Chrono Cross- Worthy Sequel?

The question of what makes a sequel truly worthy of its predecessor is one that has nagged me ever since I saw The Last Jedi. As I pondered that question, one game sprung to my mind: Chrono Cross, sequel to the legendary Chrono Trigger. It was not until today that I finally came to a conclusion regarding what makes a sequel truly worthy of its predecessor, which allowed me to measure up Cross' worthiness of following Trigger.

Let us summarize, to the best of our ability, the story of Chrono Cross. A boy named Serge lives in an archipelago called El Nido (Spanish for "the nest.) One day he stumbles across a portal that leads him to a world similar to his, but different. The most striking difference to him is the simple fact that, in this strange yet familiar world, he's been dead for ten years. 

After being attacked by one of the Dragoons (elite warriors of El Nido) Serge joins forces with Kid, a mysterious girl who seems to know something about what's going on. Serhe and Kid join forces to enter Viper Manor, the home of the lord of El Nido, Lord Viper. There, they encounter a cat-man named Lynx, who wants Serge for a nefarious plot... You know what? If I do this, I'm gonna take forever.

The story of Chrono Cross is not just convoluted, it is (in my opinion) one of the most convoluted stories in ANY RPG I've ever played. This is quite a contrast to Trigger, which had a simple, easy to follow plot:

One day a kid named Crono went to the fair where his best friend, a girl named Lucca, was showing off a teleporter she made. He meets a girl named Marle, the two hit it off, and Crono takes her to see the teleporter. Marle enters the machine, but her pendant causes it to malfunction, sending her back in time. Crono follows her, arriving 400 years in the past...

Let me stop right here, I have a point I want to make. the Chrono series utilizes the concept of time travel, one of the most complex and thought provoking narratives in fiction. This is due to the INSANE number of questions time travel raises, including the famed Grandfather Paradox (if I go back in time and kill my granpa before he had my dad, would I still be alive?) Chrono Trigger's relative simplicity for an RPG is entirely dependent on the story ignoring nearly ALL questions time travel would raise, presenting itself as a simple Hero's Journey with time travel involved.

This makes Chrono Trigger a very "surface level" story: what you should be concerning yourself with is the heroics of Crono and company, not whatever philosophical conundrums you can come up with when asking such silly questions as "wait, is it REALLY such a good idea to change a timeline?"

The shallowness of Trigger's plot could well be explained away as being the limitations of not just the SNES, but of the gaming zeitgeist; RPG's weren't yet known for being deeply philosophical yet. That would come after 1997, with the advent of a game called Final Fantasy 7.

So how does Cross fit into all this? To put it bluntly, Trigger made a mess and Cross had to deal with it. Chrono Cross is the Deconstructive Sequel; the sequel that takes apart everything you loved about the original and showed you the only way you could love it was by not looking beneath the surface. But how does Cross do this?

Truth is that Cross doesn't until the game is a quarter done. That's when Cross starts making those connections to Trigger by shoving the player into a moment frozen in time: the Day of Lavos. In Trigger, the Day of Lavos was the day the world ended; Lavos woke up, destroyed everything, then left. In Cross we see this day frozen mid-way in the Dead Sea, a place where discarded timelines exist, frozen forever.

This is what the Player strove for in Trigger. You walk around buildings being destroyed, tidal waves consuming roads, a world that had seen its last sunrise. What should be a moment of Meta-triumph instead feels...wrong. So very wrong.

You're standing in the middle of a place that should not exist, yet does. How is this possible? Simply put, it's not supposed to be. In the same way you're not supposed to travel through time.

But then the game trips on its own feet by trying to make the existence of this place a major enigma you're not meant to solve. Why does this place exist? Because of the Frozen Flame; a piece of Lavos that fell off and was kept there. OK, good. And a computer from the future named FATE placed it here to keep it safe from people. OK, acceptable; we can say Lavos' essence still exists in the Flame, so of course it could distort time wherever it is. Oh, and it's somehow Serge's fault the Dead Sea is like this. Um, what? Wait, how!?

Therein we have the first demonstration of Cross' biggest weakness: it's plot is much too convoluted for its own good. A complex plot can be good, especially for a sequel. But if it's too complex, then it becomes more difficult to follow; and what good is a plot you can't follow?

It's sad because, up until then, Cross had a very fascinating plot; in  fact, the plot's still fascinating in its own right, even after this turn of events.

But returning to topic; Cross deconstructed the idea that Crono and company got rid of Lavos for good. How? To answer this question, we need to go back to Trigger and analyze one crucial element.

In Trigger, you can unlock special endings depending on which part of the game you defeat Lavos with. Did you somehow beat him after the beginning of the game? You get one ending. Did you defeat Lavos after finishing the ENTIRE game? You get a different ending. On its own, these multiple endings are simply that: alternate endings to the game, not meant to be taken seriously.

But in the context of Cross, which confirms the existence of alternate timelines, these endings take on a new context: they are different timelines created by Crono and crew. There is one timeline I am most concerned with though: the timeline created if Crono defeats Lavos before traveling to Pre-History.

In this timeline, humans are replaced with Reptites, dinosaur people. Why? Because in the lore of Trigger, Lavos' arrival in the year 64M BC was the catalyst that tipped the scale in the war between humans and Reptites. The debris from Lavos' crash flew up into the sky, blocking the Sun and starting the Ice Age that killed the Reptites. But in the new timeline, the Reptites live on.

So what's the problem? Cross makes it amply clear that, in one alternate timeline, the Reptites did, in fact, live on and prosper. That makes it clear that ALL of Trigger's endings, one way or another, are canon. Well, all but one: the Bad Ending you get if you fail to kill Lavos. I mean, you're the Player Character! How can your defeat to Lavos be canon if your victory agaisnt Lavos is also canon?

I initially thought that, if Cross had gone the route of "this is the timeline where Crono failed," it would have inevitably turned into Chrono Trigger 2, which as cool as that sounds, was not needed. Chrono Trigger was about different time periods, while Cross was about timelines.

What Cross tried to do with the overall narrative of Chrono was to add some depth to it all. Trigger, as I stated previously, was very surface-level. Cross tried to go deeper by asking (and answering) some tough questions. What happens when you mess around with time? You create a bigger mess than the one you tried to fix.

It is implied in Trigger that there is only ONE timeline; whatever changes you make in the past, affect the future. This is evident in how Robo turns the desert north of Porre into a forest in 400 years. In the year 600 AD it'll still be a desert, but in the year 1000 AD it'll be a forest. But at the start of the game, you STILL had a desert in both eras! Again, this is evidence of Trigger treating time travel using "Back to the Future rules:" none of it makes sense if you think about it, so just shut up and enjoy the show.

But then you have Cross, which goes and says "actually, changes in the past just makes new timelines." In the year 1010 AD, the boy Serge nearly drowned in the sea. In one timeline, he lived. In another, he died. What made the difference? Kid. In the year 1003, Serge made a connection to the Frozen Flame, linking him to the object. In the year 1010, a panther demon tried to kill Serge. However a time traveling Kid managed to arrive, splitting the timeline into two: one where she saves Serge, and one where she fails.

The story was more complex than that; I'm leaving out some details for the sake of brevity and clarity.

While Trigger ignored the ramifications of altering the past, Cross put them front and center, saying "THIS is what happens when you intervene!" Because Serge lived, the Frozen Flame remained unprotected by FATE's computer system, which was forced to shut down. The reason for this is because Serge was bonded to the FF...

...look, it's complicated, OK? In my opinion, Square should have streamlined the story more, made it a bit simpler. But it is what it is.

But in the timeline where Serge died, the Frozen Flame was locked away. The alternate timeline would keep the Flame safe in Chronopolis, a scientific research center from 1280 years from the future.

Aha! We see again a deconstructive connection between Trigger and Cross! Time traveling, disrupting the natural flow of a timeline. But while Trigger presented its heroes as in the right about doing so, Cross is more morally ambiguous.

Because Chronopolis traveled to the past, a second timeline was affected: the Reptite timeline. The Planet (somehow?) took the city of Dinopolis from the Reptite Timeline as a counter to Chronopolis. Why this happened, it's not explained.

For this again we go to Trigger. In an optional and missable sidequest, Lucca is given the option to travel to the year 990, where she can save her mom from an accident. The time portal appears out of thin air, and just as quickly disappears. Where did it come from? Lucca hypothethizes that the portal was willed into existence by "the Planet's own conscience." But she has no proof, and this idea is never followed through.

So it is possible that the Planet's conscious not only exists, it transcends timelines.

What followed next was a war, one where humans eventually won and took the Reptite's ultimate weapon, the Dragon God, and split it into 6 parts. What we're seeing here is NEGATIVE effects of time travel: a pointless war between two factions who shouldn't exist.

Chrono Cross deconstructed (to a point) Chrono Trigger's plot by demonstrating that time travel has consequences. But beyond that, Cross attempted to resolve one of Trigger's lingering plots: the whereabouts of Schala, princess of Zeal.

In Trigger, Schala was the princess of Zeal, a kingdom that drew power from Lavos while the beast was still underground. As Crono and the crew attempted to stop the Queen from exploiting Lavos more, a time portal opened, sending Schala to parts unknown. This was one of Trigger's burning questions, and for a while it was the clearest Sequel Hook in the game. So it comes as no surprise that Cross answers that question. But the answer provided was...

Schala was sent to a rift beyond time and space alongside the Lavos that came from the timeline where Crono and crew defeated it, fusing together to become the Time Devourer. Once the new being grew to maturity, it would consume all of space and time, effectively ending existence. The Time Devourer is the final boss of Cross.

Chrono Cross did not continue the story of Crono and crew, but it DID answer some questions raised by Trigger: the whereabouts of Schala, the existence of alternate timelines, etc. However, there is no question that Cross also raised many questions, the most disquieting being "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE ORIGINAL CREW!?" Ah, but that's for another time!

So to answer the question that made me write this entry: is Chrono Cross a worthy sequel to Trigger? I would dare say: kind of.

Cross completely changed the way one can look at Trigger's story. Cross' Deconstruction of Trigger was rather thorough, perhaps too thorough. I can't play Trigger again without wondering about the negative effects time traveling is having on the world. What happens to Lavos after I defeat it; does it go back to the Darkness Beyond Time? If all the endings gained from defeating Lavos at different intervals of the game are canon, then how many copies of Lavos will fit in the Darkness Beyond Time? Trigger was a fun and happy adventure, but Cross painted that adventure with a more somber tone, demonstrating that the heroics of Crono and crew had far reaching consequences.

Crono made a mess, and Serge had to clean it up. Cross turned the happy-go-lucky Trigger and turned it into one of the most disturbing RPG's you'll ever play. But it also answered the questions Trigger raised, giving a sort of true finality to the original game.

Do we need a third game in the series? Do we need a game that answers the questions Cross raised? that's for another day!