Epic Game Design: How the Incomparable Final Fantasy is Built
I’ve recently been playing through a classic RPG, Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III when it came out in the U.S. for the Super Nintendo). Some readers may remember this game fondly from their childhood, while others may have never played it but would recognize some Base Mechanics as ancestors of their current day favorite games.
Many things could be said about FFVI; it was iconic for the SNES generation and revolutionary in terms of its use of cutscenes and beautiful 2D graphics. In many ways, the game, and many other Square RPG’s of the time, is the inspiration of many indie titles today like Independent Games Festival finalist Owlboy, which models its graphical style after games that were released around 1994-1996. That period of time was the height of big-budget 2D games; before then the resources weren’t available to make large, massive, epic titles, and afterwards those resources were spent on 3D titles on the Nintendo 64 and original Playstation. Truly this was an unusual window in time that resulted in some stunning games.
Final Fantasy VI is a great game to dissect and analyze, especially in terms of a useful game design concept that we haven’t discussed before on The Game Prodigy: Gameplay Clusters.