A Journey Begins

Welcome to Final Fantasy Weekly, I'm Drew Creasman and I'm Ira Creasman and

Welcome to the very first episode of Final Fantasy Weekly a podcast we hope to be a long running Series where my brother and I dive deeply into the world of, or the worlds I should say, of

arguably the greatest role playing franchise in video game history arguably one of the greatest franchises genre non-specific in video game history Final Fantasy 

Celebrating their 30 anniversary this season we'll be going through all of the main entries in the series we'll be going through some of the side stuff as well but uh ultimately we are here to talk about a franchise that we feel is worthy of a deep dive in terms of its analysis of themes plots characters absolutely music I just went to a final fantasy concert actually last night as of the recording of This podcast so we're going to get into all of the things that we love about a franchise that 30 years ago Legend says Ira that they were on the brink of no longer being a video game making company that is square soft and in their last ditch effort to save the company and make a

game that they wanted to make a team led by Hironobu Sakaguchi got together and

created what they thought would be their final game their final fantasy if you will and so goes the story. 

But as you just recently told me uh maybe just an urban legend that they let grow because it's

awesome right according to an article I read on Kotaku uh Mr Sakaguchi recently did an interview where he talked about the name Final Fantasy but that the word “final” maybe wasn't based upon the studio shutting down he says that uh the word could have been anything that began with the sound that it was is more about the alliteration that the fs sound nice in Japanese apparently pronounced fu fu though not speaking Japanese or being a student of it in.

Anyway I'm not sure I'm saying that correctly well you know it's interesting you bring that up because you remember I took a couple of years of Japanese in college and although I was absolutely miserable at it uh I did learned some of the basics and one of the things that's really interesting is they have three different l not languages it's one language but they have three different alphabets one is uh just like the pictures that kind of are words in and of themselves one is their more phonetic language and one is a phonetic language that's used typically to spell out words in foreign languages and it's interesting because there's something like there's not a [ __ ] there's not just a Japanese word for like I think the color gray was one was like really there's not just a Japanese word for that but Final Fantasy in Japanese is spelled out in that phonetic language if I recall correctly Katakana.

And it's Fainuru Fanteshi. You know they didn't use the Japanese words for final and fantasy which there are Japanese words for those two things.

Right and he does explain that further the studio did seem like it was in its end times but yeah it could have been just about any words so it's interesting that they decided to uh name it using English words in their phonetic alphabet uh and that they chose they chose it based on alliteration uh which is an interesting writing Choice one of many interesting choices I'm sure we will talk more in depth about yeah and and we're jumping the gun on on themes and stuff as well but just a an immediate early indicator of one of our favorite things about the franchise which is that it is a blend of cultures it is never just one thing even in its name it is a combination of eastern and western sensibilities from the future check out Final Fantasy Union's extraordinary multi-part YouTube documentary series on the founding and creation of square soft and Final Fantasy they're two parts into it it's 10 out of 10 stuff cannot recommend more highly everything they do at Final Fantasy Union. 

We also wanted to mention that this is not going to be just a retrospective of the franchise in fact

there is something specifically called the retrospective and I doubt anyone who's clicked on this isn't familiar with the wonderful work that they've done over at game trailers if you're not and for some reason you want to listen to this podcast but you're not totally familiar with what the Final Fantasy franchise is check out that series and then come right on back but one of the things we're assuming is that if you've clicked on this then you are a fan of Final Fantasy because we will be going spoiler deep in as many episodes as we get to do about this so do not expect this to be something that doesn't offend your spoilers sensibilities if you haven't already played the series right and so we may find ourselves for example in a conversation in the very first Final Fantasy game talking about how it relates to events in Final Fantasy 7. 

So that's just you know it's going to happen but as they say one of my favorite quotes of all time in Alice in Wonderland let us start at the beginning and when we come to the end we'll stop.

But that's not going to be for a while why don't you take us back because your earliest memories of Final Fantasy are going to both predate mine and also match up with mine because you were the person who introduced me to the franchise well sort of but we'll get into that but take us back to your earliest memories of discovering what this thing

[Music]

Sure so for me Final Fantasy was released in the US in 1990 and as I recall I rented it probably from City Market when City Market still had video rentals yeah so I was eight or 9 years old which I think would have put me in about fourth grade and I did not understand what I was doing with this game I was used to Mario and Mega Man and Metroid and Castlevania and that sort of stuff I was used to jumping on platforms oh I loved excite bike, I still love excite bike I would play that game again. 

in any case so I did not get it we just had these guys on this mostly featureless background and I understood the menu and I understood I was attacking but the whole system didn't really make sense to me I had no idea what I was doing I didn't get it I am sad to say yeah uh but then I got a I

had a friend I I'm pretty sure in fifth grade who had the old it wasn't old at the time who had the Nintendo Power strategy guide to Final Fantasy. 

And that that I thought was fascinating and we would during recess because we were nerds he would run a sort of DnD campaign with me during lunch using that strategy guide I didn't know that you know I I didn't actually know that story so that's another reason why I'm glad we're doing this cuz that's cool so the first Final Fantasy game that I bought and played all the way through still I was still ignorant of what Final Fantasy was at this point.

and I know this is going to disappoint some people but the very first Final Fantasy game I bought and played all the way through was Final Fantasy Mystic Quest a game that will get will absolutely get its own set of episodes because I'm pretty sure when we talk about individual games we will need more than one episode and I'm guessing five or six episodes minimum for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. 

I'll be shocked if we get two but yeah well okay fine if I get one I will be happy and I love the game again uh I didn't really understand what Final Fantasy was at the time I didn't understand some of the Throwbacks I didn't understand that it was a simp simple game meant for beginners but for those who mock Final Fantasy Mystic Quest as a dumb down American version for beginners well for me it worked it really it it sold me on Japanese role playing games it sold me eventually when I realized that it was connected it sold me on Final Fantasy.

I still occasionally play that game that's fantastic because I definitely had the experience cuz you went through that and we'll get to the next part of your story here in a second but of going backwards my first final F and I think I had kind of seen maybe you play a little bit of Final Fantasy 1 and kind of just did not register at all and so my first experience and this is funny because this has happened to me a lot in life I was just talking with somebody the other day about what my first hip-hop album was not that this has a whole lot of relevance to people listening to this maybe but it might but the first hip-hop album I ever got was IL Matic from Nas which is one of the greatest hip-hop records of all time the very first Final Fantasy game I ever played the very first RPG that I ever played was Final Fantasy 6.And that's like you you just jump into this thing with one of the very best that they ever was and then so going back and playing Mystic Quest after the fact I do have more of that I think the kind of consensus opinion of oh this is dumbed down Final Fantasy for people who don't get it you

know cuz I I I grew up on the the the sweet stuff well and if if I recall correctly you and I did play that original Final Fantasy rented Final Fantasy together but it wasn't you know it didn't stick uh if I was eight at the time you would have been what four or somewhere in there yeah and then for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I was 10 or 11 at the time which would have made you five or six.

But again I I just don't think you were as interested in that as you were Excite Bike for example right so Final Fantasy 3 in the US better known as Final Fantasy 6 by its actual name was that

'94 maybe ‘95 when we first played it I'm pretty sure yeah yeah and we were at our

aunt and uncle's house uh down in Texas and Uncle Dave had it and that's yeah

that for me too that is the one where I fell in love with Final Fantasy Final Fantasy 6 is such an amazing narrative has such amazing characters and music and just the graphic style even now is

is incredible one of the things that really stands out to me also about that trip was I remember desperately wanting to play Mortal Kombat with Uncle Dave because I think he was probably the only adult at the time we knew who played video games but our younger cousin was still you know at the age where that was inappropriate so we had to wait for certain times and it was in waiting till

late at night to play Mortal Kombat that we were watching him play Final Fantasy 3 on the Super Nintendo. 

And suddenly I didn't care about Mortal Kombat anymore it kind of redefined for me what an adult video game playing experience was.

And as I recall we came home that summer and bought our own version of Final Fantasy 3 and we bought Final Fantasy 2 now better known as Final Fantasy 4 by its real name and Breath of Fire and and Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG that that's where we got into assuming I've calling correctly where we really exploded on the jrpg bandwagon though it wasn't quite as bandwagon then right but man did we go in without really knowing anything other than one game that we wanted to the game dude game dude the old game dude Buy, Sell, trade video game stores that Mom and Pop they had a couple of them out there in Grand Junction I still remember the uh the commercials with the Bulldog. 

Was that anywhere other than Grand Junction is that something anybody who's not from

this town is going to know? Probably not but I'm sure there are a lot of people in their own towns that had little buy/sell/trade video game stores that don't really exist anymore because the big ones kind of do that now but they rip you off way more than they used to back in the day you could walk in by outside of the box I don't think we got the box maybe for Chrono Trigger we did have a box for Chrono Trigger and for six but I think the one we had for Final Fantasy 4 was one of those plastic cases that you would get when you rented cartridge games. 

Yeah yeah but and what did we pay like 15 or 20 bucks a piece maybe for like four or five of the greatest games of all time well and they threw in and we had no idea what Chrono Trigger was either I remember the guy putting it in the machine to show us and it just we watched the beginning where like the balloons pop and stuff and we talk about the Chrono stuff we'll do all the Final Fantasy stuff first I think we'll find time to talk abouton we'll get it in there but we just saw that opening and we're like give us that one and they threw it in for Less they we got a deal on Chrono Trigger which looking back is kind of stunning it really really is. 

What's funny to me too is that like you talked about that trip down to Texas to stay with our aunt and uncle and discovering the game and I hadn't even remembered this until just right now and I can't recall what they had but there was a little music device yes you remember where I'm going with it was a little keyboard thing yeah it was a tiny little touch keyboard thing and did we get to the part did I learn the Opera is the very first song I ever randomly learned how to play and I think it was the little we picked out yep we picked it out on that goofy little keyboard thing and yeah just finding the Melody at a pretty young age just finding the melody and picking it out and wow just thinking

back on it who knew that one day I would be a moderately successful and then

failed musician all things to Final Fantasy 6 that's right all roads lead

right back to that. 

But yeah my last personal historic story about Final Fantasy…  I love this one cuz I remember this one better I was old yeah but this one is definitely a joint story my part in it is I turned 16 the

summer before Final Fantasy 7 was released uh it came out September of 1997 which was my junior year I'm a summer baby so I didn't have my license until my junior year and the day Final Fantasy 7 came out during lunch I drove from Central High School in Grand Junction Colorado to the Toys R Us and that's about a 10 minute drive assuming no traffic but of course everybody was going to lunch so there was traffic and so it took me longer to get out there than I thought it would and I bought a PlayStation and Final Fantasy 7 and I made it back in time for class I didn't get any food but I had a PlayStation and I had Final Fantasy 7 and as I recall it.

We snuck it into the house not necessarily because Mom and Dad wouldn't have approved or or would have been mad or told us you know not to have it but just because I didn't necessarily want to explain how much money I had spent to buy uh to just to play this game and then if I recall correctly we played until our eyeballs fell out that evening.

I'm sure we didn't get through the first disc we sure tried.

And I remember this sneaking it into the house too and us being like I'm not sure we need to do this but we'd rather just not go through the explanation of what did you get why' you get it now do you really think that's what you need to spend your money on and just get right into playing this damn thing right uh and and assuming that Mom will be one of the few people who actually listens to this podcast hi Mom uh hi Mom yeah I know right I know we're essentially confessing to something we don't need to many years after the fact to a small group of people one of whom is the person we Bamboozled with this silly little stunt…I'm not sure we did bamboozle her… I'm not sure either they might have been what is he doing cuz you went like around back of the house and opened a window we live downstairs in the basement and so I was the inside man I had to go in and get it from the inside you're sneaking in the back door but you didn't want to come in through the window that would be suspicious right oh for goodness sake well and it's not I mean so the PlayStation was then hooked up to the TV and we played the game that night.

So I mean it's not that we hadn't played video games downstairs in our room before but surely it was pretty obvious that there was a new console in the house right and there was this you know

big music playing and yeah we had it up pretty loud I uh I can't imagine they

were actually I can't imagine we played our parents I guess is what I'm saying yeah

yeah I find that unlikely as well the second part of all of that that really stands out to me is because like I mentioned while it was an unforgettable and at times clearly a life-changing

experience to play Final Fantasy 6 and in such ways that I'm only now like as

we're recording recalling stuff oh yeah maybe that's why I'm a musician. 

But Final Fantasy 7 I was in the sixth grade I was old enough to fully get into more of what was going on inside some of these stories and it was the first time I could ever recall being at school and

thinking about the a video game and not in terms of like I want to get home and play this video game I mean like sure there was some of that but I'd be thinking about what had just happened in the story the day before what had just gone on with the characters what were the implications and I remember Final Fantasy 7 specifically being the first time I'd ever finished a video game and felt like I did when you know you walk away from a really good book like having read a wrinkle in time before that was always one of my favorites something like Ender Game and and being in this kind of days for a couple couple of well days. 

Just walking around thinking about like that was so much different

than everything else I experience in my life it just felt so far outside the realm of the thoughts and ideas I was being exposed to at school or by my friends or whatever else it was it was like we had this Gateway into something else entirely. 

And uh I think that's really as much as I'll always say you know six still is is my favorite and we'll get into favorites and not favorites and all that stuff down the line and my whole thing about uh trying to measure things objectively without bringing your favoritism into it but for me I think Final Fantasy 7 was what ultimately like for you there was that step where you played the first one and then it was you know it took a couple to to really sell you on the whole idea for me Final Fantasy 7 was that one that I just this this stuff is incredible and I have to get as as much of it as I

Possibly could…

[Music]

So why do we want to take our time to take a deep dive into the final fantasy series why is Final Fantasy worthy of deep analysis not only of characters and themes and plots but of

gameplay and music and Graphics why is this something that we want to spend time on

and that we think others might want to spend time on with us well that's a big

question and there's a lot to unpack there but as somebody who sent you a text seemingly out of the blue a couple of weeks ago maybe not I don't know a week ago that just said hey we should do a final fantasy podcast! 

I'll say that my one of my big Inspirations was actually a text I sent you a few weeks before that I don't believe you ever responded to so I'm calling you out right now but and again just out of the blue and I think I was with Caity like we somewhere shopping and I don't know why I was thinking about it but there was something to do with music and I was thinking about how few musicians ever really truly change up their sound over the course of their careers and I was thinking about movies and filmmakers and actors and how many people who are in the creative arts who essentially get

type cast or pigeon hold or you become a certain thing and you can some people

are better at finding more creativity inside of their box than others. 

But it can be very difficult to jump outside of a box and typically what happens is people either decide you're aan fan of that thing or you're not a fan of that thing and then I started thinking about our favorite video game franchise and how it is so completely rare for a creative person or for a group of creative people to constantly reinvent themselves to the extent that I think

maybe the most defining attribute of the Final Fantasy franchise is that there

are people who absolutely love it and will fight each other over which games are better or worse

because they're so different from each other. 

You don't have like you'll have music fans fighting over which albums are better or worse say radio head's a good example of a band that actually has changed up their sound over the years you'll get some debate there but you're not going to find people who say like they will Final Fantasy 7 is the absolute best in fact it might be one of the best games that's ever been made by anybody ever or people who think it's it's the bane of the franchise's

existence. 

And that's because over the years they've continued to take risk after risk reinvent themselves they did it again most recently with Final Fantasy 15 and they always insist that you judge the new thing based on what it is based on what it can accomplish based on whether or not it moves you or not

and for a franchise that has sequel itself seemingly to death it's remarkable how different every single entry is. 

You're right I did not actually respond to that text though I did read it and in fact I found it on my phone the thing you texted was the reason Final Fantasy is the greatest video game series of all time is because each title has haters people who love it as well but the constant risk taking with continued success is almost Peerless among creators over the last 30 years and then yeah to be fair to myself I responded with a phone call not with a text I know I know so so it's all good responded with an entire podcast about t so how about that absolutely I am the better brother because I responded with the podcast 

You know that is just one of those things that and it sort of hit me in this moment that it is actually the people who dislike certain game cuz if you're a Zelda fan you like all the Zelda games if you're a Mario fan you like all the Mario games mostly but yeah if you yeah I mean there are going to be some that like if yeah if some are cash grabs or if they're just slightly poorly made but you're never going to have to struggle with new characters to get used to new themes a new world maybe a completely new aesthetic the difference between Final Fantasy 5 six and seven are remarkably stark. 

Absolutely from almost straight fantasy to steampunk to cyber punk in the span of three games that you could easily believe were made by completely different people and they weren't and these games when you attempt to measure them objectively always come out with Incredible scores various you know look at meta scores for each one of them they rate remarkably High because they've got incredible production values they're almost never broken so what it comes down to is Personal Taste of whether or not you think the characters the plot the whatever is most important to you sometimes the battle system but whatever it is is to your taste because it's almost always well crafted. 

And so it does come down to Personal Taste and that's why it's so amazing to me that this franchise has been so successful because the world of music has taught me that if you want to appeal to a wide variety of personal tastes you make something as generic and familiar as you

possibly can so that people always feel comforted by your thing rather than challenging their sensibilities with something new every time out they want to hear the old classics they want to hear the stuff that they know is good and I think there are a lot of video game franchises that kind of do that and that's perfectly fine but I think one of the things that sets this one apart is that it absolutely insists on not living in that comfortable space of just being able to give people exactly what they're expecting and in fact doing the opposite every single time

[Music]

The reinvention of Final Fantasy from game to game is one of its strongest most commonly recurring themes and we're going to talk about recurring themes a lot and certainly there is a you could find a thread from 5 to 6 to 7 not plot-wise necessarily but thematically and I think it is uh one of the Hallmarks and one of the strengths of the series as you have said that it constantly reinvents itself but also finds a way to draw on similar themes or to recall things that have come before and because it is so layered because thematically plot-wise character-wise game mechanics wise it manages to so starkly reinvent itself while maintaining certain truths or recalling certain

events uh is one of the reasons that we're going to give this thing a try and analyze as deeply as we can individual games individual themes individual plot devices even individual spin-offs like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest which I swear will get at least three episodes uh I'm trying to bargain. 

That's yeah no that's good that's good that's a good idea this will be a common theme of us on this podcast talking about but a manifestation of that that I wanted to mention because I was just at the concert last night was I was just looking around at the different types of people who were there and it was a far more diverse crowd than most of the concerts that I have ever been to there were I mean there was just no clear demographic there were younger people uh anything from high school looking age not to overuse the word but nerdy dudes and you know cargo shorts and t-shirts to adults in full suit attire to people who came in costume there was there's no one group of people who it's for it.

Because it's constantly Reinventing itself but as you said the some of the common threads and elements are this amalgamation of all the world's cultures and religions uh you know and we'll talk

about it over and over again in each individual game there's so much religious imagery and history and all that great stuff that that we'll dive into and it's one of the reasons why we think there's a lot of material here to jump into but just as I looked around at the kind of makeup of the crowd I was like yeah something that can appeal to that guy over there and that lady over there is something interesting and worthy of long in-depth conversation so what we're going to to try to do with this podcast series is have a thesis that is we're going to try to analyze and explore the themes stories and design of Final Fantasy through a variety of lenses we're going to try to do some deep Dives we're going to look at individual games and events in their own context we're going to try to look at it from a historical context we're going to try to look at it from a literary criticism context. 

What we're not going to do is we're not going to be uh unnecessarily negative we're we're not going to be cynical for the sake of cynicism we you and I I think agree that uh cynicism is not analysis in fact I think I think you said that to me before I ever said that to you and we're going to try to do it not that we think everything Final Fantasy does is perfect but that we think it is worthy of an analysis that comes from a place of analysis rather than a place of trying to hate on something in order to get attention.

Right uh I think there'll be plenty of room to critique certain things and say hey this part I don't think works as well as this or whatever there will be plenty of room for all of that but I did write it on here as a a warning I just said warning we like all the games don't listen don't listen to this podcast expecting us to side with you if you think 4, 6, and five are the good ones but 8 seven and 10 are dumb. like no.

We like all of them. 

Some some of them maybe a little more than others but we're very very Pro this franchise and we're going to spend much more time celebrating the things that we think it does well the things that are interesting the conversations it can start the historical implications the implications on the way we live our lives those conversations are far more interesting to us so these aren't going to be like retroactive reviews of of the games they're going to be conversations about what the games mean and it's also worth noting that we are not going to present ourselves necessarily as experts on any one topic that this is going to be as much a learning and remembering experience for

us and that it's going to be as much about like I was talking about all those other lenses through which we are going to view and analyze Final Fantasy but it's also going to be a very personal lens.

You know this is what I remember when I played the game this is the experience I had this is why I connected to character a maybe over character b or in a different way than character B and so it's going to be about those conversations and less about you know this one gets a seven out of 10 and that one gets a nine out of 10 I can't imagine we'll do any rating of the games no I may at some point try to force you to do top fives of things just because I think thought experiments like that can be fun it does force you to try to explain certain Tendencies so I might at times try to get you to rank stuff though I you're far less into that than I am but yeah we're not going to be we're not going to be scoring things by any means. 

And the one thing I will say on the lines of us not being experts

that I I know you'd be slightly more reticent to do but since I have more of a history of self-promotion why don't I just step out and say quickly that we do both have experience in writing very

different kinds of writing you're a novelist which I'm trying to be well no you have written three novels I've read two of them I'm such a jackass but uh I'll I'm getting around to reading that third one but just that one needs more work certainly well um just the idea of writing a novel absolutely

scares the hell out of me because it just seems like such an enormous task to undertake and what you've done eve building you know a whole world uh to exist over several different stories and and characters and and and it's much more like a final fantasy type existence.

Snd I think having attempted at least I'll say that though I think you've done a good job but to create a world of your own you have a unique perspective on what a creator of a final fantasy type of thing is trying to accomplish that maybe some other people never would kind of the same way I might have insight on music stuff I was never you know whatever I made a couple hundred

bucks here and there playing music over the years before I became a sports writer so I don't get to speak on Jimmy Hendricks you know more than you know that but I kind of do and I think in that same way your eye for storytelling and under and specifically even fantasy style storytelling uh you're much more well-versed in the genre I would say than I m in terms of your reading history your history with DND things ike that so I don't want to downplay either uh a bit of our resume. 

To speak or our qualifications I write about sports so that's not really related other than I can string some sentences together and I know what it's like to publish things and get feedback from people and so that's that's a certain uh element of it as well sometimes nasty feedback sometimes

perfectly nice feedback and I think the musical some of my musical history will play a role because we're probably going to take an episode per game to talk about the soundtrack the music is

that good it's that worthy of each game getting its own episode. 

I mean Final Fantasy 6 might need two episodes I think it might be the greatest soundtrack in the history of soundtracks movies included I've thought about this way more than somebody else should so that's a tease for an episode like 40 episodes from now but right so maybe that leads us into our

attempt at structure is going to be uh each game will get a sort of narrative recap wherein we jump into the plot themes and characters the episode after however many it takes to get through that will be uh about art music and gameplay.And then you know once we're once we have wrapped up our thoughts on a particular game before going into the next game in the series we'll try to do an an interlude episode about one of the major themes possibly relating to the next game in the series a theme that will tie several games together and uh if we stick to that I think we'll have uh several episodes of of content that we can share with you know our mother.Yeah I was going to say with whoever with our mother and like one or two of the people I know who follow my Rockies stuff who are also interested in video games but who knows what kind of

audience there will be for this uh it was mostly As I said on a recent one of those Rockies podcasts mostly just an excuse for me to get to my talk to my brother about this stuff that we really like and and act like there's a reason we're doing it rather than just talking to each other on the phone but I also because I have noticed there's a lot of Deep dive stuff and and I think another thing that got me on this train is I've been doing some deep dive in Game of Thrones I've been watching there are these great videos that you can watch on YouTube that pour into the history of like thousands of years before the events of the show and all of this stuff and um there are some guys I

really like who do deep dives into comic book stuff that I'm like yeah doing these deep reads not just saying here's why I think the product was good or bad but here's what I think the product

Means, what it's trying to say why it might be interesting to our lives. 

Hopefully if you have clicked on this you find that it fills that particular need in your life that I happen to have in mine. 

Thanks for listening that's it for this episode you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter at FF weekly pod you can send questions comments or links for us to check out to finalfantasyweekly@gmail.com Join us next time when we choose our classes rescue a princess and set out to restore light to a quartet of crystals.

[Music]Once again thank you all so so much for listening if you can't wait until tomorrow to hear the next episode do goto patreon.com/ffweekly and if you're curious about any additional Final Fantasy

content Marvel stuff Star Wars Rockies baseball if that happens to be your

thing but original music mostly folk and acoustic please do check out

patreon.com/DCProductions and thanks for all help even if it's just spreading the word!