Who cares about The Conduit?

High Voltage Software's Wii first-person shooter, The Conduit, was released just under a month ago, and early word has it that sales have been mediocre at best. Some Wii fans see this as the distressing final proof that original, enthusiast-oriented IP cannot succeed on the platform. As an enthusiast gamer myself, I am here to say that I am not at all distressed. Let it be known that this was NEVER the sort of game I wanted on the Wii.

No, I haven't played it. I haven't played it because it looks irredeemably generic. Enduring endless previews every single month in Nintendo Power leading up to the game's release, not only did I feel it looked unimpressive next to current PS3/360 shooters, but I didn't think it would have stood out even back on the GameCube. The art, characters, story--everything about the game just seemed so utterly uninspired.

As far as I could tell, any attention it received was only because it was a first-person shooter designed for the Wii. This perceived hole in the Wii library is meaningless, in my opinion, because anyone remotely interested in this kind of game, whether or not they have a Wii, should own a PS3 or 360 (or stick to PC). Maybe The Conduit does boast better control than any PS3/360 shooter, but that wouldn't come close to making up for all that the game lacks. I own all three consoles, and I can honestly say that I never find myself wishing that more of the PS3/360 shooters I play had been designed for the Wii instead.

More broadly, who even still cares about getting "hardcore" games on the Wii? Sure, we all want new installments in Nintendo's own franchises, but why does the system really need hardcore third-party exclusives? Mind you, I bought No More Heroes, MadWorld, and even The House of the Dead: Overkill. I'm not sure at what point rail shooters became hardcore, but, as for the other two, there frankly isn't any compelling argument that can be made for why those games should have been Wii exclusives. I'm not saying that they suffered as a result, but I no longer see the sense in judging Wii titles just by Wii standards.

With even Final Fantasy and Metal Gear going multiplatform, the PS3 vs. 360 war has become inane. But the Wii does not exist in a bubble, because, I say again, no true hardcore gamer would limit themselves to only owning a Wii. I look at my library and I no longer perceive it in three divisions. It is all one collection now, and The Conduit competes for a place on that wall, not against Wii fare like Petz: Horse Club and Imagine Fashion Party, but against eminent first-person shooters like Halo, Killzone, and Call of Duty.

The Essentials #38: Final Fantasy VII

SPOILERS

This was the one that changed everything. Developed by Square and originally published by Sony Computer Entertainment in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation, Final Fantasy VII was the game that established both companies as powerhouses in the industry. Following the arrival of this one title, PlayStation would go undisputed as the leading platform through two console generations, while Square's Final Fantasy series would be one of the system's key exclusives through those years of dominance.

Although the transition to Sony's hardware meant a shift for the series from 2-D sprites to polygons, Final Fantasy VII barely qualified as 3-D. In truth, it was not really any spectacular processing power of the PlayStation that the game took advantage of, but rather the CD-ROM media format, which Square used to store the tons of pre-rendered background graphics and cut scenes. Although the polygonal characters were generated in real time, the environments they navigated were actually all flat 2-D images, only occasionally offering depth by allowing players to move their characters toward the horizon line. It was a style that Square and many other companies utilized to produce visually impressive games that were deceptively far beyond where real-time graphics were actually at.

The pre-rendered movie sequences were still being used fairly sparingly. Like its predecessors, FFVII relied primarily on text and limited animation to tell its story, usually cutting to the movies for action sequences that were beyond the PS1's power to generate in real time. It could be jarring to have the characters constantly alternating between the squat, blocky models during exploration mode, the more realistically proportioned characters during battle, and the yet more detailed and smoother pre-rendered characters of the movie sequences. Perhaps because the project was so large, requiring the contracting of multiple outside teams to provide assistance at the expense of consistency, there were even a few cases where the pre-rendered characters were inexplicably super deformed. Subtler but more impressive were the inclusions of frequent smaller background cinematics that were more organically integrated into the experience, resulting in some stunning sequences where pre-rendered environments would seamlessly transition into pre-rendered animated movies, while the player remained able to move the character around.

The true 3-D elements were primarily in the battle graphics, which is where, over a decade later, the game looks really rough and dated. Not only did Tetsuya Nomura take over as character designer, but he was also credited as "Battle Visual Director." I'm not sure what that means, but the game did feature some intense battle visuals that may have been an early precursor to the Nomura action style as seen in such projects as Kingdom Hearts II and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Rather than just cutting directly to different angles and closeups as characters attacked, the dynamic camera would rapidly swing around and zoom into the next shot. Such tricks would not be possible working with actual cameras in live action, and I was pleased to see a video game exceeding the limits of its cinematic inspirations instead of merely imitating them.


It's not the gameplay that most people remember Final Fantasy VII for, but its mechanics may have been one of its strongest aspects. Combat still operated on the Active Time Battle system, although the pace had been sped up considerably. Character development differed from previous installments in that, while party members still gained experience and levels, magic and skills were actually attached to equipped "materia," which grew independently and could be swapped among characters. Different materia could be fit onto weapons and armor to endow their holders with various traditional spells, techniques, and other abilities, allowing the player to transform nondescript characters into the mages, knights, thieves, etc. of past installments. But the real meat of the system lay with the "support" materia.

These had no effect on their own, but, depending on the number and nature of materia slots on a character's equipment, they could be linked with magic or command materia. In order for the "Ice" magic materia to target multiple foes, for example, it needed to be linked with the "All" support materia. Alternatively, linking "Ice" with the "Elemental" materia and attaching both to a weapon would infuse a fighter's basic attacks with the ice element, thereby removing the necessity for an actual "Ice Brand" sword as in previous games. But the combinations could get a lot crazier than that. If you linked "Ice" with the "Added Cut" materia, a character would attack with their weapon after each casting of Ice. If you further linked an additional "Ice" each to the "Steal as well," "HP Absorb," and "MB Absorb" materia, the character could cast the spell, follow with an attack, and then attempt to steal from the enemy, also absorbing a bit of health and MP out of the damage inflicted. But why stop there? Add in a "W Magic" command materia, and the character would go through the entire process twice in one turn. With plenty more materia to experiment with, the game surpassed even Final Fantasy V in offering the deepest and most flexible system yet. On the other hand, you really didn't have to get that devious just to make it through the game, which is probably why the materia system doesn't quite get due credit these days for having been so ingenious.

While most of the power lay in the materia, the characters themselves were distinguished by their "Limit Break" desperation attacks, which sometimes differed considerably across characters. Vincent's, for example, essentially transformed him for the rest of the battle into the berserker class of previous installments, while Cait Sith's were basically Setzer's old gambler tricks from Final Fantasy VI. For the other characters, the Limit Breaks were usually just big attacks. One of the irritating failings of the system was that the game never clearly explained how to acquire new Limit Break skills.


FFVII is perhaps better remembered for its infamous translation, which was sometimes hilarious, often embarrassing. It was far from the worst Japanese-to-English work, nor anywhere close to Square's worst translation, but there were some blatant errors, as well as some confusing phrasing that could legitimately interfere with the player's understanding. For example, during the very first boss fight, Cloud would warn Barret to watch out for the scorpion mech's tail: "Attack while it's tail's up! It's gonna counterattack with its laser." Ignoring any technical errors, it's hard to tell what Cloud is actually saying. He seems at first to suggest attacking the beast, but then the second line warns that the boss will counterattack. So is attacking while its tail is up a good idea or not? (It's not.) These problems would crop up throughout the game, and they would not be isolated to instructional dialogue.

It's difficult to say to what extent the spotty translation compromised the story, which would have been confusing in any case. While I'm sure the sloppy work didn't help, this was the beginning of a new period of deliberately confounding plots and storytelling in Final Fantasy. Kazushige Nojima and Yoshinori Kitase were credited with the story, but the opening credits elaborate that it was "Based on the story" by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura. My rough understanding, based on reading interviews with the key men involved, is that Sakaguchi, with input from Nomura, provided the early concepts and the first script that basically comprised the Midgar episode. Kitase, receiving vague instruction from Sakaguchi to focus on the theme of "life," then heavily revised and expanded it into the core "Cloud vs. Sephiroth" plot, which Nojima then fleshed out into a proper JRPG-length script. Given that this was Kitase's first project as sole director, as well as the first time Nomura held so prominent a position, it's easy to attribute the mind-bending direction to the new blood. But consider the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie, which was Sakaguchi's pet project, with a metaphysical plot bearing myriad similarities to FFVII. If Final Fantasy had morphed into something different from what longtime fans were accustomed to, it's likely that all of these men were collectively culpable.

That said, the story was the very reason that so many players fell in love with Final Fantasy VII. Massive in scope and scale, yet intimate in its focused presentation and haunting ambiance, there was more to FFVII's story that I've forgotten than most games in their entireties ever have to say. But there are some moments that I'll probably always remember.


Perhaps surprisingly in retrospect, the wheelchair cinematic notwithstanding, all of Final Fantasy VII's greatest moments were enacted by the crude, pudgy real-time models, seen as shrimpish Lego people from the same distant angles that were usually meant to facilitate map exploration. To me, the greatest scene in FFVII came midway during the first of its three discs, when Cloud and party stopped at Aeris's house to inform her mother, Elmyra, that Aeris had been taken by the enemy. Elmyra, who saw this coming, would then proceed to tell the story of who her daughter really was.

I consider this episode to have been this game's equivalent to the opera scene from Final Fantasy VI. Though perhaps dissimilar in content, the sequence exhibited the same all-encompassing mastery in constructing a moment. Evoking pages of a storybook more so than a film reel, images would dissolve into light, and spaces--interiors suspended in limitless black expanses, just like in the 2-D games--would slide across the screen as years flashed by and Elmyra narrated her daughter's growth from a helpless orphan into the willful flower girl that would force her way into Cloud's party.

Years before they considered implementing voice acting in a Final Fantasy, Hironobu and team turned as always to Square's resident maestro, Nobuo Uematsu, to carry the scene with his music. And, just as he had in FFVI delayed the first in-game occurrence of Celes's theme, opting not to have it accompany her introduction, as had been the case with the other characters' leitmotifs, in order to attach it more meaningfully to her defining moment in the opera, it was now this FFVII scene, and not Aeris's introduction, that would first feature the track titled "Aeris's Theme."

It's always been hard with these Final Fantasy games to tell whether the adventures transpire over months, weeks, or even just days. We get the sense that we are sharing in the lives of these characters briefly, but for their most vital periods. With Final Fantasy VII, Square invited players to observe a character's life in stages, from its beginning to its premature end, and then had the gall to carry on. Aeris's death remains probably the most famous in gaming, and it had become common knowledge years before I played the game. Sometimes I envy those who were able to go into FFVII unspoiled, to have known Aeris without having to always think about her fate. On the other hand, it can be even more affecting to return to a story, experiencing scenes in a new context with knowledge beforehand of how things will turn out. And so it was that, from the first few notes of Nobuo's composition--in fact, the same three notes that began "Aria di Mezzo Caraterre"--I got the sense that I was witnessing something special.


I remember reading an interview many years ago where Hironobu Sakaguchi summarized his position on gaming's potential by insisting that you could put a movie in a game, but you could not put a game in a movie. Skeptics would likely scoff at such pretentiousness, while self-proclaimed purists might echo Shigeru Miyamoto's sentiment that video games must be about having fun. While I have enormous respect for Miyamoto's skill as a game designer, I would take issue with any one man defining for others what video games are or ought to be. Technically, Sakaguchi was right in that you can make a movie and then build a game around it. That is essentially the very ambition that his former series still carries even after his departure. Final Fantasy VII reached further than any game before it toward that vision, for, although it could never be mistaken for a film, it did feature a story and storytelling that engaged players, arousing emotions as good films are expected to, yet even good games rarely do.


Additional Information

Perhaps because it ended in such an unsatisfying manner, but more likely because there was more milk to be had, post-Hironobu Square Enix would expand FFVII into its own series, first announcing the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie in 2003.

Helmed by Nomura and Kitase, the movie also brought back Nojima, Uematsu, and art director Yusuke Naora for a direct sequel to the game. It's debatable whether Advent Children actually provided a better conclusion to the story than FFVII's own cryptic ending, but I enjoyed how the movie managed to adapt the overblown yet curiously protracted combat of video game battles to establish a new style of action. For obvious reasons, it was a far less substantial experience than the game, however, and despite the involvement of so many of the original creators, I had a hard time buying it as canonical. Perhaps it was my idealized memory of FFVII, and not the reality of the game, that the movie failed to live up to.

In addition to the movie, the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" has included several minor video games, the relevant ones for North America being Dirge of Cerberus (2006) for the PlayStation 2 and Crisis Core (2008) for the PlayStation Portable.

I haven't personally played either of the games, but Dirge of Cerberus looked like a pretty wretched Japanese take on the first-person shooter. A semi-sequel/prequel, it did flesh out Vincent's story, which had always seemed incomplete in the original game, but, although the flashbacks impressively managed not to contradict the old material, the new stuff seemed loonier by far than FFVII ever had been.

The secret ending to Dirge of Cerberus seemed to point toward another sequel, but there doesn't seem to be anything more in the works right now.

Who is watching 07-Ghost?

Earlier this week, while perusing the anime torrent trackers, I noticed that fansub groub Dattebayo's release of episode fifteen of 07-Ghost was reporting over four thousand simultaneous downloads, along with close to seven thousand seeds. For reference, the average semi-popular new anime usually peaks at less than two thousand simultaneous downloads. 07-Ghost's numbers were by far greater than any other spring show, significantly higher than new episodes in the "phenomenon" that is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Based on my crudely assembled data, total transfers have been more comparable to but still slightly higher than for the season premiere of TNT's Leverage, one of cable's highest rated shows and presently the most torrented mainstream television program. The only show I could find that ranked higher was fansubbed Bleach. (New Naruto is freely available on almost every streaming site now, so it's no longer a factor in the torrent scene.)

Naturally, I was curious about this 07-Ghost, about which I had heard almost nothing. After watching the first two episodes, what did I get? The show's really not that great. In fact, it kinda sucks. Featuring a cast of generic prettyboy cliches of the very sort that Ouran High School Host Club effortlessly lampooned, student uniforms ripped straight out of Code Geass (along with the flowing robes that were already obnoxious in Trinity Blood), and a typically nonsensical fantasy plot pitting an emotionally damaged young hero against unabashedly evil shadow men, it doesn't even look or sound good. Complete garbage, there doesn't seem to be a speck of originality in it. Is it possible that it gets progressively better, to the point that episode fifteen might actually be the best anime of the year? I don't expect I'll hang around to find out, but, anyway, the answer is no.

These torrent numbers can be interesting to watch as a way to track the pulse of the anime fan community in the English-speaking world, where it remains so niche that, unless you're depraved enough to frequent the otaku forums, it's hard to get recommendations for what's worth viewing among shows that are still current. You could wait for series to get officially licensed to see which ones are more heavily promoted, but the domestic market has crashed, in my opinion, not because the fad has passed, but because the digital-age fans have grown savvier. These days, the anime fan is not the kid getting his parents to buy Dragonball or Naruto DVDs. Provided you know what you want, a motivated individual can and will find ways to keep up with the latest out of Japan, and even if you steer clear of forums, there's an excitement and a near-tangible energy that builds week-after-week as you wait in sync with other fans to see a show like Gundam 00 march toward its conclusion. By the time the series officially makes it to America, most of that energy will have dissipated.

In practice, I don't know that the download numbers are particularly meaningful, especially since many of the bigger shows these days get licensed immediately for online streaming through more official channels, thereby rendering fansubs somewhat obsolete. Still, that's a lot of downloads for a show of no redeeming qualities that I could see. I have to ask, who the hell are these people that are watching 07-Ghost?

Agony and Ecstasy

I previously mentioned that the company had set up an exhibit wall in the laboratory for employee use. At the time, I perceived most of the displays as the unrealized dreams of my ground down fellow humans. In the months since then, I've grown personally more enthusiastic. I've seen some pretty great stuff--paintings, knickknack collections, even musical compositions--that has left me thoroughly convinced that these people are far more than their jobs. No lie, it really does bring a smile to my face to think that, when their shifts end, they go off to spend the bulk of their days living as they ought to.

This week brought an especially intriguing exhibit, initially announced as a "cake gallery." As it turned out, it was just a wall of photographs of cakes baked and designed by a few of my co-workers. Cute, but I was honestly a little disappointed by the tease, until I received an interoffice e-mail from the gallery organizer, promising edible cake from contributors throughout the week. Sure enough, the first batch of cupcakes arrived in less than an hour. It may have been a bad idea to consume cake so early in the morning, as I crashed pretty quickly, and the already long Monday dragged more than usual. Tuesday was possibly even longer, however, because I was left waiting in anticipation of cake that never manifested.

I had all along thought it foolishness to promise cakes "throughout the week." Were these fine ladies really going to work eight hours of a thankless job, then go home and work some more on baking for a gang of ungrateful cake-eaters who had hardly any appreciation for the subtleties of the craft? The project was born out of a wide-eyed optimism that these dilettantes might be coaxed to recognize and share in the obscure passion. But the folly of it should have become evident on the first day of freeloaders passing by to collect treats while offering little in the way of insightful commentary on the collected albums of designs. Surely, I thought as I sat there disappointed, the poor women had learned their lesson and lost their enthusiasm.

Yes, I must have been suffering from withdrawal; such is the power of sweets over one's mood. Fortunately, today one of those wonderful ladies swung it back in the other direction by unveiling a full-blown three-tier cake. And the world seems so beautiful...

Goodness! It seems I've gone on and on only to brag about having eaten cake! My apologies. But I wonder what tomorrow will bring...

The Essentials #37: Final Fantasy IV / V / VI

Square's Final Fantasy IV was the first of three 16-bit installments in the series. Released in North America in 1991 as "Final Fantasy II" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, this marked what many fans still consider to have been the series's prime. I played about halfway through the SNES version, only later finishing the game when Square released a port as one-half (the other half being Chrono Trigger) of Final Fantasy Chronicles for the Sony PlayStation in 2001.

Development was led by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Takashi Tokita, while Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano filled their usual respective music and art roles. In charge of battle design, Hiroyuki Ito debuted his "Active Time Battle" system.

A departure from the turn-based battling common among Japanese RPGs of the time, the ATB system lent combat an action-oriented twist. Rather than having the player set all actions at the beginning of a round, individual characters' turns were determined by their speed rating, with faster party members (and enemies) able to act sooner and more frequently. Battles felt more dynamic, and the system also tested the player's decisiveness in inputting actions quickly, since the ATB clock did not stop while they deliberated.

Final Fantasy IV's gameplay has been accused of being the simplest of any Final Fantasy to date. Not only would the player have zero control over the party's constantly changing composition, but characters also developed in a completely linear fashion. This left the player little freedom and almost no input, aside from taking on enough fights to keep the party at the proper level. The complaints are valid, but these design decisions had benefits as well. Making the characters distinct and consistent in battle lent them greater personality out of combat. You got the sense that, as warriors, Cecil and Kain were as powerful as their subordinates claimed, while Rydia, a little girl, would be far less so. The adventure was driven by its tightly woven script, rather than by a compulsion to provide balance or flexibility, allowing the narrative and gameplay to complement one another as no other Final Fantasy ever had or would. Meanwhile, the five-character party, still the largest in a numbered installment, yielded some layered strategy, with each member assigned a role against probably the series's toughest bosses.


The story, about the technologically dominant kingdom of Baron's ruthless pursuit of four magical crystals, was not the deepest or most original. The crystals were already a series staple, and the plot otherwise borrowed liberally from Star Wars. But gaming had never witnessed such a grand, riveting story full of betrayals, redemption, and noble sacrifices, as well as some of the most complex heroes yet proposed in gaming. The dark knight Cecil was the conflicted protagonist, who had done cruel deeds under orders that he was beginning to question. Even more troubled was his best friend, the dragoon Kain, one of the series's most iconic characters, whose envy of Cecil's life was a private torment. As the story began, they made for a pretty menacing pair. Their faces were even concealed beneath some mean headgear. And the player's very first mission led to them burning down a village that offered little resistance. Granted they were tricked into doing so against their wills, but there was little doubt that they were on the wrong side. This was some dark and unprecedented stuff.

In a lot of ways, Final Fantasy IV may have been my favorite in the series. Its linearity and simplicity, which some might call weaknesses, actually made it the most playable and replayable installment, consequently the easiest to like.


Additional Information

The original North American release was actually modified to be easier than the Japanese release. I've played enough of both to say that the differences were negligible. Mostly, the SNES edition dispensed with a bunch of largely useless abilities, such as dark knight Cecil's "Dark Wave."

The PS1 port appended crude, roughly Final Fantasy VII-quality CG movie sequences to the beginning and end. The opening depicted the Red Wings taking off before the game's proper beginning, while the ending sequence was a music video of sorts, showcasing some of the highlights in pre-rendered 3-D.

Another port (pictured above) arrived on the Game Boy Advance in 2005, adding slightly enhanced graphics, new optional dungeons, and the ability to swap in old party members for the final dungeon.

In 2008, Final Fantasy IV got the full 3-D remake treatment for the Nintendo DS. Players also finally got some customization options for character development in the form of the "Augment" system. I haven't played much of it, but, new graphics aside, the maps seem much the same.

Most recently, there was an actual sequel called Final Fantasy IV: The After Years released in installments to Japanese mobile phones in 2008. I don't know much more, but it's still in the process of being released via WiiWare to North America.


Originally released in 1992 for the Super Famicom, Final Fantasy V would not see release in North America until 1999, when Square compiled it with Final Fantasy VI as part of Final Fantasy Anthology for the Sony PlayStation. That was the version that I played.

Perhaps because it missed its own prime release window, FFV has never been as celebrated in the West as its 16-bit siblings. But that reasoning might suggest that the fans' love of those titles is driven by nostalgia, which they would not have for FFV.

In its own time, the game was deemed "too difficult" for Western audiences, which was why it was passed over for localization until many years later. FFV was not really a harder game than FFIV, but it was for sure less intuitive than its incredibly straightforward predecessor. Combat was much the same as before, only adding the "ATB Bar" to allow the player to actually see when a character's turn was coming up. But the key feature of FFV was Hiroyuki Ito's "Job" system, which allowed party members to switch between different character classes unlocked during the course of the game. It had roots in the class system of the original Final Fantasy, which had been further expanded upon in Final Fantasy III. But FFV, while retaining many of the same classes, was a massive upgrade over its predecessors.

Through winning battles, characters would earn Ability Points to unlock new skills in their current jobs. The true beauty of the system, however, was that, when characters changed jobs and took on the abilities inherent to the class, they could also still equip any previously earned ability as a secondary skill. Thus, whereas FFIII had basically just provided progressively more powerful classes over the course of its quest, FFV encouraged players to spend some time with every job in order to amass a healthy mix of stats and skills for combining. The ranger's "Rapid Fire" command, for example, was a nifty technique allowing the character to attack four times per turn with the mediocre bow and arrow. But adapted to a much more powerful sword-wielding warrior class like the mystic knight, the skill was several times more potent.


Although the characters were the most versatile in battle, outside of combat they offered nothing close to the depth of Cecil and Kain. The hero, Bartz, a traveling adventurer, was really little more than a simple country bumpkin who became accidentally entangled in world-shattering events. If the story lacked the pathos of its 16-bit siblings, it was nevertheless a well-paced and involved adventure that, like the earlier titles, treated the player to exotic cultures and fantastic sights, most notably the battles on the intercontinental Big Bridge. This would be the last installment where Hironobu Sakaguchi himself assumed the position of director, and it would also be the last Final Fantasy for quite some time to use the crystals plot.

Its champions would argue that Final Fantasy V was the deepest of the 16-bit installments, and, from a gameplay standpoint, I don't think there can be much disputing that claim. With the immensely rewarding Job system, it played better than almost any JRPG before or after. However, it was weaker in the areas for which Final Fantasy titles are traditionally best remembered, and I suspect that is why it is not now more fondly recalled.


Additional Information

As with the PS1 port of FFIV, the Anthology release of Final Fantasy V included new opening and ending cinematics, the former being a short prelude scene, the latter a highlight reel. These were closer to Final Fantasy VIII's movies in CG quality, though not quite there.

It also received a Game Boy Advance makeover in 2006, featuring some upgraded background graphics and a few extra jobs and optional battles. The GBA release also sported a brand new translation that greatly improved upon the sloppy work on the Anthology edition.


Square's final 16-bit installment, Final Fantasy VI arrived in North America in 1994 as "Final Fantasy III" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Again, I did not play it until the PS1 port.

This was the first installment to feature Yoshinori Kitase in the director's chair, alongside Hiroyuki Ito. In many ways, it felt like a transitional game between the Sakaguchi and Kitase titles. While the 2-D graphics were still superficially similar to the older titles, no longer was it a swashbuckling adventure. It traded the wild frontier quality of the earlier games for a grittier, more sophisticated world in conflict.

FFVI's cast of playable characters remains the largest of any numbered installment, and, in a departure from the series, they were all about equally prominent. Instead of one protagonist and a crew of supporting characters, FFVI essentially had eleven main characters. This was not exactly an ensemble cast, however, as characters would simply take turns in the lead. At its best, the story felt massive and infinitely more layered than FFIV, shifting effortlessly from one perspective to the next in episodes that might only subtly intersect. While the official credits obscured this fact, the development team apparently included multiple writers scripting the plots for different characters. Soraya Saga, later an integral contributor to Xenogears and Xenosaga, for example, wrote the stories of the brothers Edgar and Sabin.

Striking a balance between FFIV and FFV, VI returned to giving each character a preset class, but also allowed for some customization via the "Magicite" system. Equipped Magicite crystals taught characters spells and sometimes enhanced specific stats at level-up, allowing a fighter to transform pretty easily into an effective mage. Magic aside, each character possessed one unique ability, although for some characters this encompassed multiple skills.

There was a definite degree of homogeneity to the characters, not only because every party member could learn every spell, but because their special techniques were not all that distinct. Sabin and Edgar had slightly different stats and equipment, but, in practice, their "Blitz" and "Tools" commands allowed them to fill the same heavy-hitter role in a party. Cyan and Shadow offered lesser versions of the same thing. The more unusual abilities, such as Relm's "Sketch" or Mog's "Dance," simply weren't that good. The only uniquely useful ability was Celes's "Runic" command, which could nullify any magic, rendering some spell-casting bosses impotent. It probably didn't help that this was definitely the easiest Final Fantasy yet, and, no matter the party, you could simply "Fight" your way through most battles. And even before working the Magicite system to subvert character classes, there would be an abundance of jack-of-all-trades types, compared to only two bona fide mage characters.


In all previous installments, the player's party at any given time would be determined by the script. That was true for much of FFVI's early portions, but eventually the story would gather the full cast together, allowing the player complete freedom to rotate any out of up to fourteen characters into the four-man party. In lieu of the FFV Job system, this added another element of customization, but it came at great cost to the narrative. Once character swapping became an option, the script could no longer know which specific characters would be present for a particular scene, so it would resort to either generic dialogue or none at all. This meant that characters didn't really say or do much outside of their own subplots. When Cyan joined up with Sabin for a multi-part adventure early on, the partnership provided some amusing interplay. What was their relationship after that quest? There wasn't one.

The story took a rather stunning turn halfway through, when the characters actually failed to stop a cataclysmic event that would leave the world in ruins. Unfortunately, it could be said that the game as a whole went to hell at that point. The entire second half of the game proceeded in an experimental non-linear design. Once the player gained access to the airship, it became possible to head directly to the final dungeon with as few as only three party members. Actually beating the game so soon would be impractical, but the game offered little impetus in any other direction, instead encouraging the player to roam freely around the map in search of old allies. This mechanic may have paved the way for my favorite JRPG series, Suikoden, but, in FFVI, it really stalled the narrative. Not only did I not feel like I was making any headway in the campaign against the main antagonist, but the open-ended progression also made the "personalities on holiday" problem most apparent.

And when characters did progress, I found myself disappointed by the turns, most notably in the case of the reserved and mysterious Terra. The girl riding the mech in the logo, she was the closest the game had to a single main character. The amnesiac daughter of a human and an esper, much of the first half of the game focused on her struggle to discover herself--not only her past, but her future as well. When you met her again in the world of ruin, she had finally found her place as the surrogate mother to a village of children orphaned by disaster. From my perspective, she was walking a path I could no longer understand or follow. I just couldn't relate to it, nor did I wish to. I still can't relate, but I suppose it was brave in a way to stay this course and carry the adolescent protagonist into adulthood that the players might not themselves know for years.

While I personally believe Final Fantasy VI was a more heavily flawed title than its 16-bit predecessors, I can certainly understand why many still hail it as the greatest Final Fantasy. The game was bold. This was never clearer than in the legendary opera sequence. Looking at it now, it's a technically primitive scene--the simple sprites and synthetic voice may not be terribly convincing for a lot of players who didn't see it the first time around. It actually featured crude bits of interactivity. I don't know that the scene benefited from their inclusion, but neither could the clumsy dance mechanics ruin the moment--a moment that was somehow bigger than the story that contained it. This was not an interstitial movie sequence between dungeon excursions. So complete was it that you had to believe that the creators must have conceived of a scene first before building a game around it. When Celes took the stage, all thoughts of empires and espers faded away. There was only the image and the vital instant. Moments like this showed why Square and Final Fantasy were the best. No pretenders building their games to formula could ever have constructed such a scene.


Additional Information

Again, the PS1 version included extra movie sequences, which were roughly of the same quality as FFV's. Pretty cool, but perhaps disappointing in that the scope of the original game meant many characters and scenes could not be represented during the ending highlights.

2007's Final Fantasy VI Advance was probably the most controversial of the GBA releases. Featuring no graphical enhancements, arguably because it didn't need them, the only minor additions were a few new items and battles. More questionable was the apparent softening of some content in deference to a more sensitive Japanese ratings board, while there was some disagreement over how well Tom Slattery's new translation compared against Ted Woolsey's original.

Tall Order for the Floor

I dreamed that I was invited to appear on TNT's Inside the NBA. A panel of experts had just decided upon the "All-Time NBA First Team," and I was being asked to analyze the selections alongside the usual hosts of TNT's award-winning post-game show.

The team was composed of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, and Shawn Bradley. In case the names mean nothing to you, those are five actual retired players who were active primarily during the 80s and 90s. Together they would make a good team, but probably not a great one. Bogues was not an All-Star even in his own time, and Bradley was honestly pretty lousy. Frankly, as an "All-Time NBA First Team," it was ridiculous, and I was prepared to say as much.

Kenny "The Jet" Smith started things off, however, by backing the panel, and he proceeded to list off all of the team's strengths, noting that it was perfectly equipped for any possible matchup in history. He then turned to me, and, after noting my respect for both Smith and co-host Barkley, I declared that I thought the team a joke. Barkley assured me he took no offense, but he asked if I could construct a better lineup. Without any hesitation, I named my team of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwan, and Shaquille O'Neal. (For the record, I really do believe that a team of five good seven-footers would dominate any more orthodox starting five. (Yes, I'm aware that Bill Russell is not a seven-footer.))

Smith responded with an amused whistle while Barkley sat in stunned silence. As the program drew to a close, they wished me well, warning me that I could expect to draw a lot of heat for my controversial statements.

They were right about that. For the next several days, I could not show my face in public without confronting hordes of outraged Michael Jordan fans. Every NBA sportswriter, rather than assessing the original official team, was determined to tear apart my televised response. But nobody took greater offense than Alonzo Mourning, who apparently felt snubbed.

Every day, the 6'10" retired center posted another YouTube video voicing his displeasure as he chewed me out. I chose not to respond to my other critics, because I knew it was blood they wanted and not an apology. But I felt genuinely bad about the Mourning situation. He was one of my best guys in NBA Jam. Finally, he challenged me to a one-on-one game. I accepted, knowing full well that I stood no chance.

We played to eleven on an urban street court, which Mourning revealed was actually his best surface, unbeknownst to most NBA fans. To everyone's amazement, including my own, I managed to nail the first jump shot. On my next possession, he immediately stripped the ball and dunked it. He then proceeded to run the score to eleven to end the contest.

I feel a need to point out that he had more than a foot on me, that he was a very recently retired professional player, whereas I had not played any basketball since high school gym class, and I sucked even back then. I wasn't sure what he had proven by this display, but all the cheers were on his side, as though he were the hero and I some vanquished villain. As Mourning collected his applause, I felt confident that it was not me but the world that was broken.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I would rank this the third best Transformers movie I've seen. That's not a compliment.

Michael Bay's 2007 movie had a ton of problems--way too long, poor Transformer designs, unwelcome and uninteresting humans, weak comic relief--but I thought it was more than redeemed by the final action sequence in the city. There was no spatial or temporal logic to the editing, but the way the Transformers themselves blended into the live action environment was the most impossibly amazing thing I'd ever seen.

Two years later, the Transformers are still the most awesome special effect you'll see this summer, but it's just not enough. All of the first movie's faults are still there and now magnified because, the second time around, I'm naturally going to have far less patience. It's also plain worse in every respect--running time even longer, annoying humans more plentiful, comic relief more incessant and less funny, plot holes more numerous. And while Bay seems reluctant to draw upon the much superior classic Transformer designs, the ludicrous and convoluted plot feels very much like a vintage cartoon. In fact, in its senselessness and audiovisual loudness, it's almost like a live-action version of the 1986 animated movie, except that it's been made twice as long by padding the runtime with inane plots and repulsive characters. And this is another one of those frustrating cases where the fanservice doesn't seem to realize that it's fanservice, as in the case of the prominently featured yet unrecognizably limp Devastator.

None of this is to say that I hated the movie. There were still cool moments, such as the opening action sequence and the fight in the forest. For the home video release, I think it would be great to offer an abbreviated cut. Heck, just take the action sequences from both Bay flicks and compress them into one feature, because, even though I enjoyed them to an extent, I would never want to watch the entirety of either movie ever again.