. "There's a tokusatsu series called Daitetsujin 17, and that's where [Seibzehn's name] comes from. The giant robot 17 has an attack called Graviton, and I remember asking for Seibzehn to have an attack called with the same name as a reference to it," says Kunihiko Tanaka in the Concert interviews.
Finally, with the wealth of backstory Tetsuya Takahashi made up for Xenogears - not just a single plot with a set cast of characters, but an evolving story that takes the form of a universe represented in many different ways, along with its political themes, gives the impression that he may have been aiming for something like Mobile Suit Gundam. A common trope of the Gundam franchise is that the robot pilot hero starts trying to live a peaceful life but gets forced into combat in strange machines where he discovers he has amazing power. He then gets pushed as a force trying to even out two major powers in a conflict.
The latest iteration of Gundam at the time Takahashi and Soraya came up with ideas for Xenogears was Mobile Fighter G Gundam which ran on Japanese television between April 1994 and March 1995, and was the first Gundam series to feature robots performing martial art style combat and have a plot based around a mech tournament, similar to a lot of elements in Xenogears. The main character is also trained in eastern martial arts, pilots a mech called the "God Gundam" that can enter a "Super Mode" based on his feelings, and the plot involves an out-of-control "Devil Gundam" that can restore itself (and self-evolve) and has determined to eradicate human beings, similar to Deus in Xenogears. Another similarity with Deus is the final evolution of the Devil Gundam in the last episodes along with its absorption of the protagonist's main love interest whom he must rescue from its core. It is highly likely that this served as an inspiration.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is sometimes thought to be an influence on Xenogears. But as early as 1999 or 2000 Soraya Saga was denying on her message board that Xenogears had been influenced by Evangelion. Thus I will not regard it as having been an influence. Arguments that Xenogears must've been influenced by Evangelion simply because the staff were fans of mecha, because Masato Kato was an ex-employee of Gainax (though before Evangelion entered production), because some of the animation directors from Evangelion worked on the game's anime cutscenes, and because Final Fantasy VII included a homage to "B-Type equipment" from Evangelion, has persisted in spite of this, but what would these supposed influences be then?
Xenogears does not allude to Evangelion but use a few similar devices, and has thus been charged with claims that it must have ripped off Evangelion. However, nothing of substance can be produced to support this claim, and the co-creator denied it. What they have most in common is actually an identical reference to something else - Jewish mysticism and older super robot shows. The strongest common trait between the two is the use of religious symbolism, but religion itself does not really play much of a part in Evangelion like it does in Xenogears. Evangelion was decidedly deconstructionist, with a message that criticized the "super robot" genre and its fans, much like Alan Moore's Watchmen did with the super hero comic genre. In Evangelion the mecha represented isolation, rather than unity, while the "super robot" genre generally focused on teamwork and championing the right cause. A lot of focus in Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon was on the horrors of war, or the idea that war doesn't change even as technology improves - something they have in common with Xenogears. Boy hero finds giant robot, learns bravery and friendship, and triumphs over evil, is the standard arc of the giant-robot genre. An ancient robot left by an alien civilization was the hero's robot in Space Runaway Ideon which referenced several Western theological themes such as a "Messiah," and is more similar to the concept of Xenogears (and Xenosaga) than Evangelion is.
Both Xenogears and Evangelion were also influenced by Childhood's End and 2001, which is where their themes of evolving mankind came from, as well as the mysterious committees; Seele and the Gazel Ministry. The psychological themes in Evangelion were mainly used to make a commentary on fans of the genre and the political climate in Japan, the Anime industry, and as an outlet for depression and isolation, while the psychological themes in Xenogears were used to comment on humanity, religion, ideology, problems facing individuals and society, and what it means to be human.
So what's left that could've been influenced from Evangelion? The scene where Id rises up, holding the Yggdrasil and throws it, has been compared to when Asuka's Unit-2 lifted a NERV ship and threw it in The End of Evangelion. But The End of Evangelion came out in July 1997 when Xenogears was already 75% finished, and the scene in question is a pivotal scene that takes place early on in Disc 1. This example would be more suitable to illustrate how these similarities more often are coincidental rather than intentional (unless both got their inspiration from an older anime).
The destruction of the second gate, where Billy has to reload and shoot twice while enemies are attacking, has been compared to the battle with the blue crystal angel in Evangelion, but the scene from Evangelion was already borrowed from Future Police Urashiman where a yellow crystal known as "Super-X" is fired upon with no effect at first. If you have a scene where a character needs to hit a precise target then it is quite natural to have him or her miss with the first shot to amp up the tension and make it more believable.
Elly has been compared to Asuka for having auburn hair, but Elly's hair color was likely chosen for the "Lion" symbolism of the Demiurge as a lion-headed, serpent-bodied entity (a Gnostic concept where Miang relates to the serpent part). Fei has been compared with Shinji as an "anti-hero." But Shinji is a much more static character (in terms of development over the course of the series) while Fei comes out a different (complete) person, and the first time Fei pilots Weltall he jumps into the robot without hesitation. Another point to consider is that the characters in Xenogears and Xenosaga, including Fei, were written using the "Enneagram of Personality" which explains much about Fei's characterization, so we know he wasn't based on Shinji.
The only suggestion I'm willing to consider as possibly having been taken from Evangelion is the narration on Disc 2 of Xenogears where characters are sitting in chairs as does Shinji in the last two episodes of Evangelion. But that's more an aesthetic aspect than part of the story. The overall tone, seriousness, and level of details in setting and characterization may also have been something that rubbed off on the Xenogears team in a general sense. Hiromichi Tanaka makes a comparison in the 2018 Concert interviews, saying "Xenogears was a philosophical work that touched on a lot of psychological themes, so I think there was something important in doing that in the form of a game. At the time there was the anime 'Neon Genesis Evangelion', but it was hard to do something like that in a game at the time. I think it would have been better to make a movie out of what Takahashi-kun wanted to do. But I think it honorable to try to do it in a game anyway as an experiment. In a game, you control your character, so it's easier to grow an attachment to them and sympathize with them."
Other team members were also contributing with script writing for Xenogears, and it will be necessary to talk a little about them. Masato Kato would write the Lahan Village segment at the start of the game, and also Shevat with Chu-Chu's and Maria Balthasar's story. It is believed by fans that he was responsible for the pastoral feel of the game that Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to resist. "I wrote them to my own personal tastes... er... maybe I should learn to listen more to what other people tell me (laughs)," Kato said of the scenes (also referring to scenes he wrote for other games) in an interview on Yasunori Mitsuda's Official Website.
Event Planner Masato Kato (unknown date)
Much has been discussed regarding Kato's influence on the game, and there have been several fans who have suggested that Kato wrote the actual screenplay, and that this is one of the distinct differences between Xenogears and Xenosaga. This is not surprising, since the U.S. game credits Kato with "Script" and the official Japanese website at the time stated in Kato's profile:
"Starting with Chrono Trigger, he's been in charge of events for various games. As soon becomes clear to everyone who pays attention, he brings stories to life with his own distinctive kind of lyrical lines. This time with Xenogears, how will he unfold Takahashi's foreshadowing-laden story for us?"
- http://www.playonline.com/archives/psgame/Xenogears/staff.html
However, Soraya Saga stated in the 2008 comment on deviantART that Square America had made a misdescription in the credits, and that she and Tetsuya Takahashi wrote most of the screenplay, not just the basic scenario. Takahashi himself said he wrote the entire scenario in the 1998 interview with the Xenogears staff. Accordingly, Masato Kato was absent from the "Main Staff of Xenogears" section in Xenogears: Perfect Works where Tetsuya Takahashi was also credited with "Performance/staging," which had been attributed to Masato Kato in the Japanese game credits and mistranslated as "script" by Square America, hence the confusion. Apparently Kato should only have been credited as an Event Planner (which was his title on the official website), but someone put his name second only to Takahashi with "Performance/staging."
"When Xenogears was in the early stages, while it included all sorts of different situations, it was actually a work with a [rather] pastoral atmosphere to it. That goes for Fei too, and the design I ordered for him had the feel of a [rural] martial artist...living in a temple. However, as I went ahead with the script work, I found myself more and more tempted to get rid of the pastoral elements, until I couldn't resist anymore, and several script revisions followed. (I'm honestly not too fond of pastoral settings. I like the psychologically grotesque and messy; I identify more with underground and niche subcultures.) As you might have noticed, Fei's design ended up being a bit out of place compared to the atmosphere of the game (especially the second half). But there wasn't any time to revise it, and in the end we decided to go with it as it was. To be honest, Fei is the character whose design I'd like to refine the most."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, page 237)
Above I used Gwendal's translation instead of UltimateGraphics', since Gwendal said that UltimateGraphics left out some things (I also included Lugalbanda's retranslation of a sentence). Takahashi also talks about the work of an "Event Planner" in the Xenosaga video-senki interview:
"Usually the planner takes his script and assigns the animator the task of character movements... For example, let's say there's a scene where a character turns around while walking. Using a script to generate that will almost always result in a jerky transition, so it's usually the job of the animator to fix things like that. The planner's job is to direct the animation, timing, message displays, and camera positioning."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga GameSpot Japan interview translated by video-senki)
That excerpt gives a new meaning to the label of "Event Planner," which Masato Kato, Tanegashima Takashi and several others are credited with in the credits - which means that no one besides Tetsuya Takahashi himself was credited with the scenario (screenplay) in the original credits. We can only confirm that Kato and Tanegashima wrote parts of the screenplay from Soraya's and Kato's comments and CVs outside the game itself. With that in mind, the line "how will he unfold Takahashi's foreshadowing-laden story for us?" might just be referring to how Kato will "stage" Takahashi's story as an Event Planner, not as a script writer.
Thus the credits do not reflect what everyone actually did and is somewhat unreliable. Soraya herself is only credited with "original storyline ideas" (as Kaori Tanaka) but no mention of screenplay, map and area concepts, or character concepts, etc, which are on her CV. This is not uncommon with games. For example, Mitsuda's name doesn't appear at all in the credits for the PS1 version of Chrono Trigger, instead Nobuo Uematsu (who only wrote a few pieces of music) is alone credited under "music". It is clear from Kato himself that he didn't write the script for Xenogears:
"I wasn't the main story writer for Xenogears, so I can't say much on it, but as for Chrono Trigger, I didn't especially think of the Bible when I was writing the story. "Three wisemen who carry the same names as the Biblical wisemen...?" Oh, I see... So, that's how they were named in the English version? In the original Japanese version, the ancient sages were named GASSHU, HASSHU, and BOSSHU. Regarding the other things you pointed out, I didn't consciously have anything in mind, biblical or otherwise, when I wrote the story."
- Masato Kato (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/GamePro_Interview.html)
In addition to this, there has been some suggestion that all of the 10 Event Planners credited in Xenogears contributed with script writing for small parts, because the 10 Event Planners in Final Fantasy VII supposedly contributed with script writing for that game. So Takahashi (and Soraya) wrote the scenario, then the Event Planners would've written individual events and staged those events. The Debug Room lists who was responsible for staging what scenes, and since Kato also staged the scenes he says he wrote, it has been suggested that what each Planner staged is also what they wrote. And since Kato is also responsible for staging inside Fei's mind during the Carbonite freeze, the scene when Id breaks out of it, and the crucifixion scene, it has been suggested that he wrote those as well. The problem with that rationale, however, is that the main writers - Takahashi and Soraya - weren't Event Planners, so the Planners would have had to have staged quite a few bits they personally didn't write as well.
Frankly, we can tell much of the script was indeed written by Takahashi and Soraya, since a lot of the style is similar to that of Xenosaga. And those parts that doesn't have the flavor of Xenosaga, such as the Captain of the Thames, were likely written by an Event Planner.
"It would be nice if there were a guide book which lists the sections everyone was responsible for. We know some things, but not enough. It could be that some of the events linked from the Debug Room were written and staged by the planning staff, but others were taken directly from Takahashi's scenario and staged by the planning staff.
There's no way that certain events I listed earlier weren't written by the planning staff. The Thames, especially the Captain of the Thames, simply reeks of Nobuaki Komoto. Why didn't Soraya Saga mention him? If Tanegashima was responsible for Emeralda, the Element girls and the crew of the Yggdrasil, why doesn't she credit Komoto for the Thames?"
- Xenogears Fan
Soraya Saga would write the script for Bart, Billy and their families and enemies as well as the former Elements - Jesiah Blanche, Kahran Ramsus, Sigurd Harcourt, and Hyuga Ricdeau - though "Takahashi wrote Citan," Soraya says in her infamous FAQ, and he probably wrote Ramsus during the present as well. She also contributed with countries and area concepts, concept of a terraforming weapon out of control (Deus), and naming concepts of Elehayym, Myyah Hawwa, Kahr(Carlin) Ramsus, Emeralda(Emerada), Elements girls, and the former Elements.
Finally, Tanegashima Takashi wrote the script about Emeralda, the Yggdrasil's crews and the Elements girls, while Tetsuya Takahashi wrote the rest of the screenplay - including Fei, Elly, Karellen, Grahf, Miang, Cain, Gazel Ministry, etc. "After the main story and integral sideplots were done, Tanegashima applied a sense of humor and his knowledge about science and military hardwares. Kato added a poetic and mysterious touch to Maria's story. An alchemical reaction of various creativity made the game enjoyable like a plate of all-you-can-eat," Soraya recalls.
Event Planner and World builder Tanegashima Takashi (1998)
It seems the Event Planners also caused Takahashi some stress and difficulties during development. In the 2018 Concert pamphlet interviews he admits that "The event planners of Xenogears, like Masato Kato, and Makoto Shimamoto, among others, were quite the bunch to deal with... (laughs) They were really rough around the edges, even among the Square event planners, and it was hard to control them. I heard from Honne, who was directing for the map and graphics, that Kato-san was about to build a theme park in Lahan Village. Apparently, he didn't even talk to Honne about it and just went to the people who can get it done, and Honne found out about it and convinced him at the last second that it wouldn't work out for the kind of game that Xenogears is. Everyone is skilled at their craft, though, so I wasn't worried about the quality."
Composer Yasunori Mitsuda had a similar issue with Kato during the development, saying in his Concert interview that "Masato Kato... he just had to use [Flight] ... in the scene where Chu-chu becomes gigantic, but that important track was not meant to be played there. For me, that scene should have had a different track. If he would have just told me, I would have remixed the Chu-chu theme! I told him not to use this until the very very end... and he used it behind my back. (laughs) He says that it was the only appropriate track, but everyone else working on event planning was also saying, 'Kato-san! Not for this!' (laughs) Everyone was holding in their temptation to use the track until the very end. And that special track was used on Chu-chu just like that. And now that track is most remembered for that scene too."
Perhaps because the story started out as a mystic love story, a major theme of this story would be "tragedy" and "grief." The grief that both Lacan and Karellen felt at losing Sophia results in the central conflict of "Episode V." However, Takahashi would not stop there, but appear to have turned it into a main theme that extended to all the characters in the game. All of them experienced loss, grief, or the absence of love in their lives, and almost all of them are motivated by a desire to retain that loss. Ramsus is probably the best example of this, but Hammer's desire to acquire super strength like his friends, Emeralda's isolation for 4000 years, or Stone's hatred of Jesiah for "stealing" the things he desired, are other examples. Even Id is revealed to have been trying to form a connection to others through destruction.
For this reason and more, the story playing out in Episode II through V would feel like one part with a theme of Grief, while the Xenosaga series starts with a theme of Fear, a theme that wasn't explored in Xenogears the game, but referenced in its genesis mythology:
"Long ago, humans were with God in a paradise in the sky called Mahanon. The place was protected by the power of God. Humans were never exposed to the fear or danger of death. However, one day, humans entered God's forbidden garden and ate a fruit which bestowed upon them tremendous intelligence and power. God found out about the incident and the humans were banished from the paradise. The prosperous times were over, an era of sorrow and hatred began..."
"Humans banished from the paradise were foolish enough to revolt against God. In order to resist the power of God, they created twelve Anima Relics, and called themselves gods... For 10 days, 10 nights, the world shed its blood, Mahanon was enveloped in flames. But human strength was no match for God and the arrogant humans were destroyed by God's anger. Only a few righteous men were left on the land. However, God was also tired and wounded. He decided to rest in the deepest depth of the earth. God's rest was long. But eternity is only a moment to God. Since then, the righteous men who didn't revolt against God had to live in the harsh nature by themselves, being in constant fear of death..."
The central human emotions mentioned here are Fear, Sorrow and Hatred, in that order, with a lot of emphasis on Fear. However, Fear - especially the fear of death - was not explored in the game. Likewise was Hatred (Anger) not given nearly as much focus as Sorrow (Grief). Thus the origin of the story in the Xenogears universe as "3 broader parts" may have had its origin, at least in part, in a desire to more thoroughly explore these three central themes of Fear, Sorrow, and maybe Hatred.
Because the game was now only "Episode V," and the plan to release Episode II-IV in separate media fell through, Takahashi ended up putting II-IV into the game as fragmented flashbacks. Karellen was thus introduced rather late, and his story with Sophia and Lacan was only briefly told through flashbacks late in the second disc. Due to things like scheduling issues, lack of time, and so on, a scene of Karellen's first meeting with Elly during the attack on the Penuel convent had to be dropped. Same with Citan's childhood tragedy and other scenes, and they ended up only being mentioned in the Xenogears: Perfect Works sourcebook instead:
Extract from unused script -- An encounter
"You've come to kill me?"
...She spoke, standing before the man as though not afraid of her own death.
That expression devoid of thought. A face that showed him as separated from all others, alone in the world.
In contrast to this colorless -monochrome- girl, he is stained in red.
Those he had slaughtered, their blood stains his hands even now.
And the man bathing in red, instead of answering her question, stands silent, while raising his sword over his head.
"...I see, thank you"
When did his will become a thing that could change? And all for a girl's gentle smile.
And for that brief moment, she shone with color.
How could such a pure and radiant smile exist in this dark world of everlasting hypocrisy and falsity, he thought.
This was the meeting of Elehayym and Karellen.
A few less important scenes or settings were discarded as well, such as a public bath house they initially had included in the narrative. "We had a changing room. We were going to have an event sequence that took place in the bath," Takahashi revealed in the 1998 Staff interview, and Yasuyuki Honne added that "it was hard to make the objects, and I needed to make nude sprites for everyone. I was begged not to do it, so we ended up sadly cutting it. (laughs)"
"Because of scheduling problems, some events were cut," says Tadahiro Usada, designer of monsters and NPC Characters in the game. "And some of them were where an NPC would appear once. And some of those were my designs...Ah well, just bad luck I guess. It isn't the first time (laughs). 'What, another one of my characters~...' is what I said, and I was pretty blue that day. The ones I liked the best out of all, were the Aveh soldiers."
These scheduling problems, the new and inexperienced staff members, the lack of a proper Final Fantasy-sized budget for the project, and the ever expanding storyline, would all turn out to be a big problem for the development of Xenogears, and when development was reaching its deadline in the summer of 1997, Takahashi had to make several tough decisions and fight for his game. We already mentioned that he asked for, and received, more money so they could include anime cutscenes. Now he also had to fight for the deadline to be extended. Takahashi explains in the 2018 denfaminicogamer interview, "[It was] like punching my way through. I think I felt a sense of 'I will NEVER give up' at the time. During that time at Square Soft, there was a one year and a half cap on development. We begged them to extend it to 2 years for Xenogears."
The new and final deadline was set at the start of 1998. As they began to cross the year-and-a-half line, Takahashi recalls people starting to lose some motivation as things were heating up and the team was trying to figure out how to make it through the next six months knowing the deadline would not be extended a second time. Takahashi explained in the denfaminicogamer interview that "Even with the extension, we weren't going to meet the deadline, and I was told to 'just cut it off somewhere'."
According to Takahashi's response to Kotaku at E3 in 2017, the cut-off point Square's higher-ups favored was after the first disc, when Fei and his team escape from Solaris, and Takahashi says: "It was a rough way to end it, and I felt like if we do that, then the players will not be satisfied. So we had a proposal - I proposed that if we do disc 2 in this way that it turned out to be, we can finish the game with the current number of staff and the current time allotted for the schedule and the remaining budget we have. I do think my decision was the right one to make, because if we had just ended at Disc 1 it would have been bad." And he continues in the denfaminicogamer interview, "if I cut it off, all of it would have disappeared forever, and I thought really hard about it, and the outcome is what you see in the game. I think in the end, it probably worked out for us. If we didn't have any of that pressure and just worked on the game until completion, there wouldn't have been any effort to try harder."
In the 2018 Concert interviews, Hiromichi Tanaka added that "Takahashi-kun seemed to come up with parts of the world as he went along making the game, so there were times when we didn't know when we'd see the exit. It might have been better to write up something first, clean and tidy, and go from there, but I think Takahashi-kun had a vision of seeing everything in action, and further expand the world from there. We could've just ended it at disc 1 and released part two as something else, but we had never made a game that was split into parts, and it was a taboo among the industry. I think for Takahashi-kun, it was really disappointing that he had to end the game in two discs. With that being said, I think that feeling of not being able to do everything he set out to do leads to what he will do later, so I think it worked out in a way."
Making Xenogears had been a great labor, and the staff express as much in material from the time, particularly from the Perfect Works book.
"God that was hell," says Yasuyuki Honne. "The current map this time has small subtle traces where light might peek out at the cracks, or be buried deep, and all of these textures were added in. All this had to be considered for the overall effect. Out of all the staff working on this, how many hundreds do you think worked on the map? Things like light and shading and the mixture of both. Ultimately, the image boards for the map, topography, placement of towns, all had to somehow come together. The hardest thing of all was this great endeavor. I can tell you, I'm not going to go through it again. Do you understand how unbelievably huge this world is? How we ever finished it is still a mystery to me."
Koh Arai, one of the "new kids" on the team who worked on graphics, said, on a night when he was not sleeping under his desk, "Even though I didn't know if it would ever end, my work was drawing various things and maps, figuring out modeling textures, tying together characters and events, and slowly but surely the game began to come together... It was tough and only a total nut would have gone through it. Something new sprang up from nothing...So this is how it's born, hm? It was really rough on the girls. I am a man you know." In the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview he also added that "There were more than thirty people working on the maps alone. The work involved the process of meeting with the planning team, modeling the maps, then applying textures to them. It was non-stop for over two years."
Chief Artistic Designer Koh Arai (1998)
Mecha designer Yoshinori Ogura said "If you speak of the difficult labor of mecha design, how about design on transforming mechs? 'Here it must pull inward and revolve out...' 'Screw in tighter until flush with mount... make it bigger here...' are the kinds of instructions, it's gotta stretch here, make it go all the way over there, it gives you the feeling of making a puzzle after a bunch of mistakes one after another. However the result in terms of the transforming mechs came out pretty good, I think."
While Gear designer Junya Ishigaki recalls, "It would start with an unclear image, and with very hard work on my part finally come together. Looking back on it now, I thought the design-up took a long time, and I got a lot of calls from Square to try and pick me up once more many times. I am truly grateful to Square. Upon thinking a little further, I've always loved robot design and doing my own CG. This time, I've had a truly wonderful experience. I definitely would love to make another game with this team."
In the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview, Hiromich Tanaka said that "In the early stages of development, I was able to take weekends off, but [the] last summer, I barely took any days off. I worked on it through New Year's Eve all the way through to New Year's Day. Towards the end, there were times when we would sleep in chairs in the office."
Although it wasn't the first time it happened to him while working on a game, Xenogears' composer Yasunori Mitsuda worked so hard on the soundtrack that he ended up in the hospital due to overworking.
"When I compose for any game, I always first set up a "theme." In this project, I had a story in my mind that was far larger than any theme I had in any game. I was ready for pressure as big as it, though," he writes in the Original Soundtrack Liner Notes. "I'll be thinking about a project so much that melodies will come in my sleep," he says in an interview with Sam Kennedy in 2008. One melody that came to him in a dream was "Bonds of Sea and Fire," Bart's theme.
Composer Yasunori Mitsuda (1998)
"The developing took time as I predicted, and I had the most difficult time. I anticipated it. Of course, because I was trying to do beyond what I had done. I often thought "Agh! I can't do this anymore!" followed by "..no! I CAN do this! I must!" and advanced little by little everyday. The sound team supported me alot. The sound programmer Hideki Suzuki and sound engineer Tomoyasu Yajima, recording engineer Takashi Nagashima, and the event planner Masato Kato... Without their help, my director Tetsuya Takahashi, and your letters, I couldn't have done this. Thankyou everybody.
[...]
Creating something out of nothing requires the most power. I haven't done anything but composing, but I think the same thing could be applied to anything. I often wonder "Why am I doing such a painful thing?", just like how mothers bare and grow their children. (I'm a man, by the way) Women who bore children say that they never want to experience the pain of giving birth again, but they often forget their pain as they grow their lovely kids. There is a never ending love in it.
[...]
This game has been created by a huge number of people. In the music field by its own, there are as much as a hundred people involved. It is certainly the biggest project I've ever been involved. [...] This [soundtrack] is filled with such hopes and wishes of many people. Ireland's air, Bulgaria's air, and Japan's air [...]"
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenogears Original Soundtrack Liner Notes)
Mitsuda says in the 2018 Concert interviews that, "When I understood the lore, I came up with three themes. Religious music, ethnic music because that was my forte, and orchestra to back up the deep plot of the game. They're all quite different sounding, but I remember thinking how good the game would be if I could tie it all together to fit Xenogears. Because of that, I didn't compose much that didn't fit into those 3 categories, like rock music." Mitsuda also does not seem to have any regrets after what happened, explaining that "At the time, it was just so fun for me to write music. I didn't even want to sleep because I would be wasting valuable time, and that attitude took a toll on me. So it wasn't tiring for me at all and I thought I was doing fine, but my body said otherwise."
When Tetsuya Takahashi started to direct Xenogears, he found something "missing." There was something missing from the image he had drawn in his mind and the computer graphics in front of him. He knew that the lack of physical things such as time, quality, and determination were the reasons, and he had to sadly conclude that that was his limit, which resulted in the game's eventual feel of "incompleteness." However, when Takahashi decided to look at the graphics simultaniously with the music that had been finished he realized that he had also been saved by Mitsuda's music, and "I had to admit the importance of music," he says in the Liner Notes.
"I also realized that I was being supported by many other people. Of course, there were some times when I was betrayed by someone. I could feel other people's feelings as we were desparate in the last moments. Still, I could not have come here without the help of all the people who tried to support me.
Yasunori is one of the people who heavily supported me in Xenogears. Without his music, the game would have been a lot worse than our goal. My determination wouldn't have continued either. This soundtrack holds everything that enhanced me and this project."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears Original Soundtrack Liner Notes)
In the end, it seems an entire two thirds of the story ultimately did not make it into the final game. In the March 1998 Famitsu PS interviw, Takahashi said that "I'd say we only got to include about 30% of what we had hoped." On page 288 in Perfect Works he said that "I have to face up to the truth that we didn't include a third of the full story." Since the game does have an ending that resolves most of the main story, this statement by Takahashi must mean that the story was ultimately condensed or abridged in order to arrive at the end before the deadline. Some of the background details on the characters in Perfect Works might clue us in on some of the things that was not included, as well as more flashbacks from Episode II, III, and IV. Data slots for three more playable characters in the game's debug room appears to suggest that the Episode IV flashback on disc 2 may have originally been intended to be playable, and thus would have been more fleshed out with additional story intended for it. And there is also a fourth slot for Dominia as a playable character sometime on disc 2 that may have been planned but abandoned.
In the March 1998 Famitsu PS interviw, Takahashi does specify that "Many ideas needed to be cut due to scheduling constraints. For example, I wanted to write more for the characters. As things stand, they feel a bit shallow." The article also features a paragraph that states that "Even with two discs of content, Takahashi says he was unable to fully tell the story. He wanted to go into greater detail on the thoughts of the game's villains, such as Ramsus and Karellen, and how they shifted over time." In Xenogears: Perfect Works, a University Student's thesis on the game seems to be included. Although not part of the development team, the fact that his text was included in the official sourcebook must mean the developers don't disagree with him when he says that:
"...the story in Xenogears wasn't finished. And not just limited to the monologue. It wouldn't have been so simple to make it like the game of disc 1. Probably, it's as finished as it ever will be. Maybe if the players are aggravated enough, it could be redone in the future."
- Sawaduki You (Xenogears: Perfect Works, 'The Xenogears Experience')
Some of the story related to Rico and the discovery of Super Dimensional Gear Yggdrasil IV is clearly seen being skimmed over early on in the second disc of the game, and there are a few characters absent from the world locations at the end. "There's a lot that went on behind the scenes [of the game's development], but we really were planning on including [Jessie, Yui, Ramsus and the Elements] in regards to the story [at the end]. So they're not gone. And you can summon Jessie anytime anyway," Takahashi explained in the Hakoere interview. "Just think of them as out there doing their own thing..."
Hiromichi Tanaka says in the Concert interviews that one scene in the game that was memorable for him was the ending. "The industry was very strict at the time, and a nude woman was considered a no-go for the PlayStation. They wouldn't even allow a silhouette... We had already drawn Elly, but we couldn't be able to release it the way it was, so I personally trimmed it as to not show her breast. As a fun fact, I gave the original animation to Takahashi-kun on a special disc. I hope he's still holding on to it. (laughs)" And about the inclusion of a lyrical song at the end, Takahashi said that "In animation and movies, music and songs go hand in hand. I thought it was weird that video games didn't have that. For the ending, I wanted to have a chorus before getting into the song, with a religious painting feel, and then get to the vocals." He further explained why the other song, "Stars of Tears," is not in the game, saying in the same Concert interview that "[We] made [Stars of Tears] like what you'd see in an anime opening with the upbeat music. But it was a little too cheery and didn't fit Xenogears. There weren't any events that would have fit for it, and we can't use it for the actual, rather dark intro of Xenogears... So we didn't use it in the game, and it's only in the official soundtrack."
At some point during development, as U.S. localization was being considered, the now long-time game localizer Richard Honeywood, who was new at the time, felt it was like translating a game in which God was the final boss. The attempt to include overt references to Judeo-Christian figures in the game would cause a few translators to quit - fearing a violent backlash - and prompted a change in the name of the game's final boss, "Yahweh," what we now know as Deus. Honeywood recalls in 8-4 Play's podcast, 1-Up, in 2011, "It was the project from hell. Translators walked off it. One [reason] was that it was too technical... and....the other was the religious content. It was a game, where, at the end of the game you basically kill God. And - a secret thing - back then, they actually called it Yahweh."
Honeywood was concerned that this bold bit of naming could offend portions of the game's audience, and confronted the development team - with unexpected consequences. "At a development meeting in Japanese I was saying 'You can't call it Yahweh. You can't do that.' I was getting exasperated, and in Japanese [I said] yabeh-o [the adjective yabai is Japanese slang for something dangerous, unfortunate or otherwise inconvenient], and they all laughed and thought it was the greatest pun ever. And so, the last boss was suddenly called Yabeh. [They] took every biblical reference they could and tried to twist it. One of the translators was a bit worried about this and was like 'I don't want to have fundamental Christians or other religious groups being upset and blowing up our office.' And I guess in the States, at that time, it was a concern. So I had two translators walk off it and I was stuck there by myself."
Yabeh was then given a new name - "Deus" - which became the name for the Strategic Subjugation Weapon in both the Japanese version as well as the U.S. version, though Honeywood did add one reference to "Yabeh" in the U.S. game, during the Raziel computer scene, probably as an inside joke, while the name was completely erased from the Japanese game and Perfect Works. However, the rough sketches for Deus in Perfect Works' picture gallery have "Yahweh" written on them, which means that when they were ordered it was still going by the name "Yahweh."
Localizer Richard Mark Honeywood (2007)
"[The hardest project for me to translate] was "Xenogears." The game was ambitious even for Japan. It was the first major title I had to manage and translate myself. Because of its controversial content and the linguistic and conceptual challenges it presented, the original translators assigned to it quit or asked to be assigned to other titles. When it went over schedule, I ended up having to not only direct, but translate and program as well. (Heck, I even burned the master disks!) The team basically left it in my hands as they went on to their next game. I worked around the clock, sleeping in the office for months to bring it to a shippable state. (At the same time, I had trouble with my own religion when the elders heard about the content of the Japanese version.) As a translator, I wanted to respect the game's creators and keep the content as close as possible to the original. Even the non-controversial parts were hard to translate-- all those scientific concepts and philosophies. I look back and wonder how we ever finished it. I guess my naivety at the time was a blessing in disguise. If I knew then what I know now, it would have been a totally different game."
- Richard Honeywood, senior member of the Square Enix localization team (http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/interview.shtml)
Honeywood explained of some of the other name changes in an interview with squarehaven.com in 2006: "In Xenogears, you had rather mature themes, with an evil 'church' betraying its common believers ('lambs' with Hebrew-sounding names) to an evil empire ('Solaris', a city in the sky whose inhabitants had German-sounding names, who slaughtered the lambs for use as Soylent Green). It was an obvious parable of WWII with sci-fi references thrown in. It also dealt with young priests being molested by the clergy, etc. Although this was fine in Japan (a country that has a long history of being betrayed by religion), the US distributors were trying to make me tone it down. They ended up forcing me to change the name of the 'Church' to 'Ethos', but I was able to get the themes across regardless, by careful rewording."
Ultimately a ton of material, which was created for the game and can still be found on the game discs, was not enabled. Hundreds of sounds, over half a dozen gears, over a dozen locations, and quite a few items never made it into the game. There's even English voice work that never made it into the game, including an English voice actress for Emeralda saying things like "Humans break easy" and "I'll repair...again."
Other deleted voice work include Elly saying "No good. I can't shoot", Bart saying "Have a taste of the Sig whip!" and Billy saying "Only one more shot... So close!" The debug room has pictures of Babel Tower being destroyed, as well as several deleted lines. It would seem that the game was even more rushed and with things abandoned towards the end than fans originally realized. But this would not make Xenogears any less of an experience.
Consumer reception
When Xenogears was released, nobody in the Western world knew who Tetsuya Takahashi or Soraya Saga were, and the game mainly had its appeal as a game developed by Square - the king of RPGs at the time - but wasn't a Final Fantasy title, so the game only got attention from a few hardcore gamers and Square fans at first.
These gamers mainly knew the title from the rumor that Square wouldn't bring it overseas due to its heavy religious overtones, but not much more. The names that were regarded as most relevant at first were Masato Kato and Yasunori Mitsuda, both whom had gained some fame from the success of Chrono Trigger, and many gamers thus considered the game a successor to Chrono Trigger, where Deus could be likened to a Lavos 2.0 antagonist. Masato Kato was praised for the "script," as the credits mistakenly gave the impression that he was responsible for the screenplay, and soon his previous affiliation with Gainax had gamers try and force a connection with Evangelion, which had been gaining much fame in the West at the time and was many gamers first experience with Japanese giant robot anime. Since nobody knew of the game's origin or its true creators, people wondered how Square - after producing mainly lighthearted games such as Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana - could suddenly come up with something as serious, complex, and detailed as Xenogears. Sure it had several tropes and references to previous Square games, most notably Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, but the storytelling had a completely different flavor to it and was unlike anything that Square or roleplaying had come up with before. Thus the theory that Square had adapted someone's anime screenplay, or that Square wanted to copy the maturity, originality and genre of Evangelion started to emerge, and persisted for a long time with some fans.
This was also a time when Japanese RPGs would finally break into mainstream gaming in the West with Square's Final Fantasy VII, the sibling game to Xenogears that had been in development at the same time and released only a few months before Xenogears. In fact, Final Fantasy VII would become perhaps the most successful JRPG of all time and made "Final Fantasy" almost a household name with both gamers and pop-culture in general, despite having an even worse translation than Xenogears.
While not on the level of Xenogears, the first PlayStation Final Fantasy would feature a more dark and complicated story than previous entries, much as a result of Takahashi's early influence on the game, as well as the passing of Hironobu Sakaguchi's mother. As of 2024 it is also the only entry in the franchise to feature a more present day styled world with people in suits, mad scientists, and corporations unwisely exploiting the natural order of things. Themes that are very easy to relate to and the most similar of all the Final Fantasy games to that of Xenosaga.
Final Fantasy VII's CG anime aesthetics, originality, attractive looking characters, addictive game play and cool, cyberpunk setting, also helped drew gamers to it like moths to a flame, while Xenogears looked rather familiar on the surface, if not downright traditional and a bit "cliché" in comparison, with a simpler and somewhat stale battle system that was unorthodox. And some people had issues with the rotating camera and the jump mechanic, finding some areas difficult to traverse. The giant robots also turned some people off the game if they weren't fans of the mecha genre. In fact, Kouichi Mugitani, a character and mech designer for Xenosaga, would reveal in his Xeno Emission E1 design book that the Gears in Xenogears received a response of harsh criticism in Japan when they were first revealed. However, opinions would change as time went on and the designs took root when Japanese players experienced the finished product.
Thus Xenogears struggled to attract gamers who, if they even gave it a shot because it was another game by Square, often gave up on the game early on. However, it is still thanks to the success of Final Fantasy VII that Xenogears enjoyed a larger fanbase in the West than it probably would have had otherwise. Even European Square fans imported the game following the success of Final Fantasy VII in Europe, despite the fact that Xenogears never reached European shores.
The North American game had a different tagline written on the back of the CD case. The Japanese tagline had been a brief outline of the subject of the "tragedy" aspect of the game, ending with the line "God Only Knows" written in English, while the American marketing guys simply put "Stand Tall and Shake the Heavens" on the back. While the American tagline became very popular with fans, it also contributed to the confusion about the game's ultimate message, since the message in Xenogears appears to be that humans are imperfect, highly flawed beings, but that their weaknesses and "incompleteness" is what makes them capable of love and admiration for one anothers complementary strengths and contributions. The American tagline seemed to say that the sky is the limit if you have pride and self-confidence, which is not really a theme in the game and in some ways contradict it.
One more reason why many gamers had trouble getting into Xenogears, often giving up before the game even leaves the Ignas continent, may have been in large part due to the fact that the story was more character-driven and also more detailed in its world-building through the story and dialogue than other games and RPGs at the time. Most RPGs had a simpler world with a clear-cut baddie right from the start, and then pursues this antagonist for the entire game, with a hero that is commonly a soldier or a mercenary of some kind going through typical settings that does not really feel real or alive and does not need to be for the purpose of the goal.
Rather than following this conventional template, Xenogears focused on actual drama and a main character who was reluctant to fight at all, and who lived in a world with detailed settings and a long history. Not only did the game not have a clearly defined conflict in the set-up, but it seemed as if the game's first tragedy was caused by the central protagonists themselves. Fei had destroyed his village in an out-of-control Gear, while Elly had been responsible for the Gears landing in Fei's village in the first place. For most casual gamers, even fans of Final Fantasy VII, this appears to have been aggravatingly slow and awkward. The gamer would ask himself, "Where is the baddie? What is my goal? Why is Fei so whiny? Why should I continue to play this game? Does it get better?"
Martin Johansson of the Swedish gaming magazine Super PLAY, who interviewed Takahashi in 2002, wrote in his article "The Power of Will" that "Tetsuya Takahashi's strange adventure did not follow the established template that Square's games tend to follow. Instead of obsessively hunting the game's villain for hours, Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to provoke players into question themselves and their existence in an extremely complex science fiction saga; part anime, part game. Xenogears was a game that never truly fit into Square's repertoire, which was one of the reasons a huge part of the team left for Namco and Monolith Soft."
Of course, Xenogears is still predominantly an action-oriented game, and is actually a blend of character- and action-driven writing. But the build-up is intentionally slow and puts emphasis on developing the characters, the story's themes, the poetic imagery and the story's mysteries and intrigues before it truly starts to take off - which is a trait of some of the best works. Those with the patience to play through the entire game while enduring its unrefined aspects and long cutscene segments were all rewarded with an enormously satisfying experience, save for a few detractors who couldn't let go of some of the game's flaws.
The focus on drama and characters did attract a lot of female gamers. In fact, Takahashi actually implied that Xenogears was primarily written for a female audience, or at least stated that Xenogears wound up being more satisfactory for female users, by saying in an interview with The Playstation in 1999: "... women think a lot about the characters' personalities and mindsets, so it's easy for me to make games women would enjoy. It's about the organization of the story and the creation of the characters. But instead of the characters' personalities and mental parts, men tend to place more emphasis on their external appearance, so to speak, and that makes writing stories [for them] harder." He also said that "next time I'd like to make something that should be satisfactory for men too."
But while Takahashi does put a lot of emphasis on characters, he has also made some seemingly contradictory statements, such as his preference of creating a world over characters. In the 2018 denfaminicogamer interview he said that "I'm not much of a person to focus on characters, personally. I put more weight on the universe. That hasn't changed since Xenogears. Of course, I'm not saying characters aren't important. We're making a game, so I want to please players as much as I can. But if I were to say which that I personally put more weight on, it's the universe."
While many gamers had issues, some longtime fans of Square and Final Fantasy had a different attitude, feeling that Final Fantasy VII was just a messy and convoluted version of FF VI that was severely overrated and didn't measure up to its previous installment. A prevailing sentiment among many of these gamers was that Xenogears had taken FF VI's place as their favorite game, and that Xenogears was what the next gen Final Fantasy franchise should have been. With Xenogears they felt that the genre had finally grown up.
The game was released without any controversy whatsoever. Although a few Christian game reviewers gave the game negative reviews due to the premise of "killing God," many Christian gamers actually became fans of the game and were not offended. Rather, most of the criticism were perhaps from Atheists who felt that the game's religion and concept of "God" in Deus was too far removed from the real world to be provocative, and that the potential for a compelling philosophical argument for or against religions and the notion of "God" was lost in the somewhat clumsy metaphors. After all, in the game, the Church is promoting the theory of Evolution, a "lie," while the truth is a spin on Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? premise - that our ancenstors were alien space travelers. In fact, with Zeboim looking like the present day world - complete with Christmas trees and a reference to Elvis - many gamers speculated that the planet was supposed to be Earth. At least up until Western fans started translating the Japanese sourcebook Xenogears: Perfect Works.
As time quickly went on, and as both newcomers and longtime fans of the genre craved more JRPGs in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears finally gained its short-lived, but much deserved momentum due to word of mouth alone. Xenogears may not have had Final Fantasy VII's eccentric Japanese style and otherworldliness, but the story was ultimately much larger, with much more substance to ponder for those of a more cerebral predilection. Not to mention being more relevant to our everyday existence and human history than Final Fantasy's more magical fantasy world with quirky characters (even if part VII did have a compelling theme of "life" and environmental messages). The level of detail and history also made Xenogears a more interesting world to discuss. Soon Xenogears was hailed as having the greatest story of all time, a strong reputation the game has maintained even to this day in some gaming circles, finally reaching a peak in fandom in 2001-2003. Some fans even went so far as to state that Xenogears' story will never be surpassed, and to say that many fans were suffering from "Xenogears withdrawal" would not have been an exaggeration, as they literally couldn't think about anything else for months. The effect it had on certain people was unprecedented in fandom of any kind that I've witnessed (at least until 2002 when the American TV show The Wire had its fans proclaim it was the greatest achievement in TV history that will never be surpassed). A fan at the time put it this way:
"I have a confession to make. I hate Xenogears fans.
Oh, it's not that I hate Xenogears or anything; it still has a spot near the top of the Azusa List O' Best Games Ever. It's just that in the past year or so, I've found myself increasingly possessed by an urge to stay very, very far away from any Xenogears-related forums or debates, or to engage anyone in conversation about it. I'm somewhat reticient at the thought of even approaching them unless they've proven to me that they're capable of thinking about and focusing on something which is not Xenogears.
Xenogears is their entire existence in a way that it never was for me, even at my most obsessive, and folks, I was pretty damn obsessive back when it first came out. It's not uncommon to hear them spout lines like "I LIVE for Xenogears!" or "Xenogears is my LIFE!" [...] they cling to it like remoras on a shark, to the point where they happily proclaim that they will never play any other game, because they just KNOW that Xenogears was the ultimate gaming experience and that there will never be a better game, ever. Nostradamus would have been impressed at their Amazing Powers of Prophecy. One marvels that Weekly World News hasn't caught on to them yet. I like Xenogears. I consider myself a fan. But these people are a damned cult."
- Azusa (Excerpt from 'The Last Word on Xenogears Fans' rant, 2001)
The online Urban Dictionary lists the term "xenogears" as "The name of the best game ever made. Usually used to describe perfection." and "most intellectually stimulating and emotionally deep RPG ever made." Of course, raising expectations like that has made a few gamers disappointed once they finally beat the game, but not to the extent that you might expect. After all, the game wouldn't earn this reputation if it didn't have something about it. One gamer made the following remark on GameFAQs in 2009: "This is the only game I have ever played that lived up to the hype. Maybe not "the best game ever" hype, but considering the hype for the story, it is amazing I actually thought this game was as good as it was."
"The value in [Xenogears] is not whether it's 'boring' or 'fun' but in what you take away with you.
Players can now broaden the scope of their discussions by using the Internet and their 'persocons'. This story is on a much larger scale than most robot and mech animes.
Usually it is not a light experience for those who have liked it. For those who are not satisfied, what the problem is, I don't know. It's not something you can analyze and logically explain.
Here is where the player and the story come together and make a whole new thing, just like in paradise. Now that's kind of scary, when I think about it. What kind of game pulls out such feeling? And the next game I play, I will be looking for something like this.
Games are usually considered kids' fare, but this is way beyond in scope and imagination, and it utilized technology in sound and graphics that were not possible in a game years ago. It will probably have quite an impact on the players. Many will ask: Why did Xenogears have to be in a game format? What are the players doing with a controller for tens of hours? So some will wonder if it needed to be a game at all.
But the question has no meaning. Xenogears could have been a novel, anime or whatever, the story would have been told anyway. But Xenogears is a game, with a story the player can interact with. This is the most important element, I think.
And even incomplete, that just leaves room for the players' imaginations. Because it is unfinished, many are left with a sense of dissatisfaction with Xenogears. But isn't that dissatisfaction the actual meaning of Xenogears?"
- Sawaduki You (Xenogears: Perfect Works, 'The Xenogears Experience')
Tetsuya Takahashi eventually peaked fans' interest after being repeatedly pointed out as the game's director who came up with the scenario, while Soraya Saga had begun talking directly to Western fans on the internet, kindly answering their questions about the game. Her original handle was Kanon Saga, then Clio Saga and finally Soraya Saga, SORA+YA, and Solaryear (the latter on deviantART and seems to be a pun on the similarity between the pronunciation of "Soraya" with that of a Japanese person's pronunciation of "solar year" in English).
Yggdrasil's Periscope Club was a Yahoo messageboard founded by Soraya Saga in 1999 that lasted until about the summer of 2000, but not many Xenogears fans knew about that place. I for one didn't, and I have had to rely on people's stories from that place for this and other articles. However, more than one person who visited that place has verified the information I provide as being genuine.
"Like any message board, [Yggdrasil's Periscope Club] was mainly a place for idle conversation about our current obsessions. It wasn't heavily trafficked, but we had a good core of people to talk to, and regular chat sessions to keep us busy. The nice thing - the reason we were all there - was Mrs. Saga's presence, and her willingness to talk with us and answer our questions about the game. She was very kind, but I was afraid to talk to her much at the time."
- Amber Michelle (Excerpt from 'Xenogears fandom: A History')
One thing of interest is that Soraya didn't draw art of Elly or include Elly in her doujinshi's (comics) since she was supposedly irritated with Elhaym for being "too stereotypical," something she expressed at one point during the time of Yggdrasil's Periscope. While it is understandable, if not likely, that most women will find Elly to be somewhat stereotypical, especially in Japanese society with the "mother" aspect, the fact that Soraya would go on to write the character MOMO in Xenosaga, a girl that is just as stereotypical as Elly, makes it seem strange that she would be so hostile towards Elly in particular. It makes more sense that she resented Elly for being her husband's "ideal woman" in however fashion that was revealed to her. Did Takahashi joke about it and she took it seriously, or did he actually never say it and she just assumed or "sensed" it? It seems rather funny that a guy would say to his wife, "This is my ideal woman." Naturally she would be annoyed after that, but Soraya has always maintained that their marriage is peaceful.
In 2013, Soraya would say that she don't remember ever drawing Sophia, stating "I'm not good at drawing young and beautiful girls (particularly late teens). :p" Following that comment, however, she did draw a sketch of what looked like Sophia in a wedding dress.
In Japan, Takahashi would interact with fans by writing for a column titled Xenolith featured in THE PLAYSTATION magazine. In one of his messages he says: "When the reactions from the fans started coming in and we kept climbing on the user rankings in the game magazines, that became a big inspiration to me. But the thing that made me happiest was being allowed to write regularly for this magazine in the column called Hakoere (Xenolith at the time). It gave me an opportunity to interact with the fans in a back-and-forth manner about a work that was originally a one-way process, and that made me extremely happy as a creator. I was taken aback many times by the correspondence and letters [fans] sent in. It is a Xenogears that reflects the various viewpoints of the fans. That's where Fei, Bart and the others lived, with various facial expressions and shining with the color of a painter's heart. It's where the characters of my own work show facial expressions even I haven't seen before... In some ways, it's also a bit embarrassing, but again, it was a fresh [perspective] that left a deep impression on me. With everyone's encouragement, and I'm grateful to the other magazines for this [too], we were even able to take first place for software in the '98 fiscal year, which I'm very happy about."
Message from Takahashi, THE PLAYSTATION magazine (1999)
"I'd say that was a fairly good result, so I honestly feel this has been a year where I was vindicated by the fans eventually. As of now, I don't have to put on a wig, and my head doesn't pound like a tumble-dryer, which is all thanks to the fans. (Laughs) Inspired by this, in the future I want to be even more active, and hope to be able to devote all my energy towards making new games.
So, you might be thinking about sequels when you hear that, but the situation as of today, right now (March 12) is that it's completely undecided what titles Square will release after the 2000 AD fiscal year. But speaking for myself in a personal capacity, I have a growing desire to make something. That means that right now, as for Xenogears, what's needed might be encouragement from you as fans. Please keep cherishing Xenogears with your usual enthusiasm."
- Tetsuya Takahashi, message of "xenogears" director (March 12, 1999)
Regarding the difference from Square's other games, Takahashi also said in the March 1998 Famitsu PS interview that "Square's games often have simpler stories for a younger audience. They're designed for anyone to be able to understand and enjoy. Even knowing it could potentially hurt sales, that isn't something I wanted to do. [...] It wasn't that I wanted Xenogears not to be popular with the general public, I just didn't want to lie to myself when creating this story. I didn't want a disconnect between the ideas I had envisioned and the product we produced. In this case, it was impossible to fully realize everything."
Perfect Works / Episode I -- Transition towards "Xenosaga"
The now infamous book "Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~" was the result of more hard work by the main staff of Xenogears, and in it Yoshinori Ogura says that the book "should make the world of Xenogears even more enjoyable." Tadahiro Usuda also adds that "[Perfect Works] shows a lot of the background of the work 'Xenogears'. But since it's from the creator and those of the staff, it ought to be very interesting and they worked very hard on it."
Working on Perfect Works were Tetsuya Takahashi (supervisor), Soraya Saga (short story), Tanegashima Takashi (also supervisor), Junya Ishigaki ("Weltall" poster), and Kunihiko Tanaka ("Elly" poster). Yasuyuki Honne, Koh Arai, Yoshinori Ogura, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Tsutomu Terada, and Tadahiro Usuda also left messages on the "Main staff of Xenogears" pages. Masato Kato and Hiromichi Tanaka were completely absent.
"This [book] includes the true meaning behind some events that wasn't fully explained in the game itself, as well some terminology used and the like. There will also be numerous pieces of unfortunate concept art that might technically have been published before, but only hidden away in the nooks and crannies of the pages or lurking behind the letters. I think I can safely say you'll have plenty of content to sink your teeth into here.
And as a small favor to all of you users who were touched by and enjoyed our game Xenogears (since you had to suffer through various troublesome parts playing the game because of us), we'll also elaborate just a little more on the Episodes that don't take place during the time frame of the game's story. If you're very perceptive, I think you just might be able to understand the meaning behind these [details]. (Laughs) Still, we should probably let those stories lie until their time arrives, and for now, please do enjoy exploring the world of Xenogears through this book.
Well then, this might be slightly trite to say, but please keep a close eye [on our work] for a good long while.
--August 12 1998, at home, listening to Snakeman Show"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, page 288, Translation by Gwendal)
The book begins with an overview elaborating on the mystery of the game's end that said "Episode V," with an introduction to the six episodes on pages 2 and 3:
The Truth about EPISODE V
The game "Xenogears" is just a small part of the eternal history that flows through the world of this work. Its time scale is 15,000 years. The story is spun into six major episodes, and as you can guess from the ending, "Episode V," the main story is the fifth of them.
This world contains a vast amount of information which converges into a fated chain of events from past to present. Let us consider "Episode V" to clarify the whole picture. By learning facts not depicted in the work and listening to the voices of the creators, we can understand "its whole world." And then, "Xenogears" will become a (complete) mirror that reflects this "truth" within those who read it.
The game "Xenogears" is just a small part of the eternal history that flows through the world of this work. Its time scale is 15,000 years. The story is spun into six major episodes, and as you can guess from the ending, "Episode V," the main story is the fifth of them.
This world contains a vast amount of information which converges into a fated chain of events from past to present. Let us consider "Episode V" to clarify the whole picture. By learning facts not depicted in the work and listening to the voices of the creators, we can understand "its whole world." And then, "Xenogears" will become a (complete) mirror that reflects this "truth" within those who read it.
EPISODE I
Interstellar War Era
Approximately 15,000 years before the events of the game, mankind, having left Earth behind, discovered a habitable planet in M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. They named this planet "Neo Jerusalem," and begin further exploration of the depths of space. Five thousand years later, they have colonized the majority of the galaxy... However, an interstellar war, which had been brewing for some time, intensifies. Episode I is set in a turbulent outer space where war is likely to break out.
The Deus System that appears in the story was developed during this era, but everything else about this episode is shrouded in mystery.
EPISODE II
The Primitive Era
In an era when intelligent lifeforms began to increase on Fei's planet, Cain, the progenitor of a new humanity, was worshipped as a living god. Abel, a survivor of the Eldridge crash, rebels against this worship of Cain and begins to search for a new way of life together with Elly. The story of Episode II progresses against this background. At this time, Cain believed that the resurrection of Deus was his mission, and he did not seek the "liberation of humans" like in the game.
EPISODE III
Zeboim Civilization
Episode III takes place in a civilization much like ours - a world of great scientific achievement. Human intelligence had peaked, but genetic disorders caused an increasing number of people to be unable to have children. Kim, a reincarnation of Abel, tries to overcome this genetic disorder with nanotechnology, but fails due to Miang's plot. It was during this era that Emeralda was born. The Nanotechnology recovered by Taura, one of the Three Sages of Shevat was also from this time.
EPISODE IV
The War with Solaris
Episode IV takes place on the continent of Ignas roughly 500 years before Fei and the others were born. During this time, Cain and his people determined that humanity's evolution had reached its final stage. They founded the nation of Solaris, with the goal of taking direct control over the planet's surface. However, humanity had evolved to the point where they could use Ether abilities, leading to a fierce war between them and Solaris. This war, known as the Great War 500 Years Ago, would eventually come to an end with the "Day of Collapse."
EPISODE V
Xenogears
In the year 9999 of the founding calendar (of this planet), with the resurrection of Deus fast approaching, Fei, the protagonist of this work, lives in the remote village of Lahan. Fei was not born in this village, but was brought to the home of the village chief, Lee, by a masked man three years prior. At that time, Fei had suffered severe damage both physically and mentally, and had lost almost all his memories up to that point. Then comes the attack on Lahan Village... This incident is the trigger that sets Fei on the path of his destiny.
EPISODE VI
Chronologically, this episode occurs immediately after Episode V, but as of now, nothing about it has been revealed. As it is also the final destination of the Xenogears world, we look forward to future information being released.
Interstellar War Era
Approximately 15,000 years before the events of the game, mankind, having left Earth behind, discovered a habitable planet in M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. They named this planet "Neo Jerusalem," and begin further exploration of the depths of space. Five thousand years later, they have colonized the majority of the galaxy... However, an interstellar war, which had been brewing for some time, intensifies. Episode I is set in a turbulent outer space where war is likely to break out.
The Deus System that appears in the story was developed during this era, but everything else about this episode is shrouded in mystery.
EPISODE II
The Primitive Era
In an era when intelligent lifeforms began to increase on Fei's planet, Cain, the progenitor of a new humanity, was worshipped as a living god. Abel, a survivor of the Eldridge crash, rebels against this worship of Cain and begins to search for a new way of life together with Elly. The story of Episode II progresses against this background. At this time, Cain believed that the resurrection of Deus was his mission, and he did not seek the "liberation of humans" like in the game.
EPISODE III
Zeboim Civilization
Episode III takes place in a civilization much like ours - a world of great scientific achievement. Human intelligence had peaked, but genetic disorders caused an increasing number of people to be unable to have children. Kim, a reincarnation of Abel, tries to overcome this genetic disorder with nanotechnology, but fails due to Miang's plot. It was during this era that Emeralda was born. The Nanotechnology recovered by Taura, one of the Three Sages of Shevat was also from this time.
EPISODE IV
The War with Solaris
Episode IV takes place on the continent of Ignas roughly 500 years before Fei and the others were born. During this time, Cain and his people determined that humanity's evolution had reached its final stage. They founded the nation of Solaris, with the goal of taking direct control over the planet's surface. However, humanity had evolved to the point where they could use Ether abilities, leading to a fierce war between them and Solaris. This war, known as the Great War 500 Years Ago, would eventually come to an end with the "Day of Collapse."
EPISODE V
Xenogears
In the year 9999 of the founding calendar (of this planet), with the resurrection of Deus fast approaching, Fei, the protagonist of this work, lives in the remote village of Lahan. Fei was not born in this village, but was brought to the home of the village chief, Lee, by a masked man three years prior. At that time, Fei had suffered severe damage both physically and mentally, and had lost almost all his memories up to that point. Then comes the attack on Lahan Village... This incident is the trigger that sets Fei on the path of his destiny.
EPISODE VI
Chronologically, this episode occurs immediately after Episode V, but as of now, nothing about it has been revealed. As it is also the final destination of the Xenogears world, we look forward to future information being released.
Below this synopsis is a column designated "Director Tetsuya Takahashi's comments," suggesting that the Episode descriptions above may not be Takahashi's own words. The text says "By ... listening to the voices of the [game's] creators ..." - which implies the writer of that bit is not necessarily Tetsuya Takahashi but instead a possible outsourced writer for printed media to whom Takahashi and others have explained the details of the story and characters. Technically, the writer of most of Perfect Works appears to be a company named "Estif Co., Ltd." according to the Staff credits page at the end of the book, along with someone named "Takaaki Aihara." The whole thing is a bit confusing though, since Takahashi said in the 2018 Concert interviews that Perfect Works "was the first time I had written it out." So while the opening page said that "The story is spun into six major episodes" because that's how the writers may have interpreted Takahashi's words or written notes about the story, Takahashi himself says in his Director's comment column that this universe is more akin to being divided into three main episodes or parts, with Episode II, III and IV being heavily marginalized as merely belonging to "Episode V," as has been cited earlier. But I will cite it again since it has a tendency to elude people:
"The world of Xenogears can be divided into three episodes, broadly speaking. The first takes place roughly 5000 years into the future from our present real-life era, a story playing out in the vastness of outer space. The second is the content of the game itself, the story of the world inhabited by Fei and his friends. It follows that the third would be the story of what comes after that."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, page 3)
The three large parts of the Xenogears universe.
The History section on Episode I in Xenogears: Perfect Works is essentially a couple of lore pages where the story is in the progress of being transitioned from what was "Xenogears" to what would become "Xenosaga." "Episode I" of Xenogears was not written yet, but Tetsuya Takahashi had a rough idea of what he wanted to tell, and outlined a few core ideas in the History chapter. Several conceptual ideas for Xenosaga would be established or hinted at here. However, since they were very much concepts for Xenogears, it can't be said that they are exclusively "Xenosaga." But before we make that comparison, we should recognize a few differences between Perfect Works and the game. Inconsistencies within Xenogears itself, so to speak.
Takahashi comments in the "Main Staff of Xenogears" section: "It's already been a quick six months since the launch of Xenogears. Looking back on it now, it's been absolutely chaotic, and there are some things about the game and some things I've said I find almost unbearably embarrassing. That being the case, I've taken the opportunity to include a few corrections for some of these in this book. Now, I'm sure there'll be some readers who'll be angry at this, saying what the...? That's different from the game!, but I'll just have to ask them to please forgive me this one indulgence."
He speaks of "a few corrections" and expect a few players to have a reaction at the differences between what is stated in the book from what was stated in the game. But what are these differences? The most apparent difference is the origin of the Phenomenon Modification Engine, Zohar (translated as "Zohar Modifier" in the U.S. version), which had been established in the game as follows:
Wave Existence:
"Long ago, a 'modifier', or a pseudo-perpetual, infinite-energy engine was created. That engine was named 'Zohar'. That reactor was created by an ancient people from another planet to attain what is considered to be the ultimate energy possible within this four-dimensional universe. Eventually, those people used that same engine to create the ultimate inter-planetary invasion weapon, 'Deus'... Zohar was used as its primary source of power."
"Long ago, a 'modifier', or a pseudo-perpetual, infinite-energy engine was created. That engine was named 'Zohar'. That reactor was created by an ancient people from another planet to attain what is considered to be the ultimate energy possible within this four-dimensional universe. Eventually, those people used that same engine to create the ultimate inter-planetary invasion weapon, 'Deus'... Zohar was used as its primary source of power."
So, in the original concept, 'Zohar' appeared to be a creation by an ancient people. The Japanese original text appears to say more or less the same thing. Takahashi had likely not worked out the details yet, and, as the Zohar was a reference to the Monolith from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series of novels and films, in which the Monoliths are advanced machines built by an unseen extraterrestrial species, he simply gave the Zohar a similar backstory.
In Xenosaga, the Zohar is not exactly an object but something more like a door or window to Xenosaga's higher dimension equivalent. Its Zohar is merely perceived to be an object by human beings, and it was already in existence from the time of our universe's birth. Thus, in Perfect Works, the description of Zohar is in a transitory phase from what was Xenogears' pseudo-perpetual, phenomenon alteration Engine, to what would become Xenosaga's window to the Higher Domain. On page 7 the origin of Zohar is laid out, where it is described that it was originally an eye shaped "Object" that was discovered on Earth in 2001, in a stratum dating back 3.9 billion years, while the Object itself was as old as the universe. The object was therefore no longer an artificial creation, but a mere aberration of nature; an intrinsic part of the four-dimensional universe that was always in existence. The Object was given the term "Magnetic Abnormal Material (MAM)," a reference to the 2001 Monoliths' "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly" terms, before being given the name "Zohar." Thus a retcon occured, where the Zohar eye portion and the rest of the Monolith became two separate parts of the Zohar "Engine" in what was a much more convoluted tale. Once Takahashi did not have to follow the original canon for Xenosaga, he simply made the entire Monolith the main Zohar that had existed since the Big Bang.
Another discrepancy seemed to be Abel's contact with the Wave Existence that is trapped inside the Zohar. In the game it is never stated when or where this took place, but above the Drama Diagram on page 203 the following is stated:
In Id's spiritual world, Fei makes contact with Zohar again. And so his memories of his previous life as Abel from 10,000 years before, on the space vessel when the Wave Existence had advented into Zohar and he first made contact are revived.
The scene referred to is the scene where Abel is looking at Zohar and where Elhaym has taken form within it. Apparently this is onboard the Eldridge. Contrast this with what the History chapter states about Abel's contact:
T.C. 4767
It has been 3 months since the adoption of Zohar as Deus's main reactor. Coupled experiments of the two systems begin inside an industrial satellite positioned in geostationary orbit around emigration planet Michtam 04β in star system NGC6744. However, another accident of unknown origin occurs during experimentation later that year, causing both systems to go haywire: Deus attacks nearby space colonies as well as Michtam 04β, which was being adapted for emigration at the time, resulting in massive casualties. (Page 8.)
It has been 3 months since the adoption of Zohar as Deus's main reactor. Coupled experiments of the two systems begin inside an industrial satellite positioned in geostationary orbit around emigration planet Michtam 04β in star system NGC6744. However, another accident of unknown origin occurs during experimentation later that year, causing both systems to go haywire: Deus attacks nearby space colonies as well as Michtam 04β, which was being adapted for emigration at the time, resulting in massive casualties. (Page 8.)
Original Elhaym
The girl born when Abel, who happened to be present during coupled experimentation between Deus and Zohar, came into contact with the Wave Existence, [...]. (Page 10.)
The girl born when Abel, who happened to be present during coupled experimentation between Deus and Zohar, came into contact with the Wave Existence, [...]. (Page 10.)
It may be that the Drama Diagram were notes written earlier, maybe during the game's development, or that Yugai failed to keep his interpretation of Takahashi's explanation consistent, but it is clear when you compare them that we are looking at an inconsistency in the History chapter where the contact happened at Michtam 04β during a series of experiments, and not onboard the Eldridge. Some might argue that they do not conflict, but it would be kind of ridiculous to assume that Abel keeps bumping into Zohar, first at Michtam's testing facilities, and again later onboard the Eldridge a second time, and no connection experiments were performed onboard the Eldridge.
Regarding Abel's contact itself, the game's dialogue states only that the Wave Existence's power went into Abel, but Abel's profile on page 158 states that "A fragment of the power of both Zohar and the Wave Existence flowed inside Abel." This appears to be another "correction" or retcon by Takahashi, since the Wave Existence says nothing about the Zohar's power also entering Abel (or how and why) in the actual game. The game's dialogue also gives the impression that all of the Wave Existence's power went into Abel, not just a portion of it, since the Wave Existence says: "I was split by your contact. My physical form or flesh stayed in Zohar, while my will went into Elhaym and my power went into you."
Another inconsistency is the number of casualties during 'The Day of Collapse.' Page 16 says 96% of the population was annihilated, while page 160 says 98%, and page 25 says the entire population was reduced to less than 1%. It also seems as if Takahashi tried to come up with a scientific explanation for the Chu-Chus, other than merely being an aboriginal species of that world, and some parts of the book suggests they may have been created from Kadmoni as an abnormal form of prototype humans, and were later given intelligence during experiments in the era of Zeboim.
Also, according to Perfect Works it was nine years ago that Maria escaped Solaris, at the age of 4, but according to a line in the game, Maria claims to have been 5 years old while living in Solaris. In the game she also states that she escaped 5 years ago (which would be at the age of 8) and indirectly suggests that she was brought to Shevat right away 5 years ago. But the book states that she was taken in by her great grandfather Balthasar for at least 5 years before being taken to Shevat 3 years ago. And there may be more discrepancies.
With this in mind, we will now examine where the story of Xenogears appeared to be going before it became Xenosaga. The mystery of "EPISODE I." The following appears in the book's After Word:
"The Time of the Gospel"
Perhaps you recall these words that were spoken by Cain? In the story, they provide an interpretation of how Man is endowed with eternal life through the resurrection of God. As I'm sure the more perceptive of you have noticed, no clear and specific explanation of the true meaning behind the words the Time of the Gospel or the three mysterious phenomena bound up with it -
why was it absolutely necessary for 'God', Deus, to restore itself within the long span of 10,000 years?,
why was there a time limit to this process?,
why would mankind be destroyed as a result of this?
- was ever provided, to the very end. In addition, the interpretations themselves given by the characters who navigate these phenomena vary tremendously based on their individual perspectives.
With this in mind, I'd like to begin by considering the true meaning of the Time of the Gospel as seen from the Gazel Ministry's point of view.
Their main interpretation is as follows: if the resurrection of God does not come to pass, Man will also be brought to ruin. This conveys the true purpose for the existence of the Gazel Ministry itself, created as an instrument of the weapon Deus. In becoming part of Deus God - they will live forever. Further, to them this is life, while anything that prevents them from becoming one with God and returning to the restored system consequently takes on the meaning of death.
Shackled to the system, the Ministry simply desired the resurrection of God, nothing more. They brought about the resurrection of God only for the purpose of being able to return to the restored system. They effectively met their end at the hands of Krelian, being erased by him. However, their Animus essence was propagated into the genetic code of mankind, the resurrection of God came to pass, and in truth, many humans became part of God, experiencing a return and reunification being endowed with life. Consequently, at this point in time they were able to escape the approach of the day of ruin they'd forseen.
Still, if the same kind of phenomenon were to be seen from a different point of view, the resurrection of God would indeed be linked to the destruction of mankind. So let us take a look at Miang's (Elly's) point of view next.
There's a line by Elly as Miang that goes like this: "Entities that can create "God" will eventually become an obstacle." This line refers to the final phase of the Deus recovery program, but in regards to "obstacles", an obstacle to who, one might ask?
If you take it at face value, this would refer to the people of the civilization who created Deus. Deus, created to be a weapon, acts to eliminate any civilization that could possibly be an obstacle to its creators. That this is a safety mechanism or program put in place by the ones who created the weapon is not hard to imagine, and Citan mentions as such at one point.
But this begs the question. When Deus was born, the same exact thing happened to those who should have been the creators of Deus, and that's seemingly why Deus had been taken apart and was in the middle of being transported.
Was it just the system going out of control?
Who is the 'creator'?
Were Fei and co. really the targets that needed to be eliminated?
Be that as it may, it is obvious that there exists two contradictory views surrounding the interpretation of the Time of the Gospel, namely without the resurrection of God, mankind will be brought to ruin, and through the resurrection of God, mankind will be brought to ruin.
What could explain this contradiction? They could just as well be seen as a result of differences in subjective actors' individual points of view. In addition, it might not be unreasonable to limit the definition of mankind to simply those who are destined to become parts of Deus. Humans who become part of Deus and join with it this way attain life, while those who never hoped for that kind of unification, those who intended to break out from under God's protection, are given a divine punishment bearing the name of ruin. On this point there is no contradiction between the Gazel Ministry's interpretation and Miang's (Elly's) words.
However, Cain was different. He took this as a contradiction.
Cain was born as part of the Deus system, and stemming from his being shackled in this way, he fervently wished for Man's liberation from the bonds of God, in stark opposition to his colleagues in the Ministry. Thus, Cain was desperately looking for a solution. If ruin is taken to mean a return to God, without unification, then its opposite would naturally be life, attained through preventing such a unification.
For Cain, thinking along these lines, the abilities demonstrated by humans such as Citan and his peers as representatives of a new seed were a source of hope. As the resurrection of God, Deus, drew closer, Cain knew there was a high probability their appearance was not due to chance. He entrusted them with everything. He decided that ruin would be a result of the curse of the system, a massacre committed by the weapon Deus, and he hoped for Man to become humanity by growing out of their collective childhood and ridding themselves of the shackles of God. At this time, Cain was freed from the curse of the system.
In Cain's view, the entity who was supposed to cut the chains of God and to become a new seed at the heart of humanity would be Ahnenerbe, the coming god in the flesh.
He believed that Man would find salvation through this Ahnenerbe. And then, God, Deus, was destroyed by Fei and his friends, deemed to be Ahnenerbe, coming god in the flesh by Cain. Through their victory in the battle to refuse a ruin of the flesh by massacre, or a ruin of the mind through unification, Man was freed from their predestined destruction and managed to become humanity.
However, if one works with the hypothesis that this destiny is indeed unavoidable, it becomes clear that these events could not have been the phenomena expected to accompany the Time of the Gospel. The reason for this is that the phenomenon of God's destruction does not have a place here.
And does this concept of "God" really refer to Deus? If we assume that it does refer to Deus, then that does provide an answer to the question of "why do people perish as a result of that?" But this fails to answer other questions like, "Why did it need to self-repair itself for an incredibly long 10,000 years?" and "Why is there a time limit for that?"
Be that the case, then, one should see the true cause for the ruination of mankind as one and the same with what the word "Ahnenerbe" (Coming god in the flesh) foretells. The cause of Deus going rogue in the opening is also still unknown.
The true meaning of the "Time of the Gospel." This giant mystery that shrouds the world of Xenogears is still yet to be solved
(Translation by Gwendal with some minor cleaning up by Lugalbanda. Note that "Ahnenerbe" was mistranslated as "Anonelbe" in the U.S. game.)
There are a number of things that are of interest in this After Word when speculating on where the storyline was heading. One thing that is clear is that Deus needed humans, specifically, as parts. But why did it need humans as parts? This is an important question, since there was no answer to this in the game, even though Deus ended up using Karellen's nanomachines to compensate for parts that were lacking.
For those who are confused about the sudden mention of a "time limit" to Deus resurrection here, this would be another instance of the U.S. translation of the game script not getting certain lines right. In the first conversation Citan is seen having with the Emperor, the Emperor says "That is our final prayer..." which should really be "If this does not come true..." The following are the relevant and accurately translated lines from the game:
Emperor:
"Having filled the earth, we again enter the presence of god, return to paradise, and gain eternal life. That is the time (age) of the gospel. That time (age) is approaching. Until then we Gazel must search for God's resting place, and revive him. If this does not come true..."
Shitan:
"If it does not come true?"
Emperor:
"Then such has been our fate (destiny) from our genesis ......"
And later on in the game:
Gazel:
Already, we are out of time. The key, use the key......
Karellen:
"Naturally you are a bit terrified, aren't you?"
Gazel:
Karellen...... What is Cain's condition?
Karellen:
"Undergoing the usual life extension treatment. It should maintain him...... for a little longer."
Gazel:
So there is a possibility that we will not be in time......
Deus had an important mission to accomplish, and had a time limit of 10,000 years in which to accomplish this. Key words here include "ruination of mankind" and "unification." If Deus wanted humans as parts, had the ability to cause some kind of unification, and destroyed those humans who rejected this unification, then it makes sense that Deus considered selfish human civilizations a threat to all existence. While it may seem like a big leap to make, the fact that the Gazel Ministry thought that if Deus is kept from being resurrected then human beings will also be destroyed suggests that Deus was vital to humanity's continued existence. Even if one dismisses the Ministry as being superstitious with a false religious "myth" about armageddon, the fact that Takahashi states that Deus had a "time limit" means there must be something to it. Thus Deus, as a metaphor for "God," becomes more compelling; because it is now a God that is supposedly humanity's only salvation, which is what compells religious people to believe in "God" in the first place. In the game's universe it has taken the role of Yahweh, which makes sense when Deus originally went by that name. This idea that Deus considered selfish humans to be a problem is further supported by a passage about Miang and the Uroborus ring on page 171 in the book:
As the Great Mother, Miang obstructs the formation of a person's Ego. A person who has been allowed to develop a conscious world (Ego) begins to act according to his own wishes. This is nothing but a hindrance to Miang's goal of leading people to a perfectly complete body. Therefore, Miang became the Great Mother, and eradicated any civilization too advanced (people with a sense of self).
Taken by itself, Miang's manipulation of human beings might be seen as merely a way to control those that would become parts for a mindless weapon system. But it does not make sense that she would care whether or not human beings become "selfish" or not. However, when taken within the context of the After Word, we can see that selfish civilizations that have overreached themselves would be less inclined to desire a spiritual unification with "God," and would have to be destroyed.
What then, is the condition that threatens the existence of humanity? For anyone who has played through the Xenosaga trilogy, this question should be rather easy to answer. In Xenosaga the people who desire rejection of others are the cause of a "collapse phenomenon" in which the entire universe runs a real risk of ultimately being destroyed from a structural collapse originating in the spiritual plane of our universe; the Collective Unconscious.
Add this aspect to Xenogears and this After Word makes sense, since Deus' action would then be the only thing that can prevent the universe from collapsing. From a philosophical standpoint the question then becomes; is the condition that Deus (Yahweh) offers a preferable compromise to death? No wonder Takahashi felt he had enough material and a burning desire to make two more epic Xenogears games; one telling a story of human fear and the cause for the collapse of the universe to explain the actions of Deus (EPISODE I) and another one that tells of what comes after the game (EPISODE VI). Let's quote a few key lines from Perfect Works' History chapter on EPISODE I:
An era in which the calendar was designated with the name of the last Messiah to historically appear. With the left behind words of an extraordinary prophet ending in unfounded worry, the Third Millennium began, with mankind being able to face a new period of 1,000 years.
16 years after the formation of the Central Council, mankind is freed from what was their motherly land for so long, and its gravitational control--what they had long hoped for (though 500 Galaxy Standard Years after the original plan), and the Immigrant Fleet is formed to leave for the abyss of space. Thereafter, Earth is referred to as the "Forbidden Land [Lost Jerusalem]" and is considered to be an unencroachable space. (The reason for this is unknown, but at minimum is believed not to be due to sudden changes in the planetary environment)
MAM, a relic from Lost Jerusalem, is discovered by supposed archaeological researchers in what appears to be a cargo ship housing items related to natural history. The ship is part of the Pilgrimage Fleet, a wandering sect of followers of an ancient religion.
The planet where Project Zohar was being conducted is destroyed in an accident of unknown origin. MAM is recovered floating in the area where the planet previously existed.
16 years after the formation of the Central Council, mankind is freed from what was their motherly land for so long, and its gravitational control--what they had long hoped for (though 500 Galaxy Standard Years after the original plan), and the Immigrant Fleet is formed to leave for the abyss of space. Thereafter, Earth is referred to as the "Forbidden Land [Lost Jerusalem]" and is considered to be an unencroachable space. (The reason for this is unknown, but at minimum is believed not to be due to sudden changes in the planetary environment)
MAM, a relic from Lost Jerusalem, is discovered by supposed archaeological researchers in what appears to be a cargo ship housing items related to natural history. The ship is part of the Pilgrimage Fleet, a wandering sect of followers of an ancient religion.
The planet where Project Zohar was being conducted is destroyed in an accident of unknown origin. MAM is recovered floating in the area where the planet previously existed.
These excerpts all involves or alludes to concepts such as "the last Messiah to historically appear" (Mary and Yeshua's story), "unfounded worry" (theme of fear), "Forbidden Land" (Lost Jerusalem), "relics" protected by a religious "Pilgrimage Fleet" (Ormus Society and Relics of God), "Project Zohar" (the Zohar Project), and the destruction of a planet in connection to this project (Ariadne) - all key ingredients for Xenosaga, but here they are conceptualized for Xenogears with only slight differences in detail and more vague allusions (as per an early draft or teaser).
In fact, Takahashi and the team did not waste any time getting together at the company to talk about the next project, and presumably Takahashi wanted to work on a Xenogears prequel next, so it figures he must have been enormously passionate about the series at this point. Kato states:
"I heard that on the day that "Xenogears" went on sale, while all of us were supposed to be still on vacation, the entire Xeno-team decided to get together at the company to talk about the next project. At that point, none of us knew which team we would be assigned to yet. Oh, and the reason why I say "I heard" is because I didn't go to the company on that day. I was off somewhere in the southern islands... enjoying my scuba-time (laughs). I also heard that because of this reason, some of the members decided not to work with the Cross-Team and decided to join a different team... Well, that's life I guess. Different people go their own different ways."
- Masato Kato (http://mitsuda.cocoebiz.com/friends/kato.html)
The meeting between the Xenogears team members sans Kato was, of course, not just to discuss a new Xenogears game, but what the team would do next. However, Takahashi likely started to "recruit" those who would eventually follow him to form MonolithSoft as early as this meeting. Following this meeting, Kato was being asked to direct Chrono Cross. The main reason Kato didn't go with others to form MonolithSoft at the end of 1999 was likely because he was stuck with directing Chrono Cross.
Apart from Perfect Works, the Xenogears team would mainly move on to develop Threads of Fate (Tsutomu Terada, Tadahiro Usuda, Makoto Shimamoto, Hiromichi Tanaka) and Chrono Cross (Yasuyuki Honne, Masato Kato, Yasunori Mitsuda, Hiroshi Uchiyama, Hiromichi Tanaka). Tanegashima Takashi would work on Front Mission 3 while Yoshinori Ogura would "disappear" altogether (later working on Final Fantasy X). It is possible that he and Koh Arai, Kunihiko Tanaka, Junya Ishigaki and Soraya Saga were all in touch with Takahashi to plan the development of "Xenogears Episode I," but later Ogura wouldn't leave with the others to MonolithSoft. Hiromichi Tanaka also remained with Square. (Note that Ishigaki, Mitsuda, Soraya and Kunihiko Tanaka worked freelance at the time, so they would not have had any trouble moving.)
It was around this time that Hirohide Sugiura, an advertising producer and development manager at Square with a lot of experience in the industry, had started taking an interest in Tetsuya Takahashi as a game developer. In a June 2020 edition of Famitsu, Suguira states that "It all started when I played Xenogears. I was working on another title, but I was immediately enthralled by Xenogears, as it was quite a unique work." Although there has been plenty of evidence supporting the fact that the Xeno team did begin working on a sequel to Xenogears, it was finally Sugiura who confirmed it. In that same 2020 interview he said that "A concept for Xenogears 2 was started after that, but Square was making large investments in the film business at the time, and it was very difficult to produce internally."
Xenogears was released in February 1998 and Perfect Works in August the same year, so when the book was released the planning stages must have already begun while Perfect Works was being put together, which would explain how the EPISODE I timeline could have such detailed information on concepts not revealed in the game. In many ways, the History chapter on EPISODE I and Zohar's origin was probably to some extent a "teaser" for the prequel-sequel game they were going to work on next.
Shion Uzuki concept art (1999)
A few characters would be conceptualized during this time (before the breakaway from Square). Shion Uzuki was one, and sketches of her preliminary design appeared as early as 1999 on Kunihiko Tanaka's webpage. Whether the character was already named "Shion Uzuki" by that point is unknown, but we can confirm this character became Xenosaga's Shion Uzuki since two of those sketches are included as early design work for Shion in the Xenosaga Episode I -Official Design Materials-. Soraya Saga's webpage at the time, called Harcourt Vega (later renamed "Ziggurat 9"), had artworks for the early concepts of MOMO, later renamed to 'Pretty in pink,' and Ziggy, originally called 'Vega' and later known as 'Otto'. Soraya had a character sample sheet in her mail section back then with Vega and this pink android whom he was talking with that wanted to do good deeds so that she could reach heaven and re-unite with her creator - which would turn out to be the story of MOMO Mizrahi in Xenosaga. Amber Michelle goes on to talk about it in her article "Xenogears: A History" (2004) on her fansite Xenogears: Guardian Angels:
"That concept was the rumored character sheet for the 'Xenogears prequel' that we talked about back then. I noticed the dates on the character sheet corresponded with the dates for the Transcend Christ timeline in the Perfect Works, so we started talking about it on the board. (I think the sheet was for Ziggy, but I think the name on the sheet was 'Vega.')"
This concept and rumor of "Xenogears 2" eventually ended up on a U.S. gaming site called "TheGIA.com" (Gaming Intelligence Agency), that was founded by Andrew Vestal, a guy who had previously founded and single handedly run The Unofficial Squaresoft Homepage, also known as square.net. The guy had serious connections at Square. A fan recalls, "When [Andrew] had problems with his service provider, [Square] let him host his site from one of their own servers for a few months. He unveiled FFIX to the world almost a full year before Square even announced that it existed at all. If he reported that Square had begun work on 'Xenogears 2,' it was probably because someone at Square leaked it to him, not because Soraya posted pics at her site."
But friends of Soraya Saga accused Vestal and TheGIA.com for getting this info from her website without giving her credit, and Vestal put up a supposedly rude display on her BBS when he came to defend his article. However, by this time Soraya had disappeared from the internet, and not long after this the Xeno team would break away from Square and form MonolithSoft.
Hirohide Sugiura explains the decision to leave Square to form an entirely new company in his 2020 Famitsu interview: "We chose the path of starting a business so that we could make this concept [Xenogears 2] a reality, one way or another. [...] Yasuyuki Honne and 27 others, along with Tetsuya Takahashi, the proposer of the concept, supported that." While it had been decided that a sequel to Xenogears would be made if it sold 1 million copies, in the end it only reached just shy of 900,000, so the executives at Square resisted the idea of making the prequel. "The reason I quit Square was that I wanted to make a series like Xenosaga and the executives claimed they didn't have enough money to realize my ideas", explains Tetsuya Takahashi to Super PLAY magazine in the April 2002 issue.
Tetsuya Takahashi had decided to leave Square to form his own company Monolith Software Inc (MSI) together with Sugiura and the others, and did so on October 1, 1999, a little over a year from when Perfect Works had been published. Takahashi and Soraya had been working on the concept and story for Xenogears Episode I ("Xenogears 2") up till then, when Takahashi finally left with nearly 50 other Square members, including Hiroshi Uchiyama, Yasuyuki Honne, Tanegashima Takashi, Koh Arai, Makoto Shimamoto, Tsutomu Terada and Tadahiro Usuda. Norihiro Takamien (the guy who developed Square's computer animation capabilities with Final Fantasy VII and VIII) and Toshiaki Yajima (Front Mission Alternative) would also follow Takahashi to MonolithSoft, despite not having been involved with Xenogears.
Fans were worried that this meant the end for the Xenogears series, but those fans who were in contact with Soraya Saga suspected that a prequel would still happen, and soon. The very name of the company as "Monolith" Software seemed to be named after the Zohar which Takahashi said was the nucleus of the Xenogears story. Several months after that, MonolithSoft revealed that they were working on a game which went by the working title "Project X" - a PS2 RPG for which they announced they were looking to hire staff. "Project X" was also the working title for Xenogears in its later stages of development, though nobody in the West knew that at the time. But the final title for MonolithSoft's PS2 RPG would turn out to be "Xenosaga," which, while sounding similar, was not exactly the same title.
"A few years ago, Square was already planning to focus primarily on the Final Fantasy series. I personally did not favor the idea, and at the same time, such plans can possibly lead to big losses for the company. So I decided to leave Square and started seeking a company which our team can work with in creating a game that we desire. That company turned out to be Namco, so with a mutual understanding in developing this game, Monolith Software was established."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview with GameSpot, 2001)
However, the question remained: Would "Xenosaga" really be a sequel or prequel to Xenogears?
Continue to Part 2: XENOSAGA
