chrono trigger reflections
part 1: my relationship with classic games
for a long time I avoided playing chrono trigger. I didn't want to play it exactly because it was so legendary. most often, if not for comfort, I go to media to become surprised and expand myself. when something is so popular it becomes absorbed into the culture itself. for every person inspired by chrono trigger and who makes something, I by extension have experienced a bit of chrono trigger for myself, or at least a piece of its spirit that lives within our collective imagination.
this pattern of mine didn't start so deliberately. actually, as a kid I just didn't get to have many games. the less popular ones would often be cheaper, so I'd gravitate towards them. as I got online I got into freeware games. I had as many formative experiences with all-time classics as I did with messy amateur (in the literal and positive sense) flash and freeware games. by my middle school years, it had become part of my identity to seek out the strange corners of neglected or outsider art. I love the way they surprise me, and give this sense of experiencing something on an equal level with the creator rather than having a consumer-producer relationship.
but even so, series like final fantasy, pokemon and megaman continued to be my favorites. even then, my favorite megaman was the lesser-praised megaman 8 and the battle network series--I still haven't played megaman X. with final fantasy, I latched on to 2, 4, 5, X and tactics advance where the most popular ones were 6 and 7. I'm sure on some level it was just as much a form of contrarianism, but it was also an expression of my own artistic values.
since then, starting about five years ago, I decided I want to catch up on and experience for myself all these classics I'd yet to experience. I always knew eventually it would be the time for them, and as I've grown older that defiant spirit of mine has calmed. I started to play various classic games like The Last of Us, FF6, Resident Evil 4 and so on. especially since akira toriyama's death last year, I wanted to make experiencing this game a priority. (I suppose these days my priorities stretch quite long!)
part 2: first encounter
when I started playing chrono trigger, my first thought was how gorgeous it was. it kept giving me this feeling like, "wow, the super nintendo can do this?" it made me think that people playing it back then must have felt things like that even more strongly.
it wasn't just gorgeous, it was animated. it's animated to a degree I think most games before and since haven't achieved the heights of. everything in the game is alive and moving, the animations and cutscenes express so much character that it feels like an anime transposed into a game.
that sensation is something that stayed with me the whole time I played it, that this game is about letting you play an akira toriyama anime instead of just watch it. for all dragon quest is, this is something it had never tried to do exactly. it gave me this recurring thought, like "ah, this must be the staff's way of trying to 'out-toriyama' dragon quest." (of course, I have no way to tell if this is true, so take it just as my imagination and personal impression.)
there's a scene fairly early on where you're put on trial, and the actions you take during the fare at the very start of the game are referenced. you don't even realize these actions of yours are being recorded, such as eating a sandwich that someone left on a table while they walked away, so it can easily come as quite a shock that the game is reacting to you on this level.
this sort of immersiveness and reactivity is everywhere in how the game is structured and presented. for example, many cutscenes and events happen in the world around you while you stay in control and may continue walking around. a few times, you're even meant to 'role play' in these live cutscenes as they play out around you and you participate in them. these are things I had associated mostly with crpgs and later narrative adventures like half-life, so I was quite surprised! at the time this must have felt truly groundbreaking, and I imagine it's a feat of engineering for the SNES that was only possible due to the wealth of experience squaresoft programmers had in working with the hardware and developing their knowledge in programming event-driven rpgs.
as the demands of high-fidelity graphics have monopolized all of game design around them, it's interesting how things chrono trigger accomplished in these ways are hardly achieved even in games that came soon after. as the PS1 era came, and particularly in the PS2 era and onwards to today, these sorts of ambitious experimentations with reactivity and immersion faded in favor of safer divisions between 'cutscene' and 'gameplay'. I couldn't help but think this game could only achieve something so amazing thanks to it being 2D.
fellow SMPS community member Effie once pointed out how '90's squaresoft appears to have had an affinity for keeping the character sprites as the focus of the attention. while some games would use portraits, final fantasy never did. instead, they focus on animating the characters on screen and using their body language and lo-fi expressions to tell the story. this way, as a player, one's attention is always on the full screen. when a cutscene starts the dialogue box isn't suddenly the only star, all the sprites on screen become performers in an impromptu play. when making chrono trigger they took this to its fullest extent, where even battles don't cut away to an alternate screen.
instead of random battles, the game uses static encounters. you'll run into an encounter zone and trigger the battle, and the enemies around you will jump into position to fight alongside your party. the animations enemies have as the battle starts are frequently unique and often humorous or creative, like an enemy crashing through a window unexpectedly or them bonking heads with each other as they scramble into position. in this way, that sense of playing an anime for yourself is taken to further heights.
this gives the game a 'material' feeling, like you're not looking at arbitrary representations of things on a screen, but that each sprite represents something consistent and tangible. the same chrono (the player insert character) that walks on maps is the one that fights in battle, looks out the window while some NPCs are talking on the other side of the room, and springs into animation during cutscenes.
it's amazing how even today this is something that feels novel to me. it made me realize that as time has gone on, what games are and how we make them has become quite set in stone. the "cutscene" has become an unquestionable aspect of games almost as much as shot-reverse-shot has become in film. this has both positive and negatives to it, but it did give me a quaint yearning for those times when videogames had yet to settle so much.
part 3: familiar... and uneasy.
I quickly came to see many of the ways chrono trigger was foundational to how people think about rpgs.
almost as soon as I started playing it, I thought "oh! this is an rpg maker game!" soon so much of the lineage of rpgs felt a good deal clearer to me. unlike the melodramatic final fantasy or quaint and whimsical dragon quest, chrono trigger is overtly humorous and self-aware, full of goofy vignettes that subvert your expectations and ocassionally even break the fourth wall. in this way it felt like a game I'd played dozens of times, except this time I got to experience the progenitor. in a way, this is a lot like when I tried Dragon Quest I or Ys I for the first time.
and then I continued to reflect on that lineage, and continued to see more and more of the familiar echoed. it's a simple, light hearted adventure story full of humour. it has a strong focus on presentation, with highly detailed spritework. it's a splashy 'roller-coaster ride' type game, full of distinct set pieces and dramatic plot turns, preferring to create tension through atmosphere and a light layer of friction rather than by being difficult, as most of all it wants to preserve the pace of the ride.
for one thing, it's a culmination of squaresoft's work in this style of game that started around ff3. it works so well that many look back on this era as squaresoft's golden age, if not among the heights of videogames ever! it's easy to understand why. it's a simple, lean and reliable narrative-forward formula that leans on things people really connect with--drama and adventure! during this time, squaresoft found their own way to transpose the pulp fantasy novel into a videogame.
for the last few years I've been studying it closely myself, as I feel it is a sustainable template for making affecting experiences that was abandoned perhaps too soon. so many of my favorite games were made during this period, and I look up to all of squaresoft's games around this time highly.
and yet.. I couldn't shake the feeling of being repelled by the game somehow. I was enjoying myself and appreciating all of its merits, but it wasn't reaching a place in my heart like many others. there was a 'magic' it lacked for me.
at first, I thought I was being unfair to it. we all have moments sometimes where we give things a hasty evaluation, or an association makes it harder to appreciate it. in this case, my mind kept drifting towards, well, indie games of today, and certain frustrations I have towards them. I can't help but connect that to chrono trigger, especially knowing what a keystone inspiration it often is--it's a humorous, presentation-forward game with a simple, light-hearted story. and often these days, I find myself a bit burned out by that exact sort of thing.
but that wasn't it, not exactly anyway. it's not that chrono trigger wasn't speaking to me because it resembled something I'm weary of, but rather that I realized there's something that all of these things are that I just don't connect with.
for one reason or another, it's just that the thing I love the most isn't the most popular. I think it is something that generally resonates with people, but it's nebulous and hard to define. and for some, I think, it can be uncomfortable or genuinely unappealing. it stops things with this quality, perhaps, from reaching the heights a game like chrono trigger is able to.
part 4: heart and darkness
and for me, that is what I'll call 'heart' and 'darkness'. I know these sound very vague, so what I want to do now is do my best to define what both of these words mean to me.
and I want to say, I feel quite confident the people making chrono trigger put their hearts into it. of all the things I felt while playing this game, I had this sense that the people making chrono trigger had a blast and gave it their all the entire way. I'm sure for them, they made (more or less) exactly the game they wanted to make, and it's clear they made something they're proud of.
I want to define 'heart' as a vulnerable quality of speaking to the human condition, particularly with compassion or tenderness. to me, a story full of 'heart' is one that seeks to, either in literal or metaphorical form, channel our sensitive thoughts and emotions around life into stories. love, loss, desire, ambition, sadness, rivalry, friendship, loneliness... a story about big emotions, joyous and tragic, told with compassion, rawness and vulnerability, even if simply. that's a story I'd consider to express the quality of 'heart'. this can range from the simple yet affecting melodrama of final fantasy to the deep reflections on desire, ambition and humanity in a novel like frankenstein. (I happen to be re-reading it right now)
and then there is 'darkness', which is not to say 'dark'. this one is more ephemeral for me to describe, but the exact feeling I want to describe is ephemerality, as in something mystical. it's the quality of a story to reach in to the edge of our consciousness, to bring out thoughts and emotions in the obscure corners of our minds, or to surprise us at the vast mysteriousness of either our world or a fictional one. often in fantasy, this is done through overt magical and mystical elements, which in their fiction blend the physical and metaphysical in wondrous ways.
sometimes it's a light touch, like the whimsical miracle of a wizard that turns a dire situation into a hopeful one, and sometimes it's something much more bizarre and dreamlike, such as a world that is itself a dream, or a parallel dimension that exists on the other side of a mirror. what if there was a library that contained every thought a person has ever had? what would you find? whatever they are, they're things that put us in touch, if just a tiny bit, with that sense of mystery and magic in existence.
these qualities don't make something better, they're just some of the things I like the most. I can understand how these qualities can even be a negative for others.
I don't think chrono trigger is quite the kind of game that expresses 'heart' or 'darkness'. its scenario is, overall, less personal. its characters adventure, for the most part, because they're thrown into it. it borders on 'heart' and 'darkness' often though. after all, it's a story about time travel, which especially from the start makes you wonder about causality and predestination. and there's a few plot beats in the story that begin to get personal and vulnerable but never take it to its conclusion, such as (spoilers) when you learn frog isn't cyrus as you may have assumed, but the meek glen who is devastated with guilt at the loss of his friend and abruptly overcomes it. after restoring the forest with robo, there is a tender scene in the woods where it feels the characters may finally (20 hours in) begin to open up with one another and talk about what they've experienced, but they never quite get there. (/spoilers)
but, overall, in the scenario these things aren't taken to the extent they tend to go in final fantasy, despite having a similar tone and aesthetic. chrono trigger isn't a heavily thematic or dramatic game in the same way. it has drama, but that drama is generally centered in things happening around the party rather than to them, especially past the early stages of the game.
the art and music do very much create a 'heart' and 'darkness' kind of atmosphere. the environments are detailed and evocative and have this sense of a strange and eminent world. the music is synthy and airy, creating wonder and mystery. that's part of what makes me feel the way I do, this incongruence I feel between what the scenario and presentation are telling me. chrono trigger doesn't (most of the time) signal itself like a light romp in the vein of Dragon Ball. it presents a scenario with weight to it, a story of tragedies that echo throughout ages, that ties it together with a plot device that interrogates causality itself.
part 5: scenario and time travel
at first I did really enjoy this game's time traveling scenario. in many time travel stories, the logistics or moral implications of time travel become the center of the story, often with an undertone like "one should not interfere with god's plans." it was refreshing for me that wasn't present here, and the protagonists freely meddle in history to achieve their goals and improve the world.
in chrono trigger's scenario, the time travel element serves to mash together various settings within fantasy and sci-fi into a single story. this exists itself in some pulp sci-fi/fantasy stories, but chrono trigger takes that and turns it into something you get to explore and meddle in yourself. I found this to be quite fun, if held down by the weight of its own ambition and its chaotic plotting.
in a typical piece of fiction, the writer creates a scenario around a single slice of time. when you create a world you weave themes and identity into the base fabric of your story. worldbuilding is already a complex, delicate and time-consuming process, so when you expand your work to create effectively five contiguous worlds rather than one, compromises are inevitably made. because there are so many time periods, that many more distinct scenarios are required, which must all stand on their own and relate to each other in a way that feels meaningful, and to the audience, worth the added burden of trying to learn so many disparate worlds.
in this case, chrono trigger's scenarios across its time periods generally lack the strong identity, unity and thematic depth that most of squaresoft's games at the time had. it felt like a race through each setpiece and time period, few of which were developed quite enough to deliver fully realized arcs with emotional impact and resolutions. there were so many different ideas and vignettes that they began to crowd one another for space and development resources, overlapping in ambiguous ways.
rather uncharacteristic of its contemporaries, chrono trigger lacks supporting characters that anchor and guide you through each scenario. both NPCs and the protagonists are mostly reactive, creating on a story that could rely on interesting villains, worldbuilding or character development in order to drive it. there's seeds of such things, particularly in the story of Janus and Zeal, but they become crowded out among the larger story and its meandering focus. in almost every instance, the delivery of the emotional moments was cut short, even by what could have been a single well-placed line or two (as is typical of squaresoft's storytelling). unfortunately, I can't say whether this comes down to the translation in this instance. it is likely a fault of the party structure, as being able to customize your party (with the rest implied to not be present) places significant restrictions on the writing during story events, limiting character interaction heavily.
in the end, the scenario in chrono trigger felt as though it contained fascimiles of dozens of different stories, nearly none of which were developed to their potential. rather than interconnect thoughtfully into a broader (even if diverse) narrative, these arcs came to feel to me like they were more in competition with one another. sometimes chrono trigger is about fun, adventure and youth, sometimes it's about hubris, sometimes it's about acceptance, and sometimes it's about forgiveness. sometimes it's even about time travel. these are things I can identify in retrospect, but while playing it the game felt like none of them. it felt like a game without a core identity that could only pull me from setpiece to setpiece to maintain its wow factor.
while chrono trigger isn't itself deserving of this blame, it is the kind of game I've grown weary of, the kind I'm often sad to see get the spotlight again and again-- a game that is fun, polished and well paced, but safe, lacking vulnerability or depth. the entire time it felt to me in tension with itself, of recreating the light-hearted narrative style Toriyama is known for, and the dark melodramatic house style of squaresoft. in the same way, its development staff itself was full of "big names" all with their own individual styles. I can't help but wonder to what extent they were all stepping on each other's toes, or that a lack of consensus led to such a wide range of ideas that struggled to consolidate with one another. when it does work, you see yuji horii's down-to-earth, beat-by-beat style marry with squaresoft's technical excellent at graphics and event programming. when it didn't, the story felt meandering and haphazard, uncertain and overly grandiose.
I can't help but see chrono trigger as representative of a bubbling hubris within squaresoft. it's a gorgeous, cinematic game with a scenario packed to the brim with ideas, yet it struggles under the weight of that ambition. and at least to me, loses sight of some of the things that make early squaresoft's work so resonant. their scenarios have always been somewhat chaotic, but they always made space to keep the drama and emotional arcs at the center. in these other games, each arc is curated thoughtfully to develop the plot, world, characters and themes. the worldbuilding has always been thin, but held together by visionary artists and musicians who use aesthetic language to support the story's themes, mood and identity.
it's a good lesson, perhaps, to be wary of having "too many cooks in the kitchen", and that the strongest team is one where every member's goal is to complement one another and work towards a shared goal, not (I presume) to merely accommodate one another. ironically, this may be squaresoft's traditional development approach (of incorporating everyone's ideas as much as possible) beginning to show its cracks, as at a certain scale it becomes unmaintainable.
part 6, conclusion: the 'darcy and elizabeth' problem
in pride and prejudice, mr. darcy and elizabeth initially misunderstand each other due to the way society's conventions form their interpretations of one another's behavior. once they finally speak frankly about their feelings and intentions, they go from despising each other to soon falling in love.
whenever I find myself not enjoying a game, if it's not just plainly not for me it's usually due to having miscalibrated expectations. I don't play games just to indulge my existing preferences (or at least, comfort gaming is a distinct mode for me), but to experience something different and see new ideas. doing my best to let go of my usual expectations is often necessary so I can achieve that, and the result is typically either having something new that I can distantly appreciate, or I find myself feeling expanded in a way I'd have never guessed.
this has happened quite a few times in the last few years, like when I played Disco Elysium, Resident Evil 2 and Death Stranding. at the start of all of them, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about them, but as I opened myself to them they gradually became a part of me, and today I count them as some of my most memorable and influential experiences. it's important to me to appreciate a game on its own terms and, at least as much as I can, focus on what it's offering rather than what I want from it. by getting my expectations out of the way, the things I myself impose on it, I can hopefully appreciate the thing I'm experiencing for what it is and get the most out of it.
it's unavoidably a lot harder to get those expectations out of the way with such a legendary game as chrono trigger. as a game I've heard praised so thoroughly, I couldn't help but play it with the expectation that I'd be impressed. and when that expectation met reality, that I'm not the kind of person it would wow, that incongruity was so great it was hard to reconcile. and it was especially harder because, at least to me, so much about its tone, aesthetic and narrative style suggested that it was trying to be that exact kind of thing that wows me. it left me teetering on the edge between anticipation and disappointment the entire time I played it, and I'm sure that sense of frustration seeded my apprehensive feelings.
when I play an obscure freeware game, it's usually something I have no expectations for. it's easy to go into it with an open mind and appreciate what it represents without qualification. similarly, I get this experience when I'm browsing through a list of ROMs and pick a game to play purely on vibes from the title or box-art. when I play a game I paid money for, even just the act of having paid money for it places a certain weight of expectation.
there's this ideal of appreciating art on its own terms, but then there's the reality that rarely quite works out that way. when we experience art, we're not an onlooker perceiving some distant, objective thing, we are forming a unique experience through the lens of ourselves, and that includes both our environment and the environment the game itself exists in. realistically, there's no way I couldn't have had high expectations for chrono trigger going into it, or read it the way I did. it's unfortunate, but it's a game that was inevitably going to be a mixed experience for me.
I think if I played it again now, I could appreciate it more just for what it is now that I know what to expect. It might be a good idea for me to replay it in japanese sometime, just in case there was something about the translation that reduced its narrative quality. kingdom hearts is a series I've always loved, but even so, I was quite surprised that when I played it in japanese, it was a much more tender and loving story than in english, almost overwhelmingly.
looking on this experience, I'm valuing it for the way it's taught me how what I care the most about compares to the mainstream. because I played this game like this and experienced these complicated feelings, I was able to put words to the some of the things that matter to me the most. generally, I prefer analyzing why things speak to me so that I can learn how to better incorporate that into my work. but with chrono trigger, particularly because it's such a unanimously praised and beloved game, it was a relief to not have loved it and get to voice these critical thoughts. I've always known there's a difference between what speaks to me the most and what's popular, and this game helped bring that into perspective for me, especially because it's so close to something else I love which does represent most qualities I seek out. (final fantasy)
it's helped me appreciate the things that others love about this game: it's fun, it's silly, it's punchy, always surprising you in little ways and absolutely gorgeous. as much as I've become a bit disappointed in what often feels to me like an over-emphasis on some of these qualities, seeing the egg of inspiration at the heart of that emphasis has helped me appreciate and respect it more. it shows me how meaningful these things are and how inseparable they are from the core joy at the heart of videogames: "look at these pretty pictures that are moving! you can make them do things! look at all the cool things you can do with them! it's amazing!"
that's an excitement I found joy in getting back in touch with despite my complicated experience. in embodying these qualities it really is a videogame of all time, as elemental of an experience as mario or space invaders, except instead of being for running or shooting, it's for cinematic flow and narrative integration.
it brings me happiness that a game as messy as chrono trigger can go on to become a universally beloved classic. it's a reminder to me that what matters most isn't perfection, but enhancing to the furthest extent the aspects that connect with people and bring them joy. in the end, I believe it's impossible to create a perfect work and not something worth pursuing. what matters is aiming to create something that speaks so deeply to someone that it continues to inspire them 30 years later.