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[Scotty W]

Chrono Trigger is built around a few simple, powerful ideas. What I want to do is show the logic of these ideas running through the game. There are quite a lot of fan theories, where people treat the characters and world as if they were real and try to spell out the meaning and resolve ambiguities. My method is different. I have attempted to follow the creative logic of the designers.

The tldr. The game is a dream, the player is the dreamer. Lavos is part of the dream. He is the source of narrative interest. The designers self consciously/reflexively implemented these ideas into the game, these ideas form the ‘matter’ of the game’s world.

The most important idea of all is Dreams. The leads of the team that made this game called themselves the Dream Team.

The reason this is important is that the game is “made of the designers dreams.” Matter in Chrono Trigger is Dreams (though with a caveat, see below on the Entity). One of the sleepers in Zeal says, “All beings come from dreams and must return to them in the end.”

You may recall that when you return to 65 Million BC to get the material to repair the Masamune, this material is a RED stone, which is later named “Dream Stone.”

Dream Stone is used to make Marle’s pendant (which reacts with Lucca’s teleportation device triggering the start of the game). This pendant is identical to (and likely is) Schala’s pendant. In addition, we later learn that the Masamune itself was made of Dreamstone. Recall also that the Masamune is made up of two monsters named Masa and Mune, who later inform us “We are the embodiment of Melchior’s hopes and dreams. One of the most enigmatic characters in the game is Masa and Mune’s older sister Doreen, who also pontificates on dreams.

Finally, in Zeal you encounter the Mammon Machine, which, according to an attendant, “Draws and magnifies Lavos’ limitless power.” From another attendant, we also learn that the Mammon Machine was constructed by the Three Gurus.

It is almost certain that these Three Gurus are the Dream Team, inserting themselves into the game. I cannot say if it is possible to determine who is which Guru- for my purposes it doesn’t really matter. What I find interesting is the name of this machine, the Mammon Machine. Mammon is, of course, the Biblical term for riches, or even, a false god of worldly wealth.

Mammon | Definition, New Testament, Etymology, & Meaning

Mammon, biblical term for riches, often used to describe the debasing influence of material wealth. The term was used by Jesus in the New Testament and has been used in both religious and secular contexts to negatively describe the pursuit of wealth.

www.britannica.com

To summarize, the Gurus (Dream Team) used Dream (Stone) to make Mammon (Machine) to draw and entice Lavos in order to… make Mammon (money).

 

[Scotty W]

This brings me to a difficult point. This is the kind of work that comments on its own creation, it is self-reflexive, or rather Janus faced. Janus, you may know, is the Roman god of doorways, showing one face on one side, and one face to another (from Janus we get January- showing one face before and after the New Year). Recall also that Magus’ real name is actually Janus, and that he is Schala’s brother.

Chrono Trigger is absolutely riddled with Janus faced situations and problems. Let’s look at some:

Does the team time-travelling create the problem of Lavos, or simply discover it? If you ask around at the start of the game, all you will discover is a guy saying that there have been a lot of earthquakes lately- That’s it!

Another one, and a basic problem for the designers- history moves forward, but the narrative moves backward until it reaches 65 Million BC and we see Lavos crash into the Earth- or was it summoned by Azala?



Azala: “Red star... Fall!!!!! Stain the earth... RED! Though it may be our fate to perish, we will not simply hand this world over to you! Mwa ha ha!”

This ambiguity is intentional, and unresolveable, something that all great artists do to ensure that their work will be talked about. But I would like to point to an unlikely connection: Lavos is a Red star, the same colour as the Dream Stone, the matter out of which Chrono Trigger is made.

There is another aspect to the dreamstone which is so in your face that it is difficult to see. That is the sparkles.

When you first meet Marle/Nadia, you bump into her and her necklace falls off. It has a sparkle. When Masa and Mune transform into fighting mode and then the Masamune, they transform into that same sparkle:





So this is the dreamstone sparkle. Human souls also seem to be that same sparkle. We see it when Chrono first tests Lucca’s machine:



Everytime characters are teleported to the end of time:



The save file seems to be made of the same sparkle.



We see it when Crono dies:



The soul of Crono is put into an Egg named the Chrono Trigger, which can be seen reacting to the pendant atop Death Peak.



And finally in the Genodome, where humans are being genocided. You can see the human below. The conveyor belt takes him into the machine. On the other end is a little sparkle.



Finally, notice that Lavos here has a similar sparkle, except that it is red.



Not that this same red sparkle is seen at the front of the Mammon Machine:

https://i.imgur.com/LltKJJL.png

Does this mean that Lavos is also made out of dreams? I think so. But we have to be careful on this point. The story and world flows creatively from the designers’ dreams, but the narrative is ambiguous, silent, or even, for the sake of narrative tidiness, in contradiction with this basic principle.

Literally speaking, Lavos came to earth in 65 Million BC, whether by accident or being summoned by Azala. But from the creative perspective Lavos seems to be the Dream Team’s realization that a story or game needs to have a principle of opposition. Without any enemy to defeat, there is no point in having a story or a game. Recall the Janus facedness or the self reflexiveness I spoke about earlier. This is an example of that. From one side, Lavos is a being with a start at a point of time. From the other side he is self consciously part of the Dream.

There is more evidence to bolster this. Look at these two quotes:

https://i.imgur.com/Fa740Xl.png

All beings born of Dreams must return to them.

https://i.imgur.com/kUW8dAg.png

Queen Zeal: The almight life force of Lavos lives in all of us. You are part of it!


And there is further evidence. When you fight Lavos, you first have to do a boss rush, where he(?) transforms into all the bosses in the game, including, very strangely, Masa and Mune (made of dreams/dreamstone), Magus, and Azala and the Black Tyranno WHO YOU FOUGHT BEFORE LAVOS ARRIVED ON EARTH!!!

https://i.imgur.com/K5BZMKq.png

https://i.imgur.com/bcsxxe9.png

https://i.imgur.com/ZVtJaVY.png

At the final form of Lavos, each character has some comment to make about Lavos. Most are similar:

https://i.imgur.com/Ot3QFIK.png

Since the dawn of time, it has slept underground, controlling evolution on this world for his own purpose.

https://i.imgur.com/8NSCbvn.png

Marle: Are you saying IT’S the reason we’re all here?

I take these statements to be Janus faced. The literal meaning is that Lavos is a parasite etc. The self reflexive meaning is that the game needs an enemy, and an enemy needs a game, and that they are all one.

 

[Scotty W]

Let’s push this logic even further. The campfire scene is one of the most beautiful scenes in all gaming. I think that part of this is because the game transcends itself for a moment and touches the player directly.

You can watch it below. The scene starts at 2:00. Notice that she goes into a red portal.



Here is part of the script as well:

Robo: After 400 years of experience, I have come to think that Lavos may not be responsible for the Gates….I have come to think that someone, or something wanted us to see all this… The different events over time, that
we have witnessed. It is almost as if some entity wanted to relive its past.

Ayla: Ayla know! When people die, elders say, see whole life pass by!

Frog: 'Tis true that mortals do relive their most profound memories before death claimeth them. Yet those memories most often are sad ones.

…

Frog: Lavos playeth an integral role in the fortunes of this Entity...

Magus: ...so who is this Entity?

Robo: It is unknown whose memories these are. It may be something beyond our comprehension. Our journey may come to an end when we finally discover the identity of the Entity.
... ...shall we turn in for the night?

——

In this scene, they give the game away, so to speak, and touch the player’s consciousness directly, though again, in a self reflexive manner. Notice when Robo speaks, he gives alternatives. He is speaking both sides of the Janus face at once:

“Robo: Lavos may not be responsible for the Gates….I have come to think that someone, or something wanted us to see all this…

Frog: 'Tis true that mortals do relive their most profound memories before death claimeth them.”

This entity can be taken to be the Earth itself, which is passing away, or the other side of the Janus face, the developers who wanted to create this world for themselves and for players to see.

The other reference to the entity comes in the good ending:



This is followed up by the line (no image, sorry):

Lucca: Yeah. I get the feeling that the "Entity" is finally at rest.

The world is saved, and the player has narrative closure.

This leads me to a point that I think is kind of fudged. In 65 Million BC, Ayla says dreamstone is everywhere. Later it seems nearly impossible to find. What then is regular old matter, or what is the Earth?

It seems to be something like the shared reality between the designer and player, or the mind of the player. I suspect it is the dreamer of the dream.





The DS translation of this last line is a bit more forthright:

Dreamer: Truths exist in dreams, the world exists in me.

To conclude on the Entity. It seems that the Earth and player are the same. Following the logic of the gamers, this seems essentially correct. Following the narrative, this is left ambiguous, which I must stress, is not a bad thing. Mystery and ambiguity, used rightly, create interest. Recall Frog’s line:

Frog: Lavos playeth an integral role in the fortunes of this Entity...

Lavos creates narrative interest. Lavos gives the player a reason to play. Lavos is one the Dream and all characters in the game. Lavos is the dream of the dreamer. When Lavos is defeated, the earth is saved and the player has narrative closure. It is time for the dreamer to:

 

[Scotty W]

Let’s push this logic to its ultimate conclusion.

When Crono dies the old man at the end of time gives your party a time egg:



So this is effectively a mise en abyme, or picture within a picture:

Mise en abyme - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

So in a sense, you are taking a copy of the game to Death Peak, which is a mountain which was formed when Lavos emerged in 1999 AD. At the top, the pendant reacts to the Chrono Trigger (whose soul is inside it):



But even stranger is the line just before this, which can only be described as a prayer. Note that the DS version substitutes “You” for “All”:



Who or what is she praying to?

A wild suggestion- Lavos. Recall this woman in Zeal:



Her next line is (sorry, no photo): “The power of Lavos can make hopes and dreams come true…”

 

[Scotty W]

A little bit extra:

Beautiful Simplicity

I have written about the economical simplicity of the pendant idea. We see this also with the royal family. If you spend any time in Japan, you will realize the centrality of the emperor’s family in the Japanese imagination. Chrono Trigger shares this feature. In one of the endings, Nadia’s father brings together almost all the members of the Royal family from all times, with Kino (later Ayala’s husband), the leader of the Earthbound in 12,000 BC, and Doan, the leader from the future.

Now it is not stated, but it seems likely (not certain) that Queen Zeal and Schala are also part of this royal family- given that Nadia has Schala’s pendant- which is a family heirloom. If this is the case, this would mean that Magus was related to Nadia. Now just stop and think of this for a moment:

There are seven characters in your party. Three are from the Royal family: Ayala, Magus and Nadia. Two are protectors of the Royal family: Chrono and Frog. The other two are an inventor and a robot. How beautifully simple.

 

[Scotty W]

There was a single episode of a Chrono Trigger anime produced. It is pretty bad, but you can see that whoever wrote it knew the source materials well.

 

[Scotty W]

It is interesting to contemplate the time between Trigger and Cross. Trigger launched in 95, Radical Dreamers in 96, and there was a manga that ran until at least September 97.

Chrono Trigger OAV Manga

www.chronocompendium.com

With that in mind, the gap between Trigger and Cross- which launched at the end of 99 seems much smaller.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

My favorite character is Crono.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

That’s… surprisingly deep. The stuff about those little sparks is eye-opening.

I often wonder if there can really be so much hidden meaning behind most works of art and fiction. Seems a bit too much for a video game about the most basic fictional take on time travel. Yet… there’s all that stuff about the “entity” that I had forgotten, after so many years of not replaying CT. It’s never explained or touched upon beyond those few lines. CT is a brilliantly scripted game, and doesn’t waste more words than are needed.

The theme of dreams is further touched upon in the grossly underrated Chrono Cross.
It’s no surprise that the music track from CC’s “attract mode” is titled “Dreamwatch of Time” or, in a different translation, “The dream that Time dreams”. Schala also mentions “Zurvan, the sea of dreams” in her final speech. People have spent so many words bitching about how CC apparently shits on CT’s characters, and missed the deeper thematic connections between the two games.

For all the talk about dreams, Chrono Trigger has a pretty ”verist” approach to many things.
I always loved how straight-to-the-point the game is in introducing its characters. You don’t get flashbacks, cutscenes, captions, or indirect descriptions of Lucca or Marle - they’re naturally introduced to you while you’re going around the place, without any of the tired tropes commonly used in modern JRPGs.

 

[Scotty W]

I often wonder if there can really be so much hidden meaning behind most works of art and fiction. Seems a bit too much for a video game about the most basic fictional take on time travel. Yet… there’s all that stuff about the “entity” that I had forgotten, after so many years of not replaying CT. It’s never explained or touched upon beyond those few lines. CT is a brilliantly scripted game, and doesn’t waste more words than are needed

I think the simplicity is the beauty of it. The deep meaning is felt, without being or needing to be understood. You might compare it to the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations. I loved it as a kid, and probably thought it was one of their better songs, but I was totally unaware of the depth. Now that I am older, the depth makes it all the better.



Compare it to something that is technically masterful but boring.

For all the talk about dreams, Chrono Trigger has a pretty ”verist” approach to many things.
I always loved how straight-to-the-point the game is in introducing its characters

Yes, CT is very direct. Almost everything that I wrote was hidden in plain view but had not been taken seriously or systematically before, or too literally.

The theme of dreams is further touched upon in the grossly underrated Chrono Cross

I have not played CC in 20 years, but from what I can tell/remember, it builds off the same ideas but “makes literal” an aspect of the original dream idea, but in very eccentric way. To me, it screams the Japanese tendency to take an idea and run with it to infinity, and get lost in contradictions and confusions, like Kingdom Hearts or Dragon Ball.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

OP you need to get laid.

I replayed CT earlier this year when my Steam Deck arrived. The game holds up and really shines a light on how different the gaming world has become. I much more prefer the style of RPG that CT and Earthbound are. Shorter length and much more personalty. I don't care so much about the subtext and depth of the story tbh.

 

[Scotty W]

Shorter length and much more personalty. I don't care so much about the subtext and depth of the story tbh.

I agree mostly. There is little to no subtext in Chrono Trigger, but I would argue that the simple, deep idea I have outlined is actually one of the things that make the personality of the game so effective. It does not need to be understood, and can in fact be ignored- but its presence is felt.

 

[Doom85]

 

[PaddyOCanager]

Spoilers should be tagged, OP.

 

[Scotty W]

Spoilers should be tagged, OP.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The second best video game of my life.

Marle and Schala are my favorites.

I still have to play Chrono cross.

Everything in this game is almost perfect for me.



Schala the most beautiful character that Toriyama has made

 

[Fuz]

Overthinking: The Thread.

 

[Fuz]

I still have to play Chrono cross.

Don't think of it as a sequel to Chrono Trigger and you'll enjoy it.

 

[FMX]

In my honest opinion, Chrono Trigger is the best game ever made. The scope, the pure epicness, and that storyline has not been matched. Genius game that could not have been topped.

 

[Lokaum D+]

I ll wait netflix adaptation thks

 

[Captain Toad]

This is quite the conversation the OP is having with himself.

 

[cireza]

The little spark analysis takes this a bit too far in I my opinion ahah. Interesting read still.

 

[Scotty W]

Overthinking: The Thread.

Not quite. It is a very simple idea, but it needs some space to be laid out.

The little spark analysis takes this a bit too far in I my opinion ahah. Interesting read still.

I think it is a kind of visual grammar. “We’re building this world out of our dreams. Let’s make a visual indicator of that.”

 

[Scotty W]

This is quite the conversation the OP is having with himself.

What went wrong with Aaron Carter? -An investigation.

So I decided to write something about Aaron Carter after seeing @brap ‘s post a few months ago. It is a rabbit hole of dysfunction, so buckle up. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/aaron-carter-sure-is-looking-good.1504387/ In that post, @brap asks a question: “What went wrong?” I guess that...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Azelover]

Excellent thread OP. Chrono Trigger isnt only one of the best games ever made, it is probably the one that has best aged.

 

[Scotty W]

Magus/Janus

The story of Magus/Janus is told in a Janus faced way. The game narrative moves backward, while Janus’ story moves forward, backward, and then forward. Let’s look at it in more detail.



Magus is first met as a statue in 600 AD. Later, after the heroes discover Lavos, they believe that Magus created Lavos. They fight Magus, and the party, Magus included, are sent back into the past. Magus re-emerges disguised as a prophet in 12,000 BC. Here we also meet the boy Janus for the first time.



The heroes confront Lavos, Magus tries to intervene, Crono is killed and Zeal is destroyed. It is unclear what happens to Janus.

Next, the heroes meet Magus on the Northern Cape and learn that Magus is Janus. Going back and forth through time, chasing this powerful magician, we fund in the end that he is at bottom a scared little boy, flung at random by fate.



There is a short cinematic. In this we see the the Mammon Machine, Lavos, Schala, Queen Zeal and the Three Gurus. A timewarp opens up and Janus and the Gurus are transported to different times.



This scene is so interesting because it is in a sense, the only scene that happens outside the plot of the game, and yet it is basically the event that triggers the plot of the game. And there it sits, cut off.

When the heroes and Magus go back to 12,000 BC, they arrive prior to this cut scene, and their intervention means that this scene COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN PLACE. The beating heart of this game is this little grandfather paradox.

The game is built around a few of these ambiguous inciting events. Why did Lavos crash into the earth? Why did the fiends kidnap Princess Leene? What is up with the dead King Zeal? And why did Marle’s pendant react to Lucca’s teleporter?

Now this Janus scene does clear up one important thing: why do our heroes get sent to those specific times?

The gate to 600 AD exists because that is where Janus is sent. There is no inner necessity to this specific time, except to link Janus up with Islam (Magus is Mohammed, seriously), and to have a time period at some point just before the present day.

The present day is 1000 AD. One of the Three Gurus is sent here. There is no inner necessity to this date as well. The Millenial Fair is a celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the founding, but this is a post hoc rationalization. There have been many, many, deep and desperate attempts to tie Chrono Trigger to Christianity, but these go too far. The parallels are very broad and general. Chrono is resurrected, like Jesus; and the game uses the BC/AD time periods mostly for familiarity. What happened in 0 AD? It is most likely the designers are thinking of the founding of Japan and are writing that onto the Christian time scheme.

1999 is the apocalypse, interestingly just a few years after the release of the game. And a Millennium after Chrono’s time period. Suggestive of the Millennium from the book of Revelations.

2300 AD is also arbitrary. Why not 2400, or 2500? There is no reason. Anyhow, another of the Three Gurus is sent here.

The next two gates kind of make sense. The end of time, where another of the Three Gurus is sent, and the beginning of time, when Lavos first comes to earth.

Finally, 12,000 BC is also arbitrary. There is a religious parallel here worth noting. When you fight Dalton, he always summons Golems to protect himself and the Mammon machine. The Golem is a creature from Jewish folklore which protects the Jews.



It seems that Zeal represents Babylon, so there is perhaps a possibility that the inhabitants of Zeal were meant to be Babylonian Jews. You will find yourself in some dicey territory if you take religion too seriously in this game.

The Japanese tend to regard Western religious conflicts as a curiosity which you can use for interesting story ideas, just as we tend to do for their religions.
———————-

Anyhow, getting back to the creative logic of the game.

The Zealians use the Mammon machine to summon Lavos, Lavos sends the Gurus and Janus to different time periods. The heroes meet Janus and chase him back and forth through time in different guises (Magus, the Prophet, Janus) until the truth about the story we have heard is revealed.

Cast your mind back to the campfire scene.

“Robo: After 400 years of experience, I have come to think that Lavos may not be responsible for the Gates….I have come to think that someone, or something wanted us to see all this… The different events over time, that
we have witnessed. It is almost as if some entity wanted to relive its past.”



The designers are aware that their time gate times are arbitrary. They use Lavos as a story tool to justify those times. But they can’t quite do it.And so they hint at this very fact, “We used Lavos to tell a story and justify these time gates. We wanted you to see it.”

 

[Northeastmonk]

It’s crazy how there’s so much ethics behind it and yet you look at this:

Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana both originated as the same original project, the original Squaresoft/Akira Toriyama collaboration, which was going to be a Super CD-ROM action RPG codenamed Maru Island. When the Super CD-ROM was scrapped, the collaboration was rebooted as Chrono Trigger while the action RPG concept was reworked as a Seiken Densetsu sequel.

Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana originated from the same original project

Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana originated from the same original project

www.chronocompendium.com

It’s like they stumbled upon creating multiple masterpieces.

 

[brettski2024]

I like to think they really did travel through time and save the world.

Best boss battle music btw

 

[Scotty W]

I think I have argued solidly for everything I have said so far, but this is much more speculative, so I would like to bracket it.

The name of Lavos in Japanese is ラヴォス, which is written in Romanji as Ravosu. The Japanese difficulty with L/R is well known. Less famous is the V/B sound (Spanish speakers have a similar problem).

I live in Japan, and I was talking about Lavos to someone (I talk about it all the time) and when I said Lavos, they misheard it as “The Boss”. The V in ヴ sounds more like a B. Japanese people know the word Boss.



My suspicion is that when the developers were talking about what the boss in Chrono Trigger should be called, someone suggested calling him, literally, in English, The Boss, and then they put it into Japanese altered the spelling slightly to sound cool, or to not give it away.

This would dovetail with my theory that Lavos, as the boss, simply represents the principle of opposition necessary for a game to have a purpose.

 

[German Hops]

Speaking of Lavos, I have a theory;

I think the name is a contraction of two ancient words:

La = Big
Vos = Fire

Big-Fire, or "Lavos", which is what the Zealians saw in the sky before it crashed down to the Planet.

 

[Scotty W]

Speaking of Lavos, I have a theory;

I think the name is a contraction of two ancient words:

La = Big
Vos = Fire

Big-Fire, or "Lavos", which is what the Zealians saw in the sky before it crashed down to the Planet.

Actually, that is what Ayla calls it in 65,000,000.

I just want to know why the designers called him that. As I said above, I am interested in the creative process of the designers.

 

[Scotty W]

It’s crazy how there’s so much ethics behind it and yet you look at this:

Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana originated from the same original project

Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana originated from the same original project

www.chronocompendium.com

It’s like they stumbled upon creating multiple masterpieces.

I love that they managed to pull a masterpiece out of chaos. If you read the interviews, it is clear that they began the dream project with no clear vision at all. In a meeting, someone suggested the idea of time police. Masato Kato, the main writer, said that when he pitched the main character dying he was laughed down. Yet somehow out of this Chrono Trigger emerged.

 

[Scotty W]

At the end of the Sun Stone quest we read this bit of dialogue:

energy?

[Lucca's House, 1000 A.D.]

Lucca: I'll modify the Sun Stone to
extract its energy...
...then, we'll just vacuum
pack it into a cartridge...
...and it's finished!
Sometimes I amaze myself!

You then receive Lucca’s best weapon, the Wondershot.

I want to zoom in on that one word, cartridge. Is this a pun? If it is, here is what it represents.

The literal meaning is the cartridge in the gun. This is not debatable.

The figurative meaning is that the game itself is the container of, and is composed of the energy of the Sun Stone. This is not unlikely given that the game has previously used a time egg called the Chrono Trigger, so the weird synecdochic part-contains-the-whole is not outside the game’s logic.

If so, what is the Sun Stone?

The answer seems clear at first, but it just ends in a kind of muddle. Let’s have a look:



He goes on to say: But when we began using our new energy source, it was sealed up just like the north palace. They claim we don't need the energy of this tired, old planet.

So it seems that the Sun Stone was the original source of energy and it was abandoned in favor of Lavos.

CHrono Compendium points out that the Sun Stone was used in Elemental magic which would have to differ from Lavos’ type of magic. Recall when you meet Spekkio at the end of time Ayla is unable to learn magic because she was born prior to Lavos giving the Zealians the ability to use it- which they lost when Zeal fell.

Now it seems to me that things here get really messy. ALL magic in the game seems to be elemental. Lucca also said that humans used it from time immemorial.



WHAT?

Let me tell you at the outset, the designers had an simple idea but it was not implemented with perfect consistency. What is this simple idea?

Prior to the use of Lavos, humans were in a state of harmony and contentment with one another, ie The Garden of Eden. Lavos caused them to lose their innocence, like Eve’s Apple. Sun good, Lavos bad.

The confusion starts when you start to ask what the relationship between the Sun Stone, Dream Stone, Nu and perhaps the Poyozo dolls as well as the Earth itself?

Honestly, when I think about this stuff, and look at all the work people have done on this, it makes me want to hands up in despair.

With the above quote from Lucca, have a look at these quotes from the secret rooms in Zeal:





Nobody knows what the Nus really mean, but there have been many theories. My own, which I will not commit to too strongly is that this is a kinds of self reflexive creature. It probably went like this:

Kato: Let’s make a new game.
Sakaguchi: What’s a New?
Toriyama: (draws a joke creature) this is a Nu.

One of the Three Gurus later turns into a Nu, and his last act is to “execute a program” using 3 Poyozos to help you. You can see it at 1 hour 55 in the video below.



As I have said before, the world is literally made out of dreams, which manifest in game as Dreamstone, but the game is wishy washy on this point. Ayla speaks of the stone as being plentiful, but somehow becomes impossible to find eventually. And then there is the quote from the secret room in Zeal which treats it as a meteorite.

Then there are the elements themselves, earth, air, wind, fire. If the player or Entity is the world, what is the relationship between all these and the Sun Stone? And most of all is there s connection in all this to the eclipse that takes place when you resurrect Chrono?



The roots of the mysteries of this game seem to tail off into incomprehensibility when we ask about ultimate conclusions.

I suspect the reason for this incomprehensibility is due to a mixing of Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity has a linear conception of time, while Buddhism has a sort of eternal/cyclical conception. The basic worldview of the designers is Buddhist. Lavos is like a kind of eternally present Buddhist conception of evil. But, it seems to me, Buddhism is not so good at heroic narratives, just as Milton claimed Christianity was not suited to tragedy, and so they have taken their eternal cyclical Buddhist ideas and pressed them into a linear conception of time. But this requires a bit of patchwork to get it working. The Sun Stone is one such patch.

Loom at this quote about the Red Dream Stone.



First, this is not the Christian idea of the Fall, which is a moral decision caused by misuse of free will. This is a Fall without morality, probably taken from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Secondly, this makes it seem like it was the Dreamstone rather than Lavos which was responsible for the Fall. Finally, we have the fact that the power of the Sun Stone had been exhausted by 12,000 BC, which necessitated changing over to Lavos.

This is an absolute rat’s nest of complications, which I do not think can be untangled. In terms of the average gamer’s enjoyment, these problems are unimportant and invisible. In terms of the literalist encyclopedist, they are tantalizing mysteries which are fun to wonder at. That’s ok.

My interest has always been in the creative logic of the designers. To sum up, the creators had a dream. They made a game self consciously out of that dream; they made that dream literal in the game. They imposed a narrative onto this dream which doesn’t quite fit. They vacuum sealed this dream into a cartridge, and used the Sun Stone as the symbol of this synecdoche. The part contains the whole, and the whole becomes the thing that contains itself- even though the narrative cannot justify using this particular part to stand for the whole. ENOUGH!

 

[Excoman]

This is the saddest tl;dr I have ever experienced in my entire life.

 

[RavageX]

Sometimes, a game is just a game. I also like things best if you are simply left to wonder. Too many things these days take the imagination out of everything. Writers want to EXPLAIN everything, how it relates to their political views, personal beliefs, etc. What happened to just letting the person experiencing it and letting them form their own ideas like the OP?

I MISS that.

To me, Chrono Trigger was just a good game.

 

[sigmaZ]

Sometimes, a game is just a game. I also like things best if you are simply left to wonder. Too many things these days take the imagination out of everything. Writers want to EXPLAIN everything, how it relates to their political views, personal beliefs, etc. What happened to just letting the person experiencing it and letting them form their own ideas like the OP?

I MISS that.

To me, Chrono Trigger was just a good game.

THIS. So much writing is just fanfic these days. It's almost as sad and pathetic as the people who eat it up.

 

[Scotty W]

Sometimes, a game is just a game. I also like things best if you are simply left to wonder. Too many things these days take the imagination out of everything. Writers want to EXPLAIN everything, how it relates to their political views, personal beliefs, etc. What happened to just letting the person experiencing it and letting them form their own ideas like the OP?

I MISS that.

To me, Chrono Trigger was just a good game.

I am not sure if you are against me or not, but I agree with you.

As I said at the start of my first post, I am not interested in writing an Encyclopedia. A quick google search will show you that there have been millions of words written about Chrono Trigger as if it was a real place with real people. I am interested only in creativity. I chose CT because I am interested in self-reflexivity in writing.

Again, as I said, everything I wrote is unnecessary to simply play the game and enjoy it. I paid no attention to all this the first 5 or 6 times I played through the game. But I think you would agree with me that CT also is a unique experience. I just want to know why and how and I have pursued these ideas to their ultimate foundations in confusion and nonsense.

 

[Boneless]

Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/;[1] also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/)[2] is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.

 

[The Pleasure]

I still have to play Chrono cross.

That moment when your triggers get crossed

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Now let me tell you over the course of this 30,000 word essay how the SNES version Boogerman is really about dismantling the jaws of capitalism and the rise of the proletariat.

 

[Scotty W]

This is the saddest tl;dr I have ever experienced in my entire life.

You have not experienced enough.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/what-went-wrong-with-aaron-carter-an-investigation.1527444/#post-257026452

 

[Scotty W]

Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/;[1] also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/)[2] is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.

Are you seriously suggesting that a work of art does not have a patterns? Ridiculous.

What you disagree with is the meaning that I gave to any patterns that I found, but you were blinded by your desire to use a fancy word.

Now let me tell you over the course of this 30,000 word essay how the SNES version Boogerman is really about dismantling the jaws of capitalism and the rise of the proletariat.

“I don’t trust any reasoned arguments longer than 140 characters.”

What I wrote is actually about 4000 words, which is the length of a long IGN review (I googled it). And if you had read any of it, you would see that I was not interested in allegory, that I discussed it in passing, and that I suggested not taking it too seriously.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Are you seriously suggesting that a work of art does not have a patterns? Ridiculous.

What you disagree with is the meaning that I gave to any patterns that I found, but you were blinded by your desire to use a fancy word.



“I don’t trust any reasoned arguments longer than 140 characters.”

What I wrote is actually about 4000 words, which is the length of a long IGN review (I googled it). And if you had read any of it, you would see that I was not interested in allegory, that I discussed it in passing, and that I suggested not taking it too seriously.

Or maybe the premise just isn't that interesting.

 

[Boneless]

Are you seriously suggesting that a work of art does not have a patterns? Ridiculous.

What you disagree with is the meaning that I gave to any patterns that I found, but you were blinded by your desire to use a fancy word.

I do apologise, I did not realise this was a complicated word for you.

 

[Irobot82]

Shit now I want to replay Chrono Trigger.

 

[Mozzarella]

Chrono Trigger is a masterpiece, indeed.

 

[Scotty W]

The time has come, my gaming friends, to talk of other things. Of Reptites and of evil Fiends, and how they kidnapped queens.

As I have mentioned before, the Fiends (or Mystics in the Snes version are Muslims). Given that the Reptites occupy the same area of the Earth as the Fields, we must invariably conclude that the Reptites are Arabs.

The Reptites and Fiend’s city is in the middle I’d the map, to the East of the human settlements- the Middle East! Indeed, we find that Lavos crashed to earth just south of Media.

This means that, allegorically speaking, Lavosis the Kaaba! Just as Lavos has altered humans at the biological level, in terms of their ability to use magic, he has also altered the revolution of the Reptites into speaking and non speaking, because, from a narratological pov, the idea of a speaking frog is frankly ridiculous. All this raises a further question of how the main characters are about to understand Arabic, in addition to Iokan I will have to do a deep dive in this later.

Now we know from the prophecies of David Icke that there are still reptiles involved in contemporary politics. The Entity intuited this truth before Icke revealed it to the world. In fact, in Japan Ioka and Icke have the same pronunciation, which means that Chrono Trigger prophecied both Icke and his revelation.

But wait, there is more!

Recall when you defeat the Reptite queen Azala, she calls down Lavos.



Red Star. Where have we heard that before? Of course, Edgar Snow’s famous book on Mao’s Great March- Red Star Over China!

Red Star Over China - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Which means that Lavos is not only the Kaaba, but also Chinese Communism! Chrono Trigger prophecies a future in which Chinese communism has been fused with Islam.

Let’s take a step back and recall the music that plays in the Reptite Lair.



Notice the main melodic line- cdcdefefbcbca

Now, the Reptites are a mix of human and reptile characteristics, so if we mix our musical notation systems, right in the middle of this melody we get Mi B Sa. MBS- Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia! It all fits so perfectly.

Now, within that melody again, we get EF. And we also notice that at the end of the line the chord gets slurred. If we apply that logic, it means that the F should be altered to 4. E4. What is E4? The next E3, at which Square announced it would be working with Sony INSTEAD of Nintendo. This lead in turn to MBS buying up all the videogame companies in Japan.

Now, what we know about commies is that they subvert. When Yakara, a reptile, disguised himself as a human- and as his ancestor was to do at a later date, they worked to subvert the kingdom. This is a reference to how MBS would later use the communists in order to subvert the industry so that he could buy it.

Now to tie it all together, MBS bought pretty much the entire industry in the present day. Now, we must recall that the time between the game’s release 1995 and the in game apocalypse is 4 years. If we follow this logic in reverse, the time between the real world apocalypse and the release of the game will also be 4 years which means,

NEW CHRONO TRIGGER SEQUEL IN 2026 CONFIRMED!!!

 

[Scotty W]

Absolute legendary thread. Probably the best ever.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Worst bump ever

 

[Doom85]

Absolute legendary thread. Probably the best ever.