Xenosaga: Was mi�riert

Very happy.

Good times, Gogglebob.

I did burn through NXC a few years ago, and yes, it's dire. There are a few more nods to Xenosaga there, too. I think you go to the Rennes le Chateau cave there, too. I remember being in a cave when Shion mentions something about being scared of lightning, and the upshot is at the end of the stage, she gets her Lightning Blast tech as one of her attacks.

There's also a series of stages aboard the Woglinde there too, probably treading the ground that PXZ would retread later.

So is this 'The End' The End? Man, I kinda don't want it to be over, but I suppose there isn't much more to cover. At least not until Namco is reminded 'Oh yeah, KOS-MOS exists' and throws her in another weird crossover game.

This has been one hell of an LP series, GoggleBob, great job! If there were a list of the cream of the crop LPs on Talking Time then this one would absolutely deserve to be on it. I really enjoyed it from start to finish and it was a great trip back through memory lane and reminded me that I still really like this series, for all its flaws.

Yeah, this has been a nice stop on my daily net run for over a year and to see it's done, well, that's fine. Had to end eventually. Good job and thanks.

Yeah, this was a fun ride, thanks for doing it.

I still wonder what happened between this series and Xenoblade. Was the writer who was let go during Xenosaga 2 the cause of all the story oddities? Was the person they found as a replacement just better? Did Nintendo simply give them enough time and money to complete the game? Was making an open world easier to design for leaving more time to edit the script? Who knows.

Interviews with Tetsuya Takahashi from when Xenoblade was announced at E3 as MONADO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD and at later showings imply that they just wanted to make different kinds of games in terms of structure. Certain structures lend themselves to different kinds of stories. Beyond that, in the Iwata Asks about Xenoblade, Takahashi goes on about how XS1 was in part the way it was because a lot of the people working on it were fresh out of school and so it needed to rely more heavily on what they already knew how to do. With all that in mind some reasonably educated guesses can be made that an inexperienced team led by some PS1 RPG veterans attempted to paper over some issues of fairly plain game design by making a game that revolved around a very (at least superficially) complex story. This need to sell the game entirely on complex mythos likely led to some overwriting, trying to make sure there at least seemed to be detail in every step. In some ways it's admirable they kept the plates spinning as well as they did, but given that its design seems to have been in some aspects necessity and continuity it isn't surprising that they dialed back in narrative grandiosity a tad to focus on the world you explored, which thankfully enhanced both game and narrative.

Thanks so much for the great LP Gogglebob.

Yeah, I kind of feel like some of the stuff set up in XS1 highlights exactly how that went: stuff like "KOS-MOS is potentially going to go crazy" is fun storytelling in almost any medium, but it doesn't so much work in a videogame where you're talking about a mandatory playable character. Shion's instant heel turn pretty much proves that, and, yes, in general, I'd just say that the Monolith Soft that made Xenoblade learned from mistakes in XS and other games (and I'm going to claim Nintendo had a hand in guiding MS to making a game that is, ya know, complete).

And, yes, that's it for the LP. Done-done. All that's left is, I dunno, link to the original post that got this thing going, and that's about it.

And before anyone asks: Yes, I probably will do another LP. I have at least two games in mind (both of which are JRPGS, incidentally), but I really want to take a lil' LP "time off" here. It's Sunday night, and for the last year+, that has been "time to play/dice up pictures of Xenosaga night". It's... nice to not have that hanging over my head for a change. Given this was my first LP, I feel like I learned to swim in the deep end...

That said, I really did enjoy this LP, even when judging some of the more ludicrous bits of XS. Thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, and whatever. I definitely would not have done this without the support of everyone reading this, so thanks and all that riot.

See you next mission, everyone.

Gogglebob, this was an absolutely phenomenal let's play. I enjoyed every single post an incredible amount, and was honored by the times I was able to contribute.

Thank you so much for all your amazing work!

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I still have a text document of all the suggested team names. For the record, The Brews won, and probably got referenced at least once an update. Realian Justice Warriors wound up as second runner up, and you can probably find its usage randomly around the updates.

The suggested team names, all from about a year ago now:

Realian Justice Warriors

Team Are You For Realian?

Chaos and the Realian Girl.

The Brews

Team Realian Death Butts

Realian Asses of Doom (RAD)

Shion and the CyberAngels

Ziggy Stardust Crusaders

Shion Uzuki & the Soulsonic Force

Thanks for the LP! Xenosaga is definitely a franchise I will never play, but it was great to see it taken apart and analyzed, and find that there really are some good parts among all the oddness.

I'm a bit late here (it took me longer to read than it took you to make), but great LP GoggleBob!

Thanks so much for the great LP Goggle!