Tendo City - Xenoblade looks pretty good

Baiten Kaitos is good. Xenosaga, the whole series, was a disappointment.

I'll keep an eye on it at least. The trailer looks like Dialga and Palkia are duking it out while a bunch of humans with light sabers fight other pokemon.

Oh, no. Monolith Soft isn't going to fool me again just by taking the prefix Xeno- and tacking on some random suffix. Fuck you, Monolith Soft. You took the Greatest Game Ever, fucked up everything that was great about it, and the result was a pile of shit known as Xenosaga.

Fuck you. Fuck your whole developing team. Fuck Namco for abetting the Xenosaga disaster and fuck Square for not keeping the original team around to develop the prequels.

Xenosaga was a disappointment for sure, but I'm saying so in comparison with the original more than anything. On their own, they're decent enough games, just nothing stellar.

If infinite realities exist, there is one where 4 awesome prequels and one awesome sequel was made. That's the one I want to go to. In it, Silent Hill 5 and Origins were abandoned in favor of making a Castlevania game that played like Metroid Prime, Megaman 10 completely revolutionised the Megaman series and had a conclusion to the original Megaman story, the Wii online network is better than XBox Live, they made spinoff games for Final Fantasy 6 filling in all the unexplained details of that universe, like the old war, the upbringing of Terra (starring Leo), the missing time during the 1 year time skip, and the cult of kefka trying to ressurect magic through terra in a sequel. They also made Chrono Break, with Shigeru Miyamoto directing, and Hideo Kojima took himself less seriously.

If that alternate reality ever is brought into existence, I will follow you there with tears of joy clouding my vision.

Apparently, Xenoblade is going to be completely unrelated to both Xenosaga and Xenogears. Why bother calling it Xenoanything, then?

I mean, Xenogears is named after a specific titular object within the game. As far as I am aware, the gear Xenogears is in no way a factor in Xenosaga, but it was intended to be a half-assed reimagining of Perfect Works, Chapter 1, so the name drop (while undeserved) makes sense.

Xenoblade gives me the impression that these guys are not confident that anyone will care about their game unless they give it another name drop.

Quote:Baiten Kaitos is good. Xenosaga, the whole series, was a disappointment.

Baten Kaitos was a boring dissapointment, I don't have many good things to say about that game. Supposedly the sequel is a lot better, but with how much I disliked the first one, I didn't exactly stick around to try it out...

As for Xenosaga though, I know lots of Xenogears fans didn't like it (it's certainly quite different and probably not as good) and I think the whole philosophical background of the series is completely stupid, but still, I do have the first game and it's kind of fun to play... yeah, I'm not exactly a fan of half hour long cutscenes, but still, somehow I was having fun. I've gotten a little ways into it, and I'm sure I'll go back at some point.

Xenogears is a great game, but I would put in the criticism that around the second disk, the story started feeling "hurried along", what with the way the story gets told becoming this chapter based thing, with little interludes with characters explaining what's been happening. It's still a good game, and eventually the world opens up for exploration again, but for that long section, you are basically put into one dungeon after another without a break. Oh if I had known how linear Xenosaga was going to be, I wouldn't have complained.

Xenoblade... Well "xeno" just means "outside" or "foreign", so it might work if these swords, like Xenogears itself, are from somewhere outside this world, interfering with the flow of events just like the discovery of "gears" did. However I agree it's probably also a name drop, considering they could have also gone with "Eldritchblade" and had the same meaning.

Weltall Wrote:Apparently, Xenoblade is going to be completely unrelated to both Xenosaga and Xenogears. Why bother calling it Xenoanything, then?

Xeno is an actual word, you kooky cat. And anyway, Xenocide [by Orson Scott Card] came out in 1991. Plus there's the Greek word "xenos" which basically means "enemy stranger".

And Xenosaga 1 basically had the same team as Xenogears.

Sure, but the point is that they're obviously just using the word in order to draw in people who liked their past Xeno games, even though they're quite different in some ways...

Well, unlike Weltall I don't view Xenogears as some holy object, so it doesn't bother me at all, considering that they guys that's directing Xenoblade also directed Xenogears and the first Xenosaga game.

True, I agree that it makes sense for them. It makes the games feel a bit less like new IPs, which is always good these days with game budgets being as huge as they are... but it also makes people think there's a connection that may not really exist. Still, if there's some kind of thematic similarity somehow I agree, the title is fine. As you say it IS the same studio behind all of them, after all.

Great Rumbler Wrote:Well, unlike Weltall I don't view Xenogears as some holy object, so it doesn't bother me at all, considering that they guys that's directing Xenoblade also directed Xenogears and the first Xenosaga game.

That'd be like Akira Yamaoka directing a totally new horror game with his new employers and calling it Silent Mountain.

"Blade" and "Gear", or "Saga" I suppose, aren't synonyms.

A better analogy would be "Silent City", which actually sounds pretty cool.

Great Rumbler Wrote:"Blade" and "Gear", or "Saga" I suppose, aren't synonyms.

A better analogy would be "Silent City", which actually sounds pretty cool.

Yeah, I agree, something like that is a better analogy. I was trying to think of synonyms for Gear to give an opposite example, but couldn't think of much...

"Mountain" and "Hill" are not synonyms, either.

Similar words, I meant. A hill is like a mountain but smaller. A blade and a gear are completely different things, though. But I think that was obvious. :)

In the context of the game, a "Gear" is primarily a weapon of war, and the word is never used in its normal context of being a specific kind of machine part. So, not really.

Still, in Xenogears, "Xenogears" is not a category or general description. It's a proper name.

This one Gear, specifically, is Xenogears.

In case you're wondering, yes, they titled it Xenoblade to sell more copies. The original title was Monado.

I wasn't wondering so much as I was assuming.

I HAVE NEW GAME IT'S CALLED MARIO TWINS

They go to Dragon Land to rides a dragon!

I got it at Chunky's for two dolla!

Silent Hill is a play on words of Silent Hell, a personal struggle against our own demons.

Xeno means stranger literally, but its used to describe bizarre lifeforms or an offshoot of species that is radically different from its normal structure and of course gears like the inner-workings of a machine. I always thought the title of Xenogears wasn't just the name of the machines in the story but also a description of the story itself - we are the xenogears created to serve the xeno god.

Xenoblade = Strange blade, describing the machines again as well as the weapons that are used by the characters. But I think it plays on the old saying of 'double edged sword'. I never played any of the games, so i cant really get in to the meaning of the title.

I love Capcom's titles. What are you playing? Street Fighter. Orly whats it about? you FIGHT in the STREET. What's that game? Megaman. What's it about? MEGA MEN. What's Resident Evil about? A residence with evil. ORLY? Absolutely no thought behind the titles.

'Xeno' also refers to 'foreign', which the humans in Xenogears were to their planet.

The Japanese title for Resident Evil?

Biohazard.

Still totally apparent what you are dealing with.

Dino Crisis, what's that about?

Hmm, Breath of Fire at least leaves you thinking, except the very first one, the series namer, was more of a collaboration between Capcom and Square, so that one maybe doesn't count.

You may say "no thought in the title" but not everything has to have layers of meaning and such. Sometimes, keep it simple, and that keeps it elegant.

I agree, but the simple form of the title, like Alien for example not only has elegance and gives you the immediate scope of the story, but it has multiple meanings as well. The only strong female being alien to the other crew, Ash being alien to humanity, the picture of an egg with the word alien having a sense of gestation and birth, the alien you carry within - pregnancy, they themselves being the alien to another world in the consistent man vs. nature. etc. All carried in the through line of the film from the title screen on.

now Resident Evil may not get awards for depth in the title but Code Veronica is arguably one of the most layered and deep stories in video game history. So is Final Fantasy Tactics, uber generic ftw. Its simple and you have an idea about the gameplay at least, but you have no idea the depth and story it presents. "The Lion War" does a better job but it should have been called (Final Fantasy(subtitle)) TACTICS: The Untold Story of the Lion War. Wordy yes, but you'd have a good grasp of what to expect in terms of scope. Dont you think?

lazy, that entire first paragraph sounded like you are reading way too much into it. They named it alien because there's an alien. I doubt they put any other thought into it.

I follow more of a "keep it simple, stupid" thing when it comes to names. I'm actually getting rather annoyed with the layers upon layers of subtitles in a lot of spinoff games lately. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, is just too much.

Look at the director and writer of Alien and tell me with a straight face that the title has no meaning beyond the fact that an alien is in the film. Jesus christ, have you seen the movie? The giant penis eats people and there's a vagina with legs that has a penis that comes out of a vagina? We're on the same page here, right?

I have a feeling Toven will be, but probably for all the wrong reasons.

*flips through pages* Yeah I'm afraid you've lost me.

Great Rumbler Wrote:<object width="640" height="385">

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NtTlUcjtqTY&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></object>

So basically it's like Final Fantasy Online, except all you do is run around and look at pretty polygons and nothing attacks you and nothing happens... Except you running around.. Ow and title screens appear every 30 seconds just to piss you off more. And after the title screen appears you celibate your victory buy running around some fields some more. And just for verity you can choose to run around the beach and do nothing, or even run around a space city and do nothing! But only after you've run around some roads first in order to get there..

Weltall Wrote:I have a feeling Toven will be, but probably for all the wrong reasons.

Hold on... I'm going to need Photoshop to illustrate, how do you spell octopenisapus?....

[ACTION]I wonder how many penises I can add before I run out of ram?[/ACTION]

[ACTION]I could always order more RAM at crucial I suppose.[/ACTION]

It does look pretty good. Great character customization there too, for a JRPG! :)

Not only that, but it also has a huge, open world that even lets you JUMP OVER THE SIDES OF CLIFFS. How many JRPGs do that?

It's also got side quests and fast travel!

Great Rumbler Wrote:Not only that, but it also has a huge, open world that even lets you JUMP OVER THE SIDES OF CLIFFS. How many JRPGs do that?

Since when was it even ALLOWED for JRPGs to do that?

If they can stay away from 45 minute long Xenosaga-style cutscenes, this is looking pretty good... and Xenosaga's not that bad somehow even with the quite excessively long cutscenes...

Quote:It's also got side quests and fast travel!

More great features! :)

What is it with JRPG characters wielding swords the size of Buicks?

This game looks good enough for me to probably still hate it anyway.

>How many JRPGs do that?

>Since when was it even ALLOWED for JRPGs to do that?

Did anyone here actually play Xenogears? 'Cuz you could totally do things like that.

We've all played Xenogears, Wetall, we know what it's like. Also, I don't recall Xenogears having a huge open world that let you climb mountains and then jump off a cliff hundreds of feet up in the air. Or fast-travel.

Anyway, your hatred of this game is kind of silly. It's like getting mad at George Lucas for making a scifi movie called War of the Stars for the sole reason that he's ripping off Star Wars. He made Star Wars in the first place!

Quote:. Also, I don't recall Xenogears having a huge open world that let you climb mountains and then jump off a cliff hundreds of feet up in the air. Or fast-travel.

Or having equipment changes actually display on the character...

Quote:Anyway, your hatred of this game is kind of silly. It's like getting mad at George Lucas for making a scifi movie called War of the Stars for the sole reason that he's ripping off Star Wars. He made Star Wars in the first place!

Quite true. Is something really a "ripoff" if the original creators made it? I'd say no.

I'm not mad because I think the game is a rip-off. I don't think I used that term, or implied anything like it.

I'm mad because Xenosaga sucked penis, and because Monolith Soft keeps using the Xeno- name but refuses to, like, ever finish the rest of the Xenogears story.

Takahashi probably can't make an out-right sequel without Square's blessing and Square is content to leave the "series" as is, so you'll have to take Xenogears as a self-contained story.

Xenosaga was, at most, a nod towards Xenogears, with even Takahashi admitting that there's no real connection between the two.

And, anyway, Xenoblade looks nothing at all like Xenosaga.

Early impressions from Japan are pretty good and it got four 9's from Famitsu.

Impressions from another forum:

Quote:Battle system is like an MMO. You auto-attack and have special attacks (arts) that refill over time (no mp). What makes it interesting is attacks do different things based on positioning. Like one of the first arts will cause attack down debuff if you hit an enemy from the side. Another will do much higher damage from the back. There are other little parts to it, like some attacks cause stun and then from stun some attacks knock an enemy down. Some enemies can only be hurt when knocked down. There's also party stuff and vision where you see the future if an enemy is going to do an attack that will kill a character in your party and you can prevent it.

Game has TONS of loot. Use the loot to trade with NPCs like .hack, or sell it and buy stuff, or craft it into gems you can equip, or equip it (all visible). It's very much a diablo-esque loot game like his last game Soma Bringer.

The cities are big, but it's not a huge deal because of no loading fast travel. The environments are huge. Honestly I feel like they are too big and wish I could run faster. Feels like traveling in an MMO.

Story is good. Lots of cutscenes, good writing/direction. Good characters, much better than your typical rpg cast. Plot is solid. Has mysteries and foreshadowing and stuff from the start.

Graphics are ok. Nice scope, good animation, awful textures/models. Music is ok, some great tunes here and there so far.