Jak II

Jak and Daxter may have been a light-hearted game, but 2004's Jak II turned the brightness down by a spectacular amount. The bright, pastoral openness of the first game is hedged into an enormous but dark, dirty, run-down city. The platform aspects remain the same, but the addition of a variety of guns add shooter to the genre list. More than the appearance darkens in this game, as the bright-eyed, silent Jak of the original gains a voice and turns anti-hero, with a predilection for hijacking vehicles and mowing down pedestrians caught in the crossfire. The darkness is also an indicator of depth, however, as the plot is more intricate and the characters more detailed than before.

When the investigation of a Precursor relic on the behalf of Samos and Keira goes amiss, Jak and Daxter find themselves alone in a strange city, but not for long: Jak is captured by the Krimzon Guard while Daxter runs off, promising to rescue his friend in no time. Two years later, Jak's a prisoner, undergoing near-constant torture and infusions of dark eco. Daxter finds him in the nick of time, as Baron Praxis, the ruler of the city, issues the order to have Jak killed off that night. Jak utters his first words before transforming into a uncontrollable monster and only barely changes back before killing his best friend. Thus begins an effort to get revenge on Praxis, whether it be joining Torn and the Underground to overthrow the Baron or working as hired muscle for Krew, the city's biggest mobster. Throw in the fact that the city itself is under assault by Metalheads, the true heir needs protecting, Keira and Samos are still missing, and the captain of the KG has a burning desire for Jak's head on a plate, the Demolition Duo have their work cut out for them.

Images:

J&D, the new look
Tall, dark, and gruesome
Erol, KG captain and Praxis' right hand man
Jak is a little too pleased with his new weapon
Torn is less pleased with newcomers
Ashelin, KG spy, is also a tad suspicious
Krew may be scum, but he's powerful scum
Sig, Krew's main enforcer, is surprisingly decent, though
Things may be bleak, but there's always time to relax
Game opening movie

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Seamless loading of a massive map is the major hallmark of this 2001 release. In most respects a fairly typical platformer, with a set amount of health that never increases, the only "power-ups" being new colors of eco (an energy source with different effects depending on the type), and some driving sequences, Jak and Daxter still garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews. While there was nothing especially innovative in the gameplay, story, or characters, the classic elements of a silent protagonist, obnoxious sidekick, and standard jumping and collecting puzzles merged together to create a wonderful, light-hearted, and fantastically fun game.

The ever-silent Jak and his best friend, Daxter, have disobeyed orders—as teenagers tend to do—and gone out to Misty Island. After witnessing a gathering of Lurkers and being attacked by a guard, Daxter is knocked into a pool of dark eco and transformed into a little orange critter dubbed an ottsel (half otter, half weasel). Samos, the Green Sage, tells them that they must travel across the continent to the Dark Sage in order to have Daxter's condition reversed. Trouble is, there's an awful lot of Lurkers between their village and the Dark Sage...

Images:

The titular duo
Samos, pontificating at length
Keira: Samos' daughter and mechanic extraordinaire
Hanging around the seaside
Spinning through the jungle
Fighting a Lurker
A little dance of victory
The game trailer

Xenosaga

This massive, three-part game (Der Wille zur Macht, 2003; Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 2005; Also sprach Zarathustra, 2006—North American release dates) bears a number of similarities to its spiritual predecessor, Xenogears. Although many of the creators were the same, the company changed, and so the concepts were revisited in a new light without directly connecting the two. The changes continued in the saga, however, as any number of people involved in the creation changed from episode to episode, resulting in occasionally inconsistant character design and some fogginess of overall plot. The conversion from Japan to North America also brought changes in some of the scenes: censored for blood or violence in order to reduce the rating. Also prone to change were the voice actors, resulting in at least one character going from a light tenor to a mellow baritone. Retaining from Xenogears the themes of gnosticism, philosophy, and psychology, Xenosaga heavily references Nietzsche and Jung in everything from the game titles to character names. Much like Xenogears, Xenosaga features long cinematic scenes that occasionally interfere with the feeling of gameplay, but fans tend to overlook the flaws in favor of the incredibly complex story and character relationships. Fortunately, there's an in-game database to help keep people, places, events, and terminology straight. It's a testament to the intricacies of the games that the database is necessary.

Major characters

Shion Uzuki: Lead developer for Vector Industries on project KOS-MOS, a brilliant young woman. I II III

Jin Uzuki: Shion's estranged elder brother. A gifted swordsman, but aimless in life. Professions have included medical doctor and bookstore owner. IIa IIb III

KOS-MOS: An experimental battle android with a fierce loyalty to Shion that trancends her programming. I II III

chaos: A mysterious young man with a gentle disposition that belies his abilities. I IIa IIb III

Jr.: Apparently a boy of about twelve, captain of one of the galaxy's most powerful battleships, and evident successor to the prestigious Kukai Foundation. I II III

MOMO: A prototype Realian—an artificial human—in the form of a young girl. I II III

Ziggy: Zigguraut 8, a cyborg charged with MOMO's protection. His price for taking the mission was to be allowed to die. I II III

Margulis: A fierce opponent and swordsman on par with Jin. They have a shared history.

Albedo: A white-haired, virtually immortal psychopath with a fixation on Jr.

Gaignun Kukai: The titular head of the Kukai Foundation. His relationship to Jr. is not immediately apparent, although the similarity of appearance is marked.

Broken down by individual game, all beyond the first entry will contain spoilers for the previous installments:

Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht

Sometime this century, an archeological expedition in Kenya uncovers a golden monolith known as a Zohar, with catastrophic effect. Fast forward a few millenia, to where humans populate over 500,000 planets, but no one knows the location of their original home, now known as Lost Jerusalem.

About fourteen years previously, Shion's home planet of Miltia was ravaged by malfunctioning combat Realians and lost in space-time following the emergence of the Gnosis—extra-dimensional creatures with the ability to crystalize organic life on contact. KOS-MOS is designed to combat Gnosis, but she's untested and unable to repel the attack on their ship which happened to be transporting a Zohar. Shion, KOS-MOS, and a couple of others are the only survivors, picked up by a salvage ship owned by the Kukai Foundation, of which chaos—retained for his ability to dissolve Gnosis with a touch—is a crew member. Along the way they pick up Ziggy and MOMO, the latter having been rescued from Margulis and wanted for the data encoded in her. When Jr.'s battleship is framed for the destruction of Shion's transport in an effort to claim MOMO, they must all work together to get themselves in the clear. Pursued and opposed by any number of factions that want possession of both the Zohar and MOMO, this is, to say the least, no simple task.

Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Continuing immediately after the events of the first game, this episode features largely around Jr.'s history. Jin Uzuki is introduced in the beginning in a flashback of the destruction of Miltia, where he meets chaos (physically the same as he is fourteen years later) and a Realian named Canaan, who are trying to find the source of the planet's troubles. Jin manages to give Margulis his distinctive scar at this point, Canaan stores encoded information in his brain until it can be extracted later, and they stumble over and rescue a couple of injured boys: Nigredo and Rubedo, A.K.A. Gaignun Kukai and Jr. In the present time, familial discord abounds as Rubedo and Albedo fight each other over the information still locked inside MOMO, Shion holds Jin to blame for the death of their parents, and chaos is revealed to have a connection to one of the galaxy's major players.

Xenosaga Episode III: Also sprach Zarathustra

A year after the death of Albedo, Shion has left Vector and is working with an underground group of saboteurs known as Scientia. While looking for information about her father's possible involvement in the destruction of Miltia she's called upon by old friends. A section of Lost Jerusalem has appeared, floating in space, but was pulled into an anomaly along with the ship that rescued Shion the previous year. In an effort to save them, Shion and the others finally discover the whole truth behind the destruction of Miltia, the existance of the Gnosis, and the path of destruction that humanity has been nudged along for thousands of years.

Xenogears

Philosophical, psychological, and religious themes pervade 1998's Xenogears, enough so that a decade later the intricacies and overall meaning of the game are still hotly debated. On the surface it's a confusing mesh of destruction, hatred, and giant robots. Underneath that is a confusing mesh of love, death, betrayal, psychosis, self-determination, and 10,000 years of machinations and plotting. The game mechanics are subject to debate, as the innovative mix of semi-turn-based battle and combination attacks are juxtaposed against the unlikely addition of platforming elements, leading to some extremely unusual jumping puzzles prone to interruption in mid-leap by random battle. Equally subject to debate are the long cutscenes, some lasting upwards of twenty minutes at a time. While the story unfolds and the characters are explored, it can be quite frustrating to play for five minutes, watch ten minutes, play ten seconds, watch fifteen minutes, play thirty minutes, watch twenty minutes, etc. Also of concern to some is the disparity of graphics, with less than stellar in-game animation occasionally being supplanted by hand-drawn anime sequences. Regardless of how they may fall on these minor issues, fans of the game universally applaud the twisted depths of the story, with references ranging from Gnosticism to Soylent Green and the vagaries of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Freudian psychology.

The nations of Aveh and Kislev have been at war for time beyond memory. Kislev had developed an edge until the appearance of a new fighting force, Gebler, put Aveh back on top. The war literally drops into the middle of a quiet border town and the resulting destruction forces Fei—a young man with no memories prior to three years previous when he was taken into the village with severe injuries—to depart for the world at large on the advice of his friend and town doctor, Citan. Fei meets Elly, a Gebler soldier, for the first time in a series of life-changing meetings before falling in with Bart, the deposed heir of Aveh. Reluctantly joining Bart's insurrection, Fei is gradually exposed to the contrived forces behind the war, the feuding religious sects of the Ethos and Nisan, thousands of years of history that had been deliberately buried, and a handful of strange people who alternately want to make him stronger, empower his enemies, or just kill him for existing. The matter of warring nations falls by the wayside as it becomes apparent that the issue at hand is the survival of the human race.

Images:

Your first glimpse of Fei
The improbably-haired Fei against the backdrop of his burning town
Meeting Elly
A recurring image
Bartholomew Fatima (Bart)
Left to right: Bart, Citan, Fei, and Billy—an Ethos warrior priest
The Nisan cathedral
Grahf, who has a habit of empowering Fei's enemies
Id, who has a habit of killing entire cities for amusement
The seemingly irrelevant opening sequence
In-game graphics demo: Citan, Billy, and Elly fight Id