Game Theory: Chrono Trigger Retells the BIBLE?!?

MatthewPatrick13

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Chrono Trigger Retells the BIBLE?!?

Chrono Trigger, perhaps the greatest RPG of all time, is a story about time travel, alien creatures, dinosaurs, and saving the world. But behind it all, it's REALLY about THE BIBLE! Seriously. Chrono Trigger fans, prepare to be amazed!

Watch Video
 

MisterColeman

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Consider me a confused loyal theorist. I believe you've told us this one. Were you picked up as a regular show on the escapist? Will this impact the videos on YouTube? Is there an announcement I missed?

Good luck and congratulations either way.
 

92Sierra

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Oct 12, 2009
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I noticed alot of this before in million and a half play throughs of the game and being a studious Christian.

I don't think the game is trying to say anything with it. Something about the Biblical narrative lends itself to easy and legal plagiarism that automatically makes your story more intelligent and well-told. So people are going to copy it. There is a reason why we the Bible The Greatest Story Ever Told. It is interesting that Chrono Trigger seemed to go so in-depth with it, though. Right down to the ten kings and the woman riding the beast.
 

Hairless Mammoth

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Uh, yeah, the three Gurus in Trigger were known as Gasch, Bosch(not to be confused with a certain Dalmascian), and Hash in the original Japanese. The US localization team was probably just building on the the usual Japanese trend of adding foreign religious themes to their stories for coolness factor. The Japanese love adding themes from both modern and ancient western and middle eastern religions just like how we love stories about or at least drawing themes from the Greek and Norse mythologies. Where do you think all those neat FF summons like Bahamut, Ifrit and Odin (well, duh on this one) come from?

Honestly, I like Game Theory better when Matt is working physics, logic, and math problems, not the symbolic literary theories. The Majora's Mask theory was one of the few like that I enjoyed.
 

Darth_Payn

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It would be more accurate to say Chrono Trigger gets a lot of its material from the New Testament. The Chrono-Jesus thing was fascinating, but the Revelations stuff was mind-blowing and ball-tripping!
 

Devieus

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That's the thing about the Bible, it's a crazy long, ambiguous book; much like Nostradamus' predictions, things can be bent to fit the mold. I'm sure with a bit of thought and bible study you can do the same thing with Fallout New Vegas or Megaman 2.
 

Chairman Miaow

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Nov 18, 2009
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MatthewPatrick13 said:
Chrono Trigger Retells the BIBLE?!?

Chrono Trigger, perhaps the greatest RPG of all time, is a story about time travel, alien creatures, dinosaurs, and saving the world. But behind it all, it's REALLY about THE BIBLE! Seriously. Chrono Trigger fans, prepare to be amazed!

Watch Video
When you talked about him feeding thousands I assumed it would have been about the seed you find in the apocalypse era.
 

mythgraven

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Mar 9, 2010
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deth2munkies said:
Wasn't this the first ever game theorists video from forever ago?
Sure was. Which sort of makes it disappointing to see it posted here.

I guess you could say The Escapist is...

/http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Sunglasses

Behind the times.


YEAH!!!
 

Alakaizer

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mythgraven said:
deth2munkies said:
Wasn't this the first ever game theorists video from forever ago?
Sure was. Which sort of makes it disappointing to see it posted here.

I guess you could say The Escapist is...

/http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Sunglasses

Behind the times.


YEAH!!!
Actually, the first one was about if Chrono Trigger's time travel was accurate.
 

Retsam19

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Okay, Christian here, and this are some ridiculously tenuous connections. At the very best case, and Game Theory is entirely right here, we've got Neon Genesis Evangelion level "random symbolism makes everything better" stuff.

(Disclaimer, I played Crono Trigger through once a few years ago, so I don't have perfect recollection, so I'm using a summary to aide my memory)

I was going to go point by point and point out all the flaws, but, this might be more fun. I present to you:

--------------

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS, According to Square Enix (according to Game Theory)

Jesus was born to a virgin in some time period after the Crusades; after some time traveling back to the Crusades to rescue a princess, in the defining action of his life, he's suddenly betrayed, put on trial, and sentenced to death for a crime that... well yeah, he actually did commit, but hey the punishment was still draconian... anyways, he's betrayed, tried, sentenced to a (somewhat) unjust death... so he breaks jail and kills a dinosaur.

So after skipping prison, Jesus and Co. travel forward in time, where they see one of the signs sent by God to signal Jesus's second coming, (except that the sign was sent 65,001,999 years too early so it chills underground) and are determined to prevent it. So after picking up another disciple, and a brief pitstop in the Old Testament where they pick up Moses as yet another disciple, they travel back to the crusades and Peter fights Saladin with a magical sword given to him by one of the wise men. (Only after Jesus wanders around killing Muslims for awhile)

Having done that, Jesus, Luke, Mark, Peter, Robo, and Moses travel to [what by process of elimination must represent] the Middle East in the time of Christ, and after [a bunch of stuff that has nothing even close to resembling a Biblical parallel here], Jesus realizes he missed a great opportunity with that betrayal, (almost) unfair trial, and imprisonment earlier, jumps a bullet.

At this point, the disciples including possibly Saladin, might bother with bringing Jesus back to life, [but that's optional since the Resurrection of Jesus obviously wasn't like the entire point of that story or anything] but if not they'll travel to the future to destroy that sign of the apocalypse (sent by God 65,001,999 years too early), which at this point also represents a completely different sign of the apocalypse involving a woman and a 10-horn beast. Unless they don't.

--------

So yeah; I'm going to say if they were trying to tell the story of Jesus, they probably should actually read it, instead of just basing it on what you learned from a couple scattered pages of the CliffNotes version and the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.

More likely, we've just got a developer xeroxing apocalyptic symbolism from the book that gives us the word "apocalypse" (which is from a greek word that literally means "a revelation", hence the English name for the book of the Bible). Nothing wrong with that, but it's not nearly as deep or as interesting as this video thinks. Crono = Jesus really doesn't go farther than "heroic sacrifice", and it's done for the wrong reasons and with the wrong result.

So, if you want to see a non-standard depiction of Jesus in a post-apocalyptic setting? Just go watch Trigun.
-LOVE & PEACE!
 

RJ 17

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Oh wow, and here I thought that The Escapist was just plucking the Game Theory videos from youtube the way the were posting the old Death Battle episodes from Screw Attack...granted that's because for a while they had a partnership-thing with Screw Attack, but the point is I didn't realize MattPat was actually a contributer here now. :p

While I must say I find your videos to be entertaining, I have to say you have a tendency to overlook some things here and there that really should be taken into consideration when coming up with these theories. Off the top of my head the theory about the Companion Cube in Portal containing a living person comes to mind. There's a number of things that stand as pretty solid evidence that this is the case, one example of this being the Companion Cube's appearance in Portal 2. Everyone's favorite AI antagonist fizzles the first couple cubes that she gives you...and nothing spills out of the box when she does so. If the theory is correct, this would imply that she's fully capable of fizzling organic material (such as any person who might be cramped up in the cube). Considering how she's hell-bent on killing Chell, why wouldn't she just fizzle the dangerous mute lunatic? It could be argued that she's bound by the constraints of the testing and as such can't directly interfere by just up and smiting the tester. But that only applies while the tester is still in the test, what about when Chell breaks out of the testing grounds and starts running free? Due to the fact that GLaDOS is officially free to use whatever resources are at her disposal to out-right kill Chell at that point...why not just vaporize her?

Regardless, as I said, I still enjoy your show and watch it regularly...that theme music is just too damn awesome to pass up. :p
 

raankh

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Well, that was a whole lot of hyperbole...

It's just the usual mythical narratives, present in religious myth and folktales from around the world-- from Osiris to Lemminkäinen through Ishtar and so on.
 

red255

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there's enough stuff in the bible that pretty much anything is in it. Yes they were named after the wisemen, we kinda noticed that long ago. but Crono Cross isn't a bible reference.

not why Chrono Trigger is great and this cheap tie in to the bible is just not worth selling out for.

If Chrono trigger was doing the bible it would be more.... obvious. Like the final villian wouldn't be some obsure Wormwood villian but instead be the end of days and maybe Satan/Lucifer or something. You can fish thru the bible and find any JRPG endboss in there. Especially if you stretch it like this to make Lavos Wormwood.
 

elvor0

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Retsam19 said:
-snip-

So, if you want to see a non-standard depiction of Jesus in a post-apocalyptic setting? Just go watch Trigun.
-LOVE & PEACE!
Yay, Trigun Love!

However, he wasn't saying it told the story of /Jesus/, just that Chrono has a lot of Jesus parallells, the Mystics and Humans are represesentitive of the Crusades and more or less, the story has many of the major beats of Revelations.