Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes killed (C&D story not proven)

[Pavos]

Hmmm... this stuff is very fishy indeed. Why the huge difference with the other C&D letter (from resurrection)? I'm curious to see how this'll all work out. There are many things that don't add up (for instance: is it true they destroyed all of their work 5 minutes after getting the C&D, even BEFORE they checked it's authenticy?), but I won't be feeding the rumor mill here

[Battousai]

First, zeality gets to some sort of nebulous percent completed in his remake. Then his hard drive crashes. He loses everything, didn't make backups, and has no choice but to give up. But he can't just come out and say that because it'll sound like he's making it up. So he invents an even BIGGER piece of shenanigans to keep people's hearts and minds with the project.

Seems pretty cut and dry. All the people flying to his defense are 1-of posters who are so blindly defensive of their e-buddy that they'd swear to anything that the project was finished and got squashed by GRAHHHHHH SQUAREENIX GRAHHHHHHHH without any solid evidence that any significant portion of the game was done to begin with.

Silly zeality, tricks are for kids!

[Meteo Xavier]

I don't think we care anymore.

[nrich]

I think the only thing I wondered about while reading this crazy thread is whether or not that the patch will be circulated at all. You can't really stop it from being spread around if it got onto torrent sites, but I guess that really depends on the whole story being true. It's a migraine to think about, to be honest.

[Ybrik Metaknight]

Hm. I just read this whole thread, and I don't know what to say — or think. A disclaimer before I say anything else: I used to be very involved at the Chrono Compendium. I was a regular participant in the Chrono threads here at OCR that led to the creation of the Compendium, I wrote some content for the initial version of the site (including an article on Magus that I think is the only bit of my content that's still up) and I used to have some administrative privileges there. But I haven't been active there in years, and post there only slightly more than I post here anymore. And I had no involvement whatsoever in this project, to the point that I just barely knew it was even going on.

I have to say that while I can certainly see that Zeality is fanatical (or "overzealous," if you will...sorry, couldn't resist the pun) when it comes to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, I've never seen anything from him (either in public forums or in personal correspondence between myself and him via AIM, e-mail, etc.) that would suggest he'd do anything like this. I also believe that Zeality really was not the main force behind this (truthfully, I think that agent12 listed a page back or so was), and therefore even if this whole C&D thing was faked, I'm not sure that it was him doing the faking. That seems quite out of character for what I know about him. Not saying it couldn't have happened that way, just that I don't think it did. Either way, I do think it's a bit sweeping to just declare that Zeality faked this whole thing because he's a nutbag. I recognize that he made a lot of enemies here, but it's for that exact reason that I'm a bit skeptical of some (not all) of these posts.

But on the other hand...there do seem to be quite a few people expressing some doubts here. Some of whom don't seem to just be seeing speculation and using that as the basis for renewing personal attacks. If you'd asked me earlier tonight whether I had any doubts as to the veracity of that C&D order, I'd have said, of course not, it seems real to me. Now I'm not sure. I've only skimmed parts of the letter itself, and I haven't made any personal attempts to investigate the numbers or any of that.

Really, I'm not sure what to think. I want to believe in what the Compendium says happened, maybe because I'm too close to the site. But I have to admit this thread has made me really think that something fishy's going on.

Bah, I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish by posting this here. I just had to react to everything I just took in. Sorry to drag up a thread that hasn't been posted on in a couple of days.

[SpanishFly]

I've got to admit I've never had anything against the stuff I've read on the Chrono Compendium (but that's mainly been the Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross theories), but this whole situation just seems...yeah....All it's really done with me is made me want Chrono 3 to come out...

[tushantin]

I may be a little late to reply to this topic, but here goes nothing.

I've read quite some posts regarding ZeaLity and C&D here. It's not surprising you don't know much about Crimson Echoes thus coming up with assumptions is no big deal for you. However, keep your concerns and hatred towards ZeaLity to yourself. Sure, he has his cons, but the dude's zealous and passionate towards his goals, and he's one we often admire him for his intellect.

But besides that, Crimson Echoes has been in development for 5 years. Prophet's Guile was a short spinoff to the story and went widely successful after its release. It was a short gameplay version with little complex ASM modification involved, and it took them a long time.

Although I'm not one of the developers of Crimson Echoes, a friend of mine from RL is in fact, and the gameplay and story, as noticed, was astounding. 5 years of hard work could be seen not only in the footage but when my friend was beta-testing it and was busy with pre-release polishing. Almost everyone was busy weeks before release.

So why would ZeaLity or the other members lie about something they worked so hard for? Saying they're making things up is an insult to their hard work and determination, mind you. They made it so others would PLAY it. They had no reason to hold back.

If you have any doubts, please step into the Compendium forums and read. You'll see what's going on.

[The Damned]

A forum run by the very person(s) we suspect of faking the whole thing, filled with fanboy bias from the people that followed the game in question with eager anticipation, who were then conned into thinking it was axed by Square-Enix.

Yes, that does sound very fair and unbiased.

[Ramaniscence]

So why would ZeaLity or the other members lie about something they worked so hard for? Saying they're making things up is an insult to their hard work and determination, mind you. They made it so others would PLAY it. They had no reason to hold back.

If you have any doubts, please step into the Compendium forums and read. You'll see what's going on.

I'm going to tell you right now, ZealitY was a huge trouble maker and a gigantic troll around OCReMix. Sure he was passionate about Chrono Trigger, but a lot of people have a lot of distaste for him in for a LOT of reasons. Not simply because he was some crazed Chrono Trigger fanboys. Anyway moving on...

Rumor 1: "Crimson Echoes was a piece of vaporware. The modders made this C&D up because they knew they would never finish something so ambitious!"

This is extremely easy to disprove. The terms of the C&D do not forbid gameplay footage taken during the beta testing phase to be uploaded to our understanding, so we'll try to get some of our numerous recordings processed and uploaded. For now, please review the preview videos.

Show me a 100% complete run-through of the game. Not random splices of the parts that they got done, or hastily try to get done now too make it look like it was a comprehensive game. I mean 100% full on plot and encounters and dialog intact telling a straight forward linear story with minimal video editting. Shouldn't have been hard, right? Especially since it was practically done. I mean, if they were honestly going to DESTROY ALL THE WORK FROM THE PROJECT ZOMG why wouldn't they do this first anyway if they thought it'd be OK?

[Nekofrog]

So, further evidence that the "98% complete" figure is a complete crock of shit -- Crimson Echoes leaked.

Sort of.

It's early alpha and only a few months old, but why in the hell would this leak if there's a version that's 98% done and ready to go?

Something is way too fishy here.

http://www.gossipgamers.com/chrono-fan-game-crimson-echoes-98-complete-leaked/

[Meteo Xavier]

The game is afoot! And Meteo X, a man God once condemned at Red Square, a man who stands for and in the way of humanity, a man once classified by the FDSA as Prime Rib Striplets, is on the case!

[KyleJCrb]

It took 'em five years to get to an "alpha" stage?

Show me a 100% complete run-through of the game. Not random splices of the parts that they got done, or hastily try to get done now too make it look like it was a comprehensive game. I mean 100% full on plot and encounters and dialog intact telling a straight forward linear story with minimal video editting. Shouldn't have been hard, right? Especially since it was practically done. I mean, if they were honestly going to DESTROY ALL THE WORK FROM THE PROJECT ZOMG why wouldn't they do this first anyway if they thought it'd be OK?

The Compendium has a thread linking to YouTube videos, and claim that they will be posting a full playthrough of Crimson Echoes. Good job on listening to Squeenix's supposed demands, dudes!

[RedFusion]

Maybe if they were the ones behind the faking, then they'll get back at the project and finish it once and for all, just to spite all of us.

Now that would be interesting.

[1337 1]

You know, maybe its all a big conspiracy, and at E3, SE and compendium will release a four letter statement.

YHBT.

[The Flame Stealer]

(This is Chrono'99 again. I posted on the second page.)

Show me a 100% complete run-through of the game. Not random splices of the parts that they got done, or hastily try to get done now too make it look like it was a comprehensive game. I mean 100% full on plot and encounters and dialog intact telling a straight forward linear story with minimal video editting. Shouldn't have been hard, right? Especially since it was practically done. I mean, if they were honestly going to DESTROY ALL THE WORK FROM THE PROJECT ZOMG why wouldn't they do this first anyway if they thought it'd be OK?

http://www.youtube.com/user/CEMemorial

So, further evidence that the "98% complete" figure is a complete crock of shit -- Crimson Echoes leaked.

Sort of.

It's early alpha and only a few months old, but why in the hell would this leak if there's a version that's 98% done and ready to go?

Something is way too fishy here.

http://www.gossipgamers.com/chrono-fan-game-crimson-echoes-98-complete-leaked/

The leak was apparently from a beta-tester, though it’s a really old version from way back in January or February. We had just began recruiting beta-testers at that point and you might as well call this an alpha. We do NOT endorse the leak and are trying to take down the links when we find them... Trying.

By May the game had changed a lot as we polished events, fixed bugs, actually inserted the final dialogues, actually balanced the game’s difficulty, and inserted new graphics and techs (obviously there were peaks and lulls during development, we're not robots or slave workers). When the C&D letter struck we were about 98% complete and that’s the version we’re showing on YouTube. The leak is NOT the 98% complete version.

SE prohibited the game, but images and videos are akin to fanart, so we can still show them. We're releasing about 3 videos a day because we want to keep the interest going throughout the month of June, though if you look at the dates they're being uploaded earlier than they are published. Believe me, if we could have released the game, we would have done it already (it was set for May 31), but we can't. These videos are the best we can do to let people experience the game and prove it actually existed and was actually near-finished. If you have the leaked version (and you shouldn't), the videos show that it's different than the 98% version.

[D.Radium]

Everything I'm reading seems to boil down to:

"Rather than suffer the indignation of such an enormous project stagnating and fizzling to death slowly, it must be taken out with an appropriately large [drama] bang!"

[Native Jovian]

It took 'em five years to get to an "alpha" stage?

And then all the way to 98% complete in less than four months!

The leak was apparently from a beta-tester, though it’s a really old version from way back in January or February.

[Gario]

Well I'll enjoy the footage, I guess...

At least they can prove that there really was something being done, there (although the C&D debate will continue, no doubt).

[agent12]

Hey Everyone,

I told meteo I'd try to stop in here every once in awhile cause it seemed like the blind biasedness was gone (based off his post). It looks like it has atleast subsided a little

"Rather than suffer the indignation of such an enormous project stagnating and fizzling to death slowly, it must be taken out with an appropriately large [drama] bang!"

Complying with a C&D doesn't mean we are going to go hide in a cave or something. A ton of time and effort went into this product. We're gunna talk about it

It took 'em five years to get to an "alpha" stage?

Uh.......yea. It's a full scale game made by people over the internet living across the world. Maybe you're confused by the term Alpha? For us we considered it the point where you can play the game from beginning to end...maybe that's a bad word, Chrono Trigger's alpha was just a couple chapters wasn't it? Anyways..most development stopped when I took a year and a half off of school, though 99 kept the ball rolling by polishing a bunch of the early chapters.

And then all the way to 98% complete in less than four months!

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. I think that's relatively standard even for professional products. At that point we had actually released to several beta testers and basically had a constant stream of people submitting bugs to the tracker (most of them small but it really added up). We fixed 2000+ bugs in that time period. It's also when we threw in some new graphics and stuff.

The Compendium has a thread linking to YouTube videos, and claim that they will be posting a full playthrough of Crimson Echoes. Good job on listening to Squeenix's supposed demands, dudes!

Um....it is? We destroyed the roms. These were videos taken before the C&D, and they haven't complained about any of the other videos (which have 1000's of hits).

So, further evidence that the "98% complete" figure is a complete crock of shit -- Crimson Echoes leaked.

Sort of.

It's early alpha and only a few months old, but why in the hell would this leak if there's a version that's 98% done and ready to go?

Something is way too fishy here.

99 kind of covered this. It's pretty clear to us that this is a beta tester's doing. Anyways any debate about the game being close to done is surely settled by the youtube playthrough.

Please try to set aside your biases for a second....why would we fake this?

--JP

[Nekofrog]

Because the C&D looks 100% completely and totally fake. It does not fall in line or comply with any of their previous letters, and the followup response to it "yeah we called them, transferred departments, don't call them on your own and verify our story pls" is absolutely fishy.

If YOU didn't fake it, someone else did.

There is no way in fucking hell any of this is even remotely real. The C&D was fake, whether you faked it or not.

[Meteo Xavier]

I told meteo I'd try to stop in here every once in awhile cause it seemed like the blind biasedness was gone (based off his post). It looks like it has atleast subsided a little

/Hasn't actually looked back at that forum yet.

Additionally, Neko, to be fair, I think he or one or some of the other administrators HAS said to go ahead and call the number - but, honest to Jesus Our Lord and Savior, do not call any number off of a paper that could be fake.

[agent12]

Meteo, the number on the C&D can very quickly be confirmed on the internet. I will admit.....if this someone managed to hack the intertubes, set someone next to this phone to answer calls all day, planted the two other people i've managed to talk to (lawyer/and HR person), then yes I got punk'd. I find that very very unlikely though.

Neko, When did I say to not call the number...I'm pretty sure I actually encouraged people to call the number (looks back) ......yea I did.

We think that they anticipated the larger fan backlash with this C&D and that's why they called didn't sign it with someones name. I agree the wording is worse, maybe they got some intern to type it up......or it was some new guy trying to make a name for himself I honestly don't know.

Meh....I'm not really that much sure what to say. Someone on this forum said to post an uninterrupted walkthrough and were doing that maybe that'll help a little :-/.

--JP

[DarkeSword]

I'm locking this.

Speculation is pointless. All there is is a fake-looking C&D letter and the I-swear-it's-real testimony of project staffers.

What a waste of time.

[DarkeSword]

Got this message from Zeality.

I wasn't aware of that thread about Crimson Echoes until now, but I'd like to request that it be unlocked.

You can check the metadata of the C&D PDF file. The author is "asullivan", or Adam Sullivan, this guy: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:...&ct=clnk&gl=us

He's taken his profile down (probably to avoid flames from whomever might connect the dots). To give you complete assurance, on May 7, one day before the C&D, I got a bogus friend request and a message from someone on Facebook affiliated with "Sony Corporate Counsel" (which, as you can see on LinkedIn, was his last job before SE):

http://chronofan.com/Zeality/thatguy.png

http://chronofan.com/Zeality/thatguy2.png

This is the same Adam Sullivan, and he was scoping my name / university e-mail out as he composed the C&D letter.

It's really heartbreaking to see people doubt the veracity of the C&D letter and close thread after thread. [...] I'm hoping something can at least be salvaged here at OCR.

[zircon]

Another amazing coincedence, the guy in the metadata of the PDF HAD a profile... but not anymore! Wow! Would you look at that.