Chrono Compendium

Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => Polling => Topic started by: TheMage on October 23, 2011, 03:59:34 pm

Title: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: TheMage on October 23, 2011, 03:59:34 pm
I'm generally curious what other people think. Who out of the seven playable character's stories are a bit lacking. I often hear Ayla for an answer but in my opinion it's Crono. I know he's the silent protagonist but he doesn't seem to change, you know, except when he died, but that seemed to show us more about Marle and the others than Crono himself. What do ya think?
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Manly Man on October 23, 2011, 04:10:50 pm
I say Ayla. Even though you make a valid point with Crono, it's that he's always so involved with everything. Up until the point that he dies, he's always the main focus when it comes to making decisions, being the target of both the affection and malice of others, and that you're given so many choices with him, you develop him more than the game itself does.

Ayla, on the other hand, is given little opportunity to actually let her character blossom except for a few choice scenes during her era, most notably during the events of the Tyrano Lair. After that, she has little involvement with the plot, much like Magus when he finally joins your party. The both of them just make some offhand comments when they're in the active party, and that's about it.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Mr Bekkler on October 23, 2011, 05:09:36 pm
One thing the game did absolutely beautifully was its use of the sprites it had available. Crono didn't talk but he had a lot of personality. Think of all the times he pulls out his sword in front of an enemy, no doubt staring them down without even blinking, and he's supposed to be around 15 or 16 in CT. I don't know how well this is going to convey what I'm thinking but based on the choices the player makes through the game as Crono, and through his actions and the way the other characters reacted to him, I'd argue that not only does he have plenty of character development, but that he's actually a little more bad-ass than even Magus. *ducks projectiles*

I think Lucca lacked a lot of development. She was pretty much "smart nerd who is okay with her situation" for the entire game. The only real development we got was the red gate, and that didn't even change her attitude afterward. The game is the same whether you save her mom or not. The only difference is her mom is sitting or walking.

Ayla has little involvement with the plot, yes, but in our short time with her we grow to really know her and she overcomes a huge obstacle in her life, defeating the Reptites and saving her people, declaring her love for the strong and sticking to her ideals the whole way while coming to terms with the fact that in her own future she won't always be so strong. I think that's wonderful character development.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Synchronization on October 23, 2011, 08:51:32 pm
I can say it is almost certainly not Crono although no one anywhere besides this forum will believe me when I tell them that.  I'll tentatively agree that Lucca seems to develop the least since she keeps her objective scientific view of things throughout the game.  I'd like to see what everyone else has to say before voting though.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Kodokami on October 23, 2011, 10:09:34 pm
Speaking strictly of Chrono Trigger, it's true that Lucca receives very little character development outside of the red gate side quest. However, in Chrono Cross, her letter to Kid makes it clear that she has come to terms with her consequences as a time traveler. I think that's important, as none of the other characters appear to accept such responsibility. Let's also not forget that she essentially became a parent in this time, adopting Kid and taking on an entire orphanage.

To be honest, I think Janus is lacking in development, as his story is never given a clear resolution.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: TheMage on October 25, 2011, 01:51:33 am
You make some good points maybe Crono is more developed than I originally thought. He is after all the main character. I think its just the whole silent protagonist thing that got me. But he does go through the most changes and shows a lot of emotion.

All the characters don't really seem to notice the consequences of their actions well Lucca does in Cross, but she seems to be it.

Magus has some great history but his story does just kind of stop after he joins the team, thats true, though I did enjoy his side quest.

Frog probably changes the most through out Chrono Trigger i'd even go so far as saying maybe he has the most character development.

Robo has some good development too especially when you learn of motherbrain and Atropos.

Marle doesn't really change through out the game but she does go through some emotional changes I believe such as the relationship with her father and when she saves Crono she has some touching scenes.

Ayla never does come off very deep because she has such innocence about her in a sense. her intentions are clear she's confident and never seems to doubt herself or doubt that she is right and the reptites wrong. She does go through struggles though- hmmm
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: utunnels on October 25, 2011, 09:37:16 pm
I think it is Magus (or Janus if you treat them as the same person) from original Chrono Trigger.

But less developed =/= poorly developed, there are always characters that are there to make the storyline complete, nothing less and nothing more.

Due to the story setting, sometimes you can't take about a character without considering others. For example, Lucca & Robo, Magus & Frog, etc.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Lord J Esq on October 28, 2011, 05:14:01 pm
This is somewhat a subjective question because it depends on people's ability to perceive character development, which will vary from person to person. In terms of least plotline and mandatory screen-time, it's Ayla. But...

Robo is the character with the least connection to timelines outside his own and the fewest interpersonal relationships with other characters (both PC and NPC; he's pretty much just got Lucca and Atropos).

Crono has no dialogue whatsoever and is left deliberately vague.

I'd be inclined to vote for one of those two, but I'm withholding my vote for the time being, pending further consideration.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: maggiekarp on November 10, 2011, 08:23:37 pm
It's a pretty difficult question to answer since everyone's experiences are different and it's all open to interpretation, especially with the different translations. One person can consider Magus the most complex by picking and choosing the best lines from Woolsey, DS, and the unofficial translation, and his involvement in Radical Dreamers (and utunnels' trans of that) but it can easily be argued he's incredibly 2-dimensional if you stick to one game, one translation, and just what is presented to the player, withholding what WE project onto the characters.

The best default answer would probably be Crono, who is meant to be an avatar for the player, but you can't ignore the impact his/your death had in the game. It can be interpreted as the character being insignificant, or as a thematic device to show the entire team's/humanity's/YOUR insignificance in the face of death. All open to interpretation.

Then there's characters that seem to leave the story exactly how they entered it. They don't change or develop, you just find out more things about their core character as they go through the adventure. That doesn't make them flat, but they still qualify for the answer.

In the end I think the characters in this game were meant to be painted with very broad strokes so that we as players can fill in the details ourselves, even if we misinterpret a lot of actions.


Also I'm super glad Marle hasn't been everyone's answer so far yaaaaaaaay
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Mr Bekkler on November 10, 2011, 09:49:58 pm
Well Marle comes a long way in the game from a stereotypical tomboy runaway little princess to an action-hero woman who leaps through a giant window into the courtroom to stand up for what she believes in and save her father. That's a cool character, I'm not gonna lie.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Meushell on January 24, 2012, 02:25:22 am
I'd say Ayla. I believe she changed the least out of the group. By the time you meet her, she's already figured herself out. How she is, and how she wants to be.

Crono could be the least. It depends how you play and interpret his actions.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Tactless on January 24, 2012, 09:23:51 pm
At the expense of voting outside of the choices, Belthasar is a stubborn, one-dimensional dick. Quit doing so much goddamned science man, you're screwing reality up. You think he would've learned his lesson the first time he got sent to the future.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: maggiekarp on January 24, 2012, 09:44:47 pm
Submitting Lucca for nothing but science vote
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: CelestialPhantasm on February 11, 2012, 07:02:55 am
While a valid point has been made about Lucca- she is still not less developed than Ayla. In the case of both, we seem to have an already fully developed character whose attributes are revealed to us through various scenes in the game. Lucca has the advantage of more screen-time, a stronger connection to the other protagonists (Crono, Marle, Prometheus and to a lesser extent Glenn), and post Chrono-Trigger development (actual development). She therefore, at the very least, contributes more to the development of the others and of the plot itself.

The only seeming development on the part of Ayla is in the form of a contradiction- She affirms that the law of nature is: Strong live, weak die. (no change law).  She nonetheless extends a helping hand to the defeated Azala who, according to this law, has lost the right to live.  At the very least this makes Ayla a normal human, contradictory and prone to compassion (or sentimentality if you prefer)

However, it is also often difficult to distinguish between character exposition and character development. Perhaps Ayla always had this contradictory tendency. We don't know.

Anyway, I voted for Ayla rather hastily before reading your arguments,   :cry: but I don't necessarily regret it...
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Samopoznanie on February 12, 2012, 01:23:10 am
I would have to say Ayla. Not because of her lack of central involvement with the plot (a fair point), but because her primitive language doesn't doesn't have the same flexibility as the other characters'. The rest of the cast's dialogue is more or less plain english with subtle stylistic quirks (Frog's occasional medieval-isms, Marle's enthusiasm, Magus's brooding reflections). Which works great, as you can capture different moods and humour easily and still give them individual voices. Ayla, you're more restricted in how well you can express things as it has to be in cave[wo]man speak.

Interesting to see Crono as the runner up -- I guess silent protagonists are going out of fashion these days?  He was always a favourite of mine (after Frog), precisely because so much of his personality was left to your own imagination. The amount of creative license you had as far as what Crono was thinking or saying, combined with the clever use of sprites that Bekkler mentioned... I thought it worked great.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: CelestialPhantasm on February 12, 2012, 02:35:50 pm
When I am playing as Crono, I more or less feel like I AM Crono- I don't really consider this to be "creative license", but I suppose that is relative... However, once he is no longer a mandatory character, he becomes, for me, completely superfluous. I can take them out of the party to have more companions who speak, and yet I am still there.

Otherwise, it works as a concept, which is perhaps why Serge never ceases to be the lead figure in Chrono Cross. Therefore, I don't even find it reasonable to compare Crono to the other characters.

I don't think Ayla's language is the principal problem. None of the characters have an extremely sophisticated vocabulary. More expository and individualizing text could have been conceived for Ayla and subsequently grammatically destroyed- We might have taken it less seriously because of this, yet the content would be the same. Ayla is a very simple character. This simplicity is also part of her charm, yet, as heirs of our western culture which has thousands of years of history of science, art and philosophy (even if many of our contemporaries are not the most cultivated people, Chrono-fans seem to have some level of education and spiritual openness), we have trouble identifying with this level of simplicity.  It also leaves little place for development as the amount of potential development seems to be relative to the existing complexity.  By Ayla's terms, ANY amount of change in her character (the aforementioned contradiction as a possible example) represents a huge development.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Lennis on February 18, 2012, 11:27:42 pm
I felt they could have done more with Ayla.  I don't count Crono since he's the silent protagonist.

I've seen some interesting arguments for Lucca.  I never really considered her due to her legacy role in Chrono Cross.  Looking back at the red-gate side quest, we don't know how Lucca is able to create a gate that goes directly to her house in the past.  We also don't know why she suddenly decided to do this.  I'm not sure we even knew her mother was handicapped before this event.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Mr Bekkler on February 19, 2012, 04:57:56 am
When I am playing as Crono, I more or less feel like I AM Crono- I don't really consider this to be "creative license", but I suppose that is relative... However, once he is no longer a mandatory character, he becomes, for me, completely superfluous. I can take them out of the party to have more companions who speak, and yet I am still there.

Otherwise, it works as a concept, which is perhaps why Serge never ceases to be the lead figure in Chrono Cross. Therefore, I don't even find it reasonable to compare Crono to the other characters.

I don't think Ayla's language is the principal problem. None of the characters have an extremely sophisticated vocabulary. More expository and individualizing text could have been conceived for Ayla and subsequently grammatically destroyed- We might have taken it less seriously because of this, yet the content would be the same. Ayla is a very simple character. This simplicity is also part of her charm, yet, as heirs of our western culture which has thousands of years of history of science, art and philosophy (even if many of our contemporaries are not the most cultivated people, Chrono-fans seem to have some level of education and spiritual openness), we have trouble identifying with this level of simplicity.  It also leaves little place for development as the amount of potential development seems to be relative to the existing complexity.  By Ayla's terms, ANY amount of change in her character (the aforementioned contradiction as a possible example) represents a huge development.

To feed my Lucca argument, I will disagree that Ayla has little development with a few key points.

I've already stated my position that she grows a lot during the course of the game. She has to deal with a lot of issues, namely being chief of a tribe that is barely surviving near the beginning of an impending ice age, with a whole other species trying to kill them.

To supplement this, I'll quote your earlier post and bring my point full circle.
The only seeming development on the part of Ayla is in the form of a contradiction- She affirms that the law of nature is: Strong live, weak die. (no change law).  She nonetheless extends a helping hand to the defeated Azala who, according to this law, has lost the right to live.  At the very least this makes Ayla a normal human, contradictory and prone to compassion (or sentimentality if you prefer)

However, it is also often difficult to distinguish between character exposition and character development. Perhaps Ayla always had this contradictory tendency. We don't know.
We do know that the law of nature is also the law of her tribe: the strongest is the chief. If she had a contradictory tendency, she wouldn't be chief. What I mean is the tribe would likely see sympathizing with something "weak" as a character flaw in a younger Ayla (pre-chief status). If she had a consistent habit of letting the weak live and contradicting the tribe's seemingly only law, I find it highly unlikely that she would have ever gained chief status. This leads to the most simple and logical explanation, her mercy/sympathy/pity toward Azala is actually character development. She's learning from the team and they're rubbing off on her.

With most of the characters, especially Frog, the development is more spread out. I posit that Ayla does not have any less development, it's just more condensed. Her screen time is saturated with story.

All we know about Lucca is that she's nerdy, into science, is better at fixing things than building them, and thanks to the red gate, that she possibly blames herself for her mother's accident (though this has no effect on her actions or personality).
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: CelestialPhantasm on February 19, 2012, 05:56:28 pm
To feed my Lucca argument, I will disagree that Ayla has little development with a few key points.

I've already stated my position that she grows a lot during the course of the game. She has to deal with a lot of issues, namely being chief of a tribe that is barely surviving near the beginning of an impending ice age, with a whole other species trying to kill them.

To supplement this, I'll quote your earlier post and bring my point full circle.
The only seeming development on the part of Ayla is in the form of a contradiction- She affirms that the law of nature is: Strong live, weak die. (no change law).  She nonetheless extends a helping hand to the defeated Azala who, according to this law, has lost the right to live.  At the very least this makes Ayla a normal human, contradictory and prone to compassion (or sentimentality if you prefer)

However, it is also often difficult to distinguish between character exposition and character development. Perhaps Ayla always had this contradictory tendency. We don't know.
We do know that the law of nature is also the law of her tribe: the strongest is the chief. If she had a contradictory tendency, she wouldn't be chief. What I mean is the tribe would likely see sympathizing with something "weak" as a character flaw in a younger Ayla (pre-chief status). If she had a consistent habit of letting the weak live and contradicting the tribe's seemingly only law, I find it highly unlikely that she would have ever gained chief status. This leads to the most simple and logical explanation, her mercy/sympathy/pity toward Azala is actually character development. She's learning from the team and they're rubbing off on her.

With most of the characters, especially Frog, the development is more spread out. I posit that Ayla does not have any less development, it's just more condensed. Her screen time is saturated with story.

All we know about Lucca is that she's nerdy, into science, is better at fixing things than building them, and thanks to the red gate, that she possibly blames herself for her mother's accident (though this has no effect on her actions or personality).

One can only speculate as to how Crono and the others influenced Ayla so drastically in such a short time, this is however an interesting idea (through their having spared Azala at their first encounter with her?). I also wonder if Ayla even considered her action as a contradiction. Perhaps she was motivated by her respect for Azala's strength as a leader instead of pity for her weakness. After all, Ayla owed her victory largely to Crono and their other companion in this battle (we don't know how exactly things happened in the original timeline).

The fact that we can have this discussion about Ayla proves to some extent your point about her development. However, I find this density to be very much the problem. She is simple, and there is one contradictory scene that puts this simplicity into question.

Your argument is also rather one-sided. You present Ayla dramatically as a leader of a people on the verge of change etc- which she is. On the other hand, you play off Lucca's character as 2-dimensional by dividing it into pieces without coherency. Lucca has the same struggle of many a creator. She is passionate for her work, and this passion threatens to not leave her much time for human interaction. Nonetheless she is a human and has the same social needs as everyone else. Her relationship to Crono is exemplary of this. Their friendship (and most of us should know that male/female friendships are never completely platonic) seemed to play a secondary role in her life, and it was only through Crono's death that she truly began to appreciate this attachment. Of course, if she would have wanted a more intimate relationship with him, this makes her a tragic figure as this desire remained unfulfilled.

Her relationship to Robo is a fascinatingly ironic facsimile of this dilemma. Lucca is at first drawn to him because he is a machine, and not a human. The irony is that Robo quickly reveals himself to be as human as any other of the heroes. When he consoles her after the red-gate event, it is clear that she appreciates him as a person and a friend more than as a marvel of technology.

After having lost Crono (to Marle) and Robo (to the future), Lucca finds Kid in the forest. By taking up this role of mother and nurturer, she develops a new side to her love of man and apparently finds some kind of balance in her life, dividing her attention between inventing and running an orphanage- thereby filling to a large extent that emotional gap.

So while you are kind of right about Ayla, I feel you hadn't really reflected much about Lucca's character. To be honest, I hadn't either until you proposed this argument.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Mr Bekkler on February 19, 2012, 06:45:18 pm
And that's why discussion is so great!

I agree I may have summed up Lucca rather hastily, but a few of your points stand out to me as questionable. Particularly regarding her relationship with Crono, I tend to disagree with most people who say there was a sort of romantic connection there. I don't see it in the game's text, and from what I can tell, there is more evidence suggesting that that Lucca isn't even romantically interested in anyone, except for Toma in the slideshow ending. She even encourages Crono in the beginning of the game when she sees he has a girl with him. I think she sees him with a more sibling-esque attitude, rather than a romantic one.

While your point about finding Kid makes sense (and builds on her character rather nicely) in the grand scheme, in the original release that never happened. She simply said goodbye to Robo and let the gates close. We could have a whole other argument about the insights revealed in Chrono Cross, but I haven't brought any of that up because the choices in this thread's poll are exclusively Trigger characters, and because it's difficult to speak of Chrono Cross and character development without someone getting mad :-)

I really feel like Lucca is the product of the Dream Team making this game have something for everyone. She's there for those who feel Crono is too "sporty" to relate with. A number of people grow attached to Lucca specifically because she reminds them of themselves. Part of this role is the consistency. If her character was to radically change in a given moment (to parallel the Ayla/Azala development), maybe gain a huge amount of confidence and become arrogant and reckless, for example, she would have lost that connection with those players. I'm not arguing that it's a bad thing that she shows little change, that's why she's so relate-able.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Lennis on February 19, 2012, 09:07:46 pm
Maybe one thing that hurt Ayla's character development wasn't even her fault.  There are signs, through dialogue, that Ayla's world is changing forever.  The problem is that we don't see it.  Even when I played Chrono Trigger for the first time, I thought that rather jarring.  We really should have seen the snow begin to fall.

On the subject of Lucca, my view has always been that she has a sibling-like relationship with Crono, and I try to show that in my fiction through their friendly - and sometimes cutting - banter.  But it's also important to consider deeper character traits that may be hiding under the surface; something the character herself may not realize until exposed to an unexpected shock.  Consider what would happen if Lucca witnessed Crono and Marle in a passionate kiss.  Though she has never had romantic feelings for Crono before, she gets incredibly jealous anyway.  In this event, Lucca becomes very suddenly aware that her personal world has changed irrevocably and that a door has closed.  Assuming that Crono has been her only male friend, which is likely, her thinking would be that if she cannot be with him, then who could she be with?  Coming to terms with this would be an important moment in her character growth, but we can only guess in canon when this might happen.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: maggiekarp on February 20, 2012, 03:28:58 pm
Lucca seems pretty comfortable talking about attractive men, and actually seems surprised that Crono is hanging out with a cute girl, but we have no real way to tell for sure how many friends she and Crono had besides each other.


Also to chirp in on the argument of what kind of strength Ayla values: it's kind of out of the way dialogue, but they do say that Ayla found Kino as a baby and raised him. She says that the strong live and the weak die, but she clearly loves Kino and he's next in line to be chief if she dies, even if he says he's weak and wants to be stronger.

Maybe there's some subtleties we're missing in this culture, from the Ioka and Laruba disagreements to Ayla's own decisions. After all, the audience's language is the Reptite's language, not Ayla's first language.
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: Mr Bekkler on February 20, 2012, 04:19:27 pm
True, we don't even know what she considered to be strength. I mean, yes, she was physically strong (and Kino wasn't), but I think her rule applied to the emotionally strong as well, though Kino was never one for will power exactly... unless it's another line about "love".
Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: CelestialPhantasm on February 20, 2012, 06:05:45 pm
The strength of Lucca's affection for Crono is made clear in his resurrection scene with Lucca present. As I already mentioned, a strong platonic relationship is almost impossible to maintain between members of the opposite sex- this scene therefore clearly has extra-platonic implications. Even if Lucca can find other guys sexually attractive and had, until the events of Chrono Trigger, been distracted enough from their friendship by her work, Crono remains her closest male friend and it took his death and subsequent return to make her realize how much she meant to him.  She then loses him a second time to Marle and the court of Guardia. She also loses Robo who, at first through his connection to her passion for technology, and then later through his loyalty towards the one who saved his life twice and helped liberate him, had quickly become one of her closest friends.

So, there is a lot going on here. Chrono Cross' added story content is a natural development of this.  If people are to complain, let them complain! Chrono Cross is canon.

maggikarp: This is the first time I have heard this idea of their having different languages. I just assumed that Ayla and the other Cavemen spoke poor Japanese (poorer than the Reptites). It would make sense that they have different languages; however, it seems unlikely that every human around would be able to speak it at all, when the only other persons who speak it are the enemy. Aside from that, Ayla would have first addressed Crono and the others in the normal human language and not in that of the Reptite's.

and Lennis: Obviously it is no character's "fault" that he is the way he is. Ayla's abrupt and questionable development is a direct result of choices made by the creators.

as far as Kino goes: While I am tempted to make jokes about his sexual appeal, there were apparently no stronger men around (which is why he would have become chief when Ayla died), and Ayla may have simply preferred to have someone rather than no one (emotional/physical desires) / reproduce with the strongest available mate (this idea takes on a darwinistic flavor)



Title: Re: Which Chrono character has the least character development and why?
Post by: maggiekarp on February 20, 2012, 07:27:57 pm
maggikarp: This is the first time I have heard this idea of their having different languages. I just assumed that Ayla and the other Cavemen spoke poor Japanese (poorer than the Reptites). It would make sense that they have different languages; however, it seems unlikely that every human around would be able to speak it at all, when the only other persons who speak it are the enemy. Aside from that, Ayla would have first addressed Crono and the others in the normal human language and not in that of the Reptite's.

Technically she first greeted them by pinning Crono against the wall and humping him, and probably switched to Reptite when she heard them speak it. Aside from "Lavos", you also have the bobonga dance.