Kahran Ramsus

Kahran Ramsus

At first glance, Kahran Ramsus has it all. He’s the commander of the Gebler army, the military branch of the Solaris Empire. He has power, respect, and authority. There’s just one problem.

He doesn’t take rejection very well.

The 1998 videogame Xenogears is infamous for the psychological conditions of its characters. Main protagonist Fei Fong Wong suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities). Ramsus harbors an inferiority complex: one that brings great tragedy to his story.

Ramsus’ inferiority issues stem from the failure of his own invulnerably-assumed strength. Ramsus was present at the destruction of Elru (a colony made famous for its red-haired destroyer). Witnessing firsthand how the later-titled Demon of Elru destroys Gears (the game’s giant robots) singlehandedly, Ramsus watches helplessly as the Demon routs his forces. Then he suffers a serious blow once the Demon summons his Gear and annihilates Elru. This is the first crack in Ramsus’ sanity. He sees his survival as a record of his failure, something that haunts him despite the confident persona he’s created for himself.

However, Ramsus’ fears of Elru are quickly overshadowed by his rivalry with Fei. While Fei’s fighting style (similar to the Demon’s) is the first nail in Ramsus’ psychological coffin, Fei’s name triggers a deeper resonance within Ramsus. From that point onward, Ramsus is obsessed with Fei. Just the mere mention of Fei’s name makes him rabid. He continually disobeys orders to go after Fei. Nothing else counts. It doesn’t matter if he was the pride of the prestigious Jugend academy. It doesn’t matter if he was an Element, the cream of the Jugend crop. All that matters to Ramsus is that Fei exists. As long as Fei’s around, Ramsus cannot be whole.

It’s towards the game’s end that Ramsus’ obsession comes to light. He is an artificial being. Officially he was created to be the clone of Emperor Cain, Solaris’ ancient ruler. Unofficially, he was meant to be an artificial Contact (a being who can make contact with God and receive his power). On the eve of his conception, Fei is discovered to be the true Contact. Thus, Ramsus no longer has use, and is discarded. It’s a slight that Ramsus never forgets.

The Xenogears characters have mental conditions that revolve around real-life concepts. Ramsus’ psychological condition is an echo of self-actualization, a theory of need fulfillment put forth by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow’s theory constitutes a set of conditions that must be met for a person to become the best version of him/herself. Unfortunately for Ramsus, the person standing in the way of self-actualization is Fei. In order to complete himself, he must eliminate Fei.

Ramsus is the typical rags-to-riches character. He fought from the gutters of his birth and attained the highest honors of his society. Yet his rejection sowed seeds of helplessness, seeds that bloomed in the form of Fei’s existence. His spiraling tale of destruction is sad, but richly intricate for a videogame character.

Krelian

Krelian

500 years before the plot of the Xenogears videogame, the antagonistic nation Solaris is having trouble with their indoctrinated servants. The Lambs – as the Solarians call the earthbound population – are gathering under the Nisan religion, thanks to the efforts of Mother Sophia, the faction’s figurehead. Under Sophia’s tutelage, the Lambs are beginning to shrug off the influence of their Solarian masters. The course is clear. Sophia must be eliminated. Hence the beginning of the Shevat-Solarian War.

For some, Sophia’s death rallies the creation of the modern nations populating the Xenogears world. For Lacan, Sophia’s lover, her sacrifice leads him down a dark path of corruption and global destruction. But he is not the only one broken by Sophia’s death. There is another.

His name is Krelian.

Krelian is introduced as an agent of the Nimrod nation, sent to kill Sophia, whose growing popularity made her a legitimate threat to their sovereignty. Instead Krelian falls in love with Sophia. Her inspiration leads him down the road of science, a calling that Krelian would follow the rest of his life.

Then tragedy strikes. Sophia’s forces are betrayed by Shevat (exchanging Sophia for Solaris’ surrender and their ally/enemy Miang). With her comrades on the point of annihilation, Sophia sacrifices herself for her people’s safety. Krelian is crushed. He cannot believe a God that would allow Sophia to die so needlessly. Henceforth, Krelian vows to create a God in Sophia’s memory.

Over the next five hundred years, Krelian uses his scientific knowledge towards that goal. He secures dominion over Cain and the Gazel Ministry – Solaris’ ancient rulers – by giving them the nanotechnology-based immortality he mastered during his time with Shevat. Because he is the only one able to maintain that immortality, Krelian enslaves Cain and the Ministry, makes himself Solaris’ de facto leader, and establishes all the resources he needs in one fell swoop.

Krelian shows little regard to the people he manipulates or those standing in his way. He created the Wels, a prehistoric branch of humanity re-engineered through nanotechnology. The Wels’ purpose: their primal state makes them the most compatible with Deus’ (the sentient weapon/God revered by Solaris) organic structure.

Krelian is a master manipulator. He abandoned the artificially-created antagonist Kahran Ramsus upon learning the Contact – he who inherited God’s strength – was reborn as main protagonist Fei Fong Wong. Ramsus’ survival is unexpected, but even then Krelian incorporates him into a plan: He hints that Cain’s – from which Ramsus was cloned – death would give Ramsus the power he needs. Krelian wins again, securing an ally and gets rid of Cain, whose guilt made him an obstacle.

Krelian is straight out of a Greek tragedy. He wanted to spare humanity suffering by returning the universe to its natural state (to become one with God’s eternal love). But he slaughtered billions, manipulated thousands in doing so. It’s no excuse, but he is human. That’s what makes him such an incredible character.

Xenogears

Xenogears – Drama Done Right

The basic principle in drams is to start small, then build up with bigger and bigger scenarios. Role-Playing Games (RPGs) are notorious for this: one day the local painter ascends a mountainside to get photographic equipment for his friend’s wedding, the next he’s piloting a giant robot (Gear) to fight the insidious forces attempting to subjugate the world. The late ‘90s RPG Xenogears takes this concept and runs with it as though hell itself is at its heels.

Xenogears’ plot arc is one of the most ambitious plot I’ve seen in decades. Fei Fong Wong accidently destroys his village trying to defend it from mysterious Gears that show up out of nowhere. Traumatic beginning. Then he saves a girl named Elly from a giant dinosaur. Then he battles a sand-ship pirate that just happens to be the long-lost prince of the desert kingdom. Shakham, the usurper of this kingdom, is actually an agent of Ethos, an organization fronted by unseen masterminds to control and dominate the earth-dwellers.

And who are these masterminds? Only Solaris, the invisible airborne nation, whose leaders number among the world’s first humans. Preserved in ancient machinery, these leaders spent thousands of years manipulating humanity in order to use them as spare parts in the recreation of their God. And that’s only in Disc One.

Paired with the elaborate plot arc is an equally elaborate combat system. Battle takes place both inside and outside Gears. Normal combat revolves around the use of AP. Each attack takes up a certain amount of AP. The Triangle button (weak attack) takes up one AP, the Square button (medium) takes two AP, and the X button (heavy) takes up three. The character can initiate any combination of said buttons, as long as the overall consumption of AP does not extend to the total amount of AP available. The party start out with three AP, but as they gain levels this total amount of AP increases to about six AP. In addition, special combinations result in a flashy but more powerful attacks resembling martial art moves. These techniques are called Deathblows.

Mastered Deathblows carry over to Gear combat. Attacks raise a multi-tiered Attack Level, desinated from 1 to 3. Each Level has two Gear combos, learned by the party members’ mastered Deathblows (using any Gear combo reduces the Attack Level to 0). Accessing the more powerful combos means stockpiling single attacks to build the Attack Level to its designated number limit.

As if that wasn’t enough, Gear strategy has to contend with the Fuel system. Each Gear operates on a fixed amount of Fuel. Each attack costs Fuel, and in a pinch an amount of Fuel can be sacrificed to boost the Gear’s agility, often allowing the Gear to act before the enemy. Furthermore, some battles are pressed back-to-back without life or Fuel restoration. The player must think two or three turns ahead in order to win.

For all its innovations, Xenogears has one or two glaring flaws. The events from Disc Two onward streamline the game on a very linear path. You get a narration from Fei or his love interest Elly, a boss battle starts, you win the battle, then another narration. You have no say where you go, no freedom to explore the world map, no sidequest (optional tasks that have no effect on the story; mainly extra/rare items) until you get to the final dungeon. The only real sidequest is to go to a place where special Gear equipment is sold. And that’s if you can afford them. The amount of money from Disc Two enemies is abysmal. You’ll be lucky if you can afford any equipment.

Xenogears is a very ambitious game. Perhaps too ambitious. Sometimes it feels that the game is trying too hard to describe how far the rabbit hole goes. It can get confusing. But if you stick with it, it’s a very enjoyable game. I mean, it has giant robots. Who doesn’t love giant robots?