I first learned of Xenogears while playinging the demo disk which came with a friends copy of Parasite Eve. Proving I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, I fell in love immediately.
The game starts out in, what becomes seen as a flashback, a scene where a man with long hair is fighting in a black, giant robot while a guy in green tells him to leave. Long hair fella takes out some other giant bots as the camera zooms into a PS1 era flame.jpg flame and then panning out to it was a painting all along. That scene never happens and I’ve never fully understood why it’s here. The story behinds and We learn the long hair guy is named Fei Fong Wong and he has amnesia. The only thing he knows of his past is a hooded man brought him to Lacan three years ago covered in blood. We then learn that his only friends in the world, Tim and Alice, are getting married tomorrow. There seems to be unrequited love going in a way or two, but, luckily for them, the wedding never comes. Yes, luckily.
The night before the wedding, giant robots show up and wreak the town. Fei, after having committed baby bird-i-cide, gets into the same black gear he was in during the flashback to help defend the town, even though he doesn't know how. It matters naught. After seeing his friends die before him, we see him replaced with Abel from Xenosaga and then a bright light.
He wakes up the next morning to be told by Doctor Citan, the man in green, that Fei went mad and blew up the town, along with most of the inhabitants. The survivors are, and rightfully so, upset and exiles him from the ‘town’. He then gets lost in a nearby forest until a hot redhead yells at him in another language before she gets jumped by forest elves. Fei screams her name, despite not being told it, and saves her. She wakes up later than night; they introduce each other and bond. The next day they try to leave the forest, but Elly confronts Fei and Fei goes through some major depression episode. The massacre of his action isn’t just blown off, but there are some major consequences as he asks Elly to kill him. At the time of release, this was a heavy scene. Rarely do such major stakes happen right off the bat and even more rarely do main characters get so real at times they should. Fei isn’t some great hero, but a normal dude.
After this, Elly abandons him in the forest and is rewarded by being attacked by a dinosaur. Fei comes to senses and tries to fight it, only for it to be a waste until Citan shows up, with the black gear Weltall, which Fei reluctantly gets in to save Elly. The dinosaur falls on her anyway, but overlook that.
That night, (lotta nights in this forest) Elly wakes up from having a dino fall on her and meets Citan, who knows who she really is. Elly is a solider from a secret space nation who secretly runs this world and it turns out she’s actually responsible for Weltall being in the village. She leaves before Fei wakes up and the two men proceed on their separate way. Right into the desert.
There we meet some dude named Grahf who knows about Fei and has him right a worm after reciting poetry. In the aftermath, the local Aveh army captures Fei and Citan. They don’t stay locked up for long as s sand pirate attacks the army. And then Fei. And then he sinks into a sand cave where Fei learns he’s riding in the gear nicknamed The Slayer of God by an old hermit which really helps Fei’s confidence and desire to be a warrior. Not! So they leave the cave, Fei and Bart fight a foreshadow of what’s to come in 30 hours before reuniting with Bart’s crew, who Citan knows because Citan knows everything for what are probably benevolent ways.
Bart gets attacked the next night, in his own hideout, but Fei doesn’t help because he’s a hippy before he realizes the people attacking are actually evil and not fighting in of itself and then saves the day. Fei and Citan then join Bart’s coup to reclaim his throne because Bartty is the secret prince of this kingdom who was dethroned by the secret space kingdom. Step one in this coup is saving a nun.
It involves a martial arts tournament where Fei meets the best character in the hame, Big Joe! Joe sucks at fighting so Fei wins and then fights another hooded fella named Wiseman and is crowned the martial arts champion. While this happens, Bart sneaks in the castle via the sewers to also save his cousin/girlfriend Margie who is the Sacred Mother of nearby Nissan, a theocracy across the northwest straight. It goes well and Fei meets up with Elly who helps them escape in a gear that’s not being tracked, I guess.
They return Margie to Nissan and try the coup for real this time. It goes poorly. Bart gets ambushed because he went in to the castle the day he escaped (high alert, guys) and Fei beats a drugged up Elly before watching Bart’s subordinates get trashed by a Grahf powered guy with a plus on his face. He goes mad again and We switch to Bart who gets his ass kicked by a red gear who also destroys an entire squadron of Aveh gears.
Fei wakes up days later in Kislev, Aveh’s arch-enemy, and has to fight a demo-human named Rico who is the battle champion of the prison/state-authorized gear fight club. Until he looses to Fei, of course. Citan becomes the prison doctor, which is probably just good coincidence and the three of them beat up a sewer monster who likes bells. Seems mean. After the gear battling, Rico tries to kill the Kaiser, who might be his dad, and Elly and her friends attack so they cab blownup the nuclear reactor. She turns traitor because shes a good person and saves the day. Rico’s plot relevance is now over.
Fei, Citan, Elly, Rico, and Hammer - the merchant- track down a Kisliv plane, board it, and gets shot down by Bart in his new, conveniently discovered new submarine. The party gets split up with Fei and Elly being lost at sea until they’re picked by a Walrus named Captain who is a MAN! OF! THE SEA!
Attacked again bu Solaris, the space country, Fei almost drowns when attacked by his unrequited arch-nemesis, Ramsus, and the other party continues the story. They meet Billy, the gun priest, and quickly learn his religion is a shame. His dad is an alcoholic, his mom was killed by zombies, his sister hates him and doesn’t talk, and his religion is a farce. That's rough, buddy. Then the party goes into a mine which ends up being a 4000-year-old ruin where they find a naked 4008-year-old girl who’s a collection of nanobots before she’s kidnapped by Solaris. While leaving, the red hear which attacked Bart shows up, beats us up, and then fights Wiseman who saves us.
Fei wakes up around this time, and we see him tending to a smoldering Weltall, for ‘some reason’. And the party climbs a tower. We’re reminded that this JRPG is also a platformer and it’s not great, but we reach the top and fight a bigger, badder version of the mech in the sand cave. 17, the gear’s name, is ‘piloted’ by a young girl named Maria who protects the city-state of Shevat which is a secret floating disk on the sky and arch-nemesis to Solaris from, a war 400 years ago. It’s also where Fei and his parents were born. It eventually gets attacks by Solaris and Margie’s stuffed animal Chu-Chu saves the day allowing Maria to kill her gear spliced robot, 18.
Chu-Chu's plot relevance is now over.
Then we figure out how to attack Solaris which I will save for tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment