/vr/ - Retro Games

Chrono Trigger was made because the creator of Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi, specifically wanted to make a game 'in the world of Akira Toriyama'. So he went to Yuji Horii, the long time producer of Akira Toriyama works and asked if he would get Akira Toriyama to work with him on a game. He did one better, and both Yuji Yorii and Akira Toriyama came together to work with Sakaguchi on a game, which we now know as Chrono Trigger. IT was basically the dream team of JRPGs, the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest team coming together to make one game.

But there was a fourth major person who worked on the game. Named Masato Kato. He wrote the final script and did a lot of the concept work for the game. In effect, he is the 'planner' for the series and Chrono as a series is his baby.

When it came time to make a sequel to Chrono Trigger, the other three major players who came together to make Chrono Trigger, Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, did not return to work on the sequel. Instead, Masato Kato was given total control as writer, director and producer of the project. Along with much of the staff from FF8 and Xenogears. This is why the game has a completely different 'feel' from Chrono Trigger. But that doesn't make Chrono Cross bad and Chrono Cross itself still has plenty of ties in plot to Chrono Trigger.

Sadly, now even Masato Kato has left SquareEnix. Leaving the execs at SE toclaim they will not make a sequel to Chrono because he is not there to do it. Frankly, with pretty much everyone connected to the original Chrono team gone except Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, I can't blame them. At this point, you might as well play Dragon Quest 7 or 8. That's as close as you're gonna get to the feel of a Chrono game from SquareEnix.

And now you know the sad downward spiral of Chrono as a series.