Frequently Asked Questions

These are just a few of the more common questions about the game and this site that I have gotten. If you're curious about something that's not addressed on this page, please feel free to email me.

1. What is Pied Piper? When was it released?

Pied Piper is an "extra" Xenosaga game that was released for Japanese Vodafone Live. Though it is a cell phone game, it is really quite long, and spans six parts (two parts for each of the three chapters) that are each downloaded individually. It is more or less a 2D Xenosaga game, with a combat system similar to XSI and plenty of dialogue.

It is set 100 years in the past and revolves around the events leading up to Jan Sauer's (Ziggy's) suicide. It is basically the backstory for all of Ziggy's drama in the Xenosaga series, especially Episode III, which features quite a few references to the events of Pied Piper.

The first part was released July 14th, 2004, between the releases of Episode I and Episode II.

2. Will there ever be an official English release of the game?

Of course, I don't know for sure. At this point it isn't looking good. Our cell phone technology is significantly behind what is available in Japan, so it would probably have to be completely remade for a console in order to be distributed in this country. Also, seeing as how Xenosaga DS and Xenosaga Freaks never made it over here, we can probably assume that it's not a priority for Namco to localize the "extra" stuff.

When asked in an IGN interview if Pied Piper would ever be brought to the states, Namco responded, "This has not been decided."

3. What is the combat system/gameplay/music like?

I don't know. I've never played the game. I've never even seen it. It's astonishingly inaccessible to people in this hemisphere. What I translated is a script that was transcribed by a kindly Japanese fan, not my actual gameplay experience. The screenshots you see in the script are from the official site or scraped from various sites around the internet.

4. Is this translation comprehensive? Who was involved in the translation effort?

The translation is not, at this time, comprehensive. It is story scenes only. The person who transcribed the Japanese script did not write down any of the NPC dialogue that would have happened outside of "cutscenes." I imagine this has left a lot out of the story, but there is nothing that can be done about it unless someone with the game is willing to transcribe all that dialogue for us.

The Japanese-to-English translation was done entirely by me, Chaoslace. Well-known Xenosaga fans Abel and Yuna helped me beta while the script was still in development. And it was Abel who provided the original Japanese script to me.

5. Can you get more screenshots or better graphics of the game? What about concept art?

Believe me when I say I have pried up every floorboard of the internet to find screenshots, art, and media for this game. There is really very little out there, and everything I found is on this site. It doesn't seem as though the game was popular among Japanese fans, and Monolith has not as yet released any concept art or materials.

6. Why did the names of certain characters/places/things change?

With the release of Xenosaga III, we now have canon interpretations of the Japanese names. In order to avoid confusion, I have changed all instances of the original names to the new canon names. Here is a short list of the original names mapped to the new ones:

Meris Orthas -> Melisse Ortus
Michael Oltman -> Mikhail Ortmann
Elrich Webber -> Erich Weber
Bagus -> Bugs
Sharon and Joaquin Rosas -> Sharon and Joaquin Rozas
Ernest Lewis -> Ernest Luis
Sean McCollum -> Sean McCallum
Irene and Klaus Thole -> Irene and Klaus Torres
Keila -> Kayla
People of the Zohar -> People of Zohar
Neurochemical narcotic program -> Endorphin drug program
Child care facility -> Nursing plant
Anti-intruder unit -> Macrophage

7. What are your qualifications? Do you really know Japanese or did you just Babelfish it and then re-interpret the results? (Yes, I actually have been asked this question.)

I majored in Japanese. I'm sure my translation isn't perfect but I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that it is accurate.

Questions/comments?
Email Chaoslace.

Legal Note: This is an unofficial translation done without permission from MonolithSoft or Namco. It is not for profit. Xenosaga: Pied Piper is © 2001 2004 Namco Ltd.