Clear your mind and travel, if you can, back to a fabled and muddy bygone era. It's the late nineties, and it's hip to be Square. FFVII has just come out, and the massive RPG developer is riding high, doing mad blow, and getting blown in hot tubs by industry floozies. So, sheerly out of curiosity, they open up the dank sub-basement where they house their D-Squad of programmers and discover that all they have to show for their massively-overrun budget and schedule is the first half of a game that can best be described as poorly-disguised Neon Genesis Evangelion fan fiction game. Despite Square's quiveringly-powerful shame and anger, the dim mutants are spared their lives and instead released into the wild to fend off the dragons and kappa that still roamed Japan in that ancient era of gaming, and shame-facedly released their half-finished opus, perhaps in an effort to show the world real, physical evidence of their former vassals' utter incompetence. The chimeric horror known to the world as Xenogears was quickly reviled by everyone except a small cadre of cultists that worship the game as though it were the religious experience it had set out to be. By all accounts, it was the worst game Square had produced since... Well, no one can quite remember.
The ronin development team sucked moss for nutrients in a dank cave, nursing their bitterness for years until, through dark ceremony and unspeakable contracts signed in the ichor of beasts unnamed by man, they rose again as Monolith Soft and vowed revenge on their former corporate masters, throwing down the gauntlet and declaring their intention to forge not one, not two, but six games, forming an epic prequel saga, Xenosaga, to lead up to and for the first time properly frame their unappreciated genius. All in spite, of course, of the glaring fact that they did not own the rights to Xenogears, which Square did and does own, wisely choosing to store them in the same undisclosed warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant. Rather than taking the route any other developer in the world would have taken, Square chose to forgo what promised to have been a laughably short legal action against a small, unproven and nearly penniless upstart. They watched, and they waited. In hindsight, I think they must have known what was going to happen.
Monolith Soft charged the gates of the gaming community with a much-hyped, apparently triple-A title that had the gaming community abuzz in the early part of the decade. the successor to Xenogears! people whispered. A rogue Squaresoft team, out on their own? Out from under the thumb of their corporate overlord at last? This promised to be huge. when at last the day came, the first installment of the epic six-game saga was unleashed upon the world, and gamers were stunned. In a single voice, every forum, every basement, and every EB let out a startled peal that still echoes somewhere in the ionosphere: "What the fuck is this bullshit?"
The game was everything it had promised to be: a glacially-paced level-grinder with an indecipherable character advancement system, a wooden, repugnant cast, an incomprehensible script packed to bursting with elementary-school faux-symbolism, and an open contempt of the player efficiently delivered by a roughly 1-to-1 gameplay/cutscene ratio. It was the second coming of Xenogears, exactly as promised. Unfortunately, all too many gamers had already been tricked into shelling out their borrowed or stolen wads of cash for this abomination, and Episode II was already underway. The gaming community, though, is a bitter and vindictive creature, and its scaly mass gurgled and quaked with scorn, waiting. When Episode II hit shelves, it stayed there. Forever. The serpent merely hid in its burrow and cackled, its very inaction providing the inevitable downfall of the false prophet, Monolith Soft.
Monolith slowly approached its podium, and gamers everywhere craned their necks in anticipation of an apology, and excuse, anything that would amount to an admission of its guilt. Monolith Soft took a deep gulp, and complied: Episode III would be the last. The saga had ended. The team that had been spat out of its ruler's belly for its egregious fiscal and temporal irresponsibility was left with only enough money and time to wright their vision into corporality halfway. There was no applause, no laughter or jeers. Everyone just stared and squinted coldly at the dazed and disillusioned developer as it staggered of the dais, unable even to carry its own emaciated body without leaning heavily on the unburnished and unbloodied spear of its vengeance.
The 'saga' was complete. It ended exactly as it began. In the cold and fog only now unobscured by overzealousness and naivety, Monolith Soft, gasping and traumatized to the ground, merely stared unblinkingly into the sky as Square lumbered deliberately into view, peering down at the ever-growing spot of urine encroaching even upon the knees of the fallen rebel. There wasn't joy or smugness as Square, thoughtfully rubbing its oiled corpulence, offered him one of its countless hands and wordlessly supported the very picture of frailty back to its lair. There was an understanding between the two: no apology, but no forgiveness. But reconciliation nonetheless.
That same year, Monolith Soft helped produce Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, lauded as the worst game Square had produced since... well, no one can quite remember.
The circle was complete.
