Hello guys! First-time poster here.
As someone who started out by playing
Chrono Cross first (though I'd certainly heard of
Trigger's richly-deserved gilded reputation beforehand), and then played
Trigger after, I ultimately feel that
Cross's greatest fault is not so much that the plot/scenario and tone of the game was bad, but that it was ultimately so far divorced from the plot and tone of
Trigger that the
feel of the 'series' (or in other words, the overall narrative and motif that fans of CT had come to believe that the Chrono series was all about) was lost in translation. The factors people feel are responsible for this 'disconnect' are numerous and varied (it's a commonly-held opinion that has divided the fanbase, and all who hold it will mention different things as to why), and have been mentioned many times before (on this forum and others); but for me, I feel that the major ones are as follows:
1)
The fact that the main protagonist of Cross, Serge, is a completely brand-new character to the Chrono series who not only suffers from the lack of any clear personal motivation or purpose to his journey as we’re trying to invest ourselves in him, but also from the fact that has no clear connections to any member of the main cast of Trigger or it’s story whatsoever. I’ll elaborate on this later on, as I feel it generally encapsulates many(if not all) of these factors into a single product.
2)
The noticeable lack of presence of Trigger’s main cast in Cross 3)
The notable lack of solid, tangible connections from CT to CC to not only be found and seen in CC, but ultimately FELT, even. 4)
A confusing, unevenly paced, and ultimately somewhat disjointed narrative that tends to lack clarity of direction in key areas and ultimately leads to an uncertain (and arguably unsatisfying) resolution In short,
Chrono Cross suffers from a perception problem: players not only generally find CC’s story hard to follow and understand completely as a whole, but due to all the differences between CT and CC, they also find it hard to perceive that the story of CC ‘belongs’ in the same universe as the story of CT. The differences can be anywhere from subtle to absolute opposites: different characters given the same name, the same characters given differences in appearance or motivation, art style, change in tone and content of narrative from light to dark, clear and simply told story as opposed to a complex and non-linear narrative, and so forth.
And ultimately, I feel that the differences from CT to CC, or more to the point, the often-mentioned disconnect between them, are most encapsulated in and by the main character in CC, Serge. Why? I'll explain below, but please bear with me as it's a bit long
As I mentioned above, Serge is a brand-new character to the Chrono Series who has no clear connections to either the story of Chrono Trigger or any of its principal characters. He doesn’t know who any of the CT cast is, nor does he even know or even perceive of anything they did in the events of that game. In short, to Serge, the CT cast has had such little impact on his existence that they might as well have never even
existed. And even if we expand to the overall story and all the other characters in it, it doesn’t get much better; In fact, Serge’s only real connection to anything in
Trigger at all is the one he shares with Schala (a minor, though certainly memorable and beloved, NPC). And even that connection is frankly, quite shaky; it basically amounts to the fact that he happened to be a child who's life Schala chose to save. Nothing more, nothing less. Furthermore, we are only made aware of that 'connection' late in the game (in either Terra Tower or in Opassa Beach before the Time Devourer fight which basically amounts to the same thing really), and even then, we are never told of a specific or even substantial reason as to
why that connection came to be (presumably, Schala chose to save Serge out of the goodness of her heart, or whatever remained of it while she was fusing with Lavos to be the TD in the Darkness Beyond Time, but then we are still left with other unanswered questions, such as why Schala chose Serge specifically and so forth). In short, we’re put into the shoes of a 17-year-old boy who we know little-to-nothing about and are asked to invest ourselves in his story and journey for the next 50+ hours we will be playing as him.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with this per se; it’s basically the same thing we’re asked to do with almost every main character(s) in any RPG we play. However (and this applies many, many, MANY times over for those who played
Trigger before
Cross), there is a snag here: generally, we’re asked to do this for characters in brand-new worlds and universes/timelines, so we are absolutely free of any sort of expectations and are free to base our connections/opinions to nothing other than the innate merits of the characters and their overall story. Serge, unfortunately, doesn’t have this benefit, because the greater world/universe Serge lives in is
not a brand-new one, it’s one that we’re
going back to after having seen it though the eyes of others. Sure, Kato and co. may have tried to minimize the burden Serge (and, indeed
Cross) had to bear by having about 98% of the game take place in brand-new areas not present in CT, but ultimately, it doesn’t work for the same reason that expecting a brand-new side-story Chrono game (even if it features a new cast that takes place in times not visited by Crono’s party) to be divorced from the expectations that CT would put on it is utter folly: it cannot escape the fact that it exists as part of the same narrative. Any story in that universe’s myth arc is by nature linked to everything else in it (especially what came BEFORE it), and trying to play down or hide those links not only does not free those stories (and their characters) to be judged on their merits, but furthermore does the opposite: it hinders that story’s (and those characters’) chances of being favorably received or appreciated.
So already, to the people who’ve played CT and/or follow the myth arc as an overall narrative, Serge has to deal with the problem of having to generate interest in himself and his story in an audience that for the most part will be pre-inclined to judge the worth of his character and his story on how it fits into the greater
Chrono story already told. As you can imagine, this is not the most favorable of circumstances to be thrown into. Instead of players approaching him saying ‘I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m eager to find out’, he has players saying ‘Who is this guy I’ve never heard of before, and why should I care?’. Really, there’s only one possible way Serge can overcome the position he’s in, the perception players have of him, and the questions it asks of him, and it’s this: To quickly build himself up as a compelling character who not only has a worthy quest to embark on, but clear, logical, and ultimately moving personal reasons that would inspire the player to emotionally invest themselves in his story. Only by being a character with a personal story people both understand and literally can’t help but try and unravel can Serge hope to overcome the weight of expectation players who know CT would have in his story (or at least, overcome them enough to make those players actually care about or appreciate him).
Unfortunately, Serge never really becomes this sort of character until the end of the game (and there are some who would say he never becomes this sort of character at all). And even when he does, his development and importance as a character is instead mostly grounded in his function as a previously-unknown-but-later-revealed key to the plot as opposed to growing into a driving force of said plot through any personal growth or development he had as a character. The overall purpose of his quest is often unclear, and what turns out to be his ultimate objective (saving Schala) is never even referenced until the very end, after numerous twists and turns that render his overall story complicated at best and incomprehensible at worst. In short, his importance to the story ultimately becomes clear, but it’s not so much that we gradually discover it with him through the quest as we play it so much as we suddenly have it told to us near the end of the game, info-dump style. Furthermore, what little connections he has to the CT story and the overall Chrono saga are similarly hidden, and revealed even later, also info-dump style, with little-to-no noticeable impact on his overall story until the very end.
In addition to all of the above, we don’t even really have the benefit of being able to truly put ourselves in Serge’s shoes and mind and either understand him as a character or understand his motivations as to why he does what he does in the story. We are never privy to Serge’s own motivations, goals, dreams, or desires, or what personally drives him to search for the Flame, Lynx, or ultimately, what drives him to risk his very existence in trying to save Schala from the TD in the DBT. We rarely know what he,
as an individual wants to get out of the overall CC quest (a quest which he undertakes as a central protagonist) at any given time; and even when we do know, we know precious little other than that he wants to achieve a stated goal, with his feelings on the situation left up in the air to be guessed at by the player. In other words, we as players may have a reason to see how Serge’s story plays out, but it’s like these reasons are more dependent on ourselves as opposed to being inspired through Serge’s own motivations. He is, for the great majority of the game, less the focal point and engine through which we see the story being told in the way it is, and more of a blue-haired male sprite along for the ride as an avatar of ourselves as we discover the story. This lack of insight we have into his character, combined with the sense that Serge is not as effective an engine to the story as his protagonist role would lead us to expect, makes it difficult for us to establish the emotional connection with him that we need to make us truly want to invest ourselves in him and his story, let alone make us care enough to appreciate his ultimate importance to the overall narrative in the Chrono series.
The final result of all this is that Serge’s story culminates in him saving Schala, uniting the divided timelines, and finally saving all of space-time from an entity determined to destroy it from existence. Through his actions, he is the greatest hero of the Chrono series in terms of his deeds and the impact of those deeds on the well-being of the world and universe. But yet, we never feel he achieved all this through the completion of his personal quest; we don’t feel as if any of these deeds started out as goals he was motivated to fulfill on a personal sense, or that they became the culmination of his choices and reactions to the story on a personal scale. Rather, it almost feels like he was a designated hero who happened to be chosen to do them by others, both in-game (Balthazar) and out-of-game (Kato and the creative team), and had little choice but to do so, because that was the role he was ultimately put in the Chrono series to fill. This is ultimately unsatisfying, especially in light of the personal, character-driven plot of CT that came before, which involved a protagonist who grew into his role and a cast of individuals who’s personal motivations were the engine that made the story go.
Does this mean that Serge was a bad character, or that his story was uninteresting, or that CC was overall a bad product because of it? No, in fact I feel that the opposite of all those statements is true. But in light of what came before, does it all mean that he was not quite the type of character with the type of story that would have been best suited to deliver the next chapter in the Chrono myth arc, especially given the role he was called upon to fulfill? In my mind, there is no doubt that the answer is yes. And ultimately, I believe that was the overall problem with Chrono Cross: it was an interesting story with great characters on its own merits, but it ultimately failed at being a good fit as the next story in the Chrono myth arc proper due to a narrative and spiritual disconnect between its story and that of Chrono Trigger. And in that comes the tragedy of it: Kato and his team may have wanted to create a new game free from the shadow of CT, but in placing it in CT’s universe and making it the continuation of the overall story arc begun by CT, their effort was doomed from the start, as CC by its very nature was fated to never truly be free of that shadow and the weight of expectations it bore from having the responsibility of carrying the Chrono name and continuing the story of the series.
Well, I hope that wasn't too long. Thanks for reading
Specterace
