All these years later, I still want to know what is on Lost Jerusalem that's so important.
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I just played Xenogears for the first time and I'm officially blown away - what now?
- Thread starter Samiya
- Start date
All these years later, I still want to know what is on Lost Jerusalem that's so important.
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Surfing the web, I stumbled on this and just wanted to shoutout Dice for this really beautiful artwork of Elly - very talented artistry, I gotta say
kinda makes me wish it'll be part of the Bitmap JRPG book that Dice is already making the cover artwork for :P
kinda makes me wish it'll be part of the Bitmap JRPG book that Dice is already making the cover artwork for :P
Even though there's some contradictory passages, it's pretty clear Abel's contact happened during Deus connection tests with Zohar which were on planet Miktam before storage onboard the Eldridge.
First paragraph of bottom blue box: "During a Series of Experiments: During a series of tests on Deus and Zohar, the Wave Existence fell from a higher dimension where it had dwelled. Also at this time, one small boy happened by chance to come into contact with it."xenogears perfect works page10
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Bottom right paragraph: "Abel: The boy who made contact with the wave existence that advented into Zohar during series mobile experiments with Deus and Zohar. Afterwards, he was a passenger on the Eldridge.... His origin and the reason for his being near Zohar during the serial experiments are unknown."xenogears perfect works translation 158
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Whenever Perfect Works discusses Deus experiments, they are in reference to the same connection tests on Miktam before the planet was destroyed. It specifically states that Deus was separated and sealed for transport to examine later. No experiments on board the Eldridge were ever mentioned.
In addition to placing contact before the Eldridge, the last sentence does at least touch on Abel being near Zohar as being a oddity and acknowledges it as a mystery. I choose to read into that as there's more to Abel's being there than just incompetent security. Maybe it's own plot point in a hypothetical Xenogears ep. 2.
Thanks for the clarification. I had forgotten that specific info was included in Perfect Works.
Surfing the web, I stumbled on this and just wanted to shoutout Dice for this really beautiful artwork of Elly - very talented artistry, I gotta say
kinda makes me wish it'll be part of the Bitmap JRPG book that Dice is already making the cover artwork for :P
I like it. It's going into my xenogears image folder.
For whatever reason I don't get the Trace Textures option at all. I'm running Retroarch 1.9.1, updated my Beetle PSX HW core, etc and that option just doesn't show up at all.
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Run Xenogears
Press F1
Go to Options
Scroll down a little bit:
Dump and Replace Textures won't be there until you've enabled Track textures.
Run Xenogears
Press F1
Go to Options
Scroll down a little bit:
Dump and Replace Textures won't be there until you've enabled Track textures.
Yeah, I figured out my first problem- I had to completely delete and redownload Beetle PSX HW to get the options to show up. Updating the core didn't do it.
But now the actual replacement textures aren't showing up. Not sure if the problem is that I have CUE/ISO vs CUE/BIN so going to try to the latter.
EDIT- Think I figured out the issue- I guess this texture replacement isn't compatible with Super Sampling? I get the new textures when I turn super sampling off but they disappear once I turn it back on again.
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I would just turn up native rendering and disable super sampling. It's practically the same thing. You can throw some MSAA in there if you have the hardware for it.
Thanks to this thread I just started a new playthrough of Xenogears.
I gotta admit, it had been many years since my last playthrough, and damn, I didn't remember how terrible the voice acting and the lip sync were. lol. Just TERRIBLE. With the lip sync it's like they didn't even try, it's all over the place.
Still, the game is just as engaging as ever. Fucking love it.
I gotta admit, it had been many years since my last playthrough, and damn, I didn't remember how terrible the voice acting and the lip sync were. lol. Just TERRIBLE. With the lip sync it's like they didn't even try, it's all over the place.
Still, the game is just as engaging as ever. Fucking love it.
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The anime sequences are incredibly few and honestly I didn't really care about it, because obviously it's simply a lack of a budget to localize lip sync for such an old game made by a smaller team.
How are you playing it? PS3/Vita/PS1/Emulation?
so after ps3/psp store is closed, the only way we can buy xenogears, chrono cross, vagrant story etc is used ps1 physical copies? i can already see those games getting expensive
i hope after legend of mana they will take care of the rest of the catologue
i hope after legend of mana they will take care of the rest of the catologue
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xenogears is already around 120-150 USD on ebay.
Yeah, I really hope Square Enix thinks about getting all their old catalogue in order once and for all. There's so many that will be lost to time :'(
If I hadn't done a playthrough last year I'd be all over doing it again. Doesn't mean it won't happen, though.
I guess it's a good game.
Does it add subtitles to the sequences as well?
Yeah I ended up with Native x4 with no filtering on Sprites and 2D Polygons. Gives a nice balance of improving the 3D while still keeping the original sprite work.
It does. I've experimented with subbed version back after I finished my first playthrough. One of the patches that does the undubbing also includes some other changes too, such as faster texting scrolling.
Well, Xenoblade 2 is filled to the brim with religious references. Even has a character names Logos, so they weren't being particularly subtle with that one.
And I think Xenosaga is in a really weird spot where two of the companies are in a somewhat tight spot. Bamco owns the IP (and I presume the source code somewhere as well) and they have said that if it were to happen (though Harada has stated, it most likely ain't happening due to a failed profitability market research), that they want Monolith to do the project. And Monolith most likely can't do the project without Nintendo giving the greenlight to do the project. And considering Nintendo outright own Monolith, they'll most likely will not let them do the project unless it will end up (exclusively) on their system.
Now we have examples of Nintendo willing to be lenient with their content however. They gave Platinum and Sega permission to use the Japanese voice acting for the PC port of Bayonetta. The Wonderful 101 is now fully owned by Platinum. They've opened the platform and Smash for Microsoft. So, if anything, I personally think that the ball is entirely within the court of Namco and that it's entirely up to them to make it happen. But time will tell.
Time won't tell, they'll probably let the IP rot away like Square does, with the exception of the occasional cash grab. Though that concert is really nice!
brewster alread answered, but here a video and link
Xenogears Undub patch
This patch allows to change 100% of the voices of Xenogears in japanese. It is compatible with th
Emulation at 16X internal resolution for my 4K screen.
It is indeed! I think it's the definition of a flawed masterpiece. The game is greater than the sum of its parts.
Interesting! I didn't know there was an undub version. However it would mean to restart the game from the very beginning because I don't think the save file would be compatible with the NTSC-U version, right?
no, you can use the save since you patch the nstc-u version, check the link above
if you are using emulator like duckstation or a retroarch core, you can also enable trophies its a nice thing for replay value, imo
Oh wow! I didn't know that! I'm using Retroarch with the Beetle HW core.
The animated opening cutscene to Xenogears is really chilling to this day. During your first playthrough you have no idea of what's going on, but once you finish the game and then read the extra material like the Complete Works, and you already understand what the terminology means, like "Omega One", "Alpha One", "Razael Central", etc.
Once you know what each one of those terms means, and you rewatch the cutscene, it gains a new meaning and becomes a lot more chilling, now that you know what exactly is happening when the Operators begin freaking out.
"Omega one restarted. Alpha One genome restructured. Confirming exon replacement..."
The obliteration of the Eldridge is one of my favorite openings of all time.
Can you remind me what those names meant?
Omega One is Deus' main body. It's the embryo-looking thing that appears on the Operator's monitor screen. It's Deus' body reduced to its most basic form.
"Omega One restarting". Means the Deus main body was awakened from stasis.
Alpha One refers to the organic supercomputer Kadomony and the Persona system. It's the main AI that controls the Deus System and transfers the Zohar energy to Deus. Consider it as the system's CPU.
"Alpha One genome restructured. Confirming exon replacement" means that the Persona system is modifying the original Ellehaym inside Kadomony to turn her into an agent of Deus, the "original Mother".
"Alpha One to Razael Central, access confirmed". The Razael Central is a super gigantic supercomputer inside the Eldridge, that contains pretty much every single piece of information on human history, culture, technology and religion. It's the ultimate human knowledge repository. Deus' computer begins accessing Razael looking for information.
During the cutscene, Deus awakens and his Omega One part begins attacking the ship by assimilating the ships weapons and turning them against it.
Meanwhile the Alpha One part, being a computer, begins hacking the ship's systems and controls. It directly hacks into the Razael Central and not only absorbs all the knowledge it can find, but it's heavily implied they it was specifically looking for the coordinates of Earth (now officially inaccesible, and called "Lost Jerusalem" or the "Main Planet").
Why Deus wanted to go to Earth remains a mystery. But once Alpha One got the coordinates, it took over the ship's autopilot controls and tried to do a "space displacement" travel towards Earth.
In order to stop it from reaching Earth, the ships captain activates the self destruction system.
The ship crash lands on a nearby uninhabited planet and the Persona system inside Kadomony gives birth to the first woman on the planet, whose mission is to start the resurrection of Deus, which was heavily damaged upon impact.
That's the basic version of it. :)
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Really enjoyed reading this and appreciated that you took the time to share it. Never did delve into Perfect Works as much as I would have liked, but man the sheer scale and scope of this game truly is incredible. Xenogears really is the gift that keeps on giving, wow.
I patched my game last night but the game crashed whenever it loaded the world map so I rolled back to the dub version.
Thank you for this. I have played Xenogears 6-7 times since 1998 and I while my English was not great back then, on later playthroughs I always felt like "I go it".
But I was missing your insight and how the intro connected to later parts. Damn. (I even learned Japanese in order to get more insight of the original language on scenes/games/movies such as this...and still missed this. )
I'm VERY intrigued now about Earth. I thought the "main planet" was referring to the eventual planet the ship crashed to (I thought the Deus wanted to crash after taking over).
Your explanation makes much more sense.
Im speechless.
I was able to play the entire game with the patch (Japanese FMV with subtitles, Japanese control config, etc.) a couple of years ago. I did start from scratch, I never attempted to use the original dub version save.
It is a major mystery of the original planned story; the nature and situation of "earth". It has little relevance to the actually story of Xenogears specifically, aside from the fact that Deus was trying to get there at the start and that stopping it from doing so was major enough to self destruct but nothing really but that is known of the originally planned story.
I love how Octopath looks, but not everything fits that mold. I don't think the flat look fits the fully rotatable 3d world as well.
Yeah that wouldnt work for the Xeno brand. I expect more detail for the characters and level/mecha designs. Even if they are 2D, the SNES sprite-aesthetic doesn't match with this universe (in my head).
^ The battle sequences could probably benefit, though. Really, Xenogears just needed some cleaned up sprites like the ones from that mobile crossover posted earlier in the thread. The game's sprites were always the worst part of the graphic engine because of how low-res they were.
And how exactly would it find "Lost Jerusalem"? If it was truly inaccessible why was the captain concerned enough to blow the ship?
The Captain surmises it was in preparation of an attack. Retaliatory strike? For having it decommissioned?
And how exactly would it find "Lost Jerusalem"? If it was truly inaccessible why was the captain concerned enough to blow the ship?
Even though the original games were on the PS2, I'd be completely ok on releasing remasters on the Switch, if that's what it took for us to get them. I am sure the Switch could clean up the graphics of the PS2 versions well enough, especially if released on the new Switch that is coming out.
However, the last thing I heard is Bamco looked into re-releasing the trilogy and they found it wasn't financially viable/worthwhile. I hope that can change, but I haven't heard anything else on that. It is a trilogy that sorely needs a re-release for current systems.
It's never explained. Anything related to Earth is left vague and mysterious.
But Earth seems to be inaccessible by official decree or something. Either something happened there that made the planet be classified as forbidden, or something else.
The fact that they have coordinates to it (Deus gets them from Razael, and one of the Operators even reads them out loud, which means they DO know where Earth is) means that it CAN be reached, but it shouldn't.
Xenosaga uses a very similar plot point regarding Earth, as well as recycling a lot of terminology and events.
Can you summarize how Xenosaga uses Earth?
Btw, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is probably the best game on the Switch since 2017 for me...even though I didn't like Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
Do you know if there are any mentions or connections to the Xenogears/Saga universe? I know the connection with Chronicles 1 shown at the end.
Gears and Saga aren't connect, but Saga is pretty much a re-imagining of Xenogears' backstory. I think most likely Takahashi already had some ideas for Saga even back then, or rather Saga was his shot to completely tell the full story of Xeno (Keep in mind Gears was originallly meant to have a sequel too, but it didn't sell enough)
The way Xenosaga ep. III end it makes you think like
The way Xenosaga ep. III end it makes you think like
a scenario similar to gears would have happened after it.
Sure. Xenogears and Xenosaga share a lot, and I mean A LOT of terminology and even plot points. It's clear that Xenosaga Episode I at one point was supposed to be a retelling of Xenogears Episode I, but since Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga didn't have the rights to Xenogears anymore, eventually the project became a complete reimagining.
In Xenosaga, the Zohar is discovered on Earth, near Lake Turkana on Kenya. Scientists immediately begin investigating the monolith and discover the usual stuff, that it was apparently as old as the universe and that it could draw immense amounts of energy, and possibly connect to a higher plane.
One of the scientists in charge of the Zohar project uses his daughter (Which is a reimagined version of Elly from Xenogears, called Nephilim) as a guinea pig in an experiment to link her with the Zohar, and thus trying to have the girl make contact with "god" (Called U-DO in Xenosaga).
Of course the experiment goes horribly wrong and Nephilim body completely vanishes, but it goes worse than that, slowly, all of Earth begins vanishing as well. It is implied that this "matter shifting" phenomenon was slow enough to allow humanity to completely abandon Earth before it completely disappeared from space. Then humanity begins their exodus in space. The region where Earth used to be is completely locked by Vector Industries' CEO, Wilhelm. In the Xenosaga universe, Earth is completely inaccessible. The way to travel to were Earth used to be is completely locked and sealed away, and the planet itself seems to no longer be there anyways (At least until the end of Xenosaga III, where it's implied that Earth, now called "Lost Jerusalem" has somehow been restored).
At the end of Xenosaga III, it's stated that the way of stopping the eventual destruction of the universe lies in Earth, "Lost Jerusalem", but once again it is left unexplained because the series just died after the third game (There were 6 games originally planed, much like Xenogears). So, in both Gears and Saga, Earth is a mythical place where something resides, but what it is is intentionally left vague.
Regarding the Blade games, the original game was originally supposed to be an entirely different franchise called Monado, but eventually changed their name to add the "Xeno" prefix. They share some visual imagery like the shape and concept of the Zohar in Xenosaga (In the shape of a cross) being reused in Blade for the Conduit. Other terms like Ether are also used, and the concepts of transhumanism and stuff like that. But Gears and Saga share the most similarities among them.
Thank you once again for the detailed explanation and amazing abstraction.
You are excellent at this...
Kinda makes me wonder if a more streamlined approach to game design (spending more time in the major points, instead of hours in minute to minute character small talk interaction, and regular NCP fetch quest loop) would help in a Remaster-Remake-Retelling.
Its clear that the scope they had in mind wasn't practical. 5 games on the PS1, 6 games on the PS2, that should have never been planned like that.
I understand that there would be an impact in the perceived quality (perhaps?) but I do wish to play a single game that could clarify all of that lore and Mythos.
XC2 did a great job of being a full game by itself, able to explain the entire thing, without needed 5 sequels, for example. Its possible.
In Gears and Saga Earth was lost due to messing with the Zohar/conduit. They are about humans who were in space when Earth was lost and became exiled. Reaching Earth is a goal mentioned but never reached.
XC1 and 2 are basically the story of what happened to Earth in that time in a parallel universe.
Thanks! I'm super passionate about the lore of several franchises, and Xeno is one of them.
Regarding your last comment, while true, the scope of the storylines of Gears and Saga runs laps around the Blade games. Their scope is just way too big, too detailed to fit within a single game even with the best editing. It was an almost impossible task, unfortunately.
I rented this game from Hollywood Video back in the late 90s and despite being a big JRPG fan I just couldn't get past the text speed thing.
I'd love for another chance to play this as a slight remaster with the speed multipliers they've been adding to the Final Fantasy games.
I'd love for another chance to play this as a slight remaster with the speed multipliers they've been adding to the Final Fantasy games.
Would you say that with (for example), someone like you (great at abstraction/communication) helping in the decision making of :
- What quests to create
- How to move the plot forward (against the overall backlog of scope, areas, themes and events that Takahashi and Saga pre-created)
- Overall story exposition/gameplay balance preview-timeline.
Could you make it work in a 80-100 hours game?
I think you could, with a team of the magnitude they had in the Saga days. Even now, even under the AA category, perhaps.
I don't believe it needs to be more streamlined and to the point. That these massive plot revelations and mysteries are there works well with them also being in the background of the story and playing out gradually as "lower level" issues are faced as you would more every day stuff. That is to say that the normalcy of life for the characters gives the weight to the heavier stuff when it's revealed in a way that if it was always obvious it wouldn't have.
The crash of the Eldridge and it's relevance to the story of Xenogears is a major formative event of everything that occurs in the history of the game, but focusing on it directly right out the gate would be the same thing as starting the Matrix with an explanation of what the Matrix is, or how they did that exactly in the theatrical cut of Dark City.
Read this: http://xenogearsxenosagastudyguide.blogspot.com/p/the-history-of-xenosaga.html?m=1
Saga was meant to be a full telling of the Xeno story in 6 parts. The 3 episodes we got were meant to be 2 episodes followed by a retelling of Gears in 2 episodes and then a 2 episode telling of after Gears.
The lore on the Siren model box talks about the conduit being found in the same place as Saga and mentions other Gears/Saga stuff like slave generators. And FC basically brought back gnosis. So it's all very still connected.
They weren't going to make six games on PS1. The plan was to make games for Episode I, V, and VI and tell the other stories through other mediums. Xenogears Episode I was in preproduction when Square decided to cancel the project. Xenosaga was supposed to cover three separate story arcs. What we got of Xenosaga was based on Xenogears Episode I, so the other two would have likely been based on Episodes V and VI.
In an era full of remake-remasters...
I would just like 1, or 2, or 3 games based on this universe-lore.
But I would like them to be practical. How do you take the overall scope of the lore and make it WORK within 1-3 games? I think is very doable, the reason they may have failed to wrap things up in the past could have been because of their inability to to map the minute to minute gameplay and char growth-interactions with the overarching story-lore.
Example: Xenogears is better at this, but Xenoblade 1 had me doing practically nothing but killing enemies inside ships for the initial 20 hours and I didn't have any sense of the actual massive lore-scope. If you have THAT great universe running in the background, how can you better include it in the character playthrough?
Yes, I want character conversations and growth, I dont want massive plot exposition every 10 minutes, but I want the universe to feel complete and your regular character playthorugh to feel coherent. XC2 was reduced in scope yes, but they managed to contain everything without reducing the character and regular quest interactions.
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there's a chaet code you can enable to have fast text when emulating it on PC.
Kind of shocked that no one has ever cleaned up the translation a bit. If nothing else just removing all of the hyphens would go a long, long way in terms of readability.