The character credits section of the ending plays into the idea of FF6 as a piece of theatre, which was mentioned way back in Ep 1 or 2. The script for the characters (eg. Cyan Garamonde, Celes Chere, Terra Branford) was written by the developers, but we bring the characters to life onstage by playing the game. The names in this section appear based on what each player has custom-named their own personal cast of characters (so if you re-name Terra to Tina, you'd get Tina as Terra Branford in your version of the ending). And that's why You is the final character credit, because we imbue our own direction and emotion into characters whose lines may have already been written but only act upon on the script throiugh our personal play actions. Also, this section of the ending changes based on the characters we have in our party. If you don't recruit Locke, Setzer will save Celes instead and she'll refer to the bandanna as her 'good luck charm'. If you skip Sabin, Edgar will dodge the falling debris and mutter 'where's Sabin when you need him?'. Technically, only three characters are required in the World of Ruin to finish the game - Celes, Edgar and Setzer. Terra will appear no matter what, but everyone else is optional and the ending changes to accommodate that.
I was thinking about the small changes in the cutscene(since I did the 3 char challenge). But that makes me wonder what happens if you don't have Strago for the cutscene where Relm carries him on the conveyor belt.
I was surprised they missed that since they commented on the theater-ish presentation earlier in the series. I guess they forgot which is totally fair as there's *a lot* of different topics that got discussed over the last several weeks.
@@medkive There are few instances where some scenes will change if it's shared with a character. Except for Terra cause she will force her way into the ending regardless if you got her or not. For Relm case, It would just be Relm asking for help on the conveyor belt but Edgar, Setzer and Celes just ran past by her causing Relm to get angry and threatened them to paint their picture, Edgar, Setzer and Celes comes back on screen with a spooked face as conveyor belt slowly brings them closer to Relm. They bumped into Relm causing them to falling in the conveyor belt and Relm runs across them. Edit: Ok, I found the scene for Relm ruclips.net/video/7vBweIriNWA/видео.html
@@tsunaxsawada10 Thanks for the scene! Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe the only altered scenes are Edgar/Sabin, Celes/Locke, and Relm/Strago. All other scenes will have a mixture of Edgar, Celes, Setzer (and forced Terra) which are the mandatory characters to finish the game. (When a character is not recruited in the WOR its cut scene jsut replaced by a simple panning shot of a location related to the character.
One of the wineglasses shown above Terra's credit has the pendant in it that her father gave to her mother, so yeah it's a final symbol of the love that can cross worlds.
Also the duality of the two glasses can be in reference to Terra's human form and esper form. They look different but nonetheless, are a pair that belong together.
To add to the callbacks and leitmotifs, the beginning monologue of the game is exactly what is being shown in the end sequence. After the War of the Magi, Magic is lost and what's left is a damaged world, but soon after, Machine will replace magic and the world is slowly restored. Except this time there will be no one able to revive magic as it is truly lost. So the beginning and the end has this connection that ties itself very well. Here's another, the intro scene has the clouds covered in darkness, camera panning downward with the ominous church sounds and the last battle with Kefka has the clouds covered in bright light, camera panning upwards with the same ominous music being used. There is so much to unpack here, I can't believe that they thought all of that and manage to put it all in a SNES game. The ideas were great but what makes it simply amazing is the time they have to create the ideas, 1 year to be exact or possibly 2 years, and put it all in a console filled with constraints.
As someone who did attempt to cover all the lore, all the mechanics, script, art, music, even AI programming and all the rest for my book on FFVI... let me tell you: it took about 800 hours of work. I still missed a few things. Go easy on these guys.
And for anyone wondering what he's talking about, look up Reverse Design FFVI. It's his incredibly deep look at FFVI including word counts per character (who talks the most?), NPC dialogue analysis, how the plot and gameplay interact, and much more. It's what got me interested in game design and helped me think about how to structure our game as well. I bought all the Reverse Design books and reread them again after I replay any of the games (Chrono Trigger and FFVII are also highlights). Thanks so much Patrick, love what you did so much!
Thanks for analyzing and breaking down FFVI's battle mechanics as well as its power curve throughout the game. It revealed a lot to me and gave me new insights on game design!
@@RescuePets Thanks for providing a reference. I thought he was talking about the Boss Fight Book by Sebastian Deken. There's also one called The Legend of Final Fantasy VI by Pierre Mauguin.
If it’s any consolation I felt your coverage of this game was extremely thorough and didn’t feel that you rushed on anything. I greatly enjoyed the coverage of this game and this podcast series as a whole. Keep up the fantastic work!
Regarding Shadow's fate: It never really made sense to me playing the game as a kid. Why would he just stay behind and allow himself to die like that? And even after you learn the secret of how to save him on the floating continent? Then he just chooses to die in Kefka's tower anyway!? It pissed me off and I didn't like the character. But then as I got older and paid more attention to all the details, I came to understand that while Cyan, Locke, Celes, etc are stories about overcoming grief for past traumas, Shadow's story is a cautionary tale about if you can't forgive yourself and move on from the past. The opposite of the other important characters. Shadow never forgave himself for what happened with Baram. It's what led him to leave his family in Thamasa, because he didn't feel he deserved to live a peaceful and happy life after failing his partner. In the world of ruin, we never get a quest to help Shadow overcome his past, we only learn bits and pieces of it from the dream flashbacks when he's in the party. He kept his trauma/grief to himself and wasn't able to overcome it on his own. Whereas the others like Locke and Cyan had help from their friends. So Shadow found a moment to slip away from the group and chose to be left behind. He was never able to move on from his past (which is why it still haunts his dreams), and so he couldn't enter into that new world of potential like the others did. He's now become one of my favorite FF characters.
Shadow is also a mirror to Red XIII’s father in this way, something hammered hard by him being Relm’s father. Combining him with the story of Odin is honestly probably how they got that in 7, especially considering it was a ghostly figure we fight as well which caused that to his father when it was still alive. But unlike Red XIII’s father, the emotional bandage is short and excluded to the one arc of Cosmo Canyon. Shadow’s story is one you have to piece together. One you see how it developed, while you grow attached to who he is in the present. And in the end? You know how it’s going to end, deep down. You know, but you don’t wanna accept it. If the planned FF6R does come to fruition, I hope this scene is done true justice. And if they do try to save him for some reason, have Strago be the one to do it.
Shadow is also a mirror to Red XIII’s father in this way, something hammered hard by him being Relm’s father. Combining him with the story of Odin is honestly probably how they got that in 7, especially considering it was a ghostly figure we fight as well which caused that to his father when it was still alive. But unlike Red XIII’s father, the emotional bandage is short and excluded to the one arc of Cosmo Canyon. Shadow’s story is one you have to piece together. One you see how it developed, while you grow attached to who he is in the present. And in the end? You know how it’s going to end, deep down. You know, but you don’t wanna accept it. If the planned FF6R does come to fruition, I hope this scene is done true justice. And if they do try to save him for some reason, have Strago be the one to do it.
thats why I really like the Barham/Kefka theory He feels immense guilt about leaving him to get captured and after he finally kills Kefka he can finally rest easy. He pushes the dog away to presumably be with his daughter and tells Barham to meet him on the other side. (my head cannon)
Two other notes: Terras trinket, the two chalices, represent the two sides of her: The esper and the human, also the constant conflict she had trough the game. + The ancient castle, and the story of Odin, could be interpreted as the inspiration for The Opera, several ages later.
I remember beating this for the first time back in 1995. I was so amped when I finally beat Kefka and then the character credits hit with the book flipping pages. I was so entranced with the whole scenario. No joke: I laughed, I cried, it felt like I never took a breath the whole time. A perfect ending.
When it comes to the end credits, you talked about how great Locke and Celes' moment is. I wanted to add two things: 1) Setzer watches all of this. It's a moment of closure for him, too - even if briefly, he had some sort of feelings for Celes, even if it was just simple attraction. I really like that he sees the two of them have this moment. 2) Uematsu was able to have a small part of Celes' theme playing under Locke's theme! I tried to do more than Uematsu did in my cover of Locke's theme on my channel, and made a video about my thought process while making the cover, but I discovered that the amount that Uematsu used was about as much as you can use. But anyway, this moment is supremely operatic: it's like the tenor and soprano finally getting to sing a love duet at the end of the opera. They start off with their own themes, then trade fragments of Locke's theme back and forth, before finally "singing" in octaves, leading to a ii-V-I cadence.
As someone who doesn't have much time for video games anymore (adulting), I love these podcasts because you play it and cover the story. I either know the story, or I don't. But it's like talking to your homies about it and breaking down/dissecting it like a book. Without you guys, we wouldn't be having these conversations on such an intellectual level, and I thank you for that! I'm a vivid FF fan, but going back to play FF6 isn't realistic for me or the time I have. Appreciate you and keep up the great work. I'm a patreon just to support you guys and listen to a common entity that we all grew to love.
Couldn't agree more about how end credit medleys evoke the experience of the rest of the game! *To Far Away Times*, in particular, gets me to this day when I hear it played. It transports me across the time and space covered in that wonderful game, with all the accompanying emotions too!
The thing about the ending discussion and the magic is that the ending is drawing resolution to the opening kicker or problem of the story in that magic has been the source of humanities war and struggle for power and in the end that is no longer going to be a factor, so it opens the question if humans will be able to coexist previously now that magic is truly gone from the world.
It's a real treat that FF6 saved its 2 best music tracks for last via Dancing Mad and the ending theme. The Credits music is so good that I default to the medley version of FF6's character themes whenever they pop into my head from time to time. I mentioned this under Ep5 of this podcast (without spoiling), but one of the coolest parts is when Uematsu seamlessly merges Celes & Locke's themes during their credits scene together. In the Opera episode at 1:30:20 Mike was talking a lot about the Aria song's (i.e. Celes's theme) message affecting Locke & Celes simultaneously and bringing them closer together. So their themes fitting so perfectly together during their credits scene was the perfect/natural evolution of that synchronicity.
Don’t know why people thought you were rushing through this. You guys took your time and were pretty in depth with the world of balance. And the world of ruin doesn’t have a lot of “story”. It’s really just recruiting the characters, which you covered. It really is mostly just gameplay.
Though I initially dismissed the Baram/Kefka theory myself, I do think there’s something to it, particularly with regard to Shadow. Though emotionally detached, with no known reason to involve himself with the party (aside from when he’s paid to do so), he puts everything on the line to hold Kefka back on the Floating Continent. More importantly, his guilt is a result of his failure to abide Baram’s request to mercy kill him before he could be caught by the Empire, and Shadow is only at ease and willing to die once Kefka has finally been defeated. Following that assumption, this may be why he never attempts to reconnect with Relm - Shadow always intended to die after fulfilling Baram’s request. I’m not married to the idea, but it does have a leg to stand on. As for the Espers, my impression had always been that the game does believe that, in a perfect world, they would have been able to coexist with humans. Terra alone is proof of that, but the party as well, as they ally with Espers and band together to use the power of magic for a worthy cause. That the defeat of Kefka requires the extinction of magic is a tragic sacrifice, but one the Espers (at least from what we see) are willing to accept for the sake of the future of others. I think the game acknowledges that the party’s victory isn’t a perfect one, though I’m glad this is something you guys addressed here. Its message resonated with me, but I can see how it might seem a bit muddled. Thank you guys for your fantastic work on these episodes. It’s been great hearing your in-depth thoughts on this incredible game and comparing them against my own interpretations. Looking forward to the eventual Terranigma series!
I've always taken FF6 as a story about love. The Playable characters giving their cheesy platitudes to Kefka represent the love they found. Terra uses family, Locke & Celes gain romantic love, Cyan holds his wife and child dear, Strago & Relm have an generational love, Figabros are best bros. Mog just wants friends. But Kefka, cannot love. Whatever the experiment did, he's lost the capacity to love. His rejection as a self-help pamphlet is the closest he can come to understanding it. He's spent a year trying to wipe out hope, waiting for the world to die of despair. And when the heroes point out love will generate enough hope no matter how bleak the situation, Kefka loses all patience. Kefka lost the argument, so he just flips out and decides to kill everyone. Shadow killed his feelings, and lost love in the process. He knows with Kefka gone, his job is done. He can't go back to Thamasa, he killed the love of his family to kill the cowardice over Baram. Of course he stays behind in the tower.
With the amount of work that goes into playing the game, taking notes, setting all of the gear for recording up, traveling to meet up, actually recording, and editing the video, it only makes sense that they would miss details or parts of a game. I'm certain Mike and Casen have fun with this, but keep in mind it's a lot of work, too! If they were rushing through games or podcasts to just get onto the next thing, the quality of the final product wouldn't be as consistently high as it is, across the board of every series they have done. Please keep up the amazing work and go at whatever pace you need! We'll be here to support you every week.
I'm glad you liked Caligula! It was, along with The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, part of a series of works that Camus wrote to explore the idea of the 'absurd' i.e., the contradiction and confrontation between the human mind, which insists on order, justice, and fairness, and an indifferent universe that is essentially none of these things, essentially the conflict between "a mind that desires and a world that disappoints." Caligula (and Kefka), then, would represent, for Camus, a failed attempt for man to come to terms with the absurd, by falling into a state of abject nihilism, despondency, and complete despair. I interpreted Caligula as, fundamentally, a troubled man. While he sought to be a good emperor according to the standards of Imperial Rome at first, the death of his sister-lover caused him to see not just the futility and meaninglessness of all these Roman ideals; it also exposes, for him, the absurdity that is inbuilt into the nature and structure of the universe. He is therefore troubled by the fact that “people are dying and they are not happy,” that their desires for all kinds of happiness and bliss ultimately means nothing in light of the truth of death and suffering. And yet, he is agitated against all the half-truths and the lies that people continue to tell themselves to live lives of “bad faith,” which they use to avert their eyes from the truth. He resolves then to stain his hands with blood, to act as a philosophical terrorist and crush all these silly little reasons for living and awaken people to the genuinely absurd nature of the world. We can clearly see the Kefka parallels here. Like Caligula, he writes his absurdist philosophy in scores and scores of human blood. I mentioned before that Kefka’s world is simultaneously orderly and chaotic-to be even more specific, he instantiates an absolute order of absolute chaos. This is a world that reflects his worldview of despair, where life, hope, and dreams mean nothing, where the gods are fundamentally powerless, where a megalomaniac can suddenly become God in one bad day, where the Light of Judgment can come and destroy you, your family, and everything you hold dear without warning. It is that vision of the world that is unbearable for Scipio and the people in revolt, for the party, who decisively “rebels” against such a picture of the world. And as Albert Camus goes on to say in The Rebel, in the moment of rebellion, the rebel affirms the existence of higher values that is worthy of rebellion, that is greater than life itself, “I rebel, therefore we exist.”
In regard to Kefka, people kind of consider him like the Joker because of his sociopathic nature, but Ive always looked at him as Frankenstein's monster. Gestahl and the Empire created a monster that essentially destroyed not only themselves (Vector literally became Kefkas tower), but the world because of their hubris
I think the Frankenstein’s Creature motif is also extended to FFVII’s Sephiroth and FFIX’s Kuja. There’s even an article iirc that links Sephiroth to Frankenstein’s Creature and Lucifer from Paradise Lost.
I'm not sure if this is confirmed officially, but Dancing mad is almost certainly inspired by Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, intro of the game included. The "dove" that nursed Celes back to life is probably the Palidor esper, which you get later when you come back to the solitary island on the shore of the beach and has a bird-like in-battle sprite. Perhaps they just didn't have a world-sprite to depict him as noticeably different from a dove.
I’m still upset by how he rushed the ending, as he forgot the laugh was legitimately imbedded into the music loop originally and only separated from the game audio later, something even more odd considering that you can hear the laugh in that video. He ended on a note of Kefka lulling into comfort at his own death, and while I feel that’s part of it as it fits his philosophy hence why him winning twice is a popular take, but he laughs in your face. It’s still not over. He’s luring you into a false sense of security.
When I was a kid playing this on my SNES, I used to be incredibly fascinated by that tower of twisted bodies you have to fight right before Kefka. As a kid I wanted to understand the full deeper meaning behind what it was and why it was there and where it came from. I never cared that much about things like this in my video games before, I was a pretty simple kid that took anything at face value. I would pause the game and try and study each level of that fight, try to figure out how it came into existence, how it had been created, still thinking of things in literal physical ways since I was a kid. I could tell that Kefka was all over it, appearing on almost every tier of it, and even seemingly appearing multiple times on the middle tier. I did a lot of research later in life as an adult about what was inspired by and what its ideas are trying to communicate, but that wasn't the kind of answer I was looking for as a kid. As a kid I wanted a more straightforward explanation. As a young kid who started playing games on the Atari, I had been pretty well accustomed to using my imagination to fill in any blanks that the graphics of old games couldn't create. So every time I would play FFVI and fight this 3 tiered tower of machine and bodies before Kefka, I imagined a more realistic version of the battle in my mind, or at least I always tried to do this. And the idea of the party having to fight multiple versions of Kefka on a twisted tower as we ascend up into the heavens was kind of mind blowing to me, especially as he ultimately descends down upon us from higher in the sky even as we climb this abomination with lesser versions of him. Normally RPGs just had monsters that appear and we kill them. The bosses are just bigger stronger monsters, final bosses are even bigger monsters. It was all very simple for a kid to take at face value, you know? But this end of FFVI was different, it made me think about it a lot.
It should be noted: Kefka's favorite means of destruction is through fire. His teaching a slave crowned Terra to burn 50 soldiers. Setting Figaro Castle ablaze. "This town has too much boring and not enough Burning". And his in battle spells, while still diverse, favor the Fire line and Meltdown.
Like the Joker, I really like the ambiguity surrounding Kefka's origins. Not only does this ambiguity further accentuate the character's chaotic nature, the fact that we don't have any details about his backstory apart from the idea that the experimentation he went through "shattered his mind" leaves it up to the audience's imagination with regard to what exactly he experienced that made him this way. My preferred reading, taking huge inspiration from Franz Kafka, is that before the experimentation, he was an everyman, the Final Fantasy VI-equivalent of a salaryman much like *The Metamorphosis*’ Gregor Samsa who signed himself up for the genetic experiments as a way of improving his lot in life. And while Gregor Samsa woke up one day as a unintelligible louse, Kefka woke up one day as an unintelligible being who had “ceased” to be “human”; it radically changed him to be no longer capable of experiencing positive feelings of love, meaning, and value, apart from the sadistic need to destroy. But as Kefka realizes, sadism and destruction, as concepts, are purely “negative” - incapable in and of themselves for building a world and lifeview that promotes and is conducive for life. Ultimately, who he was before "Kefka" doesn't matter. The scary thing is, given one bad day and a radical change to our worldview, we might all have become Kefka. And as Bane puts it in The Dark Knight Rises, "no one cared who I was until I put on the mask."
Thank you, gentlemen! A lovely end to your lovely coverage for FFVI! This was released in NA nearly 30 years ago, when I was 13... one of my friends bought the game and I'll never forget starting to explore the world together. Saturday plans became a sleepover and the sleepover became hanging out all weekend trying to get as far as we could in the story before school on Monday. The escalation of mature themes versus other SNES games was jaw-dropping to us, it was my first JRPG and the game that I loved enough to realize I could use my Walkman to make (crappy) recordings of the music on cassettes. I distinctly remember my friend being impatient and moving around, getting into battles when I wanted a looped cut of the overworld music so I wouldn't have to rewind it every time I wanted a full listen. FFVI nurtured a love for music I didn't know I had, and has led to my collecting CDs/vinyl since I had money to buy them. After thoroughly enjoying the distinct characters and their themes, arriving at the end, challenging Kefka, and watching the credits unfold was transcendant. It truly felt like the culmination of a life-changing experience, a game conclusion above all others mostly due to another intricate layering of the music I had loved so much already. I became a JRPG fan for life, with the hopes that other games in the same genre could be just as touching. I later got a copy of Chrono Trigger on my SNES, and during any downtime I was always content to play a New Game + again, eventually completing it over 80 times before I gave my console away. I will always know Chrono Trigger better than FFVI, and the soundtrack was similarly moving and is one of my favorite scores as well. But even though it was satisfying, the last boss sequence and ending never quite measured up to FFVI, didn't provide that wholly changing experience I was hoping to capture again. As good as CT was, I remember seeing the normal ending for the first time, feeling fulfilled, but then disappointing myself wondering where the rest of the ending was (since it was ~1/3 the length of FFVI's sequence). As the years passed, I realized more and more that this last part of FFVI wasn't something to be expected out of all JRPG endings but was a uniquely phenomenal finish for an amazing game, from the "theater role" sequences in the credits to the immaculately connected medley of leitmotifs. I've enjoyed many games, but it's no exaggeration to say that FFVI spoiled my expectations of what an ending COULD be (a 20+ minute musical masterpiece), and for me it's never been equaled. While most people praise how well done it is, Mike's comments from 1:04:48 through 1:10:39 are probably the best way I could convey my experience now that I've grown and can better articulate myself, it was cathartic to hear someone else spend this amount of time and detail discussing how impactful it also was to them. ❤
Thank you so much for this series! FF6 is one of my favorite games of all time and I've played it countless times, but I still managed to learn quite a bit.
The "Gau as Gau" part seems a bit silly, especially if you've never thought to change the default names of the characters, but it actually shows the customized names you put in, so you might get: "Tina as Terra Branford" or "Thief as Locke Cole".
Kinda plays into that "Stage Play" element of the presentation that was spoken of before, in particular when discussing the way the characters get thier little spotlight descriptions just as you're about to name them.
Thank you guys so much for all your hard work, it was an absolute blast to play this game for the first time. I am still thinking about this game almost a week after finishing it and I think I'll probably ponder on it for months from here, possibly even years. I think the thing that has stuck with me more than anything though has to be the music. These songs by Nobuo Uematsu are amazing, I catch myself humming these songs more than possibly any other game I've played. Cyan's theme is my personal favorite. Again thank you guys so much 👍🏻
Oh, it definitely sticks with you. I played it when I was 16 so it definitely stuck with me. A masterpiece of game storytelling for the ages. This and Chrono Trigger.
One little tidbit about Gogo that almost everyone seems to not find. He's the absolutely best character to use in the Colosseum because you can customize what commands he can use. His command list can be changed to any commands from anyone in your party, and if you use the magic command, he knows all the spells your current party knows. He doesn't have the stat boosts from espers as all the other characters, but he has all the skills. He's the ultimate Jack of all trades, master of none. As one friend said once: "One bum rush is nice, but 2 bum rushes are nicer" XD
One note about the music in the ending, Celes and Locke's theme actually get played together, and they work surprisingly well, harmonically. I take that as Nobuo's way of saying these two very different people with very different musical cues are a good match.
When playing through the game as a kid, I did not have Shadow at the end of the game as I did not know that I could save him on the floating continent by hanging around until the timer ran out. Playing through it as an adult, here is my view on Shadow's ending: - Shadow and Baram are train robbers - They have a train robbery that goes sideways and the Empire is chasing them - Baram pleads Shadow to un-alive him with his knife, stating: "You know what they'll do to me if they catch me alive!" - Shadow does not fulfill Baram's request, and leaves him to his fate I assume at this point, the Empire catches up to Baram and captures him. They then run cutting-edge, untested and drastic Magitek experiments on him which warp his mind and he becomes Kefka. After the party defeats Kefka, Baram is now put to rest. I believe this was Shadow's true motive for joining the party. "Baram... It looks like I can finally stop running... Come and find me, all right?" With Baram now at rest, Shadow has finally fulfilled Baram's request and now has nothing else worth living for and un-alives himself. That's how I see it, anyway :)
A quote rom the Vector citizen: "Here's one for you... That guy Kefka? He was Cid's first experimental Magitek knight. But the process wasn't perfect yet. Something snapped in Kefka that day..." I would assume the Empire would conduct these experiments on prisoners/undesirables first.
Kefka is undeniably a sociopath (also known as anti-social personality disorder). Sociopathy as it is colloquially known is on the same disorder spectrum as psychopathy (they are both officially called anti-social personality disorder). If you ask a psychiatrist/psychologist the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, they will tell you that a psychopath is born while a sociopath is MADE. I don’t know if the developers thought it out to that degree but it is interesting to note that FF6 is notoriously the first FF game where the ultimate villain is just a regular guy rather than some inanimate evil. It is almost as if the developers are trying to say that Kefka, unlike all of those other guys we fought in previous FF games, is the evil we ourselves (by which I mean the world) made. Edit: Terra’s precious treasure listed at the end credits is her necklace draped across the cups. That necklace is an heirloom from her parents.
Great analysis and I'm excited for Nier Automata. I haven't played it again since launch so I'm definitely hyped to dive back in for a deeper look at the game all these years later.
Guys, your in depth analysis is incredible. I feel wiser, almost enlightened with your podcast. Bravo! FF6 is near and dear to my heart. I couldn't wait for each episode. Really looking forward to Chrono Trigger. Thank you gentlemen!
Thank you for covering the Ancient Castle and Ebot's Rock. I know there isn't a ton there compared to some other areas but I think they add to the conversation and the themes of the plot and characters. If my comment from last week talking about them was one of the ones that was causing problems, I want to sincerely apologize. I definitely didn't mean for it to be taken in that light. Other than that, thank you so much for covering this game. It's one of my favourites and your analysis and commentary has been fantastic. On to Nier Automata!
Pretty sure most/all if the Espers are dead in the wold of ruin because the land beyond the sealed gate where they lived rose up to become the floating continent then crashed down to become the foundation of Kefka's tower.
This was such an amazing podcast. These types of Philosophical endings especially concerning the character motivations and their personality traits are pretty common amongst jrpg games and one such series comes to mind to me that is similar to FF VI, is the "Tales of" series. Often these types of stories and character monologues go right over a lot of people’s heads so its nice to see this greater analysis and perspective on what is really being presented here concerning Kefka and his Nihilistic and sociopathic logic. I would definitely be interested in watching a podcast about one of the tales of series if there ever were enough votes for it.
I would say Terra's two glasses were representing her two halves. The plain glass is her human side, easily injured, emotionally fragile, etc. And the ornamented one is her Esper side. Grand, powerful, majestic.
I personally interpret the 2nd part of the boss as an expression of madness. He sits at the front, in a thinker's pose, while the figures at the back represent his mind, split into multiple persons with no common goal or direction.
This series was an absolute pleasure to listen to, and I've played along with you guys and beaten the game for the first time in years. Such an amazing, epic, MAGICAL game. Probably my 2nd fav JRPG after Chrono Trigger.
Another brilliant production from you guys. A great video on one of my favorite games. I appreciate the time and effort, as well as the great perspective that you both have put in to this!
I'm very unsatisfied with Shadow's conclusion. If it were just a story about survivor's guilt, it would make sense. But he has been reuinted with his daughter and adventures with her to save the world. Before the final battle even, he seems to be warming up to the idea of caring about people again. But then that gets undermined whe he just decides to go and die in a corner. It just doesn't sit right with me.
The scene plays as a curtain call, with every actor getting their final bow. When I played as a kid, the internet convinced me you could save Shadow, if you saw all "seven" of his dreams. As an adult, I realized it was appropriate for him to resign himself to collapse with the tower (He does not appear on the Falcon). But the best part of the ending: the music of Celes and the music of Locke coming together. Best game of all time for me.
I see the one-winged thing more along the lines of a fallen angel. You can't reach heaven with only one wing.. nor return to your origins (there's no turning back / in too deep / ain't no getting offa this train) and there was most likely a clash in heaven to cause that injury in the first place.
A couple of things I LOVE about the final battle against Kefka is the melded statue design. The way I see it, each part can be seen as 1- Each of the warning triad as being corrupted by Kefka's power or 2- Different agents that LEAD to Kefka's ascension to godhood: The first level is Gestalt, the second level is the returners (from left to right you can see Sabin, Cyan, Edgar and Terra, assuming the rest are in the back of the statue we can't see), and the third level being "the goddes" herself. The ultimate magic he absorbed from the warning triad, that led Kefka to acquire the ultimate power to shape and destroy the world. AND you can see how this also happens in the mechanics (script) on each part of the battle, the magics and attacks they use: First stage uses high level magic, like Gestalt, Second level uses physical and balanced magic attacks, like the returners, Third stage has high level magic and healing spells (as what happened in the floating continent)
I really loved the idea that Terra, who has been enslaved and exploited for her powers her whole life, is finally free to write her own story. Moreover, as Kefka and Terra stand as character foils, if Kefka ultimately arrives at a position of mockery at the world's absurdity and is completely detached from the world, it makes sense that Terra, as his opposite, comes to an appreciation of life, dreams, hope, and all that this life has to offer, and it is this appreciation (something that, for all of his power, Kefka could never reach) that saves her. On the discordant note that the ending left on, it is worth noting that in the initial scenario, Terra was meant to die at the end at FFVI (an idea that became reused for Tidus in FFX): "-What is Terra’s role in the story? Sakaguchi: In the first half of the game, her personality is very passive. We did that because we wanted to show her growth as the story progresses. In the process of being manipulated and used by others, she gradually awakens to her own destiny. The awakening of the self, of one’s own humanity-those are her themes. -Were there any major changes to her character during the development? Sakaguchi: At the end of the game, we originally were going to have Terra disappear along with all the other Espers. We thought it would be a waste, though, to have Terra erased like that just when she had awoken to her humanity. So instead we made her lose her magic powers and remain in the world."
I love the biblical references in the final battle with Kefka. 😍 I love the fact that you're pretty much fighting your way from the depth of Hell and the purgatory until you reach Heaven to face against the mad clown turned "God".
Interesting note (and perhaps Casen can correct me on this), but "Dancing Mad" in the Japanese is called something along the lines of "Wild Dance of a Calamitous Star". If Terra / Celes / the party is the evening star that shines brightly in the midst of the darkness, then Kefka represents the calamitous star that heralds and brings forward calamity to the world. My favorite part of Dancing Mad is the final movement, where the party fights against Kefka, the God of Magic in the World of Ruin. The track opens up with the introductory organ piece that resembles "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," perhaps indicating that, for Kefka, this is the true state of the universe (much like how Nietzsche's prophet uncovers the truth that "God is dead"). If the Divine Comedy exemplifies the medieval worldview, where man moves away from sin and hell towards God and enlightenment, the only equivalent there is is an awareness of the impermanence of all things and a man-God who holds all notions of meaning and value in the world in contempt. The track is manic, indicating Kefka's godlike powers and how the party is doing everything in their power to barely survive against the man-God. But the track suddenly becomes sad, Kefka's meditation on the impermanence and hence meaninglessness of all things. Everything is worthless to him: Kefka cannot understand all of the reasons that human beings have for hope, especially in this broken world that seems to contain nothing but suffering, despair, and death. This is where he ultimately lands: the end comes beyond chaos. And in reaction to this sadness, he steels himself up for mockery, for destruction. It is fitting that the last word we have from Kefka is his laugh. For the only sane reaction in a mad world is laughter, at the dissonance between the weight that human beings give to their silly little reasons for living, and their lack of importance when viewed from the grander eyes of a god, looking a thousand years into the future.
I agree the death of Espers is a strange way to resolve the plot from essentially the entire World of Balance. Couldn't the power of the statues could have been imbued into Terra after Kefka's defeat instead, fulfilling her destiny as the "ray of light" for both the Espers (source of life) and humans (mother figure in Miranda)? Otherwise she doesn't do much for the Espers besides piss them off/get them killed/etc. This would require her to not be optional in World of Ruin and it admittedly fits more with her "ray of light" theme than "finding love" theme, but it's an interesting way to make her solidified as proof that Humans and Espers coming together can result in great things.
Ff14 back in 2016 had the warring triad from FF6. The fiend was Sephirot and represented nature, Sophia was the Goddess and represented balance, and Zurvan was the Demon representing overcoming injustice. The models were even modeled directly after the ones from FF6.
As cheesy as they are, and as much of a cliche as the moment is, each character stepping up to tell Kefka why they fight is essentially them explaining their Superobjective to him - the thing that they're working toward throughout the game, and what most of them come to realize by the end. I think the only character that doesn't have a strong SO is Edgar (at least in the SNES translation). Each character's SO is pretty closely tied to their theme: when something in the game happens that ties in to what the tell Kefka at the end, their musical theme tends to play. Throughout the entire game! I'm not sure how much of that was intended, but it works so well.
While you guys were discussing the ending of games and the journey you went through, one of my favorite games came to my mind. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. The progression of scenes where everything that was wrong was put right. The dwarven smiths, the two friends on Death Mountain (and the one is still a bully), and the flute boy playing in his grove with his father there.
Just in regards to 31:07, I don't feel that the party and Kefka are talking past each other. Rather, Kefka's saying that nothing matters because everything will eventually disappear. And the party are countering that by saying that just because things may change and disappear in the future, it doesn't diminish their value in the present moment. And that no matter how much change occurs, life will persist. At least, that's what I felt =) Incredible podcast Mike and Casen! One of my favourites you've done so far - and that's saying a lot =D
With regards to the ending, specifically with the explanation as to why the espers had to "die" after defeating Kefka, it seems to be implied, if not intended, that all of the espers in the world have been turned into magicite, i.e. they're already dead. Between the actions by Kefka in the World of Balance, the interim year between events, and our party's actions, it appears that all espers in the world have been killed or hunted to extinction. So, the idea that humans and espers can live together in harmony was already challenged and /or refuted all the way back to the Floating Continent section in the World of Balance, indicating that the espers were losing/had lost the second war of the Magi, particularly because of the direct actions by Kefka. Aside from Kefka himself, it appears that the only form of magic left to exist in the World of Ruin is magicite. And, magicite has become a symbol of the cycle of destruction and chaos that thematically is tied to the remnants of trauma and loss that surround each of the characters and the greater world at large. One could discuss the specific side quests of each instance where magicite is obtained, but overall, a monster or lingering trauma for a character (whether party member or npc) is usually resolved with obtaining more magicite. AND THUS, by the disappearance of magicite (i.e. dead espers) from the world can humans learn to let go of their traumas, pain, and hang ups of the past, allowing humans, especially our main cast, to move forward with their lives. This seems to fall more in line with the Buddist concept of letting go of earthly attachments, allowing the espers in magicite form to move on to a higher plane of existence, I believe. I find it especially interesting that the full resolution to each characters' arc occurs during the cast roll WHILE the magicite is disappearing from the world.
I've played "FF3" since it debuted and yet you guys analyze and approach things in a way I never considered. Also you've cultivated one of the smartest and most thoughtful comment sections on RUclips. Amazing stuff! Love this Podcast. I appreciate all the writing, research, editing, filming, and you know actually playing the damn game, that goes into this Show. Thank you for all the hard work and dedication.
Thanks a ton! I agree about the comment section. I actually look forward to reading the comments each episode because of how good and thoughtful many of them are.
Echoing the transcendence/immanence rift (i.e., how close does/should humanity get to the life-giving powers) so central to theological disputes throughout history, I wouldn't say that the theme/message is necessarily that the transcendent powers are bad as such. Indeed, within the dramaturgy of FF6, it's what gave us Terra. It's just that humanity shouldn't attempt to get *that* close. It bespeaks something of the 'old wisdom' of respecting the limits of the natural order, against which the human heart, in its sinfulness, always wants to rebel. Think of someone like an Augustine, who well understood that any attempt to make of this world a heaven would only make of it a hell. The empire, in trying to be as gods themselves, in embracing the nihilism inherent in viewing humanity as nothing more than intrinsically meaningless resources (standing by to be optimized), gave rise to Kefka, who so thoroughly internalized that nihilism that there could be no redemption or penance for him. In the end, he could not allow for the dialectical tension of the transcendence/immanence rift, of that fundamental ambivalence, of our divided nature. In his own quest for godhood--not just to reunite with the primal, life-giving powers, but to supplant and surpass them--that distinction had long since been rendered meaningless for him. Whereas Terra went on a journey of self-discovery in which she learned that to be human is precisely to reconcile oneself to the limits and fallenness of the world--the tragic sense of life, from which so much great art derives---while nevertheless affirming the goodness of it all. To hold oneself within that tragic sense while still affirming life, in all its contingency, givenness, and necessity--that is love. So you could think of Terra as not only giving us about as good of an answer to the t/i dialectic as we're ever going to get, in a mytho-poetic sense, but also, as the living legacy of the life-giving powers (i.e., magic, Espers, what have you) in the embodiment of a positive and life-affirming heroine. I don't think she would teach the children of Mobliz that the Espers were bad, per se, but maybe it's better that they live on in mythology rather than becoming consubstantial with the human. Religion, as an expression of the t/i dialectic, as a productive and expressive attempt to come to grips with that, could never be bad, as such, anymore than storytelling, as another expression of that dialectic, could be. I will concede that The Warring Triad as the prime movers of the story's mythology do arguably equate religion with will-to-power in a negative way that may be distinctly eastern or Japanese by turns. Of course, for all we know, there are higher gods above the Triad who would disprove of their actions--that the Triad were themselves rebellious, Luciferean archetypes, imposing their will, acting as if the mortal realm had no intrinsic meaning but what they might ascribe or impose upon it. Suffice it to say that the question of whether "the natural order" as portrayed in FF6 is intrinsically good or bad, will always be open to interpretation. But one might say that the upshot of this entire post is that, well...how could it be otherwise in ANY facet of human existence. That's probably why they call it 'faith.' And I guess I'm interpreting the story in a way that suggests that Terra believing in love was itself an act of faith--a positive affirmation of nothing short of religiosity itself.
You raised some really great points here. 1. I like your points about "respecting the limits of the natural order" and the restoration of those limits in light of the transgression that has already taken place as a result of the Gestahlian Empire's will to power and Kefka's desire for destruction. It is not for nothing that the musical theme that accompanies this section of the game is called "Balance is Restored," which could also refer to reinstating in place the natural boundaries and limits between the different races in the world of Final Fantasy VI. 2. I appreciate your Heideggerian read of the Gestahlian Empire (in viewing others as tools to be used and subsequently discarded), and how Kefka goes beyond the transcendent-immanent dialectic. In a sense, the dialectic is confused and thrown into chaos with the ascension of Kefka into godhood. Here is a man who was purely immanent, but seized for himself a faux-transcendence, usurping a godlike power that was never his to begin with. This is why, for all of his pretensions of divinity, he is ultimately not immortal and can still be killed. And your reading further contextualizes the party's response to Kefka's absurdist philosophy: Kefka is right in the sense that all things will eventually pass away. And therein is the tragic sense of the world, that life, though important, is fleeting. And perhaps it is all the more important because it is fleeting, because there will come an expiry date to the things that we know and love. 3. In a sense, the Triad was the first instantiation of the Luciferian will that upset the delicate balance of the world, throwing it into the chaos of the War of the Magi. And Gestahl and Kefka were merely byproducts of their destructive legacy. 4. I'm also wary of imposing moral judgments ("good" or "bad") on the natural world itself, since to do so might be, in a sense, to anthropomorphize it and to distort it to befit human interests. Terra could very well be embracing the end of one era (the era of the gods), and a new era of freedom where she is, on a personal level, free to do whatever she wants; and for humanity to write a new chapter in their history without fear of the threat of annihilation that could come with the wrongful misuse of magic that has devastated the world so many times already. Humanity has finally broken free of its yoke, and is free to craft a new future for themselves.
@@michs7451 I'd argue that to believe in a natural order is to believe that things can be naturally good or bad -- and that good and bad ultimately come down to appropriateness within that order. Otherwise, what do good and bad even mean beyond mere preferences? And how can one justify treating them as mere preferences when the natural order seems intent in practice upon avenging itself on those who treat good and evil as preferences?
You have a point there. I think the only caveat is to make the distinction between “good” (as human beings understand it) and “good” (as the natural world understands it), since what is good for the world might not be so for humanity.
@@michs7451 I'm inclined to think that if we don't take it on faith that what's good in the natural order is also somehow good for us, things start to go very wrong very quickly. Doing so might not be particularly appealing if we don't believe that the natural order is designed to reward us for trusting it, but at the very least we're dealing with a natural order designed to punish us for trying to resist it, so questioning its goodness is useless at best and actively counterproductive more generally. And given that "that which the natural order doesn't inevitably punish" is as close to an objective definition of good as one can get, it's good not to see what's good for the natural order as bad for us, lol.
Thank you guys for this excellent series on one of the FF games that I haven't played, but always have been interested in. Always a pleasure to hear Casen make breakdowns of the symbolism hidden in games/art, and make references to the Kabbalah and other religious texts. You definitely did give FFVI your best. Cheers, and on to the next!
1:19:00 Clarification: It's another case of GBA vs SNES confusion :P I think the dissonance you guys express with Terra's credits ending with Maduin come from focusing on specifically direct attachments and not the broader themes of appreciation and hope. She becomes a foil to Kefka for these reasons after all, so perhaps the issue is the use of the word "strongly attached to something or someone" in the SNES text. Fwiw, the GBA script instead says "if the human part of you feels something strong enough..." which Mike reads out loud at 1:17:30 It is also plausible that Maduin had no idea what he was talking about and just theorized how Terra could live on, when in fact she would've survived anyways due to her human half/genes lol and it's not like there were any prior examples to pull from
Thanks for this set of podcasts lads. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, FF6 never gets enough love in this franchise. Great to have such an extensive look into my favourite title every week.
No spoilers but Mike talking about how good music in credits makes you feel things and reflect on the journey and have emotional responses, Nier Automata has my favorite end credits of all time of any video game I’ve ever played. It is absolutely outstanding the rush of emotions from what it asks you to do, again no spoilers, and then the music and what it does there at that moment oh my god.
Started playing through FF6 at the beginning of this podcast weeks ago and I finally beat it 3 days ago. Probably my second or third time playing it, but first time actually beating it, and I loved it every minute. Quick edit. Finally finished the episode and regarding the espers.. if you go back and watch really closely when Kafka opens the gate, more than one Shiva and Ifrit and Ramuh and various other espers whom I'm sure you already have in your party, exit the sealed cave. so they're not the only esper of that type, or being. Kinda makes you wonder how many espers they decided to not use in 6 and actually put in concept in other FF's.
The dissonance is important to the central theme. Terra is trying to reconcile her two halves throughout the WoB. But in searching for herself through her ancestry, she finds only fighting and ruin. Kefka, trying to conquer the espers/magic leads to the annihilation of the planet: i.e. a manifestation of her greatest fear that humans + espers/magic = terror. So in the WoR she has basicallt renounced her esper half in order to create her first sense of self-created identity. She starts to find herself in loving the children, to the point where she is reluctant to go back at all. but then she MUST face her esper half, specifically the fear that letting her human side join with it in order to fully let go of her past and her fear. Her esper half and magic disappearing is symbolically relate to her acceptance of her past and relinquishing it's control over her self-fear/hate.
Keep doing what you’re doing guys. I figured we would get about an episode and a half dedicated to the world of ruin. There’s just not much story to cover in that part of the game. Cool moments, sure, but not everything in this part lends itself to fevered analysis.
For Kefka, no one sits atop a tower for a year without thinking about what they've done after what he did. He even says he's been practicing his opening lines to the party. I believe he was waiting up there for someone to kill/save him from his philosophy. He could have destroyed the world long ago, but didn't. I think he was screaming for help under the clown. He listened to the party as they spoke to him and just didn't understand, but he Wanted to hear them. My personal interpretation of the final boss phases, besides Dante's Inferno and Kefka's story which I also believe are true, is that its a series of who Kefka sought help for his Nihilism from. First he took to anger and destruction and wrath seeking solace in it and found none. Then he sought people and compared himself to them and found no comparison, the most Him part of that section is Blue unlike any other part,; he can't compare himself to people and feels alienated and isolated. Third he sought comfort from his parent, especially his mother, but his mother had no hands to hold him with anymore (I often worried if that was his Actual mother on that segment, but that's getting into crazy Evangelion theory crafting). At last all he came to was himself and god, and he found he was god so the only answers he could find were in himself and therefore there were no answers. Leaving him with the party to show him what the world he was and was not, dying quietly in nothingness, maybe even peace.
I wanna point out something obvious about the cedits. So, FF6 is the Super Mario World of Final Fantasy. Why would I say this? It’s all a play, theatre. The ending all but confirms this. It’s an ensemble cast brought perfectly together by its main antagonist, the story crediting each actor at the end as noted by the fact you could rename everyone, but the true names always stay. It feels perfectly like a comedy you would see at a play, a comedy which Kefka is making his own comedy on. And so, so, so much more symbolism for. This also is a very thematic nod to its fourth-wall breaks where characters go all across the screen of laugh off. It’s the actors genuinely jumping across and off the stage.
You only mentioned in passing the mini-quest to kill the 8 elemental dragons, which unlocks the Crusader esper... That triad of espers matches up with the 3 goddesses. They also do damage to the whole player party as well as the enemies. It's like they continue the war of the magi when you summon them in. Overall, I think this story carries right into the FFXIII world of l'Cie/Espers created by the fal'Cie/"gods"... and the war between the Pulse and Cocoon fal'Cie (no triad, but still a war between the gods carried out through their magical warriors.)
35:03 I love Kefka's usage of "Exterminate" and avoiding direct mentions of death in the SNES version. "A monument to nothingness" feels much harsher than "kill everyone."
I really think Shadow's choice at the end really speaks in favor to the Baram is Kefka theory. Clyde's guilt from not being able to give Baram the coup de grace haunts Shadow's dreams. In the first dream, Baram says "Find me here." In the third dream, Baram pleads to Clyde to use his knife, saying "think of what they'll do to me if I get caught. I dont want to go through that." Not sure who "they" would be, perhaps associated with the Empire? Clyde then cowardly abandons the situation. We DO NOT know for certain that Baram died. I wonder what he went through if/when he got caught... I think Shadow (our character) has been pretty one-track minded this entire time. If he was simply a train robber, why all the need for masks and mystery over a decade later? Times when you can recruit him and times he leaves the party are all pretty close to scenes relating to Kefka. It seems to me that Shadow is trying to get himself as close to Kefka as he can this entire time; taking deals that align with this purpose. I think it's especially obvious during seemingly out-of-character moments, such as his selfless heroic actions taking on Kefka alone on the floating continent? He tried to end his nightmare there once, but it finally ends after the last battle. Shadows purpose for fighting? "Friends...and family." I don't think he ever became "friends" with the rest of the party. There are no scenes of development for Shadow where he forms anything that I would consider friendship. So for him to say that in front of Kefka at the very end would seem out of character, UNLESS... Clyde finds him. Clyde fulfills his friend's final plea and grants Baram his coup-de-grac in the name of friendship (and also his family, but most players by now have already figured that part out on our own or through theory and discussions).
Also, the sword he's looking for in WoR is the ichigeki, meaning "one strike/blow." Which was all Clyde would have needed to give Baram. It's the one thing Shadow needs to fight Kefka.
I love the fan theory that Elayne (Cyan's dead wife) was also Shadow's girlfriend and Relm's mother / Strago's daughter. In that case Shadow formed a close friendship with Cyan because they loved the same woman and she was killed by Kefka.
It's funny you bring up that Terrah always saving the party and hasn't had much of a chance to be herself because of being pushed and pulled one way or the other. You didn't bring it up (maybe you didn't know) but if you go to the tower and don't get Terrah, she will show up at the end to save you and lead you out. A few of the scenes play differently if you only have certain characters, which I always found to be a very nice touch.
I liked the fact that you couldn't control Umaro when he was in your party. Many times he helped me when I was down and out with his chaotic berserk mode.
I don't think Kefka is nihilist, I think he's absurdist. Existence itself confounds and torments him to the point where he can't bear it. "I will create a monument to non-existence" is a line that is the essence of the absurd. A monument is a physical testament to the existence of something - a monument to non-existence is a kind of an absurd paradox. I don't think it's an accident he's only one letter away from "Kafka". Another funny coincidence is that Albedo from Xenosaga's last name is "Piazolla", while Kefka's is "Palazzo". Are the Tanakas up to something there?
Kefka, like the Camusian Caligula, represents only one (and the negative) way for an individual to resolve the confrontation between his demands for order and an indifferent world. Good catch on Kefka and Albedo!
I wanted to add another thought to the shadow triangle idea. The idea can map on to 3 dimensions with a 4 dimension governing it. As in our world has the 3 dimensions we directly perceive (height, length, depth) and 1 one overseeing it, being time. (That we infer exists, but don't directly percieve) Add that to Kefka and his perception of the meaninglessness of the world being his logic projected into the future. Additionally, the protective force of being in control of the 4th triad over the other 3 triads on the floating continent.
1:44:20 I always assumed the Espers knew what they were in for, and they'd take pride to weaponize themselves one last time for our heroes. There's quite a few parallels between the Triad+Espers and FFX's Fayth+Aeons. Both games end with their Summons disappearing from this plane of existence, possibly into their own heaven/farplane, after serving grand assistance in the fight for the future. Obviously it's not main-character levels of dramatic sacrifice, but I still took FF6's Esper fate as bittersweet rather than just bitter. There's some Tolkien parallels too. The elves, tho not gods, were clearly 'higher beings' than the men who ruled middle-earth much later. They were even used to forge the Rings of Power, which of course backfired on a global scale... thanks to Sauron and general corruption. But of course they eventually helped men out in the final battles. At the end of LOTR, the One Ring is destroyed by our heroes through the power of undying hope, and thus the power of the elves' own Rings begin fading. The 4th Age was then known as the Dominion of Men, and most elves had left Middle-Earth for Valinor (basically heaven with an elven passcode) while any remaining elves slowly 'faded away' or something. Arwen, with her strong love for King Aragorn of Gondor, remained with him and as a result lost her immortality - arguably the elves' signature trait - essentially joining humanity in their time of rebuilding & advancement.
Someone online once described the ff6 soundtrack as like “painting the Sistine chapel with a box of crayons” and I just thought it was hilarious. Dancing mad is my favourite boss track ever. Different interpretations of the last bit that I like. Once you start fighting Kefka the music style begins to really change. He becomes more frantic and exposed. The sad part representative of him realizing he’s losing and ending in his laughter. Although personally I always felt it was the party’s grinding on despite his assault. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed that during the sad part he unleashes his strongest move. I’ve played this game many many times and, at least for me, it’s always in that part of the song. Has anyone else experienced that? Was that planned? Also the snes version is the best version of the track as it blends into the next stage of the fight seamlessly. I believe the gba and the PlayStation it just cuts off the music and starts the next movement as soon as you reach the next stage. That was always a real shame to me. It’s meant to transition seamlessly. Oh man and the ending theme. I cry every time a bit when Terra’s part start. Saying bye to her dad is a stronger moment now that I’m older.
The character credits section of the ending plays into the idea of FF6 as a piece of theatre, which was mentioned way back in Ep 1 or 2. The script for the characters (eg. Cyan Garamonde, Celes Chere, Terra Branford) was written by the developers, but we bring the characters to life onstage by playing the game. The names in this section appear based on what each player has custom-named their own personal cast of characters (so if you re-name Terra to Tina, you'd get Tina as Terra Branford in your version of the ending). And that's why You is the final character credit, because we imbue our own direction and emotion into characters whose lines may have already been written but only act upon on the script throiugh our personal play actions.
Also, this section of the ending changes based on the characters we have in our party. If you don't recruit Locke, Setzer will save Celes instead and she'll refer to the bandanna as her 'good luck charm'. If you skip Sabin, Edgar will dodge the falling debris and mutter 'where's Sabin when you need him?'. Technically, only three characters are required in the World of Ruin to finish the game - Celes, Edgar and Setzer. Terra will appear no matter what, but everyone else is optional and the ending changes to accommodate that.
I was thinking about the small changes in the cutscene(since I did the 3 char challenge). But that makes me wonder what happens if you don't have Strago for the cutscene where Relm carries him on the conveyor belt.
I was surprised they missed that since they commented on the theater-ish presentation earlier in the series. I guess they forgot which is totally fair as there's *a lot* of different topics that got discussed over the last several weeks.
@@medkive There are few instances where some scenes will change if it's shared with a character. Except for Terra cause she will force her way into the ending regardless if you got her or not. For Relm case, It would just be Relm asking for help on the conveyor belt but Edgar, Setzer and Celes just ran past by her causing Relm to get angry and threatened them to paint their picture, Edgar, Setzer and Celes comes back on screen with a spooked face as conveyor belt slowly brings them closer to Relm. They bumped into Relm causing them to falling in the conveyor belt and Relm runs across them.
Edit: Ok, I found the scene for Relm ruclips.net/video/7vBweIriNWA/видео.html
@@tsunaxsawada10 Thanks for the scene! Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe the only altered scenes are Edgar/Sabin, Celes/Locke, and Relm/Strago. All other scenes will have a mixture of Edgar, Celes, Setzer (and forced Terra) which are the mandatory characters to finish the game. (When a character is not recruited in the WOR its cut scene jsut replaced by a simple panning shot of a location related to the character.
Woah. Didn't know that because I never rename my characters.
One of the wineglasses shown above Terra's credit has the pendant in it that her father gave to her mother, so yeah it's a final symbol of the love that can cross worlds.
Also the duality of the two glasses can be in reference to Terra's human form and esper form. They look different but nonetheless, are a pair that belong together.
To add to the callbacks and leitmotifs, the beginning monologue of the game is exactly what is being shown in the end sequence. After the War of the Magi, Magic is lost and what's left is a damaged world, but soon after, Machine will replace magic and the world is slowly restored. Except this time there will be no one able to revive magic as it is truly lost. So the beginning and the end has this connection that ties itself very well. Here's another, the intro scene has the clouds covered in darkness, camera panning downward with the ominous church sounds and the last battle with Kefka has the clouds covered in bright light, camera panning upwards with the same ominous music being used. There is so much to unpack here, I can't believe that they thought all of that and manage to put it all in a SNES game.
The ideas were great but what makes it simply amazing is the time they have to create the ideas, 1 year to be exact or possibly 2 years, and put it all in a console filled with constraints.
Great series guys, loved every moment of it!
As someone who did attempt to cover all the lore, all the mechanics, script, art, music, even AI programming and all the rest for my book on FFVI... let me tell you: it took about 800 hours of work. I still missed a few things. Go easy on these guys.
And for anyone wondering what he's talking about, look up Reverse Design FFVI. It's his incredibly deep look at FFVI including word counts per character (who talks the most?), NPC dialogue analysis, how the plot and gameplay interact, and much more. It's what got me interested in game design and helped me think about how to structure our game as well. I bought all the Reverse Design books and reread them again after I replay any of the games (Chrono Trigger and FFVII are also highlights). Thanks so much Patrick, love what you did so much!
Thanks for analyzing and breaking down FFVI's battle mechanics as well as its power curve throughout the game. It revealed a lot to me and gave me new insights on game design!
@@RescuePets Thanks for providing a reference. I thought he was talking about the Boss Fight Book by Sebastian Deken. There's also one called The Legend of Final Fantasy VI by Pierre Mauguin.
Loved the FF7 reverse design, cheers for that Patrick.
If it’s any consolation I felt your coverage of this game was extremely thorough and didn’t feel that you rushed on anything. I greatly enjoyed the coverage of this game and this podcast series as a whole. Keep up the fantastic work!
Regarding Shadow's fate: It never really made sense to me playing the game as a kid. Why would he just stay behind and allow himself to die like that? And even after you learn the secret of how to save him on the floating continent? Then he just chooses to die in Kefka's tower anyway!? It pissed me off and I didn't like the character.
But then as I got older and paid more attention to all the details, I came to understand that while Cyan, Locke, Celes, etc are stories about overcoming grief for past traumas, Shadow's story is a cautionary tale about if you can't forgive yourself and move on from the past. The opposite of the other important characters.
Shadow never forgave himself for what happened with Baram. It's what led him to leave his family in Thamasa, because he didn't feel he deserved to live a peaceful and happy life after failing his partner. In the world of ruin, we never get a quest to help Shadow overcome his past, we only learn bits and pieces of it from the dream flashbacks when he's in the party. He kept his trauma/grief to himself and wasn't able to overcome it on his own. Whereas the others like Locke and Cyan had help from their friends.
So Shadow found a moment to slip away from the group and chose to be left behind. He was never able to move on from his past (which is why it still haunts his dreams), and so he couldn't enter into that new world of potential like the others did.
He's now become one of my favorite FF characters.
It wouldn't be a proper RA podcast episode without a very insightful post from DudeMcGuy!
Shadow is also a mirror to Red XIII’s father in this way, something hammered hard by him being Relm’s father. Combining him with the story of Odin is honestly probably how they got that in 7, especially considering it was a ghostly figure we fight as well which caused that to his father when it was still alive. But unlike Red XIII’s father, the emotional bandage is short and excluded to the one arc of Cosmo Canyon. Shadow’s story is one you have to piece together. One you see how it developed, while you grow attached to who he is in the present. And in the end? You know how it’s going to end, deep down. You know, but you don’t wanna accept it.
If the planned FF6R does come to fruition, I hope this scene is done true justice. And if they do try to save him for some reason, have Strago be the one to do it.
Shadow is also a mirror to Red XIII’s father in this way, something hammered hard by him being Relm’s father. Combining him with the story of Odin is honestly probably how they got that in 7, especially considering it was a ghostly figure we fight as well which caused that to his father when it was still alive. But unlike Red XIII’s father, the emotional bandage is short and excluded to the one arc of Cosmo Canyon. Shadow’s story is one you have to piece together. One you see how it developed, while you grow attached to who he is in the present. And in the end? You know how it’s going to end, deep down. You know, but you don’t wanna accept it.
If the planned FF6R does come to fruition, I hope this scene is done true justice. And if they do try to save him for some reason, have Strago be the one to do it.
thats why I really like the Barham/Kefka theory He feels immense guilt about leaving him to get captured and after he finally kills Kefka he can finally rest easy. He pushes the dog away to presumably be with his daughter and tells Barham to meet him on the other side. (my head cannon)
Thematically, I'd compare the meaning behind Shadow's fate to the meaning behind Spike's fate in Cowboy Bebop. Pretty similar.
Two other notes: Terras trinket, the two chalices, represent the two sides of her: The esper and the human, also the constant conflict she had trough the game.
+ The ancient castle, and the story of Odin, could be interpreted as the inspiration for The Opera, several ages later.
I remember beating this for the first time back in 1995. I was so amped when I finally beat Kefka and then the character credits hit with the book flipping pages. I was so entranced with the whole scenario. No joke: I laughed, I cried, it felt like I never took a breath the whole time. A perfect ending.
When it comes to the end credits, you talked about how great Locke and Celes' moment is. I wanted to add two things: 1) Setzer watches all of this. It's a moment of closure for him, too - even if briefly, he had some sort of feelings for Celes, even if it was just simple attraction. I really like that he sees the two of them have this moment. 2) Uematsu was able to have a small part of Celes' theme playing under Locke's theme! I tried to do more than Uematsu did in my cover of Locke's theme on my channel, and made a video about my thought process while making the cover, but I discovered that the amount that Uematsu used was about as much as you can use. But anyway, this moment is supremely operatic: it's like the tenor and soprano finally getting to sing a love duet at the end of the opera. They start off with their own themes, then trade fragments of Locke's theme back and forth, before finally "singing" in octaves, leading to a ii-V-I cadence.
As someone who doesn't have much time for video games anymore (adulting), I love these podcasts because you play it and cover the story. I either know the story, or I don't. But it's like talking to your homies about it and breaking down/dissecting it like a book. Without you guys, we wouldn't be having these conversations on such an intellectual level, and I thank you for that! I'm a vivid FF fan, but going back to play FF6 isn't realistic for me or the time I have. Appreciate you and keep up the great work. I'm a patreon just to support you guys and listen to a common entity that we all grew to love.
Couldn't agree more about how end credit medleys evoke the experience of the rest of the game! *To Far Away Times*, in particular, gets me to this day when I hear it played. It transports me across the time and space covered in that wonderful game, with all the accompanying emotions too!
Thank you for mentioning Terranigma's ending. The imagery is so similar for sure. I would also LOVE to see Terranigma in State Of The Arc!
The thing about the ending discussion and the magic is that the ending is drawing resolution to the opening kicker or problem of the story in that magic has been the source of humanities war and struggle for power and in the end that is no longer going to be a factor, so it opens the question if humans will be able to coexist previously now that magic is truly gone from the world.
It's a real treat that FF6 saved its 2 best music tracks for last via Dancing Mad and the ending theme. The Credits music is so good that I default to the medley version of FF6's character themes whenever they pop into my head from time to time. I mentioned this under Ep5 of this podcast (without spoiling), but one of the coolest parts is when Uematsu seamlessly merges Celes & Locke's themes during their credits scene together. In the Opera episode at 1:30:20 Mike was talking a lot about the Aria song's (i.e. Celes's theme) message affecting Locke & Celes simultaneously and bringing them closer together. So their themes fitting so perfectly together during their credits scene was the perfect/natural evolution of that synchronicity.
Don’t know why people thought you were rushing through this. You guys took your time and were pretty in depth with the world of balance.
And the world of ruin doesn’t have a lot of “story”. It’s really just recruiting the characters, which you covered. It really is mostly just gameplay.
Well, after that passionate speech Mike, now I wanna vote for Terranigma
You guys did great. Thank you for this series. 👏👏
Though I initially dismissed the Baram/Kefka theory myself, I do think there’s something to it, particularly with regard to Shadow. Though emotionally detached, with no known reason to involve himself with the party (aside from when he’s paid to do so), he puts everything on the line to hold Kefka back on the Floating Continent. More importantly, his guilt is a result of his failure to abide Baram’s request to mercy kill him before he could be caught by the Empire, and Shadow is only at ease and willing to die once Kefka has finally been defeated. Following that assumption, this may be why he never attempts to reconnect with Relm - Shadow always intended to die after fulfilling Baram’s request. I’m not married to the idea, but it does have a leg to stand on.
As for the Espers, my impression had always been that the game does believe that, in a perfect world, they would have been able to coexist with humans. Terra alone is proof of that, but the party as well, as they ally with Espers and band together to use the power of magic for a worthy cause. That the defeat of Kefka requires the extinction of magic is a tragic sacrifice, but one the Espers (at least from what we see) are willing to accept for the sake of the future of others. I think the game acknowledges that the party’s victory isn’t a perfect one, though I’m glad this is something you guys addressed here. Its message resonated with me, but I can see how it might seem a bit muddled.
Thank you guys for your fantastic work on these episodes. It’s been great hearing your in-depth thoughts on this incredible game and comparing them against my own interpretations. Looking forward to the eventual Terranigma series!
Thank you for covering my favorite game! This was such a good analysis.
I've always taken FF6 as a story about love. The Playable characters giving their cheesy platitudes to Kefka represent the love they found. Terra uses family, Locke & Celes gain romantic love, Cyan holds his wife and child dear, Strago & Relm have an generational love, Figabros are best bros. Mog just wants friends.
But Kefka, cannot love. Whatever the experiment did, he's lost the capacity to love. His rejection as a self-help pamphlet is the closest he can come to understanding it. He's spent a year trying to wipe out hope, waiting for the world to die of despair. And when the heroes point out love will generate enough hope no matter how bleak the situation, Kefka loses all patience. Kefka lost the argument, so he just flips out and decides to kill everyone.
Shadow killed his feelings, and lost love in the process. He knows with Kefka gone, his job is done. He can't go back to Thamasa, he killed the love of his family to kill the cowardice over Baram. Of course he stays behind in the tower.
With the amount of work that goes into playing the game, taking notes, setting all of the gear for recording up, traveling to meet up, actually recording, and editing the video, it only makes sense that they would miss details or parts of a game. I'm certain Mike and Casen have fun with this, but keep in mind it's a lot of work, too! If they were rushing through games or podcasts to just get onto the next thing, the quality of the final product wouldn't be as consistently high as it is, across the board of every series they have done. Please keep up the amazing work and go at whatever pace you need! We'll be here to support you every week.
I'm glad you liked Caligula! It was, along with The Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger, part of a series of works that Camus wrote to explore the idea of the 'absurd' i.e., the contradiction and confrontation between the human mind, which insists on order, justice, and fairness, and an indifferent universe that is essentially none of these things, essentially the conflict between "a mind that desires and a world that disappoints."
Caligula (and Kefka), then, would represent, for Camus, a failed attempt for man to come to terms with the absurd, by falling into a state of abject nihilism, despondency, and complete despair.
I interpreted Caligula as, fundamentally, a troubled man. While he sought to be a good emperor according to the standards of Imperial Rome at first, the death of his sister-lover caused him to see not just the futility and meaninglessness of all these Roman ideals; it also exposes, for him, the absurdity that is inbuilt into the nature and structure of the universe. He is therefore troubled by the fact that “people are dying and they are not happy,” that their desires for all kinds of happiness and bliss ultimately means nothing in light of the truth of death and suffering. And yet, he is agitated against all the half-truths and the lies that people continue to tell themselves to live lives of “bad faith,” which they use to avert their eyes from the truth. He resolves then to stain his hands with blood, to act as a philosophical terrorist and crush all these silly little reasons for living and awaken people to the genuinely absurd nature of the world.
We can clearly see the Kefka parallels here. Like Caligula, he writes his absurdist philosophy in scores and scores of human blood. I mentioned before that Kefka’s world is simultaneously orderly and chaotic-to be even more specific, he instantiates an absolute order of absolute chaos. This is a world that reflects his worldview of despair, where life, hope, and dreams mean nothing, where the gods are fundamentally powerless, where a megalomaniac can suddenly become God in one bad day, where the Light of Judgment can come and destroy you, your family, and everything you hold dear without warning.
It is that vision of the world that is unbearable for Scipio and the people in revolt, for the party, who decisively “rebels” against such a picture of the world. And as Albert Camus goes on to say in The Rebel, in the moment of rebellion, the rebel affirms the existence of higher values that is worthy of rebellion, that is greater than life itself, “I rebel, therefore we exist.”
In regard to Kefka, people kind of consider him like the Joker because of his sociopathic nature, but Ive always looked at him as Frankenstein's monster. Gestahl and the Empire created a monster that essentially destroyed not only themselves (Vector literally became Kefkas tower), but the world because of their hubris
I think the Frankenstein’s Creature motif is also extended to FFVII’s Sephiroth and FFIX’s Kuja. There’s even an article iirc that links Sephiroth to Frankenstein’s Creature and Lucifer from Paradise Lost.
I'm not sure if this is confirmed officially, but Dancing mad is almost certainly inspired by Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, intro of the game included.
The "dove" that nursed Celes back to life is probably the Palidor esper, which you get later when you come back to the solitary island on the shore of the beach and has a bird-like in-battle sprite. Perhaps they just didn't have a world-sprite to depict him as noticeably different from a dove.
8-Bit Music Theory has an excellent 3 part analysis series on Dancing Mad, the final boss music of FF6.
I’m still upset by how he rushed the ending, as he forgot the laugh was legitimately imbedded into the music loop originally and only separated from the game audio later, something even more odd considering that you can hear the laugh in that video. He ended on a note of Kefka lulling into comfort at his own death, and while I feel that’s part of it as it fits his philosophy hence why him winning twice is a popular take, but he laughs in your face. It’s still not over. He’s luring you into a false sense of security.
Dang it! I said the same thing!
I was going to say the same thing! I love that channel.
When I was a kid playing this on my SNES, I used to be incredibly fascinated by that tower of twisted bodies you have to fight right before Kefka. As a kid I wanted to understand the full deeper meaning behind what it was and why it was there and where it came from. I never cared that much about things like this in my video games before, I was a pretty simple kid that took anything at face value. I would pause the game and try and study each level of that fight, try to figure out how it came into existence, how it had been created, still thinking of things in literal physical ways since I was a kid. I could tell that Kefka was all over it, appearing on almost every tier of it, and even seemingly appearing multiple times on the middle tier. I did a lot of research later in life as an adult about what was inspired by and what its ideas are trying to communicate, but that wasn't the kind of answer I was looking for as a kid. As a kid I wanted a more straightforward explanation.
As a young kid who started playing games on the Atari, I had been pretty well accustomed to using my imagination to fill in any blanks that the graphics of old games couldn't create. So every time I would play FFVI and fight this 3 tiered tower of machine and bodies before Kefka, I imagined a more realistic version of the battle in my mind, or at least I always tried to do this. And the idea of the party having to fight multiple versions of Kefka on a twisted tower as we ascend up into the heavens was kind of mind blowing to me, especially as he ultimately descends down upon us from higher in the sky even as we climb this abomination with lesser versions of him. Normally RPGs just had monsters that appear and we kill them. The bosses are just bigger stronger monsters, final bosses are even bigger monsters. It was all very simple for a kid to take at face value, you know? But this end of FFVI was different, it made me think about it a lot.
It should be noted: Kefka's favorite means of destruction is through fire.
His teaching a slave crowned Terra to burn 50 soldiers.
Setting Figaro Castle ablaze.
"This town has too much boring and not enough Burning".
And his in battle spells, while still diverse, favor the Fire line and Meltdown.
Like the Joker, I really like the ambiguity surrounding Kefka's origins. Not only does this ambiguity further accentuate the character's chaotic nature, the fact that we don't have any details about his backstory apart from the idea that the experimentation he went through "shattered his mind" leaves it up to the audience's imagination with regard to what exactly he experienced that made him this way.
My preferred reading, taking huge inspiration from Franz Kafka, is that before the experimentation, he was an everyman, the Final Fantasy VI-equivalent of a salaryman much like *The Metamorphosis*’ Gregor Samsa who signed himself up for the genetic experiments as a way of improving his lot in life. And while Gregor Samsa woke up one day as a unintelligible louse, Kefka woke up one day as an unintelligible being who had “ceased” to be “human”; it radically changed him to be no longer capable of experiencing positive feelings of love, meaning, and value, apart from the sadistic need to destroy. But as Kefka realizes, sadism and destruction, as concepts, are purely “negative” - incapable in and of themselves for building a world and lifeview that promotes and is conducive for life.
Ultimately, who he was before "Kefka" doesn't matter. The scary thing is, given one bad day and a radical change to our worldview, we might all have become Kefka. And as Bane puts it in The Dark Knight Rises, "no one cared who I was until I put on the mask."
Thank you, gentlemen! A lovely end to your lovely coverage for FFVI!
This was released in NA nearly 30 years ago, when I was 13... one of my friends bought the game and I'll never forget starting to explore the world together. Saturday plans became a sleepover and the sleepover became hanging out all weekend trying to get as far as we could in the story before school on Monday. The escalation of mature themes versus other SNES games was jaw-dropping to us, it was my first JRPG and the game that I loved enough to realize I could use my Walkman to make (crappy) recordings of the music on cassettes. I distinctly remember my friend being impatient and moving around, getting into battles when I wanted a looped cut of the overworld music so I wouldn't have to rewind it every time I wanted a full listen.
FFVI nurtured a love for music I didn't know I had, and has led to my collecting CDs/vinyl since I had money to buy them. After thoroughly enjoying the distinct characters and their themes, arriving at the end, challenging Kefka, and watching the credits unfold was transcendant. It truly felt like the culmination of a life-changing experience, a game conclusion above all others mostly due to another intricate layering of the music I had loved so much already. I became a JRPG fan for life, with the hopes that other games in the same genre could be just as touching.
I later got a copy of Chrono Trigger on my SNES, and during any downtime I was always content to play a New Game + again, eventually completing it over 80 times before I gave my console away. I will always know Chrono Trigger better than FFVI, and the soundtrack was similarly moving and is one of my favorite scores as well. But even though it was satisfying, the last boss sequence and ending never quite measured up to FFVI, didn't provide that wholly changing experience I was hoping to capture again. As good as CT was, I remember seeing the normal ending for the first time, feeling fulfilled, but then disappointing myself wondering where the rest of the ending was (since it was ~1/3 the length of FFVI's sequence).
As the years passed, I realized more and more that this last part of FFVI wasn't something to be expected out of all JRPG endings but was a uniquely phenomenal finish for an amazing game, from the "theater role" sequences in the credits to the immaculately connected medley of leitmotifs. I've enjoyed many games, but it's no exaggeration to say that FFVI spoiled my expectations of what an ending COULD be (a 20+ minute musical masterpiece), and for me it's never been equaled. While most people praise how well done it is, Mike's comments from 1:04:48 through 1:10:39 are probably the best way I could convey my experience now that I've grown and can better articulate myself, it was cathartic to hear someone else spend this amount of time and detail discussing how impactful it also was to them. ❤
Thank you so much for this series! FF6 is one of my favorite games of all time and I've played it countless times, but I still managed to learn quite a bit.
The "Gau as Gau" part seems a bit silly, especially if you've never thought to change the default names of the characters, but it actually shows the customized names you put in, so you might get: "Tina as Terra Branford" or "Thief as Locke Cole".
Oh! That's actually kind of cool!
Ah, I didn't think of that!
Kinda plays into that "Stage Play" element of the presentation that was spoken of before, in particular when discussing the way the characters get thier little spotlight descriptions just as you're about to name them.
Thank you guys so much for all your hard work, it was an absolute blast to play this game for the first time. I am still thinking about this game almost a week after finishing it and I think I'll probably ponder on it for months from here, possibly even years. I think the thing that has stuck with me more than anything though has to be the music. These songs by Nobuo Uematsu are amazing, I catch myself humming these songs more than possibly any other game I've played. Cyan's theme is my personal favorite. Again thank you guys so much 👍🏻
Oh, it definitely sticks with you. I played it when I was 16 so it definitely stuck with me. A masterpiece of game storytelling for the ages. This and Chrono Trigger.
One little tidbit about Gogo that almost everyone seems to not find. He's the absolutely best character to use in the Colosseum because you can customize what commands he can use. His command list can be changed to any commands from anyone in your party, and if you use the magic command, he knows all the spells your current party knows. He doesn't have the stat boosts from espers as all the other characters, but he has all the skills. He's the ultimate Jack of all trades, master of none. As one friend said once: "One bum rush is nice, but 2 bum rushes are nicer" XD
One note about the music in the ending, Celes and Locke's theme actually get played together, and they work surprisingly well, harmonically. I take that as Nobuo's way of saying these two very different people with very different musical cues are a good match.
I love Casen's talk of the shadow triangle and the 4th item and his "rant". SOOO good on that content.
He could have gone even deeper, as technically there are 5 triangles
@@lion_mx Oh nice! I'll have to research that.
When playing through the game as a kid, I did not have Shadow at the end of the game as I did not know that I could save him on the floating continent by hanging around until the timer ran out.
Playing through it as an adult, here is my view on Shadow's ending:
- Shadow and Baram are train robbers
- They have a train robbery that goes sideways and the Empire is chasing them
- Baram pleads Shadow to un-alive him with his knife, stating: "You know what they'll do to me if they catch me alive!"
- Shadow does not fulfill Baram's request, and leaves him to his fate
I assume at this point, the Empire catches up to Baram and captures him. They then run cutting-edge, untested and drastic Magitek experiments on him which warp his mind and he becomes Kefka.
After the party defeats Kefka, Baram is now put to rest. I believe this was Shadow's true motive for joining the party.
"Baram... It looks like I can finally stop running... Come and find me, all right?"
With Baram now at rest, Shadow has finally fulfilled Baram's request and now has nothing else worth living for and un-alives himself.
That's how I see it, anyway :)
A quote rom the Vector citizen: "Here's one for you... That guy Kefka? He was Cid's first experimental Magitek knight. But the process wasn't perfect yet. Something snapped in Kefka that day..."
I would assume the Empire would conduct these experiments on prisoners/undesirables first.
Also I've never heard of terranigma. Thanks for the suggestion, that's going on my play list immediately just because y'all are always on point.
try Illusion of Gaia too. it's made by the same people.
Kefka is undeniably a sociopath (also known as anti-social personality disorder). Sociopathy as it is colloquially known is on the same disorder spectrum as psychopathy (they are both officially called anti-social personality disorder). If you ask a psychiatrist/psychologist the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, they will tell you that a psychopath is born while a sociopath is MADE.
I don’t know if the developers thought it out to that degree but it is interesting to note that FF6 is notoriously the first FF game where the ultimate villain is just a regular guy rather than some inanimate evil. It is almost as if the developers are trying to say that Kefka, unlike all of those other guys we fought in previous FF games, is the evil we ourselves (by which I mean the world) made.
Edit: Terra’s precious treasure listed at the end credits is her necklace draped across the cups. That necklace is an heirloom from her parents.
8 bit Music Theory youtube channel has a GREAT breakdown of Dancing Mad. It's crazy how music theory can add depth and understanding to Kefka.
Great analysis and I'm excited for Nier Automata. I haven't played it again since launch so I'm definitely hyped to dive back in for a deeper look at the game all these years later.
Guys, your in depth analysis is incredible. I feel wiser, almost enlightened with your podcast. Bravo! FF6 is near and dear to my heart. I couldn't wait for each episode. Really looking forward to Chrono Trigger. Thank you gentlemen!
Thank you for covering the Ancient Castle and Ebot's Rock. I know there isn't a ton there compared to some other areas but I think they add to the conversation and the themes of the plot and characters. If my comment from last week talking about them was one of the ones that was causing problems, I want to sincerely apologize. I definitely didn't mean for it to be taken in that light. Other than that, thank you so much for covering this game. It's one of my favourites and your analysis and commentary has been fantastic. On to Nier Automata!
i cannot fathom complaining about your work on the series , it's profoundly in depth.
Pretty sure most/all if the Espers are dead in the wold of ruin because the land beyond the sealed gate where they lived rose up to become the floating continent then crashed down to become the foundation of Kefka's tower.
This was such an amazing podcast. These types of Philosophical endings especially concerning the character motivations and their personality traits are pretty common amongst jrpg games and one such series comes to mind to me that is similar to FF VI, is the "Tales of" series. Often these types of stories and character monologues go right over a lot of people’s heads so its nice to see this greater analysis and perspective on what is really being presented here concerning Kefka and his Nihilistic and sociopathic logic. I would definitely be interested in watching a podcast about one of the tales of series if there ever were enough votes for it.
I was playing Nier Automata literally as I was listening to this episode, can't wait for the podcast.
I would say Terra's two glasses were representing her two halves.
The plain glass is her human side, easily injured, emotionally fragile, etc.
And the ornamented one is her Esper side. Grand, powerful, majestic.
I personally interpret the 2nd part of the boss as an expression of madness. He sits at the front, in a thinker's pose, while the figures at the back represent his mind, split into multiple persons with no common goal or direction.
This series was an absolute pleasure to listen to, and I've played along with you guys and beaten the game for the first time in years. Such an amazing, epic, MAGICAL game. Probably my 2nd fav JRPG after Chrono Trigger.
Another brilliant production from you guys. A great video on one of my favorite games. I appreciate the time and effort, as well as the great perspective that you both have put in to this!
Enjoyed this series. Great job covering this boys!
I'm very unsatisfied with Shadow's conclusion. If it were just a story about survivor's guilt, it would make sense. But he has been reuinted with his daughter and adventures with her to save the world. Before the final battle even, he seems to be warming up to the idea of caring about people again. But then that gets undermined whe he just decides to go and die in a corner. It just doesn't sit right with me.
When Kefka drops his facade, that becomes scary
The scene plays as a curtain call, with every actor getting their final bow. When I played as a kid, the internet convinced me you could save Shadow, if you saw all "seven" of his dreams. As an adult, I realized it was appropriate for him to resign himself to collapse with the tower (He does not appear on the Falcon). But the best part of the ending: the music of Celes and the music of Locke coming together. Best game of all time for me.
On the topic of music vs. language:
"Language speaks to your mind. Music speaks to your heart."
Thank you for the amazing journey!
I see the one-winged thing more along the lines of a fallen angel. You can't reach heaven with only one wing.. nor return to your origins (there's no turning back / in too deep / ain't no getting offa this train) and there was most likely a clash in heaven to cause that injury in the first place.
A couple of things I LOVE about the final battle against Kefka is the melded statue design.
The way I see it, each part can be seen as
1- Each of the warning triad as being corrupted by Kefka's power
or 2- Different agents that LEAD to Kefka's ascension to godhood: The first level is Gestalt, the second level is the returners (from left to right you can see Sabin, Cyan, Edgar and Terra, assuming the rest are in the back of the statue we can't see), and the third level being "the goddes" herself. The ultimate magic he absorbed from the warning triad, that led Kefka to acquire the ultimate power to shape and destroy the world. AND you can see how this also happens in the mechanics (script) on each part of the battle, the magics and attacks they use:
First stage uses high level magic, like Gestalt,
Second level uses physical and balanced magic attacks, like the returners,
Third stage has high level magic and healing spells (as what happened in the floating continent)
I really loved the idea that Terra, who has been enslaved and exploited for her powers her whole life, is finally free to write her own story. Moreover, as Kefka and Terra stand as character foils, if Kefka ultimately arrives at a position of mockery at the world's absurdity and is completely detached from the world, it makes sense that Terra, as his opposite, comes to an appreciation of life, dreams, hope, and all that this life has to offer, and it is this appreciation (something that, for all of his power, Kefka could never reach) that saves her.
On the discordant note that the ending left on, it is worth noting that in the initial scenario, Terra was meant to die at the end at FFVI (an idea that became reused for Tidus in FFX):
"-What is Terra’s role in the story?
Sakaguchi: In the first half of the game, her personality is very passive. We did that because we wanted to show her growth as the story progresses. In the process of being manipulated and used by others, she gradually awakens to her own destiny. The awakening of the self, of one’s own humanity-those are her themes.
-Were there any major changes to her character during the development?
Sakaguchi: At the end of the game, we originally were going to have Terra disappear along with all the other Espers. We thought it would be a waste, though, to have Terra erased like that just when she had awoken to her humanity. So instead we made her lose her magic powers and remain in the world."
I love the biblical references in the final battle with Kefka. 😍
I love the fact that you're pretty much fighting your way from the depth of Hell and the purgatory until you reach Heaven to face against the mad clown turned "God".
I think the two glasses were for Madeline and Maduin. Inside one glass is a pendant, that Maduin gives to Madeline.
Interesting note (and perhaps Casen can correct me on this), but "Dancing Mad" in the Japanese is called something along the lines of "Wild Dance of a Calamitous Star". If Terra / Celes / the party is the evening star that shines brightly in the midst of the darkness, then Kefka represents the calamitous star that heralds and brings forward calamity to the world.
My favorite part of Dancing Mad is the final movement, where the party fights against Kefka, the God of Magic in the World of Ruin. The track opens up with the introductory organ piece that resembles "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," perhaps indicating that, for Kefka, this is the true state of the universe (much like how Nietzsche's prophet uncovers the truth that "God is dead"). If the Divine Comedy exemplifies the medieval worldview, where man moves away from sin and hell towards God and enlightenment, the only equivalent there is is an awareness of the impermanence of all things and a man-God who holds all notions of meaning and value in the world in contempt. The track is manic, indicating Kefka's godlike powers and how the party is doing everything in their power to barely survive against the man-God.
But the track suddenly becomes sad, Kefka's meditation on the impermanence and hence meaninglessness of all things. Everything is worthless to him: Kefka cannot understand all of the reasons that human beings have for hope, especially in this broken world that seems to contain nothing but suffering, despair, and death. This is where he ultimately lands: the end comes beyond chaos.
And in reaction to this sadness, he steels himself up for mockery, for destruction. It is fitting that the last word we have from Kefka is his laugh. For the only sane reaction in a mad world is laughter, at the dissonance between the weight that human beings give to their silly little reasons for living, and their lack of importance when viewed from the grander eyes of a god, looking a thousand years into the future.
That quick talk about the fourth Triforce brought forth war flashbacks of people online arguing about the Tetraforce.
I agree the death of Espers is a strange way to resolve the plot from essentially the entire World of Balance. Couldn't the power of the statues could have been imbued into Terra after Kefka's defeat instead, fulfilling her destiny as the "ray of light" for both the Espers (source of life) and humans (mother figure in Miranda)? Otherwise she doesn't do much for the Espers besides piss them off/get them killed/etc. This would require her to not be optional in World of Ruin and it admittedly fits more with her "ray of light" theme than "finding love" theme, but it's an interesting way to make her solidified as proof that Humans and Espers coming together can result in great things.
Ff14 back in 2016 had the warring triad from FF6. The fiend was Sephirot and represented nature, Sophia was the Goddess and represented balance, and Zurvan was the Demon representing overcoming injustice. The models were even modeled directly after the ones from FF6.
As cheesy as they are, and as much of a cliche as the moment is, each character stepping up to tell Kefka why they fight is essentially them explaining their Superobjective to him - the thing that they're working toward throughout the game, and what most of them come to realize by the end. I think the only character that doesn't have a strong SO is Edgar (at least in the SNES translation). Each character's SO is pretty closely tied to their theme: when something in the game happens that ties in to what the tell Kefka at the end, their musical theme tends to play. Throughout the entire game! I'm not sure how much of that was intended, but it works so well.
The ending of this podcats is so clean 😂
“I love my grandma
NIER AUTOMATA”
Considering "Grandma" is the name of a Nier song 😏
While you guys were discussing the ending of games and the journey you went through, one of my favorite games came to my mind. The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. The progression of scenes where everything that was wrong was put right. The dwarven smiths, the two friends on Death Mountain (and the one is still a bully), and the flute boy playing in his grove with his father there.
Just in regards to 31:07, I don't feel that the party and Kefka are talking past each other. Rather, Kefka's saying that nothing matters because everything will eventually disappear. And the party are countering that by saying that just because things may change and disappear in the future, it doesn't diminish their value in the present moment. And that no matter how much change occurs, life will persist. At least, that's what I felt =)
Incredible podcast Mike and Casen! One of my favourites you've done so far - and that's saying a lot =D
With regards to the ending, specifically with the explanation as to why the espers had to "die" after defeating Kefka, it seems to be implied, if not intended, that all of the espers in the world have been turned into magicite, i.e. they're already dead. Between the actions by Kefka in the World of Balance, the interim year between events, and our party's actions, it appears that all espers in the world have been killed or hunted to extinction. So, the idea that humans and espers can live together in harmony was already challenged and /or refuted all the way back to the Floating Continent section in the World of Balance, indicating that the espers were losing/had lost the second war of the Magi, particularly because of the direct actions by Kefka.
Aside from Kefka himself, it appears that the only form of magic left to exist in the World of Ruin is magicite. And, magicite has become a symbol of the cycle of destruction and chaos that thematically is tied to the remnants of trauma and loss that surround each of the characters and the greater world at large. One could discuss the specific side quests of each instance where magicite is obtained, but overall, a monster or lingering trauma for a character (whether party member or npc) is usually resolved with obtaining more magicite. AND THUS, by the disappearance of magicite (i.e. dead espers) from the world can humans learn to let go of their traumas, pain, and hang ups of the past, allowing humans, especially our main cast, to move forward with their lives. This seems to fall more in line with the Buddist concept of letting go of earthly attachments, allowing the espers in magicite form to move on to a higher plane of existence, I believe.
I find it especially interesting that the full resolution to each characters' arc occurs during the cast roll WHILE the magicite is disappearing from the world.
I've played "FF3" since it debuted and yet you guys analyze and approach things in a way I never considered. Also you've cultivated one of the smartest and most thoughtful comment sections on RUclips. Amazing stuff! Love this Podcast. I appreciate all the writing, research, editing, filming, and you know actually playing the damn game, that goes into this Show. Thank you for all the hard work and dedication.
Thanks a ton! I agree about the comment section. I actually look forward to reading the comments each episode because of how good and thoughtful many of them are.
Echoing the transcendence/immanence rift (i.e., how close does/should humanity get to the life-giving powers) so central to theological disputes throughout history, I wouldn't say that the theme/message is necessarily that the transcendent powers are bad as such. Indeed, within the dramaturgy of FF6, it's what gave us Terra. It's just that humanity shouldn't attempt to get *that* close. It bespeaks something of the 'old wisdom' of respecting the limits of the natural order, against which the human heart, in its sinfulness, always wants to rebel. Think of someone like an Augustine, who well understood that any attempt to make of this world a heaven would only make of it a hell.
The empire, in trying to be as gods themselves, in embracing the nihilism inherent in viewing humanity as nothing more than intrinsically meaningless resources (standing by to be optimized), gave rise to Kefka, who so thoroughly internalized that nihilism that there could be no redemption or penance for him. In the end, he could not allow for the dialectical tension of the transcendence/immanence rift, of that fundamental ambivalence, of our divided nature. In his own quest for godhood--not just to reunite with the primal, life-giving powers, but to supplant and surpass them--that distinction had long since been rendered meaningless for him. Whereas Terra went on a journey of self-discovery in which she learned that to be human is precisely to reconcile oneself to the limits and fallenness of the world--the tragic sense of life, from which so much great art derives---while nevertheless affirming the goodness of it all. To hold oneself within that tragic sense while still affirming life, in all its contingency, givenness, and necessity--that is love.
So you could think of Terra as not only giving us about as good of an answer to the t/i dialectic as we're ever going to get, in a mytho-poetic sense, but also, as the living legacy of the life-giving powers (i.e., magic, Espers, what have you) in the embodiment of a positive and life-affirming heroine. I don't think she would teach the children of Mobliz that the Espers were bad, per se, but maybe it's better that they live on in mythology rather than becoming consubstantial with the human. Religion, as an expression of the t/i dialectic, as a productive and expressive attempt to come to grips with that, could never be bad, as such, anymore than storytelling, as another expression of that dialectic, could be.
I will concede that The Warring Triad as the prime movers of the story's mythology do arguably equate religion with will-to-power in a negative way that may be distinctly eastern or Japanese by turns. Of course, for all we know, there are higher gods above the Triad who would disprove of their actions--that the Triad were themselves rebellious, Luciferean archetypes, imposing their will, acting as if the mortal realm had no intrinsic meaning but what they might ascribe or impose upon it. Suffice it to say that the question of whether "the natural order" as portrayed in FF6 is intrinsically good or bad, will always be open to interpretation. But one might say that the upshot of this entire post is that, well...how could it be otherwise in ANY facet of human existence. That's probably why they call it 'faith.' And I guess I'm interpreting the story in a way that suggests that Terra believing in love was itself an act of faith--a positive affirmation of nothing short of religiosity itself.
You raised some really great points here.
1. I like your points about "respecting the limits of the natural order" and the restoration of those limits in light of the transgression that has already taken place as a result of the Gestahlian Empire's will to power and Kefka's desire for destruction. It is not for nothing that the musical theme that accompanies this section of the game is called "Balance is Restored," which could also refer to reinstating in place the natural boundaries and limits between the different races in the world of Final Fantasy VI.
2. I appreciate your Heideggerian read of the Gestahlian Empire (in viewing others as tools to be used and subsequently discarded), and how Kefka goes beyond the transcendent-immanent dialectic. In a sense, the dialectic is confused and thrown into chaos with the ascension of Kefka into godhood. Here is a man who was purely immanent, but seized for himself a faux-transcendence, usurping a godlike power that was never his to begin with. This is why, for all of his pretensions of divinity, he is ultimately not immortal and can still be killed. And your reading further contextualizes the party's response to Kefka's absurdist philosophy: Kefka is right in the sense that all things will eventually pass away. And therein is the tragic sense of the world, that life, though important, is fleeting. And perhaps it is all the more important because it is fleeting, because there will come an expiry date to the things that we know and love.
3. In a sense, the Triad was the first instantiation of the Luciferian will that upset the delicate balance of the world, throwing it into the chaos of the War of the Magi. And Gestahl and Kefka were merely byproducts of their destructive legacy.
4. I'm also wary of imposing moral judgments ("good" or "bad") on the natural world itself, since to do so might be, in a sense, to anthropomorphize it and to distort it to befit human interests. Terra could very well be embracing the end of one era (the era of the gods), and a new era of freedom where she is, on a personal level, free to do whatever she wants; and for humanity to write a new chapter in their history without fear of the threat of annihilation that could come with the wrongful misuse of magic that has devastated the world so many times already. Humanity has finally broken free of its yoke, and is free to craft a new future for themselves.
@@michs7451 I'd argue that to believe in a natural order is to believe that things can be naturally good or bad -- and that good and bad ultimately come down to appropriateness within that order. Otherwise, what do good and bad even mean beyond mere preferences? And how can one justify treating them as mere preferences when the natural order seems intent in practice upon avenging itself on those who treat good and evil as preferences?
You have a point there. I think the only caveat is to make the distinction between “good” (as human beings understand it) and “good” (as the natural world understands it), since what is good for the world might not be so for humanity.
@@michs7451 I'm inclined to think that if we don't take it on faith that what's good in the natural order is also somehow good for us, things start to go very wrong very quickly. Doing so might not be particularly appealing if we don't believe that the natural order is designed to reward us for trusting it, but at the very least we're dealing with a natural order designed to punish us for trying to resist it, so questioning its goodness is useless at best and actively counterproductive more generally. And given that "that which the natural order doesn't inevitably punish" is as close to an objective definition of good as one can get, it's good not to see what's good for the natural order as bad for us, lol.
Thank you guys for this excellent series on one of the FF games that I haven't played, but always have been interested in. Always a pleasure to hear Casen make breakdowns of the symbolism hidden in games/art, and make references to the Kabbalah and other religious texts. You definitely did give FFVI your best. Cheers, and on to the next!
1:19:00 Clarification: It's another case of GBA vs SNES confusion :P
I think the dissonance you guys express with Terra's credits ending with Maduin come from focusing on specifically direct attachments and not the broader themes of appreciation and hope. She becomes a foil to Kefka for these reasons after all, so perhaps the issue is the use of the word "strongly attached to something or someone" in the SNES text. Fwiw, the GBA script instead says "if the human part of you feels something strong enough..." which Mike reads out loud at 1:17:30
It is also plausible that Maduin had no idea what he was talking about and just theorized how Terra could live on, when in fact she would've survived anyways due to her human half/genes lol and it's not like there were any prior examples to pull from
Happy Pixel Remaster day and State of the Arc FFVI finale episode day!
Thanks for this set of podcasts lads. Thoroughly enjoyed this one, FF6 never gets enough love in this franchise. Great to have such an extensive look into my favourite title every week.
No spoilers but Mike talking about how good music in credits makes you feel things and reflect on the journey and have emotional responses, Nier Automata has my favorite end credits of all time of any video game I’ve ever played.
It is absolutely outstanding the rush of emotions from what it asks you to do, again no spoilers, and then the music and what it does there at that moment oh my god.
Started playing through FF6 at the beginning of this podcast weeks ago and I finally beat it 3 days ago. Probably my second or third time playing it, but first time actually beating it, and I loved it every minute. Quick edit. Finally finished the episode and regarding the espers.. if you go back and watch really closely when Kafka opens the gate, more than one Shiva and Ifrit and Ramuh and various other espers whom I'm sure you already have in your party, exit the sealed cave. so they're not the only esper of that type, or being. Kinda makes you wonder how many espers they decided to not use in 6 and actually put in concept in other FF's.
You guys did an excellent job covering Final Fantasy VI. Looking forward to Nier Automata next week.
i just wanna say i really LOVE what you guys are doing always hyped for a new episode 😁
The dissonance is important to the central theme. Terra is trying to reconcile her two halves throughout the WoB. But in searching for herself through her ancestry, she finds only fighting and ruin. Kefka, trying to conquer the espers/magic leads to the annihilation of the planet: i.e. a manifestation of her greatest fear that humans + espers/magic = terror. So in the WoR she has basicallt renounced her esper half in order to create her first sense of self-created identity. She starts to find herself in loving the children, to the point where she is reluctant to go back at all. but then she MUST face her esper half, specifically the fear that letting her human side join with it in order to fully let go of her past and her fear. Her esper half and magic disappearing is symbolically relate to her acceptance of her past and relinquishing it's control over her self-fear/hate.
Keep doing what you’re doing guys. I figured we would get about an episode and a half dedicated to the world of ruin. There’s just not much story to cover in that part of the game. Cool moments, sure, but not everything in this part lends itself to fevered analysis.
For Kefka, no one sits atop a tower for a year without thinking about what they've done after what he did. He even says he's been practicing his opening lines to the party. I believe he was waiting up there for someone to kill/save him from his philosophy. He could have destroyed the world long ago, but didn't. I think he was screaming for help under the clown.
He listened to the party as they spoke to him and just didn't understand, but he Wanted to hear them.
My personal interpretation of the final boss phases, besides Dante's Inferno and Kefka's story which I also believe are true, is that its a series of who Kefka sought help for his Nihilism from. First he took to anger and destruction and wrath seeking solace in it and found none. Then he sought people and compared himself to them and found no comparison, the most Him part of that section is Blue unlike any other part,; he can't compare himself to people and feels alienated and isolated. Third he sought comfort from his parent, especially his mother, but his mother had no hands to hold him with anymore (I often worried if that was his Actual mother on that segment, but that's getting into crazy Evangelion theory crafting). At last all he came to was himself and god, and he found he was god so the only answers he could find were in himself and therefore there were no answers. Leaving him with the party to show him what the world he was and was not, dying quietly in nothingness, maybe even peace.
thanks as always guys, i look forward to these every week
I wanna point out something obvious about the cedits. So, FF6 is the Super Mario World of Final Fantasy. Why would I say this? It’s all a play, theatre. The ending all but confirms this. It’s an ensemble cast brought perfectly together by its main antagonist, the story crediting each actor at the end as noted by the fact you could rename everyone, but the true names always stay. It feels perfectly like a comedy you would see at a play, a comedy which Kefka is making his own comedy on. And so, so, so much more symbolism for. This also is a very thematic nod to its fourth-wall breaks where characters go all across the screen of laugh off. It’s the actors genuinely jumping across and off the stage.
Haven’t played FFVI in a long time and after this podcast I feel like I played it again! 😁 great job guys
You only mentioned in passing the mini-quest to kill the 8 elemental dragons, which unlocks the Crusader esper...
That triad of espers matches up with the 3 goddesses. They also do damage to the whole player party as well as the enemies. It's like they continue the war of the magi when you summon them in.
Overall, I think this story carries right into the FFXIII world of l'Cie/Espers created by the fal'Cie/"gods"... and the war between the Pulse and Cocoon fal'Cie (no triad, but still a war between the gods carried out through their magical warriors.)
Fire itself is a trangle... Not only the shape of it but it needs three things to exist. Fuel, heat and oxygen.
35:03 I love Kefka's usage of "Exterminate" and avoiding direct mentions of death in the SNES version. "A monument to nothingness" feels much harsher than "kill everyone."
I really think Shadow's choice at the end really speaks in favor to the Baram is Kefka theory.
Clyde's guilt from not being able to give Baram the coup de grace haunts Shadow's dreams. In the first dream, Baram says "Find me here." In the third dream, Baram pleads to Clyde to use his knife, saying "think of what they'll do to me if I get caught. I dont want to go through that." Not sure who "they" would be, perhaps associated with the Empire? Clyde then cowardly abandons the situation. We DO NOT know for certain that Baram died. I wonder what he went through if/when he got caught...
I think Shadow (our character) has been pretty one-track minded this entire time. If he was simply a train robber, why all the need for masks and mystery over a decade later? Times when you can recruit him and times he leaves the party are all pretty close to scenes relating to Kefka. It seems to me that Shadow is trying to get himself as close to Kefka as he can this entire time; taking deals that align with this purpose.
I think it's especially obvious during seemingly out-of-character moments, such as his selfless heroic actions taking on Kefka alone on the floating continent? He tried to end his nightmare there once, but it finally ends after the last battle. Shadows purpose for fighting? "Friends...and family." I don't think he ever became "friends" with the rest of the party. There are no scenes of development for Shadow where he forms anything that I would consider friendship. So for him to say that in front of Kefka at the very end would seem out of character, UNLESS...
Clyde finds him. Clyde fulfills his friend's final plea and grants Baram his coup-de-grac in the name of friendship (and also his family, but most players by now have already figured that part out on our own or through theory and discussions).
Also, the sword he's looking for in WoR is the ichigeki, meaning "one strike/blow." Which was all Clyde would have needed to give Baram. It's the one thing Shadow needs to fight Kefka.
I love the fan theory that Elayne (Cyan's dead wife) was also Shadow's girlfriend and Relm's mother / Strago's daughter. In that case Shadow formed a close friendship with Cyan because they loved the same woman and she was killed by Kefka.
It's funny you bring up that Terrah always saving the party and hasn't had much of a chance to be herself because of being pushed and pulled one way or the other.
You didn't bring it up (maybe you didn't know) but if you go to the tower and don't get Terrah, she will show up at the end to save you and lead you out. A few of the scenes play differently if you only have certain characters, which I always found to be a very nice touch.
I liked the fact that you couldn't control Umaro when he was in your party. Many times he helped me when I was down and out with his chaotic berserk mode.
I don't think Kefka is nihilist, I think he's absurdist. Existence itself confounds and torments him to the point where he can't bear it. "I will create a monument to non-existence" is a line that is the essence of the absurd. A monument is a physical testament to the existence of something - a monument to non-existence is a kind of an absurd paradox. I don't think it's an accident he's only one letter away from "Kafka". Another funny coincidence is that Albedo from Xenosaga's last name is "Piazolla", while Kefka's is "Palazzo". Are the Tanakas up to something there?
Kefka, like the Camusian Caligula, represents only one (and the negative) way for an individual to resolve the confrontation between his demands for order and an indifferent world.
Good catch on Kefka and Albedo!
I wanted to add another thought to the shadow triangle idea. The idea can map on to 3 dimensions with a 4 dimension governing it. As in our world has the 3 dimensions we directly perceive (height, length, depth) and 1 one overseeing it, being time. (That we infer exists, but don't directly percieve)
Add that to Kefka and his perception of the meaninglessness of the world being his logic projected into the future.
Additionally, the protective force of being in control of the 4th triad over the other 3 triads on the floating continent.
1:44:20 I always assumed the Espers knew what they were in for, and they'd take pride to weaponize themselves one last time for our heroes. There's quite a few parallels between the Triad+Espers and FFX's Fayth+Aeons. Both games end with their Summons disappearing from this plane of existence, possibly into their own heaven/farplane, after serving grand assistance in the fight for the future. Obviously it's not main-character levels of dramatic sacrifice, but I still took FF6's Esper fate as bittersweet rather than just bitter.
There's some Tolkien parallels too. The elves, tho not gods, were clearly 'higher beings' than the men who ruled middle-earth much later. They were even used to forge the Rings of Power, which of course backfired on a global scale... thanks to Sauron and general corruption. But of course they eventually helped men out in the final battles. At the end of LOTR, the One Ring is destroyed by our heroes through the power of undying hope, and thus the power of the elves' own Rings begin fading. The 4th Age was then known as the Dominion of Men, and most elves had left Middle-Earth for Valinor (basically heaven with an elven passcode) while any remaining elves slowly 'faded away' or something. Arwen, with her strong love for King Aragorn of Gondor, remained with him and as a result lost her immortality - arguably the elves' signature trait - essentially joining humanity in their time of rebuilding & advancement.
Someone online once described the ff6 soundtrack as like “painting the Sistine chapel with a box of crayons” and I just thought it was hilarious. Dancing mad is my favourite boss track ever. Different interpretations of the last bit that I like. Once you start fighting Kefka the music style begins to really change. He becomes more frantic and exposed. The sad part representative of him realizing he’s losing and ending in his laughter.
Although personally I always felt it was the party’s grinding on despite his assault. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed that during the sad part he unleashes his strongest move. I’ve played this game many many times and, at least for me, it’s always in that part of the song. Has anyone else experienced that? Was that planned?
Also the snes version is the best version of the track as it blends into the next stage of the fight seamlessly. I believe the gba and the PlayStation it just cuts off the music and starts the next movement as soon as you reach the next stage. That was always a real shame to me. It’s meant to transition seamlessly.
Oh man and the ending theme. I cry every time a bit when Terra’s part start. Saying bye to her dad is a stronger moment now that I’m older.
Your podcast is fantastic, amazing work guys. ❤
The heart is the true mind, memory is emotion.
Love your videos guys. I try to support via Patreon whenever I can. 🍻