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Star Ocean 5: Getting Out of the Corner You Wrote Yourself Into

Star Ocean 5: Getting Out of the Corner You Wrote Yourself Into

Star Ocean 5: Getting Out of the Corner You Wrote Yourself Into

Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness has been announced, and so far the JRPG crowd has been excited. It takes place in a time period that we haven’t yet seen in the Star Ocean world, Space Date 537. Unfortunately, we are very soon going to run out of Space Dates because Star Ocean made a pretty serious mistake early on in the series. It bookended itself.

The was told from the point of view of a medieval style civilization that was encountered by the civilized Earth federation. At the time, it was mostly a riff on classic swords and sorcery JRPGs. The monsters, curses, and horrible demons that the main characters feared were easily defeated by modern day technology. This took place in Space Date 346.

Star Ocean 5: Getting Out of the Corner You Wrote Yourself Into

Its sequel , which took place twenty years later, was much of the same, except this time you got to see the plot through the eyes of a stranded Earth federation recruit that finds himself on a medieval style world. This game upped the ante by adding artificial planets and godlike beings into the mix, but in the end still left things open for the continuation of the plot at a later date.

Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time is where the plot started to head for some trouble. It took place in Space Date 772, over 400 years after Star Ocean 2 , which is a good start. The problem, is what ended up being revealed over the course of Star Ocean 3 , which is that not only the planet that the characters were on, but also the entire Star Ocean universe, wasn’t real. Instead, it was just data in a game called the Eternal Sphere, essentially an MMORPG for technologically advanced beings. Hence, the game’s subtitle “till the end of time” which points toward this being the absolute end of the Star Ocean franchise.

Star Ocean 5: Getting Out of the Corner You Wrote Yourself Into

Once the characters of Star Ocean 3 manage to materialize in actual reality, they can change the Star Ocean universe however they like. It is just a simulation after all. Even if they decide to head back to their universe, nothing can legitimately be called a threat anymore because they can just delete it by altering their universe’s code. It’s like a screwed up version of the Matrix, except no one is actually real.

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