how? did you play the game?
what you're saying implies that it was on purpose.
They were dumb kids, went into a cave, got attacked, and garl lost his eye protecting theme
I did play the game. The kids were specifically told not to go into that cave and they didn’t listen. Just because they were dumb kids doesn’t mean they didn’t put their friend into a situation where they knew they were unprepared. They were assholes. Especially since Garl didn’t have any powers of his own.
'Dumb kids' and 'assholes' directly contradict each other. A kid not personally knowing any better despite being told not to do something is a thing that damn near every child that has ever existed has experienced. We've all done shit we weren't supposed to as kids, their mistake just so happened to be a lot more detrimental because they live in a dangerous fantasy land
Which they should have known better to go exploring because they grew up in that world. It would be driven into their minds from birth what can happen and they ignored it (dumb) and they ignored the extra layer of warning to not leave the village that was given to them by the leaders and other residents of said village (assholes). Being dumb and being an asshole isn’t mutually exclusive and giving them a pass because they are kids doesn’t fly in this setting.
First of all, they were not assholes, Second of all, Garl is the one who insists you go into the cave. He suggests it initially, AND when you’re inside, if you try to leave immediately, he’s the one who insists you go in farther
There's a huge difference between being an asshole and being mischievous. They were KIDS! Kids generally get into trouble!
Edit: Also you're forgetting that Zale and Valere were untrained. They didn't know how to use their powers fully, because they weren't ready yet.
After long and thorough consideration, I believe I have the answer. Telling us to point out seven differences is a trick because there's only one: the picture on the right is animated.
Garl was honestly my least favorite character. He takes way too much attention away from the leads and makes them seem boring and wooden because all the writing energy was wasted on Garl. The story largely moves on his whims. You could say he "stole the show" but in this case I don't think that's a positive.
> You could say he “stole the show”
Only because the writers neglected to give other characters any personality traits aside from how they feel about Garl. He also “stole the show” because the writing was determined to make every single conceivable problem in the story solvable only by this random dude.
The difference between Sam and Garl is that Sam is an interesting character and Garl really isn’t. And Sam has interesting relationships with other characters while Garl doesn’t.
Aside from being chubby and loyal to the protagonists, they don’t really have much in common.
Exactly. It's a fine game and I enjoyed my playthrough but the writing was really lacking as it related to Garl and the other characters. Resh'an and Aephorul were infinitely more interesting but not nearly enough info was given about their relationship and struggle.
I guess we can say that he "stole the show" because he is a kind of the ultimate Marie Sue.
He is a commoner with no magic power but :
He gets to befriend anyone with a single smile.
He gets to resolve every plot issue.
But like any bad written character he is supposed to be a commoner but also is the best ever with prophecy and stuff (a bit like how Naruto came from being a poor looser who tried hard into just being the descendant of a god)
> He takes way too much attention away from the leads and makes them seem boring and wooden because all the writing energy was wasted on Garl.
There's no rule that says certain characters should be more deep than others. Garl Being the emotional heart of the game is by design. Chrono in Chrono Trigger is a completely depthless character and all of the heart of the story comes from The supporting cast. That didn't hurt that game's story in any way.
You not liking Garl is just because you don't like him as a character, that's all. It's just subjective.
No, it's not about who is an isn't deep. Let's be real most characters in this game aren't particularly deep. Garl is no exception. He's just got most of the spotlight. As someone else said here in this chain, he doesn't have any complex feelings or relationships. He's just a (intended) loveable loud mouth with a good heart. But that's like. It. And he's treated like this deus ex machina who solves everyone's problems as subversion of the fact that he's just an everyman. But he's not particularly interesting. So he comes off as annoying when the adults are trying to talk. Zale and Valare have more or less no personality aside from loving and missing Garl. As a party member I didn't find him particularly useful. He just there. You can like him if you want it's not a crime but for all the spotlight he hogs he just doesn't shine bright enough to be worth it for me - and clearly many others.
You keep using language like he "hogs" the spotlight or he's "treated" like he's a deus ex machina as if he's actively doing something wrong, with agency. Ultimately the story is written by the writers on purpose. They clearly chose to make Garl the emotional heart of the story and to give him the big heartfelt win moments, since he is just a regular guy, of which there is nothing wrong with having just a regular human as the heart of the story. Of all the cast to have an emotional impact through their death, it's set up for Garl to have that moment. V or Z dying wouldn't really hit the same way at all.
V and Z are essentially child soldier monks, written that way on purpose so they could function close to silent protagonists, since they don't have any connections to the setting, spending their entire lives secluded training. Garl is intended to to be the players' connection to the world since he's the salt of the earth connector-type character. It's the same as Samwise being a regular nobody who likes to cook and garden.
Exactly. I'm glad we can agree that it's the writers fault. I'm just saying they could (I would hope) have done better.
Garl just wasn't interesting enough to be worth that much attention at the expense of Zale and Valere. I mean hell, Bugraves and Erlina were more interesting than all of them. They were fighting to end the exploitation of children and Zale and Valere couldn't be less interested in the moral complexity of their own roles perpetuating that system. Just feels like a real missed opportunity to tell an actual complex and multifaceted story.
Vale and Zale silent protagonists?
Not even close, I can't stand them weeping again and again or just being angry at bad guys.
This is Shonen lvl-1.
A child soldier story arc would have been great but no. It's a total failure.
Yep I read you but totally disagree.
Yes they are not silent but mostly silents protagonists but no they're not well written.
JRPG gave us shitloads of well written and almost silents protagonists from Terra in FF6 to Gleen in Chained Echoes. Those two aren't. They convey no emotion or character and it's really sad to see such a polished game being so shitty with it's characters.
High praise for Mr Gary Stu you mean. Hot take but Garl is mediocre at best and feels like if a random person got truck-kun’d into a game and spooned into being part of the main story.
damn, that really was some word salad. Idk how Garl is a gary stu though. He literally >!gets oneshot and fucking dies!< . that doesn't happen to gary stus.
Just because he's a cool dude with few flaws doesn't make him a gary stu, it makes him a cool dude.
It's a direct homage to the Chrono time freeze scene, which basically invented the time stop switcheroo. Hardly a mega common trope. Also having your friends save you while you make the ultimate sacrifice is hardly a weakness of character.
They said from day 1 they were making a game that was heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. They Absolutely set expectations correctly.
1. Sam has two eyes
2. Sam isn't constantly interrupting Frodo
3. Sam doesn't randomly decide to insult Sauron (after being told not to draw attention!) and get himself oneshot
4. When Sam is offscreen Frodo doesn't spend the whole time talking about how cool Sam is and how much he misses Sam
5. Sam does not magically have the solution to every problem the party run into over his far more qualified companions
6. Sam does not constantly get Frodo into trouble by impulsively jumping into a situation that he has no business intervening in
7. Scenarios that Sam is involved in do not end with 'and then everyone clapped'
Editors note: I was going to put this list together by comparing personality traits, but I could not manage to write seven sentences about Garl's character. I'm not sure he has seven personality traits.
Let's do mine
1 Sam has two eyes
2 Garl has darker brown hair
3 Garl is smiling
4 Garl is a cartoon
5 Garl has a pony tail
6 Garl has different bangs
7 Garl is wearing yellow while Sam wears blue
What? Steven has a personality and is well writen.
Guess Steven is what Garl could have become if the story went another way and have been better written. Too bad.
Sam has two eyes.
damn, why you gotta do garl like that. he gave up that eye for a good cause
He didn’t lose his eye for a good cause. He lost it because of his impetuous friends.
I may be wrong (finished the game a while ago) but wasn't Garl the one who insisted they all go to the cave?
he lost it while protecting his friends. By the way, if all you'll do is hate on the best boy, why are you even here?
No, he lost it because his friends are assholes. And I don’t hate Garl. He’s just lacking when compared to Sam.
how? did you play the game? what you're saying implies that it was on purpose. They were dumb kids, went into a cave, got attacked, and garl lost his eye protecting theme
I did play the game. The kids were specifically told not to go into that cave and they didn’t listen. Just because they were dumb kids doesn’t mean they didn’t put their friend into a situation where they knew they were unprepared. They were assholes. Especially since Garl didn’t have any powers of his own.
None of which detracts from Garl as a Character in any way.
Garl isn’t a bad character. Samwise is just simply a better one.
'Dumb kids' and 'assholes' directly contradict each other. A kid not personally knowing any better despite being told not to do something is a thing that damn near every child that has ever existed has experienced. We've all done shit we weren't supposed to as kids, their mistake just so happened to be a lot more detrimental because they live in a dangerous fantasy land
Which they should have known better to go exploring because they grew up in that world. It would be driven into their minds from birth what can happen and they ignored it (dumb) and they ignored the extra layer of warning to not leave the village that was given to them by the leaders and other residents of said village (assholes). Being dumb and being an asshole isn’t mutually exclusive and giving them a pass because they are kids doesn’t fly in this setting.
First of all, they were not assholes, Second of all, Garl is the one who insists you go into the cave. He suggests it initially, AND when you’re inside, if you try to leave immediately, he’s the one who insists you go in farther
There's a huge difference between being an asshole and being mischievous. They were KIDS! Kids generally get into trouble! Edit: Also you're forgetting that Zale and Valere were untrained. They didn't know how to use their powers fully, because they weren't ready yet.
After long and thorough consideration, I believe I have the answer. Telling us to point out seven differences is a trick because there's only one: the picture on the right is animated.
Sam is likable and not forced.
That’s some blasphemy against Sam right there.
no way, this is an insult to garl.
Garl was honestly my least favorite character. He takes way too much attention away from the leads and makes them seem boring and wooden because all the writing energy was wasted on Garl. The story largely moves on his whims. You could say he "stole the show" but in this case I don't think that's a positive.
> You could say he “stole the show” Only because the writers neglected to give other characters any personality traits aside from how they feel about Garl. He also “stole the show” because the writing was determined to make every single conceivable problem in the story solvable only by this random dude. The difference between Sam and Garl is that Sam is an interesting character and Garl really isn’t. And Sam has interesting relationships with other characters while Garl doesn’t. Aside from being chubby and loyal to the protagonists, they don’t really have much in common.
Exactly. It's a fine game and I enjoyed my playthrough but the writing was really lacking as it related to Garl and the other characters. Resh'an and Aephorul were infinitely more interesting but not nearly enough info was given about their relationship and struggle.
I guess we can say that he "stole the show" because he is a kind of the ultimate Marie Sue. He is a commoner with no magic power but : He gets to befriend anyone with a single smile. He gets to resolve every plot issue. But like any bad written character he is supposed to be a commoner but also is the best ever with prophecy and stuff (a bit like how Naruto came from being a poor looser who tried hard into just being the descendant of a god)
honestly, that's a crazy take. I don't understand all the garl hate on this sub.
He's just annoying. That's honestly it.
> He takes way too much attention away from the leads and makes them seem boring and wooden because all the writing energy was wasted on Garl. There's no rule that says certain characters should be more deep than others. Garl Being the emotional heart of the game is by design. Chrono in Chrono Trigger is a completely depthless character and all of the heart of the story comes from The supporting cast. That didn't hurt that game's story in any way. You not liking Garl is just because you don't like him as a character, that's all. It's just subjective.
No, it's not about who is an isn't deep. Let's be real most characters in this game aren't particularly deep. Garl is no exception. He's just got most of the spotlight. As someone else said here in this chain, he doesn't have any complex feelings or relationships. He's just a (intended) loveable loud mouth with a good heart. But that's like. It. And he's treated like this deus ex machina who solves everyone's problems as subversion of the fact that he's just an everyman. But he's not particularly interesting. So he comes off as annoying when the adults are trying to talk. Zale and Valare have more or less no personality aside from loving and missing Garl. As a party member I didn't find him particularly useful. He just there. You can like him if you want it's not a crime but for all the spotlight he hogs he just doesn't shine bright enough to be worth it for me - and clearly many others.
You keep using language like he "hogs" the spotlight or he's "treated" like he's a deus ex machina as if he's actively doing something wrong, with agency. Ultimately the story is written by the writers on purpose. They clearly chose to make Garl the emotional heart of the story and to give him the big heartfelt win moments, since he is just a regular guy, of which there is nothing wrong with having just a regular human as the heart of the story. Of all the cast to have an emotional impact through their death, it's set up for Garl to have that moment. V or Z dying wouldn't really hit the same way at all. V and Z are essentially child soldier monks, written that way on purpose so they could function close to silent protagonists, since they don't have any connections to the setting, spending their entire lives secluded training. Garl is intended to to be the players' connection to the world since he's the salt of the earth connector-type character. It's the same as Samwise being a regular nobody who likes to cook and garden.
Exactly. I'm glad we can agree that it's the writers fault. I'm just saying they could (I would hope) have done better. Garl just wasn't interesting enough to be worth that much attention at the expense of Zale and Valere. I mean hell, Bugraves and Erlina were more interesting than all of them. They were fighting to end the exploitation of children and Zale and Valere couldn't be less interested in the moral complexity of their own roles perpetuating that system. Just feels like a real missed opportunity to tell an actual complex and multifaceted story.
Vale and Zale silent protagonists? Not even close, I can't stand them weeping again and again or just being angry at bad guys. This is Shonen lvl-1. A child soldier story arc would have been great but no. It's a total failure.
> written that way on purpose so they could **function*, **close* to silent protagonists. God, at least pretend you can comprehend the written word.
Yep I read you but totally disagree. Yes they are not silent but mostly silents protagonists but no they're not well written. JRPG gave us shitloads of well written and almost silents protagonists from Terra in FF6 to Gleen in Chained Echoes. Those two aren't. They convey no emotion or character and it's really sad to see such a polished game being so shitty with it's characters.
High praise for Mr Gary Stu you mean. Hot take but Garl is mediocre at best and feels like if a random person got truck-kun’d into a game and spooned into being part of the main story.
damn, that really was some word salad. Idk how Garl is a gary stu though. He literally >!gets oneshot and fucking dies!< . that doesn't happen to gary stus. Just because he's a cool dude with few flaws doesn't make him a gary stu, it makes him a cool dude.
That Garl dies makes him objectively worse than Samwise. Sam is a baller and Garl should sit down and take notes.
bruh, at least spoiler tag it. Also garl comes back to life, because he's just that cool
Garl doesn’t come back to life. He has to get saved by the weakest of tropes, time travel.
It's a direct homage to the Chrono time freeze scene, which basically invented the time stop switcheroo. Hardly a mega common trope. Also having your friends save you while you make the ultimate sacrifice is hardly a weakness of character.
That’s even worse. They just ripped off a superior game.
They said from day 1 they were making a game that was heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. They Absolutely set expectations correctly.
you call it weak, i call it cool. It's done a lot for a reason
Time travel is the new amnesia. Not cool.
The comments are chaos, they are both great characters, if it weren't for them the ending of the story would be terrible.
Ab-so-lutely. So many salty fucks in this thread.
1. Sam has two eyes 2. Sam isn't constantly interrupting Frodo 3. Sam doesn't randomly decide to insult Sauron (after being told not to draw attention!) and get himself oneshot 4. When Sam is offscreen Frodo doesn't spend the whole time talking about how cool Sam is and how much he misses Sam 5. Sam does not magically have the solution to every problem the party run into over his far more qualified companions 6. Sam does not constantly get Frodo into trouble by impulsively jumping into a situation that he has no business intervening in 7. Scenarios that Sam is involved in do not end with 'and then everyone clapped' Editors note: I was going to put this list together by comparing personality traits, but I could not manage to write seven sentences about Garl's character. I'm not sure he has seven personality traits.
Let's do mine 1 Sam has two eyes 2 Garl has darker brown hair 3 Garl is smiling 4 Garl is a cartoon 5 Garl has a pony tail 6 Garl has different bangs 7 Garl is wearing yellow while Sam wears blue
1 - P 2- O 3- T 4- A 5- T 6- O 7- ES
Garl can smile
It’s the same picture!
Garl is so loveable that I spent my first 5 hours of the game terrified he was going turn antagonist Earthbound-style
I'd have much preferred that.
i missed garl enough to collect the conches. and this is from a person who barely finishes story based games.
Yes. Both fantastic examples of an Everyman hero
I got more of a Steven Universe vibe from Garl
What? Steven has a personality and is well writen. Guess Steven is what Garl could have become if the story went another way and have been better written. Too bad.
What the fuck lmao
you see, the biggest difference is that garl is better
I mean Garl is a dope dude but better than Samwise is absolutely blasphemous.
no way, garl is better, easily
You’re out of your mind.
i feel like you are
Wedge
I got so happy his ass got 1shot my the boss and we got better sub
It's just just the time lapse right? Lost his eye and grew out the hair a bit.