Ep 112: Final Fantasy 6 (Part 7) - More Connections to an Ensemble Cast

On the second half of our Final Fantasy 6 character discussion, we explore the stories and connections of Edgar, Sabin, Shadow, Gau and more. Seven episodes, one more to go in our exhaustive dissection of this legendary classic. Enjoy!

STARRING (all handles from Twitter)
 
Greg Sewart of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 (@sewart)
James and JJ of RetroFits on YouTube (@FitsRetro)
J.R. Sommerfeldt (@sommerfeldt_r)
Julian Titus (@julian_titus) of The Stage Select Podcast (@StageSelectPod)
Mekel Kasanova (@MekelKasanova)
@Mustin
Ryan Lindsay of KISS 105.3 in Ottawa (@THERyanLindsay)
The Lets Play Princess (@TheLPPrincess) 
Tim Knowles of The Leetist 
Yurik (@YurikArkady on TikTok) 
Xerxex

SONG COVERS

Relm's Theme (Final Fantasy VI) | Classical Guitar Cover by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRremDsqmHg

Terra's Theme Classical Guitar Cover | FFVI | Ottawa Guitar Trio by Ottawa Guitar Trio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTQuEzxE8GM

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Transcript

0:16

Last week we shared stories and memories of why the cast of Final Fantasy 6 is world class and we focused on Tara, Locke, Celice, and Cyan. This week we tackled the balance of the main cast asking that same important question, who did we identify with back in the day and now as adults? Time to saddle up our chocobos, venture out into the overworld, and hope that Shadow sticks around for longer than three battles. More on that trauma later, as we embark upon episode 112, Final Fantasy VI, part seven, even more connections to an ensemble cast. This week we begin this episode with some general thoughts on the game's cast as a whole. Starting us off is music producer Mustin followed by Tim Knowles, formerly of the Lidist, and then the Let's Play Princess joins us, and finally, cosplayer Yurik. Changing gears a little bit, talking about characters, which characters did you really connect with in Final Fantasy 6? Well as a kid, I mean love Shadow of course, still do. Yeah, I'm ninja, know, I mean he's throwing shrikens and he's got this dog named Interceptor which is freaking cool and the way that Amano drew those characters is really great The all the cool stuff, you know, it's lit his mama's throat for a nickel I mean just seemed like the baddest dude in town and such a great theme like that gave him like this western theme and It was just the coolest. Like, so I always, to this day, he's always my best character. And then, I like, who do I like? I think Locke is annoying, you know, kind of a simp and problematic and same thing with Setzer, he's gonna steal some girls and problematic and I like how Sabin is kind of a meathead and he has some good lines. The relationship between the Figaro boys is cool. When you activate the right stuff or you get them to do their stuff, their side story things, it's really nice. And I think Mog is cute. He's not very useful. And I really love the idea of Umaro. I love the idea of the Yeti, but the fact that you can't control him is just too chaotic for me. I like never use their, yes. So I can't really use him as like his big yeti -ness. And then GoGo, I don't know what their whole thing is, at least they're a helpful character. The fact, I didn't know this. I didn't know this for years even though I had the dadgum book over here. I didn't realize you can go into gogo and then change their Their stuff where you can add in the other characters Functions and I just kind of like when I did that the first time when I realized that I just slowly pan to a camera that wasn't there and just stared at it and And I was like, okay GoGo has magic, has tools, has throw. And I'm like, now they are the butt kicker, man. Like, this is it. We're in it. Take them to win it. everybody has something. Like, I don't hate anybody because everybody has. There's a part of me in all of those characters. There's a part of those characters in me, right? I I love Realm. It's like sassiness. Stregos like Kind of wildness, know white knightness, but in a good way and trying to best his own demons, you know with the What's -his -name bad guy and his butts best buddy So hide on or whatever. But anyway, yeah, there's great characters. And of course Tara is just your like I Don't know. I'm having I'm supposed to be arranging Tara's theme right now. I'm like on version nine or something. Because like, I think I nailed it the last time I did it, but I need to do it again. I just, because she doesn't, you know what? like at the end, the ending has the greatest ending with that table and it has little tchotchkes of everybody that represents them. And it's so, good. But for Terra, it's just like a wine glass and a pearl necklace on it. And I'm like, what? When did that happen? You know what I mean? She's just basically walking around going, I want to know what love is. Like, that's really all there is to it. So I'm not sure. I mean, I really enjoy everybody. I said, the storyline didn't really hit me as a kid as much as the rest of the game did. The pretty pictures and the fighting and the messing around with relics and seeing how you could break things. I loved, I absolutely, I still do, I love the fact that each character had their own individual special ability, even if they weren't all that good necessarily across the board. Even if they weren't as... If some were greater than others, think Mog's dances are up there with one of the worst things you could possibly add to a character in a game. I never understood, here's another thing. This goes back to the offensive spells versus buffs and debuffs. I never understood what Runic was for his cellist. I didn't get it. Why would you ever do that? And that's why I never really used her. Going back and playing it again, I'm like, this is the best spell ability ever. This is so great. But to have Sabin and his really neat Street Fighter moves, to have Edgar with this retinue of tools at his disposal. Shadow with his skeins and throwing things. I think it was my second time playing through when I realized, I don't have to sell everything. I can just throw it at people. Yeah, it's really empowering when you realize that. like, this is actually really very effective to just toss into someone's face. This is fantastic. And there were, you know, I was, I was impatient, of course. So, you know, Cyan's ability kind of went out the door on that one. And Umaro, I even understood, was a novelty at that age. And Setzer's luck thing was, you know, that was pretty garbage too. Not great. Not great. But to have all those options and then they give you a character that you can fully equip with all of those options, the super greatest, best character ever, Go -Go. Go -Go. Gotta love him. Gotta love him. I don't know how you figure out how to get Go -Go without Nintendo Power by your side. I don't know how you figured that out. You had the one kid in the class who had Nintendo Power and told everybody else because... The idea of like, hey, let's purposely let this monster on this one little island, little island, suck you up and then go into his belly. And Gogo just lives in a monster's belly. That's realized. That's what Gogo does. Gogo lives in a a monster's stomach. That's that's where he came in a monster's stomach. That's right. Cave in a monster's stomach. That's where he's chosen to get his mail sent to. I don't understand this. I just realized how bizarre and strange the whole thing is. can absolutely remember too the first time that I went into, you know, that belly, the zone eater's belly. And this is how young I was. I couldn't figure out for the life of me the collapsing ceiling part. My brother had to help me get through that part because I just kept on getting crushed. by the ceiling in Henderstein, I was frustrated and almost in tears because I just couldn't figure this part out. yeah, put on sprint shoes. That helps. That helps a lot. Yeah, totally. mean, and there is a lot of reading too. I never understood the difference between sprint shoes and running shoes. So I never used running shoes. I didn't know what that meant. That's a really good point. Actually, that's a very good point. would you? Go -go is a wild card. going like Eggers tools, getting the chainsaw, you know, and, you know, learning the trick to that one. I mean, that was absolutely, you know, they give you all the clues technically in Zozo to figure out how to get that, but I was not intuitive enough to understand that at all. know, was someone had to tell me it was 61050 and then I never forgot, you know. To this day, evidently, you still remember is 61050. That's so funny. I love that. That's a memory. Remembering that one for sure was a good one. We'll talk about that at some point. Right. But yeah, that's just really weird. Well, so that kind of goes into a character conversation then. Which characters did you identify with in Final Fantasy 6, either at that time or even now when you play it? There was definitely Selas. There was definitely Realm in the sense of that. Even to this day, I have like a sense of childlike innocence. I still watch cartoons for the love of God and... That whole using painting as a way to get rid of the enemies was so cool. I love the brotherhood connection between Sabin and Edgar. I love, I used to use shadow all the time and finding that little side quest where, remind me, he's Realm's father, isn't he? He's relate to realm in somehow some way. might be realm's father. Yeah, I might be right. So finding that character connection was amazing. It's really wild. Tara trying to find herself and figure out who she is was definitely a big thing for me around that time as well, because I was starting to question my own gender identity. You have... Gow. Gow is just one of the worst characters to play as. But I also love that idea of he is a child so he'll just leave the fight. And sure, you're kind of telling him every once in to leave the fight. Yeah. But it's also, go out and explore. Yeah, and come back when you come back, which is neat, which is neat thematically, but it's not terribly fun mechanically. I'm not a Gao fan. I mean, me and Gao, not the best buds. But yeah, thematically, though, makes sense. And this is the era, too, of Final Fantasy, where they really are thinking about character themes and character identity. alongside the gameplay. Like Final Fantasy IV is a beautiful example of that, where all the gameplay ties into the characters. And Final Fantasy VI has some of that, maybe not as much as IV, but definitely has elements of it. And I think the series kind of goes away from that a bit as we move on, where it's more the stories and the mechanics are separate. But VI still maintains that balance, for sure. Gow's funny, Gow's an interesting... I was never a Gao fan. was like, I don't want to down the belt. This song is great. Go Go's fun though. Go Go's super fun. everything that you do. Yeah, just copy Bumrush and then do Bumrush again. It's great. Just do or yeah, copy whatever Sabin does. Fantastic. of the NKFGA that you connected to when you played it of its time. Or when you first played it. mean, the obvious right away is gonna be Terra because it's the first character you see. I think apart from that, also, it almost sounds like it's happening in order, but it changes pretty quick. But Terra and Locke, like right away, I liked them like right away because Terra was like, I wanted to know what was going on with her because you had no idea. And then Locke seemed like so heroic. I remember not liking Edgar at all because as a kid, I just didn't understand his vibe. And then everybody else started filling in the blanks, because even if I didn't like them, they all became a lot more likeable later. I think pretty much to this day, I don't think there's a... None of the playable characters are bad. You can argue, don't know, like Umuro, like the characters who have no lines. But I can think of really cool moments for all of them. And I think that's big part of what makes it hit hard for me. But as far as pulling me in initially, Like a hundred percent and like the walk through the snow is like the first thing I think of when I think of the game even more than Kefka like I Totally agree. I it's I I played it of its release and I had never seen anything like it I didn't know games could do that. Like I didn't know games could do this and this is incredible Totally totally jumping ahead. Yeah, jumping ahead. Like we got to the jumping to the opera I don't know games could sound like that like at the time like totally that you could actually sing along to the 16 bit notes is it's a miracle. It's actually a miracle that works and it's fantastic. Final Fantasy VI heavily features intense personal connections and few resonated as deeply with my guests than the relationship between Edgar and Sabin. Whether they were the older sibling tasked with keeping a lineage alive or a younger kid carving a future for themselves out from under the shadow of familial expectations, it's easy to see yourself in one of the brothers. To talk about the Edgar side of the equation is Julian from the Stage Select podcast, followed by J .R. Sommerfeldt of thepixels .com and finally content creator, Mackel Casanova. Continuing on that vein, what characters did you identify with again, either now or back when you played it for the first time? And that's my favorite, but what are the ones that you felt like you had this kind of connection with? That's a good question. Connection like in that first playthrough. It was probably Edgar because I have always had like a soft spot for like the rakish rogue, even though I didn't really know that that's what it was. But like, you know, I loved Han Solo. like as a kid, like a little kid when I first saw Star Wars. And so having that like witty, you know, charming debonair character, like I always loved him, like from the jump. Also Sabin, like they were definitely like my favorites, but also like the ones that I gravitated towards the most that first play through. really immersed me into the stories of characters that quite honestly I could kind of relate to and specifically the brothers Edgar and Sabin that they know kind of their love-hate relationship that they had with each other is very similar to the relationship that I have with my own brother and how you know We would fight, we would scuffle, but in the end, we would always come together when things got hard. that was kind of the connection that I had with Edgar. You know, he was kind of giving the keys to the kingdom and did the best that he could. And in a way, being the oldest, me being the oldest in my family, and I just have one brother. That was kind of the way that it was, know, I was given the keys. It wasn't based off of a coin flip, of course, but. Of course, yeah, right, right. But there was that connection though. Yeah, there was. There was. And kind of, know, heavy is the weight of the crown, you know? And that's kind of what I felt a lot during my days growing up because... I was the first, know, even my cousins were younger than me. And so all throughout growing up, everything was a new experience for my parents in raising me. Do you remember any characters that connected with you when you played it for the first time when you were younger? Like what characters do you think really like struck you then and now? I suspect they're probably different. So... Truthfully speaking, they're the same. same characters hit me. So the, Figaro brothers really hit me hard. And the reason I say that, so I was a big Saban or a seven or however you want to pronounce his name. I was a big fan of his when I was a kid because I could relate to him and how like you're in this family that has all these expectations of you. And it's like, you kind of want to do your own thing. You kind of want to carve your own path. I think you've got Edgar who kind of wants to do the same thing, but he knows he's, know, somebody's got to uphold the family tradition. Yeah. You know, and I could understand, especially as, you know, a Polynesian, as a Samoan where You know, from my village, I'm from a village of street chiefs in Mosul. And so traditionally when you turn 30, you get your sleeve and it's an indication of you being, you know, of the, you know, like a tribal air, I guess you could say, or the line of it was coming of age for men. I'm 35 and I just started this like a month ago. So it cool. You know, yeah, very painful. I can't yeah. Yeah, but it's it was one of those things where like, you know with a lot of someone culture and everything like that I for the longest I kind of struggled with like Being part of it because I am the youngest of like 11 that I know of so far and counting My dad my dad spread his low high every work. This is with that way Very loving and giving man, but But you know, I, I got to a point where, you know, being the youngest and the expectations of the family, Hey, you're going to grow up, you're going to do this, you're going to be this. And it's just railing against it, you know, call it teenage or youthful rebellion, whatever, or trying to figure yourself out. And I just really clicked with Savin. He just, his struggle, you know, going his own way. And then, you know, reuniting with his brother. And their strange relationship, because I am in a strange relationship with all my siblings. So like I, I, I really jelled with him. I jelled with him back then because as a, you know, kid in the nineties, technically, if you really want to get technically, I mean, my dad is a USS, I'm a USS by way of my dad. But, you know, being a immigrant for the most part, because I didn't speak English until I was like, six or seven and you know, I didn't really understand American culture and especially going to the south where my dad's from. He's from Memphis. It was, you know, really hard for me. I didn't fit in. I didn't really have a lot of friends, you know, at the school. A lot of people thought I was weird being, you know, like, what are you? So like I, I really relate to that character and his dynamic. And then as an adult going back and replay, I replayed it technically as a teenager. Yeah, as a teenager, I replayed it on a PlayStation one, anthology. I that was the that came out. So I played it on there. Yeah. So I played it on there and I played it again on the advanced series on game of events and I replayed it again on the pixel read master. And it's always been the same. I always relate to that. There are other characters that I do totally with. Like I relate with sell us. I definitely relate with Locke and with Terra, but Simon just... Yeah. Because Edgar, Edgar reminds me of my brother, Devin, the Playboy. Even though, even though I got the last, I got the, the, the, the non -diploma of Casanova, lot of people like, Playboy. It's actually interesting enough, that is a play on my grandfather's last name of Casanova, so. Okay, interesting. Okay, interesting. Gotcha. Very cool. Continuing the conversation to talk about Saban is Xerxes followed by Ryan Lindsay of Kiss 105 .3 in Ottawa and finally Tim Knowles returns to the show. So Saban is a character that you said you really connected with and because you felt like you could identify with Saban a little bit. What about Saban did you identify with back then? I mean, it's just like, like. Back then, I was more or less a kid. I wasn't really that complicated or whatnot. He was the martial artist. I did martial arts at the time. cool. OK. He was kind of like the no -nonsense, didn't want to deal with the drama kind of stuff. So I can relate to that as well. It's like growing up, you know, like growing up though, you know, like when I look back, you know, it's like, feel like personality wise, you know, like less like Sabin and more like Edgar. So think that was my next question was as you grew up and have played the game over and over, are you finding yourself more, more Edgar? More Edgar, you know, maybe not so much the ladies man aspect of it and everything, but just more along the lines of just like the, you know, like the The being able, know, the, you know, like just being an adult, taking responsibility, you know, like taking responsibility of things, you know, like willing to make sacrifices, that kind of stuff. Interesting. That's very cool. I always find it interesting when we replay these games as when we're older, the characters we're attracted to just change. And I think that's a good thing, and that shows growth. I think that's interesting that as a kid, was just cool, right? Did the Street Fighter moves, and yeah, Sabin's awesome. But as you get older, Edgar is someone that you find yourself connecting more and more to. Identified with Sabin and that's because it took my love of fighting games and put it into an RPG. Interesting. Yeah, it's alone made me lose my mind Suplexing a train is one of my favorite things in video game history ever Possibly top maybe just top three, but I'm pretty sure it's the top. It is so wonderful and I I think I think, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or anything, I might have an emulator save file somewhere in the bowels of some computer somewhere that is saved right at that moment. So I could just go back and load it and suplex to train when things are not doing well. Like I'm having a bad day. You know what? If I'm having a bad day, at least I can suplex to train on command. I really do think somewhere, again, on some emulator, on some laptop is a save file that's right before that moment with the Phantom Train. It saves state six on my system. See? It's such a poignant moment to me. is so nerdy. Like my wife's going to leave me now for how nerdy this is. My office, which is approximately about, I want to say 35 feet from where I'm sitting right now, okay?-huh. Yeah. In my office. There are pictures of my kids, pictures of my wife, some of the medals I've gotten for Extra Life Days over the years, a couple of things from like record labels, some weird nerdy art. And then there is a printed picture. Somebody took the moment Sabin was about to suplex the train and turned it into like a traditional Japanese scroll. I don't know if you've ever seen the image. I've not seen this. I love it. It's one of my favorite things I've ever seen. I have a massive printout of it in my office that just says underneath any task in handwritten letters. that's cool. I feel division every single time. I've only had an office, honestly, for about a year and a half of my career so far. But that is the most prominent thing in there. I just I love it. Do you remember, obviously it's got a huge cast of characters, what character do you think you connected with the most as a kid and has that changed over time? Yeah, you asked me that. I saw that was in the pre -questions that had me thinking about it. The little kid one was no question, it was Sabin. I always loved Sabin. I mean, that was a bigger little kid, you know what I mean? And he was the bruiser and he was like the tough guy and everything. He had to do these really cool, unique moves, know, fire dance and air blade and aura bolt. pummel suplex. You could suplex a train. I mean, come on. What? That's awesome. Unbeatable. And Mantra, the sound effect when he does Mantra was one of my favorite sound effects from that game. I recall that one, but I'm going to pop it in right here. Editor Bill, put this right here. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. It's funny too, because I'll watch these videos of the re -releases of the game and Final Fantasy VI and the new translations of them and everything and they'll have these abilities and spells and enemies and the names are all different because whatever the translation was for Final Fantasy III on Super Nintendo is what I remember. But I'll always have that place in my heart with Sabin. He's my boy. His story is... garbage. There's nothing like really profound about it or anything like that. He just didn't want to be a king so we just learned how to beat people up. people up. His conclusion is that he learns the best way to beat people up. Yeah, which is pretty awesome. Throw a Genji Glove and Offering on him and just let him hit things eight times and just win. don't forget to cast Quick on him so he can do that twice in a row. Just destroy. Yeah, saving was almost like an easy mode. You put that on and then go into that one forest where Tyrannosaurs and Brontosaurs spawn and you just have Sabin go first every single time and just knock out. And those are the highest XP for quick leveling. And then you had the highest AP build was the Hoover and the Cactrots in the desert. Right. I'll never forget these things. They're going to be my last words on my deathbed. I was just trying to say speaking of deathbed, but I don't have a good transition for that because that would have been brilliant. I wish I was as quick as y 'all are on the lead as I just say. It is once again time to say thank you to our wonderful patrons, starting with Terry Kinnair, Games with Coffee, BT Gobbles, Julian of the Stage Select Podcast, Seth Sergel of All In Media, Tim formally of the Lidist, the Let's Play Princess, Greg Seward of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, Philip Becker, and finally the one and only Fabulous Pete Harney. If you would like to join these amazing human beings in donating your hard earned funds to this podcast, then by all means go to patreon .com forward slash a gamer looks at 4040. Check out the tiers and sign up today. And if not, no worries. A rating review or even telling a friend about this series is always greatly appreciated. Thanks so much. And let's jump back into the episode. If you've listened to this show for any length of time, you know I like to keep things positive. Even when my guests are sharing intense stories, I enjoy a good positive spin because that's quite frankly hard to find out there on the internet. But for this Final Fantasy VI series, the demons of my lesser nature rose to the surface the topic of one particular character was brought up. To talk about my least favorite character in all of Final Fantasy VI, let's be honest, mainly listen to me complain about him, is Mikkel, followed by Greg Seward of the Player One podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, then Ryan Lindsay, and concluding with Mustin. I have one character I can't stand, and he's probably one of my least favorite characters in - in games. I think I know who is a gal. is it gal? is it gal? Gal is I'm sorry, if you're a gal fan out there, I respect you. And that's awesome. And I would love to hear why because I don't find him mechanically fun. I don't find him fun to be around. I don't find his story. He's got an interesting side story when you get later on when you kind of learn like bit of his background, he was abandoned and all that. I think that's cool. But boy, boy, do I hate running around the VELT trying to like jump into things and learn random stuff and then be berserked and not know what these things do. I cannot stand him going gow gow all the time. I just don't, what's your take on gow? And I'm so very funny that you moan, you... Called it out of the 16 characters that you can be in Final Fantasy 6. Gough to me is the most repugnant and I don't know. And this is a show based on positivity and good vibes, but boy boy, that's got to be aired because I got a problem. I I never like Gough. I think of all the Final Fantasy characters. There are two characters within the entire series, maybe three that I'm going to be generous to say three that I absolutely hate in Final Fantasy series. It is Gao at number one. Number two is going to be Queen from Final Fantasy nine and number three is going to be Yuffie. And I know there's a lot of Yuffie stands out there. But in OG seven, I did not like Yuffie at all. found her to be a useless character. I found Queen to be a very useless comic relief character. Yeah. Gau, I'm just like, you don't really add anything to the story. mean, you got... I mean, Shadow is a better character than Gau. yeah. Substantially. Yes. Realm is a better character than Gau. Yes. At least Realm is interesting. She can do the sketching and even though you get her super late and she's kind of useless when you get her because you already have like better characters. I'll still take Realm and Strago. I'm not a big Blue Magic person, but I'll take Strago over Gaoh. Just, I don't know. It just did not work for me. I always regret it. I will say the music on the Veldt, that jungle tribal theme, that's a jam. That is an absolute jam. I can listen to that for an hour. And you will, if you want to level Gao, because you wander around that godforsaken plane with nothing in it but rando enemies that you just leap into and hope you absorb. Yeah, not a fun one. I understand Gau. I don't know why anyone likes Gau. You know me, I try to say positive, but boy boy. I was just mechanically, and that idea of gotta catch them all, all running around the veldt. The veldt, that music is awesome. It was ahead of its time. It was, it was. The Pokemon craze hadn't hit yet. That's right, that's true, that's true. We were we were four years away from Pokemon hitting the right though like that character Speaking as someone who? When I played role -playing games back then and even now I played if I was if I was going to grind it was because I had to not because I wanted to Hmm, right where I think a gal definitely appealed more to the person who like you said got to catch them all It's like well, this is an element of the game. It's sort of an unofficial side quest I guess that I personally was not interested in. But maybe, I guess that goes back to my previous point where I'm glad that he wasn't a super important character because I didn't care to find all his abilities and everything and just didn't do anything for me. And the initial few will get you through just fine. And again, that's really the strength of the game in that you can say, well, I'm just not gonna develop this character much. Or maybe, hey, let's just use magic on him mainly because I just don't feel like running around developed. It's funny, on my last interview I did yesterday with someone about Final Fantasy VI, I went on a bit of a, not a tirade, and not a rant, but I shed some feelings about Gao and how much I loathe Gao. Just, no, I am not a fan of Gao. I am not a fan of the Velt. That song's a bop, there's no question. That song is a bop, but. I, that's interesting. You actually enjoyed that cycle of leaping. I think it's broken. Okay. That's the difference. Okay. You're saying impactful moments to me, that mechanic was so different than anything else in any other game that I was like, wow, you know, like as much as I hate this, and again, I'm only going to use two of the rages, I respect that they put it in because there's going to be completionists that are like, I'm going to spend seven days on this thing. favorite character and and I think his story is ends up being relatively interesting but I really dislike Gao. I am not a Gao fan and I think there may have to be a section of this podcast where I do just talk about my utter disdain for Gao. The music of the Velt is very good but it's I just I don't like Berserk characters that you don't know what you're doing. I just find it extremely annoying. Yeah. Like we talked about unpredictability is very scary and tomorrow and Gal have that aspect and they're always the two that are left behind when I go to the, the, the final tower. But yeah, I agree with you on the story, but I never do the, I never do the VELT stuff. Yeah, I like the music. But the story of it is so tragic. I would love to talk to Imanzu about it if it was intentional or what. But that cello is so haunting for his theme. And it's just the antithesis of what his perception is. I mean, what you perceive him to be. It's this sad, slow thing. And once you go through the story, you find out... What is so tragic about him, but on the surface, he's just this goofy goofball, Scrappy do kind of guy on this belt with the cool music. But yeah, the whole game mechanic there, I don't do that. All I do is I just start leveling him with, all the simple espers. And then by the end of the game, he's like just doing quick and Ultima. It's magic. I never had the patience for trolling around the veldt and randomly getting into battles. just did not. That's not how I... It's not appealing at all. And Gau. Even though Gau... I know people hate Gau, but I like Gau because he's just feral and he's funny. And when you teach him all the spells, he's just as good as anybody else. But I do not do all that veldt stuff. That's not for me. There are people who are the complete... type people and that really gets their rocks off and I'm glad that that stuff is in there for them but I'm also glad that it's not something that I have to do in order to really play the game. So I never learn a single thing except for when I have to go pick him up. The two times I have to pick him up. I think it took years before I found out about taking him to the crazy old man and then having that side story where they like get him dolled up and they buy him the suit with the jacket with the coat tails and that was just heartbreaking man because again with the abandonment and then my father and like I just, man I felt it and maybe that's part of the reason I have a feel for him and I've never really loved his theme. But recently I arranged it and I turned it into like this real like he's a badass like synthwave dark version of the theme. It's like it really like it's my emotion coming through and I really like it. From an annoying feral child to a serious badass, time to discuss the mysterious ninja himself, Shadow. Starring in this section is the less play princess, followed by Mikel, and finally Mustin returns to the show. Well, saving Shadow is just in the overworld. And shows how much of a character connection you've already made with this character that you're waiting. on the Forgotten Continent. It's about to crash and you know that, but you're not leaving without your pal. And at that point, because you don't have the opportunity to save after Atma Weapons, so even if you think about it from a gameplay perspective, because it does say, do you want to wait for shadow or do you want to go? The game is signaling to you, hey, if you leave without shadow, there's going to be a negative consequence. But the result of that negative consequence, if... You know, I mean, if the game were to actually end, you'd have to like beat Atma Weapon again. You'd have to do a lot of stuff over again. It's not a weighty decision, both from a gameplay perspective and from a story perspective. No, I always saved him. totally. You have to. You can't let him go. As much as Shadow and I have a contentious relationship, because for some reason in my playthroughs, he always leave incredibly early. He'd always just bounce like, I'm done. Dude, what? What do mean you're done? Give me my armor back at least or something. Nope, gone, out. It got to a point where when I was playing it, you know, as younger kid, as younger person, I would like save every three battles just because I knew he would leave at some point so I could keep him around for as long as possible. Were you rotating saves at that point or? No. Should the Super Nintendo version have this? multiple save slots. I believe it did, but I don't think I was rotating because I'm sure my brother had one and I had one. So we definitely weren't rotating. So I think I just kind of like every three battles I save. He sells here. Cool. Save two battles. Save. Cool. He's here. OK. I ran away. Back up a couple. I definitely did some of that for sure. It's even Shadow, who's a very ancillary character. When you start seeing his dreams and some of his backstory when you're in the ends, it's really cool. And to have this mysterious character, who, by the way, I don't know what I did to Shadow, he's always bouncing on me. Always leaving. Always. Every time I played that game, I'd save every five minutes. I didn't want to lose Shadow, because at one point he just pees out. I'm off. Later. Dude. And don't equip anything of value on him. No, nothing of value. Don't give him any good relics. Don't give him anything that you can't just buy at the next town. For some reason, me and Shadow, he always would piece out to me after like five battles, and I don't know why. And it was always random, supposedly random, but I guess not for my, my cart. I don't know. I totally agree. so who's of all the characters in Final Fantasy, which was the one you think you felt like you identified the most with? mean, right now you mentioned Cyan, but who of the time or even now again, who do you identify the most with in that huge cast? I don't know about identify, but I always my favorite is Shadow. yeah. And I mean. I love dogs. don't love I'm an animal lover. I'm anti pet and I I do love dogs. I love his that he has a dog is really cool in the game. It's very interesting. Having a having a pet, having a familiar and then having it like spill over into what is the realm story. I always found that fascinating only to grow up and considering my home life, never want to have kids. But I accidentally fell in love with this redhead with a two year old and ended up adopting him. And now he's my son who lives with me. And I think it's interesting the dynamic of what makes a family, what seeing like how these characters make it work with like Terra and adopting the people in the what is Mobbliz And finally, finishing up this episode is a smattering of comments about random characters we love, respect, and remember. Starting us off by talking about everyone's favorite big character, General Leo, is Tim Knowles, followed by the Let's Play Princess. After them, Ryan Lindsay and James and JJ have retrofits talk up Mog, and then finally James finishes the episode by giving some love to arguably the most memorable octopus in all of video games. Did you ever attempt to resurrect General Leo? And what did your playground friends say? Because there were so many rumors of that time. You know, I remember hearing about that and I remember reading about it, I think, too. But I actually never went for it. I heard the rumors that you could play as General Leo or that you could You know, somehow glitched the game into you being General Leo. But I never really went for that one. I don't think I bit as much. his that sword ability, I can't even remember what it was called that he did where you just kind of swing it and like, what was it called? had its really cool name. Yes. hang on. We're going to we're going to we're going to have to use the Internet for this one. General Leo special move. Shock. Shock. That was it. Shock was so cool. go. It had a cool sprite and animation for it. It had a cool sound effect. I was like, see, that would be cool. I would like to have that. It's like, if Gaw had that as one of the rages he could learn, I'd settle for that. That'd be cool. he would stay in my party. That'd be amazing. If he was just through Shock every other turn. That'd be fantastic. I love that, I love that. General Leo double crossing you get to play as him for that one battle. you were younger. So good. When you were younger, did you try to get General Leo back? Did you follow all the breadcrumbs that your friends left for you? Like, because back when I was a kid, I played this pre internet of its time. The playground was full of people saying you can totally get General Leo back. I didn't play the same games as everybody else it turned out because I was playing bow tie, Final Fantasy, all that stuff and nobody else was playing that. They were all the Call of Duty kids. But looking up on Google, can you get Leo in your party? Yeah, I followed those breadcrumbs. See, see I and there was no looking up on my in back in my day. It was all for, if you get all your characters level 99 and you do this one thing and you show up at the grave site with realm and it or whatever. You can do this one specific thing and you gotta hit the button 15 times and do this controller magic. You can get General Leo in your party. Fly the ship this way, that way, almost like a Chico glitch it out. Yeah. like, okay, you know what? I'll try it. I'll try it because he's awesome. He is, that is such a cool moment when you feel like, boy, I'm gonna have this awesome person up to my side and he's very quickly ripped away from you. And that's a great moment too. I love when they can... I love how cinematic Final Fantasy 6 can be without the use of cinematics, you know? I love when Final Fantasy does things in the battle screen, like that General Leo scene. That's all done in a battle screen. Yeah, they're cool. Those are no matter how much I hate seeing him stumble. It still makes my kids pee themselves laughing when he does. Yeah, truth. Seven and 10 year old kids. They're face first is one of the things in our household while I'm screaming. Just dance. I need the rock slide for God's sake, please. you killing me. that's really funny. Yeah, dance is fun. Mog is a really great character because it's it's it's a it's not a comic relief character at all. He's got he's just a very interesting use of kind of like the animal character in a video game where you actually do feel for Mog and you want to protect Mog and you want to protect all the little moogles. It's it's. It's amazing how they were able to do that with a character who is basically nonverbal, who doesn't say much and is just adorable and cool and does those like really awesome dances. Slapped him on all of the promo imagery. Very good point. to me, merchandise. Later in life, we've seen it in so many other forms as we've gotten older. Perfect example, New Age Star Wars trilogy, the Porgs, the second they showed up, everybody wanted a Porg. I'm like, that's a Moogle. That's a moogle. That's a moogle. I do that every time we see some super cute thing pop up from a franchise that then becomes like everybody's got to have this. Everybody's got to have that. like, that's a moogle. That's a moogle. That's a moogle too. Does baby Yoda owe a debt of gratitude to the moogle? Baby Yoda is a moogle, bud. Grogu is a It should actually be Mogu. Let's be real. And yes, I understand that Yoda came long before Muggles did, but Grogu is a moogle and nobody will ever. be able to help you. Sorry. Put the little thing on top of his head, get him to say Koopa once, game over. I'll buy it right then. Done. Put it into perspective, as a kid, I fell in love with Moogles because of this game. my lord. Almost got a tattoo at one point in time. I was convinced I was going to do, this is ridiculous, but I was going to do a Dr. Pepper symbol on my right arm and a Moogle all the way down my left arm. It has never happened to me still because I love me. Okay. one of the greatest characters in any video game ever, and I will defend that to my dying days. Are there characters in it? I mean, it's tough to say. I identified with them, but you could see little pieces of yourself in every single one of them. And that was the difference from this versus two. Now, again, there are games that existed in between there that... In North America, most of us never got a chance to touch or see until much later in life. And we're like, meh, I get it. It's OK. Or yeah, that's brilliant. a job system. Like, all of these things were fantastic to see in there. But every single character, there was one little piece of them that you're like, damn, that's me. Damn, that's me too. that's me. How is that me? Up until like Go Go Tomorrow. actually also on Twitch as we do this as well. So oatmeal packet chimed in with some of his favorite moments. writes the best moment in Final Fantasy six is when he took the gold hairpin Aladdin the Moogle to fall to their death. There's a moment where I think it's like lone wolf. You can either say the old or save lone wolf. And if you say I won't wolf, you get the thing he's still, which is a useless gold hairpin. My man here. Let the moogle that's cold, cold blooded, cold blooded. But listen, I respect the hustle. I could never let the Moogle go ever. Even when I was first playing and I didn't know what the choice really meant overall, I was like, no, he's fluffy. He's adorable. He is Moogle friend. You must protect him. A source of constant cuteness and adorability. it's hard to do, but Omnipack did it. That's it. I mean, his whole deal is dancing to cause massive damage. Well, OpalPacket does chime in and say that he would have felt bad about it. But since gold hairpin allows you to, think, it's half magic points, I think that's what the item does. That's that. Getting that kind of early is a good and early. It is a pretty good get. totally, ever again, I respect it. Play over, you know, sometimes the mood's gotta die for the sake of the better, for the better good. That would be, yeah, clip that. Clip me saying, sometimes a moogle has to die for the greater good. And now here we are. Take that out of context. Take that completely out of context, y 'all. Fantastic. Thank you. if you look past Baron's lion's mane of a hairstyle. Love it, yes, and the absolute goofiness in his ultros, which is, I love, is he, just, should I do it? Do it, do it. So, an episode that we did when we found Realm, and we named her, you know, I was, I just typed it in like, I was just like, JJ, guess what? And typed it in, was like, her name name is Lisa. That's not gonna pay off immediately, but it's gonna pay off. And JJ, like, you knew what I was talking about and you kept it under your hat for like 10 episodes while we were waiting for her to get to the point where like she faces off with Ultros and she beats him by painting a picture of him and showing him how ugly he is. And at the same time, I was so glad you kept it under your hat. We just went, you're tearing me apart, Lisa! Well done. That is a setup. Listen, listen, that's a setup, my friends. Well done, well done. And good for you for not not exposing that one. is... I so wanted to. No, I could tell. I could tell in the moment you were like, Yeah. Kind of the various. Yeah. I love that. Very, very good. Mm That's awesome. Ultra says a great character. I love when Final Fantasy gets silly and goofy and boy, boy, he embodies. He's not. He's just a threat enough. to make it feel good when you beat him. But boy, it's also lot of fun to watch him fail. I really love Ultros as that goofy side character. Well yeah, the first time. Six is one of the main ones where he has actual dialogue. Most of the others he's just a random monster. Yeah, it's sort of like a throwback thing. Like, remember Ultros from Six? Here he is and he's gone. But the first time you face him in Six, he's like. He's a legitimate boss. The thing that I love about him is that he never really grows in power. Because as the silly side character, one of the things is he doesn't really have character growth, so why should he have stat growth? Exactly, that's a very good point. That's a very good point. seven episodes down one more to go as we complete our journey through Final Fantasy 6. It only took two months. I warned you this is an important game for me and really is for lot of people. I highly doubt any other game in this series will have this kind of length, but I don't know. It all depends on my guests and their recollections and people have quite a few and I am so thankful to be sharing those with you. on a gamer looks at 40. Next week we finish things up with a huge goulash, a random smattering of thoughts and opinions. It's the odds and ends episode. I did it a lot during the Legend of Zelda series. We will continue doing that here. Sometimes things don't fit an episode and I want to get them out there because they're fun. And these episodes are just really just random stuff. People said. and somehow someway I make a thing out of it.