The simplicity of Final Fantasy IV and its cast made for a timeless game
Keep It Simple, Cecil
This week, we had an On The Level entry from Zack Handlen about the treacherous Sealed Cave of Final Fantasy IV. Down in the comments, readers praised the classic game and aired personal memories. For Kolya, FF4 and its characters represent a timeless, comforting ur-fantasy:
Final Fantasy IV is the game that made me fall in love with the fantasy genre when I was a wee child, and it’s undoubtedly the reason I’m gushing about video games on the internet at this very moment.
The classic hero’s journey you undertake might not have broken any new ground, but the way each party member perfectly inhabits their given archetype makes FF4 the perfect, nostalgic comfort fantasy. Kain’s betrayal still angers up my blood every time I replay it. You can’t say “white mage” or “paladin” to me without my mind conjuring Rosa and Cecil.
Shinigami Apple Merchant had more to say about how Square made use of those typical fantasy characters:
I grew up with the Gold Box Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and Cecil is the quintessential Paladin archetype for me. “The desire to do good and the wish to cast aside your darker impulses and face yourself” sells it. He earned his title, and that’s what makes it stick with me to this day. Rosa, the white mage, shows her healing spirit through her support of Cecil, her endurance when captured by Golbez, and her compassion. She must endure the darkness, and it’s not just something you can cast Cure I at.
Square took these archetypes and did their best to breathe life into them while still holding on to those conventions of the past. The game is still a world of “Welcome to our town!” NPCs, but it’s slowly becoming so much more than that. In a lot of ways, FF4, Dragon Quest IV, and Earthbound are the template for what would become the modern RPG Maker game. The triggers, the sound editing, the cutscenes—it’s all from a very similar foundation. So hats off to the original pioneers here, who themselves took inspiration from Wizardry, Ultima and other ‘80s classics.
Koyla posits that an important part of that characterization comes from locking the character’s growth and skills into a predetermined path, unlike most modern games that give you the freedom to pick and choose their abilities as you go. DL thinks this is a significant change:
The way we are allowed to carefully shape, direct, and craft each character’s progress, skills, and jobs takes away from what would make that character “alive” and independent. They become dolls that we dress up and direct until they pull the string to spew dialogue that is supposed to give them personality, despite us poring over every other detail as if they were our own avatar.
I believe one of the things that makes online co-op so compelling for me is not the “social” aspect of experience, but the fact that our partners are beyond our direct control—that there’s intelligence behind them and they can assist us without intervention. Certainly there should be games that allow us to be control freaks—XCOM is much about our ability to craft a combat squad, for example—but in other cases, I want to feel like I’m a part of a bigger world, and that my presence in it is influential, yet unnecessary on a global scale. I want to make a difference, but I want the game to make a difference for me, too.