Philosophical Issues in Terranigma

[Marty]

Well, I must say these posts have been very enlightening and surprisingly in-depth, even if there's not much we could do to officially verify this. I was thinking has anyone read the manga or the novel even? It's probably not canon in that sense, and may even be drastically different, but it would be interesting if those works depicted certain events differently or in more detail. I have only slightly peeked at the manga, maybe I should give that a read.

(I realize no post has been made for over a year here...)

[Metall Ark (XD®)]

What the Heck is Happening at Astarica?

I read about that and I have an other Idea what could happened there.

I think that when Dark Ark drink the glass he was sent to the past. A past before the surface was sealed. I also guess that the Astarica Ark was Light Ark that would also explain his dead. That would explain how the guys look familiar but are different. But further more important is what has happened to Elle?

She drank it and gain some god like power like Emeth says. BUt why does she turned evil? Maybe she was Controlled by Dark Gaia or is becoming Dark Gaia. Either way she tricked Light Ark to drink the Poison wich would cause his deaths. But how did he save the World then? Maybe something more has happened as we could see. That could be a reason why Light Gaia would sealthe surface.

[EverPhoenix]

Marty wrote:

Well, I must say these posts have been very enlightening and surprisingly in-depth, even if there's not much we could do to officially verify this. I was thinking has anyone read the manga or the novel even? It's probably not canon in that sense, and may even be drastically different, but it would be interesting if those works depicted certain events differently or in more detail. I have only slightly peeked at the manga, maybe I should give that a read. (I realize no post has been made for over a year here...)

I've got the manga, but since I can't read Japanese I have to go off the translated first half. It doesn't really cover too much new plot stuff, although it is amazing. If the novel is the one I'm thinking of (the German one), then I saw it once and tried to read it... understood nothing.

and Metall, I think the thing at Astarica might just be a hallucination meant to show the true nature of people, which Ark can see because of the Starstones, and the whole loop of fate thing. Since he is, as mentioned in the ending, pretty much a God, then he should know what he's sacrificing himself for... A bit sad but then again, the game itself is.

[Rark]

I have the log-out novel by Norio Nakai (in addition to the Adventure novel) but little time to translate on my hands for the time being. What is evident so far is that it alters between shorter chapters (epics) of Ark's quest up till Norfest as sung by the Quatros, and more dialogue-heavy chapters about Ark post-Norfest. It certainly provides more background information in chapters of the latter type, if not interesting trivia (such as that the armoured guards from Sylvain Castle haunt the local village, and upon defeat have been found to be empty inside). Oh and it has a few illustrations, that noone even knew existed, or at least I didn't.

Like this one where Ark battles the arachnid from the final Tower of Trials.

[EverPhoenix]

Holy Crap, Gold's back!

[Rark]

Hah, Gold is it now.. Anyway, this game is just always floating around in my consciousness somewhere, and this is about the only place where I can go jointly celebrate this particular infatuation so.. If anything I'm surprised you frequent this place with such apparent diligence that you caught on to my post within a day.

By the way, for those interested in the Japanese version of Terranigma, some guy on Youtube named intru400 has recently been uploading his realtime playthrough of that. If not enlightening, I'd say it's entertaining, even for stuff like just watching him struggle through half an hour of Bloody Mary hell, or listening to him chant the melody to her daughters' creepy recitations (which is of course just an innocent nursery song to the Japanese but freaked out everyone else in the world through it's various bizarre translations).

[Metall Ark (XD®)]

Quote:

and Metall, I think the thing at Astarica might just be a hallucination meant to show the true nature of people, which Ark can see because of the Starstones, and the whole loop of fate thing. Since he is, as mentioned in the ending, pretty much a God, then he should know what he's sacrificing himself for... A bit sad but then again, the game itself is.

We dont have a clue wich theory could be right so we cant say for sure but both things could make sense.


What Exactly are Starstones?

I think the Starstones were created by Light Gaia. It seems like they have the power to awake the Legendary hero. So he could talk to Dark Ark who was created after the legendary hero. The skulls are some kind of "relasing the power of the Starstones" skull. In other words Light Arks Soul is sealed in the Starstones and can only be released by using the skulls. In short the Soul of Light Ark is sealed in the Starstones and can be released by using the skulls.

[EverPhoenix]

I thought that the skulls weren't anything special, just a monument to put the starstones. The place itself, Dryvale, would be the Hero's Grave. The starstones resurrect the hero of the lightside, who then merges with the hero of the darkside into a being that can stand against Dark Gaia.

And the Starstones... probably are relics created by Light Gaia specifically for the above purpose.

[Al. I. Cuza]

Wow, a thread 10 years dead, and I am disturbing it from its restful sleep.

I like the theories in principle, but many of them seem to be based simply on conjecture, fun nonetheless. It seems also

I have issues with the understanding of the whole premise of the game, as op has described it.

First of all, the assumption that Light and Dark Gaia can only influence their own realms, the surface and the underworld respectively. It think it more plausible that both have a comparable amount of control over both realms, since Dark Gaia supposedly brought about the ice age.

Another thing that I don't agree to is the nature of Ark. Again from the intro it seems obvious that NOW is the time of the 13th hour, the hour that cannot or should not exist. The two sides coexisted with each other, in a balanced conflict, up until one side actually managed to win.

Now I would like to comment on much more, but I haven't played the game in some time.

But more on that later, need to leave my job.

[abitofBaileys]

Re: Ending

It seems that the one who is knocking on the door in the last scene is indeed a seagull according to the original artist. It remains unclear if that seagull is Ark though

[psychokind]

abitofBaileys wrote:

Re: Ending It seems that the one who is knocking on the door in the last scene is indeed a seagull according to the original artist. It remains unclear if that seagull is Ark though

which is a bit in contrast with what the creator told in an interview. he said he wanted it to be open to interpretation by the player.