I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
I’m embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions… So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?
I loved Chrono Trigger! The very first example of this that I ran into as a kid was Crystalis. You are told at the beginning that it’s Earth after an end of the world event, but it’s a sword and sorcery overhead action RPG (think original Legend of Zelda with slightly more RPG, slightly more action, and slightly more varied combat) and ends with you shooting advanced technology with your magic sword.
Yes I played Crystalis! Not like, whenever it was when it first came out, but I like to study the evolution of gaming so I went back and played a bunch like Dragon Warrior/Quest, even the Japanese versions of Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, etc.
I definitely enjoyed Chrono Trigger more:-). But I was glad to have played Crystalis too, especially with it having been so unique (or at least like rare I guess).
And while I never played it, isn’t Baldur’s Gate also post-apocalyptic, with a high fantasy theme? There are indeed so many that use that trope.:-)
Chrono Trigger (and Chrono Cross for that matter) is a better game for sure but I played Crystalis as a kid when it first came out so it’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Chrono Trigger came out when I was about to become a teen so I had other things on my mind at the time.
As for Baldur’s Gate…kind of? Without going too far into it, most of the D&D worlds had some sort of apocalypse in their past. Faerûn’s apocalypse was so far back that they’ve completely rebuilt, and they were already fantasy so there was no serious genre shift (it’s high fantasy) and it doesn’t fall under the Earth All Along trope. The floating city that crashed when shit went wrong was held up by magic.
Ok, I went further into that than I meant to. I’m an old nerd.
I was poor and so played very few titles when they first came out, but at some point later on discovered emulation, and loved seeing the magical wonderland of all the best games from the past.
I particularly loved seeing the “development” of a genre. Like Dragon Warrior/Quest was a game where the player controls a single character, who only had 8 item slots (though I don’t recall if you could fit like 3 or 8 or sth medical herbs together - even if so it was extremely constraining), and keys were something that you used once but never again. Then Dragon Warrior/Quest 2 added two additional characters to your party - but they were “fixed”, both magic-users, a prince & a princess iirc, who kinda swapped between them which was more powerful at the time as they learned new things. Then Dragon Warrior/Quest 3 allowed you to roll your own characters with a character creation menu in a tavern, and you could reject them and reroll to attempt higher stats, choose their names, classes and even upgrade classes, some like Sage needing special items from the world. Somewhere in there keys became permanent forever-use items, though they also expanded to include different “types” - opening locked wooden, metal, gold, or prison doors.
And Dragon Warrior/Quest 4 was one of the most intricate, multi-interleaving storylines that I’ve ever seen, despite the constraint of having to fit onto an old NES cartridge!:-) Those graphics were NOTHING like the 3-d effects of the later installments in the series, yet so very much of what made those franchises great were there.
Chrono Cross I did not like so much - it was “fine” as a game, but it was not the spiritual sequel that I hoped for:-). I occasionally play through Chrono Trigger every few years, like re-reading an old favorite book - the music, the story, the themes, it relaxes me and I enjoy it, plus it’s so short that such is do-able:-).