LogFAQs > #885073824

Raganork posted...

Xenogears is fun, but it has massive pacing issues. Conversations drone on for inordinate amounts of time, to the point where I couldn't really tell you what the game is about despite reading endless reams of dialogue for 70% of the playthrough.

I feel like the real problem there is that the writers thought they had deeper ideas than they actually did (though that might also be at least partly a cultural/translation/localization issue to some degree). So it basically takes them a long time to set up all of the backstory, plot elements, and details necessary for later pay-off... but then you get to Disc 2 and you're rushed through the entire rest of the game and the climax of the narrative on rails because they ran out of time or budget, and getting the game finished and released mattered more to them than whether or not it was entirely coherent (especially since they were already planning a six game epic franchise in their heads even before the first game came out).

Xenogears feels like a majorly epic game that could have been awesome if they'd had double the budget and a few more years to finish (and maybe a project head with a firmer grasp of their creative vision who could rein people in if they started to get a bit too abstract with their ideas).

Sadly, I think most of the problems that plagued Xenogears only became worse over time, so by the time they managed to get everything in place to work on Xenosaga, it wound up becoming a massive clusterfuck of ideas and characters I couldn't even remotely give a fuck about.

Which is a shame, because you watch this, and it seems like it has so much promise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RLf0O8eofU


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family