Why I almost gave up on Xenosaga

In my previous post, I said that I would talk about anything that crosses my mind regarding my work on the Xenosaga videos. And what's been crossing my mind at the time of writing this, is something that is making me question the quality of Xenosaga's story and my whether or not I should continue this project.

I've mentioned before that I haven't finished the game, or have watched all the cut-scenes before I started this project, so I didn't really have a total understanding of the plot. I know that saying this is going to make me look like a total dumbass who is impatient, but I think that it's better for me to be honest, rather than lie. So a good portion of my knowledge of Xenosaga's plot has been coming from my work on further episodes in this series.

However, working on the most recent episodes has been bothering me quite a bit. You see in the setting of Xenosaga, there are a lot of things that's needed to wrap your head around to get a full understanding of the plot and the world Xenosaga has created. Up until now Xenosaga did a good job of expositing; keeping things vague, while at the same time making them simple and understanding. At the part of the story I'm in now, they use that same exposition technique, but they're trying to provide exposition for too many things at once. I suppose I could just remove the scene I'm talking about here, hoping that it would have no real impact further in the plot (it's not like it's the first time I've made that decision woking on this series).

It also doesn't help that there are actually quite of number of plot-holes I've noticed. The first one I saw is in the first episode I made. At one point Shion mentions that she used to live on Miltia, and that nobody is allowed to go back there. Although later on in a scene where she is talking to her brother over the phone, Shion said that she would visit him eventually. Thing is, Shion's brother lives on Miltia. I thought that nobody outside that planet was allowed to go there? I don't know, maybe I took that statement out of context, or it could've been a translation error. Plus, it didn't really seem to affect the main plot so I let it slide when I posted it, thinking that things would've been better explained later.

After that, I haven't really noticed any other plot holes while working on further episodes. That was until recently. Later in the story, we're introduced to a character named Junior. Even though I haven't gone through the story in completion, I can tell that the writers for Xenosaga were trying to set up a romance story between him and MOMO. Problem is that in one point in the story, Junior indirectly calls MOMO's "father", Joachim Mizrahi, insane, leaving MOMO upset. Later on, you see Junior asking his friend and co-worker not bring up Mizrahi when he's around her due to her being a realian. Than why did you go on that rant about him in front of her earlier!? He knew MOMO was a realian, but that still didn't stop him from his diatribe!? In fact you never see Junior confronting MOMO about that situation. Next moment their together, Junior tries to put the moves on MOMO, without ever apologizing or consider if she's still a little upset over what he said earlier. Ass-hole.

Then there came another plot hole that just blew my mind in how stupid and ridiculous it was. I'm still a little confused about this scene, so excuse me if I get some things wrong in this explanation. Anyways, our main protagonists are under arrest, and while awaiting questioning, they are introduced to this woman whose working on the inside, trying to prove they're innocent. To summarize this event, here's what she asks them to do. She asks our heroes to knock her out, run away and retrieve video footage stored in KOS-MOS' memory bank and give it to that same woman from earlier. THAT..DOSEN'T..MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE! If you want to prove them innocent, than why do you want them to knock you out and attack every guard in the way!? That would just add to their list of charges! Secondly, this woman seems to be the one in charge of the soldiers that arrested our heroes, so why couldn't she just escort them to KOS-MOS and receive the footage from there!? What's the point!? Why create this elaborate stage when it makes NO FUCKING SENSE!!!

Sigh.... Now I think I've given a good explanation on what I said earlier about having second thoughts on this project and on Xenosaga as a whole. I mean, I really did think that Xenosaga had a really good story to it, but after seeing how confusing it is, and how gaping the plot-holes are, I'm starting to think that my admiration for Xenosaga's story and this project as a whole is a total lie. However, even with that I'm still determined to finish this project. Why? Because I've spent so much time and effort into this, I'd hate to see it end up being worthless. And who knows, maybe things will start to make sense in the end. And if it dosen't, I could try to edit these scenes out.

Xenosaga: Episode 3 and announcement

I am so, so, so, sorry about the delay of this video. I know I said that I would have this up on saturday, but a couple things have gotten in the way, which prevented me from doing so, but here it sorry. Again, I'm very sorry.




With that, I would also like to make an announcement for this blog and series. Due to the problem of trying to keep this on schedule, I'm not going to be releasing any more episodes for a while. What I'm going to do, is finish making every episode for this series, and then I'll post them on the site after that task is accomplished. I feel like I work better when I'm not under any sort of pressure. Plus, I got to admit that I haven't seen every cutscene for the game, so it would probably be better if I had a full grasp of the plot before I release this series. I'll still keep the blog up and make posts whenever there's something relating to Xenosaga that crosses my mind. So with that, I'll say "see ya later".

Episode 3 Will Come Out Next Week

I know that in a previous post, I said that to some extent I was finished with episode 3 of this series. What I meant by that was that I had the video I made for episode 3 in the days I did this series using Movie Maker.... or I thought I did.You see, when my laptop caught a virus erasing everything installed on my laptop, I was kind of fortunate to have episodes 1 and 3 intact on my flash drive. However, one day when I was trying to make some room on my flash drive, I deleted episode 3 without thinking I was going to need it later. I forgot about this happening and I made the premature statement that I said I was kind of finished with episode 3. Also I got to admit that the other reason why I didn't finish the episode for this week was because throughout this weekend I was busy with school and work, and I spent my free time playing video games and watching TV. I know it's kind of stupid for me to admit this, but it's not like there are thousands of people watching my videos and visiting this blog. So to the two people who visit this blog on a regular basis, I want to apologize for the lack of a new episode this week, and I'll have episode 3 up on the Ninth of July.

Xenosaga: Episode 2

Here's the second episode of my Xenosaga series.

Xenosaga: Episode 1

 Well, it's finally here, the first episode of my Xenosaga series. It's been a while since I started this project and only now am I posting the first episode on the internet.

Episode 1 Will Be Released This Saturday

Dear god I'm lazy! It's been what? Two months since I started this blog? And I haven't even posted the first episode yet, even though I've been working on it it for months!? Sigh, unfortunatley to those who care about this little project I'm working on, it won't be released until saturday of this week. The video itself is actually finished but I wanted to release it on saturday because not allot of internet series (at least not the ones that I'm familiar with) don't post any new videos on that day of the week, which I thought would give the series more exposure on the internet. I was going to post it on the saturday that preceded this post, but I got distracted that weekend with school, the movies, hanging out with friends, work, errands and just plain goofing off, to even bother working to set-up an account on blip tv, where I'll be posting the episodes on. I do plan on releasing new episodes on a weekly schedule, and since episode 2 is finished as well, and episode 3 to a certain extent, I don't think I'll have to worry about on track to much.

Episode 2 is Finished

 Man, it's been a while since I last posted on this blog. Like it says in the title for this post, episode 2 of my Xenosaga series is complete. I've actually been finished with it since last friday, but I've only able to confirm this today because in the weekend I completed this, I caught the flu, and I got sick during Memorial Day weekend. Plus, school and other things have prevented me from having much free time to write this post, and working on more Xenosaga-related stuff.

 Also, I didn't face the same problem I had while working on episode 1, where the video took 11gb of space. I fixed it by working the episode on the latest version on Sony Vegas, which not only gave me a video that wasn't the size of a World of Warcraft install, but it was superior to Premiere Pro 1.5 in every way.

 Anyways, I'm going to make some adjustments to the episode 1 video before I post it online, but I'll be able to finish it and post it soon. Although considering how busy I am, and how easily distracted I can be, It will probably take another week.

Episode 1 is finally finished

Working on first episode for my Xenosaga series was painful, especially at point where I was trying to finish it. I'm not going to go into much detail, but the biggest problem I faced, and the one I would like to share here, was file size of final video, which was 11 gigabytes. I am not joking. I don't know why really, I guess maybe it has to do with it being in an avi video format, or since that I'm working with with an older version of Adobe Premiere, it may have had some difficulty with exporting a video that's up to fifty minutes in length. I don't know. I solved this problem by putting the 11gig video in Movie Maker, and exporting that to a wmv video that's around 600 megabytes.

 Before I post the video I'm going force ask some friends and acquaintances to watch the video and hear their thoughts on it, wondering if they had any difficulty in following the plot of Xenosaga, and they're thoughts on the editing job I did. When it comes to working on stuff like this, I'm a bit of a perfectionist who wants to fix every problem to be had, especially since I'm working on something that I'm going to put on the internet.

 I'm also thinking about retracting what I wrote in my first post, where I said that I would release these videos on a weekly basis. Keep in mind, I'm working on these videos at my school during their night hours, which is three times a week, with each night lasting four hours, and since I'm currently taking day classes five days a week, and I have to wake up early, those four hours are reduced to three. I suppose I can still try to release these video weekly without any hiccups, but I would have to finish at least the first three episodes (as opposed to two, which I said in my first post), before I post anything. So to those reading, would you prefer the videos to be released weekly, waiting a while longer before I post the first episode? or would you prefer me releasing these videos when I'm done with them, which would likely be on a tri-weekly basis? Let me know.

What I've Actually Been Doing

 So as of right now, I have only gotten six people who have viewed my blog, with no followers or comments. Some people may just give up on their blog at that point, but not me. I'm still going to make posts on this blog, even if in the end, there's only been one person following me. Anyways, to those who actually find my project interesting (both of you), I suppose it's about time I talk about what I've been doing on this project, specifically what I've been doing before I started this blog.

I've actually started making videos for this project around six months ago, finishing five episodes. The reason why I didn't post any of them was because I wasn't really confident in how I did the editing, and a lot of times, I would go back to videos that I already completed, trying to fix things that would cause, at least one person, to nitpick at. It also didn't help that the video-editor I used in making these episodes were Windows Movie Maker. Good news is my school as Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on some of their computers, and I've been using those to make these videos. I know it's pretty dated compared to the latest version of Premiere, but it's free and it's a hell of a lot more advanced than the version of Movie Maker that came with Windows 7.

Now you're probably wondering why I don't just take the videos that I already made, and edit them further in Premiere? Well unfortunately, the laptop I was using in making these videos, caught a virus, and everything on my hard-drive had to be erased. And the real kicker is I couldn't save anything on a flash-drive because everything was inaccessible. The only videos that I saved on my flash-drive, before this event, were for episodes 1 and 3, which I didn't feel were really any good. So yeah, I'm pretty much starting from scratch here.

There have been some changes I made from the old episodes, to the ones that I'm making now. The most noticeable change is the hidden subtitles. One of the reasons why I didn't post the videos that I've made, was because of the subtitles that were seen in every footage that I could find for this game. I didn't really mind them personally, but I'm sure that other people would have had a problem with them, and since I'm trying to fix everything that would cause someone to nit-pick, I was reluctant to post them. Now that I've been working on premiere, I made this widescreen look to the videos, which in turn, hid the subtitles.

Another thing that I wanted to talk about were the length of the videos. I had a little difficulty deciding whether I wanted to make each episode last around an hour or 30 minutes. In the end, I decided to make each episode 40-60 minutes in length, since I wanted to these videos to feel epic in scope, and I felt that a forty-minute episode would've been more appropriate for that goal.

Other than that however, I just want to say "thank you" to everybody who visits this blog (both of you), and that I'm halfway done with working on the video for the first episode.

Welcome to the Blog

I got to admit, I didn't really like playing Xenosaga. In my opinion, the game was slow, boring and featured game-play designs that I feel have been done better in other RPGs. Despite all of that, however, I think that Xenosaga offers one of the best sci-fi stories I've ever seen in a video game, offering many elements that I love seeing in a science fiction story. In fact, I stopped playing the game altogether, and just watch the cut-scenes for the game on YouTube. After watching them for a while, I got kind of annoyed by some parts of the cut-scenes, specifically at points where it would transition to a part of game-play, which kind of broke the flow of watching the cut-scenes a little bit.

I thought that one thing I could do to alleviate this problem would be to just stop watching these cut-scenes altogether and watch the anime series made that was available to watch on Netflix instantly. And despite the problems I had with watching the cut-scenes over YouTube, I still felt that they were far superior to the anime. So one day, I had an idea: "Why don't I try to edit the cut-scenes to make an episodic series out of it"? And so that's where this blog comes into play. I thought that, maybe, it would be a good idea to post the videos on the internet, and so I made this blog to compliment it; to have people get interested in my project and to me report the progresses I make, while I work on it.

However, I don't own the rights the Xenosaga games, and I'm not entirely sure if Namco would be OK if I were to post videos of their properties, and (potentially) make money off of it. I do intend to credit them in every video I make, and I encourage all of you who are following, to purchase at least the first Xenosaga game in support of the official release. If Namco is against this project that I'm doing here,and ask me to stop working on this, I will respectfully, stop working on these videos and take down any videos that I post, regarding this project.

I do plan to have the videos released on a a weekly basis, so before I go ahead and post the first episode of this series, I'm going to finish working on the second episode, just in case there happens to be a problem in my schedule for working on this series. I hope that many of you reading this, find this interesting, and to those who are, I can't wait to hear your feedback when I post the first episode of this series.