Video Game Forum Descends Into Hours-Long Argument Over Dream Twists

A discussion on /v/ has devolved into an exhausting meta-argument about narrative tropes, with users bickering over whether two JRPGs deploy identical storytelling mechanics and, more importantly, whether one participant actually knows what they’re talking about.

The thread began innocuously: “Why did Expedition 33 successfully pull it off but Star Ocean 3 couldn’t?” Within replies, commenters rehashed a decades-old criticism of Star Ocean 3’s late-game revelation that its setting is artificial. One user alleged that Expedition 33 commits the same narrative sin, claiming both games employ the “All Just a Dream” trope.

What followed was a linguistic cage match. The OP’s main antagonist repeatedly accused them of “arguing about E33 and painting for hours” while admitting, mid-debate, “I have never even played E33, nor do I care about it.” The OP fired back: “Anon, all you did is make yourself look retarded.”

The crux hinged on trope taxonomy. One commenter insisted that Star Ocean 3’s twist doesn’t qualify as “All Just a Dream” because, supposedly, the Eternal Sphere is “wholly substantial and meaningfully real” despite being artificial. “A person made of data is still a person, with all the hopes, dreams, and sorrows of a person,” they wrote. The OP countered by repeatedly linking a TV Tropes page and demanding, “PLEASE JUST READ, ANON.”

A respondent who’d actually played Expedition 33 noted the foreshadowing was deliberate: “I started thinking about how Esquie felt like someone out of a fairy tale… they didn’t asspull, it was there the whole time.” They also praised the game’s “complete lack of browns past the first 30 minutes,” using a racial slur in the process.

Other users offered meta-commentary. One suggested Expedition 33 succeeded where Star Ocean 3 failed because its twist occurs in a newly-launched franchise, whereas Star Ocean 3’s revelation “had such a far-reaching negative impact on the franchise that it’s now stuck only making games that happen before it.”

The thread also spawned discussion of the game’s broader cultural position. According to commenters, Expedition 33’s art style and tone appeal to older gamers (approaching 33 themselves, one user noted darkly) and normies, but repel online creative communities. One user dismissed the game’s aesthetic as “the gritty, brown, bloom, dirt shit that people complain about in literally every single other game,” before admitting: “Clea does look kinda cute though.”

By thread’s end, neither side had conceded. The original antagonist declared: “We are done here. I take my leave. Till the end of time, I love Maria.” The argument, like the games it concerned, remained unresolved.