>> So, what happened to Xenosaga?

[black orb]

>>> Are this series dead or something?..

I never had the chance to play one of these games (with any luck i just played some Xenogears).
All I know is that became fairly popular because of that Kos-mos girl and their good FF like graphics.

Since I never played it I`d like to see a new Xenosaga game for the PS3 or something..

[chionos]

I'm not sure either, as I lost interest after the second game. I thought, though, that the series was wrapped up between the games and anime. Am I wrong in thinking that?

[Mirage]

Namco decided the series wasn't making enough profit around the second game, and let them make the third just so they could end the story in a proper way or something. They initially planned to make 6 games.

Not the biggest loss in the world, in either case.

[Ultima Shadow]

Not the biggest loss in the world, in either case.

Yes it is! It's a catastrophy of massive magnitude! =(

It was all because the second game was such a screw-up. If they only hadn't changed the character designs in such a dumb way... and if only they had kept the same (or a similar) battle system. The first and third games are both absolutely brilliant, but the second one is pretty bad and something I played only because of the story.


But yeah, the series is pretty much finished. It's, sadly, very unlikely that we'll ever see anything more of it.

[Mirage]

I tried the first game and the battle system was terrible. I hear the second is even worse, but the third is actually sort of good. The entire series was a huge loss for Namco anyway, it's prefectly understandable that they didn't want to spend money on three more games which could potentially make them lose even more.

[Ultima Shadow]

I tried the first game and the battle system was terrible. I hear the second is even worse, but the third is actually sort of good. The entire series was a huge loss for Namco anyway, it's prefectly understandable that they didn't want to spend money on three more games which could potentially make them lose even more.

Totally disagree about the first game. I loved its battle system.

And if they hadn't wasted money on changing the graphics and such for the second game, it would have been a lot cheaper to produce that title... plus the game would most likely have made more money. So I still blame Xenosaga 2 for ruining everything.

[DMKA]

I was all hyped and excited to buy the first one because I loved Xenogears. But then I went to my friend's house, who had bought the game already, and started to play...and well...those freaking CUTSCENES! I mean come on. Final Fantasy X had some long cutscenes. Metal Gear Solid 4 had some really long cutscenes, but Xenosaga Episode 1 was just mind boggling with how far it took cutscene length.

Even still, I had planned to play them all anyway one day but then they changed the way everyone looked and then announced that they were only going to do three games instead of five so I just lost interest.

Speaking of which, did they really have nothing to do with the story of Xenogears? I remember beating Xenogears and at the end it saying "End of Episode V" which made me like to think Xenosaga would fill in those prior episodes, tee hee.

[black orb]

>>> Monolith Soft work for nintendo now right?..

[Ultima Shadow]

I was all hyped and excited to buy the first one because I loved Xenogears. But then I went to my friend's house, who had bought the game already, and started to play...and well...those freaking CUTSCENES! I mean come on. Final Fantasy X had some long cutscenes. Metal Gear Solid 4 had some really long cutscenes, but Xenosaga Episode 1 was just mind boggling with how far it took cutscene length.

Even still, I had planned to play them all anyway one day but then they changed the way everyone looked and then announced that they were only going to do three games instead of five so I just lost interest.

Speaking of which, did they really have nothing to do with the story of Xenogears? I remember beating Xenogears and at the end it saying "End of Episode V" which made me like to think Xenosaga would fill in those prior episodes, tee hee.

Well, the cutscene-length is a turn off for some. But as long as you don't mind that (I certainly don't), the first and third games are both great.

And no, Xenosaga doesn't really have anything to do with Xenogears. Well... there are some referrences and a few similarities, actually. But the story itself has nothing to do with Xenogears.

As far as I know, there were actually plans for prequels and sequels to Xenogears too. But they were also canceled.

>>> Monolith Soft work for nintendo now right?..

I'm pretty sure they do, yeah. Or else we probably wouldn't have seen KOS-MOS as a character in Super Robot Taisen og Saga: Endless Frontier.

[GhandiOwnsYou]

Speaking of which, did they really have nothing to do with the story of Xenogears? I remember beating Xenogears and at the end it saying "End of Episode V" which made me like to think Xenosaga would fill in those prior episodes, tee hee.

Unless I'm mistaken, it all stems from the developement hell xenogears went through. Fom what i've heard, xenogears was forced out the door because it was taking far too long to finish, thus the infamous second disc of cutscene hell. Square shut em down for the sequels, and the majority of the team left and formed monolith. Problem is, the original story line for xenogears was supposed to be a six parter, and with the break from square the legality of them doing direct sequels or prequels was questionable to say the least.

It seems like they chopped up the lore from xenogears so they wouldn't have to start from scratch, but the storyline itself bears little resemblance to the initial game. I always looked at it like two kids playing seperately with the same action figures. Might be the some of the same names and locations, but it's a different plot altogether.

[Bolivar]

I haven't played Xenosaga ep 1 but from what I've read the overall structure of the plot closely parallels the early events alluded to in Xenogears and elaborated on in the Perfect Works compendium (way before Cain and Abel). The devs seem to claim it was a "reimagining" of the original six episode timeline. It would've been crazy to see how they pulled off Episode V.

I've only played the intro of Xenosaga ep 3 (long before I played Xenogears) but I was a little impressed. I want to get to these games eventually, just really hesitant because of the ep 2 backlash.

[edczxcvbnm]

While they made 3 games I think it was suppose to be just the first two parts of their original vision. In the original trailer for the first game they showed some cut scenes that never made the game. Those did make it somewhere in the middle of the second game though.

Overall the biggest problem with the games was that they had no clue how to make a game. They kept changing graphic models, battle systems and pretty much everything instead of sticking with something and building on it for the next game. Xenosaga 1 had an insane amount of cut scenes up front for the story and then towards the end the trend became damn near the exact opposite. I liked the battle system for the first game as it was very free to let me create the characters how I wanted. It was probably too much for most though. There was also a lack of dungeon music if I am not mistaken (I didn't mind or notice).

The second game they went totally insane and jacked up every single aspect. I almost think they had meetings with the topic of "How can we make this worse?" Horrible music, worst graphics, worse voice acting, God AWFUL battle system and probably some other stuff.

The third game finally got it all right. It struck the balance of story to gameplay. It had a nice simple battle system and leveling system. They had a supplemental database to fill in the details in the background instead of wasting money with expositioning it all through cut scenes. Also for the first time in the series the Mechs were useful and fun. I think they were used in the second game but I am pretty sure it was annoying and bad like everything else. In the first game you never had to use them and I never did.

A great example of how to do this whole thing correctly is the .hack series. Multiple games using the same engine and just building off of each other to reduce costs/spread costs over the production of multiple games. They probably spent more time upfront planning to make sure everything they wanted was set in place first then went to work. Humorously enough, both series were published by Namco-Bandai games :/

[Ultima Shadow]

There was also a lack of dungeon music if I am not mistaken (I didn't mind or notice).

Many dungeons didn't have any actual music - just some background sounds, or completely silent. As unusual as that is, I also didn't mind at all. In fact, I sometimes prefered it that way.

[darkchrono]

It's been years since I have been a regular video game player but since this thread is about a group of games from when I was a regular video game player I figure I'll make a reply.

As others have said xenosaga came about because square did not want to continue the xenogears series so the people who made the game left so they could make the series they wanted.

Xenogears and Xenosaga take place in separate universes but they both have similar story points because they both originated from the same idea.

Think of it this way. Xenogears was the first attempt at creating the story they wanted to tell and Xenosaga was just the second attempt at telling the story they wanted to tell.

People can try to blame the xenosaga ep. II for the failure of the series but the real culprit was Takahashi himself (or the guy who created the series).

Takahashi should of been an author instead of a video game creator. He had great ideas but at the same time was a terrible businessman. He was not able to meet deadlines in any of the games he made and with the graphics that xenosaga had he went way over budget as well I believe (which is why he was removed from the project).

The xeno series could have worked if Takahashi had decent business sense. But since he didn't both his attempts at telling his grand story failed.

[black orb]

>>> They should have made a book instead of a game then ..