PSIII - which time frame do you prefer?

One of the most well known changes made in the English release of the PS games is the blunder with the time frame of PSIII. In the original Japanese, PSIII takes place about 2,000 years after PSII. The war between Laya and Orakio was about 1,000 years after PSII, with no mention of what might have happened before that.

In the English game, the story was changed so that the events of the game take place only 1,000 years after PSII. That puts the war almost right after the ship left Palma. DF, credited with destroying all the other ships, has to take them out in the space of just a few years.

Which version do you like more, and why? I'll share my thoughts after some of you have posted yours.

I like the English version, with PSIII taking place at the same time as PSIV. It wouldn't make much sense to have PSIII occur after PSIV, with the PD already having been defeated.

I have to prefer the Japanese version over the English for this reason. It doesn't make much sense for Dark Force to quickly destroy the vast majority of the ships within a short time frame, unless it made short work of wiping out the fleet. Even then, this is uncharacteristic of Dark Force, in my opinion. Dark Force gave me the impression that it enjoyed making the Palmans suffer and fall into despair before finishing them off, since it fed off those emotions...hate, sadness, helplessness, all those negative feelings. Which is the case for how Dark Force comes to control people to do his bidding. We also see this in the Devastation War, when Orakio and Laya realise that they were being used all along. Silly sadistic Dark Force!

The only thing that I think could be said about the English version making any sense would be that it'd explain how Dark Force could exist, since the Profound Darkness would still be around. As we see in PSIV, Dark Force appears more than once without the 1,000 year rule, though this is the result in the planetary seal weakening.

At least, this would be the case if PSIII is starting around 60 years before PSIV takes place. Unless we take into account that Rhys starts his quest around the same time as Chaz and the others, so that'd mean that Dark Force would still be in existance after all once the 3rd generation rolls around, since the Profound Darkness would've been destroyed in Rhys's time. So in that sense, it's the same as the Japanese version because Dark Force would be around after the events of PSIV, regardless.

But then, that'd mean that Dark Force can very well be independant of the Profound Darkness... I like the idea.

One of the things I really dislike about that game was the lack of precision with the dates. They always say 1,000 years. No matter how many decades pass in the game, it's just 1,000 years. 1,000 years since Dark Force appeared, 1,000 years since Palma, 1,000 years since the war. Did they happen in the same year?

It's a headache. I usually like the English stories more, but in this case I have to go with the Japanese version too.

Well, Dark Force would have to be able to exist without the Profound Darkness in order to manifest in Ragol and Gurhal.

Shinuzzo wrote:

Well, Dark Force would have to be able to exist without the Profound Darkness in order to manifest in Ragol and Gurhal.

Aha! I never played past PSIV so I never considered that! If Sega took that attitude for the next games, then either those games occurred concurrently with PSIV, or the PD wasn't spawning the DFs. Very interesting. That would throw out an necessity for PSIII to occur at the same time as PSIV. In that case it would make the Japanese time-line preferable since it would give DF so much more time to destroy all the other worldships.

We don't really know the origins of the Falz on Ragol. It might have manifested before PSIV. I do believe a DF can exist without the PD, thanks to PSIII, but the background of Ragol Falz is too much of a mystery to be used as a vaild example of that, IMHO.

For my part on the dates, I like the 2,000 years number more. I even thought of a way it could work with the English games. Given how much technology and history has been lost on the ship, they may not be aware that the war happened 1,000 years after the ship launched. Consider these two things:

• The wrong dome name is used when the third gen heroes are told where Sage Isle can be found.
• PSIV says "tens of ships" left Palma, while PSIII says there were 400.

Given that, I think it's questionable as to how much the historians really know about their history. If they only pass it down by word of mouth, there's bound to be some changed with each telling.

Thoul wrote:

For my part on the dates, I like the 2,000 years number more. I even thought of a way it could work with the English games. Given how much technology and history has been lost on the ship, they may not be aware that the war happened 1,000 years after the ship launched. Consider these two things:

• The wrong dome name is used when the third gen heroes are told where Sage Isle can be found.
• PSIV says "tens of ships" left Palma, while PSIII says there were 400.

Given that, I think it's questionable as to how much the historians really know about their history. If they only pass it down by word of mouth, there's bound to be some changed with each telling.

True, however, that's not to say that PSIV's entirely correct either... Logically, I somehow doubt that many large ships landed on Motavia or Dezoris, since their planet (Palma) exploded and they possibly could've feared the same with the other planets. Why go through the trouble of making large world ships that are capable of sustaining life for a very long period of time and even made to support various climates for a short trip to one of the neighboring planets?

PSIV also says that most of the ships left the solar system, but my belief is that there were only a few worldships in the fleet. Considering the size and people's reliance on Mother Brain to provide almost everything for them, there's no way that 400, or even 40, ships that large could have been constructed without her knowledge. She certainly wouldn't have built them, given she was trying to kill everyone. I think there were, at best, 10 worldships. The rest of the fleet would have been smaller shuttles or ships like the Landale.

There were probably only a few that went for Motavia or Dezoris. Of those, none actually landed. We know one stayed in orbit around Motavia and that the Palmans on Dezoris (Espers excluded) were taken there by Tyler. I believe Tyler would have transported some people off a worldship that is probably still orbiting Dezoris in PSIV's time.

Thoul wrote:

Considering the size and people's reliance on Mother Brain to provide almost everything for them, there's no way that 400, or even 40, ships that large could have been constructed without her knowledge. She certainly wouldn't have built them, given she was trying to kill everyone.

I agree with that point. I don't think she'd allow too many worldships to get built. I felt like they were trying to put a band-aid over the gaping wound that was the genocide of Palma when I read that in PSIII. As if a few ships escaping made it any less horrible.

Back to the point, that the historians on the Alisa III would be wrong about the number of ships would be another great idea for the 2,000 year time frame. They've already lost so much knowledge on board that both sides live in perpetual fear of each other. This would allow more time for the retrogression to such backward cities, and for the Devastation War. I never did like the idea that Palmans went berserk just after, (or during!) the time they left Algo.