By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo - Xenoblade - the things that bother me

@ the_bloodwalker

Have you played Xenosaga: Episode 3? It's the best one in the series and it's amazing.



Around the Network
LordTheNightKnight said:
"I disagree where you say that using encyclepedia is very very wrong. It is your taste that you'd rather not have games with that. I personally love sifting through various sources of information to piece together the universe. As I love the codex's/datalogue/whatever that adds lore/makes the story make more sense in various WRPG and JRPG's"

You're confusing "looking up all the nuances of a world and their deeper meanings" with "doing homework just to understand the plot".

I am not confusing it with anything, because I enjoy that. As long as it's in game and it's fun which xenosaga was. And it is. Just saying. I enjoy it, and other people do as well.

Some people like MMO's where it takes you 5 years to level up, grinding, fetch quests etc. That's fine. I find it horrible

Will there be a bigger market for it if it has less  going through things for information? we'll see if xenoblade comes out and is not like that.



@g-value

Sorry, didn't have the chance. I will buy a PS2 later on to play it (sold it because I had to move out V_V).

@thelifatree

Yes you are confusing it.
what I'm trying to say, and I think LordTheNightKnight agrees, is that "source of information" should be a complement of the game. If a player wants to understand more of the story, the mythos, the elements that the game uses, etc. then this feature is excellent. But it does not need to be mandatory if the game's story is so confusing.

A story can be complex, with many twist and turns and surprises. But it should also be simple enough to let any player understand what is going on and what needs to be done and why, without resorting to a reference text.

I believe it's better "play more if you want to understand" than "read this if you want to understand"



the_bloodwalker said:
@g-value

Sorry, didn't have the chance. I will buy a PS2 later on to play it (sold it because I had to move out V_V).

@thelifatree

Yes you are confusing it.
what I'm trying to say, and I think LordTheNightKnight agrees, is that "source of information" should be a complement of the game. If a player wants to understand more of the story, the mythos, the elements that the game uses, etc. then this feature is excellent. But it does not need to be mandatory if the game's story is so confusing.

A story can be complex, with many twist and turns and surprises. But it should also be simple enough to let any player understand what is going on and what needs to be done and why, without resorting to a reference text.

I believe it's better "play more if you want to understand" than "read this if you want to understand"

I am not saying it couldn't be presented better. Because it could be. Every game can be improved in so many ways even the very best ones. @bloodwalker and @TheLordKnight, just asking did you play xenosaga and understand how it was assembled, so you could have your own opinion on the game. Or on what you heard from reviews/other people? Either's fine, I just want to know if I'm arguing about the perception of the game or with someone that played it.

However if the choice was to have a less convuluted story, where everything wraps up tightly and everything is understood completely without any effort into understanding the story. Or the texts with more convoluted story. I'd take texts with a convoluted story over simple good sotry. That's just my taste.

However, the cutscenes in xenosaga, were already said by a lot to be too long. Thus, if you were presented with more cutscenes.  For the information it would create even more cutscenes. Thus, I think they made the correct choice in the past.

The story in xenosaga made enough sense without reading the texts as xenosaga made sense to me in the first play through without it. It made more sense with the supplemental texts when I played it the second time I played through.

Also, there is a budget, so they sometimes have to cut out/put in things differently than would have been the best for money reasons. As with all videogames.

However, this is just what I want from the series. As it's spiritual predecessors were. It could turn out a different direction is better.

You can want it to be anything and that's fine. What is coming is unknown.



Soriku said:

I didn't think Xenosaga 1 was that confusing :/ I had to go into the UMN database a bunch of times but it was usually for background information. I think in the game there was only one time where I didn't understand something in the story that the UMN fully explained and that was during the whole Cherenkov flashback and how his wife cloned herself for a daughter. It was explained in more detail in one of the database entries and the requirements for cloning yourself due to government laws, etc.

Other than that you're usually looking into the database to understand what certain terms and stuff meant like the UMN or Rubedo/Nigredo/Albedo (unless you already did research about those 3 terms before playing you'd never know those names had to do with alchemy and how each character's story fits in with what those alchemic terms meant) or ubersoldier, etc. They couldn't have explained every single detail in the story, it would be too much filler. That's why they added the database in the first place.

what soriku says. As i am scatterbrained and think too many things at once :P

edit @soriku... the thing I thought was worst about xenosaga was how the halways/whateverways had no music D:



Around the Network
woops

 



I agree that Xenosaga was confusing and forced pepole to read in order to understand the plot.

However, I understood Xenogears' story perfectly well without anything but playing the game.



Bet with Dr.A.Peter.Nintendo that Super Mario Galaxy 2 won't sell 15 million copies up to six months after it's release, the winner will get Avatar control for a week and signature control for a month.

Wait wait wait. I'm confused here. Xenogears plot was way more complex then Xenosaga. If you understood Xenogears' storyline without any problems, then how can you get confused with Xenosaga's? Fei's interaction with God (or the Wave Existence) during the second disc alone is far more complex then anything that has came out from Xenosaga: Episode 1 & 2.



g-value said:

Wait wait wait. I'm confused here. Xenogears plot was way more complex then Xenosaga. If you understood Xenogears' storyline without any problems, then how can you get confused with Xenosaga's? Fei's interaction with God (or the Wave Existence) during the second disc alone is far more complex then anything that has came out from Xenosaga: Episode 1 & 2.

Dunno, I think that, looking back, I remember Xenogears' story better simply because it didn't have all of these abbrevations :P



Bet with Dr.A.Peter.Nintendo that Super Mario Galaxy 2 won't sell 15 million copies up to six months after it's release, the winner will get Avatar control for a week and signature control for a month.

I understood Xenogears very well and Xenosaga 1 as well. I was sometimes confused but the game explained as you play with a combination of cutscenes and gameplay. not too much dialogue