Read this article on the creation of Xenogears and its main creators:
xenogearsxenosagastudyguide.blogspot.com
Tetsuya and Soraya
The original story idea was invented by Kaori Tanaka (from now on referred to by her pen name Soraya Saga) in 1994. At that time, Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga had finished their work on Final Fantasy VI, and Takahashi was working on Front Mission and Chrono Trigger, while Soraya was working on Romancing SaGa 3, and they would later get married in 1995.
The original concept was a story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities" that Soraya wrote that year. Soraya have given at least two accounts of what followed:
"Takahashi proposed the plan to our boss. Though the plan was rejected because it was too sci-fi for RPG, the boss kindly gave us an advice "Why don't you make it into a new game?". Then I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet. Takahashi refined the idea into more deeper and mystic love story."
- Soraya Saga (Fringe FAQ, Mars 05, 2005)
"I and Tetsuya Takahashi originally submitted it as a script idea for Final Fantasy VII. While we were told that it was too dark and complicated for a fantasy, the boss was kind enough to give Takahashi a chance to launch a new project. Then Takahashi and I wrote up the full screenplay which contained cutscene-dialogues in final form, thus the project was born."
- Soraya Saga (Interview with Siliconera, June 11, 2010)
Xenogears, as a story, is a work primarily about anthropology, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, and ideology. The ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung are the most obvious influences along with Gnosticism, and happened to be part of common interests Soraya Saga shared with Takahashi. "Xenogears is basically a story about 'where do we come from, what are we, where are we going'. In that respect, we were inspired by those concepts a lot," says Soraya in the Siliconera interview. Xenogears also draws a lot of influences from cinema such as Star Wars.
The influences and homages in Xenogears (and Xenosaga) are many, and I will not devote much time to examine them here. When relevant I may comment on influences that are directly useful for understanding the series development, but this article is not the place to explore a full story analysis.
Clearly many of these ideas had to be at the back of Tetsuya Takahashi's mind when he started writing for their project that would become Xenogears. The story is simply too ambitious to have been made up on the fly. One does not proceed from merely two ideas and then write up a full screenplay like the one in Xenogears filled with multiple references to psychoanalysts, philosophies, ideologies, religions, literature, history, science, names, and homages, without a lot of reading.
Born on November 18th, 1966 in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan, little is known about Takahashi's childhood and adolescence other than that his family "was always full of intense competitiveness," and he would avoid, or try to escape from such social matters. Even to this day he finds himself becoming avoidant sometimes without even realizing it, which he expressed in the Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-. In a revealing 2018 interview with denfaminicogamer he also said that "I've been someone with low self-esteem ever since I was a child, so it might be that I want to play god, within [a] world that I create. There's also the desire to be in that world I create, and to try and create the entirety of a world, so to speak."
His desire for imaginary worlds and artistic temperament also appears to be connected with his social difficulties: "I don't really like people, so I like being alone. I don't really feel comfortable in [interviews], to be honest. I don't really want to show myself, if that makes sense." Other people's first impression of him tends to be that he is shy, quiet, gentle and a bit mysterious, but Takahashi himself says that's mostly a social persona or facade.
Takahashi was a pretty small kid, so he was better at study than sports. Chemistry and physics were his favorites, "but I was awful at math" he recalls in an interview on Sony's Website in 2002. For art he would sometimes get good grades, sometimes bad, depending on teacher. "I used to read a lot of manga and those science fiction novels with the blue spines from Hayakawa Publishing" he says, referring to the publishers of Japanese translations of Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov, which have clearly influenced Takahashi.
Takahashi reveals that the messages in his works are also reflections of his own life:
"The many messages in the game are also reflections of my own life. Having said that, I am a selfish human being and when I'm creating I only say what I want to say."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
On Yggdrasil's Periscope BBS, while talking to fans, Soraya once stated that Elly (Sophia) was Takahashi's ideal woman. The webmistress of Xenogears: Guardian Angels fansite recalls it on her Livejournal in 2007 while ranting on feminine stereotypes:
"Elly of Xenogears is the ultimate feminine stereotype (and not just the mother of a small family, but an entire bloody religion), and I remember Clio Saga commenting that she was the director's ideal woman."
- Amber Michelle (livejournal, Jan 01, 2007)
If Elly was not only the product of Soraya's female A.I. concept, but also the result of Takahashi projecting his own ideal woman into the story, then perhaps those two characters who were to be in love with her would carry aspects of Takahashi himself... And perhaps no other character would be more similar to Takahashi in personality than Karellen, the character named after his favorite character from Childhood's End (although Takahashi himself has said that Ramsus is the character that reflects him the most).
As the main antagonist, Karellen is a character that is thoroughly treated with dignity and intelligence, despite the atrocities he commits on a global scale. It is usually expected in RPGs to get a chance to fight each of your opponents, and usually the main antagonist is saved for a final epic battle, but Xenogears breaks off from this tradition, and not once do the player get a chance to fight it out with this character.
Karellen's actions are the result of the sorrow of having lost Sophia, his resentment at those who caused her death, and his lost hope (mixed with a love) for people, which turns him into a hardened scientist and holy man in search of a real God to save human beings from themselves. His ultimate plan is an Ark plan that the character refers to as "Project Noah," which would turn out to be the working title for Xenogears.
Karellen is an intense and sensitive character that tries to suppress his emotions, but ends up having a really hard time doing that, ultimately having to face the guilt of what he has done. Takahashi says of himself:
"My daily emotional life is pretty intense. If you look at it a certain way it's a burden to be going to the office, working, and meeting with a lot people. There's a part of me I have to suppress."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
He goes on to say, "Even if it's something you can't do [in society], you can always instead incorporate it into the story and the game." His unexpressed emotions can thus be seen pouring out in his writing in Xenogears and Xenosaga, which sets the tone of the story in many ways. He has said that "My motivation is fueled by negative emotions," and his friend (and composer for the series) Yasunori Mitsuda, when asked what he thinks of Mr. Takahashi, said:
"It's hard to put into words, but I really feel that there's a hidden anger inside him. Like, "Why the hell don't they realize this?!" That anger has been poured into this game, and people who resonate with it will be sucked in. My impression was that I sensed he was very similar to me. He's probably a dark person too, Mr. Takahashi (Laughs) But he's diligent."
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
"As a child, in the middle of a meeting with the chief priest of a Buddhist temple near my home, I began having vague doubts myself on, "What is religion?" That's when I started having an interest in religion and I did research by reading various books."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
Combine his interest with religion and reading from an early age, along with his hobby of manga, science fiction novels, and finally cinema, it is not strange that he would end up being known as the "science and ideology" game director who attempts to "create game experiences that outdo films." The elements of romance, mystery, horror, and pop-culture camp that are frequently felt in his games could've been influenced from Futaro Yamada, prominent author of romantic, detective, horror, and bizarre ninja novels, as Takahashi recalls being a fan of his. But not everything in the games were conceived by Takahashi alone, as we will see.
As for robots, Soraya Saga explains:
"I'm of an older generation who grew up with classic giant robot anime by Nippon Sunrise (e.g. Raideen, Gundam, and Votoms). Besides the guy who enthusiastically created gear/AMWS/AGWS/ES mecha is more Takahashi than me. (His room is filled with vintage Chogokin Toys.)
"
- Soraya Saga (deviantART, Jul 7, 2008)
Finally, once getting in to college, Takahashi says he "began to grow up and started reading books on philosophy and ideology." He says he read a lot of Friedrich Nietzsche during university. And from Nietzsche came some of the influences of Norse mythology also seen in the games. "He [Nietzsche] was connected with Wagner, so I pulled it from there," says Takahashi in the 2001 video-senki interview.
"With religion there are many different denominations with many adherents. These people carry an ideological bias. The status quo is to ignore this bias, but ever since I was a student I couldn't be satisfied with that response."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
All this knowledge and passion for these and many other subjects would finally be given an outlet for expression after Takahashi joined Squaresoft as a Graphics artist and subsequently met and became romantically involved with Soraya Saga, who was to come up with the original story idea that Takahashi would turn into the game known today as Xenogears.
What lead Tetsuya Takahashi to aspire to become a game developer were his fond memories when Xanadu, an action RPG released in 1987 by Falcom Japan, was released. "When I played it on the PC-8801, I became interested in the game industry." He goes on to add in the 2018 interview, before continuing in the Sony 2003 interview, that he had used up all his tuition funds by purchasing a PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in Japan), "and that was going to really piss of my parents, so I decided to work part-time, and [...] Falcom Japan happened to be hiring part-time employees at the time, so I came to Tokyo and started working there. I was living alone and supporting myself."
Switching between the interviews again, he says: "I liked games, and I liked to draw, so I thought [the videogame industry] was a good fit. [...] I entered right when Y's II came out, and I started working as a designer. I only knew BASIC at the time, so I helped out, learning as I worked. [...] It was pretty much like a mom-and-pop shop at the time. You would do everything from development to customer support. [...] The first [game I participated in] was the fonts for Sorcerian. We had to make our own fonts for our games in those days. If we used the standard system font, things would look all blocky, so we had to rewrite everything."
What made Soraya Saga interested in the gaming medium was similar. In an interview with LuminoMagazine.com in 2011 she states that "The Legend of Zelda (1986), Dragon Warrior (1986) and Final Fantasy I (1987) inspired me a lot. Those [games] let me know a new type of fun that differed from what other media e.g. books and movies had."
Takahashi, when giving his reasons for leaving Falcom Japan, said: "The designers were at the core of Falcom Japan as a company. Also, there were a lot of opportunities to learn. But with our first computer, the PC8801, we could only use oblong dots and 8 colors for character designs. So we were pretty frustrated by that. At that time we ported Ys III to the X68000 and used sprites. It had a large memory capacity and allowed us to use a lot of colors. Because of that I became interested in doing sprite work. At just the same time, Falcom Japan itself moved away from taking shortcuts on their games and released unusual games such as Brandish and Lord Monarch. I thought I'd like to try making games on home consoles if given the chance, so I left Falcom. I read a job listings magazine and looked for a part-time job. Right then Square was recruiting for part-time jobs. That was when Final Fantasy III had been released on the Famicom. I thought I'd give it a try, so I applied."
When Takahashi joined Squaresoft he started work on Final Fantasy IV. "I had a strong impression I'd joined an organization that was the polar opposite of Falcom Japan. Even though we were using the Super Famicom, memory used by the program was given priority over memory used for the image. So at best we could only display 8 colors at the same time. 'This isn't very good!', I thought." Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, recalls in an interview with Iwata in 2011 (Iwata Asks: In Conversation with Takahashi & Sakaguchi): "Back then, [Takahashi] was the top graphic design man in the FF team. I can still clearly remember being really taken aback by how realistic his design for the stone wall in the background was. I remember thinking: 'That's really something!'"
Takahashi had been a fan of titles Sakaguchi had been responsible for, such as Cruise Chaser Blassty, "So I thought of [Sakaguchi] as someone who had created games that I had spent a lot of time playing," says Takahashi in the same interview. "I advocated strongly for [graphics on Final Fantasy IV]. When we wanted to make the graphics better, the designers advanced that opinon about the contents of the game, and the programmers and planners changed its specifications. The director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, helpfully approved of us working that way," Takahashi continues in the other Creators Talk interview. "This might be one of my good sides, or maybe it's annoying from other peoples' point of view, but I'm the type who changes my environment to make it easier to do my job. So when I joined Square, I constantly let them know my opinions so I could work more easily."
On his impression of Sakaguchi he comments: "What I always found really impressive was how [Hironobu] would get to the office before anyone else and be the last to leave. He was someone who was always at his desk, with a capacity for work far beyond that of a regular person. Back then, arcade machines had higher specifications than home consoles, so our ambition was to create something that would surpass them. But back then Square had its own particular culture. On the one hand, there was a real desire to change things, while at the same time there was this sense that things shouldn't be tampered with. I would always worry about whether I was on the right track. But there's always the need to actively push things forward, otherwise nothing changes."
Takahashi was on the Final Fantasy team up to VI. The impetus for wanting to create his own game was that he was growing frustrated with Final Fantasy. "When it came to making a role-playing game, I had the planning ability, and I wanted to try my hand at presenting a world, character modelling and things like that," he continues. In fact, Takahashi was quite insistent on it, going so far as to reveal in 2018: "I used to start fights all the time. Confronting my superiors at the top of my voice. [...] I wanted to make a universe. At the time, Final Fantasy VII was using pre-rendered CG, and I thought, 'You can't make a world with this approach'. So, I wanted them to use 3D for everything." During Final Fantasy VI he had worked together with Soraya Saga and, as I stated at the beginning, Soraya came up with a story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities." But both of them used to downplay Takahashi's rebellion and insistence on making a different project.
"...back in 1994, I wrote a story about a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities. Takahashi proposed the plan to our boss. Though the plan was rejected because it was too sci-fi for RPG, the boss kindly gave us an advice "Why don't you make it into a new game?".
- Soraya Saga (Fringe FAQ, Mars 05, 2005)
Takahashi relays his version in an interview with the Xenogears staff in 1998, stating: "In the beginning, when the base plot itself was first in production as a 'FF' or something like that, I sent a proposal [to the higher-ups] saying 'How about this?'. Then they told me, 'Well, if there's something you want to make, why don't you give it a try?' So that was how it all got started in the first place. [...] there wasn't a name yet, and at the stage of that first proposal I presented, we had summon beasts [the standard term used in all the Japanese FF games] instead of mechas. That's where we had started. When it was decided that this would be its own game, we decided to replace all of that with mechas."
Thus Takahashi decided to leave the FFVII team during its early development. Takahasi states in the 2018 denfaminicogamer conversation: "I think the reason why I left the FFVII team had to do with the misanthropy I talked about earlier. I can't go along with someone who doesn't want to go in the same direction as me. I was also young then, too. So, I questioned myself, 'Why am I making something I don't even want to?' We didn’t really fight or anything. We're good friends, and we went to go out and eat together. I don’t hate them. But I just didn't feel right about it. That took a toll on me, so I wanted to leave the team and make something else." Takahashi also mentions in the 2011 conversation with Sakaguchi that he recalls "going to see Sakaguchi-san and telling him I was looking for a new challenge" in the middle of FFVII.
So the original idea appears to have been a "FF VII," that was "too dark," too complex, too "sci-fi," and "too complicated for a fantasy," with a soldier hero who suffered from "multiple personalities" and could possibly ride "summoned beasts." Given the influence Takahashi had in the Final Fantasy team back then, being friends with both Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura (the latter whom had also joined Square during development of Final Fantasy IV), it is perhaps not surprising that the game which would eventually become Final Fantasy VII (directed by Yoshinori Kitase) would feature many similarities with this initial concept that Takahashi proposed. Final Fantasy VII has far more science fiction concepts than previous FF, the soldier hero (Cloud Strife) suffers from serious identity confusion, and supposedly Sakaguchi's original script for Final Fantasy VII was completely different from the finished product. Hiromichi Tanaka says in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert interviews, "At the time, Takahashi-kun was with the FFVII team, and he was tasked with building the world along with Tetsuya Nomura. It looked to be a story that was about robots, an extension from Magitek Armor [of FFVI], but it was so drastically different from the world of FF, so we decided to do it as a different game."
Final Fantasy VII marked a real turning point in the Final Fantasy series, and for someone like Takahashi, who was such an integral part of that series, to start out on their own, was a bit of a blow to the continuation of that series. Sakaguchi himself says that he felt a little lonely afterwards. "One really clear memory I have is that no sooner had [Takahashi] formed a separate team than his desk became completely covered in Gundam models and toy guns. It was then that I realised he'd always wanted to work on this kind of thing."
At any rate, the project was not called "Xenogears" yet, and it seems that the concept for Deus might have come after the initial proposal, as Soraya goes on to say in the same FAQ entry; "Then [after Takahashi proposed the plan] I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet. Takahashi refined the idea into more deeper and mystic love story."
This suggests to me that the religious symbolism and greater maturity came to fruition after the initial proposal, once the project was independent from the FF franchise, allong with the concept of "Gears" instead of summonings. It is also possible that it was at this stage that the project may have been developed as "Chrono Trigger 2," when you consider the initial similarity between Soraya's concept and that of Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Takahashi states in the "Creator's Talk" interview from 2002, "With Xenogears, in the very beginning we started from the point of making a sequel to Chrono Trigger. But as various arguments with the publisher piled up, some practical difficulties came up... Thanks to Sakaguchi-san's great efforts on our behalf, we were allowed to make it an original title. So when we started development, we had parts that wouldn't fit in a fantasy world, and I was worried about the motivation of the staff. To an extent, we made Xenogears as a cross [between sci-fi and fantasy]."
Regarding the actual title, 'Xenogears', it is not difficult to guess where the second part of the name comes from - Gears. However, according Takahashi, they came up with the word 'Xeno' first. "From the beginning, we decided on the word 'Xeno' between the staff. In itself, that has the implication of 'Something strange or alien', but what kind of title could we draw from that? So I made a few alternatives for things we could put after 'Xeno'. After that, we finally decided on 'Xenogears'." In a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Gameplay Demo during E3 2017 he further explained that "I think in life when we're living you meet different people and they have different [or strange] personalities, different backgrounds, and it's the interaction between those people that create the drama of life. And I thought that it would be great if I could drop that drama into video games, and that's why I add Xeno to a lot of my games."
Starting with Soraya's original story idea in 1994, Xenogears would not be released until February 1998. In the official source book, Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, released about 8 months after the game, Takahashi states in the "Main Staff of Xenogears" section, that "From the beginning, we spent just over two years working on Xenogears (there's been some rumors saying it's been in development for more than three years and the like, but that's just hearsay)." He goes on to reflect on the development:
"Thinking about it, we've come a long way...I try to bask in that feeling, but when I regain my composure and try to consider it more soberly, I have to face up to the truth that we didn't include a third of the full story. When I think about the years' worth of work ahead of me, I suppose I'll look back on this time right now as the good old days when I could take it easy. (Laughs)"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, Transl: Gwenal)
- Xenogears was called Ura FFVII (Bizarro FFVII) in Japan because development on the two games began around the same time, as well as the fact that while FFVII had polygonal characters with prerendered backgrounds, Xenogears had polygonal backgrounds and hand-drawn (prerendered) characters.
- Xenogears was considered a possible FFVII during the latter's planning stages, though Hironobu Sakaguchi decided against the idea. It was then developed as Chrono Trigger 2, but various circumstances meant it was reformed into Xenogears. This is also a reason why it shares a number of similarities with Chrono Cross, in addition to sharing some staff members.
- At the beginning of its development, the game was going to be divided into two separate games -- one covering Episode IV, and the other Episode V.
- Xenogears was not an offered choice in the recent 100 Items Representative of Japanese Media vote, but it did make the #3 write-in spot in the Entertainment category.
- Square had decided that a sequel to the game would be made if it sold 1 million copies, but in the end it only reached just shy of 900,000, so the plan was dropped."
Even though it's common and verified knowledge today thanks to this study guide, as late as 2010 western fans could find no sources to confirm that Xenogears originally entered production as a possible "Chrono Trigger 2." Apart from the previously cited "Creator's Talk" interview on Sony's Website in 2002, this fact can also be verified with the DVD that came with the Xenosaga Fanbook with DVD where the developers talked about Xenogears and Xenosaga during a Monolith Soft conference that was held in the summer of 2001. More recently in 2018 it was mentioned again in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamplet. Square has also gone on the record as identifying a connection between the two games in the Chrono Cross Ultimania, and the Japanese Wikipedia on Chrono Cross stated that Xenogears began development as Chrono Trigger 2. Also, in a demo movie of Xenogears the following line was used:
"So let love's blood flow! Like the seas of hell, it runs red and deep...!"
This line appear in Xenogears' system files, as a deleted part of the script when Fei wakes up after having destroyed Lahan (possibly it was meant to appear just before he wakes up, or while staring at Weltall, or after leaving Lahan behind), translated as:
Now, Fei, allow me to spill the blood out of love... Like the sea of hell, crimson, deep...!
Presumably this is Id speaking, but was removed (probably due to it being too heavy a foreshadowing). Instead Masato Kato later used it in Chrono Cross' script, for Dark Serge, translated as "Now, let love bleed! Darker and deeper than the seas of hell!" Furthermore, Lucca, a character from Chrono Trigger, appears in Xenogears as a guest, whose last bonus line makes a reference to the Silbird (The Epoch), etc.
So then, we must assume that the project began to be referred to as "Project Noah" some time in 1995, as well as the idea of turning it into two games. Although Hiromichi Tanaka confirms in the Concert interviews that the world Takahashi was creating kept expanding, saying "We had initially planned it as a one-disc game, but we ended up having two discs thanks to Takahashi-kun's ever-expanding world. Even with that, two discs didn't seem enough to him, and he wanted to separate it into a part one and a part two," it seems that Takahashi already had the lore for the game that you see in Perfect Works worked out as they started production. Takahashi says in an interview in Hakoere: "The lore in that [Perfect Works] was something that I had already come up with at the very beginning of development. But I'm not a good communicator, and I tend to hold things in. So I think there were only one or two people among my staff who knew all of the details inside and out." He also said that, "It was pure sci-fi for me at the beginning. But because of the change of course that I mentioned earlier [from FFVII to Xenogears], and considering the staff's own tastes and what they specialized in, I thought it would be better if we had certain elements from fantasy genres." The exact year the game settled on the title "Xenogears" is unknown. Takahashi's profile on the official website would eventually read:
"He supervised the graphics division from Final Fantasy V until VI. With the switch in hardware, he's decided to start working on an RPG with a new style and taste, Project"NOAH" (Development code name, it was later given the title Xenogears). With the style and sense of the graphics and the cohesion of the scenario, he's aiming to make a game where the total balance will be outstanding."
"[Takahashi] has always had a talent for motivating people and bringing them together as a team," says Sakaguchi in the 2011 interview. "I remember that back then those teams would always be dividing into smaller units. If someone displayed leadership skills, they would be given the independence of having their own team. At the same time, they would often ask me: 'Is Final Fantasy all this company can let me create?' I used to worry about that. But [Takahashi] had some really good people working for him, and I think it was for the best that he got to head his own team."
The History of Xenogears
Creators Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga Table of Contents: Introduction - Origins of the story - Developing the game - Consu...
xenogearsxenosagastudyguide.blogspot.com
Tetsuya and Soraya
The original story idea was invented by Kaori Tanaka (from now on referred to by her pen name Soraya Saga) in 1994. At that time, Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga had finished their work on Final Fantasy VI, and Takahashi was working on Front Mission and Chrono Trigger, while Soraya was working on Romancing SaGa 3, and they would later get married in 1995.
The original concept was a story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities" that Soraya wrote that year. Soraya have given at least two accounts of what followed:
"Takahashi proposed the plan to our boss. Though the plan was rejected because it was too sci-fi for RPG, the boss kindly gave us an advice "Why don't you make it into a new game?". Then I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet. Takahashi refined the idea into more deeper and mystic love story."
- Soraya Saga (Fringe FAQ, Mars 05, 2005)
"I and Tetsuya Takahashi originally submitted it as a script idea for Final Fantasy VII. While we were told that it was too dark and complicated for a fantasy, the boss was kind enough to give Takahashi a chance to launch a new project. Then Takahashi and I wrote up the full screenplay which contained cutscene-dialogues in final form, thus the project was born."
- Soraya Saga (Interview with Siliconera, June 11, 2010)
Xenogears, as a story, is a work primarily about anthropology, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, and ideology. The ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung are the most obvious influences along with Gnosticism, and happened to be part of common interests Soraya Saga shared with Takahashi. "Xenogears is basically a story about 'where do we come from, what are we, where are we going'. In that respect, we were inspired by those concepts a lot," says Soraya in the Siliconera interview. Xenogears also draws a lot of influences from cinema such as Star Wars.
The influences and homages in Xenogears (and Xenosaga) are many, and I will not devote much time to examine them here. When relevant I may comment on influences that are directly useful for understanding the series development, but this article is not the place to explore a full story analysis.
Clearly many of these ideas had to be at the back of Tetsuya Takahashi's mind when he started writing for their project that would become Xenogears. The story is simply too ambitious to have been made up on the fly. One does not proceed from merely two ideas and then write up a full screenplay like the one in Xenogears filled with multiple references to psychoanalysts, philosophies, ideologies, religions, literature, history, science, names, and homages, without a lot of reading.
Born on November 18th, 1966 in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan, little is known about Takahashi's childhood and adolescence other than that his family "was always full of intense competitiveness," and he would avoid, or try to escape from such social matters. Even to this day he finds himself becoming avoidant sometimes without even realizing it, which he expressed in the Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-. In a revealing 2018 interview with denfaminicogamer he also said that "I've been someone with low self-esteem ever since I was a child, so it might be that I want to play god, within [a] world that I create. There's also the desire to be in that world I create, and to try and create the entirety of a world, so to speak."
His desire for imaginary worlds and artistic temperament also appears to be connected with his social difficulties: "I don't really like people, so I like being alone. I don't really feel comfortable in [interviews], to be honest. I don't really want to show myself, if that makes sense." Other people's first impression of him tends to be that he is shy, quiet, gentle and a bit mysterious, but Takahashi himself says that's mostly a social persona or facade.
Takahashi was a pretty small kid, so he was better at study than sports. Chemistry and physics were his favorites, "but I was awful at math" he recalls in an interview on Sony's Website in 2002. For art he would sometimes get good grades, sometimes bad, depending on teacher. "I used to read a lot of manga and those science fiction novels with the blue spines from Hayakawa Publishing" he says, referring to the publishers of Japanese translations of Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov, which have clearly influenced Takahashi.
Takahashi reveals that the messages in his works are also reflections of his own life:
"The many messages in the game are also reflections of my own life. Having said that, I am a selfish human being and when I'm creating I only say what I want to say."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
On Yggdrasil's Periscope BBS, while talking to fans, Soraya once stated that Elly (Sophia) was Takahashi's ideal woman. The webmistress of Xenogears: Guardian Angels fansite recalls it on her Livejournal in 2007 while ranting on feminine stereotypes:
"Elly of Xenogears is the ultimate feminine stereotype (and not just the mother of a small family, but an entire bloody religion), and I remember Clio Saga commenting that she was the director's ideal woman."
- Amber Michelle (livejournal, Jan 01, 2007)
If Elly was not only the product of Soraya's female A.I. concept, but also the result of Takahashi projecting his own ideal woman into the story, then perhaps those two characters who were to be in love with her would carry aspects of Takahashi himself... And perhaps no other character would be more similar to Takahashi in personality than Karellen, the character named after his favorite character from Childhood's End (although Takahashi himself has said that Ramsus is the character that reflects him the most).
As the main antagonist, Karellen is a character that is thoroughly treated with dignity and intelligence, despite the atrocities he commits on a global scale. It is usually expected in RPGs to get a chance to fight each of your opponents, and usually the main antagonist is saved for a final epic battle, but Xenogears breaks off from this tradition, and not once do the player get a chance to fight it out with this character.
Karellen's actions are the result of the sorrow of having lost Sophia, his resentment at those who caused her death, and his lost hope (mixed with a love) for people, which turns him into a hardened scientist and holy man in search of a real God to save human beings from themselves. His ultimate plan is an Ark plan that the character refers to as "Project Noah," which would turn out to be the working title for Xenogears.
Karellen is an intense and sensitive character that tries to suppress his emotions, but ends up having a really hard time doing that, ultimately having to face the guilt of what he has done. Takahashi says of himself:
"My daily emotional life is pretty intense. If you look at it a certain way it's a burden to be going to the office, working, and meeting with a lot people. There's a part of me I have to suppress."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
He goes on to say, "Even if it's something you can't do [in society], you can always instead incorporate it into the story and the game." His unexpressed emotions can thus be seen pouring out in his writing in Xenogears and Xenosaga, which sets the tone of the story in many ways. He has said that "My motivation is fueled by negative emotions," and his friend (and composer for the series) Yasunori Mitsuda, when asked what he thinks of Mr. Takahashi, said:
"It's hard to put into words, but I really feel that there's a hidden anger inside him. Like, "Why the hell don't they realize this?!" That anger has been poured into this game, and people who resonate with it will be sucked in. My impression was that I sensed he was very similar to me. He's probably a dark person too, Mr. Takahashi (Laughs) But he's diligent."
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
"As a child, in the middle of a meeting with the chief priest of a Buddhist temple near my home, I began having vague doubts myself on, "What is religion?" That's when I started having an interest in religion and I did research by reading various books."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
Combine his interest with religion and reading from an early age, along with his hobby of manga, science fiction novels, and finally cinema, it is not strange that he would end up being known as the "science and ideology" game director who attempts to "create game experiences that outdo films." The elements of romance, mystery, horror, and pop-culture camp that are frequently felt in his games could've been influenced from Futaro Yamada, prominent author of romantic, detective, horror, and bizarre ninja novels, as Takahashi recalls being a fan of his. But not everything in the games were conceived by Takahashi alone, as we will see.
As for robots, Soraya Saga explains:
"I'm of an older generation who grew up with classic giant robot anime by Nippon Sunrise (e.g. Raideen, Gundam, and Votoms). Besides the guy who enthusiastically created gear/AMWS/AGWS/ES mecha is more Takahashi than me. (His room is filled with vintage Chogokin Toys.)
"- Soraya Saga (deviantART, Jul 7, 2008)
Finally, once getting in to college, Takahashi says he "began to grow up and started reading books on philosophy and ideology." He says he read a lot of Friedrich Nietzsche during university. And from Nietzsche came some of the influences of Norse mythology also seen in the games. "He [Nietzsche] was connected with Wagner, so I pulled it from there," says Takahashi in the 2001 video-senki interview.
"With religion there are many different denominations with many adherents. These people carry an ideological bias. The status quo is to ignore this bias, but ever since I was a student I couldn't be satisfied with that response."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenosaga -Official Design Materials-)
All this knowledge and passion for these and many other subjects would finally be given an outlet for expression after Takahashi joined Squaresoft as a Graphics artist and subsequently met and became romantically involved with Soraya Saga, who was to come up with the original story idea that Takahashi would turn into the game known today as Xenogears.
What lead Tetsuya Takahashi to aspire to become a game developer were his fond memories when Xanadu, an action RPG released in 1987 by Falcom Japan, was released. "When I played it on the PC-8801, I became interested in the game industry." He goes on to add in the 2018 interview, before continuing in the Sony 2003 interview, that he had used up all his tuition funds by purchasing a PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in Japan), "and that was going to really piss of my parents, so I decided to work part-time, and [...] Falcom Japan happened to be hiring part-time employees at the time, so I came to Tokyo and started working there. I was living alone and supporting myself."
Switching between the interviews again, he says: "I liked games, and I liked to draw, so I thought [the videogame industry] was a good fit. [...] I entered right when Y's II came out, and I started working as a designer. I only knew BASIC at the time, so I helped out, learning as I worked. [...] It was pretty much like a mom-and-pop shop at the time. You would do everything from development to customer support. [...] The first [game I participated in] was the fonts for Sorcerian. We had to make our own fonts for our games in those days. If we used the standard system font, things would look all blocky, so we had to rewrite everything."
What made Soraya Saga interested in the gaming medium was similar. In an interview with LuminoMagazine.com in 2011 she states that "The Legend of Zelda (1986), Dragon Warrior (1986) and Final Fantasy I (1987) inspired me a lot. Those [games] let me know a new type of fun that differed from what other media e.g. books and movies had."
Takahashi, when giving his reasons for leaving Falcom Japan, said: "The designers were at the core of Falcom Japan as a company. Also, there were a lot of opportunities to learn. But with our first computer, the PC8801, we could only use oblong dots and 8 colors for character designs. So we were pretty frustrated by that. At that time we ported Ys III to the X68000 and used sprites. It had a large memory capacity and allowed us to use a lot of colors. Because of that I became interested in doing sprite work. At just the same time, Falcom Japan itself moved away from taking shortcuts on their games and released unusual games such as Brandish and Lord Monarch. I thought I'd like to try making games on home consoles if given the chance, so I left Falcom. I read a job listings magazine and looked for a part-time job. Right then Square was recruiting for part-time jobs. That was when Final Fantasy III had been released on the Famicom. I thought I'd give it a try, so I applied."
When Takahashi joined Squaresoft he started work on Final Fantasy IV. "I had a strong impression I'd joined an organization that was the polar opposite of Falcom Japan. Even though we were using the Super Famicom, memory used by the program was given priority over memory used for the image. So at best we could only display 8 colors at the same time. 'This isn't very good!', I thought." Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, recalls in an interview with Iwata in 2011 (Iwata Asks: In Conversation with Takahashi & Sakaguchi): "Back then, [Takahashi] was the top graphic design man in the FF team. I can still clearly remember being really taken aback by how realistic his design for the stone wall in the background was. I remember thinking: 'That's really something!'"
Takahashi had been a fan of titles Sakaguchi had been responsible for, such as Cruise Chaser Blassty, "So I thought of [Sakaguchi] as someone who had created games that I had spent a lot of time playing," says Takahashi in the same interview. "I advocated strongly for [graphics on Final Fantasy IV]. When we wanted to make the graphics better, the designers advanced that opinon about the contents of the game, and the programmers and planners changed its specifications. The director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, helpfully approved of us working that way," Takahashi continues in the other Creators Talk interview. "This might be one of my good sides, or maybe it's annoying from other peoples' point of view, but I'm the type who changes my environment to make it easier to do my job. So when I joined Square, I constantly let them know my opinions so I could work more easily."
On his impression of Sakaguchi he comments: "What I always found really impressive was how [Hironobu] would get to the office before anyone else and be the last to leave. He was someone who was always at his desk, with a capacity for work far beyond that of a regular person. Back then, arcade machines had higher specifications than home consoles, so our ambition was to create something that would surpass them. But back then Square had its own particular culture. On the one hand, there was a real desire to change things, while at the same time there was this sense that things shouldn't be tampered with. I would always worry about whether I was on the right track. But there's always the need to actively push things forward, otherwise nothing changes."
Takahashi was on the Final Fantasy team up to VI. The impetus for wanting to create his own game was that he was growing frustrated with Final Fantasy. "When it came to making a role-playing game, I had the planning ability, and I wanted to try my hand at presenting a world, character modelling and things like that," he continues. In fact, Takahashi was quite insistent on it, going so far as to reveal in 2018: "I used to start fights all the time. Confronting my superiors at the top of my voice. [...] I wanted to make a universe. At the time, Final Fantasy VII was using pre-rendered CG, and I thought, 'You can't make a world with this approach'. So, I wanted them to use 3D for everything." During Final Fantasy VI he had worked together with Soraya Saga and, as I stated at the beginning, Soraya came up with a story about "a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities." But both of them used to downplay Takahashi's rebellion and insistence on making a different project.
"...back in 1994, I wrote a story about a young soldier of fortune with multiple personalities. Takahashi proposed the plan to our boss. Though the plan was rejected because it was too sci-fi for RPG, the boss kindly gave us an advice "Why don't you make it into a new game?".
- Soraya Saga (Fringe FAQ, Mars 05, 2005)
Takahashi relays his version in an interview with the Xenogears staff in 1998, stating: "In the beginning, when the base plot itself was first in production as a 'FF' or something like that, I sent a proposal [to the higher-ups] saying 'How about this?'. Then they told me, 'Well, if there's something you want to make, why don't you give it a try?' So that was how it all got started in the first place. [...] there wasn't a name yet, and at the stage of that first proposal I presented, we had summon beasts [the standard term used in all the Japanese FF games] instead of mechas. That's where we had started. When it was decided that this would be its own game, we decided to replace all of that with mechas."
Thus Takahashi decided to leave the FFVII team during its early development. Takahasi states in the 2018 denfaminicogamer conversation: "I think the reason why I left the FFVII team had to do with the misanthropy I talked about earlier. I can't go along with someone who doesn't want to go in the same direction as me. I was also young then, too. So, I questioned myself, 'Why am I making something I don't even want to?' We didn’t really fight or anything. We're good friends, and we went to go out and eat together. I don’t hate them. But I just didn't feel right about it. That took a toll on me, so I wanted to leave the team and make something else." Takahashi also mentions in the 2011 conversation with Sakaguchi that he recalls "going to see Sakaguchi-san and telling him I was looking for a new challenge" in the middle of FFVII.
So the original idea appears to have been a "FF VII," that was "too dark," too complex, too "sci-fi," and "too complicated for a fantasy," with a soldier hero who suffered from "multiple personalities" and could possibly ride "summoned beasts." Given the influence Takahashi had in the Final Fantasy team back then, being friends with both Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura (the latter whom had also joined Square during development of Final Fantasy IV), it is perhaps not surprising that the game which would eventually become Final Fantasy VII (directed by Yoshinori Kitase) would feature many similarities with this initial concept that Takahashi proposed. Final Fantasy VII has far more science fiction concepts than previous FF, the soldier hero (Cloud Strife) suffers from serious identity confusion, and supposedly Sakaguchi's original script for Final Fantasy VII was completely different from the finished product. Hiromichi Tanaka says in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert interviews, "At the time, Takahashi-kun was with the FFVII team, and he was tasked with building the world along with Tetsuya Nomura. It looked to be a story that was about robots, an extension from Magitek Armor [of FFVI], but it was so drastically different from the world of FF, so we decided to do it as a different game."
Final Fantasy VII marked a real turning point in the Final Fantasy series, and for someone like Takahashi, who was such an integral part of that series, to start out on their own, was a bit of a blow to the continuation of that series. Sakaguchi himself says that he felt a little lonely afterwards. "One really clear memory I have is that no sooner had [Takahashi] formed a separate team than his desk became completely covered in Gundam models and toy guns. It was then that I realised he'd always wanted to work on this kind of thing."
At any rate, the project was not called "Xenogears" yet, and it seems that the concept for Deus might have come after the initial proposal, as Soraya goes on to say in the same FAQ entry; "Then [after Takahashi proposed the plan] I came up with an idea about a deserted A.I. with feminine personality who becomes an origin of new mankind in the unexplored planet. Takahashi refined the idea into more deeper and mystic love story."
This suggests to me that the religious symbolism and greater maturity came to fruition after the initial proposal, once the project was independent from the FF franchise, allong with the concept of "Gears" instead of summonings. It is also possible that it was at this stage that the project may have been developed as "Chrono Trigger 2," when you consider the initial similarity between Soraya's concept and that of Lavos in Chrono Trigger. Takahashi states in the "Creator's Talk" interview from 2002, "With Xenogears, in the very beginning we started from the point of making a sequel to Chrono Trigger. But as various arguments with the publisher piled up, some practical difficulties came up... Thanks to Sakaguchi-san's great efforts on our behalf, we were allowed to make it an original title. So when we started development, we had parts that wouldn't fit in a fantasy world, and I was worried about the motivation of the staff. To an extent, we made Xenogears as a cross [between sci-fi and fantasy]."
Regarding the actual title, 'Xenogears', it is not difficult to guess where the second part of the name comes from - Gears. However, according Takahashi, they came up with the word 'Xeno' first. "From the beginning, we decided on the word 'Xeno' between the staff. In itself, that has the implication of 'Something strange or alien', but what kind of title could we draw from that? So I made a few alternatives for things we could put after 'Xeno'. After that, we finally decided on 'Xenogears'." In a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Gameplay Demo during E3 2017 he further explained that "I think in life when we're living you meet different people and they have different [or strange] personalities, different backgrounds, and it's the interaction between those people that create the drama of life. And I thought that it would be great if I could drop that drama into video games, and that's why I add Xeno to a lot of my games."
Starting with Soraya's original story idea in 1994, Xenogears would not be released until February 1998. In the official source book, Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, released about 8 months after the game, Takahashi states in the "Main Staff of Xenogears" section, that "From the beginning, we spent just over two years working on Xenogears (there's been some rumors saying it's been in development for more than three years and the like, but that's just hearsay)." He goes on to reflect on the development:
"Thinking about it, we've come a long way...I try to bask in that feeling, but when I regain my composure and try to consider it more soberly, I have to face up to the truth that we didn't include a third of the full story. When I think about the years' worth of work ahead of me, I suppose I'll look back on this time right now as the good old days when I could take it easy. (Laughs)"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears: Perfect Works~The Real Thing~, Transl: Gwenal)
- Xenogears was called Ura FFVII (Bizarro FFVII) in Japan because development on the two games began around the same time, as well as the fact that while FFVII had polygonal characters with prerendered backgrounds, Xenogears had polygonal backgrounds and hand-drawn (prerendered) characters.
- Xenogears was considered a possible FFVII during the latter's planning stages, though Hironobu Sakaguchi decided against the idea. It was then developed as Chrono Trigger 2, but various circumstances meant it was reformed into Xenogears. This is also a reason why it shares a number of similarities with Chrono Cross, in addition to sharing some staff members.
- At the beginning of its development, the game was going to be divided into two separate games -- one covering Episode IV, and the other Episode V.
- Xenogears was not an offered choice in the recent 100 Items Representative of Japanese Media vote, but it did make the #3 write-in spot in the Entertainment category.
- Square had decided that a sequel to the game would be made if it sold 1 million copies, but in the end it only reached just shy of 900,000, so the plan was dropped."
Even though it's common and verified knowledge today thanks to this study guide, as late as 2010 western fans could find no sources to confirm that Xenogears originally entered production as a possible "Chrono Trigger 2." Apart from the previously cited "Creator's Talk" interview on Sony's Website in 2002, this fact can also be verified with the DVD that came with the Xenosaga Fanbook with DVD where the developers talked about Xenogears and Xenosaga during a Monolith Soft conference that was held in the summer of 2001. More recently in 2018 it was mentioned again in the Xenogears 20th Anniversary Concert pamplet. Square has also gone on the record as identifying a connection between the two games in the Chrono Cross Ultimania, and the Japanese Wikipedia on Chrono Cross stated that Xenogears began development as Chrono Trigger 2. Also, in a demo movie of Xenogears the following line was used:
"So let love's blood flow! Like the seas of hell, it runs red and deep...!"
This line appear in Xenogears' system files, as a deleted part of the script when Fei wakes up after having destroyed Lahan (possibly it was meant to appear just before he wakes up, or while staring at Weltall, or after leaving Lahan behind), translated as:
Now, Fei, allow me to spill the blood out of love... Like the sea of hell, crimson, deep...!
Presumably this is Id speaking, but was removed (probably due to it being too heavy a foreshadowing). Instead Masato Kato later used it in Chrono Cross' script, for Dark Serge, translated as "Now, let love bleed! Darker and deeper than the seas of hell!" Furthermore, Lucca, a character from Chrono Trigger, appears in Xenogears as a guest, whose last bonus line makes a reference to the Silbird (The Epoch), etc.
So then, we must assume that the project began to be referred to as "Project Noah" some time in 1995, as well as the idea of turning it into two games. Although Hiromichi Tanaka confirms in the Concert interviews that the world Takahashi was creating kept expanding, saying "We had initially planned it as a one-disc game, but we ended up having two discs thanks to Takahashi-kun's ever-expanding world. Even with that, two discs didn't seem enough to him, and he wanted to separate it into a part one and a part two," it seems that Takahashi already had the lore for the game that you see in Perfect Works worked out as they started production. Takahashi says in an interview in Hakoere: "The lore in that [Perfect Works] was something that I had already come up with at the very beginning of development. But I'm not a good communicator, and I tend to hold things in. So I think there were only one or two people among my staff who knew all of the details inside and out." He also said that, "It was pure sci-fi for me at the beginning. But because of the change of course that I mentioned earlier [from FFVII to Xenogears], and considering the staff's own tastes and what they specialized in, I thought it would be better if we had certain elements from fantasy genres." The exact year the game settled on the title "Xenogears" is unknown. Takahashi's profile on the official website would eventually read:
"He supervised the graphics division from Final Fantasy V until VI. With the switch in hardware, he's decided to start working on an RPG with a new style and taste, Project"NOAH" (Development code name, it was later given the title Xenogears). With the style and sense of the graphics and the cohesion of the scenario, he's aiming to make a game where the total balance will be outstanding."
"[Takahashi] has always had a talent for motivating people and bringing them together as a team," says Sakaguchi in the 2011 interview. "I remember that back then those teams would always be dividing into smaller units. If someone displayed leadership skills, they would be given the independence of having their own team. At the same time, they would often ask me: 'Is Final Fantasy all this company can let me create?' I used to worry about that. But [Takahashi] had some really good people working for him, and I think it was for the best that he got to head his own team."
