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Lavos, the Planet, and other Entities / Re: Draco ex Machina--Or, The Plot Device That Makes No Sense
« on: November 22, 2014, 10:31:20 am »
I agree that pulling stuff from an infinitude of possible dimensions is pretty bad writing. Once this door is opened, virtually anything goes unless pretty strict guidelines for these alternate dimensions. Why didn't the Entity pull a magic fairy with the power to eliminate Lavos from another dimension?
One way to eliminate this nonsense from Cross while preserving the Dragons and stuff would be to make them an experiment from Chronopolis. Let's say, after being thrown to the past, Chronopolis tried to resurrect Reptites from genetic material they found. Eventually they escaped and formed their own society. After some centuries/millennia, they even developed their own form of magic. Eventually, Chronopolis felt threatened by their progress and attacked them.
One way to eliminate this nonsense from Cross while preserving the Dragons and stuff would be to make them an experiment from Chronopolis. Let's say, after being thrown to the past, Chronopolis tried to resurrect Reptites from genetic material they found. Eventually they escaped and formed their own society. After some centuries/millennia, they even developed their own form of magic. Eventually, Chronopolis felt threatened by their progress and attacked them.
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: SE plan for Chrono Trigger's 20th annivesary
« on: February 18, 2014, 05:42:55 pm »
Trigger was released in March 11 in Japan, so given that there was no further announcement I imagine whatever plans they had never materialized.
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: The long night is upon us
« on: February 18, 2014, 05:40:13 pm »
Well, there's always the possibility of waiting a couple of decades until the Chrono series becomes public domain. 
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Magic, Elements, and Technology / Re: Zeal's Clones
« on: December 01, 2013, 07:36:39 pm »
Are we sure the clones are physical and not just spooky illusions?
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: anybody else not care for Chrono Cross?
« on: November 26, 2013, 06:39:48 pm »
Don't get me wrong, Chrono Cross is an excellent game. Better than the average crap regurgitated by game studios these days. But it fails at several crucial points.
Even if, for a moment, you ignore the existence of Chrono Trigger, Cross still has several shortcomings. Having 40+ characters was, in my opinion, a failed experiment. Everyone could join your party, everyone could use almost all techs (Yes, the element system is badly designed, IMO. More about that in another post, perhaps.) and everyone spoke the same lines, modified by accent. Exciting. And the pacing of the plot is terrible. I mean, absolutely atrocious. Opassa Beach Exposition is a complete disaster. This tarnishes an otherwise interesting story, because pacing is as important as plot. I also don't care for the overall misanthropic mood of the game, but that's my personal taste. Though let's admit the whole "evil humans hurting the nature-loving peoples" is as cliché as it gets.
But here's the thing: You can't ignore the existence of Trigger. It doesn't matter if you want to call it a sequel or whatever, Cross is a direct continuation of Trigger's story. And, for several reasons that I don't have the time to get into right now, Cross is a terrible sequel (whatever you want to call it, the specific word doesn't matter) to Trigger. If Kato wanted Cross to be judged independently of Trigger and stand on its own merits, he should have made the game without any connection to Trigger. Because, let's face it, the setting, characters, story, all that could've easily been modified or rewritten to have no connection to Trigger. But Kato opened the door when he made his game a continuation of another, and when he did that he introduced certain expectations for this continuation that were not met. Basically, he tried to have his cake and eat it too.
Even if, for a moment, you ignore the existence of Chrono Trigger, Cross still has several shortcomings. Having 40+ characters was, in my opinion, a failed experiment. Everyone could join your party, everyone could use almost all techs (Yes, the element system is badly designed, IMO. More about that in another post, perhaps.) and everyone spoke the same lines, modified by accent. Exciting. And the pacing of the plot is terrible. I mean, absolutely atrocious. Opassa Beach Exposition is a complete disaster. This tarnishes an otherwise interesting story, because pacing is as important as plot. I also don't care for the overall misanthropic mood of the game, but that's my personal taste. Though let's admit the whole "evil humans hurting the nature-loving peoples" is as cliché as it gets.
But here's the thing: You can't ignore the existence of Trigger. It doesn't matter if you want to call it a sequel or whatever, Cross is a direct continuation of Trigger's story. And, for several reasons that I don't have the time to get into right now, Cross is a terrible sequel (whatever you want to call it, the specific word doesn't matter) to Trigger. If Kato wanted Cross to be judged independently of Trigger and stand on its own merits, he should have made the game without any connection to Trigger. Because, let's face it, the setting, characters, story, all that could've easily been modified or rewritten to have no connection to Trigger. But Kato opened the door when he made his game a continuation of another, and when he did that he introduced certain expectations for this continuation that were not met. Basically, he tried to have his cake and eat it too.
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General Discussion / Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« on: June 23, 2013, 05:56:46 am »
But I didn't say suppress; I said regulate. Determining that a book doesn't have the right to have a fundraising campaign isn't suppression — after all, you're not downright forbidding it — but it's still a form of regulation. Like I said, Kickstarter is a private company, so they can regulate their content in whatever way the wish, but I am uncomfortable with the way Kickstarter was pressed into doing this by those campaigns, petitions, etc.
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General Discussion / Re: Humanity: Good News, Bad News
« on: June 22, 2013, 06:44:16 pm »
I partially disagree with Kickstarter. Now, don't get me wrong, these seduction guides are at best pathetic, at worst extremely in bad taste. And, of course, Kickstarter is a private company, so they have the right to cherry-pick what they want to work with; I don't hold anything against them for removing it.
Still, I think part of freedom of speech is being able to express any opinion, including those that might be offensive or even against the very idea of freedom. As a society, we shouldn't be trying to regulate what is or isn't published as that is too slippery a slope. I understand some people fear these sort of guides might negatively affect the men that read them but, honestly, anyone who is manipulated that much by the shit he reads simply has no moral fiber to be a decent human being, and it isn't by stopping the publication of shit that this will change.
Still, I think part of freedom of speech is being able to express any opinion, including those that might be offensive or even against the very idea of freedom. As a society, we shouldn't be trying to regulate what is or isn't published as that is too slippery a slope. I understand some people fear these sort of guides might negatively affect the men that read them but, honestly, anyone who is manipulated that much by the shit he reads simply has no moral fiber to be a decent human being, and it isn't by stopping the publication of shit that this will change.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: Has anyone ever thought about this?
« on: June 22, 2013, 06:34:21 pm »Indication from the interviews and developer material is that Cross suffered from "disc 2" syndrome, where time constraints didn't allow for the team to finish the game as planned. Some people theorize this is why "Belthasar did it" was used as a plot convention to tidy everything up. More time would have allowed the plot to be more naturally unraveled.
While more time to expand the late game would be absolutely necessary to avoid the storytelling abomination that is Opassa Beach, I feel the early game still needs a lot more foreshadowing. For example, why is the Kingdom of Zeal not mentioned at all? It would be very easy to do so when exploring the history of the Flame, and would tie everything better later on when it's revealed Kid = Schala.
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Reality, Real-World Connections, and the Supernatural / Estimating Lavos's power using SCIENCE
« on: June 22, 2013, 06:25:55 pm »
I know the Compendium has a page on some rough estimations on Lavos's power, but I used a different approach based on physics to derive a more rigorous figure. Obviously, this is all for fun because you can change the final result by fudging the numbers I used, but anyways.
It's a pdf attachment because I needed support for equations (but I promise the math is very simple).
It's a pdf attachment because I needed support for equations (but I promise the math is very simple).
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: So..the Chrono series has crossed time boundaries, and dimensional boundaries...
« on: February 14, 2013, 03:06:41 pm »
Time travel itself can be reiterated in a new game in a completely different style than Trigger. For example, rather than covering eras, you could just focus on a single event that you have to manipulate. Suppose a global catastrophe occurs at autumn's end in 1200 AD. Then you could travel to 1200 AD in the spring, summer, autumn and winter (to use the seasons as a theme), orbiting around the catastrophe to try to prevent it.
As for actual new boundaries, there's always travel through outer space, but I don't think it's very interesting.
As for actual new boundaries, there's always travel through outer space, but I don't think it's very interesting.
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Time, Space, and Dimensions / Re: How does a Lavos spawn gets sent to the Black Omen?
« on: February 03, 2013, 02:43:47 pm »That the spawn in the Black Omen is called an Elder Lavos Spawn makes things seem even weirder; judging by what of the Lavos species' lifespan we can determine, for it to be significantly older than the ones that you find on Death Peak means that it came from at least centuries ahead of the latest date that you can see the world.
I would assume that your idea about Queen Zeal having drawn it forth from the future (possibly somewhere around the very end of the world altogether, not just the post-apocalyptic setting) is the most likely to be correct. The Black Omen, being a product of Queen Zeal and her tapping into the power of Lavos, who is shown to have time-space-reality-warping capabilities, could hypothetically have some extra time-screwing strangeness as well. Another would be that it's just from Queen Zeal's own power, since she's the one who has absorbed the most of Lavos' energy at that point, and so she would take on features of Lavos. Lavos can create its own pocket dimension, so after having saturated herself in the energies of something so powerful, being able to pull something from a future date doesn't seem like too far of a stretch.
Fair point. At any rate, I just assumed it was Queen Zeal that brought the spawn because it's the most simple explanation, but, ultimately, the origin doesn't matter. The spawn cannot come from the future to stop the party; its arrival is a paradox.
Unless the spawn comes from another planet (!!) or was asspulled from another dimension à la Chrono Cross, but this beyond far-fetched.
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Time, Space, and Dimensions / How does a Lavos spawn get sent to the Black Omen?
« on: January 24, 2013, 03:44:00 pm »
Hi, first time here. I decided to post since I couldn't find an answer on the Compendium's analysis section.
Anyway, when the party is assaulting the Black Omen, how is it possible for a Lavos spawn to be sent from 2300 AD to 12'000 BC? It's doesn't make sense, because it shouldn't be possible for this Lavos spawn to even exist! From the point of view of 2300 AD, whatever came before is past and has already happened, including the party's invading the Omen in 12'000 BC, which immediately leads to the party defeating Lavos in 1999 AD. Both things, from the point of view of 2300 AD, have already happened, so the future should be pristine, not ruined, and Lavos spawns shouldn't even exist in the first place.
Think about it: Suppose it's 12'000 BC and the party is assaulting the Black Omen when Queen Zeal summons a Lavos spawn. Years later, in ruined 2300, AD a Lavos spawn is just chilling when a Gate opens, with Queen Zeal commanding it to warp to 12'000 BC. But before entering it, the spawn decides to look back at the timeline. It sees the party arriving at the Black Omen...but does it see itself arriving? No, because things only happen when they happen; until the spawn enters the Gate, we are still in a timeline in which the spawn has never arrived in 12'000 BC.
Then, what happens next? It sees the party continuing their assault on the Omen, it sees Queen Zeal being defeated, it sees the party falling into the Omen Gate to 1999 AD. Because the spawn is in 2300 AD, events in 1999 AD are in its relative past, so it does see the party arriving in 1999 from the Omen Gate, it sees Lavos erupting, it sees Lavos being defeated by the party...at which point the Lavos spawn thinks "Oh crap!" and vanishes. It never gets the chance to travel to 12'000 BC!
The only explanation I can think of is dramatic coincidence. Basically, while the party is out doing sidequests but before Lavos is defeated, Queen Zeal, hoping to improve the Black Omen's defences, summons a Lavos spawn from the future. This works because the future is still ruined and it isn't far-fetched to think she would enlist extra-temporal help to defend the Omen. From now on, the spawn's appearance in 12'000 BC is protected by time traveller's immunity regardless of the state of the future. The problem is, because she's proactively summoning the spawn rather than reacting against the party's assault, the specific chamber and moment she summons the Lavos spawn are essentially arbitrary. Yet the party encounter the spawn at precisely the right place at precisely the right time to see it just coming out of the Gate, a huge coincidence for which the only explanation is "rule of drama".
Anyway, when the party is assaulting the Black Omen, how is it possible for a Lavos spawn to be sent from 2300 AD to 12'000 BC? It's doesn't make sense, because it shouldn't be possible for this Lavos spawn to even exist! From the point of view of 2300 AD, whatever came before is past and has already happened, including the party's invading the Omen in 12'000 BC, which immediately leads to the party defeating Lavos in 1999 AD. Both things, from the point of view of 2300 AD, have already happened, so the future should be pristine, not ruined, and Lavos spawns shouldn't even exist in the first place.
Think about it: Suppose it's 12'000 BC and the party is assaulting the Black Omen when Queen Zeal summons a Lavos spawn. Years later, in ruined 2300, AD a Lavos spawn is just chilling when a Gate opens, with Queen Zeal commanding it to warp to 12'000 BC. But before entering it, the spawn decides to look back at the timeline. It sees the party arriving at the Black Omen...but does it see itself arriving? No, because things only happen when they happen; until the spawn enters the Gate, we are still in a timeline in which the spawn has never arrived in 12'000 BC.
Then, what happens next? It sees the party continuing their assault on the Omen, it sees Queen Zeal being defeated, it sees the party falling into the Omen Gate to 1999 AD. Because the spawn is in 2300 AD, events in 1999 AD are in its relative past, so it does see the party arriving in 1999 from the Omen Gate, it sees Lavos erupting, it sees Lavos being defeated by the party...at which point the Lavos spawn thinks "Oh crap!" and vanishes. It never gets the chance to travel to 12'000 BC!
The only explanation I can think of is dramatic coincidence. Basically, while the party is out doing sidequests but before Lavos is defeated, Queen Zeal, hoping to improve the Black Omen's defences, summons a Lavos spawn from the future. This works because the future is still ruined and it isn't far-fetched to think she would enlist extra-temporal help to defend the Omen. From now on, the spawn's appearance in 12'000 BC is protected by time traveller's immunity regardless of the state of the future. The problem is, because she's proactively summoning the spawn rather than reacting against the party's assault, the specific chamber and moment she summons the Lavos spawn are essentially arbitrary. Yet the party encounter the spawn at precisely the right place at precisely the right time to see it just coming out of the Gate, a huge coincidence for which the only explanation is "rule of drama".
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