Welcome to the Kupo Chronicle, the premium edition of the Wark Digest newsletter, where we explore the Final Fantasy universe in long-form and drill down into unique moments of the series’ history. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and in this installment we take a closer look at Final Fantasy VI’s huge ensemble, and reconsider what makes a protagonist.
This week’s newsletter is 2524 words, a 12-minute read.
No More Heroes
One of the biggest strengths of Final Fantasy VI, hailed as one of the best RPGs of all time, is its cast. With a series-high 14 playable characters, you have enough allies to field three full parties and still have two benchwarmers on reserve (provided you recruit everyone, which isn’t a given). Each has their own story highlights and unique gameplay elements, giving them different ways to draw players to them—maybe you sympathize with Cyan’s tragic story, or enjoy the versatility of Edgar’s tools.
Famously, the development team likes to brag about the game’s lack of a central protagonist. In a 1994 interview, Graphics Director Tetsuya Takahashi explained: “There isn’t a single protagonist this time, so you’re free to use the characters you like throughout the game, which I think makes for a more interesting playthrough. People who like fighters can level up the martial artist Sabin [for example].”1
In another interview around that time, a staffer explained why Celes is the first person we control in the World of Ruin, instead of Terra: “There’s no central main character in FF6—all 12 of them are equally the ‘main character’, so starting with Celes then just made sense in the overall flow of the story. We were concerned that if we started it with Terra, it would place too much relative importance on her story. Also, we wanted to give Terra some extra backstory, and show what she had been up to since the world had been destroyed.”2
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