XENOGEARS: POWER, TRUTH AND LOVE
by: Joshua Loomis (jeloomis@planetx.bloomu.edu)
Good to see a well-written Xenogears fic. It is definitely one
of my favorite games. I'm afraid I don't have a whole lot of
time to do a thorough commentary on the chapters you've
written thus far, but I'm looking forward to seeing more.
I have a few recommendations thus far. I think you might
want to take more time with your descriptions, which would
let the story unfold at a slightly slower pace. You make the
very reasonable assumption that your readers have played
the game, but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear
YOUR interpretation of things. So when you mention
Shevat, for instance, take a paragraph or two to really
convey what it's like. When a gear appears, describe it
for us. I wouldn't be afraid of rehashing some
of the story elements from the game - I've played it twice,
and I still had trouble remembering all the elements you
referred to in the story. There's a lot of wonderful imagery
in the game, and it's good to hear it described with care
and affection by someone with a gift for words.
Also, you've got a tough cast to juggle - so many characters.
While it would help to be more descriptive about each one
when you introduce them into the story, I'd also make an
effort to keep your cast as streamlined as possible. This is
a bit hard, since there's part of me who wants to see
everybody back in action (with the exception of Rico - I never
did warm up to him).
However, the more characters you have in any given scene,
the more confusing it becomes. There's one scene, for instance,
where you have almost the entire cast, including Jesse, discussing
things on the Yggdrasil. Does everybody need to be there for
that, or can you cut it down? If you want to have a personal
exchange between Billy and his father, for instance, maybe it
would be best to save that for a scene between the two of
them, rather than forcing it into a large round-table style
discussion. Also, when the action starts to get fast-paced and
the plots thicken, it couldn't hurt to take a hint from the
RPG genre and split your cast up into distinctive teams with
individual missions. That way, you can focus on a few characters
at once in each segment, rather than having to deal with all the
characters working at the same time. These are the sorts of
decisions you can make to keep your story from getting too
bogged down with multiple characters.
You've got a good start with the conflict and the villain, and I'm
keen to see how it plays out. My sense is that you are
intending to introduce revelations which will expand upon the
themes dealt with in the original game, which is a good way
to go. Don't feel you need to rush it, though - give the story
time to develop and bloom, let us see how the world has changed
in the days after Deus and Solaris, and let us get to know and
love the characters again.
And remember... Seibzehn IS Giant Robo.
Grayson Towler
grayson@rigroup.net
http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless