Anything you can do, Chrono Trigger can do better
Francisco Souki
Back when I was 9 years old I would go with my mom, once in a long while, to the video rental store to rent VHS tapes. I had very little interest in movies back then, so I would head straight to the SNES rental section and stare at their limited selection. I have no idea why I chose that game the first time - I guess the cover art, as it used to be back in the day, caught my attention. Whatever it was, from that moment on and until someone else was smart enough to rent it and not return it (should have been me!) every time I went to the video rental store I would come out holding the same SNES cartridge: Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger was, back when I didn’t really know what an RPG was, my first JRPG (Japanese role-playing video game). I had played other, more primitive RPGs. I had played adventure games with RPG elements. I had all the pieces of the RPG puzzle lying somewhere in my head, but no game had yet put them all together. Lucky for me, Chrono Trigger made them fit together like instruments in a symphony.
Now, there’s a catch about the video rental scenario: I would only get to play the game for a couple days at a time which meant that my save file would invariably be erased next time I rented the game. In short, I must have played through the beginning of the game dozens of times: that panning shot over Chrono’s house, with the fair in the distance and the sound of seagulls, the view of the continent, the sound of Lynne’s Bells - all together are stimuli that my senses associate with my childhood. Well, not only with my childhood, as I’ve played through Chrono Trigger many times.
Let’s recount those quickly. Ahead is my full disclosure, it’s sort of boring.
I played a lot of Chrono Trigger in and around 1995, when it first came out - of course I never finished it back then, as between the fact that I only had it for a couple of days at a time and my parents’ emphasis on me not spending entire weekends gaming, I never got too far into the story (farther than you’d think, though...). Then later, around 2000 I finally played through it for the first time on the ZSNES emulator for the PC. Some time after that, and having skipped the PS console, I bought a PS2 and with it a copy of Final Fantasy Chronicles. I played through Chrono Trigger again, PS version this time, somewhere around 2004. That time I finished the game and found all the possible endings. I played the game again, sparingly, until 2008 when I bought a Nintendo DS just so I could play Chrono Trigger (though I ended up falling in love with the system, this was what pushed me to buy it). I played through the game again then, thoroughly, walkthrough in hand. I’m currently making my way through all of the endings again for the DS version.
Here’s the thing about my particular experience with Chrono Trigger, though: give this game today to any gamer and, in the highly improbable case that they haven’t heard of it yet, they will quickly recognize strong elements in it and realize how strong the design is. But present it to a nine-year-old in 1995, living in Caracas, Venezuela; have him take it by chance from a random selection of games - and you know what? Even he will identify those strong elements.
In this day and age, we very rarely have the chance anymore to discover anything for ourselves. When was the last time that you picked up a book, saw a movie or played a game that you had heard absolutely nothing about prior? Doesn’t happen too often, does it? And what are the chances that you will fall madly in love with it? And then, even better, what are the chances that after falling in love with it, you start realizing that thousands of people all over the globe are also falling in love with it? It is rare for someone at this point to discover a classic before it becomes a classic, or to even discover a classic before we realize it is one. But that 9-year-old in that video rental store who just happened to like the cover and decided to give that game a shot: he had that chance and he took it.
And I’ll tell you the exact moment when I knew that the game I was playing was extraordinary - I can pinpoint it because I can remember how baffled I was when it happened. At the very beginning of Chrono Trigger you start the game playing as Crono. There’s a town fair happening not far from your house and a friend of yours is going to unveil an experiment there so you decide to check it out. You are encouraged to explore the fair for a while - with the free-roaming fair serving as a tutorial level - and as you do, you accidentally crash into a girl. You both fall to the floor, and so does a pendant she was wearing. You get the pendant, help her up, and give the pendant back. She thanks you profusely since that pendant is a family heirloom and she asks if she can tag along with you for a bit. You explore the fair together and perform simple tutorial-like tasks: she gets candy at a store (takes her a while, too), you find a girl’s missing cat, you can take a guy’s lunch from a table and eat it, you can buy items from a merchant that even tries to get you to convince the girl to sell him her pendant, and so on - regular RPG stuff. After a while, your friend is ready to unveil her experiment so you take the girl along to that.
Then the action begins. The girl disappears through a fluke with the experiment, and so you - a hero and a gentleman - volunteer to go find her. The game goes on for a couple hours, which have the player going through a forest and a dungeon to find the missing girl. Eventually, you rescue her and before you bring her back home you realize that she’s actually a princess. As you bring her back to her castle you get arrested: you’re being charged with kidnapping her. Wait, what?! But I just saved her! - you yell at the screen. Sure you did, but the Chancellor has it in for you and so he calls a trial to determine if you’re innocent or guilty. Stop right there. Think about this, now. A trial. To determine your innocence. This is already looking awesome and we haven’t even gotten to the good part.
Cue establishing shot of the gorgeous courtroom and so the trial starts. At this point, my 9-years-old self is wondering what the hell is going to happen in this trial. Is this going to play out as a cutscene or what? And let’s be fair, even now, more than 15 years after the game was released, one would expect no more than a cutscene to deal with this situation. Well, be it now or then, one would expect wrong.
The trial starts. Forget about the cutscene, they’re asking YOU, right now, if you’re after the Princess’s money. Ridiculous! Of course not! you answer. Well guess what, the Chancellor calls in a witness that explains how when you and the girl crashed into each other at the fair you went to pick up her pendant instead of checking to see if she was all right. And then, as if it weren’t enough already, they show a video replay of you doing exactly that. All you want to do is get up from chair and start shouting at them - Imbeciles! This is a video game! You’re supposed to get the shiny things first!!! But it’s helpless. Luckily, your lawyer is not a moron and he calls the little girl whose cat you rescued to testify, she agrees that you’re a good person and the trial goes on. Same thing happens with four or five other actions that you took while at the fair: if you ate the guy’s lunch they’ll show that as proof of your bad behavior and if you asked the girl if she wanted to sell her pendant then they’ll bring a witness to imply that you’re after the girl’s money. By the end of this sequence you’re wondering what sort of twisted mind designed this. You feel confused, your concept of what a video game is is crumbling before your very eyes and in your very hands. You sit up in the couch, and get ready for whatever the game has in store for you next. You are engaged.
That is when I fell in love with Chrono Trigger.
But what I didn’t realize at the time was the most important part: that the game was training me. See, Chrono Trigger is a time travel game and as such, it has you jumping from one time period to another, messing with history. The most important concept for a player to grasp in order to understand the story and flow of the game is that actions have consequences: whatever you do or change in the past will in turn change something in the future. It is important then that players become more aware of their actions so that they are not caught off guard by the consequences. The trial scene is just a reinforcement of this concept, an opportunity for the player to directly face this paradigm. It’s a sort of warning of things to come. It is also a love arrow shot straight at the gamer’s heart.
Now let’s go back to that part where I mentioned in passing that Chrono Trigger is a time travel game. I am assuming that you, as a reader of this piece, have encountered and consumed some sort of time travel-themed media before - whether it’s Back to the Future, The Terminator, Heroes, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Donnie Darko, Chrono Trigger or The Lake House, starring Keanu Reeves. If you have, then you know that time travel can get messy: it’s hard to explain, hard to grasp, overused as a storytelling device and often unconvincing. You will also be happy to hear that this is not the case with Chrono Trigger’s time traveling.
Here’s why:
First of all, the pacing in Chrono Trigger is well designed, and its story is well-written. The characters are not expecting most of this time traveling to happen, so they are discovering this situation along with us - they are as surprised and confused as we are.
The time periods through which the characters travel are spaced really far apart. The party visits ancient times, the middle ages, the future - the minimum temporal gap between ages that are visited is 400 years (or 300, if you want to get really technical). This mostly eliminates the problem of the possibility of running into oneself (always confusing) and also plot points such as having to seduce your own mom.
Few characters have the ability to transcend time in the game, and those who do can also recognize the heroes as time travelers, so they very rarely have to explain that they are traveling through time or have to confront people that they have met in other ages.
Each time period that the players visit is distinctive, yet absolutely familiar. The geographical map retains most of its topology across time, so mountains, islands, forests, etc. are mostly on the same spots across the ages, making the terrain recognizable. However, each era has a very distinctive look, and they are absolutely impossible to mix up with one another. Different characters, color palettes, music, weather effects and overall style ensure this.
These are only some of the design aspects that keep the time traveling manageable, the player more often than not can easily keep track of what is going on. The effect this has on the game is that it manages to benefit from all the cleverness that a time travel-based plot usually allows for while keeping the story manageable
and digestible.
Another very nice touch is that the different characters that act as party members in the game come from varied eras, as the player sort of picks them up along the way of their travels. This is extremely helpful in keeping the story close to the party, thus helping the player relate to it through the characters he is controlling. This may sound ridiculous, as the characters in any game should most definitely be deeply involved with the story in order for it to feel important at all, but the truth is that many games have a hard time getting the player to care about the story itself rather than about the action of advancing it.
Chrono Trigger manages to do this by making the story relevant to the characters in both an overall manner (the world could end, which affects all characters) and a personal manner by involving the fate and importance of their specific time periods into the story. More often than not the story is driven not only by an overarching goal but also, and more prominently, by at least one of the characters’ personal goals. And this, in the case of Chrono Trigger, works.
But why does it work?
The answer is simple and somewhat broad. Ok, it’s very broad: because the characters are awesome. In fact, let me put it this way: the characters are so awesome that it can get confusing to analyze what makes them so awesome. Let’s still give it a shot.
It starts visually. The characters were designed by Akira Toriyama (the guy who created Dragon Ball), and he did an excellent job of giving all of them a distinct look. The main part of this distinctiveness is that not only do they, when put side by side, clearly belong to different eras - they also are each aesthetically consistent with their own era. Second is that the gear they wear, their body features and their color palette, are all very reflective of their personalities.
Add to that the fact that if there’s one thing that these characters do not lack is a strong personality. And by “strong” I don’t mean that they are fighting for your attention, all trying to shine within the group, but rather that a lot of work clearly went into these guys’ and gals’ backstories and how they fit within the main storyline and around each other - and it shows. The way in which each future party member is met by the active party and ultimately ends up joining is, without exception, deeply integrated into the story. No party member feels tacked on without necessity, and there is also never the feeling that one must do specific side quests to add party members: all of them join because it makes perfect sense within the story for them to do so This is a luxury the designers could afford since there are only 7 available party members throughout the whole game, which also allows for each party member to voice their opinions during story sequences.
Furthermore, as the game advances the player realizes that Chrono Trigger also made the most of their limited party size by tying the optional side quests to party members. This works brilliantly for them since it creates a decent number of relatively lengthy side quests that have the added bonus of revealing a significant backstory element relevant to each character - an element that would otherwise have been left untold. Players are then encouraged to take on the side quests to gain extra experience, obtain new and powerful items and to get to know their party members a whole lot better. The player feels compelled to go on the different side quests almost as a favor to the characters, since most of them tackle an unresolved issue in the character’s present or past that, given the party’s time traveling abilities, can be dealt with now or at any time.
Ah, “at any time”. This reminds me...
See, side quests are not the only part of the story that can be dealt with at any time. This might get you thinking that Chrono Trigger is an open story game where parts of the story can be played in any order the player wishes - but you should immediately stop that train of thought. Chrono Trigger’s main story is absolutely linear, don’t doubt this for even a millisecond. But there’s a fine print to that: since the goal of the game is to defeat a being that is going to destroy the world in a specific year, you can just travel to that year, defeat it and end the game right there - at any time. From a logical point of view it makes perfect sense. And from a gaming point of view, what implications does it have? The implication of different endings, of course.
The magic of these different endings lies in the fact that they are not all parallel, alternate endings but rather (although, not quite) sequential, different endings. Imagine the course of the main storyline of a game as a straight line, with all the major plot points represented sequentially as a little marker that intersects the line. Now imagine that from each of those markers you could jump straight to the ending of the game, except that by doing so you bypass everything that would have happened in between that marker and the ending - it means that you still save the world, but you didn’t do a bunch of other stuff along the way, like pick up some party members of fix specific things in long-gone eras. On top of that it also allows the player to replay the game and, at specific spots, save the progress and head straight to the final boss to experiment with the ending. It is a rare occurrence that even gives meaning to the “New Game +” feature.
The music of the game is what rounds up an incredibly solid infrastructure on top of which the main systems were built. The beautiful soundtrack that makes you forget that what you are listening to was composed for the Super Nintendo does a great job of evolving (and devolving) as the player cruises through the different eras while always remembering to hint at the epic proportions of the party’s task. The soundtrack, together with the strong characters, the well-implemented time-traveling theme and a strong story told in a compelling way are what make up the foundations of this game. But what about the stuff that was built on top of it?
Perfect segue for us to get down and dirty with the battle system. Chrono Trigger’s battles are turn-based, built upon the same foundations as most JRPGs out there. Players can choose at the beginning of the game whether they want it to be strictly turn-based (enemies act, then you act) or somewhat real-time (enemies go again if you take too long deciding what actions to take) - but other than that there is nothing too innovative about the pacing of the battles. Chrono Trigger’s battle system does excel at four things however: combat positions, context-sensitive battles, Team Techs and cleverness of encounter design. Let’s go over those.
First up is combat positions. We should start by saying that the camera angle for the exploration areas of Chrono Trigger is isometric, somewhere between a top-down camera and a 3/4 one. In these exploration areas, players can initiate combat by colliding directly with roaming monsters; when combat is initiated, the three active players from the player’s party take their positions in a section of the screen and all enemies present in the screen take their respective combat positions. Both enemy and player positions are of extreme importance during battles since some specific special moves (called Techs) are area-based. For example, one Tech called Slash will prompt the player to choose an enemy and hit all other enemies on a straight line between the player and the chosen enemy while a different Tech called Cyclone will hit all enemies within a specified radius. It is important to note that players cannot move the characters on the combat field, so they must adapt to the position conditions imposed by the game in order to make the most of their Techs. This is an element that, even though it’s extremely common in tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons, doesn’t make an appearance in video games often enough.
Next up is what I like to call context-sensitive battles, or rather context-sensitive events. The important point to convey here is that environments in Chrono Trigger are often active or reactive, which can have a direct impact in specific battles. Switches in the environment can prompt a battle or directly reduce the character’s Hit Points - even outside of battle. On top of that, environments are designed such that surprise battles are never left unexplained. In the future era, enemies might fly in via conveyor belts while in the Middle Ages they could jump from behind bushes or from a small cliff. In a Boss’s lair a suspicious switch could cause a monster to appear as easily as it could cause a hole to open on the floor, causing the player to fall into a secret treasure chamber, and waiting for the rain in the hunting grounds will increase the chance of a special type of enemy appearing. In short, environments are not just paintings that serve as backdrop for the story, but rather living elements of the story itself.
I mentioned before that in Chrono Trigger the special combat abilities (like spells and such) are called Techs - and Team Techs are no more than Techs that are performed by two or three team members at the same time. I find it incredibly hard to believe that every RPG since Chrono Trigger has not copied this design, since in my opinion it serves the game so well. The idea is that almost every two-character combination in the game has a Double Tech that combines one Tech from each character into an extra-powerful “super” Tech. This has a positive impact on the game in many levels. It encourages the player to level up all characters and play around with party formations to discover the different Double Techs. It also adds a new layer to the combat, since both characters need to be active at the same time to perform the Double Tech - and the time that one character has to “wait” for the other to be ready as well is essentially lost time. Furthermore, it enhances the level of camaraderie perceived by the player between the two characters, as they are acting together against their foes, rather than on their own. And last, but certainly not least, it is pretty darn cool. Emphasis on the cool for the Triple Techs, which occasionally require the player to find a special item to enable them, and which represent one of the ultimate achievements in the game: to have a band of enemies wiped out by an incredibly cool-looking move in which all party members contribute the best of their skill.
Lastly, it is imperative to mention the cleverness of the encounter design. The designers truly did a great job of identifying all of the elements they could play with to create exciting encounters and executing endless variations on them. Enemies that are immune to attacks, sets of enemies that must be defeated in a specific order, multi-part bosses that heal themselves in predictable patterns, foes that change vulnerabilities mid-battle or that get stronger as the battle goes on, enemies that counter-attack automatically, that attack with specific area-effects or that affect party status, enemies that change position during battles or that call reinforcements - all of these types, and many more, are combined to create battle after battle after battle that feel challenging but never unfair, and that require the player to equip the appropriate items as well as to think fast and strategize on their feet.
The virtues explained above have the happy consequence of making the combat in Chrono Trigger feel extremely organic. Turn-based RPGs have the unfortunate tendency of presenting a deep customization tree for characters but shallow encounter design, resulting in battles that are often filled with flare but rarely with excitement. Chrono Trigger’s combat is designed to keep the player on their toes: it is exciting, fun, clever and allows for exploration. I’m not saying that the combat is without repetition (it is a 20+ hour-long game, after all) but players will find themselves constantly challenged by boss designs, enemy immunity to specific attacks and variable enemy positions on the board. This, coupled with a Tech tree that feels rewarding, make up for a battle system as solid and exciting as I have ever seen.
At this point it should become clear that a lot of love was put into this game’s complete development process. If we look at it from an exclusively design-oriented point of view we will see that the game both innovates and emulates within its genre with great success - for example it introduces new storytelling devices and perfects the turn-based combat system while at the same time keeping a traditional equipment and party system. This is taken to the next step of perfection when dressed up in a charming and appealing way by adding great art, unforgettable music, and overall tasteful flavor to the already solid base. Chrono Trigger is solid from start to finish and from low to high level, looked at from afar or with a microscope almost to a fractal perfection - where uncovering further and further layers just reveals deeper levels of great design.
Somewhere within these paragraphs lies the secret of this game, the reason why I can’t listen to the main theme without getting goosebumps or why I can’t play through the beginning sequence without getting pumped. Or should I say that it doesn’t lie up there among those paragraphs but rather down here, at the bottom, as the sum of all that has been said. The true genius of this game, the thing that sets it apart from so many other JRPGs, is the perfection with which the fine thread that binds all its elements together was woven. It’s the fact that, as with a complicated sailor knot, pulling hard at one end of the game tightens the whole experience rather than bringing it apart. Battle system, grinding mechanisms, exploration, character design and development, inventory system, soundtrack, story, storytelling devices - all interwoven to create an experience that becomes more and more solid as the player tugs harder at the controller cord.
We can find examples of this all over the game. The environment design helps us get oriented in the midst of all the time traveling while also contributing to the combat design and providing player-triggered events. Character development affects the story and combat alike, opening the possibility of Team Techs and fueling the player’s desire to complete the different side quests. Some special, equippable items are tied to the story and have both meaning to specific characters and special abilities when equipped. Time traveling is not only used as a storytelling device but also reinforced by (and at the same time used to reinforce) character style, player relationships and ending variations.
What it comes down to in the end is that the elements of the game seem to all have grown together as siblings in a family, affecting one another and developing a synergy that has deep roots in the design process. And just as one can see a group of brothers playing together and understand that they share a bond that is both indescribable and undeniable, one can play Chrono Trigger and immediately identify a similar sort of magic at play. The icing on the cake is that the last necessary element is the player himself - giving meaning to the game via interaction and connecting the live wires of the game’s guts in order to get the machine going. The result is more than a game, but rather an experience that the player feels privileged to experience. Because everything that Chrono Trigger does, it does exactly right.