Xenogears Had, and Still Has, the Best Story in a Game to Date
Image credit to Proyect NOAH.
This article contains spoilers.
If you’re a gamer, you have probably heard of Xenoblade and MAYBE Xenosaga. However, not everyone knows of the original concept that started it all, and subsequently became the pillar for the lore and worlds of the other Xeno~ games that followed: Xenogears. I was 9 when this game was released. The story, the mechanics, the world — although some parts did not age well, everything this game offered was top tier back then. The area where this game excels the most is the story. It’s the reason why I have finished Xenogears more than two dozen times since it was released in 1998. To be fair, I have finished all Xeno~ games at least twice, even though they are not as good as ~gears. What makes this game so good? Spoilers ahead, so beware.
If you’ve played Xenosaga or Xenoblade, you know how these games always involve a main antagonist that is either controlling everything from the shadows or is key in the current state of the world. Both these games always include robots and space, the first being completely in space. Religion also plays a role in influencing the world, although it is not as evident in the ~blade series. The concept for all this comes from Xenogears.
In ~gears, you play as Fei Fong Wong, a young man living in a small, peaceful, and remote village. He was taken there in a near death state by a strange man in the past and has no recall of his life before that event. Countries outside of this village are at war. One day, a robot (called “Gears”) that was fleeing from an enemy troop crash landed near the village and started fighting in the middle of it. Fei, whose instinct for battle got the best of him, gets on an empty gear that was nearby and started fighting. At one point, his best friend is killed. He loses it and ends up destroying all the enemy units, but also destroyed the village in the process. Turns out (spoilers) that Fei has multiple personalities living inside of him (Pretty much multiple personalities disorder). One of them — the one that ends up destroying the village— is a very powerful being called “Id”. Fei has no recollection of things Id does.
Fei sets off with his friend Citan, who by the way (spoilers) was ordered by what is effectively “God” to watch over Fei, or rather his other personality, Id. He then joins with a group of pirates, who are actually royalty and are playing the role of a third power in the current war. It is through them that Fei starts discovering more and more about the world, the past, and himself.
Of the many things he discovers, one thing that was very controversial was (spoilers) the fact that Fei discovers religions in Xenogears are actually fraudulent organizations, put in place to control the masses and use them as slave labor for a hidden country that is pulling most of the strings. He discovers more things like how another civilization had crash landed into this planet, giving birth to the first humans and subsequently bioengineering them to be weaker. He also discovers that one of the men that appeared during the game was pulling all the major strings, using these bioengineered humans to feed a powerful being referred to as “Deus” (or “God”). The most shocking part, however, was that Fei and his lover have been reincarnating for thousands of years because one of their past lives made contact (touched) with something called the Zohar, a mysterious artifact that is regarded as the source of all existence in the Xeno~ series. Notice how the shape of the Zohar is the same as Pyra/Mythra’s core. The Zohar is also present in the ~saga series. It is believed that the ~saga series are a prequel to ~gears, but because the publishers are different, the developers were never able to officially confirm it.
I could go on, talking all day about what makes Xenogears the best game narrative ever created. I’d probably need hundred pages to go over all the details and moments. So, if you like RPGs and enjoy a good story, you should at least play it once in your lifetime. Head over to the Downloads section here on FunctionX to download both an emulator and the game. Enjoy!
