Continuing with my vaguely vitriolic rantings that might interest perhaps a handful of people: Xenosaga.

For some reason I was incredibly excited when Xenosaga was announced. I was in high school at that time, going through that phase where yes, bizarre esoteric philosophy really is the bomb (I was a nerd if you couldn’t already tell). Looking back on this I’ll be damned if I can figure out why, because the spiritual forebearer to this game, Xenogears, was arguably the most convoluted game I have ever played, both game play- and story-wise.

But that’s not my point. My point is Xenosaga. Going into it I probably knew immediately something was amiss. Why is that? Well, allow me to answer my own question with a question. Successful stories tend to make sense, don’t they? Because it’s about two hours in and I STILL HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IS HAPPENING. All I know is people are saying words (most are made up, I later checked) about… Something. I guess it was supposed to sound like a bunch of scientists in the future talking about future-stuff, but all it accomplished was confusing the hell out of me.

That’s pretty much par for the course of the entire game, though. Lots and lots of references to the Zohar and stuff like that, which even one glance of the associated Wikipedia page can tell that it’s definitely not something I want to even hear from, really.
(continue reading…)