Not sure if this has been posted before, but...

[gatotsu911]

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=chrono

I recently discovered these writeups on the Chrono games and read them (well, most of them - I skimmed over a few parts). Both articles are fascinating reads; the writer has an excellent analytical eye and really manages to put his finger on many of the things that made both games work (or, in some cases, not work). The Compendium is also referenced, linked, and thanked numerous times, so I'm sure some guys here will get a kick out of that.

While I definitely have a higher overall opinion of the game than he does, I especially like the author's article on Chrono Cross, as it identifies better than any other piece of writing on the game I've yet encountered exactly what I love about it. My favorite passages are the following:

Generally, NPCs in role playing games only exist to dispense clues and flavor text. As the technology improved and the towns and villages in the games grew larger, they became populated with more NPCs, and they all started having less to say. (I envision a room full Square interns tossing pencils at the ceiling and churning out colorful blurbs for Rabanastre NPC #47, Rabanastre NPC #48, Rabanastre NPC #49, Rabanastre NPC #50...) The NPCs in Chrono Cross's are a little different. Whether they make their livings as fishermen, soldiers, merchants, cooks, or scientists, virtually every NPC in Chrono Cross is a philosopher or a poet. El Nido is a place where you can walk up to anybody you see, tap them on the shoulder, and be treated to a long, existentialist tangent inspired by whatever that person happens to be looking at, doing, or thinking about at that particular moment. Kato lays it on pretty thick -- some of these folks talk like first-semester undergraduates smoking a joint for the second time -- but it makes for a hell of a trip when everyone you approach wants to share their reflections on the paradoxes of human existence, the mysteries of the sea, and the recondite wisdom of their vocations. (Gosh, it's like those MDMA-fueled psytrance raves all over again.)

Chrono Cross is a grown-up Chrono Trigger. Maybe Kato reckoned that the fans who enjoyed Trigger when they were ten to fifteen years old deserved a sequel whose maturation was commeasurate with their own experiences during the years since Trigger's release. Chrono Trigger is a fairly tale; a boyhood dream. Chrono Cross is a bittersweet dose of reality. There is no THE END in the world. The story always continues after the latest chapter is concluded, and -- perhaps as Trigger's fans noticed as they passed into adolescence and adulthood -- the next chapter isn't necessarily a happy one or what we expected.

Trust me: a Chrono Trigger 2 would not have been a good thing. We've discussed the nature of the hack sequel elsewhere, so we won't do it again here. Chrono Trigger 2 would have almost definitely been a hack sequel. If you are a fan who would have preferred another game about Chrono and Marle (both starting back at level one, of course) travelling through time to save the world from some other cosmic threat, congratulations -- you are the reason Hollywood and the video game industry suck right now. It is impossible for decent art (commercial or otherwise) to be made if the creators allow the consumers to call the shots. It art doesn't risk upsetting expectations and challenging its audience, it can only stagnate. (But I'm probably repeating myself here.)

I admit that I'm probably ripping off the central theme of K. Newton's brilliant deconstruction of Trigger here, but Chrono Cross is so blantantly designed as an existential trip that it's hard not to. The game begins with a dream and an awakening into reality. You cross over into a world in which all your friends and neighbors tell you that you don't exist. Then you cross back into your own world, where everybody tells you that you aren't yourself. You literally spend the entire game being tossed around by immense cosmic forces you cannot understand (fate on one side, the gods on the other, and an incarnation of the void at the bottom), and receive no explanation as to why until the very end (and the explanation doesn't make a great deal of sense). Serge can't even begin properly saving the world from FATE, the Dragon God, and the Time Devourer until he succeeds in asserting his own existence in said world. Chrono Cross can be a very unsettling game, since it so frequently assails Serge's (and by extension, the player's) sense of self. At the end of the game, the distinction between Serge and the person holding the controller is totally shattered when the liberated Schala addresses her speech to the player, then spends the closing credits in a video montage in which she searches for the player throughout modern-day Japan, played by a faceless actress wearing a blonde wig.

The silent protagonist device makes it work. (Well, except for maybe the creepy credits montage.) Chrono Cross couldn't evoke such a sense of the uncanny if Serge didn't serve as the player's total in-game surrogate. Just imagine how different an experience it would be if Serge were able to speak. Serge would enter Another World's Arni for the first time and start braying "BUT I'M SERGE! WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? I'M NOT DEAD! THIS IS WEIRD!" and wouldn't let up until the end of Home World's Fort Dragonia sequence, twenty-something hours later. Because Kato had the sense to keep Serge's mouth shut, Chrono Cross is capable of getting under the player's skin on a very personal level. From where I'm sitting, BioShock ("would you kindly?" "a man chooses...") has been the only other mainstream video game that does it more effectively.

Chrono Cross's plot gets off to a hell of a start, but trips and falls on face as it approaches the home stretch. Things begin happening extremely quickly, as though the developers were struggling to cram the whole remainder of the plot into a much smaller space than they anticipated. Remember that video games had mushroomed into a big business at this point. Even though Square's corporate suits weren't as overbearing in 1999 as they were after the Enix merger (remember what they did to Matsuno), but it is very evident that at some point during Chrono Cross's development, they put their foot down with Kato: the game must be finished by this date, and within this budget, or you will commit seppuku for failing your masters. Therefore, we see the most important revelations in the plot divulged by a trio of NPCs loitering around the portal leading to the Time Devourerer, and learn as an aside that Kid goes back and saves from Serge from drowning (kind of an important plot point, wouldn't you say?) after the game ends. There is absolutely no way it would have played out like this if Kato and his team were given more time and money. (Granted, I am in the apparently small minority of players who don't particularly mind the Opassa Beach textheap, but I still think the developers would have found a more interesting way of getting the message across if they weren't pressed for time and/or money.)

The other fatal flaw actually is Kato's fault, but it's hard to blame him for it.

This is purely speculation on my part -- but you'll remember that Kato resigned from Gainax to work for SquareSoft after his work on 1993's Princess Maker. Chrono Trigger was released the same year as Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion, the anime that shook Japanese pop culture to its roots, and the two were likely developed during the same timespan. Chrono Trigger was a hit, but its ripples were nothing compared to the tidal wave caused by Evangelion. Maybe Kato observed the success of his former colleagues and was determined to create something similar -- a pop cultural art piece that could rattle and haunt its viewers the same was as Evangelion.

The whole thing is good, though, and well worth reading, as is the Trigger one. I don't agree with all of it, or even all of the statements in the passages posted above, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's played both games.

[Rocky]

LOL - I had discovered those articles about a month or two ago, and I loved them too.  I thought they were very analytical, but also humorous in the process.  Some of my favorite parts were:

Collecting so many characters and being unable to use or interact with most of them without going to a lot of time and trouble is frustrating, a little stressful, and somewhat pointless, since the difference between most of these people are pretty negligible. "NO!" you'll find yourself shouting at the screen after a while. "I don't need any more of you people!"

And:

One of Chrono Trigger's graces was that its plot had a lot of bends and details, but could be encapsulated in just a few sentences: "some teenagers accidentally travel through time and witness the end of the world. They resolve to go back and change history to prevent armageddon. Fantastic adventures ensue." Describing Chrono Cross's  story takes a bit more doing: "so this kid Serge goes into another world where he's dead and breaks into this mansion and later on switches bodies with this panther demon and goes back to his own world and a lot of weird shit happens and there's this city and supercomputer from the future that comes back in time and a city from an alternate reptite dimension that is pulled into the timeline to counterbalance the city from the future and this thing called the Frozen Flame that everyone's after for some reason and the god of dragons that wants to kill humans because they were influenced by Lavos but is also being controlled by Lavos itself or something, maybe, but in the end it turns out the whole thing was pretty much all about tying up a dangling plot thread from the first game. I think?"

In addition to being funny, those quotes really hit home with me.  I remember playing it for the first time, and thinking 'Come on!  I don't WANT any more characters!  I can't even get familiar with the ones I already have cuz there's so many!'  (Especially after 4 people joined me all at once on Fargo's ship.)  And then the sheer complexity of the story, and trying my hardest to grasp it all as I played it for the first, second, or third time.  Ah well... anyway, yeah, that article reflected a lot of how I felt when playing the game.

[gatotsu911]

The complexity of the story isn't even a negative for me. It's just so crazy I love it. I think there are a lot of comparisons to be made between Chrono Cross and Killer7 (and Xenogears), but that's a topic for a different thread.

I agree with the thoughts about the excess of characters, though. While I didn't mind it as much as many, I wouldn't dare pretend that there aren't at least 30 more characters than there needed to be given the fact that the game offers no use whatsoever for characters who are not in your immediate party. (Though the article neglects to mention that even many of the characters who are not central to the main plot or even the major subplots still get at least some optional development, e.g. Gogh and Doc. There are really only a few characters who get no development whatsoever, though that's still too many.) I almost did shout exactly that at the screen at certain points, though, for sure.

[Tiammat]

I read these articles some time ago and I share some opinions with the author.

*spoilers ahead

In my opinion, the story of Chrono Cross is very interesting, but the way it was conveyed to the player was a complete mess. You simply don't know why Serge is doing what he's doing. He's just moving around doing things like recruiting random people into the party, battling ghosts in pirate ships, fighting a guy named Miguel in one hell of a strange place that they say is a lost future, destroying some strange computer named Fate that controlled a demi-human called Lynx that says Serge is the Chrono Trigger, but in reality he is you father, WTF!... The explanations come only at the end of the game, before fighting the Dragon God and the last boss itself. By that time, the player is completely lost.

I only began to like the story when I read about it in the Chrono Compendium. I discovered so many things that I found it absolutely amazing! So much that I love it, like gatotsu911 said! There are other aspects of the game that I find most incredible too, such as the music and the graphics. They represent, in my opinion, the best the PSX had to offer.

Maybe if Masato Kato had some more time to work on the game's plot, as suggested by the text's author, the story wouldn't be so intricately presented to the player.

[FaustWolf]

Oh man, I can't wait to dig into this. Looks incredibly juicy. Thanks for sharing gatotsu!

I'm really intrigued by the Gainax situation. I have to wonder how Kato felt about all the giant robots in Xenogears while he worked on the script. Jeez, as I try to do more research, I'm having a more difficult time parsing Kato's influence on Xenogears from Takahashi's now.

[Lord J Esq]

Enjoyable read! Thanks for the linky.