For a Moment, the Internet Had Hope

A domain was recently registered by Squeenix for something called "Chrono Bind" which had the internet going into overdrive at the connection of Squeenix and the word "Chrono".  Surely it was the long-awaited threequel for the Chrono series that would come by and right all the wrongs in the world and such.  But, no such luck, as Chrono Bind is simply a card game for FFXIII-2 which, I'll grant it is terribly named.  It's not even a trading card game, so far as I can tell, just some sort of Casino card game as it's described as here.  It is, by all means, simply ignorable aside from the fact that it gave the internet hope for such a short time to anyone reading Siliconera.

The thing that gets me, and I might be biased in this, is that I don't get where this blind faith comes from.  Any news of a new Chrono game possibility is met with universally positive out-pour, despite the last attempts at a sequel and a re-release were just poor.  It is Well Documented that I have issues with both games, and for that assortment of reasons, I just don't see a third Chrono game being a 'worthy' game in the series.  It might be a good game by its own standards (which people who really like Chrono Cross, but don't want to argue about it being a true sequel say (it's not.)) and if that much happens, it'll be magical, but they're clearly so far removed from the thought process that worked with Trigger to come back.  Simply because one of Trigger's many, many successes was it's simplicity which, considering the generalization of Squeenix stories since Final Fantasy VII (if not earlier), likely isn't coming back.

I guess the logical step to take here would be to suggest my idea for a third game in the series, to show off just how little faith I have in them to make it happen, but I just don't have an idea.  The way Cross has its tendrils steeped into Trigger's story all of it happening basically entirely at the end is not only fairly all-encompassing, but terribly done, so to move forward, you would have to try and find some way to justify that out.  I guess the way you'd want to go is to take the idea put forth with the previous games and run with it, going full-on spiritual sequel rather than trying to pretend it's an actual continuation of Cross' and/or Trigger's storyline.  Spoilers for both games are coming below, so if you care, haven't been spoiled on either somehow, or just plain don't like spoiling, move along.

The basic principle put forth towards the middle or end of Chrono Trigger is that Lavos isn't just a single entity, but it's implied that it is one of its kind, and its kind launches to worlds, sucks them dry of energy, spawn more of it, and those in turn carry out the same life-cycle.  In fact, towards the end of Trigger, you fight some Lavos Spawn that look, essentially, like really tiny version of him, so it's no surprise that this is a thing that happens.  So if it's established that this is not a single incident, work with that!  Pick a new world that can be as similar or different from Trigger's wold (since Cross' world is technically the same world, there's just suddenly tropical islands thanks to a computer program, no I'm not joking) as they want, and have a Lavos Spawn be living in it, or even hit it while technology is advanced, rather than when man was new to the planet.  It would be interesting to see if they could try and figure out a timeline that put an even more futuristic world into the forefront than Trigger's 1999 and 2300, which were inaccessible and ruined respectively.

If you absolutely, positively have to ham-fist a direct connection to Trigger and Cross, then I don't friggin' know what to tell you.  Cross' theme is, roughly, "You saved the world, but it's fucked anyway", showing off how bad things happened regardless of the fact that there wasn't an entity eating the world from inside except there still was because it didn't die when it was killed.  Or it did die and just got better thanks to the magical princess it ate at 12,000 B.C.  Who colored her hair blonde in the 14,000 or so years she was part of Lavos except she was part of him for time eternal or something, since Lavos in its newly not-dead form existed outside of time because it was eating time.  So anyone who was connected, realistically, with Lavos from Trigger is either dead or dying by the time Cross takes place and I don't even know what happens with that after Lavos is destroyed again because the whole theme was there's two separate timelines that were existing side-by-side.  (Except there were a lot more than two, as was revealed by the fact that there was a timeline where Serge already won and was shacking up with Kid or something, you know what, I don't know anymore.)

Not having a direct connection to Trigger and Cross means, essentially, that they have to think of a way to make it work without being a direct retread of Trigger, which is why I suggested the Lavos Spawn hit while the world is matured, rather than young, so they can research it and such to find out its terrible secrets while time and existence itself starts wrecking itself from the inside out.  Or something.  I can't really go too far in-depth with my idea since it's never going to happen as well as the fact that there's just so much terrible that I can't pick it all off to present something uniformly good.  Though I suppose now, after all that, I can see why people have a little hope for a third Chrono game as, the idea I came up with was literally on the fly and I wouldn't mind playing that after describing it.  I really wouldn't mind it, especially if they merged the two gimmicks from Trigger and Cross and had Time Travel and Alternate Dimensions.  Also a space ship instead of a plain airship because fuuuuutuuuuurreeeee.