Anyway, because of how much I love going on about just how awesome a game Xenogears is, I'd be willing to explain just exactly how much deeper and more complex it is than virtually any other story there is, Eastern or Western.
Depth: It explores an absurd number of themes and concepts, ranging from war, to history, to politics, to economics, to ethics, to religion, to God, to the nature and creation of the universe. It is by far the most philosophically deep story I've ever come across, implementing the ideas and concepts of Freud, Nietzsche, Jung, with a particularly deep exploration of existentialism; it's extremely emotive, with a strong sense of friendship, romance, love, tragedy, revenge, betrayal; the story affects the player in virtually every way, at times genuinely terrifying you, at times genuinely shocking you, at times keeping you intrigued, at times keeping you excited, at times making you laugh, at times keeping you completely in the dark. There's a heavy use of symbolism throughout the game, and each and every single character, from the primary protagonists to the supporting protagonists to the antagonists of the storyline all receieve an extremely detailed backstory and role throughout the story. The villains are extremely well characterised; you have the mastermind in the form of Krellian, a sort of rival type figure in the form of Rhamsus, the intriguing villain in the form of Grahf, the genuinely terrifying Mhiang, the extremely cryptic Gazel Ministry, the extremely mysterious Id, the villain you grow to truly hate in the form of Stein, and many others. And before you think that it tries to pull too much off; all of those themes and concepts are explored over a 50 hour+ long story, and are all developed and introduced at an extremely great pace.
Complexity: The story presents the player with an absolutely unprecedented level of mystery and suspense, where events and characters can appear to be completely unrelated and seem that way for large portions of the story and then connect together far later on in the game. The story is filled with ridiculously cryptic characters and dialogue, that will genuinely confuse the hell out of you. The game explores a deep history, that's presented to you in an extremely unordered manner that further adds to the confusion. A lot of players still don't understand a large portion of the game's events, though they're mostly later explained towards the end of the game. You can literally spend days analysing the storyline. Really, it's hard to put into words just how complex it is but truthfully nothing else I've come across (which includes Neon Genesis Evangelion) even comes close.
The truth of the matter is that nothing else comes close in those regards and that Xenogears is quite simply far deeper and more complex than any other story out there. And beyond that it's music is absolutely incredible and really enhances the mood and atmosphere of an incredible well told and emotive story.
I was never able to get into Xenogears. Simply didn't find the story engaging at all. It may be complex and philosophically deep as you say, but I wasn't interested immediately enough to stick with it.
Yeah you should it's definitely worth it. How far did you get into it out of curiosity? The story pretty much completely grabbed me by the music box scene.
It's one of the great Squaresoft games that was released exclusively for the PS1, and along with the Xenosaga trilogy and the Chrono trilogy (Trigger, Cross, and Radical Dreamers) it has - easily - one of the greatest storylines I've ever come across. In fact, the greatest, with only Radical Dreamers approaching. As a game, it far outstrips any FF with the exceptions of VII and IX (but still being firmly better than IX and on par with VII), and even then that's only because of its lack of a strong balance between gameplay and storyline, where otherwise it would easily be the greatest RPG, and game, ever made in my honest opinion. The storyline experience alone is more than worth playing the game.
Yes, I would agree.
It is indeed one of the greatest RPGs ever made, regardless of country of origin.
Too bad it didn't garner as much international reception than it should've...
Many from the Western gamers slipped the opportunity of playing one of the best games the genre had to offer.
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"Farewell, Damos... Ash, Pikachu... And you. All of my beloved." -- Arceus
I think thats too broad to say.. in something like mario.. you expect something simplistic.. but if you go to say, play something like final fantasy, or baldurs gate.. whatever.. you'd probably be pretty pissed to find out that it just boiled down to having kidnapped the princess
while kidnapping the princess is classic and cool..
I think people want a bit more of a detailed journey for other games...
even in zelda games its a bit more complex than just kidnapping the princess
what are some games that 'how much you enjoy them' became a factor in their story telling success, in your opinion?
Having a complex and deep storyline doesn't always net you the Win Button.
Ever heard of Vagrant Story? Had an absolutely superb storyline, with incredible graphics and full on motion of the characters, however where does it stand in the test of time?
Xenogears did have a great storyline, however you can ask me again, when I had to sit there for like 20 mins straight to go through a talking segment was way too much. I loved Xenogears, but talking about it's storyline doesn't do it justice. It's a game after all, and the gameplay has to be taken into account. It's play was extremely enjoyable, especially all of the combo option you and your gears, lmao, all I can say is, Fei did not have the best overall gear at the end, just so you know, if you played it 24/7 like I did that is, haha.
Anyhow, to me, you don't necessarily need a complex storyline to make your game great. Street Fighter II has a mediocre storyline at best...however it's arguably in the Top-3 Best Video Games of all time in what it did and achieved when it was released back in 1991 (If you deny this game for not being Top-3 of all time, then you are crazy and definitely were not there to witness what took place on this planet in 1991 when this game came out).
Look at Mario 64...what great or deep storyline was in that game? However that game was an absolute GEM during it's time, so to me, great storyline will only go as far as the gameplay as well, because being a video game, the gameplay is just as important if not more important then anything else.
Anyhow...hasn't this detracted away from the American or Japanese notion? Lmao. Like I said, storylines don't "always" win out, if that were the case, we'd be seeing way more other franchise games coming out of Japan to the USA if it all fell upon this notion.
Games are games first, a good storyline only helps improve it, and it's shown that you don't always need to be deep or complex to be Top-Tier.
What I dont get is.. people keep going from the topic of story to gameplay and back and forth..
*cue image of a thought train crashing into a watery ditch*
basically what I started off saying.. was that most of the stories nowadays.. (obviously older games are forgiven, since not much was needed to get people involved, and for fighting games, noone even cares about story) are very watered down, or borrow way too heavily from others
saving the princess is fine if its mario.. but when you have a company like squeenix or bethesda.. it would probably become annoying very fast
KMC Community Forums
Dec 27th, 2009 05:24 PM
