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Thursday 21 February, 2008
/GAMEPLAY/ Session #2
I played through the Millennial Faire sequence, carefully showing around the new character Marle (the love interest). She wanted to play some games at the fair and I obliged: drinking contests, sparring, and gambling. The setting was all very light hearted until Marle is sucked into another time period via an error in Lucca’s (the brained) invention.
This is where the game begins to get interesting; the story took a drastic turn away from this merry setting and quickly became a “rescue the princess” type game. The element that makes it truly compelling is the notion of time traveling, and the amount of complex story elements that come from it.
As I battled my through the monster infested forest I realize that this is the start of a truly epic journey.
/DESIGN/
The controls of the game are very straight forward; you have full range of motion while you watch your avatar from bird’s eye view. The players are drawn as though you are seeing them head-on which give the perception of 3-D.
The developers thought long and hard about how to break the mold of traditional RPG’s. The narrative is one of the most interesting pieces of story telling I have ever heard in my life. The video-game feels more like an interactive book or historical document from a forgotten age. The writers knew that with time travel, the game could go far beyond what any RPG has ever done: multiple world maps to explore, each with special characters and side quests. As far as an RPG goes the puzzles in the game were very much related to the story, frequently players will get stuck because they forgot a comment that a character had said. This design element forces the players to pay attention to every thing story wise, otherwise they can not progress.
Aside from the narrative, the actual mechanics of the game were quite revolutionary. The battle system incorporated a break from traditional turn based fighting. The timer on each character added an emergent quality and forced players to make decisions because if they didn’t, they would be sitting ducks.
Square also created a new type of battle system where the characters had “Dual” and “Triple” techniques. All of the characters had at least a move that they would perform together, dealing much more damage than normal. What this did was allow players to use their favorite characters and discover all of the special and hidden techniques that they could.
Chrono Trigger is a game progression, there is a linear path to follow, but not always is it apparent where the path lies. The battle system is the part of the game that allows the player to improvise and strategize to their delight. Chrono Trigger is a classic through and through and a prime example of an RPG.
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