The Shrine

KOS-MOS

The Xenosaga stuff is more of a throw-off. This is about comparing Xenogears to Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2.

Core plot details in Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are retellings of parts of the Xenogears story. Although their focus is on different sets of plot points, and both are simplified. Takahashi is a little more restrained these days with story telling - he knows the story he wants to tell, but he also knows that large amounts of people don't really have the capacity to digest it... Either that or he just really liked Xenogears and can't think of plots he'd rather do. They have different settings, so it is kind of like a plot reskin.

Xenoblade Chronicles:
1. Main character - A young man missing his childhood memories, adopted by his current village, gets attacked by incoming Mechons/Gears, picks up a weapon of immense almost holy power, and wins. In the process, the girl he had a crush on is tragically killed. His reason for leaving the village is linked to that. In Fei's case, it is because he feels guilt, in Shulk's case it is a revenge mission.
2. Main characters & gods - Fei and Shulk both house the spirit of a very strong being. In Shulk's case, the scientist who created Bionis and is god-like. Fei is infused with godlike powers by coming into contact with the wave existence. Zanza and the wave existence are higher dimensional beings. Both Shulk and Fei are genetic rebirths. Fiora and Elly are both characters who have a Goddess implanted into them due to possessing the correct body; with Elly, it is Miang, with Fiora it is Meyneth.
3. There is a dominant pure-blood race that gets transformed into monsters: in Xenogears, it is the Solarians, in Xenoblade, it is the Avian master-race High Entia.
4. God created life to be building blocks for its rebirth. In Xenogears, it was the fail-safe reconstruction of a super-weapon capable of destroying star systems. In Xenoblade it was as building blocks to rebuild Bionis, life is essentially made to be Bionis-food. Also, Telethia and Angels are the same things, the defence mechanisms of their respective gods.
5. God is not anything sacred, but a creation of ancient human scientists housing the soul of a higher dimensional being. God is killed at the end to free the universe. As previously discussed, in Xenogears it was the Deus weapon; created by humans and loaded aboard the colony ship Eldrich to take to a location, it destroyed after the weapon become self-aware, but the failsafe rebuilt it 10,000 years later. In Xenoblade it was the result of Zanza (a scientist) experimenting on a space station, creating a new universe where he would be a god. So the particulars are different due to the different settings of each game, but they fit the same role in the plot.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
This stuff doesn't become apparent until much later, the beginning of the game is much more Skies of Arcadia-like, while the later portion shows its true Xenogearsian colours. Although, I haven't really thought about the plot as much. I am still on Chapter 8, so my thoughts may change in the future.

The parallels:
1. The world was destroyed multiple times in the past, once 500 years ago, and even more complete destruction thousands of years ago. I'll break this down further in the next three points.
2. 500 years ago a powerful person destroyed a large amount of the world using ancient Gear technology under his control (and yes, they LOOK just like Gears from Xenogears, although they're called Artifice Aions in Xenoblade Chronicles 2). In Xenogears this was Grahf, in Xenoblade, this was Malos (although Malos's reason hasn't been revealed yet, it seems he is just created to be the destroyer - in Xenogears Graft did it out of grief for the loss of Sophia). Grahf used something called the Diabolos, which can be assumed to be Angels or ancient Gears; Malos used Artifice Aions - which are Omni-Gear-like objects.
3. The main villain seeks annihilation due to knowing the truth of the existence of life in the world. He has felt great pain again due to the death of a loved one. In Xenogears this is Krelian, in Xenoblade this is Jin. Krelian learned life was created to be building blocks for the Deus weapon, while Jin learned that Blades and Titans were built to be enslaved for human usage (truthfully, I'm still in the process of uncovering Jin's plot). Krelian lost Sophia, and so he joined Solaris and came to lead them. Jin lost Lora, and so he joined Torna and came to lead them. Jin and Krelian are both villains with redeemable qualities. Egill from Xenoblade Chronicles another of this archetype, although he doesn't have the same number of similar plot elements, just the same characteristics.
4. The other significant destruction: At the bottom of the world is a civilization dead for thousands of years that lived in skyscraper-filled metropolises and were of incredibly high technology. In Xenogears this was Zeboim civilization which was destroyed about 4000 years earlier, in Xenoblade this is Morytha - it was destroyed thousands of years ago, but an unspecified number. Here at the root of the World Tree, it seems that there is a technological base that appears active.

This is as far as I am in the game. It is possible the world of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is Earth; it's also possible that it is some planet existing in the Xenosaga universe. I haven't discovered it yet,

I did enough to get Poppi a her skill upgrades, didn't do shit with other models...

1995 - Chrono Trigger launches with the New Game+ feature
1995-1998 - The big issues with this team and Square occurred mainly with Xenogears and Square's insistence on a 2-year dev cycle with limited staff; this created a lot of animosity between Takahashi and the production staff at Square - in an interview much later Hironobu Sakaguchi told Takahashi he hoped to work with him again some day, Takahashi brushed him off; I don't think Takahashi dislikes Sakaguchi, the interview (which also had Nintendo President Iwata) seemed friendly (I'm linking it below), but I think there may still be some hard feelings with the former FF leader.
1998-99 - Xeno-team members were broken apart with Takahashi heading to the FF8 team, and much of the rest going to Chrono Cross (a bit of a remake of Radical Dreamers). Chrono Cross was disastrous from a dev standpoint, and for much of the staff it was the last straw- Mitsuda became hospitalized with stress during this game's development; it must have been nasty since they took his credits off of the Chrono Trigger port to PSX. He would leave Square and not work with them again for 18 years when he did some work on some FF15 DLC.
1999 - took a huge chunk of Square's talent with him to Namco to form Monolith Soft studio.
2001 - Relationships with Namco quickly soured when they discovered that Namco was not the home they were looking for, and in 2001 Monolith Soft leadership (Hirohide Sugiura and Tetsuya Takahashi) was already in talks with Nintendo executive Shinji Hatano (one of Nintendo's video game department founding members from back in 1972).
2002 - things worsened when Namco's leadership had a shake-up, Takahashi and Soraya Saga were removed from the lead positions on the dev team for Xenosaga Episode 2 and 3; and after things were really bad. Namco was re-arranging the studio.
2007 - Nintendo purchases 80% of Monolith Soft - and they become exclusive to Nintendo platforms but with longterm creative goals; vertical map design, open world design; and these missions were realized with Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
2014/15 - Monolith Tokyo would help Nintendo EPD in the development of the open world style Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - while simultaneously developing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Takahashi has stated XC2 actually only required about 40% of the capacity, while the other 60% were on Breath of the Wild).
2018 - This update gets released: Tetsuya Takahashi, Yasuyuki Honne, Makoto Shimamoto, and Tadahiro Usuda were there the entire journey from Chrono Trigger to this DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/I ... 11179.html

Shulk and Fiora

One of Elma's affinity chart lines is all based on going to different areas in Alrest and seeing a cut scene discussing theme. I was disappointed that part of the world tree, but not the lower orbital station itself, was included as one of the cut scenes. They appear to be hesitant to expose the creator of Alrest, the Architect, to discussion or scrutiny by Shulk, Fiona, and Elma. Maybe I was hoping for too much, but I thought at LEAST addressing the tie in between the Architect and Zanza would have been cool (other than the tie in from the game's ending itself).

I also wish that there would have been a scene for Elma in the Land of Morytha. Based simply on timelines, it's becoming less and less likely that Alrest, prior to Klaus' activation of the Conduit, is in fact Earth. Could be an alternate universe thing I suppose, or Alrest and Earth could be completely unrelated. I'm doing reading online to try and stitch it together better, but a scene with Elma in Morytha would have been at least intriguing.

It was fairly clear at the end of XC that the planet Klaus had his orbital base around was Earth given that you travel through the Sol system at the end... That was, at least, the original intention of Takahashi. I don't think he was thinking about a connection between the original Xenoblade and the greater Xeno-universe at the time of its creation - he put a game together with the intention of exploring vertical design on a large scale... I would be shocked if Faxanadu had no inspiration on this. Another thing is that the plot mechanics of Xenoblade are unoriginal compared to his other games - much of Xenogears and Xenosaga are repackaged to fit the new characters and settings - and the storytelling is slimmed down as well.

With XCX, he became interested in the greater Xeno-universe again and crafted a new story to fit at the very beginning of the timeline, when humans first left Earth. It fits about 15,000 years before the events of Xenogears. In Xenogears and Xenoblade Chronicles X, Earth is "lost" shortly after humans began traveling into space. This is kind of similar to Asimov's Foundation universe - from which Takahashi was heavily inspired... especially with Xenosaga.

In XC2, he may be redacting the storyline by obscuring the planet Klaus had his orbit around. It might not be Earth, but rather a different human planet. I've put a bit of thought into it. Taking the old timeline and mashing it with XCX, you get something like this:

20XX - Zohar discovered on Earth near Lake Turkana, Elma reaches earth
2054 - Earth Destroyed
2056 - Landing on Mira, New Jerusalem/New LA founded. Also, the post-game quest of XCX revealed the survival of other Ark ships when they are contacted.
2XXX - Zohar/Conduit weapon prototype created, weapon disappears
6XXX - Zohar/Conduit reacquired, Deus project resumed.
7000 - Deus weapon & Eldridge crash.
17000 - Deus weapon resurrected.

10,000 years seems to be the distance between the creation and end of Alrest. It doesn't really fit. What we can say is that the Zohar monolith did survive, even though the Wave Existence was released. Alrest could potentially be the Xenogears planet 27000+ years in the future.

Although, with what has been said in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it looks like rather than redactions Takahashi intends for each game to be linked through the Conduit/Zohar in a sort of multiverse.

As another note, that is not Elma's true body. That is her Mim.