Chrono Cross Remaster and Radical Dreamers Localization Announced!

[ZeaLitY]

You heard right. The Radical Dreamers localization is new, too, as spotted by our beloved Lucy Romana. Get ready to suddenly have to change the name of every Radical Dreamers character in the encyclopedia, lmao.

Here's a tweet comparing graphics: Link





But we can't leave Chrono Trigger out of this auspicious news. I'm happy to report that eezzzz has acquired another Japanese prerelease magazine! Check it out here! We'll get it on the Compendium soon. And of course, if you can translate, there are literally tons of these scans hiding Chrono Trigger development secrets, just waiting to be rendered into English...

[Vehek]

Also, as the Demiforce team took some liberties at times, it may affect documentation of events.

I noticed from the samples a difference in translation style: the official uses past tense rather than the present tense I expect from visual novels, even in the choices. Looking up the reasons visual novels are often written in present tense, maybe it's because the story is supposed to be a diary/journal.

I wonder, though, if this makes utunnels' online version a risk now.

[Radical_Dreamer]

Interesting. Guess I'll find out how many liberties the fan translation took, especially with the more out there scenarios.

[Epiphron]

Yasunori Mitsuda mentioned on his Twitter account that there will be new tracks too, something that might indicate that there will be some new scenarios!

Maybe that would include the mysterious Irish language song that Éabha McMahon/AVA mentioned she was writing the lyrics for in an interview last October -- for a "remake of a PlayStation game", in collaboration with Mitsuda and Anúna.

[Acacia Sgt]

If the AVA thing ended up being for this, I'll admit, part of me would be disappointed as it'd mean it wasn't for a surprise Xenogears remake/remaster (as Mitsuda has said he was inspired by Irish music when making its soundtrack). Still, it's great then, that the Cross remaster could be getting  some expansion beyond minor tweaks.

Interesting. Guess I'll find out how many liberties the fan translation took, especially with the more out there scenarios.

RIP Mick Van Jovi. 

[Basso]

Look, I will be the "that" guy...let's be real... huge disappointment; calling this "remaster" is just lying. It is a port. An HD Port, as they used to call, before the marketing department chose to use the wrong definition to se if it sticks. This is just the same game in HD, something that can be achieved with any emulator and swapping the background for 4K upscaled ones. Search Youtube for "Chrono Cross 4k" and there will be plenty of videos from 2018-2020 showing graphics better than this. Trying to use the wrong definition will not change what it is.

If this become successful, everthing now can be a remaster just by up scaling the resolution...

Edit: I saw the tweet about the graphics comparison and i literally couldn't tell which one of the Kid models was the "remastered" one. I kept going back and forward trying to guess. This is a fact. The other image is possible to see just because the background.

We expect for any remaster at least new models, graphics, textures. The Spongebob Rehydrated game did a remaster 10 times better. Sponge. Bob. Look for it  and you will see what I'm talking about.

Again, Square Enix is showing little respect for the series and barely doing the work that fans did years ago. I would not be surprised if these ps4/switch versions are just being run by an emulation software (probably, let's be real).

The only thing good about this is that people are talking about the Chrono series again, and just that...

And I expect a price of US$20 or something like this.

[Beach Bum]

Look, I will be the "that" guy...let's be real... huge disappointment; calling this "remaster" is just lying. It is a port. Port.This is just the same game in HD, something that can be achieved with any emulator and swapping the background for 4K upscaled ones. Search Youtube for "Chrono Cross 4k" and there will be plenty of videos from 2018-2020 showing graphics better than this. Trying to use the wrong definition will not change what it is.

Edit: I saw the tweet about the graphics comparison and i literally couldn't tell which one of the Kid models was the "remastered" one. I kept going back and forward trying to guess. This is a fact. The other image is possible to see just because the background.

We expect for any remaster at least new models, graphics, textures. The Spongebob Rehydrated game did a remaster 10 times better. Sponge. Bob. Look for it  and you will see what I'm talking about.

Again, Square Enix is showing little respect for the series and barely doing the work that fans did years ago. I would not be surprised if these ps4/switch versions are just being run by an emulation software (probably, let's be real).

The only thing good about this is that people are talking about the Chrono series again, and just that...

And I expect a price of US$20 or something like this.

It's not just a simple upscaling job. Look at these screenshots. The font has been changed, and at the very least, Nobuteru Yuuki has redrawn all of the artwork for all of the characters and character portraits. The portraits in this remaster look super crisp, where in an emulator they would look terrible if you simply pumped up the resolution.









They've also made some kind of changes to model textures. There's no way Serge's face looks this clean in an emulator with just a higher resolution.



Then there's the pre-rendered backgrounds. I think they used some kind of filter on these. This looks a lot better than what you get in an emulator, where they end up blurry as hell.



I do wonder why the FMVs still look low resolution tho. Do they no longer have the source files? If they did, they should be able to simply re-render them in a higher resolution.

In the end, it's a remake, not a remaster. It's not a barebones port like you claim, but it's also not gonna look mindblowingly good.

[Acacia Sgt]

I do wonder why the FMVs still look low resolution tho. Do they no longer have the source files? If they did, they should be able to simply re-render them in a higher resolution.

SE has long said they don't have the source files of anything from those years. It's all lost.

[Basso]

It's not just a simple upscaling job. Look at these screenshots. The font has been changed, and at the very least, Nobuteru Yuuki has redrawn all of the artwork for all of the characters and character portraits. The portraits in this remaster look super crisp, where in an emulator they would look terrible if you simply pumped up the resolution.

Yeah, I mean, there must be some work done to call it that way... maybe a little change were and there... the portrait, the font.... But for  the most part is minimal. So minimal that is almost indistinguishable, and lazy. If they called HD port I would be beyond happy.

[HandleBar_Gamer]

Just in case no one realized it yet it is also going to be available on PC, it's up for preorder on STEAM.  Which means the modding community will pick up from Squares slack.  The do appear to have improved a bit from the learning curb of FFVIII Remastered which was just the Character Models improved and everything else completely garbage and yet that modding is almost completely revitalized to the entire game.

So there is a lot of promise from passionate fans to make it a whole lot better and for a $19.99 price tag, I'm not that upset they still do these cash grab remasters, they're doing more with each one so it's not like they're completely not listening, agree they could do so much more though.

[Ema]

Look, I will be the "that" guy...let's be real... huge disappointment; calling this "remaster" is just lying. It is a port. An HD Port, as they used to call, before the marketing department chose to use the wrong definition to se if it sticks. This is just the same game in HD, something that can be achieved with any emulator and swapping the background for 4K upscaled ones. Search Youtube for "Chrono Cross 4k" and there will be plenty of videos from 2018-2020 showing graphics better than this. Trying to use the wrong definition will not change what it is.

If this become successful, everthing now can be a remaster just by up scaling the resolution...

Edit: I saw the tweet about the graphics comparison and i literally couldn't tell which one of the Kid models was the "remastered" one. I kept going back and forward trying to guess. This is a fact. The other image is possible to see just because the background.

We expect for any remaster at least new models, graphics, textures. The Spongebob Rehydrated game did a remaster 10 times better. Sponge. Bob. Look for it  and you will see what I'm talking about.

Again, Square Enix is showing little respect for the series and barely doing the work that fans did years ago. I would not be surprised if these ps4/switch versions are just being run by an emulation software (probably, let's be real).

The only thing good about this is that people are talking about the Chrono series again, and just that...

And I expect a price of US$20 or something like this.

Well I do share some of your opinions in regards to the quality of said upscale backgrounds. There was someone on the internet ( I think it was this same forum ) who had painstakingly AI Upscaled every single Chrono Cross background (literally one of those is my current PC Wallpaper) and they looked soooooooo much better than what we saw in this trailer.

There's many different AI Upscaling technologies and within those many settings to be tweaked that will alter said quality and I can safely say that they either used the worst one available or they just went with the default settings without a care of the output. I've used Topaz Gigapixel in my job and I can say that you can get some ugly results if you don't properly play with the settings.

The lack of widescreen support is also hugely disappointing.

In regards to the music I had seen a website where Square outlined all of the remaster's features and within them they specified that there's only ONE new track which is also very disappointing in my opinion.

And making claims that Nobuteru Yuuki re-drew ALL of the old artwork...I don't see it. I see that he may have drawn over some of the main characters drawings...but the rest look like they only went through the same AI Upscaling as the backgrounds did. I could be wrong about this though? Point is...why not just make new drawings of the characters if its almost unnoticeable that its a new drawing T___T

At the end of the day...I already pre-purchased it on Steam and am waiting for a play-asia physical release to pre-order. I gotta support what little effort they put into anything chrono related...even if it leaves a lot to be desired. Especially right after seeing what they're doing with Front Mission, Live a Live and the full 3d Remake of Trials of Mana 

[legaiaflame]

https://i.imgur.com/IurTfjz.jpeg

The new heads they plopped onto the original bodies stand out like a sore thumb. While the original texture work on serge and kid's body is detailed, with varied colors blending together to create the illusion of shadows, the new face models just look too clean to the point where it doesn't match the body textures!

[Beach Bum]

That's true, that does look a little bit off, but whatever. It's not april yet, they could still be fixing some stuff.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Hell, I'll take what I can get at this point. The last official Chrono release was Chrono Trigger on PC, which itself was just a port of the mobile version.

This is better than nothing, and the first time we've received such treatment for Cross.

[ZeaLitY]

Goes without saying, but we need to datamine the living hell out of the Steam version to see if we can recover the new art assets. I supppose it's naive of me to hope that somehow, the full character art will be in the game files. It's always been sad that we have to use those ugly Ultimania scans of mine.