Article by Princess Artemis

Name: Allen Ridgeley
アレン　リッジリー (Ａｒｅｎ　Ｒｉｊｊｉｒｉｉ)
Age: 24 (Ep 1,2), 25 (Ep 3)
Character Type: Supporting Character, Protagonist
Born: T.C. 4743
Sex: Male
Height: 5’7 (176 cm)
Weight: 145 lb (66 kg)
Appears in: Episode 1, 2, 3, Freaks, 1&2, Outer File, the Animation, Manga
Voice Actor: Dave Wittenberg (EN), Hiroaki Hirata (JP)
Blake Shepard (EN Anime)

Character stats Episode III
Level 22
Weapon: Ether Crossbow
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Initial Equipment:
Weapon: Benzer Ace
Armor: Neo Protector
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Ether:
Medica S All
Soul Down
Fist Down
Break Heal M (Lvl 23)
Beam Bolt II (Lvl 24)
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Tech:
Big Shot
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HP: 1413
EP: 91
STR: 31
VIT: 22
DEX: 29
EVA: 30
AGI: 29
EATK: 29
EDEF: 15
LUCK: 9
Break Limit: 117

(Without equipment, which is impossible in game)

Skills and Abilities:
Allen is capable of initializing and operating E.S. Dinah, primarily as a co-pilot. He is a brilliant engineer and programmer, capable of reverse engineering and repairing highly advanced systems that were considered impossible to understand by others. He can use a small variety of support and attack Ethers. Though he does not have the physical strength to handle it, he is capable of channeling considerable power through Ether crossbows. There is some mystery surrounding him in the form of ‘ghosts’, but this was never solved and Allen was not aware of it. Perhaps his greatest skill is in being overlooked, though it isn’t a skill he enjoys.

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Allen Ridgeley is the ‘everyman’, a fairly ordinary human thrown into a group of extraordinary people and circumstances. When in his element, he is confident in his own skills and tenacious, though high-strung, carrying sedatives and stimulants with him. Out of his element, he becomes extremely nervous, overly cautious, worried, wildly moody, and distrustful to the point of being unintentionally offensive. He is extremely easy to walk all over and is prone to being taken advantage of due to his insecurities. Regardless, when the need arises, he can be singularly courageous, risking his life on multiple occasions to save others. Commonly, this is for Shion’s benefit. Much to his dismay, he is often overlooked by those he wishes would notice him; Shion is oblivious to his obvious feelings for her, and Miyuki claimed he just didn’t make a strong impression on people to the point that they didn’t notice if he was missing.

He comes from a wealthy family, but he prefers to avoid relying on them and rarely shares details of his background with anyone. He is the youngest of several brothers, a black sheep among them. He lived a sheltered life together with his grandparents, who founded his father’s company. His father was a strict businessman and would never play with his children, unless it were to share his hobby of fishing. Allen inherited this love of fishing. His mother enjoyed housecleaning and was only satisfied when she herself had cleaned the whole estate, but she was a terrible cook. His brothers were fiercely competitive for who would be their father’s successor, though Allen himself never felt that drive. He wished to avoid the rat-race of a business life and what he perceived as stifling over-protectiveness on the part of his family, so he attended the University of Bormeo on a scholarship, studying what he wanted to study and following his own plan for his life.

After graduating from the University of Bormeo in T.C. 4764, Allen joined Vector’s First R&D Division. While two years older than Shion Uzuki, he is one year her junior at Vector. He fell for Shion fast and greatly admired Kevin Winnicot. Though a coworker informed him that Shion and Kevin were romantically involved, Allen refused to give up pursuing her. A year later, Allen was away for a business trip when the incident of the KOS-MOS archetype malfunction occurred. He returned just after the event and was asked to identify the bodies of his former co-workers. He located Shion, who was relatively uninjured. He was appointed to Vice Chief Engineer of Vector Industries’ First R&D Division’s KOS-MOS Project Joint Operations Systems Development after the death of Kevin. Due to these events, Allen found himself unable to express his feelings to Shion. Instead, he kept a journal of his feelings.

Fourteen years later, he was still working as Vice Chief for Vector’s First R&D’s KOS-MOS project. He often oversaw Shion’s Encephalon Dives to train KOS-MOS, and at least twice was forced to risk his life entering the dives to pull an oblivious and over-confident Shion out before they collapsed and killed her. He was aboard the Woglinde when it chanced upon a Zohar Emulator. In the resulting chaos caused by a massive Gnosis attack, Allen accompanied a self-awakened KOS-MOS to rescue Shion. On the way back to the escape pods, Allen fought alongside Virgil, KOS-MOS, and Shion, using an automatic rifle.

Shortly after the attack, the Elsa rescued the escape pod Shion and Allen shared at the insistence of KOS-MOS. After their rescue, Allen made a terrible first impression on the crew by openly questioning chaos for his ability to dissolve Gnosis by touch. Later he was determined to try to get along with the Elsa crew, though it seems Hammer never did like him much. This habit of pointing out obvious inconsistencies or true possibilities even if they came across as insensitive cropped up a few times in the game. He distrusted the Kukai Foundation for being connected to “mutants”, though he had no issue with any of them when he met them and enjoyed visiting the Kukai Foundation. While visiting the Foundation’s beach at Jr.’s insistence, Allen showed that his personal sense of fashion is apparently very different than the common one, wearing a colorful Edwardian-era union suit to swim in.

He continued his run of bad first impressions by insulting Jr. when the Durandal met up with the Elsa, though Jr. seems to have taken it in stride by taking a jab at Allen in a joking manner. Though chaos took part in this jabbing, Allen thinks chaos is “too nice” because when he later told chaos that he wished he could take Shion’s tears away, chaos listened to him.

When the party was framed for the destruction of the Woglinde, Allen was sucked into KOS-MOS’s subconscious domain along with the rest, and was present when Nephilim informed them all that they would have to eventually confront their pasts.

During one trip to the Kukai Foundation, Shion can obtain a photograph of herself from the Pink Bug. In this photograph, a translucent image of Allen is visible, and Pink Bug explains that the image is unexpected, but seems to be a nice ghost, looking out for Shion. This particular mystery is hinted at in Episode II, where a resident of Second Militia mentions a ghost that worked at Vector who couldn’t win the love of his beautiful boss and walks the streets at night.

At some point during Episode I, the events of Xenosaga Freaks occur. KOS-MOS goes on a rampage destroying parts of the Elsa and Durandal, and it turns out that Allen is partially responsible for this by virtue of allowing Professor and Assistant Scott to railroad him into being Assistant #2 and convincing him to let them install the Schrödinger AI into KOS-MOS (a.k.a Assistant #3) which involved remote controlling her through cat-ear antennae and somehow releasing a nanovirus that adversely affects the 100-Series Realians and MOMO.

In Episode II, when MOMO attempts to defend the Y-Data stored in her by erasing herself, Shion calls Allen in to oversee the Encephalon Dive into MOMO’s subconscious domain. Though he did not participate in the dive, as the overseer, he helped set up KOS-MOS’s mental transfer into it so that she could help the party, and he was aware of everything that occurred during the dive; this is likely when he learned about Yuriev and the history of the URTVs. He never spoke of it to anyone.

Later on, when Shion is attempting to escape the Dammer‎üng by stealing E.S. Dinah, Allen accompanies her and has no trouble starting the E.S. or using the weapon system. This may not seem like much, but it was established early on in Episode II that ordinary humans could not endure the feedback of operating an E.S., and there are other factors that come into play in Episode III related to this. While stealing the E.S. Dinah, they encountered E.S. Dan and were unable to fight it off until KOS-MOS arrived on her space bike, which allowed her to transform Dinah into a proper E.S. and escape.

For the rest of Episode II, Allen is in the background, though he does help Hammer navigate the Elsa to the correct place to pick up the party after their battle with Sergius inside Proto Omega.

EPISODE III SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!

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After Shion resigned from Vector, Allen was promoted to Chief of the KOS-MOS Project. Things were generally going well, and he told Shion that KOS-MOS was her “usual anti-social self”. However, by the time Episode III begins, Allen has bad news for Shion―the KOS-MOS project is being scrapped and some of the engineers, himself included, are being transferred to the military to work on another project. He invites her to a demonstration of the new project, which turns out to be T-elos.

When news arrives that the Elsa is trapped inside a bubble that only KOS-MOS’s Third Armament can hope to pierce, Allen and Miyuki help arrange for the party to steal KOS-MOS. After this, he travels with the party for most of the rest of the game, riding in E.S. Dinah’s third seat and possibly helping co-pilot.

Allen consistently worried over Shion’s fainting spells and helped her when he could, though he became increasingly irritated at her continued insistence that it was nothing to worry about, since Allen personally believes everyone is entitled to worry about their own troubles and not say that they are “no big deal”, since no matter what they are, they are real to the person experiencing them.

On Old Miltia, when Shion insisted on exploring on her own, Allen went with her to protect her and both disguised themselves as U-TIC researchers. While inside Labyrinthos, he stalled a young Kevin long enough for Shion to steal the original designs for KOS-MOS. Professor and Assistant Scott used these materials to build a new frame for the then-destroyed KOS-MOS, while Allen used them as a guide to reverse engineer and repair her black box, something which no one previously had been able to figure out. It is unclear how much Shion was involved in this process, as in the game, she was playing HaKox and relaxing while repairs were being made to KOS-MOS. Allen was unable to reactivate KOS-MOS after repairing her; it took Voyager threatening Shion’s life to wake her up.

Later on, when Shion is captured inside Labyrinthos, Allen accompanies the team to rescue her. At this point he is a playable character. His Big Shot is one of the most powerful Break attacks in the game, rivaling chaos’ Break attacks. If used carefully, he is a good support character, able to break in one or two rounds virtually every enemy in the area, including Pellegri, while also using status-affecting buffs and debuffs, making it easier for the more powerful physical fighters to clean up. He is something of a glass cannon with his very low Break threshold, though his other stats are average for a support character.

When the party does reach Shion in Labyrinthos, the Red Testament reveals himself as Kevin and explains why he helped arranged the whole Old Miltia re-enactment. He orders KOS-MOS to take Shion and come with him, but KOS-MOS refuses, stating that she only follows the orders of her creators, Shion Uzuki and Mr. Allen Ridgeley. Apparently, the repairs made to her black box were so fundamental that they were, in essence, a recreation.

Much later, while on Michtam, Voyager informs everyone present that they could have been Testaments, as they all have what Wilhelm calls Shining Wills. A Shining Will is required to operate an E.S., as the Vessels of Anima only respond to those with Shining Wills. Some believe Allen was not included in this, but the fact that he can operate an E.S. and suffers no ill effects from it suggests Voyager meant what he said and was not excluding Allen.

Beneath Michtam, when Shion is deeply confused and chooses to leave the party to be with Kevin, Allen stands between both groups to stop the fighting. He confronts Kevin and tries to convince Shion to come back to the group, risking his life to do so. Kevin shoots red lightning at him that throws him around and into walls. It’s not quite enough to convince Shion, though she does tell Kevin to stop hurting Allen because he can’t do anything now. While badly injured, Allen tells Kevin how he feels about Shion, saying he has always wanted to bear her pain for her and that he would do anything for her. He also tells Kevin of his low opinion of Testaments and Yuriev, using their tremendous power to run away from life. He declares that he will bring Shion back, no matter what, to which Kevin responds by firing another red blast at him, intending to kill. KOS-MOS blocks it, sympathizing with Allen, carrying him toward Shion, and continuing to try to convince Shion to come back. When Kevin attempts to kill both Allen and KOS-MOS, Shion stops him and returns to the party.

After the party defeats Zarathustra, Jin entrusts Shion to Allen’s care, calling him “my friend”. On their way toward the Elsa, Shion turns away for a moment and a Gnosis is about to attack her. Allen picks up a rifle, makes a huge leap onto its back that knocks it down and startles everyone else, then beats it a bit before shooting it. When he’s done, he offers his hand to help Shion up.

At the end, Allen goes with Shion, Jr., Mary and Shelley, and the Elsa crew to find Lost Jerusalem.