Car broke down, my crippled ass body hurts from work and I'm likely getting sick, so this analysis is going to be so endlessly clutch in getting me through today. I cannot do justice with words in describing how much I enjoy you two talking about Xeno-anything, I appreciate the fuck out of y'all.
The 13th Zohar was the Marienkind "child of Mary", Shion's mother is in the 13th hospital ward, and is a descendant of the immigrant fleet. The blood connection to Mary seems heavily implied but it's never outright stated, but it would make sense given certain later plot points.
It's been stated in official material that Marienkind refers to the child of the virgin Mary, Jesus, not Mary Magdalene. The Brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name is also mentioned in the database, which also relates to the virgin Mary.
@@ValToadstool Maybe it was meant to have a double meaning before the story underwent heavy changes halfway through.The "maiden of Mary" being the child of Mary, the child being what ignites the power of animus (sperm) inside the woman (womb) would make more sense to me personally than the maiden just being Mary's sidekick
While playing *Xenosaga III*, the term I would use to describe my experience would be "apocalyptic." I think many aspects of the game feed into that central feeling: "cosmos" (universe) being superseded by "telos" (purpose/end point), the onslaught of the Gnosis, the increasing recurrences of Shion's contact with U-DO and her poor health. It really feels like the end of the universe, along the lines of the three act in Hinduism (creation-destruction-renewal), and perhaps the game is interested in really exploring the transition from the second to the third act of that framework. How do we navigate the process of destruction, and turn that from a destructive to a renewing force? Also if we were to go back to Nietzsche, then we can understand KOS-MOS as “Becoming” and T-ELOS as “Being.” Becoming is threatened by Being, and needs to fight back, with Becoming eventually overcoming Being.
Did you ever have an experience where someone came across as completely arrogant and unfriendly towards you and you eventually learn that that is not the case, but they are really just a shy person, but their evasive nature seemed to you like an aversion? The same problem is true for psychological illnesses. A person with borderline syndrom will often be mistaken as a narcissist, when in reality the exact same problem is true and they have alarmingly low self-esteem. The depiction of Shion‘s mental illness is so impressive, because it‘s realistic. There is the risk of losing a good chunk of the audience with her. And that’s exactly what happened. But it was an important lesson to show that a depressive person does not come across as „sad“ in the eyes of others. They will be evasive, build walls, not let anyone near herself and overall seem extremely unlikable. Because how could she be likable when she doesn’t even like herself. I can’t claim to know all works of fuction, but Xenosaga is the only piece that I know that represents depression right.
I wanted to leave this comment earlier, but I just got back from vacation, so if any of these comments have already been repeated ad nauseum, I apologize. - I so wish we knew more about the original plan for Episode 3, especially considering when you replay Episode 1 after playing Episode 3, you'll notice there's quite a bit of foreshadowing to be found even in that game. But that quote you read from Kaori Tanaka is literally the only statement about the game from Monolithsoft itself. I don't think I've ever encountered another RPG whose publically available development history is next to nonexistent in quite the same way. - With regards to why the Testaments have four circles on their cloaks instead of three, I know in Japan the number four has an association with death, so perhaps Takahashi is drawing from that tradition? That would certainly be fitting for what they are, but that's purely speculation. - As far as Abel is concerned, I'm also very curious with regards to what role he would have played in subsequent episodes, because on the surface, Xenogears-Abel and Xenosaga-Abel are very, very different. To keep spoilers entirely out of it, Xenogears-Abel appears to just be a regular human being, whereas Xenosaga-Abel is definitely not. - The area in Episode 1 where T-elos was introduced was the U-TIC Battleship, which is fascinating because she's supposed to be a design of Vector and the Galaxy Federation, who are (of course) U-TIC's enemies. Considering what we later discover about Wilhelm, I find this to be another brilliant example of Takahashi and Tanaka's penchant for planting seeds that don't fully grow until incredibly late in the story. - One quick note about Roth Mantel: his name in German literally means "Red Cloak," a very blatant hint regarding his true identity. I'm guessing Monolithsoft was being intentionally obvious here, kind of like what Konami did with Solid Snake/Iroquois Pliskin in MGS2. - OH GOD I THINK I'M THE SHION STAN THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT
This is 100% contender for best RPG on the PS2. Sad that it didn't get the recognition it deserved at the time but this podcast series is proof that it is being appreciated NOW
Xenosaga 3, Final Fantasy X, and Kingdom Hearts 2 are probably the top spots. I've heard good things about Dragon Quest VIII as well, but I know very little about it.
The T-elos plans in Episode 1 were in the U-TIC battleship that Jr disables with the Durandal and explores, just for the record :) (And U-TIC, Ormus, and the Immigrant Fleet are all basically the same thing, which always seemed unnecessarily complicated for the story, lol)
I figured the immigrant fleet had Ormus as a a religious sect everyone in the fleet belongs to, but certain people fall away from when leaving the fleet. And U-tic was a front that the fleet and ormus could separate and vindicate themselves from claiming they aren’t associated with extremists. And claim those people are doing their own thing, despite all 3 being deeply interconnected.
@@TheMilhouseExperience Yeah, my recollection is one of the big revelations to the characters in the second game (not to us the player) is that Ormus/U-TIC/Immigrant Fleet are all affiliated with each other. U-TIC being a front was the intent.
1:36:04 small correction, they're not named after the twelve tribes of israel, but the 13 children of Jacob (which includes Dinah, his only daughter). I don't blame you for making this mistake though since some of his sons and their tribes share the same name.
Wilhelm's comment about Scientia thinking that their "cage" is the entire world makes me think of Plato's Allegory of the cave. This allegory is more heavily explored in the Xenoblade Chronicles series.
EDIT: Vague Spoilers Ahead I would say theres plenty of evidence from the first two games to show that Shion is a sad being. Look at how she conducts herself, constantly throwing herself into her work to the point it consumes her so that she never has to have personal relationships. Take the "Theres no use crying over spilled milk" comment from the first game. Shion has emotionally distanced herself from the situation; from every situation really. The times we've seen Shion get super emotional were times when she was backed into a corner and had nothing to hide behind. She was forced to confront things and had no opportunity to hide. How did she react during those times? She broke down crying, often with an intensity that felt a little strange. But thats what happens when you bottle up everything; when it comes out it all comes out at once. Im pretty sure i know which scene youre referring to. At that time, shion is **forced** to confront everything that she has been hiding from(not always consciously). And for someone like shion who has an avoidant personality, its too much to handle. So she shuts down. She gives up entirely because there's someone telling her "Do this thing and you dont have to face all of those scary, awful emotions." She is offered another way to run away, which is INCREDIBLY tempting. That weakness is manipulated by that person and she sees it as her only safe harbor. Because when you are overwhelmed, someone coming along and saying "Hey. You dont have to do any of this. Take a step back, and Ill take care of everything" is incredibly attractive. She then has other people coming along and telling her that safety net is wrong; she cant run away and she *has* to do the difficult thing. So she does what anyone does when theyre backed into a corner and scared. She lashes out. Is it pretty? No. Is it rational? No. Is it ENDLESSLY FRUSTRATING for the audience? Absolutely. Is it the kind of reaction you would see from a real person? Also yes.
I'll save the detailed thoughts for when we get to that part of the game, but I totally agree with your conclusion at the end there. Shion frustrates a ton of people in this game. Shion also acts very realistically in this game. I can't give enough credit to the creative team for avoiding all the sugar coating that tends to happen with video game/anime protagonists. There is no hiding from the fact that Shion acts in a manner that so many have and continue to do in real life. One doesn't have to like the character, but I think the writing decision should be respected.
@@quiddity131 I agree wholeheartedly. I tried to be as vague as I could be and not provide too many details. Do you think I should edit my comment or do you think that was okay? I never wanna be that spoiler guy haha
I appreciate that, even if Mike didn't wind up liking Shion at the end of his initial playthrough, you guys are still willing to give her character an in-depth and thoughtful analysis down the line. I still want to throw my two-cents in though: Shion, to me, is a character that hits way, WAY too close to home. Not that I'm qualified to give any diagnosis of any sort, but Shion displays several signs of Bipolar Disorder, or some disorder of the like. Someone I've been very close to my entire life has BP and playing through Xenosaga for the first time last year, I was shocked to the degree and accuracy with which traits symptomatic of the disorder were present within Shion's mannerisms and her interactions some of the characters, namely Jin. There were moments in our lives where this person would act in an "unreasonable" way not unlike Shion, and I admittedly and shamefully never tried to understand them for the longest time and dismissed their behavior as unacceptable and frustrating without accounting for a lot of the trauma and abuse that had made them that way. This person has said and done things that've made me unhappy, but I had to come to terms with that because by being dismissive of them, it only tore a further rift in our relationship, one that's gotten much better with time but has never quite been fixed fully. All I'm saying is that I hope you guys afford Shion this same level of understanding in your future analyses. You don't have to like her by the end; she's certainly not conventionally likeable by any means, but I do hope you can grow to understand just how great and thoughtfully conceived of a character she is. She's not a character for everyone but Takahashi and the writing team at Monolith knew exactly what and who this character was for, and I have to give them real props for that.
I could write the exact same thing but you did it first and probably better than I can. I hope that is what people one day will say about Shion, a fantastic, realistic character that you don't have to like but at least respect.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the analysis so much. I still believe Shion is one of the best-written characters in a video game when it comes to what one might expect a real human, who has gone through what she has, to act like. The more that's revealed about her past, which she constantly represses, the more we as the audience realize that her actions and reactions to things have so much more behind them than what's at surface level - we just have to be willing to put ourselves in her shoes.
The shion character analysis is gonna be divisive as Mike already suspects. The only think I can hope is that you try to analyze but not over rationalize her actions. She is a flawed character with clear traumas and issues that will look quite awful if seen from the lens of a practical, proactive and healthy state of mind. Part of the reason some people resonate with her is this auto destructive and ignoring behavior that we can all experience at some point or other when life gets tough.
The problem is that I'm pretty sure a lot of her character got lost in localizationlypse. So they kinda have to over rationalize, even if it is to conclude the over rationalization isn't warranted.
Not going too much into spoilers, but the trilogy really benefits from a replay with some hindsight on your side, particularly when it comes to the character of Shion. She has a lot of tells (some of which you actually already picked up on and discussed a bit) that show how her life and mindset are really negatively affected by depression, loneliness, and trauma. It's a bit harder to identify and understand them in a first playthrough because you don't know where the character arc is heading, or the extent of her true feelings, and she's also pretty decent at masking most of the time. I think it also helps if you are good at recognizing psychological signs, or have experienced a somewhat similar state mind in your life. Regardless of any personal feelings towards the character, a lot of the writing for her is actually really impressive, at least in my opinion. I would recommend doing another playthrough eventually anyways (on your own times, of course) as I find there's even more to pick up and more connections you can make on subsequent playthroughs.
Another fascinating discussion, guys, especially the part about the Demiurge. Another comparison between the Xeno series and Evangelion is during the End of Evangelion movie, there is a scene with a graveyard full of Eva skulls with the brain and spinal cord, similar to how the Demiurge is depicted. That Abel connection too. You can't praise Takahashi enough for doing the best he could, while telling one of the most ambitious stories in video game history. The characters, environments, and mechs all look incredible in Xenosaga III. It's really impressive to see how the series improved in that regard throughout the three games.
Just started the game on my ermm pc. And dude this game upscale beautifully. Visuals are unreal. Top tier PS2 RPG all around so far. About 3 hours deep. Can't believe it took me this long to get to this one.
Definitely looking forward to the future videos on this game. Love the symbolism readings because this series is just FULL of it. I can definitely respect putting a pin on the Shion conversation rather than just going with your feeling about her. However you feel at the end of it all, at least you are planning to dive into that conversation rather than just going with your gut.
This is my first time looking at footage from Xenosaga III since I originally played it, and I really think that this game is where Monolith started to really nail down their art style for further Xeno games. I can see hints of it in the environments and you can almost imagine what that space would look like if extrapolated into a modern Xeno game. Just incredible.
This has been so fun to watch you guys play through this. This has become one of my favorite series of games. Something I'd like to recommend looking into is frequencies and music there are some parallels. The Why Files video on Tesla is a great place to start.
Glad to hear you enjoying the start of the game. Whether its story, graphics, gameplay, music, hard to not consider this peak Xenosaga content the rest of the way, particularly with it coming after what was a disappointing second game for many people. At most one might be able to say the voice acting is better in the first game although this one is still very strong and thankfully brings Lia Sargent and Bridget Hoffman back for Shion/KOS-MOS respectively. At some point I believe you mentioned it was the Vessels of Anima named after the tribes of Israel but its actually the E.S.s as well (or perhaps the Vessels don't have names, I can't remember for sure). This is a contrast to Xenogears, where the Gears and their respective Anima Relics had different names. I think its pretty much impossible to not have passionate feelings about how Shion is portrayed in this game, either good or bad. Looking forward to the discussion when we get there. Off the top of my head, fellow UA-camr Enel is probably the biggest Shion defender I can think of, or at least the most well known. All I'll say at this point is that one doesn't have to like a character for it to be great writing.
Really excited that you went straight from Xenosaga 2 to 3! I fell behind on the Xenosaga 2 playthrough, so I'm still catching up, but incredibly excited to finally play 3 and follow along with you guys when I get the chance😄
One correction is for Xenosaga DS, Takahashi was not the director, but rather was in charge of various aspects of the scenario writing. Xenosaga 3 was currently in development during all of this. Xenosaga 3 was directed by Koh Arai same as Episode 2. Takahashi or Saga for that matter has not really ever talked about his role in the development of Episode 3. It seems to be quite a sore spot for Monolithsoft as a whole. It does seem like the team learned a great deal between 2 and 3 though.
I believe Carl jung has talked about the significance of the spine before in that its the inbetween of the mind and body or spirituality and flesh, so I think that's why the relics are in the shape of the spine as that has to do with their purpose
The pacing of Xenosaga 3's story feels like you watched the first two seasons of a show years ago and are suddenly now watching the 'previously on' intro on an episode from season ten
I'm playing this on my Steam Deck via PCSX2. Im so happy I can listen to your detailed convo. Im in chapter 5 now... I will need to pause my play for Echos of Wisdom I think...... so you guys will really help out coming back to this game... if I can pull away...
If you guys are planning on doing Xenoblade games as well, I highly recommend emulating the Wii U one, Xenoblade X. You can use some quality of life things like putting day and night cycle changes in the menu like other Xenoblades. You can force and access the now defunct online features. Cemu runs it super well, basically flawless. 60fps. Also the ability to disable the flight theme.
Ah darn, I wish I wasn't so busy in the last month. It's probably too late now but I've been doing a Psychological Analysis based playthrough of Xenogears and explaining a lot of the layers of depression, and how it doesn't always show itself so easily. Shion is very similar to someone I know in the way she displays depression, which essentially, she has high-functioning depression (which speaks for itself, she's able to do what she needs to, take care of herself, feed herself, etc, but she's severely masking it also.) Shion fits into that type of depression where you think someone is totally okay, but, they really aren't okay in the slightest and what they are experiencing is very internal.
One of the reasons a lot of videogame bosses make you repeat a thing three times is the saying "Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, Three times is enemy action". If the player does things three times, it's because they understand why they're doing it.
I always thought Abel’s “sad being this way” line was referring to KOS MOS and NOT to Shion. For Mike, if you think about the flashback near the end of the game. The fight immediately preceding the penultimate boss fight; Shion’s words to KOSMOS: “You’re sad, aren’t you? KOS MOS!? Are those tears? You’ve lost sight of yourself, just like me.” Abel is leading Shion and her party to KOS MOS and so I interpret that he is leading Shion TO the ‘sad being’. It makes a lot more sense for KOS MOS to be a sad being, given her broken state (not just physically, but psychologically and spiritually as well). So Abel is saying, ‘this way to the sad being’.
I believe that Abel is talking about Shion actually in this scene. If you think about it, every party member is inflicted with a deep sadness, though Shion might not even believe she is acting out in sadness. Perhaps what you are saying could also be true and it's a double meaning. In the scene where Nephilim talks to Shion in the hotel, the "sad being" she is referring to in this scene is actually Kevin.
+aidanuzuki3449 I’ve debated both interpretations and I’ll admit either scenario works. I just settled on KOS MOS given that, at that time, she has just been discarded as trash and due to the later quote by Shion about KOS MOS being sad and having tears. But Shion being the subject of the sentence makes a lot of sense too. The placement of the comma seems to support your argument since grammatically the comma preceding the imperative clause would indicate ‘sad being’ is likely the subject, or the person being requested to perform the action (Shion) whereas without the comma it is more likely ‘sad being’ is the object (KOS MOS). I am not sure how closely Japanese grammar holds to this rule, but it would be interesting to see if the Japanese text used punctuation in a similar manner.
@@tinyguy9398 I'm curious about how this scene is written in Japanese too, for all we know "sad being" might be referring to the state of being human itself (knowing that you are trapped and you are going to die).
So I've been playing alone with you guys with retro achievements and I've made the game even look better by putting a texture pack on top of it honestly these first three chapters have been absolutely stellar
I genuinely believe xenosaga 3 might be one of the greatest games of all time. When I’m on my death bed I just know I’ll be thinking about what that game had to say
And yeah, this game look freeking awsome even today. Yeah, first game look's no that impressive, but when you see something like this in 2001 it blows minds, compering to FF 10 where polygons just shaking. Also in Xenosaga 1 monolith already use revolutional technology as blendshape for facial expression. It will be coo to get this quality for game today :
Got to say I never caught on to the Ouroboros and Moebius (Infinity symbol) symbolism in this game. Kind of neat that they brought that back and made it pretty important to Xenoblade 3.
1:14:45 To be fair, the Agents upgrade and get beefier in Matrix Reloaded but Neo still kicks their asses. How Morpheus is able to stand his ground against one on the back of the truck is another matter 🤔
Hey Mike, a bit off topic but I’m curious where you got your video transitions. I’m an editor and have been searching for very minimalistic zoom transitions like yours.
i don't remember where i saw this source, especially since a lot of stuff around the development of xenosaga is speculation, but i believe fei's story was meant to be episodes 3 and 4 of xenosaga. if you look at perfect works, the idea is that episodes 1 and 2 of saga would be episode 1 of perfect works, episode 3 and 4 of xenosaga would be episode 5 of perfect works (basically a xenogears remake), and then episodes 5 and 6 of xenosaga would be episode 6 of perfect works. and the only thing we know about episode 6 of perfect works is that it is meant to be the terminal point of the universe also very slight spoilers but there's a theory that some of those elements for what would be episodes 3-6 may be shown in disc 2. maybe i'll leave another comment about that later
lol wish I had kept up with these as they came out-I would have come on to defend Shion as a Shion stan during a larger conversation. I understand not liking her-in fact, no one liked her, she was lambasted in reviews, and Takahashi has said that Shulk being generally pleasant and one note was a direct result of the hate Shion got. Shion is honestly their best protagonist though in terms of how she’s written. She, Fei, and Noah are my favourites, but Shion barely surpasses Fei and Noah for me. She is extremely real, she’s bratty (because she’s stuck in all this tragedy of her life), she’s depressed, she’s someone who hides her feelings behind “I’m fine” and brusqueness. She’s also a victim of manipulation and abuse, for various reasons, and is stuck on that abuser, and with that comes irrationality. Like I said, I get it, I’m totally used to people hating Shion and thinking she’s terrible or mean, but I can only look at her with pity and compassion.
I may have misunderstood what you meant when you were talking about the symbol behind the xenosaga 3 logo which you also see on Wilhelm's desk. Were you saying that you werent sure what thay symbol was? Because if so, thats the Compass of Order(not its full name). If i misunderstood, then I apologize for the unnecessary correction.
3 dots podcast, yeah :DD But as i remember right, whole design was mabe by third party studio "CHOCO" so all that cool looking mech's and cloth style is their work.
I cannot wait for you 2 to play xenoblade 3 future redeemed. Im am just waiting for you response to be recorded and see how you forsee whats next in the "xeno-collection" by takahashi lol
Xenogears spoiler………………………………….Abel is a dead ringer of Fei and Nephilim is a dead ringer of Ellie. In a previous incarnation of Fei, he was a painter who painted the portrait of queen Sophia who is an earlier incarnation of Ellie. It’s like these two are forever entangled by fate and incarnation even transcending games.
By now I have given up on Latin pronunciations :(. This one always rubs me the wrong way!! Reconstructed consensus is: -“ti” followed by a vowel is pronounced /tsi/, unless preceded by “s”, “t”, or “x”. You can see how this evolved into “z” in Italian, “ț” in Romanian, etc…
The reasons I both like and dislike Shion are the exact same as the case of Elma (Xenoblade X). Both are well written characters once you get the full picture but come off as ass until then. Both are the actual protagonists but they sure don't seem like it for the majority of their games (some people even finish Xenoblade X without realizing Elma is the actual protagonist, not your main playable character). Also, both leave A LOT unexplained which as pointed out makes it even harder to relate to them. And last but not least, having Shion story diluted in 3 very busy games is not doing her any favors, ditto for Elma's story being diluted into random side quests, easily missable events and even random NPC chat. There is a case to be made about the worth of purposefully writing protagonists where the audience doesn't know their objectives and motivation until the end of the story (Elma is even worse on this matter). When the audience doesn't know the protagonists motivation, how does that impact their perception on the themes? It muddies the water too much IMO.
Xenogears, Xenosaga 1,2, and 3, Xenosaga Freaks, Xenosaga: The Missing Year, Xenosaga 1&2, Xenosaga: Pied Piper, Xenoblade 1,2, and 3, Xenoblade: Future Connected, Xenoblade 2: Torna the Golden Country, Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed, and Xenoblade X. and that's just the video games i think that's all of them, anyone is free to tell me anything i missed
@leif54 yep, and i won't spoil anything but the fact that they connect everything in single 3 minute scene in Future Redeemed is nothing short of a miracle
@@j0anbugmiracle maybe, but not genius lmao. It was just them emulating crappy Marvel movies by hyping up a fanbase in which (maybe) at least a half would understand the references and the rest will just resort to looking them up on the Internet instead.
I will keep leaving comments with some overlooked details that might or might not come up again. Not mentioning that Sellers have built a 13th emulator is a big miss for me!
It is difficult to discern that he made an emulator based off Joachim's designs unless you are really paying attention to the conversation he has with Yuriev or dig into the database. The database is really important for understanding this game though, just about as important as item descriptions in a From Software game.
@@aidanuzuki3449 Haha, a comparison I never thought I would hear. But true, very easy to miss details and especially since the tempo is much higher this time, still Sellers clearly says in a voiced cutscene that he built a spare emulator and that it outputs too much energy. The fact that it is grey and can be hard to spot in all the action scenes is also true.
@@opkij86 Yeah I'm just using it as a point of comparison for the material that exists inside the game. Many don't like this datalog way of doing things but engaging with the game further than just simply playing it is all part of the fun!
@aidanuzuki3449 I don't mind needing to read stuff, but Xenosaga just suffers from having too much stuff to read, and so much of it is essential to understand the story. If it was more like Metroid Prime, where the datalogs are really just there to flesh out the world and give context to certain concepts like Phazon or the Chozo Artifacts, but are largely unrelated to what the player should actually care about, it would be far more palletable.
Spoilers! In reference to your Xenogears spoilers, look at the form that Omega takes after it absobs the Zohar,... To me (and i could be mistaken), but it looks an awful lot like the Alpha Weltall from Xenogears
I'm normally just a listener rather than someone who comments (I think is my first UA-cam comment ever). There's an aspect on the intro I'm interested in getting your thoughts on, though. I first played through XS3 without knowing about any of the supplemental material and found myself a little colder on the opening than you guys were. Do you think the intro works well without that material? I feel like there are so many changes and new concepts being introduced in this moment (to a series already bloated with complex organizations and sci fi concepts) that anyone playing just the core texts themselves is going to feel lost or unsatisfied. When playing through the intro, I joked to my fiancée that it felt like I'd missed a whole game covering the Gnosis Terrorism. It bugged me so much, I looked into the details and that's when I learned about The Missing Year and that is where we get the resolution to Nephilim's identity which had been a major plot thread from the series beginning. You touched a bit on this sentiment in the XS2 portion and Pied Piper when you asked how players would have felt about Ziggy's backstory without having played the latter. While typing this out I guess my real question became, do you feel like putting such important content in supplemental material ends up being a detriment to the core games themselves? Thanks for the fantastic content! I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the ending. It's definitely an emotional triumph.
There's definitely a lot of conversation to be had whether the ways that Monolithsoft had to tell the story were effective or not. Unfortunately the case is that it would be impossible to decipher the beginning parts of the story without the supplemental material. Yes, it does make the experience much rockier overall. In some ways the totality of the experience is worse than say Gears or Blade where you get a single, cohesive experience. This, combined with other plot related things are reasons why Xenosaga is looked down upon or skipped by players of those games, but Xenosaga is also instrumental in understanding Takahashi's vision for his later work.
Due to the problems with project management and overly ambitious plotting, Pied Piper and Missing Year were separate even though they weren't meant to be. Pied Piper was supposed to be included in Episode 1, and Missing Year presumably would have been the first part of Episode 2. If that plan had actually manifested and it somehow wasn't a complete mess, there would be no supplemental material to worry about. But since they had to be economical with their time and resources, I don't know another way they could have told all this story given the circumstances.
@jacobmonks3722 Excellent point. I'm aware that those materials were split off from 2 and 3, though that raises the question of whether the related Xenosaga shortcomings are due to writing or editing issues. Should the story have been edited to compensate for what couldn't fit into the game? It's all really important, really good, stuff so there's no way of knowing if that would be a satisfactory answer. I guess it depends on whether we consider the Xenosaga story to be the core games or them and the supplemental materials. I personally think the core games should be able to tell the story in its entirety, but I'm not sure I have any persuasive argument as to why it should be that way. It's not like we can base it on the core games having a wide release while the supplemental material was only available in Japan. XS 1 didn't see a European release and the series itself had been out of print for almost two decades. A bit of a tangent, but I suppose if Xenosaga was made today, both Pied Piper and Missing Year may have been released a la Torna for Xenoblade 2. Cut content released as DLC.
@@Twtales59 Takahashi said in an interview that JRPGs were going into a direction where their stories were getting bigger and bigger and that in hindsight he also made that mistake. It was for that reason that with Xenoblade, he aimed at something closer to 50% focus on story and 50% on gameplay. As for Xenoblade X, he experimented going the complete opposite direction. Focus all in on gameplay and leave most of the story as optional content. He also did what he originally wanted to do with Xenogears gameplay-wise: a map system that smoothly works simultaneously for on foot characters and giant mechas. "that anyone playing just the core texts themselves is going to feel lost or unsatisfied" This is true for all Takahashi games though. None of them are all that satisfying if you don't know/research all the references. Even Xenoblade 1 rings too shallow without researching the Monad or how it is thematically tied to Perfect Works. Being this convoluted is generally a bad idea if you're trying to sell a story but with the benefit of hindsight it made Takahashi RPGs unique and deep in a pool of many, many generic JRPGs. My favorite framework he attempted is by far Xenoblade X. Shallow as a puddle on the very short mandatory story path, then escalates deeper and deeper, layer by layer the more you dig in the optional content until it fits with every other game he made into a perfect work that elaborates on Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblades and science-fiction as a whole.
Did you know Xenoblade series ironically resembles Xenosaga in terms of a great first entry with slightly realistic look,controversial second game with a artstyle change and a third game with art style mix of 1 and 2 artstyle and great opening with a grand finale.
This is technically not true, since the actual release order was Xenoblade > Xenoblade X > Xenoblade 2 > Xenoblade 3 > DLC that ties everything together including Xenosaga. The point being, he didn't make the same mistake he made with Xenosaga and Xenogears. The main team was working on Xenoblade X while a B team worked on Xenoblade 2 so the controversial game was mainly a filler and cash generation while they developed the Zelda Breath of the Wild engine and map. The man got smart.
Kosmos noun das gesamte Weltall; das Universum Kosmos → cosmos; Kosmos noun the universe cosmos; → Kosmos; an ordered, harmonious whole cosmos; → Kosmos; Weltall Noun Weltall, das ~ (UniversumWeltraumAll) space, the ~ Noun universe, the ~ Noun outer space, the ~ Noun
Xenosaga 3 really surprised me with how good it is as a video game. The story is obviously good and filled with the Xenography we all love, but it feels like there wea a lot of conscious effort placed into making it fun. Xenosaga 1, in terms of gameplay, felt like a very standard typical JRPG, and Xenosaga 2 tried to be different but just kind of shot itself in the foot. Saga 3 uses a lot of those gameplay ideas and refines them into something more streamlined, more approachable, and more immediately gripping. And it doesn't make as many sacrifices for the sake of the story that the previous games did. I still don't think it's Xenoblade levels of fun, but it's close.
It was because of all mistakes and past experience that when they got Nintendo funding, the 1st thing they did was a small scale "test" to see if they could make a good ARPG and only after that they made Xenoblade. In fact the Break>Topple>Launch system came from that little test game called Soma Bringer.
1:47:57 Have you guys done a breakdown of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series? This train of thought reminds me of it. I can't remember the exact details, as its been probably close to 2 decades since I've watched it, but the feeling is very strong...
While the game looks amazing, I think it's unfortunate that much of the game's scenes are told through text boxes rather than the high-quality, fully animated cutscenes.
I never minded it; they are all fully voiced and have a wide variety of character portraits to express their emotions. And when it is a big action scene they switch to a full animated cutscene. Frankly I think the first two games should have done the same.
I really do not understand this criticism of the game at all. Imagine if people said "Yeah, Persona 3 and 4 were great and all but unfortunately the story is told through text boxes". Literally no one says this for any other RPG and the game still does have really good cinematics. The text box scenes bring the presentation and camera work for them a lot closer to Xenogears in this way also.
@@aidanuzuki3449 I was skeptical about the text boxes before release but in the end I love them and the only way the game could have been done. Doing everything in high budget cutscenes would add another disc, another year to develop and of course made them lose even more players who would have moved on to other games while waiting.
Throughout XS's 1 and 2, a majority of the cutscenes where they stand around and talk came across to me like those would work best in textboxes. Monolith Soft at the time most likely consisted of scene directors who were more comfortable in writing for RPGs from the SNES or PSX era where they didn't account for voice acting and choreography that are in line with cinema. XS3 choosing to go this route tells me that they needed to compromise and stick with what they know best.
This was also a complaint some people had about the first Xenoblade game, how all the smaller cutscenes had very repetitive and generic character animations. But the reason I don't mind is because they are as expressive as they need to be and it gave the team the time to make the more important cutscene animations REALLY good.
I love you guys and waited forever for you to cover this game. But I just don't get the reason for the goggles. It's been worn for like 4-5 episodes now. Is this supposed to be funny or some reference I'm not getting. We haven't even gotten an explanation. My point is I can't take this serious in any way.
My theory is that is a funny take on how the xeno series does things in general. Introduce a random element early in the story to develop it ages later in the final episode/game.... or even forget to develop it and let the fandom go crazy with theories.
Car broke down, my crippled ass body hurts from work and I'm likely getting sick, so this analysis is going to be so endlessly clutch in getting me through today. I cannot do justice with words in describing how much I enjoy you two talking about Xeno-anything, I appreciate the fuck out of y'all.
It is indeed legit. The jump from XS2 to XS3 always reminded me of the transition from Devil May Cry 2 to 3.
The 13th Zohar was the Marienkind "child of Mary", Shion's mother is in the 13th hospital ward, and is a descendant of the immigrant fleet. The blood connection to Mary seems heavily implied but it's never outright stated, but it would make sense given certain later plot points.
There’s also the thirteen children of Jacob
The 13 tribes of Israel as well
It's been stated in official material that Marienkind refers to the child of the virgin Mary, Jesus, not Mary Magdalene. The Brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name is also mentioned in the database, which also relates to the virgin Mary.
@@ValToadstool Maybe it was meant to have a double meaning before the story underwent heavy changes halfway through.The "maiden of Mary" being the child of Mary, the child being what ignites the power of animus (sperm) inside the woman (womb) would make more sense to me personally than the maiden just being Mary's sidekick
Finally Peak Fiction on is now being reviewed
yeah, maybe they could do Muv Luv Alternative sometime as well
While playing *Xenosaga III*, the term I would use to describe my experience would be "apocalyptic." I think many aspects of the game feed into that central feeling: "cosmos" (universe) being superseded by "telos" (purpose/end point), the onslaught of the Gnosis, the increasing recurrences of Shion's contact with U-DO and her poor health.
It really feels like the end of the universe, along the lines of the three act in Hinduism (creation-destruction-renewal), and perhaps the game is interested in really exploring the transition from the second to the third act of that framework. How do we navigate the process of destruction, and turn that from a destructive to a renewing force?
Also if we were to go back to Nietzsche, then we can understand KOS-MOS as “Becoming” and T-ELOS as “Being.” Becoming is threatened by Being, and needs to fight back, with Becoming eventually overcoming Being.
It shares that with End of Evangelion. I got a real similar vibe from it.
Did you ever have an experience where someone came across as completely arrogant and unfriendly towards you and you eventually learn that that is not the case, but they are really just a shy person, but their evasive nature seemed to you like an aversion?
The same problem is true for psychological illnesses. A person with borderline syndrom will often be mistaken as a narcissist, when in reality the exact same problem is true and they have alarmingly low self-esteem.
The depiction of Shion‘s mental illness is so impressive, because it‘s realistic. There is the risk of losing a good chunk of the audience with her. And that’s exactly what happened. But it was an important lesson to show that a depressive person does not come across as „sad“ in the eyes of others. They will be evasive, build walls, not let anyone near herself and overall seem extremely unlikable. Because how could she be likable when she doesn’t even like herself. I can’t claim to know all works of fuction, but Xenosaga is the only piece that I know that represents depression right.
I wanted to leave this comment earlier, but I just got back from vacation, so if any of these comments have already been repeated ad nauseum, I apologize.
- I so wish we knew more about the original plan for Episode 3, especially considering when you replay Episode 1 after playing Episode 3, you'll notice there's quite a bit of foreshadowing to be found even in that game. But that quote you read from Kaori Tanaka is literally the only statement about the game from Monolithsoft itself. I don't think I've ever encountered another RPG whose publically available development history is next to nonexistent in quite the same way.
- With regards to why the Testaments have four circles on their cloaks instead of three, I know in Japan the number four has an association with death, so perhaps Takahashi is drawing from that tradition? That would certainly be fitting for what they are, but that's purely speculation.
- As far as Abel is concerned, I'm also very curious with regards to what role he would have played in subsequent episodes, because on the surface, Xenogears-Abel and Xenosaga-Abel are very, very different. To keep spoilers entirely out of it, Xenogears-Abel appears to just be a regular human being, whereas Xenosaga-Abel is definitely not.
- The area in Episode 1 where T-elos was introduced was the U-TIC Battleship, which is fascinating because she's supposed to be a design of Vector and the Galaxy Federation, who are (of course) U-TIC's enemies. Considering what we later discover about Wilhelm, I find this to be another brilliant example of Takahashi and Tanaka's penchant for planting seeds that don't fully grow until incredibly late in the story.
- One quick note about Roth Mantel: his name in German literally means "Red Cloak," a very blatant hint regarding his true identity. I'm guessing Monolithsoft was being intentionally obvious here, kind of like what Konami did with Solid Snake/Iroquois Pliskin in MGS2.
- OH GOD I THINK I'M THE SHION STAN THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT
This is 100% contender for best RPG on the PS2. Sad that it didn't get the recognition it deserved at the time but this podcast series is proof that it is being appreciated NOW
Xenosaga 3, Final Fantasy X, and Kingdom Hearts 2 are probably the top spots. I've heard good things about Dragon Quest VIII as well, but I know very little about it.
Finally, the analysis of Xenosaga III!
I'm going to enjoy hearing the rest!
I just finished replaying this masterpiece a little while ago in preparation for this series-really looking forward to seeing the full analysis!
The T-elos plans in Episode 1 were in the U-TIC battleship that Jr disables with the Durandal and explores, just for the record :)
(And U-TIC, Ormus, and the Immigrant Fleet are all basically the same thing, which always seemed unnecessarily complicated for the story, lol)
I figured the immigrant fleet had Ormus as a a religious sect everyone in the fleet belongs to, but certain people fall away from when leaving the fleet. And U-tic was a front that the fleet and ormus could separate and vindicate themselves from claiming they aren’t associated with extremists. And claim those people are doing their own thing, despite all 3 being deeply interconnected.
@@TheMilhouseExperience Yeah, my recollection is one of the big revelations to the characters in the second game (not to us the player) is that Ormus/U-TIC/Immigrant Fleet are all affiliated with each other. U-TIC being a front was the intent.
1:36:04 small correction, they're not named after the twelve tribes of israel, but the 13 children of Jacob (which includes Dinah, his only daughter). I don't blame you for making this mistake though since some of his sons and their tribes share the same name.
Wilhelm's comment about Scientia thinking that their "cage" is the entire world makes me think of Plato's Allegory of the cave. This allegory is more heavily explored in the Xenoblade Chronicles series.
EDIT: Vague Spoilers Ahead
I would say theres plenty of evidence from the first two games to show that Shion is a sad being. Look at how she conducts herself, constantly throwing herself into her work to the point it consumes her so that she never has to have personal relationships. Take the "Theres no use crying over spilled milk" comment from the first game. Shion has emotionally distanced herself from the situation; from every situation really. The times we've seen Shion get super emotional were times when she was backed into a corner and had nothing to hide behind. She was forced to confront things and had no opportunity to hide. How did she react during those times? She broke down crying, often with an intensity that felt a little strange. But thats what happens when you bottle up everything; when it comes out it all comes out at once.
Im pretty sure i know which scene youre referring to. At that time, shion is **forced** to confront everything that she has been hiding from(not always consciously). And for someone like shion who has an avoidant personality, its too much to handle. So she shuts down. She gives up entirely because there's someone telling her "Do this thing and you dont have to face all of those scary, awful emotions." She is offered another way to run away, which is INCREDIBLY tempting. That weakness is manipulated by that person and she sees it as her only safe harbor. Because when you are overwhelmed, someone coming along and saying "Hey. You dont have to do any of this. Take a step back, and Ill take care of everything" is incredibly attractive. She then has other people coming along and telling her that safety net is wrong; she cant run away and she *has* to do the difficult thing. So she does what anyone does when theyre backed into a corner and scared. She lashes out. Is it pretty? No. Is it rational? No. Is it ENDLESSLY FRUSTRATING for the audience? Absolutely. Is it the kind of reaction you would see from a real person? Also yes.
I'll save the detailed thoughts for when we get to that part of the game, but I totally agree with your conclusion at the end there. Shion frustrates a ton of people in this game. Shion also acts very realistically in this game. I can't give enough credit to the creative team for avoiding all the sugar coating that tends to happen with video game/anime protagonists. There is no hiding from the fact that Shion acts in a manner that so many have and continue to do in real life. One doesn't have to like the character, but I think the writing decision should be respected.
@@quiddity131 I agree wholeheartedly. I tried to be as vague as I could be and not provide too many details. Do you think I should edit my comment or do you think that was okay? I never wanna be that spoiler guy haha
Very well said!
@@smashbrandiscootch719 My suggestion would be leave as is but put a "vague spoilers" label at the top.
@@quiddity131 Thank you, I'm on it!!
I appreciate that, even if Mike didn't wind up liking Shion at the end of his initial playthrough, you guys are still willing to give her character an in-depth and thoughtful analysis down the line. I still want to throw my two-cents in though:
Shion, to me, is a character that hits way, WAY too close to home. Not that I'm qualified to give any diagnosis of any sort, but Shion displays several signs of Bipolar Disorder, or some disorder of the like. Someone I've been very close to my entire life has BP and playing through Xenosaga for the first time last year, I was shocked to the degree and accuracy with which traits symptomatic of the disorder were present within Shion's mannerisms and her interactions some of the characters, namely Jin. There were moments in our lives where this person would act in an "unreasonable" way not unlike Shion, and I admittedly and shamefully never tried to understand them for the longest time and dismissed their behavior as unacceptable and frustrating without accounting for a lot of the trauma and abuse that had made them that way. This person has said and done things that've made me unhappy, but I had to come to terms with that because by being dismissive of them, it only tore a further rift in our relationship, one that's gotten much better with time but has never quite been fixed fully.
All I'm saying is that I hope you guys afford Shion this same level of understanding in your future analyses. You don't have to like her by the end; she's certainly not conventionally likeable by any means, but I do hope you can grow to understand just how great and thoughtfully conceived of a character she is. She's not a character for everyone but Takahashi and the writing team at Monolith knew exactly what and who this character was for, and I have to give them real props for that.
I could write the exact same thing but you did it first and probably better than I can. I hope that is what people one day will say about Shion, a fantastic, realistic character that you don't have to like but at least respect.
The symbol that Wilhelm has is called the Compass of Order. If I add to this I'd be spoiling it. Stay tuned.
My head imploded when I got to the third game and read the full name of it in the database, hehe.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the analysis so much. I still believe Shion is one of the best-written characters in a video game when it comes to what one might expect a real human, who has gone through what she has, to act like. The more that's revealed about her past, which she constantly represses, the more we as the audience realize that her actions and reactions to things have so much more behind them than what's at surface level - we just have to be willing to put ourselves in her shoes.
The shion character analysis is gonna be divisive as Mike already suspects. The only think I can hope is that you try to analyze but not over rationalize her actions. She is a flawed character with clear traumas and issues that will look quite awful if seen from the lens of a practical, proactive and healthy state of mind. Part of the reason some people resonate with her is this auto destructive and ignoring behavior that we can all experience at some point or other when life gets tough.
The problem is that I'm pretty sure a lot of her character got lost in localizationlypse. So they kinda have to over rationalize, even if it is to conclude the over rationalization isn't warranted.
Not going too much into spoilers, but the trilogy really benefits from a replay with some hindsight on your side, particularly when it comes to the character of Shion. She has a lot of tells (some of which you actually already picked up on and discussed a bit) that show how her life and mindset are really negatively affected by depression, loneliness, and trauma. It's a bit harder to identify and understand them in a first playthrough because you don't know where the character arc is heading, or the extent of her true feelings, and she's also pretty decent at masking most of the time. I think it also helps if you are good at recognizing psychological signs, or have experienced a somewhat similar state mind in your life. Regardless of any personal feelings towards the character, a lot of the writing for her is actually really impressive, at least in my opinion.
I would recommend doing another playthrough eventually anyways (on your own times, of course) as I find there's even more to pick up and more connections you can make on subsequent playthroughs.
Xenosaga III is more than Legit its the GOAT
Perhaps then LOAT? Legitist of all time😅
The three dot symbol also appears on Alvis’ coat in the original xenoblade.
and as the Trinity Processor in XB2 and XB3
You can also see this in the Song of Nephilim in Xenosaga episode 1.
All this talk of the collective unconscious I can't believe you guys have not done a serial experiments lain podcast yet
Don't forget that also Nephilim looks like Elly from Xenogears.
Another fascinating discussion, guys, especially the part about the Demiurge. Another comparison between the Xeno series and Evangelion is during the End of Evangelion movie, there is a scene with a graveyard full of Eva skulls with the brain and spinal cord, similar to how the Demiurge is depicted.
That Abel connection too. You can't praise Takahashi enough for doing the best he could, while telling one of the most ambitious stories in video game history. The characters, environments, and mechs all look incredible in Xenosaga III. It's really impressive to see how the series improved in that regard throughout the three games.
Just started the game on my ermm pc. And dude this game upscale beautifully. Visuals are unreal. Top tier PS2 RPG all around so far. About 3 hours deep. Can't believe it took me this long to get to this one.
Woot! I've been waiting for this, haha.
Definitely looking forward to the future videos on this game. Love the symbolism readings because this series is just FULL of it. I can definitely respect putting a pin on the Shion conversation rather than just going with your feeling about her. However you feel at the end of it all, at least you are planning to dive into that conversation rather than just going with your gut.
This is my first time looking at footage from Xenosaga III since I originally played it, and I really think that this game is where Monolith started to really nail down their art style for further Xeno games. I can see hints of it in the environments and you can almost imagine what that space would look like if extrapolated into a modern Xeno game. Just incredible.
This has been so fun to watch you guys play through this. This has become one of my favorite series of games. Something I'd like to recommend looking into is frequencies and music there are some parallels. The Why Files video on Tesla is a great place to start.
Finally! Lets goooo. Hope you guys enjoyed the whole ordeal of the xenosaga series.
Glad to hear you enjoying the start of the game. Whether its story, graphics, gameplay, music, hard to not consider this peak Xenosaga content the rest of the way, particularly with it coming after what was a disappointing second game for many people. At most one might be able to say the voice acting is better in the first game although this one is still very strong and thankfully brings Lia Sargent and Bridget Hoffman back for Shion/KOS-MOS respectively.
At some point I believe you mentioned it was the Vessels of Anima named after the tribes of Israel but its actually the E.S.s as well (or perhaps the Vessels don't have names, I can't remember for sure). This is a contrast to Xenogears, where the Gears and their respective Anima Relics had different names.
I think its pretty much impossible to not have passionate feelings about how Shion is portrayed in this game, either good or bad. Looking forward to the discussion when we get there. Off the top of my head, fellow UA-camr Enel is probably the biggest Shion defender I can think of, or at least the most well known. All I'll say at this point is that one doesn't have to like a character for it to be great writing.
Really excited that you went straight from Xenosaga 2 to 3! I fell behind on the Xenosaga 2 playthrough, so I'm still catching up, but incredibly excited to finally play 3 and follow along with you guys when I get the chance😄
One correction is for Xenosaga DS, Takahashi was not the director, but rather was in charge of various aspects of the scenario writing. Xenosaga 3 was currently in development during all of this. Xenosaga 3 was directed by Koh Arai same as Episode 2. Takahashi or Saga for that matter has not really ever talked about his role in the development of Episode 3. It seems to be quite a sore spot for Monolithsoft as a whole. It does seem like the team learned a great deal between 2 and 3 though.
Well, if it's true, Koh Arai are defenatly grown-up :>
I believe Carl jung has talked about the significance of the spine before in that its the inbetween of the mind and body or spirituality and flesh, so I think that's why the relics are in the shape of the spine as that has to do with their purpose
The pacing of Xenosaga 3's story feels like you watched the first two seasons of a show years ago and are suddenly now watching the 'previously on' intro on an episode from season ten
I'm playing this on my Steam Deck via PCSX2. Im so happy I can listen to your detailed convo. Im in chapter 5 now... I will need to pause my play for Echos of Wisdom I think...... so you guys will really help out coming back to this game... if I can pull away...
If you guys are planning on doing Xenoblade games as well, I highly recommend emulating the Wii U one, Xenoblade X. You can use some quality of life things like putting day and night cycle changes in the menu like other Xenoblades. You can force and access the now defunct online features. Cemu runs it super well, basically flawless. 60fps. Also the ability to disable the flight theme.
Ah darn, I wish I wasn't so busy in the last month. It's probably too late now but I've been doing a Psychological Analysis based playthrough of Xenogears and explaining a lot of the layers of depression, and how it doesn't always show itself so easily. Shion is very similar to someone I know in the way she displays depression, which essentially, she has high-functioning depression (which speaks for itself, she's able to do what she needs to, take care of herself, feed herself, etc, but she's severely masking it also.) Shion fits into that type of depression where you think someone is totally okay, but, they really aren't okay in the slightest and what they are experiencing is very internal.
Don't forget Resonant Arc/Dark Pixel. they started as a group of 3 as well!!
I so so so cannot wait for the conclusion of this discussion, so much goes on in this game and I'm looking forward to hearing all the final thoughts
Thank you guys. Have a great day!
One of the reasons a lot of videogame bosses make you repeat a thing three times is the saying "Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence, Three times is enemy action".
If the player does things three times, it's because they understand why they're doing it.
We need a top 50 games again ASAP
Also I remember Okami being exceptionally high quality in terms of art direction.
I always thought Abel’s “sad being this way” line was referring to KOS MOS and NOT to Shion. For Mike, if you think about the flashback near the end of the game. The fight immediately preceding the penultimate boss fight; Shion’s words to KOSMOS: “You’re sad, aren’t you? KOS MOS!? Are those tears? You’ve lost sight of yourself, just like me.” Abel is leading Shion and her party to KOS MOS and so I interpret that he is leading Shion TO the ‘sad being’. It makes a lot more sense for KOS MOS to be a sad being, given her broken state (not just physically, but psychologically and spiritually as well). So Abel is saying, ‘this way to the sad being’.
I believe that Abel is talking about Shion actually in this scene. If you think about it, every party member is inflicted with a deep sadness, though Shion might not even believe she is acting out in sadness. Perhaps what you are saying could also be true and it's a double meaning. In the scene where Nephilim talks to Shion in the hotel, the "sad being" she is referring to in this scene is actually Kevin.
+aidanuzuki3449
I’ve debated both interpretations and I’ll admit either scenario works. I just settled on KOS MOS given that, at that time, she has just been discarded as trash and due to the later quote by Shion about KOS MOS being sad and having tears. But Shion being the subject of the sentence makes a lot of sense too. The placement of the comma seems to support your argument since grammatically the comma preceding the imperative clause would indicate ‘sad being’ is likely the subject, or the person being requested to perform the action (Shion) whereas without the comma it is more likely ‘sad being’ is the object (KOS MOS). I am not sure how closely Japanese grammar holds to this rule, but it would be interesting to see if the Japanese text used punctuation in a similar manner.
@@tinyguy9398 I'm curious about how this scene is written in Japanese too, for all we know "sad being" might be referring to the state of being human itself (knowing that you are trapped and you are going to die).
So I've been playing alone with you guys with retro achievements and I've made the game even look better by putting a texture pack on top of it honestly these first three chapters have been absolutely stellar
You've reached Episode III, time for the wild ride to ramp up.
I genuinely believe xenosaga 3 might be one of the greatest games of all time. When I’m on my death bed I just know I’ll be thinking about what that game had to say
And yeah, this game look freeking awsome even today. Yeah, first game look's no that impressive, but when you see something like this in 2001 it blows minds, compering to FF 10 where polygons just shaking. Also in Xenosaga 1 monolith already use revolutional technology as blendshape for facial expression. It will be coo to get this quality for game today :
Eagerly anticipated this and UA-cam doesn't notify me until 7 days after the fact. 😠😐😑
Oh well, time to play catch up. 😅
I don't know if I forgot stuff or what but I'm like "who is Abel?". I guess I should watch all the Xenosaga videos again.
Abel is shown briefly at the end of episode 1, but he does not become relevant until 3
He's more committed to those goggles than I am to my girlfriend!
The way I would LOVE to be that Shion stan you bring on 😭
BEAST! LOVE THIS GAME!!! 🔥😎
Got to say I never caught on to the Ouroboros and Moebius (Infinity symbol) symbolism in this game. Kind of neat that they brought that back and made it pretty important to Xenoblade 3.
1:14:45 To be fair, the Agents upgrade and get beefier in Matrix Reloaded but Neo still kicks their asses. How Morpheus is able to stand his ground against one on the back of the truck is another matter 🤔
I think the 'telos' in Xenogears was referring to 'telomeres' in cells.
Hey Mike, a bit off topic but I’m curious where you got your video transitions. I’m an editor and have been searching for very minimalistic zoom transitions like yours.
So I've got to ask because I've kind of been curious since the set change many, many, series ago... Where did you get those chairs from lol?
i don't remember where i saw this source, especially since a lot of stuff around the development of xenosaga is speculation, but i believe fei's story was meant to be episodes 3 and 4 of xenosaga. if you look at perfect works, the idea is that episodes 1 and 2 of saga would be episode 1 of perfect works, episode 3 and 4 of xenosaga would be episode 5 of perfect works (basically a xenogears remake), and then episodes 5 and 6 of xenosaga would be episode 6 of perfect works. and the only thing we know about episode 6 of perfect works is that it is meant to be the terminal point of the universe
also very slight spoilers but there's a theory that some of those elements for what would be episodes 3-6 may be shown in disc 2. maybe i'll leave another comment about that later
lol wish I had kept up with these as they came out-I would have come on to defend Shion as a Shion stan during a larger conversation.
I understand not liking her-in fact, no one liked her, she was lambasted in reviews, and Takahashi has said that Shulk being generally pleasant and one note was a direct result of the hate Shion got.
Shion is honestly their best protagonist though in terms of how she’s written. She, Fei, and Noah are my favourites, but Shion barely surpasses Fei and Noah for me.
She is extremely real, she’s bratty (because she’s stuck in all this tragedy of her life), she’s depressed, she’s someone who hides her feelings behind “I’m fine” and brusqueness. She’s also a victim of manipulation and abuse, for various reasons, and is stuck on that abuser, and with that comes irrationality.
Like I said, I get it, I’m totally used to people hating Shion and thinking she’s terrible or mean, but I can only look at her with pity and compassion.
I may have misunderstood what you meant when you were talking about the symbol behind the xenosaga 3 logo which you also see on Wilhelm's desk. Were you saying that you werent sure what thay symbol was? Because if so, thats the Compass of Order(not its full name). If i misunderstood, then I apologize for the unnecessary correction.
Oh man, this is what I've been waiting for. This is going to be so epic.
"Telos" in modern Greek is the word for "end." Didn't see that mentioned in the symbology part about T-elos. Good Luck going through the game.
generally you get much more dramatic answers when searching online, but thats the simple functionality of the word.
3 dots podcast, yeah :DD But as i remember right, whole design was mabe by third party studio "CHOCO" so all that cool looking mech's and cloth style is their work.
Isn't Choco a person, not a studio? I remember they brought him back to design the Ouroborus in Xenoblade 3.
@@quiddity131 Actually, i don't know. When i see amount of work in artbook and official website it feels like studio
I cannot wait for you 2 to play xenoblade 3 future redeemed. Im am just waiting for you response to be recorded and see how you forsee whats next in the "xeno-collection" by takahashi lol
Moebius Hotel…. Puts conspiracy theory hat on.
This game is high quality all the way sound visuals story… stands right up with ffxii in terms of late PS2 Gems.
Check out the meaning of Roth Mantel in German (Rot Mantel)...
Chads discussing scifi nerd sh*t is peak.
I never thought I'd see the day when the virgin becomes the chad. Truly peak character development.
Xenogears spoiler………………………………….Abel is a dead ringer of Fei and Nephilim is a dead ringer of Ellie. In a previous incarnation of Fei, he was a painter who painted the portrait of queen Sophia who is an earlier incarnation of Ellie. It’s like these two are forever entangled by fate and incarnation even transcending games.
not really a spoiler, just a glance at their Xenogears portraits and you can see that they look identical
I never noticed that human shape in UDO cloud.
Telos means absolute power kosmos means chaos
By now I have given up on Latin pronunciations :(. This one always rubs me the wrong way!!
Reconstructed consensus is: -“ti” followed by a vowel is pronounced /tsi/, unless preceded by “s”, “t”, or “x”. You can see how this evolved into “z” in Italian, “ț” in Romanian, etc…
The reasons I both like and dislike Shion are the exact same as the case of Elma (Xenoblade X). Both are well written characters once you get the full picture but come off as ass until then. Both are the actual protagonists but they sure don't seem like it for the majority of their games (some people even finish Xenoblade X without realizing Elma is the actual protagonist, not your main playable character).
Also, both leave A LOT unexplained which as pointed out makes it even harder to relate to them. And last but not least, having Shion story diluted in 3 very busy games is not doing her any favors, ditto for Elma's story being diluted into random side quests, easily missable events and even random NPC chat.
There is a case to be made about the worth of purposefully writing protagonists where the audience doesn't know their objectives and motivation until the end of the story (Elma is even worse on this matter). When the audience doesn't know the protagonists motivation, how does that impact their perception on the themes? It muddies the water too much IMO.
How much Xenostuff is there?
Xenogears, Xenosaga 1,2, and 3, Xenosaga Freaks, Xenosaga: The Missing Year, Xenosaga 1&2, Xenosaga: Pied Piper, Xenoblade 1,2, and 3, Xenoblade: Future Connected, Xenoblade 2: Torna the Golden Country, Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed, and Xenoblade X. and that's just the video games
i think that's all of them, anyone is free to tell me anything i missed
@@j0anbug so after this There is the Xenoblade stories left to cover? There is alot of Xeno.
@leif54 yep, and i won't spoil anything but the fact that they connect everything in single 3 minute scene in Future Redeemed is nothing short of a miracle
@@j0anbugmiracle maybe, but not genius lmao. It was just them emulating crappy Marvel movies by hyping up a fanbase in which (maybe) at least a half would understand the references and the rest will just resort to looking them up on the Internet instead.
a lot, and quite frankly, i need more
I will keep leaving comments with some overlooked details that might or might not come up again. Not mentioning that Sellers have built a 13th emulator is a big miss for me!
It is difficult to discern that he made an emulator based off Joachim's designs unless you are really paying attention to the conversation he has with Yuriev or dig into the database. The database is really important for understanding this game though, just about as important as item descriptions in a From Software game.
@@aidanuzuki3449 Haha, a comparison I never thought I would hear. But true, very easy to miss details and especially since the tempo is much higher this time, still Sellers clearly says in a voiced cutscene that he built a spare emulator and that it outputs too much energy. The fact that it is grey and can be hard to spot in all the action scenes is also true.
@@opkij86 Yeah I'm just using it as a point of comparison for the material that exists inside the game. Many don't like this datalog way of doing things but engaging with the game further than just simply playing it is all part of the fun!
@aidanuzuki3449 I don't mind needing to read stuff, but Xenosaga just suffers from having too much stuff to read, and so much of it is essential to understand the story. If it was more like Metroid Prime, where the datalogs are really just there to flesh out the world and give context to certain concepts like Phazon or the Chozo Artifacts, but are largely unrelated to what the player should actually care about, it would be far more palletable.
You should play hollow knigth xD
Spoilers!
In reference to your Xenogears spoilers, look at the form that Omega takes after it absobs the Zohar,... To me (and i could be mistaken), but it looks an awful lot like the Alpha Weltall from Xenogears
My recollection is it actually closely resembles
Spoilers...
The final boss version of Deus from Xenogears
I'm normally just a listener rather than someone who comments (I think is my first UA-cam comment ever). There's an aspect on the intro I'm interested in getting your thoughts on, though. I first played through XS3 without knowing about any of the supplemental material and found myself a little colder on the opening than you guys were. Do you think the intro works well without that material? I feel like there are so many changes and new concepts being introduced in this moment (to a series already bloated with complex organizations and sci fi concepts) that anyone playing just the core texts themselves is going to feel lost or unsatisfied.
When playing through the intro, I joked to my fiancée that it felt like I'd missed a whole game covering the Gnosis Terrorism. It bugged me so much, I looked into the details and that's when I learned about The Missing Year and that is where we get the resolution to Nephilim's identity which had been a major plot thread from the series beginning. You touched a bit on this sentiment in the XS2 portion and Pied Piper when you asked how players would have felt about Ziggy's backstory without having played the latter.
While typing this out I guess my real question became, do you feel like putting such important content in supplemental material ends up being a detriment to the core games themselves?
Thanks for the fantastic content! I can't wait to hear your thoughts on the ending. It's definitely an emotional triumph.
There's definitely a lot of conversation to be had whether the ways that Monolithsoft had to tell the story were effective or not. Unfortunately the case is that it would be impossible to decipher the beginning parts of the story without the supplemental material. Yes, it does make the experience much rockier overall. In some ways the totality of the experience is worse than say Gears or Blade where you get a single, cohesive experience. This, combined with other plot related things are reasons why Xenosaga is looked down upon or skipped by players of those games, but Xenosaga is also instrumental in understanding Takahashi's vision for his later work.
Agreed, not ideal in that it requires a bit of forgiveness from the audience.
And gnosis of the behind the scenes discourse + extra lore.
Due to the problems with project management and overly ambitious plotting, Pied Piper and Missing Year were separate even though they weren't meant to be. Pied Piper was supposed to be included in Episode 1, and Missing Year presumably would have been the first part of Episode 2. If that plan had actually manifested and it somehow wasn't a complete mess, there would be no supplemental material to worry about. But since they had to be economical with their time and resources, I don't know another way they could have told all this story given the circumstances.
@jacobmonks3722 Excellent point. I'm aware that those materials were split off from 2 and 3, though that raises the question of whether the related Xenosaga shortcomings are due to writing or editing issues. Should the story have been edited to compensate for what couldn't fit into the game? It's all really important, really good, stuff so there's no way of knowing if that would be a satisfactory answer.
I guess it depends on whether we consider the Xenosaga story to be the core games or them and the supplemental materials. I personally think the core games should be able to tell the story in its entirety, but I'm not sure I have any persuasive argument as to why it should be that way. It's not like we can base it on the core games having a wide release while the supplemental material was only available in Japan. XS 1 didn't see a European release and the series itself had been out of print for almost two decades.
A bit of a tangent, but I suppose if Xenosaga was made today, both Pied Piper and Missing Year may have been released a la Torna for Xenoblade 2. Cut content released as DLC.
@@Twtales59 Takahashi said in an interview that JRPGs were going into a direction where their stories were getting bigger and bigger and that in hindsight he also made that mistake.
It was for that reason that with Xenoblade, he aimed at something closer to 50% focus on story and 50% on gameplay.
As for Xenoblade X, he experimented going the complete opposite direction. Focus all in on gameplay and leave most of the story as optional content. He also did what he originally wanted to do with Xenogears gameplay-wise: a map system that smoothly works simultaneously for on foot characters and giant mechas.
"that anyone playing just the core texts themselves is going to feel lost or unsatisfied"
This is true for all Takahashi games though. None of them are all that satisfying if you don't know/research all the references. Even Xenoblade 1 rings too shallow without researching the Monad or how it is thematically tied to Perfect Works.
Being this convoluted is generally a bad idea if you're trying to sell a story but with the benefit of hindsight it made Takahashi RPGs unique and deep in a pool of many, many generic JRPGs.
My favorite framework he attempted is by far Xenoblade X. Shallow as a puddle on the very short mandatory story path, then escalates deeper and deeper, layer by layer the more you dig in the optional content until it fits with every other game he made into a perfect work that elaborates on Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblades and science-fiction as a whole.
Did you know Xenoblade series ironically resembles Xenosaga in terms of a great first entry with slightly realistic look,controversial second game with a artstyle change and a third game with art style mix of 1 and 2 artstyle and great opening with a grand finale.
This is technically not true, since the actual release order was Xenoblade > Xenoblade X > Xenoblade 2 > Xenoblade 3 > DLC that ties everything together including Xenosaga.
The point being, he didn't make the same mistake he made with Xenosaga and Xenogears. The main team was working on Xenoblade X while a B team worked on Xenoblade 2 so the controversial game was mainly a filler and cash generation while they developed the Zelda Breath of the Wild engine and map.
The man got smart.
Curious how the villain of this game is the father of psychology.
The number four in Japanese is associated with death...
w00t
Also isnt the number 3 in Japan synonymous with death?
That's the number 4, being pronouned "shi", same as the word for death
Kosmos
noun
das gesamte Weltall; das Universum
Kosmos → cosmos;
Kosmos
noun
the universe
cosmos; → Kosmos; an ordered, harmonious whole
cosmos; → Kosmos;
Weltall Noun
Weltall, das ~ (UniversumWeltraumAll)
space, the ~ Noun
universe, the ~ Noun
outer space, the ~ Noun
LFG
Someone please tell me what is going on with the goggles haha. Lasix surgery or something?
why is he using those goggles?
What's with the goggles?
Xenosaga 3 really surprised me with how good it is as a video game. The story is obviously good and filled with the Xenography we all love, but it feels like there wea a lot of conscious effort placed into making it fun. Xenosaga 1, in terms of gameplay, felt like a very standard typical JRPG, and Xenosaga 2 tried to be different but just kind of shot itself in the foot. Saga 3 uses a lot of those gameplay ideas and refines them into something more streamlined, more approachable, and more immediately gripping. And it doesn't make as many sacrifices for the sake of the story that the previous games did. I still don't think it's Xenoblade levels of fun, but it's close.
Agreed. Not only is 3 the best looking game with the best story, it is also the most fun to play.
It was because of all mistakes and past experience that when they got Nintendo funding, the 1st thing they did was a small scale "test" to see if they could make a good ARPG and only after that they made Xenoblade. In fact the Break>Topple>Launch system came from that little test game called Soma Bringer.
1:47:57 Have you guys done a breakdown of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series? This train of thought reminds me of it. I can't remember the exact details, as its been probably close to 2 decades since I've watched it, but the feeling is very strong...
While the game looks amazing, I think it's unfortunate that much of the game's scenes are told through text boxes rather than the high-quality, fully animated cutscenes.
I never minded it; they are all fully voiced and have a wide variety of character portraits to express their emotions. And when it is a big action scene they switch to a full animated cutscene. Frankly I think the first two games should have done the same.
I really do not understand this criticism of the game at all. Imagine if people said "Yeah, Persona 3 and 4 were great and all but unfortunately the story is told through text boxes". Literally no one says this for any other RPG and the game still does have really good cinematics. The text box scenes bring the presentation and camera work for them a lot closer to Xenogears in this way also.
@@aidanuzuki3449 I was skeptical about the text boxes before release but in the end I love them and the only way the game could have been done. Doing everything in high budget cutscenes would add another disc, another year to develop and of course made them lose even more players who would have moved on to other games while waiting.
Throughout XS's 1 and 2, a majority of the cutscenes where they stand around and talk came across to me like those would work best in textboxes. Monolith Soft at the time most likely consisted of scene directors who were more comfortable in writing for RPGs from the SNES or PSX era where they didn't account for voice acting and choreography that are in line with cinema. XS3 choosing to go this route tells me that they needed to compromise and stick with what they know best.
This was also a complaint some people had about the first Xenoblade game, how all the smaller cutscenes had very repetitive and generic character animations. But the reason I don't mind is because they are as expressive as they need to be and it gave the team the time to make the more important cutscene animations REALLY good.
I love you guys and waited forever for you to cover this game. But I just don't get the reason for the goggles. It's been worn for like 4-5 episodes now. Is this supposed to be funny or some reference I'm not getting. We haven't even gotten an explanation.
My point is I can't take this serious in any way.
"I can't take this serious in any way."
Good.
My theory is that is a funny take on how the xeno series does things in general. Introduce a random element early in the story to develop it ages later in the final episode/game.... or even forget to develop it and let the fandom go crazy with theories.
Put simply- He's channeling the same mood as Yoko Taro, trying not to take the intellectual too seriously. I think.
You really wrote this paragraph and were serious? Obviously they are beer goggles and it’s the only way to dive into the lore of the game.
Yes I am serious. I made a comment. I am an adult not a child, end of story.
Meh. But I'll leave you an engagement for the algo.
SAGA III let’s goooo!