Author Topic: Masato Kato translated interview  (Read 13328 times)

r66y

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Masato Kato translated interview
« on: January 07, 2021, 07:06:26 pm »
Hi everyone,

This is the translated interview from 'Más allá del tiempo' ("Beyond time") to Masato Kato.

I didn't translate the introduction as there is nothing really new there, just a few lines for those who don't know who Masato Kato is.

I was falling sleep at the end (just in case I have some mistakes).

I hope you enjoy it.

 :roll:

Acacia Sgt

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2021, 09:45:46 pm »
Wait, you got the book?

r66y

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2021, 10:35:26 pm »
Yeah.

I bought it online.

Personally, I think most of the material is known by the fans. But there are some very interesting things plus the interviews.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2021, 03:27:47 am »
Quote
Regarding Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, the truth is that I did imagine a final episode of the Chrono trilogy, later in time than Chrono Trigger, in which Kid and the others had to save Crono, Marle and Lucca.

Mother of God.

Quote
Regarding some new release from the series, as I already mentioned, it would be a final chapter to the trilogy. But is not going to come out [laughs].

You can almost feel the pain in that statement. And that nails down that he probably has the story draft somewhere. We need to determine whether that other game he was working on, Another Eden, culminates at some point storywise with the rescue of three characters analogous to Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Boo's been working on it [here.

This raises the additional question of how this interfaces with the Ghost Children:

https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Ghost_Children.html

Depending on which theory is correct, it's either, they need to be saved because they died in the Fall of Guardia + burning orphanage, or, they need to be saved because of the Home World shenanigans related to that incredibly convoluted Dead Sea issue (why is Lavos's future restored in Home World, etc.) I'm inclined to believe it's the former, since the healing of dimensions with the Chrono Cross doesn't leave much room for Home World's future catastrophe to remain a problem.

So that probably means Crono and Marle definitively died in the Fall of Guardia, and as shades, perhaps through the planet or in some other way (like the ghost of Cyrus), appeared with Lucca to the Chrono Cross party. This could also open the question of whether the shades of Crono, Marle, and Lucca in Chrono Trigger DS's dimensional distortion also represent post-CT ending shades of themselves after their deaths.

Quote
"[Another Eden] has nothing to do with the Chrono series"

Cue talking Frog knight.

Huge thanks for translating this. Who knew, who knew...

Edit: This also begs the question, how do you save Crono/Marle/Lucca? Because there's a pretty established, canonical way to pull that off, using clone dolls and a Time Egg. I have to assume he wouldn't have gone via an established route like that...if Crono/Marle died in the Fall of Guardia, that's fairly straightforward—you just roll in and substitute the dolls with time frozen...or if you lacked the time freeze effect, you give Dalton and Porre a beatdown, and then enjoy the complete and utter clusterfuck in the timeline from stopping Porre's ascent. Likewise, if Lucca still dies in the orphanage, it suggests that Lynx/Harle's visitation is preserved in time despite the Ideal Timeline coming into existence via the healed dimensions—that'd be some truly hardcore Time Traveler's Immunity at work. Again, straightforward—grab Lucca at the right moment and get the hell out of there with the kids.

Surely, there has to have been a grander design; maybe Crono, Marle, and Lucca survive in the Ideal Timeline but got into some other kind of trouble?

« Last Edit: January 08, 2021, 03:47:55 am by ZeaLitY »

Acacia Sgt

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2021, 01:14:10 pm »
I'm gonna guess it would definitely be some other scenario than saving them at the Fall or whatever resulted from that (since it's the FoG that led to Lucca turning her home into an Orphanage). Also, if I remember correctly, there was another info stating Break was going to be like an all-star cast team up, so this rescue thing sounds like it would be early game stuff, or mid-game at the most.

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2021, 03:25:16 pm »
After playing part of Final Fantasy Dimensions II and Another Eden, I am pretty confident this wasn't going to be a standard time-travel romp a la Chrono Trigger (in which the goal is overwrite the timeline).

The rules of space-time in Another Eden are really wonky (time singularities existing at the same static location in all points of space-time, time quakes that will tear space-time apart, etc.), with there being both casual time loops (in which events were always destined to happen -- for example one character receives a cursed sword as a child from an adult version of herself, revealing that there is no origin for the sword), and the ability to actually alter/erase timelines (i.e. King Palisfal and the Oracle using the Visus Embryo to alter the timeline from the past).

But both games sort of play with time as non-linear; characters are often displaced in time and meet future (or past) versions of themselves. Timelines are changed and then those changes are reverted (counter-time experiment, perhaps?). So on and so forth. I think we would have seen more of this kind of thing in Chrono Break.

I also keep thinking that the 'Break' in Chrono Break is equivalent to the "breaking" of space-time as we see in Another Eden. Essentially, something destabilizes space-time to the point that it begins to quake and eventually be destroyed.

r66y

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2021, 06:03:47 pm »

You can almost feel the pain in that statement. And that nails down that he probably has the story draft somewhere...


I thought the same myself.
I hope for the PS6 they finally do it..

Razig

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2021, 05:16:56 pm »
After playing part of Final Fantasy Dimensions II and Another Eden, I am pretty confident this wasn't going to be a standard time-travel romp a la Chrono Trigger (in which the goal is overwrite the timeline).

The rules of space-time in Another Eden are really wonky (time singularities existing at the same static location in all points of space-time, time quakes that will tear space-time apart, etc.), with there being both casual time loops (in which events were always destined to happen -- for example one character receives a cursed sword as a child from an adult version of herself, revealing that there is no origin for the sword), and the ability to actually alter/erase timelines (i.e. King Palisfal and the Oracle using the Visus Embryo to alter the timeline from the past).

But both games sort of play with time as non-linear; characters are often displaced in time and meet future (or past) versions of themselves. Timelines are changed and then those changes are reverted (counter-time experiment, perhaps?). So on and so forth. I think we would have seen more of this kind of thing in Chrono Break.

I also keep thinking that the 'Break' in Chrono Break is equivalent to the "breaking" of space-time as we see in Another Eden. Essentially, something destabilizes space-time to the point that it begins to quake and eventually be destroyed.
If these games truly are an indication of what we would have seen in Chrono Break... I'm glad it never materialized.

A writer can use whatever rules he likes for the mechanics of time travel, but once those rules are established, he needs to stick to them. Causal loops may work for Another Eden, but Chrono Trigger does its best to avoid them. One could always conjure up a reason for why things work differently now, but retcons are always deeply unsatisfying in my opinion.

ZeaLitY

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2021, 05:58:37 pm »
I completely forgot that around 2015, someone saw Kato post this on his Facebook account:

And so, Kid, Serge, Crono, Lucca, Frog and Janus are gathered together in one chamber, Zurvan the sea of time is awakened, the curtain rises on the final battle.

~

Really kind of rules out the Fall of Guardia, right? It sounds like the final battle, as is tradition, is happening in some kind of space-time distortion (in this case, the Sea of Dreams). Crono and Lucca are party members as well, which indicate they've been saved by this point, so perhaps the ultimate aim wasn't to save them; rather, that was a midpoint chapter in his idea. It does beg the question of who the big boss is in the sea of dreams (oh god, please don't let it be interdimensional evil Schala-sama, sigh)

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #9 on: March 09, 2021, 09:43:06 pm »
Quote
And so, Kid, Serge, Crono, Lucca, Frog and Janus are gathered together in one chamber, Zurvan the sea of time is awakened, the curtain rises on the final battle.

I hadn't heard of this Facebook quote. Interesting that these were the six chosen. As much as I love Lucca, a little disappointing she'd be one of the Final Six. I can't imagine her having a heavy bearing on the plot.

Quote
Really kind of rules out the Fall of Guardia, right? It sounds like the final battle, as is tradition, is happening in some kind of space-time distortion (in this case, the Sea of Dreams). Crono and Lucca are party members as well, which indicate they've been saved by this point, so perhaps the ultimate aim wasn't to save them; rather, that was a midpoint chapter in his idea. It does beg the question of who the big boss is in the sea of dreams (oh god, please don't let it be interdimensional evil Schala-sama, sigh)

I could totally see the rescue of Lucca and Crono as being Act II. Time to change the future!

Acacia Sgt

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #10 on: March 09, 2021, 10:11:57 pm »
It was shown here some while ago, if I recall. Or was it on the Discord? I forgot, admittedly.

kaionaziozeno

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #11 on: March 10, 2021, 07:43:39 pm »
Quote
Regarding Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, the truth is that I did imagine a final episode of the Chrono trilogy, later in time than Chrono Trigger, in which Kid and the others had to save Crono, Marle and Lucca.

Mother of God.

Quote
Regarding some new release from the series, as I already mentioned, it would be a final chapter to the trilogy. But is not going to come out [laughs].

You can almost feel the pain in that statement. And that nails down that he probably has the story draft somewhere. We need to determine whether that other game he was working on, Another Eden, culminates at some point storywise with the rescue of three characters analogous to Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Boo's been working on it [here.

This raises the additional question of how this interfaces with the Ghost Children:

https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Ghost_Children.html

Depending on which theory is correct, it's either, they need to be saved because they died in the Fall of Guardia + burning orphanage, or, they need to be saved because of the Home World shenanigans related to that incredibly convoluted Dead Sea issue (why is Lavos's future restored in Home World, etc.) I'm inclined to believe it's the former, since the healing of dimensions with the Chrono Cross doesn't leave much room for Home World's future catastrophe to remain a problem.

So that probably means Crono and Marle definitively died in the Fall of Guardia, and as shades, perhaps through the planet or in some other way (like the ghost of Cyrus), appeared with Lucca to the Chrono Cross party. This could also open the question of whether the shades of Crono, Marle, and Lucca in Chrono Trigger DS's dimensional distortion also represent post-CT ending shades of themselves after their deaths.

Quote
"[Another Eden] has nothing to do with the Chrono series"

Cue talking Frog knight.

Huge thanks for translating this. Who knew, who knew...

Edit: This also begs the question, how do you save Crono/Marle/Lucca? Because there's a pretty established, canonical way to pull that off, using clone dolls and a Time Egg. I have to assume he wouldn't have gone via an established route like that...if Crono/Marle died in the Fall of Guardia, that's fairly straightforward—you just roll in and substitute the dolls with time frozen...or if you lacked the time freeze effect, you give Dalton and Porre a beatdown, and then enjoy the complete and utter clusterfuck in the timeline from stopping Porre's ascent. Likewise, if Lucca still dies in the orphanage, it suggests that Lynx/Harle's visitation is preserved in time despite the Ideal Timeline coming into existence via the healed dimensions—that'd be some truly hardcore Time Traveler's Immunity at work. Again, straightforward—grab Lucca at the right moment and get the hell out of there with the kids.

Surely, there has to have been a grander design; maybe Crono, Marle, and Lucca survive in the Ideal Timeline but got into some other kind of trouble?



Quote
Regarding Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, the truth is that I did imagine a final episode of the Chrono trilogy, later in time than Chrono Trigger, in which Kid and the others had to save Crono, Marle and Lucca.

Holy sh*t! This is exactly what I always think that would happen. When the DS version came, that became clear when Trigger's characters loose the battle to Dream devourer.

I also wrote a plot that how it would be: A new character, in future, work in Chronopolis looking for any time/timeline violations, when some disturb comes in his knowlege. Then he finds Kid/Schala, traveling in time to rescue her friends. Her first act is rescue Guile and restore his memory, and get success saving other Trigger's characters.
But eventually, the group discover that they need to confront the "Entity" to restore the flow of time, or something like that.

I thought about creating a game fan out of it, but gave up after losing my hope with Square.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2021, 07:48:52 pm by kaionaziozeno »

kaionaziozeno

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #12 on: March 10, 2021, 08:52:30 pm »
this kind of information makes me melancholy ... it makes me want to open a crowdfunding to raise money and hand it over to Square to do this sequence.

Magus_Brokenhart

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #13 on: March 17, 2021, 04:37:30 pm »
What was that about Another Eden having nothing to do with Trigger? In this interview that just came out yesterday he says that he is indirectly writing the story from the perspective of the future heroes from the erased timeline. Like he was doing the opposite of Chrono Trigger and having people from the future having to fix the changes time travelers from the past make.

Hell, with him not expecting to finish the trilogy Another Eden is as close as we are going to get.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJsLOFXAEGE

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Masato Kato translated interview
« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2022, 11:15:51 am »
Sjackson, are you real or a bot. You look like a bot but wanted to double check before I shut down your account. :)