CoN 25th Anniversary: 1997-2022
Finally Fantasizing -OR- The FF Progress Thread

Posted: 28th August 2017 14:09

*
Black Waltz
Posts: 900

Joined: 12/7/2011

Awards:
Member of more than ten years. Celebrated the CoN 20th Anniversary at the forums. Member of more than five years. User has rated 25 fanarts in the CoN galleries. 
The idea was too big to fit in the subject line, but it goes like this: 1) Determine which FF was the last you played before browsing over to CoN. 2) Determine where you started and stopped playing. 3) Speak extemporaneously about what you played through, if possible.

I was playing FF6 and started a new game, playing up through the first exit to the world map outside Narshe.

FF6 doesn't want to lull you into any false sense of security at all. It breaks very heavily with tradition in this way, beginning in an even darker fashion than FF4, which did not end before a couple Black Mages and a White Mage got deep 6'd. You have to go pretty dark, in order to top that, but FF6 doesn't even have a title screen with a happy theme music to show you before informing you that this world once got burned to a crisp, and it's kind of in danger of it happening again if you know what a giant low pitch bell tolling over and over means, in music scoring parlance. If you are lost here; giant low pitch bells tolling are never good.

You should remember, if you've been around CoN for any length of time, that FF1, FF4, and FF6 used to be the only FF games from the pre-7 era that were given a domestic release. With Anthology on PSX we were brought a sort of slapdash translation of 5, but it sold well enough to the point where FF Origins was next up, and brought us 2. 3 didn't come out here until it was remade for the DS in 3-D and the NES version still has no official localization to this day.

But the idea I'm trying to get across to you is that I had no way of knowing that this game did not immediately follow FF4, so when I saw Terra for the first time, it was only natural for me to think of Rydia, the only other person with green hair and magic powers I had known in the series. If I hadn't seen a preview in EGM months beforehand, I might've thought it was Rydia until the game told me different, which it waits a while to do.

Why was she changed from Tina to Terra? Woolsey probably thought people named Tina or who knew people named Tina were more common than people named Terra. If you see a character in a fantasy story with a name you are familiar with, it can be weird, as I understand it. Fantasy stories are meant to draw someone out of the mundane world they normally exist in. I've read various takes on the subject over the years, and the prevailing thought seemed to be that in Japan nobody is ever named "Tina" so it sounded odd, but you might run into a waitress at your local eatery whom bore the name Tina in America, so a more 'exotic' sounding name was given to the Green Haired Destroyer of Worlds and Mistress of the Riot Blade; that way, she doesn't sound like she wants to know if you want room in your coffee for cream.

While FF4 has its share of people getting took out in the intro, FF6 has a bit longer of an introductory sequence where you're riding mechs, and man these mechs (referred to in-universe as 'MagiTek Armor') are really good at making living things dead. FF4 introduces you to monsters as abhorrent abominations that you take out with Fir-Bomb and Lit-Bolt. FF6? You're basically starting the game by being forced against your will to commit a war crime.

I've always been fond of the scene between Arvis and Locke, for the simple reason that you get to hear Locke's theme for the first time, and this sort of swashbuckling hero business is not something FF usually goes in for. But something about Locke just clicks. He's a cool character, wizened and sharp, but without any of the strange characteristics those types of characters which came along later had (Barrett's borderline-racist portrayal, or Vincent's emo-ishness if you want, though Locke can be a bit emo too, Irvine's annoying airheadedness, Zidane's tail and tendency to grope women).

Locke is a character whom, essentially, moves the plot forward by getting stuff done. This is one of the reasons he seems so effective when you first are playing the game. Later characters majorly outstrip his ability to deal damage, and frankly, even Terra is better at it when he first shows up; it's not like Locke knows how to burn things with his mind.

But he rescues the damsel in distress from her would-be captors, slings her over his shoulder and charges for the secret exit that only he knows about, being the seasoned Treasure Hunter he is.



--------------------
X is blue.
Post #213326
Top
Posted: 28th August 2017 22:32

*
Crusader
Posts: 1,531

Joined: 19/6/2009

Awards:
Member of more than ten years. Celebrated the CoN 20th Anniversary at the forums. Member of more than five years. 
I don't fully understand but i'm playing ff legends 3.

FF legends 3 has a bigger story/World etc than previous games and it starts off with the world being flooded and people dying which is quite the scene for a old game.It has people turning into monsters and losing control which makes me think of that scene where prince edge of eblan in ff4 had to fight his father and mother with cecil and the team.

I think ff legends 3 is the first game to actually have multiple worlds and ways of exploration, making it the first game in the ff series to have multiple ways of travelling.It even has boat travelling and 1 different dimension aside from past/present and future.

Of course the reason to have so many places is that the worlds are smaller and you need more things to do to explore because back then the worlds were populated with only a couple of towns per place.Chrono trigger more advanced but had similar world structure of small amounts of places.

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 28th August 2017 22:33

--------------------
We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Post #213327
Top
0 User(s) are reading this topic (0 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
0 Members: