Xenogears: When Final Fantasy VII Bumped into Nietzsche and Giant Robots

It was the beginning of the 2000s. A grown man arrived at a video game and electronics store to buy a new game for his son. His son liked very specific things: like every boy of that era, he experienced the rise of anime hype on television channels, developed a peculiar taste for role-playing games influenced by his older brother, and was always the kid who liked giant robots—one of his favorite animes, in fact, was Gundam Wing.

I imagine the clerk looked at his requests, said, "Say no more!", and went to the counter to get a copy of a game released in 1998. On the cover, a long-haired man with clenched fists, and in the background, the silhouette of a giant robot reproducing the same pose. A huge red X in the upper left corner created the outline that would reveal the title: Xenogears. Anime? Yes. Robots? Also! RPG? Sure enough, it was produced by Squaresoft, the same company behind the Final Fantasy series.

Upon arriving home, the father presented the boy with a copy of that game and explained everything he'd probably heard at the store: that it was a game with Japanese animation, that it had robots, things the kid liked. They finally put the first disc in a two-disc set into the family PlayStation, and the opening animation blew his mind: voice acting for cutscenes? Animation with the quality typical of what we saw in 90s anime? And the character designs, in that cutscene, evoked the stereotypes of cartoons with the same theme from that period. It was enough to capture the boy's complete attention.

At the time, he had no understanding of English beyond the basics. His reading was much more about understanding a game's controls than exactly what the story was trying to convey outside the action. Unlike other RPGs, Xenogears had much more dialogue, which didn't stop him from remaining engaged in that game from start to finish—a journey that would only end around the age of nine or ten, when he somehow figured out how to solve one of the puzzles on the second disc.

What neither of them knew at the time was that that game, as the boy grew older and understood more of the language used in the game, would become the source of a dozen interests he would later pursue: philosophy, psychology, communication, sociology, and even theology would, in some way, be driven by the themes masterfully addressed in Xenogears, well beyond the time of its development and release.

On October 20th, Xenogears marked 27 years since its Western release, and there's no better time to remember the Squaresoft (now Square Enix) title that was once overshadowed by the massive release of Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX but has become a cult classic of JRPGs and a title that every fan of the genre should play at least once.

The origins of Xenogears can be traced back to the pre-development of what would become Square's most famous title: Final Fantasy VII.

At that time, initial concepts for the plot of the seventh game in the series were being written and evaluated. That's when Soraya Saga and Tetsuya Takahashi submitted a script to company executives, which would be produced by Hiromochi Tanaka. Company executives rejected the game, deeming it "dark and complicated" for a fantasy game, but saw enough potential to authorize the title to be developed as a standalone project.

Rebranded as Project Noah, Xenogears spent approximately two years in development. Initially, the team struggled with the game's identity: the original plan was for the game to serve as a sequel or spin-off to Chrono Trigger, but due to disagreements between the game's directors and Square executives, the idea of ​​a sequel was scrapped, and the game became a standalone original title.

This would lead to another problem when some of the sci-fi elements considered when Xenogears was intended as a spin-off no longer fit, forcing changes to the script to incorporate more fantasy elements and make the game a blend of the two genres.

FFVII influences on Xenogears… or Xenogears influences on FFVII?

Despite the rejected script, Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears had a symbiotic relationship in narrative development, where clear elements and tropes from one end up rubbing off on the other, perhaps even intentionally, given that both were in production at such close intervals.

The greatest similarity between the two involves one of, if not the best aspect of, Final Fantasy VII's plot — the choice of an unreliable narrator as the protagonist.

Fei is a man who, while leading a quiet life in a small rural village, has a past full of mysteries: he was taken there by a hooded man years before the game's events, and all it takes is for the war between two great nations to arrive for the interlocutor to discover that Fei somehow knows how to pilot a Gear (the giant robots). Minutes later, in a fit of rage, the hero destroys the village that welcomed him, killing even his best friends during the conflict.

Branded a "murderer", Fei finds himself confronted with uncertainty about his own identity and embarks on a journey of self-discovery that weaves through the intrigues of the continent's politics and the dominance of the Solaris empire over the world.

Despite the plot changes with a darker tone, Fei has notable similarities to Cloud Strife regarding his past. But unlike the FFVII hero, who has an artificial version of the facts, this one is unaware of his own history, and everything he believes he knows about himself and the world is gradually turned upside down, placing him in a role where, at a certain point in the plot, he is considered the greatest threat.

The similarities also extend to some plot threads and characters. Xenogears has its own version of an interplanetary calamity, like Jenova—both inherited from Chrono Trigger's influence with Lavos—and its narrative importance to a technologically advanced society that controls the development and political and social nuances of the world connects the megacorporation ShinRa of FF7I and the Solaris Empire of the later title.

Where the two works diverge, however, is in how mature Xenogears is for its release year and audience. If there's a flaw in the title (aside from the infamous second disc), it's that it's too text-heavy, even for a PlayStation One-era JRPG, to the point that the game's official translator and localizer, Richard Honeywood, mentioned that translating Xenogears was a nightmare.

The reason Honeywood and other translators had so much difficulty localizing the work, to the point that many before him asked to be assigned to other projects or resigned, was the amount of scientific, philosophical, and religious references.

Xenogears is heavily inspired by, but not limited to, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. It also contains numerous science fiction references and little or no hesitation in incorporating religious aspects of Gnosticism and Christianity at a time when RPGs were still moving away from the satanic panic and religious taboos that existed until the mid-2000s.

Elements such as the human construction of divinity, the cycle of Eternal Return and Nietzsche's perspective of transcendence, the id and personality formation through trauma as theorized by Freud, the relationship between the anima and animus, and Jung's concept of the collective consciousness are all exemplified in the work, even if sometimes with metaphorical or imagery references adapted to the overall development of the plot and/or the elaboration of a fantasy game.

Ultimately, it's a story about where we come from, who we are, and where we're going, and despite the lengthy dialogue, the plot presents mature subjects without fantasy overtones. Portrayals of propaganda, xenophobia, war, slavery, eugenics, control through faith, and the impacts of psychological and emotional trauma are addressed with raw language, and even heavier topics like prostitution, drugs, and abuse are brought up in dialogue or referenced in the narrative without delay.

The interlocutor can identify that the world is bad, that something is wrong with the reality of that universe, but at no point does the narrative cease to be about characters.

The plot consistently follows Fei's journey to self-discovery. Along the way, he will encounter a prince deposed from his throne or a member of a religious sect who swears loyalty and devotion to the institutions responsible for taking him in when he was orphaned. Each of them has time to tell their stories and develop, while the events always revolve, in some way, around the mysteries of the world and their connection to the hero's past.

Another key aspect that made Xenogears a contemporary classic is its battle and navigation system. Even before every RPG had this kind of free-form control, the game allowed characters to jump to reach places and/or even fall into pits to perhaps find secret items.

The battle system was and continues to be another highlight. It is divided into two segments: the first, with 2D character sprites, features standard melee combat, using the Deathblow system to create combos as the character levels up and receives more action points.

While this system features a tangible progression system, it also makes combat linear: for each new combo learned, there's little reason to try using old commands, except in a few specific boss battles where saving ability points makes a difference.

There's also a second combat system with Gears, giant robots using the Fuel mechanic, where each command uses a specific amount of fuel, and the Attack Level system, in which passing turns without using combos unlocks a stronger special attack the following turn.

The Gear customization system is also a unique case: although there are no cosmetic modifications, there's a common balance between having enough stamina and fuel with high attack power to avoid prolonging the battle too much. While much of the game follows the logic of making numbers go up, as we reach the later stages, choosing the right components creates a different experience for each Gear.

Special attacks, resistances, and even Gear speed are influenced by equipment choice, and while there's no depth in any part of the system to be overly punishing or advantageous, Xenogears incorporates enough elements and difficulty spikes to force informed choices and prevent the entire game from being a walk in the park.

While the first disc offers dozens of hours of exploration, battles, and character development at a traditional pace, the second features a very distinct structure. Much of the story is told through long stretches of narrated text, interspersed with a few playable sequences.

Fans assumed this was due to budget constraints caused by the game being produced at the same time as Final Fantasy VIII, but in 2017, Takahashi revealed to Kotaku that, because his team was inexperienced, they couldn't create the entire proposed game in the development time. So, instead of accepting the directors' suggestion and finishing the game on the first disc and releasing the second half in a later title, Takahashi offered a solution that would become the content of the second disc, where the plot is told through character narration of the events interspersed with segmented gameplay elements, with virtually no free exploration.

Takahashi's choice was and continues to be the main target of criticism for Xenogears. After all, the experience between the first and second installments is so distinct that they feel like different games, if not for the characters and overall plot development.

Despite its flaws, Xenogears is still one of the most beautiful, complex, and engaging RPGs of all time. Unfortunately, the chances of a remaster are slim to none: Tetsuya Takahashi founded Monolith Soft a year after the game's release and began working with Namco on the Xenosaga trilogy, a spiritual successor to the Square Enix title.

In 2011, Monolith Soft was sold by Namco to Nintendo, which retained a 96% stake in the company. Since then, in addition to supporting other titles, the developer has been primarily responsible for the Xenoblade Chronicles series and was fully acquired by Nintendo in December 2024.

Therefore, it's difficult to imagine, given Takahashi's rights to the Xenogears intellectual property and Monolith Soft's relationship with Nintendo, that a remaster will be possible when the game turns 30 in 2028.

It's undeniable, however, that Fei's story is one that deserves to be revisited so many years later or experienced for the first time by new and old generations of JRPG enthusiasts and fans who yearn for an interactive game, full of mysteries, and with a plot whose relevance remains untouched almost three decades after its original release.