Shin Megami Tensei 5's Ending Sucks

You may have intuited from certain subtle clues I’ve dropped here and there over the course of this year that I’m not a huge fan of Shin Megami Tensei 5.  But just in case I was being too coy about the myriad ways in which the latest installment of the mainline SMT series is disappointing, let’s talk about the ending.

First of all, it’s dull and empty.  You beat the final boss, the Nahobino briefly exchanges nods (because dialogue would have required someone at Atlus actually doing their job that day) with the dead Hero and patron of the path he chose in a white void, he finds himself in this empty space-y expanse with planets and frozen celestial beings and a really, really ostentatious New Years ball in the center, and he starts walking nonchalantly through the extra-dimensional emptiness as the narrator tells, not shows, what the results will be of the protagonist taking or breaking God’s throne for a whole whopping 2 minutes (and the narrator isn’t exactly rushing through his lines, either), and then it goes to the credits, which play over a scene of the Nahobino continuing to just walk in a straight line with someone’s very pretty Deviantart landscape in the background.  Finally, once the credits are done, the stroll concludes with the Nahobino walking up to God’s super special disco ball and the screen fading to white.

And that’s it.  That’s all!  That’s the ending.*  That’s your reward for forcing yourself to play Shin Megami Tensei 5 for 40+ hours: a lack of dialogue from the characters who matter, a minimal narration-dump, and trudging through an atmospheric but thoroughly empty void.  Well, it may be garbage, but I suppose you gotta give SMT5 credit for being consistent to the bitter end.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the endings of most of the previous mainline SMTs are also a bit, shall we say, sparse.  I certainly can’t deny that point, any more than I can deny the fact that character development in the same games has likewise been on the low and understated side.  But as with the depth of the cast, prior SMT games have maintained an approach throughout their course that makes it clear to the audience that their endings’ stoic minimalist-leanings have been a matter of storytelling design, something chosen and planned for, rather than just a consequence of not having spent enough time and effort on the game.  In previous games, the span and scope of the plot (whether good or subpar) has possessed enough substance and artistry that a somewhat austere and spare conclusion feels acceptable (and aesthetically appropriate), while with Shin Megami Tensei 5, the scanty approach to its finish just feels like more of the same inadequacy that’s plagued the game’s entire narrative to this point.  Even if the result is superficially similar, there’s a big and discernible difference between a landscape artist who paints a desert out of a wish to capture the sensation of sprawling starkness it invokes within him, and a landscape artist who paints a desert because it has fewer features and he’s lazy.

So yeah, Shin Megami Tensei 5’s ending is empty and half-assed.  And yeah, it’s hardly surprising; watching SMT5’s story unfold is like reading a book printed with only a single sentence on each page, with an epilogue scribbled on a sticky note taped to its back cover.  But--and this is also, sadly, not surprising for SMT5--what little material IS there in the ending also manages to disappoint in its own right.  Because every ending of this game seems kinda determined to leave you dissatisfied, or at the very least tell you that you’re a stupid jerk.

Seriously, there’s really just no pleasing ending to this game.  So let's say you choose Chaos.  What happens?  Why, what happens is that a mere 3 sentences into his monologue, the narrator makes it a point to let you know that the new world you’ve chosen of multiple gods and an ever-changing society has been difficult for some people to adapt to and find happiness within.  That’s the first reaction he speaks of; the fact that there are plenty of people who thrive in the new world of Chaos is only something he mentions AFTER he shows you your 1-star reviews.  And then a mere 2 sentences later, this pessimistic prick’s back on the complain train as he informs you that, shocker of shockers, a bunch of competing divine narcissists (and 1 actual Narcissus) is naturally a recipe for, and I quote, “immeasurable conflict.”  The ending narration then talks about how sad the Nahobino is to witness his reality completely plagued with war, but that he holds firm to his belief because of some sloppy, shaky philosophy about how people should be able to choose for themselves rather than have things chosen for them.

First of all, this is a fucking stupid statement and correlation all on its own.  The Choose For Yourself ship has already sailed for the people of Chaos’s world because the fact that the world is this way was a choice the Nahobino made without consulting every other person in existence, or any of them, for that matter.  All they’re getting in exchange for never-ending violence is the ability to choose which powerful being to obey because they’re powerless themselves.  And also, even if this idea that people are self-determined in this world was legitimate, you’re saying that the trade-off for having any choice in your actions and the direction of your life is constant war.  Free will may be inseparable from the potential for, and eventuality of, conflict, but there’s no rational way you can argue that the reasonable price of it is or should be a never-ending turf war between insanely powerful deities that makes the entire human species a reluctant participant and casualty.

Secondly, and more importantly, what kind of shitty way is that to end your game?  There’s only 7 fucking sentences of narration in this ending to reward the dozens of hours you put into this garbage, and of them, 3 are devoted to admonishing you for your choice.  And sure, Chaos IS a dumb choice to make in Shin Megami Tensei 5 and anyone who couldn’t see bickering godly gang wars being its result is probably as facile an unquestioning a moron as Atsuta himself, but that’s still excessively negative to a degree that feels mean-spirited.  The writers seem to actively want you to feel bad about having played their game.

And lastly, let’s not forget that the whole reason that Atsuta becomes the game’s Chaos Hero is because he’s told by Koshimizu (and because he unquestioningly, blindly believes this statement) that Chaos’s world of multiple gods will be the best way to protect Tokyo and its people.  And by siding with him, you’ve wound up bringing about a world where the people are caught in constant, inconceivably devastating warfare from which they can never be safe.  I’m getting flashbacks to Wild Arms 4’s ending with Jude, Mr. Codependent Everyone Let’s Be Friends Forever And Work Together And Never Ever Let Each Other Out Of Our Sight becoming a goddamn forest ranger hermit who lives completely separated from his friends and the entire human species.  Just as it was with Jude, for Atsuta, this conclusion is the opposite, the exact polar fucking opposite you understand, of the single solitary overplayed trait of his 1-dimensional character.

You might think that maybe this poor showing of Chaos, the latest in a whole game’s worth of instances of this route’s lesser quality, might just be a case of SMT’s preference for the Neutral path being taken a little too far.  But the fact is that both Neutral endings, though not quite as poorly reasoned and inconsistent to their figurehead’s stated purpose, are equally unsatisfying.

The ending in which you destroy the throne involves what’s-his-name, the monk guy who decided out of nowhere right at the last second that he was gonna be some important lofty observer entity, outright talking about what a foolish decision you’ve made, so right off the bat you have a tidy little bit of narrative disapproval for your actions even before the other endings get their chastisement.  Then when you get to the regular ending narration, the game makes sure you know that plenty of people will perish in the efforts to resist and stand free of the influence and control of demon-kind.

Granted, Neutral Hero Yakumo, who is basically what happens when you decide to base your entire personality around your Resting Bitch Face, has made it clear that any human being who can’t personally stand up to malevolent godlike beings and beat them in hand-to-hand combat doesn’t, in his opinion, deserve to live.  So this ending gloating about how many people will be casualties in the world you’ve created isn’t as thematically opposed to its representative as Chaos was.  And at least this time around the game doesn’t tell you that even the protagonist himself is disappointed with the results of his choice.  But it still is an example of SMT5 going out of its way to use its extremely limited ending summary to make damn sure you know that the ending you got was really bad for a hell of a lot of people.  The very people, in fact, that you presumably chose this path with the intention of doing right by--the deities and demons certainly don’t benefit from breaking the throne, and the Nahobino doesn’t gain God’s power with it gone, thus presumably you could only be choosing this path because you genuinely believe that it will be in the best interests of humanity as a whole.**  So thanks for making sure to hammer home the fact that the players who have made this decision for the good of the people have, in fact, fucked those very people over, SMT5.

It’s not even like it’s a sure thing that those sacrifices are even toward a greater good.  The narrator ends his stunted little spiel by expressing certainty that humanity will, in the future, come out on top against the demons and gods that would control them, but he doesn’t actually state it as fact.  Even the underwhelming, disappointing ending for the Black Eagles route in Fire Emblem 16 at least made it pretty unambiguous that the long, bloody war with Those Who Slither in the Dark, a costly and prolonged conflict that would have been quickly and relatively painlessly settled had the player possessed the brains and/or human decency not to back Edelgard,*** would end in an eventual victory.  In SMT5’s first Neutral ending, the best we get is a “surely” that humanity will eventually be able to stand on its own and win its right to freedom from the machinations of higher (and lower) mythological beings.

But okay, sure, that’s the lesser Neutral ending.  If any conclusion in the game is gonna be crappy, it’d be that one.  Surely**** the True Neutral ending is reasonably satisfying, right?

Well I’m talking about it right here and now in this rant about how the game’s endings suck, so I guess you can probably tell from context alone that it isn’t.  Hell, we’re talking about a component of Shin Megami Tensei 5--that should be all the information you really need right there.

So yeah, the “best” ending of SMT5 is also unsatisfying.  Now, this time around the game is at least kind enough not to gleefully make all the myriad people who are going to be miserable and dead because of your decision the most memorable takeaway.  And there’s even more content besides, with a more enthusiastically positive reaction from Tao and I Refuse To Bother Learning Monk Guy’s Name Because Holy Shit What A Forgettable Character, and a more involved talk and confrontation with Lucifer.  No, rather than the game forcing unnecessary admonishment into the ending text, the dissatisfaction of the True Neutral ending comes from qualities inherent to its nature, thanks to the incompetence of the game’s writers.  The disappointment of the True Neutral boils down to 2 points.

First of all: it’s an emotional betrayal to everything that the game has shown us.  See, in the True Neutral ending, the Nahobino takes God’s throne and uses his power over creation to decree that there will be no more gods or demons, that Earth is for humanity alone, because SMT’s Neutral faction always has such a boner for telling all mythological entities to get the hell off humanity’s lawn, as though we aren’t the ones who created and invited them to start with.  And in most Shin Megami Tensei titles, that’s fine, justifiable, and emotionally consistent, as gods and demons and the like are the source of most of humanity’s problems in the game.  But while that’s still true in SMT5, what’s also true is that pretty much every noticeably positive character relationship that the Nahobino has over the course of SMT5’s events is with a demon character.

I mean, think about it.  The most (inexplicably) loyal and supportive character in the game to the protagonist is his partner Aogami, who can’t seem to speak 3 consecutive sentences if at least 1 of them isn’t affirming that he’s gonna protect the protagonist at all costs and make all his dreams come true and wuv him and cuddle him and give him head-pats.  Then the runners-up behind Aogami are his companion Amanozako, who helps the Nahobino off and on for most of the game and who is weirdly sort of a half-assed love interest for him or something, and his friend Tao, who may start as a human but is resurrected as a goddess who outright pledges to help him become God because he almost made a mild effort to help someone one time (more on that in a later rant).  All 3 of the only people in this game who demonstrably have a positive character connection to the main hero are demons.

Additionally, most of the outright moral and decent people you meet in the game are likewise inhuman.  Khonsu, for example, is devoted to saving the life of the sickly Miyazu to a self-sacrificial degree.  In fact, Khonsu shows way, way more active concern and affection for Miyazu, not to mention expends way more effort in trying to help her, than her own brother Atsuta does!  And lest we forget, Atsuta is the clown who’s supposed to be entirely defined by his wish to protect her!  Meanwhile, the fairies under Oberon and Titania’s leadership graciously take in the lost, wounded, and helpless kidnapped human students in Chapter 2, treating their injuries and providing a safe haven to them for the entire rest of the game’s course, completely without complaint or expectation of reimbursement.  Hell, they didn’t even need to be asked to do it--Fionn mac Cumhaill just started bringing hurt human beings to the fairies to care for, and they set right to it.  And speaking of, Fionn, a mythological entity himself, just up and takes it upon himself to go around saving the students from their captors, again for no discernible reason beyond the desire to help the helpless.  And then there’s various minor sidequest demons like Idun and Demeter and Hua Po who are friendly and generally decent individuals.  Hell, the Neutral faction itself is much more likable for its demonic patron Nuwa than it is for that human jackass Yakumo.

I’m not saying that all or even most of the demons in this game are good people, but there’s pretty much no denying that all of the likable and nearly all of the morally decent members of this game’s cast are gods and demons, and definitely all of the Nahobino’s own positive friendships are with these supernatural entities.  So the True Neutral ending really sucks and betrays whatever emotional weight the game has managed to create, and makes the Nahobino look like a complete tool, because you’re basically turning on every individual who’s extended meaningful friendship to you and disintegrating them.  What was the point of protecting Amanozako, helping her with her search to find her soulmate, if a mere couple hours after she finally achieves what she needs to lead a happy and secure life, you force an abrupt conclusion to that life?  Why make a big deal about Tao being reborn if she’s just going to re-die the next day?

As with Atsuta’s criticism of Law, the writers of SMT5 clearly just paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to what they themselves had been doing.  They’ve made a story wherein the “best” ending involves killing every single character in the game who isn’t a jackass!

But even if you don’t give a shit about any of that and just hate them dadgummed durned demons for the hell of it, the True Neutral ending’s still unsatisfying.  Because it, in all its special Trueness, gets a special post-credits scene of the new (but basically just the same as the old) world you’ve created, and the narrator, as well as the golden-eyed putz sitting on a bench, strongly imply that this humanity-for-humanity-only world is not gonna last because the Mandala universal will thing cannot be denied or escaped.  So yeah, after all that rigamarole, after sacrificing everyone who demonstrably gave a shit about you in the game, it turns out it was probably all for nothing.

Honestly, compared to the rest of these, the fact that the Law ending only insults your intelligence probably makes it the least disappointing of all of them.  Sure, the narrator’s clearly relishing the opportunity to hammer home the idea that people who follow Law can’t think for themselves (a stupid claim that has been soundly proven wrong by the game’s own cast), but at least humanity is safe and generally happy, the Nahobino himself is pleased with the result, and it’s stated flat-out that the future is prosperous.  Frankly, I’ll take a clumsy attempt at an insult over any combination of being told that countless people suffer and die in war, being told that even the protagonist himself hates what he’s done, the assassination of the only people we’ve seen capable of being nice, and being told that my actions didn’t accomplish the 1 thing they were meant to.

Honestly, between this and the fact that the Law faction is the only one with anything approaching actual character development, I’d be tempted to think that SMT5 is actually intentionally favoring Law...if not for the fact that Dazai spends 85% of the game wearing a baseball cap that says “SUCKER” on it.

Make no mistake, though: even if the Law ending is the least unsatisfactory, the game’s still sneering at you for picking it.  The facts of the matter are, that all of the endings are careless, empty after-thoughts in a story that’s as barren and abandoned as the wastelands it takes place within, and that 3 of the 4 endings leave a player feeling unsatisfied, with the other one still goes out of its way to make you feel like you made the wrong choice.  SMT5’s endings are the perfect crappy way to cap off a crappy game.














* Well, there’s an extra scene for the “true” Neutral ending tacked onto the end.  But it is nothing beneficial, as we’ll see in a moment.


** Or you might just be simping for Nuwa, I guess.


*** Well, not Dimitri either, since the bad guys actually effectively win in his route.  But he, tiresome and dumb edgelord though he is for most of his route’s narrative, is at least not a gullible, amoral dingus like Edelgard.


**** See, SMT5?  See how effortless it is for “Surely” to be linked to an ironic opposite?

Fire Emblem 15's Royal Treasury

So...a treasury that only allows in those of the royal family.  How much use is that, exactly?

Think about this.  The royal treasury of the empire of Rigel in Fire Emblem 15 can only be accessed by those of royal blood.  So...doesn’t that mean that any time anyone needs something from the vault, whenever some relic or parchment in there is necessary for the sake of state business, they have to petition the emperor himself to haul his ass down to the basement to fetch it?  And it’s a good bit of a walk, too: this vault’s sitting smack dab in the middle of the final dungeon.  The emperor’s gotta clear his whole schedule and make a morning of it any time someone needs a particular national treasure for some reason or other.

And this uppity storage unit ain’t kidding about only opening to royalty, either.  This isn’t some situation where His Royal Highness can just show up, open the door, and get back to his business while some servants head in to procure whatever’s needed.  He really is the ONLY one that can go in.  No cargo-haulers, no dignitary from a neighboring nation that the emperor talked into helping him move this weekend, not even a goddamn intern with a dolly is following him in there.  Meaning that Emperor Amazon Fulfillment Center has to haul out anything he wants from the vault all on his own.  Yeah, that’s definitely what I want as ruler of a nation, alright--I want to keep important shit I might need in an emergency within a warehouse I have to drive 30 miles to get to, where I get to be a 1-man warehouse worker union.

And is it really such a good idea to keep Falchion in this vault?  Falchion, the god-slaying sword given to humanity as a safeguard against the day that the continent’s dragon overlords turn against their people?  The one weapon that gives humanity the capacity to defend itself against an otherwise theoretically unstoppable force?  You’re keeping Falchion in a treasury that only a tiny handful of very killable human beings can get into.  A tiny handful of very killable human beings who traditionally all congregate in the same palace, meeting with the same people, hanging out in the same throne room, eating at the same table!  The sword that represents the great and final hope of the human species is 1 really poorly-cooked fish dinner away from being lost forever to an uncooperative doorknob.

You know what would be a great way of keeping the stuff in your vault secure, but accessible to a highly reasonable degree?  A fucking key.  Just get some magical lock made that only recognizes a special royal crest or whatever--don’t pretend that’s gonna be less feasible than a goddamn DNA-scanning teleporter--and use that.  That way, the most important human being in the entire nation doesn’t have to lug himself through the catacombs every time Royal Gardener Harry needs the legendary +3 Vorpal Hedge Shears because those damned briars in the back are getting uppity again.  He can just give Harry--or a duly appointed designee, never put too much trust in a guy who has a wisteria as his emergency contact--the royal crest key thing, tell him to bring it right back afterwards, and get on with his day.

Hm?  What’s that?  Oh, “What if the Falchion falls into the wrong hands?”  Hmm, yeah, you know, I guess you’re right, it WOULD be pretty bad if someone were to kill the emperor, steal the key, and make a withdrawal of $God-Buster.  Yes, that’d be a real disaster!

But hey, you know what would also be pretty bad?  If instead of killing the emperor and getting the key to the vault, someone were to kill the emperor and there was no key and now no one can have the Falchion.  I mean, if we’re gonna suppose the possibility of a bad guy offing the emperor, I’d sure as hell rather run the risk of having to foil a villainous plot to abuse the power of the Falchion than to run the risk of the only defense against a malevolent god becoming eternally and irreversibly beyond anyone’s grasp.  Frankly, if it means not having to worry that humanity’s fate is 1 loose patch of carpeting on a palace stair away from sealed, I’ll happily run the risk of the royal treasury key being snatched up by any old pickpocket, some 2-bit usurper, or even just an intern who got mixed up and handed the emperor back the bathroom key by mistake.  A single detour from the main plot is all that’s required to fetch the damned key from a mortal holder.

But as the royal treasury stands now, a round of flu breaking out at the capital--or hell, even just a sole royal heir who doesn’t feel like walking all the way down there--is all it’ll take to make every single thing in that vault inaccessible forever.  Deus Ex Machina devices aren’t usually icons of intelligent thinking, but Fire Emblem 15’s royal treasury is a cut below nonetheless.

...And yes, I know that this is 1 of the least important things I’ve ever ranted about.  I’m not apologizing.

Chrono Trigger's Party Members' Pseudonyms

Aliases are not exactly an uncommon phenomenon in RPGs.  I mean, they aren’t in all of fiction, really, but they prevail especially often in this genre.  And that fact isn’t terribly surprising, either.  RPGs have the usual array of story-related reasons for characters to have multiple names and identities to go by which inevitably work their way into a plot twist later on--taking on a new name to go undercover (like a guy named Ryu beating the shit out of some hermit minding his own business named Baba so he can steal Baba’s identity because damn it all he’s gonna get those backstage passes 1 way or another), or making a clean break from the past (like a guy named Clyde taking on the name Shadow because he wants to avoid the messy business of child support checks), or deceiving the heroes into believing that their new best buddy is not actually a complete shitbag using them for nefarious ends (like a guy named Ghaleon deciding that his name just wasn’t sus enough and to begin moonlighting as the Magic Emperor), among many other examples.

But RPGs are also inordinately fond of of both the Plot-Induced Amnesia and the Rebellious Princess tropes, far more than most other narrative ventures, and these story paths are almost always accompanied by pseudonyms, since the schmucks in question either can’t remember their own names or view being known as royalty as a hindrance to adventuring (hell, sometimes it’s a 2-for-1 schmuck like Legrand Legacy’s Finn doing both routines).  It doesn’t always make a lot of sense--I really don’t know who Tales of Vesperia’s Princess Estellise thinks she’s fooling by choosing “Estelle” as her codename, that’s like someone named Jonathan going undercover as Jon--but it certainly does happen a lot all the same.

Oh, and also, goddesses who have reincarnated as humans and don’t remember that fact.  Holy fuck do RPGs ever love playing that card.  You can even get bonus pseudonyms out of that one--Erim from the Lufia series and Althena from the Lunar series each have (at least) 3 separate named identities, and can you imagine how many different monickers Hylia would’ve collected by this point if she didn’t just keep getting slapped with “Zelda” every time?  Woman would have so many aliases that the FBI would put her on a list just out of reflex.

Even considering how prone to pseudonyms the genre is as a whole, however, Chrono Trigger is a peculiar case.  Because while other RPGs might be content with 1, maybe 2 major characters who have separate names for substantial plot-related reasons, over half of Chrono Trigger’s main characters are known by pseudonyms!  There are, after all, only 3 characters in the party whose names are genuinely their own (Ayla, Lucca, and Crono), while the remaining 4 are known by adopted monickers.  Marle is actually Princess Nadia, Magus is actually Janus, Frog is actually Glenn, and Robo...well heck, Robo ought to count double, because he’s actually R66-Y AND Prometheus.*

And I can’t help but wonder: thematic, or a coincidence?

I mean, it’d be a hell of a chance occurrence to have 4 characters’ arcs all substantially involve adopted names in the same game, without the writers having intended the concurrence for any higher purpose.  Particularly since CT’s writers were all quite competent--it’d be out of character for this to just be a case of some oversight.

And it’s worth recognizing that each character’s pseudonym has different context and reason for its existence, but all could be seen to share a narrative purpose.  Marle chooses to be Marle, for positive and self-affirming reasons.  While the choice to hide her identity of Nadia might have briefly, at the start, been a matter of convenience (as she didn’t want Crono to treat her differently due to her status), after that point, being Marle is clearly a decision she makes for her own sake--”Marle” is who she really is, while “Nadia” is a restriction imposed upon her by people and circumstances she despises.  And while she does reconcile with her father and (presumably to some degree) her position as a princess, she and her character’s arc have made it clear that she’s not giving up the name she gave herself.  “Marle” is an identity, her identity, and “Nadia” a castoff that, at best, she won’t object to being called when her royal life does have to crop up.

Like Marle, Frog chooses his pseudonym--but for him, it’s clearly for negative reasons.  The name is a way of hiding within his cursed form, avoiding acknowledging his past failure as Glenn and hiding that truth from the world, particularly those he loves and respects, like Queen Leene and King Guardia.  While “Marle” is an identity of self-affirmation and freedom of individuality, “Frog” is one of shame and/or fear, an identity created to coincide with the cursed body that serves as a physical representation of Glenn’s failure and loss.  In terms of the identity of “Frog,” Glenn’s story is one of coming to terms with his past and an identity built on its consequences, and bringing honor and self-value back into his life as Frog.  While “Marle” is a positive identity to start with, “Frog” is one in which a healthy self-attitude must be grown--and even then, it’s almost certain that the identity of “Glenn” is the preferable one and would be who the man seeks someday to be again.

Robo, meanwhile, is an interesting variation.  Unlike Frog and Marle, Robo doesn’t choose his pseudonym, instead being dubbed such by Crono, who apparently either has no creativity whatsoever or just didn’t give half a shit.  “Robo” is the name of the character who develops from essentially nothingness from the moment that Lucca repairs him.  Unlike Marle and Frog, there’s not really any conflict of identity for the majority of the game for Robo--he doesn’t remember his previous life the way they do, and he isn’t given a chance, when meeting his assembly line brothers, to decide whether he wants to exist as Robo or as R66-Y, as they turn on him automatically.  While being called a defect distresses him and of course he doesn’t particularly like getting the crap kicked out of him, the incident never offers a choice to Robo regarding which identity he wants--by the end of it, the beings who have saved him are the ones who named him Robo and there’s nothing else left for him as R66-Y, so of course he’s going to be Robo going forward.  The choice only comes late in the game, and unexpectedly, as Atropos reveals that he had another identity as Prometheus before, and that he’d been meant to be an infiltration unit of sorts.  It’s a questionable claim, actually, given that Atropos herself is only being all genocide-y because her programming’s been tampered with by Mother Brain, but at the time said claim is made, Robo has no particular reason to doubt it.  Either way, the identity of “Robo” is the one that’s been given the time and opportunity to grow, and given things and people to cherish, while “Prometheus” is still just a theoretical that can’t be remembered, so the choice, while still significant, is nonetheless probably easy for Robo to make.  Though it was a name given to him, Robo has grown into his identity as such, and now chooses to be that self just as much as Marle does.

Magus, of course, is grumpy and not a team player even when it comes to narrative tools like character development, so we can’t really say for sure what the emotional circumstances are that tie him to his current name.  Maybe it was a name given him by Ozzie that he grew into like Robo, or maybe it’s something he wears because he’s ashamed of what he was as Janus like Frog, or maybe he legitimately only ever started feeling like a person in his own right once he was away from everyone who knew him by his former identity like Marle.  There’s a good chance it’s none of the above and more an edgy new-name-for-a-new-identity-of-VENGEANCE sort of thing.  Could also be something else entirely.  Regardless, we can’t say for sure exactly what the story of “Magus” is, only that he willingly keeps it.  But the absence of an answer is an answer too, in the sense that the mystery still makes it a different case from the other pseudonyms, from our audience perspective.

So the story of each character’s pseudonym is different, but they all clearly work toward similar purposes of showing identity as something consciously chosen.  Marle, Magus, and Robo all arrive at a destination of voluntarily embracing these identities, and even though Frog’s story is a bit different, it still revolves around him using a name to undergo an emotional journey to come to terms with and accept himself--it’s just that in his case, he’s arriving at an acceptance of “Frog” and more importantly a willingness to return to “Glenn” someday.  So there’s certainly a theme to be read here, one of the human will to choose their own self and to consciously defy or own the identity given to them by others.

I just don’t really know if this theme that you can find was actually intended.

I mean...yeah, okay, when the majority of your cast run in the same thematic circle, most often it’s for a reason.  Look at Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, after all.  The theme of ascension, of rising above the restrictions placed upon you by the universe, is all over the place in its cast’s stories, with succubi overcoming the Evil in their natures, and Hell Knights subtly working outside Law’s methods to achieve success, and broken PTSD-suffering fallen paladins being nurtured back to believing that a day might come when they’ll be okay again, and so on and so forth.  It’s all over the place; there’s very few major characters that don’t tie to this ascension theme in 1 fashion or another.
 
But at the same time...well, ascension is a theme that exists within and permeates PWotR far beyond just the main cast.  The story as a whole plays with it, the main villain ties to it, and it’s the very purpose itself of the true ending.  By contrast, as far as I can see, this concept of self-determined identity represented by pseudonym isn’t a part of Chrono Trigger as a whole.  Human will and potential is a major theme of the game, and I suppose that’s at least somewhere in the same ballpark as self-determined identity, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to assume they’re intended to be connected, particularly since the method of the latter (the pseudonyms) doesn’t appear in any other significant part of the game.**

So...I’m inclined to say that the peculiar prevalence of pseudonyms in Chrono Trigger’s cast might, indeed, be more coincidence than contrived.  Maybe it was intended to tie to the game’s ideas on existential will and potential, but I just don’t see enough evidence of it.  Maybe the writers didn’t somehow overlook the fact that the game had so many main characters running around with aliases, but just recognized that what they’d made still works and wisely decided not to mess with it.  Anyway, the point is that I have fully wasted my time and yours considering a question no one was asking, and arriving at a conclusion that requires no shifting of one’s perspective on the matter in the slightest.  Aren’t you glad you read these things?




















* I mean I guess Frog also has a second pseudonym of Mr. Toad thanks to Crono’s mom, but just because all these amphibians look the same to her doesn’t mean that we should humor her blatant and disgusting racism.  Why, she was even shocked that one of Frog’s kind could articulate himself!  Truly disgraceful.  I ask you, where were Nintendo’s censors that day?


** Yes, Lavos is given a name by Ayla (like how Robo was named by the party), but it’s no pseudonym, because it’s the only name he ever possesses, nor is it part of any story of identity.  And yes, Gasper’s name is only revealed late in the game, but until that point he only has a title (Old Man), not an actual alternate alias.  And again, it isn’t used to explore any concept of identity.