16. Chrono Trigger (1995) – SNES
In Chrono Trigger, you lead a group of young adventurers through the fabric of time to prevent a global catastrophe. If this premise sounds redundant, cheesy, or just plain silly, it is. But like so many great pieces of entertainment, the real brilliance here is in the presentation, how the premise is webbed together in a complex string of events that gives you a diverse range of perspectives on the consequences of failure. You travel to horrifying futures, where no plant-life grows, surviving animal life is grossly mutated, and what’s left of mankind is faced with eminent extinction. The message here is surprisingly mature and sincere. Trips to the past show a world that exists in perfect harmony with nature: humans, dinosaurs, and all other life coexist happily. In the present, there is a clear division from nature and many species have gone extinct. This was 1995, and game developers were making very clear comparisons to our world and giving very really warnings about the inevitable consequences of our irresponsibility.
There are a ton of characters, and optional subquests allow you to explore each one in as much depth as you wish. One particularly touching quest involves a robotic character planting, and caring for a forest. I don’t remember what the significance of this forest is, but it is important. The human characters would not live long enough to see the trees fill in the land, so they leave Robo to tend to the earth and return thousands of years later to find their friend rusted into the ground. But a forest now lives where before there was none. The affection and dedication this artificial character exhibits toward the natural world is dichotic. He himself is so very unnatural, manmade. But he understands the significance of his sacrifice and makes it unquestioningly.
The game is also famous for its nearly limitless endings, all depending on your choices along the way. Chrono Trigger is a fun classic, giving the gamer difficult moral choices and many options for progress. This is one of the first examples of this depth of choice in videogame interactive narrative structure.
In Chrono Trigger, you lead a group of young adventurers through the fabric of time to prevent a global catastrophe. If this premise sounds redundant, cheesy, or just plain silly, it is. But like so many great pieces of entertainment, the real brilliance here is in the presentation, how the premise is webbed together in a complex string of events that gives you a diverse range of perspectives on the consequences of failure. You travel to horrifying futures, where no plant-life grows, surviving animal life is grossly mutated, and what’s left of mankind is faced with eminent extinction. The message here is surprisingly mature and sincere. Trips to the past show a world that exists in perfect harmony with nature: humans, dinosaurs, and all other life coexist happily. In the present, there is a clear division from nature and many species have gone extinct. This was 1995, and game developers were making very clear comparisons to our world and giving very really warnings about the inevitable consequences of our irresponsibility.
There are a ton of characters, and optional subquests allow you to explore each one in as much depth as you wish. One particularly touching quest involves a robotic character planting, and caring for a forest. I don’t remember what the significance of this forest is, but it is important. The human characters would not live long enough to see the trees fill in the land, so they leave Robo to tend to the earth and return thousands of years later to find their friend rusted into the ground. But a forest now lives where before there was none. The affection and dedication this artificial character exhibits toward the natural world is dichotic. He himself is so very unnatural, manmade. But he understands the significance of his sacrifice and makes it unquestioningly.
The game is also famous for its nearly limitless endings, all depending on your choices along the way. Chrono Trigger is a fun classic, giving the gamer difficult moral choices and many options for progress. This is one of the first examples of this depth of choice in videogame interactive narrative structure.
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