Hm. I should clarify, because I agree with you, and was trying to say the same basic thing: he's way too ambitious with his stories
for the video game medium - or even a video game series, just because of how long the process seems to take. If Xenogears could fit into six games satisfactorily, great! ... but if each game took two years to be made, or something, well. That's not so great. (I'm not sure I like anything enough to play and/or wait for the same story for twelve years. Or even six years. I almost didn't bother with XS3. Even VP Silmeria was a stretch until it came out.) An anime would be better, but a novel would be the best. I think the thought he puts into the story - and history and philosophy etc. - and such is wonderful, but a game doesn't necessarily express it best in my opinion.
But then, I really would miss the music, and the visuals, and all of the other elements that I loved so much about the games aside from the stories.
It sucks when characters are talking it out in a way to inform the audience.
True, but what sucks more - exposition through text that you can click through in about seven minutes, or that same exposition that you would have to listen to for twenty? (I might be exaggerating a little.) I know this is mostly preference. Exposition is a bad word, and nobody really likes it anywhere if it isn't written really
really well, but since we (or, I?) read faster than we speak, textual exposition moves by faster.
Generally speaking, you can fit more into one page of prose than you can into one page of script, just by nature of the medium. One script page suppsedly equals one minute, while one page of prose can equal... hell, whatever you want it to equal depending on how you write. This translates into the experience - I can read one or two pages of prose in a minute, and I'll hear a small fraction of that amount in one minute of spoken dialogue, even if it's written cleverly. Shion's conversation with Virgil (since I was harping on that before) would have gone by much faster if I could have just read it. Xenogears is almost a bad example to compare it to since the text speed was glacial... and I can't remember reading quite as much exposition in any other game. Damn.
It would help if Takahashi scaled down the epic nature of his stories, if he really wants to make games. Short stories can be complex too as long as they're structured well. Then he can philosophize all he wants.
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