Final Fantasy VI is Great: The CoNcast Episode 11

Posted on Wednesday 31st July 2013 at 18:03 by Rangers51

As promised earlier today, we've got a nice little snippet of a podcast for you. It's shorter than usual, and probably a little more roughly edited, but we wanted to give folks some media to listen to both because it's a big day for us here at CoN, but also because I'm going on vacation soon and didn't want to leave our many subscribers hanging.

Today's episode, in honor of both CoNniversary and the relaunch of the Final Fantasy VI section, is just about how great Final Fantasy VI really is. Obviously, this could cover a great many podcasts (and over time, I suspect it will!), but for today we just wanted to talk a little, in broad strokes, about the things that made us all fall in love with it over the years. For this, we got the original CoNcast group together for the first time in a few months, and I, Tiddles, lasz and DP spend an afternoon touching on a few things that keep us coming back to the game.

This one is a nice quick listen, so if you've never tried one of our podcasts before, or just love Final Fantasy VI, you should give it a try in honor of the site's 16th birthday. Let us know what you think and we'll be back with a new episode in a few weeks!

Source: The CoNcast Subscription Feed, The CoNcast on iTunes

Posted in: CoNcasts

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Rangers51

CoN Webmaster

Member Since: 1997-07-31

News articles posted: 558

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Comments

Glenn Magus Harvey

Comment 1: 2013-08-17 02:21

I first played FFVI as FFIII US in my last years of high school and actually had heard of the big mid-game climax so one of the fun things was that I stopped playing shortly before I went off to university, then finished sometime after that. And after I finished the game, I joined my first two internet forums, both related to FFVI. CoN was one of them.

I think that the comment in the podcast about FFVI being a "bridge" between the older and newer generations of FF games is spot-on. FFI started off the series on a more stereotypical fantasy story with class choice customization, while FFII tried to present a more plot-heavy experience (with some other controversial gameplay elements). III and IV continued to alternate class customization and storytelling focus, but both still had lots of stereotypical fantasy elements.

Starting with V, and matured with VI, the series began featuring a more custom-built setting. Even in V we no longer have a story of the heroes stopping the villain from taking over the world and having close calls with it time and time again. FFVI took this one step further and instead of just having moogles and legendary sealed weapons and series lore, it used a whole custom setting with steampunk influences and political intrigue and more. FF games each with a custom (not generic fantasy) setting would become the norm from here on forward. The story wouldn't be something to justify innovative gameplay, nor would the gameplay just be something to allow the player to advance the story -- after FFVI and FFVII, gamers had the expectation that a FF game ought to have a deeply emotional story of epic scope, like a novel or a movie.

And that includes the soundtrack, of course. As you noted in the podcast, reusing distinctive musical motifs -- such as in "sad versions" of character themes -- was a development that accompanied the rise of the epic Final Fantasy narrative. The soundtrack of FFIV was much more stereotyped and simply fit-to-the-occasion -- notice the uneven use of character themes, where certain characters had themes that recurred frequently but others didn't even have themes -- while the soundtrack of FFVI was a part of the storytelling, with pieces like "Coin Song" intentionally evoking a more introspective side of the Figaro brothers.

Of course this went along with the fact that there was more character development in the first place. For example, Cid in FFIV just feels like the hearty engineer who bangs things together and makes stuff happen, but only that. In contrast, Edgar in FFVI features aspects of technical genius, political leader, and inveterate womanizer.

Also, for some reason the opera section didn't do much for me but the opening themes (as well as their altered versions later in the game) are REALLY, REALLY awe-inspiring.

Spooniest

Comment 2: 2013-08-17 05:35

Much too short.

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