I'm going to be posting numerous arguments/rants/blurbs/editorials/etc. here for why FFVI is the best in the series/why it all went downhill after. Consider it the forum equivalent of an old man yelling from his porch.



Part 1: Fidelity

Part 2: Characters

Part 3: Aesthetics

Part 4: Peak

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 18th January 2013 23:11

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Let me talk to you about fidelity...


Oh my GOD! What's wrong with your face?!

Fidelity is fancy-pants shorthand for visual detail (i.e. 'better graphics') and most recently, it's become a big topic for videogame development as a lot people in the industry are talking about the possibility of creating videogame characters that are photorealistic. While this isn't very likely for a lot of pretty obvious reasons, it's also a claim that's practically as old as computer generated visual effects. Always we think we've broken past The Uncanny Valley and always we turn out to be wrong. Why is it we can't seem to learn our lesson, and what the %*($ does it have to do with FFVI?

I'm getting there, don't worry. Anyway...

The reason videogame developers keep making this claim of breaking through the photoreal barrier is because they don't realize photo realism requires an equal amount of animated realism and so we end up with games featuring exponentially more detailed characters, but still using animation from the last generation of videogames. Videogame screenshots are now writing checks their animation can't cash. It's a problem of cohesion, where all the elements that we are presented with - the image, the animation and the audio - are not in synch with each other because some elements are more detailed than the rest. They don't match. The thing is, just as an image with higher fidelity creates a subconscious expectation of more detailed animation to match it, the reverse is also true. The lower the detail, the lower the expectations and there's more you can get away with without your brain calling bullshit.

Final Fantasy VI was the last in the series to be sprite based and 2D as well as being closer to the ass end of a videogame system generation. It was made with all the benefits of having gone through two system generations and a decade of videogame development that revolved around sprite based visual design. After that was Final Fantasy VII...


...which I don't like very much.

While there's plenty of other reasons for why, a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that the visual cohesion was beginning to break down. The environment was now significantly more detailed, but the characters were still modeled after a simplified sprite ideology and were these strange key-chain versions of their more realistic looking fight models walking around a much more detailed and realistically rendered world. You could argue this as intended to be a throwback to earlier Final Fantasy games, but those games weren't dealing with the same complex thematic content this game was handling and even if they were, they weren't being presented with the same level of fidelity. No matter which way you sliced it, it just didn't match up as well. And it only got worse as the fidelity increased reaching critical mass when the first game in the series was released to feature fully voiced characters. It wasn't pretty.

All this to say that FFVI was basically the zenith of the series in terms of visual cohesion. Through a mixture of circumstance and skill, it ended up being the game that provided the most harmonious presentation. So...why does this matter?

Getting back to what I said about the uncanny valley, we've already established that a lower fidelity image is going to reduce the expectations your brain puts on it. Instead, your brain will fill in the blanks with it's own imagination. This allows the character to feel 'right' to you because your imagination covered a lot of the bases of what the character 'is'. It's the reason Samus Aran was able to have such a specific personality thrust on her by the fandom despite having no such traits occur in her games...until they tried and it blew up in their face. This means that a game like FFVI is providing enough visual detail in its visual design and sprite animations to allow us to acknowledge the ability of these characters to feel emotions, but the sprite medium and text-only delivery of dialog was restrictive enough to force our imaginations to fill in the blanks, whereas later series increased the fidelity, removing more and more of what our minds could make up about the characters. Now we were seeing characters in 3D, removing the imagination of how they moved in 3D space. Now they had voices, removing our own voices we were giving them. We were being given less and less to mold to our own satisfaction, leaving us to use our own personal experiences and expectations in order to relate to the characters in the later entries in the series.

It didn't help that the characters just weren't as good either.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 23rd December 2012 19:48

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I've always wondered exactly why FFVII left an odd taste in my mouth with its graphics in a way that FFVI did not.

I always felt that the 3D graphics felt into an "uncanny valley" of sorts. Not the same one as a face looking too real and being creepy, but more of a mismatch between the fact that stuff looked very detailed but didn't quite "behave" right. It's like the game was graphically trying to promise me that the game had a very realistic interface, but then didn't deliver on it. Alternatively, the game was trying to tell me to take its graphics as is, rather than as an abstraction with which to use my imagination--but then showing me stuff that really should be an abstraction rather than an explicit display of whatever.

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Later games became about graphics too.The snes and psx still had some good games, but i dare you guys to call FFXIII a good game, cause that would be quite a joke.

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At first glance, I thought this was quite an interesting explanation - and I even thought "that explains why I initially disliked FFX so much".

Now, I'm not disputing the theory of the uncanny valley; but I'm not sure it really applies here. Not for me, anyway. The reason I disliked X was not the poor cohesion due to the voices, but the fact that Tidus was voiced as a whiny Californian surfer brat (no offence to Californians, it just didn't work for me). I'm not sure that is so much the Uncanny Valley, as basic irritation.

As for the VI vs VII argument, I can see a lot of strength in the fact that VI had the benefit of being the peak of a generation, whereas VII did not. It's certainly true that VI had the best graphics it could; whereas VII had an odd mix, almost certainly limited by technical capability.

But is that an Uncanny Valley issue? Or is it just a matter of taste and preference? To me, the Uncanny Valley doesn't trigger by anything in videogames to date (except maybe stuff by Quantic Dream). This is partly because I don't think they have yet reached the necessary level, photorealistically; but it is also because the interaction is too contrived. I know I'm playing a game. I know it's not real. I know it's an animation. Just in the same way that a real-life humanoid-but-clearly-inhuman robot does not trigger the Uncanny Valley. I don't feel that the Uncanny Valley would begin to apply until the point where my brain starts to question the possibility of the 'almost human'.

I guess I'm not really weighing in on the VI vs VII issue - I'm just not sold on the application of the Uncanny Valley.

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FFXIII is a good game and I enjoyed it immensely, I know others who did also.
* puts two fingers up *
Oh and mainstream/high budget games have always been 'about the graphics '

FVII's visuals were so primitive that calling them uncanny would be like calling lego uncanny. You can definitely argue that it looks bad, like any early 3D era title. I certainly agree with Nway's point about animation not matching up to the graphical capacity, when it comes to modern games, but does it really apply here?

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 17th December 2012 13:23

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But XIII was trying to be different, and ended up abandoning everything that makes an rpg an rpg.
FF6, 7, 8 and 9, and 10 still had stuff, and XIII abandoned towns, shops, people to talk to, and you had a really lousy sphere system that didn't give any customization.

FF6, and especially tactics gave you massive customization.

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The sphere system actually you an arseload of customization. Much more so than FFVI.

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I know I took the bait but.. I'm sure OP wasn't intending this thread to be another xiii war.

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I'm talking about XIII, and it was a linear progression sherrick.You couldn't level up as much as you wanted, and in FFX, the characters all became about limit breaks.In ff tactics and 7, you had more you could do to win than press x to win.

6 had static characters with very different abilities, like:Terra's morph increases her spell power, or gau can be used to be massively overpowered in the early game, or Sabim is best against bosses.I'd compare it to ff4 and 9 class system, but a little less rigid.

Oh yeah:Sorry for going off topic, please don't place anymore warnings under my name.

Not trying to start any FFXIII flame war, i just think that ff6 and old games after succeeded, because they didn't stray too far from their roots, and forget they are meant to be rpgs.

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 17th December 2012 15:29

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Glad you brought all this up, because it made me realize I had forgot to touch upon the other aspect of fidelity. I didn't want to give the impression that all the characters after FFVI were nestled in the deepest abyss of the uncanny valley, but that as the fidelity increased with each new game in the series, they were getting closer and closer to it, leading to a reduction in empathy for the characters as the games wore on. Which again, is only one aspect of the problem. I've now updated the original post with more wall o text. It's in bold so you don't have to search for it.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 17th December 2012 15:23

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Can the Uncanny valley apply to a character's personality then? in more than just the visual aspect of imitating life.

I'll agree that a lot of Samus' appeal was in her silence, however some of her character traits were inferred in other ways, Other M butchered the character because it took a total U-Turn on the tough, independent Samus that fans were used to playing. My point is that it wasn't the act of attempting to give her personality that ruined it, rather the attempt itself was godawful and contradicted everything about Samus we knew before.

Enjoying your discussion thus far though Nway, it's certainly food for thought.

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The uncanny valley issue is probably a bit like tastes; it probably varies from person to person.

That said, I think that the way games are featuring more and more cinematics these days seems to want to make me think they're photorealistic, while being not.


Actualy, one issue I had with FFVII's visuals was the jarring transition between gameplay-rendered stuff and FMVs. Not to mention the detail difference between character polygons and scene backgrounds (including FMVs where characters were featured).

I hypothesize that, had they actually gone and made the FMV's extremely-detailed and prerendered, it might have worked out better, because then there would be such a big gap between gameplay visuals and FMV visuals that it would "clarify" in the player's mind that the gameplay visuals are just abstractions.



I think that's more so "character derailment" than "uncanny valley". Though I think uncanny valley could apply to the gap between expectations of functional realism and lack thereof.

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So blinge and narratorway, would you like the idea of voice acting in ff6? I think the mistery of not knowing what everyone sounds like, is better than butchering ff6 with bad voice actors, and stereotypes that turn characters that people love, into things fanboys of other ffs generalise into, like kefka.I think kefka was better in the original ff6, and kh turned setzer into a jerk for no reason, which is why i fear a remake.



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Nice topic OP!

The uncanny valley is the phenomenon (if i'm wrong, please correct me) that occurs when a person is uncomfortable with something that is the limit between a real representation of something, yet with elements that allow our reason to identify it as a fake.

In that sense, Im not sure about "uncanny valley" being the case here, just a matter if you prefer a well done "inferior" graphic with a decade worth of advancement, or a tech revolution, that still looks experimental.

In the end, I agree that one of the charms of the old timey jRPG is the fact that they allow the player to participate in the world and char creation, by leaving details to the person's imagination. I hate to quote a The Big Bang Theroy joke, but that was my thought on the subject much before I heard this on that show: Your imagination is the best graphics card. FFVII and other 3D games are not enough simple and cohesive to allow your mind to work, yet they dont deliver anything visually satisfactory.


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This discussion is supposed to be about why Final Fantasy VI is the best of the series, and it seems to have gotten bogged down with the visual representation.

Let's not forget that the SNES cart Final Fantasy VI was sold on had some killer custom sound chips in it; the digital delay and reverb in VI's music are far more pleasant to my ears than their respective counterparts on the PSX. Somehow, the delay and reverb settings of the Playstation processor just don't sound as good to me. It's either that, or the way VII's soundtrack is mixed, or composed, for that matter, that just kind of turn me off.

VI's soundtrack, on the other hand, is just phenomenal. These pieces of music are just thematically powerful, even without the game to play them along with. I could listen to the Final Fantasy VI OST every day for a month and still be pleased with it. VII seems, by comparison, to lack the cohesion, the oomph necessitated by being limited to a 16 bit cartridge.

Which brings me to an important point. Nick Meyer, the director of Star Trek II, makes the point when speaking about that particular film that art tends to thrive under restrictions. Star Trek 1's budget got absolutely out of control, it ended up costing 45 million dollars. It was still immensely profitable, but Paramount wanted a faster, cheaper movie for the sequel. Star Trek II's budget was about 11 million dollars, yet many fans still hail it as the greatest movie in the series.

There is an analog here to Final Fantasy. When Square moved their production of VII to the Playstation, they were essentially increasing their "data budget" (as well as, I imagine, their monetary budget, but that's a separate point). Once they had these oodles and oodles of megabytes to waste on whatever junk they wanted, they removed the restrictions that were forcing them (during VI) to be economical, straightforward, and simple.

VII is a much more complicated piece of software than VI, but due to its massive stature, it tends to lack the emotional punch that VI gave us. I agree with the idea that we connected to the characters better when our mind was filling in the gaps for what they looked like and how they moved, etc. But there's also the old maxim to consider: less is more. Final Fantasy VI did more with less, and Final Fantasy VII comes near to collapsing of its own weight.

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The OP already links to a solid definition of the uncanny valley.

The opinions on this thread are laying heaps of criticism on FVII, almost as if it was a bad game. If this is the case though, then how come VII is one of the most popular Final Fantasies ever made.
'Collapsing of its own weight?' I think we're getting a bit ridiculous here, and may I also remind you that VI was the third attempt at developing a game for the SNES, as the much loved IX was Squares third attempt at working with the newer hardware of the Playstation

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That is because most of the OP statements seem to be of visual aspects, and that other aspects would come later (as if the OP were the one to guide the topic, posting the other reasons later, or at leats, that is what I had thought).

Nice points you make, btw, some of them resembling that reverse engineering of FF VI someone posted here weeks ago. Music in this game is just fantastic.



Sorry, didn't click the link because I'm at work, I must be careful .



most of the comments here regarding FFVII graphics seemed to objectively bring some cons if compared with FFVI (and many others said that some things are a matter of opinion and taste), which is not saying that it is a bad or not popular game. Besides, the topic is about why FFVI is the best, so you should expect people not being in love with VII (note: I really like FFVII and was one of the FFs I most enjoyed playing the first time).

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You're right, I perhaps am being a bit unfair to Final Fantasy VII, and I should say that I did play it when it came out and was obsessed with it for a long time, drawing pictures of the characters in my school notebooks and what not.

But I don't play it anymore. As I've aged, the game's pace (compared with VI, which moves like a bat out of hell) just irritates me. It takes forever to get into a battle, get out of battle, to move between a town and the world map...I have rent to pay. I have food and cigarettes to buy. I have a social life (of sorts). I don't have time to wait for Final Fantasy VII to (paraphrasing Mr. Barret Wallace) "get off its slow-moving ass!"

But VI doesn't waste my time with movies, or loading times, or a long intro. I pick it up, I'm playing it. There. Consider it another point in Final Fantasy VI's favor: its pick-up-and-playability.

I'd also like to comment on the dodgy quality of VII's translation compared with VI, but I'll leave that for someone else.

Edit: I would say, that, in the end-all-be-all, Final Fantasy VII is a close second-best to VI. It's the only contender in the series, really. Final Fantasy IV was very good, but kind of restrictive when it comes to gameplay. There aren't a lot of different ways to play the game.

This post has been edited by Spooniest on 18th December 2012 15:36

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Materia system is fun, but 7 has so many encounters, that it becomes frustrating.

I also think that 6 story arch, and having no central character develops the other characters.I think 6 has a coherent story that is more focused.

I am replaying 7, and am at the temple of ancients part.I am a little frustrated that i can't find better ap from monsters, especially when you have some materia with 80.0000 requirement to level, but i can partly understand maybe square doesn't want you to be that overpowered.I personally think you were being most fair around ff7 spooniest, because why should we need to avoid pointing out flaws from one game, but not the others? A whole lot of people love 9, but there are people who mercilessly bash it.Sure no ff is perfect, and ff6 borrows ideas from others, but so does every game.The important thing, is to add an original touch, so it just avoids being a rip off.

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 18th December 2012 16:03

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I found out an interesting tidbit of information while attempting to write this piece. In FFVII, Cloud Strife is 21 years old. Point of fact, most of the cast are over 20 years old. I did not know nor would I have assumed that because regardless of what age they're said to be, they act like teenagers. Even the ones that I know are older.


Especially the ones that I know are older...

You know what other interesting tidbits I discovered...the majority of the adults in the FFVI cast are around ten years younger than I had always assumed. This is because regardless of how old they're said to be, they act like adults. Even the ones I now know are teenagers.


Not gonna lie...I always thought she was in her thirties...

It's pretty easy by now to figure out where this is going. I loved the FFVI cast a whole lot more than I ever did the casts of the rest of the series, because - for whatever reason - it was the last FF game to feature a cast of grown ass people dealing with grown ass problems in a grown ass manner. The FFVI cast behaved with experience, perspective and at least a modicum of wisdom, all while avoiding the trappings of self-absorption and immaturity that plagued the characters of every game in the series since (with the exception of only one). It made the world more believable and the threat that much more threatening. From the round table discussion in the Returner's HQ to Locke's escape from an occupied city to the political power play mini-game during the Emperor's dinner, at every opportunity, this game had the characters focused on the problem at hand and behaving with the maturity and seriousness that threat demanded. This was war and these were not children fighting it. They were men!


Manly men!

The game understood the need for self-reflection and getting to know the personal lives of the characters...but it also understood there was a time and place for it with its damn near revolutionary 2nd act. Now, there were some bits of character drama and even one moment that could be considered camp in the 1st act, but it never overshadowed the main thrust of the narrative and more importantly it never compromised the characters' integrity. When they had a magitek gun to their head, you didn't seem them whining about their daddy issues.


The Axis of Emo

FFVI was the last in the series to feature characters that were predominantly proactive and empathetic to needs greater than themselves. FFVI had heroes.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 23rd June 2013 06:46

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Best laugh of my day so far!!

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Ehhhhh. You're comparing slop and manure here.

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Well, my opinions are just for myself. I really don't like FFVII that much; I've tried enjoying it but it just doesn't engage me quite the way FFVI has.

In fact, I think one major reason is this:


FFVI isn't even that fast; FFIV is arguably faster. And maybe Super Mario RPG, which is about the same speed as FFIV.

FFVII, on the other hand, slowed down the action with dramatic swirly and other animations in random battles that were big deals. I never liked random battles being big deals. One of my favorite things about i90east's FFVI hacks is that he turned off the battle music for random battles with three or fewer enemies, if I recall correctly. Random battles are supposed to be small blips, because there are just so many of them--this isn't like a tabletop RPG where random battles really are big freakin' deals (when run right at least).

And the trend of big-deal random battles with time-consuming animations and such seems to have continued through at least FFX. So i know I don't like that.

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You are not the only one .

Now that you mention it, I've always been bothered by the melodrama of some post FFVI main char, but never realized how VI was different in that regard. Great job!

Something that, for me, makes FFVI stand above other entries, and is somehow related to what was already stated here, is that FFVI is about people, and not so much about facts/happenings.

The story may not be complex and intricate as some other RPGs (Xenogears), but the game does a great job showing how the party individuals have problems, REAL problems (the loss of a family member/entire family, finding your place in the world), and yet thrive in a world ruined and hopeless, represented by Kefka and his desire for destruction. That makes the game more deep, I guess.

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The funny thing about that is how little actual dialogue the characters got in the game. In that FFVI reverse design thing, they mention that Locke is the chattiest character in the game, and, really, even he doesn't get that much to say. Character-wise, FFVI was backed up a lot by Uematsu's incredible work on the score, which, due to the whole game's operatic theme, worked out much better than in other games. The project also talks about the way Kefka, as a villain, gave the game a unity, since they made it so easy to hate him, thus giving greater characterization to everyone else, without having them say or do all that much.

Still, it's strange to me that such a large cast of characters could be considered better defined than a smaller one. That said, I don't disagree, necessarily that they aren't, and that in VII and beyond, the characters were pretty lame (even IX, which gets so much praise in this department, has some serious holes and problems, although it's much better than every FF around it, in a lot of respects). I would still have to say the best defined characters of the series came from IV, which is another reason I think it's my favorite game of the series. But that's pre-VI, so it's a moot point here .

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Final Fantasy VI seems larger than Final Fantasy VII because the characters move across the screen so quickly and fluidly. When I play Final Fantasy VII I feel like I'm underwater (to say nothing of the gameplay that takes place underwater), and even if it takes comparable time to navigate things (I'm of the opinion that it takes longer), the slow speed at which you move makes it feel smaller. There's an almost claustrophobic element to the town and dungeon layouts, like you're confined to a very narrow path that only occasionally branches.

Final Fantasy VI's simplicity trumps again. It feels wide, open, accessible.

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I'm going to ask you a question and you're going to think you know the answer.

...but your going to be wrong.

What is this?


Now you're going to say it's a gunblade, because this is a final fantasy forum and if you've created an account here to post a response, it's a safe bet you know a thing or two about the franchise.

...but your wrong.

That is not a gunblade because gunblades are not real things. No, that image up there...that is what child logic looks like. That is a representation of everything wrong with the franchise's post-FFVI aesthetics because it is an image that should not be expected to be taken seriously...and yet it does.

When I got into the nitty gritty about visual cohesion, that was a technical discussion about how visuals function, but aesthetics are a much smokier poison to wade into because we're dealing with personal preferences, so let's start with a solid foundation so you can see where I'm coming from. Now, there's a common wisdom among the do's and don'ts of storytelling which says the characters that inhabit a story must be relatable for the audience to be engaged by them. It's easier to get engaged by a character whose behavior you can relate to your own personal experiences. Not exactly rocket science, but as a concept, this applies to really every aspect of a story, including - in the case of a visual medium - its aesthetics.

Now FFVI marked a radical shift in the series from an aesthetic that, while it certainly increased fidelity with each new game, never actually changed much beyond the faux eastern european fantasy trappings with a heavy emphasis on bright green and blue color palattes. FFVI eschewed the primaries almost entirely for a gold/purple motif and even before the world went to hell, it tended to dull or darken any primary colors it was forced to present. The setting itself was also almost a complete departure from vague fantasy realm trappings to the strikingly specific 2nd industrial revolution. It was a setting so unique I wouldn't see it again for nearly ten damn years.


Baz Luhrmann took significant liberties with the source material...

Now this obviously paid off for Square, but I think they took the wrong lesson away due to...well, frankly bad timing. See, here's the thing, FFVI was made...maybe not during the eve of the SNES, but definitely far enough into its cycle that a new FF for the system was unlikely. They were prepping for the next gen and hardware with a lot more power and they'd eventually realize an added dimension. All this extra power along with the newfound freedom of being able to depart from the standard fantasy visual setting leads me to believe they kinda got big headed about how much they could get away with.

After FFVI was a distinct and noticable shift visually from fantasy into science fiction and I'm not just talking about FFVII here. Again with the one exception, every game after FFVI featured a visual design that wasn't connected to any era in human history. FFVII was actually damn near reserved in it's alien visual aesthetics compared to the worlds and visual designs that'd eventually come from games like FFVIII and FFX.

So how can creating something new be such a detriment? Well, because it's not relatable. We have no anchor to get our bearings on this new world and how it works from a visual perspective because it doesn't relate to any experience we have in our own personal lives. This is typically the reason a movie that takes place in a completely alien world (John Carter/Avatar) will feature a 'blank-slate' protagonist who has no idea how all this functions. He's meant to be the character the audience can project their feeling of confusion on and relate to his unfamiliarity with his environs because they're unfamiliar with it too. FFVIII didn't have this because I think they underestimated just how off-kilter their visual design was.


Flying buildings are perfectly relatable!

So they made the main character in FFX the odd man out from a visual design that was the furthest they'd gone so far. The problem was that - aside from being a total...a poor character - he originated from a place that was also entirely alien to the audience. Zanarkand didn't have a familiar visual motif to it and Blitzball wasn't analogous to any sport that has ever existed...ever. Being a total...a poor character didn't help...

It also didn't help that the games were still called Final Fantasy and still played to certain genre conventions that just got more and more strained as the games wore on. FFVII was practically self-aware in the way the very first battle you fought with your sword weilding main guy was against guards with automatic machine guns, but suspension of disbelief got taken behind the woodshed with the concept of the goddamn gunblade!

This isn't to say FFVI didn't have it's moments of disparity. It had machines that cast magic for crying out loud, but at the very least the game tried to explain it away with the concept of magitek and it played a central part in the plot, so you couldn't argue it was just thrown in either.


It was FFVI's Mass Effect more than ten years before that was a thing.

It also had such visual hiccups mitigated by a setting that - overall - was relatable because it represented an era in human history that actually existed and allowed breathing room for fantasy genre conventions. Swords and magic could make sense in FFVI because it was the beginning of the industrial era and you could argue visually this taking place in a period of transition between the two.

In essence FFVI was the first attempt Square made at creating a completely different aesthetic for their series and regretfully, the last time they'd get it so right.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 11th January 2013 07:42

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Really enjoying your thread!! Keep it coming!

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Yeah, the railroaded "you can only exit the screen from here or here or here and that way is blocked by a pile of junk" is definitely a VERY different feel from the sprite-based thing were you can just move around and see stuff...I know it looked less realistic, but I think that is another example of what some of us have been saying about the difference between stuff looking realistic and and fostering expectations of realism while not delivering on them.

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