Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes Plot Development

[Daniel Krispin]

On a last note regarding what was said about the oppression of women. It is not so much oppression as it is the form of old culture or, rather, a culture in which each is given different responsability. Women cannot do all things men can, after all, and vice versa. And there is always tradition, a thing not to be flouted. Can there be a woman pope or priest or pastor, for example? It is not discrimination, it is simply tradition and order in society, as there must at needs be to stave off anarchy.

I think that the old culture srted the oppression and by following the old culture we continue the oppression. Why can't a pope be a women, because God said that? They are both human, they both have a soul, they could both be pope, but a women couldn't because of tradition.

Hey, don't get me started on this.

No, by no means whatsoever can the pope be a woman (and remember: I belong to a tradition that once considered the papacy the anti-christ, and stood in fierce opposition to the Roman Church.)

Firstly, the very name 'pope' means father. Secondly, no, God did not say it, but all his apostles were men and so considering the Church is a religious institution, going against such things is perilous. Yes, both men and women are human, yes they both have a soul, but not all people are allowed to do all things. To even want to, actually, is a sign of corruption and arrogance - wanting to for one's own sake, and because they want to, rather than for the good of the people. Thus for a woman to be a pope would be inherently sinful, if for that than for nothing else. The same goes for pastors. Women do not have the same emotional strength that men have, nor the same commanding precence, that a man does, and that is one of the chief reasons they should not be pastors. It is true there are men that also have neither, but the same holds true: they should not be pastors either. But the chief problem is this: why do they need to be? Why should they want to be? It is because of the very un-Christian preaching of the self, and that anyone should be able to do anything, a focus on the rights of the individual. The Church, for those who do not know, is not a democracy: it does not follow the whims of the people, nor does ascribe to what people in one age or another consider to be politically correct. One cannot go before God and tell him he is not doing things as we would like them to be. It is a monarchy. If these things exist in the secular world, there is little to be done about it, and must be abided, and has in the past century even been a good thing - there are many things women should be allowed to do that they were not able to before. But it truly, should be kept seperate from the Church. Again I must say: why would women even wish to be pastors, aside from being envious of the position of men? And is not envy a sin? Is there then discontent in the positions they have been given? And is that not, too, a sin?

This new thing of women being pastors is something I am adamantly against, even as I am against the Church accepting gay marriage (though if the secular world wishes to do it... well, let them do as they will, and let the Church do as it wills) the way the liturgy is no longer used and services instead are done at random and at whim, or the way praise songs have replaced traditional hymns (changing the focus from what God does for mankind, to a focus on feeling and emotion, and on the self - a perilous thing.) The Church all about is falling apart, and there are few who keep to the old traditions alive, or think them as relevant as they are. Even within the supposedly traditional Lutheran church, things are dying left and right.

By the way, just so you know, I'm not mysoginistic or anything like that, merely old-fashioned. As I said, I do not mind many of the secular freedoms that women have gained, but at times I see the feminist ideals very selfish, and stemming more from a desire to be like men than anything else (which to me seems extremely odd.) I mean, women are women and men are men, and each have their own roles. I don't see it as oppression to stick by these. My mother has essentially dedicated her life to raising her children, and never once has lamented not having a job - raising her children is her job, and has no less worth than my father working to provide for them. Everybody has their purpose and task, and it is simply not in the job description, as it were, of women to be pastors. In fact, I think to do such things depreciates them - it is almost an attempt to be like men, to which I think: they are women, they are unique from men. To do man's work takes away from their being women. Moreover, if women have been oppressed by men in the past, men in turn have been oppressed by circumstance: they have marched to war and died in the bloody battlefields, scarred themselves in hard labour, all as defenders and protectors and providers of home and family. That is their duty, whereas women care for the home itself (at least, in general.) I don't see how taking women from this place makes anything better - in fact, it is likely the cause for much of the difficulties with children these days, for none but a mother can raise children aright - or, moreover, makes them any more of a woman. Actually, to put it plainly, women being pastors strikes me as a very grave instance of someone crying 'me too!' when they see someone having something that they do not. Like I said, nothing against women - I hold women in higher regard and treat them with far more respect than most do - but some things should just be sacrosanct. That is what I fear: the loss of things sacred.

Oops, sorry, I have no intention of hijacking the illustrious CE thread. I'll shut up now.

[Zaperking]

Lol, According to the Da Vinci Code, the picture of the person sitting next to Jesus is Mary Magadline >.>

[Daniel Krispin]

Lol, According to the Da Vinci Code, the picture of the person sitting next to Jesus is Mary Magadline >.>

Well, such things are not very trustworthy, you know.

[Hadriel]

I've tried to type this post FIVE TIMES.  The computer's always either reset on me or I got busy and did something else.  But no more.  I originally knocked a bunch of this stuff out randomly, but then I got tired and went to sleep.  When I came back this post was miraculously still here, and I'd thought of some new stuff to put in it.

Anyway, we need the breaking point and El Nido to be developed.  I have no idea as of yet for the second, since I've focused on the first.  My idea is that when King Zeal cites the Frozen Flame's power and brings out an ideal version of Queen Zeal taken from some random discarded timeline, Janus knows it's bullshit, especially since he can feel Lavos' essence all over the damn thing.  At this point it's revealed that the entire city of Calasperan has been conjured back up from the Tesseract by the Frozen Flame.  He grabs Schala and tries to run for it, but gets trapped.

Meanwhile, Crono has found his way into the research wing of the palace, where he finds all kinds of wack-ass biomechanical experiments, similar to the Weapons in Final Fantasy, save that there are more varieties of weird stuff here than the Empire has TIE variants.  (<-- hyperbole yo)

Among this number are engineered creatures with various odd, specialized abilities that are nevertheless very effective.  Of course, Crono has to fight a boss to gain entry to the research core.  In this case, it's a bioengineered dragonlike cyborg with special skin that softens and hardens selectively.  I'm trying to think of a mechanism by which this could occur; natural or technological, it matters not.  I'm just looking for something halfway realistic to put in the battle messages when it does that...not to mention a name for it that isn't too terribly much of a ripoff of Final Fantasy, though if the committee decides now's the time for a little props that's fine too.  But all that aside, it's got some mean-ass lasers attached to its tentacles.  Fortunately, as a prototype, it ain't the sharpest tool in the shed.  Once that's accomplished, Crono gains access to the core, where instead of some giant uber-Weapon he finds Sorin as the centerpiece of the whole thing.  This is where Sorin's backstory, or at least a goodly portion of it, is to be revealed.  Sorin is convalescing from terrible wounds he took by accident in the battle at Dorino.  After part of his backstory is explained, Crono frees Dyasavah from a prison and she helps him rescue Janus and Schala by calling forth a Gate to Chronopolis, thus allowing him to bring two more party members through to help him.  After that, all of Calasperan descends into chaos as King Zeal and the Frozen Flame split the party apart during the breaking point.

For Sorin's backstory, I tried for a couple of days but couldn't come up with a damn thing.  So I finally enlisted the help of two good friends of mine, along with a few drunken idiots on the Battle.net chat channels.  For such an enigma, the concept I've (sorta) come up with for Sorin is something deeply tragic that reflects on the theme of the game we've managed to establish, that of personal attachment, which is in fact bolstered by the running "fate vs. free will" theme of the Chrono series in general.

It is a considerable task; Sorin's backstory had to occupy just as much significance to this game's plot as Janus did for the original.  Even more ironic is the fact that they serve as foils for each other; Sorin occupies Janus' CT plot function in this game, while Janus himself is struggling to rebuild his life from the wanton murderer he was in the previous installment.  On top of all that, his backstory has to do 3 things:

1) Involve William Ishito
2) explain why CM&L didn't die when he owned them back in Scenario 3
3) contain a crucial key to beating the Frozen Flame
4) be so tragic and painful that Hitler would hug a woobie for comfort after hearing it and then shut down all the concentration camps, retire and go to work for the Christian Children's Fund.  

To that end, I went into a D2 chat channel and asked "how many of you are drunk?"  A gazillion affirmations of drunkenness then clogged my chat window.  I followed that up with "you guys ever played Chrono Trigger?" and they're like OMFG BEST GAME EVAR!  I never have bad luck in those channels.

Anyway, after a time of sharing stories with people I had never met before and a couple friends of mine, I came up with a few things:

1) Sorin used to have a wife and they had a happy, unassuming life.  Then something REALLY REALLY BAD happened and she died.  Actually, he ended up killing her, for reasons I'll explain later.  This is part of what makes him nuts.

2) The only way he can have any kind of mental focus is the cybernetic implants Porre has given him.  Again, this is explained in a bit.

As for the resurrection, it's pretty complicated.

*takes a deep breath*

In Scenario 3, when he hit the characters, they were in fact supposed to vanish completely from all of existence, so maddened was Sorin.  This is because they indirectly caused all of his suffering.  This is because Sorin is the Chrono Break.  As we established earlier, the CB erases all versions of someone from existence completely; doing this to CM&L would mean that Lavos was never defeated.  If Lavos was never defeated, there would have been no need for the Time Crash and El Nido, subjects which Belthasar elaborates on during the actual El Nido scenario.  Without El Nido, Porre would not have militarized.  But, if Porre had never militarized, the situation in Guardia would be just as it was at the beginning of Chrono Trigger.  This would be all fine and dandy for Sorin, save for one thing; destroying the main cast prevents him from getting the Chrono Break in the lower-order timeline.  This is because without the crew, King Zeal would have been killed, but thanks to their interference in the Ocean Palace the destruction of Calasperan was delayed and he was allowed to escape.  As King Zeal was the one that ordered the Chrono Break to be designed, and Sorin embodies it, Sorin cannot reach his present state without Crono.  Thus, he cannot kill them in that way, which in fact was a stroke of luck for the crew; he's perfectly capable of killing them normally, but his uncontrollable rage and lack of knowledge blinded him to that.  The crew, as usual, is the exception rather than the rule; if he'd just killed some random redshirt, it would have had the desired effect.  But the fact that annihilating CM&L with the CB would override his actions in an earlier timeline makes it impossible for him to do so.

On the Chrono Break: As I mentioned earlier, King Zeal had it designed.  The actual process, as well as the design of the freaky crap mentioned earlier in Calasperan's research labs, was carried out by our female smart person/head scientist Dyasavah, or whatever we decide to name her.  Once Belthasar's lover, a zillion years ago when he didn't have wrinkles and a beard, they studied together and learned the secrets of the universe and stuff, but they too split during the Zealian Schism.  The knowledge she's gained both through study and from Belthasar enabled her to design the CB.  The weapon itself is something of an anomaly.  King Zeal and Lavos both have the same aims, but different purposes.  This involves Lavos' mega-huge master plan.  However, when Dyasavah figured out what they were going to use it for, she banished it to 1000 A.D. and implanted it into the man Sorin, replacing his biological heart.  However, when Lavos figured out what she'd done, he had King Zeal imprison and torture her.  He was just about to kill her when Crono freed her.

Now for Ishito's part in all of this; he's the current captain of the Black Wind.  Before that, he was a career military officer of unflagging loyalty to Porre, which is why their government picked him to head it up.  The Black Wind runs with the technology of ancient Zeal, except with less of it; King Zeal periodically visits them and grants them new pieces of tech.  This was all fine and dandy until Sorin went on a homicidal rampage.  William was Sorin's best friend since childhood, and he won't give him up without a fight.  William is unknowingly also part of his suffering; CM&L, as dangerous agents of the enemy, had to be dispatched, and the Porre government commissioned the Black Wind to do so.  Actually holding Truce was an optional secondary objective; the main point of Porre's assault was to get rid of them.  In essence, William sent Sorin on the ultimate torturous mission, one which he is too enraged and insane to accomplish successfully, which in turn adds to his insanity.

Sorin's ultimate fate is that of irony; the only way to resolve the paradox surrounding his existence is for the crew to do to him exactly what he would have done to them, obliterate him entirely.  However, it isn't the crew that ends up doing it; it's William, which makes it even more painful.  William doesn't have Time Traveler's Immunity, so he won't remember his best friend, but he doesn't know this before he does it.  After Sorin the being is gone, William forgets he ever existed, and 1002 A.D. is altered accordingly.  When the being dissolves from history, he leaves the Chrono Break to the party.  As the final insult, Dyasavah eventually learns that Belthasar's OK; she would have just sent the CB to him if she'd known that, but now she's a temporal murderer.  Oops.

So, to recap the sequence of events from least current timeline (lowest-order) to the current timeline:

~The Zealian Schism occurs as a result of the conflict over Lavos energy
~Team Crono interferes at Ocean Palace, allowing King Zeal to live
~Team Crono destroys Lavos, ensuring the El Nido paradox and thus Porre's militarization
~King Zeal lives and is enslaved by the Frozen Flame (irony of a sort since its grants his wishes), dreams up Calasperan and its population from the DBT
~King Zeal has the Chrono Break designed by Dyasavah
~Dyasavah figures out Lavos' master plan and banishes the CB to the 1000 A.D. era and into Sorin
~Sorin eventually goes insane from its influence and kills his wife, two children, and a bunch of other people
~Sorin's best friend William Ishito saves his friend with cybernetic implants and tries to rehabilitate him in the Black Wind program
~Sorin attempts to kill Crono, Marle and Lucca by wiping them from history; this doesn't work because their interference caused him to obtain the Chrono Break in a lower-order timeline; this in turn adds to Sorin's insanity and bent on vengeance
~The Breaking Point
~The El Nido sequence happens, with elaboration by Belthasar on the militarization of Porre
~William Ishito finally destroys his best friend by erasing him from history (still need to figure out exactly how and why this happens); all memory of Sorin is erased and Sorin's soul is banished to the Tesseract
~After King Zeal leaves Calasperan, Dyasavah learns that her lover Belthasar is still alive and weeps at what she did to Sorin

After that, all that's left is to fully develop the El Nido scenario and for me to reveal the demented and pretty damned heavy master plan I thought of.  Of course, there is a lot of potential for dialogue here...IMO, anyway.  Sorin could give some kind of monologue about death and precious things before he dies.  Dyasavah/Belthasar also constitute an opportunity, not to mention all the stuff Janus has the chance to say.  Suggestions, anyone?

[Shinrin]

wow that's alot of stuff you thought of hadriel, so with this new storyline it will clear up some plot holes that are in chrono cross. This is starting to sound interesting. just keep up the good work, and i can't wait to test this stuff out when it comes time for it.

[Chrono'99]

It's awesome, but the only thing that I'm not very keen on is the fact that Belthasar is sooo involved and important in the storyline. He's very involved in CT, and is very much a Matrixian "Architect" in CC. For his part, Gaspar is quite important in CT but does nothing in CC.

As for Melchior, the only thing we actually see him do in the whole series is repairing the Masamune just once...

Now in CT:CE, Gaspar is missing like in CC, Belthasar is still always omnipresent, and Melchior still seems to do (nearly?) nothing... And we're involving yet another new Guru (Deva w/e) instead of developing Melchior's role. It think it would be more balanced for the "Guru order" to have all the Gurus have more or less the same importance (probably in different domains though).

Of course it's just an opinion.

[Hadriel]

The end of the game is going to be pretty Gaspar-heavy; the master plan involves the fate of the End of Time, Gaspar, and Spekkio.

[Legend of the Past]

The end of the game is going to be pretty Gaspar-heavy; the master plan involves the fate of the End of Time, Gaspar, and Spekkio.

OMG, Spekkio finally gets a semi-important role in the storyline except for a magic-bestower-god-thing!

[Chrono'99]

The end of the game is going to be pretty Gaspar-heavy; the master plan involves the fate of the End of Time, Gaspar, and Spekkio.

OMG, Spekkio finally gets a semi-important role in the storyline except for a magic-bestower-god-thing!

And Melchior is still doing nothing besides repairing the Masamune and contributing in putting Crono to Guardia's jail ;_;

[Hadriel]

He repairs and upgrades the party's armor and weapons this time around, though if it's a plot function you're looking for...yeah, Melchior does deserve a bigger part.  Both he and Gaspar will play a crucial role in the Calasperan sidequest, and there'll be a bunch of exposition on the Gurus.  The last bits of the Porre War will also involve Melchior.

I just caught a possible plot hole.  Upon playing the final version of the game, some people might think "If the Frozen Flame can summon all this crap out of the DBT, why doesn't it just call Lavos back?"  The main reason for this is the massive amount of influence Lavos has on the progression of time; the more such influence a thing has, the more magic power is required to sustain it in the corporeal world when causality would otherwise dictate its destruction or banishment to the DBT, and the Frozen Flame bereft of its master simply does not have the kind of power required to summon Lavos from the DBT.  Melchior and Belthasar explain this to the heroes after everyone is reunited following the breaking point.  

But for now, we need to develop the El Nido scenario completely.  After that, we have only the following to attend to:

~Reveal the fate of the End of Time, Gaspar, and Spekkio, and Lavos' master plan
~Save Calasperan from disappearing back into the DBT
~Fight the Frozen Flame
~Establish the fates of all the major characters in the ending
~Put in cute little extras for New Game +, as well as the obligatory uber-hard optional boss(es)

The quest-related tasks are an excellent opportunity to use all the Gurus in a storyline.  For the optional bosses, I'd thought to include two, much like they did in Cross.  One of them was the Criosphinx, accessible in the main game.  The other was the combined attack of Ozzie, Flea, and Slash.  So what I'm thinking is to have some crazy creature from Calasperan's lab be the first optional boss, and to have the second be a bunch of people who worked on the game, with custom sprites, sound effects and everything.  Several sets of people could even be used, each representing a different aspect of the game's development; almost like the Cups in Kingdom Hearts.

[ZeaLitY]

The Medina Auxiliary. Suggestions? How's the "Dojo" floor look?

[Chickenlump]

Is the Dojo floor area supposed to be higher than the rest of the floor? It kind of has an eleveated look to it, but only because of the bottom part, sort of looks like a wall or the side of it if it were a platform... (hard to describe)

[ZeaLitY]

Yeah, sorta like a foot off the ground.

I'm going back to work with shadows and lighting in the dining area.

[DarkGizmo]

~Put in cute little extras for New Game +, as well as the obligatory uber-hard optional boss(es)

lol I like that sentence

For the dojo it depends the anglae you look at it (sound wierd eh?)

If you look at the upper part it seem on the floor with some stick on the corner, if you check bottom it look like a platform elevated liek 1 foot from the floor

[Zaperking]

Nice story Hadriel. It's good to know that Gaspar and Melchior will have a part in the end of game.

Heres a question:
Like you said that Crono and Co. save King Zeal in the Ocean Palace, wasn't he dead long before that?

And I just have a little comment, you don't need to take it or anything anyway:
You know how you said that Calasperan's Reseach Centre would have the lizard skin hardening and thickening research etc, I don't know but I personally feel that putting giving a Zealian type place a Biological Research Centre makes the whole Zealian conspect lose it's magical tough, and that's what makes Zeal so special.