Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Final Fantasy VI. We continue talking about the story, the mechanics that make an area like Floating Continent so frustrating, the new characters, and more! Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Up through the Floating Continent

Issues covered: sketching my enemies to death, whether there are other characters named Relm, setting things up to be open, retreading a lot of territory due to random battle interruptions, the psychology of spatial changes, running away and smoke bombs, leaving the area and returning, crashing the airship and getting that Mode7 goodness, the rough-and-tumble empire town of Maranda, the impact of Empire, having to sustain disbelief, not buying that the Emperor would sue for peace, introducing dialog trees for a one-off, designer jokes, Cid becoming a Returner, General Leo's honor, Kefka being locked up, mastering 16-bit cutscenes with a limited palette of expressions, Thamasa and the lore of how the world came to discard magic, constraints inspiring creativity, the Jedi analog, the house fire sequence and Relm and Shadow, Gao as a character based on grinding, the return of Ultros, Leo fighting Kefka and losing, negotiating peace with the Espers, the party being somewhat culpable with the Espers as well, Leo's consistency as a character and the shock of his death, Kefka as Louis XIV, Sephiroth as villain, the organic looking environment of the Floating Continent, the massive number of potential spells, using Espers more, ways to slim down spell options based on character archetypes,

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: L. A. Noire, Kingdom Hearts, Godzilla, Star Wars, H. R. Giger, Chrono Trigger, Death Stranding, Dragon Quest Builders, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: Some significant amount of time in the World of Ruin.

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