Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion => Topic started by: FouCapitan on March 23, 2009, 03:54:51 am
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I'd like to take a moment to talk about what was one of the few things that actually bothered me about Chrono Cross' plot (besides the oft depressing or environmentally preachy moments).
The villains. While good and well done in their own right, there was not a single true enemy in the game with any story relevance that didn't have origins from an enemy in Chrono Trigger.
Think about it.
Lynx and FATE are both remnants of Mother Brain from Geno Dome.
The Porre Army was retconned to be definitely a product of Dalton.
The dragons were the creations of an alternate dimension's Reptite future population.
The Time Devourer was Lavos reincarnated from the Darkness Beyond Time.
The only enemies that can even be considered original are the Acacia Dragoons, who turn out aren't even your real enemies in the game.
Here's hoping that if there ever is a fourth installment to the Chronoverse, it will feature some stand alone new villains.
I guess the dwarfs can count as original villains, but they're so damn annoying I'm gonna choose to ignore their existence.
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I guess the dwarfs can count as original villains, but they're so damn annoying I'm gonna choose to ignore their existence.
Worlds to live by.
But you forgot Belthasar. He could qualify as a villain (if he engineered everything, he is responsible for things like Kid being poisoned, Wazuki becoming Lynx, the oppresion of the demihumans, etc). Also taken from CT, but he's definately given a new twist.
But I am curious; is there really anything to analyze or discuss with this issue?
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It's the sequel to CT, so obviously it has lots of elements that have their origins in CT.
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I guess the dwarfs can count as original villains, but they're so damn annoying I'm gonna choose to ignore their existence.
Worlds to live by.
But you forgot Belthasar. He could qualify as a villain (if he engineered everything, he is responsible for things like Kid being poisoned, Wazuki becoming Lynx, the oppresion of the demihumans, etc). Also taken from CT, but he's definately given a new twist.
But I am curious; is there really anything to analyze or discuss with this issue?
I was kind of hoping to be enlightened with some major antagonist that I skimmed over with no relation to the previous title. Belthasar is a new twist, but in the end his meddling causes things to work out with the DoT & Schala. So despite his scheming, I can't really count him as a villain, since his work ultimately saves all of time itself.
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And I can't help but think that Belthasar in all his genius would have calculated the chance of success versus the chance of failure, and then decided that the necessary evil of splitting the dimensions and affecting the lives of countless individuals would be worth the ultimate goal of destroying the Time Devourer and freeing Schala.
If the chance of failure was significantly high, I don't think that Belthasar would have gone through with it. I don't think it is in the nature of his character to just be all "well this is what I want so I'm going to just play God and screw all of you over for a bit".
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Well its not as if Belthasar really had much of a choice, if left the time devourer would have destroyed everything eventually.
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An 'end justify the means' situation that's perfectly valid. As such, after what he did and what happened thanks to him, I don't consider him a villain.
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huh? one of the most recurrent complaints about Cross is its deviation from the chrono trigger world and characters, or so I've heard. And the few things that do link CC with CT also get criticized?
So if I shoot and miss, I lose, and if I shoot and hit, I lose aswell. Is there a way for CC to ever win?
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I don't think it is in the nature of his character to just be all "well this is what I want so I'm going to just play God and screw all of you over for a bit".
Belthasar:
Well, that research led to
the creation of Chronopolis
and to the Time Crash...
You might think I really
blew it, but perhaps it
was really my finest hour!
Ho-ho-hoh...
This quote seems to imply otherwise. He's laughing at the Time Crash and Polis War :/
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Or is it? It could be laughing since his plan was working as planned. After all, the Time Crash was a very important step.
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The ends justify the means? Really?
Consider Magneto. His end goal is to create world where mutants are safe and can live at peace. His means are to erradicate all non-mutants.
Consider Big Brother from 1984. The end goal is to create a stable world order, free from chaos. The means is to control the lives of every human on the planet.
Consider the Borg from Star Trek. Their end goal is to reach the height of technological and biological life. Their means is to assimilate anything and everything different than themselves.
No, the ends do not justify the means. Indeed, improper means can only lead to an improper end.
Consider, at the end of CC, what Schala tells us:
The '"eggs"' that we call planets...
And the innumerable '"spermatozoa"'
which gather around these
that we call life-forms...
When one of those countless seeds
inseminates a planet,
a new universe is born.
But until that occurs,
hundreds of millions of years will pass,
and innumerable life-forms will be born,
then die...
That is the be-all and end-all.
Everything exists for that one moment.
All so that the universe can evolve
into the next dimension...
The TD was evolving into the next dimension (admittedly, a dimension in which it could consume the old, like a new born plant consuming the seed it was contained in for food). It was the "be-all and end-all" of everything. All of existence had led up to that one point. And Belthasar stopped it.
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Was the TD really aiming for that?
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The TD? Dunno, but if we believe that ending narative, the universe was aiming for the TD.
EDIT: I suppose it would be good for me to state that I'm largely playing the devil's advocate. I don't think B is a villain, but he's terribly close to one.
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The TD? Dunno, but if we believe that ending narative, the universe was aiming for the TD.
EDIT: I suppose it would be good for me to state that I'm largely playing the devil's advocate. I don't think B is a villain, but he's terribly close to one.
I think it's more like the TD was accelerating it. Besides, doesn't the Time Devourer consuming all space/time means that no matter where or when you are in it, you aren't safe from it? Probably not the same case as in the one told in the ending.
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Unless I missed something, which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest so correct me if I'm wrong, but at least by the looks of it the Time devourer was a combination of all the dragons, but if they're reptites then how is the time devourer a reincarnated Lavos?
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The Dragon God is all the dragons as one. The Time Devourer consumed the Dragon God already since a long time ago.
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So the thing that all the dragons turned into was the dragon god which the Time devourer consumed?
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Unless I missed something, which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest so correct me if I'm wrong, but at least by the looks of it the Time devourer was a combination of all the dragons, but if they're reptites then how is the time devourer a reincarnated Lavos?
Going from memory, so I may be wrong about a few things.
Lavos was sent to the DBT after the time period in which he reigned was destroyed by Crono killing his past self. His power was so great though, that he was able to absorb power in the DBT still, where he became connected to Schala who was also sent to there in the Ocean Palace disaster.
The dragons were part of an alternate timeline sent back to the distant past along with Chronopolis. Seeing as the thriving city of the Reptites was not part of the primary timeline, it can be assumed that it was pulled from the DBT. In that case, Lavos likely had a hand in their being sent back with Chronopolis. The dragon god was no longer simply the pinnacle of Reptite engineering, but a vessel for the Time Devourer in Serge's time period.
At least that's what I thought was going on.
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Actually, it was pulled from the Reptite Dimension, and by the planet (or Entity? Unless they are one and the same).
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Schala and Belthasar wanted Serge to fuck the planet before Lavos did so his spermies would get there first, it's not hard to understand.
As for ends justifying the means, while it wasn't really considered a bad thing in CT, CC did make a big point about Crono and co. erasing the original future being a naughty thing to do.
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literally lol, Maggiekarp. :D
Belthasar:
Well, that research led to
the creation of Chronopolis
and to the Time Crash...
You might think I really
blew it, but perhaps it
was really my finest hour!
Ho-ho-hoh...
This quote seems to imply otherwise. He's laughing at the Time Crash and Polis War :/
How I always interpreted this quote was that he was commenting that from an outside perspective it would look like he really fucked up, but in reality he didn't. The Time Crash wasn't an accident. He planned everything from the start. He was just bragging here. I wouldn't take from it a sinister laugh of indifference towards all the lives that he affected.
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huh? one of the most recurrent complaints about Cross is its deviation from the chrono trigger world and characters, or so I've heard. And the few things that do link CC with CT also get criticized?
So if I shoot and miss, I lose, and if I shoot and hit, I lose aswell. Is there a way for CC to ever win?
Unfortunately, no. Most people don't like to fight the same thing over and over and over, but they do like to fight new things WITH the same PC's. Now in Cross's case, they got it backwards. Too many new goodguys. Too many old badguys. That's the biggest reason it received and still does receive such an adverse reaction from diehard CT fans.
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Okay... So you just proved that CC does link to CT... And your problem is...?
Seriously, people need to stop whining. First it's not close enough to CT, and when it is it's not good either.
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Not whining. And I know it connects with CT. But that's the reason.
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If I'm whining about anything it's that Lynx started out as an excellent stand alone villain. Dark, mysterious, stealing your body, screwing you over big time, and then in the end he's just a puppet for an alternate future's Mother Brain. It seemed a bit anti-climactic and left the game lacking any villains formed specifically for this story.
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Agreed. At least he got a strong start, though.
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Let's not misunderstand Lynx. He merged with FATE, he wasn't really FATE from the beginning. He was his own person, while FATE resided at Chronopolis. Sure, he may have been controlled by FATE (or merely loyal to him), but he wasn't the same being from the start.
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This thread seems less like an actual Analysis thread and more like a, "I don't like this about it, prove me wrong?" type of General Chrono Discussion-type of thread...
Anyways, CC is full of a shitton of mini-bosses that are basically there to get between Serge and Lynx/FATE/the Dragons/Devourer of Time...
Noteable non-recycled bosses though: party members, the Fort Dragonia bosses, Garai, Dario, Miguel and maybe the Hydra if you choose the path where you get to fight the De-Hydrate...oh, and then there's Criosphinx...That was a kind of interesting addition (though he was never explained, really)...
Oh, would the Atropos Vita count as a recycle?
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Only in name, since it's not related to CT Atropos in any other way.
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It could be since the Vitas basically act as the guardians of Chronopolis, where both FATE (/Mother Brain recycle) & the Prometheus circuit (Robo recycle! lol) would be...Maybe they recycled Atropos in a similar way to create the Vitas (one of them is pink even)...
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Don't think so, since the name of the three Vitas were taken from those of the Greeks' Three Fates.
Considering that, it doesn't have a relation with the robot Atropos. But then again, Robo's name was also taken from Greek mythology. A connection, but since the name of the other R-Series was never given, there is no definite answer there.
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Acacia Sgt is right. Atropos is the name given to the statue, which looks like the Greek goddess, not the guardian machine. Besides, Robo's "girlfriend" was called Atropos XR. It wasn't necessarily "the" unique Atropos of the Chrono world.
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Wait, are you saying that since the Vitas of CC were named for the Fates that there couldn't be a connection to Atropos from CT, who was the first character in the series to be named after one of the Fates?? How is that not a striking connection? It's even relatively easy to connect the Vitas with two other characters (or components of those characters anyways) from that first character's background. I agree there's no definite answer, but it seems like a fairly big coincidence for there to be no relation at all...
If nothing else, it's probably a quirk of the Mother Brain that named Atropos that way, since Atropos in mythology was the eldest sister who cut the threads of fate (much like Mother Brain was trying to accomplish with the humans)...then the Mother Brain was ironically used to create FATE...perhaps it was those remnants that used the knowledge of the Fates to create FATE's 3 guardians...or else it was the creator of FATE that remade Atropos, but chose to include her 2 sisters as safeguards...FATE itself really imitates the Fates of mythology when you think about it....
XR is her model type. Robo is an R-type. XR probably means she was the first of the R-types..."X" is usually connotative with experimental in these terms (ala PSX).
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Taking a look in the encyclopedia, it appears that her name was "Atropos 145" in Japanese. Thus, the prototype concept wouldn't fit.
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Well then it's even less meaningless and it's just a random model number...I wonder why that number was chosen, though...
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Perhaps it was Kato's high score in Frogger. But seriously, most likely it was random.
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Chrono Cross is all about Crono Trigger then...Don't see why people complain that it was so difference. There are so many connections.
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The connections are there, it's just that for the most part you gotta dig for 'em or else they're just vague references & Easter egg-type stuff for the more hardcore fans, I think...Or else revealed in the last 15-minutes...>_>
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At least from my knowledge, most of the people complaining about how they're nothing alike are the people who are too lazy to look for the similarities.
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When I first heard about and saw Cross, I was a bit put-off that it didn't see directly related to Trigger. So, I didn't try to hard to find a way to play it. Having read through some of this stuff, though, I'm more looking forward to getting a chance to play, now that I have that available to me.