Found this music video written by none other than Shigesato Itoi, a name you'll recognize if you've played Earthbound. It gives off the same sort of feeling as that game to me, is what I just typed.
I thought you may be interested, and then I thought of posting it. I ended up reading some news articles and while putting something together noticed I still had this in my clipboard.
I'm sorry, was that an overly detailed explanation?
Also, i am looking for an earthbound remix. All i can tell you is that its very simple but good drums and has an amazing ending that includes YOU KNOW WHO'S theme in very mindfuckering ways.
Of course the 'music' from his appearance in the game is probably one of the best ever done for a video game.
It's a classic remix and probably quite old, i would guess 4 or 5 years old. It contains several of the themes from the game and has a strong drum beat, like a mixing DJ.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:ABF, EM, you recieve the "look at it but don't comment on it" certification of achievement. I signed it in my tears for authenticity.
I've never played any of the Earthbound games, you know...
Yeah, considering how much I usually love JRPGs, particularly older ones, that sounds like a great use of money...
I mean, the only traditional-style JRPGs I've ever actually finished are Lunar Legend and Skies of Arcadia Legends. I guess if you add action-RPGs, dungeon crawlers, etc you could add a few more (Etrian Odyssey, Illusion of Gaia, various Zelda games, Final Fantasy Adventure, Tales of Symphonia, Phantasy Star Online Ep. 1), but not too many. Oh, and I did finish the N64 Paper Mario, if that counts as one.
As for Earthbound, I've heard the NES game is hard and grindey. Sounds exactly like the kind of JRPG I most dislike. The SNES one... eh, I don't know, I've never been interested enough to try it out, really...
The NES game is the Famicom game. If you want to hunt down the english prototype, good luck with that. It's even rarer than those copies of the World Series cartridge people pay ridiculous amounts for. Fortunatly, most collectors don't seem to realize that yet so the prototypes are relatively cheap if you ever find them (still outside my price range).
Yeah I hear that the first in the series still uses random encounters and so on.
However, let me put it this way. If you finished Skies of Arcadia in spite of youur hatred of random enouncters, consider Earthbound a major relief.
The battle system has been streamlined to be AWESOME. You know how we say Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG put all the enemy encounters in the field? That's not the half of it with Earthbound. You can force a "preemptive strike" by touching the enemies from behind (they can do the same though, so watch out). Best of all, the best feature in any game ever. You know how if you level up enough, low level enemies just become a waste of time? That's true no matter what "style" of RPG you play. It makes you wonder why idiots in those games even TRY. Yeah, nice one random Super Mutant, I just exploded 50 of you at once, what are you trying at this point? Well, in Earthbound if you get high enough that the battle is basically just reduced to you hitting A until they go away anyway, the game recognizes this and gives you an "instant win" the moment you touch the enemy on the field.
Aside from that, the game is, as you may have heard, funny. It seems to plan for every little thing you may possibly do ever and have some really funny out of the way dialog if you do that. They even have some stuff programmed in JUST for taking an item you stop using early in the game, the bicycle, to a swamp you can't get to until after you can't use it any more, IF you decide to go on a VERY out of the way trip TO that swamp during the incredibly fully explorative ending sequence.
Now ABF, I know you collect pretty much any game you find cheap. You seem to indescriminately gather really terrible games as well as good ones, so don't tell me you wouldn't pick this up for a good deal.
Quote:Now ABF, I know you collect pretty much any game you find cheap. You seem to indescriminately gather really terrible games as well as good ones, so don't tell me you wouldn't pick this up for a good deal.
If I through some miracle found a copy for $5 or something, sure I would buy it... but I don't know of many stores around here that would actually put it in the shop, as opposed to EBaying it for far more money. I mean, Earthbound is not a cheap game! Just watch those two auctions, I'd be surprised if either sells for less than $60-$80 or more. And there's obviously no way I'm paying that kind of money for an SNES RPG.
Quote:The NES game is the Famicom game. If you want to hunt down the english prototype, good luck with that. It's even rarer than those copies of the World Series cartridge people pay ridiculous amounts for. Fortunatly, most collectors don't seem to realize that yet so the prototypes are relatively cheap if you ever find them (still outside my price range).
Emulation...
Quote:However, let me put it this way. If you finished Skies of Arcadia in spite of youur hatred of random enouncters, consider Earthbound a major relief.
I think that it's not just that I hate all random encounters. I mean, I played how many hours of Etrian Odyssey... I mean, I don't like them, but there are other things I like even less, like not knowing where to go in a game with random encounters (or infinitely spawning enemies, same deal). I like knowing where I'm supposed to be going, so that I feel like what I'm doing has a point -- wandering around in a maze lost with no map while fighting battles constantly is the kind of thing that quickly gets me to quit games. Give me a map, an obvious goal, a questlog, etc. Save anywhere is a huge plus too, save points are a huge pain... (yes, I like the fact that all Lunar games have save anywhere... :)).
Oh yeah, and as I've said many times, I definitely prefer strategic combat... which is a big part of why I often lose interest in JRPGs (and RPGs in general really), the combat systems are often not too interesting or deep, or if they are you don't usually have to do much more than mash A repeatedly.
I mean, sure, sure, Grandia has a pretty good, fast-paced and somewhat strategic battle system... but what use is it when all I have to do is repeatedly press A and I'll win almost every fight? What use is all that depth when it's unused? It's frustrating.
But that, I think, is why I've said for many, many years now (14 or 15, perhaps?) that strategy games, not RPGs or anything else, are my favorite genre. And before then it probably would have been platformers, not RPGs, a genre I barely ever played when I was younger.
On that note, Lunar Legend and Skies of Arcadia... why have I beaten the GBA version of Lunar, widely agreed upon as the worst version, and one which DOES have random battles, and not, say, the PSX version which I also have, and which doesn't have them... um, "I had the GBA version years earlier" is all I can come up with. It wasn't great, and I'd never have played through the whole thing without save anywhere I think, but I wanted to play a version of Lunar because I'd played and liked the Sega CD versions in emulation, and without a Sega CD or PSX at the time, that was my only choice...
As for Skies of Arcadia... yeah, that's one I've debated with myself about for years, about why I love it so much (it is my favorite JRPG by far, after all)... I'll try again later. :)
lazy you just opened Pandora's Box. Prepair for a lecture from ABF on how they are "distinctly different", though there is a lot of overlap, especially considering Ultima was where both got their start.
ABF, you need not concern yourself with that. The game has maps, town maps. They provide you with all the information, except the information they don't provide. You access it with X, you know, the big blue button at the top? Just infuse your finger with an "Xish" kind of feeling to unleash it. It is usually very apparent where to go next. The desert is a bit of an exception, a boring part the game will tell you is boring.
That's the sort of humor the game has. It makes light of all the various ways RPGs function. Talking to everyone in a restaurant will eventually get someone telling you it's rude to walk around a fancy restaurant and ask everyone questions. The humor is also subtle, which I love in this age where humor seems to have to SHOUT the punchlines at you at high speed (not that I don't enjoy that too, but I like variety).
There's strategy. While you certainly are permitted to over-level yourself in the way I described and literally just walk into things everywhere to kill them (you complain about constant fighting in a dungeon, but did you read my description of how battles work?), if you don't do that, you end up using special techniques. If you just mash the attack button, you probably won't even get past Master Belch. Aside from standard healing and attacks, there's a number of stat boosters from the PSI casters and special devices from the nerd with no psychic powers that'll be very helpful in doing the enemies in.
Besides let's face it, unless an RPG specifically tries to "cap" your stats throughout the game to force it on you, ALL RPGs tend to let you brute force your way through the game with minimal strategy, American and Japanese alike (Yes, even Planescape Torment, which is still a great game mind you). In fact, the few exceptions are ones that really try to limit leveling up, like Super Mario RPG where you really need to learn to play well since the level caps pretty dang low (30, low by RPG standards). Heck, that applies to all the Mario RPGs since they intentionally use very low HP numbers. It also is done very well in Chrono Cross, since not only does your "cap" start really low and only increase when you kill bosses, the very nature of the combat system forces you to "work up" to special skills (advantage being the total removal of "MP", abilities can be used forever in long dungeons so long as you build up those resources). Pokemon is ridiculously deep considering how simple the basic premise is (just check out any Pokemon tournament strategy forum out there to get a clue as to just how people manage to twist those systems into amazing victories).
There's a lot more depth to be found in some games than overlevelers realize, and yes, I'll admit that I too tend to fall into the overleveling trap, because I NEVER run from fights and tend to ALWAYS fully explore every inch of some new location, coupled together to make even the "hardest" RPGs seem too easy, except when they incorporate those "cap restrictions" I mentioned.
Really, I think it's time to take a good long look at "leveling" and say goodbye to it's "default" implementation. It worked fine for a time, but perhaps methods like Chrono Cross are simply a better way to control stat growth. Also, again Chrono Cross basically gives the lesson that if you give someone limited MP to cast spells, they tend NOT to cast ANY spells except curative ones and just bash things with sticks except for bosses, BUT if you take away that limitation and make powerful spells simply something that needs special steps to cast, but are ALWAYS castable when those steps take place, people will use them far more often.
Another thing about Earthbound, it's a game that's not afraid to say "you lack the power, and never will have the raw physical strength, to punch out Cthulu, there will have to be some other way". Actually, Cthulu isn't entirely accurate. That abomination of monstrous star stuff was just a high priest. The game's final boss is basically Azathoth incarnate.
In fact lazy can probably back me up here. Azathoth, if ever awakened, will destroy all of everything to infinite darkness, and can only be put to sleep with a strange song (in it's case, played for all eternity, but then again we can't be sure that the way the Devil Machine works isn't to just play the 8 melodies for all eternity). It's just raw insane nullifying strength, with no real mind, called the "Blind Idiot God", and everything else, including creatures with minds beyond our comprehension, fear it. It's form is also beyond our comprehension, as is the nature of it's existance and whatever means it'll use to destroy the entire universe if awakened, and it exists across all time.
Giygas is all of that, except like Tony Stark it's a self-made ultimate horror.
Heck even Lavos, another eldritch horror from beyond the stars and able to control things outside our space and control the development of all life on the planet (while the whole time fighting the planet, as the planet is alive and equally capable), is nothing on Giygas. However, I'm willing to bet that the hyper-evolved timeless form of Lavos as the Time Devourer would be the one thing capable of taking Giygas on. Time Devourer Lavos, aside from being fused with Schala, is "linked" to infinite copies of itself across infinite realities, and all are in a position to destroy all of existance, meaning just killing the one in your reality isn't enough, because any of the infinite others will start the chain-fusion of them all that will collapse everything forever. That, plus the planet's only way to even slow this down was involving it's own multi-reality gambit involving an alternate reality ruled by Reptites taking on the utopian future made possible in Chrono Trigger and the FATE super computer. In the end, like all eldritch horrors in Japanese games, you win via song.
If they fought, well... Yeah.
Oh, and Mantorok sucks compared to either of them. Oh sure that thing manipulated eons of human history just to kill 3 other elder gods that had originally imprisoned it, but it's still dying and otherwise rather impotent to do any sort of world destroying, and all it's manipulations were rather subtle. Heck even the 3 other elder gods were simply going to imprison everyone on earth in a hellish nightmare based on their... well personality isn't the right word because it compares their minds too closerly to our talky ape minds... their "attributes"? That's about as close as it gets.
Until Silicon Knights FINALLY makes a sequel! Where is it?! WHERE?!
All these horrible void things make me sad... C'mere Niggerman. Wow, that is the most racist name for a pet black cat I've ever heard (the most racist name for anything really). Lovecraft you're racist as hell dude, not cool, not cool.
lmfao there should be a rule that if you're racist but a genius it's okay.
SPOILER'D
Lavos has a great sci-fi feel to it, it's why we're all here but it has to be killed before it destroys everything. The alien astronaut linked to Lavos is its cancerous host that siphoned everything from lavos. But it's never explained: Did the alien come with Lavos? was it already here? Did it arrive BECAUSE of Lavos? The alien is a platypus of physical features, it looks like a man who is part everything, is everything on earth created directly from his DNA? If this idea is true, then Lavos represents something very interesting. The entire game, it was like God or the earth, the universe, was opening the gates to heal itself from the scars of wars, personal anguish, etc. Like time itself was guiding you to show you these particular events that need your help, ultimately leading to the thing that will eventually bring time's end.
Lavos is the creator, but also our destroyer. Through the game of Chrono Trigger we see false prophets and religions, corrupt church's, praising statues and chanting. All of the 'religions' in the game are brought down yet we see that spirits exist, God exists and it is bound to nature itself - references to mountains, forests, particular plants. In fact one plant is so important, part of the game is to ensure its survival from 65m BC to 2XXX AD. Tons of references to the sun having power but not as a god, but as a source of life.
Ultimately, it takes the purity of mind from some youths to uncover it and abolish Lavos (but as DJ pointed out, only its single instance) and we are left with one understanding: Only life matters, what is here and now. There is no religion, no Gods, only your family and friends and the ability to do what is right - the choices we make.
False Gods is nothing new to RPG's but Chrono Trigger does an amazing job with the story.
On Earthbound's time line we are first presented with normality and a young boy. A meteor crashes and we go investigate. A Bee tells us it's not a bee and then we're attacked by an astronaut. This event gives perspective for Ness and Pokey. For Ness he saw a great trial, to do what the bee said and follow a path to ensure that the evils the bee spoke of would be destroyed. For Pokey, he saw great power. Perspective is important, its brought up multiple times in the Earthbound story. Eventually, in order to do what's right, you have to do something unspeakable. The series is called 'Mother' and the earth, our mother, plays the largest role in the story. Mothers in general are a constant theme, dad's are great too, but mom's are serious business. Mom's know these things.
In the story, I cant spoil it, but we see how a thing called 'Giygas' is made. Gigas is greek for giant and this thing is definitely big, in the series you see Giygas when it was young, an alien with pointy ears. Eventually it will grow to become penultimate evil, a God. But in Earthbound's story at its end you are first turned in to robots (as organic matter cannot travel through time) and then sent in to the past.
You travel up the caves.
They begin to look like intestines, pulsating under your feet,
At the end, you find what looks like an eye.. which turns in to the face of Ness but wearing a blue baseball cap. Giygas is an alien created without love and was torn from its mother, it could have been a boy, it could have been you but now it fluctuates in anguish. When the devil's machine destroyed, you see it.
Its form isn't humanoid at all, it's a spirit, vengeful in the darkness. It screams at you, yelling your name over and over, it tells you it's happy, then attacks you, it begs you why. It begs why over and over.
As you attack it, it becomes more fierce and you see more of it. This in turn, transforms and shifts as it tries to defend itself.
Screaming your name, the music, if you can call it that, gets louder, screeches and biomechanical grinding. Paula, a girl in your team, prays "If anyone can hear us, please help us, please give us strength, if you can." It continues to yell your name, telling you it's happy, that it wants to die. It attacks you with energy you cannot comprehend.
Do you see what this form of Giygas is? Look closely.
You are aborting a fetus inside its womb. It has no mother to call for help, no one to give it love. It has no rational thought, just anger, hatred and sadness that binds it together.
This boss and Earthbound in general... it gets to me.
You misunderstand. Lavos' Final Form is not some "alien astronaut", it's Lavos' final super evolved form. That's made very clear in the sequel. That IS Lavos, molting his shell after finally absorbing all the DNA and magic of our world. In fact, when you ultimately kill Lavos in the game, while in that messed up pocket dimension he created, something happens. Lavos attempts to save itself by jettisoning some of itself, but there's nowhere left to go. So it ends up in literal nothingness, void, with itself defining the rules. Schala is there as well, asleep, and it merges with her, becoming far more powerful.
But there's one thing, there IS a major god besides Lavos in the story. The planet is alive. You know the "entity" in Chrono Trigger everyone wonders about, the one sending you throughout history to direct you to key events? They mention that these must be key events in that entity's life time. Well, the ONLY entity that was present in every time period is the planet (in prehistoria, Lavos isn't around until the final part of that era's story). There's a group that translated more accurately, and it's far clearer it's the planet in the original Japanese. If that's not enough, Chrono Cross makes it explicit. The thing is, it's not necessarily a benevolent god. It's basically "nature" vs "an outside element". The planet can take or leave humanity. It wanted reptites, who in their timeline developed "biotech", all their buildings and ships and such are living things, and they are much closer to the planet (think the Chozo). Humans, being products of Lavos' influence, aren't nearly in that "harmony" and when they go the route of creating FATE, tampering with the timeline to maintain their own existance, the planet fights back by merging two realities. It's all very weird. In the end, the planet is as much your enemy as your ally, but Lavos is purely the enemy.
I read some of the story of Earthbound NES. Interesting origin for Giygas, I liked it. I gotta say that seeing it as an aborted fetus is creepy, but that's not really what I see, and due to the ink-blot "what is it" nature of it, I think it's likely just one personal interpretation. I just see raw screaming power. It starts out human, Ness's face, and as the Devil's Machine is turned off, it becomes a disembodied ghostly spirit, a screaming psyche. As the battle goes on, it dissipates, losing it's mind literally before your eyes as it's face slowly dissipates into raw power, static.
You crawl up a pulsating tube to a cervix where you fight a mutating red blob that has the silhouette of a fetus inside it. xD 'The devil's machine' is a uterus, get it? It cant be more obvious imo.
On Lavos, that cant be. Keep in mind i havent played Chrono Cross, but leme splain. You kill it and then crawl up in to its shell which has a cave underneath leading to the alien who is in a large suit. You even fight Lavos's infants, so they are just animals. Really, really big animals, that feed off worlds. People can use that siphoning power to gather it for themselves just as the Queen did using the Mammon Machine. But even she was just getting the leftovers from Lavos's host (the alien). The last battle has Lucca examining the alien, saying that he is an explorer that seeds worlds. The alien's 'siphoning suit' that you first battle him in, that is not an evolutionary form. it's the alien's technology (it's his Mammon Machine).
The evolutionary form of lavos is the Dreameater, it's a different Lavos that has grown for billions of years, eaten time, and it (they) are the reason that time ends, that's why the Guru found himself there as time isn't supposed to end. Schala said the dreameater is multi-dimensional, taking the minds of all living things through time and space so all the infinite possibilities act as one at the apex of the dreameater. It's there to bridge Chrono Cross as you said, as it spits Magus in to a different time with no memory, at which point you get the cut-scene of the 1005 war and destruction of the Guardia kingdom with 'someone' grabbing a sword that looks like the masamune. Setting the stage for Chrono Cross.
The alien using Lavos, at the end battle, has some interesting things happen depending on which chars you bring there. If you bring Marle she will say 'It's made up of every animal' and 'He is the reason we're all here' and if you bring Magus (or was it Frog?) he will say that the alien (calling him Lavos as well) created the world as its farm using "That creature" to suck the life from it.
But I agree with you, I dont think I explained very well, but Lavos is essentially religion. Putting faith in to power and omnipresence when it was just an animal feeding. Religion never succeeds in Chrono Trigger, but we're shown repeatedly that God exists. The Reptites and people of Zeal thought of Lavos as a God, as did the game player up until they find out that Magus didn't summon him from hell, which I thought was a great story arc to surprise the player and expand the game from fantasy in to science fiction. Lavos-as-religion has a ton of double meanings, even the resurrection of Chrono and Schala who sacrificed herself for her mother's sins.
"It all began with a red rock" is a theme too, I believe it represents the same thing as the image of 'unexplained intelligence' and 'advancement' as seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It appears from no where and immediately causes constant change but looks as a simple black brick. The red rock in Chrono trigger appears from no where, Ayla holds it and for some reason, Ayla is supremely strong and better than any human on earth, you first hear about it as the Masamune and having to obtain 'Dreamstone'. One caveman says "Found strange rock, made me feel icky so threw away."
Now it's kinda interesting but... its red like blood and man's destruction is a theme in Chrono Trigger, war is everywhere. Strangely enough, after time ends and nothing exists, the 'Master of War' still waits. I think this very telling in to the ideas of Chrono Trigger. Before the red rock exists openly, humans are simply victims. Once Ayla gives it to you and you use it in the future everything opens up to war, even the humans in 65m BC start to fight back. Belthasar and other gurus use the red rock in their inventions including the blackbird's engines, the Black Omen's generators, the Mammon Machine itself and of course the ruby knife which becomes the masamune.
More odd, is that the masamune contains three spirits, two males and a female. More oddity - the powerful form of masa and mune combined is what the Master of War will look like until you hit level 99 (at which point he becomes a Nu, which I believe t represent man's child-like curiosity) but does this mean that dreamstone is the spirits of things in our natural world? The ruby knife had no spirits, masa and mune lived in Zeal with their sister who stayed in the dream chambers. How and why did the three siblings decide to become part of the sword after it made contact with the Mammon Machine? was it a continuum break, a rift that pulled spirits in to it? The masamune stays in the mammon machine, but when you get to queen Zeal, you can see the remnants of the original mammon machine behind her. Did Melchoir take it? Did he put the spirits inside the sword? Did the queen trap the spirits the sword as a prison? Regardless, the red rock is spotted repeatedly and in each instance represents major feats of advancement for humanity, i think it is another piece of the true (and invisible) natural God in Chrono Trigger guiding life on certain paths but letting people choose what paths to take.
i have a psx emulator... maybe i should play Chrono Cross...
I'm not sure where you're getting a lot of that, but that's not really the case near as I can tell. The game specifically explains that the "central thing" in there is actually the Lavos Core, which after you beat it, evolves even further into that humanoid form. It created those offspring, but it seems it's intelligence is far greater than it's roars suggest. That's kinda par for the course with these eldritch things though, it's just that we can't comprehend it and just label it as animal.
I don't think I ever heard anyone call anything a "dream eater" in either game. You really should play Chrono Cross. It sets a lot of this straight. Lavos is Lavos. There's no alien hitching a ride inside. Actually that kinda seems lame... Like, random "extra boss" completely and inexplicably tossed in lame. Don't mean to knock the idea, in Final Fantasy X, the "Sin" creature, the one that created a religion saying it was a punishment for mankind's evil, the one everyone thinks is some godlike entity of some sort, turns out to be nothing more than the result of an ancient wizard's endless experiments on making an ultimate summoning.
I think the outside spikey bit of Lavos can be considered a crysalis, the "planet burrowing" phase, and the inside is where all the real work takes place.
Keep in mind that when your characters examine those forms, they specifically call them Lavos, and specifically say "so everything we've done has been for it". It looks like technology because that's part of what it copied. It's a combination of the entire history of genes, magic, and technology that the planet has produced, and it'll just keep spreading across the universe with it's offspring absorbing more worlds. No wonder it's power is so great.
It really is made a lot clearer in Chrono Cross. Keep this in mind, as much as it clears up, it also creates a whole lot of new unanswered questions. What the heck is Schala talking about in the "true ending"?
Oh, as near as I can tell from both games, Magus simply has been travelling around time searching for Schala after he "returned". They had intended on making him yet another of the 40 playable characters, but scrapped the idea. Instead it's hinted he's been watching one of the characters for a long time.
Incidentally, that purplish bluish hair the enlightened ones all have? That's not natural anime hair :D. Turns out that without Lavos' influence, Schala's blonde, like Marle, and Queen Leene, and Ayla. ...And one of the first characters you get in your party in Chrono Cross. Yeah there's a connection there.
Interesting you know about the third spirit in the Masamune, keep that in mind when it gets corrupted.
Also, red rock? Keep that in mind too. It's first appearence is BEFORE Lavos arrived on the planet, and Lavos itself is only capable of altering time periods where it exists. Further, red rock is common in Ayla's time, but after Lavos it becomes far more rare. It's likely a gift from the planet trying to shape humans (or aimed at reptites), but there's another thing that changes it in a completely different direction. The Frozen Flame is an important artifact in Chrono Cross, it's literally a flake off of Lavos' shell when it crashed into the planet, and JUST that flake is ridiculously powerful. That altered human history forever.
The dream eater is the thing you fight to get the true ending, its only in CT DS though.
Lavos's core is actually one of those flying tomatoes next to him which contains is life force, his body is just that. The machine is a machine that siphons power and the creature that destroys the world is just that, it's not like infant Lavos have tiny humanoid bodies inside them piloting them. You kill Lavos and then kill its host that was using Lavos, even if you kill Lavos before technology exists it has a techno-suit, so that doesn't make sense as each time zone has its own Lavos (just like the black omen)
I'll need to finish the DS version, but remember it's made AFTER Chrono Cross came out.
Anyway, it's no point trying to argue there's a tiny alien in Lavos piloting it. That IS Lavos, it's specifically stated many times that it's nothing BUT Lavos. The inside part is just the same ol' evolved forms you're always fighting in RPGs. You need not read more than that into it. Lavos exists across it's entire existance, keep that in mind. The final battle takes place in a pocket dimension that draws in all periods where Lavos exists. Plus, there's plenty of plot holes surrounding the "battle Lavos at any time" thing anyway, so it's not really an air tight argument to begin with. I'm not saying there's tiny humanoids in all of them. I'm saying that all the lavos shells are basically cocoons where a super evolved form is being made the entire time, and in this planet's case, it took a humanoid form. I bet whatever "hatches" from the others on their worlds will look totally different.
Here's why I say that, the ending of Chrono Cross gives this concept that every planet is basically a cosmic egg, and every single species created has the potential to "birth a new universe" by being a spermazoa for that egg. Lavos is unique in that it "cheats" the process by arriving from outside. You LOVE sex metaphors, you should like this. It literally feeds off the entire planet until eventually it hatches into a new form, something that'll take the entire planet into a new plane of higher existance. That's probably why the final form is in some weird pocket dimension, but it IS Lavos. I just have to say that considering Lavos is already a super advanced alien parasite that feeds off the entire planet to supercharge itself, adding in that it has another alien piloting it really adds nothing to the story.
I wonder if the Dream Eater you're talking about is intended to be some reference to the Time Devourer from Chrono Cross? I should play to find out.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:I'll need to finish the DS version, but remember it's made AFTER Chrono Cross came out.
Yes but it bridges the games better and offers more questions to keep it fresh and (hopefully) build on the sequel/prequel.
Quote:Anyway, it's no point trying to argue there's a tiny alien in Lavos piloting it. That IS Lavos, it's specifically stated many times that it's nothing BUT Lavos. The inside part is just the same ol' evolved forms you're always fighting in RPGs. You need not read more than that into it. Lavos exists across it's entire existance, keep that in mind. The final battle takes place in a pocket dimension that draws in all periods where Lavos exists. Plus, there's plenty of plot holes surrounding the "battle Lavos at any time" thing anyway, so it's not really an air tight argument to begin with. I'm not saying there's tiny humanoids in all of them. I'm saying that all the lavos shells are basically cocoons where a super evolved form is being made the entire time, and in this planet's case, it took a humanoid form. I bet whatever "hatches" from the others on their worlds will look totally different.
That's an interesting theory, I like it. But Lavos (the world destroyer) doesn't seem to show any intelligence beyond absorbing and destroying. When you fight its offspring, it simply shoots its quills at you, it doesn't reason or communicate and just acts like an animal. But i'll reserve any speculation until I finish Chrono Cross.
Quote:Here's why I say that, the ending of Chrono Cross gives this concept that every planet is basically a cosmic egg, and every single species created has the potential to "birth a new universe" by being a spermazoa for that egg. Lavos is unique in that it "cheats" the process by arriving from outside. You LOVE sex metaphors, you should like this. It literally feeds off the entire planet until eventually it hatches into a new form, something that'll take the entire planet into a new plane of higher existance. That's probably why the final form is in some weird pocket dimension, but it IS Lavos. I just have to say that considering Lavos is already a super advanced alien parasite that feeds off the entire planet to supercharge itself, adding in that it has another alien piloting it really adds nothing to the story.
Cosmic sperm is so Sagan. xD The seeding theory is basically that, it states that all life forms in the universe would have originated from some original source and therefore have base-similarities. So Lavos being the beginning and ending of all things is solidified as an ideology. In CT it kind of gives the idea that magic didn't exist in the world until Lavos came, but strength and spirit of humanity was already forming before hand, shown with Ayla's intensity (and again the red rock). But the oddity of evolution and our advancement has always been theorized as having extra-terrestrial origins, so it kind of fits in that ideal.
The issue i have is that it makes no sense that a huge machine with tubes hooked up to Lavos's body would 'form' in a cave a mile under Lavos's body as part of any evolution. It makes more sense that an alien setup camp and used Lavos as a generator. Why would the alien want the world to be destroyed? Based on what you said, that siphoning of Lavos's energy would be to power something massive, such as the energy needed for other worlds, or dying worlds.
This starts a new question. Why did Lavos attack in 1999 AD? We only see him do this once before in Zeal after being forced out from the Queen. So why did Lavos need to 'hatch' at that moment? Were the people of 1999 using Lavos as an energy source as well and unknowingly forced him out? Or, could it have possibly been because 1999 AD is when the alien arrived and parasitically attached to Lavos, causing him to 'erupt'?
Quote:I wonder if the Dream Eater you're talking about is intended to be some reference to the Time Devourer from Chrono Cross? I should play to find out.
You should definitely, the new areas/dungeons are fun too. But my wording was off, the creature in CT DS is the "Dreamdevourer" So, there you go.
I have CC up and running, I am currently looking for the scales of Kimodos and then meeting a pretty girl at the beach to give her a necklace. So far this is impressive but I would have much rather seen 2-D hand-drawn than these models. Dont get me wrong, they're lovingly crafted, but the PSX is just too flaky for proper 3-D modeling. Even 2-D sprites on 3-D backgrounds would have been better.
The battle system is quirky, creating color-coded fields to increase your power is pretty nifty and the combo attack method is clunky but interesting. I am not learning 'techs' so that's disappointing, I was hoping for 'Sean learned Windslash!' but so far no luck. My character has 'cure' which is already bizarre to me, why does the main character have support abilities? ;P
Quote:On that note, I haven't played Chrono Cross, but the way that its major theme is that people can't change their fates, and that most of the whole Chrono Trigger cast actually died horribly instead of changing things for the better (as you do in Chrono Trigger) is just reprehensible and definitely does not make me want to play the game...
It's a pretty bold move, actually. Not many companies would have the guts to do something like that and risk upsetting the fans.
Late, but I thought I'd point out one small thing to lazy here. That fight against the machine-like Lavos? That's not in a cave UNDER him, it seems to me that it's clear you went IN Lavos, inside his body. There's pulsing tissue everywhere, and those tubes are like arteries and nerves connecting to a machine-like inner-form. The machinery is part of him copying everything in our world, since technology is a part of it.
Edit: ABF, it isn't about not being able to change your fate at all. You literally kill an entity CALLED Fate in order to control your own destinies during the course of the game.
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