Chrono Cross's Use of a Silent Protagonist

The incompetence of Chrono Cross at every level of its writing and conception is well-documented, particularly by myself.  And yet, even though its greatest flaws are easily listed and discussed, and have been many a time by many a person, the minor mistakes it makes through the course of its story are not given all that much attention, even though they cumulatively drag the game’s quality down just as much as its infamous blunders.  In fact, even after over 20 years of hating this game, 1 of the regular-sized but nonetheless substantial mistakes of Chrono Cross only just now occurred to me: the decision to make Serge a silent protagonist.

Now I’ve criticized the concept of the RPG silent protagonist many times before, and to be sure, inflicting Serge with a permanent Mute status ailment did the storytelling of Chrono Cross no more favors than it did with Vahn in Legend of Legaia, or any given protagonist in the Etrian Odyssey series--or Chrono Trigger’s Crono himself, for that matter.  But the problems created by forcing a strict non-personality onto Serge actually go beyond that which afflict most games as a result of their mute heroes.  The thing is, you see, is that Chrono Cross is way too personal a story to Serge to be able to work without his verbal and emotional participation.

Consider the relationship between the main plot and the main character in, say, Wild Arms 1, a fairly standard example of an RPG with a silent protagonist.  Protagonist Rudy Roughknight comes from humble yet not fully understood beginnings, and, through a series of escalating circumstances, finds himself becoming gradually but inextricably involved in a sprawling quest to save the world from a great villainous threat.  There are reasons revealed to us along the way for why Rudy is especially suited for defending the world from those that threaten it, reasons involving his true origins which tie him in certain ways to the story as a whole...but though he is adequately personally involved, his participation in Wild Arms 1 is still largely a case of his having happened to get caught up in a series of major events, and his choosing to step up and do his part for the greater good.  This is the most typical case of RPG stories, particularly involving a silent protagonist--the main character has some ties to the unfolding events of the story, because being a random bystander from start to finish isn’t as compelling, but by and large, the machinations of the game’s villains and the story events set in motion do not revolve around the protagonist’s existence.

Plenty of other games, however, tell far more personal stories which are completely and totally derived from the protagonist’s existence, actions, and beliefs.  Absolutely no part of Planescape: Torment would have occurred sans The Nameless One, for example; it’s a game entirely about him, his legacy, and his personal journey to accept mortality.  Tales of Berseria, meanwhile, possesses a plot whose every fiber of emotional character and themes are iconized by protagonist Velvet Crowe, and its sequence of events are entirely her personal quest for vengeance.  Sometimes it’s more of a half-and-half situation--Dragon Age 2, for example, is a story of the social conflict and turmoil of the city of Kirkwall over a few years, as a representative sample of the simmering cultural conflicts of the land of Thedas as a whole.  But just as much as it is that overarching plot, it’s also the story of how the hero Hawke confronted and overcame these conflicts and more to become the city’s champion, and what it cost her/him to do so.  Final Fantasy 7’s another example of this mix, wherein a lot of shit goes down in its plot that amounts to larger forces at work that protagonist Cloud heroically reacts to, but also a ton of the game’s story is inextricably tied to who Cloud is and his personal psychological issues, and only moves forward through his action and presence in events specifically designed for him and him alone.

And unfortunately, this more personal story is the approach that Chrono Cross’s plot takes.  I mean, think about it.  The vast majority of the game’s events revolve around Serge in some significant capacity, as does at least half of the lore events that occur as preamble to the game’s story.  Serge isn’t just some random hero-to-be kid who finds himself transported into another reality early into Chrono Cross--once he’s in Another World, he’s almost immediately attacked by the minions of antagonist Lynx, who is specifically targeting Serge and will continue to do so for the first third of the game.  And why is that?  Because Serge’s DNA is the key to opening a door in Chronopolis, which is a fluke chance that resulted from a sequence of events in Serge’s childhood that made him a living plot mcguffin.  These events also had the result of separating Serge from his father for the rest of his childhood, and (supposedly) giving him a phobia of cats--both facts being relevant in that his father’s body is used by overarching villain FATE to create Lynx, who is only someone’s Inkbunny OC because FATE wants to take advantage of Serge’s fear of felines.

Eventually Serge finds the Frozen Flame, it swaps bodies between him and Lynx, and he winds up, eventually, back in his own home dimension (Home World) whilst in the body of a villain.  For the next 60% of the game, his task is to save his companion Kid and stop the real Lynx in his old body (since Kid is too dumb to know the difference), which, upon success, eventually leads into a bunch of poorly conceived, poorly explained, utterly pointless, and at times self-contradicting nonsense regarding multi-timeline-spanning Skynets being tricked by dinosaurs whose reality got aborted and also Schala and Baltahasar and Lavos are superfluously tacked on in the clumsiest possible way.

But aside from all the jumbled idiocy that is the core of Chrono Cross, that’s a largely personal plot to Serge.  As a house key given human form, he’s the essential crux of nearly every major plot movement for 90% of the game.  As a result of this, the kid is lost in an alternate universe that is just similar but different enough that it must surely be maddeningly frustrating, is hunted by an enemy he had no idea existed, loses his body AND is trapped within the body of an evildoer (one which ain’t exactly easy to disguise, either), loses his friends in the process, is finally able to return to his Home World but now in the body of a monster which makes him more alien here than he was in Another World, and when Miguel finally has an opportunity to dump some exposition on him by the truckload, Serge finds out that his father’s disappearance was due to his dad being transformed into Lynx, the villain that had been out to get him all along, meaning that Serge is currently hanging out in his own dad’s body.

Not only that, but the majority of the most important figures in the game have a very strong connection to him.  Lynx is, of course, a strong contender for poster child of Unnecessary Paternal Ties Syndrome, but even if Chrono Cross doesn’t seem to really actually care all that much that the villain is technically the same matter that was the protagonist’s dad, Lynx is still fixated on Serge as the necessary component of his plan.  Kid turns out to have some nebulous and weird tie to him across time and space.  Plot-vomiter Miguel was his dad’s buddy and also has been hanging out in the middle of nowhere and notime for like 15 years specifically so he could spill his lore guts to Serge and almost forget that he had his own kid.  Harle is the only significant person who isn’t stapled onto Serge by destiny, but (for some truly inexplicable reason) she becomes emotionally attached to him as she guides him to Chronopolis.

So yeah, Chrono Cross is a story where nearly every important thing that happens is centered around Serge, and he’s exposed to and undergoes events and situations which have strong personal, emotional relevance to and impact upon him, AND the most important people pushing events forward are all extremely connected to him.  And he isn’t saying a thing about any of it.

Fear from being hunted by an unknown villain?  Confusion and wonder at being in an alternate world?  Existential grappling with interacting with a world in which he died?  Homesick yearning to return to the world he knows and the people he cares about?  Deepening friendship and/or love for his ally Kid?  Personal torment at being trapped within a body not his own, one so radically different and also reviled by most who know it?  Anguish at losing his new friends as they see him only for what’s on the surface, including Kid herself?  Frustration and loss at returning home only to, thanks to his new body, be a greater stranger here than in the other world?  Forming an emotionally meaningful connection with his new ally Harle?  Amazement at discovering that there’s life on other planets, and that it’s goddamn cute as the dickens?  Learning the truth of his father’s disappearance and the reasons for all that has happened to him?  Sorrow at the fate of Miguel?  Squicky weird unsettled feeling at realizing that it’s his own dad’s scratching post and yarn balls he’s been swingin’ around for over half the game now?  Elation at finally retrieving his own form?

Not a word about any of it.  Square created 1 of the most personally-relevant-to-the-protagonist stories in its entire history, and then made that protagonist UNABLE TO ENGAGE WITH IT.

It’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Link communicates nothing more complicated than a grunt of exertion in any given The Legend of Zelda title, but at least with those, he’s only involved inasmuch as he’s stuck in a vaguely recurring destiny, and the ways in which the plot involves his personal life (such as following his uncle in A Link to the Past, or his lifelong friend Zelda’s being taken in Skyward Sword) are usually surface-level, straightforward “Gotta Go Do Hero Stuff Now” ways.  And it’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Ryu 2 has nothing more than a few sweat drop sprites to display as a reaction to any part of his personal obligations which move the plot forward for 35% of Breath of Fire 2, but at least the game’s story eventually dissolves into a standard “I’m Just Hero-ing For The Hell Of It Now” situation afterward.  But this?

Imagine if Velvet wasn’t able to voice the rage and pain behind her quest for vengeance, or help Laphicet form his identity as a being through hundreds of conversations.  Imagine if The Nameless One had no lines of complex, brilliant dialogue through which to refine his journey for identity and mortality.  Imagine if Cloud had no more tools through which to communicate his confusion, turmoil, and realizations of his own weaknesses than a few stiff pantomimes.  Imagine if Hawke never showed a reaction to her/his family’s and city’s ever tumultuous fortunes, if Fei could do no more than nod dumbly at the fact that he’s the centerpiece of 6 different absurdly complex world-stakes plots all going on simultaneously in Xenogears, if a story so reliant upon the strong and affectionate bonds between the protagonist and her siblings as Fire Emblem 14’s was restricted by being unable to actually show the interactions between Corrin and said family.

It doesn’t even make sense by Silent Protagonists’ own poor logic, for Nalinivati’s sake.  While a few notably excellent exceptions exist, the whole point of burdening an RPG with a silent protagonist is, traditionally, out of some misguided, functionally pointless, and usually outright wrong idea that it makes the protagonist more relatable to the player.  In spite of the evidence of literal thousands of years of human storytelling,* RPG writers cling to this absurd notion that a blank slate is easier to relate to for a human audience than a protagonist who displays, y’know, actual humanity.  But as we’ve established, Serge’s existence and role in the events of Chrono Cross is anything but a blank slate.  This ain’t some monotonous Dragon Quest hero stumbling through a tofu-only sandwich on processed white bread in narrative form, where conjuring a personality and backstory out of one’s own imagination for him is a desperate act of self-defense by the audience’s mind as it fights to stay conscious.  Serge’s circumstances and history are aggressively unique, stupidly over-complicated, and rely heavily on irrationality.  It doesn’t matter if he’s as speechless as a game industry executive asked to specifically detail how NFTs are going to improve the player’s experience; Serge is not the kind of main character that invites this imaginary scenario of the player relating to the Silent Protagonist.

While far from the game’s worst qualities, the decision to make Serge a gagged spectator to his own story is insane.**  Yeah, it’s possible to pull off a Silent Protagonist who doesn’t lower the quality of an RPG based around their personal story--Severed accomplishes this, as does Transistor, and if my old theory about Frisk is true, you could make an argument that Undertale sort of manages it, too.  But it takes a distinct level of narrative skill and knowledge of exactly what you’re doing to pull something like that off.  Chrono Cross, on the other hand, can’t even handle normal, foundational writing conventions adequately--it sure as hell didn’t need to handicap itself further.

















* Yes I stole this from a Robot Chicken Halo sketch, no I’m not ashamed.


** Insane, but not unexpected.  This IS the game whose writers outsourced 90% of their job to an accent version of Babelfish in terms of the cast.

A fact which, by the way, only worsens the situation with Serge.  Under normal circumstances, the rest of the cast may be able to pick up a bit of a silent protagonist’s slack by interpreting him to the player.  For example, in Wild Arms 1, when Rudy’s true nature is revealed, there’s a moment in which Cecilia admonishes Jack for being too harsh with Rudy, pointing out how scared Rudy looks as evidence that the kid himself didn’t know.  With sprites that were somehow less sophisticated than those of the previous console generation, there was certainly no way we as the audience could have discerned that fact otherwise, but that’s the benefit of an involved and functional surrounding cast--they fill in some of the blanks that the stupid decision to go with a Silent Protagonist create.  Hell, almost the entirety of Transistor’s storytelling is based around this kind of thing.  Transistor aside, it’s not usually a great narrative device, of course--it feels a bit like that stupid thing that shows and cartoons and movies do where someone on the phone just repeats everything they’re being told so the audience can get the necessary information, even though no human in history has ever had a conversation like that.  But it’s better than nothing.

But unfortunately, even that crutch is unavailable to Serge, because the party of Chrono Cross is impersonally distant, have effectively no interactions with the plot as it goes on around them since their reactionary dialogue has to be substance-less enough for the accent system’s purposes, and each member gets essentially 2 very tiny scenes of character development to themselves, most of which don’t have any relevance to the main story.  As a result, we rarely see anyone around Serge engage with him to the point that we could glean any insight whatsoever into his feelings or mental state.