Last time, creepy old men stared at Terra, and Terra continued to say nothing of value as usual. Today, we really are going to steal things since we’re controlling an actual thief. Speaking of which…
Locke’s Theme
I’m incredibly tempted to leave it this way because it seems like the most obvious joke to make. For those of you who don’t play Zelda, I’m referring to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1wAGpbRAE
He’s supposed to be wagging his finger at us, like so:
. I should’ve named him “Sonic”.
So they meet up to discuss blind dates? No
wonder he couldn’t stop staring at us, he locked us in the house… and… oh man, you don’t want to know the several places my mind went.
Beggars can’t be choosers. This is why you’re still single.
It’s like I’m reading a Star Wars novelization. The Empire is the Empire. The Returners are basically the Rebel Alliance.
In this case, the story somewhat seems mildly interesting. The rebels going up against the Empire who has far more manpower and resources than they ever will. (Well, we’ll see that the resistance actually has some manpower and resources, so it’s not wholly the David vs Goliath affair that I’d like it to be.)
I just realized something. It wasn’t until a little later in the game (we’ll get to this part later, but I feel like I should discuss this now) that the game truly felt as though a large empire seized control over the entire world, but that was only for a small arc in the game. This is something I’d much rather have, though. I’d said above that I prefer something on a macro scale overall as opposed to a micro scale that FF6 kind of does. I think it tries to handle the macro and micro simultaneously, but I feel like it doesn’t do it well, or there’s some sort of disconnect that doesn’t allow the player to enjoy the bigger arc and the character arcs in conjunction with each other. I think the reason behind that is because there isn’t conclusively one single character that I can use to tie both the micro and macro aspects of the narrative together.
If I do finish this playthrough or get far enough into it to discuss why I really dislike Terra’s arc in general, I will. But I think the best character to tie the entire game together is truly Celes. Someone who was raised in the Empire, who worked in the Empire, learned about how shitty the Empire can be, joining up with the Returners and rebelling against them, having her lowest point in the game and then learning from it, and then journeying about to complete herself, her team, and her world again. Terra… I think she’s a decent
bystander/sidekick character, but I don’t think she’s necessarily a good character to wrap a narrative around. When I think about the narrative in conjunction with Terra’s story, it’s just kind of weird. It somewhat works for a fraction of the game’s narrative, but not necessarily the entirety of it (especially since her character arc seems to
stop after a certain point).
While they’re discussing politics for a bit here, it sets up something incredibly interesting and Suikoden-esque. Despite the fact that I’d given FF6 its fair chance in the early/mid-2000s, I ended up comparing it a little bit to Suikoden just based on this dialogue alone. And boy was I disappointed with what I ended up getting by the time I beat the game. I was hoping that the game would throw more political intrigue into the mix, but that aspect of the game took a complete backseat to the mysticality of the game’s universe. That’s something I find deeply disappointing. Something like that was probably handled a little better in FF7’s universe, when they combined mystical sources with political power and the scenario ended up being very interesting until it became all about Sephiroth. In FF6, the politics were used as a method to get to the mystical stuff, and they were barely ever mentioned again.
So why is Terra important? She’s supposed to be like the Runebearer of FF6: she’s special and they want to use her as a pawn in their scheme (and these pawns tend to be either willing or unwilling, or they kinda know what’s going on as opposed to just being there for higher morale). And to a point, she ends up taking that role, but for some reason, it ends up being dropped in favour of making Celes the main highlight of the second half. The switch from Terra to Celes in this respect isn’t handled very well. Highlighting Celes was something that started from her introduction and more explicitly during the Opera Scene. Terra kind of fades from the limelight overall around Zozo, and then she pops back in a few times, only to be somewhat dumped to “having 1 character arc” status during the second half of the game. At least with Celes, it’s kind of seamless, though it starts relatively late.
So… the short version of it is that I don’t like how FF6 handles its overarching plot in relation to its subarcs or the character arcs very much. Some of it feels relatively detached, and in turn, I feel a little disappointed with the narrative. For all this talk about an Empire and having a rebel group, it ends up being rather insignificant in the grand scheme of all things with respect to politics.
How the hell is he going to waltz right up to the King of some country where people sing a lot and talk to him as if they’re buddies if he’s a damned
thief?
I have no clue how he found her. He just
did because reasons (because they were lazy and didn’t want you to waltz through the cave yet again). I dunno why he didn’t bother taking the exit near that hole because it just leads down here anyway.
I guess he just wants to be cool.
Better question: how did he find her faster than these goons did? Guess they needed to find a way to bring their huge mammoths with them.
Oh, hey! It’s that thing on game box. Except there are two of them.
Ah, so this is supposed to be Final Fantasy VI’s mascot character. Even though Moogles were introduced in Final Fantasy III. The
real Final Fantasy III. ‘cept this is the first time NA saw them (I guess the Moogle spot was given to the Namingways/Hummingways in FF4).
They also like to say…
… a lot. This quality ended up making them incredibly endearing to fans, and I truly think moogles hit their height in Final Fantasy IX
because stuff like this happened.
Then we got FF13-2 and I started to genuinely dislike the little things. That damn fatheaded thing with a nasaly voice and all I really want to do is throw it off a damn cliff and destroy it because it treats “kupo” as if it were a lexical quirk rather than onomatopoeia. What the heck were they thinking there? It’s annoying.
And they didn’t say “kupo!” at the end of the sentence.
Thank God for that!
No, I’ve played this game before.
This section of the game is basically a tutorial on something that Final Fantasy VI does
a lot, and that’s split parties up. That means you can’t just use the same dudes over and over in the long run because there will be times when the game likes to say, “Gotcha!” and throws you into a scenario where you are forced to use
everyone.
This is just a tutorial stage, so you aren’t forced to use every single party, but it’s best to position them to block every single route to Terra possible. Every Moogle team is leveled up appropriately so you don’t have to think about whether or not everyone is leveled up enough to combat every group and the boss of the dungeon.
There will be times you split up to complete puzzles across the dungeon and have your teams cooperate in order to complete the dungeon, but that comes much later.
About the moogles specifically, they fill the places for most of the main playable characters save for Locke and Mog. So they share the same slots as some of these characters. If you execute the Pass Event Glitch, you’ll have one of the moogles fill Celes’s spot instead because they share the same slots.
But there’s an interesting thing going on with one of the moogles. We can swap his equipment and go into his status menu. For some reason. I don’t know why I am able to do this. They’re just letting me. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
(I really wish they didn’t allow me to go into his menu because it makes it
so obvious that he’s a future recruit, but maybe it’s a programming limitation.)
So these are the same things we fought when we were invading Narshe with Terra, Vicks, and Wedge. The thing is that they kind of nerfed the monsters a little bit and coded parts of these monsters’ scripts to make it easier on us when we first started the game. Now that we have party members that are stronger than the initial party member set, all of these monsters’ skills are unlocked (so basically they can use their entire script because they are no longer limited by the levels your party have) and they can go to town on you if you’re not careful.
The Vomammoths are a good example of this: they cannot cast Blizzard if people in your party are under Level 5. Considering
almost everyone is now level 5 and up, they can finally cast it on its first turn (that’s the first check the script actually does). On its second turn it can decide based on percentages what it does (attack, Bear Claw, nothing). They can only cast Blizzard once since they don’t have enough MP for a second cast.
I guess Lobos are another good example of this. So, we’re now greater than Level 7, which means they can use another attack they weren’t able to before: Tusk. They won’t always use it, though, because it’s a probability sorta thing in their script.
Because Mog fought in a cave, he learns Dusk Requiem. No, I don’t know why “requiem” is spelled wrong. I’d love to go further into what Mog’s abilities are, but we have some battles to fight. Let’s get rid of the leader!
The Decisive Battle
The Marshal is accompanied by his guard dogs because he wants to take
a BITE out of crime and run for superior court judge. What he should’ve done was just have his nephew make a commercial for him.
Depending on how much the game likes you, bringing Locke into this fight may or may not be beneficial, and that’s because you have the ability to steal a Mithril Knife from the Marshal. It could be difficult, and if the game doesn’t seem to like you, you could bring Mog’s party in instead and use Dusk Requiem to potentially kill the Marshal in one hit with one of its attacks.
But I’m successful with stealing the Knife from the enemy anyway, so it doesn’t matter if I use Mog or not. If you do die with a party while fighting the Marshal, that party will just be revived with 1 HP per character so you could just heal them and go again. You can also try to steal multiple Mithril Knives this way as well.
So, the Marshal has two Lobos accompanying him. At this point he’ll use Net, which casts Stop on people (this is when people glow pink). If you kill both Lobos, he’ll start using Charge (2/3s of the time) which really
hurts. It’s thus best to kill one Lobo, keep one alive, Steal until successful, kill the Marshal, and then kill the last Lobo.
I can assure you that since we can go into Mog’s menu, we’ll meet him again someday. And with that, we run away like hell.
The Mines of Narshe
You know, if it weren’t for the monsters, I think Narshe could hide their townspeople in here if they truly wanted to. They’d seem to get along well with the moogles if they’re nice, and the hidden door here would prevent the Empire from seeing where they are if they don’t comb through the mines/if they destroy that long bridge.
Locke’s so totally not into her.
So many ellipses. The script was actually rather passable before this.
No, wait! Stop. Don’t do this. She’s going to be even more creeped out and confused if you just appoint yourself as her White Knight out of nowhere, especially since she
just met you, and you’re clearly not into her and you’re just doing this out of obligation.
Stop lying to yourself just because you’re hopelessly single.
She just said she can’t remember anything and you expect her to remember this?
This game doesn’t know what subtlety is.
Remember where this is, GAF. We’ll be coming back here very soon.
I would go over most of the stuff they say in the Beginner’s lodge, but truly, it’s best to show you guys as I play the game rather than stand there and narrate tutorials. Because reading that kind of stuff certainly isn’t fun, is it?
Lies and slander!
How does a monster fit in a box? This is a concept I have never ever understood. I know the answer is “video games”, but some of these monsters can be gigantic and some of these treasure chests can be the smallest things ever.
Boring.
Well, nothing cool’s happening right now, so let’s go back into town just for giggles.
Never mind.
Figaro?
Next Time: Son of a Submariner! There’s SAND on my boots!
Actually, I don’t even know if there’s going to be a next time based on how poorly thought-out the last few entries have been. Plus I’m doing the 4 in Feb thing like everyone else. Two down, two to go!
FFIV has something about it that makes doing jokes pretty easy, so don't feel pressure if you're having difficulties with FFVI. I have faith in you!
Well, the jokes in Mystic Quest and FF4 at least came to my mind in a fluid manner. FFVI's jokes... mehhh... They feel incredibly
forced. I could come up with better material for FF7 or FF8 because they're visibly absurd in some respect.
A lot of my hesitation comes from having played FF6 after almost every other FF in the series, don't forget.