Because posting in the BoF2 thread made me realize just how in love with this game I still am, even after 14 years.
Why is it such a masterpiece? A lot of games have great music and graphics, a lot of games have great plots, character development, and battle systems. FFVI obviously had all of those, ESPECIALLY for its time.
But there’s also something more. For me, more important than having individually good plots, characters, and visuals, is the way they all meshed to create the greatest game of its generation and probably the greatest game I’ve ever played to this day. The only others that come close are Suikoden II and Final Fantasy VII.
Most of the RPGs I’ve played since then have had individually great things about them, but nothing has ever been as complete and polished as VI. The elements aren’t just there, they actually have CHEMISTRY. And I think that’s something game directors should be paying more attention to, because most the games I’ve played recently seem like they have it all together at first, but end up being pretty incoherent and boring in the long run.
The layout isn’t showing, but you can read the text.
I think that the characters of both Final Fantasy VI and Suikoden II show a variety of recognizable character types. On one hand, they are generalized archetypes, but on the other hand, those archetypes are “taken from real life” in some sense, so it is possible to think of them as people. Suikoden II feels like a work of historical fiction that just happens to be set in a fictional nation - Shu, for instance, somewhat resembles the depiction of Richelieu in The Three Musketeers.
I personally find that FF6 is overrated. Yes it was a good game for its time and it would be an incredible game if they gave it a proper face lift with good voice acting, but I don’t feel any particularly deep connections with anyone. I feel the first world is just one of those save the world things (well done but well done and better in other games) and the 2nd world is a painful treck to go through shallow characterization.
Personally, I dread the day when they will try to give the game a “face lift.” The visuals are very specific, and unlike any other Final Fantasy game. The use of muted earth tones is very effective. If they remade it, they’d probably give it a bright colour scheme with super-deformed sprites, thus raping the memories of my youth very hard. It would require a very unconventional artist/director to remake the visuals in a modern way while retaining the intention of the original. It wouldn’t be impossible, I suppose, but I don’t see it happening.
I disagree. I was apprehensive of FFIV DS and it turned out to be an EXCELLENT remake. It portrayed the game beautifully. This is similar to the DQ8 cel shading upgrade for the PS2, which captured the spirit of the DQ series perfectly. If they made it, I would buy FFVI for Xbox 360 without blinking.
FF4 is very different from FF6. It’s much simpler. As SG put it, it’s a children’s adventure story, and it can do perfectly well with a bright colour scheme with super-deformed sprites (although I think a lush 2D portrayal is better for that). FF6 can’t, because it actually uses graphics, sound and set design to create atmosphere. In order to remake it correctly, one would have to understand what the atmosphere is and how it was evoked in the original. It’s not impossible (whoever designed Lea Monde in Vagrant Story might be capable of doing it), I just find it more likely that they’ll lazily copy the same strategy they used to remake FF4.
You’re just being a cranky old man that doesn’t want to upgrade to new technology. Of all companies, SE has proven that it is capable of keeping to the spirit of the games and to be faithful to the source material without losing the touch.
These things you’re so worried people might fail at doing, you would be surprised to see how commonplace they are becoming. The past year of games has been incredible in that regards. Atmosphere, design, ambiance, there has never been anything like it up to now. Good times are ahead of us.
I’m not a big fan of the FFIV DS remake. It was too goofy, even for FF4. The characters had tiny bodies and huge heads, and although they were 3d-ish, there was very little attention to detail, and they changed way too much of the actual game for it to be a legitimately good remake. It was like comparing Starcraft to Warcraft III. WC3 was 3d, but the graphics and systems were still shit compared to SC, if you can see where I’m coming from. IMO, they did lose touch with FFIV and, like SK, I’d be afraid of seeing what they do to VI.
Uh, no, not really - if anything, SE has shown its willingness to milk old games in the franchise to the point of absurdity (the endless ports of the NES and SNES FF games, FFX-2, the FF7 sequels). The only genuinely new idea they’ve had recently to balance out that trend was The World Ends With You. If we only look at the reissues they’ve done so far, the quality varies widely.
In particular, FF4 Advance was very good (I’ll take your word for it regarding the DS version, apparently that was also good), FF5 Advance was okay, and FF6 Advance was worse than the original. The reason was precisely what I said above - FF4 and FF5 are simple games which don’t require anything more complicated than a slight gameplay tune-up, and work perfectly well with cartoony visuals. FF6 doesn’t, and was harmed by the inferior sound quality and bright colours. That’s all.
I’ve given detailed reasons why FF6 is special in everything I have ever written on the subject. You don’t have to agree with them, but no, it’s not enough to dismiss them as “cranky.” If they’re “cranky,” they’re a pretty goddamn well-argued version of “cranky.” And again, if they find someone who can do all these things, I’d be quite pleased to see it. But no, I don’t think something needs a “face lift” just because it’s old, any more than I think old novels should be rewritten because we’ve discovered better ways of writing novels since then.
It was sort of reverse irony - you started the game thinking the characters were what you were used to, but they become more complicated. For instance, at the beginning of FF6, Locke seems the typical optimistic rogue hero so common in rpgs. And then from there you find out he has a psychological issue where he seeks to protect women… Then you find out he’s got his dead girlfriend preserved in the basement of his house. And with only a few cutscenes they’ve turned the character on his head. Or, the quintessential example would be Cloud from FF7, where you start off thinking he’s the silent badass from countless animes, but he turns out to have been a complete fake and his personality is actually made vulnerable and complex. They take the archetype of the silent and strong warrior and give him the psychological profile of an insecure teenage rpg-player - pure brilliance. I had a longer discussion with Xwing about that, which is probably somewhere on the Main Forum.
The reason why FF6 is so good is the same reason I feel the same way about FF7, which is the excellent interplay of characters. Its certainly not because of the gameplay, which is ridiculously sloppy and inconsistent(rom hackers have proven that the ‘Evade’ statistic does nothing!) Though, FF7 has the added benefit of being a wondrous satire of late 20th century America. A sentiment that probably deserves its own thread.
The characters of FFIV I felt were good attempts to repdroduce the artwork that gave rise to FFIV, Amano’s original designs. The areas of FFIV are unquestionably very well done and some of the best the DS has to offer graphically.
I say your old and cranky because you’re stubborn about adopting new technology and don’t want to realize that things like mood and atmosphere are things that are already being addressed. The quality of game design has gone up tremendously in very recent times in order to meld gameplay with story. As I mentioned with DQ8, SE is very well capable of creating a game that is faithful to its predecessor’s history.
I don’t consider FF5 and 6 advance to be remakes, but re-releases. FFIV DS is appropriately a remake because they remade the game from the ground up. They didn’t just swap the translation and add a bonus dungeon.
Edit: What Curtis said about Locke is what I find frustrating about FFVI. It has these things which are interesting but the game doesn’t flow very well into it and so it breaks the drama. It ends up being too cut and dry and lacking in impact and thus ultimately shallow.
On a final note, I’m not saying that your argument of why FF6 is special is why you’re being cranky. I’m saying that your stubborness and refusing to believe that it can properly be updated is.
My opinion is based on their other reissues. I greatly enjoyed FF4 Advance. However, instead of approaching FF6 Advance individually, they used the same strategy they used for FF4 and FF5 - they speeded up the game, rewrote the script and used bright colours. The same strategy that works for FF4 doesn’t work for FF6. I’ve exhaustively explained why, many times.
For FF4 DS, their strategy was to use cartoony, super-deformed sprites. I’m not really opposed to that. FF4 can do fine with deformed 3D sprites. My concern is only that, if they try to remake FF6, they’ll just repeat the strategy they used for FF4 only because it worked there, since that’s exactly what they did with the Advance games. This won’t work for FF6.
I’m not denying that the quality of game design has gone up. But I don’t see why that’s a good argument for the necessity of remaking old games. The quality of novel-writing has also gone up, but this is not a reason for remaking old novels. The quality of movie-making has gone up, but the overwhelmingly vast majority of remakes of old movies are appalling. If something is the perfect expression of an outdated form, I think it’s better to leave it be rather than try to adapt it to a new form. I’d much rather SE spend its time coming up with more games like The World Ends With You than re-releasing yet another version of FF6.
Not to put words in SK’s mouth, but it seems like he believes it could be properly done… just that SE would probably screw it up if they tried to approach it like any other remake they’ve done.
I would favor ‘special editions’ a la Star Wars where they add more scenes but don’t change anything about the existing plot and dialogue. This would be even more applicable for FF6 where the storyline rushes through the World of Ruin.
I dunno man, I think over-explaining things can ruin them. The LotR novels would’ve benefited from being more cut and dry, for example. FFVI was just subtle, and allowed for your mind to fill in the blanks, and that’s one of the things that made it so powerful, especially if you first played it when you were as young as I was.
There is very little changed cosmetically between the ff4,5,6 and ff4,5,6 advance so complaining about cosmetic changes in those games is pointless. This is like complaining about any different between DQ4 PSX and DQ4 DS.
Therefore the only changes that are relevant are FF4 DS and DQ8 because they are substantial changes to the series and are recent. Saying they’ll redo FF6 like FF4 DS is a baseless argument for the simple reason that nothing has been said about it and arguing over something they’re not doing is stupid.
What I am saying is that the game would greatly benefit from the kind of polish that FF4 DS and DQ8 received in comparison to their predecessors.
Comparing FF6 to books is comparing apples to oranges and the same goes for movies. If you want to complain about movie remakes, you have to look at who the person remaking the movie is. For example, the guys who remade Casino Royale did an excellent job reviving the Bond genre. However, other Bond movies will not be made by the same guy. In order to know if you can consistently make new remakes that are of good quality, you have to have the same person work on the same products, which is something you rarely ever see. What we have are jack offs every ejaculating their crap on everyone and calling it a work of genius. No one will care about recreating a silent black and white movie to tell a story like it was told in the silent black and white story. What would happen with modern technology is add voices, add the proper setting to main the original intent, etc etc. Ultimately, to create an enhanced version of the original product so the audience actually feels emotion, the drama, etc.
edit: I don’t want fill in the blanks, I want a flowing, cinematic experience. Not breaking the 4th wall.
Edit: What Curtis said about Locke is what I find frustrating about FFVI. It has these things which are interesting but the game doesn’t flow very well into it and so it breaks the drama. It ends up being too cut and dry and lacking in impact and thus ultimately shallow.
Yeah… the characters have interesting arcs and premises, but they’re not really developed enough. At least not enough for my tastes. This is especially apparent in the World of Ruin, where every character gets their one “I’ve conquered my demons” cutscene and that’s it. For instance, the entire resolution to the Locke-Celes relationship is Locke walking out of the house with all the stuff he stole, showing that he’s back to his old self. That’s the only cutscen they have together in the entire second half of the game. Pretty disappointing.
I’m gonna say straight up, that if they did remake FFVI, it better be for 360 or greater, and have as much effort put into it as any new game being built from the ground up does. That’s what it would take to make it a successful remake imo.
I want the game to retain its ESSENCE. I want to feel like I’m playing the same game, even if the words and images entering my mind are a little different. I agree with SK that it’d take a man of unrivaled skill to do something like that, and I don’t have faith in SE if FFIV DS is the best they could come up with for a remake. If you’re gonna remake VI, you’d better be sure you’re not just ruining it.
