The Melancholy of Chrono Trigger

If you asked me what my favorite RPG of all time is, I would hem and haw and say that I couldn’t decide. Go ahead, ask me.

Greg, what is your favorite RPG of all time??

“Well,” I’d say, after hemming and hawing, “I can’t decide, but Chrono Trigger would make the top three.”

For all the various reasons I love Chrono Trigger—and you can find better written accountings of its greatness elsewhere—I think the one least mentioned is the palpable sense of sadness that is always bubbling underneath the surface. Obviously most RPGs have the whole mechanic of “go to town, find out town and townspeople have a problem and are bummed out, solve the problem and make everything better for everyone forever” but to my knowledge only Chrono Trigger goes a step farther and shows you what will happen should your quest to defeat Lavos fail.

There are different sad moments in the game, from Frog’s backstory to Robo’s beating to Schala’s sacrifice, but the 2300 A.D. era you visit early in the game is basically an entire time period wherein Lavos has emerged and destroyed civilization. Humanity clings on, shivering and starving in scattered domes, but all in all people are pretty well fucked in this era.

For whatever reason, the parts of the game that take place in 2300 are my favorite. Actually, I think I know the reason: I respond to melancholy. Even though through your actions you bring hope to this era by helping out and providing the survivors with a potential future food source (see plant below) it’s still going to be a rough time.

What’s more, there are little touches here and there that help drive home the fact that this place is close to death, from the corpse you discover clutching the plant seed to the howling wind sound on the overworld map to the insane inventor who gives you the Epoch. There are RPGs where you can get “bad” endings or do bad things—see most American developed PC RPGs—but entire chunks of Chrono Trigger take place in a world you’re actively trying to prevent.

Of course, my favorite little bit is the way that, even with advanced technology, humans still couldn’t stop Lavos. I tend to be a fatalist about a lot of things on top of my aforementioned melancholy preference, so the fact that technology couldn’t help makes my black, cynical heart pump with slightly warmer ichor. Plus it makes me wonder if the Reptites had won out over humans whether they could have fared better.

Anyway, there’s this device called the Enertron which is effectively a free, instant Inn—it restores all your HP and MP to full. Your characters step out of it striking victory poses, but then the text intones the following and your characters stare down in disappointment at their empty bellies:

Mankind may have advanced rest machinery (imagine how it must’ve revolutionized the trucking industry!!) but they still can’t overcome hunger, one of the most basic drives.

Then, of course, there’s the predictable “robots that were created to aid and defend mankind end up turning on him” thing.

PROTIP: Most robots in the game are weak to Chrono’s Lightning techs.

The future is a bummer, but on the bright side, I guess things can get worse than they are. Errr I guess that’s a bright side.