Chrono Trigger v. Chrono Cross.
Regardless of whether it's best to appreciate them as one series, I think that Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross have one really interesting point of contrast between them. It's not exactly their stories; it's more their storytelling. While Trigger nailed its storytelling better than just about any video game I've ever played, I also believe that Cross bombed it just as spectacularly. Although Cross left me sour after I first finished it, these days I enjoy thinking about both games as examples of what to do and what not to do.
I've studied, critiqued, and feebly attempted to write short stories and short film scripts myself, and one thing that's surprised me is that pretty much any story, even the most seemingly mundane, can be interesting for an audience. It's all simply a matter of how you tell it. With this in mind, one of the corner-stone rules of storytelling in general is the idea of "Show, Don't Tell". This can be applied in many different ways, but it basically means that your audience should
experience all of the most important aspects of a story rather than be dryly informed about them along the way.
Obviously, this means that we should usually see critical dramatic scenes unfold rather than be told about them afterward, ie we should see the car chase, not come in at the end to one character saying "Boy! That was one exciting car chase we just had!". Even when you've got a scene that's basically just dialogue, though, you really want the dialogue to be almost like a by-product of the situation rather than be its leading force. For example, if you want to tell the audience that the two people in your scene are old friends, it's a bad idea to have one turn to the other and say "Boy! We sure have been friends for a long time, haven't we?". Instead, you want them talk to each other like old friends do, and thereby imply that information to us. No matter the scope or the specific situation, showing things properly makes people connect emotionally with your story and, if you're lucky, feel a stake of personal involvement.
Looking at Chrono Trigger, tell me if you can think of any other story-centric RPG where you could actually hack and erase every last dialogue box, have somebody play it with a bare-bones walkthrough, and then see that person coming out with an understanding of a good 80% of the story. As a matter of fact, there are only a few points that really even require dialogue to tell us where to go at all. With a little bit of re-staging of events silent-film style, a newbie could play the game with zero dialogue and no walkthrough and still understand (almost) everything. This is a fairly complex story to understand, too.
Chrono Trigger's story-arc is elegant, the opening and closing were both very neat and tidy, and most importantly, the player participates in nearly every significant event in the entire storyline. In fact, Trigger goes into genius territory by using the time-travel gimmick to let us take part in all of the back story. There's almost nothing in the entire plot that we aren't actively involved in ourselves. In that way, you can say we really get "shown" everything important to the game's story.
Now let's talk about Chrono Cross. It definitely has nice music, graphics and atmosphere, and the early premise is actually pretty good. I personally loved the funky tropical island setting. I also loved the parallel worlds, and that you fall into a dimension where you've been dead for 14 years to meet up with a sexy thief-girl and break into a corrupt general's mansion. After that, though, it all goes downhill fast. That good beginning aside, everything up until the last third of the game feels somewhat meaningless. Then, when the time finally comes to discover what's really important in the story, we basically stand around and listen to people talk at length about stuff that happened in other places and other times. In other words, we're "told" just about everything. Nothing illustrates this better than that whole bit before the final boss when the game has to halt and basically narrate a dozen key plot details just to keep the story from completely falling apart.
Honestly, that last bit in particular is a very amateur mistake. Also, I can't think of any other game that would make less sense if you erased all the dialogue. Not even Xenogears.
At least one school of thought says that a plot's quality is primarily measured by how much the audience gets emotionally involved in it. It's one thing to make a story that isn't easily understood right when it's over and makes people think for a while to really "get it", which I think is what they tried to do, but Chrono Cross simply didn't have much good stuff in what you actually play. Even the core cast didn't go through any interesting character arcs. Yeah, maybe the storytelling wouldn't have been so bad if we at least got to enjoy a fun cast and a string of endearing situations.
Perhaps someday I'll re-play Cross someday and see if I can enjoy it on its atmosphere alone. Seiken Densetsu 3 is one of my all time favorite games, and it has almost nothing to do with its story. For now, though, there's just too much other stuff to play.
This review contains more spoilers, but I think it also sums up the problem with Chrono Cross very well.
