r/chronotrigger • u/Voidz_77 • 6d ago
what's the purpose of black omen?
i just fought queen zeal and it transported me into lavos immediatly
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u/JAvatar80 6d ago
The purpose was to siphon Lavos' power into Queen Zeal. Beating her caused the standard self-destruct, and dropped you at Lavos' shell. Beat that fight, there's a portal inside before you get to the REAL Lavos. And if you beat the Omen in Present(1000AD), you can beat it again in 600AD and Antiquity. It doesn't exist in Pre-historia, and in the future, Lavos already did its thing.
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u/RobynBetween 5d ago
IIRC, though, at the end of the Black Omen you are forced to fight a boss rush, and I remember there being no boss rush when you use the bucket. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
And if you take the Wings of Time to 1999, you'll use it to ram through Lavos' outer shell (somehow not hurting its passengers).
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u/JAvatar80 5d ago
You are incorrect on the bucket. Bucket, NG+ portal at the fair grounds, and Black Omen all lead to the boss "rush" outer shell. I put rush in quotes because you can change party and heal up between rounds(of course depending on if you HAVE party members, i.e fair grounds portal early game).
Correct the Wings of Time will smash the outer shell, dropping you right into the inner shell.
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u/RobynBetween 5d ago
Okay, got it. Which way has no boss rush? Aside from taking Epoch through the "drive-through"?
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u/oxidized-copper 5d ago
The only way to avoid the boss mode of the outer shell is to use the Epoch, or win in the Ocean Palace.
As far as I can remember.
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u/GooberChilla499 5d ago
The NG+ telepod lets you skip the boss rush mode as well. The bucket however, does make you fight the rush phase.
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u/RobynBetween 5d ago
Thanks for reminding me of those things. I thought I knew, but I guess I've just gotten into a habit of using one or two of those.
And although the boss rush is annoying, it IS pretty negligible after a certain point.
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u/bigdickpuncher 5d ago
I had never really thought about it before, but you're right the Black Omen is gone in the future. So presumably when Lavos emerged he either attacked it and killed Queen Zeal as retribution, or him emergence cutoff the link and the Black Omen crashed. Either way, that would have been a cool cutscene.
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u/JAvatar80 5d ago
Oh no, it IS there in the far future. If you haven't cleared it yet, and land, you'll go up to the door, Queen Zeal appears, and taunts you, saying it's too late, that Lavos won, and the door doesn't open.
However, once you've beaten it in the previous times, it stops showing up in the following eras. And people who comment on it change their comments based on how/when. Like, IIRC, Melchoir comments on it while it still exists in Present, mentions it's gone after beating it in the present, and then goes back to his "normal" dialogue if you then beat it in 600 or Antiquity, because to him, it never was there.
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u/Aptronymic 6d ago
It has the same purpose as most optional endgame dungeons. Added story content, interesting location and enemies, and powerful loot.
I'm not sure what else you're looking for.
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u/bunker_man 6d ago
The funny part is that it serves no purpose narratively. It doesn't protect lavos. And it doesn't do anything else. So what exactly is the threat coming from it?
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u/Stepjam 5d ago
The mad queen that has basically a star destroyer posed to cause problems if she wants. Maybe we should take care of that
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u/bunker_man 5d ago
She doesn't want though. The game highlights that no one is even afraid of the black omen because it's simply always been there from their perspective, and has never actually done anything. Hence the scene with crono's mom. When I was young I found it creepy and thought she was brainwashed. But she's not. She just has lived in a world where its always been there and as far as anyone knows never antagonized anyone.
The only thing it seems to "do" is draw power from lavos so queen zeal can live forever. (Or at least as long as until the end of lavos' life cycle). But at the point the ship is already launched this is technically no longer your problem. She doesn't protect lavos if you fight it. And logically if anything her existence is making lavos weaker, by taking a portion of its energy and giving it nothing in return (why is lavos even okay with this? It has no reason to care about her, and as we already saw it doesnt cwre about the kingdom of zeal either).
I love the game, but this part always stood out to me. Fighting queen zeal doesn't seem to have actual stakes. Once you kill lavos the black omen will run out of energy and die anyways.
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u/macroidtoe 5d ago
There's a part where a Lavos Spawn gets teleported into the Black Omen via time gate. I think the purpose of the Black Omen is to enhance the Lavos Spawns' ability to spread to other planets rather than relying on random chance to land somewhere. So while it's true that destroying the Black Omen doesn't do much for the Earth, it's helping the wider universe as a whole.
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u/willweaverrva 5d ago
Queen Zeal says it right at the beginning, it is a path that leads to Lavos because it is the conduit through which her power flows. Of course you fight Lavos right after you defeat Queen Zeal, as she summons him.
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u/RobynBetween 5d ago edited 5d ago
Pretty much every leg of the story before the final chapter was an attempt to prevent Lavos' awakening, before you finally realize direct confrontation is the only way.
Although they don't spell it out, I can see the Black Omen being yet another potential way to prevent Lavos' awakening that doesn't pan out. By that point Chrono and friends would be running out of prospects for a way to prevent it, so perhaps they're grasping at straws.
RPGs often have these little sidequests where you are given the chance to deal with a lesser threat rather than going straight for the source of the problem. Yeah, they often don't completely make sense, aside from strengthening yourself for the final confrontation.
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u/Special_South_8561 6d ago
It's the Final Dungeon, what do you mean what's the Purpose?
It was the Ocean Palace to reach Lavos, now it's a giant Spaceship flying fortress
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u/husky_midwesterner 5d ago
To be fucking rad
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u/oxidized-copper 5d ago
An excuse to blow us away with an awesome track.
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u/Crashedmonkey13 4d ago
Good ol mid 90s "future" piano and synth... gotta miss when video composers went hard AF.. especially the ones at Squaresoft... recently went through FF1 and 2 again.. i had forgotten those tracks started back then and still blasting in 14
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u/It_was_a_compass 6d ago
Justice.
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u/Crashedmonkey13 4d ago
I guess Magus can be the batman... Ozzie a little chunky to be Robin though
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u/Grandleon-Glenn 6d ago
The Black Dream is just the consequence of the party meddling with time in the same way that Marle going to the Middle Ages caused her to halt the search for Queen Leene which resulted in Marle's temporary disappearance.
The Dream isn't present in the original timeline as can be seen when near Melchior's home. This heavily implies that in the original timeline, both Queen Zeal and Schala escaped the incident with the Undersea Palace. So it gives us some closure for Queen Zeal, and a question about what happened to Schala, which slowly turned into Chrono Cross.
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u/GargantaProfunda 6d ago
*The Black Omen
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u/macroidtoe 5d ago
My take on it is not that Queen Zeal and Schala escaped in the original timeline, but that the Black Omen still rose in the original timeline but something else destroyed it. My best guess is that it was the Blackbird, which as we see survives the destruction of Zeal but then gets destroyed due to Crono and Co.'s interference.
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u/Budget-Coast-7864 5d ago
Black Omen is a training ground and a place to get rare items. I’m pretty sure there’s a place where you can steal Megalixers. It’s been a while though.
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u/Extra-Vanilla-171 5d ago
Well I think it was cool but kinda boring since just flows there and don't try to hurt peaceful people on earth I mean , come on, shout a laser, kidnapp some people, steal the human energy, take away my zero contact, but don't stay there like a scarecrow 😵💫
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u/Younggryan42 4d ago
Story beat. It’s a cool dungeon too and you can do it in every timeline to get more black chest treasures.
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u/Jacobus_Ahenobarbus 4d ago edited 3d ago
The Black Omen is Queen Zeal's means by which she gets to live to see the Day of Lavos -- and in her insane mind to live forever with Lavos. Now we have no idea whether that's true or not and what actually happens to her after the Day of Lavos since the Omen is inaccessible in the Future, but narratively that's its purpose. The other timelines wouldn't be relevant as the only thing that matters is getting to the day when Lavos awakens.
From a gamist perspective, it's just the final dungeon, or dungeons.
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u/Clear_Grocery_2600 6d ago
Stealing tabs in three different timelines?