So I looked up Madonna/Madeline's name in the Japanese script and it is Madeline, but it's spelled "mado"-line (ﾏﾄﾞﾘｰﾇ), so the madō connection still works.
I'll wait on my opinion of this game for another episode or two, right now the story is fantastic and while the game does have it's flaws they are easy to overlook.
"and we will seek to eliminate poisons throughout the world" Entire party: Yes, poison is evil and needs to be eliminated *Edgar quietly slides his Bio Blaster into his coat pocket*
“I mean, if you look at our enemies. Their power sources are rather nice: wind, steam, fire, coal…I just can’t think of something worse of a power source than sentient beings subjugated against their will.”
Stahl means “steel” in German, and “Ge-“ is a collective prefix meant to suggest a count noun. So “Gestahl” is the literal embodiment of this steel empire of machines.
I always thought Gestahl's name was a pun/reference to Gestalt psychology, since Kefka's name is oddly similar to Kurt Koffka (a German psychologist who helped develop Gestalt psychology) and Franz Kafka (A German novelist who touched a lot of psychological concepts in his writting). I also think that Locke's name may come from John Locke since with the earlier examples it seems the devs took inspiration from psychology/philosophy.
@@Ekusu7 The locke connection could still be a connection. I'd take a look at what John Locke taught in his philosophies and see if is parallels with Lockes character that will of the. Tell you if it was ment to be an influence on the name.
It's implied the dead espers all turned into the Flan enemies you can run into in the Ifrit/Shiva room. You can steal Magicite Shards from them, so...there you go.
The spell that Celes casts in the Magitek Factory is Warp. She's taking "her party" out of the dungeon with it. It's really a shame they didn't include it among the magic she learns naturally, because that would be a cool bit of gameplay and story integration. After you learn about Celes's betrayal, it paints the opera in a completely different light. The opera is a story about a woman with divided loyalties. Her kingdom wants to adopt the spirit of the West, but she still longs for the hero of the East. (Or maybe I have that reversed.) But when she sings her aria, the first two lines are actually the same melody in two different keys (D major for the first version, and F#minor for the second), because of the accidental written on the G. It's a musical version of her inner conflict! But it's kind of odd, or maybe it's really bold, that they put this moment of (intended?) dramatic irony in the game BEFORE the scene that shows us, the players, the double meaning behind it. It's only upon looking back or playing the game again that we can see how Celes's divided loyalty makes the aria more personal.
Regarding the meaning of the name Gestahl. As a native German I don't associate the word "Gestalt" at all. The h in Gestahl is pretty significant and also changes the pronunciation. Gestahl is much closer to Stahl, the German Word for Steel. Since the Gestahlian Empire is the only industrialized nation in the game, the name is telling. Ge-Prefix however doesn't make any sense at all. If you use it on the word Stahl it turns into gestählt, wich mean steeled. I can image that they just drop the Umlaut, turning an Ä to an A. However Gestahl doesn't use much tanks or armor himself. Anyhow "Stahl" seems way more likely as a reading as "Gestalt" from a German point of view. Keep up the good work!
I think it's a very good analogy that the Empire is like Germany during WW2. A lot of the generals were already in place before the war started and weren't part of the party, so there were generals like Rommel et al that were just doing their jobs. But then you had monsters that were part of the party, and the paramilitary troops that were not part of the regular military, and were more than willing to commit war crimes like Kefka did in Doma against their opponents and POWs.
13:40 Clarification: Jeremy Soule's FF6 OCRemix was for Terra's theme, not Dancing Mad. It's called "Squaresoft Variation" for some reason. Personally, my favorite Terra remix has always been "Terra in Black" from 23 years ago! Also, another great 'industrial-ish' remix of Cid's Factory is "The Megiddo Brigade", arranged 10 years ago by OCRemix founder djpretzel. Sick cello usage! It was part of their FF6:Balance & Ruin album that I keep mentioning in this podcast haha you owe it to yourselves to check it out if you've been away from OCR for decades
You guys have referenced how closely connected FF6 is with opera and with Phantom of the Opera. Just wanted to make sure you didn't miss that the Chord progression of the opening Overture from Phantom of the Opera (that descending and then ascending bit on the pipe organ) is inside the first few seconds of "The Fierce Battle" (the music that plays while fighting Atma Weapon on the floating continent, just before Kefka jacks up the statues.) You can hear that Duuuun Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun Duuuuun (Desecending) and then Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun Duuuuun (Ascending) before dropping back down (descending), and it's almost exactly the same as the opening notes of Phantom of the Opera.
Cid- Oh dear, now that I've been directly confronted with what I'm doing being horrifically evil, I've realized that I no longer want to do it... You don't fool me, banana man.
It is not lost on me that even though in some games he becomes a playable character, Cid usually works with / for the bad guys, if only at first. FF4, 6, 7, 8, 12...
I always wished Maduin got a bit more screen time. They don't ever really acknowledge they are carrying Terra's father with them. Also Madeen from FFIX was used as an homage to these characters. Madeen And Terra Homing
I love how the relationship between Maduin and Madonna/Madeline adds further dimension to the central theme of FFVI (the evening star, the last ray of hope in pitch black darkness). Maduin was the last ray of hope for the despairing Madeline/Madonna, and it is their relationship that gives her a renewed sense to live. It's interesting here that we even get a scene (an abstraction of how Terra was 'created' so to speak) of two evening stars in a sea of pitch black darkness coming together, and giving birth to Baby Terra. Terra is the embodiment of their union, the combination of two worlds (the human and the divine), in a sense the Christ-figure who would reinvigorate the human world on the verge of destruction.
Not only do cranes and mechanical arms have innumerable uses in an industrial society, the Blackjack isn't the only aircraft in the world. You fight the entire Imperial Air Force (IAF) a bit later in the game, including its squadron leader, who is actually named "Air Force". Setzer's and Daryl's ships are only unique as unarmed luxury racing craft that nobody else finds practical or affordable
So on the re-writing script idea... I'm already working on it. I've always wondered what a FF VI movie series would look like. So I decided to start working on FF VI screenplay as a writing project. I'm nearly finished with draft 1 of the 4-part series. Getting into the lore and characters of this game is so much fun. Your commentary and that of many other fans on RUclips really helps with insight into ways to interpret the story. I think, once it's done, I look forward to sharing it with other fans like yourselves. My plan is to make video on it with some storyboarding. Stay tuned.
@@AlastairGames Tough to explain thoroughly in a comment, but my strategy so far is to only make (major) changes to assist in flow and solve some problematic plot holes. I'm finding it doesn't need much, because most of the characters have great underlying themes. So keeping the essence of each character is not only a goal, but pretty easy to keep to as well.
A further point of comparison between Celes and Kefka: Celes was originally intended by the writers to not only be a spy, but also be mentally damaged like Kefka, which might influence our sense of the entire exchange at the Magitek Research Facility. As indicated in a Shmuplations interview: "Staff: In the very beginning of the development, Celes was an Imperial Magitek Knight who pretends to be the player character’s ally. Using magic requires a great deal of mental energy, and the mental strain of it has caused Celes to become unhinged, prone to sudden outbursts of tears and fits of hysteria… this state of mind strengthened her desire to find someone she could rely on: enter Locke, who speaks to and treats her kindly. By the time she is supposed to betray everyone, Celes realizes she has fallen in love with Locke, and the conflict tears her up inside."
I would love to see a remake of this game using the ideas that you presented here. Imagine the pairing of Celes learning how to love herself and repairing her shattered ego with Locke's needing to forgive himself. Love is a powerful emotion that can be a great source of healing.
@@phantom8157 I think there are elements of the original idea that got transposed over to Cloud (the magically-enhanced soldier with the mental instability and episodes of psychosis) and Cait Sith (the traitor who is secretly working for the evil Empire).
@@michs7451 I think you may be right about that. I've heard that the creators of the series often used ideas they weren't able to implement in one game into another
A few thoughts on Kefka's backstory in Vector: I love how we learn about Kefka's backstory ("extraordinary magical power, though with a shattered mind") through a random, totally missable NPC in a bar. This not only lends an air of mystery and intrigue to the character and gives further flavor text to the dungeon that we are about to enter in terms of the Magitek Research Facility, it leads us to wonder if he has, as pointed out here in the podcast, been concealing his power and manipulating the party's impressions of him this whole time. I love how Sakaguchi, Kitase, and the rest of the developers were able to use the general template ("prototype magical soldier with fearsome abilities and a shattered mind") and craft two legendary (and totally different) villains in Kefka and Sephiroth. There's also some resemblance to Xenosaga's Albedo as well. We get some sense that Kefka has been victimized in the past, much like the hapless Espers that he would go on to victimize in the Magitek Research Facility, and, arguably, the lack of further description here and in the rest of the game further fuels the mind to think about what he must have seen for his mind to shatter like this. I personally believe that there's some strong connection here to the Czech absurdist writer Franz Kafka, who is famous for his work The Metamorphosis. The Metamorphosis is a short story of a salesman who inexplicably wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a huge insect (a cockroach-like louse). He realizes that his family does not actually like him very much, that their "love" of him is merely a cipher for their dependence on him for their own needs, and the salesman eventually comes to the conclusion that he has to die for his family to be set free. It's interesting because FFVI has a song that is associated with Kefka called "Metamorphosis," which plays during the sequence at the Esper Gate, at Thamasa, and as Kefka becomes more and more powerful. There's a sense that, frightfully enough, Kefka was just an ordinary person who had "one bad day," that shattered his sense of the ordinary and the commonplace nature of things, that rendered him forever unintelligible to himself and to those around him, satiated only by sadism and an ever increasing lust for power, destruction, and chaos.
Agree on Terra's "birth" being a very effective use of abstraction to convey the necessary information in a short amount of time. But now it has me thinking about what it would've been like if VIII had this same degree of abstraction, and we got a scene where Raine and Laguna flew up into the air and started spinning.
I don't think it'd work as well, because the style and the mode of presentation in FFVIII was explicitly designed to be more cinematic and 'fantasy based in reality' from the onset. Having an abstraction like this would be quite the whiplash.
Playing this for the first time I honestly can't take what anyone says from the Empire to heart because there's so much being said by them. Kefka claims Gestahl said Terra would lead them to the esper gate by herself, but also General Leo says "Emperor Gestahl wouldn't want you to throw your life away" to the soldier right before Doma. Gestahl also took Terra from the esper world so how would he then not know the dangers of espers if he was so set on absorbing their power for his own gain. Maybe its translation issues but it feels like the empire knows the dangers but continues to go after the espers until the espers really rock Vector. Then the banquet seems too set up, like the empire/Emperor Gestahl has something hidden or something he doesn't want us to figure out. Again great job guys, can't wait for next week
Its my first time running through and I'm really not a fan of the various script issues that create these contradictions and redundancies. Threads begin and end without any real meaning and characters contradict one another constantly without any real reason. The contradictions add nothing to these characters. At best you could say that Ghestal is putting on a different face to convince Leo he's a good guy actually but like... Why? Why is Leo that special that he should be decided? It just doesn't make any sense and it's definitely an oversight that people have done Olympic level mental gymnastics to justify across the 4 different scripts for this game.
Who would consider it a stretch that "Mado-nna" was meant to be a play on "madou" in the context of Square-Enix naming conventions? In light of the crazy trilingual references Kingdom Hearts has made a habit of using -- my favorite of which is Vanitas, whose name is simultaneously a play on the Japanese word Sora having an alternate meaning of "emptiness" when written with a different kanji and a quote from the English translation of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes which says "all is vanity and a chasing after wind", with the proper nouns then being rendered into Latin to reflect his relationship with Ventus -- that sort of thing is exactly what I'd expect.
17:50 IIRC there was a cut piece of dialogue where Cid examines the Blackjack and tries to give Setzer some tips on making his airship faster, which Setzer wholly rejects.
Ever since Octopath came out, FF6 has been one of the most requested games to get a remake in this HD-2D style, so I think it's pretty cruel of Square do add these two scenes into the Pixel Remaster (the opera scene and the rails scene).. just taunting us! Like.. why didn't they just go all the way and do FF6 in this style? Grrr..!
I kind of agree but I kind of don't. The reason I don't is that it would be yet another version of FF6 to throw on the pile. The reason I do is that it was a perfect opportunity for a version different enough to justify it and create a modern 'definitive' version with a more solidified script that could add in some of the lore and background details in less obscure ways. (Kefka's backstory is a random NPC in a tavern FFS... That's crapass storytelling no matter how you cut it if you ask me. There's no reason this random guy should or could know this or tell you, they just rushed it and needed more backstory in there somewhere for him)
@@bartandaelus359 Yeah, I meant that it would have been great to get the HD-2D remake instead of the Pixel Remaster, but now that we have the PR, an HD-2D remake would be a bit redundant. (Although if they did end up doing it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat! lol) But I think now, a remake would have to be 3D in order to be different enough. I actually think doing something along the lines of Dragon Quest XI would be amazing (obviously it would look very different due to having a very different art style, but imagine FF6 and its art style & aesthetic in the DQXI engine and keeping the turn based combat). As for Kefka's backstory, I definitely don't think it's crap storytelling. While it's not something you would do today, it was perfectly fine in 1994. Games did this sort of thing back then to incentivize exploration and talking to NPCs, and you'd get good little nuggets of story like this. Kefka works better as the villain he is with a mysterious past.
@@Enharmony1625 I fundamentally disagree on the Kefka backstory. If it's so unimportant to the character it should be cut completely. If it's fundamental to the player's understanding, it should be unskipable.
I still have that Magitek Factory song on my playlists somewhere lol! It even combined it with FF4's theme. (If this continues we need an episode about OC Remix :D )
In Japanese, the phrasing used in several places implies that becoming magicite is a choice made by the Esper, which is why the Empire didn't discover it. However, they probably knew from the War of the Magi that it was possible to get much greater power from Espers than they'd managed to do so far, so when Kefka saw them become little magic stones, it wasn't hard for him to put it together. He then was somehow able to develop a weapon that could forcibly magicite Espers during his attack on Thamasa.
It seemed implied that way in the English version also. Most of the magicite you get in the game was from espers willingly choosing to become one for you.
Comparison of Kefka to Sephiroth is on point. Both are top tier soldiers in the respective world's dominant military power, both were experimented on by that respective power and grew resentful. Their personalities are completely at odds, yet their goals and motivations were similar. As horrifying as they are, you can at least see why they would harbor the hatred and disregard they do. I think that's why they're two of the best villains final fantasy has produced
I love how Sakaguchi and Kitase were able to craft, from the general template of the "experiment gone horribly wrong" archetype that dates all the way back to Frankenstein's Creature, two entirely different villains that became legendary in their own ways. Just like how the creators opted to focus almost entirely on Cloud's story in FFVII as a direct contrast to the ensemble cast in FFVI, they wrote the villains to be in direct contrast to one another. You have Kefka, who is a maniacal, gleeful, Mephistophelean madman who plays with audience expectations of being a joke boss like FFV's Gilgamesh and FFVI's Ultros and Siegfried, who gradually becomes increasingly powerful and unhinged as the game proceeds, and then you have almost the complete opposite in Sephiroth, who is set up as an unbeatable, larger than life, Jaws-like figure from the very onset, whom the party initially has no hope against and must scramble to defeat.
@@michs7451 That archtype (The failed creation) goes back way, way, way farther than Mary Shelley. The idea of a failed creation is present in many Greek myths, the cyclopes and the Hecatonchieres are two examples of it there. Even the birth of the Olympians was a mistake in that Chronos believed he had destroyed his children when he consumed them. They only came to exist because of that time-honored greko mythologic pastime of patricide. (Also, personally, I feel that both of these villains are among the worst in the franchise.)
@@bartandaelus359 Sure, we can even think of Lucifer from Paradise Lost, who rebelled against his creator and fell from grace as a result of his rebellion. I single out Mary Shelley and Frankenstein's Creature because it was one of the first characters in literary history to be a result of human meddling in science and technology. For this reason, it stands quite apart from earlier, more transcendent forms of 'failed prototypes'.
@@AuspexAO I consider FFVI, FFVII, and FFIX sister games in the sense that they not only have the Sakaguchi fingerprint, but have central themes and antagonists that are closely related to one another. As you rightly pointed out, Kuja is similar to Kefka and Sephiroth in being a flawed prototype, but he is, at the same time, different from the other two in that he acts as a scheming, calculative chessmaster in the first act and a covetous, envious man on the verge of death in the second act. A little bit closer to Liquid Snake from MGS if you ask me.
I like Maduin and Madonna because the names are distinct enough but have the same sequence of consonants, perhaps a subtle way of conveying how well they match and complement each other.
Also, in regards to the point that it's 'hard to believe the empire didn't kill espers in their experimentation,' I would say at this point in the game espers are a VERY rare commodity, and they're using espers to give their army power. If anything, it makes sense that the empire would absolutely do as much as possible to keep them alive as they possibly could, because they don't know when they'll find the next one to drain.
My biggest challenge to this statement is: *which FF6?* Every version has script revisions. It's nearly impossible to keep it straight across the 3 versions of the game's script that exist in official means. It's part of why I feel so disconnected from this game and why I kind of dislike it wholesale. Watching this series has revealed the game to be an unreliable narrator due to the vast differences between its disparate scripts. I really don't enjoy the idea of figuring out what's real *outside* of the text. You could play this game in the SNES, GBA, PR and original Japanese and have 4 almost completely different experiences with different themes present in each. Not even the gameplay is consistent throughout these ports!
I feel like IX is up there, though the style of humor isn’t quite the same. And I can’t help but think the at times absurdist humor along with other creative decisions VI pulls off owes to the graphical style and limitations the devs needed to work within. So many people want a big budget remake for the game, but I’m wondering how much of the original could really be recreated if they completely changed the game engine and went with a more realistic look.
Some thoughts - Id imagine being outright murdered or drained of magical power would be what prevents them from turning into the stones. It almost seems like the esper before death has to prepare itself willingly which imo is why the army has to capture the espers with an interesting type of light source to turn them into magicite instead of shooting them with missiles/other weaponry later in the game. - kefka having powerful magic is all within the context of the world imo. There are only a handful of people in the world who can use magic so to any common person casting even weak magic would be considered powerful. Its not quite a stretch when you compare Kefkas magic power to the people in Thamasa. They seem to be running around with weak cure spells compared to the stuff Kefka is packing even in the first fights with him (which isnt all that great but its all relative). -On the Cid thing with him knowing how strong the magicite is right off the bat...Idk as a kid I always assumed he had a meter that could read magic or perhaps like other forces the intensity can be felt 🤷♂ just some thoughts. Loving the series and appreciate it a ton. Despite playing this game a million times over and acknowledging how funny it is Mike manages to remind me of how hilarious the game can be and Casen killed it on the symbolism this episode 👍
On the Gestahl thing. The word is not to be confused with the German word "geist" (ghost). Gestalt refers to "an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts". This is clearly linked to Emperor Gestahl in FFVI in the underlining concentration of power he desires. It also links to the Gestalt school of psychology (patterns vs. individuality of the heroes like Terra).
I love this! It also signifies the mentality underpinning Gestahl and the Gestahlian Empire: that any action, however cruel, is justified so long as it brings into fruition Gestahl's personal ambitions for a long-lasting kingdom. Like Faust, this mentality thinks little to nothing for the individual lives that must be trampled over for that dream to come true.
@@michs7451 Yep, pretty much. It's also a running theme in the FF franchise. There'a always an evil empire of some sort, but the creators really hit the mark in FFVI by actually giving it some charisma with both the Emperor and Kefka. An absolute classic.
@@michs7451 Yep, pretty much. It's also a running theme in the FF franchise. There'a always an evil empire of some sort, but the creators really hit the mark in FFVI by actually giving it some charisma with both the Emperor and Kefka. An absolute classic.
@@EduardoPortasRuiz One thing I absolutely love about the treatment of the Evil Empire plot in FFVI is how it largely happens in the World of Balance. It leads you to see the game, in some ways, as a derivative of the conflict already seen in games such as FFII & FFIV. It lulls you into a sense of order, which makes the collapse of that order all the more jarring when it happens.
My understanding was the Espers becoming Magicite was a voluntary process. They could choose to become magicite to leave that power behind, but it is not a requirement.
I think the espers do not turn into magicyte when they die. They have to willingly turn into macigyte because Ramuh entrusted the party with his magicyte and because shiva and ifrit felt that Ramuh had trusted you, they turned into magicyte. Of course later on, the empire finds a way to force them to turn into magicyte.
Is that stated? Because I thought the flaw in that idea was that Kefka kills loads of them and takes the magicite. Do they state that the Empire figured out how to force them? Because if they didn't then I disagree. It seems to only happen when they die.
@@Genji_Glove I agree with Samuel. IMO this is what happened *warning, BREAKING BAD SPOILERS BELOW* : after Cid discovered that the espers could turn into magicites, he probably made some discoveries and theorized that he could create a machine or give someone the ability to instantly turn espers into magicites. He might have talked about it to one of his assistants, also telling them he would never do it because he was done working for an evil Empire, but that assistant then told everything to the Emperor (I like to think of this assistant as a snitch, just like Gale was to Walt/Heisenberg in Breaking Bad when he worked in the lab, so this snitch could obtain all of Cid's knowledge while working with him, which would allow Gestahl to ultimately kill Cid and replace him with a more obedient pawn. Maybe it's the same situation as in BB : because of his sense of justice Cid has always tried to find a way to free himself / kill Gestahl, but Gestahl tries to kill Cid first...). Then the Emperor asked Cid to create this machine or ability but since Cid refused, he was forced to work on it via threats. Threatening his well-being wouldn't work as the guy would now rather die than work on weapons of mass murder, but since Celes was back at Vector at the time, they probably used her to threaten Cid into cooperating ("do you know what we'll do to her if you don't do it?"). The thingy was thus completed, and that's what Kefka uses in Thamasa to turn dozens of Espers into magicites. I also like to think that what Cid made was not a machine - he instead infused Kefka with an ability (which is also why he was invincible when he fought that Ifrit clone). And the reason why Kefka was chosen instead of the Emperor was that there was a big chance that you wouldn't survive the infusion, or that it could once again cause massive brain damage. Kefka was always Gestahl's favorite guinea pig after all. I admit that all of that comes from by imagination, but that's what makes the most sense to me given the game events. Even though a remake would probably ruin quite a few things, I still wish a version of the game expanded all of that so we'd get the official detailed explanations. I can't imagine that they would be very different from mine though, especially if they want to make Cid a good guy right from the start instead of his dumb ""Are we the baddies?"" and ""I'll have tea with the emperor so I can convince him to turn into a good guy, just you watch!"
It might seem like Kefka is not very powerful but each time you run into him he gets stronger, much faster than our characters can. At first he's just a messenger, next time he confronts you but runs away. At Narshe, he now has magic and has more hp. Also note he takes off, you don't really wound him. At the factory, he now handles espers. (It's debatable if he drained them and gained some of their magic). Next time he comes around he is nigh unstoppable. In my head cannon the guy at the Cafe in Vector might mean at that current time he is highly powerful in magic. I think he hides his true power until he's able to enact his true plan. That's my theory at leaat
I'm 99% sure that Kefka recieved his magic and status as a general (or general level) figure within the empire before the game begins. He already has a reputation when we encounter him and I'm also pretty certain the experiments he underwent is why he's decided to go full Joker.
In my headcanon Kefka's already powerful when you first meet him. The reason he pretends to be a weakling is because he's playing games with you. As the Trickster archetype, he's the embodiment of, and delights in, chaos and deception. It kind of reminds me of a scene in Batman (1989) where the Joker puts on glasses and pretends to be harmless, saying: You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses, would you?
One of the reasons why this is my personal favorite in the series is that there is room for personal interpretation of characters' motives and power levels. Nothing about Kefka is one hundred percent laid out in concrete terms. We can never really know how powerful he is at this point in the game. Did he have access to other espers that the party does not? How much of his mind did he really lose? Perhaps his mind snapping is simply a losing of inhibitions and morality? Then again look at the culture into which he was born into and raised in.
@S S I really like your using Nicholson's Joker as an example here. A lot of people nowadays do not appreciate his version I think due to Ledger's joker. Characters change with the writers' interpretation of said character. Kefka is more goofy than sadistic at times. You could say Kefka is an amalgamation of both
Fun fact: Mog is blind. Cave dwelling creatures often lose their eyesight, he has squinty eyes, and when he's surprised you can see he opens his eyes and notice his pupils are completely white. Yet he moves around like he can see. What else changed in moogle designs from FF5 to FF6? The pom-pom antenna. He sees through it, which is why he dislikes people touching it (as reported in FF Ultimania), you're basically touching the thing he uses to see!
As much as I doubt a remake would do ff6 justice, I feel like they could really expand on Terra and Maduin (Madeen). I would love to see scenes of her talking to her dad’s magicite. It’s a missed opportunity to not explore her trying to connect with her dad.
There was another translation difference in the scene where Gestahl takes the baby Terra away. In the SNES version, Madeline says "Please... take care... of my baby..." and only goes "Noooo!" after Gestahl says they'll use Terra to realize their dreams. The GBA translation changed her initial line to "Leave... my daughter... alone..." which changes the context of the scene from her trusting the evil man who attacked the Esper World (though it's possible she didn't notice who he was before he spoke, as she was lying on the ground) to trying to stop him from taking her baby right off the bat.
She was in his party and uses a "Warp Stone" to pull them out, I think... kind of further implying that she was actually there to spy on them but was having doubts about it.
The story of FF6 moves so fast, especially in this section of the game. If you're planning on rewriting it, I think the best approach is to expand it. Fill in the missing elements of the story and significantly expand the World of Ruin, especially because its organized with respect to each of the many characters. In this section for the southern continent, we go from the Empire in Vector being the biggest bad, to rendering inoperable their Magitek Factory, to inadvertently opening the Sealed Gate and releasing furious espers, who severely damage Vector, killing many of its civilians. As we see later however, the Empire's military is mostly intact elsewhere and its Airforce is just fine. I would like to see these transitional sections expanded upon with a few if not many scenes. Also, what happens to Banon and the Returners in the WoR? They totally disappear. There are more than a few loose threads that could be tied up.
If I were told by Square to rewrite it I would almost be tempted to start from nearly scratch to reconcile all the threads and ideas that don't connect or kinda maybe do if you have an incredibly broad and esoteric body of knowledge to draw on. The first change I would make is straight up changing the party system and cutting about half the cast and making them guest characters like in XII instead of full party members. I absolutely agree that these super dense story scenes should be expanded if they were to ever do it. Fans of 6 have for many years tried to convince themselves that every thread is tied off but they just aren't. The Banon and the Returners part is one of the biggest ones but the pacing in this mid section makes it hard to keep track of everything.
@@bartandaelus359 right, and the story pretty much ends after the game goes non-linear once you get the second airship in the World of Ruin. I do enjoy how it becomes more focused on the characters then though. I think you can still do this even if many of them (like Mog) would be guest characters in such a system. Have you played T-Edition? It expands upon some of the story and includes some optional esper fights that are pretty awesome. It includes elements from earlier FF games that are cool throwbacks but make very little sense for the story of FF6 though.
I always thought terra was born in the Esper world and raised in the empire. Madonna got into the esper world by traveling into some fog that gets less thick when the storm appears. I personally think she wanted to get herself killed. That's how I understood it.
How arrogant of Bannon to think that the Espers would want their seal broken so they can help human affairs. Also, I think Terra wanted to open the gate to see her people.
The humor in this game seems to hit really well. It feels like they were having a lot of fun writing those parts and didn’t think twice too much about them.
The pixel remaster really cleaned up the mode 7 cart ride. I wish they did it like F-Zero where the Mode 7 is used to rotate a flat map and they drew sprites of different sizes on top. But it always looked like mud to me, even back in the mid 90s.
I absoluely LOVED that you guys brought up OC Remixes! I still listen to a lot of their stuff from years ago. Something I didn't catch until watching this was Cid mentioning being under threat from Kefka, but wouldn't he have had to do this to create Kefka in the first place? So I have a very basic weeby knowledge of Japanese so I'm wondering if Madonna could have also just been a combination of Madou (Magic) and Onna (Woman). Although I guess that logic would make more sense as Terra's name
One of the nicest things about this playthrough is rediscovering all the music. I'd kind of forgotten how much I liked the themes for Zozo and the Magitek Factory. Also, the castle in Vector rather reminded me of the Tyrell building as well, possibly because of Blade Runner-esque industrial backdrop.
One thing I found about the music track that is played in the Magitek Research Facility is that in the album cover titled "Kefka's Domain" it known as "Devil's Lab". Makes sense considering the dark tone of the game and how the Espers get experimented in the facility. It honestly reminds me of how experiments were done to humans in the real world.
My take on Kefka and Gestahl for a long time has been Kafka and Gestalt. Kefka is a Kafkaesque antagonist (needlessly cruel, chaotic, making very little sense) and Gestahl is Gestalt, a philosophical term denoting a concept which may not be immediately obvious but which comes into view upon use of pattern recognition faculties, not unlike a magic-eye image.....the significance there would be that Gestahl embodies the conceptual ideal of the empire (he has intense and evil goals, but he is still guided by a principle and won't cross certain lines, as shown on the floating island.
There's an article I really like, called "The Essence of 'Kafkaesque'": "'What's Kafkaesque," he said in an interview in his Manhattan apartment, "is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world. "You don't give up, you don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafkaesque."" If anything, Kefka and Gestahl map onto excessive Chaos and Law respectively. Both are a threat to the World of Balance. The threat Gestahl represents is despotism, a Faustian desire for the possession of all, empire-building and the dream of a thousand year kingdom; Kefka, on the other hand, represents the precariousness of that order, an incomprehensible being who just wants to watch the world burn, someone unintelligible and foreign to the very concepts that govern humanity itself.
@@michs7451 I really like the Law/Chaos analogy here, showing the sort of horseshoe effect of extremes. With Chaos comes an extreme release of energy, but unable to hold a form; with Law comes inflexible rigidity, its energy locked away in an unusable form: both paths lead to a sort of entropy.
@@GeebusCrust Yes, exactly. I was inspired by a chart on the Yin-Yang symbol that associated despotism and authoritarianism to Law / Yang and nihilism to Chaos / Yin. It also implies that, although the game transitions over from the World of Balance to the World of Ruin in its second act, the world had already found its balance being threatened by an excessively orderly force in the Gestahlian Empire. The pendulum has now only swung the other way, to absolute chaos.
19:05 How I explain that Cid didn't know about the Magicites is that the Espers are too valuable to them to kill them, because they've only caught a few of them, and the only way they know to get the power of the Espers is to extract it while they're still alive. I think it's not too hard to believe that they simply didn't want to risk losing any of those few Espers. But still, the likelihood of at least one of them dying accidentally in all that time is pretty high, so it's still a little weird for me.
Did I miss something or did Kefka at the sealed gate confirm that the three-man attack on Narshe at the beginning of the game was planned to fail? "The Emperor was right! Let Terra fall into your hands, and you'd open the gate for us...!"
I read it more as, after that attack had failed, and after he was sent to get her at Figaro, that the Emperor came to the conclusion that it wasn't really a loss because she would just lead them to the gate anyway.
@@michaelcoraybrown I don't think so, because then Kefka would say something like: "The Emperor was right! Returners will use Terra to open the gate anyway".
This means that Kefka deliberately presented himself as a weakling, and these two attacks were provocations to impose this only solution on the enemy. Terra will voluntarily open this gate because she will be convinced that she is doing the right thing.
@@michaelcoraybrown I connected the dots. Gestahl knew where the gate was - he was there when it closed. He was inside too, so he knew what was there. He built a base next to this gate to control the passage to it. He was aware of the power on the other side of the gate. He also knew that Terra was a half-breed. The only problem was that he didn't know how to open that gate. After a decade of trying, he decided to hand Terra over to his enemies so that together with Terra they would open the gate for him. He also created a political emergency situation to steer the enemies towards the only one viable solution - opening the gate. However, he did not expect to be confronted by such a powerful force that flew out of the gate, so he again began manipulating the team during dinner to prepare an ambush. Leo was wrong, Gestahl did not hesitate to sacrifice his soldiers in pursuit of his goal. Gestahl was mastermind behind all of this. Meanwhile, Kefka began making his own plans.
@7:54 Battle at Narshe Kefka can wipe your party with ice 2 and magic if you are unprepared. we haven't encountered much if any tier-2 magic at this point in the game. I'd say Kefka has displayed his powerful magic but if you are prepared it's easy to bulldoze passed Kefka without seeing his magical capabilities.
Have I had amnesia? 🤔 Can’t remember. What I do remember is Cid’s Factory music. Not necessarily from my one and only playthru, but from around 12 years ago where I was suffering from a really bad ear worm. As in a piece of music that was looping around and around in my head to the point of brain fog. My mind is alway threatening to break apparently. However, one of the songs I would play to drown it out was the Factory music. Helped a lot. In fact, a lot of video game music helped a lot. Thanks Nobuo! You helped force something terrible out of my mind (mostly anyway) 😮
Speaking of military propaganda, there's also the case of soldiers who don't believe any of it, but they need a motivation (a narrative or fantasy if you will) to do the job they are being trusted to do.
i think the minecart ride is GREAT in terms of the tech and look of it. a bit long, yes, but it's so unique and i always thought it was some sort of meticulously composed arrangement of scaling sprites coming at you over and over again while changing position slowly to create that illusion. i think i may be right, still, though i am curious about exactly what was meant by "we drew the dots one by one." it looks like some crazy thing treasure would have done on the genesis, while smrpg simply implements mode 7.
The whole mecha aspect of the Empire (especially with the robot arms and kidnapping 'nature spirits') makes me think a lot of Dr Robotnik from Sonic games
I think it went under appreciated for terra failing not once but TWICE to communicate with the espers. At the time, back in the day it was a common trope for RPGs to collect a macguffin item then successfully bring it to said objective. It's easy to concept and program and deliver. What squaresoft is doing here seems like a half baked plot twist to us 2020's folk, but this was actually brilliant subversion for its time.
@@CasenSperry if you haven't heard of the myth of Agatha, it's worth looking into. There was also a sensationally good anime film made about it called Children who Chase Lost Voices that you may enjoy.
I know you don't do deep dives into the soundtrack (or how far ahead you record the episodes). But might I suggest listening to 8 Bit Music theory's video on the final boss fight, Dancing Mad (and his FF6 music series in general) It talks about hidden themes and symbolism in the music, what parts are sounds effects and what are actually part of the songs (and well, music theory too).
Hmm, I wouldn't take the easy balancing of the game to be any indication of Kefka's canonical magical power. This is a world where people like Locke and Edgar freak out to see Terra cast Fire 1 for 48 damage. So any magic at all is considered to be a very dangerous force, and Kefka has command of even more spells than does Terra or Celes
I suppose there’s no better place to say this but it’s definitely worth it to steal the Tempest/Kazekiri from the mine cart ride boss. You can get a second in the Sealed Cave and the random(but very common) wind slash effect can lead to some pretty powerful builds. The original SNES version of the game allowed Gau to equip it using the merit award and by also using the Offering/Master Scroll relic and the Stray Cat Rage allowed for absurd damage (known as the “Wind God Gau” build). Alternatively, equip two on Cyan using the Genji Glove, use Espers to jack up his magic stat, and then later equip the Offering/Master Scroll. This allows him to, on average, unleash 4 Wind Slashes that attack all enemies per round but potentially up to 8 without any MP cost and can result in similarly huge damage (assuming enemies don’t absorb/are immune to wind damage).
There's two sides to this. It is "Mahou" in the commandlist but magitech specifically (the technology to infuse magic) is always referenced as Madou. In Universe, "Mahou" is the mystical aspect of the classic FF style while "Madou" is the corrupted (for good and bad) version in which "Mahou" is transformed into wieldable power by technology.
So I looked up Madonna/Madeline's name in the Japanese script and it is Madeline, but it's spelled "mado"-line (ﾏﾄﾞﾘｰﾇ), so the madō connection still works.
Giving a heart to your own comment (and only your own comment) 🤣🤣
@@nanoglitch6693 Oops. I think I just meant to pin it... Mike usually does this part... 😐
@@CasenSperry Aw, you should've left it, tho. It was funny.
Madonna is also a punny name because madō and onna (Japanese for "woman") effectively makes a portmanteau that means "magic woman."
I'll wait on my opinion of this game for another episode or two, right now the story is fantastic and while the game does have it's flaws they are easy to overlook.
"and we will seek to eliminate poisons throughout the world"
Entire party: Yes, poison is evil and needs to be eliminated
*Edgar quietly slides his Bio Blaster into his coat pocket*
Party members stop learning the Poison spell
Cid, after 16 years of experimenting on sentient beings to create super soldiers and war machines for world conquest: "Are we the baddies?"
Skulls, Hans
“I mean, if you look at our enemies. Their power sources are rather nice: wind, steam, fire, coal…I just can’t think of something worse of a power source than sentient beings subjugated against their will.”
YWNBAW
Stahl means “steel” in German, and “Ge-“ is a collective prefix meant to suggest a count noun. So “Gestahl” is the literal embodiment of this steel empire of machines.
Oh, that makes sense. Thanks!
I always thought Gestahl's name was a pun/reference to Gestalt psychology, since Kefka's name is oddly similar to Kurt Koffka (a German psychologist who helped develop Gestalt psychology) and Franz Kafka (A German novelist who touched a lot of psychological concepts in his writting). I also think that Locke's name may come from John Locke since with the earlier examples it seems the devs took inspiration from psychology/philosophy.
@@Ekusu7 The locke connection could still be a connection. I'd take a look at what John Locke taught in his philosophies and see if is parallels with Lockes character that will of the. Tell you if it was ment to be an influence on the name.
It's implied the dead espers all turned into the Flan enemies you can run into in the Ifrit/Shiva room. You can steal Magicite Shards from them, so...there you go.
Mike's WAR OF THE MAGI voice is great.
The spell that Celes casts in the Magitek Factory is Warp. She's taking "her party" out of the dungeon with it. It's really a shame they didn't include it among the magic she learns naturally, because that would be a cool bit of gameplay and story integration.
After you learn about Celes's betrayal, it paints the opera in a completely different light. The opera is a story about a woman with divided loyalties. Her kingdom wants to adopt the spirit of the West, but she still longs for the hero of the East. (Or maybe I have that reversed.) But when she sings her aria, the first two lines are actually the same melody in two different keys (D major for the first version, and F#minor for the second), because of the accidental written on the G. It's a musical version of her inner conflict!
But it's kind of odd, or maybe it's really bold, that they put this moment of (intended?) dramatic irony in the game BEFORE the scene that shows us, the players, the double meaning behind it. It's only upon looking back or playing the game again that we can see how Celes's divided loyalty makes the aria more personal.
Funnily enough, Terra learns Teleport naturally not long after. Does seem like a missed opportunity.
This deserves more likes an attention! This comment was beautifully written ! Kudos !
Regarding the meaning of the name Gestahl. As a native German I don't associate the word "Gestalt" at all. The h in Gestahl is pretty significant and also changes the pronunciation. Gestahl is much closer to Stahl, the German Word for Steel. Since the Gestahlian Empire is the only industrialized nation in the game, the name is telling. Ge-Prefix however doesn't make any sense at all. If you use it on the word Stahl it turns into gestählt, wich mean steeled. I can image that they just drop the Umlaut, turning an Ä to an A. However Gestahl doesn't use much tanks or armor himself.
Anyhow "Stahl" seems way more likely as a reading as "Gestalt" from a German point of view.
Keep up the good work!
I think it's a very good analogy that the Empire is like Germany during WW2. A lot of the generals were already in place before the war started and weren't part of the party, so there were generals like Rommel et al that were just doing their jobs. But then you had monsters that were part of the party, and the paramilitary troops that were not part of the regular military, and were more than willing to commit war crimes like Kefka did in Doma against their opponents and POWs.
13:40 Clarification: Jeremy Soule's FF6 OCRemix was for Terra's theme, not Dancing Mad. It's called "Squaresoft Variation" for some reason. Personally, my favorite Terra remix has always been "Terra in Black" from 23 years ago!
Also, another great 'industrial-ish' remix of Cid's Factory is "The Megiddo Brigade", arranged 10 years ago by OCRemix founder djpretzel. Sick cello usage! It was part of their FF6:Balance & Ruin album that I keep mentioning in this podcast haha you owe it to yourselves to check it out if you've been away from OCR for decades
A really good FF6 remix I recommend would be Prancing Dad, which mixes a little bit of One-Winged Angel in the middle.
@@ProxyDoug oh yea I remember that remix from years ago! Silly title but ended up being surprisingly excellent
You guys have referenced how closely connected FF6 is with opera and with Phantom of the Opera. Just wanted to make sure you didn't miss that the Chord progression of the opening Overture from Phantom of the Opera (that descending and then ascending bit on the pipe organ) is inside the first few seconds of "The Fierce Battle" (the music that plays while fighting Atma Weapon on the floating continent, just before Kefka jacks up the statues.) You can hear that Duuuun Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun Duuuuun (Desecending) and then Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun Duuuuun (Ascending) before dropping back down (descending), and it's almost exactly the same as the opening notes of Phantom of the Opera.
Which ALW stole from Pink Floyd's Echoes. Uematsu, being a huge prog rock fan, likely heard it there first.
The sheer enjoyment I feel when I see that notification
Cid- Oh dear, now that I've been directly confronted with what I'm doing being horrifically evil, I've realized that I no longer want to do it...
You don't fool me, banana man.
It is not lost on me that even though in some games he becomes a playable character, Cid usually works with / for the bad guys, if only at first. FF4, 6, 7, 8, 12...
I always wished Maduin got a bit more screen time. They don't ever really acknowledge they are carrying Terra's father with them.
Also Madeen from FFIX was used as an homage to these characters. Madeen And Terra Homing
I love how the relationship between Maduin and Madonna/Madeline adds further dimension to the central theme of FFVI (the evening star, the last ray of hope in pitch black darkness). Maduin was the last ray of hope for the despairing Madeline/Madonna, and it is their relationship that gives her a renewed sense to live.
It's interesting here that we even get a scene (an abstraction of how Terra was 'created' so to speak) of two evening stars in a sea of pitch black darkness coming together, and giving birth to Baby Terra. Terra is the embodiment of their union, the combination of two worlds (the human and the divine), in a sense the Christ-figure who would reinvigorate the human world on the verge of destruction.
Yes, so good.
Not only do cranes and mechanical arms have innumerable uses in an industrial society, the Blackjack isn't the only aircraft in the world. You fight the entire Imperial Air Force (IAF) a bit later in the game, including its squadron leader, who is actually named "Air Force". Setzer's and Daryl's ships are only unique as unarmed luxury racing craft that nobody else finds practical or affordable
So on the re-writing script idea... I'm already working on it. I've always wondered what a FF VI movie series would look like. So I decided to start working on FF VI screenplay as a writing project. I'm nearly finished with draft 1 of the 4-part series. Getting into the lore and characters of this game is so much fun. Your commentary and that of many other fans on RUclips really helps with insight into ways to interpret the story. I think, once it's done, I look forward to sharing it with other fans like yourselves. My plan is to make video on it with some storyboarding. Stay tuned.
how did you go with the FF6 script idea? I'm curious how you did changes, thanks.
@@AlastairGames Tough to explain thoroughly in a comment, but my strategy so far is to only make (major) changes to assist in flow and solve some problematic plot holes. I'm finding it doesn't need much, because most of the characters have great underlying themes. So keeping the essence of each character is not only a goal, but pretty easy to keep to as well.
@@mitymi thank you! sounds interesting. looking forward to seeing your ideas, as I'll likely start on my own FF6 remake in a few months
Great episode yet again gentlemen, this was one of the best segments of the game for sure!
A further point of comparison between Celes and Kefka: Celes was originally intended by the writers to not only be a spy, but also be mentally damaged like Kefka, which might influence our sense of the entire exchange at the Magitek Research Facility. As indicated in a Shmuplations interview:
"Staff: In the very beginning of the development, Celes was an Imperial Magitek Knight who pretends to be the player character’s ally. Using magic requires a great deal of mental energy, and the mental strain of it has caused Celes to become unhinged, prone to sudden outbursts of tears and fits of hysteria… this state of mind strengthened her desire to find someone she could rely on: enter Locke, who speaks to and treats her kindly. By the time she is supposed to betray everyone, Celes realizes she has fallen in love with Locke, and the conflict tears her up inside."
I think I like this better.
I would love to see a remake of this game using the ideas that you presented here. Imagine the pairing of Celes learning how to love herself and repairing her shattered ego with Locke's needing to forgive himself. Love is a powerful emotion that can be a great source of healing.
@@phantom8157 I think there are elements of the original idea that got transposed over to Cloud (the magically-enhanced soldier with the mental instability and episodes of psychosis) and Cait Sith (the traitor who is secretly working for the evil Empire).
@@michs7451 I think you may be right about that. I've heard that the creators of the series often used ideas they weren't able to implement in one game into another
@@phantom8157 Definitely. Fujin, Raijin, and Sorceress Edea were all leftover concepts from FFVII that found their way into FFVIII.
A few thoughts on Kefka's backstory in Vector: I love how we learn about Kefka's backstory ("extraordinary magical power, though with a shattered mind") through a random, totally missable NPC in a bar. This not only lends an air of mystery and intrigue to the character and gives further flavor text to the dungeon that we are about to enter in terms of the Magitek Research Facility, it leads us to wonder if he has, as pointed out here in the podcast, been concealing his power and manipulating the party's impressions of him this whole time.
I love how Sakaguchi, Kitase, and the rest of the developers were able to use the general template ("prototype magical soldier with fearsome abilities and a shattered mind") and craft two legendary (and totally different) villains in Kefka and Sephiroth. There's also some resemblance to Xenosaga's Albedo as well.
We get some sense that Kefka has been victimized in the past, much like the hapless Espers that he would go on to victimize in the Magitek Research Facility, and, arguably, the lack of further description here and in the rest of the game further fuels the mind to think about what he must have seen for his mind to shatter like this.
I personally believe that there's some strong connection here to the Czech absurdist writer Franz Kafka, who is famous for his work The Metamorphosis. The Metamorphosis is a short story of a salesman who inexplicably wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a huge insect (a cockroach-like louse). He realizes that his family does not actually like him very much, that their "love" of him is merely a cipher for their dependence on him for their own needs, and the salesman eventually comes to the conclusion that he has to die for his family to be set free. It's interesting because FFVI has a song that is associated with Kefka called "Metamorphosis," which plays during the sequence at the Esper Gate, at Thamasa, and as Kefka becomes more and more powerful.
There's a sense that, frightfully enough, Kefka was just an ordinary person who had "one bad day," that shattered his sense of the ordinary and the commonplace nature of things, that rendered him forever unintelligible to himself and to those around him, satiated only by sadism and an ever increasing lust for power, destruction, and chaos.
Every time someone mentions "The War of The Magi" I hear it in Solid Snake's voice like when he says "Metal Gear!"
Haha yeah. "War... War of the Magi never changes. ID tagged people using ID tagged Weapons, and casting ID tagged Espers" god's I gotta replay MGS4.
@@MiBrCo4177 hahahaah thank you! xD
@@Sacrengard hahahah glad someone got it.
I always thought Celes just cast a Warp spell to exit the dungeon but with Kefka.
Agree on Terra's "birth" being a very effective use of abstraction to convey the necessary information in a short amount of time. But now it has me thinking about what it would've been like if VIII had this same degree of abstraction, and we got a scene where Raine and Laguna flew up into the air and started spinning.
I don't think it'd work as well, because the style and the mode of presentation in FFVIII was explicitly designed to be more cinematic and 'fantasy based in reality' from the onset. Having an abstraction like this would be quite the whiplash.
I’m absolutely loving it. Thank you Mike and Casen. 🙏
Playing this for the first time I honestly can't take what anyone says from the Empire to heart because there's so much being said by them. Kefka claims Gestahl said Terra would lead them to the esper gate by herself, but also General Leo says "Emperor Gestahl wouldn't want you to throw your life away" to the soldier right before Doma. Gestahl also took Terra from the esper world so how would he then not know the dangers of espers if he was so set on absorbing their power for his own gain. Maybe its translation issues but it feels like the empire knows the dangers but continues to go after the espers until the espers really rock Vector. Then the banquet seems too set up, like the empire/Emperor Gestahl has something hidden or something he doesn't want us to figure out.
Again great job guys, can't wait for next week
Its my first time running through and I'm really not a fan of the various script issues that create these contradictions and redundancies. Threads begin and end without any real meaning and characters contradict one another constantly without any real reason. The contradictions add nothing to these characters. At best you could say that Ghestal is putting on a different face to convince Leo he's a good guy actually but like... Why? Why is Leo that special that he should be decided? It just doesn't make any sense and it's definitely an oversight that people have done Olympic level mental gymnastics to justify across the 4 different scripts for this game.
I love the chemistry between these two. You can tell they're best friends.
And likely Mormon.
@Digg Dirkler ?
@@trollingisasport Ex-Mormon? Likely lovers?
@@trollingisasportI notice they tend to be the nicest people in America, a country is otherwise full of maniacs
@@mickeymickey9914 And very conscientious of bad words and the like.
Who would consider it a stretch that "Mado-nna" was meant to be a play on "madou" in the context of Square-Enix naming conventions? In light of the crazy trilingual references Kingdom Hearts has made a habit of using -- my favorite of which is Vanitas, whose name is simultaneously a play on the Japanese word Sora having an alternate meaning of "emptiness" when written with a different kanji and a quote from the English translation of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes which says "all is vanity and a chasing after wind", with the proper nouns then being rendered into Latin to reflect his relationship with Ventus -- that sort of thing is exactly what I'd expect.
A Wolf chooses, a moogle obeys!
More like 'A moogle chooses, a Yeti obeys.'
Best episode yet on this series! You guys were on all cylinders here, great discussion. You bounce off each other really well.
17:50 IIRC there was a cut piece of dialogue where Cid examines the Blackjack and tries to give Setzer some tips on making his airship faster, which Setzer wholly rejects.
Thanks! We'll cover it next time.
Ever since Octopath came out, FF6 has been one of the most requested games to get a remake in this HD-2D style, so I think it's pretty cruel of Square do add these two scenes into the Pixel Remaster (the opera scene and the rails scene).. just taunting us! Like.. why didn't they just go all the way and do FF6 in this style? Grrr..!
I kind of agree but I kind of don't. The reason I don't is that it would be yet another version of FF6 to throw on the pile. The reason I do is that it was a perfect opportunity for a version different enough to justify it and create a modern 'definitive' version with a more solidified script that could add in some of the lore and background details in less obscure ways. (Kefka's backstory is a random NPC in a tavern FFS... That's crapass storytelling no matter how you cut it if you ask me. There's no reason this random guy should or could know this or tell you, they just rushed it and needed more backstory in there somewhere for him)
@@bartandaelus359 Yeah, I meant that it would have been great to get the HD-2D remake instead of the Pixel Remaster, but now that we have the PR, an HD-2D remake would be a bit redundant. (Although if they did end up doing it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat! lol) But I think now, a remake would have to be 3D in order to be different enough. I actually think doing something along the lines of Dragon Quest XI would be amazing (obviously it would look very different due to having a very different art style, but imagine FF6 and its art style & aesthetic in the DQXI engine and keeping the turn based combat).
As for Kefka's backstory, I definitely don't think it's crap storytelling. While it's not something you would do today, it was perfectly fine in 1994. Games did this sort of thing back then to incentivize exploration and talking to NPCs, and you'd get good little nuggets of story like this. Kefka works better as the villain he is with a mysterious past.
@@Enharmony1625 I fundamentally disagree on the Kefka backstory. If it's so unimportant to the character it should be cut completely. If it's fundamental to the player's understanding, it should be unskipable.
@@bartandaelus359nah. Jrpgs always hide details about characters in the world for players who investigate everything.
I still have that Magitek Factory song on my playlists somewhere lol!
It even combined it with FF4's theme.
(If this continues we need an episode about OC Remix :D )
In Japanese, the phrasing used in several places implies that becoming magicite is a choice made by the Esper, which is why the Empire didn't discover it. However, they probably knew from the War of the Magi that it was possible to get much greater power from Espers than they'd managed to do so far, so when Kefka saw them become little magic stones, it wasn't hard for him to put it together. He then was somehow able to develop a weapon that could forcibly magicite Espers during his attack on Thamasa.
It seemed implied that way in the English version also. Most of the magicite you get in the game was from espers willingly choosing to become one for you.
Comparison of Kefka to Sephiroth is on point. Both are top tier soldiers in the respective world's dominant military power, both were experimented on by that respective power and grew resentful. Their personalities are completely at odds, yet their goals and motivations were similar. As horrifying as they are, you can at least see why they would harbor the hatred and disregard they do. I think that's why they're two of the best villains final fantasy has produced
I love how Sakaguchi and Kitase were able to craft, from the general template of the "experiment gone horribly wrong" archetype that dates all the way back to Frankenstein's Creature, two entirely different villains that became legendary in their own ways.
Just like how the creators opted to focus almost entirely on Cloud's story in FFVII as a direct contrast to the ensemble cast in FFVI, they wrote the villains to be in direct contrast to one another. You have Kefka, who is a maniacal, gleeful, Mephistophelean madman who plays with audience expectations of being a joke boss like FFV's Gilgamesh and FFVI's Ultros and Siegfried, who gradually becomes increasingly powerful and unhinged as the game proceeds, and then you have almost the complete opposite in Sephiroth, who is set up as an unbeatable, larger than life, Jaws-like figure from the very onset, whom the party initially has no hope against and must scramble to defeat.
@@michs7451 That archtype (The failed creation) goes back way, way, way farther than Mary Shelley. The idea of a failed creation is present in many Greek myths, the cyclopes and the Hecatonchieres are two examples of it there. Even the birth of the Olympians was a mistake in that Chronos believed he had destroyed his children when he consumed them. They only came to exist because of that time-honored greko mythologic pastime of patricide.
(Also, personally, I feel that both of these villains are among the worst in the franchise.)
@@bartandaelus359 Sure, we can even think of Lucifer from Paradise Lost, who rebelled against his creator and fell from grace as a result of his rebellion.
I single out Mary Shelley and Frankenstein's Creature because it was one of the first characters in literary history to be a result of human meddling in science and technology. For this reason, it stands quite apart from earlier, more transcendent forms of 'failed prototypes'.
Kuja from FFIX is this archetype as well! They were quite fond of it in this era.
@@AuspexAO I consider FFVI, FFVII, and FFIX sister games in the sense that they not only have the Sakaguchi fingerprint, but have central themes and antagonists that are closely related to one another. As you rightly pointed out, Kuja is similar to Kefka and Sephiroth in being a flawed prototype, but he is, at the same time, different from the other two in that he acts as a scheming, calculative chessmaster in the first act and a covetous, envious man on the verge of death in the second act. A little bit closer to Liquid Snake from MGS if you ask me.
I like Maduin and Madonna because the names are distinct enough but have the same sequence of consonants, perhaps a subtle way of conveying how well they match and complement each other.
Man this didn’t pop up in my feed so glad I looked it up 😅
Also, in regards to the point that it's 'hard to believe the empire didn't kill espers in their experimentation,' I would say at this point in the game espers are a VERY rare commodity, and they're using espers to give their army power. If anything, it makes sense that the empire would absolutely do as much as possible to keep them alive as they possibly could, because they don't know when they'll find the next one to drain.
What I'm realizing with the series on FFVI, is that FFVI is hands down the funniest Final Fantasy.
I like FFV a little better for that. In general old school FF are way more light hearted and comedic.
My biggest challenge to this statement is: *which FF6?*
Every version has script revisions. It's nearly impossible to keep it straight across the 3 versions of the game's script that exist in official means. It's part of why I feel so disconnected from this game and why I kind of dislike it wholesale. Watching this series has revealed the game to be an unreliable narrator due to the vast differences between its disparate scripts. I really don't enjoy the idea of figuring out what's real *outside* of the text. You could play this game in the SNES, GBA, PR and original Japanese and have 4 almost completely different experiences with different themes present in each. Not even the gameplay is consistent throughout these ports!
I feel like IX is up there, though the style of humor isn’t quite the same.
And I can’t help but think the at times absurdist humor along with other creative decisions VI pulls off owes to the graphical style and limitations the devs needed to work within. So many people want a big budget remake for the game, but I’m wondering how much of the original could really be recreated if they completely changed the game engine and went with a more realistic look.
@@bartandaelus359none of the translations are so different that the Canon is up for debate. You're being over dramatic.
Some thoughts
- Id imagine being outright murdered or drained of magical power would be what prevents them from turning into the stones. It almost seems like the esper before death has to prepare itself willingly which imo is why the army has to capture the espers with an interesting type of light source to turn them into magicite instead of shooting them with missiles/other weaponry later in the game.
- kefka having powerful magic is all within the context of the world imo. There are only a handful of people in the world who can use magic so to any common person casting even weak magic would be considered powerful. Its not quite a stretch when you compare Kefkas magic power to the people in Thamasa. They seem to be running around with weak cure spells compared to the stuff Kefka is packing even in the first fights with him (which isnt all that great but its all relative).
-On the Cid thing with him knowing how strong the magicite is right off the bat...Idk as a kid I always assumed he had a meter that could read magic or perhaps like other forces the intensity can be felt 🤷♂
just some thoughts. Loving the series and appreciate it a ton. Despite playing this game a million times over and acknowledging how funny it is Mike manages to remind me of how hilarious the game can be and Casen killed it on the symbolism this episode
👍
Great series so far boys! I'm really interested to see how you cover the game when it becomes more open ended
"A Wolf choses, a Mog obeys!"
On the Gestahl thing. The word is not to be confused with the German word "geist" (ghost). Gestalt refers to "an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts". This is clearly linked to Emperor Gestahl in FFVI in the underlining concentration of power he desires. It also links to the Gestalt school of psychology (patterns vs. individuality of the heroes like Terra).
I love this! It also signifies the mentality underpinning Gestahl and the Gestahlian Empire: that any action, however cruel, is justified so long as it brings into fruition Gestahl's personal ambitions for a long-lasting kingdom. Like Faust, this mentality thinks little to nothing for the individual lives that must be trampled over for that dream to come true.
@@michs7451 Yep, pretty much. It's also a running theme in the FF franchise. There'a always an evil empire of some sort, but the creators really hit the mark in FFVI by actually giving it some charisma with both the Emperor and Kefka. An absolute classic.
@@michs7451 Yep, pretty much. It's also a running theme in the FF franchise. There'a always an evil empire of some sort, but the creators really hit the mark in FFVI by actually giving it some charisma with both the Emperor and Kefka. An absolute classic.
@@EduardoPortasRuiz One thing I absolutely love about the treatment of the Evil Empire plot in FFVI is how it largely happens in the World of Balance. It leads you to see the game, in some ways, as a derivative of the conflict already seen in games such as FFII & FFIV.
It lulls you into a sense of order, which makes the collapse of that order all the more jarring when it happens.
@@michs7451 Word. And that's why the second part of the game is practically unrivaled in JRPGs. It's deeply moving and invites reflection.
Poison disarmament! That’s a good one!
I think the Vector building, aside from being generally ziggurat-shaped, is specifically inspired by the Tyrell building in Blade Runner
The music break is kinda hilarious in its abruptness.
My understanding was the Espers becoming Magicite was a voluntary process. They could choose to become magicite to leave that power behind, but it is not a requirement.
Kefka turns multiple into magecite
Mike. If you rewrote the script and put a mod up for ff6... I'd pay for that.
I think the espers do not turn into magicyte when they die. They have to willingly turn into macigyte because Ramuh entrusted the party with his magicyte and because shiva and ifrit felt that Ramuh had trusted you, they turned into magicyte. Of course later on, the empire finds a way to force them to turn into magicyte.
Is that stated? Because I thought the flaw in that idea was that Kefka kills loads of them and takes the magicite. Do they state that the Empire figured out how to force them? Because if they didn't then I disagree. It seems to only happen when they die.
it's magiCITE. not magicyte. not sure where you got that spelling from.
@@Genji_Glove I agree with Samuel. IMO this is what happened *warning, BREAKING BAD SPOILERS BELOW* : after Cid discovered that the espers could turn into magicites, he probably made some discoveries and theorized that he could create a machine or give someone the ability to instantly turn espers into magicites. He might have talked about it to one of his assistants, also telling them he would never do it because he was done working for an evil Empire, but that assistant then told everything to the Emperor (I like to think of this assistant as a snitch, just like Gale was to Walt/Heisenberg in Breaking Bad when he worked in the lab, so this snitch could obtain all of Cid's knowledge while working with him, which would allow Gestahl to ultimately kill Cid and replace him with a more obedient pawn. Maybe it's the same situation as in BB : because of his sense of justice Cid has always tried to find a way to free himself / kill Gestahl, but Gestahl tries to kill Cid first...). Then the Emperor asked Cid to create this machine or ability but since Cid refused, he was forced to work on it via threats. Threatening his well-being wouldn't work as the guy would now rather die than work on weapons of mass murder, but since Celes was back at Vector at the time, they probably used her to threaten Cid into cooperating ("do you know what we'll do to her if you don't do it?"). The thingy was thus completed, and that's what Kefka uses in Thamasa to turn dozens of Espers into magicites. I also like to think that what Cid made was not a machine - he instead infused Kefka with an ability (which is also why he was invincible when he fought that Ifrit clone). And the reason why Kefka was chosen instead of the Emperor was that there was a big chance that you wouldn't survive the infusion, or that it could once again cause massive brain damage. Kefka was always Gestahl's favorite guinea pig after all. I admit that all of that comes from by imagination, but that's what makes the most sense to me given the game events. Even though a remake would probably ruin quite a few things, I still wish a version of the game expanded all of that so we'd get the official detailed explanations. I can't imagine that they would be very different from mine though, especially if they want to make Cid a good guy right from the start instead of his dumb ""Are we the baddies?"" and ""I'll have tea with the emperor so I can convince him to turn into a good guy, just you watch!"
🎉🎉🎉 refreshing your channel this afternoon for this!
Couldn't tell you where but Ive heard it pronounced that way in other media
It might seem like Kefka is not very powerful but each time you run into him he gets stronger, much faster than our characters can. At first he's just a messenger, next time he confronts you but runs away. At Narshe, he now has magic and has more hp. Also note he takes off, you don't really wound him. At the factory, he now handles espers. (It's debatable if he drained them and gained some of their magic). Next time he comes around he is nigh unstoppable.
In my head cannon the guy at the Cafe in Vector might mean at that current time he is highly powerful in magic. I think he hides his true power until he's able to enact his true plan. That's my theory at leaat
I'm 99% sure that Kefka recieved his magic and status as a general (or general level) figure within the empire before the game begins. He already has a reputation when we encounter him and I'm also pretty certain the experiments he underwent is why he's decided to go full Joker.
In my headcanon Kefka's already powerful when you first meet him. The reason he pretends to be a weakling is because he's playing games with you. As the Trickster archetype, he's the embodiment of, and delights in, chaos and deception. It kind of reminds me of a scene in Batman (1989) where the Joker puts on glasses and pretends to be harmless, saying: You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses, would you?
One of the reasons why this is my personal favorite in the series is that there is room for personal interpretation of characters' motives and power levels. Nothing about Kefka is one hundred percent laid out in concrete terms. We can never really know how powerful he is at this point in the game. Did he have access to other espers that the party does not? How much of his mind did he really lose? Perhaps his mind snapping is simply a losing of inhibitions and morality? Then again look at the culture into which he was born into and raised in.
@S S I really like your using Nicholson's Joker as an example here. A lot of people nowadays do not appreciate his version I think due to Ledger's joker. Characters change with the writers' interpretation of said character. Kefka is more goofy than sadistic at times. You could say Kefka is an amalgamation of both
@@bartandaelus359Kefka says before he steals the espers, that you only beat his shadow. You might have been fighting an illusion the whole game.
Fun fact: Mog is blind.
Cave dwelling creatures often lose their eyesight, he has squinty eyes, and when he's surprised you can see he opens his eyes and notice his pupils are completely white.
Yet he moves around like he can see. What else changed in moogle designs from FF5 to FF6? The pom-pom antenna. He sees through it, which is why he dislikes people touching it (as reported in FF Ultimania), you're basically touching the thing he uses to see!
What will we learn next? That Umaro has Asperger? 😂
@@armorvil Severus Snape has a foot fetish and Hermoine is into pegging
As much as I doubt a remake would do ff6 justice, I feel like they could really expand on Terra and Maduin (Madeen). I would love to see scenes of her talking to her dad’s magicite. It’s a missed opportunity to not explore her trying to connect with her dad.
I don't remember ever having amnesia...
I think I had amnesia once, but I can't remember 😕
There was another translation difference in the scene where Gestahl takes the baby Terra away. In the SNES version, Madeline says "Please... take care... of my baby..." and only goes "Noooo!" after Gestahl says they'll use Terra to realize their dreams. The GBA translation changed her initial line to "Leave... my daughter... alone..." which changes the context of the scene from her trusting the evil man who attacked the Esper World (though it's possible she didn't notice who he was before he spoke, as she was lying on the ground) to trying to stop him from taking her baby right off the bat.
She was in his party and uses a "Warp Stone" to pull them out, I think... kind of further implying that she was actually there to spy on them but was having doubts about it.
As far as “industrial” music, I’ve always loved “Wretched Automatons” from Nier
Yasssss you two are BEASTS
The story of FF6 moves so fast, especially in this section of the game. If you're planning on rewriting it, I think the best approach is to expand it. Fill in the missing elements of the story and significantly expand the World of Ruin, especially because its organized with respect to each of the many characters. In this section for the southern continent, we go from the Empire in Vector being the biggest bad, to rendering inoperable their Magitek Factory, to inadvertently opening the Sealed Gate and releasing furious espers, who severely damage Vector, killing many of its civilians. As we see later however, the Empire's military is mostly intact elsewhere and its Airforce is just fine. I would like to see these transitional sections expanded upon with a few if not many scenes. Also, what happens to Banon and the Returners in the WoR? They totally disappear. There are more than a few loose threads that could be tied up.
If I were told by Square to rewrite it I would almost be tempted to start from nearly scratch to reconcile all the threads and ideas that don't connect or kinda maybe do if you have an incredibly broad and esoteric body of knowledge to draw on. The first change I would make is straight up changing the party system and cutting about half the cast and making them guest characters like in XII instead of full party members.
I absolutely agree that these super dense story scenes should be expanded if they were to ever do it. Fans of 6 have for many years tried to convince themselves that every thread is tied off but they just aren't. The Banon and the Returners part is one of the biggest ones but the pacing in this mid section makes it hard to keep track of everything.
@@bartandaelus359 right, and the story pretty much ends after the game goes non-linear once you get the second airship in the World of Ruin. I do enjoy how it becomes more focused on the characters then though. I think you can still do this even if many of them (like Mog) would be guest characters in such a system.
Have you played T-Edition? It expands upon some of the story and includes some optional esper fights that are pretty awesome. It includes elements from earlier FF games that are cool throwbacks but make very little sense for the story of FF6 though.
I don’t remember ever having amnesia.
I always thought terra was born in the Esper world and raised in the empire.
Madonna got into the esper world by traveling into some fog that gets less thick when the storm appears. I personally think she wanted to get herself killed. That's how I understood it.
How arrogant of Bannon to think that the Espers would want their seal broken so they can help human affairs.
Also, I think Terra wanted to open the gate to see her people.
The humor in this game seems to hit really well. It feels like they were having a lot of fun writing those parts and didn’t think twice too much about them.
The pixel remaster really cleaned up the mode 7 cart ride. I wish they did it like F-Zero where the Mode 7 is used to rotate a flat map and they drew sprites of different sizes on top. But it always looked like mud to me, even back in the mid 90s.
If I've had amnesia before, I don't remember it.
"The War of the Magi!"
I learned this from a guy back back in Vector! 😂
I absoluely LOVED that you guys brought up OC Remixes! I still listen to a lot of their stuff from years ago. Something I didn't catch until watching this was Cid mentioning being under threat from Kefka, but wouldn't he have had to do this to create Kefka in the first place?
So I have a very basic weeby knowledge of Japanese so I'm wondering if Madonna could have also just been a combination of Madou (Magic) and Onna (Woman). Although I guess that logic would make more sense as Terra's name
One of the nicest things about this playthrough is rediscovering all the music. I'd kind of forgotten how much I liked the themes for Zozo and the Magitek Factory. Also, the castle in Vector rather reminded me of the Tyrell building as well, possibly because of Blade Runner-esque industrial backdrop.
One thing I found about the music track that is played in the Magitek Research Facility is that in the album cover titled "Kefka's Domain" it known as "Devil's Lab". Makes sense considering the dark tone of the game and how the Espers get experimented in the facility. It honestly reminds me of how experiments were done to humans in the real world.
My take on Kefka and Gestahl for a long time has been Kafka and Gestalt.
Kefka is a Kafkaesque antagonist (needlessly cruel, chaotic, making very little sense) and Gestahl is Gestalt, a philosophical term denoting a concept which may not be immediately obvious but which comes into view upon use of pattern recognition faculties, not unlike a magic-eye image.....the significance there would be that Gestahl embodies the conceptual ideal of the empire (he has intense and evil goals, but he is still guided by a principle and won't cross certain lines, as shown on the floating island.
There's an article I really like, called "The Essence of 'Kafkaesque'":
"'What's Kafkaesque," he said in an interview in his Manhattan apartment, "is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world.
"You don't give up, you don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafkaesque.""
If anything, Kefka and Gestahl map onto excessive Chaos and Law respectively. Both are a threat to the World of Balance. The threat Gestahl represents is despotism, a Faustian desire for the possession of all, empire-building and the dream of a thousand year kingdom; Kefka, on the other hand, represents the precariousness of that order, an incomprehensible being who just wants to watch the world burn, someone unintelligible and foreign to the very concepts that govern humanity itself.
@@michs7451 I really like the Law/Chaos analogy here, showing the sort of horseshoe effect of extremes. With Chaos comes an extreme release of energy, but unable to hold a form; with Law comes inflexible rigidity, its energy locked away in an unusable form: both paths lead to a sort of entropy.
@@GeebusCrust Yes, exactly. I was inspired by a chart on the Yin-Yang symbol that associated despotism and authoritarianism to Law / Yang and nihilism to Chaos / Yin.
It also implies that, although the game transitions over from the World of Balance to the World of Ruin in its second act, the world had already found its balance being threatened by an excessively orderly force in the Gestahlian Empire. The pendulum has now only swung the other way, to absolute chaos.
All those things you point out, like the Ultros 5 minutes or distraction thing, you must keep in mind, it's a stage-play...
19:05 How I explain that Cid didn't know about the Magicites is that the Espers are too valuable to them to kill them, because they've only caught a few of them, and the only way they know to get the power of the Espers is to extract it while they're still alive. I think it's not too hard to believe that they simply didn't want to risk losing any of those few Espers. But still, the likelihood of at least one of them dying accidentally in all that time is pretty high, so it's still a little weird for me.
Did I miss something or did Kefka at the sealed gate confirm that the three-man attack on Narshe at the beginning of the game was planned to fail?
"The Emperor was right! Let Terra fall into your hands, and you'd open the gate for us...!"
I read it more as, after that attack had failed, and after he was sent to get her at Figaro, that the Emperor came to the conclusion that it wasn't really a loss because she would just lead them to the gate anyway.
@@michaelcoraybrown I don't think so, because then Kefka would say something like: "The Emperor was right! Returners will use Terra to open the gate anyway".
This means that Kefka deliberately presented himself as a weakling, and these two attacks were provocations to impose this only solution on the enemy. Terra will voluntarily open this gate because she will be convinced that she is doing the right thing.
@@michaelcoraybrown I connected the dots.
Gestahl knew where the gate was - he was there when it closed. He was inside too, so he knew what was there.
He built a base next to this gate to control the passage to it. He was aware of the power on the other side of the gate.
He also knew that Terra was a half-breed.
The only problem was that he didn't know how to open that gate. After a decade of trying, he decided to hand Terra over to his enemies so that together with Terra they would open the gate for him. He also created a political emergency situation to steer the enemies towards the only one viable solution - opening the gate.
However, he did not expect to be confronted by such a powerful force that flew out of the gate, so he again began manipulating the team during dinner to prepare an ambush.
Leo was wrong, Gestahl did not hesitate to sacrifice his soldiers in pursuit of his goal. Gestahl was mastermind behind all of this.
Meanwhile, Kefka began making his own plans.
@7:54
Battle at Narshe Kefka can wipe your party with ice 2 and magic if you are unprepared. we haven't encountered much if any tier-2 magic at this point in the game.
I'd say Kefka has displayed his powerful magic but if you are prepared it's easy to bulldoze passed Kefka without seeing his magical capabilities.
Just bring celes
Have I had amnesia? 🤔
Can’t remember.
What I do remember is Cid’s Factory music. Not necessarily from my one and only playthru, but from around 12 years ago where I was suffering from a really bad ear worm.
As in a piece of music that was looping around and around in my head to the point of brain fog. My mind is alway threatening to break apparently. However, one of the songs I would play to drown it out was the Factory music. Helped a lot. In fact, a lot of video game music helped a lot.
Thanks Nobuo! You helped force something terrible out of my mind (mostly anyway) 😮
Speaking of military propaganda, there's also the case of soldiers who don't believe any of it, but they need a motivation (a narrative or fantasy if you will) to do the job they are being trusted to do.
Guessing we'll need to gather up all the poisonous insects and spiders then
i think the minecart ride is GREAT in terms of the tech and look of it. a bit long, yes, but it's so unique and i always thought it was some sort of meticulously composed arrangement of scaling sprites coming at you over and over again while changing position slowly to create that illusion. i think i may be right, still, though i am curious about exactly what was meant by "we drew the dots one by one." it looks like some crazy thing treasure would have done on the genesis, while smrpg simply implements mode 7.
The whole mecha aspect of the Empire (especially with the robot arms and kidnapping 'nature spirits') makes me think a lot of Dr Robotnik from Sonic games
I think it went under appreciated for terra failing not once but TWICE to communicate with the espers.
At the time, back in the day it was a common trope for RPGs to collect a macguffin item then successfully bring it to said objective. It's easy to concept and program and deliver. What squaresoft is doing here seems like a half baked plot twist to us 2020's folk, but this was actually brilliant subversion for its time.
Emperor Gestahl’s sprite Always looked like a light haired Schnauzer or Scottish Terrier. It was so hard for me to humanize him.
Apparently I had amnesia but i don't remember that happening
I may have had amnesia. I can't remember
What's the vector, Victor?
Don't call me Shirley.
I feel like I am one of the kids who didn't read through this. I remember playing FF6 but only snippets. Hahaha
Yes.
Pretty sure you're referring to zircons mix of magitek factory. It was probably a part of the ff6 full album project they had years ago. RIP
Rip? Why?
I STILL LISTEN TO THAT OC REMIX SONG CHRIST.
YES!
I wonder if the place where the Espers live is not adjacent to the world, but inside it. The hollow earth theory and the Espers live inside it.
Hollow earth? That's pretty cool.
@@CasenSperry if you haven't heard of the myth of Agatha, it's worth looking into. There was also a sensationally good anime film made about it called Children who Chase Lost Voices that you may enjoy.
I know you don't do deep dives into the soundtrack (or how far ahead you record the episodes). But might I suggest listening to 8 Bit Music theory's video on the final boss fight, Dancing Mad (and his FF6 music series in general)
It talks about hidden themes and symbolism in the music, what parts are sounds effects and what are actually part of the songs (and well, music theory too).
I always pronounced the name 'Maduin' as 'Ma-du-in' with three syllables.
Xenoblade Chronicles would be a fun game to watch an analysis of. It has a really engrossing story with heaps of plot twists.
They probably will eventually, but in terms of the Xeno series, I'd much rather that they do the rest of the Xenosaga games first.
@@srswriter1165 Agreed. I just finished Episode 2 and Jr and Albedo have a very mixed up relationship.
Hmm, I wouldn't take the easy balancing of the game to be any indication of Kefka's canonical magical power. This is a world where people like Locke and Edgar freak out to see Terra cast Fire 1 for 48 damage. So any magic at all is considered to be a very dangerous force, and Kefka has command of even more spells than does Terra or Celes
Cids suit reminded me of a chicken suit 😂
I think lone wolf died of embarrassment
I suppose there’s no better place to say this but it’s definitely worth it to steal the Tempest/Kazekiri from the mine cart ride boss. You can get a second in the Sealed Cave and the random(but very common) wind slash effect can lead to some pretty powerful builds.
The original SNES version of the game allowed Gau to equip it using the merit award and by also using the Offering/Master Scroll relic and the Stray Cat Rage allowed for absurd damage (known as the “Wind God Gau” build).
Alternatively, equip two on Cyan using the Genji Glove, use Espers to jack up his magic stat, and then later equip the Offering/Master Scroll. This allows him to, on average, unleash 4 Wind Slashes that attack all enemies per round but potentially up to 8 without any MP cost and can result in similarly huge damage (assuming enemies don’t absorb/are immune to wind damage).
If I'm not mistaken, Magic is actually Mahou for nihon, not Madou
There's two sides to this. It is "Mahou" in the commandlist but magitech specifically (the technology to infuse magic) is always referenced as Madou. In Universe, "Mahou" is the mystical aspect of the classic FF style while "Madou" is the corrupted (for good and bad) version in which "Mahou" is transformed into wieldable power by technology.
@@BDtetra hey, thanks for clarifying!
wish i had that maduin rizz...