Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series playing Chrono Trigger. We hit the story notes first and doing things in your own order before turning especially to where the game goes once we reach "The Fated Hour." Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Up into The Fated Hour

Podcast breakdown: 0:50 Chrono Trigger 1:08:35 Break 1:09:07 Feedback

Issues covered: the chapters at the end, the monomaniacal immortal queen and her daughter, underdeveloped queen nemesis, the cast of characters surrounding the queen, a battle with the Golem Twins, having bosses that are puzzles rather than slugfests, bringing in cosmic horror, fighting Lavos early, finding the locked chests organically... and not, finding the blue pyramid, a brief digression on the Ultimate Weapon, the revelation of the prophet, Chrono struggles to his feet and is obliterated, the fall of the floating continents, the party reacts to Chrono's death, choosing a new leader, losing and retrieving your stuff on the Blackbird, looking through grates, similarity to an adventure game, crashing the time ship after defeating Dalton, leveraging the history of the characters, Brett blows Tim's mind, "the black wind blows" and telegraphing Magus's identity, learning how everything came from one event, the gurus help you out, having an object out of order, bringing you full circle, having trouble with a mini game, more frustrations, QA being good at a thing, designing to the controller you have, another difference between the two versions, Brett and Tim talk about time paradoxes, whether you always have to have the main character, finding Ozzie's fortress by accident, assembling all the ingredients to fix the timelines, monsters and humans living in harmony, Brett theorizes about how to finish the desert quest, advice from the Civ 3 political advisor, modding and Civ 3, updates from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the appeal (or lack thereof) of developing a 4X game, worrying about the spreadsheet and chaos, not being sure you could go the distance, being able to tell a story about your game, replaying a JRPG and length, having more or less grind.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Timothy Dalton, James Bond (franchise), X-Men (series), Brian Taylor (obliquely), Final Fantasy (series), The Sneetches, Dr. Seuss, Metroid (series), Pulp Fiction, Wii/Virtual Console, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Xbox, Back to the Future, James Roberts, BioWare, Civilization 3, Wild Weazel, Soren Johnson, DOOM, Johnny Grattan, Sid Meier's Beyond Earth, X-COM, Julian Gollop, The2ndQuest, Legend of Zelda, Dragon Warrior, Shakespeare, Wasteland 2, Persona 5, World of Warcraft, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers.

Next time: Finish the game! For real, this time!

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