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11/3/1995 — 11/3/2025! happy 30th one of *the* games of all time!!

Crono's Dreamseeker! by Mast3r-Rainb0w

Made some fanart to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Chrono Trigger a.k.a. one of the best RPGs/games ever made! (seriously, go play it if you haven't already!) The main protag Crono wields the "Dreamseeker" katana from the DS version here! Enjoy!

Crono (Chrono Trigger)

time lads

#chrono trigger #chrono cross #serge chrono cross #crono chrono trigger #my art #daily drawings 2023 #chrono trigger is like 'let's have fun time travel adventures'#and chrono cross is like 'every living being has the instinct to survive even if it means harming or killing others'#both are good #but cross has been living rent-free in my head for the last few weeks

The more I think about it, the more superfluous Crono seems to the plot of Chrono Trigger, despite being framed as the protagonist.

Sure, the group Crono is in does a lot of important stuff, but he doesn't really lead them or anything. He just follows instructions from Marle, Lucca, or whichever player character is taking center stage this chapter. Marle wants to break free from her restrictive royal life; Frog wants to defeat the Fiendlord and avenge his master; Ayla wants to defeat the Reptites; everyone wants to save humanity from Lavos; and Crono is also there.

He doesn't do much plot-relevant, either. Most of the stuff he does could have been done by other characters with zero effect on the plot, on top of the aforementioned lack of motivation. Anyone could do it, but Crono's at the front of the party, so he does it.

Crono is most active early in the plot (before they go to 2300 the first time), partly because he's alone most of that time. But everything he does and that happens to him is 100% circumstantial. He bumps into Marle, so they two of them hang out at the fair. He sticks around when Lucca's telepod malfunctions, so Lucca sends him after Marle about five minutes before Lucca decides to also go after her. Crono gets arrested after everyone comes back to the present, because he was the guy Marle decided to hang out with. Etc. You could drop Crono and slip Lucca in to replace him without changing much, in no small part because Lucca helps with most of the things that Crono does.

Crono doesn't even have any Chosen-One-iness to him. Crono and his friends don't defeat Lavos because Crono is a secret Lavos-spawn which lets them find Lavos's weakness or whatever; he's just a normal dude with abnormal friends who figure out the plot while he's there.

The only thing Crono does that nobody else could easily replace is that time he dies. If anyone else sacrificed themselves to Lavos, their absence would change the party dynamics. That's a big change! And the quest to bring him back to life occupies a lot of Chrono Trigger's endgame. But from a narrative perspective, that death is pointless. Crono's sacrifice saves his party and some other people, but...why? I've played the game several times, rewatched the cutscene before queuing this, and cannot even guess why Crono's sacrifice made Lavos not eat the others, or bought Schala time to recover, or whatever. It's just a thing that happens—a dramatic thing that affects the other characters, but a thing that's easy to cut.

Yeah, he's a silent blank-slate protagonist, but most such characters have something that makes them matter. They're a Chosen One, or the party leader, or they at least make a decision that influences the other characters in some way. Crono is just an empty shell that the player controls, alongside fleshed-out friends and allies that the player also controls.

#chrono trigger #meta #crono chrono trigger #characterization #(or lack thereof)