Final Fantasy VI: A window to the sun

Earlier this morning, I came across this article at Hardcore Gaming's blog. Written by Sergei Servianov, the article made the interesting argument that for some kids, Final Fantasy VI represented their first glimpse into a world beyond the one they knew. I thought it was an admirable point, but the article's purple prose wore thin really fast on this reader. Somebody get this guy Strunk & White's The Elements of Style! I posted a comment to the article. Posting that comment inspired me to open this blog. This article will essentially be an augmented version of my previous comment.

Now some of you may think it silly to think that a video game could actually help expand the mind of youth. Wars over the validity and ultimate usefulness of video games are old news and are likely to continue long after we're gone. To be sure, the pretensions of some games to higher culture are just that. But some games, without self consciously striving to do so, can at least point the way to where a receptive young mind may go.

I was 12 years old when Final Fantasy VI came out. It would be no exaggeration to say that I never before, and never again, would so anxiously wait for the arrival of a game as I had with that one. Bitterly disappointed with the cancellation of an American release of Final Fantasy V, I was floored when I saw the first pics of FFVI in an EGM issue long ago. I would soon learn that FFVI would not merely be one of the greatest gaming experiences I would ever enjoy. It would also become my first glimpse of a window to the sun.

In junior high, I was hardly a sophisticate. Well, who is in junior high? Though I excelled at most subjects in school, I could hardly be thought of as erudite. I rarely read for leisure; was clueless when it came to the arts. Moreover, growing up in what is colloquially referred to as "da hood" by the hordes of hipsters that have moved into the area where I grew up, there weren't many opportunities for kids like me to experience something beyond the here and now. Nobody to expose me to Mahler's symphonies or to the painful honesty of Boethius. But life unfolds in its curious way. Final Fantasy VI--a video game--inspired me to go beyond the everyday and to seek the eternal.

The game's plot and mechanics obviously drew me in initially. Who can forget when the game's first act ends with, of all things, the end of the world? It took quite a video game to challenge the convention of the "happy ending". Even when the game does finally close, it's not quite an optimistic stride into the sunset. Lives have been lost; the world irrevocably changed. Victory has been achieved, but at what a cost. Even the victory is of an ambiguous sort. Not a blinding victory with sabers flashing. Victory is simply being allowed to continue living with the hope of a better day in wait. No ticker tape parade awaits. Life hardly ever really does throw you those.

Most of all it was Nobuo Uematsu's haunting music that lingered most in my memory. The impression of hearing the melancholy tones of the synthesized English horn as the Magitek soldiers marched onto Narshe was something of a water shed moment for your's truly. The game itself, needless to say, won me over completely. It is to this day my favorite FF game. But it was the music that suddenly lit upon this somewhat feckless youth that served a beacon from a better world. The music obsessed me. I remember taping the music off my TV onto a portable cassette player just so I could have the pleasure of being able to listen to it again and again. But it wasn't enough. Not living in Japan where game soundtracks are plentiful and readily available, my mind suddenly began to seek out music; a music that could give expression to desires and thoughts that remained wordless and unknown in this 12 year old. I got lucky. Around this time, my father happened to play for me a CD with Ravel's Bolero on it. I was hooked. 15 years and some 5000 CD's later, I have become an avid lover and enthusiast of classical music. But not just that. Through music doors to other vistas opened before me: poetry, fiction, religion, philosophy, history, sociology, etc. All these I devoured greedily. My cramped apartment with 3000+ books stands as proof.

Now rapidly approaching my 30's, I read anywhere from 4 - 12 books a week, am well versed in the arts, well informed politically and culturally, successful in my career... all in all, I've turned out to be a rather solid citizen. Some may doubt that a video game could do all this. Let them. But I can attest with honesty of the great benefit that a work of art--be it music, film, literature, or (in this case) video game--can work on a kid with an open mind and heart. I wouldn't be the man I am today if it weren't for FFVI. I suppose I was onto something as a 12 year old. The child truly is the father of the man.