The Cliffhangers of Xenosaga

Something's missing....

 

Okay. Among the cliffhangers of the Xenosaga series there were (1) the identity of the girl Nephilim and her role in the game, (2) the importance of main character Shion Uzuki, (2) the secrets behind the cyborg Kosmos, (3) who the heck is chaos, (4) the purpose behind the creation of MO-MO, and (5) of course there has to be something about Shion's former boyfriend, Kevin, otherwise the creators wouldn't have bothered working on his avatar much.

 

Most questions were answered. Shion was the equivalent to the key that unleashed demons onto the world, Kevin was a defeatist who believed in a common destroy-all-to-cure-all way of saving the world and overcoming past traumas, both Nephilim and chaos are immortals who wield secret fate-controlling powers, Momo's the keeper of ultra secret data, etc. Very good. But some questions aren't answered at all or they weren't answered thoroughly. Or it's just confusing! One might say...

 

"The character chaos is actually the real Jesus Christ while the one we know from the Bible was actually just a spokesperson--No, chaos was a disciple of Jesus Christ and somehow he got these incredible powers along with his girlfriend--No, Mary wasn't his girlfriend, just a partner who cared about him and apparently lived in the same house as him. Oh, and Mary cared tons about chaos enough to separate his power into pieces but she doesn't so much as look his way throughout the entire series and who the heck is this Wilhelm guy? How does he and chaos really know each other? Is Nephilim like chaos, someone who actually existed as a person at one time, or is she simply the physical representation of you-know-who's power?"

 

It's a long, rambling question.

 

The first Xenosaga game, The Will to Power (or so the English translation goes), was nice in laying out the plot. As the introduction to its series the duty of the game was to bring out the questions and present tantalizing cliffhangers for the sequels, and that duty was fulfilled. The second game, however, was almost completely devoted to the purpose of the girl Momo and the backstory of the character Junior, which ultimately had little to do with the game as a whole. The presentation of his twin brother, whose tale is thoroughly fleshed out in the second Xenosaga, as a lackey for the ultimate villain Wilhelm had no need for ten hours of their lives at a high-tech facility. In other words, the second Xenosaga was hardly needed and could be completely skipped by anyone vaguely following the storyline.

 

The cliffhangers in Xenosaga gave the air of questions that didn't matter so there was no real need to provide answers. As big questions that need answers were part of the theme of the Xenosaga series, equally big answers should have been provided in the final installation for closure. Mysterious characters were never cleared up and some characters didn't need answering at all. What mystery characters other than Shion Uzuki and chaos had to them were all answered in the third game. The second was merely an elaboration.

 

All that religious jargon didn't help either. Answers or not, talk of things like 'anima' and 'animus' caused enough confusion to make me, at least, go looking for definitions in Wikipedia. The purpose of the frequent religious references weren't explained either. There was all that data provided in Xenosaga III, but how come we have to read the answers to our questions that are never shown in the game?