My friend and I recently beat Chrono Trigger without Chrono, and it is quite nearly the best ending of any video game I have played, marred only by what I would call a generational genre convention and the need to keep little kids from crying.
My first complaint about the ending stems from its place in the, if I may wax academic for a moment, historical context in which it was created. Chrono Trigger is an SNES JRPG, and like most iconic games that can be classified in such a fashion, there are moments designed to make the player chuckle. Normally this adds a nice bit of flavor to the story. In this case it dilutes the impact of the ending, in which the main character of the story is dead.
The sudden reappearance of the entire cast on a quest to revive Chrono when a gate opens, after Gasper had just explained that the gates were going to close forever, undermines the definitiveness of Chrono’s death, as established at the End of Time. I have heard two possible explanations for such a scene in the ending. The first was that the designers wanted to establish that there was a way to bring Chrono back, if the player had not already figured it out. The emphasis placed on the Time Egg earlier, it seems to me, did a nice job of that. The second explanation was that they wanted to keep kids from being sad that Chrono died.
Accounting for the preceding design decisions, the ending presents us with one of, if not the, saddest ending I have ever seen in an RPG. After defeating Lavos, the characters are returned to the End of Time. At the moment of their elation, their greatest triumph, the saving of everything on the planet that ever was or will be, they are informed that the gates are closing. The magnitude of their success is forgotten in a mad rush to return to their appropriate times, and various commitments, like Kino and Queen Leene. Marle pleads with her friends to help her save Chrono, but her words fall on callous ears. As the gates slowly close, even she must bow her head and return to her own time as Lucca provides her with the cold comfort of science, informing her that everyone dies eventually. We are left with the Guru of Time, alone, about to be stranded in the End of Time, when he discovers the C. Trigger, abandoned in everyone’s frenzied haste to return to the correct era.
When Marle returns to Guardia, the Millennium Fair is in full swing. This scene is familiar, though notable for its lack of any of the other characters. The standard fanfare and dialogues are present, until you find Chrono’s mom. She has the same sort of line as when you visit her in her house after Chrono dies; she wants to know where Chrono is. It’s fairly mundane, until the moment in which you realize that, after the curtain closes, someone will have to tell her that her only son, and only child, is not only dead, but was obliterated, making her a woman who has lost not only the father of her only child, but has outlived the child in question. After the credits, the game leaves us with Marle, sitting under a tree with the silhouette of Chrono walking endlessly within the moon, a mere shade and living on only in memory.
The final image of the ending leaves us with a singular emotion that sums up the previous scenes, loneliness. After saving the world, the party is shattered; torn apart by the compulsion to return to their own times. Not even Lucca, who shares an era with Marle, has any comfort to offer the princess. Even the celebratory atmosphere of the Millennium Fair is spoiled by our knowledge that Marle is doomed to tell Chrono’s mom of his destruction. The closing of the game, Marle sitting under the tree, is actually the moment when she is closer to Chrono than she has been during the entire ending. Sadly, she is sharing the screen with Chrono’s shadow, showing us that despite this moment of proximity, Marle is still alone. As the ending finishes, we too are left with that same loneliness of Marle, acutely feeling Chrono’s absence.
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