Issue 4.8: From Seconds to Epochs, Part 3

The Life, Death, and Life of Lavos in Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross

Game & Word Volume 4, Issue 8: Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022

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Table of Contents

1. Summary & Housekeeping

2. Feature: “From Seconds to Epochs, Part 3” (~23-minute read)

3. Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts

4. Further Reading

5. Game & Word-of-Mouth

6. Footnotes

Summary:

Today, we’ll witness the defeat of Lavos at the hands of Crono & Friends, and delve into the mind-breaking madness that is Chrono Cross’ plot, setting up this article series’ riveting finale!

Housekeeping:

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Feature: From Seconds to Epochs, Part 3

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🚨🚨🚨 SPOILER ALERT 🚨🚨🚨 

This post is one big, ginormous WALKING SPOILER for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Seriously, you really should experience this story firsthand. Chrono Trigger is easy to play and readily accessible on PC and mobile. Chrono Cross is available on PC and all major consoles, though its barrier to entry (gameplay-wise) is much higher. If all else fails, there’s always YouTube. If you’re at all able to, I can’t recommend enough that you play before reading this article.

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Welcome back, time travelers!

Before we dive back in, I wanted to share something really cool with you.

Special thanks to reader

William F. Edwards

for directing my attention to the excellent fan project, Chrono Trigger: The Musical. It’s a fun musical journey through Chrono Trigger’s story, with phenomenal lyrics, accompanying visuals, and synthonic remasters of the game’s iconic soundtrack.

It’s a great way to experience the story if you’re unable to play, or don’t have ~20–30 hours of spare time to sink into it. You can find it on YouTube by clicking this link, or watch the embedded video below:

Ok, now that you’re all caught up, let’s do this!

The Life, Death, and Life of Lavos

At a certain point, after playing enough, our intrepid Chrono Trigger player will have completed every side quest, earned every weapon upgrade, unlocked all magic tech, and hit all the level caps. At that point, there’s only one thing left to do:

Defeat Lavos.

As far as final battles go, it doesn’t get much more epic or climactic than the one against Lavos. After all, it’s one thing to be told that the fate of the world rides on the outcome of the battle you’ve been building up to for the past ~20-50 hours. It’s quite another to actually know it, because you’ve already seen what’s going to happen if you fail.

Need I remind you again?

“BUT… THE FUTURE REFUSED TO CHANGE.”

Hell, even the noobiest of n00bs will be motivated enough to emerge victorious against Lavos just so they never have to watch that horrible, ghastly Game Over sequence again.

The epicness is dialed up to infinity if you don’t warp straight to 1999 A.D. and instead tackle the final dungeon (which is actually the canonical path), because then you also have to fight Queen Zeal, then an upgraded Mammon Machine, then an upgraded, ultra-powerful, holographic, light-deity-ish Queen Zeal… and then Lavos… which is itself a fight so momentous, so climactic, so epic, that it spans not, one, not two, but three consecutive final boss fights.

I mean… Lavos is an incomprehensible eldritch monstrosity from beyond time and space. What did you expect?

And, just in case the sheer significance of the showdown still wasn’t clear enough, the third (and final) fight against Lavos takes place against a backdrop of constantly shifting scenes from each different era you’ve visited. It’s as if every single timeline has now converged on this single moment of truth. By now, even the densest, most inattentive player will finally realize: time itself is counting on you to win this battle!

It’s just such an incredibly perfect example of masterful game and narrative design. Hard to believe it’s rarely been equaled, let alone surpassed, over two decades later, with the much more powerful and comprehensive audiovisual toolkit and hundreds of billions of dollars at the game industry’s disposal today.

Check it out for yourself! Here’s a really fun speedrun of the whole sequence, which fits in with the whole “time” theme we’ve got going on (though unfortunately, the battle here doesn’t last long enough to show all the different eras cycling through the background):

Yeah, told you it was neat.

SIDE QUEST: Musical Storytelling

Thanks to orchestral scores, advances in audio tech, and the slow but steady normalization of video games more broadly, video game music is (FINALLY) gaining some modicum of respectability and recognition as a proper genre and category of music.

Video game music has long been derided as a shallow, repetitive, and hollow simulacrum of “real” music—but it’s hard to argue that position in today’s age of games scored by live orchestras and game soundtracks selling like hot cakes. The 8-bit chiptune soundtrack’s era is long gone, and while some developers do score their games that way, doing so has become an artistic choice instead of a technological necessity.

Video game soundtracks are now practically indistinguishable from movie soundtracks—yet nobody calls the legitimacy of movie music into question. Why, then, does the stigma against game music persist?

It’s madness—madness, I tell you—and I am here to exorcise from your mind all traces of the retrograde, repressive, and straight-up wrong notion of game music somehow not being “real” music.

It’s not hard, actually: all you need to do is listen to Chrono Trigger’s soundtrack!

Chrono Trigger has one of the most iconic and beloved game soundtracks of all time. It’s instantly recognizable to anyone who’s played the game, and many who haven’t. Fans constantly remix and re-arrange it. Its influence on game music composers is surpassed only by Mario and Zelda. And this was recorded in 1995, two console generations removed from the audio tech that enables today’s epic, fully orchestrated scores.

Why is that? Now, I’m not a musicologist, but I have noticed similarities between Chrono Trigger’s soundtrack and other iconic soundtracks from the retro days. One of the most consistent being their flawless use of the leitmotif to support their games’ narratives.

Leitmotifs are recurring elements throughout the score that are associated with specific characters, places, or events. They play whenever their associated characters, settings, and events are either on screen, or strongly associated with what’s on screen.

You can think of a character’s leitmotif as a “theme song,” though leitmotifs don’t need to be as long as an entire track.

Some of gaming’s most recognizable and iconic tracks are either leitmotifs, or contain leitmotifs. Nobody’s deployed them as well as Koji Kondo, the maestro who scored the Mario and Zelda games. Mario’s leitmotif is recognizable not just to gamers, but also to mainstream audiences. The Legend of Zelda’s equally iconic leitmotifs for Zelda, Link, and Ganon—among countless others—have moved entire generations of sh*teating edgelord gamers to actual tears.

Similarly, Chrono Trigger uses leitmotifs for each playable character, era, and main antagonist, along with almost every location, and several recurring events and situations.

Nothing quite illustrates how well the game deploys situational leitmotifs than the three different battle themes. There’s one for mooks and other random baddies, one for ordinary boss fights, and one for major boss fights.

The latter’s only used for narratively significant battles, like the fights against Masamune, Azala, and Mother Brain. Meanwhile, fights that are even more central to the plot will use your opponent’s leitmotif instead of the “normal” battle tracks—examples include the battles against Magus, Queen Zeal, and Lavos.

The reason this is so brilliant is that it instantly signals to the player how tough (and therefore significant) a particular battle is. It thus reinforces the narrative—without a single line of dialogue, nor a single frame of a cutscene.

Leitmotifs can also be used to invoke particular characters or events when they’re not on screen (but still associated with the current scene), or to reinforce a character’s connection to whatever’s on the screen.

To illustrate this, consider the track for the second fight with Lavos, “World Revolution.”

This is the moment when our heroes first encounter Lavos’ true form, and so it carries monumental symbolic significance. The plucky protagonists with fate’s actual blessing, defending their world and timeline against a near-unstoppable force of chaos and destruction. So, how does the music reinforce the stakes of this battle?

With leitmotifs.

Specifically, the first ~4-8 bars of Lavos and Crono’s leitmotifs play at 0:24 and 1:20, respectively. By this point, the player’s heard both themes several times, and will quickly make the connection: Lavos vs. Crono, Good vs. Evil, Order vs. Chaos, and what have you.

(This track also plays with contrast and juxtaposition in other ways. Notably, the two leitmotifs play atop a background of electronic synth notes, which contrasts Lavos’ alien and highly advanced nature with the planet’s more “organic” sounds.)

So, why are leitmotifs so prevalent in gaming’s most iconic soundtracks? Probably for the same reasons they’re equally prevalent in film’s most iconic soundtracks. Namely, they create and reinforce associations with the story’s most central people, places, and moments.

Try to imagine Darth Vader without the Imperial March, or Indiana Jones without his theme song, and you’ll instantly understand how powerful this musical device can be. Hell, John Williams’ status as one of cinema’s greatest composers and his own mastery of the leitmotif are not unrelated.

Now, if anybody talks sh*t about video game music within earshot, you now have the knowledge to give them a big, strong, rhetorical kick in the jewels.

After you kick Lavos out of spacetime, everyone returns to their respective time periods, Crono’s granted a pardon from King Guardia (remember the trial?), and the Millennial Fair marks the dawn of not just a new millennium, but a new reality—a timeline in which the apocalypse is averted, the future is bright, and ravenous space ticks no longer threaten the planet or its lifeforms. Hurray!

Actually, hold up—what happened to the other timeline?

You know… the one with the future you just averted? After all, you still experienced the ruined future—you kind of had to, as that’s what motivated you to challenge Lavos in the first place. So it follows that the original timeline still happened, and wasn’t wiped from existence... right?

Well… sort of. But not really. But also kind of. Confused yet? You don’t even know the half of it. If you thought Chrono Trigger was hard to parse out, just wait until we take a look at its sequel.

Chrono Crossroads

Chrono Cross was released on November 18, 1999 (in Japan; it released August 15, 2000 in North America) for the original Sony PlayStation. It was directed by Masato Kato, who wrote the story and script for Trigger… and then proceeded to take a cleaver and go all Ramsay Bolton on it for Cross.

This is a big reason why Cross is so contentious amongst the Chrono fandom. It also makes my job here much harder.

Today’s issue has been the bane of my existence all week. While Trigger’s story can induce some head-scratching if you stop to examine it, it’s still fairly easy to follow casually. Not so with Cross. It is a labyrinthine web of tangled timelines that maybe starts making sense after grinding through three +60-hour playthroughs. It is madness made manifest.

After writing this week’s newsletter, I’m more convinced than ever that it’s impossible to summarize Cross’ story in a way that’s both concise enough not to put newcomers to sleep and detailed enough to provide enough context for the concepts I want to examine.

Nevertheless, I’ll give it a shot.

*Clears Throat*

*Clears Mind*

The story starts in 1020 A.D., in a tropical archipelago called El Nido. Our hero, Serge, slowly gets out of bed.¹ Through some confusing timeline shenanigans I don’t have time to get into here, Serge discovers he can travel between two alternate timelines, one called “Home World,” where he lives; and another called (fittingly) “Another World,” where he died ten years ago.

We follow Serge and his totally-not-a-love-interest co-adventurer, Kid (yes, that’s her name), as well as a cast of over 40 playable characters as they hop and skip back and forth between the “Home” and “Another” timelines to eventually save time itself.

So, that’s the TL;DR of it. Obviously, there’s much more to the story. I’ll do my best to keep this concise and accessible to those unfamiliar with the Chrono games, but I make no guarantees. I strongly recommend you watch some of those condensed plot summaries on YouTube—one for both games (but especially Cross). I’ve found that a video length of ~20 minutes usually hits the sweet spot of balancing thoroughness with accessibility.

Here’s one for Trigger:

And one for Cross:

I should mention that you don’t have to watch these to follow my analysis, but they’ll help you understand what’s going on much quicker.

Anyway, about that averted timeline…

When Timelines Time Out

Each square marks a point in time. From left to right: 65M B.C., 12,000 B.C., 600 A.D., 1000 A.D., 1999 A.D., 2300 A.D.; the right endpoint marks 2400 A.D. | Source: Chrono Compendium

So, let’s turn to the diagram above. The second timeline (from top to bottom), the “Lavos Timeline,” is the one in which Trigger takes place. I want you to direct your attention to the 1999 A.D. node, where the timeline forks. The “Averted Future” is the one where Lavos succeeds in destroying the world. The “Keystone T-1” (no, I will not be explaining what that label means) future is the one Crono and Pals created after defeating Lavos. So far, so good? Very well, moving on…

Now, you’ll see that at the end of the “Keystone T-1” “Happy Future” fork, the year 2400 A.D., there’s a weird symbol that denotes a “Time Crash,” and a red line that goes back to another fork in the timeline, this one in 12,000 B.C., which created the “Keystone T-2” “Serge Timeline” where Cross takes place.

And from there, the timeline splits yet again, this time in 1010 A.D., creating “Another World,” where Serge dies in 1010 A.D., and “Home World,” where thanks to some temporal tomfoolery, Serge lives.²

So, that’s two entire timelines that have been altered. But what happens to the original timelines after such splits? Well, they go to a place called “The Darkness Beyond Time.” This is a place/state/whatever of non-existence that serves as the Chrono universe’s trash can (so to speak) for nullified timelines. The future where Lavos destroyed the world ended up here after Lavos’ defeat, and the future from Trigger’s ending ended up here after the “Time Crash” altered the timeline again.

This all has a rippling effect, which eventually leads to Serge being born. Oh, and in the “Home” timeline (the one in which Serge lives), Lavos ends up destroying the world in 1999 A.D. anyway. So… was Crono’s struggle all for nothing? Ultimately, that’s for the player to decide.³

Now you can see why Cross is so contentious in the Chrono fandom. Kato seems to positively delight in taking a wrecking ball to the beloved characters and perfect story that he so masterfully created for Trigger.

Lavos Loop-de-Loop

Anyway, let’s back up: what the hell is a “Time Crash,” anyway? Here, it refers a particularly massive disturbance in spacetime that altered two separate timelines to create a brand new timeline.

In “Happy Future,” the new timeline created at the end of Trigger, Lavos doesn’t destroy the world in 1999 A.D., and humanity continues developing and advancing. Remember how the Ocean Palace incident sent everyone to different time periods? Well, one of the Gurus/Sages/Wise Men of Zeal, Balthasar, was warped to 2300 A.D., and was delighted to find a technological utopia where humanity flourishes.

Encouraged, Balthasar spearheads the construction of city-sized institute for researching time and time travel, called Chronopolis. One day, while conducting some sort of time experiment, he makes a most disturbing discovery:

Lavos LIVES!

Well, as much as one can “live” in a dimension of non-existence, anyway—the parasitic alien abomination was banished to the Darkness Beyond Time after his defeat at the end of Trigger.

But wait, there’s more! Not only is Lavos alive and kicking, he’s grown more powerful than ever. During the Ocean Palace incident, Schala, Princess of Zeal, was warped to the Darkness Beyond Time. After Lavos also ended up there, he fused with Schala, becoming the Time Devourer—a ravenous monstrosity that, as soon as it grows strong enough, will eventually devour all of spacetime. Every timeline, every dimension—it’ll all go GULP.

Uh oh.

(More on Schala later. For now, just remember who she is, and that she exists.)

Obviously, this can’t stand. So Balthasar gets to work figuring out a way to stop the Time Devourer from munching on all of existence. Fortunately, he’s got at his disposal all the computing power of Chronopolis’ central AI, named FATE.

Yup. Remember how much we explored the concept of fate last week? Well, Cross makes destiny far less abstract, and much more literal. Though it’s probably for the better, I still find it funny how Cross’ plot, themes, and message can be positively Byzantine in some areas, yet painfully unsubtle in others. But I digress.

Anyway, in the course of accomplishing this new objective, Balthasar concocts a plan so complex, even Lavos’ mind would short-circuit before figuring it out and adapting accordingly (at least, I think that was the aim…).

For starters: he contacts Schala, who subsequently clones herself and sends the clone back in time as an infant, with some sort of directive—I can’t remember if it’s innate, or communicated to her later on—to stop Serge from dying in 1010 A.D. (how both Schala and Balthasar know that Serge is the “chosen one” is a whole other article) so he can carry out his… *ahem* FATE and destroy Lavos.⁴ Oh, and this Schala clone turned out to be Kid.

Confused yet? Good. Moving on…

Anyway, all these crazy time experiments destabilize spacetime to the point the Time Crash occurs—a temporal rift opens up, exposing Chronopolis to Lavos, who takes advantage of the rift to send Chronopolis back in time to the year 12,000 B.C., thus creating an alternate timeline where Cross takes place.

Oh, and as Chronopolis emerges in 12,000 B.C., the planet—the “entity” hypothesized by Robo in Trigger—reacts by opening a similar rift into the timeline where the Reptites defeated humanity for dominion of the world. It then transports the Reptite’s capital, Dinopolis, into the alternate timeline. It does this in order to “balance out” the temporal intrusion of Chronopolis. Thus, the existence of dragons in Cross.

At the end of the day, Serge & Friends are able to defeat the Time Devourer, erasing Lavos from existence—this time, for good.⁵ Upon doing so, the “Home” and “Another” timelines merge, creating a unified Ideal Timeline that stretches forward into infinity.⁶

Headache? I feel for you. Really, I do. But I swear on my amiibo collection that this is as simple as I can ever possibly make it. If need be, feel free to chalk everything up to “time travel is complicated,” the time-tested⁷ method of handwaving temporal complications, favored by writers worldwide.

Though perhaps I’m being hyperbolic. After all, it’s not like timeline merging doesn’t have precedent in the Chrono universe. In Trigger, one of the “eras” you can visit is The End of Time, which is the place/moment/dimension where all timelines converge, where time loses all meaning. Thus, it functions as a hub area, where you can instantly warp to any era you’ve previously visited. Fittingly, in Trigger’s timeline screen, it’s marked not with a numbered year, but an infinity (♾️) symbol:

Game: Chrono Trigger | Source: Square Enix, via Apple (Author Screengrab)

Hey, speaking of hugely consequential Chrono elements I’ve yet to examine, let’s talk about Schala.

Time Girl, Interrupted

Last week, I called Schala the single most tragic figure in the Chrono timeline. And once you know the stories of both Trigger and Cross, it’s easy to see why. She gets a painfully raw deal.

During the heights (or depths, literally and figuratively) of Queen Zeal’s madness, she was one of the only ones who openly expressed concern about the direction the Queen was taking the kingdom. She was also kind to the Earthbound Ones, treating them as equals and regularly traveling to the surface to comfort the children and generally offer moral support. She saves the heroes from certain death by warping them away before Lavos can annihilate them.⁸

All in all, she’s probably the kindest soul to have ever existed in any timeline.

And how does fate⁹ reward Schala’s kindness? By forcing her to helplessly suffer under her insane, megalomaniacal mother’s iron fist, then banishing her to an extra-dimensional plane of non-existence away from her beloved younger brother,¹⁰ and then, just to rub salt in her wounds, has the eldritch space tick—the one responsible for taking everyone and everything she held dear away from her—to merge with her, completely subsuming her will, and reducing her to mere fuel for Lavos’ evolution into the reality-killing Time Devourer.

Ouch.

Fortunately, in Cross’ canonical (or “true”) ending, Serge uses the titular “Chrono Cross”¹¹ to separate Schala from Lavos, upon which she regains her free will, and eventually ends up in our universe, seeking Serge… somehow. I suppose it’s as good an ending as any, after going through the hell that she did.

But this begs the question… what was so special about Schala in particular, that Belthasar went to such lengths to find her, not to mention her catalyzing Lavos’ transformation into the Time Devourer?

As it turns out, a lot of things! But for now, let’s put a pin on it.

Schala’s influence rippled through spacetime, not just directly, but in more indirect ways, as well. Most notably, through her younger brother Janus, the only member of Zeal’s royal family to emerge from the Ocean Palace incident relatively unscathed. And his is another story worth telling.

The Black Winds Blow (NOT Just Because I’m an Insufferable Edgelord)

Janus, Prince of the Eternal Kingdom of Zeal, never inspired the adulation her older sister did. Unlike the kind, warm, and magnanimous Schala, Janus was silent, sullen, and sulky. An oppressive gloom always seemed to follow him around. The citizens of Zeal would constantly remark, in hushed tones, on how weird, strange, and downright creepy he is. Some folks even spread rumors that he couldn’t even use magic (which—untrue as these rumors were—would have been highly scandalous for a member of Zeal’s royal family). Upon meeting the heroes, Janus grimly foretells that one of them will soon die, which rightly creeps the hell out of them.¹²

Basically, he was about as charming as you’d expect a 10-year-old edgelord to be. In fact, the only person who seemed to show Janus any love was Schala herself, whom he adored dearly. In equal measure, he despised his mother, Queen Zeal—to the point of renouncing her as having become someone entirely different to the mother he knew.

Janus was among the unfortunate cohort that witnessed the Ocean Palace Incident unfold as the Mammon Machine malfunctioned. Like the others, he was also warped to another era—in his case, ~680 A.D., where fiend leader Ozzie happened upon him.

After Janus demonstrated magical prowess,¹³ Ozzie decided to take the young prince under his wing, hoping to use his power to overthrow the human kingdom of Guardia. From then on, Janus took the name Magus.

He would eventually play almost as big a role in the Chrono story as his sister.

…A role that we will analyze in depth (along with Schala’s) next week, when we (hopefully) wrap up this series by tying together all the loose time threads in this series, and finally erasing the Time Devourer from existence, once and for all. It’ll be an entry for the ages.

Until then,

~Jay

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Food for Talk: Discussion Prompts

While you wait for the next issue, I invite you to mull over the following discussion prompts. Please reply to this email with your answers, or post them in the comments—I'd love to hear your thoughts!

1. Does knowing how much Chrono Cross turns the clock back (literally and metaphorically) on Chrono Trigger’s ending change your answers on fate and choice from last week’s prompts?

2. One of the gut-punchiest reveals in Chrono Cross is the fact that Serge’s escaping death in 1010 A.D. opens a door for Lavos to destroy the future again (because reasons). Would you sacrifice Serge so that everyone else may live? What about if Serge were your son, or sibling?

3. If you’ve played Chrono Cross, what is your verdict on it, and the direction it took? Is it just a big middle finger from Kato, or an underappreciated and brilliantly subversive sequel?¹⁴

Also, don’t forget to join the Game & Word subscriber chat! I’ll be posting a new thread later today:

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Games Featured:

• Chrono Trigger, developed and published by SquareSoft (now Square Enix) — Steam | iOS | Android

• Chrono Cross, developed and published by SquareSoft (now Square Enix) — Physical: Nintendo Switch | Digital: Steam | Xbox | Nintendo Switch | PlayStation

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Tags

#narrative #storytelling #physics #philosophy #metaphysics #spirituality

#TempusLudos

#ChronoTrigger

Footnotes

1. If you’re wondering why Crono & Friends aren’t the protagonists, or even in the game… you really don’t want to know.

Oh wait, you do? Fine. They’re dead. …I warned you!

2. You’re probably wondering… if the timeline where Serge dies is the “original” timeline, shouldn’t that be the “Home” timeline instead? If so, I agree fully. But it’s not.

I’m sure Kato had his reasons, but as of press time, neither I nor anyone else but him is privy to them.

3. But the answer is “yes.”

4. Which is funny, because FATE seems hell-bent on killing Serge every step of the way.

5. If for no other reason that Square has shown they’d rather flush hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet than make another Chrono game.

6. This also explains why Serge is able to travel between the “Home” and “Another” timelines at will, but none of the other ones. Since they eventually merge into the “Ideal” timeline, neither was consigned to the Darkness Beyond Time, as all the other timelines were.

7. Pun intended.

8. Well, except for Crono, but that’s neither now or then.

9. Small, not capital, “f.”

10. More on him later.

11. Please don’t ask me to tell you how it works.

12. Though it turned out, he was right!

13. Likely by defending himself from the fiends, who all but certainly tried to kill him on the spot.

14. For the record, I sympathize with both viewpoints.