(Semi-broken post from the old Godsibb forum; I don’t know if I can get all the images back. [1] [2])
-including details from past threads I’ve made.
Was going through old material and putting the pieces together over on Twitter. Started from trying to find back that screenshot of the unused portion of the Grahf, Khan, and Id animated cutscene but ended up finding out way more about how the original game was intended to play out.
This image of Grahf. Same scene, different angle, different pose. [3]
Then I found this screenshot in <Weekly Famitsu 1997-11-28> that my eyes always skimmed over in the past:
Two screenshots of an extended version of the scene. Likely the scene was going to be much longer, showing the fight between Khan and Grahf before Khan forcibly forms Fei and gets possessed by Grahf.
That image of Grahf is also cropped, seen in Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon VJump, 1998-01-18, but there’s also Khan without any overlaid text; still not the full image though, with the very top of the sky cut off.
Here’s another instance of that found in VJump January 1998:
And an extra cel we’ve never seen shown in the XG 20th concert book:
Beside this screenshot in Japanese on the Famitsu scan it says something like “On the way back from Shitan’s house Fei hears a strike of lightning and sees a hallucination” and describes what we know of this scene and then “after seeing this hallucination will Fei be awakened by another personality?”
So this scene was intended to be shown on the way back from Citan’s house. Thing is, I realized just now that the scene we ended up getting was completely unchanged from that initial intention of how the story was originally going to play out. The scene starts with a strike of lightning lighting up Fei’s face, then he notices the three of them and looks over at them.
In the final build of the game the scene plays when Fei is asleep on the sand cruiser. I always viewed it as one of those POV dreams where you’re looking at the events at a distance separated from it all, but still something about it always stood out to me.
Turns out this whole time it was left unchanged from its intended use. In this scene Fei is actually still on the mountain on the way back to Lahan and looks over at this hallucination.
extra speculation
Its likely the reason why they’re glowing as well. The glow could’ve very well been used to illustrate the fact that these are hallucinations he’s seeing and not actually people up there on the mountain with him.
Likely he would’ve been jolted out of this hallucination from the Gears flying overhead and kind of forgotten about in the moment when Citan comes running over to him.]
Also, the hallucination happening up on the mountain before getting back to Lahan makes Fei’s hallucination seeing little Id inside the cockpit make a lot more sense in general, as it’s a one-off thing in the final build of the game, but originally he was having hallucinations coming down the mountain and leading him into getting in the Gear.
Someone else on Twitter also pointed out the fact that this scene taking place before we ever meet Grahf in the desert makes the animated scene of Fei seeing Grahf in the desert make more sense. Fei saying “Who are you!? Who…right, I know you… You killed her…” and it plays a shot of Grahf, (circling around before zooming into his eye, much like how in the other cutscene it puts emphases on Grahf and circles around his face) illustrating that Fei is remembering seeing Grahf’s face in his hallucinations right before his focus changes to trying to remember why he’s thinking “you killed her” and who “her” even is.
Another thing I learned- these images from <Weekly Famitsu 1998-01-09>
And another shot of Aruru here from Hyper Playstation Mar/1998, post-release.
For ~2 years I kept hearing only speculation about what these were going to be used for the unused opening cutscene we heard about that likely would’ve used Stars of Tears, but no one read the Japanese on this page it seems.
It says “A flashback at Bart’s Hideout. People from Fei’s memories rush about in circles in his mind”
So originally we were supposed to get another animated cutscene when Fei was going through that initial arc of being overwhelmed, stressed, and not wanting to get involved with other peoples’ problems while in the hideout.
It would definitely fit there considering his and Bart’s conversation about it all in the final build of the game.
Then there’s this shot of Sophia from that same zine.
And another shot from Hyper Playstation Mar/1998 with them closer together. As if the animation had them split in two.
This screenshot was also thought to have been from that Stars of Tears opening sequence we never got, which we (a few fans chatting about this on SNS) questioned. But paired with the next two shots I found recently, that makes a lot of sense again.
This art of Bart, that I believe was pulled from an official webpage back in the day, considering the (c) SQUARE 1998 and old webpage image dithering, how clear it is, etc.
I found a screenshot in Hyper Playstation Mar/1998. It appears to have a blue haze of the background over it, so this has to be the original shot of it as it would’ve been used in a cutscene.
In fact, considering it has the same blue diamond haze that Elly/Sophia’s has it’s likely that these along with Elly/Sophia’s are in fact from that fabled Stars of Tears opening.
Alongside this shot in that Hyper Playstation issue was this shot of Citan that I’ve never seen anywhere before.
Was looking at this (little poster in the limited edition soundtrack)-
and noticed a few screenshots that we either never see in-game or that differ from the final release.
Any shown here that have alternate shots of these scenes will be put in “chronological order” of how the scene plays out, seeing the light get brighter, how the lights on the floor progress, etc.
-First one looks like the Eldridge in front of the sun, looking like you can actually see the moment it begins splitting apart. I’ve seen this same image in a few other magazines since; best quality found thus far in The Playstation Sept/5/1997 (2nd img here). Another instance of it found in Weekly Famitsu no466 Nov/21/1997 as well. [4]
-Here’s shots of Razael (by now the post is so broken I don’t know where these were from originally, one was from- how I said it- “Weekly Famitsu no466 Nov/21/1997, showing the blue lights on the floor progressing”). The third here being from the OST poster.
The latter looks to be either a 2D animated version of Razael in Mahanon in the opening, mixed with CG lighting effects or an early 3D model?
All three images here differ from the final version of the scene.
-Here’s another shot of what looks like the escape vessels being shot down after they take off? Can’t find this exact shot in the opening sequence.
-And these two that look like a different shot of Weltall-Id in the Yggdrasil’s Gear hanger. One with his wings open and the other being from the same angle but after he busts through the ceiling.
because this 
is what we see in-game when W-Id opens its wings. Cleaner light overall, no burst of particles.
That early version of the cutscene and the shape of the wings actually reminds me of this render of Weltall-Id that we can see in PW, where the blue wings are less-so simply the “clean” shapes and have more light particles flaring outward in all directions.
In Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon VJump you can find more screenshots from this beta version of the cutscene. Much clearer, easier to see the primitive, bony-like 3D modeled wings that confirms to me that this is the same 3D model as the one above, used in PW for that render.
There’s another shot without any overlay found in Hyper Playstation Mar/1998
(broken image)
Over on Twitter someone pointed out to me the stone carving on the wall in Anima Dungeon 2 depicting Abel and Elly running from Cain, which I had never noticed before.
So Anima Dungeon 2 and Mahanon are really close to one another on the planet, both located in the Terrane region of the world and Anima Dungeon 1 is located in the exact opposite corner of the map, so its also really close. Likely Kadomony fell in roughly the same region of the planet.
The Gazel would likely look for the Anima Relics in this area of the world first, as Kadomony is where the Gazel were created and the relics separated from Kadomony as it fell from the Eldridge so likely a good majority of them would be located in this region of the world.
Being that this Anima Relic was hidden away in this dungeon full of booby traps that was built by the first civilizations of Kadomony-born humans (“In order to obtain the final Relic, we headed for a ruin that is believed to be almost 10,000 years old.”), with a stone carving depicting the death of Elehayym during the attempted murder of Abel, this suggests either one of two possibilities:
1: There were a number of those humans who followed Abel’s belief of free will & opposed Cain (Abel who is pushing his ideology of free will vs Cain who is falsely claiming to be the advent of god in order to control the masses) who hid away the nearest Anima Relic they found & carved this depiction of Cain murdering the first Antitype for future generations…
or
2: This was done by Abel himself, as his fate was unknown- neither the game nor PW ever says anything about how or when he died.
(The last we know of him is Cain attempted to kill him but killed Elly instead. Like Kim and Lacan after him, it isn’t stated when or how he died. Every Elly incarnation is the one whose demise is detailed to the player, but the Contact’s is always obscured.)
Theory 2 makes more sense to me, given the fact that Abel is the only Contact that we don’t directly see have a connection to the art of painting. He probably carved this into the wall himself so that no one would forget that in trying to murder Abel, Cain murdered one half of the Mother.
There are a ton of words carved into the walls that we the player can’t read (repeating wall texture of text on the walls). It could very well be that Abel left inscriptions describing these events and his philosophy of free will, exposing Cain, detailing what he remembers of the human space colony that he was a part of, etc, that eroded away over time.
Abel likely spent the rest of his life trying to locate these Anima Relics in order to hide them away from the Gazel, but of course this is only speculation.
A paragraph from the Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon VJump calls the scientist from the past who created nanotechnology “Eric”, referring to Kim Eric Drexler, who was only semi name dropped in both Perfect Works and Dengeki Playstation volume 72, both other instances avoiding saying “Kim” at all, simply abbreviating it to “K.”
It’s never stated aloud anywhere, but it’s clear Kim was named after Drexler.
On many pages of Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon VJump (as well as other sources I cant remember right now) it refers to Elly being the one who was piloting Weltall in the beginning of the game.
(Whereas in the final build we see Elly piloting a basic Gear while through her cockpit screen panels we can see someone else is piloting Weltall and we later see them fall out of Weltall’s cockpit, dead.)
It states that her first mission as a Gebler officer was to infiltrate the Kislev base and gather information about the new experimental Kislev Gear, Weltall. She then steals it and is pursued by Kislev Gears, but being unable to properly pilot Weltall causes her to have to take an emergency crash landing in Lahan.
This scenario would better explain why she felt so personally responsible for the destruction of Lahan, as in her conversation with Fei in Blackmoon she would’ve learned that the Gear she left open and without a pilot was the one he had used and “blacked out” in, destroying Lahan.
This would also add another layer of complexity to the animated cutscene’s dialogue.
Elly:
“You talk as if it’s not your responsibility!”
“No! I didn’t do anything!”
“They died because you had to pilot the gear and start fighting!”
“It wasn’t me, can’t you understand!?”
“Not just anyone can pilot those machines you know!”
“I didn’t do it!”
“…Why won’t you take responsibility!?”
“I’m not so strong…”
“Why are you trying to put the blame on others!?”
“I’m not even all that talented…”
“You’re a coward!”
Fei:
“That’s right, I’m a coward!!”
There are shots from the opening in the magazine The Playstation 11/21, 1997 vol.82
Here’s one that’s never seen in-game, a shot overlooking one of the cities in the Eldridge.
It looks like an unused 2D cel of what eventually became a fully CG shot here:
(broken image)
If you rotate the image the buildings line up perfectly. (there’s way more than just these buildings that I’ve highlighted here that line up 100% perfectly, but this much alone is enough to prove my point here.)
(broken image)
Another unused shot of the Eldridge exploding with the Captain’s reaction cutting in as well as a completely unused shot of…something exploding in what appears to be the inside of the ship? (VJump January 1998)
(broken image)
(broken image)
Found that shot again in another November '97 magazine, as well as another shot I’ve never seen before which looks to be taken from right before this explosion. Looks to be the same escape pods we see in the final opening, viewed from below, and it appears they’re exploding before even leaving the Eldridge?
(broken image)
It’s weird, if I attempt to reupload the same image above the image’s text in the editor, an image that’s broken, it’ll fix that image and then I can delete the one I just started uploading. But if I don’t have those images on my pc anymore I don’t know how to fix them; then I’ll just have to find those images back somehow, half from scratch, half from Bsky, probably. ↩︎
lmao I say that and right as I saved that edit I saw the images for a second…and then they broke again. RIP. It’s acting so weird… ↩︎
The only two sites Ive ever seen it is through Archive.RPGamer.com (previously the Square.net fan site. …that I also learned was responsible for starting a fan petition to get XG localized) under their XG screenshots, the last screenshot under “Fei Fong Wong anime shots”, and Ramsus’ Webpage, an old defunct fan site.
But I still have yet to find where they got this screenshot originally. Most believe it was likely from some promotional CDs or something. ↩︎(By splitting apart I’m referring to the manual override bolt system used by the captain to dismantle the ship. He didn’t use a typical “self-destruct”. Hence why it wasn’t completely destroyed and you get whole blocks of the ship like the Babel block that landed vertically.
PW says Deus had 90% control of the ship’s systems and was delayed in taking control of the 10% of the ship’s systems that contained the manual override as it wasn’t required for flight. (or gunning down escape pods) ↩︎