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indigozealI haven't talked about Chrono Cross for a while, primarily because the game hit a stretch that was so phenomenally stupid and patience-trying - I mean, patience-trying even for that game - that I was forced to shelve for a while for my own sanity. I'm thinking that I want to put it to bed soon, though, so let's catch up on old, stupid business.
After the volcano section mentioned in the previous CC post, I arrived at the Myst-like fortress you explore in the opening dream sequence, where I fought a truly ridiculous number of bosses - I think it was like eight. Instead of being thrilling, though, it was just a slog, because there was no drama or sense of accomplishment to the battles: you're just running into a big bunch of generic monsters. They're not elemental Fiends or Ozzie, Flea, & Slash or anything; I'm not busting down the enemy hierarchy by defeating them. There's no theatricality to the fights, no satisfaction. You might have clued in from the foreshadowed setting and the boss gamut that the story thought it was reaching an important turning point - that this was its Magus's Castle, as it were (yes, again) - but the story hasn't even started. We got an interesting premise with the parallel dimensions, but then we got bogged down in irrelevant Dragoon politics, and then some lazy stock bad guy said that he knew all the answers to the questions we didn't have and never asked and we'd have to come to the Myst fortress for him to spill it, even though the info he did offer was clearly off-base. Chrono Cross just fails to set up a clear, credible problem to solve in the first part of the game. (There are clear, credible problems the hero could have tackled - his homeland in the parallel dimension remains unconquered, for instance; could he find any clues there to help free it in his native dimension? - but the game ignores them.)
I tried to consider things from the developers' perspective a bit - tried to figure out how they could have thought this a successful narrative - and in drilling down, I discovered something: the entire plot hinges on you, the player, falling in love with Kid. The developers have proceeded from the premise that you're going to be so enrapt with Kid that you're going to find the sheer joy of following her around sufficient incentive to keep playing. (That's the entire story in the other, Kid-infested route - you're just doing stuff she wants to do because she says so, with no further explanation as to her purpose.) If you choose not to follow her around, you're up a creek, because the plot has no motive force otherwise. Everything is contingent on you liking this one character, and the designers were so certain you would that they didn't bother to craft a viable story alternative. (And they didn't have to create any sort of branching story - probably another one of the game's "so preoccupied with whether or not they could didn't stop to think if they should" things - but it says volumes that the creators were so confident players would opt to cling to Kid's side at every given moment, even when given a choice not to do so, that they didn't bother to come up with any sort of contingency plan.)
But we have more stupidity to tackle. At the end of all the boss fights, you discover the catman bad guy, Lynx, whereupon he promptly, and inexplicably, swaps bodies with Serge. (To give the game a modicum of credit, after the big magic mumbo-jumbo flash of light, the first cue that Serge isn't himself is a smart moment when Kid asks if he's all right and the silent protagonist actually speaks to say "...I'm fine!".) The bad guy then stabs Kid and tells Serge that if he really, really, REALLY wants the answers for REAL this time, he'll follow the bad guy to...some other place. Serge then wakes up in Bad Guy's body, whereupon the game settles in for an extended portion where you walk around in the villain's shoes and, presumably, see events from his perspective - whereupon I completely lost patience.
(Side note: I actually forgot the exact order of events in this cutscene and had to look up an LP on YouTube. In doing so, I saw that after stabbing Kid, the villain will scream: "Let love bleed! Darker and deeper than the seas of hell!", which, oh, my God.)
(Oh, another side note: To sell us on Lynx's coolness, the designers have him wield a scythe justlikeMagusseesee in battle, which is Day-Glo Jason Voorhees levels of stupid.)
Now, when the writers (if this game had writers) thought this up, I'm sure they lit up cigars in celebration of their inutterly brilliant twist, but this is going to be a big waste of time, because the point in letting the player see things from the villain's perspective is to turn the player's presumptions about the villain on their head, and we haven't formed any presumptions about this character, because there is no character there, just an anthro design who's gone bwah-hah-hah a couple times. To continue previous comparisons to Baten Kaitos: the whole turnabout in Giacomo's death scene, where he uses his dying breath not to curse or swear bitter vengeance but to check to see that his two henchmen are all right and tell him that he cares about them, works because everything we've seen of Giacomo has painted him as a thoroughly horrible human being concerned only with power, and to have his highest priority in his dying hour be the welfare of people traditional mwa-ha-ha villainy treats as utterly disposable suggests dimensions to the character that we haven't seen. (It's also consistent with the story's theme of forgiveness and idea that everyone has the ability to be a positive influence in life.) The "I only summoned him!" reveal after the Magus fight in Chrono Trigger works because of how Magus and his alleged role in the apocalpyse have been built up all throughout the first half of the game. And then when the rug is pulled out, you think: But this is Magus! He's the source of all evil!! You mean that he's just as clueless as WE are?! That we've accomplished NOTHING in our fight against Lavos with all we've done against Magus? These revelations worked because these characters were developed at length within the framework of an ongoing story. In Chrono Cross, there is no ongoing story and no characterization for the apparent villain, so this whole gambit is going to be just a big block of wasted time that's keeping me further away from the end of this game.
Then there's the bit where it's teased that Lynx was originally this cat who tried to attack Serge when he was 7 - not an anthropomorphic cat; I mean like a four-legged jungle cat - that's supposed to be a heart-stopping epiphany but reminds me more of The Life Aquatic. When we heard the passing bit about a wild animal who attacked the hero once when he was a kid, I didn't think we were supposed to have sworn vengeance against the beast and vowed to hunt Serge's foul feral nemesis to the ends of the archipelago instead of chalking it up to a freak nature accident.
Anyhow, the whole body-swap detour provides one more aggravation. Now, I was completely content with the hand-picked party I had: the hero, the Otherworld incarnation of Hero's girlfriend, Poochie, Disco Magus, some knight named after Glenn from Trigger who everyone says is a really strong character offensively, and this large, gregarious, take-charge mom from the islands who loves wearing hot pink & purple and attacks with cooking implements. (Forget Rosa; this is the heroic mom whom we should all be championing.) Six characters, one of each element: a manageable team that covers all bases. But in the short time Serge has been going around in the villain's body (in this admittedly lovely world of Impressionistic islands based on Monet's haystacks paintings), I've been picking up another set of all-new characters, ensuring that when this mess finally gets sorted out, I'm going to have this huge combined party, against my best efforts. To add insult to injury, one of the characters is this obnoxious jester with a Pepe Le Pew accent who previously attempted to start a rivalry with Kid for the affections of Serge, in another attempt by the game to shove in your head that you really love Kid and will fight for her affections and arrrrrgggghhhhh.
In any case, I'll be throwing myself back into this morass shortly, so updates later.
After the volcano section mentioned in the previous CC post, I arrived at the Myst-like fortress you explore in the opening dream sequence, where I fought a truly ridiculous number of bosses - I think it was like eight. Instead of being thrilling, though, it was just a slog, because there was no drama or sense of accomplishment to the battles: you're just running into a big bunch of generic monsters. They're not elemental Fiends or Ozzie, Flea, & Slash or anything; I'm not busting down the enemy hierarchy by defeating them. There's no theatricality to the fights, no satisfaction. You might have clued in from the foreshadowed setting and the boss gamut that the story thought it was reaching an important turning point - that this was its Magus's Castle, as it were (yes, again) - but the story hasn't even started. We got an interesting premise with the parallel dimensions, but then we got bogged down in irrelevant Dragoon politics, and then some lazy stock bad guy said that he knew all the answers to the questions we didn't have and never asked and we'd have to come to the Myst fortress for him to spill it, even though the info he did offer was clearly off-base. Chrono Cross just fails to set up a clear, credible problem to solve in the first part of the game. (There are clear, credible problems the hero could have tackled - his homeland in the parallel dimension remains unconquered, for instance; could he find any clues there to help free it in his native dimension? - but the game ignores them.)
I tried to consider things from the developers' perspective a bit - tried to figure out how they could have thought this a successful narrative - and in drilling down, I discovered something: the entire plot hinges on you, the player, falling in love with Kid. The developers have proceeded from the premise that you're going to be so enrapt with Kid that you're going to find the sheer joy of following her around sufficient incentive to keep playing. (That's the entire story in the other, Kid-infested route - you're just doing stuff she wants to do because she says so, with no further explanation as to her purpose.) If you choose not to follow her around, you're up a creek, because the plot has no motive force otherwise. Everything is contingent on you liking this one character, and the designers were so certain you would that they didn't bother to craft a viable story alternative. (And they didn't have to create any sort of branching story - probably another one of the game's "so preoccupied with whether or not they could didn't stop to think if they should" things - but it says volumes that the creators were so confident players would opt to cling to Kid's side at every given moment, even when given a choice not to do so, that they didn't bother to come up with any sort of contingency plan.)
But we have more stupidity to tackle. At the end of all the boss fights, you discover the catman bad guy, Lynx, whereupon he promptly, and inexplicably, swaps bodies with Serge. (To give the game a modicum of credit, after the big magic mumbo-jumbo flash of light, the first cue that Serge isn't himself is a smart moment when Kid asks if he's all right and the silent protagonist actually speaks to say "...I'm fine!".) The bad guy then stabs Kid and tells Serge that if he really, really, REALLY wants the answers for REAL this time, he'll follow the bad guy to...some other place. Serge then wakes up in Bad Guy's body, whereupon the game settles in for an extended portion where you walk around in the villain's shoes and, presumably, see events from his perspective - whereupon I completely lost patience.
(Side note: I actually forgot the exact order of events in this cutscene and had to look up an LP on YouTube. In doing so, I saw that after stabbing Kid, the villain will scream: "Let love bleed! Darker and deeper than the seas of hell!", which, oh, my God.)
(Oh, another side note: To sell us on Lynx's coolness, the designers have him wield a scythe justlikeMagusseesee in battle, which is Day-Glo Jason Voorhees levels of stupid.)
Now, when the writers (if this game had writers) thought this up, I'm sure they lit up cigars in celebration of their inutterly brilliant twist, but this is going to be a big waste of time, because the point in letting the player see things from the villain's perspective is to turn the player's presumptions about the villain on their head, and we haven't formed any presumptions about this character, because there is no character there, just an anthro design who's gone bwah-hah-hah a couple times. To continue previous comparisons to Baten Kaitos: the whole turnabout in Giacomo's death scene, where he uses his dying breath not to curse or swear bitter vengeance but to check to see that his two henchmen are all right and tell him that he cares about them, works because everything we've seen of Giacomo has painted him as a thoroughly horrible human being concerned only with power, and to have his highest priority in his dying hour be the welfare of people traditional mwa-ha-ha villainy treats as utterly disposable suggests dimensions to the character that we haven't seen. (It's also consistent with the story's theme of forgiveness and idea that everyone has the ability to be a positive influence in life.) The "I only summoned him!" reveal after the Magus fight in Chrono Trigger works because of how Magus and his alleged role in the apocalpyse have been built up all throughout the first half of the game. And then when the rug is pulled out, you think: But this is Magus! He's the source of all evil!! You mean that he's just as clueless as WE are?! That we've accomplished NOTHING in our fight against Lavos with all we've done against Magus? These revelations worked because these characters were developed at length within the framework of an ongoing story. In Chrono Cross, there is no ongoing story and no characterization for the apparent villain, so this whole gambit is going to be just a big block of wasted time that's keeping me further away from the end of this game.
Then there's the bit where it's teased that Lynx was originally this cat who tried to attack Serge when he was 7 - not an anthropomorphic cat; I mean like a four-legged jungle cat - that's supposed to be a heart-stopping epiphany but reminds me more of The Life Aquatic. When we heard the passing bit about a wild animal who attacked the hero once when he was a kid, I didn't think we were supposed to have sworn vengeance against the beast and vowed to hunt Serge's foul feral nemesis to the ends of the archipelago instead of chalking it up to a freak nature accident.
Anyhow, the whole body-swap detour provides one more aggravation. Now, I was completely content with the hand-picked party I had: the hero, the Otherworld incarnation of Hero's girlfriend, Poochie, Disco Magus, some knight named after Glenn from Trigger who everyone says is a really strong character offensively, and this large, gregarious, take-charge mom from the islands who loves wearing hot pink & purple and attacks with cooking implements. (Forget Rosa; this is the heroic mom whom we should all be championing.) Six characters, one of each element: a manageable team that covers all bases. But in the short time Serge has been going around in the villain's body (in this admittedly lovely world of Impressionistic islands based on Monet's haystacks paintings), I've been picking up another set of all-new characters, ensuring that when this mess finally gets sorted out, I'm going to have this huge combined party, against my best efforts. To add insult to injury, one of the characters is this obnoxious jester with a Pepe Le Pew accent who previously attempted to start a rivalry with Kid for the affections of Serge, in another attempt by the game to shove in your head that you really love Kid and will fight for her affections and arrrrrgggghhhhh.
In any case, I'll be throwing myself back into this morass shortly, so updates later.
