[[2024 Cafe Posts]] > [!warning] Title > Spoilers for a game from 2004 There's this running belief amongst JRPG nerds - the most annoying and full of themselves fandom in a medium filled with people full of themselves - that *Star Ocean: Till the End of Time* killed Star Ocean as a series and Tri-Ace as a developer. This is incredibly fucking stupid. Let me explain why. --- *Star Ocean: Till the End of Time* is the third game in the Star Ocean series, released on the PlayStation 2 twenty years ago. Don't think about that date too much. In that game you learn that everything the characters are experiencing is a simulation, and that the characters exist in something called the "Eternal Sphere," an MMO that aliens play in 4D Space. People who have played this game will have you believe that this twist is bad, or that it "ruined" *Star Ocean*. They are wrong for many reasons that I feel like I have to explain because I've been shadow-boxing this belief since I first started hanging out on GameFAQs forums. If you don't know what I'm talking about I'm about to sound unhinged. This is because I am. But there's a bigger point to this I'd like to address after I rip this argument apart. Okay, so firstly: the twist in *Star Ocean 3* is heavily built throughout the entirety of the game. You will realize this if you are paying attention while you are playing it. I was 9 years old when I played it and even I realized something was up. So there's that. But let's say that the twist wasn't expertly executed, sure, fine. Even then: why are you so outraged over it? Why are you acting like this is a bad twist? The most frequent argument I see is that this twist "delegitimizes" everything that happens beforehand. That it makes what happens in *Till the End of Time* "not matter." Did you play the game? Did we play the same game? When Fayt, the protagonist of the game, and his homies head to 4D Space to confront Luther Lansfeld, the creator of their world, he considers them "mere data." This is, of course, a fucked up thing to say to a bunch of characters that have very clearly become sentient. By the end of the game, it's recognized that the Star Ocean universe has grown beyond being a simulation, and is now its own universe that exists parallel to the 4D dimension. How does that delegitimize the time you spend with *Star Ocean 3*? It's the **whole point of the game**!!! "Life is valuable in whatever form it takes, even if you're an NPC" isn't even that unique of a plot-point, especially not in 2024. But beyond that, to act like the characters of this 2004 video game and their struggles are worthless means that you are literally in agreement with the antagonist, lmao. And if that's how you feel why are you even engaging with narratives in video games to in the first place? None of it matters because it's all fake and also love is just chemicals in our brain. "You can't make any game that takes place after *Star Ocean 3* with a twist like that." I'm fucking sorry? We've had how many Xenoblades at this point? In reality, *Star Ocean* would be significantly more interesting as a series if it went out of its way to engage the twist. Tri-Ace has just refused to do so and made every subsequent story take place before the twist. *Star Ocean: The Last Hope* doesn't have a shit story because of *Star Ocean 3*. It worked very hard to have a shit story all by itself. Protagonists defying the will of God to change their fate and then kill that God is effectively JRPG-101 at this point. It's so bog-standard that it's a meme. By the time *Xenoblade Chronicles 3* came around I was wondering **how many** Gods I was going to be killing. But it's a meme that *works*. So why does *Star Ocean: Till the End of Time* not get away with it? I think the main reason is because gamers are fucking parrots. What I mean by this is that there is a phenomenon I've come to recognize in the time that I've spent in this hobby[^1] - and it's that people really do just be saying shit. An idea is permeated throughout forums, and it spreads as inaccurate yet somehow confirmed fact. I'm convinced half the people who say that *Till the End of Time* killed Tri-Ace haven't even booted the game up. Probably even more than half. You wanna know what killed Tri-Ace? *[Star Ocean: The Last Hope](https://youtu.be/y0p1tX2nZLY)* killed Tri-Ace. *Infinite Undiscovery* killed Tri-Ace. *Resonance of Fate*[^2] killed Tri-Ace. They went up to bat with 3 games and struck out, and now they get barely any budget for the shit they make. It's a mriacle they're even still allowed to make games at all at this point. The remake of [[STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R (2023)|Star Ocean: The Second Story]] is the most positive reception Tri-Ace has gotten in years, and they barely had a hand in it!!! Gemdrops did all the work!! Anyways, that's the end of my rant. I guess my point is to just think about anything that gamers act like is a sure fact. They're probably wrong, or at least heavily misconstruing or even forgetting that supposed fact. [^1]: I'm sure it happens elsewhere, I'm just most engaged with games which is why I'm calling it out specifically. [^2]: This game is also good it was just a commercial failure lol