[Editor's note: NihonTiger90 takes a look at Final Fantasy VI's big twist for his Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]
The end of the world: it's become something of a cliche now a days, but there was a time when this was almost unheard of. Yes, there was a time when the world the game was set in wasn't massively destroyed. Maybe on a rare occasion, a city or something, but not the entire planet. There were threats, there were grand evil schemes, but they were always foiled. The villains were always stopped at the last second and everything turned out okay.
One game really changed all that for me, though: Final Fantasy VI. Squaresoft's sixth installment in the RPG franchise is legendary for a number of reasons, but one scene in particular stands out: the big cut scene just over halfway through the game on the Floating Continent.
Gesthal and Kefka have reached the three statues of the Gods that control the balance of magic in the world when the mad man turns on the emperor, downing him and unceremoniously punting him off the continent to his death. Celes tries to stop Kefka as he moves the statues, warning him of the great danger that would befall everything, but he tosses her aside and does it anyways. However, Shadow tries to put a stop to him, even as the skies turn black and the continent itself collapses around them. Everyone makes it successfully back, and it seems the worst might be over, right?
Then, it happens.
The world begins to rip itself apart. Giant chasms tear across the land, swallowing people whole. Earthquakes destroy towns and cities. Mountains crumble into dust. Explosions of magic appear across the continent, disintegrating all unlucky enough to be caught in the blast radius. People die. Not even Setzer's airship escapes such a fate as it is broken in half, its occupants strewn across the landscape.
What then follows is one of the most impressive scenes in any
Final Fantasy game to date. The dramatic music fades out on a shot of the world from space, explosions ripping across the landscape. Then, the continent tears itself in pieces in total silence, signifying the end of the world that was known for both the people who lived there and the player.
This entire sequence of events is memorable in my mind for a few reasons. First off, it's memorable for the fact that Kefka succeeds in destroying the world and becoming a God. The number of villains who can ever claim to have had that much success in their plans is very, very, very small, even in the grand history of videogames. It's one of the reasons I'll go to my grave saying that Kefka is the single best
Final Fantasy villain of all time.
More importantly, this scene is one of great historical importance for the world of videogames. While we've grown accustomed to doomsday scenarios in out games today, back in the mid-1990s, it was a lot less common, and it was almost unheard of to actually have a world get destroyed during a game. As I briefly touched on earlier, those kinds of things were generally reserved for the prologue or the background story.
Final Fantasy VI was one of the few games to not only portray the world's destruction, but the living hell that the "lucky" few survivors had to cope with. It didn't just weave the possibility of the world being destroyed into the game; it made it happen, and there was not a damn thing you could do to stop it. This went against almost everything I had learned in videogames up to this point. Sure, there was redemption at the end by stopping Kefka’s ultimate goal of erasing all life, but the damage had been done and life would never, ever be the same.
It was the first time I truly encountered the destruction of the world in a videogame. I remember sitting there in a pretty stunned silence at first, wondering if I'd somehow missed something or if there was some quest I could go on to save the world. When I eventually found out there was nothing I could do to return the world to the way it once was, it was a bit shocking, but in my older age, I have come to appreciate this twist more. The destruction of the world in videogames is something that rarely holds the same emotion for me anymore, because it's been done to death, but this one scene in
Final Fantasy VI is always an exception, and it always will be. It is the way the destruction of the world should be done.
Contest:
2:35 PM on 12.14.2008
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I've heard arguments that say that Sephiroth is the most evil Final Fantasy villain ever because he destroyed Cloud's hometown. Kefka ripped the world asunder. Sephiroth isn't even in the same league as Kefka.
A fair amount of that has to do with several factors:
1) Nostalgia - FFVII was the first FF game for a lot of people
2) Completely new 3D graphics instead of the old 2D sprites
3) Better platform which allowed for other major advances in presentation
FFVII is a very good game but it unfortunately has become so over-hyped that it becomes very difficult for the game to live up to the expectations imposed upon it. The fact that Square has been milking the FFVII franchise TO DEATH does not help in the matter.
Basically once you get past the visual and nostalgic elements of both games, FFVI's story and characters stand on somewhat firmer ground than FFVII's.
Oddly enough I think the first game which gave me a similar experience was another old jrpg, Chrono Trigger. With Magnus destroying the world in certain timelines, and so many other serious outcomes, it was the first game to really give me a sense of the finite.
You're thinking too small. He's probably the best video game villain of all time, period.
Hell even in movies/books I can't really come up with many villains that top Kefka.
I remember when I first played the game being really surprised as Kefka's sudden 'rise' as the main bad guy over the emperor.
Plus most other video game heroes are either evil in a shade-of-grey and/or because of emo rage (Sephiroth). Kefka always gave me the impression of being evil just for the pleasure of it AND certifiably insane.