Chrono Trigger celebrated its 30-year anniversary this week, on March 11, 2025.

It’s a late-game moment after you complete one of Chrono Trigger’s few but meaningful side quests.

It’s not exactly clear what happened in Fiona’s story, but we can make an educated guess.

Fiona’s tiny cottage is surrounded by desert. She hopes to turn a few tiny trees into a forest, but needs your help, and an immortal robot, to realize her Green Dream.

Her husband didn’t return.

She never realized her dream.

That changes over the course of the game, thanks to your influence.

Akira Toriyama’s art for Chrono Trigger is often lighthearted, but it also captures the humanity of the characters.

Returning to Fiona, you tell her the good news–she can tend the land without fear.

That makes his decision to grab Chrono Trigger, rather than anything else, something of a fateful one.

I had always liked games–but IlovedChrono Trigger.

Returning 400 years later, you find that the land around Fiona’s cottage has been transformed.

And indeed, at 10 years old, it hit me incredibly hard.

But they are, fundamentally, heroic and selfless people, and sometimes, that can be enough.

And despite mostly being a somewhat predictable adventure RPG, Chrono Trigger can still be surprising.

Chrono Trigger’s campfire scene is one of the only moments when the whole cast is together, contemplating what they’ve experienced.

In the camp scene, it becomes downright philosophical.

They say, ‘Man, those dudes are badass.

I want to be that cool,'" Gilligan went on.

“When that happens, fictional bad guys stop being the cautionary player that they were created to be.

God help us, they become aspirational.”

This one isn’t blue like all the others, but a somewhat frightening red.

Stumbling out into the front room, you get what is easily the most harrowing scene in the game.

This is Chrono Trigger at its most intense, and also its most subtle.

If you’ve previously visited Lucca’s house, you might not have realized what you were seeing.

While talking to her, you might have seen Taban, Lucca’s father, bring Lara lunch.

But while other characters sometimes mill about or change locations between scenes, Lara never does.

She only sits quietly and, mostly, alone.

Here, you specifically go back to the past and right a wrong.

That can be horrifying.

Video by YouTuberBruce Riggs.

Often, they’ll hand you their grandma’s favorite sword or some such instead.

Chrono Trigger is never really like that.

You receive rewards for doing quests, sure, but that’s not why thecharactersdo them.

They’re from 1000 A.D. and will be long dead before the apocalypse.

So will their children.

Their children’s children.

The children of their children’s children, and on.

They fight anyway, for people they’ll never know.

They don’t know that they can stop Lavos.

They just know that they should try.

A forest could grow here, with help.

Life is worth the effort.

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