Final Fantasy 3 (6)

When I was young, I liked playing video games simply because they were fun. You try to make it from point A to point B while defeating enemies on the way. For me, I didn’t really care much about having to save the princess/girlfriend/kingdom/galaxy as long as I could keep playing; they were more about stimulation, not immersion. That is until I played Final Fantasy 6. Back when it was first released, it was called Final Fantasy 3 on the Super Nintendo (SNES) since not all Final Fantasy games were released into the US. To avoid having to explain the numerical inconsistency, they numbered them based on the order of when they were released. But since it is actually the 6th installment of the FF series, I’m going to call it FF6.

I consider Final Fantasy 6 as one of my all time favorite games. Not because of the gameplay, it was actually a pretty simple turn based RPG battle system, but because it was the first game that made me realize the potential video games have in telling amazing stories. They do a good job of telling players this is going to be a very story driven game by starting the game with not only with cutscenes but opening credits:

This is pretty simplistic, if not standard, in today’s games but for a young adolescent Byron, this was pretty mind blowing. Having opening credits really emphasized that this wasn’t going to be your run of the mill point A to B game. This was going to be an epic tale of troubled pasts, redemption, revenge, family, and so much more.

Final Fantasy 6 has 12 main playable characters, not counting, Gogo and Umaro, since they aren’t needed to progress through or complete the game. As you play through the game, you learn about each character’s past and even have side quests that let you learn even more about them. Although the game somewhat revolves around Terra, I don’t identify her as the main character. Sure she was significant but I didn’t JUST care about her story, I wanted to know more about why Locke was always so quick to protect women, who Shadow really was, how Gau ended up in the Veldt, and how the hell is Sabin able to suplex a train. Okay that last one they don’t really explain but boy did that raise my eyebrows.

The point I’m trying to make is that Final Fantasy 6 has a special place in my heart (which still identifies it as “Final Fantasy 3”). This game is one of the big reasons why I went from enjoying games as a form of entertainment to appreciating them as a form in storytelling; it is one of the main reasons why I am pursuing a career in writing. It has lead me to play other amazing games like the other installments of the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, the Breath of Fire series, the Mass Effect series (regardless of how it ended), and many more.