I'm not surprised in the sense that this was one of the core teams that worked on Chrono Trigger. I just never knew about the history, and I'm always really interested in the cool development stories behind games, especially their origin. Looking up more on this, Saga also stated that her and Takahashi pitched the game as Final Fantasy VII, but Sakaguchi considered it too dark for the series. Imagine that! It's funny, because one of my best friends always insists that Xenogears should have been Final Fantasy VIII. I can't wait to tell him!

It makes a lot of sense, though, at least with the way the field screen is presented and the way your sprite character moves over it, reminded me a lot of trigger.

I'm also sad to say I missed the Lucca cameo