Preamble

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new blog series I plan to do in-between my usual JRPG content on Giant Bomb. In 2021 I decided to play around with an assortment of "classic" adventure games, each with a reputation for having some butt-ass puzzles. This time around, I will be looking at The Dig, a 1995 release from LucasArts. Now, I can hear a handful of you typing away already that The Dig is not nearly as bad as some of the games I will likely look at throughout this series. And while I personally am not a fan of The Dig, and more on that later, I do commend the game for its ambition and otherwise outstanding visuals and music. Some of the screens you'll find in the game are major technical achievements and simply awe-inspiring. That said, none of this is to say the game is free from a handful of genuinely bunk-ass puzzles. And boy, are there some bad puzzles in The Dig.

That last sentence might be surprising to those of you that have only experienced the high points of LucasArts' "Golden Age" of adventure games. The studio maintained a reputation for creating sweeping adventures without the punishing difficulty associated with point-and-click adventure games. That said, there are a few LucasArts games that eschew their family-friendly and "all-ages welcomed" reputation. The three titles that come to my mind are Loom, Full Throttle, and The Dig. With The Dig, the game bites off way more than it can chew as its multiple attempts at environmental storytelling butt up against the Spartan-like simplicity of the SCUMM engine. As a result, The Dig has more than a few puzzles that subject its players to massive leaps of logic as well as fiddly time-based sequences that are anachronistic to what LucasArts built its reputation on at the time. With all of that in mind, let's get into the nitty-gritty with my rankings of every puzzle in the game.

As you will see, I'm using a continuum ranging from 1 to 10. Puzzles ranging from one to four are accessible sequences or set pieces that can be solved without guides or hints, regardless of your puzzle game expertise. Puzzles ranked between five and six are ones that only intermediate puzzle game players can solve, but beginners can solve in-game through clues, hints, or significant trial-and-error. From seven and above, we get into puzzles that most players cannot solve without consulting outside resources. Also in this category are puzzles that have major accessibility issues. For reference, one thing that will crop up in this entry is how several mechanics in The Dig are not at all accessible to those that are color blind. With that in mind, let's jump into it!

The Fun & Easy Shit - (In Chronological Order)

• Stopping the Asteroid - Score: 2/10 - A very forgiving introductory set piece and a puzzle where you can't enter a fail state. The one reason why I bump it up ever so slightly is that it is easy to forget to pick up the shovel as it almost perfectly blends into the background texture.
• Opening the Entrance Puzzle & Pedestal - Score: 1/10 - This puzzle is straightforward, and I enjoy the mystery the game builds up during this sequence. The puzzle pieces all have logical positions, and I had no UI or UX issues to report.
• Exploring the Canyon - Score: 3/10 - This is the game's first open-world environment and a real visual treat. It can be played out of order, but the game does not like that. Everything you see is abstract enough that it is not difficult to get lost and using the orb compass sucks. Likewise, the rod and chest, which are necessary items to progress the story, are easy to miss.
• Door Puzzles The Use The Gems - Score: 3/10 - The lack of door color coding is infuriating. Correspondingly, the Gem Wands are not fun to use. You can accidentally skip or go over your intended shape and color, and it sucks cycling back to the correct form. Additionally, the gem wands are not accessible for the color blind. The gem wands are far from "difficult," but they are tedious even after you grasp their gimmick. You use these devices way more often than I'd prefer, and they always feel fiddly.
• Light Bridges (All of Them) - Score: 2/10 - Here's another sequence that is not accessible for the color blind. The Light Bridge puzzles are easy once you "get" their gimmick like the Gem Wands. Nonetheless, fixing a Light Bridge is never not annoying, even if they all can reasonably be solved using logic and the information the game provides.
• Jumping the Chasm - Score: 1/10 - This sequence was a fun worldbuilding moment. Even if you get it wrong the first time, you will not die, and it is easy to figure out what you need to do.
• Fixing The Green Door - Score: 2/10 - There is a visual hint from the sparks on a pillar to indicate the terminal will not work. Using a nearby wire to jumpstart the panel makes sense. Using the tusk to open the panel's front board instead of the rod or shovel is less so. However, I appreciate how the game does not tack on an additional crystal puzzle like the earlier doors.
• The Panel in the Tomb Spire - Score: 3/10 - This panel is after the green door, but you need to use the red gem rod. In practice, this means the player needs to use trial and error to figure out which rod is correct. Much like every time you need to open a door, this is not hard or impossible; it's just time-consuming.
• Fixing The Last Light Bridge - Score: 2/10 - The game hints you need to open the panel to repair the bridge. Aligning the light beams is not complicated but provides another puzzle with accessibility issues. You still need to adjust the lens, which sucks, but I genuinely enjoyed this puzzle.

• The Planetarium Puzzle - Score: 2/10 - You need to use the two bong-looking objects to create a solar eclipse. It controls like shit, but the puzzle here is clever. The game's visual input is surprisingly coherent, and the accompanying cinematic is fantastic. This is by far my favorite moment in the entire game.
• Getting "The Eye" - Score: 3/10 - First, you need to go back to the alien inventor, and that is not at all clear to you as the player. Next, you need to collect a dropped rod that almost perfectly blends into the background. As was the case before, switching the gems to the correct symbols is annoying, and there's a ton of backtracking when you need to go to a different spire to pick up the Eye. Nonetheless, it is far from impossible.
• Getting Crystals From Brink - Score: 2/10 - The cutscene when Brink dies is very silly, but it's pretty clear where you need to go. Unfortunately, the game does not warn you to have the Eye in your inventory when you interact with Brink, which can cause the player to need to backtrack, but overall it's not that hard.
• The Final Guard - Score: 1/10 - You kill a monster by briefly turning off a light bridge. It's a simple and anti-climactic end puzzle.

The Convoluted And Frustrating Shit That Is Still Fun Or Redeeming - (In Chronological Order)

• Nexus Mirror Puzzle - Score: 5.5/10 - The terminal interface is atrocious, and the lack of a reference or unit of measurement is terrible. The inclusion of an action button is also very unintuitive. How you rank this puzzle depends on how you feel about games with programmable movement. I usually enjoy programmable movement, but the lack of a grid or circuit to indicate where you can move your automaton frustrated me. Also, a level of pixel-perfect accuracy is required for this sequence which makes it way harder than it needs to be.
• Saving Maggie - Score: 4/10 - This was some sexist bullshit and very silly. This set piece is comedic when the game has not been overtly eliciting laughs thus far. I appreciate the game automatically moving characters in the right direction at various points. Forcing Brink to help you is a clever and funny bit. That said, you sure do need to jump between multiple screens way more than you feel like you should.
• Getting the 4th Metal Tablet - Score: 5/10 - I have a real hard time ranking "pixels hunts." In this case, the entrance to the beach can be hard to find. Worse, knowing to use the tablet with Maggie to unlock an island from another dimension is a MASSIVE leap of logic. This requires the player to explore the entire game looking for some glowing shit flickering in a specific background and knowing when to combine an item with Maggie. None of this is challenging per se, but it's still a convoluted pixel hunt.

THE FUCKING AWFUL SHIT THAT MAKES ME WANT TO EAT OUT MY EYEBALLS! - (In Order Of Pure Pain)

Bringing The German Dude Back To Life - Score: 7/10

I debated if I wanted to put this in the "FUCKING AWFUL" category or not. One reason against doing so is that some enjoy this sequence as it forces the player to explore the game's world for the first time. Likewise, a lot of people appreciate the mythology surrounding The Dig, even if the game doesn't entirely pull its many pieces together. That said, I'm not too fond of this set piece. The foremost issue for me is that this is the first puzzle that forces you to navigate between several different environments, and navigating the world of The Dig sucks. Whether using the tram or the Light Bridges, every path or shortcut is at least three to four screens long. And some of your exit ways or transitions are not entirely clear, which is not usually a problem with LucasArts' works. That last problem is especially the case when you're trying to find the door to the life crystals.

The actual process of reviving the dead German Scientist is entirely illogical. The cinematics the game forces you to watch all make very little sense. And for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, you need to examine a series of animated wall paintings and discern that green orbs can revive the recently deceased. With one of your companions having fallen to their death, the game wants you to use alien goo to bring them back to life. The problem is that the stone walls are monochromatic, and everything you look at is a blurry indecipherable mess. Likewise, the in-game world is already so large that knowing where the green crystals are in the first place is no easy task without a guide. The lack of an in-game map makes remembering specific tombs or rooms an uphill battle. More importantly, the concept of using goo to revive a dead person represents a "genre break." Up to this point, The Dig has been operating under a somewhat realistic veil of science-fiction, and this is the point when that suddenly stops.

The Nexus Crystal Puzzle - Score: 8/10

I HATED this puzzle when I first played The Dig as a child. Whether it is on an old CRT or modern LCD monitor, I always have had a hard time seeing if the glow on the tips of the crystals is getting brighter or not as I adjust them. As things stand, you need to alternate between three translucent crystals and illuminate them by adjusting all three at various heights. The source of frustration here comes when you accidentally change one crystal's position and undo your progress with another one. There's a specific order the game wants you to tackle the three crystals, but it at no point communicates what that order might be.

I absolutely HATE how you can fuck yourself over and turn off the other crystals and make things way harder for yourself. This puzzle is easy to solve once you figure out what you need to do, but even concluding you need to raise and lower the three smaller crystals simultaneously is not clear from the onset. Likewise, the tips of the crystals are a terrible source of input. Fun fact, this is one of those LucasArts puzzles that prevent you from looking up the answers on a guide. Whenever you start a new playthrough, the game randomizes the values for each of the crystals. This means that guides can only describe the strategy for the puzzle rather than represent a single solution.

The Tomb Puzzle - Score: 9/10

This might surprise some people, but I think the sequence in which you revive the alien architect is a moment worthy of condemnation. My reason for this is:

1. You first need to find a specific screen with an eclipse in the background that you created from a prior puzzle. The Dig's navigation issues make this a downright painful process.
2. Once you observe the eclipse, you need to place a blue crystal into a small slot, and this is an object you gathered during the first hour of the game.
3. You need to stand on a blurry stone tile with two moons, which, to activate, you need to use the red rod from the rat puzzle to turn on.
4. After you go down the elevator, you need to destroy a statue to find an entrance that has a guard. The guard, paradoxically, is killed using the green stones, which have not been used for a while.
5. You use the first gem rod to open a door before you revive an alien in a tomb.

More than any other puzzle in the game, this sequence represents The Dig's overall design pitfalls. It attempts to provide elaborate environmental storytelling using the SCUMM engine and struggles to accomplish this. This process is way too involved for the verb–object interface employed by LucasArts. Similarly, the leaps of logic you have to make are uncharacteristic of LucasArts and instead pines for the works of Sierra. For example, on FOUR OCCASIONS, you need to pull out items that have been wasting away in your inventory since the first act. One of these objects, the blue orb, has not been used FOR HOURS!

Turtle Bone Puzzle - Score: 9/10

Many who play or have played The Dig consider this to be the most challenging puzzle in the game. I'm afraid I can't agree for a handful of reasons. First, the game provides a visual reference in the form of a fossil. This reference guide is far from perfect, but it is at least a partial attempt by the game to make your experience easier. Likewise, you are stuck interacting with a single pile of bones and don't need to bother with other nearby items or devices, which is not something I can say about what I consider to be the actual hardest puzzle in The Dig. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this puzzle is still complete horseshit. It's not exactly what I would call "a good time."

Right off the bat, the fossil reference is only partially helpful. The fossil you can examine is blurry and missing some critical parts compared to the pile of bones you need to piece together. Additionally, it is not clear what you have done wrong when you have completed the fossil and have an incorrect outcome. To add insult to injury, some of the bones look exactly the same. Finally, the pieces to the fossil are more than happy to snap into incorrect positions, and this can result in you having a completed skeleton that looks right but has a single piece out of alignment. In this situation, you are better off tearing apart your completed work and trying again from scratch rather than scouring for your one or two mistakes. To call this "frustrating" is a colossal understatement.

Trapping The Rat - Score: 10/10

And now we reach The Dig's biggest puzzle-based turd. When people say they "like" The Dig, I cannot help but squint my eyes and point to this puzzle. On paper, your task seems simple enough. The panel to a door is missing an essential part thanks to an alien rat snatching it before you could stop it. Obviously, this means we need to chase after the rat and repair the door. Well... not so fast. What you are about to subject yourself to is widely considered one of the worst puzzles LucasArts designed during their "Golden Age" short of the Brick Wall Puzzle in the original release of Full Throttle. Even veterans of LucasArts games will back me up with that declaration.

Getting all of the parts needed for this puzzle is difficult because they all blend into the environment. The next issue is simply figuring out you need to create a trap to capture a rat in the first place. When I first played this game, I did not know the rat was the key to the puzzle and instead viewed it as a fun background animation. I thought it made more sense if you needed to dig directly into its nook. Assembling the trap is not intuitive, and trapping the rat requires a lot of trial and error as getting the rat in the proper position can take time. Identifying if your character is in the correct spot is a headache and knowing to use the bracelet on the rat makes no sense. Much like the Tomb Puzzle, the Rat Trap Puzzle requires you to use an assortment of items and objects you collected hours ago!

There's also an element of Broken Sword's notorious "Goat Puzzle" here as well. The only way you can get the critter in the trap is to get in position before its moving animation begins and finishes. This is a tiny window for you to fiddle with the SCUMM interface, and if you fail, you have to get the rat to pop out of its nook again. Using the blue compass device sucks because it is ambiguous enough to where you never really know where you need to use it or where it's pointing towards. Additionally, fixing the panel requires a specific part from a far-off environment you can miss. Finally, the red rod from the trap needs to be picked up after releasing the rat. Otherwise, you will not be able to complete a future puzzle.

Should You Play The Dig? (Answer: Maybe?)

Even for intermediate to expert puzzle game fans, The Dig is a tough sell. While ambitious, the game struggles to pull together its many disparate and diverging ideas into a coherent adventure game. This issue makes sense when you consider the game is an adaptation of a long scrapped Steven Spielberg movie script. Despite the game having all the world's ambition, it doesn't do much when it comes to its narrative. The characters are largely the same as when you first encountered them, and the actual plot meanders for hours upon end. Worse, the story's climax reeks of a game that didn't know how to stick its landing.

Playing The Dig is equally befuddling. If you want to see LucasArts push their SCUMM engine to a breaking point, The Dig is worth a shot. That said, you should play it with a guide, as its punishing difficulty is an anachronistic break from many of LucasArts' previous classic adventure game titles. Some of the puzzles in the game are downright atrocious, requiring the use of long-forgotten items or specific inputs in a limited time frame. If this was any other developer, I might be convinced this is not a big deal. However, knowing this is a LucasArts project, I cannot help but feel like their attempts to try something different hurt the overall experience The Dig is attempting to offer.

Author's Note: There are spoilers in this blog related to Halo 4 and 5.

Yo, Where Did All The Prometheans Weapons Go?

It would appear the internet is still buzzing about Halo Infinite's multiplayer. A glance of any video game forum or social media platform will unveil a smattering of largely positive chatter about the game's many modes and customization options. If there is one significant negative talking point, it is the general sense that the multiplayer's progression system still needs some work. That being one of the few complaints is a bit of an accomplishment for 343 when you consider where the franchise was with Halo 4 and 5. While both games were generally well-received by critics and the franchise's most ardent fans, there was a clear sense that both games were chasing after dragons and zeitgeists it had no real hope of catching. This is partly why many people have enjoyed Halo Infinite's rollback of several features and gimmicks from prior Halo games. I understand people are bound to cite the Grapplehook as a "game-changer." Still, I'd argue it is more in line with the identity of what a Halo game plays like than some of the Promethean weapons in Halo 4. As we will discuss shortly, calling Infinite a "return to the basics" is an understatement, and 343 Industries have seriously parred down some of their experiments from previous games.

However, to return to my earlier point, there are only three Promethean/Forerunner weapons in all of Halo Infinite's multiplayer (i.e., the Cindershot, Heatwave, and Sentinel beam). Of these three, only one, the Sentinel beam, has appeared in previous Halo games. With Infinite, 343 have emphasized UNSC and Banished weapons and left the Promethean weapons from 4 and 5 mainly in the dust. Furthermore, I found it slightly funny that when introducing the Cindershot and Heatwave, 343 altogether avoided using the word "Promethean" and instead favored the term "Warrior-Servants" when discussing the original users of said weapons. Likewise, it is incredibly telling that while 343 were happy to bring back icons of the series, the weapons most likely to get axed debuted in Halo 4 and 5. While I think there's a pretty apparent reason for this when discussing Halo Infinite's multiplayer, what this absence could mean for its campaign is anyone's guess.

This leads me to a final admission before we jump into the "meat" of this blog. I am now, and always have been, someone who plays Halo games for their campaigns and single-player modes. I have nothing against Halo's multiplayer and, over the years, have come to appreciate what the franchise has contributed to the gaming landscape in terms of online matchmaking, alternate control schemes, and match customization options. There's also something to be said about the enduring legacy of Halo and the fact it is the last multiplayer shooter of its kind still standing. Simply put, they are not making open-world arena shooters anymore. Not with the unforeseen retirement of Tribes, Unreal Tournament, and even Quake. That said, I remain someone who comes to Halo games for their scripted single-player campaigns and high-budget science fiction storytelling. A lot of this has to do with the Halo franchise being something that caught me at the right time and place when I was young, and I haven't been able to shake it away since. While many people advocate for the multiplayer progression system to be tweaked, I have been sitting here idly twiddling my thumbs for any signs that 343's era of Halo storytelling will be less of a mess.

Explaining The Absence Of Promethean Stuff In The Multiplayer Is Incredibly Clear-Cut

Before I attempt to speculate what the axing of Promethean weapons could indicate about Halo Infinite's story, let's discuss their absence in the game's multiplayer. The reason for this is pretty straightforward, as 343's messaging has been the same for a while. Halo Infinite is intended to be a "return to form" after a brief period of experimentation for the franchise. Rather than make all of the speed and item-based mechanics "work" a third time, 343 ditched those ideas in favor of a multiplayer experience that echoed the Bungie-era games. Fuck, remember when one of the first things 343 did to get some skeptics of 4 and 5 back on board was to prove Master Chief's armor in Infinite more closely mimicked his armor in Halo 3? Yeah, that's what they did with the parred-down weapon list in Infinite! They shit-canned a ton of Forerunner energy weapons most people did not like and replaced them with a bunch of slug-based UNSC and Brute/Banished weapons. And if we are being honest, these weapons play better into the stiff but deliberative feel of Halo than the sleek and glass-canon-like weapons of the Prometheans.

From a practical standpoint, I don't think these weapons can work in Halo Infinite unless the movement-based additive and customization mechanics in 4 and 5 return. When you go back and look at the Promethean weapons in Halo 4, you also realize how inconsequential they are in the grand scheme of things. Most were different interpretations of long-standing icons in the series, but in a different shell that allowed 343 to ease people into the many item and weapon-based gimmicks they were selling at the time. Likewise, most of the weapons were never especially well-received from the greater Halo multiplayer community. They certainly looked nice, but by Halo 5, they were a clear indicator that 343 was attempting to chase after the popularity of other multiplayer zeitgeists rather than celebrate the distinctive look and feel of the series. So, if Infinite is an honest attempt to bring back long-time fans, 343 needed to revert to series standbys.

If you ask me, I always felt the Promethean Weapons worked far better in the campaign and Spartan Ops missions than the multiplayer. Most of them worked best when you were down on your luck and had nothing else to use. Ultimately, they were fun last resort options while traversing larger Forerunner-based environments when ammunition for other weapons was hard to come by. And if Infinite isn't going to launch with the single-player campaign and with no indications of a Spartan Ops or Firefight equivalent coming any time soon, why put more on 343's plate than needed? What people are buzzing about right now is only possible if 343 tackle a bite-sized chunk of what is normally included in a Halo game. They needed this game to resonate with Halo fans, both new and old, and that is what happened.

Does This Mean Anything For The Campaign?

Now we get into the section of this blog that is more speculative. Again, as someone who comes to the Halo games primarily seeking single-player and cooperative experiences, my opinion of the "343 Era" is even more mixed than the multiplayer community's impressions. First, the current state of the Halo canon is a complete mess. Halo 4 and 5 didn't help matters in that both games failed to commit to the "Reclaimer Saga" 343 initially billed as the next big thing for the franchise. With it, we have seen the Forerunner and Prometheans go from being a huge selling point to second-fiddle to remnants of the Covenant as well as the Brutes. The Didact initially appeared to be a possible figurehead for a pivot for the franchise, and then 343 offed him in a less than ten-minute boss battle. Both Halo 4 and 5 struggled to strike an effective balance between providing new enemies or factions as well as doling out fanservice. And the less said about both games struggling to engage in even the most basic worldbuilding and instead relying on computer terminals to explain essential plot points, the better. But the most significant point of failure for the "Reclaimer Saga" continues to be its downright awful attempts to humanize Master Chief. I have always argued 343 should have used Dr. Catherine Halsey as the focal point for an entire game as a massive thorn in Master Chief's side. And yet, 343 completely squandered Halsey as a character after building her up for literal years. It's a fucking mess.

So here we are, with the two most prominent factions in the multiplayer being the UNSC and Banished, a breakaway resistance faction from the Covenant Empire. You also have to consider the larger emphasis on Cortana's "Created" faction. For those who may have forgotten, at the end of Halo 5: Guardians, Cortana founded a collective of rogue A.I. called the "Created," which seek to use the Mantle of Responsibility to take over the galaxy. It's a pretty contrived plot beat, but Halo, even during its "Golden Age," wasn't exactly a bastion of original science-fiction storytelling. Nonetheless, with the campaign demo 343 released, one thing is for certain. The Prometheans and Forerunners are taking a backseat... again. After spending the better part of Halo 4 and 5 building up the return of the Forerunners as a significant plot point, Master Chief is instead going to tango with a Covenant resistance movement and a rampant Cortana. Yet again, 343 responded to negative fan input about their creative decisions in previous Halo games by ditching their experiments and shotgunning new shit to fill in the gaps. This is odd considering the last time 343 invested in supporting media for the Halo franchise was for a trilogy of books called the "Forerunner Saga."

That last point leads me to my most pressing quibble with 343's strategy whenever they make a new game. Often 343 repackage a bunch of enemy types from previous games, give them a new name, and then use characters from these factions to present a bunch of subplots. Besides the lack of creativity, the issue here is that Halos 4 and 5 still have completely unresolved plot threads. 343 have a bad habit of never remaining too married to any of their creative ideas, and that's a concern I have going into Infinite. Even if Halo Infinite's campaign strikes a balance between open-world environments and scripted levels, there's no telling if anything from this game will represent a tangible real-world change for the franchise. And this impacts those of you who seek Halo games for their multiplayer-based experiences as well. There's no telling if any of the current multiplayer mechanics or gimmicks this time around will persist.

Why Single-Player Halo Fans Should Still Wait

I forgot to note I'm not opposed to any of the fundamental changes 343 are proposing with what they have shown and released thus far. I'm glad they are trying to shake up the structure of a Halo campaign because I think even die-hards will admit 343 is not equipped to copy the format that Bungie pioneered with earlier games. We know this to be true after two mainline games attempted just that, and the major structural and storytelling issues that entailed were not exactly secrets. However, I don't think for a minute that moving things into an open-world format or adding on a tech tree will absolve 343 of some pretty glaring design and narrative mistakes that they made in Halo 4 and 5. For example, the four missions they have provided to the press don't clarify if 343 will YET AGAIN use terminals to convey fundamental aspects of Infinite's worldbuilding. Also, even if the campaign in Infinite is "perfect," that doesn't change the fact that the franchise is a narrative mess. There are still characters that populate the world of Halo that feel half-baked or still have yet to get their complete character-defining moments.

I hate to say it, but part of me is expecting the Prometheans to make a sudden unwanted re-appearance at the butt-end of Infinite's campaign. It would be the absolute worst thing 343 could do, but it is not outside of the realm of possibility. Nowadays, writing the story for a Halo game seems more like a plate-spinning circus act. With each game, the writer needs to keep five or six plates spinning at all times or otherwise risk them falling to the ground and breaking. Not seeing their perilous position, 343 keeps adding new dishes to their circus act and has no signs of slowing down. My point is I'd like them to relax and reflect on what they have added to the Halo universe rather than keep adding in more shit that they cannot conceivably prevent themselves from breaking. But alas, that's not what people want. People want big guns that shoot eleven laser beams and rip apart Brutes like a hot knife through butter.

All that aside, it is fantastic to see people excited about Halo again. As I mentioned in the first section, Halo is all that remains of a very particular style of FPS campaign and multiplayer design. They simply are not making arena-style multiplayer shooters like they once did, and Halo's level-based shooter puzzles are rarely replicated these days. I know I am guilty of saying "I want this game to succeed" a lot, but I honestly do want Halo Infinite to "work." The diversity of styles of FPS games has taken a pretty dramatic dip in the past ten years. Hopefully, if this game captures even a portion of the series' highs, while also blazing its own path, 343 will finally feel like they can make a Halo game on their terms rather than those demanded of them from unflinching fans. I know portions of this blog might make it seem like I fall into that camp, but the opposite is true. All I wonder is if 343 can finally shake away their indecisiveness and commit to what they pioneer in a game for once, and only time will tell if that is the case. But I swear to fucking God, if two games down the line, the Didact comes back from the dead and leads a group of Prometheans called "Titans," I'm going to fucking die. Mark my words, I'm going to fucking die.

What Is G String?

Right off the bat, I'm going to give everyone about three minutes to get out their giggles over the fact I'm talking about a game titled "G String." It doesn't help that the developer, who is one person, refers to their updates as varying bra sizes with the latest titled "B-Cup Update," but hey, who am I to judge? Okay, are you done laughing? G String is a game I have followed for a while now. The project started as a mod for Half-Life 2 and eventually expanded into a full-fledged video game. A single person is spearheading the endeavor, and they have been tinkering around with it for over a decade. For example, the first version of the game was released in 2011. Since then, the developer, who goes by the handle @eyaura on Twitter, has hosted livestreams and fireside chats that explain their timetables for various updates.

The game itself is a novel mix between Deus Ex and Half-Life. Most of the game takes place in a futuristic cyberpunk city, and it controls much like Half-Life 2. The game's overall look and its graphical fidelity are probably the starkest reminders that G String is indeed a one-person passion project. Its world is rather impressive, but the facial textures and character models you'll see run a vast delta. Finally, the amount of "jank" you can expect to encounter is a given. Eyaura is still working on the scripting for mainline story missions, and the game has yet to go a week without someone chiming in on its Steam or ModDB pages about something fundamentally breaking. All of that aside, it's an astounding accomplishment by its developer, and if you approach it with the correct mindset is worth a check. However, that leads to a significant issue plaguing the game.

What's The Issue?

Whenever G String is put up for sale, a similar problem always crops up. While those that have followed the game for a while understand it is a passion project, those seeking a complete game do not. This exact problem came to a head when the game was prominently featured during Steam's 2021 Summer Sale. During the much-ballyhooed event, G String was placed on the same science-fiction page as major games like Cyberpunk 2077, Dead Space, and Mass Effect. People saw its budget-tier price and impressive screencaps and jumped at it thinking they were getting a polished indie game version of Cyberpunk 2077. When buyers discovered the game was just as, if not more, rough around the edges, there was an immediate backlash. All of this is to say, the review scores for G String tanked, and its developer scrambled to do damage control. They eventually released a statement that they appreciated the influx of feedback yet underscored they were a single person. The entire ordeal sounded like a goddamn nightmare, and I am amazed Eyaura managed to stay afloat.

I understand this is by no means an unfamiliar scenario. Developers have been releasing games via Early Access and public betas for years, with consumers generally unable to set realistic expectations for such preliminary launches. I also am aware that many people believe that both Steam and the developer have part of the blame to share with this burden. Steam's blasé attitude about what they allow on their marketplace has led to many consumers feeling as if they have been "burned" by false advertising. Also, they put a lot of the responsibility of communicating what to expect out of Early Access games on individual developers. Rather than enforce a codified ruleset for the many states games can be in on their storefront, they have maintained an "anything goes" standard. Eyaura, on the other hand, was naïve to jump on board the Steam Summer Sale train with a partially complete project and think there would not be some blowback. If you check G String's Steam page, you see a smattering of high-res pictures and pie in the sky promises. Much of which does not indicate the moment-to-moment technical difficulties you will likely encounter trying to get through the game. Nonetheless, I have a real hard time blaming them for being excited for a game they have toiled away at for over ten years, which leads me to the final point I want to make.

Why Do I Think This Game Is Impossible To Review?

First, video game news and editorial sites have not found a "solution" on how to review games in perpetual development. Polygon and GameSpot temporarily used fluctuating review scores that were updated to coincide with patches and DLC. However, that system proved messy, and at some point, most major sites need to move on to provide SEO-ed content for their front page. Games like G String, which do not have any signs of ending active development any time soon, are virtually impossible to review outside of preview coverage and the occasional op-ed piece. I'm not saying that the people who work at these sorts of publications are bad at their jobs or that these sites are in the wrong. Instead, they are not in the best position to review games like G String which increasingly are a majority of the titles you are likely to encounter on digital marketplaces.

From a more fundamental perspective, G String is a game that reminds me of why I would struggle to cover games in a formal capacity. As a primarily narrative writer that enjoys telling tall tales and weaving a mix of truth and myth into my writing, G String makes me realize I cannot toe the line expected with general game reviews. If you were to give me a game from a single person who had worked on it for more than a decade, your damn straight I am assessing them differently than a major publication or developer with a team in the hundreds. I am also totally disinterested in not surfacing the travails that developer has had over their many years of making their dream a reality, including their possible struggles with their own community. If someone has had a tough time getting one foot through the door of the games industry, I am doubtful to shut that door or not at least attempt to commend them for their effort. None of this suggests I would not critically analyze cheap knock-offs or games that demean minorities or other vulnerable communities. But the developer of G String tried their best and is working on their game in-between their normal goings-on, and I have a real tough time telling them what they should have accomplished or done with their project given those circumstances.

Final Thoughts

I have gone most of this blog talking about the recent controversies surrounding G String without actually talking about the game itself. For the most part, I think the game lays out an ambitious floor plan to an experience that may be worth having in the future. As someone who recalls the project when it was just a Half-Life 2 mod, where the project stands now is good enough for me. As a wizened sage would put it, I am in too deep to stop now. I have reached a point where I am actively rooting for the developer to turn things around and make the game of their dreams. I fully understand improvements will be incremental rather than sudden and groundbreaking. I also want to clarify this is not a Star Citizen situation as the developer isn't operating something I suspect is a pyramid scheme. The roadmaps lead to tangible and attainable goals for an indie developer, and the developer's attempts at communication feel genuine and realistic. Also, did I mention the game is being sold for $18? With your purchase, you get the game in its current form, an invitation to become a stakeholder in the development process, and access to all future updates. As things stand, I don't feel ripped off even in the slightest.

Nonetheless, if you ask me to recommend you check out G String, I would have to think about it. Even in its current improved state, the game is plagued with issues and works only in spurts. It is not for the faint of heart, especially those seeking smooth and polished gaming experiences. And as I have hinted at earlier, you have to come to terms that the game may never fully realize its potential. The odds of Eyaura leaving the project entirely and in a partially complete state are significantly higher than the game ever being completed, whatever that word might mean in this case. But it's those sorts of "swings" that I feel like the industry could benefit from having more of from time to time. Even in its endless jank, G String is something that you are never bound to experience elsewhere, and that's something worth admiring. Anyways, if you end up giving the game a shot, remember to have your bug-reporting Google Doc on the ready.

So They Are Making A New Star Ocean Game! (Also, SPOILER WARNING!)

Star Ocean: The Divine Force was announced recently for the PS4 and PS5 with a 2022 release date. That coincides with the franchise's 25th anniversary, and while many were speculating something big from tri-Ace, a full-fledged game seemed low on the list. With Star Ocean effectively hibernating since the 2016 release of Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness (aka Star Ocean 5), most fans suspected an HD Remaster of one of the older games as a more likely outcome. But here we are, and the press release and debut trailer for The Divine Force surfaces a lot about what to expect from the game. Much like its predecessor, it looks like a pseudo-MMO in the style of Monster Hunter and Xenoblade Chronicles. The game's reveal trailer showcased vast open environments and an assortment of anime-ass characters murdering hapless monsters. The best way I can put it is to call the sizzle reel incredibly "safe."

Nonetheless, you might be surprised to know the first thing I did when the game was announced was to check the press release to establish the "Stardate" for the story. You see, while there is some sense of a continuous narrative with the Star Ocean franchise, each game has haphazardly navigated the series' continuum in leaps and bounds. Star Ocean: The Last Hope (aka, Star Ocean 4), for example, is technically the furthest back in the series' timeline, and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (aka Star Ocean 3) continues to be the franchise's awkward endnote and more on that in a little bit. Disappointingly, I discovered, after a bit of sleuthing, The Divine Force's start date is listed as the year "583 SD." This date means the game takes place after Star Ocean 5 but BEFORE Star Ocean 3. Which I suspect will frustrate long-time fans of the Star Ocean franchise because it is YET ANOTHER sign that tri-Ace continues to be in denial about how badly they fucked up the Star Ocean canon with their godawful plot twist in Star Ocean 3. Speaking of which, let's talk about the plot twist in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

Let's Talk About A Plot Twist So BAD It Almost Killed A Franchise!

For those of you who look at Star Ocean as a bit of a pipsqueak in comparison to JRPG titans like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, The Legend of Heroes, and the Tales of games; you would be correct. Even during the series' "peak," which I would estimate is Star Ocean: The Second Story (aka Star Ocean 2), it always lived in the shadow of bigger and better games. Even glowing reviews of Second Story at the time couldn't help but declare it as a decent companion piece to Final Fantasy VII. That said, the franchise has its defenders who have followed it as far back as its initial offering on the Super Famicom. And much like the games they are compared to, the Star Ocean games constantly endeavor for a level of mechanical quality other Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest knockoffs do not usually aspire to all the time. Shit, even Blue Sphere, an early GameBoy Color release, is worth checking out as a solid proof of concept of a bite-sized handheld-based JRPG experience. Narratively, Star Ocean definitely showed its Dragon Quest influences. While its early games certainly had stories, they felt ancillary to their mechanical innovations to genre standbys. Personally, I enjoy Star Ocean: The Second Story's action-oriented battlefield and gameplay far more than its Tales of contemporaries. I find Second Story snappier, and its skill and crafting mechanics far less convoluted.

All of this nostalgic musing suggests the first handful of Star Ocean games were pleasant experiences. You will never see me put a Star Ocean game on my proverbial "Greatest Games of All-Time" list, but you might see me suggest a few titles as gateway JRPGs for newcomers. Unfortunately, that is far from the case with Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (aka, Star Ocean 3). In the lead-up to the game's release, tri-Ace promised an epic story, as well as an improvement to the real-time JRPG combat fans had grown to love. In comparison to previous Star Ocean games, Till the End of Time's sense of scope and scale dwarfed its predecessors by a considerable margin. To highlight, single acts and one-off environments doubled the in-game world of the first game. For many, seeing tri-Ace pine for the skies of JRPG stardom was worth the price of entry alone, and I would be one of them had it not been for the game's final act. Overall, Till the End of Time is a fun and fast-paced adventure for upwards of 80% of its playtime. Sure, you have to get over some groan-inducing moments and the expected anime tropey horseshit endemic to this genre, but the story, for the most part, holds its own. Likewise, while you whale away on trash mobs and allocate points into characters, the worlds you explore are stunning. Sure, the protagonist is named "Fayt Leingod," but the game successfully conveys a spectacular space-faring galaxy.

BUT HOT DAMN IS THE ENDING FUCKING STUPID! And it's not just the game's ending that is "problematic." The final act of Till the End of Time continues to be a sore point among fans and in the Star Ocean continuity. You see, near the end of Star Ocean 3, the game starts to ramp up its digital artifacting and even starts spouting out game code as if you are a character in The Matrix. Eventually, the characters of the game encounter a man by the name of "Luther Lansfeld" who reveals he is a "Fourth Dimensional Being" and the entire world of Star Ocean, from beginning to end, has been a parallel universe that his race has been utilizing as an MMORPG. Yup, the whole Star Ocean metaverse is outed as being a game within a game. All of the characters you loved and enjoyed in the previous Star Ocean entries were just avatars controlled by an ancient alien race. Obviously, the game implies that these fourth-dimensional beings are you and me and Luther Lansfeld is our representative. So, it's "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" but anime. Predictably, the characters of Star Ocean 3 reject this reality, claim they have achieved sentience, and promptly delete Luther Lansfeld to prevent him from erasing the universe they know and love. The entire epilogue of the game involves you controlling the main character and asking every member in your party how they plan to live their life. That might sound compelling on paper, but in execution, you get one lecture about human consciousness after another for about two hours. It is undoubtedly one of the most painful video game epilogues I have ever witnessed in my life.

Regardless, it's worth mentioning how Star Ocean 3's plot twist has its share of defenders. Some view it as an interesting inversion of the isekai genre, whereas others applaud the story for rejecting standard epic storytelling conventions. One of the more interesting defenses of the game comes from Kotaku's Ethan Gach, who, in 2017, shared why they found the narrative ambition of Star Ocean 3 far more compelling than the mechanical rigmarole of Star Ocean 4 and 5. Obviously, I entirely beg to differ, but there's no denying tri-Ace went for it in Star Ocean 3. What continues to rub me the wrong way is how Star Ocean 3 entirely discards decades' worth of worldbuilding for the sake of a cheap one-off twist that the series has repeatedly failed to make good on since it happened. Yes, Star Ocean 5 is essentially an MMORPG, and because of its mechanical trappings, it somewhat leans into the possibility of its world being an MMO. Nonetheless, the in-game story barely addresses the implications of your characters being avatars of an alien race or if anyone you control has achieved consciousness. To me, tri-Ace refusing to own up to their fuck up by either retconning the ending of Star Ocean 3 or doubling down and making it the series' raison d'être proves they had no idea what they were doing.

One of my all-time favorite memories of 1Up.com was when tri-Ace brought Star Ocean 4 to their office, and the site's usual JRPG reviewers refused to let a PR representative dodge questions about if the game addressed the ending of Star Ocean 3. Eventually, tri-Ace was forced to recognize that "all stories in the Star Ocean family are to be respected, but each game is its own story," and that has been the stance they have maintained since. Star Ocean 4 is a prequel to all previous Star Ocean games and entirely dodges the issue as a result. And as I mentioned previously, every time I bring up this fundamental issue with the world of Star Ocean, someone chimes in about Star Ocean 5. These commenters tend to claim that the series slowly becoming a single-player MMO is the developer recognizing the legacy of Star Ocean 3. But if that were the case, they should make this the whole point of the games moving forward and explicitly communicate it to the audience! This roundabout ambient storytelling is WEAK SHIT! In my opinion, the creative leads at tri-Ace are a bunch of fucking cowards, and they need to decide on what they want to do with this part of the canon. Otherwise, why the fuck should I care about any of these characters?

But What Does Any Of This Mean For Star Ocean: The Divine Force?

Here's my big prediction about Star Ocean: The Divine Force. tri-Ace does jack shit to resolve any of the dozens of questions people still have about Till The End of Time. Like the last two games, as well as the awful free-to-play mobile game, they are likely going to plug their ears and pretend no one remembers Star Ocean 3 exists in the first place. MAYBE, there are "hilarious" references to the fact the universe of Star Ocean is a fake video game world. I would not discount there being a single NPC that spouts a random line about knowing the machinations at play that govern the franchise's shared metaverse. However, will any plot holes this premise presents ever get resolved? NOPE! Never say never, but the chances tri-Ace even gives a shit is virtually zero.

And I don't know, the game in the trailer looks incredibly mediocre? With the series increasingly erring towards the mechanics of Monster Hunter, I honestly hope tri-Ace does something stupidly ambitious with their storytelling. Otherwise, I think they run the risk of exposing their low-rent sensibilities. The games they develop independently cannot possibly hope to stand on the laurels of tight mechanics or marginal innovations, as they did in the PS1 and PS2 era, with the RPG market as crowded as it is today. Which, honestly, is why I want them to do something crazy. tri-Ace had a massive role in making Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns. I get they only provided additional programming and design help in those games, but they are no strangers to the "right kind of schlock." That would at least lead to something more compelling than yet another Monster Hunter clone. And with this game, what do they have to lose? The franchise has been in a rut for over five years, so now is the time to shake things up!

Disclaimer: This blog in no way is implying the Silent Hill franchise and its creators of plagiarism or infringing on copyright. This is just a fun exercise many other horror game essayists have done prior to the publishing of this blog. Both Jacob's Ladder and the Silent Hill games can be enjoyed together, as they should.

Preamble (Also, SPOILER WARNING!)

First off, I want to clarify that pointing out how Jacob's Ladder inspired the Silent Hill series is not exactly "breaking news." The creative minds that helmed the initial entries of the franchise have said as much for literal decades. Likewise, horror fans have provided great retrospectives and video essays about this very topic, with my personal favorite being @voidburger's exhaustive Let's Play videos. Seriously, check out her Silent Hill series, as it leaves no stone unturned. It was videos like those that inspired me to re-watch Jacob's Ladder this month, and upon doing so, I came to a startling conclusion. While I certainly recognize the influence the film had on games, my most recent viewing made me realize the scenes that had those influences are a minority of the film's overall running time. In fact, you can boil down the parts of the movie that are important to horror video games into a compilation video of fewer than twenty minutes, and with this blog, I will prove that point.

A lot of this stems from Jacob's Ladder's moment-to-moment horror being told through a slow build of varying haunting set-pieces rather than an endless loop of jump scares and graphic gore. There are viscerally horrifying moments, don't get me wrong, but much of what makes Jacob's Ladder frightful is its use of metaphor and the unreliable narrator convention. Within minutes of the film's start, the viewer comes to understand that its protagonist, the aptly named Jacob, is stuck in a purgatory of some sort. It's a narrative motif the Silent Hill franchise has been built upon for over twenty years, but what gets lost in the mix are the multiple red herrings in Jacob's Ladder, as well as its preference for leaving things ambiguous. If there is one negative legacy of Silent Hill's use of Jacob's Ladder, it's the many cheap imitators that have utilized the "creepy insane asylum" trope without any nuance. Games like Outlast borrow the iconography of Silent Hill, and in turn, Jacob's Ladder, by featuring straightjacketed characters shaking their masked heads back and forth to a blurring effect. However, in these examples, nothing is in service of providing a metaphorical descent into Hell and, in doing so, reiterates negative stereotypes about mental health and mental health services.

Speaking of which, the visual iconography and narrative themes that horror games have borrowed from Jacob's Ladder are undeniable. Entire boss designs in Silent Hill, which influenced future games, were ripped from the movie in question. A scene we will discuss shortly involves the protagonist going to a party and watching a flesh demon consume his girlfriend. That flesh demon is a boss in Silent Hill 3. Pyramid Head's tongue arm under his head? Yeah, that was ripped from Jacob's Ladder. Creepy nurses with their eyes covered in bandages or rotting flesh? Yup, that too came from Jacob's Ladder. The MANY straightjacket enemy types in Silent Hill are a recurring visual in Jacob's Ladder. The list goes on, and I only mention these notable examples because they are the visuals from the Silent Hill games that became codified tropes throughout horror video games. Nonetheless, none of this should suggest Jacob's Ladder doesn't have its share of historical muses as well.

The Odd Backstory Of What Influenced Jacob's Ladder

Before we jump into everyone's favorite subject, math(s), let's delve into history. It would behoove me not to mention how Jacob's Ladder borrows many of its visuals and narrative themes from pre-existing sources and media. The most important to note is "An Occurrence at Owl Creek" by Ambrose Bierce from 1890. For those unaware, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek" is a seminal work of literature that pioneered the twist ending and was an early example of the stream of consciousness narrative structure. It also lay the foundation for future authors to experiment with storytelling devices like unreliable narrators and non-linear storytelling. It would be histrionics for me to claim it was the first creative endeavor to explore these tropes or idioms. Nonetheless, it popularized them and had a lasting influence. For one thing, the ending to Jacob's Ladder and Silent Hill carbon copy the conclusion to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek."

There are many cinematic influences, but the most fundamental comes from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which provides an early prototype of the template used in Jacob's Ladder. Like Owl Creek, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari deploys a shocking twist ending and conveys its story in what looks and feels like a hellscape. The elements of body horror in Jacob's Ladder have an assortment of influences worth recognizing. H. R. Giger and Francis Bacon are names that need no introduction in the art scene. Bacon's screaming mouth motif is ever-present in Jacob's Ladder, and the few times when the movie gets visceral, it pines for many of Giger's iconic works. Nonetheless, there's a lesser-known influence on the explicitly horrific moments in Jacob's Ladder. Joel-Peter Witkin is a photographer who deals in the macabre and one of the few people in the 90s that actively photographed people with dwarfism and transgender and intersex bodies. Witkin's photographs directly influenced Jacob's Ladder's most iconic scene, its hospital set-piece, which returns me to the negative legacy of Jacob's Ladder. Long-time Silent Hill art lead, Masahiro Ito, often cites Bacon and Witkin as their primary source of inspiration. While Jacob's Ladder and Silent Hill use people with deformities to show their protagonist metaphorically descending into Hell, we cannot say the same about their copycats. Often, horror games and films today make an abominable correlation between mental illness and physical disabilities. This leap of logic, while pervasive in movies and games, is beyond shitty and worthy of condemnation.

Then there's the part of Jacob's Ladder I have been dancing around since the start of this blog: the government conspiracy subplot. Now, I never claimed that Jacob's Ladder is a "perfect" movie; all I ever said was that it was "influential." Jacob's Ladder, like almost everything in the horror genre, makes the mistake of feeling like it eventually needs to explain why everything in the story is happening. One of its explanations for why its events unfold the way they do is that Jacob was an unwitting test subject to a super soldier serum program during the Vietnam War. It is an incredibly stupid revelation and the subject of significant debates between fans of the film. Some argue this part of the film is a red herring and a figment of Jacob's imagination to rationalize his death as more romantic than it was in actuality. On the other hand, the film makes this part of the story baked into its DNA when it puts up an end card that shares a factoid about rumors of the U.S. military experimenting with hallucinogenics during the Vietnam War. This part of the movie was influenced by "Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion" by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. I will only mention in passing that Jacob's Ladder's use of a variety of subplots directly influenced the Silent Hill franchise's use of multiple endings. This specific part of the movie played a role in justifying things like the UFO Ending and horror games overexplaining vagaries through optional routes.

Let's Add Up The Runtime Of The Scenes Important To Silent Hill

Jacob's Ladder	Silent Hill 3

Now we come to the "fun" part of this blog! Most databases list the overall playtime of Jacob's Ladder as being 113 minutes. After all of my mythologizing, you might be surprised to know that less than twenty percent of the film delves into explicitly horrific scenes applicable to the games and media it affected. The first scene from the movie that many note as being directly influential on horror games is its opening subway scene. During this sequence, Jacob navigates a haunting subway train and comes across a tentacle monster consuming a sleeping homeless person. After exiting the train in a panic, a careening subway populated with faceless zombies nearly hits him. While shocking and essential to Silent Hill and its many cheaper clones, both of these moments amount to about five minutes and twenty seconds total. Nonetheless, what I find incredibly compelling about Jacob's Ladder is that it spaces its visceral moments with long atmospheric mise en scene-styled establishing shots. While there are a handful of creepy interjections featuring faceless figures and a rampaging car, it's not until the party scene when we witness the film's next actual "horror" scene.

And that party scene, even if we incorporate its establishing shots, clocks in at slightly above three whole minutes. If you want to include the scene involving the psychic, that bumps things up to about three minutes and twenty-three seconds. Suppose you want to be generous and have that earlier moment with the rampaging car included in this compilation video. Even if I lop in the "hilarious" scene where Jacob encounters street prostitutes, we only add one minute and thirty seconds of air time. The scene with just the car is approximately forty seconds. I'll also add in the horrific moment after the party wherein Jacob's girlfriend forcibly places him in an ice bath in an attempt to deal with his fever. The scene does wonders to underscore how Jacob is truly alone as his neighbors assist his girlfriend, Jezebel, in dipping him into a painful bath. Even if I threw in the dream sequences and Jacob waking up, this scene amounts to about five minutes and twenty seconds. Even before we get to THE SCENE, everyone talks about when they discuss Jacob's Ladder, only about sixteen minutes of its first forty to fifty minutes are directly influential to the video games and other works it inspired.

This leads us to the single most "important" part of Jacob's Ladder: the hospital scene. Before this scene, Jacob sustained multiple injuries after stumbling out of a car. After being assessed by doctors and nurses at what we initially think is a clinic, he is carted into an urgent care ward. However, while in transit, he realizes the hospital staff are either a part of a grand conspiracy, or demons seeking to keep him in limbo; it depends on how you read the story. This is the set-piece that single-handedly inspired Keiichiro Toyama, the creator of Silent Hill, and Akihiro Imamura, the series' lead programmer, to make horror games. Nonetheless, it is ONLY four minutes and twenty-seven minutes long! In fact, if you only include Jacob's slow descent into "Hell," then we are looking at about three minutes. That's right! Three minutes in an approximately two-hour film inspired the aesthetical choices in horror video games for almost thirty years. And with that scene, my basic arithmetic rounds things up to about twenty minutes and twenty-four seconds. That's it. The creative minds behind the PS2 horror game "Golden Age" were inspired by approximately twenty minutes of a 1990 film that borrowed its influences from an 1890 short story and an arthouse photographer. Isn't life funny?

Brainstorming Other Examples

While researching this blog, I thought of an endless stream of other examples of games "borrowing" only a tiny portion of a film or source. The first examples that came to mind were the MANY games that draw inspiration from the shootout scene in Heat. While games like Payday and Kane and Lynch try to emulate the shootout's kinetic action and heart-thumping adrenaline rush, none of them tackle Heat's hardboiled neo-noir dialogue. Also lost in the mix in every Heat-inspired heist video game is the sense of cat and mouse with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino's characters. And it is fine if you like the shootout scene in Heat, but the real fans of Heat appreciate the coffeehouse meeting between Pacino and De Niro as the film's actual best moment. It is a rare scene where you can cut the sense of tension with a butter knife, and few have even come close to copying Michael Mann's skeletal but tight dialogue.

I'm going to excuse the Fallout franchise, obviously drawing inspiration from Mad Max and Metal Gear Solid pulling Snake from Escape from New York. Both examples are games that are honest about their influences while also providing their own stories and going in directions that differ from their respective inspirations. I'm also not talking about games like Earthbound, which pulls one confrontation or character design from a misconstrued scene from a movie. As many of you know, the final boss of Earthbound is an optical illusion depicting a fetus because the game's creative lead accidentally walked into an adult movie and thought they overheard a rape scene. And I'm on the fence when it comes to games like Deadly Premonition, which seek to emulate the aesthetics and experiences from another source entirely. With Silent Hill and Jacob's Ladder, we are talking about Shark Fin Soup rather than minestrone. Regardless, if you can think of other instances of games drawing inspiration from a small portion of a film or book, feel free to chime in with your examples.

Author's Note: Hey everyone, I actually recorded a podcast about this very topic! If you want to hear me talk with @thatpinguino about the legacy and importance of Jacob's Ladder, here you go!

• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #1: Ten Out Of Ten? Review It Again!
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #2: This Game Might Be The Weirdest Sequel To A Beloved Video Game Ever Made
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #3: This Game Was Kingdom Hearts Before Kingdom Hearts!
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #4: Help... No Seriously, Help Me! I Don't Understand The Story In This Game!

Part 26: Let's Discuss The OTHER/REAL Reason Why This Game Exists

Way back when I first debuted this retrospective, I spent some time talking about Radical Dreamers and how it influenced the development of Chrono Cross. There's no denying how Chrono Cross is a "soft reboot" of Radical Dreamers but with a "consolized" budget. However, it would be wrong to suggest that Radical Dreamers is the only factor in why Chrono Cross has a story as messy and convoluted as it does. In a handful of interviews during the most recent anniversary of Chrono Cross, Masato Kato, the game's director, shared some vital enlightenment into why the ending of Chrono Cross is what it is and what was the intended "heart" of the game. As Kato has put it, you have to go back to the release of Chrono Trigger to understand the inspiration for making Chrono Cross. It is worth noting how Episode 317 of the Retronauts podcast covered this topic extensively (https://retronauts.com/article/1583/retronauts-episode-317-chrono-cross). Regardless, Kato was under the impression that with the excessive number of alternate endings, his Chrono Trigger writing team had "covered all of their bases." They reviewed Chrono Trigger's script for weeks to ensure no unaddressed plot holes or unresolved story threads got through the final cut. They thought they had done their job, but then they got a call from the Nintendo Power Line.

As a representative from the Power Line put it bluntly, moments after the game's release, people began calling the tip line asking what had happened to Schala after the fall of the Kingdom of Zeal. Hundreds of people were inundating the tip line, asking if they had missed a hidden Easter Egg where they could find Schala and bring her to Magus. When Kato confirmed the calls were indeed authentic, and people felt this plotline had been left unresolved, he began to feel as if he had failed. Even after countless peer review sessions, he had missed something, and fans immediately picked up on it within days. This sense of frustration would be something Kato would hold on to for years. While the rest of the production, writing, and direction staff moved on with the feeling Chrono Trigger was a monumental accomplishment, Kato couldn't help but feel like there was unresolved business to attend to in the game. So, he started pestering higher-ups at Squaresoft to make a follow-up to Chrono Trigger, and eventually, Squaresoft complied. Unfortunately, his original go, Radical Dreamers, was saddled with a satellite peripheral that not more than 100,000 people had access to at any time. And so, Kato continued to pester and advocate for a "proper" follow-up to Chrono Trigger.

I'm not going to lie to you and say none of this story is apocryphal. However, I do know I want to believe this story. I want to live in a world where fans calling into the Nintendo Power Line caused the lead writer of Chrono Trigger to develop a grudge against one of their best works. A grudge, mind you, that guided two highly flawed attempts to address an unresolved question that most wouldn't even give the time of day. But when you reach the end of Chrono Cross, there is no doubt that Schala is the "key" to why its events unfold the way they do. What baffles me, and we will discuss this in-depth shortly, is why Kato decided to withhold her presence in Chrono Cross until the butt-end of the game's story. This incontrovertible fact leads me to believe the project ran out of development time and was rushed to meet a deadline. Otherwise, there is no justification for the game communicating its raison d'etre minutes before its final boss. That's especially the case when you consider the first half of the game had a concert about the importance of being tolerant.

Oddly enough, the Square-Enix of today seems to have leaned into this part of Chrono Cross' ridiculous lore. Look no further than the Nintendo DS release of Chrono Trigger and consider the game's secret super boss. For most who play the DS release of Chrono Trigger, the game goes off without a hitch. However, Kato, still feeling like there was unresolved business, rejoined the Square-Enix team to add a handful of new levels to the DS port. These new dungeons and enemy encounters made the connection between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross far more explicit. One of these levels, the "Darkness At The End Of Time," is straight up the final level in Chrono Cross, and the battle that takes place there is but a preamble to the final boss in Chrono Cross. Furthermore, Chrono Trigger DS' new optional dungeons even foreshadow the underpinning of Chrono Cross through its use of Schala. As we discover, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Zeal, Schala fused with Lavos to form the larval Dream Devourer. Schala's brother, Janus/Magus, even attempts to rescue her but to no avail and is sent away by Schala, who proclaims the Dream Devourer is not his battle to fight.

Part 27: Terra Tower SUCKS A LOT OF SHIT!

When we last left off, Serge and company recently picked up the Chrono Cross element and were preparing to summit Terra Tower. At the top of the monolithic superstructure is a dragon god who is lording over the Frozen Flame. This dragon god is moving to use the Frozen Flame to destroy humanity and usher in a new "epoch" led by dinosaurs and dragons. Serge is the only person capable of stopping this from happening because his soul is attuned to the Frozen Flame, which can grant whoever wields it a wish. If none of this makes sense, please consult the last episode of this series. If, however, you have completed this step and are still confused, you are not alone. Nonetheless, Terra Tower is a tall structure with no steps or elevator. If your party hopes to hack away at the dragon god, they will need to achieve flight. In a classic Squaresoft game, this would be where Chrono Cross unlocks your airship. However, this is far from being a routine Squaresoft romp.

I want to clarify how little the game actively preempts you before enacting the following sequence of events. All you know at this point is that you need some flying craft to reach the top of Terra Tower, and because Serge's society has yet to master flight, this is no easy task. So, I want you, dear reader, to predict the member of your party that is the "key" to reaching your goal. I won't rush you, so take your time. Are you ready for the answer? Be aware; unlike the Final Fantasy franchise, there is no grizzled war veteran that once captained an airship during an oft-forgotten war. Oh, and by the way, it's Starky. When you reach the bottom of the ocean after approaching a glowing spot, your diminutive alien companion discovers their spaceship and offers to use its engine on Serge's boat to help everyone get to the entrance of Terra Tower. What ensues here is a schlocky inspirational set-piece that pines for the bicycle flying scene from E.T. It is completely tonally anachronistic from the rest of the game, and it does nothing to prepare you for the tower. I guess there's a nice moment when Kid and Serge muse over the fact they have reached the end of their adventure, but even that goes painfully longer than it should. I will say it was funny when Kid and Serge attempted to have a genuine heart-to-heart, and Starky ruined the scene when he loudly asked, "Why were we born?"

Also, Terra Tower fucking sucks ass. It's the worst goddamn dungeon in the game, and it's not even a contest. The first issue is a problem admittedly encountered throughout the entirety of Chrono Cross, and it is the difficulty of differentiating foreground and background environmental textures. Terra Tower makes this issue even worse due to the twisting ropes and red tree trunks you have to navigate to reach the lower portions of the dungeon. When you are spiraling through the main room in the tower, it's easy to lose your perspective and line of sight. Additionally, this is one of those JRPG dungeons wherein you'll need to backtrack and revisit levels after flipping switches or collecting items. It is an absolute chore to play, and it is made worse due to the myriad of enemy encounters and boss battles. Your walking paths here are narrow enough that you can no longer avoid random goons. Worse, many of these battles last far longer than usual due to everything having a ridiculous amount of health points. I get some of this is expected out of Terra Tower being the last "real" dungeon in the game, but as someone who did not enjoy Chrono Cross when it played at its normal pace, I found no part of this level pleasant.

Gallery

A majority of the bosses here aren't that hard, as most of them are elementally themed. For example, at the tower's entrance, you encounter a yellow android, and predictably it can absorb yellow magic but is susceptible to green magic. However, as I mentioned in the previous episode, once you unlock the Diminish and Magnify abilities, you don't need to play these sorts of magic-based bosses as intended. As Diminish halves all elemental damage, popping it off and relying on your physical attacks, especially if you did the Masamune quest, is the way to go from this point forward. Nevertheless, I have to return to the issue of the level design in Terra Tower. It's the same labyrinthine dungeon design seen in the Temple of the Ancients in Final Fantasy VII, but worse. At least with the Temple of the Ancients, there were respits in the form of minigames and puzzles. Yes, those minigames and puzzles are awful, but at least they provided breaks from an endless stream of monotonous combat. You don't have that here, and I again have to ask, if I can't actively dodge real-world instanced enemies, what is the fucking point in using the mechanic? Why not use a random encounter system instead of teasing me with the prospect of evading and avoiding combat?

Part 28: What About The Dragons?

Many people commented in the last episode that they enjoyed my attempt to make sense of Chrono Cross' story. However, this blog will push me to my limits. As to be expected, we have more than one lore dump to mull over at Terra Tower. The first comes when you reach the bottom of the dungeon and encounter a massive statue. The statute proclaims it was once human but has since become part of the tower. It also reviews much of what you already know about the dragons and how they connect back to Chrono Trigger. It relays that the dragons are an advanced race descending from the Reptites in Chrono Trigger and view humanity as a foe. It also reminds Serge that humanity's evolution from primates was thanks to its exposure to Lavos, a point I think Chrono Trigger sufficiently hammered home years ago. Your characters move on and eventually discover a part of the tower that looks precisely like Viper Manor. Here you find Belthasar, who enthusiastically greets Serge and subjects him to ANOTHER lore dump.

For the most part, I think I have nailed summarizing the story of Chrono Cross. However, Belthasar's speech in Terra Tower is an incomprehensible garbled mess. At first, Belthasar merely reviews events from Chrono Trigger related to the fall of the Kingdom of Zeal. Still, Belthasar emphasizes his words whenever he repeats Schala's or Lavos' names. He mentions that even before Crono defeated Lavos, the destruction of Zeal created a dimensional vortex. This vortex stranded him in the future and sent Schala into a void where she fused with Lavos to form a trans-dimensional monster. Belthasar was also in charge of "Project Kid," but we learn more about that later. We discover Belthasar, while stuck in the future, made a Neo-Epoch, a time-traveling vehicle many of you recall from Chrono Trigger. He used this vehicle to go back to Serge's time to direct him in his quest for the Frozen Flame, hoping this would free Schala. That's right, Belthasar had a motherfucking Neo-Epoch all this time and is just now commenting about it! I need to mull over this point for a bit. If Belthasar had a time-traveling device, why has he been letting Serge fuck about on El Nido? Why not just give Serge the Neo-Epoch and help him recruit a team of heroes to rescue Schala? Speaking of which, how does saving Schala relate to Serge being the source of the Apocalypse? Will rescuing her stop the end of the world, or is Belthasar being a selfish prick who doesn't give a shit about that and just wants to save Schala?

To add insult to injury, Belthasar didn't even use the Neo-Epoch properly. Instead of using it to go to the moment of the Time Crash, which fucked up the entire research facility at Chronopolis and killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, he decided to travel to the opening events of the game and check up on how FATE's schemes were doing. As the silent protagonist we all know and love, Serge lets Belthasar's misuse of advanced technology, which could have helped his adventure immensely, slide entirely. Belthasar then turns his attention to Terra Tower and says it is the former castle of Azala, the leader of the Reptites in Chrono Trigger. He confirms, YET AGAIN, the Dragonians exist in a different timeline and constantly want to "reset" the Keystone Dimension to mimic their own. What is a bit of a shock is when Belthasar mentions that Dinopolis was drawn into El Nido about ten thousand years ago and waged war against Chronopolis. Chronopolis was victorious and, with the help of FATE, sealed away Terra Tower and split apart the Dragon God.

But, what's the deal with the Sea of Eden, you might ask? Well, initially, El Nido was a giant ocean until Chronopolis defeated the Dragon God. With the dragons in check, Chronopolis and FATE created the world Serge presently resides in, and upon saying this, Belthasar uses this as an opportunity to chastise Serge for destroying FATE. Because, as we all know, defeating a tyrannical supercomputer that refused to give humanity free will is always a bad idea. The next part of this conversation, wherein Belthasar expands the lore for the Dragon God, is complete technobabble. Belthasar's speech during this bit reminded me of the scene in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo meets the Architect. Maybe if I were to spend an hour, I could figure out what the fuck this spiel means, but fuck it, I value my time:

"A living accumulation of the planet's energy! Originally it was a biological machine used to control the powers of nature in the future society of the Reptites. In order to control the natural energy itself, FATE divided the one Dragon God entity up into 6 weaker plasma life-forms... Then scattered them across the land and sealed them away. Their dragon-like appearances are just pseudo-guises... Temporary forms they take so that they can appear in this dimension."

If any of that makes sense, feel free to drop a comment, but I'm not fucking around with that. No matter, Belthasar confirms that Harle was indeed a dragon and that Serge's next course of action is to off the Dragon God. Oh, and then the ghosts of the characters of Chrono Trigger appear, but for some reason, they are all children. The only purpose of this scene is for Lucca to remind Serge how important the Chrono Cross element is, but she provides fuck all in terms of telling him how to use it. Which reminds me, we have to talk about the single most frustrating level in this game! Moments before you decide to tackle the Dragon God, you enter a room full of different colored crystals. Each crystal represents one of the schools of magic found in Chrono Cross, and they chime away while providing a rather pleasant tune. What pisses me off is how the order in which the colors ring out isnot the correct order for beating the final boss. The game does present the right order eventually. The elevator leading up to the Dragon God chimes away its colored crystals correctly, but that's far more missable than a dedicated level!

Speaking of which, the Dragon God boss feels like a complete afterthought, given the game's priorities are meant for a subsequent battle. The dragon monster introduces itself as the Time Devourer and is a rather generic multiphase boss. Each phase takes place in a different environment where the Time Devourer represents one of the seven dragon gods. It starts by inflicting white magic before shifting to yellow and finally to black. It's a clever design decision I would have a far easier time reconciling if it didn't take forever to deal with and utilized its magic in the order needed to beat the final boss! WHICH, BY THE WAY, THE CORRECT FUCKING ORDER IS YELLOW, RED, GREEN, BLUE, BLACK, THEN WHITE, AND THIS BOSS GOES IN A DIFFERENT ORDER! Likewise, the Time Devourer doesn't add a lot to the story besides the battle playing like a slugfest. It simply reminds Serge that the Dragonians are strongly attuned to nature and consider themselves better equipped to treat the planet with proper care. And you know what? It's a fair point. Nonetheless, it goes down for the count, and I guess that's a victory for humanity.

Part 29: Baby, Daughter, Clone

After the Time Devourer is defeated, Belthasar returns to spew out a bunch of hot nonsense. He reveals that Serge fought an illusion as the original Dragon God was eliminated by the "real" Time Devourer ages ago. Oh, and he also states the Frozen Flame is a goddamn piece of Lavos! Furthermore, if someone connects themselves with the Frozen Flame, they effectively link themselves with Lavos. That seems like it should have been a more significant plot point, but the game moves on as if it's no big deal. Then the Frozen Flame itself begins to speak to the entire party. Despite being a piece of Lavos, it politely asks Serge to "go to the place where time divided and weave the threads of time together again" before disappearing into the ether. Was that Lavos speaking or a different omnipotent force? The game never tells, but one thing is for certain. The item of our attention for the past thirty goddamn hours disappears with nary a care.

Luckily, Belthasar clarifies the situation and explains that Serge will need to defeat the "Devourer of Time," which is entirely different from the "Time Devourer." You see, the "Devourer of Time" is the monstrosity created when Schala and Lavos fused in a temporal vortex, whereas the "Time Devourer" is just the ultimate form of the Dragon God. Belthasar provides Serge with a Time Egg to assist in his final battle, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever. As some of you may recall, the Time Egg in Chrono Trigger allowed the party to revive Crono after Lavos killed him during the Ocean Palace Incident. In Chrono Cross, the Time Egg is a teleportation device and the only way to access the void in which the Devourer of Time resides. Belthasar disappears, and the Terra Tower begins to collapse. After your party beats a hasty retreat, your team deduces that Opassa Beach is where you need to go next. After shifting dimensions at the coastline, you encounter the ghostly forms of Lucca, Marle, and Crono. And before you ask, yes, Crono does speak in this game.

I have to be honest right now. Chrono Cross is one of those games where I can honestly say I have genuinely no idea what's going on. I will do my best to paraphrase everything the ghost children tell you here, but it is a fucking trainwreck through and through. Let's start things off with some easy shit. Crono asks if Serge has the Chrono Cross, and if you do, he says it is the key to "healing the dimensions." He also reveals that Lynx was Serge's father, and Serge will have to live with the guilt of murdering his dad for the rest of his life. THAT'S RIGHT! FATE FOUND A WAY TO TURN SERGE'S FATHER INTO A FURRY, AND SERGE KILLED HIS FATHER WITHOUT KNOWING IT! Trust me, this is the "easiest" part of the Opassa Beach lore dump to digest. Talking to Lucca, for example, certainly doesn't simplify things. Instead, Lucca reveals that the "start" of Serge's journey happened when the Kingdom of Zeal fell. In particular, when Schala became stuck in a dimensional vortex and fused with the soul of Lavos after Crono defeated it.

What does any of this have to do with Serge? Well, the Schala x Lavos abomination heard Serge's cries of pain after being attacked by a panther many years ago. Schala, able to overpower the influence of Lavos temporarily, created the storm that sent Serge's father to Chronopolis. Moreover, to make sure Serge does not die at the hands of FATE, Schala transported a version of herself into the past to monitor Serge. The game leaves it ambiguous whether the magnetic storm that causes FATE to malfunction was on purpose or incidental. What is certain is that a part of Schala was stomping around El Nido while Serge was at death's door. You might be wondering how that is possible if Schala is trapped in a temporal vortex. Well, it turns out Belthasar has been holding back on you once again as he found a way to clone Schala. This clone is called Schala's "baby daughter-clone," and that clone is none other than Kid. Yup, Kid is a goddamn clone of Schala! That's an actual plot point that the game presents you with a straight face.

I don't feel adequately equipped to understand the words "baby," "daughter," and "clone" when they are together in a single sentence. However, if Kid has been Schala's clone all along, I have a lot of questions. Principally, fuck the Frozen Flame! Have Kid Thanos finger snap the two dimensions back together and wish Schala free! If she has somehow managed to be the baby, daughter, AND clone of Schala, then she must be some all-powerful being that has attained godhood! Unfortunately, we discover the reality of "Project Kid." Kid is Schala's baby daughter-clone sent into the modern world to prevent Serge from dying. All of this is possible because Schala temporarily resisted Lavos before virgin birthing a baby that she gave her pendant to before dropping her at Lucca's orphanage. What is confusing to me is how Lucca suggests that at some point, Kid was tasked with traveling back in time to save a young Serge from dying.

So, why does Kid have no recollection of this event? This tidbit seems like a weird thing for Kid to never bring up until now. Also, Kid somehow saved Serge from dying in the past as an adult but also grew up at Lucca's orphanage while still a child. Furthermore, as revealed during the Masamune questline, Serge found a way to time travel to the razing of Kid's orphanage and was the person who single-handedly saved her life. Yet, somehow she still didn't recognize Serge when they first met at Cape Howl. How the fuck does that work? Moreover, saving Serge appears to be the source for the two alternate dimensions of El Nido, a fact we have been told countless times prior. However, Lucca explains these two timelines present two differing dimensions. The first involves a dimension where Serge lives and the Day of Lavos happens. The second, wherein Serge is dead, presents a world where Chronopolis still exists. In the timeline where the "Home World" exists, Lavos is somehow reborn and destroys the world, which turns the Sea of Eden into the Dead Sea.

Oh, and the whole point behind Belthasar's many schemes and even Chronopolis finding its way to the continent of El Nido is so Serge could be at this exact position with the Chrono Cross in tow to free Schala. That's why everything in Chrono Cross exists. It's so Serge can get to a teleport point on a beach and use a special ability to free a one-off Chrono Trigger character you probably didn't even remember existed. Chronopolis, the Time Crash, Project Kid, and the battle between FATE and the Dragon Gods? All of that shit has been in service of freeing Schala. To make matters worse, Marle reveals that Serge has reset the current timeline to where Crono, Marle, and Lucca don't exist! THAT'S RIGHT! ALL OF THE CHARACTERS FROM CHRONO TRIGGER YOU KNOW AND LOVE ARE FUCKING DEAD! THEY FUCKING FRIDGE SOME OF THE MOST BELOVED CHARACTERS IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY!

You know what? Fuck it! I'm just going to bullet point all of this shit, and if you think I missed something, you can let me know! Here's what we know about how the world of Chrono Cross exists:

• • Princess Schala fused with Lavos after the Kingdom of Zeal blows up and has been stuck in a temporal vortex for a long time.
  • Schala heard Serge's cries of agony, and that's what convinced her she finally had a chance to break away from Lavos.
  • Schala cloned herself, or maybe it was Belthasar, and used a magnetic storm to fuck up FATE which murders thousands of people on Chronopolis.
  • FATE corrupted Serge's father and turned him into Lynx.
  • The Dragons are an evolved version of the Reptites from Chrono Trigger. The Reptites also exist in a different timeline.
  • Schala's clone is Kid and somehow saved Serge from downing or dying from panther poison in the Home World.
  • Kid can time travel but has forgotten how to do that and even forgot she time-traveled to save Serge.
  • Kid grew up at Lucca's orphanage and forgot she was Schala's "baby daughter-clone."
  • The Frozen Flame is a piece of Lavos and unleashes the wrath of Lavos should its influence take over anyone who holds it.
  • The Frozen Flame can grant wishes.
  • The Time Egg is no longer a device that revives people and instead teleports people to voids in space to save princesses.
  • Crono, Lucca, and Marle are dead and/or ghosts.
  • Belthasar had a bunch of advanced technology that made the story possible and could have played a more direct role in ensuring nothing wrong happened.
  • Serge being dead was the "correct" timeline, but that's passed us, and we need to save Schala.

Alright, I think that's everything! Let's talk about this bullshit final boss battle!

Part 30: The Last Boss Is Bullshit!

This point is a bit of a tangent, but where the fuck is Magus in all of this? Why isn't he in Chrono Cross? Schala is his SISTER! Shouldn't he be tagging along with Belthasar's schemes and helping Kid and Serge? I understand the DS port of Chrono Trigger features a line where Schala tells Magus to live his best life without her, but when has that ever stopped a video game character? Nonetheless, when it comes to beating the Time Devourer in Chrono Cross, there are multiple leaps of logic you need to make to get the game's "best" ending. As hinted at during the previous episode, simply getting the necessary materials to make any of this possible is a Byzantine nightmare. Creating the Chrono Cross element is no laughing matter, and knowing when to use it is never adequately communicated to the player at any point. In fact, if you attempt to "practice" casting the Chrono Cross element after filling Serge's meter, nothing happens. The only time when it can be activated is during this boss battle.

So, here you have a sparkly rainbow-colored trinket that seems to be the "key" to beating the final boss in this game. A boss, mind you, the game has, at best, had the common courtesy to reveal to you during its last hour. If you decide to play Chrono Cross, I strongly advise you to drop all pretense and look up the answer of how to get the "best ending." Like a fool, the first go I had at the final boss was a disaster. As I whittled away at its health, I popped off the Chrono Cross element after Serge built up his meter. Nothing happened. Twenty or so minutes went down the goddamn drain just like that. Frustrated to no end, I had a friend who had completed Chrono Cross explain to me what I needed to do. As they did, I wanted to eat out my eyeballs. Had I not reached out to them, my next course of action would have been to beat the boss like every final boss in a JRPG. I prepared my characters for this slog as any typical video game player would. I prepped my party composition and equipped each to the teeth to be sufficiently outfitted for whatever cheap bullshit the game had in store for me. It turns out, if you defeat the Time Devourer by lowering its HP to zero, you get the BAD ENDING! Schala just dies, and everyone in the final cutscene acts sad. There's no opportunity for you to use the Chrono Cross move as it explodes.

In the bad ending, you kill the monster and Schala, and as Serge and Kid stand in a black void, the game smash cuts to black before displaying the words "fin." Yeah, that's honestly all you get! What, pray tell, do you need to do to get the game's "good" ending? First, you need to remember the order the colored crystals on Terra Tower chimed in, but not the set of crystals that played "incorrectly." I feel it is important to remind all of you that this happened well over an hour ago. During the lore dump with the characters of Chrono Trigger, one suggests music and the elements of the world are "the key." However, whatever the fuck that means is anyone's guess! To the game's credit, the battle with the Time Devourer has a unique UI feature that displays the color of whatever spells have been cast during the fight. Using this tracker, you can more easily map what spells your characters have cast as the battle progresses, which leads us to the "solution" of this final encounter. To unlock the "good ending," you need to choose spells in a specific order based on their color and then have Serge use the Chrono Cross element at the end. That order is YELLOW, RED, GREEN, BLUE, BLACK, AND THEN WHITE! It goes without saying, the solution to this "puzzle" is complete horseshit.

I think I have moaned and complained about how this is impossible to figure out organically enough. Game design like this all but confirms that old-school developers expected players to buy game guides. Otherwise, what other justification could there be for this kind of dogshit? However, even if you know the order of the colors, two parts of the Time Devourer's boss design rear their ugly head. First, it is essential to have characters loaded with a cornucopia of low-tier magic commands because those will likely be the spells you use to burn through this sequence. However, because items, even healing items, have an associated color class, it is next to impossible to heal without messing everything up. If you lose a character in battle because the only revive command is white, you're better off running away from the fight, resurrecting them out of combat, and then trying again from scratch.

Second, when you reach the end of the order and need Serge to cast the Chrono Cross ability, it is not guaranteed that he'll have enough meter to use it! As is often the case, you might need to spend a turn wailing away with physical attacks and hoping the Time Devourer doesn't counter anything you do. That was an issue for me, and it led to me sitting on my hands a whole bunch and praying the Time Devourer wouldn't counter Serge with some cheap bullshit like Meteor. Finally, Serge is the only person who can perform this spell. That means if he dies during the battle, you might as well give up and run away. It is worth mentioning; this boss isn't easy. This fucker is still a traditional Squaresoft final boss! It has a ton of spells that do percentage damage, and it can also inflict every possible status effect under the moon. Which, AGAIN, you can't deal with because you are STUCK needing to cast specific spells in a precise order. Here you are playing this game like a Drakengard-ass musical number, and it hits you just as hard as any other boss in the game!

Part 31: THEY MADE A MOVIE THAT ONLY PLAYS DURING THE CREDITS!

Right off the bat, who the fuck is this girl? This isn't what Schala looks like in Chrono Trigger! The Schala in Chrono Cross looks like a little girl, but in Chrono Trigger, she's an adult capable of managing the internal affairs of a kingdom. That all aside, the final cutscene that plays during the ending is weapons-grade insanity. First, when Schala breaks free from her crystal prison inside the Time Devourer, she rattles off about humanity always in a struggle to destroy life. She's finally free after living inside a monster for hundreds of years, and all she wants to talk to you about is the human condition. At no point does she ask where Magus might be or if any of her friends are still alive. Instead, she wants to talk about the concept of dialectical thinking. Seriously, her first paragraph of text is all about understanding one another better so we can avoid wars.

The second part of Schala's lecture involves her telling the player to fuck the planet! Or maybe she just wants me to fuck in general? During this cutscene, she refers to planets as "eggs" and then calls all of those who live on planets "spermatozoa." She then ponders why humans raise children and rattles on like someone who has read "The Selfish Gene" for the first time. She asks the player to think if there is something greater at work when we have kids. She coldly calls human life "short" and then goes off a Nietzsche-esque rant. I never thought the word "inseminate" would be used in a SquareSoft game, but here we are. I am a truly blessed person. This timeline is the best. What more needs to be said?

Honestly, I think the issue here is with the translation. I get the spirit of what the game is trying to accomplish in championing the player to cherish their life and do the best they can with their limited time. But the execution of these honest feelings is weird. Also, and this is a minor point, but Schala isn't human. Her lecture about the great and wonderful things in store for humanity makes it seem like she's a human herself. However, as most of you probably remember, in Chrono Trigger, she's a member of the "Enlightened" race of people that lived during the time of Antiquity. Back to the topic at hand, Chrono Cross tries to tie together all of its plot threads in the laziest way possible. Schala announces that Serge has managed to merge both dimensions and will forget about his adventure shortly. This is not the first time Squaresoft has ended a game of theirs this way, but I have always hated this sort of conclusion. In the case of Chrono Cross, there are so many unaddressed plot points that suddenly get swept under the rug as if they did not exist. It is incredibly frustrating, and things don't get better when you discover the only characters you can say "goodbye" to are the ones who were in your party during the final boss.

If you ever wanted a real sign that the people behind this game had no comprehension of what made Chrono Trigger the iconic classic it is considered to this day, look no further than this ending. With Chrono Trigger, you have a final opportunity to talk with NPCs and party members one last time before you bid them adieu. It's a melancholic scene but also one of the game's most empowering moments. With Chrono Cross, you are faced with the prospect of characters like Poshul, Starky, or Funguy spouting off inconsequential one-liners as your final Parthian Shot. Yes, there's a final scene where Kid chimes in about needing to chase her destiny, and with this "good ending," there's a moment where Leena wakes Serge on the beach where everything started. But there's something shitty about Sneff and Zoah being the characters that could be your last hurrah with Chrono Cross. Speaking of the "Good Ending," all it amounts to is a final scene where a dress-clad Kid turns to the camera and smiles, heavily implying that she has "merged" with Schala and the two of them will go on to live their life how they see fit. And this is not editorializing on my part. If you complete the game having unlocked the "true ending," a movie plays during the credits, which further hammers this point.

I watched this entire movie with my mouth agape. At first, I thought the credits were dolling out the usual compilation of cutscenes from the rest of the game. However, most of what you watch is wholly original and involves a young blonde-haired girl walking through the streets of modern-day Japan. While this is happening, you'll start to notice that this is NOT animated and instead an actual film featuring live-action actors. That's right; they paid an actual film company to shoot what amounts to maybe five minutes of useable footage. It's simply bananas. The madmen and women at Square made a movie that only plays during the final credits if, AND ONLY IF, the player gets a secret ending. Late 90s era Squaresoft was an otherworldly company that was really going for it. Fucking "bravo," I tell you!

I would be remiss not to mention the other "secret" endings when you play the game's New Game+ mode. I tested it out briefly, but it was way too fiddly and tedious for my tastes. Again, this is something I think Chrono Trigger executes perfectly, and Chrono Cross manages to bungle due to its love for convoluted bullshit. Needing to burn through hours of content so I can see Starky's alien race take over the world isn't worth it, in my opinion. I enjoyed the ending where the dinosaurs come back and get their revenge on humanity, but I wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I had to replay the first three hours of the game to watch what was ostensibly a joke ending. The only secret ending worth seeking out is the one where Serge succumbs to Lavos' temptations and merges his soul with the Frozen Flame. It hints that there was a more significant relationship between Serge and the Time Devourer and did more to fill in the gaps of how Serge relates to Chrono Trigger than the main story ever did during its forty fucking hour playtime. However, 95% of these secret endings are entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things and not worth the time investment of taking the Time Egg and using it at different parts of the main game.

Chrono Cross Postmortem (Should You Play This Game?)

There is no game quite like Chrono Cross out there. No game will ever match the technical and narrative ambition of Chrono Cross in my book. Chrono Cross was given the monstrous task of following one of the most beloved and well-liked JRPGs ever made. Whether you think it handles that mission well says a lot about your ability to forgive its many faults while it provides an utterly unique experience. If you approach games seeking sleek mechanics and rewarding sub-systems, this is not the game for you. I would by no stretch of the word say I enjoyed playing Chrono Cross. The magical slot system was too fiddly for my tastes, and the inventory management made my head explode. Likewise, the combat was way too slow for me and lacked the brilliant strategy of its predecessor. Finally, so many sub-mechanics feel undercooked or come across as afterthoughts in the grand scheme of things.

Things are more "complicated" if you seek out compelling narratives in your video games. Don't get me wrong; I was fully entertained by the sheer brass balls of Chrono Cross at times. Even its zanier ideas and moments are likely going to stick with me for years to come, and that is no small feat. But HOT DAMN does this game take its sweet ass time to get even remotely interesting. For example, the underlying core theme of the game only reveals itself in its last three hours! The game's first disc is fine, but I would struggle to tell you my favorite parts from it. And to be honest, I found the game's attempts at connecting itself to its predecessor more often hilarious rather than earnestly dramatic, which was NOT the intent. By that token, the game is an awful failure. However, I struggle to call its story a failure, the exact reason why I resist calling Final Fantasy VIII's story a failure. Sure, it's rough and bananas at times, but that is part of what makes it even remotely appealing.

It's safe to say I don't consider Chrono Cross a "perfect" game. Maybe as you read my recollections of this maddening game, you feel inspired to pick it up yourself. To that end, I applaud you. It's taxing at times but also gratifying. As I said earlier, you're never going to play something that comes close to what it provides. To the handful of you who played Chrono Cross many years ago and used this series to rekindle a nostalgic part of your childhood or gaming upbringing, I want to be clear about my overbearing grousing. I might have had difficulty parsing out some of Chrono Cross's design decisions and mechanics, but that should never take away from how you remember this game. That said, I would challenge you to give the game a whirl when you have the time, as I think there might be parts of it you have forgotten or overlooked.

But what the fuck do I know? Give it a shot or not! You're your own person and can make your own decisions that empower you in your daily quest to get by on this timeline of ours. I trust you to make an informed decision even if you do not trust yourself. And it is on that hopefully inspirational note that I announce my next closed reading blog series will be a "quickie" two-parter on Final Fantasy XIII-2. Or what I consider to be the most misunderstood and over-hated Final Fantasy game ever made. Yeah, I bet you weren't expecting me to say I like Serah and her time-traveling companion, Noel! But until next time, peace!

• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #1: Ten Out Of Ten? Review It Again!
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #2: This Game Might Be The Weirdest Sequel To A Beloved Video Game Ever Made
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #3: This Game Was Kingdom Hearts Before Kingdom Hearts!

Part 21: Why Do So Many Characters Get Long-Winded Story Arcs?

I have not spent as much time with Chrono Cross's optional characters and story arcs throughout this series as I probably should have. One difficulty in covering these storylines is that it is impossible to see all of them in a single playthrough. Chrono Cross prompts you to decide on diverging story branches throughout the first half of the game, and your choices can have massive implications. For example, I never had Glenn but instead had Razzly the Green Fairy. The second and more problematic issue is the sheer breadth of quality with Chrono Cross's optional characters. I have a real hard time mustering the energy to provide an introspective look at a character like Skelly, considering all his final character arc culminates in is him crying over a potential lost love interest while eating spaghetti. I also got Draggy and watched him cry over the skeletal remains of his mother. These are scenes I saw, and I cannot unsee them. Nonetheless, I struggle to get passionate about either because the one-off nature of the characters makes it impossible to get fully invested in anything the game does with them.

There were, however, a handful of exceptions worth commending. The party members that stuck out to me the most were Karsh and Riddel. Both had interconnected backgrounds, which culminated in a rather spectacular final scene involving the Masamune. In both cases, the game even involves their diverging fates between the two dimensions. In the case of Karsh, his Home World counterpart is dead, which makes reconnecting him with Zappa, his father, in the Home World a poignant moment. The more critical aspect of Karsh's character development comes when you re-explore the Isle of the Damned. Once there, Solt and Peppor accuse Karsh of murdering the last owner of the Einlanzer, Dario. You discover Dario, Glen, and Karsh all trained together to become Acacia Dragoons when they were children. Also, in a continuation of that flashback, Karsh is heartbroken when Riddel and Dario announce their desire to marry as he had unfulfilled feelings for Riddel.

Because everything ties back to the Masamune, there's a stable pace with Karsh's past. We discover Dario attempted to wield the cursed sword, but it quickly corrupted him. Karsh defends himself against an enraged Dario, and depending on the dimension, he either slays Dario or injures him. Then we have Riddel, Dario's fated lover. Riddel spends the better part of ten hours arising to nothing more than the usual damsel in distress archetype. When we first encounter her, Kid holds a knife to her throat. Our second meeting involves the player rescuing her from Norris. However, when Riddel finally joins your party, she shows a side to herself you have yet to see. Riddel is independent and can hold her own in conversations as well as combat. More importantly, she implores Karsh to follow up on a rumor that Dario might still be alive. I have been told the final battle against the Masamune is better if you have Glenn, but alas, I had Razzly. I do know that Karsh and Riddel have unique lines of dialogue should they be with you as you attempt to excise the evil spirit in the Masamune.

After you jog Dario's memory and defeat him, the Chrono Trigger characters Masa and Mune chime in and surmise how they went from being Frog's best weapon to an evil devil sword. And before you ask, they admit this happened because the two of them were "sleeping on the job." Their older sister appears, out of nowhere by the way, and fuses the Masamune with Serge's original weapon, the Sea Swallow, to create the "Mastermune." Then, Riddel professes her love for Dario once more, who responds by promising to rebuild Viper Manor. Should you reconnect with Dario before reaching the game's "point of no return," you discover he plans to convert the villa into an orphanage. It's a fun storyline to explore, and I strongly recommend it should you personally take the time to play Chrono Cross. However, and I hate to repeat this gimmick once again, but this might have worked better as part of a self-contained story in a different game.

Part 22: Disc Two Is Fucking WILD!

Throughout this series, I have warned you. I have warned you that you are not ready to learn how Chrono Cross "bridges the gap" between itself and its predecessor, Chrono Trigger. One cannot prepare themselves for this, and even Chrono Cross veterans can be forgiven for either blacking out this part of the game's story or forgetting it entirely. All I can say is that the moment you pop in disc two of Chrono Cross, you need to treat the second disc as if you are playing an entirely different game. If you enjoy the character recruitment mechanic, dialogue choices, or light-hearted adventuring in Chrono Cross, don't play Disc Two. All of that shit completely ceases to exist, and the game even hard pivots its tone and style to match the wild direction it is going towards by the time you reach its ending. That said, things start relatively straightforward. When Serge and company enter the Sea of Eden, they find a massive triangular water monument jutting from the landscape with shrines on each corner. Each shrine contains a boss you need to defeat before continuing with the next part of the level.

Eventually, your troupe of characters finds themselves in the "Chronopolis Military Research Center." Beyond the facility's robotic defensive measures, you can interact with the ghosts that inhabit the institute. Many of these apparitions spew incomprehensible technobabble, whereas others reveal how Chrono Cross connects to Chrono Trigger. It is worth mentioning how much of this dialogue is entirely skippable as a majority of the ghosts do not need to be interacted with to continue the story. However, many of you are here to learn how the fuck these two worlds interact, and HOT DAMN is it bananas! I'm going to try my best to explain everything, but there are parts of this lore that make no sense whatsoever. First, let's start with why the characters of Chrono Trigger never mentioned El Nido or the world of Chrono Cross at any point. Well, it turns out that 10,000 years ago, El Nido did not exist. However, an artificial being, known as FATE, willed it into existence after gaining control over the elemental powers of the universe. Yup, this game gets metaphysical!

What does that have to do with the research facility? According to the game, the original inhabitants of the Chronopolis Military Research Center were a collection of people who lived in the timeline where Crono successfully defeated Lavos. Following the destruction of Lavos, these people worked on making a new continent for a technological super lord named "FATE." FATE is or was powered by the Frozen Flame, and its functions were at one point disturbed fourteen years ago when "a boy came into contact with the Flame on the night of the storm," which we can safely assume is when Serge's father attempted to heal Serge after being poisoned by a panther. Now, I know what some of you might be asking right now. What about those weird dragons? Well, those dragons are descendants of the Reptites that Ayala defeated in the main timeline of Chrono Trigger. It turns out that the Reptites exist in an alternate timeline and have to be kept at bay by FATE because they are super angry that they were made extinct in the main Chrono Trigger-Chrono Cross timeline. The Reptites cannot beat FATE but can create an alternate dimension where dragons control the continent of El Nido. We also discover that the timeline/dimension in which Chrono Trigger exists is called the "Keystone Dimension."

Are you confused? Well, get ready for even MORE convoluted nonsense because we need to talk about the "Counter-Time Experiment." According to a random ghost, there's a reason why the Chronopolis Military Research Center currently exists during Serge's time when it should exist 10,000 years in the future. Many years ago, there was an experiment where the people of the future, who created El Nido with the help of FATE, attempted to use the Frozen Flame to control time. Their experiment failed and set off a chain of events known as the "Time Crash," where the future people are flung into the past. After accepting their place in the past, the facility's inhabitants began reseeding the continent of El Nido with the support of FATE. Speaking of FATE, upon interacting with a random computer terminal, you discover that FATE designed the "Records of Fate" (i.e., the save crystals) as an instrument of mind control. That's right, the save crystals are an actual plot point and are mind control devices that allow FATE to make sure all of the people of El Nido don't develop free will. I wish I were kidding.

Part 23: Don't Tempt FATE!

But who created FATE or even this military research facility? It turns out this facility was founded by Belthasar, the motherfucking "Guru of Reason" for the Kingdom of Zeal! Using advanced technology, Belthasar detected the two dimensions in which El Nido exists and used both to reestablish humanity. However, Belthasar disappeared at some point, leaving FATE and the rest of the research team to their own devices. Around this point, FATE is revealed to be a supercomputer whose purpose is to prevent humanity from experiencing any catastrophic outcomes as it repopulates El Nido. Unfortunately, FATE lost complete control over the Home World with the formation of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is an alternate timeline where Lavos is successful in destroying the universe of Chrono Trigger. This becomes a possible outcome for humanity because of a storm that temporarily disturbed the functions of FATE and also sent Serge's father to Chronopolis, which is why Miguel ends up in the Dead Sea as FATE tasks him with protecting the Frozen Flame. Does any of this make sense? If not, too bad, because there's more lore to digest!

And that's just the first part of the research facility! Eventually, you find a massive capsule that suspiciously looks like the device that contained Jenova's head in Final Fantasy VII, but this time with the words "PROJECT KID" emblazoned on top of it. Upon entering the building, Serge finds Lynx presiding over an unconscious Kid. Lynx then explains that when Serge's father brought Serge to Chronopolis, the Frozen Flame found him and became attached to his soul. As a result, the research facility was thrown into the past, and FATE began to malfunction. FATE's technical issues also come from a circuit board that contains Robo's soul, who, by the way, was destroyed to make the FATE supercomputer. Robo ensured that only Serge would be able to attune to the Frozen Flame, hence why Lynx needs to assume Serge's form. So, Robo is dead, but in a final display of rebellion, fucked over the computer controlling humanity, which in turn, was trying to ensure humans wouldn't wage wars or start global warming. So yeah, Chrono Cross brings back Robo for a whole ten seconds so is that he can tell Serge to kill FATE. That's right, one of the most beloved characters in Chrono Trigger gets fridged!

But what about Lynx? Well, it turns out Lynx is an organic extension of FATE. After Lynx lays out his master plan and returns the Frozen Flame to FATE, he merges with the computer and becomes a SHODAN-looking super boss. I will say, the FATE boss model is AMAZING! It is one of the most well-detailed 3D models I have ever seen in a PS1 game, and it is also one of the best-animated bosses I have ever seen from this era. It fully reacts to taking damage in real-time and has distinct animations for its attacks and special abilities. After defeating the abominable Lynx x FATE hybrid, Kid awakens and jumps on top of the receptacle that once held the Frozen Flame. And before you ask, the story is content with not addressing the whole "Project Kid" shit for another five hours. She is confronted by Harle, who fucked off for a while but is here to set off the story's next series of events. Harle stops Kid from destroying the Frozen Flame and commands the elemental dragons of El Nido to reawaken. Seeing an opportunity to regain control of the continent following the defeat of FATE, they fuse with Harle, who is dramatically revealed to be a dragon in hiding. Does the game hint or foreshadow at any point that Harle is a dragon? NOPE! It drops this plot twist on you with little to no pretense.

This fusion act summons the "Terra Tower," which bulges out from the ocean. Terra Tower is a relic from Dinopolis and from the dimension in which Ayala did not defeat the Reptites. The Reptites in this alternate timeline evolved into dragons which mastered the ability to travel across dimensions and time. However, before that evolution takes place, the Reptites declared war on Chronopolis. Terra Tower was sent by these "Dragonians" to house and assist the Dragon God in its fight against the humans that arrived in El Nido via Chronopolis. Chronopolis won the war against the dragons and Reptites, and FATE separated the Dagon God into six parts. With the defeat of FATE, the dragons attempt to use the Frozen Flame to destroy humanity and make the timeline in which the Reptites defeat humanity the reality for the Keystone Dimension. Now, all of this might sound absurd, but the craziest part is that this is a sub-plot. All of this dragon-based drama on Terra Tower is entirely ancillary to figuring out what the deal is with "Project Kid" and what the fuck Belthasar's master plan might be!

Part 24: Lucca's Orphanage Is The Best Part Of This Game (And It's Not Even Required)

The rest of your party takes the whole "Harle was a dragon all along" news rather well. Whoever your supporting party members might be, they surmise aboard the S.S. Invincible that Serge likely needs to deal with the dragons on Terra Tower. The tower is where the Frozen Flame currently resides, but what the long-term goal is on what Serge is expected to do with the Frozen Flame is anyone's guess. Chrono Cross has previously been guilty of what I like to call a "jingling toy key act." It only knows how to string together its disparate and tonally inconsistent set pieces using MacGuffins and nothing else. The writing is behaving no different to a mother trying to stop a crying baby by jingling neon-colored plastic keys. The issue here is that the story has used the Frozen Flame as a plot device for over ten hours, and we are none the closer to understanding why it needs to be used in the first place. Yes, Serge is prophesized to bring forth the Apocalypse should he not capture the legendary item in question. But we still have no clue as to what malevolent evil is behind all of the various schemes seeking to thwart Serge's efforts or even what level of agency Serge's quest needs to have.

One person, however, is notably absent on the S.S. Invincible: Kid. You eventually discover Kid has lapsed into a coma, with Radius attempting to resuscitate her at Hermit's Hideaway. If you complete the side quest involving the Masamune, Masa and Mune return and reveal Kid is subconsciously stuck in the past. They offer to send Serge to deal with whatever is causing Kid to remain in her stupor. Upon entering Kid's dreams, you witness the trauma of her watching her orphanage be burned to the ground by Lynx. I get why this might sound hokey on paper. Chrono Cross's central theme involves traveling dimensions rather than Chrono Trigger's motif involving time travel. It also does not help this moment is an obscure callback to Radical Dreamers, a game that most people who play Chrono Cross are likely not to know even exists. Likewise, it is another example of Chrono Cross withholding a significant character moment behind a poorly communicated set of criteria. But, fuck it. The orphanage is by far the best scene in the game!

The level starts during the middle of Lynx's massacre. The orphanage is on fire, with only a handful of its residents still alive. However, upon reviewing a handful of notes and some furniture, you discover Lucca was the owner of this establishment. Gato's dying words are a plea for Serge to do whatever he can to stop the slaughter. As you frantically try to save the survivors, you look over heart-wrenching drawings and love letters to Lucca by the orphans she cared for, a younger version of Kid included. Then, to your horror, you learn you are too late to save Lucca from being murdered by Lynx, but Serge still has a chance to save Kid. As you snatch Kid in the nick of time, she weeps in Serge's clutches and begs him to explain why this has happened. It is one of the few times when the game takes advantage of Serge being a mute protagonist, as his silence is the only logical answer to such a question. When Serge returns to the present time, Kid reawakens and, if allowed to interact with Luccia, gains a final letter from Lucca. It's a poignant moment and somewhat frustrating, as it is the only bit of foreshadowing the game does regarding Kid's heritage. Lucca's letter explains to Kid that she has yet to learn her "true name," and someone extraordinary is connected to her past.

Here, you get an idea of what Chrono Cross should have been in the first place. Much like Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross provides its best storytelling moments when characters that feel deeply connected to a shared storyline convey a tragedy or trauma that echos tragedies or traumas found in other party members. If anything, it makes the connection between Kid and Lucca even stronger as watching the destruction of Kid's orphanage strikes the same emotional tone as your attempt to save Lucca's mother in Chrono Trigger. Watching Kid weep over the remnants of her childhood home as well as the murder of her most vital parental figure hits harder than any of the shit involving FATE or the dragons. And for the most part, this is one of the few times when the dimensional shifting mechanic works in service of the story. What we learn about Kid's past is likely something she would never share with Serge through the ordinary course of the story. That aside, the work done with Kid highlights to me how little Chrono Cross benefits from its Suikoden-styled party system. Other than Kid, there aren't many opportunities for Chrono Cross to weave its characters, even the required party members, to its central narrative.

Finally, it's night and day when you compare how Chrono Cross uses Robo versus Lucca. With Robo, Chrono Cross has him speak a few lines to tie an element of Chrono Trigger to itself. As a creator, I respect the brass balls needed to off a beloved character for the sake of the story at hand. However, Robo's death left a bad taste in my mouth, whereas Lucca's sacrifice felt warranted. The events surrounding Lucca's death helped us better understand one of the key characters in Chrono Cross. Again, the only criticism I have is how the orphanage and letter scenes are optional. If you missed my earlier hints, knowing what the fuck is up with Kid is what Chrono Cross is all about! There are only two scenes in the entire game that remind you of this fact, and both are entirely missable. The first takes place after dealing with the Dwarves at the fairy forest but ONLY if you did not collect the Hydra Humor. What ensues there is a quiet campfire between Serge and Kid in which Kid talks about why she wishes to kill Lynx in the first place. The second is this scene involving the orphanage. Who the FUCK thought it was a good idea to leave necessary foreshadowing and character development behind side quests?!

Part 25: Getting The Good Ending Is Complete Bullshit!

It's hard to imagine, but entering Terra Tower represents Chrono Cross's proverbial point of no return. Once you enter it, there's no going back to tie up loose ends. If any character moments have not yet expired, now is the time to do them. For me, I completed a handful more than the ones I have already hinted at before making a final push to be done with the game. I made no effort to collect the final tech abilities for any characters unless completing their character arcs was the last part of the process. The word "nice" perfectly conveys my overall feelings about what I witnessed. Characters like Nio-Fio, Funguy, and Skelly have silly capstone scenes that do nothing to impact the overall story adversely unless the prospect of ridiculous fanservice makes your skin crawl. Other characters like Steen or Orlha are introduced so late in the game it is impossible to feel invested in what the game conveys. While on the subject of Orlha, I was shocked to see how much effort was put into her final character moment. After she demos her kung-fu skills, you discover her sister has terminal cancer, and upon her passing, her ghost sends Orlha a final parting message about how to live her best life. I was astounded at how coherently and earnestly the game tells this entire subplot. Where was this creative self-discipline when it came to the main storyline?

What kills me, and I discussed this briefly in the first episode, are the characters you think should get their due but do not. For one thing, any character that could shed more light on Serge's life gets shafted. Serge's mother, on paper, should relay more information about his father or the events leading to his fateful journey to Chronopolis. Unfortunately, that never happens. The same could be said about Leena, Serge's childhood friend. If she's in your party, you fuck off to a beach and croon about the good old days. I know the standard excuse for characters like Leena coming across as underbaked is to point out how they are optional. Many of the characters I previously highlighted as being the game's better ones are required. That said, there are plenty of cases where the game spends countless hours contextualizing missable party members or NPCs, so I don't buy that excuse at all. Look at Glenn and think about how much time the game spends building up his backstory! Simply put, the developers bit off more than they could chew with the massive cast of characters they put in Chrono Cross, and that leads to an incredibly uneven experience depending on your early to mid-game choices. As someone who killed the Hydra to save Kid, I honestly feel like I got an inferior story.

However, there is one remaining nitpick to share before we end this episode, and it involves the subject of this mini-chapter. Upon the erecting of Terra Tower, you might think Serge's first course of action is to storm the building and lay waste to all of its residents. That is partially the case, but only upon entering the monolithic structure. The game fails to mention the two errands you need to complete before any dragon-based genocide can occur. The first of these, which involves collecting the Chrono Cross item, is contrived bullshit, and the same can be said about jerry-rigging Starky's spaceship. I'm saving Starky's garbage for the next and final episode, but your first exposure to the actual Chrono Cross deserves a fair thrashing. For one thing, you need to have Steena in your party to merge two previously collected story items to form the Chrono Cross. The game never warns you of this fact, so it is very much possible to find yourself at the correct location in the game with the right items in tow, and nothing happens. That, at least in my humble and very smug opinion, is complete horseshit.

It does not help the level you pick up the item is a one-off tucked-away waterfall that is impossible to find without consulting a guide. Likewise, arriving at the wrong dimension can also fuck you over! Some of you are bound to chime in saying the Chrono Cross item is only required for the "good ending," and you would be correct. However, if I am going to provide a proper retrospective of this game, I want as much of this game's convoluted bullshit as possible, and you bet that involves getting the "True Ending." Getting the best conclusion consists in using the Chrono Cross element, but you wouldn't know that from playing the game. Even if you miraculously pick up the item through sheer brute force of logic, even Steena, your helpful mystic guide up to this point, offers no advice on how to use it.

For those that have already played the game, I dare you to go back and replay Terra Tower. The ONE TIME when the game plays a song synched to flashing differing colored crystals, it's not the "correct" order! When the game bothers to hint at the solution to the final boss, the game doesn't set the song in Terra Tower to the proper tune or correct sequence of colors! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT?! Seriously, what in the actual fuck? All of this, at least in my mind, makes the actual process and steps involved in correctly beating the final boss utterly unacceptable, and it's the cherry on top of the tire fire the game becomes as it winds down. What the fuck happened to this game when its development team reached its conclusion? The world will never know.

• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #1: Ten Out Of Ten? Review It Again!
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #2: This Game Might Be The Weirdest Sequel To A Beloved Video Game Ever Made

Part 16: It's Time For A Bunch of Side Stories With No Connection To The Main Plot!

When we last left off, Serge uncovered more information about the Frozen Flame while occupying Lynx's body. He discovered the Frozen Flame could wish into existence anything whoever holds it into reality, which is why multiple parties are vying for it. Nevertheless, that leaves an inordinate number of unanswered questions. Is the Frozen Flame the reason for Lynx swapping bodies with Serge? What happened to Kidd? Who or what is the malignant evil working in the background trying to destroy the fabric of reality? What's the deal with that random dragon that rescued Serge before Chronopolis exploded? Well, we have another five hours before the game answers any of those questions! Instead, the dragon from earlier drops Serge off at a beach near Marbule and directs them to "seek the Sea of Eden." It's anyone's guess how to accomplish that, but one of your party members muses that Serge's ability to shift dimensions should be working, and their theory later proves to be correct.

Once you drag your ass back to Opassa Beach and shift things to the "Another World," you find the quaint town of Arni in disarray. It appears Serge, who is Lynx, has been waging total war on the various settlements in this dimension, and as such, the town is abandoned. Likewise, Porre's occupation of Termina is notably more authoritarian. When you manage to seek counsel with a handful of former dragoons, they relay what happened to General Viper and Kid at Fort Dragonia. Viper is away at Hermit's Hideaway, healing from his injuries, whereas Kid is a loyal lackey of "Punished" Serge. Oh, and by the way, this entire conversation is way funnier if you bring the Home World's version of Norris along. I will give the game credit where credit is due; Karsh and Zoah are not happy if Norris is in your party, and it is one of the few times when the story actively recognizes its massive cast. You also need to pick between allowing Karsh or Zoah into your party, and I strongly recommend Karsh as he adds far more to the story than Zoah.

Regardless of whoever you pick, the dragoons instruct you to save Lady Riddel at Viper's Mansion. What ensues next is an extended rescue mission where you discover Norris is a crueler military agent in the "Another" dimension than the one tagging along with you. Furthermore, the amount of time the game puts into painting Riddel in a sympathetic light so the narrative can lecture you about how "war is bad" is groan-inducing. At best, raiding Viper's Mansion with the "Resistance" is an excuse for the game to present another batch of party members. Orcha, Riddel, and Grobyc are "nice," but they don't add anything to the story beyond a handful of character moments. Grobyc ended up being my go-to black elemental character when Serge transformed back into his normal self. But I sure as fuck wasn't a fan of another puzzle platforming bit in the sewers. This middle portion of Chrono Cross is when the game recycles prior levels and environments to a fault. Finally, to resurrect a bit from my last blog, I want to say the sub-plot about Porre's occupation of Termina is a decent plot thread that might have worked as a self-contained story in a different game.

The boss battle against Grobyc is certainly cinematic, but your return to Viper's Mansion is the first sign of Chrono Cross's aforementioned "padding" strategy. This is the THIRD TIME the game has used Viper's Mansion as a backdrop for a dungeon sequence! It's around the game's mid-point when the variety of levels plummets. Instead of showcasing new set-pieces, it forces you to swap back and forth between dimensions while revisiting previously encountered levels. After finishing things up at the villa, you return to Hermit's Hideaway and after milling about with Viper's dragoons, Punished Serge arrives. He unleashes Kid, who seeks to kill Lynx, not knowing Serge and Lynx have swapped bodies. Shockingly, Kid reveals that she wants to kill Lynx to "avenge Lucca." Just as Kid moves to murder your party, Fargo arrives and saves them in the nick of time. You might have forgotten all about the game's subplot with Nikki and his concert about world peace, but the game sure has not!

Part 17: And Now This Game Decides It Needs To Lecture About How War Racism Are Bad... AGAIN!

I have been avoiding this subject, but we need to talk about the English localization of Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross is of an era wherein accents and dialects are used to communicate different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Working Designs did not touch this game, but their spirit looms large over its direction and many of the decisions made regarding its translation. There are two French characters (i.e., Harle and Pierre) who, when they speak, the letter "s" is replaced with "z." To call the localization "campy" is an understatement. Similarly, it does not help that the creative direction with the localization is incredibly inconsistent. For example, Kid oscillates between a Scottish, Cockney, and Australian accent, and sometimes all three in the same scene. It's indeed funny; but, this direction sabotages the game's more dramatic moments. Harle and Kid, in particular, have some genuinely tragic and heart-rendering moments which are tough to swallow because of how their lines of dialogue are translated. And if you think I'm making a big stink over a "non-issue," I want you to consider that this game came out the same year as Vagrant Story. I refuse to believe the same studio that signed off on Alexander O. Smith's localization of Vagrant Story didn't know any better.

To return to the story at hand, after Fargo whisks you away from the clutches of Punished Serge, a family reunion of sorts takes place on his ship. General Viper and his supporting dragoons recognize Serge despite his appearances and join him in his quest to stop Lynx. More bizarrely, Kid announces that she too believes that the person masquerading as Serge is Lynx, even though not five minutes ago she was following his orders without question. The game never addresses what convinces Kid to see the error of her ways or if she was under the influence of a spell. She's here to be a part of #TeamRealSerge and has her knives ready to shank some fools. Likewise, it's around here when the narrative kicks in its romance angle between Harle and Serge. This romance angle comes out of nowhere, and it feels astonishingly half-baked considering Harle's limited time in the game. I imagine the writers realized Chrono Cross lacked an immediate love interest for Serge, and slapdashed this to remedy the situation. However, Harle previously has only acted as a lore dump for the player, so when she becomes depressed when she realizes her role in the story is ending, I found her arc rather underwhelming.

Speaking of odd shit that comes out of nowhere, there's Nikki's rock opera. A massive issue I have with Chrono Cross's endgame is that it feels incredibly cheap. Large swaths of important storytelling are conveyed through dialogue boxes and static images, making what the game does with Nikki all the odder. You see, Serge and company discover they must first defeat all of the elemental dragons that populate both dimensions before they can continue with their journey. Unfortunately, many of these dragons are in a deep slumber and need to be reawakened. The solution here is obvious: let Nikki sing a love ballad about "Ziggy and the Neptunian Nymphs." So, with both dimensions of El Nido well aware of the situation, the Fargo in your party accosts the Fargo in the Home World to whip him back into shape. With Nikki's help, they convert the S.S. Zelbess into a concert ship. Upon which, Nikki sings about a poor sap getting embroiled in a star-crossed lovers situation.

I want to say; this in-game cutscene is a notable technical achievement. The music is perfectly synced with the animations of the characters, and the game showcases a masterclass of directorial framing and lighting. I was utterly enamored with how this concert looked and couldn't help but get excited with the characters as the scene reached its crescendo. Nonetheless, and I cannot believe I have to repeat this yet again, but this might have worked better as part of a self-contained story in a different game. The first issue I have is that if the game has this scene, why the fuck is Nikki an optional character? I opted for Guile in my playthrough, so Nikki lives and dies on the S.S. Zelbess. As a result, I had no idea about Nikki's life as an orphan until two-thirds into the game. Second, there's no denying how ancillary the entire concert feels in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it awakens the dragons that need to be murdered. However, NOTHING here addresses ANY of the late-game story revelations regarding Kid or Serge! Finally, there's no denying how the concert is an obvious example of the development team not correctly using their budget. Until we get to the actual end of the game, the number of fully animated cutscenes that even approach this concert in terms of quality are few and far between. Simply put, they blew their wad on this scene, which comes at the cost of the conclusion feeling more rushed. But hey, at least this concert scene looks good.

Part 18: Update on My Thoughts About How This Game Plays!

Spoilers, I still think this game plays like shit! The main culprit, at least for me, is the endless number of sub-mechanics. In the last episode, I briefly touched upon a few of the character-specific mechanics. These mechanics do a fine job differentiating party members, but they often require an absurd amount of player investment before paying off dividends. The two most prominent examples are Sprigg and Pip. Sprigg, for example, is Chrono Cross's version of a Blue Mage and transforms into enemies they have captured. It is an incredibly involved process scouring the world and picking up the enemies that make Sprigg an asset in battle, and that's my issue. Most of these systems require busy work for them to even tread water with your standard array of physical attacks, which prove to be effective at murdering everything that stands before you 90% of the time.

Nevertheless, I wanted to invest in at least one of these sub-mechanics before passing an overall judgment of the gameplay. For whatever reason, I decided to capture as many of the optional "summons" as possible. I did not need to do this, but I did, and I fucking hated it! To even humor the idea, I first needed to purchase a bunch of capture magic. Next, I needed to find various enemies capable of summoning the monsters I wanted to trap. Next, I had to make sure the color field was the same as the summons's innate color so the enemies would pop them off during a battle. Luckily for me, trapping magic has no failure rate, but hot damn, it involves way more trial and error than it should. And what was the payoff of my hard work? I got to witness some flashy summoning animations that were virtually impossible to see because filling a field with the same color and timing that with your summon is easier said than done. To add insult to injury, the summons are terrible! Most of them bestow a handful of situational buffs that don't even last for the duration of a battle.

That lack of satisfaction from playing according to Chrono Cross's rules is a recurring issue. Something that drove me crazy are the late-game tech abilities. Every character has three unique skills they can use when building up their meter, and these are bolted at various intervals on their spell slots. The issue comes with each character's third and final unique ability. Some characters gain this skill by leveling up, some require you to make specific choices throughout the story, and others only gain their last ability if you complete a side quest. There's no rhyme or reason for which characters fall into any of these categories. Worse, the game does an AWFUL job of communicating when you have failed your opportunity to pick up a final ability. For example, I missed out on Kid's last tech move because I had no idea it was hidden in some furniture in a one-off environment you can never revisit. That's a problem because you end up using many of these tech abilities more often than the magic commands because, as I hinted at earlier, your regular physical attacks usually murder everything you encounter. When you miss a single tech ability, that can jeopardize the long-term viability of that character.

There are other reasons why I was not impressed by how this game controlled and felt. Principally, this section of the game is an absolute slog because the boss encounters do not pop off as often as they did during the game's introduction. The problem is that your character's levels only go up after you beat a storyline boss and progress the story. That means you plug along in the mid-game with a moderately leveled party far longer than you should. If you complete some of the side quests, you can end up with level six and seven spells without any hope of using those abilities for hours. The second, and far more prominent issue, is the one I have already hinted at twice. Chrono Cross's difficulty curve drops like a sack of bricks after you beat Miguel. Serge/Lynx does an absurd amount of damage from regular attacks, and there are several other party members where this also applies. The other issue comes from the game's introduction of the "Magnify" and "Diminish" abilities. The magnify ability increases elemental damage by x1.5, whereas Diminish halves all elemental damage. Using some basic math, you can use both of these abilities to make enemy magic moot, thus leaving you to your own devices.

Part 19: Killing The Dragons Sucks So Much Shit

In the last episode, I mentioned there were two levels in Chrono Cross I genuinely hated. The first being your initial go on the S.S. Zelbess and the second, which is now before us, is when you need to track down all of the elemental dragons in El Nido. There are two reasons why I HATED this part of the game. To begin with, it is here I once again need to belabor the point of Chrono Cross lacking a mission log. Even knowing which islands have dragons on them is a pain in the ass! Sure, some of the islands bear the namesake of their dragon-based residents. Nevertheless, that's not always the case, given how you need to go to Gaea's Navel and Mount Pyre. Furthermore, the amount of backtracking during this sequence is atrocious. Due to you only being able to warp between the different dimensions at Opassa Beach, there's a TON of aimless wandering back and forth involved.

At least things start off simple enough with the Black Dragon residing conveniently at Marbule. Nonetheless, there's another nefarious part to each dragon's design worth mentioning. Each boss has a matching elemental plate that absorbs their element or color when it is equipped to a character. Getting these plates is a one-time-only opportunity, but the game doesn't even mention they exist in the first place. The issue here is two-fold: 1) Kid and Fargo are the only characters in the game that can steal items, and 2) You can only use the steal command once per battle for each character. So, if the RNG Goddess is pissed at you, it is easy to fuck up your shot at getting these essential items. Usually, I wouldn't mention optional equipment in one of my blogs, but things are different with the dragon plates in Chrono Cross. These items are CRITICAL, if not necessary, for the penultimate level and boss.

The final part of this infernal sequence worth discussing involves the puzzles you need to solve before fighting one of the dragons. None of these are especially hard, but they take time, and some have a frustrating amount of trial-and-error. Case in point, you have to move sand cockroaches using explosives to open the door to the Earth Dragon. The direction you need to push these large insectoids is unclear, and the game provides little input to guide your attempts to solve this puzzle. Worse, the subsequent boss battles are rough if you are not adequately prepared, and failing at one of these bosses is bound to force you to repeat many of these levels from the beginning. That said, other dragons (i.e., the Blue Dragon, Fire Dragon, and Sky Dragon) leave the path to their encounters wide open with no extra work needing to be accomplished. However, in these cases, the player needs to navigate previously explored environments, further suggesting that this game's budget wasn't the biggest. There's no reason for you to explore the Isle of the Damned or Mount Pyre for the umpteenth millionth time. It's just lazy game design.

All of this grousing pales in comparison to what you need to do to get to the Green Dragon. To kick things off, accessing Gaea's Navel is complete horseshit. You first need to head over to the Hydra Marshes of the Home World and find a "Beeba" shaman. This amphibian magician provides a magical flute that you can use to summon a giant dragonfly that Serge can ride to get to Gaea's Navel. HOWEVER, you need to use a summoning fruit on a specific part of the Hydra Marshes for this to work. When you first land at Gaea's Navel, you find Leah, Chrono Cross's cheap facsimile of Ayala. When you find the Green Dargon, Serge discovers it encased in a protective barrier. Leah reveals that it will only lower when all hostile life is eliminated on Gaea's Navel. That's right; you need to finish around twenty or so random encounters before you can continue with the story! This part of the game can fuck right off for all I care. Needing to eliminate a fixed number of enemies before being allowed to fight a boss is a shitty trope. What makes Gaea's Navel ten times worse is how the environment loops, making it is a thousand times harder to discern if a part of the environment is clear of enemies. As I said, this part of the game sucks, and everyone responsible for making it this way should feel bad.

Part 20: Turning Serge Back Into A Person Broke My Brain

I do want to mention that the order you tackle these dragons is up to you. Equally important, there are a handful of character moments and side quests that should be attempted before you slay the last one of these bosses. The dragons aren't Chrono Cross's proverbial "point of no return," but there are a handful of plot threads that get locked away if you progress the story too fast. I would bemoan how Chrono Cross fails to clue you into this part of the game being your best opportunity to explore the greater world and its massive cast of characters. Unfortunately, that's kind of how Chrono Cross rolls. You are the one that needs to decide when you want to pick up optional items and party members because Chrono Cross isn't the type of game to hold your hand. It is worth chastizing how the story stops dead in its track when you do all of this dragon-based bullshit. Each time you encounter a new dragon, it challenges Serge to prove he is a worthy opponent. Upon defeating them, they repeat the same soundbite saying they wish to see Serge complete his destiny. There's no progression about what Serge's destiny might be as you slay the dragons other than what the game has already provided.

Nonetheless, after beating the last dragon, you are told to seek a female mystic at Guldove named Steena. I should have mentioned this point beforehand, but you encounter Steena earlier as she is the one who tips Serge off that the next leg of their journey will involve dragon-based genocide. Steena provides Serge with a "Dragon Tear," which introduces the final part of our quest before venturing into the Sea of Eden. Slight aside, when you defeat the last dragon, it instructs you to seek out the Sea of Eden. However, you can't accomplish that until AFTER you meet with Steena and use the Dragon Tear to return Serge to his human form. Also worth mentioning, it's WILD how Chrono Cross is still introducing new party members this late into its story. You are only a handful of hours away from seeing the ending of Chrono Cross, and yet, here we have Steena joining your motley crew. I can only assume Steena has a real purpose and role, but my party composition had solidified by this point, and I was not in the mood to invest the time to see what she was all about. I mean, I can respect her for rocking a popped collar, but that is about it.

Steena at least has the common courtesy to tell Serge he will need to return to Fort Dragonia if he wishes to become human. Upon discovering this development, I groaned loudly. The path from Guldove to Fort Dragonia is no joke as it involves piloting your ship for a while and then re-ascending Mount Pyre. Luckily, you will not need to resolve all of the dungeon puzzles you needed to deal with the first time you entered this fortress. The elevator at the spire is already activated and Punished Serge meets the party without much trouble. Regarding the boss encounter with Evil Serge, I have to say almost everything in this game post-Miguel goes without a hitch. The gauntlet of dragons can have their moments wherein they pop off cheap bullshit, but nothing during the second act of Chrono Cross comes close to Miguel in terms of difficulty. That is not to say nothing in the game gave me a rough go. There's one more encounter in Chrono Cross that kicked my ass, but that's a topic for another time.

After beating away your evil doppelganger, Steena encourages Serge to enter the final room at Fort Dragonia. After placing the Dragon's Tear in a receptacle, a series of dragon statues power up. After these statues shoot a laser beam at Serge, we watch as he evaporates and is reborn. I'm not kidding. That's an actual scene that happens in this game, and it blew my goddamn mind.

What can I say? Squaresoft loved them some ridiculous plot twists during the PS1 era! Over my many years of blogging on Giant Bomb, I have seen some bizarre shit. Watching Serge emerge from a blue crystal after being reborn is undoubtedly up there as one of the craziest scenes in a video game I have ever seen. It's up there with the final boss of Kingdom Hearts transforming into a boat, and it compares favorably to the "Orphanage Scene" in Final Fantasy VIII. It's fucking WILD! I have no idea what Serge being reborn has to do with the story, but it made me cackle with glee. And before you ask, this isn't even the craziest plot twist in Chrono Cross! WE HAVEN'T EVEN TALKED ABOUT THE TIME-TRAVELING DINOSAURS, "PROJECT KID," OR TIME DEVOURER YET! If we were to make a "meme iceberg" of crazy shit in Chrono Cross, this would, at best, be in the middle! On that note, I think it is time to end this episode. Next time, I plan to do a fun supplemental on all of the side quest shit, including stuff that didn't make the cut in this episode, before jumping headfirst into the ending.

Author's Note: In a previous blog, I mentioned how I have been struggling with another bout of writer's block with my retrospective on Chrono Cross. I want to thank the handful of you who expressed concern and words of encouragement to me privately. With this episode, I have decided to take to heart a recurring criticism of my game-specific blogs. I have gone ahead and cut down this entry in half to make it both easier to read and edit. In doing this, I hope to ensure I can provide a new entry at least once a week rather than once a month. If you have any other ideas, inquirers, or criticisms, feel free to share in the comments.

• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #1: Ten Out Of Ten? Review It Again!

Part 11: We Need To Talk About How Much Time You Spend Playing As Lynx

It's been a while, but when we last reviewed my progress with Chrono Cross, our protagonist, Serge, found himself in a bit of a pickle. The story's primary antagonist, Lynx, found a way to swap his soul with Serge's and is now masquerading as Serge while wrecking wanton chaos on the world. As I reviewed last time, this is a bonkers plot twist that the game does fuck all in the grand scheme of things. When everything is all said and done, you play at least half the game as Lynx. While on paper, that might sound like an exciting prospect, it ultimately is not. While there are a handful of environments and set-pieces that hint at the ethos and pathos of Chrono Cross, most of your time controlling Lynx involves what feels like busywork. While you intrepidly explore Serge's "Home World" as Lynx, the overarching theme is that he doesn't want to be a furry and needs to stop the world from ending; the latter of which the first act of the game hammered home for TEN HOURS!

No matter, while controlling Lynx, you explore the "Temporal Vortex," which a resident of the Vortex explains is where souls of the recently deceased go. This reminds me of something I failed to discuss in the first episode of this retrospective. Serge being a silent protagonist makes the PS1-era Squaresoft storytelling Chrono Cross attempts all the more awkward. Yes, I understand Serge being mute is a reference to Crono in Chrono Trigger. At the same time, Chrono Cross tries to have characters engage in sweeping dialogues about morality, faith, destiny, and metaphysics. Its attempts to punch way above its weight class feel weird when the goober you control stands there and says nothing. In the case of the Temporal Vortex, you have party members lecturing about the frailty of life and the fickle nature of destiny. And yet, Serge stands there and does zip. It's the same style of storytelling Squaresoft attempts with Final Fantasy VIII, but unlike Squall, Serge doesn't even reply with an ellipsis.

So, if the writing refuses to allow introspective moments with Serge because it feels obligated to keep up the silent protagonist gimmick, what does it offer instead? Well, not a lot, if we are honest. All those themes of metaphysics, time travel, alternate dimensions, and destiny during the first act? THE STORY BLOWS A FAT RASPBERRY AT YOUR FACE FOR AN ENTIRE THIRD OF THE GAME! For most of the second act, what you get is an endless stream of interstitial set-pieces and one-off characters with nary a connection to the main plot. I'm going to discuss the matter in more detail in the next section, but why the fuck do Van and Zappa get three-act dramatic structures retelling their tragic backstories when we still have NO IDEA why Lynx swapped bodies with Serge? What is Lynx planning? How did Kid survive getting stabbed in the chest? These are the sorts of questions I wanted the game to answer, but for whatever reason, it stubbornly refuses at every turn.

Regardless, I want to return to the issue of Serge not feeling like a genuine character. The advantage of silent protagonists is that they allow the player to graft their moralities and impressions onto a video game avatar. However, that's virtually impossible to do in Chrono Cross. While the game initially provides you with opportunities to respond to scenarios with different choices, there are not enough of these for Serge to function as a cipher. Likewise, it is not like the choices you make in the game are all that impactful or important. For example, let's return to the Temporal Vortex. The dialogue choice you make there is whether or not you lie to Harle and say you are Lynx, which she knows to be false, or tell her you are Serge, which she responds to by calling you a fool. It's not exactly the "best" quandary to graft your opinions of what you think is happening to Serge. To me, this issue highlights how much of Chrono Cross feels like an unfinished passion project. Within the scope of this second act, these dialogue prompts disappear entirely. A core storytelling hook vanishes before your eyes.

Part 12: This Game Sure Does Like To Throw A Bunch Of Pointless Characters At You For No Reason In Particular

When Serge first found himself in Lynx's body, I was furious. However, I wasn't angry because I wasn't in the mood for a wacky plot twist. By this point, you all should know that I'm always down to clown when it comes to Square hitting me with their best shot. No, I was pissed because I knew the character swap would fuck up the spell slots and equipment assignments I meticulously planned for my last bevy of characters. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened! When Sprigg, Harle, Radius, Zappa, and Van join your party, they have jack shit. I know I belabored how much I was not too fond of Chrono Cross's inventory and spell management system on the last blog. Nonetheless, needing to parse out another dozen or so characters to find out which ones are genuinely useful is a tedious slog. Seriously, the minute you leave the Temporal Vortex, the game inundates you with up to five characters across three levels. Despite Chrono Cross spanning over forty hours, it usually barfs out new characters during transitional sequences one after the other.

Some of these characters, like Funguy, can and should be skipped. There is no rhyme or reason to which optional characters are worth the time and effort to get. Some of the worst characters in terms of damage output or magical prowess are recruited through long side quests, which presents a dilemma for Chrono Cross. Character recruitment is the one gameplay hook that carries across the entire game. Nevertheless, the complete lack of balance with these characters makes investing your time with this mechanic generally not worth it. As I discussed last time, the lack of an EXP sharing mechanic on top of the large cast encourages the player to identify three to four characters they enjoy using and sticking with them. And the process of even seeing the unique abilities of each character is a massive time sink. Because you need to build up a meter to use special moves, the simple task of figuring out which characters are worth your while takes fucking forever. I would have significantly preferred something like Grandia II's "Special Attack" system to Chrono Cross's because at least there, you can see all of the flashy animations and spells you want within the first couple of turns.

That last point is a massive disappointment considering how varied some characters play and how intricate their animations are in Chrono Cross. Checking out new characters and watching their attack animations never ceased to put a smile on my face. Some characters like Razzly even have distinct combos that can add an area-of-effect bonus to their basic attacks. Unfortunately, I lost patience with the game as even the most benign battle in Chrono Cross can take upwards of five to six minutes. Additionally, while the cast of characters gets more extensive, the pace of the combat stays about the same. And when I discovered some of the late-game exploits, I didn't feel like Chrono Cross's jingling toy keys act was as cute as I initially found it. Even more baffling, there are a handful of character-specific mechanics. Sprigg, for example, is the only Blue Mage in the game. Pip can evolve into one of five possible forms like a Pokémon. Pierre is like Voltron and needs to assemble five pieces to a medal before assuming his ultimate form. There's also the summoning mechanic, which might warrant its own section next time.

These gameplay mechanics require hours upon hours of player investment before they begin to pay off dividends. The issue here is how little the game cues you in with any of your party members. Unless you are using a guide, the game expects you to spend hours figuring out which characters meld with your play style. However, you can't even do that very effectively! For one thing, you always need to have Lynx or Serge in your party. That limits your slots for experimentation to two. Second, there are only two characters in the entire game who can perform the Steal/Mug command, and they are Kid and Fargo. As a result, for hours upon end, one of them is bound to be a member of your party. This point is essential because Chrono Cross is one of those JRPGs where the best equipment in the game needs to be stolen from bosses!

Part 13: And Now This Game Decides It Needs To Lecture About How Racism Is Bad.

But let's return to the issue of Chrono Cross's story! When Serge returns to his hometown, he discovers that its citizens are none too pleased to see him as they are all dramatically revealed to be biased against demi-humans. That's right, instead of furthering the main plot of a nigh forty-hour game, Chrono Cross decides to spend what feels like ten hours lecturing you about why racism is wrong. Every interaction you make in the town of Arni results in Serge and company being shouted at to leave. No one believes that Lynx is Serge, including his mother, who is horribly underwritten, by the way, and even Poshul refuses to join your party. Things come to a head when the wizened sage, Radius, confronts your party and challenges them to a battle. After emerging victorious, the party gains the trust of Radius, but even he cannot convince the villagers to accept Serge.

Now, I want to make it very clear that I am no friend of racism. However, with the nine or ten different A and B plots that the game has active in its burner, another subplot is not what I was interested in at this time. If the game was solely focused on surfacing how humanity has done the demi-humans dirty, that would be one thing. But because this game cannot make up its goddamn mind on what it wants its story to be about, this thread feels entirely out of place. To make matters worse, the game complicates things further by tossing in two extra story developments when you revisit Termina in the Home World. Upon entering the once-bustling city, you discover it under occupation by the nation of Porre, and upon meeting up with Van, learn more about the "Frozen Flame." The latter of which is shockingly the quest item that returns you to the main path. Truth be told, while I was picking up new party members and trying to wrap my mind around the ten different story threads popping off in the game, it wasn't until much later when I realized the Frozen Flame was connected to the main story. Everything else was secondary, and that includes the nigh seven-minute cutscene in which Van shares his sob story about wanting to help his father's failing artistic career.

Speaking of Van, he's a perfect example of the game not knowing what to do with its massive cast. The minute he's done with his lecture about his hope to use the Frozen Flame to rejuvenate his father's career, he might as well be dead because the game does nothing with him for the rest of the story. The Frozen Flame, by the way, is a magical MacGuffin that will grant the wish of whoever finds it, similar to a complete set of Dragon Balls. However, after learning about the Frozen Flame, Serge's presence is requested by a colonel named Norris in Viper's Mansion. After navigating a Byzantine series of water puzzles, they find Norris in the villa's sewers. Surprisingly, Norris takes the whole "there are alternate dimensions" news well and even accepts that the person standing in front of him is not Lynx. What's more, he corroborates the information you collected earlier about the Frozen Flame and relays that it can be found at the Dead Sea. Norris provides a boat that you can pilot in the overworld, but approaching the Dead Sea reveals it to be a giant vortex.

The issue here is that a magical sword, the Masamune, has employed a mystical field in front of the entrance of the Dead Sea. Before any of you ask, yes, the characters Masa and Mune are indeed in Chrono Cross. Because when I think of my tier list of Chrono Trigger characters that I want to see in Chrono Cross, Masa and Mune are right up there with characters like Marle, Crono, Lucca, Dalton, Frog, and Robo. Radius reveals the only thing capable of lowering this magical force field is the Einlanzer. That means we need to collect a different magic sword to beat an evil cursed sword, which prevents us from collecting a magical MacGuffin. If that last sentence doesn't make sense to you, then join the party. So, with four or five different story-critical trinkets, you'd maybe think the game spends just a sliver of its time developing its world, mythos, or perhaps the background information to some of these items. You would be wrong. Instead, we fight a giant alien that looks like something from a 1960s era science fiction movie. I wish I were kidding.

Part 14: You Spend So Much Fucking Time On The S.S. Invincible

With the story meandering with a bunch of B Plots and MacGuffins, you eventually find your way to the Home World's version of the S.S. Invincible. However, here the ship is called the "S.S. Zelbess," and this version of Fargo is a sorry sack of shit. I'm going to be honest with all of you. There were two sections of this game I genuinely detested with the passion of a thousand suns. The first being this initial romp on the S.S. Invincible, and the second involves beating all of the dragons after you awaken them from their slumber. Both involve a level of tedium that made me want to pull my hair out. In this case, you discover that the Home World's version of Fargo uses their once-mighty pirate ship as a leisure boat with a fully operating theater and casino. Furthermore, this Fargo has enslaved the demi-humans that once inhabited the island of Marbule as deckhands.

I mentioned earlier whenever the game brings up the topic of the demi-humans, Chrono Cross lectures you as if you are a child learning about Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time. Yet, the real problem here is that the story once again attempts a juggling act of storylines which muddies the punch of its message about tolerance and diversity. In this single set-piece, the story tries to:

1. Provide historical context to the discrimination of the demi-humans.
2. Foreshadow why Fargo is sad.
3. Flesh out Nikki's relationship with Fargo.
4. Present Nikki's plan to host a concert.
5. Introduce Sneff.
6. Introduce Irenes.
7. Have the Sage of Marbule share a bunch of tangentially connected stories about dragons.

As you might imagine, the whole level is a goddamn mess because the writing cannot make up its mind on what tone or message it wishes to commit to while you are here. When learning about the death of Fargo's wife and the plight of the demi-humans, the narrative strikes a somber tone. When you meet with Nikki and learn about his hope to host a massive concert to use music to teach the world the power of love, it strikes an inspirational one. Then, with Sneff, I suspect Squaresoft watched "The Pest" starring John Leguizamo and thought they could out-racist one of the most offensive films made in the past forty years. Seriously, what the fuck is this?!

It is impossible to take any of the game's attempts to paint a message of racial tolerance seriously when one of its characters is a buck-toothed caricature of a Chinese magician. And I wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I noticed in the English translation Sneff was unable to pronounce the letter "R." It's not as if what the story accomplishes with Fargo, Nikki, and the Sage of Marbule is all that impressive. Fargo ends up conning your party and enslaving them to a lifetime of labor on his boat, and the process of regaining your freedom is about as convoluted as the rest of the game. Long story short, Sneff transforms you into a domesticated cat, which allows you to break a mechanism that previously ensured Fargo always beat you at roulette. During this process, you discover Fargo is Nikki's father, and Fargo was once married to a mermaid who is now dead. As I have said before and will say again, this might have worked as a self-contained story in a different game.

"But ZombiePie, now Chrono Cross is surely ready to get back to the main plot!" you say with childish naiveté. No, no, it is not. We still need to pick up the "Einlanzer" to combat the evil juice running through the Masamune. And if you are wondering, yes, they retconned Frog's best saber to have some bad cursed bullshit in it. Conveniently, the questline connected with the Einlanzer sheds some backstory about Radius, another storyline required character who in no way, shape, or form impacts the game's conclusion. Worse, Radius's tragic backstory is a shameless copy-paste job from Squaresoft's storytelling playbook. Radius was friends with a man named Gerai, who once wielded the Einlanzer. The two eventually came across the Masamune, which happens to be the dark inverse of the Einlanzer. Unable to control the evil powers of the Masamune, Radius slew Gerai in a fit of rage and buried him on an island now named the "Isle of the Damned." Before you collect the Einlanzer, you first need to defeat the spirit of Gerai and listen to a ten-minute lecture on why the Masamune is bad news. It's a good storyline, but yet again, I must say that it would have been better served as a self-contained story in a different video game.

Part 15: The Game Finally Remembers Its Main Plot! And It's FUCKING CRAZY!

Mercifully, once you finish attending to Radius's bullshit, you promptly travel to the Dead Sea only to discover it is a frozen wasteland. Upon entering the ruins of a city, you find yourself in Chronopolis. The futuristic metropolis and its remaining furnishings might seem familiar to anyone who has played Chrono Trigger, as specific visuals are similar to Robo's 2300 AD timeline. The Dead Sea is one of the stronger set pieces in the entire game as its eerie environmental work and masterstroke score are a match made in heaven. While exploring these ruins, your party discovers a computer terminal which then plays a PowerPoint presentation on Lavos. It is over twenty hours in, and Chrono Cross FINALLY realizes it is a sequel to Chrono Trigger! Thankfully, Chrono Cross takes place in the timeline where Crono and company were successful in beating Lavos.

In the first episode of this series, I warned anyone who wishes for the connections between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross to be more overt to be careful. There are many fingers on this monkey paw ready to curl up if you want this wish granted. Unfortunately, Chrono Cross is only prepared to share the tip of its narrative iceberg at this moment. After the presentation about Lavos shuts down, nothing corroborates this abbreviated summary for a while. Instead, you weave your way towards the "Tower of Geddon" at the center of the Dead Sea. It is in this tower when you come to grips that something from Chrono Trigger has been catapulted into the tropical wonderland of El Nido. The building appears to be a shopping center of some sort, and it is populated by malfunctioning robots and the spirits of long-dead citizens. A nice touch I noticed is how you witness fewer robots and more ghosts as you progress further into the tower. For example, when you enter what appears to be a theater or ballroom, you encounter apparitions of pageant queens, which also say some of the weirdest quotes.

Then, when you enter a room with what looks like a collapsed wind turbine, you see the ghost of Lucca. As you chase after her, you find a crowd of ghosts standing before a portal. The spirits here are a mix of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross characters, and when you follow what I think was Crono into the portal, shit gets weirder. On the other side, there's an army of spirit children, and it is at the end of this environment when you meet up with the ghosts of Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Instead of greeting Serge with a hearty welcome, they instead yell at him for dooming the world of El Nido to damnation. In a genuinely upsetting scene, Crono speaks and calls Serge a "murderer." As we all know, silent protagonists speaking in sequels is a bit of a video game trope. However, something about Chrono Cross making Crono speak pissed me off more than I can adequately express. Part of it had to do with the game taking its sweet time to muster any effort to connect itself with its predecessor, which is the whole point of it being a sequel. But the other part is how they make Crono speak and do nothing with it for hours. It's not as if this is the first time Serge has been told the world's fate is in his hands.

After this ghostly encounter, a man named Miguel greets Serge. Miguel explains that he was with Serge's father when Serge was attacked by a panther that poisoned him many years ago. Lacking proper medicine, Serge's father plotted a course for Marbule in hopes of finding magic capable of saving his son's life. Unfortunately, a maelstrom knocked their ship into the Dead Sea and the ruined city of Chronopolis. Somehow, Serge's father saved his son's life at Chronopolis, but the city's defenses were activated, which stranded Miguel for over ten years. Luckily for him, people don't age at Chronppolis because it exists in a future where death has "been solved." The game also does not address how Serge returned home, nor does it answer questions about Serge's father's current status. Then, Miguel goes on a five-minute screed about how Serge being "saved" destroyed a timeline in the future, and that is why Chronopolis is all fucked up. I might be wrong on that one, so here's a snippet of what Miguel says, and you can feel free to share if you think I'm misconstruing something. Nonetheless, it is at this point when Chrono Cross begins to spew technobabble at a breakneck pace.

"Res nullius... It's because this is a future that was eliminated!!! History is composed of choices and divergences. Each choice you make creates a new world and brings forth a new future. But at the same time, you're eliminating a different future with the choices you didn't make. A future denied of all existence because of a change in the past... A future that was destroyed before it was even born rests here... condensed into the Dead Sea."

Oh, and the boss battle against Miguel is a real pain in the ass! For whatever reason, he's one of the few bosses in the game that take full advantage of the color mechanic. Also, because his color is white, he does double damage to Serge in Lynx's body. While this means Serge does double damage to Miguel, because Miguel is programmed to target Serge first, you will be lucky to get any attacks out of him. Which reminds me, spells being one-time use abilities sucks so much shit. Because you can only use any given spell in a slot once per battle, you end up with a TON of the same healing spells across all of your spaces. Moreover, there are only three revive spells in the entirety of Chrono Cross. Thus, you can only ever resurrect your characters three times in the same battle, and that's if the KO-ed character isn't holding a resurrection spell. It's a system that barely works in ordinary encounters, and it actively punishes the player in boss battles as it forces them to play conservatively.

Once defeated, Miguel weaves a story about a young boy and their friends stopping the end of the world by navigating the dimension of time. If you have even half a brain, you know he's summarizing the story of Chrono Trigger, and it was at this point when it dawned on me how much Chrono Cross enjoys talking at you instead of talking to you. I also realized that Miguel wouldn't spill the beans on how Serge survived being poisoned by a panther demon or what happened to his father. Rather, he reviews how attempts to collect the Frozen Flame by several Acacia Dragoons failed because FATE, and there is a reason why it is spelled with all capitalized letters, did not deem them worthy. However, before Miguel can divulge any more, the remains of Chronopolis begin to explode. In the nick of time, a dragon sweeps up our troupe of heroes and transports them to safety. And it is on that note I am going to wrap things up. Next episode, I will turn Serge back into a human. Trust me; you're not ready for that one!

Author's Note: This blog contains MASSIVE SPOILERS!

It's A Great Time To Be A Fan Of The Persona Games!

So, it appears a new Persona game is in the works. With the series celebrating its 25th anniversary and Persona 4 turning thirteen, the franchise is the healthiest it has ever been. The rise of the Persona series to become a respected household name alongside the likes of Dragon Quest, Tales of, or even Final Fantasy is nothing short of a miracle and a testament to how hard Atlus has worked to make the franchise the best it could be. Better yet, the franchise has addressed many of the sticking points that previously afflicted it. For example, any game with the Persona moniker will feature a professional localization in dozens of different languages. The breadth of characters the Persona games have shared with audiences is astounding, and the overall quality of writing surrounding these characters equally so. Likewise, the production values of the Persona games and its growing emphasis on aesthetics have set industry standards. The list of positives goes on and on, and I don't want to deny that. Shit, some of you frequent Giant Bomb because of a particular recurring video series about Persona 4.

There is, however, something that has been lost as a result of the Persona series rising from a niche JRPG series to one with industry-wide cache. Whatever shape Persona 6 takes, it will not be a self-contained story that begins and ends within the scope of a single game. Now, this is not breaking news or anything new to long-standing fans. Persona 3 started the franchise's trend towards spin-off games, and an argument could be made this habit even began with Persona 2. Nonetheless, even the most ardent Persona or Megaten fans must admit that when the credits roll in Persona 6, that's most likely not going to be where the story finishes. There will be spin-offs, crossovers, and even multimedia tie-ins that flesh out the characters and bolt-on post-game storylines. I want to emphasize this is not necessarily a bad thing but, instead, a compromise of the series attaining mainstream and international clout. And to be honest, that's why the news that the Persona team is working on a new game shouldn't be surprising. The Persona 5 spin-offs have left no stone unturned, and that world has been fully excavated.

This point leads me to the topic of Persona 3's original ending, and I need to stress the word "original" even if it pains me to do so. It's hard to imagine this, but Persona 3 ended. When Persona 3 essentially rebooted the franchise after a six-year-long hiatus, the prospect of spin-offs and media tie-ins was not a given. As a result, Atlus went HARD when writing its story and conceiving its ending. When compared to its successors, Persona 3 is unrelentingly nihilistic and sullen. None of this should be construed to dismiss the mature content and darker storytelling moments in Persona 4 and 5. However, when you look at the overall "body count" in Persona 3 and notice how it overshadows that of Persona 4 and 5's by a country mile, you start to grasp how much more dire that game's world is to its contemporaries. The characters of Persona 3 are not simply stopping a misguided Shinto god or goddess from establishing a new world order. The characters of Persona 3 are forced to sacrifice everything they love for the sake of preserving a harsh, corrupt, and flawed world they often detest. Nonetheless, it needs to be done.

Why Persona 3's Ending Is So Special

The image above is one burned into the minds of everyone who has played Persona 3. After subjecting the player to a nigh one-hundred-hour experience, Atlus made you watch your protagonist die in the arms of Aigis. The game's message being the world of Persona 3 is one of enormous sacrifice and one where you need to accept death as an inevitability. If players want to prevent the world from ending, they must concede that there is no neat present with a pretty bow on top that contains a conclusion where all the characters get together and cheer each other on as friends for life. That was never what Persona 3 was about, and its last moments solidify that once and for all. Your protagonist needs to die. To call this an "emotional moment" is an understatement. In their quest to send a message and preserve the game's tone, the writers were willing to disregard your hard work and due diligence. It was ballsy at the time, and it is almost incomprehensible when you look at where the Persona series is today.

Even at the time, fans were in denial that there was no cheerful ending to Persona 3. For months, GameFAQs had an endless stream of threads asking if there was a "secret ending" wherein the protagonist did not die. People scanned the game's code in hopes of finding some way to get that neat little bow they desperately wanted, but to no avail. The rumors and speculation revived once more when Persona 3 Portable was released and presented an alternate protagonist. However, yet again, Atlus remained committed to its original message and forced players, yet again, to watch their protagonist die. All those times Igor whispered into your ear that "the end is coming," the game fucking meant it, and there are no take-backies. Which makes it far more decisive than tragedies in subsequent Persona games.

Even if you object to my notion that the current Persona games withhold their entire stories for the sake of post-release content, there's the issue with messaging and intent. It is unlikely Atlus will ever recapture the lightning in the bottle of Persona 3 because Atlus has continually shown they do not have the appetite to confront their audience that aggressively ever again. For example, Nanako's death in Persona 4 is a gut punch, but one the game is unwilling to stand by, and there's a similar problem with Persona 5. While Persona 5 is willing to subject you to grim scenarios and wronged victims, it always provides an opportunity for the player to feel like they came out on top and ensured that the "good guys" won. You don't leave Persona 3 with that feeling. The ending of Persona 3 is a heart-stopping moment that I have yet to see a single Persona fan tell me they did not get teary-eyed when they first encountered it. Even though you've beaten back the game's monolithic big bad, you feel as if you've failed.

Additionally, this ending addresses an issue plagued by many AAA titles. Repeatedly, games have told us that "sacrifices need to be made" to conclude their events. And yet, most games allow you to resolve cataclysmic disasters and existential crises without nary a scratch. Even industry titans like Bioware, Square-Enix, and Bethesda are prone to including fan-satisfying conclusions that allow players to retain all of their in-game possessions and companions after finding a "third way." Persona 3 said, "fuck that." If you want to stop the suffering inflicted by Nyx, someone would have to pay a toll. So, even if you fulfilled every social link in the game, and even if you maxed out your entire party, you watched your protagonist die in the arms of Aigis. No matter what you did, that was the result. The game doubled down on its overall theme that calls to adventure have consequences and Persona 3 made you live with those consequences.

This Is Never Going To Happen Again, And There's An Elephant In The Room

Persona 6 will likely be a great game. Atlus has a reliable track record, and there are no immediate red flags they will not deliver a memorable storytelling adventure. Likewise, I don't want this blog to suggest that Persona 3 is a perfect crystal that needs to be gawked at like the Hope Diamond. The quality of writing in the Persona franchise has evolved and gotten better over time. The cast of Persona 5 feels more fleshed out and fully realized than the vast majority of characters in Persona 3. And there are some real hard "misses" in Persona 3 that make it harder to recommend to newcomers than Personas 4 or 5. Characters like Ken Amada are abrasive in all the wrong ways, and the game's unflinching nihilism is not for everyone. Also, mechanically speaking, it is an awful experience. Tartarus is a lousy dungeon, and depending on which version of the game you are playing; I'm going to pray the RNG Goddess is nice to you. It also does not help the lack of a proper remaster of Persona 3 has left the OG PSP as the platform of choice to experience what most consider the "definitive" Persona 3 experience.

More importantly, the Atlus of today is a different beast than the one that took wild risks when making Persona 3. When they hammer down what they want to accomplish with Persona 6's cast and story, I will make a wager that the game will leave things open-ended enough for post-release content no matter what. As I mentioned before, I am not saying this is a bad thing; it's just the path that Atlus wants to blaze, and we all need to live with it. Persona 4 and 5 getting additional spin-off adventures did not adversely impact your ability to enjoy the original games. Nor were any of the spin-offs objectively terrible in their own right. The days of bad OVAs like Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei or Trinity Soul are gone. Yet, there is something to be said about playing a 100+ hour video game and not needing to worry about missing out on shit three years after the fact.

That said, as the subtitle of this part of my blog suggests, there's an elephant in the room. While Square-Enix gets a ton of shit for picking at the conclusions of games after their release (i.e., Final Fantasy VII and X), Atlus has somehow gotten away scot-free doing the same shit to the ending of Persona 3. "The Answer," Persona 4 Arena, and the eleven billion Persona 3 OVAs Atlus produced are a crime. Atlus had something beautiful and incredible, and they couldn't help themselves when they saw an opportunity to expand Persona 3, and the series in general, into a multimedia empire. Not only have they shown they have buyer's remorse, but it also looks like Atlus does not have it in them to make a story as morose and moody as Persona 3. The fact they have wholly retconned the ending of Persona 3 so that the male protagonist, who is NOT MY PROTAGONIST, BY THE WAY, can continue to pop up in crossover games sucks a lot of shit. Suppose Atlus ends up announcing a Persona 5 Arena after fans have been calling for them to make it for years. In that case, I look forward to it collecting the "big three teams" to ruin everything good about Persona 3's ending, once and for all. Fuck everything.