When RPGs Came of Age

by Martin Haller

Console roleplaying games went through a number of important changes during their infancy -- a period that is probably best understood to begin with the release of Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) in 1986 and end with the release of Final Fantasy 4 (Final Fantasy II) in 1991. Three things were developed during this period -- one was the increasing emphasis on graphics in RPGs, a trend that would not catch on in the PC market for some time. The second would be an increasingly heavy focus on storyline, and the third, intimately connected to this, would be an increasingly "directed" game experience.

Squaresoft was probably much more active in these developments than Enix, but if one compares, say, Dragon Quest 4 to Dragon Quest 3, he will see that there has been some notice taken of graphics (the tilesets are substantially improved, though still far below Square's standard), the plot is much more in the fore, and the experience is heavily directed during the first chapters. Similar developments in the hallmark Sega series, Phantasy Star, can be easily traced.

All of this is to say that RPGs were hitting puberty, if you will, during the early 1990s. As with most pubescent things, these games experienced uneven growth, awkwardness, and a certain lack of social graces. Game designers were experiencing a great deal more freedom, but much of this was used "inappropriately." The railroading of Phantasy Star III, the ludicrous "death and resurrection" cycles of Final Fantasy 4, the glut of mediocre games (7th Saga, Traysia, etc.), and so on, are symptoms of this phase.

Usually, there is a moment near the end of puberty where the child is gone, the teenager is dormant, and the adult shows signs of appearing. This may manifest itself internally in a moment of self-confidence, or externally in the beautiful teenagers so often plastered on summer movie posters. The child becomes a young adult.

For the RPG, the first of these flashes of adulthood came in 1994 with the release of Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy III). While I am well aware of the fanaticism of certain Final Fantasy 5 boosters, I will, for now, ignore this potential challenge, and focus on how I think Final Fantasy 6 broke new ground.

Important to understand here: Final Fantasy 6 is not really a perfect RPG, nor even, probably, the best console RPG we've had, though I might argue for it. FF6 suffered from all the growing pains of a young adult: its overly large cast of largely underdeveloped characters, its pathetically low difficulty level, its flawed magic system, its software glitches, its occasionally flawed translation. But it also had that sparkle, that beauty, and that grace that showed the promise of what the console RPG could become.

I would cite three very specific elements here: first, the maturity of themes, second, the arrival of "set pieces", third, less significantly, the birth of the mini-game.

Perhaps I should start with the mini-game, because it is such a small point. FF6, unfortunately, showed the first signs of what I consider the "great mistake" of console RPG design: introduce lackluster mini-games to distract from the overall lack of gameplay variety. In FF6, this varied from opera memorization to mine-cart racing, with a few silly elements thrown in between. Mini-games would, eventually, choke RPGs, particularly Square's RPGs.

The other two elements, however, were where FF6 shined. FF6 dealt with, in no particular order: yearning, romantic (as opposed to platonic) love, death, murder, parenting, shame, self-doubt, fraternal competition, and many other "mature" themes. Consider the difference between the Locke/Celes love affair and the Cecil/Rosa love affair. We are simply asked, as gamers, to accept that Cecil and Rosa love each other. This is demonstrated not by showing us their love, but rather by showing us what they will do because of their love. With Celes and Locke, we watch their relationship grow from distrust to shy tenderness to trust to, finally, love. I term this romantic love, because we see the character care for each other in terms of romance specifically, as opposed to "relationships of plot convenience" that are present in the earlier RPGs.

FF6 was the first Final Fantasy to deal with death seriously -- though Phantasy Star had dealt with it in both of its earlier incarnations. In FF4, every character who dies finds a way to come back to life, save Anna, who is a non-character and dies in a "cartoonish" fashion (that is to say, in a fashion that is totally foreign and almost ridiculous), and Tellah, who is an old man and who all the same appears as a ghost. Likewise, FF5 shows death -- of Galuf -- but he comes back to speak to the party and appears again as a ghost.

FF6 pulls few punches. Of particular power for me was the scene of the Doma genocide. Cyan confronts a dead wife, a dead child, and, eventually, a whole castle full of dead compatriots. This psychological harm doesn't immediately leave him (compared to FF4 and FF5, neither of which confronts the player with lasting emotional effects due to a death) and is extremely "real" by comparison to earlier RPG deaths -- the victim does not simply flash and disappear. Also, note that deaths in FF6 take on much more "serious" implications -- we are not dealing with "mass disappearances" (as in FF5) or giant marauding robots. Doma is destroyed with poison. General Leo is stabbed in the back (or so we must presume.) Cid dies of a wasting illness. These are not cartoon deaths, they are, to a very real extent, deaths that we might see in our everyday lives.

Obviously, later RPGs would follow the lesson of replacing "flashing random deaths" with "visceral murders." FF7 does so frequently, Phantasy Star IV's death of Alys remains one of the most powerful videogame death scenes (more powerful than the death of Aeris, in my opinion.) FF6's mature depiction of love would also grow into a major RPG theme.

The set piece was another glorious element of FF6. Its most famous set piece, the opera, remains one of the most memorable scenes in all the RPGs I've played; it is certainly the most immediately recognizable by name. Other set pieces would include the Phantom Train, the ruining of the world, and the introduction. (There are, of course, many more.)

Set pieces are probably now best represented with FMV. I would define them as moments in which music, writing, and graphics are all set to function in tandem, perfectly, to capture a mood, evoke a reaction, and awe the player. Though earlier RPGs may have hinted at this ability (FF4 with the arrival of the Giant of Bab-Il, FF5 with the bridge battle, Phantasy Star II with the death of Nei), FF6 really demonstrated it for the first time.

I am obviously biased in favor of FF6. It happened to be released at the perfect age for me (I was 15), at which I could appreciate the beauty in the game, and could also endure its tediously poor gameplay and, by literary standards, lackluster writing. It remains my favorite console RPG and probably my second favorite game of all-time. But I don't think it's just bias that leads me to credit FF6 with so much. FF6 came at a rare moment when the hardware technology it employed was old and well broken-in, when graphical capabilities were impressive, but not rapidly changing, when RPGs were still enough of a fringe market to avoid pandering to the masses, but were sufficiently mainstream to require solid production values. It came at the moment when RPGs were ready to come into adulthood, and it brought them there with a flourish.