sincere | Xenogears liveplayyyy (inactive)

This opening sequence is so much longer than I remembered! I mostly just remembered the crew giving up as everything asploded into Bible verses and fire, and then Cousin It's sexy sister was there.

Our opening cinematic begins with some Revelations, because you can't spell God without "alpha" and "omega", and you can't kill God if you can't spell God, probably.

A massive spaceship flying through space abruptly starts self-destructing, because if we've learned anything from science fiction, it's that space travel will kill us all. The lady officers on the bridge say very many words about tech things that probably mean something, but who knows or cares. What matters is that something is taking over their ship, and suddenly all their viewscreens start spouting "YOU SHALL BE AS GODS" over and over again.

That sounds promising, but it also seems slightly suspicious under the circumstances, so the captain evacuates the ship to keep all the godhood for himself. The ship is literally attacking itself by now, and when he's alone, he self-destructs it.

It happened to be right above a planet at the time, and the debris crash-lands there. From the wreckage, a naked woman with the most hair stands up and observes the dawn on her new planet.

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sincere - 2015-01-28 01:54 (UTC) - Expand

EXPOSITIONARY WALL OF TEXT

Desert kingdom Aveh and awful hellhole empire Kislev are at war and they don't remember why, they just are, accept it. Then one day a group called the Ethos dug up some mobile suits and everyone became able to kill each other better! This wasn't great.

On the edge of Aveh, near the border with Kislev, is the sleepy village of Lahan, which promptly explodes.

Fei is in a ~~Gundam~~ Gear beating up other people in Gears. Oh, hey, Grahf is there! I see you, Grahf!!

Down on the ground Citan is tinily attempting to tell Fei that maybe he could move his robot fight out of the middle of his sleepy village, but Fei is too busy having a flashback.

Just earlier today, Fei was in his happy place in his happy town, painting. It's worth noting that his happy place involves painting everything on fire.

A helpful nearby maid informs Fei that 3 years ago he was brought to Lahan covered in blood and half-dead by a man in a weird mask who was maybe his father idk and he doesn't remember anything about his life before that day but he had terrible nightmares for a long time after that.

Thanks for the backstory! And the helpful illustrative flashback!

Another helpful nearby NPC informs him that Chief Lee thinks of Fei like his own grandson since he was without family for so long before Fei arrived, so don't go doing anything that would break his heart like kill everyone in the village including Chief Lee, okay?

Fei's best friends Timothy and Alice are getting married tomorrow! What fortuitous timing! And Fei is the best man! Joy!

Anyway, Fei has fluffy feelings about it, so they pledge eternal friendship that will definitely last a lifetime.

I found Lucca from Chrono Trigger! She does not respect Fei's life choices.

"You're pretty smart, for an artist."

"Pumpkinberry, applelily, radish..." Step it up, radish, your combo game is weak.

A village feminist muses about how the lives of women in Lahan are so rigid and limited and she wishes she'd been born a man so that she could go out into the world and see and do things. When I assure her that that's not a weird thing to want at all, she rewards Fei for feminism by giving him an Aquasol. "Our bearcows love it!"

Some of the villagers talk about how weird and inconvenient it is that their town doctor lives high up on a nearby mountain crawling with monsters which makes it somewhat difficult to get medical attention.

Even ICly people know Citan is a bad doctor

Edited 2015-01-28 02:40 (UTC)

Alice's creepy balding little brother Dan tries his best sales pitch to make Fei run off and elope with Alice. Alice is going to have more or less the same sentiment. In the bar a waitress propositions Fei when her boss isn't looking. At least three villagers so far have suggested that Fei should marry someone, anyone, and/or themselves in particular.

This village is so sleepy that Fei is the most eligible bachelor there, and there are few characters in video game history more fucked up than Fei.

So Fei goes to visit Alice at Timothy's request, because Timothy is apparently as much of a meathead as the village kids think he is. They are reasonably awkward together, alone, with her wedding dress nearby, and she asks him to go get the village camera from the doctor, since only a battle-hardened warrior can make it to his house alive.

By the way, has Fei ever thought that it could be him marrying Alice instead of Timothy... because she has given a lot of thought to that.

Citan's home is a monument to quirkiness, with chickens and like four outdoor staircases and a mechanical land crab and a telescope and a room-sized music box, etc. Fei says hey to Citan's wife Yui and mute daughter Midori and asks after the doc.

YUI: My husband is tinkering with his junk out in the backyard.

snerk.

FEI: I should have guessed! Doesn't he ever get sick of playing with that stuff?

That's what she said!

Fei admires the enormous room-sized music box and listens to Distant Promise. Things get a little hazy as he feels like he's heard it before...

Citan arrives to say meaningfully that music can help people remember things they've forgotten. Or didn't even know they knew! Even if the listener would rather not remember. I'm sure that's not relevant though, don't worry about it, don't even know why I bothered observing.

Fei remembers to ask for the camera and P.S. he intends to eat you out of house and home please.

FEI: Doc... I feel strange when I listen to this music... I feel something warm inside...
CITAN: That just may be because you have someone living inside of you... And he too must have liked this music a long time ago before he became a part of you...

God, Citan, are you even trying? You're so lucky Fei is only smart "for a painter"

Later that evening Fei fawns over Yui's cooking. The game informs me that he's gained weight and feels guilty for overeating. Teehee.

Citan promises to bring the camera equipment down tomorrow himself. Yes, everyone is very excited about the wedding tomorrow! The enthusiasm is slightly dimmed when suddenly several Kislev Gears go flying overhead toward Lahan and start exploding the place.

Who could have predicted something would go wrong!!

Stupid need for sleep and work and class, I'll level Lahan soon.

Level Lahan! And then on to Dazil! 8'DD I'm so happy you're replaying Xenogears. I should do the same as well!

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sincere - 2015-01-31 01:18 (UTC) - Expand

Everything is on fire and giant robots are fighting. Timothy and Alice are worried about Dan, who is missing, but Citan insists that he and Fei can handle it. I'm not sure what Citan's argument is for why Fei is more qualified than Timothy to handle an active warzone. I guess he's a doctor so he would know, right?

Although reluctant, Alice and Timothy both promise to evacuate the village immediately, which is why they are definitely going to be out of the way of anything potentially traumatic that is about to occur.

Fei is just supposed to be encouraging stragglers to gtfo, have you not noticed the fire and the giant robots? but the situation gets up close and personal and Fei starts feeling funny. He hallucinates a hypnotic swinging pendulum and seeing a little boy being creepy inside the Gear that has just landed nearby and been vacated by a dead pilot. Or so I assume. My emulator is not actually showing the graphics for this part, just the dialogue and the CGI. V. promising.

Naturally he climbs into the Gear himself, despite Citan's protests about how this is a terrible idea, and starts Gear fighting!

The Gear literally sets itself to Easy Mode because it can tell that Fei is a newb Lamb who doesn't do a lot of piloting

Edited 2015-01-31 02:15 (UTC)

Although Fei could not possibly have predicted this, getting in a Gear and fighting some of the attackers means that other attackers will get upset and attack him. He is starting to have a panic attack about being trapped and under attack, but he mans up.

While he is doing so, a very dramatic gear very dramatically arrives on the battlefield and just... waits. Hi Grahf!!

Fixed my graphics problem! Although now I have a skipping music problem, which is not an acceptable trade. The music, man

There. Perfect.

Citan is concerned about "him" waking up, but is critically distracted by Dan, who returned to the village in order to rescue Alice's wedding dress. So Citan has to take him to safety while saying ominous things about Fei's dark, cruel destiny. He seriously has a brain-to-mouth-filter problem, it is a miracle that Fei doesn't know the combination to Cain's luggage already.

Oh look, here's Timothy, who came back to look for Dan! And here is Timothy getting shot in the back by a Gear (at Grahf's command!!) while Fei watches helplessly.

Then he freaks out, hallucinates, smiles creepily, and everything explodes.

Fei wakes up some time later on the ground near where the survivors of his nuclear freak-out have gathered. All the named villagers are dead except for Dan, who starts shrilly accusing Fei of being a murderer, of being the one who killed all the villagers using that "monster" -- the Gear that's chilling a short distance away.

Citan insists that Fei isn't to blame for the Gear malfunctioning, but gently suggests that Fei take his murder Gear and run, since reinforcements might come, and also he's kind of harshing everybody's vibe. Since the soldiers were from Kislev, he tells Fei to head for Aveh so that it'll be harder for the enemy to follow him.

Fei does not want to spend time with the murder Gear, though, so he slinks off without it.

So here's Fei, wandering on his own through Blackmoon Forest, when he comes across a hot redhead with a gun who attempts, clumsily, to take him hostage.

FEI: ...are you shaking?
Hot Redhead: sdlkfjsg shut up

She's paranoid about the Kislev soldiers who are after her and she has orders to kill all "surface-dweller LAMBS" she comes in contact with but she is obviously not really eager to pull the trigger and Fei just sort of stands there patiently waiting for her to make up her mind.

Elly is so bad at this, you guys.

ELLY: How do I get out of this forest?
FEI: ...Are you lost?
ELLY: Just answer my question! How do I get out of here?
FEI: Sorry... I'm looking for the way out too.
ELLY: Oh. :(

She has such a sad that she lowers her gun and has a Charlie Brown moment until Fei reminds her that she was going to murder him.

God they're such losers and I love them so much

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sincere - 2015-01-31 03:42 (UTC) - Expand

Elly wakes up a while later to find that Fei has set up a campsite for them. Fei was so worried!

She reminds him for at least the third time that she really will kill him, which is less believable each time she says it and fails to just do it. She also calls him a surface-dwelling Lamb for the third time, which he rolls his eyes at instead of asking "What the hell is that supposed to mean and do you mean to imply you don't live on the surface of the planet"?

They exchange introductions and Rope of Robots, unsurprisingly, summed it up best:

ELLY: Oh, um, I'm Elly.
FEI: Yeah, I thought you looked like an Elly.
FEI: ...Huh.

But in the real world Fei is not terribly concerned about how he psychically knew her name. G'night!

That night Fei dreams a CGI dream about being a tiny crying boy alone in the desert when a procession of faceless people passes by and leaves him behind. He's just about given up when a shadowy woman with hair conspicuously like Elly's and a necklace conspicuously like the one that keeps hypnotizing him collects him.

tbh don't even know what all that's about

That's supposed to be Abel and the original Elly, and the faceless people are Cain's followers.

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sincere - 2015-02-01 13:27 (UTC) - Expand

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slayerofgod - 2015-02-01 15:26 (UTC) - Expand

As they meander together, Elly finally asks Fei about his obvious death wish. After a beat, Fei explains that he ran away after his village was destroyed in a Gear battle. Even with no idea how to operate a Gear, he got in one to try and defend the village, maybe because he felt like someone was whispering to him, encouraging him to do it. Not alarming!

He says that he's sure that he destroyed the village, not Kislev. He blacked out after Timothy's death and when he woke up

oh god everyone he loved and everything that was important to him is gone and he did it

Elly does not take her cue from his obvious trip into hysterical grief because she is busy having a flashback revealing that she was the pilot who brought the mystery murder Gear to Lahan in the first place. She had to crash-land in the village and then she left the damaged Gear there and fled on foot.

At Elly's provocation, Fei suddenly starts ranting about how it's all the fault of those EVIL SOLDIERS WHO STARTED THE FIGHTING, not his fault at all!!!! THEY DID IT ALL

Her guilt prompts her to start shouting back at him, calling him a coward -- running from his responsibility in what happened. If he hadn't got in the Gear and started fighting back they would have taken it and the town probably would have been safe.

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sincere - 2015-01-31 04:21 (UTC) - Expand