LANTIS, DON'T FREAK OUT. I AM NOT MAKING FUN OF CHRONO TRIGGER. I WOULD JUST LIKE SOME CLARITY ON A SEEMING MISTAKE IN THE WRITING.


Okay, guys, i need some help, here. There may as simple an explanation, to the seeming plot hole that I fear I have just discovered as I was playing through the SNES version of Chrono Trigger earlier, as: Magus was describing an event that happened to his knowledge, before Chrono and his friends changed history by showing up at the Ocean Palace and challenging Zeal. But it's still sort of weird.


All right, so, this is it ->

When you first journey through the cities on the floating continent of Zeal, various people mention at least one or two of the three Gurus having mysteriously disappeared, while another named Melchior was imprisoned on Mt. Woe for opposing the Queen. I assume that time-wise this is but a few days prior to rescuing Melchior and going through the Ocean Palace, whereupon none of the Gurus are present with Zeal, Schala, and the Prophet, and Lavos wakes up, causing the Palace to "crumble" (according to what Schala warns is about to happen just before she teleports you away), and destroying the entire Floating Continent.

Later when you find Magus at the cape, he describes a moment in his childhood (where he originally lived in Zeal as Janus) where, in what looks to be the very same room in the Ocean Palace as where you had just gotten through getting owned by Lavos, the Mammon Machine goes haywire or something and a few wormholes appear, swallowing Janus and the three Gurus and sending them to various time periods. Now, when did this scene actually happen? It doesn't coincide with the established history of Zeal that we've found out so far. If the story Magus describes where he and all three Gurus disappear in time happened BEFORE Chrono and the party discovers Zeal for the first time, then it doesn't make sense that Melchior is trapped on Mt. Woe in the same era as Zeal and not in 1000AD where you originally find him, and that Janus is also still present in Zeal, of all things. If Magus's flashback happened AFTER the party confronts Lavos in the Ocean Palace, then it doesn't make sense that that same room in the Ocean Palace was still intact at all for anyone living to still be there, when the screen shaking and Schala's warning that the Palace was starting to fall apart during the scene where Lavos owns the party both clearly suggest that the Palace did not remain standing after Schala sent Magus and the party away to safety. Also, if the flashback happened afterward, then Gasper and Balthasar should not be there in the scene, anyway, because random people in the floating continent's cities suggested that one or both of them mysteriously disappeared.

Now, my only guess is that Magus was describing what ORIGINALLY happened at the point in time where the Mammon Machine finally summoned Lavos in a tangible form and he naturally gave Queen Zeal and the other stupid assholes present there ready to hail his arrival. And therefore, Chrono and party's arrival in that room in the Ocean Palace just before Lavos "woke up" was them changing history as it was known. But there's a flaw with that, too. If Magus's flashback and the party's trying to destroy the Mammon Machine, ticking Zeal off and compelling her to sic Lavos on them, both happened at the exact same moment in time, then the three Gurus should have been there in that room along with the Queen, Schala, and the other nameless Enlightened Ones when the party showed up to defy Zeal, because the Gurus were all there in the flashback just before Lavos opened a rift to swallow them all up and send them to various eras. Also, if the party then changed history by rousing Lavos's anger after trying to scrap the Mammon Machine, thereby simply getting their butts kicked by Lavos instead of Janus and the Gurus getting swallowed up in wormholes, then why is Gasper still subsequently found at the End of Time, Melchior still found in 1000AD, and Balthasar's supposed corpse (I think he died of insanity at some point in his lab before the party arrived to claim the Epoch) is still in 2300AD? If history was changed to where none of them were sent through wormholes, then they should all be either dead from Lavos's crushing the entire Floating Continent, or there along with the few other survivors of the catastrophe back on land in 12,000BC, right?



So, yeah, I can't believe I never noticed this seeming plot hole before, but if someone can help me resolve the two conflicting stories, I'd like to hear their explanation.



P.S. You know, this brings up another question I have always asked myself. Come to think, where did Schala go? Did she die in the fall of the Ocean Palace? Or did she get lost through a wormhole as well to some random era and Magus is still trying to find her?

...I hate time travel.

... Uh.

So, that flashback. Cool find and all but, uh, no.

Here is how it went down in that flashback, before Chrono & Co's mass altering of millenia of history:

- Zeal begins sucking Lavos' energy
- Sages try to stop her
- By control of Zeal, Lavos sends all sages and Janus off into their respective future locations. They remain there.

Here is what happens after Chrono and such go gung-ho about changing everything:

Note: everything from before is changed and does not relate to this at all.

- Magus is defeated in his castle and sent back to prior to Zeal's energy sucking escapade. His memory of how it went down last time remains even after his arrival now.
- Magus becomes the prophet of sorts and warns Zeal of the sage betrayals to come
- Melchior is imprisoned on Woe, (this is key) the others flee and hide
- After Chrono and such free Melchior from Woe, they begin the attempt to stop the energy sucking escapade again under different conditions, and fail. Again. Portal sucking ensues.

And juuuuuuuust in case:



... Yeah.

Okay. That's where I'm confused. By "they", do you mean Crono and the party trying to stop the incident when you actually control them going to the Ocean Palace, or do you mean "they" the three Gurus going to the Palace together, ahead of the party, immediately after Melchior is freed from Mt. Woe, to stop the incident and it happens anyway?

Honestly, this isn't a matter of plot holes and more a matter of the functions of and implications of time travel. This is a field much more adequately tended by Regal and I hope he decides to come in here eventually, but I'll go ahead and throw my 2 cents.

As I don't recall clearly what ends up of the gurus post-hiding, maybe someone else does. As I and probably every other CT fan recalls, though, none of them were present for the second round at the Mammon Machine. My memory has them in hiding up to that point and I do not recall any information after that.

What does come to mind, though, is that it would seem your understanding of the repercussions of time travel in Chrono Trigger is based on one that causes immediate effects to all future timelines, but there's only one instance where this is a definite argument: Marle's disappearance in 600AD.

Your problem with it seems to be that you're wondering why the gurus remain in their present times if they weren't sent to them after Chrono's team f*cked with time. They should have vanished, under your assumption.

Well, that's cool. But.. Marle's disappearance is a bit of a special case. She "ceased to be" because her manner of existence was completely removed, not because her manner of getting there was completely removed. With the gurus, they only had their way of getting there taken away. There isn't any evidence in the game that I can recall that would lead to the assumption that them having already been sent somewhere will change if it has happened once in at least one timeline.

This is where the time travel thing comes in. Metaphysics and such.

There's a few different ways time travel could work. The one you're assuming is similar to that seen in Back to the Future where a change in the past will cause immediate and unnoticed changes to all futures associated with your new history.

I don't believe Chrono Trigger functions on that kind of time travel. Neither should you.

The only definitive evidence there is of something like this is when Marle, a figure from the future, disappears in 600AD when her ancestor is killed. Had it been the way you seem to be suggesting, then her disappearance should never have been noticed. It should have been just *poof* gone and Chrono suddenly doesn't have a single memory of how the hell he ended up in a castle 400 years before his time.

You can either take that itself as a plot hole, one which goes perpendicular to your own, or assume that as the way time travel works in Chrono Trigger's world. By this, you now know that having your way of getting somewhere does not remove you from that place. Had Marle never existed, Chrono never would be 400 years in the past. Yet there he remains. It's also known that Marle "ceasing to exist" isn't REALLY ceasing to exist, as she has memory, however vague, of where she was during the time she "disappeared".

Uhhhh.


Yeahhhhh.

This is a difficult subject. But it's a time travel story, there will invariably be things that are difficult to understand.

</Freak_Out>

its complex, thats all i can say about the time travel in ct. ive read through all the materials at chrono compendium and i still cant fully grasp how it all works. there are so many logic errors, nuanced rules, and sequential changes.

Funny thing about time travel and the effects of such.... We know jack sh*t about it.

The flashback of Magus does make sense. As Stythe stated earlier, the Gurus originally attempted to take down the Mammon Machine. But when Magus when back to 12000 BC, he already KNEW that was going to happen, so he warned Queen Zeal about it. In doing so, they caught Melchior before he and the other two could do anything about it. Then Belthasar and Gaspar disbanded and went into hiding. So that's why there were no Gurus when Crono made it there... Magus screwed it up.

Also, after the fall of Zeal and the rise of the Black Omen, you never hear from the Gurus again. The game never tells you where Belthasar and Gaspar were hiding after Melchior was capture, and the game never tells you what happened to Melchior after the Earthbound Village was sank due to Zeal falling. So no one can really say they DIDN'T end up going to the time periods that they currently reside in. If I wanted to get really far fetched, I could say that maybe Lavos DID send them away even if they weren't physically right beside him. Like Melchior was taken while he was sitting in the comforts of the Earthbound Village, and Belthasar and Gaspar were whisked away while they were in hiding. And another thing you have to consider is someone behind the scenes kind of directing all of this. In the optional campfire scene and at the end of the game, the party talks about an "Entity" that might have had it's hand in the way all this unfolded. So maybe even THAT could have been what got the Gurus to their time periods after Magus' and Crono's interference.


Oh and just as a side note, I'm going to put out on the table how I think time in Chrono Trigger is handled. Just in case this might clear up future debate. All time periods in the game progress at the same rate. If something happens in one time, you can't go back to that time before said event happens (Example: After Lavos crashes into 65000000 BC, you can't visit that time before it happens). So I think that all time periods have a static date and time that progresses normally and may even be the exact same date/time. That really doesn't help anything in the discussion at the moment, but there it is anyways.