Analysis of the chances of the Chrono Trigger main developers reuniting again

[Pa]

I was working on my spreadsheet I posted here of the other games done by the Chrono Trigger developers along the way and I started analysing the real chance of the Chrono Trigger main developers coming together again to work on a new game.

A big factor we can't ignore is the estimate sales numbers of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. I'm not sure of its accurary, but the info from VGHChartz.com tells us the Chrono series didn't came close to sell as much as the bigger Final Fantasy titles. So, as for the company executives, the series probably isn't on their minds.

Now let's go through each of the CT main devs.

<> Kazuhiko Aoki's (CT Producer) whereabouts is unsure. The last known project he worked on Square Enix was on 2008. He may be retired or in another company.
<> Akihiko Matsui's (CT Director, mostly for the battle system) whereabouts is also unsure. The last known project he worked on Square Enix was on 2002. is still working in the Final Fantasy series as Battle Designer (FF11&14).
<> Masati Kato (CT Story Co-Writer) is a freelancer right now, so he probably couldn't pitch the idea of a sequel to the company. The ideia would have to come from inside Square Enix.
<> Yuji Horii (CT Story Supervisor/Co-Writer) once said in an interview a few years ago he didn't have much interest in the series since all that he wanted to do he could do in the Dragon Quest series.
<> Hironobu Sakaguchi (CT System Supervisor) is in another company now, busy with their own games. Little chance he would leave Mistwalker for a while to work for Square Enix, except if the new Chrono game would be a joint venture, like the original was.
<> Takashi Tokita and Yoshinori Kitase (CT Directors) continue working on the Final Fantasy series. If they had a lot of interest in doing another Chrono game maybe they could make a good case to the Square Enix executives.
<> Yasuhiko Kamata (CT Graphic Director) left Square around 2001.
<> Masanori Hoshino (CT Graphic Director) has become a freelancer.
<> Tetsuya Takahachi (CT Graphic Director) is in Monolith Soft still working in the Xeno series.

As for the CT artists that could be invited...
<> Akira Toriyama (Character Designer) is busy with the Dragon Quest series and the Dragon Ball series. But, if invited, he could be in.
<> Yasunori Mitsuda (Music Composer) is also a freelancer now. Once a interview he showed interest in working on the series again, but said that for him is very important that Kato is involved.


So… basically… The main developers are totally scattered — a few through Square Enix different projects, some through different companies.
A new game with at least part of the original main staff involvement could only happen if there was a lot of interest from Horii and/or Tokita and/or Kitase part, and if they could convince the company executives to let them stop working on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest for a couple of years and to let them maybe summon some of the other guys that are freelancer or in other companies now, and if the executives ignored the relatively low sales numbers of the series… Boy, that's a long shot.

Oh man... Are you hearing that sound? It's my heart breaking.

Let's look at it from another angle... Let's forget about the bigger-name guys and talk about the Chrono Cross team (although it was only compromised of around a fifth of the original Chrono Trigger team). Even most of them is not there. But, sure, they could easily employ Kato and give him a small budget and a new team made almost totally of new developers to try to create a hugely complex story to follow the overly convoluted and somewhat non-sensical story he ended up writing alone. But frankly would we care much for that?

As for me, what I'd like much better — and I think is way more possible and doable — is if they did a Chrono Cross remake.  I don't think Chrono Trigger could get much better from a remake, but Cross could. I don't think Cross was a bad game relatively to the other titles in the era, but, unlike Trigger, I think it got several things that could be a lot better. The 3D graphics for one didn't age well (as most, if not all, of the PlayStation 1 titles). And I think the story had a lot of potential but is very apparent that it got rushed and messed up, and need a very large review, but they probably weren't given more time to do it or just didn't could do at the time. A lot of things in the story are not very well explained or are just very non-sensical (like Project Kid and the whole El Nido terra-forming/Dragon God thing). They could also cut a lot of hallow and uninteresting content, like focusing only on a few characters and developing them better (expanding Harle and etc.) and maybe even giving us better mid-game villains to fight than the Dragons. Also the balance of the game — from the very empty and slow middle part to the very rushed and frenetic latter part definitely could be distributed a lot better. They could also put in a better battle system, removing that multiple-choice melee attack system that was very annoying if you factor the amount of clicking you have to do versus the minor effect they have, and instead put something in that requires you to me more mindful. And that battle theme... oh god... that gets very annoying very quickly.

I hope the Final Fantasy 7 remake sells well and is well received. It couldn't hurt our chances of getting a Chrono Cross remake.

Anyway... If you have any information I don't have, or if any of this info is incorrect, please do share.

[Razig]

I have my doubts that Chrono Trigger didn't sell well. Maybe not up to the level of the better-known Final Fantasy series, but definitely enough to justify a sequel. I've always thought that executive's comment about "If people want a sequel, they should buy more!" to be complete BS. For a game that supposedly isn't selling, Square sure re-releases the hell out of it on every available platform. Now a port is obviously much cheaper to produce than a whole new game, but it's obvious that Square knows there's still money to be squeezed out of the series.

The rest of your post mirrors my own thoughts. If a new game did somehow materialize, would we even want it? Aside from narrative issues (I can't imagine the series continuing without Lavos, which I feel was soundly defeated in CC, and to continually resurrect the same villain diminishes the accomplishments of the heroes) there are the quality issues you mention. The frenetic pace of CC's late game always suggested to me that the development team was running up against their budgetary limitations and/or scheduling deadlines and the quality suffered for it. This would mostly likely happen again with an underfunded, understaffed team.

The most egregious example of the developers being in a rush that I can think of, is the ape skeleton in Chronopolis when they're explaining the evolutionary jump that contact with Lavos caused around 3 million BC. This timeframe corresponds neatly with real-world theories about sudden (geologically speaking) advances in early human species (at least according to my meager understanding; I'm certainly no paleontologist), but the developers seem to have forgotten that Ayla was a hot babe, not an ape. The Lavos connection should have been explained as a new structure evolving in the brain that allowed the use of magic. Not an ape-to-man metamorphosis, as this change was already complete by 65 million BC in the Chronoverse.

Like you, I've always thought the best thing that could happen for the series is a CC remake that not only updates the graphics but also smooths out the rough spots—namely the giant infodumps that occur whenever Belthasar or the ghost children show up. They should find a way to work all that information into the script organically, rather than slamming you with giant walls of text. As a wise man once said: "The mind cannot absorb what the seat cannot endure."

Another thing that needs explanation is the nature of the ghostlike entities in Chronopolis. Most of them ignore you and seem to endlessly repeat the events that led up to the Time Crash, while others react to your presence and speak with you... Add to this the fact that the Chronopolis researchers were mind-wiped and released into El Nido, so exactly whose ghosts are these—assuming they're ghosts at all? The whole thing is weird and incoherent.

The Harle/dark moon thing is another one. A new moon appearing in the sky would have caused a much bigger stir than it seems to have.

Lastly, the ending needs to be explained better. I get that Kato wanted it to be an interpretive kind of thing, but there are simply too many loose ends left untied for the player to draw any sort of conclusion. Which mutually-exclusive aspects of each world were kept when they merged? Did Serge forget his adventure, or not? And so on.

The fact that Chrono Cross is widely considered to be one of the best games ever made despite all its flaws, is a real testament to its greatness. You wouldn't know it from all my complaining, but I do dearly love this game, which is why I hope Square revisits it someday and does it justice.

[Pa]

As for the sales numbers...
The official Chrono Trigger Android version page states that CT sould "over three-and-a-half million copies around the world" (as of 2015). This counting all the sales including the original and the 2 main ports that have been available in 8 different game systems.
In comparison, wikipedia states that Final Fantasy VII sold "over 11 million copies were sold as of 2015"; Final Fantasy VIII, "as of March 31, 2003, the game had shipped 8.15 million copies worldwide"; Kingdom Hearts, "as of December 2006, Kingdom Hearts had shipped over 5.6 million copies worldwide"; Dragon Quest VIII, "by September, 2008, total worldwide shipments of Dragon Quest VIII surpassed 4.9 million copies."
So, yes, Chrono Trigger didn't sold poorly, but it definitely sold less than the company best selling titles, and so it probably wouldn't take too much priority in the executives minds. Unless, like I said, one of the big-name devs still in the company — like Horii, Tokita or Kitase — really want to make a new Chrono game and really fight for it. Which, at least right now, seems unlikely. :/


I agree to almost everything else you said.
Except, although I liked Cross the first two times I played it, I'm not that found of it anymore. I think it's an average/good game, but not a great one.

Now I'll do a little more complaining about Cross, feel free to skip it.
This is just my opinion — since we go into somewhat subjective territory here — but I think the game has average writing, poor direction, an average RPG battle design, average to bad character designs. On the other side it has a soundtrack that (for the most part) is excellent, amazing background and overworld art and CGI cutscenes that still look good to this day in my opinion.
I also forgot to complain about the annoying secondary characters accents, which at the time made the dialogue a headache to understand everything to a non-native english speaker like me.

It's been several years since I last played it to the end, and I really wanted to refresh my memories and revisit some good scenes, but then I remember the things that annoy me so much and I can't bring myself to play it.
I wish I could convince myself. LOL. Maybe I could try to look for a gameshark code that turns off the non-boss battles. That could help.

[Razig]

I see what you mean about the sales numbers, but in my opinion the only fair comparison there is with Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are both long-running series which have a huge level of name recognition to help carry them. I certainly can't fault Square for betting on their sure things, but it seems foolish to ignore Chrono Trigger's potential to become another sure thing, given how dedicated its fanbase has proven to be. Although again, perhaps it's for the best that we don't get a new game, considering that so much of the original development team is unavailable.

The complaints:
I think CC's story is very good at its core, but the presentation of that story is hurt by the game's aforementioned uneven pacing and use of infodumps. Things seem needlessly complex when key information is buried under a ton of dialogue and there's no way to repeat the conversation. Better direction (or at least a longer deadline and/or bigger budget) would have helped.

The battle system definitely needs some rebalancing. The only time I felt challenged by a battle was when fighting Miguel—who was so absurdly overpowered that it almost felt like he was originally meant to be the final boss or something.

Artistically speaking, the character designs were hit-or-miss for me, but that was bound to happen due to the sheer number of them. That brings up one of the most common (and in my opinion, most legitimate) complaints about CC: the lack of development among the optional characters. I would have preferred a smaller cast who all have strong ties to the main story. CT really spoiled us in that regard. But I suspect that the large cast of CC was probably intended to serve the needs of gameplay rather than the narrative. They sacrificed depth for breadth in order to allow the player to create a well-rounded team in any combination of innate colors. Unfortunately, the ease of most of the game's battles makes such optimization rather unneccesary.

I can see where the characters' accents would cause trouble for non-native speakers, but it was one of the few things that distinguished the optional characters from each other. From a native speaker's perspective, the accents gave a sense of the characters coming from different cultural backgrounds. All except for the "CHA" people—that felt so unnatural and forced that it was almost insufferable.

The good:
CC's music is amazing. It could be directly ported into a remake without any alteration. I also think the cutscenes stand up well to this day. The backgrounds and maps are also very nice, although higher-resolution scans of the original art would probably be needed for modern screens.