Xenogears/Xenosaga

[Shaifs]

This thread was created to not bombard another topic with becoming offtopic/switching to another topic.

I'll direct my post toward one person while letting others know that Xenogears and Xenosaga are not connected Fair warning there will be spooilers in these, mostly Xenogears but the game is 13 years old, you had your time. =P

I played Xenosaga, just not any of it's sequels. I enjoyed it so much that I tried to convince my husband it was the best game ever. He then showed me Xenogears, and told me that Xenosaga seemed like a rip-off. He was right.

However, in response to Shaifs, it's not a rip-off or an alternate time-line. If I can find the site again, I'll post it, but I found a site where the developers of Xenosaga said they loved Gears so much they wanted to continue it's story, but didn't know how and didn't have permission from those developers to do it. So instead of making a sequel to Xenogears, they made a prequel. It's meant to take place a few hundred or thousand years before Gears.[/QUOTE]

HAHAHAHA... don't mean to laugh, but read closely what I said, "Anyone who had perfect works will know that!"

It's obvious you haven't read perfect works. The saga of Xenogears was made long ago before Xenosaga came out, infact it came out before Xenogears was made a videogame. Xenogears comes from a large novel, called Perfect Works. There are six episodes of Perfect Works. Episode V is Xenogears. Episode I happens 15,000 years before Episode V and Xenosaga happens long long before that.

Xenosaga and Xenogears creator Tetsuya Takahashi states himself that Xenosaga and Xenogears are not connected, also it is impossible for it to be the same timeline/story as Square Enix has the copyright to everything Xenogears[recently sold to Nintendo, along with Monolith who created Xenosaga], so it's quite impossible that they are the same. Not only that Perfect Works tells you how they are not connected, meaning they cannot be in the same timeline.

Below is the preface of Perfect Works.

Spoiler

2001 A.D.

The discovery shook the world. An eye shaped object was discovered in a stratum approximately
3.9 billion years old. From its shape, the object appeared to be artificial. Research
Organizations made hyptothesis about the object and a public announcement was made to the
world.
The geological features from the era of the start of the Earth caused some to believe this
object was the source of all life, an Artificial Panspermia (Pan-Universal Embryo) and...
In the academic world there was a number of hypothesis that started to give it unusual,
romantic and jumbled opinons and speculations about what it was. A flood of them focused on
the grounds of existence of the object and what it was. Its existence was puzzling and there
were many questions surrounding this artificial creation.
There was a lot of deep confusion surrounding the object and many reckless, blind hypothesis's
were made. But this and other hypothesis met their demise. Dating of the object found it to be
from 15 billions years ago, confirming the belief that it existed since the beginning of the
universe.
The official announcements about the object helped increase the confusion. This object, if not
of artificial creation was already from a Godlike domain. Eventually the object, which had
magnetic properties was labelled MAM(Magnetic Abnormal Matter) for convenience.
Research on a national scale was conducted on the object but problems arose with the budget,
which was eventually frozen.
One group of voluntary researchers continued with very detailed analysis. These researchers
gave the object another name. The name was Zohar.

Sound familiar, yeah it's the exact opening of Xenosaga. 2001 is 15,000 year prior to the landing of Ignas. After 10,000 years [13001 AD] a new era begins called Transcend Christ [TC] this era will be the Era of Deus and when humans have left Earth, now to be known as Lost Jerusalem. Approximately 300 years after leaving Lost Jerusalem on the Immigrant Ship a new planet is found, and it's called Neo Jerusalem.

Approximately 4700 TC a war across the universe breaks out, this results into the creation of Deus Weapon and eventually the Eldridge is created.

What seperates Gears and Saga is that Deus is not in Saga, neither is the Eldrige. Nephilim is not Abel's [The Contact] mother, AKA as Elehaym. Abel in saga is not the same one in gears, he is not The Contact. And of course there is no Deus in Xenosaga either.

This is where the two stories seperate. =/ You have to read Perfect works to understand the difference beween them.

And for reference Gears happens 15,000 years after discovering MAM/Zohar.

-2001 AD Zohar is found
-13001 AD [0 TC] TC timeline begins
-4800 TC [17801 AD] Ignas is discovered
-999 Ignas [18800 AD] Lahan is destroy/Star of Xenogears

I'm up for any discussion on the topic. I've completly played out Xenogears, read all of perpfect works and finished All three episodes, I consider myself quite knowledgable on the two universes.

 

[Dopples]

And....this matters, why? Monolith has staff members who worked on Xenogears, and while they are similar in each respect, it still doesn't change the fact the Xenosaga is a DIFFERENT game. Each game rips off of another. Phantasy Star ripped off of Final Fantasy for being a RPG. Sonic ripped off Mario by being a platformer. EVERYTHING rips off of something.

 

[Shaifs]

I made this topic for discussion, if your question was why I made this topic then there is your answer. Ripping off is blatently copying someone elses idea, you can't rip off your own work. The creator is the same, Tetsuya Takahashi created Xenogears, he created Perfect Works, he created Xenosaga. It was about 1998 that it was announced that Episode 6 was going to be made. That's episode 6 of the Xenogears, there was no notion of Xenosaga yet. However things didn't go over smoothly with Squaresoft. That is what created Monolith.

My whole point is exactly as you said, Xenosaga and Xenogears are two different games.

Spoiler

TC 4767 [the very same year the story of Xenosaga starts] is the year that the Eldridge takes off with all that is left of humanity, all 120 million. The world of Ignas, all major technologies, even city foundations were made up of the Eldridge. That right there proves that Xenosaga and Xenogears are not one in the same. Episode 1 & 2 last approximately 6 months, Episode 3 starts 1 year after the end of Episode 2. Approximately 2 years long is the Xenosaga story. Coming to almost TC 4770, TC 4769 at the latest making it too late for anyone in Episode 3 to board the Eldridge. Not to mention Abel who is the Contact the previous Incarnations of Xenogears male Protagonist DIES IN EPISODE 3. Yeah that kinda fucks up the two series being connected at all.

 

[ccoa]

Spoiler

Abel doesn't die in Ep III. Didn't you say you knew the series really well? He received the power of Anima from chaos and departed with Nephilim.

 

[Shaifs]

Spoiler

Technically he is dead, he is no longer of the world. I'm not exactly sure what the light he walks into is. But he is no longer in the miltian star cluster that's for sure.

 

[Marcus]

What's the point of this topic? It's been announced several times that Xenosaga and Xenogears weren't connected. It was originally going to be a prequel (as seen by the little text screen at the end of Xenogears' credits) but Squeenix wouldn't give up the rights and monetary and development issues cut Xenosaga short. It's not a "rip off" it's just a dead project that quickly retooled into something original after several failed plans.

Honestly, Xenosaga was a huge mess of a development cycle. I think it was originally supposed to be 5 games or something but atleast it got finished unlike shenmue. Fuck you sega.

 

[Bogus]

Thank you, Marcus. I was going to grab the Wiki entry, but you said it well enough. My husband and I have had this argument and were both disappointed when we found that Xenosaga is nothing more than a failed project, it was meant to be so much more. I'm also glad to find that someone else knew it was meant to be a prequel. I didn't know that was scrapped though, thanks for clearing that up. Now I can tell my husband it isn't an abomination next time I play it and he scoffs at me.

Oh and Shaifs, I didn't say I thought it was a rip-off, I said my husband did. I just thought it was a neat game until he showed me Xenogears and I caught the similarities and did some research (not enough, obviously). I do apologize if I hit a button somewhere that made you want to make an entire topic for this, that was not my intention.

 

[youngcrunk187]

Can sombody tell some script editor to make a multiplayer rmxp script? thats what everyones waitin for :D

 

[arcthemonkey]

Spoiler

I'm convinced that the series was always "secretly" intended to be prequals to Xenogears, but that when the series had the plug pulled, Episode III cut ties to the rest of the series. This was mostly accomplished by changing Abel's character and role in the story. Of course, nephilim was never Abel's mother, rather, she looks exactly like Elhaym who was created by the Abel of Xenogears' desire for a mother. When she appeared earlier in the series, I assumed this was forshadowing Fei's relationship with Id, in addition to Miang's division. This could have continued being true, but they, again, changed Abel. Notice he still looks exactly the same as Fei/Abel/whoever, but rather than being the only survivor of a space-ship wreck (I believe he was otherwise an ordinary boy) he's something entirely different. Notice that Omega Universitas looks strikingly like Weltal, and even has an ID mode. When Omega Res Novae absorbs the zohar, notice that he looks almost exactly like Xenogears. A character who looks exactly like the animus piloting a vehival that looks just like Xenogears?

Of course, we all know Michtam SHOULD have been destroyed by Deus, not Shion summoning Gnosis. While Xenosaga III never felt pieced together, satisfying the concept of a inevitable but unexpected ending, I believe that if they had gotten the rights, Deus would have indeed been revealed as the destroyer of Michtam.

Fortunately, they've stated that Xenosaga may come back in the future. They may have forced the story into a side-continuum of sorts, but I'm still interested to see where they go with it.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I think they diverted the storyline off the Xenogears path because the series got cut short.