Messages

91

Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: An Audacious Proposal

« on: June 08, 2009, 06:03:44 pm »

$32 million is within the bounds of what I was anticipating, actually (toward the high end, but not unexpected). We're talking about buying something from one of the biggest names in the game industry, and it could not possibly come cheap...but if we could convince even half the people who've bought a copy of Chrono Trigger over the years to throw in $20, we'd have enough and then some.

No offense, but I find this completely sickening. If someone or a community had $32 million to spend, I'd rather they spend it for a charitable organization or to help out those kids in poor countries that are starving so much they're forced to eat mud cakes with salty butter (true story). $32 million for a video game? Seriously? Obviously no one can save the world and stop poverty in the blink of an eye, but I know if I could raise 32 million bucks I wouldn't spend it on a potential video game.

Was Double Helix a startup, or has it been around awhile? That's the company Square Enix sold off/farmed out Front Mission to. If Double Helix is pretty fresh, maybe Square Enix really is willing to sell to anyone with the money.

I think SE just outsourced one installment to them like they outsourced FF3 and 4 DS to Matrix Software. I doubt they actually sold off the Front Mission series considering its creator Toshiro Tsuchida is still in the company.

92

Site Updates / Re: The Month That Could Have Been -- Chapter 11

« on: June 08, 2009, 05:25:13 pm »

I'm not sure, but had Marle not interfered, wouldn't Antaeus have simply been killed?

Yes, he would have been obliterated by Cedric's Frozen Flame. The point of divergence is when Marle fights the Heckran and two Porreans. She made the mistake of not finishing off one of these enemies (the Porrean who looks dead after the battle but doesn't disappear). During Cedric's little speech with the Frozen Flame, this survivor tries to attack Marle again and utterly fails, but this distracts Cedric and Antaeus steals his Flame. In the original timeline, Cedric would have killed the Heckran and Porreans himself, so Antaeus would never have got a hold of the Frozen Flame.

I love these cutscenes where you see the modified timeline but can deduce from what you see what happened in the original.

Another example of that is in 605 A.D. (in the previous videos), when Glenn has to choose between Porre or the Mystics or staying neutral. In the player's timeline, the two other party members left Glenn before this point because there were two wounded Vanguards at the entrance of the forest and they had to bring them to safety. However, in the previous timeline (without the player's intervention), Glenn had to carry these two soldiers to safety himself, so he never had to make a decision concerning the 3 Vanguard captains' dilemma. We had to plan each of the player's intervention in time really carefully to make sure the plot would actually go in the direction we want it to go.

93

Site Updates / Re: The Month That Could Have Been -- Chapter 11

« on: June 08, 2009, 11:54:12 am »

Zeality said the name Antaeus "popped right into his mind" so I don't know if there was a conscious or subconscious reference to the Antaeus of Lybia, who was defeated by Herakles (Hercules). Either way, when I first read his story outline I immediately thought about all these powerful images from mythology... Antaeus vs Herakles, David vs Goliath, the Covenant Ark, foundation myths, violent battles from the Old Testament and Norse legends, the wild, untamed landscapes and forests of Europe before any active urbanization had taken place... It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure it was after reading that part that I began to really think about joining the project.

94

Site Updates / Re: The Month That Could Have Been -- Chapter 11

« on: June 08, 2009, 10:37:52 am »

Yeah, in the original outline he seemed as badass as Cedric even before the transformation, and wielded a scythe called the RivenCrimse. It would have been great if this big humanoid form were his first, natural form and if something else was his tranformed state. Not something as large as Giga Gaia though, as he's still supposed to be human. But yeah, spriting takes time and inserting the data into the game takes even more time.

95

Submissions / Re: Crimson Mellow

« on: June 08, 2009, 07:11:19 am »

Nice work. That would have fit well in the game lol. (... )

Banners:

96

Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: French

« on: June 08, 2009, 06:55:08 am »

Yeah, the French version was translated directly from Japanese and doesn't use any name from the English version. Some names are the same as in Japanese (Alphard, Grandléon, etc.), some are the same but with a different spelling to conform with the French pronounciation system (Zhyle, Lynne, etc.), and some are localized names (Ibis for Sylbird, Gren for Frog, etc.). That said, I still haven't beat the French version...I have my copy for good measure but I finished the Japanese one that had English text.

What would be interesting would be to check what pronoun they gave to Azara. The English script says Azala is female but as far as I know her sex was never specified in Japanese.

97

Site Updates / Re: The Month That Could Have Been -- Chapter 11

« on: June 08, 2009, 06:31:51 am »

Holy cow, I just realized that when you put annotations in the special "Annotations" page (as opposed to directly on the video page) you have to click Publish for them to actually in the video... Aha, if you've already seen today's 3 vids you might want to watch them again to learn some tidbits about the "covenant ark" of the Chrono world, the original plot outline that didn't have the Reptite chapters, the Cold War of the 2100s and whatnot.

98

General Discussion / Re: New clothes...

« on: June 07, 2009, 11:37:49 pm »

Just look for photos of fashion shows on Google or Flickr. "Haute couture" designer's clothes can easily pass off as alien clothes considering no one ever wears them in real life.

For instance:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/f9e33b44/cols_fashion-35325.jpeg
http://flippyman.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/borat-in-catwalk.jpg
http://csos.movieset.com/download/movieset/o/b/old/bruno_cohen_fashion_show_2008.jpg
http://splendicity.com/metrostylemen/files/2009/02/men.jpg
http://b4tea.com/post/images/milan-crazy/1.jpg
http://photos.thefirstpost.co.uk/assets/library/090302nipmilan_9--123616277125548900.jpg

Even if you don't find anything interesting at least you'll have a good laugh

99

Site Updates / Re: Good News Bad News

« on: June 07, 2009, 10:59:02 pm »

They restored the timeline, and got Chronopolis back, but they still got the idea that they could really fuck up everything forever. That never really came up in CT or CC. It was more like a sugar coated version of what Crimson Echoes delivers so far. If this game had been released, it would have been censored a bit or else have a mature or adult rating or whatever the not for little kids thing is. The equivalent of pg13 in movies. It's not obscene, but there are some dark moments. And those are the most juicy. More juice!

And you haven't even seen the original plot outline >_> It was incredible, but even more violent than the final version. We changed it actually not (so much) because of the violence but other factors (it was fantastic in its own right, but...).

Something I forgot to say in the videos is that the "Breaking Point" and Reptite timeline were the big "shocking occurrence" of the game. CT and CC each had an unexpected, game-altering event. In CT it was Crono's death, and in CC it was Serge's body swap. Since CE focuses on an ensemble cast rather than one main character, the shocking occurrence affects everyone--that's the Reptite timeline.

If you're curious, SquareHaven had a very interesting article about Masato Kato's taste for shocking occurrences (he actually puts one in all his games, not just the Chrono series):

http://squarehaven.com/news/2006/06/11/Masato-Kato-The-M-Night-Shyamalan-of-gaming

100

Site Updates / Re: Good News Bad News

« on: June 07, 2009, 09:06:08 pm »

Well, if the chart here can be believed, CTDS did amazingly well for a game that really had very little done for it (and it's a very old game now, 13 years and a half?) It is fourth on the list! What more could SE really ask for?

Also, I've looked through all of the 31 videos for CE...simply amazing work there. Considering Square did the same with their bonus dungeons that you did (using existing tilesets), you did such a better job that it really should shame the company. Truly phenomenal work that I would of loved to play through myself!

Thanks. Concerning the article you linked, it should be noted that these are the sales for the fiscal year 2009, not the total sales of each games listed. For instance Crisis Core sold 0.84 million copies in FY2009 but sold 1.92 million copies since its release in 2007.

101

Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: Square Enix Not Impressed by CTDS Sales

« on: June 07, 2009, 03:30:27 pm »

Also present there was a translator and two employees from
Double Helix, the guys working on Front Mission Evolved.

Saw this on the official Front Mission blog:

http://blog.square-enix.com/fmpi/2009/06/e3_2009_report_-_2.html



This is Hashimoto (right) with two guys from Double Helix. Michael "Sax" Persson (center) is the vice president of Double Helix rather than a simple employee, but this pretty much confirms that the interview did happen.

EDIT: The two most recent Front Missions (FM 2089 and a DS remake of FM1) still sold like shit though according to most gaming news sites. They didn't even bother releasing them outside of Japan.

102

Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: Square Enix Not Impressed by CTDS Sales

« on: June 07, 2009, 08:11:53 am »

correction: FF is the reason SQUARESOFT stayed in business. almost no one originally squaresoft is left after the "merger," so it figures enix wants to take out those that prevented dragon quest from being number one, starting w/chrono.

You have no idea what you're talking about. 1/ A gigantic majority of Squaresoft people are still at Square Enix, unfortunately they don't all have executive powers. 2/ As V said above, the Enix part has not much say in the goings-on of Square, as the SE President Wada was the president of Square before the merger, and Vice President Hashimoto has been working at Square since 1995. 3/ Dragon Quest has always been number one. 4/ The creator of the Dragon Quest series has never been an Enix or Square or Square Enix employee to begin with. 5/ The merger is the reason Square stayed in business.

103

Site Updates / Re: Good News Bad News

« on: June 07, 2009, 07:44:32 am »

I can see it being Grobyc's predecessor, but Grobyc was constructed in 994 A.D. Also I hope you guys mention the StrongArm, seeing how Grobyc was going to be used for that... Overall I see this as your way of explaining Porre's takeover. Cyborgs! But, to me it seemed likely to be Grobyc after all it's been 11 years and he was meant for scientific purposes and it seemed in the beginning that Sorin was not really there for murder, he was going to use poison I mean, he kinda just thought it'd be easier. Sounds like him to me. Brothers perhaps, or maybe his best friend?

Grobyc wasn't constructed in 994 A.D.; he was born in 994 A.D. Remember, he's a cyborg (a robotically-enhanced human).

It was Chronopolis but that gets taken away.

Mmh, they've just restored the timeline...

104

Site Updates / Re: Good News Bad News

« on: June 06, 2009, 11:23:06 pm »

Well they're both cyborgs from the Porre army. Other than that...you'll see in later chapters.

105

Site Updates / Re: Good News Bad News

« on: June 06, 2009, 11:19:04 pm »

Oh by the way, Sorin (the Porre cyborg) had his own design as said in the video annotations. He was supposed to look like this: