It was a dare. Basically.

Several years ago, three of my friends and I got together for a cultural exchange: two of us would explain the plot of Naruto, and the other two would explain the plot of Xenosaga. As you might imagine, this was a pair of monumental tasks, and it more or less took an entire three day weekend.

I was on Team Naruto, and I jokingly made the suggestion that we should have whiteboards handy. Team Xenosaga took me seriously and supplied two whiteboards. For Naruto it was mostly used to hash out relationship charts, but it turned out that we really seriously needed them for Xenosaga.

Back in the day ("the day" being ten years ago, as we are all ancient, or at least I am) all four of us were big into Xenogears. I'm not really going to go into that, as time does its best to wound all heels, but we were. We still all love it, but for some reason Xenosaga never really caught hold of me. The Xenosaga lecture was educational, to say the least, and the whiteboard illustrations of the plot were so intricate that I photographed the evidence. Thus, the Xenosaga Whiteboard Explanation lives on, though the lecture itself was not and could not be recorded in any way. It was epic, and I'm sorry you missed it.

The only visual aids that survive from the Naruto explanation was a chart I whipped up in Photoshop after the fact, as we were in a Melting Pot around the time Akatsuki was being explained and I just said, I will write this down for you later. And so, thus:

The Akatsuki Relationship Chart!

Which I updated a few months later:

The Updated Akatsuki Relationship Chart!

HA HA, I BET YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING NARUTO SPOILERS IN HERE. Don't be upset, it's hopelessly outdated now.

Anyway, recently a bunch of us were talking about some half-finished parody recaps I did of some other games, and one of us, who shall remain nameless, Whitney, suggested that I do it for Xenogears. She was joking. At least I think she was joking. "Explain Xenogears?" I said. "Xenogears couldn't explain Xenogears." I totally could not do that, I said. Then I thought about it for approximately two minutes.

"I am totally going to do that," I added.

AND SO, HERE WE ARE. This is, basically, the spiritual descendant of the Whiteboard Explanation, with a dash of the Let's Play mentality minus the part where you're supposed to be currently playing the game. I have played Xenogears at least four times, it's cool. If you were ever curious about the plot of a ten year old PS1 RPG, I guess you have come to the right place. If not, I am sorry. I have shamed us both. Anyway, you should totally watch Clone High, it's great.