Oh wow, a Radical Dreamers localisation

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

It's more that you can create interesting scenarios and make it so that each playable character matters in the stories where they appear. Instead of randomly inserting turnips, talking flowers, and pink dogs with zero bearing on the plot whatsoever, you can write interesting characters who fit into the game's world. A game with numerous story paths and unique party combinations is loads more replayable than a game that gives us half-meaningful choices exactly twice (and in both those cases, the outcome is ultimately the same anyway).

Oh of course. It's kind of the minimum requirement for a good story. Have characters who actually matter! My point was that you can have characters who don't matter too once you have a solid cast (think, like, what does Danved add to Path of Radiance's plot, basically nothing, but that doesn't matter because Ike and Elincia et all are already there, Chrono Cross was just a cast full of Danveds and Devdans).

 Really I think Guile should have been one of the major focus characters of the game. Following up Chrono Trigger with the further adventures of Magus makes sense as he's one of the characters with uncompleted plot points. I don't know why he wasn't integral from the start. Instead they had the idea, I don't know literally forgot to implement it or something, and then later tried to double back and retroactively do it again with the Chrono Trigger remake leaving us a mess of amnesia and lack of actual character development.

2 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

Ah, forgot Water Dragon Isle being all dried up in Another World yet overflowing with water in Home World. Given that the difference is ten years, there's only so much they could change about locations like Mt. Pyre or Isle of the Damned.

Another issue I've discovered:

  Hide contents

I really hate that you have to wait until you're back to being Serge to get all your old party members back. That was a colossal waste of an opportunity to develop those characters by convincing them that you really are Serge and getting them to rejoin your party, and in the process give the game more length. By the time you get them all back, you have two dungeons left, Chronopolis and Terra Tower. Most of the fun stuff's already over, and your party members have basically zero room left for development. Not to mention, the game sends the message that your old friends will only trust you if you look how they want you to. Way to push a message of superficiality, game. Even worse, some of them would join you later if you hadn't recruited them earlier anyway! Why not just have them rejoin your party!? Why can you only recruit them as Serge or as Lynx and not both? Gods, this game can be infuriatingly stupid!

On that note, it's really disappointing that the game's practically over by the time you go back to being Serge. I used to think of Serge-Lynx-Serge as three acts of the game, but in hindsight I realized a lot more happens during the first Serge segment than either the Lynx or especially second Serge segments. At least Lynx's part lasts long enough to have some fun, but with Serge II, the last two dungeons just breeze by and the game's over before you know it. I really wish there was more to do once we get Serge back.

 

Well the first Disc (of two?) Discs end when you lose Serge's body, if I remember correctly. So it makes sense that that's half the game.

[Lord_Brand]

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh of course. It's kind of the minimum requirement for a good story. Have characters who actually matter! My point was that you can have characters who don't matter too once you have a solid cast (think, like, what does Danved add to Path of Radiance's plot, basically nothing, but that doesn't matter because Ike and Elincia et all are already there, Chrono Cross was just a cast full of Danveds and Devdans).

 Really I think Guile should have been one of the major focus characters of the game. Following up Chrono Trigger with the further adventures of Magus makes sense as he's one of the characters with uncompleted plot points. I don't know why he wasn't integral from the start. Instead they had the idea, I don't know literally forgot to implement it or something, and then later tried to double back and retroactively do it again with the Chrono Trigger remake leaving us a mess of amnesia and lack of actual character development.

What happened is that they wanted to force in 20 more characters than the game needed, and so his characterization had to be sacrificed to make room for the likes of Poshul, Mojo, and Turnip. Oh, sure, we could have gotten a satisfying conclusion to his search for Schala, but wouldn't you rather have Funguy in your party? Or Sneff? Yeah, all those extras that nobody cares about are the reason Magil was replaced with Guile.

Honestly, getting to recruit all seven of the CT heroes would have been vastly preferable to the chaff we got in the final game. Forget Turnip, gimme Frog. Never mind Leah, just give me Ayla. Reassembling Skelly? How about reassembling Robo? And heck yeah to getting Lucca, Marle, and Crono back! If the game needed any bonus party members, they were the perfect candidates. But no, we just get "Mon Game rejects" and random should-have-been-NPCs to pad out that roster instead. And we don't even get to recruit some of the game's more interesting actual NPCs like Dario and Rosetta that could have made for good compliments to the likes of Glenn and Razzly. Even better, they could have been Lynx's counterparts! Kinda like Miki is for Nikki, come to think of it.

It's like the devs had a vendetta against conventionally cool characters, wanted to shove as much weird, goofy junk in there as they could get away with, and only included the actual cool party members we got because they had to.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh of course. It's kind of the minimum requirement for a good story. Have characters who actually matter! My point was that you can have characters who don't matter too once you have a solid cast (think, like, what does Danved add to Path of Radiance's plot, basically nothing, but that doesn't matter because Ike and Elincia et all are already there, Chrono Cross was just a cast full of Danveds and Devdans).

 Really I think Guile should have been one of the major focus characters of the game. Following up Chrono Trigger with the further adventures of Magus makes sense as he's one of the characters with uncompleted plot points. I don't know why he wasn't integral from the start. Instead they had the idea, I don't know literally forgot to implement it or something, and then later tried to double back and retroactively do it again with the Chrono Trigger remake leaving us a mess of amnesia and lack of actual character development.

Well the first Disc (of two?) Discs end when you lose Serge's body, if I remember correctly. So it makes sense that that's half the game.

I recall having to change discs when you enter the Sea of Eden. So, CC was originally a 3-disc game, and that last disc doesn't hold a whole lot on it. I wonder if that's why the game doesn't let you get most of your old party members back as Lynx? Maybe the reason the third disc is so light on story content is because it has to make room for all your party members between disc one and disc two? Even so, doesn't excuse the stupidity of not getting to recruit Luccia or Greco a second time since they're available to Lynx anyway. If the sheer character count caused memory issues that kept them from doing more interesting things with the good half of the roster, well then that's another reason the not-so-good half should have been removed from the roster in the first place. I think we can all agree that 20-odd fully-baked playable characters would have been preferable to 40-odd barely-baked characters.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Lord_Brand

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Lord_Brand said:

What happened is that they wanted to force in 20 more characters than the game needed, and so his characterization had to be sacrificed to make room for the likes of Poshul, Mojo, and Turnip. Oh, sure, we could have gotten a satisfying conclusion to his search for Schala, but wouldn't you rather have Funguy in your party? Or Sneff? Yeah, all those extras that nobody cares about are the reason Magil was replaced with Guile.

I've said that several times now that it didn't. Those characters took nothing to create and that's why they are nothing characters. Davned's existence in no way took away from Ike's character in Path of Radiance. If a typical Fire Emblem game can have 50 characters as standard than a typical rpg game can too. There is absolutely  nothing about the medium that makes it more possible in one genre but not the other. It's a matter of will, not capability. There aren't more compelling characters in Chrono Cross because they either didn't think compelling characters were needed (some how) or were incapable of creating compelling characters (or assumed they had) and trimming down the cast wouldn't have changed that. The issue with Chrono Cross isn't that they they tried developing too many characters and over extended themself, it's that they just didn't try to create any real characters integrated with the story at all, with the sole exception of Kid.

Quote

I recall having to change discs when you enter the Sea of Eden. So, CC was originally a 3-disc game, and that last disc doesn't hold a whole lot on it. I wonder if that's why the game doesn't let you get most of your old party members back as Lynx? Maybe the reason the third disc is so light on story content is because it has to make room for all your party members between disc one and disc two? Even so, doesn't excuse the stupidity of not getting to recruit Luccia or Greco a second time since they're available to Lynx anyway. If the sheer character count caused memory issues that kept them from doing more interesting things with the good half of the roster, well then that's another reason the not-so-good half should have been removed from the roster in the first place. I think we can all agree that 20-odd fully-baked playable characters would have been preferable to 40-odd barely-baked characters.

Ah is it? Guess I'm just plain mis remembering. The ending does have a live actions segment though which would explain where msot of that disc space goes to.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Jotari

[Lord_Brand]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I've said that several times now that it didn't. Those characters took nothing to create and that's why they are nothing characters. Davned's existence in no way took away from Ike's character in Path of Radiance. If a typical Fire Emblem game can have 50 characters as standard than a typical rpg game can too. There is absolutely  nothing about the medium that makes it more possible in one genre but not the other. It's a matter of will, not capability. There aren't more compelling characters in Chrono Cross because they either didn't think compelling characters were needed (some how) or were incapable of creating compelling characters (or assumed they had) and trimming down the cast wouldn't have changed that. The issue with Chrono Cross isn't that they they tried developing too many characters and over extended themself, it's that they just didn't try to create any real characters integrated with the story at all, with the sole exception of Kid.

Here are the key differences:

• Fire Emblem is built around having a large army of characters. Chrono Cross is not. In Fire Emblem, you can use upwards of ten characters at a time, giving you access to a fifth of the game's roster in most battles. In Chrono Cross, you only ever get to use three at a time, and one of those is fixed the first time through, giving you access to less than a tenth of the game's roster at any one time.
• With the exception of leads, Fire Emblem characters generally don't have dozens of dialogue boxes outside of personalized support conversations. And the support convos themselves are, with certain exceptions, unique to specific pairs of characters (the exceptions generally being stuff like the Awakening kids' convos with their fathers, which use the same basic dialogue regardless of who their father is save for a few little easter eggs like Virion admitting to Inigo that he's a skirt chaser himself). Meanwhile, in Chrono Cross, 90% of your party members have to share 90% of the dialogue boxes. Even Kid herself isn't immune to this.

The bloated roster is very much the reason we didn't get more backstory for the likes of Guile, because the developers chose to focus their time on programming in a talking turnip rather than giving Guile more scenes to tie him in to the game's story. They had to structure the dialogue such that virtually any two characters could be in the party along with the lead (which, along with the small number of unique techniques for each character, reminds one of how FFVII and FFVIII's player characters were practically interchangeable as well, only it's much more exacerbated here).

Large rosters work for a series like Fire Emblem because they're designed with such large rosters in mind. You're leading an army, after all. In Chrono Cross, you're leading a small band of adventurers into the wilds of El Nido; not exactly the kind of setup that warrants a huge roster of interchangeable characters. But the developers evidently went "yeah, sure, throw it in" and didn't bother to think of how that would impact the final product. And that sadly is very in-keeping with how Square developed RPGs at the time; if a team member had an idea, they'd use it no matter how well or ill it fit the project. There are a few concepts that didn't make it in, like a party member who was going to be the son of two characters from Trigger (Crono and Marle, perhaps?), but somehow the devs decided Poshul was more important that actual decent tie-ins to Trigger. (I don't think I've ever seen another video game that fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time like Chrono Cross does.)

My suggested pathing system would allow for a large number of potential playable characters with the caveat that only a handful will join your party in a given run through the game, which in turn makes the game highly replayable. The game could be designed around that pathing system, ensuring that you pick up a diverse array of playable characters without giving the player too many to manage at once. In a game like Chrono Cross, a roster of 12-18 by the end of the game is plenty, enough to give you at least 2-3 choices for each innate. That's how you manage a large potential roster in a game with a small party size: by limiting how much of the roster the player gets access to in a given playthrough, and doing your darnedest to make sure each path offers something compelling that makes experiencing it worthwhile.

[Acacia Sgt]

When it comes to the discs... it's probably the FMV's. At least, I remember reading up once that FFVII has the full game in all of its three discs, and it's only the FMV's that are unique to each one. So you can theoretically switch back to an earlier disc and keep playing... until the next FMV is meant to play, in which case you're forced to switch back.

I don't know if Cross' two discs (it's two, not three) work on the same logic. I'd think so, considering the disc swap happens at like... the 90% mark (with only Chronopolis and Terra Tower left to do as far the main story is considered), so there isn't that much content unique to disc 2 that couldn't have room in disc 1 if not for the FMV's. At the very least, I'm pretty sure some stuff (Dario, Criosphinx) can be done in both discs, so there's some data sharing at least.

Regarding the reason why Cross has the cast it does... I did say Kato himself explained it in an AE interview.

Quote

(Laughs) Kato: When we were working on Chrono Cross, we only created characters that were not good. Even though people would say, "Nobody needs Funguy," I was happy to write them. I did think to myself, "Now that I think about it, maybe I went too far with Funguy." But he had his own taste.

--At the time, I was thinking that with over 40 characters in the game, there would be characters like this (laughs).

(laughs). Kato: At that time, I was free to do whatever I wanted.

Even for Mojo, when I started thinking about the character, I thought, "Let's make a straw doll!" So he inevitably ended up in the first Arni village.

--The first straw doll is .......

Kato: As I said in my old strategy books, I asked Hiromichi Tanaka, "What kind of game is it if the first two friends you get when you start the game are a straw doll and a dog?"　He corrected me and said, "You need to start out with a heroine, a childhood friend, or a proper character to grab the player's attention."

--Was Mojo supposed to appear before Leena and Kid?

Kato: In the first scenario I wrote, Mojo was supposed to be dancing around in the scene where he meets up with Leena (laughs).

--(laughs).

Kato: Basically, I'm out of control. When I'm in the mood, I do whatever I want. But the calm people around me keep me in check. That's how it is with "Another Eden" every time (laughs).

(Laughs) Even though I do whatever I want, I only explain the bare minimum in the scenarios, so in Another Eden, I always get criticized by people who say things like, "I don't know what you're talking about," or "Ordinary people can't understand that.

Also, I think it was stated somewhere too, but they have said they weren't making Chrono Trigger 2. Which is why, despite the sequel status, Cross doesn't have that much direct correlations with Trigger in general.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[Lord_Brand]

2 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

When it comes to the discs... it's probably the FMV's. At least, I remember reading up once that FFVII has the full game in all of its three discs, and it's only the FMV's that are unique to each one. So you can theoretically switch back to an earlier disc and keep playing... until the next FMV is meant to play, in which case you're forced to switch back.

I don't know if Cross' two discs (it's two, not three) work on the same logic. I'd think so, considering the disc swap happens at like... the 90% mark (with only Chronopolis and Terra Tower left to do as far the main story is considered), so there isn't that much content unique to disc 2 that couldn't have room in disc 1 if not for the FMV's. At the very least, I'm pretty sure some stuff (Dario, Criosphinx) can be done in both discs, so there's some data sharing at least.

Regarding the reason why Cross has the cast it does... I did say Kato himself explained it in an AE interview.

Also, I think it was stated somewhere too, but they have said they weren't making Chrono Trigger 2. Which is why, despite the sequel status, Cross doesn't have that much direct correlations with Trigger in general.

Which tells me it shouldn't have been a sequel in the first place. It should have just been its own thing.

Earlier today, I had an idea for a completely different plot for Chrono Cross that involves Lynx - as an ordinary demi-human cat man, mind you - simply trying to eradicate humanity in the El Nido Archipelago with help from the six Dragon Gods. No Chronopolis, no FATE, none of that surrealist BS that ruins many a great RPG. Instead of Harle, Lynx would be aided by his daughter, a younger female cat person who wields daggers much like Kid (or maybe whips?), and who takes a liking to Serge despite her father's enmity towards humans.

Spoiler

Lynx's anti-human sentiment would stem from the death of his mate ten years ago, quite possibly connected to Serge's survival. Serge might be alive because Lynx's mate died, causing the cat man to resent the boy personally. Could be he was a friend of Serge's father before that. Would also explain why Arni Village is so bigoted towards demi-humans; one attacked and nearly killed one of their children, so they've distrusted demi-humans ever since.

Alternatively, it could turn out that Lynx's mate died protecting Serge from a panther demon, and a misunderstanding on both ends caused Wazuki and Lynx to blame the other, planting the seeds of enmity between them.

If the game has to push a message of anti-racism and environmentalism, I'd weave those themes into the plot much better. The game would give you chances to choose a more benign path as opposed to an a-hole path, and if you perform six great deeds (which generally involve improving human-demi relationships and helping the environment, and one of which could involve convincing Lynx to relinquish his grudge against humans), you're taught a certain song that you're told to perform before the Dragon God.

Spoiler

The purpose of the song would be to help quell the Dragon God's wrath as an alternative to slaying it, thereby proving humanity is capable of peaceful solutions. Thus, you earn the best ending by choosing to be kind and compassionate to others.

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Lord_Brand

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

Here are the key differences:

• Fire Emblem is built around having a large army of characters. Chrono Cross is not. In Fire Emblem, you can use upwards of ten characters at a time, giving you access to a fifth of the game's roster in most battles. In Chrono Cross, you only ever get to use three at a time, and one of those is fixed the first time through, giving you access to less than a tenth of the game's roster at any one time.

You really think those characters are magically going to be more developed if you could field more of them in combat at once? That's a purely gameplay function, not a narrative one. If Fire Emblem had smaller scope for it's gameplay then it could also only field only half a dozen units at once, like Final Fantasy Tactcis.

Quote

• With the exception of leads, Fire Emblem characters generally don't have dozens of dialogue boxes outside of personalized support conversations. And the support convos themselves are, with certain exceptions, unique to specific pairs of characters (the exceptions generally being stuff like the Awakening kids' convos with their fathers, which use the same basic dialogue regardless of who their father is save for a few little easter eggs like Virion admitting to Inigo that he's a skirt chaser himself). Meanwhile, in Chrono Cross, 90% of your party members have to share 90% of the dialogue boxes. Even Kid herself isn't immune to this.

So? Rpgs can have a support system too, absolutely nothing about the medium preventing that. Xenoblade has a support system which they call Heart to Hearts which is pretty much exactly like Fire Emblem.

Quote

The bloated roster is very much the reason we didn't get more backstory for the likes of Guile, because the developers chose to focus their time on programming in a talking turnip rather than giving Guile more scenes to tie him in to the game's story. They had to structure the dialogue such that virtually any two characters could be in the party along with the lead (which, along with the small number of unique techniques for each character, reminds one of how FFVII and FFVIII's player characters were practically interchangeable as well, only it's much more exacerbated here).

Structured dialogue is the issue (along with a mute protagonist who can't feasibly be a character for such a story), not the presence of more characters. You've just given an example of two games with smaller rosters that do the same thing to the game's detriment (of course both Final Fantasy games have way more developed casts because they actually involve the characters in the plots and neither actually does it that much)  

Quote

Large rosters work for a series like Fire Emblem because they're designed with such large rosters in mind. You're leading an army, after all. In Chrono Cross, you're leading a small band of adventurers into the wilds of El Nido; not exactly the kind of setup that warrants a huge roster of interchangeable characters. But the developers evidently went "yeah, sure, throw it in" and didn't bother to think of how that would impact the final product. And that sadly is very in-keeping with how Square developed RPGs at the time; if a team member had an idea, they'd use it no matter how well or ill it fit the project. There are a few concepts that didn't make it in, like a party member who was going to be the son of two characters from Trigger (Crono and Marle, perhaps?), but somehow the devs decided Poshul was more important that actual decent tie-ins to Trigger. (I don't think I've ever seen another video game that fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time like Chrono Cross does.)

Yes, that's exactly the issue. They didn't design the game around a large cast. That doesn't meant they couldn't. They didn't even try to design the game around the large cast. Like I said, it's not a case of them being over ambitious and failing to implement everyone, from the start Kid was the only character they bothered to develop in tandem with the story.

Quote

My suggested pathing system would allow for a large number of potential playable characters with the caveat that only a handful will join your party in a given run through the game, which in turn makes the game highly replayable. The game could be designed around that pathing system, ensuring that you pick up a diverse array of playable characters without giving the player too many to manage at once. In a game like Chrono Cross, a roster of 12-18 by the end of the game is plenty, enough to give you at least 2-3 choices for each innate. That's how you manage a large potential roster in a game with a small party size: by limiting how much of the roster the player gets access to in a given playthrough, and doing your darnedest to make sure each path offers something compelling that makes experiencing it worthwhile.

That's a bad argument if the logic is "too many characters takes away from existing characters", because all the characters still need to be created. Again, Fire Emblem. Recruiting a minor character half way through the game with their own place in the world or even just with a quirky personality does absolutely nothing to detract from the core characters the story and, when used at their best, enhance the main cast.

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Jotari