Sea of Shattered Stars

(Updated 04 Dec 2023 with some more info about connections between both games)

So I’ve spent some time away from Sea of Stars, and been playing a lot of The Messenger lately. I basically started and finished the latter over the course of last week’s long weekend, and now I’m working on the DLC, Picnic Panic. If you haven’t played it before, The Messenger came out in 2018 and is a really fun “Metroidvania” platformer with tons to do and find, and ridiculously difficult platforming, requiring near-perfect timing in some areas. Many compare it to Celeste, which is another stellar platformer requiring precise timing and control. Both have fabulous soundtracks and are generally very well-regarded, as far as I know.

Warning: spoilers for both Sea of Stars and The Messenger within! Caveat lector!

The fascinating part to me is that The Messenger is, by all accounts, a prequel to Sea of Stars. This post-apocalyptic hellscape you’re going across, like so many archetypal drifters, is set in the same universe as Sea of Stars. You play as a ninja, tasked with delivering a scroll on a dangerous trek across a ruined world. This is not a spoiler, just the general synopsis of the game. And I was speaking with friends about this, who were surprised I hadn’t played The Messenger when it came out 5 years ago, and had played Sea of Stars first. One friend said I may be one of the few people to play the games in that order, which fascinates me. Playing both games now, I am beginning to see connections between the two. There are at least two areas in common, Autumn Hills and Glacier Peak, and while the vibes (and music) are similar, they’re very different locales. In addition to that, at some point in the past, there was a large flood and only one landmass remained, with everything else sinking into the sea.

While playing through the endgame of Sea of Stars, I looked around a little more at Mesa Island and found that there are a lot more connections than I expected. Songshroom Swamp becomes Quillshroom Marsh. Bamboo Creek exists in Sea of Stars as well, and serves the same function as an oasis. Mesa Island also has “Turquoise Lake,” which is a nod to Rivière Turquoise in The Messenger.

With all landmasses gone besides Autumn Hills and Glacier Peak, it would logically follow that the remaining landmass, then, is Mesa Island from Sea of Stars. I just thought of this right now, but it totally makes sense. And the Sunken Shrine in The Messenger may be a Docarri temple, perhaps. Coincidentally, the Sunken Shrine theme, from what I’ve heard, is remixed as the “level up” theme in Sea of Stars. And that is true, but it really only remixes a fraction of the track.

After spending a little more time with Sea of Stars and comparing Mesa Island to the world of The Messenger, it seems clear that Mesa Island was the only landmass to survive the cataclysm.

So where am I going with all this? Knowing the connections between the two games really kinda bums me out now, or at least it makes the connections very much sadder. You end Sea of Stars on a hopeful note, with Valere and Zain as “Guardian Gods” watching over the planet and its inhabitants, ensuring all will be right with the world. And it is, for a time, but as you learn in the Sunken Shrine in The Messenger, their power eventually waned and ultimately failed, and the world fell to ruin. A demon army sprung up (perhaps Aephorul’s creations?) and began to lay waste to everything. Everything you work so hard for in Sea of Stars is eventually for naught. I am beginning to have some sympathy for those who loved Chrono Trigger and loathed Chrono Cross, since in many ways, the same thing has happened here. Chrono Cross undoes all the hard work you did in Chrono Trigger, just as The Messenger (retroactively) undoes all the hard work done in Sea of Stars. Sure, The Messenger ends on a somewhat hopeful note, but what a vast desolation you go through to get even a sliver of light!

There is another incredibly sad thing about The Messenger. I regret doing this, but I dug a little too deep on a Sea of Stars wiki and found out that Burgaves, your erstwhile mentor in Sea of Stars who eventually turns to the dark side, eventually becomes the Demon King’s second-in-command, Barma’thazël, in The Messenger. What a fall indeed from the upstanding Solstice Warrior Valere and Zain look up to at the start of Sea of Stars. I need to get the “true ending” of Sea of Stars, which involves a lot more collecting and completion, and I hear it is totally worth it, since it gives a little more closure for Erlina and Burgaves’ story. But knowing that Burgaves becomes the impish, comically evil Barma’thazël is really incredibly sad. “Live long enough, and the hero will become the villain,” vel sim., I guess, but still. What a melancholy development.

I haven’t come across any more direct connections between the two games, really. The Clockwork Concierge in the Elemental Skylands recalls the Clockwork Castle of Sea of Stars; the Elemental Skylands themselves may be a future form of the Skylands (the giants who live there are mentioned directly in The Messenger, so that connection is pretty explicit); the unnamed “Monk” you purify and save near the end of The Messenger is slightly reminiscent of Seraï in Sea of Stars. The vibes are similar and of course, the soundtracks are by the same composer, so there are a lot of aural connections. As far as I can tell, the Skylands in Sea of Stars has the same theme as Cloud Ruins in The Messenger, and “Zephyr & Sky” in Sea of Stars is the same theme as “Water & Wind” (Elemental Skylands) in The Messenger. There are probably others, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

I just had to share this with y’all. I love both games dearly and have really enjoyed them, but these realizations really made everything even more poignant. Apparently there will be a Sea of Stars DLC in the works that will make the connections between the two even more clear, and I’m wondering what that will reveal. Who knows. Anyways, thank you for reading!!