Chrono Set off celebrated its 30-year anniversary this week, on March 11, 2025. Under, we glance again at the way it continues to endure and what continues to make it a robust, related traditional.
After 30 years, I nonetheless usually discover myself interested by Fiona’s Forest in Chrono Set off, and one of many scenes that captures what makes the sport so enduring for me.
It’s a late-game second after you full one in every of Chrono Trigger’s few however significant facet quests. In it, you meet a lady named Fiona, who has devoted herself to planting a forest round her small cottage. Her husband has gone away to battle because the native kingdom, Guardia, takes on a robust magician referred to as the Fiendlord and his military of demi-human creatures. Whenever you discover her, Fiona worries over his security and laments that whereas the couple had hoped to develop the grove collectively, she will be able to’t have a tendency it on her personal.
Chrono Set off is a time-travel recreation, and Fiona lives within the 12 months 600 A.D. A plurality of the forged hails from 1000 A.D., so that you study fairly rapidly after first assembly Fiona that no forest survives into the longer term. It’s not precisely clear what occurred in Fiona’s story, however we are able to make an informed guess. The battle continued. Her husband did not return. She by no means realized her dream.
That adjustments over the course of the sport, due to your affect. The story pushes you to assist the dominion of Guardia struggle key battles, just like the one at Zenan Bridge, the place you resupply Guardia’s troopers after which assist cease the advance of the Fiendlord’s forces. Later, you personally defeat the Fiendlord and his lieutenants, placing a cease to the battle and altering historical past.
Whenever you drop by Fiona’s cottage later within the story, her husband has returned, however now listless monsters, with no Fiendlord to comply with, have scattered into the area, turning the entire space right into a wasteland. So that you supply to help and dip down into the close by Sunken Desert and carve up the undead creature sucking the life out of the world.
Returning to Fiona, you inform her the nice news–she can have a tendency the land with out concern. But Fiona realizes that even along with her husband, the job of cultivating the forest is just too large, they usually will not reside lengthy sufficient to see the job by. That’s when your robotic companion, Robo, volunteers to hold round for 400 years to help in tending to the grove.
You zip ahead in time to 1000 A.D. and now, the place as soon as stretched empty sands, inexperienced timber march for miles. Fiona’s cottage has been changed by a shrine, tended by acolytes paying tribute to her for her efforts. On a dais on the middle, bathed in daylight, is Robo, now rusted and lifeless, commemorated for his tireless work in bringing life to a spot the place there was none.
I first performed Chrono Set off when it was launched within the U.S. in 1995, once I was 10 years previous, and on the time, it was revelatory; formative. It was a type of random Christmas items from relations, my aunt and uncle seemingly having chosen it arbitrarily from the cabinets of a Toys ‘R’ Us or Ok-Mart. My uncle is a fan of video games, however the type of one who’d exit for a Legend of Zelda and snag a replica of Doom or Madden, and has by no means actually been one to remain up on new titles, particularly within the mid-’90s. I am uncertain he knew something concerning the recreation outdoors its cowl artwork, which had an identical vibe to A Hyperlink to the Previous, and he knew I preferred that as a result of I performed it at his home each time I visited.
That makes his resolution to seize Chrono Set off, fairly than anything, one thing of a fateful one. I performed Chrono Set off over the course of what felt like the following year–when I lastly defeated Lavos, I keep in mind it being brilliant and sunny and summer time outside–and it blew my tiny mind out the again of my younger head. Chrono Set off was the primary time I noticed that video games had the potential to be as highly effective, emotional, and even shifting as a e book or a film, that they could possibly be one thing greater than mechanically satisfying like Mario or fascinatingly expansive like Zelda. Each recreation I had ever performed earlier than it was a toy, however Chrono Set off was a chunk of artwork. I had all the time preferred games–but I liked Chrono Set off.
It is, in no unsure phrases, the sport that put me on the trail to be an individual who writes about video games.
Whenever you present up 400 years later, for the individuals caring for it, the shrine can be Robo’s tomb: a spot to recollect and have fun him for who is aware of what number of extra centuries. But he is a robotic, and the genius inventor of your group, Lucca, solely wants a number of hours to repair him again up once more. With nothing to do, you and the opposite characters discover yourselves in Chrono Trigger’s quietest and most contemplative second.
Your group of misfits, cobbled collectively from throughout the historical past of the planet, make camp within the forest that now exists purely due to your efforts and Robo’s sacrifice. Everybody stretches out underneath the leaves and the celebrities, ringed round a campfire, and simply talks for a bit. Whilst you can collect seven whole characters collectively in Chrono Set off, you solely ever journey with three, and whilst you can go to your ready get together members within the surprisingly liminal house that’s the Finish of Time whereas they wait so that you can name them off the bench, this is without doubt one of the few instances, if not the one time, during which they only share one another’s firm.
Chrono Trigger’s story is, for probably the most half, not particularly deep. Replaying it just lately, I used to be struck by how a lot I might projected onto the characters, and the way little there actually is of every one demonstrated by dialogue. They’re principally skinny, and regardless that you could have possibilities to dig into their backstories, the sport by no means provides a substantial amount of dimension to any of them. Crono is courageous however silent; Lucca is good and (principally) humble; Robo has a Information-like high quality of fascination within the ideas of humanity and friendship; Frog is stoic, loyal, and guilt-ridden; Ayla is boisterous and daring.
Of all of them, Marle is probably the most human, struggling underneath the yoke of her position as a princess and her want for exploration and journey, and to expertise the world. She’s additionally very clearly the group’s coronary heart, an incessantly uplifting and selfless voice inspiring the others to step up, to assist, to do no matter they’ll for whoever they meet. When Crono, Lucca, and Marle wind up sooner or later for the primary time and uncover that the world ends in 1999 A.D. with an enormous monster, Lavos, erupting from the bottom to ravage the planet, it is Marle who first steps ahead. Marle is the one who decides that the three of them–three youngsters, who’ve practically died various instances as they’ve unintentionally traveled by time–must discover a strategy to cease it.
Video by YouTuber OmegaVideoGameGod.
Chrono Set off is fairly clearly a recreation written with a youthful viewers in thoughts, the kind of of us who may obtain a replica of Chrono Set off for Christmas in 1995. And certainly, at 10 years previous, it hit me extremely exhausting. At the moment, seeing Crono, Lucca, and Marle watch with horror and despair as Lavos annihilates their world, earlier than deciding because the theme music swells that it is as much as them to maintain the worst from taking place, it nonetheless hits exhausting.
There won’t be a substantial amount of depth to Chrono Trigger’s characters, and thy won’t undergo particularly concerned arcs over the course of the story, past traditional hero tropes like coming to phrases with previous failures or reconciling with dad and mom. But they’re, basically, heroic, selfless individuals, and generally, that may be sufficient.
And regardless of principally being a considerably predictable, heroic journey RPG, Chrono Set off can nonetheless be shocking. Within the camp scene, it turns into downright philosophical. Robo has had a whole bunch of years to consider why the group has been pulled on this journey, concerning the forces which have drawn them collectively. The group discusses concepts of destiny and function, and speculates {that a} greater power–implied to be the troubled, dying planet itself–might be accountable for the gates that permit them to journey by time.
Sitting on this forest they helped carry to life, the characters ponder the connection they share with the world, and with one another, permitting one of many recreation’s main themes to come back into clear focus.
Simply earlier than I set about replaying Chrono Set off, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan gave a speech at the Writers Guild Awards, after successful the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Tv Writing Achievement. In it, Gilligan–famous and, at that very award present, lauded for creating one of many all-time anti-heroes in highschool teacher-turned-meth kingpin Walter White–called for fewer tales about terrible individuals and extra about clear heroes.
After praising “Breaking Dangerous” writers and Walter White actor Bryan Cranston, Gilligan stated, “Walter White, due to the work they did, he’s one of many all time nice dangerous guys. But all issues being equal, I feel I might fairly be celebrated for creating somebody a bit extra inspiring. In 2025, it is time to say that out loud, as a result of we live in an period the place dangerous guys, the actual life sort, are working amok.”
“Once we create characters as indelible as Michael Corleone or Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader or Tony Soprano, viewers in all places, all world wide, they listen. They are saying, ‘Man, these dudes are badass. I need to be that cool,'” Gilligan went on. “When that occurs, fictional dangerous guys cease being the cautionary participant that they had been created to be. God assist us, they grow to be aspirational.”
Within the remaining moments of the campfire scene, after suggesting the sport’s time journey could be the planet itself reminiscing over its life and revisiting errors or regrets, somebody asks Lucca if there’s something she needs she might change. Lucca hesitates within the second, however when everybody’s asleep, you are taking management of her as she slips off and enters one of many time gates alone. This one is not blue like all of the others, however a considerably horrifying crimson.
If the participant has visited Lucca’s home every so often again in 1000 A.D., they will acknowledge the placement the gate takes them to as her dwelling. Pages from a journal scattered round give a way that you’ve got traveled to some level in Lucca’s previous, earlier than she turned the intrepid inventor you know–before she was even focused on such issues.
Stumbling out into the entrance room, you get what is well probably the most harrowing scene within the recreation. Lucca’s mom, cleansing one of many contraptions her husband has invented, will get caught within the equipment and is being slowly pulled into it. As you watch, a toddler Lucca scrambles about, making an attempt to cease the machine, however is just too younger to know the way.
That is Chrono Set off at its most intense, and in addition its most refined. When you’ve beforehand visited Lucca’s home, you won’t have realized what you had been seeing. It’s doable you did not put collectively the truth that Lucca’s mom, Lara, all the time sits quietly in a chair in one of many home’s rooms. Whereas speaking to her, you might need seen Taban, Lucca’s father, carry Lara lunch. But whereas different characters generally mill about or change areas between scenes, Lara by no means does. She solely sits quietly and, principally, alone.
You’re seeing the worst second of Lucca’s life–the motive why her mom is all the time in that chair.
The scene is one in every of solely a few moments in Chrono Set off during which time journey is not simply a part of your journey, taking you considerably haphazardly from period to period, the place you assist out whoever you meet. Right here, you particularly return to the previous and proper a flawed. When you’re fast about it, you’ll be able to shut the machine down and save Lucca’s mom. When you’re 10, you could be overwhelmed, having had no concept how it’s best to have ready for this challenge–having no concept you might put together for it. That may be horrifying.
Video by YouTuber Bruce Riggs.
But succeeding–saving Lucca’s mom, altering her life, altering the fates of those three people–is highly effective. The outcomes of the state of affairs aren’t clear till later, while you return to Lucca’s home to seek out an lively Lara shifting across the rooms, doing home tasks, excited to see her daughter.
It’s not uncommon that in RPGs, you wander a world, interacting with individuals who need assistance like a sword-swinging, gun-toting Mr. Repair-It, taking up odd jobs and quests. In lots of them, you’ll be able to even be magnanimous about it, turning down funds characters supply or by no means asking for any. Typically, they will hand you their grandma’s favourite sword or some such as a substitute. Even while you refuse fee, there’s an implicit transaction in your actions, as a result of in any case, it is a recreation and you want to advance. Some video games even allow you to ask earlier than you tackle any person’s request: “What’s in it for me?”
Chrono Set off isn’t actually like that. You obtain rewards for doing quests, certain, however that is not why the characters do them. It’s the type of story the place you meet an individual who desires to develop a forest, and somebody in your group says, “I might like to assist.”
I feel that is why Chrono Set off has caught with me for 30 years, when so many different tales have come and gone, and why it feels particularly highly effective now. When Crono, Lucca, and Marle watch Lavos burn down the world, that occasion, legitimately, is just not their downside. They’re from 1000 A.D. and might be lengthy lifeless earlier than the apocalypse. So will their youngsters. Their youngsters’s youngsters. The kids of their youngsters’s youngsters, and on.
They struggle anyway, for individuals they will by no means know. They do not know that they’ll cease Lavos. They only know that they need to strive. A forest might develop right here, with assist. Life is definitely worth the effort.