There are an increasing number of Xenogears fans out there I think, it's an interesting game, but a game I have never completed.
I reached disc two at least a couple of times but the game is far far from perfect and after beginning as an amazing game, a game which you are thinking is going to be one of the greatest games of all time, unfortunately it gradually and then quickly runs out of steam almost from 3 hours in.
I really love some of the soundtrack though, it is a masterpiece and the vocals are awesome.
The big problem for Catholics with a lot of JRPGs is their blatant anti Catholicism and their promotion of false anti-God philosophies.
I have traditionally seen Xenogears as anti God in a really really big way...sham religion to control people, 'god' himself is an antagonist, reincarnation, etc etc.
but I recently saw a video that made me reconsider this a tiny bit, and the video has some good points. The argument is that the Japanese who are godless and largely propelling to eternal damnation like to use Christian terminology to make their games and stories seem more occidental and strange, often applying names incorrectly and with nothing to do with their original reference points. This is certainly the case in Xenogears in a way perhaps unparalleled.
And so whilst at the centre of xenogears there is this god thing trying to revive itself by farming and feeding itself humans who it has created, this thing isn't really a god at all, it is a demiurge a being that is itself created and yet has the capacity to create as if it were a god. So a created being posing itself is god is the enemy.
But then there is this wave existence- is this the true God? Obviously not, since how could God get trapped by a demiurge (which seems to have happened in xenogears) the whole stuff about the wave existence in xenogears is just incoherent, an all powerful being from another dimension is somehow trapped in a man made robot demiurge and wants to be set free....
So in xenogears we are not dealing with the true creator of the universe in any of this, we are not fighting uncreated existence, we are not fighting the supremely simple, perfect and holy God, we are not actually fighting the supreme being in any way, nor are we helping him escape from the demiurge.
Xenogears fails in as much as it does not bring to light to fact that whilst the demiurge Deus is a phony god that is rightly destroyed, there is a true God sustaining all things Who Himself exists without the need of any other, a God Who simply Is and cannot fail to Be, a God without which all things would fall back into nothingness.
Hear are some ideas of altering the plot to make Xenogears more Christian:
1) Wave existence has to go.
2) the continual reincarnations of elly and fei not true incarnations but vocations given by the true God
3) Just as the demiurge has his false religion in xenogears through the ethos, the true God too ough to His own religion in the world of Xenogears which is acknowledged by the end of the game to be true.
4) The true God wishes to see the destruction of demiurge through means of humans, as humans created this false god the true God wishes that they destroy it.
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4 comments:
Breath of fire 2 is even more anti Catholic/anti Christian. I stick to zelda and final fantasy and chrono series fot a reason. (Ths other breath of fires are ok too.)
I've heard that the whole God or religion being the villains are due to the fact that for a long time, japanese rpg's would use the whole "demon king" as the villain and they just wanted to reverse that trope.
I could be wrong of course. The problem is that the japanese never really come out and SAY what their intentions were/are regarding the contraversial parts of their stories. I guess thats one thing we can respect about atheists, that they are more open about their intentions. (Japanese don't really classify themselves as atheists, seeing as they still pray at shrines and have ceremonies and such)
I dunno. Almost every tv series, movie, video game have used the "corrupt religion" trope. Perhaps this is Capcom's first attempt at that type of story as this doesn't appear in any of the other Breath of Fire games.
Hell the religion in BOF2 was actually portrayed in a positive light that did good things. Only for it to unfortunately reveal that a evil demon was behind it, that doesn't believe in all the good things the religion has done. I mean, it could have been worse.
They could have made it that it WAS God behind the religion and that he was somehow a villain that needed to be defeated for some reason.
Also, keep in mind that Christianity is a VERY minority religion in japan. Perhaps they view it similar to Greek mythology. In the video game series God of War, the greek gods are portrayed in a very negative light. This isn't because the creator's hate the greek gods. Its because they are indifferent to them. They don't believe or pray to them.
(Which is ironic because despite the fact that the greek gods are considered mythology in this day and age, I read some article a few years back where certain people in Greece were beginning to worship greek gods again)
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