The story follows protagonist Fei Fong Wong and several others as they journey across the world to overthrow the all-powerful rule of Solaris and uncover mysteries concerning their world. The gameplay of Xenogears revolves around navigating 3D environments both on-foot and using humanoid mecha dubbed "Gears".

The Story Behind Xenogears

"Gears" was chosen from multiple suggested words. Honeywood may also have had a hand in the Japanese naming of Deus: the staff were originally going to call it Yahweh, and during his argument against it he said "It's dangerous" (ヤベーよ, yabē yo). According to her, the story revolved around "where do we come from, what are we, where are we going".

Preliminary planning and creation of the backstory extended to several years before that. The themes and story were greatly influenced by the works and philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as well as dystopian science fiction films such as THX 1138 and Soylent Green. The English translation of Xenogears was the first instance in which an English localization team worked directly with Square developers.

How Xenogears Plays

After Krelian manipulates Ramsus into assassinating the Emperor, the Gazel Ministry uses the Gaetia Key, an artifact that manipulates the DNA of massive numbers of humans around the world, turning them into mutants called Wels to collect flesh to reconstruct their God, an all-powerful war machine called Deus that crash-landed on the planet ten thousand years ago. Citan is a man whose knowledge of the world and technology often aids in the party's quest. Fei is the story's protagonist, and has initially lost his memories of his past.

Emeralda is a humanoid being constructed by an ancient civilization from a colony of nanomachines, and was retrieved from the ruins of the ancient civilization Zeboim. Having a duration of three turns, Infinity Mode allows fuel to be recharged in much larger quantities and, while in this mode, gears have access to "Infinity" attacks. However, through the power of the Wave Existence, they are able to be reincarnated in later eras to combat Deus.

Why Players Still Load It Up

Like movies, sometimes you have the director of the movie or friend of the leading actor appearing as cameos, so it's similar to that. The cast of Xenogears were also featured in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius for a limited time as part of a collaboration event. In June 2000, Sugiura Hirohide, president of Monolith Soft, said that a sequel was being considered before being cancelled due to the company's film investments at the time with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

While Xenogears has never had an official sequel or prequel, there was speculation that Namco and Monolith Soft's Xenosaga was a prequel when it was first announced. Xenogears has occasionally been featured in other Square Enix properties. On 11 February 2018, in celebration of Xenogears 20th anniversary, Kunihiko Tanaka and Junya Ishigaki collaborated with Square Enix to release Xenogears Bring Arts figures of Fei, Elly and Welltall.

Xenogears — Frequently Asked Questions