Last year, I found a recently-abandoned Japanese Chrono site that archived links to Chrono series interviews. They had a link to
this Another Eden interview with a note that Masato Kato discussed Chrono Break as part of it. Today, I was able to use OpenAI's Whisper tool to transcribe the Japanese, and sure enough, he talks about the game! By feeding the transcription into DeepL, it appears that:
- He started brainstorming ideas for a new Chrono game shortly after Cross's release around 2000, with the idea that it would be a PS2-era game.
- It really is intended to be titled "Break", not "Brake", as he was imagining a story about time literally breaking somehow (DeepL says, "And the title was something like, 'That's when it all goes to shit.'")
- Preproduction was in session around 2000/2001 (including the registration of the trademark).
- Final Fantasy Dimensions II ended up recycling the main scenario of the story!
We'd already found an interview from Takashi Tokita where he mentioned, as machine-translated, that certain story details were reused this way for FFD2. But this interview sounds much more definitive, and DeepL is suggesting that the main story idea itself became the basis for the game. We've tried put together a summary of FFD2's story at
this thread, but there's just hardly information available in English. You can already draw parallels between Lavos and FFD2's "flare"-type weapon raining fire from the heavens.
What we really need now is someone who understands spoken Japanese to translate this interview snippet! We'll be in our eternal debt. Anyone who's also familiar with FFD2's plot is encouraged to add details and reply to that thread as well. If you know someone who might be able to translate, I've excerpted the relevant part of the interview here:
Masato Kato Discusses Chrono Break. Pass that link on!
