[Classic] The Storyline of Final Fantasy VI *Spoilers*

Kefka wasn't just comical though, he was DERANGED. He wasn't always so, though, but the game never did a good job at explaining things past "he was messed up in an experiment to augment his magical powers".

"Final Fantasy VI: Settai Shiryou" was a book published by Square in Japan, which was basically a "perfect works" or Ultimania book. It went pretty deeply into Kefka's history and you can clearly see there was a good person (or at the very least, a not insane one) in there before he spiraled into madness.

According to the book Kefka was infused with an evil esper called María, which was what drove him insane and probably conquered his mind. He had been infused with it around the same age that Celes was when she was infused and it didn't seem to effect him very deeply for several years. Infact, his first "major breakdown" where he had become clearly insane (started dressing in gaudy clothing and wearing makeup...) was three years prior to the events in the game. He wasn't much different than Leo originally, except they clashed with one another often because Leo despised Magitek while Kefka embraced it and found it fascinating (as did most of the empire).

http://forums.ffonline.com/showpost....9&postcount=63
http://forums.ffonline.com/showpost....3&postcount=65
http://moonreading.lunarpages.com/tr...rldhistory.txt
http://moonreading.lunarpages.com/tr...opolitical.txt

You can read some translations of the book there but it's mostly just a timeline and the character pages for Kefka and Celes. People at the FFO forums are trying to translate the whole book but it's a slow process making sure the translations are correct. I know it doesn't change the fact that the story wasn't all that well fleshed out, but it does explain why a garish clown like Kefka could have risen so high in power and have been trusted so much by the emperor despite his obvious insanity. He just simply put wasn't always like that and for the final three years trust in him had been waning, he had been demoted from a higher position even before the game started because of it. According to the book, María is the demon you fight right before you finish off Kefka at the end of the game as well -- and is figuratively his mother too.

"Born of María, the fallen angel, this child was destined to destroy the world, and overthrow the gods themselves."

Hopefully someone else will find that interesting, because I've always loved the game and was pretty excited to see people translating this book (I knew it existed before but could never convince anyone to translate it...) so that I could see what Square originally had in mind for some of the characters as well as their origins and such. It helps separate canon and fiction at least.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Judging on the rest of the topic over at FFO the Maria thing seems like canon, but the last bit of the wiki article was not (The Thamasa bit with mention of Clyde and such).

At the very least it's certain she was the esper he was infused with and was the strange female part of the "tower" you fought during the last boss fight. And I entirely agree, I didn't post it hoping to change anyone's minds about the storyline -- I just noticed people ragging on Kefka for being a comic relief character/villain and thought this would be a nice read for them (and for anyone else that happened to be interested).

Basically, I just felt it fit well with the discussion about the storyline and it seemed relevant enough to post, ya know?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Somewhere in the massive topic, it at least confirms that Shadow is roughly 30 years old during the events of FF6. He was robbing trains and such when he and Baram were about 15~16 years old so that narrows things down slightly. The topic veered away from him unfortunately in favor of the empire, Kefka and Celes, though, since there seemed to be a much larger pool of information about that stuff. (understandable, since the empire was a much larger chunk of the game's focus than Shadow was)

Kefka being like an older brother to Celes was pretty odd, as a lot of that stuff was. Not because it was unbelievable, but just because absolutely none of it came up during the course of the game. Then again, Locke and Celes had a poor romance plot to say the least as well, so it didn't truly surprise me all THAT much that such things would go unresolved.

I'm sure they'll eventually get back to Shadow and whatever else remains in the book. It's only 96 pages long, though, and it appears like maybe it was made with the thought that there would be three books made all together and this was just part one of that three.

I like these books, there is one for Final Fantasy IV as well which is actually a good deal translated. (http://home.att.net/~RCgamusic/ff4comp.htm) I guess that would make borg happy and give him something nice to read; though I myself am much more interested in seeing the rest of the FF6 translations get finished.

The topic did touch on how similar the Maria/Kefka thing was to FF7 as well. It's a pretty long topic but I read through it all anyway just to see what was true and what was debunked. It certainly added a new layer to the game for me but I already appreciated the game in the first place. I didn't need this to convince me that the game had a decent storyline.

For sake of staying slightly on the original topic -- I gave the plot about a 8.5 as well. Nostalgia played a large part, but I can't give it any higher than that because I do realise there was a lot left unresolved and plenty that was just never touched on at all. The books Square shove out always do this, but at least in most of the games (FF7 and such...) the majority of what is mentioned is mostly confirmations for things people already suspected, rather than being entirely new information nobody would have ever guessed in a million years. (ex; Prime Minister Kefka?) Eheh.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Prime Minister was Kefka's title before he got demoted from his massive breakdown. The books timeline and structure make it seem like the empire was a place built upon the dreams of a man unifying a country that was torn between three smaller "city-states" which were constantly at war. It definitely tries to give you a more realistic look at the workings of the empire rather than the basic look you get in the game. (where they actually break down some of the positions and help you get a look at what the character's were doing before you tried to take them down) Totally understandable anyway, though, as I can't think of many games with a great amount of history or inside look at most anything anyway. It's just not necessary information for what was the basis of the actual plot. It's a nice read to me anyway, though, since I always like reading about empires and how they are built, maintained and inevitably fall.

Just a few things left unresolved to me were Banon (as was mentioned), Narshe (though this isn't necessary, some subplot about what happened there and rather everyone died or left would have been nice regardless), and Celes and Locke's romance subplot which pretty much died entirely after their scene in Albrook. Though I know there are some hints of feelings between them on the solitary island if you let Cid die, since she has his bandanna when she attempts to kill herself, I'm not sure that's canon since you can save him anyway and it's still just an extra scene proving she liked him rather than any actual resolution involving their feelings for each other.

I agree about Kefka/Celes. It was likely only hinted at in those select moments and even then, barely so. It's why I said it doesn't strike me as unbelievable at any rate. They did just enough in-game that it didn't seem like it came out of left-field, just that it was odd.

My main reasoning for a 8.5 rather than a 9 or a 9.5 is simply that the cast drove the plot up to a point, and then as with many people, I had a slight issue with the way the WoR was setup. No longer was it really driven by the characters but instead with generic dialogue shared between the whole cast (Having Edgar in the team, or having Relm, it didn't matter as instead of a specific line from the character it would be a generic text string that all characters shared -- it was obvious because such lines were simply in quotations rather then actually following a name.)

You have a good point about Rinoa/Ultimecia though. I never really expected that, either. I think I blocked that game from my mind when typing that cause of how much I detested the orphanage subplot. Heh.

As for better storylines, it's hard to tell. I loved the way FF6 was setup, and because they are remaking FF4 on the DS (with added plot and a stronger emphasis on the love triangle as well) I have some hopes that maybe they'll remake FF6 and at least attempt to rectify the last half of the game by adding a little bit more substance to the storyline. It wouldn't hurt to see some flashback scenes involving Celes and Kefka, to show a slight humanization of his character at least in regards to one of the main characters.

Games with better plot progressions though... maybe Tales of the Abyss, as much of a problem as I had with some of that game it at the very least had a pretty solid storyline start to finish, which involved the entire cast and never banished one to being worthless as the game's plot progressed. I'm sure that's why many games focus on smaller casts at any rate is it's easier to keep a character written stronger in the storyline so that you never feel someone is "dead weight". Final Fantasy 6 had a lot of great characters but it had it's share of dead weight without a doubt. Especially as the game went on and their plot threads were resolved, they lost their meaning and it became hard to keep them written in the storyline because of it.

...And now I'm rambling incessantly trying to explain what I mean and probably just making it come out more confusing in the first place.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Oh yeah, I think a better example than Tales of the Abyss would probably be Persona 2 for the PSOne. It kept all the characters involved with the plot and had a good core storyline going for it at the same time. I'd rate that game a very solid 9.5 or even a 10 if I were being generous and also assuming 10 just meant "fantastic" rather than perfect. (since no game can be perfect)

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'll post more about the other stuff later, but I gotta go real soon so I'll just touch on that last bit about the ending of the game.

I think one of the things I did appreciate about the WoR (despite my gripes with other aspects to it) was simply that it dealt maybe a little more realistically than most of the other "omg we saved the world!1!1!" RPG plots, in that they had to simply save what they could -- it wasn't a cut and dry "everything works out perfectly in the end as long as we try our hardest!" ending and I appreciated that. Sometimes you just have to deal with the hand you are dealt and I think the characters just did just that, and quite beautifully I might add.

It also made the villain look a good deal more menacing that he was actually able to do something, rather than be stopped at every turn. He went a good deal further than most villains ever did (and still to this day ever have done) which was very cool IMO.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?