Threads of Time - Chrono Trigger spiritual successor

[911 Jumper]

https://threadsoftimegame.com





More info:
Source: Gematsu

 

[Nutmeg]

You can immediately tell it's not made by Asians

 

[Eldrin]

I will never understand the appeal of this 2d/3d mix, it feels weird to look at, many backgrounds and characters are blurry or look like cardboard cutouts the further back they are, the navigation feels like it would be a pain...
This is such a waste of time and resources.

Just give me normal 16-bit 2d pixel graphics.

 

[Lagole Gon]

1. Slap time travel plot on a weeb game.
2. "Just like that super popular old game, wink, wink."
3. Profit?

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, they're also ripping off a ton of the characters and story beats judging by those trailers, along with game mechanics.

Devil's in the details though. Recent nostalgia bait has soured me on the concept pretty badly. More than likely they shit the bed in some major way, like making the combat some shitty reinvented wheel that doesn't work or failing to make the exploration interesting, or just having awful writing/story.

 

[Reinhardt]

we already have another eden.

 

[OysterSauce]

"Ontario Creates", so funding from the Canadian Government. Not a good sign.

 

[Talby]

There are like 3-4 indie games that are meant to be a "spritual successor to Chrono Trigger" that were released/announced lately and they all look like the same indie slop garbage.

 

[Phinx]

The thing that irks me relating to these spiritual successors, is that it appears as if many of them are trying to imitate. The Chrono Trigger devs goal was to create a masterpiece, whether people think it is a masterpiece or not is beyond the point, as those are just opinions.

The team behind Chrono Trigger went out to form a dream team with that goal in mind. Not every company will have the luxury of being able to get their dream team up and going, however, I would prefer it if they were to go out there to create their own masterpiece.

Based on my personal experience and opinion, If you are hell bent on creating a masterpiece, with a massive chip on your shoulder, it can go a long way in pushing you to create something special.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Another sea of stars in the making. I hope not, but this is how "spiritual successors" usually are

 

[Damned Registrations]

Another sea of stars in the making. I hope not, but this is how "spiritual successors" usually are

I wonder why that is. On the face of it, following in the footsteps of a great game should make things a lot easier. Yet it seems like more often than not, it just gets used as marketing bait while the devs veer way off course trying to reinvent the wheel. Fell Seal managed to do a good job imo, and that seemed like a much more difficult job to pull off. Mind you, the same seems to be true of actual sequels from the same company as well. Harvest Moon got decades of bland sequels before Stardew Valley came along, Final Fantasy has long since forgotten what made it good, etc. As disappointed as I was with Chained Memories or whatever it was called, I'd still take it over any of the last 9 mainline final fantasy games.

 

[Phinx]

Another sea of stars in the making. I hope not, but this is how "spiritual successors" usually are

I wonder why that is. On the face of it, following in the footsteps of a great game should make things a lot easier. Yet it seems like more often than not, it just gets used as marketing bait while the devs veer way off course trying to reinvent the wheel. Fell Seal managed to do a good job imo, and that seemed like a much more difficult job to pull off. Mind you, the same seems to be true of actual sequels from the same company as well. Harvest Moon got decades of bland sequels before Stardew Valley came along, Final Fantasy has long since forgotten what made it good, etc. As disappointed as I was with Chained Memories or whatever it was called, I'd still take it over any of the last 9 mainline final fantasy games.

From personal experience, when writing a story I found forcing it turned out for the worst more often than not. Whereas when I just go about my day doing other things with the conversation I want at the back of my mind, a solution/inspiration comes to me out of nowhere.

I wasn't trying to make it cool, or anything fancy. I had an idea of what I wanted the conversation to be about, and the words came to me. And the conversation just came out more natural. So maybe these guys are trying to force it too much, but that's just a guess. I actually never had a story in mind for quite a while when writing mine.

However, I had issues with other stories that I wanted to tackle. I personally don't like how in many stories they try to shoehorn a past loved one as motivation for player character. You the player has never met this character, never seen what their relationship was like, and they end up being relegated to nothing more than a plot device in my opinion.

E.G. An old family member has left you a dire message, and afterwards when you went to his house he wasn't there. How can you relate to this when you don't give a damn about that person? My goal was to overcome this hurdle, whilst still allowing the player to create their own character, and that's how the solution came to me.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

"spiritual successor" should mean: stunning ost, entertaining combat, groundbreaking innovations to the whole genre. does it bring them? no? then fuck off.

 

[spookyheart]

i rather chrono break actually happen back in the 90s and 2000s than the wannabe dei type slop coming out lately.

 

[deama]

Just give me normal 16-bit 2d pixel graphics.

Everyone forgot how to do decent 2d pixel art a while ago.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just give me normal 16-bit 2d pixel graphics.

Everyone forgot how to do decent 2d pixel art a while ago.

Not everyone.



Sadly, it seems only small indies are interested in using it. Well, maybe that's for the best actually. Sea of the Stars actually looks real damned pretty, and the only chance we get another game looking like that without the retarded woke shit shoehorned in is from an indie dev. Most don't have the money needed to take the art all the way though and end up compromising a lot, usually on animations.

 

[Nutmeg]

Just give me normal 16-bit 2d pixel graphics.

Everyone forgot how to do decent 2d pixel art a while ago.

Not everyone.



Sadly, it seems only small indies are interested in using it. Well, maybe that's for the best actually. Sea of the Stars actually looks real damned pretty, and the only chance we get another game looking like that without the retarded woke shit shoehorned in is from an indie dev. Most don't have the money needed to take the art all the way though and end up compromising a lot, usually on animations.

Sorry to disappoint you but it took me a whole 15 seconds of footage to determine that game was not made by Asian people.

Some counter examples

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sorry to disappoint you but it took me a whole 15 seconds of footage to determine that game was not made by Asian people.

Some counter examples

That's a shame, it's a whole 60 seconds in when the monkey drops to the ground and starts attacking with the staff, and I think he's among the best I've ever seen, he'd fit right in with even BoF3 enemies, and that's a high bar. Feels rather disingenuous to bring up a sidescroller as a comparison too, shit's barely animated to begin with.

Edit: After watching more of the Shadow of the Ninja one, I'm downgrading that to outright 'meh'. Most of it's 'animation' is just flash animation- characters or objects made of multiple sprites being wiggled around without ever being redrawn. Hate that shit.

 

[Nutmeg]

I wasn't talking about personal preference, just whether it comes from the school of Japanese 16-bit sprite work which is usually associated with that era, or non-Japanese. Of course you are entitled to prefer whatever you want.

Anyway what gave it away for me in the case of crosscode are all the inertial frames and multi-frame turning animations.

or objects made of multiple sprites being wiggled around without ever being redrawn.

Which part are you referring to? FYI you see that in the 16-bit era too but limited to dragon or snake like bosses or tails or tentacles.

In the 32-bit era it becomes more common and used for human characters too, see e.g. Princess Crown

 

[Skinwalker]

Chrono Trigger is shit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I wasn't talking about personal preference, just whether it comes from the school of Japanese 16-bit sprite work which is usually associated with that era, or non-Japanese. Of course you are entitled to prefer whatever you want.

Anyway what gave it away for me in the case of crosscode are all the inertial frames and multi-frame turning animations.

or objects made of multiple sprites being wiggled around without ever being redrawn.

Which part are you referring to? FYI you see that in the 16-bit era too but limited to dragon or snake like bosses or tails or tentacles.

In the 32-bit era it becomes more common and used for human characters too, see e.g. Princess Crown

I was seeing it all over the place, like I said. The Pocky and Rocky remake had it too, but was used sparingly and had lots of real animation too. For specific examples... elevators halfways through stage 2, the boss of stage 2 looks especially bad, background stuff in stage 3... I'll give the boss of stage 3 a pass as it's an animated set of armour pieces, so a bunch of wiggling parts doesn't look out of place necessarily.

I know this existed before flash games, but I've always found it really offputting except in rare exceptions like the snake bosses you mentioned. Even there it looks weird, but it seems justified given how hard that would be to do otherwise. Taking a sprite and turning/warping/sliding without a new frame in general looks bad to me. I'd generally prefer a character to stand stock still or have a much simpler idle animation than have some weird crap going on where it looks like they're some sort of marrionette held by a dude with shaky hands. It's probably one of the reasons I rate SotN's art so highly- when Cerberos sits down to breathe fire, it's limbs are actually drawn to bend properly, it's not a bunch of segments being rotated. The jaws, likewise, are redrawn when they open, it's not a lower jaw rotating. Etc. Breath of Fire 2 and 3 has a lot of floating segment bodies too, but it doesn't look nearly as bad in most cases because the segments are redrawn while they float around; hands flex while they bob up and down, faces snort clouds of steam or fire, and during actual attack/injury animations, all this is especially true. And PS4 is just all redrawn stuff, and it looks fantastic to this day.

 

[S.torch]

I will never understand the appeal of this 2d/3d mix,

It's because any type of 2D art must be made by hand. While there's a nearly infinite amount of pre-made 3D assets.

 

[Starner]

There was a point in time a few years ago when I was happy to hear about all of these Chrono Trigger inspired games. Now I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Chrono Trigger is the definition of bland + inoffensive. The best quality is the world building due to the different time periods. It's usually captivating to see how a world changes, and having time travel lends itself well to that idea.

The point is we don't need another Chrono Trigger. As soon as a dev announces their game to be a "spiritual successor" to CT is just means they are reusing the same played out combat system, creating a setting that isn't nearly as inspired as the original world design was, and rehashing safe gameplay for JRPG normies to slop up. These clones of CT are pure decline my friends.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Chrono Trigger's combat system (particularly, the double/triple tech system and the area of effect/positioning systems) was a breath of fresh air amongst final fantasy doing the exact same thing with it's combat from FF4 through 9. Not to mention plenty of others that were equally uninspired, like BoF 1 and 2 and various others that were just bog standard turn based. So it makes perfect sense that people wanted a spiritual successor to it for a long time, including after Chrono Cross used it's name while being a successor in basically no way at all.

On top of that, the time travel/era mechanics were also very cool from a world exploration perspective. It was a ton fun trying to change stuff in the past or check back in the future after doing something once you did a major thing to see the impact. I think that's what people still really want to see- a large world with many possible ways to fuck with the timeline in small way as minor sidequests, secrets and easter eggs. I don't think it's ever been done since CT to my knowledge. I recall some games on the DS claiming to do that but I dropped them fairly quickly before they opened up, I doubt they actually followed through on the premise or they'd be cult classics that get brought up more often. Instead, games advertise time travel, but only use it as on rails story events, often badly.

 

[Starner]

Chrono Trigger's combat system (particularly, the double/triple tech system and the area of effect/positioning systems) was a breath of fresh air amongst final fantasy doing the exact same thing with it's combat from FF4 through 9. Not to mention plenty of others that were equally uninspired, like BoF 1 and 2 and various others that were just bog standard turn based. So it makes perfect sense that people wanted a spiritual successor to it for a long time, including after Chrono Cross used it's name while being a successor in basically no way at all.

On top of that, the time travel/era mechanics were also very cool from a world exploration perspective. It was a ton fun trying to change stuff in the past or check back in the future after doing something once you did a major thing to see the impact. I think that's what people still really want to see- a large world with many possible ways to fuck with the timeline in small way as minor sidequests, secrets and easter eggs. I don't think it's ever been done since CT to my knowledge. I recall some games on the DS claiming to do that but I dropped them fairly quickly before they opened up, I doubt they actually followed through on the premise or they'd be cult classics that get brought up more often. Instead, games advertise time travel, but only use it as on rails story events, often badly.

Regarding the time travel and eras, that's what I was discussing in my original post. The world building and exploration is the best part of Chrono Trigger.

Your point about the combat system and the historical context for why people were excited by it is fair. My gripe is that these clones haven't really made meaningful iterations. When you look at something like Sea of Stars, it's just a 1:1 copy for the most part. On a recent replay of Chrono Trigger, I found myself wishing I could skip past the skill animations, and waiting for the enemies to line up correctly didn't feel like it added much to the experience. My hot take is that the combat hasn't aged all that well. If modern devs don't want to refine that system and give it a meaningful update, then I'd rather they just do something different.

My main takeaway from this is that these clones feel like "We have Chrono Trigger at home". The story on rails thing is another reason these don't interest me. I guess we'll have to see how Threads of Time turns out. Hopefully it's great, and I'll eat my words.