DiipuSurotu
Banned
I think SOLDIER is referring to the FFVII Remake.
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Masato Kato Talks End of Chrono Trilogy, Chrono Break
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
I think SOLDIER is referring to the FFVII Remake.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Huh? Nah, he's talking about a hypothetical third Chrono game. The CT trio is essentially dead in Chrono Cross but the idea was that Kid and other characters after the end of Chrono Cross would then go rescue the CT trio, some time, somewhere.
The Fall of Guardia in 1,005 A.D. and Lynx and Harle's raid on Lucca's Orphanage would most likely have been events featured in that third game.
Basically:
Chrono Trigger: Schala "dies", but Crono and co. save Belthasar
Chrono Cross: Belthasar saves Schala, but Crono and co. die
Chrono Reflect: Schala saves Crono and co.
All Possible Ways
Member
Oh of course, it just dawned on me they could still be dead in Cross, it's a time traveling game after all!
Stop making me dream.
NHarmonic.
Member
We have enough toriyama with DQ. Chrono Cross' art direction and character design is far superior to trigger's, more of that please.
Galactic Barret
Member
TheDinoman
Member
I wouldn't mind Kato being brought back for a new Chrono game, if there ever was one.
I do, however, think he probably should be put on a more tighter leash. I appreciate his contributions for Trigger, for stuff like the Kingdom of Zeal which was brilliant, but I think he ultimately got too much control with Cross, where he became the director and sole writer. I think he has interesting ideas but he needs an editor to make it work in a cohesive manner, to prevent it from being a jumpled mess like CC's story.
Seems to me he's better when doing bits and pieces of the story, like how he wrote the KOZ on his own, and Tifa's dialogue in FF7 as mentioned above, rather than being in full control of the entire project like with Cross.
I do, however, think he probably should be put on a more tighter leash. I appreciate his contributions for Trigger, for stuff like the Kingdom of Zeal which was brilliant, but I think he ultimately got too much control with Cross, where he became the director and sole writer. I think he has interesting ideas but he needs an editor to make it work in a cohesive manner, to prevent it from being a jumpled mess like CC's story.
Seems to me he's better when doing bits and pieces of the story, like how he wrote the KOZ on his own, and Tifa's dialogue in FF7 as mentioned above, rather than being in full control of the entire project like with Cross.
Shifty1897
Member
In my dark twisted fantasies, Tokyo RPG Factory keeps churning out titles until they perfect the style of game they want to make, then SE gives them a proper budget and they make Chrono Break.
MagnaderAlpha
Member
I find it funny with Kato's idea for a third Chrono game. I once had an idea I wrote down after I played the first Chrono game, and it was basically about the cast of CT disappearing from the world because "man wasn't meant to commit crimes against time" and they were "collected" by Zeitgeist, a collector of displaced objects in time and timelines and a sorta "watcher of timestreams". It has a floating mansion outside of time/space where the characters are trapped within (Dalton was also there), with many floors and doors that open to specific discarded eras that are in Zeitgeist's collection. There is also a NEW threat that Zeitgeist sealed away in the depths of his mansion's basement vault that is trying to find a way out and back into the timestream (which Chrono and co are also trying to do, but are unaware of this dark force following them). The beginning of my story was that all the heroes wake up in a room together... lol!
I wouldn't mind a new Chrono game in the SNES+ style. Sonic Mania hit the nail on the head with a Genesis+ style ("+ style", of course meaning it takes most cues from the original console graphics, but does some things that those specific consoles just couldn't do; another example would be Shovel Knight being an NES+ style game). Maybe it is time to see more games like these. I know there are some people that hate this sorta thing, but hey, they got their brand new, shiny "cutting edge graphics games" that are still popular and embraced by the mainstream. Let US have this.
There is a character in Dragon Quest XI that looks REMARKABLY like a Kid, but in Toriyama's style. The main hero in Dragon Quest VIII looks like Serge in Toriyama's style.
I wouldn't mind a new Chrono game in the SNES+ style. Sonic Mania hit the nail on the head with a Genesis+ style ("+ style", of course meaning it takes most cues from the original console graphics, but does some things that those specific consoles just couldn't do; another example would be Shovel Knight being an NES+ style game). Maybe it is time to see more games like these. I know there are some people that hate this sorta thing, but hey, they got their brand new, shiny "cutting edge graphics games" that are still popular and embraced by the mainstream. Let US have this.
There is a character in Dragon Quest XI that looks REMARKABLY like a Kid, but in Toriyama's style. The main hero in Dragon Quest VIII looks like Serge in Toriyama's style.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
I mean, I doubt it was going to be some Dissidia shit. Chrono Cross basically lets you play as Schala but look how different she was compared to the first game. I'm sure some of these mentioned returning characters would be there in disguise and none of them would be the main protagonist.
Also, it's not a "rumor". It's a statement straight out of the series' scenario writer's mouth.
XxSlasherMcGirkxX
Member
What Kato describes would be my dream game.
disappeared
Banned
Thanks a lot for posting this! 
Sad we'll likely never get the final chapter.. if there even was one to begin with.
I actually even like the sound of Reflect even more than Break.
Sad we'll likely never get the final chapter.. if there even was one to begin with.
I actually even like the sound of Reflect even more than Break.
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Native Spanish speaker here, the context of the translation was a little bit off in this part:
He is saying that he would have liked to make a third game and that it would have an all star cast but that the chance slipped by and hes the kind of guy that wants to look forward and not dwell on projects that could have been.
He is saying that he would have liked to make a third game and that it would have an all star cast but that the chance slipped by and hes the kind of guy that wants to look forward and not dwell on projects that could have been.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
That's my impression as well, maybe I didn't word it well enough.
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Initially it read to me that it was his CC idea, and that CC was about rescuing Crono but he decided that he preferred His story to be about moving forward, so they stayed dead
LizardKing
Member
I didn't know Kato just released a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger for mobile called Another Eden (Japan only). Anyone play it? How is it?
DiipuSurotu
Banned
I guess I can see how it could be misread. He does start his paragraph by talking about an episode that would end the trilogy(*) though, so the context is that it's a game after Chrono Cross.
(*Some people consider Radical Dreamers the "second" Chrono game, which would make Chrono Cross the third game, but technically Chrono Cross is an expanded remake/reimagining of RD, so officially CC is the second game while RD is just an unfinished version of it.)
LizardKing
Member
I think he's laughing at the fact that Kato basically IS Chrono as far as scenario goes. He didn't just do a section. He did most of it, and then rounded out a trilogy. Chrono is Kato's child more than any one else's.
Same. The Chrono games are like the peak of JRPGs, I can't imagine how beautiful a game Break would be. I'm mad they ever even teased the idea of the game, now we know what we'll never have.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Huh? The only thing purple about Schala was her dress.
I really hated Cross.
Gameplay was crap. The story was an abomination that killed off the characters from one of my favorite games of all time.
The graphics were good and music was great but not enough to salvage it. It was a really good RPG but a total disappointment to my favorite RPG of all time.
I would rather they leave it dead and start a new epic 2D RPG with gameplay and style similar to the OG ChronoTrigger.
Gameplay was crap. The story was an abomination that killed off the characters from one of my favorite games of all time.
The graphics were good and music was great but not enough to salvage it. It was a really good RPG but a total disappointment to my favorite RPG of all time.
I would rather they leave it dead and start a new epic 2D RPG with gameplay and style similar to the OG ChronoTrigger.
Blue hair, my bad.
Misremembered those sprites. Kid being blond made 0 sense though.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Eh, it made more sense than Krelian being blond in Xenogears' present era.
I think we can safely infer that Lavos altered Schala's genetics, considering he was physically merging with her.
Yep.
Look, I like FFXV but please, no. Not the Luminous engine. That was (supposedly) riddled with problems. UE4 and just even reusing textures/assets from DQXI, I think, as a previous poster said, would be the best route to go.
I'd personally take a remake, or a sequel to either Trigger or Cross (my preference would be a Cross sequel though... not often we game an amazing setting / OST like in that world... just... have better characters
)metalmania4evr
Member
Would absolutely love another Chrono game. I'll always have an affinity for the series.
almostjuliuscaesar
Member
mood
Chrono Reflect, huh...
y'know there's a game in the Legend of Heroes series that's kind of like this
Azure Dream
Member
Would people accept a Sonic Mania effort as a real Chrono Trigger sequel? The series hasn't fallen like Sonic had, but it also hasn't gotten a new title in almost 18 years, not counting ports.
AlphaDragoon
Member
IIRC, they later retconned it in the PSX Trigger, saying that all the royal family in Zeal dyes their hair the blue color and Schala is naturally blonde.
yup, checking the translation there are some differences, but they are minimal.
For example, this part: "when I reached the last step of the plot, I started feeling some doubt: was the epilogue I was unfolding the right one?"
could be more accurately translated as: "and when I was at the last stage, the doubt came about how to finish the story"
but then again, its not that much and doesn't change the idea of chrono break
No one has ever been able to produce the screenshot that says this.
Yep, schala in Chrono Cross
Edit: i forgot there's a huge discussion around this point
Aeriscloud
Banned
Sort of. He was heavily directed by Horii and to a lesser extent by Sakaguchi, who both clearly contained some of his excesses that would become very evident in Chrono Cross and Xenogears, e.g. expositional walls of text and humorless psychobabble.
The critique of 12,000 BC, which Kato had the freest hand in writing, is a fair one. While, like all Kato's work, it's interesting and complicated, it could also easily be excised from the game and have little to no impact on the overall story flow and feel of the game. Its atmosphere is certainly an outlier in the game. I still enjoy the sequence, even if it offers an uncomfortable sign of the joyless, dismal direction to follow in subsequent games when he longer had the Dream Team as his minders.
I am unaware of any work by Kato on the battle sytem for Chrono Trigger.
LizardKing
Member
Who else is more involved in the series than Kato? He wrote most of Trigger (even if directors directed and kept him in check), Radical Dreamers, then wrote/directed Cross. Then he directed the ports. There's no one else who is near as heavily involved. It's more his thing than any one other person's. That said, he should have someone like Horii keeping him in check.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
I like to think that Kirite is based on ideas that Kato and Mitsuda would otherwise have put into a third Chrono game... The setup of Kirite reminds me of Chrono Cross:
"The Five Seasons of Kirite" by Masato Kato set inside a world of magic and fantasy, tells the story of a boy by the name Kirite, a girl by the name Kotonoha and a darkness by the name Orochi. When those three would meet, the world would silently start to go mad.
Sadly the full story was only published in Japanese and no one has ever translated it. The album is great though.
Thanks for checking!
(Raging Spaniard too)Yup, thanks for saying it! As a huge fan of the series I dislike this "hair dye" urban legend that keeps popping up from time to time. I don't think it's true since Magus probably wouldn't care about dying his hair in 600 A.D. and especially in Radical Dreamers (where he was literally going out of his way to hide his identity) and yet he still had blue hair.
What about his human form that we see in some of the endings though. I would have loved to be able to unlock human Glenn in New Game+ or a spinoff something. He kinda looks like Magus, which is ironic.
Actually part of the responsibility for the walls of text in Xenogears lie in the director/main writer Tetsuya Takahashi. These kinds of endgame text dumps in both Xenogears and Chrono Cross were due to a rule that Hironobu Sakaguchi enforced that all Square games had to be developed in two years max.
I'm surprised someone would call Kato's game humorless. Xenogears and Chrono Cross have a lot of weird, quirky humor that's really different from the more dramatical Final Fantasy games. Also if you look at the Xenosaga games, they're basically Xenogears without the humor and they feel really cold and heartless compared to it, IMO.
For the battle system of Chrono Trigger, Kato designed (some of?) the combination attacks.
An editor is fine, everyone needs an editor IMO. I'm not sure Horii is the right person though. He literally doesn't care about the Chrono series, and he was responsible for some of the more outdated ideas in Chrono Trigger, like the idea that the protagonist should be silent. Many at Square wanted Crono to speak but Horii eventually had his way, and Chrono Cross ironically kept Serge silent even though he had a wonderful and hilarious personality in Radical Dreamers.
When was the last time there was a crossover or spin-off that had Aerith but not Tifa? Meanwhile, games like Dissidia and World of Final Fantasy has Tifa as an FFVII rep but doesn't feature Aerith at all.
It's been obvious for a while now who FFVII's leading lady is.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
When was the last time there was a crossover or spin-off that had Aerith but not Tifa? Meanwhile, games like Dissidia and World of Final Fantasy has Tifa as an FFVII rep but doesn't feature Aerith at all.
It's been obvious for a while now who FFVII's leading lady is.
I hope Jessie is the new leading lady in Episode Midgar
DiipuSurotu
Banned
They're not invincible. Crono is literally killed off in CT itself in the cheapest way possible, did you forget that? But we got to revive him -- which is exactly what we could have been able to do again in a third Chrono game according to the interview I posted.
KojiKnight
Member
This is why I wouldn't want a sequel to Cross or Trigger without Kato's involvement. Sadly with him only doing the occasional contract work at Square, I don't see that happening.
You weren't paying much attention if you thought this was the case. The original cast all had their roles to play in Cross, some more obvious than others.
You weren't paying much attention if you thought this was the case. The original cast all had their roles to play in Cross, some more obvious than others.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Eh, one of the reasons I like Cross so much is how poignant the main story is, especially in regards to the Trigger cast. I don't really want to save Lucca if it means erasing the Kid/Serge orphanage scene.
If we're saving anyone, it should be
Ah, Harle, one of the victims of Sakaguchi's rule that all PS1 projects should be completed in less than two years. Kato actually planned to have an actual send-off FMV with her in Chronopolis, but it was cut short due to time constraints.
Sketch from Kato's Facebook:
Anyway, I'm not sure saving Lucca would mean erasing the orphanage scene. Presumably the new cast would be careful in making sure they don't completely mess up the events of CT and CC. Plus we know for a fact that the Crono/Marle duo and Lucca don't need rescuing at the same point in time (the Fall of Guardia for the former, and the orphanage attack for the latter), so who knows what sorts of time-hopping the new cast would have done.
Chrono Cross has a completely bonkers set of party members including a giant pink dog, a turnip with a face and a talking totem pole; a major part of the game revolves around staging a rock concert to help clear an island of monsters. I don't think you can really criticise Chrono Cross for being any more joyless than Chrono Trigger, which features a bleak and barren post-apocalyptic future inhabited by killer androids, the entire Zeal plotline being based in both class warfare and the horrible suffering of its royal family, and the party deliberately causing mass extinction.\
While I am obviously exaggerating for dramatic effect, Chrono Cross's story is mostly looked down on for the simple fact that it involves the deaths of Chrono, Marle and Lucca. Yes, it's sad, and preferably avoidable, but that doesn't negate the many other parts of it which are equal to the original.
Also Xenogears has ChuChu, all that crap about MEN! OF THE SEA!, and one of my favourite romantic plotlines of any JRPG; yes, it also has a lot of portentous Eva-inflected drama, but we're not talking Soulsborne here.