I'd have been willing to say more about Xenogears, but the topic says we shouldn't give spoilers.
(WARNING! Snape kills Trinity with Rosebud!)
Xenogears isn't a story of a young man whose hometown burnt down saving the world. It's not even a story about how he failed to save the world. It's a story of a great weapon which was powered by forces best described as 'divine,' which bound something very like a god to a corporeal reality from which it needed to free itself.
The weapon felt differently from its power source. The weapon was, after all, a weapon, and one with organic components.
The divine being made a mental contact with a young boy who, as is reasonable under the circumstances, wanted his mother. So it attempted to fill that void, and in time also filled the void left by the boy. These core human emotions, need and love, are central to the lead characters because they are artificial people. However, they're also deeply flawed people because their raw materials were of the weapon's organic parts.
A flawed creator using flawed materials to free itself from a world too small to support it. If you read A Scanner Darkly, this will be familiar from the female agent's self-justifications. Indeed, beyond its strong Gnostic vibe, this game's story plays out very much like a Philip K. Dick book.
What I have not touched on is the extent of human hubris after the story begins. This is backstory, crucial to understanding the rest of the plot. Indeed, this world's growth has been horribly stunted, and it's sometimes the smallest, most terrible details which make this clear. For example, there's a scene where an 'ancient' document is revealed. It's only 400 years old. This is a world which has been denied growth because a large organization has conspired to deprive each nation of its history, making them easier to manipulate. For people who aren't allowed to keep records themselves, 400 years old is ancient.
And don't even get me started on the symbolism, or on the end of the story. Nor its philosophical significance, or how it can be taken as a rebuttal to strong central tenets of the religions from which it draws.
It's a hell of a game. I just wish the presentation were better.
