"Chrono Trigger" by Michael P. Williams (Boss Fight Books)

This is the second in a series of reviews covering the Boss Fight Books Humble Bundle. If you missed the bundle, fear not! They’re all available on bossfightbooks.com/, from $4.95 each.

 
 
 “The following is a contributor post by the Bookwarm Mage.”
Chrono Trigger, by Michael P. Williams, opens brilliantly. On the cover, a glowering hedgehog peers down from the top of the page, right where Lavos would be in the boss fight. Then comes an engaging foreword by the game’s original translator, Ted Woolsey, where he speaks of his work localizing the text for a new audience as an exercise in “channeling…trying to balance concision, resourcefulness, and faithfulness to the original game.” But in some cases, Woolsey’s choices significantly altered the meaning of the Japanese original: Woolseyisms like changing the names of the wise men to allude to the Magi of the Nativity story spring to mind. As Williams translates his experience of the game into a book, he similarly struggles to strike a balance between competing aims. At times, faced with the boss fight of wrestling the titanic Chrono Trigger into the slim volume of the final text, he falters.

Early on, the narrative voice swings between the giddy–Williams recalls his anticipation before Chrono Trigger’s release, reading about it in glossy gaming magazines of the day–and the jaded–having accomplished his dream of moving to Japan, he finds himself getting bored. It is actually the Japanese GBA version of Mother 1+2 that rekindles his interest in games. Still, this central ambivalence, shading into discontent and bitterness, marks Williams’ return to Chrono Trigger. There is a creeping cynicism to the tone of his writing, which in many places becomes simply muddled and unclear. Describing his epiphany with Mother 1+2, he writes:

“Square and I had gone our separate ways. They had transformed RPG characters from little collectible figurines into complex intractable mannequins. I wanted more of what used to be. But new.”

I’m unable to parse this seemingly highly consequential moment. If it is intended to explain why he decided to write a book about Chrono Trigger, the reasoning is opaque to me; neither do the mixed metaphors that follow do much to clarify:

“I approached with caution, reaching my hand down gingerly into that abyss of murky memory, wondering if the old abracadabra still had any kick. I can assure you, reader, that there’s still plenty of rabbit left in that old hat.”

We can take his word for it, but the claim is one that the rest of the book does little to bear out. The interweaving of memoir with analysis, deployed to such great effect in the EarthBound and Super Mario Bros. 3 books, among others in the Boss Fight series, here comes across as internally conflicted, at odds with itself.
Rather than illuminating themes and lessons which Chrono Trigger portrays as significant–heroism as an interplay between responsibility and freedom; how to maintain hope and a sense of humor in the face of an implacable fate–Williams spends scads of the text in a searching cultural critique of race, gender, and sex. As if to telegraph his earnestness, abrupt and unnecessary expletives frequently pop up in the text. He gives a halfhearted summary of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth rather than investigating the game’s intricate narrative on its own terms. Of the story’s rich structure, with its branching possibilities triggered by Crono’s sacrifice and the player’s choices about how to respond, he gives little indication, referring us to Patrick Holleman’s work on the Game Design Forum (and to the official strategy guide) without offering any substantive new interpretation.
Chapters on Crono and his party members jostle with others dedicated to cultural norms and time-travel motifs. There are interesting discoveries to be made along the way, from a look at the Japanese legal system and the a-national concept of mukokuseki, to analogies between Lavos and Fukushima, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the original plan to have Crono’s death be permanent. A juxtaposition of short interviews with translators Ted Woolsey and Tom Slattery provides some insight on the way in which apparently significant changes to the script “bubbled up almost unconsciously” or were determined by limited space and time. Then again, tendentious claims about Tolkien and Lewis’ racism are trotted out alongside Godzilla tropes. Even setting the jarring tonal shifts aside, throughout, my recurring question was, how does all this add to our understanding of the game and its themes? For me, the connections and analysis were wanting. Perhaps other readers will find Williams a more enlightening and endearing guide, but my impression was one of bafflement. How could such a skilled editor produce such a lackluster book?

Particularly lacking was the discussion I was most looking for, dealing with the Entity alluded to in the original game, and how the story- and timelines of Chrono Trigger are developed or recast in the light of subsequent games in the series. Together with this, I wanted some glimpse into the creative process of the “Dream Team,” and some reflection on how Square’s legendary development work of the 90’s has changed over the technology’s rapid generations. Instead of tracing these lines of inquiry, which may be speculative or may be at the heart of the game, depending on how much weight you give these sorts of context, Williams is dismissive when not incurious. Instead, the contexts he was interested in, personally, add little to–indeed, distract from–one of the great adventures in video game history.
6/10 — With its wandering focus, clunky prose, and jarring tonal shifts, this is one of the more disappointing entries in the Boss Fight Books series. Better to check out Patrick Holleman’s Reverse Design: Chrono Trigger.
 

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