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Final Fantasy VI fans:

What do you want? What would you like done with it?

I open this discussion to any and all ideas, no matter how insanely infeasible. Just have fun with it.

I also am going to take this opportunity to say what I want, which is not something simple, so I'm going to go into some detail: be warned.

I want the level of maturity the story possesses to be something Squaresoft tries to get right, because they've never since gotten it right. I mean, you do know what this story is about? Some clown pushing a button he shouldn't have pushed and ripping the world apart? ...Oddly enough, I find people debating the script translation, I find people debating the religious references...I don't often see people discuss the aspect of the story that is most heavy, most frightening. I guess we're all sort of worried that bringing it up is going to be bad mojo or something, since this is the world we live in. It is an uncomfortable thing indeed.

And that is what makes Final Fantasy VI unique among its cohorts: it isn't "we must stop thing from happening or we will all be destroyed," it's most definitely "thing happened, we have to keep trying to win anyway."

But funny enough, the event that happens involves a bait-and-switch that you don't expect from the game either; the Empire is no more at that point. Kefka becomes the party's main antagonist, as the decoy antagonist is cast aside. The mask is removed, and you are given the most powerful motivation you can to stomp Kefka into the dirt.

He twists RPG cliches inside out, and successfully destroys quite a bit of the world...it gets to you as a player, you know? When you strip away all the story elements but what is necessary (protagonist vs. antagonist) for gameplay, this is what the game is doing to you. It's cheating, of course...there is no way to stop Kefka from moving the Triad out of alignment. But the point is, they went to every length possibly imaginable to get a rise out of you, to make you angry at this villain.

That is the kind of dedication to the basic core of gameplay married to strong and thematic storytelling that I feel exemplifies why the game still rings so resoundingly to this day, and I'd like to see SE boil things down even further than they have, and show us what happens when they apply that much dedication to just the core of the gameplay, and the basic plot of the story. Once those two things are in perfect harmony and richly present in the gameplay experience the way they were in Final Fantasy VI, I will be what we call a happy camper.

Final Fantasy VI, beyond being just a great story with great characters, is also a well designed game. There is much beneath the hood that goes unused and dummied out, true, and the code is not what you'd call tidily arranged within the rom. There are hundreds of bugs, many of which have been extensively documented over the years...

But it's got something going for it design-wise in what you do see. The game dumps you in a town and tells you to move forward after less than three minutes of introduction, part of which the player is allowed to skip (the credits).

That's important for an RPG, because barrier to entry can often be very very difficult for people who play a lot of these kinds of games, and it's certainly the most difficult thing for someone who has never played an RPG before. Having the chutzpah to just blast the story at you in bold letters and begin is one of the best parts of this game. And you are not begun powerless, either. You're given a unique and fun gimmick to play with immediately, which explains a basic plot element in the most expeditious and fun way possible: by letting you use it. I'm talking about MagiTek Armor, of course. Do you notice how this game is working to get you invested into this universe, to want to know how the things in it work?

That's the kind of thing that I enjoyed about these games, and I feel that modern developers have gotten somewhat lackadaisical about getting you INTO the game as fast and in as directly controllable a way as possible. They waste a lot of time with tutorials that could be put into an accompanying document. Begin the game after boot up and LOGO (of course) by imploring the player to look into the manual for explanations of how to play, and that's it. Get the tutorial out of the actual gameplay as much as possible, make it optional.

I want these games to be designed to be better than other games, faster than other games, more interesting than other games...

Because Final Fantasy VI is considerably all three to me.

What about you, Cave people? What would you like for SE to do about VI?

I just want more like it, that's all.

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X is blue.

I think everyone wants "more like it", it's just that it's hard to back-trace the route from an emotional reaction to a story to the elements of such a story itself.

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins

I'd like to cover more points later, but: On the subject of nit picking dialogue and/or translations...

I don't think you can critically give that subject a sweeping pass. Granted, it's important to view the title in context of the time period and I do believe that FF6 qualifies as a release that came to be greater than the sum of its parts. However, that doesn't mean such problems should be overlooked in future iterations of the genre.

When I originally played FF6 I was, well, young. I believe at that age language has a much more figurative space in the mind & there's a great deal less literal assessment of any given word or phrase. This is one reason why the nitpicking is harsher when I (and probably others) re-examined the content of writing of FF6. Replaying the title now I can very much tell when a joke that was probably very endearing in Japanese falls like a stone in the English translation. I can tell when there was probably some sexual innuendo that got chopped right out of the writing because of the last few generations of religious right reactionary activism that dug in its heels on issues of censorship to protect the precious children that shall never go through puberty 'till God and State say they're right & ready.

Are these gaff's worth nashing of teeth and rending of threads? Not really, no. But it's not as if they are of artistic merit; and if those of us that are the types still discussing these things to death years after relevance & possibly having some vague influence on the influence that shapes iterative works I believe it worth noting that writing could and should be better.

This post has been edited by drivebymessiah on 28th May 2016 07:58

Quote (drivebymessiah @ 28th May 2016 02:56)

When I originally played FF6 I was, well, young. I believe at that age language has a much more figurative space in the mind & there's a great deal less literal assessment of any given word or phrase. This is one reason why the nitpicking is harsher when I (and probably others) re-examined the content of writing of FF6.

I never thought of this but you might be onto something here.

This would kinda explain why we're more accepting of imperfections in stories in our youth.

Incidentally, I also desire to stay in or return to this mindset myself -- a less judgemental, more accepting, and arguably more holistic way of enjoying fiction.

I've occasionally railed against people who take to the internet just to rage about their favorite anime series to hate, for example. It's like, not fun at all.

(An alternative hypothesis of mine is that somehow at that age we're just engaging our imagination more, and rather than looking at story or setting as an analytical outsider, we're basically putting ourselves into the work and creating our own fantastical vision of the work, basically acting as a co-creator and personalizing the experience for ourselves, thereby making the work feel so much more meaningful.)

--------------------

current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal

finished so far this year:
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins