Xenogears: Flashbacks and stuff.
Hour 47: Citan speaks of the terror unleashed by Merkava, as it absorbed the mutated humans while attacking the rest. The game, however, spends very little time dwelling on the horror, instead focusing on more of Fei's story. Fei is found comatase in the ruins where Merkava took off from, and Shevat decides that there's a high chance he's going to turn back into Id despite Taura's efforts so they freeze him in carbonite, getting the 90's Square RPG reference to Star Wars checked off.
Citan asks Zephyr about just why Shevat fears Fei so much, and she reveals that it isn't just because Grahf caused destruction, but that Grahf's mere existence was in fact Shevat's fault. Shevat had feared that, even should they win the war, that the people would all follow Nisan instead of them, so they struck a deal with Solaris, essentially trapping Sophia and her followers in a Solarian ambush. (In exchange, Shevat took custody of a Solarian woman who held far too much power and had been manipulating the Gazel Ministry to their chagrin. Citan immediately speculates that this was Miang, because if a woman is causing lots of trouble in the XG world...) The ambush failed because Sophia sacrificed herself to allow her guardians (Lacan, Roni Fatima, Krelian, and Zephyr herself) to escape, but Lacan was driven mad by seeing his loved one killed due to the greed of some old men, and ended up becoming Grahf.
She also mentioned that Krelian suffered much the same fate, though rather than become a crazy destroyer he decided that since God didn't exist, he would "create God with his own hands". And he dedicated himself to searching to some things of legend which are now all too real: Mahanon (the Eldridge), the tree of wisdom (its computer), and the Zohar Modifier (Deus' power supply, which Miang had earlier revealed was also the power suppply of all gears and ether power in the world). Zephyr also reveals that Lacan may have found the Zohar, and it was through tapping its power that he became Grahf.
From here the game cuts to inside Fei's head. Id appears and reveals that the reason Fei has been unconscious is that because, due to the stress of recent events, he has created a -fourth- personality so that he can escape. Id is pleased, because now all he has to do is manipulate this fourth personality and he can finally break free again.
Fei, meanwhile, dreams of episodes from his past life as Lacan. We see some scenes developing his relationship with Sophia, and the love they had for each other. We see Krelian, obviously infatuated with the woman, learning that he was once a violent individual until Sophia taught him to be better... but she never loved him the way Krelian wanted, and he became obviously jealous of Lacan. We see more of Sophia and her ideology, that she believed that everyone has the ability to overcome hardship, and she is trying to be an example to prove that to everyone, despite (as she sees it) all her own weaknesses.
Finally, we see the events Zephyr had described, and it's hard not to feel for the anguished Lacan as Sophia sends her ship on a suicide run into the Gazel flagship to buy her friends an escape route, begging Lacan to "live!" even as she dies. Krelian eats all the paint chips and announces his plans to create his own God, while Lacan turns inwards, finishing Sophia's portrait in anguished silence.
Later, we see him exploring the Shevat prison, though how he gets there isn't clear. There, he sees a woman he mistakes for Elly, but the game makes it quite clear he is looking at Miang. Miang tempts him with power - the power he could have used to save Elly, the power with which he could wreak vengeance on his enemies. I am amused at the symmetry at how Lacan, or Grahf, would later offer power to others. But in this case, it seems that Lacan, despite doubts in his head crying out at him not to, sought out the Zohar at Miang's urging, obtaining the power to have his vengeance, and to bring about the crisis which all but destroyed the world 500 years ago.
And now, the game cuts back to the present. Id has taken control, and just as ws feared, is planning to find the Zohar himself. Dan (apprently still alive!) and Midori have come to see Fei, but Fei has just enough sense of himself to warn them to run, before Id takes over and breaks out of the carbonite encasement.
Hour 48: Inside Fei's head, Fei tries to reason with Id, but Id will have none of it, angrilly talking about his hatred for the father who created the "Fei" personality. Id also reveals that the hate didn't start there, that he blames his father for some trauma he experienced as achild, though he clams up before talking about it, gleefully noting that Fei's "friends" have arrived so he'll finally get to kill them now. Kill everyone now, in fact! Id is going to make contact with the Zohar and use its energy to destroy the world. Great.
The party fights Id in his fancy new Zohar-powered mech, although this is really just an excuse for gameplay as it is irrelevant; Id can not be so easily stopped. Wiseman makes just his second appearance on disc 2, though, trying to stop Id as well. Id taunts Wiseman for wearing a mask, calling him a weakling who can't bear to face the son he failed. Yes, Wiseman is Fei's father, the mysteriously missing Khan Wong! Id rants at his father and begins attacking him. Khan tries to reason with him, and finally reaches out to Fei inside Id and tells him to "accept his memories". Don't think too hard about the mechanics of this. Citan, meanwhile, calls at Fei to remember his desire to save Elly.
Meanwhile, Fei is innundated with Id's memories (whether this is due to Id or Khan isn't clear). He comments that feeling this, he understands Id's pain, and comments that it even feels kinda pleasant, and even starts to think about going along with Id's plans before Citan's words jolt him back to reality. He instead continues to wander inside himself, eventually finding a young version of himself watching a video of himself playing with his mother, a scene which Fei has stumbled upon before.
Id explains that this Fei is the "coward", or original Fei, scarcely able to keep the loathing out of his voice. He shortly decides to explain to Fei the story of the coward, apparently feeling charitable since he's about to destroy everything and will never get another chance to rant.
We learn that Fei was born to a happy, normal family, spending most of his time with his mother as his father was always away on (Shevat agent) business. One day, however, his mother Karen changed dramatically, becoming cold. She took Fei to a Solarian lab and had many horrible experiments done on him. Not only were the experiments painful, but they were deeply traumatic and horrifying, as some involved attempts to psychically link him to other humans ("men, women, the old, the young, even demi-humans") which invariably led to said others dying horribly, apparently due to Fei's own power. Id describes it as hell, and it's hard to disagree with his assessment. Young Fei tried to explain things to his father the rare times he showed up, but his claims were laughed off as childish fantasies. By the time his father did believe, it was too late. Fei had not been able to handle the trauma, so he had created Id, a persona onto which he offloaded every one of his many extremely painful memories, but keeping all the good memories for himself. Hence, Id's description of his previous personality as the coward, and his utter hatred for him, the mother who abused him, the father who ignored him, and the world which allowed this to happen.
Karen being an absolutely horrible person had already been corroborated by Ramsus, and Fei wonders how she could change and be so horrible. Id reveals that Karen had become Miang. Just in case you needed another villain's entire existence to lay at her feet. Miang was able to confirm through her experiments that Fei was a Contact, which was of interest to her for Deus' reactivation. It was also of interest to Grahf, who came to abduct Fei for his own purposes (as we know, he succeeded). Khan fought Grahf to keep him from getting to Fei, while Karen watched on silently, caring little as to the fight's outcome. Khan was defeated, and almost killed, and Fei, overcome with anguish at seeing his father about to die, transformed into Id and lashed out with his powers, killing his mother. Which despite the fact that his mother was pretty much satan, only traumatised him further.
In the outside world, Khan apologises to Id, regretting that he didn't notice his wife's transformation and begging for forgiveness, but Id has none to give. Fei desperately searches inside himself for anything that can help, time running short. He finds himself in the coward's memories. He tries to get the coward to see reality, to see that his life is more than these few happy memories he replays for himself. He tries to convince the coward to show Id the happy memories, too. The coward refuses, saying that he refuses to share them with the one who killed mother. Id and the coward being to argue, so Fei steps in, angrily declaring that "we" killed mother, that it is wrong to blame each other when they are all the same person. He makes an impassioned demand to the coward to show Id the happier memories.
And this time the coward agrees, showing what actually happened at Karen's death. Id's powers had gone out of control, and in fact had been aimed at himself, but Karen had jumped in their way, saving her son's life. As Miang, she could not possibly have killed herself, but somehow Karen found a way, a powerful act that showed how much she loved her son. At this, Id is overwhlmed, first trying to call it a trick. As he realises is isn't, he breaks down in tears. He regrets wanting to kill everyone, but most of all he regrets wanting to kill Elly, the woman who, through his memory of past lives, he knows he has loved for 10 millenia. Id is redeemed through the love of his mother and Elly. I have a lot ot trouble doing this scene justice in text. It works, in context, extremely well.
Id, now, shares all his memories of past selves, the memories he recalled under Miang's painful experiments, with Fei. We, the player, get little scraps of Fei's past lives, but the main thing the sequence draws attention to is Elly, who has repeatedly died trying to protect Fei, but always beseeching him to go on living. We see Lacan's transformation into Grahf, where he took this advice literally and decided to live forever... until he could see the world which robbed him of happiness destroyed.
Now, the scene shifts, and we realise that Fei/Id has finally made contact with the Zohar. There, he talks to a strange creature, calling itself a Wave Existence: a being from another dimension trapped in the Zohar. The Zohar engine, it turns out, is a source of infinite power because it is tapping upon this being it has trapped, drawing it out of said dimension. The creature desires to return home, but it is trapped. The original Fei (Abel) had made contact with the Zohar and it had created Elly in response to the orphan Fei's desire for his mother. (There are some fairly squick ramifications for Elly the essentially the dream woman of the Contact, and based on his mother, but I digress). Regardless, a part of the Wave Existence exists in Fei, the Contact who inadvertently trapped It, and in Elly, the creature it created. The Eixtence has now reunited with Fei, but also needs to be reunited with Elly to escape back to its own world. It also needs to have the Zohar trapping it destroyed, which is now the core of the Deus system. So basically, Deus needs to die, not just because it wants to destroy the world and has essentially fused with Elly, but also because it's the only way this creature can get home.
This sequence is a bit odd, certainly, and I'm never sure what I think about it. Certainly, it is primarily an explanation for the special purpose of the Contact in the story: Fei can channel limitless energy due to his contact with the Zohar (although only Id and Grahf ever seem to have figured out how to do it... Fei mostly does it in the form of a badass gear that the Wave Existence transforms Weltall into). It is also an explanation for the limitless energy and power Deus posesses. The character itself is somewhat unnecessary, though I suppose it is barely a character. (It never appears onscreen again.) The creature is essentially "God" within the Xenogears cosmology, so it's nice that this God is a benevolent creature rather than the monster Deus is, I suppose. Plus you get to save God, don't you feel like a badass.
Meanwhile, the newly united Fei reaches out to his father, asking if he's all right. Khan reveals that he is, and that... IT IS TIME FOR US TO BECOME ONE!
Grahf reveals that he is, in fact, Khan. Grahf has been jumping bodies for centuries to stay alive (this has been previously mentioned) and that when Khan fought him to save Id from him three years ago, Grahf had jumped into him. However, Khan was apparently more badass than most people Grahf tried to possess (there isn't any explanation for this, and Khan doesn't seem like much of a "badass" to me but it's probably some martial arts master stereotype) and couldn't be fully possessed, sometimes able to manifest as himself, and chose to appear as Wiseman during those times, probably because he didn't want Fei to have to deal with his father being Grahf (kind of a sketchy thing to do... I mentioned that I don't think Khan is much of a badass, right?). Grahf taunts Fei, threatening to kill his friends if Fei doesn't fight him, hoping to weaken Fei until he can bodyjump into the body of a Contact, access the Zohar again, and use Deus to destroy the world.
Fei tries to reason with Grahf, indicating his desire to save Elly, and wondering how Grahf can't see the importance of that given their shared memories. Grahf responds that Elly and Miang are part of the Deus system, and can not be saved: that the Miang personality has conquered Elly, and indeed will continue to be reborn as long as humans exist, taking over other women. This is pretty flimsy reason to destroy the world, Grahf! Fei doesn't think much of it either, choosing to believe he can save Elly from Deus/Miang. Might as well trying to destroy Deus and seeing if Miang goes down with it, certainly a better plan than Grahf's stupid one. Miang gets some points here: this stupid Grahf plan is her doing, as he was convinced to want Deus reborn so he could use it for destruction, rather than using his abilities to just destroy Deus. Grahf comes across looking like a moron, though!
Unfortunately for this moron, though, his time in the story is done. The Deus system, having now activated further, is now seeking to reunite with the final part, that which was separated from it first: the Contact. Here, in the presence of where the Zohar fell to earth, it has caught him. Grahf decides to place his faith in Fei after all, offering himself, the fake Contact, up as a sacrifice, but warning Fei this misdirection will not fool Deus for long. He begs Fei to save Elly ("and all the other women with her", barf) from Miang and Deus, as he is consumed.
Reuniuted with the party, and reunited with himself and his memories, Fei reveals a bit more to the party before they leave the crash landing site of the Zohar. He reveals to them the remants of the Deus system's computer, Kadomony, which had created the original human woman (besides Abel, who somehow survived the crash himself) upon landing on earth, who in turn went on to birth all the original humans, including Cain and the Gazel Ministry, as well as two aspects of herself... the nurturer Elly and the destroyer Miang.
Hour 49: After all that plot stuff, there's another surprisingly long and rather boring plot section detailing how the party attacked Merkava, going through all sorts of shenanigans to get through its barriers, around its defences, and destroy its main cannon so it could stop wrecking humanity. There was probably going to be gameplay attached to this? Bart features prominently in the plans, as do ships which transform into mechs. I'd forgotten this sequence even occurs! Boring anime nonsense. Anyway they succeed, and may even destroy Merkava! The party is all "oh no, what about Elly!" while my reaction is certainly along the lines of "fuck Elly, I'm sure she's a sweet young woman and all but hell if we need to kill her to take down world-destroying calamities I will take that trade!" Fortunately for our dumb part, Deus is okay. It may have lost its ship, but it has a new, better plan: terraform the ENTIRE DAMN PLANET into a mobile weapon. Which also means killing all humans. The party gathers at the ruins of Shevat to plan its final assault into the Deus system to stop it.
There are a few scenes in Shevat, with the survivors of humanity. The world is rapidly descending into greater cold as Deus terraforms it, attempting to wipe everyone out. The Thames captain has survived, because that's what men of the sea do. There's a cute scene where he tricks the stepson of his first mate, Hans, into finally calling Hans his father. Queen Zephyr has also survived, guiltilly reflecting on the errors Shevat made which led to this situation but neverthless resolved to lead the survivors. She asks Fei if he has the courage to fight the woman he loves; he reaffirms his dedication to destroying Deus and freeing Elly. And finally, it is revealed that Ramsus has survived. There's a nice scene where Ramsus is referring to himself as trash. Citan slaps him and points out by doing that, he is disrespecting those who believe in him, those he saved from ending up as test subjects as he built Gebler to allow third-class citizens... such as the Elements. Citan notes that by calling himself trash, he is calling those who believe in him trash as well. A veil is lifted from Ramsus' eyes, and Dominia in particular is overjoyed to see him finally get over his demons, leaving the fandom with a little fuel for Ramsus/Dominia shipping.
Beyond that, there are some sidequests to mop up...
Hour 50: The more interesting sidequest is a return to Zeboim, where we learn a bit about society. We learn that Miang may have engineered its downfall, to get humans on a better track for being parts of Deus, creating a calamity where most humans were unable to breed. Emeralda was created by Kim, a past Fei, and Elly, in order to save human fertility somehow (the details are sketchy, but hey nanomachines can do everything I guess) but she died and Emeralda was taken from them for military purposes, and the society crumbled. Emeralda, meanwhile, randomly turns into an adult because she feels she'll be able to better help her "parents" this way. Hey it's a free boost to Atk and Ether, I'll take it.
The other optional dungeon is the Duneman Isle, which is pretty uneventful except that the Thames captain told us about it so doing it is a must. It's also the source of the only lategame foot combat, and a random which can OHKO everyone except Citan who remains completely ridiculous.
Next up: the end!
