Chrono Trigger's story

Long ago when I originally played Chrono Trigger, I tried to repiece together the storyline, and where and what Crono's effect on time really changed things. So I though I'd write it down today.

Here's how I can understand and/or speculate on CT events.

65,000,000 BC : Lavos crashes into Earth, which eradicates the Reptites, that should have won over Humans.

12,000 BC : Zeal kingdom thrives on Magic and technology, and tries to draw more out of Lavos, but fail at it. The result sends Janus and the 3 sages into other timelines. Trying to draw too much power from Lavos made it wake up and destroy Zeal, including all of the royal family, which led to the end of magic.

It's also shown that the destruction of the Mammon Machine with the Ruby Knife turned it into Masamune, but how it happened in the original timeline is not explained, presumably Schala or Melchior could have done it. It's also unclear how the Masamune went down through the ages, or how it received the two souls of Masa and Mune that were in Zeal before that.

600 AD : Queen Leene was rescued possibly by Frog and the castle guards. While Masamune was not restored in that timeline, Frog possibly led a secluded life. Magus tried to summon Lavos, but was quite possibly killed by it instead. Due to a simple disapearance rather than a defeat, Magus is still venerated in Medina village later on, and the feud between Humans and Fiends is never truly resolved.

1000 AD : Nothing happens just yet, it's the start of the entire story.

1999 AD : Day of Lavos

Now if you start at the point that Crono starts messing with the timelines.

600 : Queen Leene's rescue was changed due to the mistaken identity with Marle. It led to the whole undoing of Yakra, his false chancellor ploy, and was the reason that the prison was built in 1000 AD, which also led to the second false Chancellor in 1000 AD later.

Going to the future didn't affect anything. Going to 65,000,000 BC served one thing, it did serve to explain a link between the Dreamstone that Ayla possessed and the Zeal kingdom, possibly out of the same lineage of tribe leaders. This would make Ayla and Schala blood related though there's millions of years between then.

Restoring Masamune brought down Magus, which is the major turning point in the entire CT story. Instead of being killed, he was sent back to 12,000BC, where he acted as counselor, an oracle, since he already knew about events. His guidance finished up the Mammon Machine and the Black Omen, which were not supposed to be finished in the original timeline.

Magus' effect increase the energy draining potential and stablized it, so while it still destroyed Zeal, it left the Queen alive. Although we don't see it in the story, we can suppose that Janus and the 3 mages were also sent back during those events, although they differed from the original timeline.

Most of the other happenings are minor changes, like changing the greedy mayor to a generous one, or helping Lucca's mom and the forest. Medina village actually gets a little more mellow after they stop venerating Magus, but they are outright friendly when Ozzie is taken out as well in the optional sidequest.

If you tack on Chrono Cross's storyline to it it gets even more complicated.

Humans are called 'Lavos Spawn'. Lavos eradicating the Reptites had the effect that Humans became dominant. Without Lavos, Reptites would have dominated the planet most probably. Thus Lavos helped humanity.

Chrono Cross starts from that fact, playing off on alternate dimensions starting from specific events in time. Lavos is one of those pivotal moments, where Humans win over Reptiles and dragons. That's why you see Dinopolis opposed to Chronopolis, the two most advanced cities made respectively by Reptiles and Humans.

Schala being a major part of the story, I'm still unsure what part she played in the 'fusion' with Lavos into the Time Devourer, but one thing is sure, Serge ends up stopping both Dragons trying to eliminate humans, and Lavos trying to eliminate pretty much everything else. No pressure at all, right Serge?

Another more hazy part is the Masamune, we can't be sure how it reached all the way in that island group between 600 and 1020 AD, and how it got that evil blade reputation and power, although it may just be a prank from the souls of Masa and Mune for all we know, being bored out of their mind after Frog had no more use of the sword.

A reference to Robo is also made, as the giant computer that the dragons try to get rid of called himself Prometheus, allegedly built by Lucca. Prometheus was Robo's true name, which Lucca quite possibly reused as a memory. In CT's final anime cutscene, Lucca is even walking around with a mini-Robo she probably built.

It's all little ties that show that CC and CT are related. That you want to consider them true sequels or not is your choice, but the entire idea of time travels and alternate dimensions already says that the things we know from CT probably don't fully apply anymore. You could consider that CC is an alternate dimension of CT, where Lavos wasn't destroyed and lived on thanks to Schala's power.

Making CC go into time travel would have otentially messed up the already established story and timeline of CT, so the alternate dimension thing was a good idea in that aspect. It was a good way of keeping the 'time travel' to some degree.

Future Remakes?

Being at only a few days from another Remake *slash* Enhanced Port in the name of Chrono Trigger on the NDS, and almost done with Star Ocean PSP, I was thinking back of several good games from former Square and Enix that probably will never get a remake/port, but were still alot of fun to play. So here's a small list of those I remember.

Soul Blazer trilogy

I call it a trilogy due to some similarities, themes and ties in the stories and characters, it's almost unmistakable that they were done by the same groups. The trilogy contains Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. Sadly, Terranigma never reached US despite English localization due to Enix USA closing doors during the SNES/PS1 eras.

The main theme went around souls and rebirth. Soul Blazer had you visiting worlds and dreams to rebuild the towns and their inhabitants. The main character was the envoy of 'god', which amusingly also had similarities with Actraiser it seems. You received the help of souls for spells and various abilities like seeing invisible things, and could talk to plant and animals. The theme was around rebirth, as various dead people seemed to be reincarnated as animals in the worlds you visit.

Illusion of Gaia had you visiting the world to dispel the cloud of darkness over it. The main character had the ability to transform into the bodies of warriors he borrows the souls from along the story, which makes you use their different abilities as you progress. While the theme was similar, the main thing that seems to tie in with Soul Blazer is when you collect the 50 red gems around the world. The extra dungeon it unlocks has for boss the very first boss of Soul Blazer, in a similar killing strategy and stage.

Terranigma also dwelled in rebirth, but this time on a whole new level. This time it wasn't a fantasy world, it was OURS. Opening Pandora's box literally throws you into a quest to bring back the world as it was, which makes you speed through the entire evolution of the world and the upbringing of plants, animals and humans, down to helping some important history figures to make their contributions, such as voting on the next King of France, helping Wright create his airplane or Edison with electricity. It probably holds the most enigmatic and sad ending I've seen.

Each of these titles would be worth a remake or a port. In fact, I'd love to see them, but seeing their age and te relative obscurity and lack of huge sales or visibility like the mainstream series received, maybe bundle them together a single NDS cart would be wise.

Secret of Mana

This one is not a surprise at all. Considering they took lenghts to actually remake the very first game from the GameBoy to the Gameboy Advance (originally Final Fantasy Adventure) to Sword of Mana. And seeing they decided to get Chrono Trigger out, why not Secret of Mana now?

Sadly while the mana series is popular, not sure they will consider it for a full remake. Maybe an enhanced port, seeing that's all they gave Chrono Trigger. It would still be a welcomed re-addition to the gaming world, as Secret of Mana definitely was an epic quest to play, and even better it could handle 3 players!

Any other title you think would be worth another chance?

Console Wars : A tale of fanboyism

The biggest reason for console wars is usually directly related to high costs of current consoles, combined with the fact that people don't always have the money to buy several consoles.

As a result, people tend to try to justify their hard-earned money spent by siding with that console. It's a bad thing in itself, it makes them blind to the qualities of the other consoles.

Not to say that I didn't do this before myself. When it was Nintendo vs Sega, NES vs Master System, SNES vs Genesis, I kept thinking that my console was the best, the SNES at the time. I still liked to play on my friend's Genesis though, but only because I love games in general. It helped me realize things later. But my tale of fanboyism happened when the PlayStation came about.

Nintendo was priming over for the N64, which was supposed to literally jump a whole console generation, going from 16 to 64 bits, jumping over the 32 bit consoles that Sega and Playstation developed. I didn't buy the N64 right off, but I will admit that I felt a pang of betrayal when I heard that Final Fantasy was moving to the PlayStation, when it was supposed to be Nintendo's property.

Of course, I was blind to the facts that Square owned Final Fantasy, not Nintendo. It just happened that Nintendo was the best platform for them to develop on at the time, and when Nintendo stubbornly clinged to cartridges instead of optical media, it was their undoing on the development of those titles. Square wanted to use the full size of discs, making the PlayStation a better platform for that purpose.

I bought a PlayStation, later a N64, but for different reasons. The PlayStation was to follow the Final Fantasy series, and at the same time game me the chance to play other quality games like Legend of Legaia, Xenogears and Suikoden. The N64 was for Zelda mostly, but I had fun with Paper Mario as well.

That ends my little backstory, so back on subject. It's when I was using my own money to buy games and consoles that I realized that the console wars and fanboy attitude was useless. And today it's even more pronounced. The consoles offer different games. The few multi-platform games are pretty much the same on each, so there's no reason to fight over it.

Basically, someone should buy a console because it has the games they want to play, not because it contains the higher polygon rate. Nowadays I'll admit that you can also buy consoles because of their multi-purpose abilities, like web browsing, BluRay reading, Virtual Console classic gaming-style, etc.

Buying a console because you think it's the end all be all is bad in that aspect. You close your eyes on the actual potential on the competing consoles.

Let's try to think objectively, looking at the previous generation of consoles, as an example :

Dreamcast - Playstation 2 - Xbox - Gamecube

These 4 were technically on this generation. I can't talk about the Dreamcast knowingly, so I'll avoid it. But the other 3 consoles were well known. Xbox arguably had the highest processing power. Yet it attracted mostly action games, first person shooters. Being american made it didn't get most of the Japanese made games, except for multi-platforms like Soul Calibur.

The PlayStation 2 continued in the steps of it's predecessor, and was helped by the fact it was a relatively cheap DVD player at the time. While not as powerful as the Xbox, japanese based and already well-known architecture made it keep most of the RPG series and games. It is the ultimate RPG console in my opinion.

Nintendo had some catching up to do with the GameCube, needing to be forgiven the N64 lack of 3rd party titles. Having the lowest processing power of the 3 consoles, it still had some good potential. It still didn't get alot of third party titles, but it showcased an extremely solid first-party line up, and pushed the 4-player aspect. Not much about action games per say, but alot of party games and pick'me'up games that were perfect for gatherings of all kinds.

So 3 consoles, very different definitions of gaming. Standing by a single console basically meant you closed your eyes to the other kind of games. This generation has a similar pattern showing up, the Wii keeping it's multi-player party games and adding a whole new row of games for more casual people. The Playstation 3 boasts the highest power (arguably) and the storage capacity of the BluRay. The Xbox360 started getting more attention from japanese developers due to being roughly the same as PC titles, and started to attract more varied genres of games.

Yet you still see people siding with their consoles and being enraged at news like Final Fantasy XIII going multi-platform. Can't you be glad that a game will be played by more people thanks to it? Sad that your console is losing an exclusive title?

It's a fact that people waiting passionately on a specific game probably own the console months before the release, the sales of a console are not affected solely by a single title of a single genre. People that are 'meh, maybe' are probably waiting until the last minute, and some of them will simply be glad they don't have to buy a new console for a single game.

But before you buy a new console, you should be thinking of a single thing : will it be worth the money I put on it, will it run the games I really want to play, right now? We can't say what the future will hold, FFXIII proves that things can change, a game can hop console or go multi-platform suddenly.

If you don't buy a console to play games right away, are you looking to only decorate your living room?

Enjoy your games, enjoy your console, but for the right reasons, not blindly like a merchandising sheep.

Link of the Day #2

I didn't have any inspiration, but here's a funny video. If they didn't do that scene on purpose, I have no idea what they were thinking!

Link of the Day #1

On off days that I don't know what to write about, I'll put up a random link to things I liked or found funny. Alot of these may come from GameFAQs friends as well, if you think it's familiar.

So the first amusing link... The Assumption Song! Thank you Ayasu (FFXI) for this one.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/460854

Games I play : Star Ocean First Departure

I kept pushing it off for a while since I wasn't very far into the game. Now I got the feeling I'm reaching in far enough to make it worth talking about.

As a little bit of background, this game was first released on the Super Nintendo, but sadly never reached US. ROM wise, it was also an oddity that required a special chip to be added that contained the graphical data, as apparently the game itself exceed the capacity that the SNES carts were able to hold data-wise. If SNES games were 4MB at most, this game reached 6MB due to that special data, which required some special patches from emulators just for this unique game.

It was also one of the few games that worked in any amount of voice acting on the SNES, although it wasn't that much either. A good part of the opening cutscenes had some voices in it, in English despite being a Japanese game (Star Trek influence?). Yet the SNES audio quality and the harsh compression imposed made the sound clips a bit hard to understand, but it was a step in that direction.

For the PSP, thanks to the capacities of this little machine, there are alot more than the opening that are voiced, and I must say the voice acting is pretty good too. I've played Star Ocean : Second Story, and many of the lines felt right off forced or out of line. Well, that was limited to battles only, but even if you limit yourself to battles in Star Ocean : First Departure, you'll notice that there was some polishing to the lines used, they feel tons more natural.

As for music, I can't remember if the songs are that much different than the original on the SNES, but they meet up with what I expected to hear from Second Story (PS1), so they are very good sounding. They are adequate for the cutscenes, upbeat for dungeons and fights, just the way I expect them to be.

Thanks to a better hardware, it also beneficiated from a graphic overhaul, bringing it on par with the Second Story. The overworld is a rotating 3D map with decent details. In towns and villages, one thing that I remember from Second Story was the detail put to lighting. Normally you'd expect a character to either be fully lighted or shaded. In this game, half-stepping into a shadow did make your character half-shaded too, a very intricate detail considering the amout of shadowy areas you may cross in a village.

From what I can see, this version also received that kind of attention, which is pleasing to see. Despite being sprites over pre-rendered backgrounds for villages and dungeons, the amount of frames of animations used for something as simple as walking is impressive, and you see the same amount of detail in fights as well.

The battles are also taken off from Second Story style, with a large area to roam. The original SNES was a little cramped due to the hardware limitations, but the following games retained the idea of having a real-time battle with positioning and chasing targets with better power at their disposal.

All in all, I found everything I liked of this series, better looking, better sounding. Even though I haven't played the SNES version more than an hour, I still have seen enough to compare and see that this was a great remake/port (whatever you want to call it all considered), and I'm happy of having it in my collection. If you have a PSP and like RPGs, this is a must have.

Games I play : Dragon Quest 8

Actually, this should be at the past tense, but it still fits the theme I suppose.

Dragon Quest needs little introduction. In Japan it was banned from being sold on weekdays due to causing a high rate of absenteeism at work and school, due to the flood of people going to buy and play it. The strong bonds between the 3 main creators of the series made it flourish. I can't say if it was the first game of the RPG genre, but it definitely set the bar for the later games, and each game tried to improve upon it.

Dragon Quest 8 : The Journey of the Cursed King is the latest installment of the series. It graced the Playstation 2 in November 2004 for Japan. USA received a futher enhanced version a full year later, with added contents like voice acting and extra animations (the famous Super Sayian-like High Tension). It was also the first game of the series to grave Europe, which is kinda odd in itself, considering Enix had dropped the US side of ports but kept Europe open for most of the SNES+PS1 era. The only difference is that Dragon Quest is unnumbered in Europe, which led to subtitling all of the new releases.

The game itself, I'm not sure I can properly put it into words. In my opinion, this game was probably the best RPG for the lifetime of the Playstation 2. Sure, there was some great ones, like Final Fantasy X, XII, Kingdom Hearts and Xenosaga, all were pretty and fun. But I don't know, Dragon Quest had something else, which is really a matter of taste and opinion in the end.

First of all, the music. The Playstation 2's ability to play music is nothing short of superb. Thanks to the quality that a DVD can hold, the soundtrack was well done and fitting from the begining to the end. It places you in the ambience of the world, the dungeon or the city perfectly.

Secondly, the world map. As far as RPGs are concerned, I noticed that the PS2 had a very odd pattern. Where as the NES, SNES and even PS1 RPGs all had the roaming world map, most of the PS2 went for other kinds, such as Final Fantasy X and XII that have a traced route on a general map, teleport points to move around, otherwise walking between points. That style is not bad mind you, in fact it's more realistic in a way that you need to physically move around.

But other games completly gave up any kind of roaming, such as Kingdom Hearts or Suikoden III. What was a staple of a map with the ability to enter town was now a thing of the past. In that aspect, I admire Dragon Quest 8's method. Without going with the 'everything is on scale' of Final Fantasy XII, the world was huge and gorgeous, colorful and with plenty of nooks and crannies to peek into, wether it's around a tree or atop a small hill.

The villages looked 'on scale' from a distance, but still were in a different area per say, which required loading, which is closer to the original world map systems. The characters are are scale with the surrounding world, and it feels huge to move around on foot. The world map also scales down when using different methods of traveling, like on foot or flying, yet everything looks the same, just perfect. Plus you can see very far away in the distance while traveling, making it very realistic in that aspect.

Of course, being drawn by Akira Toriyama, the entire world and the characters have a distinct cartoony look. In fact the game was made in cell-shade, which from my understanding is a method of using 2D drawings on minimalistic skeletons, instead of being a fully 3D skeleton like Final Fantasy XII for example. The result is more cartoony, but somehow more detailed as well, which fits Akira's style perfectly in my opinion. And it fits Dragon Quest's style just as well.

Storywise, it was very interesting to follow. The generic 'save the world' quest, but not quite either. There's more involved as the quest starts with the only goal to uncurse the king and the princess. But obviously it won't be so easy, will it?

The battles are elegantly made, the first Dragon Quest to actually let you see your characters in battle in fact. All of the previous games used the 'first person view' of the fight where you'd see only the monsters. This time you can see your characters doing their attacks, spells and special abilities, and even lean over tiredly when low on HP. Monsters received the same attention with various animations for their attacks.

All in all, this was an extremely good addition to my collection, and one I would suggest to anyone that enjoys RPGs. It's not terribly hard, not terribly long (50-60 hours), pure Dragon Quest style with some very humorous scenes and dialogs. A good balance of everything that brings it to the top of my list of PS2 RPGs.