Random lessons from Chrono Trigger

[Don]

I found my CT OST recently and it occurs to me it has a lot of good ideas that apparently no one has figured out to even duplicate. New Game + is an obvious one, but let's go to some of the less obvious stuff.

First, CT is one of the few RPG that has an ending that isn't too long (not counting the pure credits part) but provides closure. Most RPGs fail to do at least one, if not both. If we're supposed to take stories in RPG seriously, then to have complete closure one would expect an extra hour or two of epilogue to just wrap things up. In this respect it doesn't matter if the ending is 2 minutes or 20 minutes. It will always be inadequate. CT's ending basically is just 'and everyone lives happily ever after', but presented in a good way. It isn't complicated, but it lets you know that everything in the game turned out okay after all, and didn't waste your time with the needless details.

Second, CT is the only game I can think of that has a bad ending, namely when you get defeated by Lavos, you see the Day of Lavos coming and everything get destroyed as foretold. In the days of strategy-guide-selling oriented days, why don't they have more such things? You can do something like Fate where if you collect all 40 bad endings you get a new cutscene. It is certainly no less contrived than what games put in as 'extra stuff' these days. Of course I'm assuming the bad endings actually make sense. We don't need to know what happens if your hero is defeated by a goblin, but why not see Cid take the reins of history back into the hands of man if you do lose to him? That way they could also make the game actually hard so that you can actually see these losing endings often enough to not have to commit suicide repeatedly to find out where one is coming, so it sounds like a win-win situation to me. At any rate, I wouldn't mind commiting suicide repeatedly to see some cool 'bad endings' because there's plenty of things just as contrived as that, and if it's not people's cup of tea they don't have to do it.

[Kupek]

I've also wondered why more games didn't pick up the gameplay elements of CT. Immediately after CT, Square went right back to random battles that take you to a battle screen that is different from the exploration screen. It wasn't until FF12 that they tried something different, and that was inspired by MMORPGs, not CT. That baffles me.

Why other games haven't incorporated New Game+, I think I understand better. While stories that don't have time traveling could still do different endings depending on when you beat the game, it makes more sense in CT because they already established a casual relationship between actions done in different times. And, frankly, I don't think that most developers are willing to (or capable of?) devote the time necessary to create such robust scenarios. The other aspect of New Game+, restarting fully powered, I'm not sure why other games haven't also done it. It does make less sense when you can't go ahead and beat the game anytime, but it would still be a nice feature.

I think the real reason we haven't seen something like CT since then is that it was a side project inside a major development house where they let their most experienced and creative people do what they wanted. Creative freedom isn't something you can copy.

[Julius Seeker]

Play Chrono Trigger as if you know nothing of the story. You will really appreciate how the information surrounding "Lavos" and the end of the world are presented.

New Game+ has been used in a few games, and "bad" endings have been used before too, like in the Ogre Battle games, if you don't have enough Chaos points, you will get a bad ending, or in some games like BoF3 you will get a bad ending if you join the Goddess. Though I understand what you mean, if you die at a certain point, and ending should occur based on state of the plot within the game to that point; I do think this is a great idea.

Multiple paths to different endings is something that I think I have only seen Chrono Trigger do well before.

Short endings though? I am a fan of long endings personally. Final Fantasy 8 and Xenosaga 3 both have long endings, they are also my two favourite endings ever, and by far. The type of ending that I like is the type that Earthbound had, it could be minutes, or it could be hours; once the game is finished, you have the opportunity to run throughout the world and see how things have changed. Earthbound also used a non-random encounter system.

Onto Chrono Trigger though, it is a game that I do think time has proven will not be equalled, by those who try to imitate, let alone bested. There are few games that I think I can say that about.

[Don]

Well I don't see how a new game + can be bad. You could always put it and people who don't want to use it just don't have to use it.

I don't really mean bad endings like those you pick the wrong choices on what should be an infinite loop of 'save world or no? if no, ask question again!' I mean an ending for actually losing a story-significant battle. Like I said, why not see Cid or Vayne do some cool stuff if you fail to stop them?

[Nev]

Plenty of people have figured out how to duplicate these ideas, Don, most likely. The question is whether or not they will sell.

I would love to see more open-ended yet plot-driven RPGs as well. The problem is that it's hard to execute successfully. And a lot of gamers are creatures of habit...witness Penny Arcade's early hatred of FFXII's battle system (and a lot of people on this board, as well, IIRC, when the demo came out). They finally played the actual game, and guess what? It's great! But if that demo had been handed to a focus group early on, who had the power to decide whether or not innovation should occur, we might never have had said innovation.

Remember, the people with the money are usually the ones making choices about games. Innovation often doesn't track well. I'm not saying I'm against it - rather the contrary - but don't think for a second that people aren't wanting to do these kinds of things. The problem is often not having the idea, but getting it past some publisher who doesn't want to screw with a winning formula...

[Kupek]

I don't think a New Game+ would ever be <i>bad</i>, but I can see why developers don't bother.

[Don]

It'd seem like implementing new game + is trivial if there are no extra open-endedness to them. You might have to check to make sure certain story-significant items aren't duplicated but I can't imagine this being a signficiant obstacle. It seems like it'd be so easy to implement, why wouldn't they do it? Like you said, I can't imagine having it ever be bad and it sure doesn't seem like it'd be hard to do.

Likewise I don't think asking to see aftermaths of being defeated is hard to do, and given the strategy-guide oriented nature of games these days, it's not going to be any worse than 'collect XYZ things for no reason whatsoever', and again, if people don't like it they could just never bother with it in the first place.

[Kupek]

I can see the difficulties you described being enough to stop the feature's inclusion. I'm not willing to dismiss its implementation as trivial. If not designed for it from the beginning, I can see how a game's implementation could have difficulty adapting to the key items problem.

[Don]

If you've a 'key item' feature like a lot of RPG do now, it is easy to simply make a manual check to ensure those items don't get carried over if it doesn't make sense. If not, I can see the implementation being harder because you'd have to check every item in the game.

[Nev]

...and then you have to QA the entire thing, to make sure that none of the key or quest items in the New Game+ don't accidentally create a crash, or produce strange or unintended results. Or that any of the regular items aren't accidentally keyed into scripting systems that create some sort of key item effect, and thus screw up the scripting.

And then if they do - and I can almost guarantee you that, unless your entire development team is completely top-notch, something will go wrong with this plan - you have to have your developers redo the event scripts to make sure that it all works. Then you have to QA both New Game+ and the regular game all over again. And if something else is broken, back to the drawing board, as your budget spirals down a massive sinkhole greased with good intentions.

Don, you really need to try making a game yourself. Just get some dev stuff, for some platform of some kind, and start doing it. Seriously, you complain enough, and have been interested in games for long enough, that you should put your money where your mouth is.

It will either raise the levels of your criticism to a better standard, or (I somewhat hope) shut you up because you finally realize how ridiculously complex and difficult the entire process is.

[Kupek]

To be fair to Don, I was implicitly assuming a New Game+ feature was being added after most of the other development was done. Designing a game from the beginning to be able to handle New Game+ shouldn't add any complexity that isn't already there.

[Don]

It's easy to say 'programming is really hard' if you don't know how it works. There are some things that are hard to program, but this isn't one of them.

Wild Arms remix has a New Game+. The only items that could possibly cause an error would be the event items and the EX File keys. Since those items are already stored in their unique section, it was easy to make sure you simply check for uniqueness on EX File Keys, and remove any key items from a new game+ that doesn't make sense.

In Chrono Trigger, where items do not have special tags to them, important story items like Schala's Pendant or the Time Key is simply not duplicated across New Game+. This process is obviously manual but there are only a few number of story-significant items that you cannot allow duplication. Like Kupek said if you're designing a game with this in mind, you'd note which items should not be duplicated when you start.

Even if you are to just add New Game + at the end of a development cycle, the only real obstacle is remembering what items, if any, should not be duplicated across the games. It is possible that with extreme sloppiness you could misjudge on the items you need, but it's possible to make anything hard if you do it the wrong way. A special category for event item is almost becoming a standardization in RPGs now, so if you have one of those you can easily identify what items aren't supposed to be repeated.

You might have to also think of fights where you're supposed to lose, but it's bad design to not think about it in the first place. There's always the possibility someone could've just leveled up a ton on a fight that you thought would be impossible to win.

[Eric]

Well what about the simple idea that these developers don't want you to replay through their game at the max level possible?

Egos in full play, they don't feel you would enjoy the full experience of THEIR game in what would be an EZ Mode experience.

[Julius Seeker]

Chrono Trigger taught me a few important lessons. Never trust Robots or Reptiles! And always make war upon those who practice sorcery! Oh, and God is actually an alien from outerspace who killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

[Zeus]

CT was a unique game and, as such, requires a lot of effort to be put forth in order to be done properly. RPGs take up a long time to develop as it is so very few companies would want to spend that kind of coin, especially in today's development market, to make a game like that

[Don]

If people don't want New Game +, they don't have to use it. It's no more intrusive than shoving a mini game that you don't care about but you must play to continue which is already done. I suppose you can say people might not have the willpower to not use New Game +, but how hard is it to just click 'new game' instead?

[Julius Seeker]

I usually only use New Game+ in Chrono Trigger when I want to get some of the other endings, though if I am looking for the real game, I always pick New Game. I agree with Don, it is not really that big of a deal.

Another feature that I feel should be in all RPGs are flashback options and encyclopedias. I first saw these in Ogre Battle, and haven't seen them anywhere else except the Xenosaga series (which were very welcomed features).

[Don]

FFT has a flashback options too. In FFX you can purchase CGs you've already seem.

The ability to reconstruct what has happened before should be a feature in all games. I don't like having to save in many places in order to see the scenes I want to see again.

[Kupek]

Don, we're not trying to answer the question "Why should more games have New Game+?", we're trying to answer the question "Why don't more games have New Game+?" And I think the answer is simple: while it's not difficult to implement (compared to other features), that small cost still doesn't justify spending time on what is probably seen as a minor feature. Like any big project, most games are made under a deadline, and when the deadline approaches, the least needed features get cut.

[Julius Seeker]

FFT has a flashback options too. In FFX you can purchase CGs you've already seem.

The ability to reconstruct what has happened before should be a feature in all games. I don't like having to save in many places in order to see the scenes I want to see again.

True, it also had an encyclopedia. Though Final Fantasy Tactics would have been Tactics Ogre 2 had they not had the Final Fantasy license.

[Nev]

It's easy to say 'programming is really hard' if you don't know how it works. There are some things that are hard to program, but this isn't one of them.

Don, I am almost certain that I can easily code you under several tables - so don't try to tell me about what's hard and what isn't until you actually try it yourself. You asked why some fictional characters get no respect - perhaps you should ask why you never give any.

While you're right that New Game+ isn't "hard" per se, my point that it takes time - and money - and can easily introduce bugs or crashes is a valid one.

I've been working in the game industry for three years now, and have been on the QA team for a commercially released RPG. And I stand by my point. QA'ing even a simple RPG for a cycle can easily take two or three days, which you have to pay your QA team for. And while it should be trivial to separate "key items" from "non-key-items", very little in practice every goes the way it should. It really depends on the RPG and its implementation. And, as I said, unless your development team is really good, I would bet on at least one or two errors that you have to fix for something like that - which means at least one more QA cycle.

So you just spent at least a day of your dev team's time, and probably a week of your QA team's time, for a feature that may or may not help you sell the game. Given your usual inability to hold a conversation about anything other than anime or video games, I will bet you that you'd be very bad at justifying to your publisher why that money should be or should have been spent.

Oh, and while I know this is trolling, I really don't care. As you represent everything I really hate about gamers - you can't hold a conversation about anything except anime or games, and my guess is that you don't get invited to many parties, and suck socially at the ones you do go to - please try your best to die in a fucking fire. God, I hate your pathetic idiot face, as well as your obviously hand-drawn and amateurish avatar.

Not to be too mean or anything, but I really hate gamers like you, who never stray outside of their comfort zones for a second and are almost certainly no fun in real life at all. And you especially complain WAY too fucking much. Way way way way too much.

To everyone else, a Merry Christmas! Unless you want to step in and defend Don, but I'd suggest staying out of it, as I'm in a somewhat bad mood where he's concerned (as if you can't really tell).

[Julius Seeker]

Look what Nev got for Christmas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAt329otj6Y

To the point.
Whether you claim to be a good programmer or not, you are completely full of shit. New Game+ would be quite simple to implement. Using Game Genie, Gameshark, or codes, you can essentially play most RPGs with all the stats and equipment (and significantly more than) you would have if you played New Game+ anyways; and with no problems.

By the way: Don knows WAY more about what makes a good video game than you do. Just keep on applying your own insecurities to Don, I love to laugh at this time of year =)

[Nev]

If I hadn't laughed so hard at that, Seek, I'd be laying into you too.

And while both of you are right in a certain sense - New Game+ is somewhat easy to implement compared to other game features - you're wrong also. Go ask some other developers about how "easy" it is to get *any* game feature well and truly done.

Shit, just ask Kup. I'm sure he knows how hard it is to complete *any* software project of any actual complexity.

[Don]

Give me a break, you're going back to the old 'programming is hard' and by your logic anything with any complexity at all should never be done because it's too hard. We should never have mini games either. I'm quite certain even something as mundane as the 'dodge the lightning' minigame in FFX is more complicated than adding New Game+ since New Game+ is all just data manipulation, while the dodge the lightning game actually has a gameplay and graphics aspect. So if we can't do new game+ because it's too hard we can't do that either (I certainly haven't heard of much praise for the dodge the lightning game). Let's not do the chocobo race mini game, that's got to be a lot harder than the dodge the lightning game (the complexity difference between the two is obvious). Then let's not do Blitzball either, because that's harder still.

Everything has tradeoffs. This is where you ask your marketing research and designer and make decision like 'we think having a dodge the lightning game will make FFX a better game than than having New Game+'. I have no idea where New Game+ ranks on the list of cool stuff that makes a game sell more, but there's an awful a lot of things people add to a RPG that ends up being almost universally hated. On the other hand New Game+ is generally at least viewed as a positive thing, and I have never heard of anyone hating a game because there is New Game+ (since you can just not use it). Sure you can't just expect to know what people will end up hating and do something else instead, but why not start by implementing something that is universally viewed as positive? Most games now have a standardized key item field because people eventually realized that it can only be a good thing to actually know where your key items are.

[Nev]

Your brain cells do not function well.

[Nev]

I'd wade through that bullshit post above, but I believe it is mostly bullshit. Perhaps I'll try some more later.

[Julius Seeker]

Oddly enough, for a programmer, you seem to lack a lot of common sense. We have a lot of evidence which clearly shows that New Game + is not difficult or costly to implement at all.

The irony here is that you are often making comments about how you bellieve that anyone who disagrees with you hass "brain cells (which) do not function well." I do apologize for spotting the obvious irony in your statements. For a programmer by proffession, you do seem to know very little about programming.

[Nev]

I think, after much deliberation, what I'm going to go with is that you really need to try making a game yourself, Don. As I said before. Just get involved in some way, and you will see my point about how things in practice are much harder than you think they should be.

I am quite a good programmer, despite anything the two of you might think. I've programmed an entire library set, as well as had a significant role in designing three commercial applications, one of which was released six years ago and is still sold and commercially viable. And the point I'm trying to make is that making a game is always, always, always more difficult in reality than it is in one's head.

Games are notorious for missing deadlines, being shipped late, and the etc. Do you really think this is because the programmers all suck? Or the artists?

It's not. It's because they are *hard* to do. Things rarely all go the way they "should" on any given project. And while I agree that your criticisms have some moderate merit, you lack credibility with me at least because you do not have any experience in this area.

Had you been on the team for even one game that's out there, that someone is playing, I might listen to what you're saying, Don. But I can't. It mostly seems to amount to "why don't people do this? it would be so easy," when you have never tried it to know how easy it is or is not. And so to me, it just looks like a lot of hot air. I don't come to this board for that - if I want people who talk a lot of shit about things they really have never tried or done, I'll go outside and walk down the street.

Anyway, just my two cents.