![]() Xenosaga takes this line religiously but its complex and alien terminology makes it very difficult to jump in on for a new player. The censored blood letting scenes for the Western version neuters any dramatic tension - especially in one key scene. Rather, you let the detail and fact of the universe permeate the story subtly and without fanfare as mere incidentals that reveal themselves naturally. And any great storyteller knows that you don't go around telling the reader/viewer/player about all these details. You see, any good storyteller knows that the key to creating a successful and believable universe is to know everything about it before you point pen to paper, camera to star or polygon to background. For anybody else here struggling to contend with the series' practical history, you have little hope unravelling its internal machinations. So as Xenosaga III comes in to land, seeking to wrap up the ubiquitous threads the earlier games have left hanging and frayed, players who have enjoyed the former games will know exactly what to expect. And so, as this space soap-opera has progressed and characters have seen their designs sexed up, stories outworked and questions added to, still these core elements of the series remain constant. But the cinematics were expertly-produced, the story while demanding was interesting, and the battle system (one of the few times the player wrestled control of the game's progression from Takahashi) fun to play. The game divided critics with its bombastic highbrow philosophy, impenetrable unfamiliar terminology, linear progression and, most notably, the long hours of non-interactive cut-scenes. ![]() A host of other supporting characters with alien jobs and histories but recognisable motivations and emotions filled out the characterisation colour and the dark threat of the Gnosis (ethereal creatures that can kill the living with one touch terrorizing the universe with increasing frequency) provided the shading needed to give the story depth and fear. Xenosaga 1's release introduced us to Shion Uzuki, a bespectacled geekgirl working for the multigalactic company, Vector Industries, on a robot intelligence codenamed KOS-MOS. Xenosaga 2 was the first Xeno-game to get a Pal release, forcing Eurogamers to play hard catch up with what was already a near impenetrable backstory. Rather than discarding all that to begin afresh a new game, Takahashi began work on Xenosaga, an ostensibly distinct world to that of Xenogears (due to the obvious contractual limitations) but one in reality closely linked to the former game in style, theme, content, mythology and much of the detail. ![]() Big in Japan, small in the US (thanks to its Church bashing overtones) and non-existent in Europe, its release saw the esteemed producer leave Square-Enix to set-up Monolith Software, his head still full of the details of the complex and vast universe he had spent the last few years of his life creating. Takahashi's Xeno universe first big-banged into existence in the 1998 PSOne release, Xenogears. So, there's some sense of relief for fans in this, the final (foreseeable) Xenosaga game: they at least made it to an end. Indeed, with declining sales as the story has progressed it was perhaps debateable as to whether we'd see any form of conclusion to this, Tetsuya Takahashi's lovingly crafted universe. Originally intended as a six-part run of games that would be released over no less than three console generations spanning a decade, the Xenosaga vision has been mercilessly downsized in recent times. ![]() Ideas that should and shouldn't be repeated and, remarkably, beneath the rubble of this prematurely destroyed series, the pleading whisper of a good game trapped in a fallen framework. While a review of the finale to a three-part epic J-RPG science-fiction saga might seem irredeemably tedious to all but the most unflinchingly geekish consumer, there are lessons herein that are important to the rest of gaming. ![]()
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