“Blame It on a Simple Twist of Fate” — Chrono Cross, the Metafictional Masterpiece

How Chrono Cross reveals Chrono Trigger’s hero’s journey was an illusion all along

I don’t get nostalgia.

I talk to a lot of people who do, and hold that sort of thing pretty close to their hearts. And on a level of pure understanding, I suppose I understand the concept — but on an intimate level of relatability, I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s because my childhood didn’t exactly harvest positive memories, maybe it’s because much of what I held dear in my formative years I continued to revisit and re-contextualize my feelings towards as I entered adolescence and my early adulthood… Maybe it’s a bit of both. But yes, as I’ve said — I don’t get nostalgia.

I do, however, get Chrono Trigger. I know most of it pretty much like the back of my hand. It’s a game I’ve played through like six or seven times now — twice in the last year — and I think it’s a game that, when considered within its own vacuum, I have largely come to understand and solidify a strong opinion. It’s a marvel of technical achievement and pacing, but largely uninteresting and uncompelling to me as far as narratives within the JRPG genre go. A zenith of the first decade of the development of the genre, to be sure, but that first generation largely isn’t what pulls me into my favorite titles within the JRPG canon.

An ouroboros-like monster with “fate” written on both head and tail.

When re-contextualized, though, as a necessary step to get to Chrono Cross, and in considering the narrative symbiosis of these two titles — neither “distant” sequel nor alternative, rather two parts of an epic that cannot exist without either piece — Chrono Trigger becomes a subversion of itself. Chrono Trigger becomes an ouroboros-like monster with “fate” written on both head and tail. Would it be better to let history stay its course, or to revise the future for the sake of humanity? Or is it perhaps humanity’s fate, in turn, to protect itself at all costs?

The ripple effects stir and create the crashing waves of Opassa Beach, and when Chrono Cross rears its head, everything locks into place. Chrono Trigger becomes heightened in its execution because it is, ultimately, set up for a game that’s truly first of its kind: a metafictional reanalysis of the first 15 years of JRPGs, the hero’s journey, the satisfaction of victory, the thrill of the hunt vs. the plight of the prey. Chrono Cross does not look back in anger at the heroics of Crono, Lucca, and Marle — a very common misconception held by decades of detractors. No — like the oceanic backdrop of the entire game, from title screen to final FMV, Chrono Cross simply considers the ripple effect. These are not the stories of haughty, self-righteous children, nor are they exactly the legendary tales of virtuosity that Trigger would have you believe. It’s as simple as Lucca’s plight at the orphanage. These are just people doing the best they can to do what’s right.

Enjoying this? Check out Timeless: A History of Chrono Trigger for a deep dive look at the classic JRPG and the people who made it.

It is no coincidence how young and innocent the Trigger kids appear in their spectral forms throughout Chrono Cross. It drives home their naïveté, their innocence and purity. The world was too big and it swallowed them whole. There is no saving them, there is no stopping the hands of fate. It’s a ballsy move to kill them off screen, but it asks the player to stake their nostalgia, their memories, their attachments by the throat. This is not what was, or rather, what these children and the children who fell in love with Chrono Trigger, thought it to be. As Citan Uzuki in sister title Xenogears says — “This is reality”. The story didn’t work out the way we thought it would. The ending wasn’t the ending, just as Chrono Cross’ start isn’t the beginning…

The hero’s journey of Chrono Trigger was itself an illusion

In reading Chrono Cross as a postmodernist work, I’d like to consider the notion that despite the entire story literally revolving around an oppressor called FATE, the irony of Cross is that its plot has already concluded by the time the game begins. Where Trigger grants the option to literally warp the events that will play out, fate remains constant in Cross. You cannot go back, you cannot revise history, you can only make lateral moves. Harle remains damned to her fate, Schala remains to be captured each and every time. Chrono Trigger’s choices seem liberating and wildly free in comparison, but when the player meets Miguel in Cross, that illusion is stripped away entirely. The hero’s journey of Chrono Trigger was itself an illusion, a JRPG narrative boxed in and around its central characters, but indeed, as the player learns, the world was larger than those children understood, and the future did refuse to change.

Again, they were just people doing the best they could.

Chrono Cross represents Square at their best to me: sloppy, scatterbrained execution leading to overly passionate, expositional tantrums of art pieces slapped together to make a functional and generally enjoyable gaming experience vastly overshadowed by the fact that the writing and artistic profoundness overwhelms and oh-so-moves me.

Chrono Cross wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if it were perfect. It wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if I couldn’t ruin a man’s life by horribly disfiguring him and then never addressing him for the remainder of my time with the game after he resolves to join my party. It wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if a half-pint mecha-toting alien didn’t waddle around and balance himself on his fish-bowl helmet during crucial dialogue. It wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if bosses didn’t end up pulling Megami Tensei-like preparational requirements out of nowhere and forcing my hand in tight scenarios I was woefully underprepared for. It wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if I wasn’t left hand-deep in the tissue box every. damn. instance. “The Girl Who Stole The Stars” sweeps the scene. And it wouldn’t be Chrono Cross if it didn’t comment on its roots with such daringness, such audacity, and such passion that it isolated and infuriated people.

The story has already happened.

I’m glad this game gets a reaction out of people. I’m glad there are people who can’t see the heart in this game. True daring art doesn’t exist without burning a few bridges or ruffling some feathers. This game is beautiful — it’s far from perfect, but objective cleanliness is vastly overrated anyways — A timeless, boundless journey and a worthy entry in Square’s gold-standard late-90s catalogue.

Cross only leans into absurdity and borderline nonsensical nature further, with mid-dimensional travel, a biblical last act of cataclysm and apocalypse, and the unyielding terror of true chaos around every bend. You begin to get the feeling that Serge, nor Kid, nor Harle, was ever the real protagonist of the story. They lack the ability to change the outcome of the game’s biggest events. The story has already happened, but these kids must make lateral moves in an attempt to reconcile fate and redefine the future — the only way forward, literally — for their world.

You can’t stop the orphanage from burning,

But you can give the kid a place to call home.

And in that final FMV, as Schala wistfully sets out on her journey, it’s silently understood that the best those people could do was good enough.