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Chrono Trigger

V-Jump Video 1

Transcribed by GekkaHikko and translated by GlitterBerri.

The Perfect: Talk Battle

Chrono Trigger: The Perfect "Talk Battle" developer interview with Yuji Horii and Hironobu Sakaguchi, translated by GlitterBerri.

• Source

V Jump Books Dokusen Project!!

Two members of the Chrono Trigger team discuss the secret story behind the game!

It’s a scorching hot TALK BATTLE!!

Y. Horii VS H. Sakaguchi

DREAM PROJECT

Event ideas, character design, the real story is just inside! See the dynamic relationship between the developers revealed as we present this information to you!

They are, of course, Yuuji Horii and Hironobu Sakaguchi, masters of the Chrono Trigger world!! We conducted this special interview for our readers!

Let the interview begin!!

The game and its graphics were beyond belief.

—Let’s start the interview off with something basic. After completing the game and playing the final version, what were your thoughts? Do you think you were able to accomplish what you set out to do?

Horii:
In my mind, the game went beyond our expectations. There were highlights that, in the end, were more than I thought they’d be. The scene where you’re going into the jail – just the feeling I got from entering the dungeon surprised me. Seeing the scrolling background of the passage left a deep impression on me. Not just the mountains in the background; the inside as well.

Sakaguchi:
Our colleagues who worked on the graphics were also talking about that. If the prison had been done in the normal style, it would have been rather devoid of colour.

—Horii, would you say that he dungeon had the best visuals, in your opinion?

Horii:
Yes. The graphics were excellent, if that’s what you mean. I’m not a professional artist, so I appreciate someone else going in there for me.

—Sakaguchi, how about yourself? Do you find that there was a place that went far beyond what you had imagined?

Sakaguchi:
Something like the stained glass of the courtroom. That part was amazing. At the beginning I imagined the courthouse to be suspended in the sky, connected by a floating bridge to the mountains. I wasn’t thinking about the contrast with the light, that was created the efforts of the staff who drew it.

Horii:
As for this game, I’m only involved with the plot. If there’s a fairground, I just write that there’s a fairground; I don’t write down any of the details. Then the staff brainstorm and come up with a variety of attractions to put in. With entertainment like a robot battle and Square’s ride, there are many things with which to amuse yourself. I think it lent a certain freshness to the game to have everyone working together.

Ideas were brainstormed under the orders of the director.

—Do you think that working with each other, there were parts of the game that reflected your personalities?

Horii:
Off the top of my head, I think that the fairground events were very Sakaguchi-esque. Characters like Gonzalez, especially.

Sakaguchi:
I was the one who created Gonzales. (laughter)

—Is that so? (laughter)

Horii:
Suddenly bursting into song…

Sakaguchi:
Actually, I was also behind the primeval dance next door. (laughter)

Horii:
It’s a good thing that I started dancing to it too.

Sakaguchi:
Actually, Kitase, who was directing the game, was the one who asked me to put something in there.

—Was it because you would always say that to him when you were the director and now your positions have been reversed?

Sakaguchi:
That’s right. (laughter) Kitase only recently became director, so he was always saying “Sakaguchi, Sakaguchi, I’m really sorry about this, but since I’m the director now, I’m going to have to ask you to do this.” (bursts out laughing)

Square had a variety of new ideas – Horii

Chrono Trigger had a degree of freedom never-before-seen in games.

Sakaguchi:
There were times that I felt under pressure to make as much of a Toriyama-style world as possible, but contrary to my expectations I found that it was okay to play around with Toriyama’s universe. It felt like anything was possible.

Horii:
Because of this, even in really serious scenes there’s a lot of silliness. Take the part where you defeat the Dragon Tank after escaping from the prison. The enemies hanging off the edge link together to form a human bride. (laughter)

—Even with the character names, like “Sir Krawlie.” (laughing)

Sakaguchi:
That would be impossible with something like Final Fantasy. It would be rejected immediately. (laughter)

Horii:
We had a lot more freedom than we would with Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. We weren’t worried about the feel of the world; it would be whatever we ended up making.

Sakaguchi:
It was a totally new game.

—Sakaguchi-san, would you say there was a part where Horii’s personality shone through?

Sakaguchi:
Yes and no. When I read the faxes he sent me, I was surprised. They were written like flowcharts, and the response time showed an almost user-like mentality. I thought it was amazing.

They wanted to make the most of time travel.

—I thought I had played till the end, but after the Undersea Palace the game suddenly awarded the player a lot more freedom. You culd go around doing all sorts of things. What was your intention there, seeing as the story was so much linear before?

Sakaguchi:
FFVI wast he same. The style had its pros and cons. We had several events that had to be completed using time travel, so we wanted to make the most of them. Also, when we came up with ideas for bosses that you had to defeat by hitting their weak points, we began to realize we couldn’t put them into a linear story. Players would get stuck and need to consult a walkthrough. As a result, I wanted to make use of those ideas in areas that were optional for the player. The game is accordingly easier to understand than Final Fantasy, and in order to help the player progress through the game we made the Brink of Time (End of Time). We created it so the player could go there to receive hints and carry on.

—I feel that there is one particular optional event that you’d like the player to experience most. There were a lot of events that caused time paradoxes or made use of time travel, weren’t there?

Sakaguchi:
Those were the most popular Chrono-like parts according to the testers as well. Though surely if you just skipped through the story at that pace from the beginning, you wouldn’t be able to follow it, right?

Horii:
Isn’t that right. It wouldn’t make sense.

Sakaguchi:
Because the Chrono Trigger world could be understood through a linear story, I thought players would enjoy events that caused time paradoxes and required traveling through time.

Enjoy the differences between the 1st and 2nd playthrough! – Sakaguchi

The second playthrough will feel different.

—Chrono Trigger has the option for a second playthrough using your progress from the first game. Was this so players could enjoy the multiple endings?

Sakaguchi:
That was one of our intentions, but there was also something we didn’t expect…the testers themselves felt as though they wanted to travel through time again. They wated to start a new game, go to Leene Fair, and time travel once more. That was actually the good thing about time travel, I think. In normal RPGs, the second time through, it feels like a chore to play all the way from the beginning again. With the New Game + you’re able to keep your characters’ strength, so your sense of battle is different. You feel like time traveling in Chrono Trigger once more.

Horii:
With the options in Chrono Trigger, you often find yourself wondering about what would have happened had you chosen to do something different. The second time through gives you more chances to toy with what people say.

Sakaguchi:
Wherever we could, we tried to make it so that a slight change in your behavior caused subtle differences in people’s reactions, even down to the smallest details. If you feel the changes, I think the second playthrough will hold a whole new interest.

Horii:
For example, even if you’re found guilty during the trial the first time through, you might be found innocent the second time. During the initial playthrough, you won’t be aware of the hole in the dungeon wall; you’ll clear he game wondering what it is. But, later, if you try to clear the game 100%, you’ll go outside and realize that you could have gone out there in the first place. (laughter)

Sakaguchi:
Even just waiting I the dungeon for your punishment to be enforced, you’re able to expand the story.

—You can play through again with a different history. By changing history through your actions, you can change the ending, right?

Sakaguchi:
Everyone will probably play a second time to see the different endings. But multiple endings aside, I think that if you enjoy the differences between playthroughs, you’ll find the second time interesting as well.

You can toy with the subtle changes in people’s reactions – Horii

We’re often asked if we like frogs.

D—The world of Chrono Trigger is so varied that it gives rise to a variety of characters that suit it. Chrono Trigger seems to boast characters that have, until now, never before been seen in games like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. Where did those original ideas come from?

Horii:
The staff studied the drawings of Toriyama. They put a lot of effort in. We felt as though we couldn’t let the drawings go to waste.

—One of the protagonists is a frog. Was that your idea, Horii?

Horii:
Toriyama gave us the rough sketch of a frog character had had drawn.

—So what made you decide to use a character like that?

Horii:
For some reason, we had been talking about how we wanted a non-human character.

Sakaguchi:
We’re often asked that. Frogs have appeared before in the Final Fantasy series. People ask if it’s because Square likes frogs! (laughter) But that’s not the reason at all. (laughter)

Horii:
When we were creating the characters, we were thinking about what sort of friends Crono would have in each era. The game’s protagonist is a young boy, so how many females should we have? When Square was working on in the in-battle actions, they thought it would be boring to have only human characters. When trying to think up characters that weren’t human or robot, they started considering the frog. (laughter)

—Easy to understand that development. It has character.

Horii:
There were pigs, too. And monkeys. But they aren’t so different from humans.

I want to better capture the feel of a Toriyama-style world. – Sakaguchi

The events that make you burst into tears are the best.

—Out of all the events, which ones did you two like?

Horii:
It’s a normal part of the story, but there’s a course of action where Marle disappears somehow, you see the resulting future, and you have to do something to prevent it. That’s the start of it all; the rest of the story just stems from it. I like that part.

Sakaguchi:
I really like the episode with Marle and her father. That’s because in this game, contrary to what you’d expect, there are some family issues. (laughter) I like events that, rather than making you cry like in Final Fantasy, make you burst into tears.

No matter what the developers do, the game tends to be difficult.

—For the first time in a while, Sakaguchi designed detailed monsters.

Sakaguchi:
When we were making Final Fantasy III, Aoki, the producer of Chrono Trigger, was the one in charge of the monsters. He’s been poking his nose into it ever since. So, I designed some concepts for monsters, then I, Aoki, and two others crowded into a room and discussed things like needing a barrier to defeat certain types of magic. In this game there are many enemies you have to defeat by hitting their weak points. I think it shows that we like simulations.

—So that means that your personality shone through, Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi:
At first getting through the game was tough. The testers were saying “You guys are being cruel. Whose idea was this?” It was mine! (laughter) Harsh, right?

Horii:
We developers had managed to make the game too difficult!

Sakaguchi:
It’s always like that the first time, no matter what.

Horii:
It’s because we know too much. The developers think the game’s just right; that they’re being too soft. They’re thinking from their own experience. The puzzles were the same. Lots of players didn’t figure out things we thought they’d get asily.

Sakaguchi:
There were exceptions to where people got stuck, though.

Horii:
Right, the places where players got stuck differed from person to person.

Sakaguchi:
You get to the point where you just need to talk to the person, so why don’t you talk to them? (laughter)

We’ll get Toriyama to draw the world map! (laughter) – Horii

They wanted to release the game by the end of the year.

—It’s hard to hear after everything’s finished, but do you feel there are places where you would have liked to have done something differently?

Sakaguchi:
If we had tried a little harder, we could have reached our goal of releasing the game by the end of the year. (bursts out laughing) It was a little heartbreaking to have to change the release date.

—Can we hear about what you’d like to do if you made a sequel?

Sakaguchi:
The sense of dancing you get from exploring Toriyama’s worlds is a little more difficult to capture than I initially thought. If we can successfully channel that feeling, we’ll be able to create a fantastic world. If we try to do a sequel, I want to perfect that completely.

Horii:
And we’ll get Toriyama to draw the world map for us! (laughter)

Sakaguchi:
Then it will really be a Toriyama-style world. (laughter)

—Well, everything turned out great! (laughter) Thank you very much for joining us today.

Hironobu Sakaguchi Profile

Born in 1962 in Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture. Sakaguchi joined Square in 1982 and participated in development, starting with computer games. After the Famicom’ sKing’s Knight the Final Fantasy series became a big hit. Since then, he has continued to play an active role as producer.

Yuuji Horii Profile

Born in 1954 in Hyogo Prefecture. After having a hand in Free Writer, Horii was influenced by the Enix Game Contest which sparked his career. He was in charge of scenarios in the smash-hit Dragon Quest series, and has also worked on the Itadaki Street games.

Chrono Cross

Missing Piece

• 111 Serge, Lynx, Harle (Chris)

The Real Cast and concept tidbits

Serge

1. This Serge is equipped in a fairly wild style. Odds are this guy would probably be scolded by Leena or Kid for trying dirty things.
2. This rugged looking Serge emanates an aura from his whole body of a fearless drifter. Completely different from the normal Serge.
3. Formal wear Serge. Lightly studded with accessories.
4. There was also a test Serge that wore a green and purple vest.

Lynx

1. The appearance of a drifter, or a nobleman that was turned down. “Very similar to a Mongolian,” was the strange reason for the drawing.
2. A sudden change, this is a more full on cat style Lynx. This one actually seems a little more obscene.
3. This is a more human version, rather than a cat like creature. Maybe the factor that he didn’t really look villainous was why he was turned down.

Harle

1. Tough to request any other characters to have more of an impacting appearance. Here’s a more clownish style.

• 113 Dario, Glenn, Karsh (GlitterBerri)

Karsh:

1. Though Karsh is a brave knight, saying he is troubled and strange would be closer to the point...
2. Karsh with armour. It was judged that he looked like too much of a knight and didn't fit with the game's atmosphere, perhaps [the armour] was discarded?
3. Though misunderstood because of his character flaws, Karsh is one of the most attractive characters of Chrono Cross.

Dario

1. It's hard to tell in-game, but Dario is actually quite tall. Is this due to his Garai blood?
2. The epaulets on Dario's armor are big, differentiating him from Karsh.
3. Perhaps due to our (too?) strong desire to make the leader of the Acacia Dragoons a large figure, Dario gives off a rather amusing impression of a middle-aged fellow.
4. He looks more like a samurai than a knight? With his slender sword, Dario has an uncanny resemblance to a samurai.

Glenn

Glenn's appearance is that of a boy knight. His hairstyle is also the so-called "zealous hero." It wouldn't even be a stretch to call him the game's protagonist.

• 119 Unused Characters (Chris)

Mechanical Doll

By combining various parts you could probably control the style and settings of her attacks. It’s a shame she was turned down.

Baker’s Daughter

Looks like a character that attacks with the bread she holds. The top picture looks like a child, while the one on the left is more developed.

Grappler

Appears to be a Chinese monk that uses his hands. Thinking about the salesclerk on page 118, maybe they originally planned a Chinese style town.

Ninja

Like the RPG’s of yesterday, there was always a ninja. This also could have been a variation of Grobyc.

Journeyer to the West (?)

What? There was a plan in Chrono Cross to have a Journeyer to the West (Character from a Manga)? Maybe some sort of heroic female preist, or a character wearing all seeing goggles…or whatever Square’s interpretation was.

Ultimania

Developer Interviews

• Masato Kato (Chris)

“Serge and Kid were where I tried the hardest, moreover making a ‘boy meets girl’ kinda thing”

In the pace of Radical Dreamers

Interviewer – Many user’s (this magazine) have been hopefully waiting for a sequel to Chrono Trigger (CT), and finally you have made an appearance. Since you (Kato) were the scenario director for the previous games, you’ve thought a lot about the series. This time around, how are the story elements going to continue or take over from the previous games?

Kato – CT wasn’t just me (Square), but Yuji Hori and Akira Toriyama were also involved in creating it. If these members met again right now, I think a serious attempt to make a CT 2 is not at all a realistic possibility. When talking with the producer Tanaka about the possibility of making a new Chrono game, I was requested to do in the storyline vein of Radical Dreamers (RD).

I – Your talking about the text adventure game that came out on the Stellaview, right?

Kato – Yeah. Honestly, there were some story elements and unfinished business that I wanted to create in a sequel to CT itself. It seemed like there was another story in a parallel dimension. If we could do in that pace, I’d like to try making in the same flow and direction as the level of the Chrono series. Also, for RD, we only had 2-3 months to develop it, and I didn’t get to a point where I felt satisfied. I think I’d like to get that a little more completed too, since it’s always been in my heart.

I – The title “Chrono” is attached, but is the influence of RD also very strong?

Kato – This time I think we were really lucky. Many people played the Super Nintendo title CT, so first of all there was a hope to have a sequel or remake. Also, no one knew about RD, since it barely slipped by production. I like the story of RD, but we left it unfinished in an emergency rush, chased by the engaging gears of production. I wanted to somehow take it up again, since I thought about it daily. What’s more, I didn’t know that CT was being ported to the PS. (laughs)

I – Oh, you didn’t know? (laughs)

Kato – I learned about halfway through the completion of Chrono Cross (CC). Actually, I knew that CT was going to be ported. (laughs) I went to anime movie meetings for the porting publisher and we talked about connecting CT to CC with some hints through the ending movie. Like how we could link the pieces together well.

I – There was only a difference of two weeks in the release dates of the ported CT and CC. (In Japan, at least…)

Kato – It was to give a feeling of wanting to continue playing. CT was already released 5 years before on the Super Nintendo. There were easily some people who forgot the story, or people who weren’t even the age to play it. That’s why we planned from the beginning to not have it take over the exact story. The people who wouldn’t have played the first game would have no reason for playing a game they couldn’t understand. Taking this into consideration, we thought about the timing, having the ported CT come before CC. If we did that, CC could be played right after CT, and the story relationships would be somewhat strengthened. That way, the previous game could be incorporated better.

I – Thinking about the various connections between CT and CC, what’s enjoyable now is not necessarily understanding the Chrono world, but actually playing it. That in mind, there are no real ways to play RD. To the Chrono fans, are there any stories from the works that could be handed down?

Kato – Actually, about RD, there was some attempt before CC was put on the market. The Stellaview data was planned to be put on a ROM cartridge and connected to a premier at Akihabara (Electronics district in Tokyo, nerd central). The porting development team heard this and wanted to put all of RD into the CT Playstation port, but was told to leave it as it was. I also rejected it. It was made four years about, and when I read the script now, I’m easily embarrassed. While the development of the RD story is in CC, I think there’s no reason you need to understand RD to enjoy CC.

I – Where did you get the conception to use parallel worlds as a platform?

Kato – From the get-go, I was against using time travel exactly like in CT, but wanted to keep on the same level in the series. Eventually, we decided not to do the “If something happened in the past, could it change the future?” pattern. If we did that, we would only be rehashing and cranking up the volume of the last game. That wasn’t at all what we wanted to do.

I – It’s only natural that you wouldn’t want to do something like that.

Kato – Yeah. If we ended up doing that, the gameplay wouldn’t dramatically change at all, would it? So we thought a bit about it, and I really liked CT’s style, but since we did time travel then, this time would be parallel worlds. Doing it this way made perfect sense to me. (literal translation: straight into my head it popped and fit) So, we started thinking about what would be most interesting when using parallel worlds as a platform.

I – Like meeting Kid in the world that you died in.

Kato – From a cursory look, it looks like the normal world, but some things are different. Then, the main character realizes the biggest shock of all…he’s supposedly dead. So he’s living in one world and not in another, and the puzzle begins; “Why did I die?” From there, Lynx gets involved, there are hints that fate is controlling the world, there are the six dragons symbolizing nature, and so on. Then, from CT, there’s more about Lavos, when Lavos came, how it lifted primitive people up to create a magic kingdom, and other connections. Maybe even Lavos was the trigger than caused humans to evolve from monkeys. Elements like that incorporate into each other, one after another. We thought about how it would flow together smoothly to surprise the players in the best way.

I – What was the main theme you tried to write into this work?

Kato – I usually don’t care too much for themes. The most important thing is whether the game is enjoyable. For this time…well, I already talked about the time element, but in CT I couldn’t write much about what happened to Schala. What truly could have happened what left an unfinished story, and that’s why I chose to properly complete it. Since both games could be played, I chose to make a conclusion between the worlds of CT and CC.

I – So you wanted to connect the works with the relationships between Serge and Kid, and also Schala.

Kato – To pin it down, Serge and Kid were where I tried the hardest, moreover making a ‘boy meets girl’ kinda thing. A kid named Serge meets a girl named Kid and together they get wrapped up in an adventure. From the world he doesn’t know about secrets are slowly revealed, about Serge himself, Schala from the past, and how fate is tied in. This could just be an ending where boy meets girl and they do their story, but perhaps there’s another dimension, another story, a different meeting, and a completely different life story that you could have. I persistently tried my hardest to get the player to question things like this.

I – So for a good ending movie, you tried to use the crossing point of a young girl and her other side to imagine “a story in another dimension.”

Kato – Yeah, like that. I thought that was the perfect material to use to give meaning to a parallel world. In each independent parallel world there would be respective developing stories. If we did it that way, people at home could use the experience of Serge in the game’s worlds to think about the reality of their own world. Maybe somewhere in our world there’s a Kid, and surely someday we will find and meet. For a long time I’ve wanted realizations developed from games to not just stop with the game, and now I feel I’ve done it right. There’s a message that comes after the ending movie finished, and I hope that all players will understand these words that have come from my heart. That’s what I’d love to have happen.

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