Not long ago, Final Fantasy 6: Pixel Replica was released. The so-called pixel reproduction is to use modern pixel technology to re-produce the game of that year, and "Final Fantasy 6" is also the last work of the first to six generations of pixel reproduction plans announced before the series, perhaps because this game is much larger than the previous five games, so the release time is relatively late, and even postponed.
The status of the original "Final Fantasy 6" can be described as very lofty in the entire series, and how popular the original was in the past may still be remembered by many old players.
Released in 1994, the game had the top graphics and rich game experience at the time, which not only triggered a buying boom in Japan, but also became highly sought after in China, and many people even watched the demo of the game and were shocked to the point of being unable to calm down for a long time. And the cassette of the game was also relatively expensive, and the price of the SFC host was also high, so the average person could not buy it to play by themselves, and could only go to the charter room to spend money to play or watch others play, as long as someone was playing "Final Fantasy 6" next to must be full of onlookers.
In the ranking of the best Japanese RPG selected by the game media, Final Fantasy 6 can often rank in the top ten, or even enter the top three, and is undoubtedly a classic masterpiece of Japanese RPG. Players in the Final Fantasy series also often argue about which game is the most classic, usually focusing on 6 and 7, both of which are epoch-making transformations.
So, how good is Final Fantasy 6? Why is it that after more than 20 years, everyone still remembers it? With the release of the pixel replica, let's talk about the excellence of this game.
The performance has been greatly enhanced
Beginning with Final Fantasy 4, the series began to experiment with more changes, one of the major shifts was the enhancement of performance, and finally reached a peak in Final Fantasy VI.
In the first three games of the early Final Fantasy series, the plot was mainly driven by fixed-angle dialogue, more similar to a kind of literary text creation, partly because of functional limitations, and partly because Japanese RPG was still in the exploratory stage at that time.
The emergence of SFC made Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the Final Fantasy series, see the possibility of adding more performative things, and he hoped to make video games as highly watchable as movies, so he recruited Kita shukatsu with the same ideal.
▲ Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the Final Fantasy series
Beishu Jiafan had a father who was an avid fan of movies, and under his influence, he had a great passion for movies from an early age. Star Wars was his favorite, and when he was introduced to the film at the age of 12, his goal in life was to create epic works that even movies could not express. Later, he saw square's job advertisement that read"Let's make a movie-like game", and it was Hironobu Sakaguchi who interviewed Kita shukazu, and more coincidentally, Sakaguchi's favorite movie was also "Star Wars" - a series of serendipitous circumstances, Kita Shuka fan successfully joined SQUARE.
▲ Bei shu Jia Fan realized his life dream in the "Final Fantasy" series
During the development of Final Fantasy 6, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Kita sogyo worked together to bring the game to the pinnacle of the 2D era in terms of cinematic performance.
For example, in the opening prologue of the game, three magic guide mechs walking on the vast snowy field, with sad and beautiful background music, that is, the theme song of the heroine Tina, which left a deep impression on many players. In that 2D flat era, this scene created a sense of space through pseudo-3D, without dialogue, and completely conveyed the atmosphere of the game to the player through the advancement of the camera, which can be said to be a typical expression of the language of the film lens.
And the most performative scene in the game is undoubtedly the performance of the opera house. Although the characters are still all Q version of the villain, various movements are added to enhance the emotional expression, through the movement and impact between the characters to express different emotions, and even the scene of group dance, the character singing bridge section is expressed by simulating electronic vocals.
Because this scene is so classic, square ENIX in Final Fantasy 6: Pixel Replica has also completely remade it with the kind of HD-2D technology in Travelers.
Final Fantasy 6's attempts at cinematic performance were well received and had a profound impact on the future development of the Final Fantasy series. In the later generations 7, 8 and 10, Beishu Jiafan also added a number of highly ornamental cinematic CG clips, many of which became classic bridges, which can be called the valuable wealth of the "Final Fantasy" series.
The breakthrough of the group portrait drama
Before Final Fantasy 6, Japanese RPGs also generally used multi-protagonist settings, but most of them were 4-6 characters, and Final Fantasy 6 unexpectedly designed as many as 14 protagonists, and each protagonist had a distinct personality.
▲ Group portraits of 14 protagonists drawn by Amano Yoshitaka
Depending on the personality of each character, the game designs different combat systems, which is also very new and interesting. For example, Matthew was a fighter, so when it was his turn to fight, he entered commands to scrub moves, which was very similar to the popular fighting game of the time; WestJet was a wanderer who opened a casino in the airship, and his form of fighting was to randomly draw cards with various effects through slot machines.
▲ Matthew's battle requires scrubbing
Musically, Nobuo Uematsu composed different theme songs for each of the 14 characters, each of which has an important connection to the character's personality, and players can recall the corresponding characters as soon as they hear it. The heroine Tina's theme song is sad and confused, which can be said to be a portrayal of her fate; Locke's theme song has a sense of bright humor, reminiscent of the cynicism and humor of the thief character. This practice was also used in subsequent works in the series, such as the theme song of Alice and Tifa in Final Fantasy 7, which also became a classic.
In addition, in terms of constructing the character, Final Fantasy 6 features a lot of colloquial dialogue and psychological descriptions.
The first three works of the "Final Fantasy" series, written by screenwriter Kenshi Terada, pay more attention to the script and pay attention to ideology, the number of dialogues is actually not much but quite philosophical, requiring players to ponder the details and background to piece together information, and the current popular fragmented narrative is somewhat similar.
However, with the development of the times, when making Final Fantasy 4, Sakaguchi Hironobu believed that as the audience expanded, the hardware function should be fully utilized to highlight the performance effect, and the dialogue should tend to be colloquial, focusing more on the description of the character and psychology - this line of thinking was later proved to be correct.
In Final Fantasy 6, the number of dialogues in the game far exceeds the first five games in the series, and many psychological monologues of the characters themselves are wandering, confused and lonely, making it easier for players to empathize, and more adult than previous works, and without a certain life experience, it may not be possible to deeply appreciate the complex feelings of these characters.
▲ Obvious colloquial dialogue
The game ending animation is actually 21 minutes and 36 seconds long, all kinds of flashbacks, character actions, dialogue, interaction, the friendship between the characters is vividly remembered, and the 14 character theme songs are all integrated together, which makes people tired of watching it (I myself have watched this animation dozens of times), which can be said to be a perfect cooperation between Kita shukafan and Nobuo Uematsu, creating one of the most evocative ending animations in the history of this game.
▲ Wonderful ending animation, the details of each character are vivid and delicate
Final Fantasy VI's attempts at a group drama have been hugely successful, as evidenced by the game's enduring fandom after its release, and every character has fans creating fandoms, even characters like Beast Boy Ga and Uma the Snowman are sought after.
▲ In 2018, SE's "Eight Travelers" is also a group portrait drama setting, which can be said to be a spiritual continuation of "Final Fantasy 6"
The artistry of music
The music of Final Fantasy 6 is arguably a milestone in the game's music, presenting a highly artistic style.
The music of the opening title interface is completely different from previous works, no longer pleasing the player with pure beautiful melodies, but through the sound of electronic music such as organs to show the dissonant tone, at that time, few games will adopt such an avant-garde style, which shows how bold Final Fantasy 6 is.
For example, in the scene of the aforementioned classical opera house performance, Nobuo Uematsu composed operable music in the classical style, which also caused a sensation in that year, and a total of four pieces of music can be described as a combination of up and down, which makes people feel a strong dramatic change. Due to functional limitations, the singing part of the original game can not be expressed through real voices, but a vague electronic voice, this pixel reproduction version adds a complete vocal segment, there are 7 different national language versions, but also to make up for the regrets of the year.
▲ This section of the opera house performance is often reproduced at Final Fantasy concerts
In addition, Nobuo Uematsu, as an avid rock lover, also experimented with the fusion innovation of electronic rock and orchestral music in Final Fantasy 6, which was also a groundbreaking event in that year.
For example, the final boss of the war Jeffka's music "Demon Star Dance" is a typical example, in the soundtrack, this song is 17 and a half minutes long, divided into five movements, a large number of electronic organ and electronic rock instruments, showing a crazy sense of evil, sacredness, nihilism, greatly praised by players, but also often appeared in "Final Fantasy" concerts.
And that's not all, SQUARE recruited Shiro Shirō, who had not yet composed for Evangelion (EVA), and Tsuneyoshi Saito, who was already famous for composing music for "Farona of the Firmament", and launched an arranger album "Final Fantasy 6: Grand Finale", the two of whom played the music skills of the academic school, and built the music in the game into a depth close to pure classical music, some of which sounded quite obscure, which can be said to have raised "Final Fantasy 6" The artistic value of music.
Looking back, Nobuo Uematsu may not have treated the music of Final Fantasy 6 as pure game music, but as an important symphony in his life, and its depth and artistic achievement are top notch in the entire game world.
▲ In 2015, the London Symphony Orchestra also held a "Final Fantasy" theme concert, and Nobuo Uematsu said that these music can be interpreted by the London Symphony Orchestra, which seems to him like a dream
A worldview where magic and science fiction merge
The worldview of Final Fantasy 6 also had a huge influence on the later development of Japanese RPGs, because before that, both the Dragon Quest series and the Final Fantasy series itself were a Western fantasy style, telling stories of sword and magic and fighting dragons.
But Final Fantasy 6 attempts to blend science fiction and fantasy, telling the story of an evil empire that uses magic and mechanics to create evil weapons such as magic mechs to rule the world. Therefore, there are many elements of science fiction in this work.
Of course, Final Fantasy 4 has made similar attempts before this, but the worldview of the entire game is still biased towards the magic style, and the sci-fi elements are just an embellishment in it, not as high as the concentration of sci-fi elements in Final Fantasy 6.
Judging from the subsequent works, the 7th and 8th generations also inherited this sci-fi + magic style, and final fantasy 15 was a similar theme later. Japanese RPGs are also far-reaching, as is the case with the setting of conductor technology and guiding magic in Falcom's "Trajectory" series.
▲ "Final Fantasy 7" also has a strong sci-fi color
Write at the end
Final Fantasy 6 has many advantages, and if you want to dig deeper and be pleasantly surprised to discover more commendable things, this is undoubtedly a masterpiece across the ages.
Japanese RPG once ushered in a glorious era on the SFC platform, and after a long period of prosperity, it has slowly declined from the PS3 era, but surprisingly, in recent years, with the emergence of games such as Dawn Breaker and Persona 5, this classic genre has begun to gradually revive.
At this point, when we revisit Final Fantasy 6, we will still be amazed at how much innovation the game has made in such an era when technology was not yet developed, and the artistry and ideology of which are not outdated at the moment, which has a lot to think about for the Japanese RPG that is in the revival stage.
For many veteran players, the touch and shock that Final Fantasy 6 has brought will never fade, and the launch of Final Fantasy 6: Remastered Replica also gives us a great opportunity to relive.