Please don't take this the wrong way, but last update was 7,200 words. It's nearly as long as Endgame A, Endgame B, and Epilogue from the FFV LP put together! It took me about six hours of writing for about an hour of gameplay. Some stuff can't make it into everything and random encounters are often the first thing to get dropped from or never-gotten-around-to in that case, especially because once I realized what bullshit the Hill Gigas pulled on death I just started systematically running away from every fight, which is something I've been doing through most of the game actually.
But yeah, Zozo was a significant step up in difficulty. Helps that it has a killer background music though.
Anyway, been delayed in writing my next update, but I think people will really enjoy it. I know I did.
Ah, sorry, I took your lack of mention of the encounters as due to a fortuitus lack of suffering. Which would have been a nice reprieve given your Veldt, Serpent Trench, and Snowfield experience.
Oh, as someone who knows what's coming I am definitely looking forward to it!
Speaking of things Omicron probably won't get around to talking about. If memory serves, pixel remasters I-V used more or less the same set of spell effects across the whole set of games. VI on the other hand, has completely bespoke animations based on the SNES originals. VI ended up getting delayed past its originally announced release date, but with various things like that apparent across the game (and what's likely to be in the next update) it seems like it was just them giving it that little bit extra love and attention.
I tried playing through FF6 once, but after getting through Zozo I forgot to save and then wiped, my last save putting me before Zozo. That killed the playthrough on the grounds of "well I'm not doing that twice."
So, about Zozo and it's enemy encounters. I'm...surprised @Omicron didn't talk more about them, because Zozo has some utterly burtal enemies.
First, you have the Hill Gigas. Tons of HP, hits like a truck, and to top it all off has a 1/3rd of a chance of causing a party wipe when you kill it. Not even joking about that last part. On death it can cast Earthquake, which hits the entire party for around 300 damage. The only real safe way of beating this guy is using Edgar's Noiseblaster so he'll keep casting Earthquake on himself until he runs out of MP, at which point he's safe to kill. Gau can also survive no problem by using the Lesser Lopros Rage, which casts float on Gau. You can steal a decent accessory (they physical equivalent to Earrings) from the Hill Gigas so it's not completely awful to encounter them. But mostly I just run from them. Not worth it IMO.
Next we have the Harvester. They have a rare steal which is worth getting - Dragoon Boots, which turn the attack command into Jump. The problem is, if you steal from them they will attempt to steal from you which is incredibly annoying. Sure you can get your stuff back (it's just gil, btw) if you kill them, but it's anxiety inducing. Anyway, the major danger they pose is that if you don't kill them fast enough they'll throw knives at you, which IIR are OHKOs on just about anyone at this point.
Finally, the Veil Dancer. Not dangerous if with other enemies. Solo...they cast 2nd tier black magic at you. If it's single target their victim is dead. If it's a group cast they'll just do terrible, terrible damage. Which will probably wipe you if you don't always keep your teams HP topped off.
Man, Zozo is rough.
Actually, about the Veil Dancer - it's really weird. They're human opponents, allegedly the exiled poor of Jidoor, but they can cast magic. Magic is supposed to be super rare, why can she cast magic? Are the Veil Dancers (and maybe the Hill Gigas) actually the uncontrollable rejects and test subjects of the Empires magitek program? Lore-wise this is a huge gaping question which I really wish had been explored.
IIRC the Mu rage for Gau actually circumvents the last "fuck you" Earthquake attack; at least, that's what I used going through. Obviously though that requires both a specific party member and a specific rage, so not an easy solution.
Really the Veil Dancers were the real pain for me, they had a heavy tendency to be fast enough to make a move before I could kill them and wipe at least one party member. Went through a few phoenix downs making my way through Zozo.
IIRC the Mu rage for Gau actually circumvents the last "fuck you" Earthquake attack; at least, that's what I used going through. Obviously though that requires both a specific party member and a specific rage, so not an easy solution.
1) Adores Gau
2) Use him on basically every playthrough
3) Refuse to go down the rabbit hole that is the Rage system
I've got a couple early Rages that I make sure to grab (Stray Cat, Lesser Lopros) every time, but unless I make a specific decision to heavliy invest in Gau that's usually it. But that's the beauty of Gau - he's actually incredibly useful even with minimal investment. An Earring and Hermes Sandal is all you need to have the Lesser Lopros Rage quickly annihilate all the trash and act as a 1-2 punch for almost everything else. And this will be true for...a pretty significant chunk of time.
1) Adores Gau
2) Use him on basically every playthrough
3) Refuse to go down the rabbit hole that is the Rage system
I've got a couple early Rages that I make sure to grab (Stray Cat, Lesser Lopros) every time, but unless I make a specific decision to heavliy invest in Gau that's usually it. But that's the beauty of Gau - he's actually incredibly useful even with minimal investment. An Earring and Hermes Sandal is all you need to have the Lesser Lopros Rage quickly annihilate all the trash and act as a 1-2 punch for almost everything else. And this will be true for...a pretty significant chunk of time.
Yeah to be entirely fair? I'm following a guide as I go to make sure I don't miss anything that's only available once or for a limited time, like items or enemy encounters. And part of that guide has a section on "which Gau rages are good and why" that pops up every few chunks of the guide, so it's pretty much spoon-feeding me things like Mu that I would never have tried on my own.
Actually, about the Veil Dancer - it's really weird. They're human opponents, allegedly the exiled poor of Jidoor, but they can cast magic. Magic is supposed to be super rare, why can she cast magic? Are the Veil Dancers (and maybe the Hill Gigas) actually the uncontrollable rejects and test subjects of the Empires magitek program? Lore-wise this is a huge gaping question which I really wish had been explored.
I've got a couple early Rages that I make sure to grab (Stray Cat, Lesser Lopros) every time, but unless I make a specific decision to heavliy invest in Gau that's usually it. But that's the beauty of Gau - he's actually incredibly useful even with minimal investment. An Earring and Hermes Sandal is all you need to have the Lesser Lopros Rage quickly annihilate all the trash and act as a 1-2 punch for almost everything else. And this will be true for...a pretty significant chunk of time.
At the risk of continuing several more pages of Gau Mechanics Discussion, I feel like the statement "Gau is useful with minimal investment" is both true and not quite.
Gau is definitely useful with just a few good Rages, no argument there. It's just that without prior experience, I'd need to look up a guide to know which good Rages, so that's an investment of time and effort to figure it out, and also extract the necessary information from Gau guides that want to give you information on everything. And of course, there's trying to get the requisite enemies to spawn on the Veldt in the first place, which has its own lengthy set of guides about manipulating the RNG.
Contrast to, say, Edgar, who is "buy the Tools in Figaro" levels of investment, or Sabin "level up for new Blitzes, check the inputs" level.
I think in a more convenient world, Gau guides should have a few different tiers of how much information they give: there's the Completionist Gau, which has all the Rages and what they do and how to get them and lets the player pick which ones they want to go for. There's the Gau For Every Situation, which has a relatively shorter list of useful Rages, but still a long list and instructions on which to use based on what the enemy does. And then there's the Emergency Gau, which is "I don't want to think about Rages, just give me the ones that will carry me". Stray Cat and Lesser Lopros is completely sufficient for Emergency Gau, with the latter for trash and the former for bosses, but as mentioned we kind of have to know about them in the first place.
So, about Zozo and it's enemy encounters. I'm...surprised @Omicron didn't talk more about them, because Zozo has some utterly burtal enemies.
First, you have the Hill Gigas. Tons of HP, hits like a truck, and to top it all off has a 1/3rd of a chance of causing a party wipe when you kill it. Not even joking about that last part. On death it can cast Earthquake, which hits the entire party for around 300 damage. The only real safe way of beating this guy is using Edgar's Noiseblaster so he'll keep casting Earthquake on himself until he runs out of MP, at which point he's safe to kill. Gau can also survive no problem by using the Lesser Lopros Rage, which casts float on Gau. You can steal a decent accessory (the physical equivalent to Earrings) from the Hill Gigas so it's not completely awful to encounter them. But mostly I just run from them. Not worth it IMO.
Next we have the Harvester. They have a rare steal which is worth getting - Dragoon Boots, which turn the attack command into Jump. The problem is, if you steal from them they will attempt to steal from you which is incredibly annoying. Sure you can get your stuff back (it's just gil, btw) if you kill them, but it's anxiety inducing. Anyway, the major danger they pose is that if you don't kill them fast enough they'll throw knives at you, which IIR are OHKOs on just about anyone at this point.
Finally, the Veil Dancer. Not dangerous if with other enemies. Solo...they cast 2nd tier black magic at you. If it's single target their victim is dead. If it's a group cast they'll just do terrible, terrible damage. Which is probably a wipe if you don't always keep your teams HP topped off.
Man, Zozo is rough.
Actually, about the Veil Dancer - it's really weird. They're human opponents, allegedly the exiled poor of Jidoor, but they can cast magic. Magic is supposed to be super rare, why can she cast magic? Are the Veil Dancers (and maybe the Hill Gigas) actually the uncontrollable rejects and test subjects of the Empires magitek program? Lore-wise this is a huge gaping question which I really wish had been explored.
We met Ramuh, learned more about espers, and unlocked a new gameplay system. Terra is still unconscious/out-of-control, and our protagonists have decided to head to the Empire to infiltrate the Magitek Research Facility, free the other espers, and hopefully learn more about Terra's troubles.
Unfortunately, the Empire isn't exactly running an open border policy. Its mainland is the southern continent, and it's locked down every port, forbidding ships from leaving harbor. I guess running a war of conquest against the entire world makes you distrustful of foreign imports, huh?
Locke suggests that the wealthy aristocrats in Jidoor might know more, because as rich people, they are likely to collaborate with the enemy wherever it may profit them, as we have already established. Celes will also be part of the expedition, as she knows the empire 'inside and out.' She asks Locke why he wants to tag along, and he explains that it's because he wants to look for a 'legendary treasure' while he's there, in a tone which suggests that the others aren't aware of his whole dead girlfriend situation, so I guess that cutscene happened in a narrative pocket dimension?
Well, I pick Sabin and Edgar to be my other two party members, and we're heading back to Jidoor… after a short detour for the chainsaw puzzle.
Someone in the thread already explained the puzzle and how it works, so I won't bore you with a detail. The Chainsaw is a powerful tool for Edgar, being a pure single-enemy damage item that easily outdamages Sabin's Aura Cannon while actually allowing us to target the enemy properly, so it's a solid addition to our inventory.
…
So let's talk about Zozo.
Love this shithole.
On the one hand, like I said last time, it's not surprising that a marginalized population of outcasts pushed to the periphery in undesirable territory would resort to criminal behavior - or, more pointedly perhaps, survival behavior targeting outsiders and their oppressors in order to protect their own social group; warfare, in essence, rather than criminality, with its implicit allegation of wrongdoing.
At the same time it's kind of messed up that there is a town where all the poor people were exiled and it's Crime Town, the dungeon-that's-not-a-dungeon where nearly the entire population are hostile criminals who attack on sight and try to kill us, most of the rest are compulsive liars who are so consistently untruthful you can literally orient yourself by doing the opposite of what they tell you, and the last ones are their population of enslaved giants.
No, I'm serious.
The Gigas is the only non-human entity in Zozo. The random encounters within the city consist of Gobbledygook (a bandit sprite), Harvester (a thief with an inhuman head which is visibly a mask), and Veil Dancer (it's a masked dancer), plus the Hill Gigas, whose sprite is visibly in chains. I don't think those are accidents!
Zozo, despite being meant to be a dump full of exiled poors, has some of the most modern and ambitious architecture to date. That might just be coincidence (aesthetically this codes as a shitty modern city instead of rich rural fantasyland), but I don't think so. I think the Zozoites, when exiled to the margins, found what every exile to the margins in history finds - people were already living there. In this case, giants. So what did they do? They conquered them, enslaved them, and put them to work. Everyone in Zozo is some variant of 'thief,' but that obviously doesn't make sense, you can't build an exploitative economy if no one is producing anything to exploit. I think instead it would be best to model Zozo's thieves as a warrior caste, whose main activity is 'raiding' (stealing shit from the rich people in Jidoor's), sustained by a laboring caste made of enslaved Hill Gigas, who can each individually perform the labor of many men.
The broader point is, the Empire is likely to soon make this irrelevant, but I don't think there is much happiness in Jidoor's future. The townsfolk already frequently complain about Zozo's lot sneaking into the city to do crimes, but that's only the beginning; I think they're about to be on the other side of a very one-sided relationship. They thought exiling all the poors would make Jidoor a perfect haven of propriety where the rich can live only among themselves, but they're about to find out why everyone in history always hates The Mountain People.
Where was I?
Oh, right. Worldbuilding implication aside, Zozo's presentation is… questionable. Also, it's a massive pain to get through, with hard encounters that seem to be happening every five steps and a lot of ground to cover. Thankfully we're out, and heading back to Jidoor. Once there, we head for the rich guy's house, and…
…called it.
This guy is the impresario for the opera house south of Jidoor, and just like the rich guy before him, he first mistakes Celes for Maria, his highlight singer. Once he realizes his mistake, he apologizes, mutters that he's in real trouble, and leaves; Rich Guy, who is identified as 'Maestro', explains he received a letter whose contents spooked him, and he shows us the letter.
And, well.
Oh boy.
The letter reads:
"Dearest Maria,
I've decided to take you as my wife, so I'll be coming to kidnap you.
-The Wandering Gambler."
Locke asks who the fuck this Wandering What's-His-Face is, and Rich Guy asks him if he was born on a farm, everyone knows who the Wandering Gambler, whose real name is Setzer, is, and-
HE'S A PLAYABLE CHARACTER?!
I had some pointed comments to make early on about Edgar but he's been significantly better than his initial playboy persona had me assume and I am quite warming up to him, ONLY FOR THE GAME TO THROW ABDUCTION MCFORCEDMARRIAGE AT ME?
'Society's narrow views of morality' LIKE WIFE ABDUCTION?!
His title isn't even cool! 'Gambler' isn't an inherently cool thing, it's not like 'Wandering Swordsman' or 'Wandering Knight,' Wandering Gambler just sounds like you have a gambling addiction. Which he probably does, seeing as he operates an illicit flying casino!
Oh, yeah, this guy has an airship. In fact, as we are helpfully informed, he has the world's only airship. Celes muses that this could be their way into the Empire, and the group plans to schedule a meeting with Setzer. Unfortunately, seeing as he is an outlaw wandering the sky outside of society, he is impossible to reach, so they'll need another plan.
I just. I can't get over the fact that we're planning to make friends with Kidnap McBride. This fucking game.
So, since we don't have a means of contacting Setzer, the group has a fantastic idea - crash his party. That is to say, wait for him to make his dramatic appearance at the opera and jump him when he does. The impresario isn't so sure, seeing as this involves ruining his performance (I should think THE WIFE ABDUCTOR DROPPING IN MID-PERFORMANCE would just do that on its own), and he doesn't want his precious singer abducted, which is where Locke gets where we all knew this was going:
Celes looks just like Maria, so Locke's suggestion is to hide Maria somewhere safe and have Celes play her part, so that Setzer unwitting abducts a trained soldier and general who can lead the crew to the airship and get them in.
We're doing this, baby. We're doing an opera sequence.
Now, Celes doesn't initially take this idea very well…
The localization's script is great for its use of colorful language, especially when it comes to insults and swear words. Fun fact: opera and classical dancing were historically seen as dens of prostitution and general sexual licentiousness for much of the 19th century, so 'opera floozy' makes perfect sense as an insult for someone to throw around, even if it's kinda rude.
Celes immediately flips out, runs around in a panic, bangs her head against a wall hard enough it knocks her down, then finally escapes to the safety of a changing room… where she can then be heard doing voice exercises, being in fact more nervous about her upcoming performance than anything else. It's kind of sweet, honestly, although there is a shocking disregard for the fact that Celes's male teammates are putting forward a plan that relies on her being abducted by Sabine McRomulus, which should perhaps warrant further discussion!
Also, there is yet another wrinkle in this plan that nobody is aware of-
ULTROS, YOU PUNK. HOW MANY TIMES AM I GOING TO HAVE TO KICK YOUR ASS?
Ultros throws a letter to give ominous warning… And everyone fails to spot it, going on with no idea they're supposed to be scared of the dread squid coming for them.
Okay.
Sit down.
It's time for the best sequence in all of Final Fantasy so far.
It's pretty clear that the opera sequence must have been one of the most iconic and memorable part of the original games; I remember way back in one of the earlier games I made a comment about the soundtrack someone made a joking reply to the effect of "wow I'm guessing by the time we reach FFVI they'll have pulled an actual opera for it" and, you know? Not that far from the truth. The dev team clearly pulled out all the stops here, to some real effects (and a bit of uncaniness), and in some ways the game is about to break its own rules. I'll explain as we go.
The sprite of the conductor is going absolutely ham here, it's genuinely delightful to watch. If you're not familiar with the game already, you need to be listening to the music, and honestly watch the whole scene. The impresario takes the stage to deliver exposition - the play is about a war between East and West; Draco, a soldier from the West, is engaged to Maria, a princess, and gets trampled by cavalry before singing about his love.
As Draco sings, the camera starts playing angles.
The games have literally never done this before. I'm not sure this could have been in any way possible on SNES hardware, because this is an actual 3D model of the stage that the camera is moving around and placing sprites on - it's going to be clearer in a moment.
Also, actual singing. They have an actual singer do Draco's lines.
The main character have the high seats, and we control Locke, who is told by the others to go check on Celes to make sure she's not succumbing to stage fright. He does so and, upon seeing Celes in her Maria costume instantly turns beet-red.
Oh, my.
I guess we're going for a romantic arc between Locke and Celes, at least on Locke's end, while he is still looking for the soul of his dead girlfriend. Damn. Imagine being in a love triangle with a literal dead girl. And, like, Celes isn't unaware of it; she asks Locke why he stood up for her when he did (presumably meaning in Narshe when Cyan confronted her), and he says outright "I'm tired of standing by and doing nothing while I lose the girls I like." Which is coming on pretty strong but Celes's reply is nothing subtle either:
Damn, girl.
This is honestly a lot more direct and 'saying the thing out loud' than I would have expected at this stage of the game, and I'm not sure yet if it's intentionally lancing the boil on the characters' part or just rushed dialogue.
Locke's only reply is a dodge, "That ribbon looks nice on you," and we swap controls to Celes as she reads the script again ahead of her first big scene - which incidentally where the gameplay comes in, such as it is; we read the full script of her song ahead of time and we have to pick the correct line a few times, it's really not complicated and just there to make sure the cutscene isn't totally passive. Which I doubt anyone would care, because this is the big showstopper. Celes goes on stage, and…
They have, like, a whole 3D castle model for Celes's sprite to move through, so they can take camera shots from multiple angles and move the camera as Celes goes through her song. That's what I mean by 'breaking its own rules' - the Pixel Remasters don't limit themselves to the SNES's actual historical capabilities, but they tend to play into its aesthetic and its ostensible limitations, using sprite work and backgrounds rather than stepping out into the realm of 3D.
And the entire time, Celes is actually singing. There is a full voice over for Maria's song - but not just in English. In multiple languages! Japanese and French and Italian and Korean!
Now, the truth is: this isn't operatic singing, not really. Opera doesn't sound quite like that. It's closer to a standard, 'pop' way of singing, which is apparently intentional; Celes is a good singer but not a trained opera singer so she falls back on something she knows how to do rather than try and fail to emulate a very technical register she isn't experienced with. Here's Uematsu himself:
"The Draco opera song was supposed to be sung by an opera singer, but Celes would suddenly appear on the stage," Uematsu says, referring to how Celes and the FF6 cast end up accidentally caught up in the play performance.
"If [Celes] could actually sing real opera, that would be a lie," Uematsu explains, going on to laugh that technically, everything in FF6's story is a lie, what with it being fictional and all.
"So we had the fixation to intentionally choose someone whose vocals didn't seem like an opera singer, but more like a musical singer," Uematsu concludes. It's as simple as that.
…although I'll caveat this. I know @FunkyEntropy is preparing a massive effortpost about the opera scene as we speak to post soon after I update, which is why I want to throw him a curveball here: I actually prefer the French version of the vocals to the English ones here. They're lower pitch, somewhat closer to an operating performance? Someone with a better background can probably explain it better than I.
Anyway you slice it, though, this is an absolute banger. The orchestration has been absolutely fantastic this entire time and fantastically lively (with the game making dialogue auto-scroll so it can time it with the music, a fairly common trick in unvoiced RPGs' more dramatic sequences), but this really elevates it.
Maria dances with an apparition/memory of Draco, swears that their love will never age and she will wait forever for him OH I GET IT IT'S A METAPHOR FOR LOCKE AND HIS DEAD GIRLFRIEND. I AM VERY SMART.
Anyway, Maria's chancellor appears, saying Prince Ralse is waiting for her to dance and she must forget about all loves and accepts that their kingdom is now part of the East, and Maria joins a dance on stage.
We swap controls back to Locke watching the scene and musing that Celes was fantastic… But then! He finally runs into Ultros's letter!
Or, more likely, one of a dozen such letters Ultros has been throwing around in frantic hope that someone would eventually notice one.
Locke rushes to Sabin and Edgar, and the group gathers to go prevent the loathsome squid from ruining both the performance, and their chance at getting Setzer!
Meanwhile, on stage, the performance goes on, and Prince Ralse's ball is interrupted by an attack from Western survivors, including Draco himself!
Prince Ralse's singer gets all of two lines but I'm gonna be honest with you he is absolutely serving.
Draco and Ralse begin a duel to the death while Locke and co are trying to get to the rafters where Ultros is planning to…
To…
I'm sorry, I think I burst out laughing.
ULTROS YOU GOOFY FUCK
HE'S LITERALLY PLANNING TO DROP A TEX AVERY FUCKING WEIGHT ON THEIR HEADS
This is a timed mission btw! We actually do have exactly five minutes to get to Ultros because this is the time it takes this idiot to push his 4-ton cartoon-ass weight onto the stage below! BUT THEN HOW DID WE GET IT UP HERE?!
Funniest scene in the game, no notes.
Anyway, there's a switch to flip to open the path to the rafters above the stage, and then we have to fight a whole bunch of operats.
Every single one of these tiny looking mice on the rafters is actually a pack of giant man-eating rats whose numbers replenish if you don't kill them quickly enough. There are no 'random' encounters as such in this section, rather we have to decide between waiting for a rat to move out of the way and slipping by it, or running into its sprite and triggering an encounter that might cost us a precious minute, multiple times until we reach Ultros.
Eventually, though we do reach Ultros, who instantly panics and tries to escape, whereupon we all fall down onto the stage together and accidentally knock out half the cast. The Impresario is distraught - "With those two [meaning Draco and Ralse there's no one to win the girl! How can the story possibly continue!?
Draco is knocked out, Ralse is knocked out, the Impresario is more concerned about his performance going on than anything… And then Locke has the stupid idea of the century and decides to attempt some improv theatre:
Locke: "It is I, Locke, the world's premier adventurer, who shall take her as my wife!"
Impresario: "Oh, dear… What dreadful acting!"
And then Ultros decides to double down.
The Impresario's response to these shenanigans is to make the most of it and call for dramatic music to score the fight.
This isn't opera, this is pro wrestling.
I mean, when you think about it… The overdramatic performances… The larger than life stakes… Everything always ending up resolved through a theatrical duel… Yeah, I think we can trace a line of connection between opera and pro wrestling. Locke didn't have to get 'into the role' and claim that he was also here to claim Celes's hand through strength of arms, he could have just kicked Ultros's ass for being a creep trying to murder people, but he sure did it anyway! Also note: he says 'Draco' and 'Ralse', but he calls her Celes, not Maria; the mask has long slipped.
Quick question though:
Why is Celes not taking part in the fight?
She is literally right here watching it all unfold. And while she doesn't have her combat gear due to being in her Maria costume, it's a pretty important plot point that she is a combat mage!
Well, either way, we gotta fight with a reduce party.
…
It doesn't go great. Ultros's Acid Rain move deals real party wide damage, his tentacles hit hard, and as funny as it is to suplex the squid, he appears immune to Meteor Strike. We wipe on our first try.
…the weird thing is that this does not result in a standard game over. Instead, we are booted out of the opera, and upon re-entering:
And then the entire opera sequence plays out again.
I'm… not doing that?
I'm not sure what the deal is here, why this bit specifically has limited retries, but it's straight up faster to just press go into the menu, come back to the main menu, and reload my last quicksave and fight him again.
Eat chainsaw, asshole.
Also he has Imp Song, which turns everyone on one side of the screen into an imp, which is a bit of a problem because I've run out of Green Cherries, the item that cures this status effect. He also has a mechanic where he 'dives' into the stage and pops up somewhere else, and I'm not sure what that actually does.
Eventually, though, thanks to relentless assault with the Chainsaw, Aura Cannon, and Locke's new Thuner spell courtesy of Ramuh, we end up driving him away again.
Locke laughs at Ultros as the squid escapes again… and of course, that is when Tier 3 Subscriber Who Geoguessed Your Actual Address drops in.
At least we've established that Celes getting abducted as a decoy is the plan so I don't have to feel bad about her getting trivially captured by this dandy fuck. I Slid Into Your DMs Thirty-Five Minutes Ago says he's a "man of his word," and is now taking Maria as he had promised, then he rappels up or something onto the airship presumably waiting above.
You… you know that was a performance, right? God, this really is pro wrestling.
Up in the airship, Setzer tosses 'Maria' into a well-furnished cabin before telling her he'll be back, as he presumably must tend to the ship's escape.
Seen here making a valiant attempt at challenging Ultros's spot for biggest creep in the game.
Celes immediately moves to…
I don't know what happens next. You tell me:
There is huge hole in the middle of the cabin which gives directly onto the sky below and she, what, produces a magic rope which everyone else is using to climb onto the ship? I have no idea, and the characters won't be explaining. Locke congratulates Celes on her performance, calling her a 'great fake actress,' and Celes yells 'Enough!' I think this may be meant to come off as Locke poking fun at Celes's startled cry of surprise/fear when Setzer pulled her up into the air and onto the airship that she feels embarrassed about, rather than her being annoyed at the entire opera scene? Alternatively she's retrospectively self-conscious about how into it she got. Either of those.
Now that the group is all there, upon returning to the cabin, The World's Most Famous Incel is shocked and taken aback; where is his abducted bride?!
Oh, so he's a kidnapper and he's rude to boot.
Correctly sensing that this guy has a massive ego, the group decides to try and butter him up; Celes tells him she heard his ship is 'the finest vessel in the world,' Locke that he heard he is 'the world's greatest gambler,' Edgar tells him he's the King of Figaro and, if he helps them, he'll be greatly rewarded. Setzer grumpily asks that they follow him to the ship's main room which is, what else, a flying casino.
The party tries to convince him to get his head out of his ass and that it's not just him who's suffering and the Empire has to be stopped, but while these arguments may mollify him slightly, they're not what gets to him. No, heavy sigh, it's this:
Celes why are you doing the blushing emoji, please.
Can we dunk this guy out of an airlock, please?
Well, anyway.
Celes actually agrees to this, to Locke's outrage, which seems incongruous at first, until she clarifies her terms: they will play this on a coin toss. Heads, Setzer helps them free of charge. Tails, Celes agrees to be his wife.
To Setzer, a compulsive gambler, this is even better than a straightforward quid pro quo, and he agrees immediately - without making sure to check the coin first. Celes dramatically tosses the coin in the air, and…
I rag on Setzer but this is actually a good Celes beat; she was in control the entire time, having identified Setzer's central character flaw and immediately exploiting it using the tools at her disposal. She made it look like she was in a position of vulnerability, but actually she secured his aid at no cost to herself, all while playing into his personality in such a way that he's not even mad that he lost, having been plainly outsmarted; in fact, he loves that she played him the same way he's usually the one playing others. No, it is a bit surprising that he's never heard of a two-headed coin before, but…
Well, here's a more interesting question:
Where did Celes get that coin? She doesn't seem like the gambling type herself.
It's the coin Edgar used to determine his and Sabin's future.
At the time, he presented the situation this way - someone had to stay behind to rule Figaro or it would be abandoning their duty, but both of them wanted the freedom to wander the world. So they would play it on a coin toss, with the winner getting to live the life they want, and the loser, presumably, having to stay behind. And, specifically, he said 'Heads, you [Sabin] win. Tails, I [Edgar] win.' Which means he tossed the coin knowing it was going to be Sabin's win - essentially using the entire scenario so that Sabin would feel unburdened to leave and wander while leaving him behind to his responsibilities.
It's… thoughtful, but also pretty damn manipulative. He was lying to Sabin this entire time to manipulate his feelings based on false premises, even if he was doing it out of concern for his brother's freedom.
Edgar is a guy with layers and these layers aren't nearly so clean as 'under the playboy persona is a straightforwardly good person.'
Damn, though. I guess you could miss this entire bit if you didn't bring Sabin (and maybe Edgar?) along. I wonder if the scene plays out any differently beyond that bit of dialogue.
In any case, Setzer is now feeling genuinely excited. 'Gambling' against the Empire, with his own life at the stake, has him feeling more hyped up than he's felt in years. I think our takeaway here might be that Setzer went with actress abduction as his new hobby because he was bored and stuck in a rut without a proper challenge? Just another sad entry in the long list of sad disaffected men forming parasocial relationships with their favorite YouTubers and creeping on them on social media.
God, Setzer probably invests in crypto too. Motherfucker once tried to argue with a commission artist that it's the artist who owes him royalties for the AI-generated NFTs Setzer made based on their art, you can't tell me any different.
Anyway, Locke gives him shit for the state of his airship, and Setzer shrugs it off by using Fate as an excuse for why he couldn't be bothered to invest in proper maintenance.
Who's got time to invest in necessary repairs when you can financialize your casino earnings, right? I'm telling you: Crypto Guy.
Anyway, the cast is worried that if they try to enter the Empire proper, they'll be spotted from miles away; instead, they decide to reach the southern continent and land a safe distance away from its defended borders, then infiltrate through land.
And with this, another sick cutscene plays out, as our characters leave the confines of the still-free world, and sail the ocean towards the Empire, whose capital rises above the horizon as a shadowy titan of industry and machinery, a monstrous Ziggurat illuminated with dancing searchlights and red, blinking eyes of doom, straight out of goddamned Blade Runner.
Don't ask why they need the searchlights for in a world that only has a single operational airship. It's aesthetic.
And on this awesome visual, we conclude today's update.
Man, what a ride. Some of the best Final Fantasy in all of Final Fantasy so far in the opera scene, a genuinely incredible cinematic moment that brings together the visual and musical arts as well as the narrative, a beautifully executed, dynamic, exciting moment of pure swashbuckling adventure complemented by stellar art. Perhaps appropriately to a scene featuring an opera piece of obviously Wagnerian inspiration, this is Final Fantasy VI reaching for Gesamtkunstwerk, the 'total work of art;' perhaps the only place where it falls short is in not doing for its gameplay what it did for its presentation, but it can hardly be faulted for reaching human limitations.
She is literally right here watching it all unfold. And while she doesn't have her combat gear due to being in her Maria costume, it's a pretty important plot point that she is a combat mage!
Ngl I was like 80% sure Setzer's plan was gonna involve some twist where Maria was trapped in some kind of debt slavery or abusive circumstances and his 'kidnapping' was just being called that to absolve her of responsibility for fucking off and never coming back, but uh, no. Apparently he was in fact 100% planning to kidnap a woman, and presumably keep her trapped in his airship? That sure is a choice.
The opera! It's so good. I love every part of this sequence.
It's worth noting that in the original game they did the midi version of voice acting here. The beeps and bloops lined up perfectly with the Japanese, but it was a bit off in the English for obvious reasons. A valiant effort on the translation front, though.
Regarding Setzer, yeah he's a scoundrel. Sometimes I like to think that he worked it out ahead of time with Maria that he'd "kidnap" her in a big public way as a gigantic middle finger to her boss, who you may have noticed is kind of a jackass in that he's only concerned about the impending kidnap because he'd lose his star and not because a living person would be abducted, but usually I just think he's the airship equivalent of those guys with the waxed moustaches who tie damsels to train tracks.
But hey, either way when you're a scoundrel with a character introduction splash screen character development trends in one direction, so we'll see where he goes from here.
It would be funny if the Ultros fight gave you an NPC "Maria" party member who could do a Banon-like group heal or party buff, framed as her singing encouragement.
Oh, and I just remembered! Jake Kaufman (of Shovel Knight fame) and Tommy Pedrini (who did the Advance Wars remake soundtrack) turned the Opera scene into a Bohemian Rhapsody-style rock opera way back when:
At long last, it is finally time for what will probably be the single most important edition of The Music of Final Fantasy. This is it: the single most iconic event in the entire franchise, where Final Fantasy transcends being a mere video game and becomes…an Opera?
Yes, a fully fledged (albiet very brief) opera.
Disclaimer: for the Opera I'm generally going to use the English language version as the foundation because,
It's the version I'm familiar with
It's the version Omicron is experiencing
SV is an English language forum
English language operas are…well, let's just say that Peter Grimes and Nixon in China are glad to finally have some company in the category of, "actually good English dramas"
A brief note before I begin, when I'm talking about instrumentation I'm frequently going to neglect mentioning the percussion. This isn't a slight against them, it's just that percussion is one of the most unappreciated jobs in an ensemble. Nobody cares about you unless you're fucking up and then suddenly everyone REALLY cares. Good percussion work means that by and large you're chugging along in the background providing a rhythmic framework for the rest of the musicians to build upon.
And with that out of the way, let's begin.
The Lobby
We start off the sequence with Lobby Music. Yes technically it's not part of the opera, I don't care. It's part of the experience. And thus we begin our journey by being treated to…a charming piano rag. There's nothing fancy or wild going on here, it's just a well-executed ragtime piece. Not the most stunning of tunes, but then again it doesn't need to be. This is a fun tune and I like it a lot, it's just there's not a lot to write about. The Spinich Rag is content to do its job without pretension.
The Overture
At last, we finally reach the part of the game where the dev team blew all their budget. The Pixel Remaster fully orchestrates the entire opera, fleshing out the barebones midi orchestra of the original to give us the full orchestral instrumentation. Was it worth it? In a word - YES. The remaster is unquestionably the superior version and I am thankful that they gave this segment of gaming history the attention it deserves.
We start off with a dramatic gesture in the strings and brass, setting the stage with nothing less than a soundscape that pays omage to some of Opera's greatest. If you've heard Nabucco or La forza del destino, you'll have a pretty good idea of what Nobuo was going for here. Immediately I want to give a highlight the mixing here - the strings predominate (which is the inverse of Verdi's orchestration in the two pieces mentioned above) but the brass comfortably sitting in the back gives these first four bars the dramatic power it needs (shoutout to the trombones doing god's work) to tell the listener, "Yes. FFVI is an opera now. Strap in and enjoy the ride." This is immediately followed by a string transition to a delightful call and response between staccato woodwinds and bowed strings. Note the use of triangle to make the woodwind staccatos really pop - that's good scoring in action.
The next section is, essentially, harp treading water while the narration sets the scene. Having a narrator is…unusual for Verdi-era Italian opera (I've got family that's a subject matter expert, and the answer is, "rarely, if ever"), but it's necessary in this context so I'm not going to ding Uematsu or the writers for this. Of note for the Pixel Remaster - we get an addition to this section which is particularly welcome: strings on the repeat. This is a massive improvement to the score, and does a lot to keep this passage from being boring like the original version while building towards raising the curtain.
So, once the harp and strings are done going EXPOSITION NOISES and EXPOSITION NOISES INTENSIFIES respectively, we transition to low strings and reeds with a plodding melody while the upper woodwinds provide staccato block chords for harmony. Four bars of that and then we get a well executed handoff of the melody to the flute (and violin support. But the flute predominates the mix, another example of great balancing by the arranger and mixing team) while the low voices transition to providing rumbling menace. We are then assaulted by what is probably the reigning champion for quickest grievous injury in an opera. Yes, we're barely 38 bars into this opera and someone is already wounded and on the brink of death.
Not that mortal injury would ever stop a baritone from expounding, at length, about their motivation. Ain't opera fun? We have two hidden motifs (essentialy, a musical idea) in Draco's melody here. The first is a simple line of three quarter notes descending stepwise, played by the violins, that trade off when Draco is sustaining a note in bars 2 and 4. This motif is shows up everywhere now I really started paying attention to it, it's frankly a bit of a rabbit hole which has got me seeing it all over the place in this opera. The second motif is our glimpse of Maria's theme, cleverly nestled in the 5th and 6th bars of Draco's solo.
A little bit here about the vocals (that's a lie, it's a lot, increasingly so as I really started digging in). There's a…let's call it an interesting decision by the English casting that gives Draco's part to a tenor. Bluntly, this was a terrible decision as his part puts him in the basement for that voice range. You can really hear the poor guy struggling to hold on to that final B. This is not a good casting, as it robs the line of basically all the richness and power that a proper baritone casting would have brought. This actually bothered me quite a bit so I went and checked all the other language versions, and the English Draco is by far the worst which is really unfortunate. It is VERY noticeable who is and isn't a baritone because this solo is in the baritone's cash register. As an example of what this passage SHOULD sound like, listen to the Japanese version. Japanese Draco does a significantly better job of singing the part, can you hear the difference in resonance when compared to the English version? Actually, while I'm thinking about it: props to Japanese Draco, dude has absurdly good tone. Despite my criticism I want to be very clear here that I am not (currently, that is. See the Duel segment) blaming the English singer (their highest note for that passage, top space B, sounds fine, which is unsurprising considering that that is a significantly better note for tenors), they were given a part they were unsuited for. Casting is important, y'all. Draco's solo ends with a very unsatisfying cadence but is ultimately acceptable since in context we segue immediately into strings acting as transitional background music.
For reference, the entirety of this overture in the original was strings, harp, and voice. As you can hear, adding brass and woodwinds does so much for making this opening truly sparkle.
First Intermezzo Listen to the bass dig in with their bow into those quarter notes. Hot damn. When the pros bring their A game they can turn even the dumbest bass lines into something that is really engaging to listen to. Viola then gives us a moving Bminor triplet, followed by some quality horn lines. Not generic Hollywood, "oh, we want a pretty melody so we'll just stick a horn on it" horn, a proper french horn section adding drama in the background musically signifsignifying that Grand Things Are Afoot while the player acts as, essentially, offstage staff. To top that off, we then get four glorious bars of the full brass section dramatic bombast. Low brass leads the charge here and I really love how present the tuba sound is here in the mix - it gives this tiny segment so much depth and impact. Grand things afoot indeed. Now, strictly speaking, tuba is inaccurate instrumentation for this era of Italian opera. What you would most likely hear instead is a cimbasso (think of it as a bass trombone on steroids) because the role is to act as a true bass for a full trombone section. OTOH the cimbasso is a mighty engine of destruction (seriously, those things can CRANK) and the tuba adds a beautiful and noble color to this section to contrast with the brighter trombones. This is a choice that works so much better than a cimbasso ever would have so I really can't fault whoever scored this for that particular decision.
The B section of this little in game intermezzo is a much more subdued woodwind and string passage. I really like how the melody, which initially hovers very close to the tonic, helps create this sense that we're stalling for time. Which is appropriate given what's happening in game, as the orchestra is essentially vamping while the ringer (the player, controlling Celes) takes a few last moments to memorize their part and lines. I love this little intersection of music and gameplay, it's just absolutely brilliant.
Aria Di Mezzo Carattere
This is the moment we're all been waiting for. Celes' big break onto the opera scene. A piece so good that Uematsu used it as the foundation for another character's theme in the very next game in the series. Remember kids: good artists steal, great artists steal from themselves . If you want to see for yourself, here are the barebones piano reductions of both: Aria, Aeris.
The original was already quite excellent despite the limitations of the midi samples, being about as close to a true aria orchestration as one can get with 16bit hardware. Our original orchestration is: harp, strings, horns, and voice. Now let's turn to the remaster to see how they've expanded and improved on the original. We start off with harp, no change so far, but a stunning example of the difference that improvements in sample quality can give you. Our soloist enters after the harp intro, again no change, but the way they fit into the sound world established by the harp is something that basic midi simply can't do. Exquisite. For the second verse high strings enter providing background support to the vocal melody (this is a very common technique to have an instrument playing the melody alongside the soloist so the singer has a point of reference to stay grounded) along with a lovely french horn counter melody which sticks out in the texture without oppressing the soloist. Again, fantastic work by the scoring and mixing teams.
We get three verses out before Uematsu decides to give our soloist a break. I really love what they've done to this transition section, as they've taken what was essentially just the strings taking over briefly while the solost gets to rest and instead get a fully fleshed out orchestral interlude. We start simply with upper strings, a very sparse texture in contrast with the previous section. And then the lower strings enter, providing depth as Celes and woodwinds ascend. It's at this point that the brass once again start to take over - first with french horn, and then trumpet and low brass adding brightness and power for the restatement. I really love this upper brass part, it's such a simple line (just descending stepwise quarter notes, that motif that we first heard in the Overture played by the strings during Draco's solo) but it's so powerful musically. Special mention for the bass trombone in the final moments of this section, they really tie the whole thing together. That final note right that is what's convinced me that this whole thing is real people playing, the way the bass trombone shapes that final attack is masterfully done.
Having had a well deserved break, our soloist reenters for two final verses. Our accompaniment is back what we had previously - supporting strings and horn countermelody, but some very sneaky woodwinds get added at key moments to make these final verses something truly special. It's not much and yet they make such a huge difference. To send us off as the soloist exits the stage we are once again greeted by noble brass. I have one single complaint about this track: the final cadence is really unsatisfying. Plenty of arias manage to transition well into the next part of the opera while having a definite final cadence to bring the aria to a close and it's a damn shame we don't get that here.
One final note about the remastered English version: I adore the voice of whomever it is they got to play Celes' part. While they're in tune (although I have to darkly wonder how much of a role autotune played in this. I've seen comments on reddit which are decidedly not charitable) and making the words nice and clear, they do a fantastic job of conveying that they're Celes singing and not Maria, for a couple reasons. Celes is, remember, not a classically trained vocalist. Which means that even if they sing the part there's going to be a couple things missing, specifically, 1) vibrato, 2) diction technique, and 3) timbre. Out of all the Celes' I think the English and Japanese vocalists do the best job of really selling the fact that what we're hearing is Celes the (surprisingly talented) amatuer and not Maria the professional. Fantastic hiring decision by whoever did the English casting, I almost forgive you for the terrible mistake of hiring a tenor to do Draco. The Celes casting apparently decision caused quite a lot of controversy when the remaster first dropped, my guess (having not been paying attention at that point) is that people had some pretty well established expectations about how it should sound ould due to some really fantastic live performances as part of the Distant Worlds tour. So with that in mind and staying in the context of how the opera is presented in the game: if you're interested in how Maria might sound singing the same part give a listen to this live recording by Sabrina Zweiacker with the SRSO.
The Wedding Waltz
In which Nobuo Uematsu shamelessly rips off Tchaikofsky's Waltz from Sleeping Beauty.
Joking aside, this is a very standard waltz. It's a ¾ bar that's felt in one, it's got the boom chuck chucks, it's got harp plinking away at the eighth notes for dual purpose rhythmic and harmonic filler, the works. Our soundscape to start is string bass on the booms, violin/viola (I want to say viola) on the chucks, and woodwinds on the melody. Yes, woodwinds. I want to say this is flute and clarinet playing in unison here - it's not breathy enough to be straight flute, and there's too much roundness in the sound to be just clarinet. Hard for me to say for sure. So, after our mysterious woodwind duo have a pass at the melody we get violins in an ascending run leading us to a, frankly, luxurious repeat of the passage. A rhapsodic upper string section takes over the melody and harmony, and the woodwinds give us playful showboating lines between phrases. This shimmering, luxurious string playing here reminds me a lot of the texture from one of my favorite bits of Shostakovich's Jazz Suite. Bless the arranger for their work here, this is truly exquisite.
The Duel
Our wedding waltz is interrupted by a rude interjection by the strings and percussion (also, wedding crashers). If I could change just one thing here, I would have added cimbasso on a low B to go along with the timpani. Would have given things a lot more oomph, and a little bit of violence from a solid accentened articulation on that low note would have really sold the sudden shift in tone. Bass trombone would have also worked, although low B is generally not the greatest note for a Bb instrument even when you're getting help from the F trigger. Ah well. They did a good enough job with the waltz (seriously, it's so good) that I'm willing to forgive them this unfortunate oversight.
I can't believe I seriously just spent a whole paragraph bitching musing about the could-have-beens for instrumentation of a single held note.
The next passage begins with low strings furiously ascending over a couple bars, with upper strings adding in on the third bar taking us to a fantastic dramatic brass lick. I want to specifically call out this bar for its good writing - brass excels at loud sustained block chords like we have here. If you want power, this is how you get it. After our brass interjections we are treated to what is, essentially, an inversion of the passage that brought us to this point. Furious upper strings descending with lower strings added in as things proceed, then transition to call and response between the string and woodwind sections of the orchestra. The timpani hits here are also really well done here. I know I'm really neglecting percussion for this writeup so I should at least draw attention to one of the more effective uses of it in this opera.
Love that cadence as we transition to the next section. Quintessential opera melodrama.
This section we find that the English language decision to cast Draco at least had a rational basis, as his stuff here is bread and butter tenor range. Unfortunately, as the other language versions show, a good baritone can pull off this passage too so that doesn't really excuse that poor decision. You could make a structural argument that it makes sense for there to be dueling baritone and tenor to mirror the physical confrontation on stage, for reasons that I'll talk about later, but in practice it didn't really work.
Y'know, listening to all the other language versions of this opera and I can't help but feel like the English version specifically was very amatuer hour with their casting. I really don't think either of the male vocalists do a very good job in their roles, neither of them have much power or depth in their voices - the sheer resonance that you can get by singing from your chest - despite singing in what ought to be the cash register of their voices like the rest of the language castings do. Maybe for Ralse it's just that the vowel shape for "duel" doesn't let you get a lot of power? As an example, compare what the English guys are doing with the Japanese language - the performances in the latter are unquestionably, crushingly better. In the course of doing research for this post I was checking Reddit just see if other people were hearing the same issues I did and, in between all the bitching about Celes' voice (which I strongly disagree with, as explained in the Aria section), and one of the comments really stuck out to me which is, paraphrased, "it sounds like they hired a bunch of high school theater kids to do it" which is painfully accurate. Dissapointing. English Celes is great though, pay no mind to the haters. I understand why people don't like her from a craft perspective, but structurally it was the correct decision (plus, it's not like she sounds terrible).
Also, god damn does the Japanese version of this bit make me wish that this was a duet instead of a duel. Just those two voices, playing off of each other right before the, "so it's a duel" line…I get chills just thinking about it. Sigh.
To talk about the actual score for a bit here instead of just lengthy invective regarding poor casting decisions, let's take a moment to appreciate what Uematsu is doing here.
So Draco swoops in and his first phrase is an inversion of that three note motif. His line ascends (and isn't completely stepwise, the first interval is a minor third but it feels correct because we've been primed for it) and it is MARIA that responds with the correct expression of the descending three note motif although, again, this is slightly different. Maria's invocation of the motif is a diminished version, using halfsteps, which musically highlights the tension going on stage. I love this little detail. Draco and Ralse trade phrases and then we transition to the next section.
Before we move on, I want to note one other really fascinating thing going on here which is that the pixel remaster makes a rather dramatic change to score here: in the original, Draco is unquestionably a baritone and Ralse a tenor and neither depart from their assigned ranges. Since they're stuck using the same midi sample for both this helps the player make an audible distinction between the two characters. Another interesting historical tidbit is that was very common in opera at this point to cast general and war heroes as baritones, meaning that you have physically/metaphorically powerful characters being played by someone with a powerful voice. So casting Draco as a baritone in the original score makes sense to help the listener differentiate the Draco from Ralse with their ear as well as being a historically accurate casting. In the remaster…well, they put Draco's lines up an octave and I'm not really sure why. To be fair to whomever made that choice, a properly done high baritone is absolutely divine and all the performances (...except the English one) do a good job of it singing that part despite it being in their upper register. A lot of them sound like they're floating on clouds, it's really quite nice.
So the orchestrator deliberately went out of their way to change this small segment from being a baritone and tenor duel to two competing tenor parts (Ralse is singing below Draco here if I'm hearing things correctly. It's a little hard to tell because all the Ralse voices are brighter than the Dracos, which makes me want to assign them as being higher even when they're not). This is a really strange decision, I'm not sure why they did it.
Second Intermezzo
And that's it for the vocal performances so Sabin can stop wondering why everyone's singing, with fanfares in the trumpets and horn heralding a scene transition to the player resuming control so our heroes can stop Ultros from dropping a cartoonish 4ton anvil Celes. Here we have a very slightly modified rendition of the initial Duel section, the difference being the dynamic level which was probably done in post at the mixing stage - when the brass entrance happens the mix is a bit louder, with the tuba being slightly more prominent to my ears. A minor tweak, but it does a remarkable job of keeping things fresh and adding excitement. This higher volume level continues with the strings, and I can definitely pick out the string bass digging into their notes, and the bassoon as well for the woodwind sections, so that suggests that they tweaked the EQ or voice channels a bit. Nice touch.
At this point the original take gets interrupted by the cadence to transition to the vocal segment, so here's what I think happened at the recording session: They record this whole section first since it's a significantly longer take, and then just used Pro Tools to snip things down to what they needed for the start of the Duel scene, fading in the start of a second, different take which has the cadence and the vocal segments.
So for this second intermezzo (that's not what it's called in the piano books or track listings, same as the first intermezzo I listed above, but that's the function the music is serving at this point) Uematsu uses a simple technique to develop this duel theme - all he does is take that initial two bar passage here, repeat it to build tension, and then modulates it by having the bass drop down a fifth from B to E. Simple, effective. All the while the entire orchestra is doing forte pianos with a crescendo every two bars to create a dynamic tension-release pattern that is constantly building the intensity of the music.
We are then treated to woodwinds taking over with a moving eightnote line that serves as a transition to a really tense and beautiful moment in the strings, with a rising half note quarter quarter passage. Wait, three notes rising before the sequence repeats…it's the three note motif again! Again, inverted and with a shift in the rhythm but it's there, I swear.
The next segment is a really wonderful viola countermelody. Violas rarely get a chance to shine, and this is an effective use of their alto string sound. Also featured: woodwinds, again with the ascending three note sequence. Goddamn I'm finding that thing everywhere now that I'm primed to look for it. A 4th horn belting it out (might be a touch of bass trombone there as well) is our turnaround for the repeat of the intermezzo.
So, as I did research listening to this track, it turns out that while the end of the turnaround might be the end of the cue as we experience it in the game, that's not the end of the track. That's right, there's more and let me just start off by saying I am a HUGE fan of what's going on here. This turnaround theme modulates and gets developed, building tension as we race to the end. A flurry of reintroduced motifs from the rest of the cue, particularly the eighth note run sequence, is what drives us to the final, conclusive, cadence. LOL, nice stinger with the low strings. What a way to go out.
Seriously, give it a listen - it's wild. I understand why we don't get to experience that ingame, it would probably be too difficult/timeconsuming to introduce a context-sensitive element into the game particularly where the player still has control and could thus theoretically stall out the end of the cue. Still though, I was not expecting that, wouldn't even know it existed if I wasn't doing a deep dive into the score like this. What a delightful little surprise.
The Grand Finale?
The final music number for our opera, and we're going out with a bang. Or rather, a blast, as this is a very brass heavy track. Yes, that's right, the last piece is a brass feature as is only right and proper.
Low strings and timpani lead the charge into the melody with upper strings on offbeats, the upper strings (probably viola) sound to me like they're just a hair on the back end of the beat here which is a bit awkward but in a way…it kind of works? It makes it feel like the whole ensemble is tripping over itself as our heroes rush onstage to do battle which is a neat music/story parallel. Also, shout out for the cymbal crashes on beats 2 & 4. They do a lot to keep the whole piece grounded.
Voicing for the first statement of the melody is in the 1st trumpet and trombone, with horns answering in response. My favorite part in all this is that when the melody repeats, the rest of the section joins in by filling out the harmony. It's a real delight to listen to. In addition we also have the bass trombone/4th horn just absolutely cranking on pedals in the background. It's a bit difficult to pick it out (I think the mixer went a little bit too far in keeping them from dominating, as I can just barely hear them), but they're there. It's much more noticeable when the trombone jumps up an octave at the very end of this part. This pedal~octave up bit also serves as a musical cue that we're moving on to the next section.
I love the playfulness of the tradeoffs between the trombones & trumpets, horns, and strings here. The strings then take over the turnaround, which is a nice foreshadowing of the fact that they take over the melody as well for our 2nd time through. Now that the strings are in charge, the bass trombone belting out those pedals is significantly more audible. While on the one hand I kind of miss the brass having the melody, having the strings take over here is actually pretty smart writing. Two reasons: 1) changing the texture keeps things interesting, 2) playing brass can be very taxing, giving the players a chance to rest their chops is really important.
The B section serves primarily as a very extended turnaround. The horn section finally gets their moment in the spotlight instead of as an interjection to the melody, this is a great example of using the sound of a french horn section for textural contrast. My interest here is drawn particularly to this extended call and response between the horns and the rest of the orchestra sections with these elegant and soaring ascending thirds. The slower rhythm of these traded thirds also serves as a way to relax and contrast with the very spirited A section. This music cue loops without end, sadly there's no definite ending - Ultros does tend to overstay his welcome, after all.
God, yeah, it's such a weird thing to just give a playable character. Like, it's a straight-up villainous bit, and not a cool inner darkness or whatever that you can spin into an anti-hero, it's something you give to a character you want the audience to viscerally hate.
Which is a shame because otherwise Setzer is pretty cool! He's a gentleman thief with a gambling problem theme operating a flying casino. Remove this one bit, and he's great! But you can't really look past it, can you?
I feel like the entire sequence would be improved if either, like others suggested, Maria was in on the plan and approving (and you would then proceed to help her out), or if he were there for something else. Like, IDK, Maria's dress has fist-sized diamonds on it that belong to a wealthy opera patron from Jidoor who wants to throw their wealth around, and Setzer is here to seize them, while promising Maria to just drop her in Jidoor or something.
But yeah, as it is, it's a major Thing that spoils otherwise excellent sequence.
It's kind of sweet, honestly, although there is a shocking disregard for the fact that Celes's male teammates are putting forward a plan that relies on her being abducted by Sabine McRomulus, which should perhaps warrant further discussion!
God, Setzer probably invests in crypto too. Motherfucker once tried to argue with a commission artist that it's the artist who owes him royalties for the AI-generated NFTs Setzer made based on their art, you can't tell me any different.
And with this, another sick cutscene plays out, as our characters leave the confines of the still-free world, and sail the ocean towards the Empire, whose capital rises above the horizon as a shadowy titan of industry and machinery, a monstrous Ziggurat illuminated with dancing searchlights and red, blinking eyes of doom, straight out of goddamned Blade Runner.
That was absolutely amazingly well-done. It's a shock that I've never heard of it before, even with how disconnected I am from almost all of Final Fantasy.
Also, the rats in the rafters are a source of an incredibly funny bug in the Japanese version of the game. (Major plot spoilers.)
The rats would stick around in the World of Ruin's version of Jidoor. Losing a fight to them in that part of the game would boot you back... to the World of Balance. This softlocks the game, as you've already gone through all the major plot triggers. It also requires you to somehow lose to an encounter about ten levels behind the curve, so it's not that big a problem.
One gag from the Ultros fight that Omicron didn't notice, though: Ultros provides a pathetically small monetary reward for beating him. This will be important later.
The Impresario's response to these shenanigans is to make the most of it and call for dramatic music to score the fight.
Celes why are you doing the blushing emoji, please.
