Comments on: The Anatomy of Final Fantasy VI | 8 | Anatomy of a town http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2014/12/04/the-anatomy-of-final-fantasy-vi-8-anatomy-of-a-town/ Defunct, amateurish, game design analysis by Jeremy Parish Wed, 25 Nov 2015 23:31:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.7 By: Jason http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2014/12/04/the-anatomy-of-final-fantasy-vi-8-anatomy-of-a-town/#comment-3024 Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:25:48 +0000 http://2-dimensions.com/?p=11673#comment-3024 I don’t think your friend was the only one. One thing I noticed playing through the SNES Final Fantasies for the first time was how many mechanics and segments in _Mario RPG_ felt like responses to failed mechanics in FFIV-VI.

Mario RPG doesn’t just tell you to equip your first weapon once (without a tutorial), but it will bring it up again ten minutes later in the Chancellor’s room if it notices you didn’t equip it on your own, this time offering a tutorial. Only then will it let you say “No, I am leaving it unequipped on PURPOSE.”

]]> By: Thad http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2014/12/04/the-anatomy-of-final-fantasy-vi-8-anatomy-of-a-town/#comment-3023 Fri, 05 Dec 2014 01:40:07 +0000 http://2-dimensions.com/?p=11673#comment-3023 There’s a narrative power to taking a familiar location and changing it in some significant way. (That’s why disaster movies tend to take place in New York or DC — you might not know what, say, downtown Phoenix looks like, but you’ve seen the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument even if you’ve never been to those places.)

FF6 takes the first place you’re free to explore and, shortly, turns it into an occupied zone under the Empire’s bootheel. (And then, of course, the entire last half of the game is about revisiting familiar locales that have been fundamentally altered by a crisis event.)

FF7 goes even less subtle; it takes the first place you’re free to explore, blows it up, kills most of the supporting cast that’s been established up to that point, and puts a steel girder through a playground.

It’s interesting to look at other games that alter familiar environments for atmospheric purposes — most Zelda and Metroid games do that, off the top of my head. FF5’s got the two worlds that get combined. Castlevania: Bloodlines wrecks that town from Simon’s Quest. Chrono Trigger’s built entirely about revisiting the same locations in different eras.

Hell, you spend a good big chunk of Dragon Quest 2 and 3 revisiting the first game’s setting.

]]> By: Tomm http://www.anatomyofgames.com/2014/12/04/the-anatomy-of-final-fantasy-vi-8-anatomy-of-a-town/#comment-3022 Fri, 05 Dec 2014 01:29:00 +0000 http://2-dimensions.com/?p=11673#comment-3022 True story – my RPG novice friend reached the Floating Continent having NEVER EQUIPPED ANYTHING. I blame this squarely on how long it takes to reach a shop.

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