Talk:Xenosaga

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Melodiester

Contents

[edit] The Intro is Awful

I am new to this article, but I would like to point out that at least one of the introductory paragraphs is awful and borderline incomprehensible to someone who has not played Xenogears: While the connection in storyline to Xenosaga and Xenogears is only speculative, they do have stylistic connections. Like Final Fantasy has it's chocobos and Cids, the Xenos share stylistic similarities, such as their use of anime style, similar feels to character designs and locations, and gameplay similarities, such as button-mapped attacks, big combos, and mech battles. And there are plenty of design throwbacks in their characters. Nephilim looks like Elly, Shion's outfit in I is very similar to Elly's, and chaos looks like Billy without the robe

"Like Final Fantasy has it's chocobos and Cids"? Where's the wikilink on Final Fantasy? Why is this sentence even here, for that matter? Those who are familiar enough with Final Fantasy to understand this sentence likely already know at least a little about Xenosaga. Those who are unfamiliar with Xenosaga or Xenogears are unlikely to learn anything from this sentence.

"the Xenos"? This is a fanboy shortening of "the Xenosaga series". I don't think Wikipedia has hard drive space issues requiring authors to prune individual bytes from articles. Encyclopedia articles should maintain a decently professional level of language.

"button-mapped attacks", "big combos"? These are barely similarities, and neither are explained to people who have not played either of the games.

"Nephilim", "Elly", "Shion", "chaos", and "Billy" should all be wikilinked to the relevant locations. "in I" is unprofessional; "in Xenosaga: Episode I" would be better. The sentence fragment "And there are plenty of design throwbacks in their characters." is just plain awful.

Here's a suggested rewrite. I haven't played either of the Xenosaga games, so I am unfamiliar with them. My rewrite is based on the existing paragraph:

While Xenogears and Xenosaga are not strictly connected in terms of storyline, they do have stylistic connections. The games share a somewhat similar battle system, a common anime graphical style, and the use of mecha. Several main characters of the Xenosaga series are similar in design to Xenogears characters.

In addition, I question whether or not the connection between Xenogears and Xenosaga requires two paragraphs in the introduction. Introductions should be short and concise, giving the necessary details about the article.

I hope you welcome my suggestions

--205.251.151.250 02:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC) (my account is Stumpokapow, but I am not currently logged in)

[edit] List of peer review conclusions

Please do not perform any of these duties until the peer review has reached conclusion. #Move Xenosaga to Xenosaga (series) .

  1. Split Episode I, Episode II, Episode III, and perhaps the smaller side story games/items into seperate articles. This will accomplish the following:
Less confusion in the series article
Ability to add depth to each series article.
I think splitting the article into different articles would cause confusion. As it is, this article isn't confusing at all. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 06:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think the article is fine as is, but I do like the three major episodes having their own articles. That way, we can enhance gameplay inormation, where it stands in the plot, and so on. Deckiller 14:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trilogy

You guys state that the game is a "trilogy" - that isn't true iirc it's contains seven parts not three.

  • Nope, it's a trilogy. Xenosaga has been announced as being canceled after part III. Nezu Chiza 19:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there a link to such an announcement? All I remember seeing is that Xenosaga III will end the Shion story arc which is the trilogy.

[edit] Identity

I think there needs to be a clarification.

In the section on Episode II, we have:

"Although Xenosaga EPISODE II answered many questions related to the U.R.T.V. and the Miltia Conflict in EPISODE I, there has been no word on just how connected Xenosaga is to Xenogears, except a slight revelation towards the end of the game relating to Abel's Ark. The rest is shrouded in mystery -- such as chaos and Nephilim's true identities."

However, there is a large revelation about chaos's true identity at the end of the episode, when Wilhelm names him.

I was confused as to whether this was talking specifically about chaos's identity as a Xenosaga-Xenogears connection, or his identity more generally.

129.22.162.123 07:16, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

I'm not sure if "a reference to existentialist themes present in the games" is the correct way to put it. If anyone wants to correct it, feel free.

Someone42 12:07, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Someone has done so.

[edit] Screenshots?

Any screenshots for post episode 2 games. I'd like to see something from Episodes 3, 4, and 5 if possible. I'll try to take some from Episodes 1 and 2 if the article needs them.

Um... Episodes 3, 4, and 5 weren't even created yet. They haven't even started making the Japanese versions. → JarlaxleArtemis 19:02, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xenoculture - the line between fancruft and encyclopedia

There are dozens of one- or two-paragraph articles all about various minor people, places, things, and ideas about Xenosaga, all of it of limited interest to anyone but devoted fans of the game, and I was pondering wrapping them up into List articles, similar to how similar lists have been handled with, for example, the Pokémon cruft. Would anyone be interested in helping me with this? My Xeno-fu isn't exactly the strongest. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 05:45, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I have done the same with the Xenogears page, and I was just coming here to suggest this as well. I think it's an excellent idea. We could always create a wikibook to go into complete detail. - Deckiller

Oh, one more thing. Coming to think of it, the List of Xenogears Terms could be completely ignored, for most of the information is either going to be fit into the other articles as sections or explained in their appropriate section. I was merely trying to keep the page operational so that all the links to the page still had some material on it ^_^. So, alphebetical sections for Main Characters, Side Characters, Planets, Star Ships, Organizations, and Other?

Heya, all pages are merged, except for the main characters. I'll take care of that asap ^^. We can work from there. Deckiller 01:33, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikicities page

Heya, there's now a Xenoaga Wikicities page at xenosaga.wikicities.com. I'll be playing around with it and whatnot, but that's where all the heavy duty cruft and whatnot will go. Feel free to help transfer, expand, etc.

[edit] Loose articles

What are we going to do with articles such as A.M.W.S. and whatnot that have been merged together? There really should only be the list pages, main pages, and main character pages. The rest should be deleted, eh? Deckiller 00:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template

Any objections to using this? Any suggestions? Deckiller 02:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


v • d • e
Xenosaga
Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht | Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse | Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra
Pied Piper | I & II | The Animation | The Manga

Xenosaga characters
Albedo | Allen Ridgely | chaos | Jin Uzuki | Jr. | KOS-MOS | MOMO | Shion Uzuki | The Testaments | Wilhelm | Ziggurat 8
Antagonists | Protagonists | Minor Characters

Other lists and articles
Organizations | Planets | Starships | Other

[edit] Criticism

This article seems to have a bit of an nPOV problem with lots of criticism scattered throughout the game descriptions, etc. I think it would be a good idea to create a separate section for all of these complaints. 71.132.18.37

I agree; I tried to correct some of it, but others just kept adding it. I think that some people may think this is an open game site.... I'll work on that section right away. Deckiller 22:39, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


v • d • e
Xenosaga
Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht | Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse | Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra
Pied Piper | I & II | The Animation | The Manga

Xenosaga characters
Albedo | Allen Ridgely | chaos | Jin Uzuki | Jr. | KOS-MOS | MOMO | Shion Uzuki | The Testaments | Wilhelm | Ziggurat 8
Antagonists | Protagonists | Minor Characters

Other lists and articles
Organizations | Planets | Starships | Other


[edit] Forgive my poor editing style

I tend to make a long chain of fifteen-twenty minor edits at a time. I'll try and shave that down significantly, for the sake of anyone reading the edit summaries. Deckiller 03:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship to Xenogears

Is it really necessary? Perhaps we could highlight the fact that Xenogears and Xenosaga are different by sourcing an interview. That way, no speculation or comparison is needed. We can then put that simple sentence in the introduction, plop a footnote or whatever, and get a step further toward a featured article. Deckiller 02:35, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I had a look at sourcing an interview for you. There's an interview from GameSpot which discusses the relationship (highlight from Takahashi: "But with our relation between Square, I think it is difficult for us to say it is a direct sequel or prequel. It's probably more suitable to say that it follows the direction and style of Xenogears") - not really totally inline with what I've heard from Monolithsoft before but it's the only interview I can find. --Ed-E 19:56, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, looks good :) Thanks. Deckiller 22:28, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move. —Nightstallion (?) 21:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Xenosaga (series) → Xenosaga – Removal of the quite unnecessary "(series)". Only disambig titles when absolutely necessary, which is not the case here, with Xenosaga being a redirect to Xenosaga (series). ' (Feeling chatty? ) (Edits!) 21:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Oppose Support. The article was moved per CVG peer review request; I don't mind either way, but some CVG members may have a serious issue with another move. Deckiller 21:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
    • One suggestion does not make a "CVG peer review request". If there's nothing at Xenosaga, then why is this here? There's no ambiguity with the term. ' (Feeling chatty? ) (Edits!) 04:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Point. It is an outdated review anyway. Besides, this article does encompass the smaller side projects as well, so "series" is not the correct term. The request was made prior to the split of the article. Deckiller 04:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Reflexive redirect --Lox (t,c) 21:17, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Gameplay?

I noticed that there is no section on Gameplay in this article. Granted, the articles on the individual games talk about it, but it is appropriate to mention the common elements of gameplay found in all the different games. Also, the screenshots in the article need to have a fair use rationale on their description pages. For an example see Image:Zelda wind waker.jpg. The article also only has partial references for its content. Excellent article so far though! Jacoplane 04:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pasted: A plea for sanity

Folks, it's great that everybody's adding content and attempting to wikify their articles, but please, before you hit that big shiny Submit button, take a look at the preview and click on some of the wiki-links you've created. Make sure they go where you meant for them to go - I've already cleaned up a couple of [[Shion]] links that redirected to the Shion in the King of Fighters universe, for example. Also, if you're wiki-linking to a page containing a list of terms/list of characters/list of whatever, you can make the link take the user DIRECTLY to the appropriate section by using the # sign.
Example follows: [[List of antagonists in Xenosaga#Albedo|Albedo]] instead of [[Albedo]] will take the user to the character from Xenosaga instead of the definition of "the measure of reflectivity of a surface or body". Syntax is [[target page#section|substituted text]].
teh TK 20:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC) "Hard work pays off later.. laziness pays off now"

I spent hours cleaning up the wikilinks on some of the list pages, so I must agree with TKarrde on this one. Deckiller 21:48, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I need you all to not be petty. Also, where TF is the xenogears information?

I'm a newcomer to the series, and this entry is squandering most of its potential for usefulness and as a real source of reference. For instance, why did you italicize "spritual sucessor" in the 2nd paragraph? Derrr....Duh? Did someone wanted to fight about it at some point? REALLY really wanted to fight about it? Did someone win? Is he now kind of a dick?

In that huge 'series overview' box at the bottom, how come Xenogears isn't mentioned? How come that huge artbook covering the Xenosaga background and common themes between gears and saga isn't even mentioned? What is it called, Perfect Works Artbook? It's mentioned ONCE. This is like having ALL MENTIONS OF MARIO edited out of the entry on Wario. Get your act together, you nitpicking fanboys. Want another analogy? This is like editing out all but one mention of Macross in an entry on Robotech. I want to know how the two are thematically tied together, and how aspects of each mirror the other in development, not the fact that part of the fanbase is going out of its way to tell us, YELL at us that xenogears and xenosaga episode 1 are, SHOCK, two separate games that must be purchased separately.

I mean, look at the 'series' box in the xenogears entry. characters? ooh, SUPPORING characters? factions? WEAK. Anyone curious about the series (as I am) will stumble onto these two pages and know instantly that there has been some kind of flame war, with article usability = attrition fodder.

Asdfff 08:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Please see WP:CIVIL and stop attacking users by calling them "nitpicking fanboys" because the article is incomplete. Thank you.
Oh, and I think it must be said that there haven't been any "flame wars". — Deckiller 11:51, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Moreover, to answer some of your questions:
  • Italics on Wikipedia are often used for emphasis. It is important to make clear that Xenosaga features some similarities with Xenogears, but the two storylines are not related. No "flame wars" involved, I'm afraid.
  • And no, there hasn't been any "flame (edit) wars", because many new claims and WP:POV statements are reverted within seconds. See the hundreds of others of "list of" pages on the site.
  • And in your second paragraph you claim that there needs to be a second describing similarities between the two games. For this, you are correct; there was once a section, but it was so riddled with unsourced claims and POV that it had to be dropped. Relevant, neutral point of view information was included in the allusions and influences section. You are welcome to contribute to a restarted section, though I have put this page lower on my priorities with the rise of new issues such as bringing New England Patriots to featured article status and my RfA. — Deckiller 12:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


Apologies, my gut reaction was knowing peripherally how much information there used to be in the caches before varying POVs started to balloon the article. If you're the only one coralling all the edits, good work and I don't envy you. I'm going to try to go through gamefaqs and the old caches here and distill out NPOV data. I'm also going to think of a concise way to link the saga/gears using that little box down there. May revise the already-given sample over the weekend. Asdfff 04:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good, though the box at the bottom is for Xenosaga games only. Usually, we put Xenogears in the see also section, but we might be able to combine the two templates into a large template. — Deckiller 20:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and yeah, a lot of the information on Episodes I to III were moved to their own articles. — Deckiller 20:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Beyond Good and Evil/Other Side of Good and Evil

Just wanted to clarify why I removed the comment from the Ep. II section about Jensites translating "loosely" to beyond and more correctly to the other side. Beyond itself means "the other side" in the sense that if you go beyond a door, you've gone to the other side of it.

[edit] Xenosaga I & II

Maybe I can't find it or something, but I guess if one existed it would be linked from here. Anyway, is there a XS1&2 article or is anyone going to start one? -- Remy Suen 01:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It appears the only article we have of it is that little itty bitty thing on this page. I have the game, but seeing as I don't know Japanese, I doubt I could be much help in writing an article for it. But someone really needs to either improve the section for I & II we have since about half of it was obviously written before its release (it's written in the future tense as if the game hadn't been released) or there needs to be a whole separate article for I & II made. --Trance 21:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I think a new article should be made as I feel that people will contribute accordingly once it starts getting some hits. It may not be immediately obvious that this article has a section for I & II, so some potential contributors may just move on. --Remy Suen 13:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soundtracks

Has there been any thought of creating a single soundtrack article like what Final Fantasy X has or possibly individual articles for each soundtrack (the former is probably preferable, I'm guessing?). I have created separate articles as user subpages for Episode II and Episode III. Since I don't own the soundtracks myself, I have not added their time lengths yet (and well, Episode III's isn't out yet, but I'll be getting both through Amazon.co.jp when my order gets shipped when III's soundtrack is released). If no one has any issues in the next couple of days, I will go ahead and create a Xenosaga Soundtracks page and add it to the template. I'm sure that most of us here would agree that Xenosaga has great music, so an article would only be appropriate. --Remy Suen 19:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Completely agree. When the Xenosaga series is complete and I begin trying to push it for FA status (which will be tough, given that there are several games in the series and the FA push will be for the general series article), we can have a brief soundtrack section with a link to the page. If you're interested in helping me out with other projects for the page, I would be very happy :) But I don't plan on starting until episode III and the I and II DS remake are released in America. — Deckiller 20:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
So should the article be Xenosaga Soundtracks, List of soundtracks from Xenosaga, or something else? --Remy Suen 01:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speculation section

The section with speculation needs to be removed. See WP:NOT (namely not a publsher of original thought and not a crystal ball). — Deckiller 02:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allusions and influences

It's stated that "Italic textFurthermore, "Abel" and "Abel's Ark" are references to a biblical figure of the same name.Italic text." There is no "Abel's Ark" in the Bible. I would suggest combining Yeshua and Abel in one sentence when referring to Biblical figures.

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