early Xeno games

> early Xeno games
> literally massive lore with complex plots, elaborate character backstories, in-game histories spanning thousands of years and shoutouts to religion, philosophy, psychology, and classic works of science fiction
> "gameplay" consists of running down straight narrow corridors and watching endless sub-Kojima quality cutscenes


> modern Xeno games
> gameplay involves exploring hugely detailed open worlds, talking to hundreds of NPCs and navigating dozens of interweaving quest lines with non-interactive cutscenes relegated to reasonable length and pacing
> plot, lore and characters are half-baked animu shit that was obviously hacked out at the last minute

How hard can it really be to do both?

Who knows.

well 2 seems to be close, XC2 seems to have more worldbuilding than XC1. If not wait for XCX2

Yeah I'm encouraged by the early trailers that they seem to have at least put some thought into the different nations and cultures in XB2 unlike the first game, but we both know the game as a whole is going to be more Tales than Xenogears. I'll still buy it day one because 1) I enjoyed X well enough and 2) I've been waiting over a decade for a full console RPG with a Yasunori Mitsuda soundtrack, but still.

The lore isn't really that detailed, it just spans a really long time and a lot is left vague, even in the Perfect Works

Fei was such a faggot I hated playing as him.

brainlet

The funny part is X seemed like it could have had a plot on par with Gears/Saga but Monolith deliberately scrapped most of the story elements halfway through development to focus on the flimsy online component. It ended up like Xenogears in reverse, where the game is complete but the story is a blatantly unfinished mess.

Anyone have that Zeboim era animation the nips did?

I played Xenogears long ago, but I had completely forgotten about it. I still see xenogears hentai being released sporadically. Well, I can agree with that. I remembered playing long ago with a boner as a kid.

Still way more detailed and thought-out than either of the Xenoblades. The funny part is with Xenoblade's open world format they could actually have way more room to develop lore, history and backstory than they ever did within the confines of Gears/Saga's conventional linear design, but instead with each game so far that's all taken a backseat to making 500 different menial fetch quests while leaving the plot, world and characters sorely underdeveloped.

Xenoblade is especially bad about this, the plot actually gets less and less coherent and adequately explained as the game progresses and by the end huge amounts of seemingly vital information is left unexplored, but right up to the final dungeon you're getting new requests from NPCs asking you to do their fucking laundry or collect five goblin boogers to make a +1 Dildo Sword

Is this from the new game? I seriously can't tell, the character design is so inconsistent.

Ouch.

because the rare blades all have different artists

>implying this isn't a shitty, immersion breaking choice

And now the series is doing better than it ever has since going generic shonen Tales of shit. Really roasts your peanuts.

wasn't a problem in X, won't be a problem here

>game that is 25% text scrolling
>it has the slowest text craw ever seen in a videogame, managing to be even slower than NES cutscenes
>no option to speed up or skip any of them

Fei is the best Xeno protag. Bad taste.

>wasn't a problem in X
X itself was a problem

>"gameplay" consists of running down straight narrow corridors and watching endless sub-Kojima quality cutscenes

As someone who played through Xenogears for the first time 3 months ago I'm gonna have to disagree. But I believe gears gameplay could have been dramatically improved like many 90s games. The problem with gears is that it didn't sell enough and that was the end of that.

Tetsuya Takahashi hasn't directed a game since the first xenosaga Which imo was not half as good as gears. I'd say the ship has sailed in terms of getting stories as developed as gears and the best we can hope for is more xenoblade 1.


One thing I appreciated in gears was the huge sense of scale. You get a brief space ship cutscene at the start and then you're a martial artist in basic clothing in a simple farming village. And it's not just the story layers but a theme all aspects of the game follow. When you're in large ship area you're a tiny ant. In battle you can fight as wee people or a large gear, there's huge enemies and small ones. In the overworld and dungeons you can move as a person or a gear with the gear sometimes fascinating travel.

How the story itself is layered and how you go from dealing with savage "elfs" in the forest to transcending existence is well done.

>people hating on Xenoblade X

>Dude lost his memory and gets dropped in the middle of nowhere
>Still has brain so he questions all the on going shenanigans in the world as he aims to find the truth and his place within it

>faggot

No user, you're the faggot. You're also a retard.

It wasn't a problem in X because the different artists were designing different HUMANOID ALIEN SPECIES, not different human (or effectively human) characters. And the character models all looked like shit anyway.

It's okay user.

You seem awfully defensive user. I spelled out what's good AND bad about both the new and old games. I just wish Takahashi/Monolith could combine the good qualities of both instead of having one end of the spectrum sacrifice the other.

>I got a trash-tier last minute waifu to apologise for the lack of a story and all those loose ends and am satisfied by this

Hasn't anyone fixed this on an emulator yet?

It's really good.

>trash-tier

he's the executive director on all the xenoblade games and decides the direction of them, he's also the main writer

But user, Tetsuya Takahashi is actually kind of shit at directing and really good at developing settings, worlds and storylines. He's like the George Lucas of video games. Having someone else do the directing work while he focuses on the plot and backstory should actually have been the best thing that ever happened to his games, but for whatever reason his heart just hasn't been in it since Xenosaga imploded.

Good comebacks

yes

>Good comebacks
Against meaningless buzzwords? Yeah, good enough/

Ah, this explains why Xenosaga 2, Xenosaga 3, Xenoblade and Xenoblade Chronicles X dethroned Xenogears in terms of narrative. I suppose this news means I should be quite hype for Blade 2.

>inb4 gears was a fluke
>or gears had a shit story

To be honest I haven't played X. Due to lacking a WiiU.

That sounds like every square protagonist ever.

if we're going to be honest Xenoblade does have a better narrative than gears, the lore and worldbuilding are what are lacking. Saga 2/3 were the faults of namco

Stop shitposting

I've never played enough of this game. How does it deal with religion? Is it in the usual fedora tipping atheist "muh rationality", group of friends get together to destroy God, or is something more sophisticated than that?

you don't know what you're dealing with

It's baby-tier.

> Oh man Id is really my id.

Even has slow scrolling text for children to follow along.

It actually emulates really well if you got a decent PC.
One of the few games that are complete-able on CEMU, with only minor graphical and audio glitches.

Unfortunately my PC is not very strong either. Still thanks user.

I'd hardly call PS2 modern.

And xenosaga was only LOOSELY based around the world of Xenogears. There was no real sequel. Comparing them is kinda dumb.

Apparently I own this game on PSN.

Is it any good?

I always give up on JRPGs either because i fuck myself with the character build or I miss somwthing important. Maybe I'll just use a walk through this time. Still a trash genre.

I think all xenosagas were shit including the one takahashi directed. I'm also of the opinion that everything that was going on in gears was far more interesting than blade. Blade's story is the gears one but simplified and it's a much more polished experience.


To me blade feels like an essay and gears feels like a book. While the delivery at times was weaker for gears, considering most of the gears team were industry novices and they ran out of dev time, I'd say the overall delivery was good enough despite the blemishes. I'm glad takahashi made the call to include the rest of the story in disc 2 as opposed to cutting it and quickly baking a new ending in disc 1.

>Blade's story is the gears one but simplified

they're nothing alike

>"God" is threatening your people band together to find out whats going
>Find out god is threatening your people kill god
>Gods dead now you get to magically decide what happens now
>You decide life moves on as normal in your planet
>Credits roll


Yea, nothing alike. Once again I played blade first and thought it was pretty sweet but when I played gears the similarities were everywhere and I quickly figured out what was happening. I also think Fei's personality added a lot to the story compared shonen sword bro.

wow you figured it out, they're both based of gnostism. The stories are still nothing alike

You literally just described 80% of JRPG plots.

Grahf is best thing to come out of any of these games only loosely tied to one another.

This is an objective truth.

Grahf was the shittiest of the 10+ antagonists in xenogears, his plot twist was the only good thing about him

I dunno about that.

He had a pretty good theme song though.

Really? And I thought I had played many JRPGs. I guess I conveniently only played games in the 20% side. Aside from xeno games of course. I guess gears and blade were pretty generic JRPGs since they have the same overall plot as 80% of the genre woooooweee thanks for teaching me that senpai!

Faggots don't even realize Xenogears/saga was never Takahashi's baby, it was his wife's, and she's called it quits. I'm tired of you faggots whining about Xenoblade when really they have little to do with each other.

I bet Takahashi himself would agree that gears and blade's stories were nothing alike. W/e makes you feel better kid.

wrong retard, Saga gave a VERY basic framework while Takahashi was the one to realize the story

Do you mean to say takahashi was cucked into making his wife's dream game and blade 1 is the true scope of his vision or lack of?

No, I'm meaning to say that Perfect Works was a project that was obviously the love child of theirs and then it nearly drove his wife to killing herself so he shut that entire thing down and decided to focus solely on one off games.

And they seem all the happier for it, so good for him and his wife. Bitch all you want but I enjoyed Xenoblade Chronicles' ride and XCX was a fun game with a sadly mediocre main story, and even then the sidequests got hilariously (or depressingly) crazy.

?

The plot of Xenogears is that a computer powered by a battery made of God decides space wars can't happen if everyone is made into the computer's flesh fortress, it crashes into Not Earth and sets an alarm clock made of people. A shota that was on the computer's ship talked to the battery and asked it to make him a waifu and they keep dying until they kill the computer and the battery fucks off back to its home dimension.

I haven't played through blade fully but I don't think it's close to that.

>I learned everything about jrpgs from FF and Gumball parodies

>then it nearly drove his wife to killing herself so he shut that entire thing down and decided to focus solely on one off games.

do you have a single fact to back that up

Personally I don't need or want saga shit. A single game like xenogears would be just fine thank you.

nah B we still need saga IV-VI

I dunno. I feel like the recurring use of the word Xeno in the titles lets them get away with shit like that. Blades are probably supposed to be weird and alien to normal existence, and a way to really drive that home is to also make them not even "fit" with each other.

>tfw too retarded to understand gumball parodies are on your side

>early Xeno games
>plot for 6 games and only 1 unfinished game
>remake the same 6 game long story but next time only 3 are made but the second one was given to another team and fucked up the entire plot

>new Xeno games
>plot for 1 game put into 1 finished game

Really makes you think why the lore is the way it is.

That's it. I'm cancelling my special edition preorder.

This game is shaping up to be poorly managed weebshit with moe trash characters, incongruent artstyles and probably a half-assed shit tier plot if X is anything to go by.

What's the bet they start selling soul crystal loot boxes for that sweet gacha $$$? Even if they don't, having randomised fanart toons stuck to your ass and every generic anime girl character playing any party role has totally destroyed the game anyway.


Maybe I'll pick up the standard physical edition so I can return it when it's inevitably a total let down. Face it, people, XBC1 isn't coming back. They didn't learn from X and you know it.

thanks for the new copypasta

Xenogears itself ended up being comprised of parts 2-5. It's kind of a misconception that they always intended it to be 6 games. It's an idea they kicked around when fleshing out the backstory, and even considered making multiple games of completely different genres, but when they finally started actually making a game they ended up just rolling everything they needed into the one. What's not in Xenogears is also infinitely vague, being a completely non-specific amount of things that happen before and after the game. Also stories that would have absolutely no significance to any characters actually in Xenogears.

Am I the only one who wanted to fuck the annoying furby thing in Xenogears?

... The word Xeno is in the title, therefore a totally inconsistent artstyle in a gachashit weapon system that was clearly designed just as a way to shoehorn in as many additional waifus as possible is excusable.

...

Of all the things to make you cancel your preorder it's THAT? That's an awesome blade design though.

Like anyone gives a shit what someone who didn't even know that was from Xenoblade 2 until someone told them thinks.

>The art style is inconsistent because I said so
>The game has bad design because I said so
>It's shoehorned because I said so

X sidequests were nothing but development though. Remember when Doc NotBrown tried to teleport off the planet?

>and probably a half-assed shit tier plot if X is anything to go by.
And why, pray tell, would X be anything to go by?

>What's the bet they start selling soul crystal loot boxes for that sweet gacha $$$? Even if they don't, having randomised fanart toons stuck to your ass and every generic anime girl character playing any party role has totally destroyed the game anyway.
You're asking if Monolithsoft is going to add a loot box system under the supervision of Nintendo and think that has even a snowball's chance in hell of flying?

>this character design is so unbelievably incongruous with the rest of the game that I do not believe it is really part of the game
>HURR STUPID user, THEY *REALLY DID* INCLUDE SOMETHING THAT INCONGRUOUS. BET YOU FEEL STUPID NOW!

Her big moment in Shevat made my penis feel things.

>And why, pray tell, would X be anything to go by?

Most faggots can't appreciate a good self-contained story. It's why even XC2 threads are full of "Durrr what if they get to da tree and da Architect is Shulk durrr" posts.

Newsflash sluts just because a plot is fuckhuge doesn't mean it's good.

actually, the first Xeno-games also had animu shit in their story
but I get what you mean

also in my opinion XCX was kinda close to do both, unfortunatly it ended on a cliffhanger

Yes user, you're a real genius. You saw all the other previously revealed rare blade designs, are posting in a Xenoblade thread, the image had a title telling you it was Xenoblade, but you still didn't think it was Xenoblade. Surely that was just because the art style is bad and not because you're a fucking moron.

Are you going to elaborate or do you actually think X has anything to do with XC2?

Should've stayed delicious brown, rather than being a disgusting space elf

>animu shit
enough

How have you managed to play a single Xeno game?

I mean in the context of XCX does it really matter? You can change your gender and appearance at any point due to the state humanity finds themselves in.

>he thinks designing an entire combat system around fanart waifu-inserts is quality game design

>implying Sup Forums plays videogames
Probably just watched a Let's Play by his favorite Youtube star.

It's weird. It's based on Gnosticism, an ancient mystical philosophy which holds roughly that the "God" of the material world (sometimes even explicitly identified as the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible) is actually false and the material world itself is evil, but the "true" God who belongs to a purely metaphysical plane is benevolent and trapped in this evil world by the false one.

So Xenogears (SPOILERS from here on, if you haven't guessed) follows that duality in very literal-minded and strange ways: its world has two major religions both clearly based on Christianity, one of which is the dogma-obsessed, politically ambitious faction based on the evil Catholics you've seen in a million other JRPGs, while the other is all about love and peace and following the spirit of the law rather than the letter and they're pretty much good guys. Likewise there are two different characters who stand in for "God": one of them is a malevolent supercomputer (think Lavos meets Glados) worshipped by the evil religion who created humans just to harvest them and make itself stronger, while the other one is a metaphysical being from another dimension who's pretty chill and mostly just wants to go home.

So there's definitely some cringey Reddit atheist moments and gratuitous 3deep5u religious references but also the writers of the game definitely did their homework on IRL religion and mysticism more than most, and it's not totally black and white.

There's a toggle in the settings or something, if I remember correctly.

>define: facetiousness

the first one
there's anime, which is acceptable, and then there's shit like this, which is not

It's the best designed blade until now

>He thinks spouting meaningless buzzwords makes his nonargument valid

It's so linear it's almost more like a visual novel with occasional dungeons than an "RPG" in the conventional sense. This may be a good or bad thing depending on your preferences. I'd say try it and if you're not feeling it after the first couple hours either watch a Let's Play or something (if you're interested in the story) or just call it quits entirely.

>tfw really like X's world, designs, aliens etc but it's all wasted on a game with no story and you can't even recruit any of them
The sidequests help make up for it, but fuck me if it isn't annoying seeing the one full-on sci-fi XenoBlade get shafted while FantasyBlade gets 50 hours of story.