Resurrection: Final Fantasy VI

‘Resurrection‘ is Resolution’s weekly retro slot. This week, in preparation for Final Fantasy XIII’s release (review soon, don’t change the channel), we head back to the one before the one everyone remembers…

Watching Final Fantasy VI’s drama unfold feels a bit weird in 2010. Look at those silly old pixelated graphics! It’s like looking at a Lego recreation of Auswitz and being expected to shed tears.

It’s most famous for being a Final Fantasy game with a number below VII on the end, but it’s actually a much better experience than its more successful sibling. It doesn’t descend rapidly downhill after you leave Midgar, for example. As a general rule of thumb it’s less guarded over the twists in the story, which makes it more consistent a narrative, but it also lacks many of its successor’s overwhelming moments of meaningless but flashy spectacle.

Remember that exciting moment in VII where you have that amazing FMV and then the awkward motorbike minigame? VI doesn’t do things like that.

On the surface, though, it’s a typical Final Fantasy by numbers with an abundance of towns, dungeons and text boxes that just don’t quit. It’s all here: Characters becoming 50ft tall on the world map and taking giant lumbering strides to their next destination? Check. Relentless random battles that you beat, for the most part, by hammering Attack? Check. 30 hours of storyline featuring a big bad villain who wants to destroy the world? I’m sure you get the idea.

Scratch the surface a bit, though, and you end up with what is perhaps the most atypical example of the series. There’s a sprawling ensemble cast instead of one primary character, and with no clear-cut leader the group finds itself prone to a far greater amount of doubt, remorse and self-reflection (in a more complex manner than Tidus bursting into a fit of big girly tears, too) than you’d probably expect from a game of its ilk.

One of the game’s more explicit scenes, and one that I’ve recently found has definitely stood the test of time, has a character finding himself stranded on an island with a wounded elderly man. You are entirely responsible for his sustenance (you can fish for food, for instance) but, regardless of your nursing diligence, the old guy doesn’t make it. Alone, lost and with nothing to live for, your character becomes so world-weary that you must – as the game will not progress until you do – manually control their slow, winding climb to the top of the mountains and leap off in a sad, desperate and misguided suicide attempt.

It tows a fine line between comedy and drama, understanding the right time to crack a joke and when to play it straight. The game’s most recognisable scene features one character posing as an opera singer in a bid to catch a killer, with the player controlling the character backstage as they try to learn their lines and stage directions. With the rest of your team waiting in the wings, the trap is set and your character performs an aria that would be quite beautiful were it not being eked out of the SNES’s tinny sound chip.

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Despite its age, it scrubs up remarkably well. You fight a weird octopus a load of times. People use carrier pigeons. Kefka poisons a lake to kill off the inhabitants of a castle because he’s a complete bastard.

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