Dimension Split, or Dimension Duplication

[Acacia Sgt]

For endings 'General Kid' and one of 'The True Hero' variations you have to access it from AW (since you can't go back to HM at the moment).

[stenir]

So, that's a New Game+ thing? What about in a normal playthrough?

I'm waiting until I hit 99* (stars) before going after extra endings, so I always end up kicking the TD's butt from HW. If the TD is only accessible from AW on a New Game+, does the compendium count that as a part of "canonical", or just gameplay mechanics?

I always took the first runthrough as what was canon, unless defined further (I always defeated Lavos through 12000 BC Black Omen, as it was the last thing left to do).

[Acacia Sgt]

When I meant AW only, it's because of plot reasons, not that it wasn't in the other world. You can't go back to HW until you get the Astral Amulet, so those endings can only be get in AW. Likewise there is the case when you can't go back to AW until you fight Miguel.

They are in both worlds, normal or NG+ either way.

[stenir]

I get that, but I mean in a normal New Game, not + or anything, the first time you encounter the gate to the TD is on Home World's Opassa Beach. If you gate over to Another World, is that TD gate still there? Or does it only exist on HW's Opassa Beach at that point? Plotiwse you aren't introduced to it until HW's Opassa Beach.

I understand for a New Game + it HAS to be in both for gameplay mechanics, but once again we don't (or at least, I assume we don't) accept New Game + as anything more than a gameplay mechanic.

EDIT:

I just pulled a save file from GameFAQs that is NOT a New Game +, and you can access the TD Gate from only HW. If you go to AW and go where the TD Gate is supposed to be, it isn't there. So, other than gameplay mechanics, I think the canon version of events is that you can defeat the TD only from HW. You can only access it on AW during a New Game +.

Note, that I understand the reason it has to be there in AW for the endings, but the endings aren't canon because you aren't supposed to beat the TD until the very end of the game. Any other attempt to defeat it beforehand are just extra bonuses for doing it that way.

So, I think since in a first run you can't access the gate from AW, it's possible my theory could exist. When I get up to defeating the TD, I can give out the memory card file if you want proof of it. I don't know any way of showing the evidence I have (would a picture of AW Opassa Beach without the TD gate but showing that I have the Time Egg in my inventory be enough?).

I've attached three pictures (1 and 2 are from exact same save file):
1) Home World with Time Devourer Gate - First Run
2) Another World without Time Devourer Gate - First Run
3) Another World with Time Devourer Gate - First Run, after Continue Plus over top of it (i.e., TD is beat, clear file saved separately, then Continue+ on the original file)

You can clearly see the TD gate on #1 and #3, but it's not there on #2. So, I think (unless someone has some evidence to refute this) that TD being accessed from AW is only on a "new game +" setting, which is therefore not considered canon.

[Acacia Sgt]

I see, I was wrong. Maybe since I was already playing towards the 99 stars that I forgot it was a NG+ while posting. Still, Belthasar's word is more than enough evidence that AW is not in the DBT.

[stenir]

What words of Belthasar's are you using which define AW as not being a part of the DBT? During the first conversation you have with him during the assault on Viper Manor, there is a point where it comes up that AW may be the "alternate", meaning HW is the current timeline. I just re-read it a bunch of times, and went through all of his lines from the script (both as Belthasar and as Prophet).

Gotta love picking apart scripted lines.

[Acacia Sgt]

I already posted it:

Wrong, you can access the TD from AW.

As for evidence, well, after receiving the Time Egg...

  That Time Egg will
   enable you to travel
   beyond space-time...

Beyond... then this means that AW is still inside those boundaries, which makes it be in it's own dimension, rather than in the Darkness Beyond Time. Well?

And considering it is said in AW, well, the rest is already quoted.

[utunnels]

Although the ghost children screamed at Serge "you killed it", but in fact Serge just restored the future that was killed by them, from another world's view.

Once you are in that timeline, it is not DBTed, something like a paradox? Something like you say "I'm dead" when you are alive?
So I don't think a timeline that went int DBT can be as alive as another world, or else what's the point of saying it is dead?

[stenir]

Well, the statement may be said in AW. As we know, Belthasar is a sneaky little Guru, since his Library shows up in the tower as a sort of third dimension to this all. However, if you could get straight to the TD from AW, then shouldn't the Time Egg be immediately useable without having to jump back over to HW?

Besides, Belthasar says a lot of cryptic things, and likes to play games. Remember his statement about the Time Crash? He says we might think it was a failure, but he "jokingly" asks us to think whether or not it may have actually been a success. His "finest hour"? He plays games...but you still have to trek to HW to use it. If AW could access the TD, then I would agree that AW is not in the DBT, and therefore part of normal space-time. But since you can't, and you have to return to HW, this means that AW is not in normal space-time. And the only place I know of off-hand that doesn't exist in space-time is the DBT.

I don't say a timeline in the DBT is "dead", just "defunct". Think about it. The Reptite Dimension was shunted to the DBT when Lavos fell, but it still remained alive; otherwise, Dinopolis couldn't have been brought over. Now I know that many people are going to say that statement is wrong, that the Reptite Dimension from which Dinopolis was brought over was from a different "base" dimension. But that in itself doesn't make sense. If the CT/CC base dimension was the Reptite Timeline, why would another dimension be the same base dimension? It makes more sense for the DBT timelines to still be active, but unreachable except through special means.

The compendium's encyclopedia entry for the DBT doesn't actually say that timelines sent there are "dead", in fact it only says they are "nullified". That doesn't necessarily mean it's all destroyed and no longer functional.

And also, the compendium's principle of discarded timelines entry states that although Marle's ghost said the ruined future is about to return, it was cryptic and probably only really meant that the destruction caused by Lavos was going to happen again, but not necessarily the exact same carnage. I don't think she could have actually meant that Lavos was going to erupt in the exact same way, and everything was going to go as it originally did.

[Acacia Sgt]

Wait a minute, why would the Reptite time line be in the DBT too?
Why would you think all time lines except HW would be in the DBT?
And don't tell me, you also think the RD time line is in the DBT too, isn't it?

The compendium's encyclopedia entry for the DBT doesn't actually say that timelines sent there are "dead", in fact it only says they are "nullified". That doesn't necessarily mean it's all destroyed and no longer functional.

If it isn't, then also it wouldn't be nullified, don't you think?

Remember, there are other dimensions out there, why can't one of them house AW?

  Terra Tower is really a
   city of the Reptites, from
   another dimension's future...

   Dinopolis was drawn into
   this dimension's past about
   ten thousand years ago...

   That thing...
   the '"Dragon God"'...
   is only a quasi-existence...
   ...A temporary form that
   the real Dragon God uses
   in order to appear within
   this dimension.

   The locations where such
   divisions in the time-space
   continua occur are called,
   '"ANGELUS ERRARE"' -
   '"Where Angels Lose Their Way."'
   It is said that, there, the
   borders of two dimensions
   fluctuate in such a way as to
   make the passage between the
   parallel realities a possibility.

Indeed, there are different dimensions. That's the whole point of the game, or else if AW would have been a discarded time line, then the Chrono Cross wouldn't have been created, since it needed the same item of two different dimensions, not time lines.

[utunnels]

So what do you guys think about the countless parallel words?
Only one of them is "alive" and any others are DBTed?

[stenir]

There are other dimensions out there; that much I agree upon. The RD is one of them. I know the original dimension CT/CC took place in had Lavos not land; thus forming the Reptite Timeline. Lavos lands, Reptite Timeline gets shunted to DBT. Now, there may be a dimension where the Reptite Timeline is the main timeline; but if there's one thing I've noticed is that for a long time timeline and dimension were used interchangeably.

Nullified doesn't have to mean "zero". It can also mean "having no effect". You can nullify a marriage, but does that automatically mean it never took effect in the first place? You can nullify any legal document, but does that automatically mean that any action taken upon it while it was in effect is now void and illegal? No. The two main descriptions for "nullify" are: 1) to put an end to; and 2) to make ineffective by applying an opposite force or amount.

As for countless worlds...they'd have to be finite, otherwise there wouldn't be the need for a DBT in the first place. You would just be doing the whole Back to the Future thing, going down one branch of the tree to go backwards in time, then just going up a different tree to return to the future. Of course, that didn't even hold true for Marty McFly, who technically shouldn't have started to disappear since he was from an alternate universe's future (i.e., his arrival in the past meant he was no longer in the same timeline). Then again, under our thought, he shoulda had TTI. Giggity.

I hate the term "alive" and "dead". Okay, so the entry for the compendium for DBT states that the discarded timelines are just information. If that's true, then why during the final fight are the dimensions physically going by you? Who is to say that you couldn't access the dimensions by triggering them with a gate key? They look gate shaped, after all.

This is one of those things that we just don't have enough information on. We've come to a conclusion that nothing physically exists in the DBT, yet we turn around and have a physical confrontation there at the end of CC?

[Acacia Sgt]

One more thing...

   Time, which has been divided,
   will be unified again now.

AW and HW merged back at the end of the game. How would that be possible if AW would be a time line in the DBT?

And don't try to use the Dead Sea's case, since that time line is only a similar one, but not the smae as CT's. By 'came back' it is probably meant that the situation is, not necessarily the time line. Besides, only the word 'future' is used.

[stenir]

Well, I don't see why it couldn't be possible. I've run out of things to use as any sort of basis. The only thing I can say at this point in response to Schala's quote is that we don't know exactly what happened afterward. We know the Chrono Cross is a powerful item, though we don't know exactly how powerful.

Is there any way to contact Kato to find out what exactly was going through his mind?

[Thought]

Now I know that many people are going to say that statement is wrong, that the Reptite Dimension from which Dinopolis was brought over was from a different "base" dimension. But that in itself doesn't make sense. If the CT/CC base dimension was the Reptite Timeline, why would another dimension be the same base dimension?

String/M-Theory. Before the Big Bang two lovely branes were floating along somehow in a manner that is so mindbendy I don't know how to express it. They meet and, at the points of intersection, Big Bangs happen, each creating a universe with a random set of universal constants (I believe it is said that each brane collision would produce somewhere between 10¹⁰⁰ and 10¹⁰⁰⁰ universes, so depending on the possible ranges of values, it may be very reasonable for an almost identical universe to form in which, say, gravity is just a little less strong, or more so. Indeed, there is a little evidence for this, in the form of the Reptite Dimension's moon. It is neither the same size nor color as the Crono dimension's moon, implying significantly different formation circumstances.