This, my friends, is a chocobo.
What is a chocobo, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. He is a large, usually flightless yellow bird. He is the mount of such famous organizations as the Chocobo Knights, and greets you with a cheerful kweh when you talk to him. You never have to worry about random encounters on the back of a chocobo, and you can travel a lot faster on his back. And for just 2000 gil, you too can take one home.
The Conclusive History of Final Fantasy (Abridged)
Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/06/26/ign-presents-the-history-of-final-fantasy?page=2
We begin our tale with Hironobu Sakaguchi. He had worked at the video game developing company Square for a few years, but alas, it was going bankrupt. While the company was pushing out titles that would later be known as classics, they simply were not selling well enough. It came time that Sakaguchi realized the company only had the funds to develop one more game before it disappeared into the annals of video gaming history forever.
The year is 1987. Sakaguchi decided to create a fantasy epic. The RPG genre had only recently penetrated Japan, creating a lot of room to work in without wearing out old, tired cliches. Expecting the game to flop (or at least not succeed), Sakaguchi named this game Final Fantasy and began signing death certificates for Square.
Against all the odds, Final Fantasy was a major hit. It sold out not only in Japan, but also in the US when it was released there, beating out such ultra-successful titles as Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star. It rescued Square from the ultimate game over and propelled them into a new era of prosperity. Very soon, Final Fantasy II began to be developed.
Now, while the original Final Fantasy was a trailblazing fantastic game, there was a lot of room to improve. The main characters were not only interchangeable, but unnamed, and the plot was pretty much black and white. Enix's Dragon Quest stayed in the top bracket by taking the original themes and mechanics that had made them successful and sticking with them. After all, why repair something if it isn't broken? Sakaguchi and Square in general, however, decided to kick it up a notch. Final Fantasy II featured character development, a deeper plot, and the first chocobos. It had its negative points, such as a poor leveling system, but the point was that it was trying to improve and be the Next Big Thing. It was never the success that Final Fantasy was, and was really one of the poorer games in the series, but nonetheless, Final Fantasy III was soon announced.
It very soon became very obvious that the name Final Fantasy was just a bit of a misnomer.
How is it that fourteen games in the same series can do so well without fizzling out?
I'm glad you asked. The most intriguing part of Final Fantasy is that each game takes place in a different world and are relatively unconnected to each other. Each game uses completely different characters, in completely different settings, with completely different plots. The only breaks in this pattern occur with direct sequels, such as Final Fantasy X-2, which never do as well as the original games.
Each Final Fantasy game takes what was done well in the previous one and doing it better. Take, for example, this screenshot of Final Fantasy X, shown right next to a screenshot from Final Fantasy XII:
Note the
Connecting the games together (so they can be considered part of the same series) are several reoccurring elements, such as chocobos and moogles. Some character names, like Cid, Sarah, Jane, and Garland, are habitually recycled. Highly detailed airships are common to each game. But what is most interesting are the themes.
The Themes of Final Fantasy
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy#Plot_and_themes; http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/best-theme-narrative-wise-in-a-final-fantasy-game.180989729/
What makes Final Fantasy stand out from many other video games is the existence of intellectual themes lurking behind the plotlines.
Let's start with perhaps the most famous of Final Fantasies, Final Fantasy VII. It is perhaps most famous for the giant, overpowered, and simply evil corporation of Shinra. Shin may mean honesty and trust in Japanese, but the company was far from it. It was one of the reasons why the world was facing an environmental disaster, among other disasters, and the main characters primarily worked to dethrone it.
And so Final Fantasy VII incorporates the theme of the abuse of corporate power and environmental crisis. Do those themes sound familiar? They should. They're a bit of a hot point of discussion in today's culture. Final Fantasy VII made a commentary on it and what might happen should any one company get out of hand.
Final Fantasy X had a similar theme to it, but instead of talking about a company, it was concerned with a despotic religious group. In the beginning of the game, the characters are led to have a fairly positive view of the predominant religion, Yevon. However, as the plot progresses, you start to notice a few things that seem a bit off. Eventually the characters are downright betrayed by Yevon and its leaders. While the group never exactly works against it, they are the primary reason why it goes down.
Like in Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X provides a commentary on what happens when you give any one organization too much power. Yevon warped the minds of the entire world's population into racism and led them to false hope that proved to lead into a continuous spiral of death.
Another fun theme in many Final Fantasies is how hard it can be to pick out who the primary antagonist is. Most games set you up with someone to hate right from the beginning, but eventually, it turns out that they were only someone else's minion.
This kind of sequence happens again and again in Final Fantasy, allowing for all sorts of fun plot twists. But the real themes that scream Japanese occur in Final Fantasy IX. These are all fairly common themes all throught Final Fantasy, but I'm going to put them into the context of Final Fantasy IX. Now then, let's have a few samples, shall we?
Amnesia: You eventually discover the Zidane, the main protagonist, has no memory of his past. He eventually learns that he was created by Garland to be like Kuja, a pawn used to kill people. Garnet, the main female protagonist, eventually learns that she was not born the princess, but is actually from a group of magic users called summoners on an entirely different continent. Long story short, the disaster which pushed her to the continent where you meet her also gave her amnesia of her life before she was about five or six. Finally, you've got the Black Mages, who, when they "wake up" from the trance they begin their lives in, forget about everything they've done before. Which is probably a good thing, since they were used as powerful front-line soldiers attacking civilians.
Do I Exist?: One of your main characters, Vivi, is a small Black Mage who discovers early on in the game that he was mass-produced by the antagonist. He spends quite a bit of the game trying to decide whether or not he has a soul and if he truly exists.
Mortality: When your party stumbles into a village made up of Black Mages, Vivi discovers the Black Mage graveyard. Apparently, a couple of years after each one "wakes up", they suddenly "stop" for no reason. All of a sudden, Vivi is faced with his impending, and apparently inevitable, demise. Lives independent from the Black Mages are shown as easily snuffed out by any despot holding too much power with impunity, and thousands upon thousands are taken in the continual wars and destruction that happens throughout the game.
Life: What is alive and what isn't? This goes right along with "Do I Exist?". The Black Mages are mass-produced, but are shown to be living and thinking people. Before them are shown the similar Black Waltzes, exceptionally powerful Black Mages that the party fights. The final Black Waltz, when it is broken, begins to ceaselessly chant something to the effect of "I was made to kill", showing its inability to overcome that sick purpose and be established as a living person.
These both prove to be a foreshadow for Zidane and Kuja to find out that they were similarly created for the purpose of destruction. While Zidane comes to terms with it and realizes his identity as an individual, Kuja goes crazy and is unable to realize his own identity.
In Conclusion...
Wow, it seems I've gone a bit long. In conclusion, I leave you with this picture.
Kweh!
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