Trails franchise (Trails In The Sky, Trails Of Cold Steel etc)

A while back, I did a post with a bunch of fake spoilers for the end of 3 with one real spoiler mixed in. Maybe I should dig that one up.

For fake spoilers; Osborne wants to convince the people of the neighboring village that the branch campus is haunted, so he can buy up the land cheaply and resell at a profit later.

I have so much satire in mind for my Cold Steel 3 play through when I eventually start it officially, because just the premise of having to teach at a school full of problematic and politically inconvenient to care for students is a gold mine of jokes against the American educational system.

C’mon, where’s all of Osborne’s evil schemes to cut funding from the branch campus to remove music, art, other non military essential classes to make sure the next generation of soldiers are unthinking drones who will do exactly as they are ordered?

I swear, by the end of this year, Rean is going to start drinking to get through the days.

PLEASE PLEASE AT LEAST FINISH THIER DAMN SCHOOL YEARS UNLIKE OLD CLASS VII.

It’s gonna break my heart if my class fails their year because Ouroboros wasn’t considerate enough to enact their schemes around the school year like Voldemort.

That's... how the Capuas lost their barony. And how the Branch Campus came into existence.

Rean turns 20 about a month after school starts. That's drinking age in Japan and Zemuria.

Sara does owe Rean drinks after all the shit in Cold Steel 1.

Also made a dumb meme about Osborne. The moment I heard from Agate that strings were being pulled by people to make this campus a thing, I couldn't stop thinking about this.

You are now imagining this Simpsons song but with the Cold Steel cast.

Seriously sad no one got the reference.

Sorry, I make a policy of not deliberately exposing myself to ear worms that I haven't already been exposed to.

Have you seen this episode tho?

Like, my crack idea is basically the plot of this episode. Osborne is setting up Rean to take the fall for the budget cuts in this school so he can better fund the main school because the crown prince attending now.

It took me a long while to remember Alfin had a brother who wasn't Oliver. Man, I keep forgetting him, Charles right? I'm serious.

I'll give you a hint, it starts and ends with a C.

No, I've never seen a full episode of the Simpsons. At most I've seen clips, about the length of the video examples around the site.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on May 7th 2024 at 12:21:17 PM

REALLY? You've NEVER watched a single episode of the Simpsons? Even the good ones? Wild.

Cormac? I think it was something like that.

Eh, close enough.

I caved in, typed up "brother of Alfin" on google, and this is what I got.

Alfin Reise Arnor (アルフィン・ライゼ・アルノール) is the Princess of Erebonia and the twin sister of Crown Prince Cedric.

Right, the kid with the kicked puppy face who was kidnapped by Duke Cayenne. Good times. Is he still shilling for Osborne?

Yeaaaaahhhhh

Man, I vaguely remember Chuck being on good terms with Oliver, so that's going to be interesting to see.

Would be funny AF if Kendrick is salty Rean is teaching at this campus because he wanted the son of Osborne to be HIS teacher.

But enough about Cold Steel 3 for now, I'm going back to Second Chapter.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 8th 2024 at 12:39:14 AM

You are definitely going to have something to say about C-c when you meet him again.

Also, because it's basically a running gag at this point, 3 should definitely explain the Salt Pale at some point.

Okay, no one is allowed to say Diggory's name correctly.

Honestly, this makes the guy more memorable.

I agree, Chuck deserves nothing better than this.

Okay, so back to more Ke A existential discussions.

So back at the ending of Azure. We see Lloyd interact Guy in the world of Zero. It's not his ghost or the afterlife, but Guy here is stated to be some kind of possibility brought to life.

Basically, he's a Guy who DIDN"T die at the hands of Grimwood and Arios, and this Guy is aware of the nature of his existence, even noting that if he was brought to reality, then it would alter all the events of the games because Guy would be alive and that wouldn't motivate Lloyd to become who he is now.

Am I accurate so far?

Pretty much, yeah.

I think of him and the associated alternate history he'd bring as an unstaged change KeA made in her local repository but never got around to committing and pushing to the central version of reality.

I get that Ke A had all sorts of changes planned, but the story suggests that she only managed to undo the deaths of the SSS at the end of Zero. I'd think Mariabell would know if Ke A saved Crossbell from being blown up by Crow and hold it over the crew's heads.

I'm not sure how Ke A would know about the events of Garellia fortress but whatever, that's a debate for another time.

What I'm questioning is how exactly does Ke A's manipulations work, because the world of Zero scenes imply that she creates a new possibility and then superimposes it over the old one right?

Because I feel like if she just jumped to new timelines where the possibilities she wants came true, then she would be useless to the Crois family, since they want THEIR reality altered.

And if we go for the first explanation, does it fully replace the old timeline or does it alter things like time travel?

Because Lloyd has memories of his death which should be impossible if he's a different Lloyd from the one at the start, and Ke A acts like the SSS she knows are the same ones who died, and so do the cast, but the fact that there's a possibility where Guy is alive and knows what would happen implies she's superimposing a version of reality over the old one, and that suggests to me that the SSS are still dead in some form.

I think I'd get a really big existential crisis if there our Lloyd met the Lloyd who died at the end of Zero.

Or worse, the entire SSS.

Maybe for the sake of my sanity, I should just pretend both Lloyds are the same person and Ke A just altered reality instead of superimposing a new one.

You're definitely overthinking it. Do you want an answer? I'll spoilertag it just in case, but nothing I say here is really spoilers. Feel free to click:

At least in the games that currently exist, Lloyd never encounters his dead self or anything like that. As far as the setting's mechanics are concerned, it seems KeA simply replaced the old timeline with a new timeline, and changed history. Thus far, Trails operates on a single timeline, not a multiverse.

Also, the Garrelia Fortress scene is odd because because that particular discrepancy still has never actually been addressed in the games, even with the end of the Cold Steel saga. In spite of how similar it is to Zero's prologue doing some meta-fuckery, a lot of players suspect it really was just a non-diegetic way of the game hiding Crow and Millium from the viewer this time, rather than a spooky in-universe timeline thing.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on May 7th 2024 at 1:21:54 PM

Yeah, there's a difference between replacing a timeline with a timeline you made, and altering the existing timeline so it's ideal.

As for the fortress, I'm more inclined to think it's a gameplay thing since besides Milly and Crow, there's also the fact that Class VII are in their regular uniforms as opposed to summer so it's def not a timeline thing because there's no way Ke A would even change the month the conference would happen in.

Read '31 Cypress Trees' in Trails in the Sky... Trails IS a Multiverse but a multiverse that is getting replaced on top of the last. One that is on its 31st attempt as of Trails in the Sky FC. Probably looking at 33rd-ish as of the end of Azure.

As well as a ticking timebomb.

Edited by Memers on May 8th 2024 at 1:08:05 AM

Trails is becoming more and more cosmic horror as I go along.

Makes me wonder what'll happen to Rean by the end of this.

Just like Kirby.

Is it getting more cosmic horror when the book straight up hinting at it and the lines saying the ‘Goddess of the firmament’ is in the first game?

Sure by the 9th and the 10th game it’s super clear but… it’s always been there.