…yeah, no prize for guessing Relm didn't care about any order she was given and wanted to come with us anyway. Nor does the group spot her trailing them (terrible form, guys; this is why you need Shadow).
To be fair, Shadow would be too busy brooding to say anything about it
ULTROS, YOU UPSTART CALAMARI, HAVEN'T I KICKED YOUR ASS ENOUGH FOR A LIFETIME?
Sorry Omi, we gotta have our replacement for Gilgamesh!
What do you mean Ultros doesn't even compare to how cool and awesome Gilgamesh was as a character, since he's literally a 2-bit perverted octopus showing up at the worst possible times instead of the fun-loving doof who actually works for the enemy big bad?
Kid's got ego, I'll give her that. She asks Ultros his name, and Ultros gets offended that she would even dare to ask.
In a move that really shows the game's theatrical inspirations, Locke then leaves the party order and turns to the camera to address the audience, Greek Chorus like: "A pintsize virtuoso and an egotistical octopus… Do I even want to know what's next?"
Well, what's next is that Relm asks Ultros to pose for a portrait and the octopus refuses rather rudely, leading Relm to turn around and threaten to jump off a bridge to her death.
This is such a wildly over-the-top escalation it's legitimately hilarious, especially because everyone else's reaction is to bully Ultros into accepting to have his portrait drawn.
For a ten year old, Relm is
masterful at manipulating the people around her, that's for sure. Pint-sized little sociopath, love her for it.
So.
Sketch.
It's the third Blue Magic in this game. When used on an opponent, it either misses or succeeds, in which case it randomly uses one of two abilities allocated to that opponent against them. And… that's it, I guess. It has the benefit of simplicity and of not requiring grinding, but it's another of those 'either you know what all the Sketches do and which enemies give one or you essentially have a randomizer that outputs unpredictable attacks each turn'.
Final Fantasy VI iterates a lot, I can certainly give it that. Each character has their own custom mechanic - more than one, when you consider that several characters can have their ability changed by the right Relic. It's definitely a game that's willing to push the boundary, and connecting each character's unique ability to their personality and history while still giving everybody access to the same Magicite and Magic system is a really interesting compromise between FFIV's character-driven approach that had some severe limitations when the mechanics pushed against the boundaries of what could be done with a character that was interesting (see Cecil spending the late game just spamming Attack and Kain just using Jump forever) and FFV's flexibility and customization.
…I think I prefer FFV's job system, though. It was… cleaner.
Yeah, Sketch is very much a failed attempt at making a cool character ability. Genuinely, it's probably the worst character ability in the game, and easily drags Relm down to being one of the worst party members in the game (if not for one little thing we'll get into later).
In a twist that makes a lot of sense in retrospect, the espers we're seeing here aren't some generic sampling of all espers, they're specifically the young generation; all espers are forbidden from crossing the Sealed Gate, but it was they who had the reckless temperament of youth and decided to ignore the warning and try to rescue their friends abducted by the Empire.
Unfortunately, as soon as they crossed the threshold, they were overcome by the same overpowering emotions as Terra, and lost control of her powers just like her, only to significantly more dramatic results.
This does say a bit more about Terra's emotional issues, and how maybe it
is supposed to stem mostly from her half-esper side. I still like the idea that it has more to do with her upbringing/potential asexuality though.
Oh boy. I really don't like that phrasing.
It really does feel like the game jumps pretty far from "Vector is full of loyal citizens who are all for the Empire taking over the world" to "Oh no not those poor Vesper citizens who are totally innocent and never did anything wrong". Guess it's just one more point in why this little arc turns out to be one of the more undercooked bits of FFVI.
Wait what was that last part?
Even if the rest of the upcoming scene is maximum Diablos Ex Machina, I do have to give credit - having the "everyone laughs, scene end" be interrupted by that
oh so recognizable laugh of Kefka's is very well done. You mentioned the stage play look of FFVI earlier in this update, and I can
perfectly picture this supposed ending scene with the whole cast standing around laughing when suddenly Kefka's laughter echoes in as well as he enters stage left.
Kefka sets the Magitek troops to light the village on fire while blasting the suddenly hapless espers with his magiciting beams of ???, while the entire party lies knocked out.
The only one who has withstood the initial onslaught and is still standing… is General Leo.
Okay, props for that character switch, I genuinely wasn't expecting it. Also it was always implicit in his sprite but with his face portrait it's even more clear that Leo is, I think, the first clearly Black character in all of Final Fantasy? Interesting choice to make him the One Good Man in the evil empire.
Gonna be honest, I legitimately
missed the fact that he was black entirely every time I played this game, until it was pointed out directly in this thread.
I am not an observant fellow.
I really love how the game keeps playing with the format of the battle as a narrative setpiece.
I'd say it's one of the biggest advantages of the game combining the overworld sprites and combat sprites - it means they were able to be much more detailed with both, and its a huge benefit to being able to play with the game's systems in battle in ways unheard of in the previous Final Fantasy games. This isn't the only SNES game to play with things like that, to be fair, the oft-mentioned Chrono Trigger also uses the same sprites for both types of gameplay, but FFVI does make very good use of it.
So, yeah.
This entire scene is completely reliant on Kefka's sudden and unexplained ability to no sell the entire esper population while converting them to magicite en masse. If you buy that it's a sudden dramatic twist for the worse, and if you don't it's just... what?
The way Ramuh initially presents magicite is that the Empire cannot obtain the full power of espers, because it only occurs when given willingly by turning oneself into magicite; every esper we then see turning to magicite is doing so willingly upon seeing their death approach and choosing to use it to help the heroes. And what we know about espers is that their power was used to lay waste to the world once, and to destroy Vector and the Imperial armies not long ago.
And now Kefka shows up and he can just… Snap his fingers and turn them all to magicite against their will while shrugging off their magic?
I'm going to withhold judgment until we find out if it turns out there was a major breakthrough in the Empire that explains this, but it's a swerve.
And so, we reach what a lot of people in the thread have already said (and I agree) is a serious low point in the story: just... Kefka popping up with unexplained powers to push the plot forward by ignoring the conventions of earlier bits of the story like how Magicite is formed. Not to mention it's got a good old side of "oh yeah btw despite having the entire party at his mercy Kefka leaves them alone, even though they've humiliated him personally multiple times in the past."
So, Leo. Let's talk about Leo.
We've talked a bunch about Leo and the Rommel 'noble fascist' archetype in fiction in this thread. And I think, ultimately, I have a positive view on Leo's arc, because here's the thing.
Yeah, aside from a single conversation where he says he's 'as bad as Kefka,' the game mostly treats Leo as a paragon whom everyone respects and trusts, even his enemies, who has words of wisdom to share with Terra and the espers, and under whom the Empire would likely be well-steered, even though he's a general of the Empire who oversaw brutal, unprovoked wars of aggression, massacres, forced conscription of conquered populations, and who by carelessness or stupidity left Kefka in charge to commit the genocide of Doma.
But the thing is that in the end, Leo was wrong. He was a fool, and he was a tool. He failed to recognize Kefka's evil and trusted him with command, he failed to see through the Emperor's true motives, he naively worked towards a 'peace' that was only a cover story and helped bring the espers into Kefka's grasp. The crucial difference between Leo and some other 'one good man in the evil empire' archetype is that Leo fails to actually make anything better, and in fact makes everything worse against his will. He gives the Empire a mask, a patsy who genuinely means the stuff about peace, because the fact that he believes it makes it all the easier for others to be fooled by it.
Kefka first killed Leo's soldiers because the Emperor probably packed the Magitek ship with Leo's men so he could remove them all at the same time, before they had a chance to splinter off into a rebellious faction.
Hell, that whole 'talk to soldiers before dinner' thing? That was probably so the Emperor could identify loyalists and purge the rest of the army.
I think... this is a pretty fair final assessment of Leo, to be honest. We've all harped on about how being the "one honorable man" doesn't mean much when your honor has you following a murderous fascist Empire and working with people like Kefka, and doubly so when one of your fellow generals was actually able to look on it all and defect like Celes, but at the same time despite all that respect he gets... Leo accomplishes nothing of note. He fails, miserably, and dies stabbed in the back by Kefka and likely on the orders of the very same Emperor that Leo has spent all this time following loyally.
Kind of a fitting end, even if everyone making a sad gravestone for him might feel a bit undeserved.
Now. This is such a truly weird exchange, right? I mean it has bad vibes. It has
very bad vibes, but it's not, like, explicit? "They grow up faster than you think" in this context doesn't seem to make sense, right? It's something you'd say about how a kid you
already know has grown up faster than you imagined because you still think of them as small, right? And the oblique reference to how attractive she… will be when she grows up? Already
is??? Is so weird.
I'm staring at that exchange and I just. I have to know. I'm going to do it.
I'm going to look up a direct translation of the original script.
Article: Edgar: Yeah, that'd definitely be a crime… I better just forget about it.
…
I'm going to go lie down for a bit.
And here it is: the absolute lowest point of Edgar's characterization, that I've been... well, whatever the opposite of waiting with bated breath is, for the entire playthrough.
I like Edgar, he's a neat character with things like his absolute loyalty to his friends and his people, the entire coinflip rigging between him and Sabin, and the character flaw of being an absolute flirt that he still sometimes turns to his advantage in situations like escaping the Empire off-screen here.
So, personally? I'm just going to take this updated Pixel Remaster version of his line as a comment on how Relm is probably going to grow up capable of manipulating people even better than she already does, take that one kid he promised to marry back in Figaro as a "haha sure whatever kid", and leave it at that so we don't get... well, lolicon Edgar.
Thanks Japan.
See, until the translation was brought up, I thought the exchange was supposed to be, like, Edgar realising this was his secret daughter who he'd hidden away or something, not... that.
It's a line that's had a few different translations between versions, ranging from the original Japanese squick, to "You've grown up entirely too fast! Lighten up, okay?!" in the original SNES translation which can be viewed more as thinking a child shouldn't be getting this involved in the whole situation, to the one we got in the Remaster which is I think, pretty fair.
Still will always be that original Japanese/some later English versions translation hanging over our heads, sadly.
Wait, this was written by a bunch of disconnected teams with no actual plan to tie it all together or writing bible to make sure it made sense? Well, that would certainly explain things.
I also disagree that the scenario is good. 'every single thing you've done so far in-game is rendered completely worthless and pointless in a totally nonsensical way' is not, actually, good writing.
I mean, the overall idea of "Emperor convinces Terra and some of the others to head off with his more honorable troops to find the Espers, then swoops in to take everything and eliminate Leo in one fell swoop?" That's a fair enough idea.
Problem is as its executed here is absolutely terrible, with Kefka showing up suddenly with the magical power just... disable Espers entirely and turn them into Magicite against established story beats, or the fact that the soldiers with him are apparently in super omega unbeatable magitek armor since if Leo tries to fight him they have the statblock of that unbeatable guardian protecting Vector from earlier in the game, or again how Kefka just leaves the downed party and bails after everything is said and done.
Anyways, enough about one of the lowest points in the game's story (and Edgar's entire character), let's talk Relm!
Relm is, bar none, probably the worst character in the entire game... if you don't take Magicite into consideration. She's got rods and a unique weapon class in Brushes which aren't particularly useful (basically just rods by a different name with less useful abilities), her armor is mostly crap other than getting one unique type she shares with Strago, and Sketch is, as discussed, a pretty garbage tier ability.
But then, you factor in Magicite, and Relm's one little secret comes to the forefront: She has the highest base magic in the entire game, even more than Terra (which is why I've always said Terra has
one of the highest magic stats). Terra might end up higher if you've leveled the party a lot, but even so Relm is a great candidate to slap Zona Seeker on and pump up that magic stat so she's comparable to characters like Terra and Celes in raw magical power.
Doesn't quite bring her up as high in the rankings as those two since they have more options like Trance, Runic, and physical weapon and armor sets to augment their magical skills, but it does take Relm from Probably Dead Last to a fairly useful party member, if you're willing to put in the time.
