the16bitgamer@programming.dev 2 days ago
Chrono Trigger, and finishing the games first full arc. What would normally be the end literally showed me that this game had so much more, which expanded the more I played it.
the16bitgamer@programming.dev 2 days ago
Chrono Trigger, and finishing the games first full arc. What would normally be the end literally showed me that this game had so much more, which expanded the more I played it.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I still maintain that Chrono Trigger was the masterpiece of the SNES. Not of its genre, not just the best RPG on the platform, not just a standout for being ahead of its time.
What got me about Chrono Trigger is the crux of the 1000 AD cast’s main quest, wherein the three kids from the present become accidental time travelers and complete what amounts to an entire young adult novel’s narrative arc where they manage to rescue Princess Nadia/Marle from the past and marginally improve history, and in any other story that is where the Happily Ever After would go and the end credits would roll. But via extended highjinks they ultimately wind up gaining some future foreknowledge of the Day of Lavos after witnessing its aftereffects first hand.
These three are not heroes or warriors (Crono possibly notwithstanding, since he’s already suspiciously good with a katana) and were not called upon by the gods. None of them are any kind of chosen one. There is no ancient prophecy. They are not the scions of a past fellowship of heroes who saved the world from an ancient evil generations ago. No villain has burned down their village in the first act. They aren’t facing much real adversity or hardship in their lives, none of them really have a secret and tragic past, and they all have homes they could go back to pretty much at any time and forget about all of this.
They’re just three kids. Lavos isn’t their problem, or even the next generation’s problem, or the generation after that. It won’t rise to destroy the world anywhere near their lifetimes, and they’re certainly not powerful enough in that moment to do anything about it anyway.
But it’s Marle who decides right then and there, no. Fuck that shit. Without hesitation. No one else can time travel and change the past, at least as far as the three of them know. As Marle says, this can’t be the way the world ends. They have to try.
There are so few RPG stories of that time where the decision to embark on the quest to save the world is left to the player characters’ own agency, and so neatly aligns with what the player would probably want to do themselves.