What is ‘God’? I was six when I booted up Xenogears in 1998 and witnessed a story that tried to answer that question in a manner as deep as any holy scripture, using allusions to Judaeo-Christian theology, historical atrocities, speculative fiction, continental philosophy, and anime director Hideki Anno’s existential crisis aka Neon Genesis Evangelion. Still, I remain convinced that even after 25 years, and in Xenogears’ grandiose attempt to unravel the mysteries of godhood, it attained a status very close to it.
The story of Xenogears starts by demystifying Stanley Kubrick’s cryptic ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and giving it substance by reinterpreting the Monolith–an alien symbol of transcendent intelligence–as an actual representation of god. Not only does this god participate in creating the first humans and their offsprings, but its prophesied doomsday resurrection lays the ground for an elaborate antinomy between societies with different beliefs like the tech-savvy Kislev and the spiritual-minded Aveh, and creates a mind-boggling divine comedy that will force the player to think and question everything about their life and faith.
At the heart of it all lies Fei, the main character who represents every human’s struggle to determine their political and spiritual standing in a vicious world where each individual’s free will and freedom are constantly being tested. The story dramatizes this conflict by portraying Fei’s inner psychological struggle between his roles as a normal human being, a cruel tool of war, and his third hidden identity as god’s messenger on earth. But if you take the wacky stuff out of the equation, all you are left with is a normal, very relatable human suffering from the influence of higher powers, with each one thinking it has all the right answers to the world’s mysteries and even the afterlife beyond.
A rich tapestry of locations and events is woven through this setup, each of them imbued with clear allegories to our real history, religions, and myths. Xenogears prophesies that our planet Earth will die and get abandoned for unknown reasons in the future–and names it Lost Jerusalem–but tries to interpret the causes for its downfall using locations that reference incidents where humans tried to fight over religious reasons, like the floating city of Shevat which is built on the remains of the Babel Tower, or the Nimrod kingdom, named after the king who commissioned the tower’s construction and ended up defying the Hebrew god Yahweh.
The game also puts these influences into practice by having both factions unite in-game to fight another country that worships Deus (Latin for God – a name chosen by the game’s localizers over Yahweh, so as not to upset religious fundamentalists). The game’s debt to real-world religious imagery is so bizarre–and transparent–that you’d have to be blind not to see it, and what makes it truly thought-provoking is how the game doesn’t shy away from digging deep into existential themes other games only skim the surface of, such as humanity’s never-ending wars, religious fanaticism, and god’s true role in all this mess.
One prominent example is how Fei’s nemesis Karellen only looks to god for answers about life and why we suffer, and can’t understand Fei’s obsession with this imperfect, transient life. On the other hand, Fei’s approach is all about embracing his imperfect self by putting all his different parts together, like a jigsaw puzzle inside his mind modeled after the Freudian model of Id, Ego, and superego. That way, he’s able to achieve a state that Nietzsche calls Übermensch, like a superhero who lives by his own rules, away from religious dogma or herd mentality, and without relying on the promises of a better tomorrow or an afterlife in heaven. Carl Jung is also referenced here somewhere, the collective unconscious and all that jazz, but if I keep going, my bosses would have to pay me a literal thesis bonus so I’ll cut them some slack here!
It’s important to note that Xenogears doesn’t really establish either stance as the sole truth, but both stances are rooted in real philosophy, and I felt immense spiritual fulfillment from how it incorporated an entire history’s worth of weighty debates into its arguments-15,000 years according to lore, dating to the first biblical figure Abel–and even setting up a literal meeting with God itself. I could only imagine the countless hours of scholarly pursuits undertaken by the developers to portray such a riveting tale, and it can be considered a type of religious devotion in its own right.
I wouldn’t go far to say this game resolves the lingering question of God’s identity, as it’s different for everyone, but it gives the player enough tools to analyze the complexities of the subject and the human spirit through a vast world that parallels our own. And in doing so, it might have become the monolith that Kubrick actually wanted to portray in his famous movie.
