Xenogears - as a piece of art - is incomplete. It’s a game defined by a tragic story of a development cycle that continued to never sway in its favor. Yet it’s exactly through that that Xenogears is as fascinating as it is. You can never truly separate art from its process of creation. Whether intentionally or not, it will always find itself manifested somehow in the final work. It is an unavoidable effect of the fact that creating art is projecting yourself onto a blank canvas.

The main and underlying theme of the game is that we, as people, cannot be complete. Everyone is flawed in some way. No-one is ever truly ‘whole’, and you can never truly become that. Instead, Xenogears suggests that everyone is an imperfect half, made to be complimented by another imperfect half. The main visual symbol for this theme are the statues of the one-winged angels. Two religious symbols of imperfection, existing to fill in each other’s flaws by helping each other, and being there for one another.

This theme is also explored in the game’s most iconic scene, that being Adrift at sea where Fei and Elly, upon becoming stranded together, share a moment of introspection. The introspection intentionally omits any dialogue boxes or signs of who is talking, because the scene is wholly universal to the both of them. It is what they both needed to hear at that exact time. They feel happy to help each other, both through their mutual introspection, as well as through the sharing of rations.

"It's okay to not be 'whole'. Even if you only feel partly complete, if you repeat that enough, eventually it'll be 'whole'. A part... is better than zero."

Yet I’ve always found that even stronger than any narrative symbol for the game’s themes, is the nature of the game’s release itself. Xenogears was dealt a bad hand by Square Enix. Initially rejected from being Final Fantasy VII in favor of Yoshinori Kitase’s game, and then rushed through development and faced with a difficult choice. Tetsuya Takahashi was told that he could either release disk one as a separate game, then pray for a sequel that would most likely never come to be, or rush disk two and release it in an incomplete state. He chose the latter, and while I believe he made the right choice, he has clearly been haunted by it ever since.

A game about imperfect halves ended up being forced to have half of it utterly incomplete. Disk two is extremely rough around the edges. Its balancing is all over the place, it omits most gameplay and opts instead to describe what happens over text, it never has any time to focus on anything else than what is most important. It’s a rushed effort for the sake of completing an ambitious vision that was not allowed to come to light.

Coming back to the game’s relation to FFVII, I find that both games are completely inseparable. I don’t think you can earnestly analyze one without connecting it to the other. Perhaps exactly because they were both initially supposed to be the same game, they hold a lot of connections with each other, be they narrative, thematic, or general execution. Both games are perfect companion pieces for each other, and playing both of them in close vicinity of one another sheds so much insight into the inner workings of both games. Once again, two imperfect halves filling each other in to make one another more ‘whole’.

But there is also a much more cynical way of looking at this. When asked in an interview which character Takahashi relates most to, he answered that it’s Ramsus. While at first this seems like a very funny answer, it makes a lot of sense if you consider it in the context of the game’s fate. Ramsus was created to be a perfect being. He was created by Krelian to become the contact, and to kill and replace Emperor Cain. In the end, however, Ramsus was a scrapped project in favor of Fei, who showed much more promise as the contact. Ramsus came into the world as an imperfect existence, replaced by Fei since birth, and only finds solace in the idea of killing Fei to prove his status as an ultimate existence.

Ramsus IS Xenogears, and Fei is Final Fantasy VII. And if you will humor me to take this analogy further, Krelian is Square Enix. Xenogears too was a promising concept, in the end replaced in favor of its peer. Xenogears too was forced to come in as an imperfect existence, completely and utterly overshadowed by what ultimately became the biggest JRPG to ever exist. Ramsus is a character that is essential to understanding the whole of Xenogears, because his character is Takahashi’s spite and resentment towards both Square Enix and Final Fantasy VII projecting directly onto a canvas.

I’ve often pondered the hypothetical of “What if Xenogears DID get to release as Final Fantasy VII” and wholeheartedly I believe that it would have the same amount of influence as FFVII did. That influence would just be taken in a different direction. Xenogears and FFVII share so much between each other that I do sincerely believe that the reception of XG as FFVII would not be much different from what FFVII ended up receiving. Of course, there is no way to prove this. This is a mere hypothetical decided by a lot of different factors. Maybe Xenogears wouldn’t have succeeded as FFVII, maybe it would. Regardless, the sheer idea that this beautiful game could have had the same amount of influence, is ultimately extremely tragic, and I think this is definitely something that was on Takahashi’s mind. Once again, not unlike the relationship Ramsus and Fei have over the course of the game.

Entertaining the idea of Krelian as Square Enix is admittedly a humorous one, because it’s so scathingly spiteful. Krelian doesn’t care about any of his creations. He’s willing to make anyone suffer for his own benefit, and no amount of human pain is ever too much if it means achieving his goal. He actively experiments on humans, then feeds said humans to other people. He is a mad scientist who has no qualms about robbing people of their lives and transforming them into monsters. When he scraps using Ramsus as the contact for the sake of Fei, he does it directly in front of him, and acknowledges that he’s already able to understand everything he is saying. Was this how Takahashi felt being told about the promise of Final Fantasy VII as his vision was being actively shut down? There is no way to know for sure, but I don't think it's a stretch to imagine it that way.

It’s truly no wonder that Takahashi has spent the rest of his career attempting to recapture and remake Xenogears. The Xenoblade series so actively attempts to finish the vision he never got to accomplish with Gears. Across the entire series, there are so many major parallels, often down to following the exact same plot points. Takahashi is by all means a successful creative nowadays. Xenoblade Chronicles is an enormous JRPG series, respected over the entire world. That in turn shows just how deep the scars caused by Xenogears go. Even Xenoblade 3, the big conclusion to his series, ended up being about finishing his vision for Xenogears. The parallels between N and Lacan are really not hard to spot, with some segments between the two being nigh identical.

On the other hand, I do find it important to mention that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 contains a direct reference to Final Fantasy VII. Towards the end of the game, Noah can be seen standing in front of a skyscraper much in the same composition as the iconic cover of FFVII. Referencing a game that ruined everything for him in a wholly respectful way feels really cool, and possibly means he no longer holds feelings of resentment towards the game that doomed his own project. Whether this is an empty homage or proof that Takahashi has let go, who can truly know, but I would rather believe the latter.

Xenogears is a beautiful and massive game that can be analyzed under so many lenses. There is sincerely so much to talk about with this game. With this essay, I purely just wanted to focus on what I always found to be most fascinating about it. Going back to my initial thesis: art cannot be separated from its creation process. Takahashi’s frustrations, his sadness, his anger, it all comes through in the game. Disk two is not finished, and it’s not even conventionally good, in spite of containing a lot of the game’s best scenes. But that only makes the game so much more beautiful in my eyes. Xenogears managed to become its own self serving proof of its themes.

Xenogears is incomplete. Xenogears is not whole, and will never be whole. Xenogears was robbed of its chance to be huge.

And yet, if you look at it just right, Xenogears is perfect.

I was left with way more complicated feelings on this thing than I was expecting. It's a fun game to play, with a tweaked battle system taken far past the clumsy feel of the PSP version and a nice, compact structure that makes it a super easy game to open up when you decide you got some time to kill. Those side-missions rock and they have the same sort of goofy yakuza-adjacent tone that Final Fantasy VII Remake happens to strike as well, probably mostly due to this version's HD facelift.

The story and presentation and just... everything to do with that though, that's a different story. Zack Fair is a hilariously stupid dickhead and I like him a lot for that but I don't necessarily love him. The returning cast is kind of a mixed bag with Cloud and Sephiroth's parts being great and Aerith... well, I'll circle back to that. The new additions to the cast are genuinely baffling. Just the most bizarre personalities that never crack past a surface reading, given absolutely ridiculous importance in the story. It's really stupid in both the good and the bad way.

A lot of the character relationships don't really hold together very well. Angeal is too weird and hilarious to take seriously, Genesis basically never makes sense at all, and Aerith's friendship/hamfisted will they won't they with Zack swings back and forth between being kinda cute and incredibly forced. That forced feeling does kinda start to work on me though, as I started to read Aerith as less someone in puppy love and more as someone being a friend that everyone in her immediate circle just assumes needs to be paired up with the guy that fell through her ceiling. It's goofy but when I look at the character that way it starts to sit better with me.

Zack starts the game as a boot boy through and through, totally bought into the culture of war and capital that Shinra peddles off to its working class. He admires literal psychopaths and broken weirdos and starts off the game committing war crimes in Wutai under the vague goal of being a hero. This literally always comes off as weird and even if the game's creators dont necessarily line up with that reading, this angle keeps being supported by the game's events... so I think deep inside there really was an intent to make a sort of weird ironic hero story like this. The way everyone talks past each other. Zack barely comprehends whats going on in the first half and then suddenly his idol dies and boom, he's broken too and thus a hero to the lower ranking soldiers.

He makes friends with Cloud, in which case suddenly the dialogue is really well acted and endearing. In Nibelheim the game just ascends to a new level where the bizarre inclusions of the new characters start to bring a newfound psychosis into focus for the characters. The world is being ruined by a corporation, it's breaking all the "heroes" and now they're sick and dying with nowhere to go, and this whole time those broken people they admired continue to be a north star. It's actually unsettling stuff as the game crawls to its conclusion, a funeral rite that starts well before the heart stops beating. Zack asks if you think he became a hero. The game fucking ends! It's kind of fucking amazing, man I dunno!

This is one of the messiest, most uneven games I've played in a long time but I'll be god damned if it gets dismissed as something fans of FF7 should skip over. More people gotta learn that Final Fantasy Is Real Good, Even When It Isn't. This is a series that has been steadfast in staying interesting no matter what, and that includes this fuckin weird thing. This failed little J-Drama of a video game. Never before have I seen a game go from laugh-a-minute kusoge to actual compelling drama before, at least not on this level. I know I'm giving the game and its creators a lot of credit here but dammit this game made me feel stuff. Hats off.