brickaq

Quick note on this: the whole U-DO being a collection of souls thing....is it related to the organization in Xenogears that was collecting dead bodies to feed into whatever it was they were building? (sorry for the vagueness - I can't remember any of the names).

Thanks for the story summary - that's great. Some comments:Once I got my mind around Xenosaga Ep. 1 (X1), especially with the mentioning of Eldridge, it was clearly evident that it was related to Xenogears (XG). I'm still waiting to find out exactly what the circumstances are that lead up to the crash of the Eldridge, though, and hopefully the later episodes will reveal this. It also makes perfect sense to me that KOS-MOS and chaos wouln't appear in XG, as XG takes place so far in the future and, more importantly, is completely isolated from the events not occuring on whatever planet the Eldridge crashed on.As for X1, aside from a horrendous amount of backstory and confusing plot twists, there really didn't seem to be much story (and the summary above seems to indicate that as well). It seems like in X1 and X2, we're very close to the events leading up to the crash of the Eldridge, which makes me wonder just how much "big picture" story is in X2 (does Eldridge crash at the end of X2?). I guess for some reason, I was sort of expecting the crash to happen at the end of X4, since XG did a reasonably good job of explaining major events between the crash and the beginning of XG.Any opinions on the quality of X1 and X2? I think they absolutely suck as games. The majority of the dialogue is way to confusing to be remotely comprehendable. I keep getting bombarded with new names, new terms, and "behind-the-scenes" action that makes no sense whatsoever. Couple that together with having days between playing an hour of the game or so, and - unless I write everything down - I can't follow the story worth crap. When I started playing X1, I was fascinated by the references to religion and philosophy, but now I'm realizing that these references don't really mean anything. They're simply tossed in there, I suppose, to make us think deeper thoughts. I guess the problem I have is that there doesn't seem to be any conclusions drawn about the nature of man, his relationship to religion or nature, or anything like that. Even in XG, they tossed around "Id" "Ego" and "Superego" like they were nothing. There's just no tie-in or comparison done, from what I can tell. I think a game like FFX speaks more about our nature and purpose than Xenosaga.