Tetsuya Takahashi’s games are remembered for being too big for their budgets. Edge called the second disc of his Xenogears “essentially a series of placeholder cutscenes”, because the money ran out, and his Xenosaga series stopped “after just three of the six intended instalments”. In 2007, looking back on Xenogears, the magazine described him as an auteur “whose imagination and ambition outstripped even the gargantuan budget SquareSoft allowed him”. What makes his career unusual is what came next. For Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii he reined in the cut-scenes and let the world tell the story, and Edge hailed “a return to creative form”.
Fast facts
- Early career: graphics at Nihon Falcom, then Square, where he was one of the art directors of Final Fantasy VI.
- Directed: Xenogears (Square, 1998), Xenosaga Episode I (Namco, 2002), Xenoblade Chronicles (Nintendo, 2010).
- Company: co-founded Monolith Soft with Hirohide Sugiura in 1999; Nintendo bought it in 2007. He is one of its directors.
Falcom and Square
Monolith Soft’s own biography of Takahashi gives his path in one line: Nihon Falcom, then Square, then Monolith Soft’s founding in 1999. At Square he worked on the 16-bit games. Edge’s review of Xenoblade Chronicles listed “Final Fantasy V, Chrono Trigger and Secret Of Mana” among his credits. On Final Fantasy VI he was one of four art directors: in Edge’s account he “designed the imperial Magitek Armors seen in the game’s iconic introductory sequence” and was “responsible for the world map”.
Xenogears
Xenogears came out in Japan in February 1998, with Takahashi as writer and director. Kaori Tanaka, who writes as Soraya Saga, created it with him. She later recalled that they “originally submitted it as a script idea for Final Fantasy VII”. It was turned down as too dark and complicated for a fantasy, and Takahashi was allowed to make it as a new project instead.
The game is a war story told by giant robots, a hero with a split personality and a god that turns out to be a crashed weapon (the Xenogears entry has the full story). It sold half a million copies in Japan within months, and in 2001 IGN’s magazine Unplugged thought it had “probably drawn a more rabid fanbase than any other PlayStation RPG”. The same magazine noted that the game’s ending called it “Episode V”, part of an imagined six-part epic. It also showed what happened when a story outgrew its schedule. Edge found the second disc “relies ever more heavily on non-interactive cutscenes” after “time or budget restraints forced them to rush the game to completion”. It called Xenogears “a grand demonstration of what can go wrong, and right, when a single-minded development team is given free rein and financing to do as it pleases”.
Monolith Soft and Xenosaga
Takahashi left Square in 1999, and “a great many of Xenogears’ staff” went with him, Unplugged reported. Monolith Soft was set up on 1 October 1999 with Hirohide Sugiura, a Square producer, as its head, and “under the wing of Namco”, which put up the money. Square kept the rights to Xenogears, so the team started again. Its first game was codenamed Project X until the Tokyo Game Show in spring 2001 revealed its name: Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, German for “The Will to Power”.
Xenosaga Episode I came out in Japan in February 2002 on the PlayStation 2. Like the two episodes after it, it took its title from Nietzsche, and it pushed further towards film than Xenogears had. Reviewing Episode II in 2005, Edge called the series “the natural endgame for the FMV-driven RPG gaming that SquareSoft’s PS1 output prophesied”, with “cut-scenes the new king, gameplay elements little more than lines to link the drama”. It credited Takahashi with “a tide of closely developed characters”, but also with references “ranging from Paul McCartney to the eponymous work of Nietzsche and on through to the Old Testament”. The planned six episodes became three. Episode III came out in 2006, and the series ended there.
Nintendo and Xenoblade Chronicles
By 2007 Namco Bandai owned 96 per cent of Monolith Soft. In April that year Nintendo bought 80 per cent from it, leaving Namco Bandai with 16. Takahashi’s next game began, he told Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, with an idea on a train: “it would be interesting to have people living on the enormous bodies of some kind of gods”. A colleague, Yasuyuki Honne, turned his sketch into a diorama of two giant figures, and that model was all Monolith Soft had to show Nintendo’s producer at first. Takahashi was executive director, “involved in every aspect of the game, from coming up with the original concept and writing the script, right through to the debugging stage”.
Xenoblade Chronicles came out in Japan on 10 June 2010, the first major game from Monolith Soft since Nintendo bought it. Its world is the giants themselves: two colossi, locked still after an ancient battle, with the player’s people living on one of them. When Edge reviewed it in October 2011, Takahashi was reported to have called the cut-scene-heavy approach of his earlier games a “dead end”. The magazine agreed. It found a world that “tells a more engaging story in shape and contour than could have been delivered in mere words”, and called the game “a potent return to form for Takahashi” and “a glowing comeback for the Japanese RPG”.
Later games
Monolith Soft stayed with the series. In 2013 Edge reported that Takahashi was working on X for the Wii U, released as Xenoblade Chronicles X in 2015. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out on the Switch on 1 December 2017 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 on 29 July 2022. Nintendo now owns all of Monolith Soft, and the company lists Takahashi as one of its directors.
Sources
- Edge issue 148, April 2005, p. 104: Xenosaga Episode II review (“part two of Tetsuya Takahashi’s six-“part series; cut-scenes “the new king”; references from Paul McCartney to Nietzsche and the Old Testament).
- Edge issue 180, October 2007, pp. 101–103: “Time Extend: Xenogears” (“writer and director Tetsuya Takahashi”; the second disc; “free rein and financing”; the auteur whose ambition “outstripped even the gargantuan budget”).
- Edge issue 215, June 2010: Xenoblade preview (released in Japan on 10 June; the first major project since Nintendo’s acquisition of Monolith Soft in 2007).
- Edge issue 232, October 2011, pp. 116–118: Xenoblade Chronicles review and “Post Script” (his credits on Final Fantasy V, Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana; the “dead end” remark; the Xenogears second disc as “placeholder cutscenes”; Xenosaga ending after three of six instalments; “a return to creative form”).
- Edge issue 251, March 2013, pp. 125–127: the making of Final Fantasy VI (Takahashi as one of four art directors; the Magitek Armors and world map; Kaori Tanaka, “co-creator of Xenogears”). The same issue: X in development for Wii U.
- IGN Unplugged issue 4, July 2001, p. 40: Xenosaga preview (Takahashi and many Xenogears staff leave Square; Monolith Soft under Namco’s wing; Project X; Xenogears as “Episode V” of six).
- Hyper issue 55, May 1998: news (500,000 copies sold in Japan).
- Hyper issue 144, October 2005: feature on the Xeno games (titles taken from Nietzsche; Namco publishing Xenosaga).
- Wireframe issue 32, February 2020: Xenoblade Chronicles X, 2015.
- Monolith Soft, company profile (web): founded 1 October 1999; Hirohide Sugiura, representative director; Takahashi, director, “via Nihon Falcom and Square, took part in founding Monolith Soft in 1999”; wholly owned by Nintendo. https://www.monolithsoft.co.jp/company/
- Nintendo, “Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles”, 2010 (web): Volume 1 (executive director); Volume 2 (the train idea and Honne’s model; Sugiura co-founded Monolith Soft with Takahashi in 1999; Xenosaga Episode I, February 2002); Volume 3 (Xenogears, February 1998; the Xenosaga trilogy, 2002–2006). https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/xenoblade/0/0/
- Siliconera, “Soraya Saga On Xenogears And Xenosaga”, 11 June 2010 (web, secondary): the script idea first submitted for Final Fantasy VII. https://www.siliconera.com/soraya-saga-on-xenogears-and-xenosaga/
- David Jenkins, “Nintendo Acquires Stake In Monolith Soft”, Gamasutra, 27 April 2007 (web, secondary): 80 per cent of Bandai Namco’s 96 per cent stake. https://gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/nintendo-acquires-stake-in-monolith-soft
- Nintendo UK, “Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is coming to Nintendo Switch on December 1st!”, 22 September 2017 (web). https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/September/Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-is-coming-to-Nintendo-Switch-on-December-1st--1282129.html
- Samuel Tolbert, “Xenoblade Chronicles 3 release date moved up”, iMore, 19 April 2022 (web, secondary): 29 July 2022. https://www.imore.com/xenoblade-chronicles-3-release-date-moved-now-coming-july-2022