Trivia / Xenogears

• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Ramsus' second Omnigear, Amphysvena, is mistakenly assumed to be Vendetta aligned to a second Anima Relic. According to the Perfect Works, however, its actually Krelian's Omnigear — Ramsus pilots it because Krelian has no more use for it.
• Creator Backlash: Yasunori Mitsuda was not happy to learn that Chu-Chu's fight against Nikolai used the track "Flight", a song made for other scenes (largely as a theme for Maria). He specifically mentioned it being Masato Kato who made the call, and said that if he had been told they were going to do so, he would have composed a remix of Chu-Chu's theme. Of all the music choices in the game, he cited it as the most upsetting choice to have done.
• Dummied Out: Each character has a weight statistic that can be raised or lowered depending on food items used throughout the game. Speculation rose that it might have influenced a character's power relative to their speed, but in the final product, it has no effect on anything.
• Divorced Installment: This game was originally proposed as a Final Fantasy game - specifically VII, but it was deemed too dark to be one. The developers were instead allowed to make the game an original property.
• Fountain of Expies: Every Xeno title release after Xenogears owes many of the characters to this game due to taking heavy inspiration from this. For some notable ones:
  • A Reluctant Warrior protagonist who prefers not to fight but finds themselves forced to by circumstances, and are disturbed by how good they are at destroying and killing, based on Fei. (Shulk, Pyra/Mythra, Noah)
  • A Fallen Hero who, due to a long life of suffering or a tragic moment in their past, becomes a major antagonist in their efforts to either avenge what they lost, take the world with them, or are a Well-Intentioned Extremist, taking after Krelian or Grahf (especially if the character has a mask of some kind). (Kevin Winnicott, Egil, Amalthus and Jin, Consul N, Alpha).
  • An Ax-Crazy Straw Nihilist related in some way to one of the main characters (usually the Fei-analogue), who embodies that character's darker impulses, such as what would happen if said character gave into their destructive potential. Often consumed with self-loathing thanks to seeing themselves only capable of destruction and ruin, and may or may not ultimately reconcile with their heroic counterpart by merging with them. Based on Id. (Albedo, Zanza, Malos, Consul N)
  • A creator god like being who is either unable to help the world at first, is trapped in some way, or helping mankind from behind the scenes, taking after the Wave Existence (U-DO, Alvis, the Architect, Melia and Nia).
  • A false god modeled after the the Demiurge from Gnosticism, mainly modeled after Deus. (Zanza, Z)
  • An older party member who acts as the Team Dad or a Parental Substitute, has some elements of a samurai in design or their code, and is usually shown fighting with a sword, taking elements from Citan (Jin Uzuki, Dunban, Mòrag, Ethel, Shulk).
  • A boisterous and Hot-Blooded character who befriends the protagonist at some point, and might develop a rivalry with them at first, while often being the source of comedic relief as some kind of Butt-Monkey, taken from Bart (Reyn, Zeke, Lanz).
  • A Robot Girl (or female-passing) or Artificial Human with extensive history related to the main plot, in a similar manner with Emeralda (even if she's just a 'sort of' example). In a variation, Emeralda is merely the element codifier because she suffers Late Character Syndrome. Her direct successor perfected her codes, adding with more plot importance and being there from early game (though some still manage to come pretty late like her anyway). (KOS-MOS, Fiora, Pyra/Mythra, Poppi, Ino, A)
• He Also Did: Yasunori Mitsuda, the composer, also worked on Chrono Trigger and would even compose the soundtrack for Mario Party in the same year that this game came out.
• Money, Dear Boy: Vocal singer Joanne Hogg noted in the soundtrack's liner notes that her initial interest in working on the game was partially because Square had offered her more money than ever before at that point in her career.
• No Export for You: The game was never released in Europe, despite the fact that the genre was in vogue back then thanks to the rising popularity of the Final Fantasy series. For European JRPG fans who grew up in the 90s, missing this title was one of the things they lament the most about that era.
• No Port For You: Barring a PSN release that ran on emulated hardware, Xenogears has never been officially rereleased by Square Enix, even as the Xenoblade Chronicles series reignited lots of interest in it and Xenosaga.
• Referenced by...:
  • Hi-Fi RUSH: Stage 10's beginning mimics Xenogears infamous disc 2 exposition dumps, with Chai sitting on the couch, under a spotlight in the dark, as his MP3 player dangles and sways behind text that explains all the epic things that happened off-camera.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel: Towards the end of the first game, "Dost thou desire the power?" is said by Valimar.
  • Project × Zone: Xiaomu and co. end up on a beach, she then breaks into song; "Hmm... 'The waves of time take me deeper into you... A haze as blue as summer skies.'" The lyrics are from Stars of Tears.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Pyra and Mythra's costumes include a couple that reference the Weltall and Xenogears mechs.
  • Vividred Operation: Episode 11 has a very clear shout out to Xenogears in the form of The Crow's One-Winged Angel mode, essentially being a black Deus.
• Troubled Production:
  • A legendary one, albeit much obfuscated for decades. The reason why the second disc was compressed into a narrative was not, in fact, a result of Executive Meddling. They had a two-year deadline, but that was normal. Instead, what happened was that most of the team were newbies and a lot of the technology (particularly the 3D they were using) was new, and they ran out of time and budget in between mentoring the rookies and getting a handle on new technology. Instead of ending the game at Disc 1 as was suggested by people within Square at the time, they went ahead and made the second disc the way it was to make the ship date and avoid leaving the game without an ending. See here for further details.
  • The localization itself was one. Once Square's localization team saw what the script included (such as religious discussions, fighting God, etc) pretty much all the localization team washed their hands of the project and left or requested to be reassigned to other projects due to being afraid of the potential backlash the game would get. Richard Honeywood, a relatively new translator for Square, was essentially the only one to remain, and localize the game alone (admittedly a small part of the script was started), describing it as flat out hell and having to work tirelessly, not unlike the games developers. Between lacking a lot of the proper context, limited text space, and being new to the process, he did his best to translate it as good as he could, but there are several instances of inaccurate translations or unintentionally confusing phrasing that made understanding the game harder, which is especially evident in Disk 2. Despite all that, he managed to complete it, and Richard would go on to push heavily for changes to the localization process to avoid another Xenogears situation, making him instrumental in Square's improved localization quality in the years to follow.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • A few of them, the two most prominent are that you can somehow use Elly/Sophia's OmniGear El Regerus outside of the one scripted battle it appears in, and that you can recruit Ramsus as a playable character after Elly merges with Deus. These two originate from translated production notes in the Perfect Works books, outlining plans for El Regerus, Ramsus, and even Margie to be fully playable characters, only to have them get cut down to NPC status thanks to time and funding shortfalls. It is technically possible to get Elly's Gear, but it can't be used.
  • There seems to be a rumor of a planned Xenogears OVA that takes place during the Zeboim era. So far, there's no evidence that such a thing was even planned.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Xenogears was originally going to have a massive story spanning a long timeline, called Episodes, with Xenogears being the fifth Episode in the timeline. The goal was to make games, anime, and other materials to flesh out the past and future of the setting. The sixth title was to be focused on the new world after Xenogears, and would have involved Earth in some form, likely tying into Deus plans for it. Despite grand plans for this, it never came to fruition due to Xenogears difficult development and changes in Square at the time making the team frustrated enough to want to leave, causing a number of the core team to leave or move to other projects. The ideas for this timeline would be documented in Perfect Works, and would be a major source of inspiration for all the titles released by the team after leaving Square.
  • Deus was originally going to be called Yahweh, but Richard Honeywood pushed back on this to avoid any further religious backlash the game would get (given what already was in the script), and convinced them to change the name.
  • Margie was originally going to be playable, hence the sketch in Perfect Works where she has an entire arsenal hidden in her cloak.
  • Omnigear versions of Siebzehn and Crescens were designed but never implemented in the game. Rough sketch's of El Seibzehn and El Crescens, Maria and Emerelda's Mid-Season Upgrades appear in the Perfect Works book.
  • Kahran was also planned as a Sixth Ranger playable character who would join for the final dungeon, but this got canned when the budget ran out. The teasing of this remains in game if you go talk to him, with several characters out right implying he might join them, which makes his removal stand out.
  • The intro for the game was meant to be longer, consisting of an animated opening credits (similar to anime openings) featuring the song "Stars of Tears" and the intro movie, but was cut. Word of God said it would make the opening very long. (the combined length of the two would be roughly ten minutes, so yeah.)
  • The game was originally pitched as Final Fantasy VII, but was eventually made its own thing because the story was considered too dark for a main Final Fantasy title.
  • Characters were originally going to have some form of a weight feature, meaning eating items would cause characters to gain weight. Some of the mechanics remain but ultimately it was never fleshed out and abandoned.
  • Tetsuya Nomura was originally enlisted to do character design work by Takahashi, but was then put to work for Final Fantasy VII. Two decades later, Nomura would end up designing the villains for Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
  • Although they didn't do it, a suggestion was given to the team to simply release the game with what was done for disk 1, so they could then circle back to finish disk 2. The team decided not to out of concern they wouldn't be able to finish disk 2.
• Working Title: Xenogears was originally called -Project Noah-, but this was changed during development for unknown reasons. Presumably it's because Square Enix didn't want the already controversial religious symbolism to extend to the title. The term "Project Noah" would instead be used in game as a part of the villains plan instead. Additionally, 'Noah' would later become the name for the protagonist of Xenoblade 3.

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