00:00:01.38 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video game deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. I have two wonderful guests today. They are both friends of the show. The first guest is a returning guest to the show. He is one of the co-hosts of Retro Hangover and is the spooniest bard in the land. Welcome back, Chris Coplein. 00:00:32.51 Chris I love the spooniness. I just love it. I'm going to go fight a fish creature with a harp now. 00:00:40.41 Dave There we go. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And the second guest is a new guest on the show. I'd love to welcome her on. She's a writer and if you ask her nicely, she will legally change your name. Welcome to the show, Jenny E. 00:00:55.94 Jenny Thanks for having me. I guess I'll go by Namingway now. 00:00:58.72 Dave Yeah, there we go. Yeah, so it's good to have you both on today and um a game that I think is perfectly fitting for the both of you. Today we're going to talk about Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy IV is an RPG developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo in 1991. If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thank you for stopping by. Here's how spoilers work. We, as always, are not going to spoil the story for you for a while. We're gonna talk about things about the story, talk about some of the characters and themes and things like that, but we won't spoil specific story events for a while. So check down on the show notes. If you wanna timestamp for when spoilers begin, then you can jump out if you don't wanna be spoiled. 00:01:44.43 Dave Previous Final Fantasy games on the show, this is probably the most well-represented series on the show at this point. Final Fantasy 6, 9, 10, 10-2, 16, 7 Remake, and the greatest game of all time, Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. So a lot of Final Fantasy, we're adding a new one here today. We have some elevator pitches for everybody. What is Final Fantasy IV? I say this might not be fair, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the game where Final Fantasy became a series about stories and characters primarily. ah Chris, what would you say? What's the pitch for Final Fantasy IV? 00:02:25.79 Chris Final Fantasy IV is the traditional JRPG that really established what it meant to be a traditional JRPG and advanced the genre forward in almost every conceivable way. 00:02:32.63 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:02:37.17 Dave There we go. And Jenny, what would you say? 00:02:39.85 Jenny I wrote that it was a traditional RPG with a classic hero's journey, and everything you guys said is spot on too. 00:02:46.68 Dave Well, good. I'm glad we're Glad we're starting out the show with ah things that are correct, and I'm not already wrong. For this episode, I played, ah so there's a lot of versions of Final Fantasy IV out there. It was a big ah mental struggle for me to figure out which version to actually play. I played the PSP version because it looked pretty. ah So I did play that, emulated on my Steam Deck. It took 25 hours to beat. And um I assume the two of you have played the many different versions before. So what's the most recent one you guys played? 00:03:24.07 Chris ah The most recent one I've played, I actually played it on stream was the Pix remaster for Steam. That took me about 16 hours, I think. 00:03:32.63 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:03:33.11 Chris So that's the most recent. 00:03:35.97 Jenny I also played the Switch Pixel remaster, but I played it on the Switch. um And that took me about 24 hours. But I've played all the versions except for the pick ah the PSP version. 00:03:43.10 Dave Nice. 00:03:47.15 Dave Okay, so I played the one that you haven't played. So we will, ah when necessary, I think we can compare the differences between the versions, but that's not gonna be like the point of this episode. 00:03:50.04 Jenny Yep. 00:04:00.05 Dave ah But for certain things, since there are so many versions there, we might wanna make a recommendation for which one maybe a newcomer could play or something like that. But we'll get to that when we do our recommendations. Let's talk about our histories with Final Fantasy IV and with the Final Fantasy series ah in general. So ah Chris, I will kick it to you first. You've been on many a podcast, including your own, talking about Final Fantasy, but I think this is the first Final Fantasy game you've been on Tales from the Backlog for. 00:04:31.82 Dave So tell people about your history with the series and Final Fantasy IV in particular. 00:04:32.00 Chris I think so. Yeah. 00:04:38.26 Chris So with the series, in particular, my Final Fantasy journey, I think started around 1993 or 1992, somewhere around there. 00:04:50.17 Dave Mm hmm. 00:04:50.43 Chris And it actually started with the very first Final Fantasy. We're over at like a day sitters house daycare sitters house, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And they had a bunch of video game systems downstairs. And one of the games that they had there was Final Fantasy for the Nintendo. 00:05:05.96 Dave Mm hmm. 00:05:07.49 Chris And I'm sure whoever really wanted to play it hated us because every single day after school for about a month, we'd restart a new save. So ah there's only one save slot. So if anyone was actually trying to make progress, that never happened. So sorry about that. 00:05:19.95 Dave Mm 00:05:21.51 Chris But I went from there and the very next Final Fantasy I played was Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I don't remember caring much for that, not because I thought it was bad. I thought there's a lot of good qualities about it, but it wasn't quite the Final Fantasy that was there, especially when I knew Final Fantasy II existed. So I think I rented that from Blockbuster a couple times as well. These were both rentals. I never owned them. 00:05:45.07 Dave -hmm 00:05:45.28 Chris I just rented them. And then I remember getting an article of Game Informer right around the time I'd gotten This was after I got Final Fantasy for Christmas because I was so invested at it at like my day sitters house that I remember reading an article in Game Informer that I had to go back to because it was the same one that there, I think Mortal Kombat 2 and Donkey Kong Country were a part of. 00:05:57.79 Dave Mm hmm. 00:06:09.35 Chris I've tried going back and looking for it through internet archives. I can't locate the issue. I know what month it's in, but I can't find it. but I was more interested in comparing the Super Nintendo and Genesis versions of Mortal Kombat 2 at the time. And of course, Donkey Kong Country. But then I remembered, oh, right. I remember another game with Final Fantasy in there. Let me take a look. And they said Final Fantasy 3. And it said, oh, this is the greatest RPG ever. And so I bugged my dad for that for my birthday. And really, ever since then, it's been off to the races. 00:06:41.73 Chris with the Final Fantasy franchise. ah Just head over heels in love with it for a very long time. I just think most of modern gaming has kind of leveled me out in terms of my obsession over it. 00:06:52.46 Dave Mm hmm. 00:06:52.63 Chris But yeah, it was definitely a big Final Fantasy head for a very, very, very long time. Now, in terms of Final Fantasy 2, I think Now, the first time I did play it was when I was running it from a blockbuster. And I think the very first time I actually did a deep dive into it was probably around 1998 with the rise of emulators and playing the hard type version of it, because all the rage on the internet was. how much better the hard type version was. You weren't getting the real Final Fantasy if you were playing it on the Super Nintendo. 00:07:25.66 Chris No, you had to get the fan translation or else you weren't a hardcore gamer. 00:07:30.03 Dave Right. 00:07:30.33 Chris So I think that's the first time I really did a deep dive into it. 00:07:30.35 Dave Of course. 00:07:34.80 Chris And I think that Christmas too, I ended up requesting it as a gift from Santa. Of course, I think I was too. I knew Santa wasn't real, but let's just play that off. But I requested Final Fantasy II, and I got Final Fantasy II for Christmas from, I'm assuming, the local Funko Land, RIP. And then I played it there. 00:07:51.58 Dave Yeah. 00:07:54.50 Chris And so that's really where, I wouldn't say that's even where my lover Final Fantasy IV really was grounded. Like, I liked it. I appreciated it. But I was always a Final Fantasy VI fanboy. Like, oh, it's always the best one. And then as I got older and just replayed it more and more, that became the Final Fantasy that I was like, everything about this is just fundamentally sound. And it is one of those games that just scratches my itch. And it just became my favorite Final Fantasy in the series because it was hard for me to really find any flaws in it the longer and longer I played it. 00:08:32.31 Chris I just ended up finding it so endearing and loved it. 00:08:36.04 Dave Yeah. 00:08:36.11 Chris So. umm I'm sorry I took a little long there, but that's my relationship with the series. 00:08:42.09 Dave Well, it is ah it's a series where people do have long and complex and detailed relationships with. I mean, I do too, for sure. ah But before I talk about myself, Jenny, I'll kick you, ah your history with Final Fantasy and then specifically FF4. 00:08:57.40 Jenny So this is gonna be super nerdy in a minute. um The game released in 91 and I was about six to seven years old when I first played it with my brother. um It was a super influential game for me. I got really invested in the characters and the story, the gameplay. um I would play pretend with my friends outside. We'd play the characters. 00:09:16.22 Dave Mm hmm. 00:09:16.31 Jenny ah Back in the day during AOL chat room days, I would role play as characters on it. I wrote embarrassing fan fiction for it. you know this This game has been my favorite game and my favorite game to replay like my entire life. um Different versions offer different different experiences and I've really enjoyed going back through and playing all of those. 00:09:33.36 Dave Hmm hmm. 00:09:35.79 Jenny and you know I just love this game. and It's my favorite game. It's my favorite game to talk about. 00:09:38.32 Chris Oh. 00:09:39.61 Jenny you know I like the series you know Final Fantasy overall. I do enjoy it, but Final Fantasy IV is definitely my favorite of the bunch. 00:09:48.37 Dave Gotcha. Okay, so two long-time players of Final Fantasy IV, and then with me, this is my first time playing it ah for the podcast here. My first Final Fantasy game, I believe, was FF VI on the Game Boy Advance, and then FF X after that, and then I think XIII was the first one that I bought when it came out, like with at least within the year that it came out. So I... a relatively late ah convert to the series but I have now gone back and played most of them the only ones I have not touched at least are the MMOs and one through three and then five everything else I've at least played for a couple hours so 00:10:36.25 Dave as evidenced by the amount of Final Fantasy on the podcast here. ah But this is my first time playing it and I specifically wanted to make this the next one that I play ah because I know the like of the ones left that I had not touched this is the one that has the most love out there for it from people like the both of you. I mean the three of us talk about games and discord and stuff all the time so i 00:11:00.86 Chris Mm 00:11:00.89 Dave It's not a surprise that you two are the guests for Final Fantasy IV here today, but um that was kind of what made me want to pull this one out first before I go play some of the other ones. 00:11:13.14 Dave So my first time playing it here for the show, and I found this to be a pretty breezy, good time for the most part. The PSP version I understand is maybe a little bit easier than some of the other versions, which is perfectly fine with me. I don't mind that at all. And I kind of appreciated this, like I appreciate the story that's going on, um but it's easy to see in a historical context how they were building out the storytelling like the way they wanted to tell stories in the series as compared with what I know about some of the previous Final Fantasy games. 00:11:50.59 Dave So when we say in the elevator pitch, this is like a game that's like a turning point in that way. When you go back and play it, you definitely see that. um It might be a little bit bare bones in some ways when compared with, you know, future RPGs. And I'll talk about that for sure later. But what's here is still really good. I enjoyed this a lot. um Now, I know that you both have basically said this is your favorite Final Fantasy game, but are there any other kinds of opening thoughts about Final Fantasy IV before we dive in properly? 00:12:31.99 Jenny Yeah, I think that how the story interacts and influences the game mechanics was kind of due for the Final Fantasy series and the RPGs in general. 00:12:40.47 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:12:41.07 Jenny um And it was just the story and the character development gets the player invested right away. We've talked about the story a little bit. But you know it gets you right out of the gate. you're You're invested in the main character's story and what he's got going on. And what happens to the characters matters to you as a player. like You're invested when you lose somebody. You're invested when someone leaves the group. You're invested when someone achieves something. And I think that was really part of what really grabs me in this game, is that it just matters. 00:13:09.07 Dave Yeah. 00:13:10.80 Chris I think for myself I'm going to say that if you're going back to this game with a modern frame of mind and you've never played it before, I think one of the things that is going to shock you is the pacing and how good the pacing is. 00:13:23.21 Dave Yeah. 00:13:24.86 Chris Are there times you're going to have to grind? Yeah, sure, certainly. It's an older game and those kinds of things are to be expected. But there are times in this game where it would be like, man, I feel like I put 10 hours into this game in a good way, in a good way. Like I've been playing for so long and wow, so much has happened. I have so much I can talk about and experience. And it's like, bro, you've been playing two and a half, two and a half hours. 00:13:47.16 Dave Yeah. 00:13:47.45 Chris Like, whoa, my mind is blown. 00:13:49.46 Jenny Yeah. 00:13:49.52 Chris And we'll get into that with the story where there's there's that key point that we'll be talking about where if you go back and you're like when did this happen and most people like I don't know three four five hours from the game you're like no that's like hour two uh and that's that's just final final fantasy four and just the story isn't the best story but it's a solid story it takes you along for a ride and the characters as I said before are endearing and this is 00:14:01.71 Dave yeah 00:14:17.41 Chris a game that will provide a lot of charm even for someone with a more modern state of mind. It's simplicity will be the draw and it should be the draw, especially as you said, even of the time when you when you think about a lot of games that be coming out the next year or two, a very almost simplistic minded JRPG ah that doesn't try to do anything too complicated and is all the better for it. 00:14:41.01 Dave Mm hmm. Yeah. All right. Well, we've set up a lot of stuff to talk about. So we're going to listen to a little bit of music from Final Fantasy IV. And when we come back, we're going to give that story set up for what's going on. Music. Final Fantasy IV opens with a fleet of airships flying home after a mission. The crew is a military unit called the Red Wings, and they're talking about the mission, and ah it's really interesting how this game begins because your crew, the Red Wings, have just done something really bad. ah They have just killed a bunch of innocent people in order to steal some crystals. And Final Fantasies, that's a capital C on the crystals there. 00:15:24.05 Dave A flashback shows them going through killing a royal family, killing guards, ah possibly a kill killing civilians and stuff too. ah The captain who Cecil, Cecil, Cecil, Cecil. 00:15:37.07 Chris Yes. 00:15:38.80 Jenny Which one? 00:15:39.68 Chris Fine. I have probably made an ass of myself trying to say this is how you say it, so I'm not even going to try. 00:15:41.34 Dave ah 00:15:47.47 Chris I'm probably wrong no matter what I say, so I'm just going to say yes. 00:15:49.64 Dave it Safe assumption there. Jenny, how do you pronounce it? 00:15:55.17 Jenny I grew up with it as Cecil, but the DS version does Cecil. So I'm trying to default to Cecil, but I also know that Chris has a weird pronunciation for Kain too. 00:16:01.27 Dave Right. 00:16:02.64 Chris Oh yes, we are. 00:16:03.98 Jenny So we're going to argue about that. 00:16:05.71 Dave Oh, there we go. 00:16:08.52 Dave So ah Cecil is scolding the soldiers. They're all talking about, you know, did we do the right thing and things like that. Cecil scolds them and says that they did what was necessary to help their kingdom of barren and that they could not defy the king's orders. They're just following orders. Ah Monsters come and attack the ship on the way home. ah Cecil fucks them up really quickly. It shows you how powerful he is. And I always like that when games kind of show you gamify that in the mechanics where there's like, whoa, this guy's strong. ah So this game does that right at the beginning. um And Cecil kind of wonders to himself if these monster attacks are punishment from the gods for what he's just done. 00:16:51.92 Chris A couple interesting tidbits here on this is where we're kind of getting to the version differences, depending on what version you played first in the, I think it's the so American super Nintendo version. 00:16:59.70 Dave Mm hmm. 00:17:03.18 Chris There's dialogue in that opening scene where. Cecil is just yeeting all the mages. He talks to the elders there and they have a conversation back and forth, but in the subsequent versions and even the original Japanese version, there's no conversation. So whatever you think is better, but that's only, I think, in the American original release. 00:17:24.06 Dave Mm hmm. 00:17:24.61 Chris Also, the thing that he's doing to all the the monsters, ah if you played this game originally for the Super Nintendo when it came out in 91, those are effects that can only be used from items because these are not things that Cecil can use, which also means that if you're playing this on the Super Nintendo, you can't do those moves. So everything Cecil is doing is something that you can absolutely not do in the game. 00:17:46.47 Dave Mm. 00:17:48.33 Chris Unless I'm wrong, I can't. I don't think you can use those. so Yeah. 00:17:53.13 Dave No, I don't think so, yeah. So yeah, he ah he destroys those mages, kind of wonders if they've done the right thing, if he's being punished. um Everyone's kind of uneasy about it at the very least. So they get home, ah Cecil asks the king, ah hey, what's going on here? ah My men don't like what they've done. We're wondering what's going on. And the king immediately strips him of his command ah and sends him on a mission to slay an Eidolon. ah which are like the Summons, the Final Fantasy Summons, they call them Eidolons in this game, and deliver a ring to a village. So ah we go out on this mission, Cecil and his friend, Kain. We already have a divide between the two of the guests here today. I think I remember Chris's pronunciation, so I trained myself to say kind. 00:18:43.85 Jenny No. 00:18:47.49 Dave It's literally just because I've heard Chris say the name out loud before and not you, Jenny. It's nothing personal. 00:18:52.97 Chris It's kind. 00:18:54.02 Jenny Of course. 00:18:55.55 Dave um There we go. So, Cecil and Kain are on this mission to deliver this ring. They slay the Eidolon, they deliver the ring, and oops, the ring is a bomb, basically. It destroys the village, unbeknownst to Cecil and Kain. They've been tricked. So, this and it sounds like, this is like along the lines of what Chris was saying earlier, it sounds like we're going hours into story and gameplay here. This is like 10 minutes into the game. So kind of setting up like these ah events that spur the story in motion. 00:19:30.74 Dave um Everyone in the village is killed except for a little girl whose name is Rydia. 00:19:30.83 Chris Uh-huh. 00:19:39.97 Dave This is the fun with these older games. I said Rydia. um 00:19:43.13 Jenny Really air. 00:19:44.05 Dave Yeah, so Rydia is the only one who survives. She's a little girl and she's a summoner. um Cecil tries to help, but Rydia is pissed off because they just killed her entire village. She summons the Eidolon named Titan. who splits the land with an earthquake and separates our friends, Cecil and Kind. And that is how the game begins. Now you're separated from your friend, Cecil's like disowned from his kingdom or at least removed of his command. 00:20:16.49 Dave ah So we're just kind of left to pick up the pieces and the adventure begins from here. But I think that this is a really strong opening for the game. And for a game, this, um 00:20:26.37 Chris Mm 00:20:28.53 Dave I don't know of this era. It seems to me that this would have been an uncommon thing for an RPG to have a character who's just done some really evil shit. And they are like, they're seemingly like maybe Cecil trying to convince himself that it was okay at the very least. 00:20:46.17 Chris hmm. 00:20:47.58 Dave um But then we split up from our party. We have this little girl that now we're going to try and take care of, even though you just killed her whole family. It's a pretty metal opening for the story of FF4. 00:21:02.41 Chris And what I love about this opening and kind of how this story develops as a narrative compared to other JRPGs of the time. I mean, you could look around and say other and JRPGs were starting to tell decent stories with fantasy stars, maybe. I think that may be more of a translation issue there just because the blocks are small, they can only get so much text, so on and so forth. 00:21:23.57 Dave Mm hmm. 00:21:24.35 Chris And Dragon Quest IV did a pretty good job as well. But in terms of, as I already mentioned before, like pacing and telling the story and getting you from point A to point B already, as you said, it sounds like a lot has happened. but And even when you're playing it, like a lot of games that they don't do well when it comes to the pacing is they make things feel like they're delivered too quick. And everything here just feels very natural. I think the other thing you mentioned is how Cecil or Cecil, whatever. i can i'm never i'm not going I'm going to say it both ways throughout this episode, so forgive me. I'm never going to be consistent with it. 00:21:54.08 Dave That's fair. 00:21:55.44 Chris but how Cecil, he does bad things and everything like that. And you could probably point to other RPGs of the time where that happens. But if you look back and you kind of think about it, they're really edgelordy. And that's not something that's happening here in Final Fantasy IV. Like, if you go to Megami Tensei, or I think it was the... 00:22:13.01 Dave Right. 00:22:16.52 Chris Yeah, the Megami Tensei, which was coming out this time, was definitely on the n NES. That's like straight edgelord shit. And we all know that, but oh, you're being, you're controlling devils and worshiping Satan. ra is in this That's not what you're getting in Final Fantasy four. 00:22:28.34 Dave ah 00:22:30.91 Chris So yeah, it's definitely striking a much different tone and weight in the ways that your hero is, is behaving and what your hero is doing right off the bat. 00:22:31.13 Dave Yeah. 00:22:40.11 Jenny You know, and as a hero, you know, a lot of the early JRPGs, you're, you know, a young plucky adventurer, you know, setting out on your first adventure for the first time, and you're level one, you've got crappy gear. Whereas, you know, Cecil and Kain, they're level 10, I believe, and in most of the versions, they're already armored, they're, they're seasoned soldiers, you know, they're not, you know, kids going out on a mission for the first time, it's, it's, it's an established, you know, routine thing for them to go out and do missions together. So this shouldn't be anything more than what it is. you know it should be It should be a routine mission. They should be coming back soon. 00:23:14.40 Dave Yeah, 100%. 00:23:16.95 Chris Yeah, that's very important. I'm glad you brought that up, Jenny. The other thing is every other major RPG that you played at this time, your character starts at level one. Cecil and Kind start out at like level 10. And that's a very important narrative play on behalf of the people over at Square making it. 00:23:36.88 Dave Yeah, and that's an example of one of the things that I thought was really cool and I like playing out throughout the game is this like focus and this dedication to intertwining RPG mechanical stuff with gameplay, with story stuff. So for example, like like you said, they start out at level 10. When Rydia joins the party, she's level one because she's a child. ah By that point, Cecil's, by Cecil's level 13. And so when you see things like that, you see, oh, they're gamifying the fact that, okay, you're going to have to like try and protect her in combat for a while until she can level up a little bit. Because again, she's a child. 00:24:20.06 Dave ah So that's good. ah Some other examples here, um character classes are important, like their RPG class is important to their characterization. The fact that Cecil begins as a Dark Knight and Rydia is a summoner, um those are like their roles in the story, but that's also their character class. And it's something that a lot of games just take for granted, you know, like this character is this class. This person is a white mage. That's their job. It's not important for their character though. It's just their job. Like I guess final fantasy 10 is a bad example because they don't have strict classes that map neatly. But like the fact that Lulu is a black mage in final fantasy 10 doesn't really say anything about her character. And that's not really part of her characterization. It's a huge part of final fantasy four though. And I thought that was very cool. 00:25:16.06 Chris Also, going back to if you want to use Final Fantasy X as an example, everything just fits neatly because they stick to the narrative sticking to those classes. Look, for example, with Yuna. 00:25:26.12 Dave Yeah. 00:25:29.79 Chris Yuna is a summoner, but if you put her on Tidus's or Orin's path on the sphere grid, now all of a sudden she's a brawler and she's, you know, doing DPS and can tank. And that, like, if that's what Tuna does right off the bat, that doesn't feel natural, but you can do that as a player, which some might argue, well, that's awesome. that I could do that and be fair to you. But when a class is more married to what their character is, and that's more represented through gameplay in the narrative, it does make everything feel much more put together and complete. 00:26:03.86 Dave Yeah, actually, yeah. Final Fantasy 10, maybe it was a bad example to say that it never matters because the fact that you know, as a summoner is like the thing about the story in Final Fantasy 10. But other than that, other than Yuna, let's just ignore Yuna. 00:26:15.57 Chris But yeah, I do think it's a good example, though, for that reason they're telling you there's a class. But does the class really matter? Sometimes the class doesn't matter. ah But but here is all of it. 00:26:24.42 Dave Not, not all the time. 00:26:25.90 Chris But here all of it does. 00:26:27.27 Dave Yeah, yeah, like ah another example is that Rydia is a mage. In addition to being a summoner, she can do Black Mage stuff. ah But at the beginning of the game, she knows Blizzard, she knows Thunder, she knows some other stuff, and does not know how to use fire spells at the beginning of the game. And so you might be searching out elemental weaknesses like you do in these RPGs. And you're like, hey, wish I had a fire spell, that would be super handy. And Rydia doesn't know how to use fire. She doesn't want to learn it because her village burned down and she doesn't want to associate it with fire. And when she learns fire in the story, it is a moment. She learns how to use a fire spell and it is a character moment. 00:27:07.02 Dave And it's just something that, again, I don't play a lot of RPGs like this. This is not a very common thing. It's very cool to see the dedication. Again, there are so many examples that we could go through and maybe we'll go through later in the spoiler section. But this is super cool. And like, again, they're like. It's a point of emphasis, we'll say, and it's I love that it's such a point of emphasis for the storytelling here. 00:27:40.97 Dave The other thing that you brought up before um that this game gets a lot of praise for is that pacing. 00:27:41.68 Chris Okay. 00:27:48.12 Dave It's super snappy, it's super quick. ah Like we said, I felt like I gave a very long introduction for the game, but what I did was explain how the first 15 minutes go in a 25 hour game. There's a lot that happens and the story just keeps moving, snappy, snappy. I thought that this was a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways, um coming from like playing Lost Odyssey at the same time as this, which is like the complete opposite. That game is going in mud for a lot of it. Very slow game. This one keeps going. um So I think that this is good. Sometimes I think this pacing is too fast, and it might be one of those places where 00:28:33.01 Dave I compare this to a more modern game and I think about some of the storylines that happen in Final Fantasy 4 and I think like well they would have made the game 10 hours longer and this storyline would have been expanded and this character's motivations would have been, you know, looked into in more detail. This character would have carried this storyline throughout the whole game instead of this one section. um So I think it's a little bit of a double-edged sword, how fast this story moves. ah But I would, I guess I would prefer this to just like this game being stuck in the mud all the time. But it is, you know, I don't think the pacing is 100% a win in a great thing for the story. 00:29:19.45 Chris Did you want to tackle this one? 00:29:23.20 Jenny I thought that you know with everything happening in the story and how fast everything moves with with the antagonist moving behind the scenes and Cecil's desperation to get to certain certain things, I think that the story kind of justifies how fast it goes because Cecil's constantly moving, he's constantly trying to counteract what the antagonist is doing and I think that that sets really the pace for the first like half of the game. until you get a point where you can breathe and and and go through and collect things but it definitely goes very quickly for Cecil and he doesn't get a whole lot of time to react to things and I think that's part of his tunnel vision with with just getting the the next task done you know so that he can you know do do the thing and rescue the person and do all the things that he needs to do. 00:29:51.28 Dave Mmhmm. 00:30:08.44 Chris I would agree mostly with Jenny here, though I do think that there are points of the game where the pacing kind of does break down. I think that becomes more common once you get to I don't want to say what part that is, but once you get to a second part of the game, and especially when you get to a third part of the game, ah that's that's where you like the pacing goes, all sorts of cattywampus in a way. But for the most part, like that first half of the game, the pacing is near flawless, only comparable to probably Chrono Trigger in the way that it's executed. 00:30:47.63 Dave Mmhmm. 00:30:47.79 Chris But there are times it's kind of like why I thought I was done with this part, why it feels like I'm going back to doing the same thing, even though it's a different area, but it's not really a different area. Or why do I have to keep coming and going back? This doesn't seem to really tie in too well. ah Those moments do happen. So I don't want to sit here and say it's absolutely pitch perfect. But ah for its time, certainly, you don't ever get into a situation where you ever find yourself, with maybe one exception for me personally, sitting outside of town and riding for experience in gold for an hour or two. 00:31:23.39 Chris That's just not something that happens in this game. 00:31:23.43 Dave Right. Yeah, the pacing is very good from that perspective. Like you can generally just keep moving onto the next main place and you don't have to stop. And ah like we said, you don't have to stop and grind for a while. um The thing that kind of like made me think about this is thinking about games like Chrono Trigger, which does have excellent pacing. ah And Chrono Trigger finds more time to deal with character stuff along the way, like within that snappy pacing than FF4 does. And it just made me think like, 00:31:58.61 Dave you know, if this game were maybe made five years later, 10 years later, they would have just done a little bit more. And I think there's a bit more that is left up to you, the player, to connect dots and figure out how this character is feeling at this moment. This is how Cecil must be feeling at this time. Whereas another game, like maybe FF6 would just have that character kind of ponder those things themselves. And that doesn't really happen here. But I do get what you said, Jenny, about the tunnel vision, especially when you're moving from place to place, trying to follow that antagonist, or me trying to rescue somebody or something like that, there is no time to sit and ponder, you're just you gotta move. 00:32:56.44 Dave And... So I think that as an entire story, um I do like how quickly it moves because I know what the alternative looks and feels like and I'm not necessarily a fan of that. um I think that there is a lot that is kind of left up to your imagination about how you know characters feel about each other with a couple of notable exceptions. um And then the like overall plot, like the plot, 00:33:27.92 Dave the capital P plot of FF4 is nothing that special, ah but it does have some cool stuff along the way, I felt like, where ah you have some cool revelations about characters, ah where they come from, their backgrounds, things like that. And so even if it's not like a narrative that blew me away. It was still an enjoyable cast of characters. It was enjoyable to care about situations that they find themselves in and things like that. 00:33:59.91 Dave It's not quite at the top level of JRPG stories that I love, but this is a good story. 00:34:05.47 Dave And so I don't want to give the impression that I was left without any detail to latch onto or anything like that. This was still a good time from a story perspective. 00:34:15.96 Jenny Well, and the nice thing about some of the other versions is they fill in the gaps on some of the story or what the characters are feeling. 00:34:21.28 Dave Mm hmm. 00:34:23.05 Jenny The DS version in particular, like every character has thought bubbles um that you can look at at the menu and you can see what they're thinking, what they're feeling. 00:34:31.15 Jenny Um, you know Some of them are hints on things that are going to come up. um So you get a little bit more introspection on the DS version, a little bit more background on that too. um But it definitely leaves a lot you know up to the player's imagination on ah specifically on Cecil and how he's feeling. 00:34:47.66 Dave Yeah, that's good. 00:34:50.38 Chris And forgive me as I mentioned this before, if you're going back and playing this today for the first time, and you're like, man, this is just a lot of tropes. Yes, it is. It's a lot of tropes. 00:35:00.17 Jenny Yes. 00:35:00.97 Chris But this was also, I guess, and in terms of fantasy tropes, if you were probably big into fantasy stories, you still had all these tropes for that. But in terms of fantasy JRPGs, This was establishing tropes. So yes, it's a trope. It's really tropes, the RPG, but it was setting up a lot of those and making them standard or trope-ish. 00:35:24.89 Jenny It definitely established the tropes in the first place on a lot of things. 00:35:28.43 Chris Definitely. 00:35:31.69 Dave I think the other thing that I would like to just kind of touch on is the cast of FF4. We've mentioned a handful of characters so far, Cecil, Kain, Rydia, that might be the only ones we talked about. There's also Rosa, who's a white mage, who is Cecil's lover partner, something like that. um There is... ah a great Cid in this game and ah kind of not just like the dude who flies the airship like Cid's an actual character who joins the party and is like a general just awesome dude. 00:36:06.65 Dave um There are a lot of other characters that join the party and the cast rotates a lot. 00:36:11.20 Jenny you 00:36:13.36 Dave So you'll never spend too long with the same group of people. um I think one of the results of this is that the people who are there for most of it, like Rydia, Cecil, Kain, they get the most characterization. Some of them, I don't, like I finished this game not having any thoughts whatsoever about a few of the characters that join. Um, but they're all generally a likable bunch. Uh, so it's, it's not, again, it's not FF six large of a cast, but there are a lot of characters. And I think that most of them are pretty, uh, fun to have around at the very least. 00:36:52.19 Chris I can only think of two that I think are underdeveloped. And unfortunately, one of them ends up as a party member at your final party. 00:37:00.81 Dave Uh-huh. 00:37:01.01 Chris ah But um I think all of them for as short as this game can be. And once you get used to where everything is and you can play this game straight, you can beat this game casually in about 14 to 16 hours. So as short as that game is, the amount of development you get from characters that are even have small roles comparatively to that final established party. Like I think they're well developed enough. And maybe it's just because I played the crap out of it. But I can look at almost every single character and be like, yeah, I like this character because of this reason. 00:37:34.94 Chris And I like this character because of this reason, even if they're only with you for like an hour, hour and a half. 00:37:40.12 Dave Mm hmm. 00:37:40.17 Chris ah But I do think there's enough kernels and bits and little like just little breadcrumbs placed even after they leave your party that can make them endearing. Now, there is a problem with a lot of the way the characters enter and come into your party, ah ah which, yeah, it's a problem. 00:37:59.46 Jenny Yep. 00:38:03.07 Chris I'm even gonna say it, it's a problem. 00:38:03.57 Dave ah You mean you mean the way they leave the party? 00:38:06.53 Chris Yes, ah that that becomes that becomes a kind of funny after a while. 00:38:07.40 Dave Yeah. 00:38:12.46 Chris And it's something that carries over from Final Fantasy II and III. It's not something that you know Sakaguchi was afraid to do with characters at that time, or the illusion of which, whatever. Of course, I'm not going to say it. We'll get to that much later. But yeah, it becomes laughable. 00:38:28.31 Dave Yeah. 00:38:35.98 Dave Yeah, we'll get into that later for sure. And I think this is a good point to put a pin in story talk. We've kind of covered the top level stuff. Let's ah listen to a bit of music and come back and we'll talk about those presentation elements like music and the way the various versions of this game look. 00:38:56.72 Dave So visuals, this is gonna be an interesting one because there are so many versions of FF4. I've only played the PSP version and I'm just gonna go ahead and say the PSP version in particular, and I've seen the way the others look, but the PSP version is hands down the best looking version of this game. And not only that, one of the best pixel art ah design games I think I've ever played, especially enemy designs and character designs when they get blown up in the battle screen, ah antagonists, bosses, and then just like your regular enemies, they're just tons of fucked up detailed little guys that you fight. A special shout out to the ant lion, who I think is 00:39:40.35 Dave one of the more famous enemy designs from the game. But all that to say, I primarily picked the PSP version because I heard it was a little easier and I knew what it looked like and it looks fantastic. 00:39:58.06 Chris Yeah, PSP is definitely the version that if you want the best visuals, that's it. That has the overall best looking sprites. I think the best looking character designs. I think that the pics remaster actually pales in comparison what pales is a strong word but it does trail behind it quite significantly. And I like the way that the pics remaster looks. I think that it does actually give the original Super Nintendo version a little bit of an upgrade where That looks like a game that's coming straight out of the Nintendo to Super Nintendo transition. 00:40:31.79 Dave Yeah. 00:40:31.88 Chris It has a lot of similar sprites to Final Fantasy 3, for example, if you played that on the Famicom. But ah yeah, I think it's the right move if you want to play this on the PSP version, if you can get a hold of it. And after that, in terms of visuals, definitely would say the Pixar remaster. 00:40:49.19 Jenny Yeah, I agree. The PSP is definitely the prettiest. The Pixel Remaster, it does it, it does its job. you know It's okay. It's better than the SNES version, but it gets the job done. I don't hate it. 00:41:02.23 Dave And no, ah no praise out there for the way the DS version looks. 00:41:03.83 Jenny Oh, I love it. I love the DS. Yes, I do. I do love the DS version. I know it has a lot of problems, but like them and just I love it overall. 00:41:06.25 Dave I, you love it. Okay. There we go. There we go. Yeah. 00:41:17.04 Dave Yeah, I'm not really a fan of like the chibi look to the DS version, and I hate all the Pixel remaster visuals in all of the Final Fantasy games. Yeah, I can't stand it. 00:41:28.97 Chris Really? 00:41:32.92 Dave It is an irrational thing at this point. like I dislike it more than anybody probably should, I think. Um, it started with the, just the, it looks cheap. It looks cheap, well, okay. They kind of were cheap mobile ports. Um, that's what it still looks like to me, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. It's a very irrational thing. I don't like it, uh, to the point where if I play the older ones, I will probably not play the pixel remasters. I will like to slug through the NES version of FF one and instead of playing the pixel remaster. 00:42:08.67 Chris You need to play the PlayStation version then. 00:42:11.27 Dave Does it have PlayStation load times to it? 00:42:14.72 Chris Yes. 00:42:16.79 Dave This is the cross that I bear apparently. 00:42:18.49 Chris Yeah. And, uh, don't worry too. You'll get CG videos from 1995 PlayStation CG. 00:42:23.26 Dave Oh, okay. 00:42:26.45 Dave That's exactly what everybody needs in their life, yeah. um Something that I think we will probably all agree on is the music in FF4 is, ah you know, it's composed by the longtime composer for the series Nobuo Uematsu, and it's great. I love the music here. The PSP version gives you a choice of like, newer rearrangements of the songs or you can just listen to the Super Nintendo versions. I chose the Super Nintendo versions because I thought they fit the pixel art better and still great. I love the soundtrack pretty much front to back. 00:43:08.95 Chris Yes, the soundtrack is outstanding. I know a lot of Final Fantasy fans like to point to it as their favorite. Weirdly enough, even though this is my final favorite Final Fantasy game, it's not my favorite Final Fantasy soundtrack. That one goes to eight. Don't tell anybody. But I've probably already said too much, but it's really good. um I find it to be second best on the Super Nintendo behind sixes and ahead of fives, obviously. And ah I don't know, like after the Pixar Master remakes, it's almost, I almost want to put it right behind threes, but I mean, it's still phenomenal. 00:43:44.86 Chris You're talking about Uematsu here. So it's not like I'm going to be, yes, in the middle of the pack, which means it sucks. 00:43:46.53 Dave Yeah. 00:43:50.89 Chris No, no, no, no, no. It's definitely in my top third of the Final Fantasy soundtracks and it's classic and it's iconic. And you'll always hear people talk about the boss theme and the Battle of the Four Fiends. Those are the two tracks that almost everyone points to as being fantastic. 00:44:02.29 Dave Mmhmm. 00:44:07.52 Jenny Yeah, I really love the music in this. It's my favorite Final Fantasy soundtrack overall, my favorite video game soundtrack. um A lot of the music really, really touched me. um The moments became really important. Like, sorrow and loss still makes me a little weepy every time it comes on, something sad happens. ah The theme of love, I always loved that. It's a gorgeous song. It's all just really well done. I really enjoyed all of it. 00:44:32.10 Dave Yeah, it's great. There's a lot of standouts here. um The battle themes like Chris talked about the battle, the boss battle music is fantastic. I like the regular battle music. um It's always a compliment to a game like this when I don't eventually just turn it into a podcast listening game. and just, you know, listen to something else and turn down the game volume. I never did that with this. I thought it was just fun to listen to throughout. I love the tactical deployment of the Final Fantasy theme song, like the series theme song, ah which apparently that song makes me cry now. 00:45:07.91 Dave That's a new development that's happened since I played FF4. 00:45:09.92 Chris Haha. 00:45:11.27 Dave ah When that song came on, it was like, oh my God, oh, oh, that's great. ah And okay, I'm crying now. So um that was great. And one thing I thought was really cool, and it's one specific song, but the the music in the village of Mysidia, which is a ah weird village full of Black Mages, Final Fantasy Black Mages, so they have that iconic design, ah is super obviously a precursor to Vivi's theme in Final Fantasy IX. which was just cool as someone who played Final Fantasy IX. I love Vivi, of course, because I'm not a monster. And playing this game from 00:45:51.56 Dave 10 years before Final Fantasy IX, I think, something like that. And you can ah you can just hear like, oh, Uematsu had the idea. This is like the sound I'm associating with the Black Mages all this time before. It's a really weird, quirky song, but it's perfect. I love it. A lot of stuff in the soundtrack like that. 00:46:14.00 Chris One of the things you can hear about what Uematsu is doing here, which really separated him from other composers of the time, is that his music was sitally ah situationally dependent. 00:46:27.18 Dave Yeah. 00:46:27.41 Chris Where if you look at a lot of other games, especially during this time, and well like like a decade after, You'll have like one track play through an entire scene, even though there's different developments and and things changing. And everything is almost cinematic in the way that he introduces music themes right off the get the theme of the red wings when they're approaching Baron and you know, they're reviewing what they did over in the city. And that is just everything about that thematic, the approach, the very militaristic way of doing things. And you might be like, oh, it's kind of like, it's it's not like Star Wars, but you could kind of put that into the 00:47:05.78 Chris I don't want to say the same level of my kindness as ah the Stormtrooper March, but like for a Final Fantasy game it is. Like it's at that level, just because of how it just sets the scene. And that's something that Uematsu would continue to do exceptionally well for a very long time. Up to this day, other things that are 00:47:25.37 Dave Yeah. 00:47:26.95 Chris interesting about the music and this might be more mythos but theme of love was popular enough in Japan where it was taught in Japanese schools and also Final Fantasy 4 I believe is the first video game soundtrack to have a full-on arrangement I'm no, because they there was some symphonic suite for one and two, but there is a full arrangement for the soundtrack that I think had a CD release. And I need to go check the facts on this called a Celtic or Celtic moon that came out in Japan. It's beautiful. It's written entirely in the way of like Celtic style for lack of a better term, but it's a, it's a gorgeous soundtrack. 00:48:05.50 Jenny yeah It's really beautiful, I've heard it. 00:48:07.55 Dave Nice. Yeah, ah it I had also noted the use of character themes in here. And again, like I didn't play Final Fantasy 1 through 3. I don't know if Uematsu was doing this before, but something that became one of his calling cards in later Final Fantasy games, these themes that are associated with a certain character or a certain place or something like that, that's all here too. You have individual songs for individual characters that come up during their pivotal moments in the story and things like that. That's here in Final Fantasy IV. A lot of those songs are really good, as you know you should expect at this point. 00:48:47.40 Dave so I expected to like the soundtrack because I knew who made it, but I didn't expect to find so many of the things that I associate with Uematsu and also with Final Fantasy in this one too. Like I didn't know how far back it went and I still don't really know, not yet, but I did find it all here. So great, great soundtrack all around. 00:49:13.40 Chris I just noticed that you wrote that the Red Wings theme sounds like Star Wars. 00:49:17.90 Dave It reminded me of Star Wars. I was listening to it this afternoon and I wrote it down. 00:49:20.03 Jenny Yeah. 00:49:21.42 Dave I also wrote, I don't know why I can't explain it, but maybe it is that imperialistic, you know, military march type of vibe to it. um And, you know, Star Wars is interwoven into my DNA at this point, but yeah, it did remind me. So when you brought it up, I was like, I know Chris is disagreeing with me, but he's agreeing with me. 00:49:44.40 Chris Yeah, it's not. It's more. Well, it's more positive than imperial. Is it called the imperial death march? 00:49:48.85 Dave Yeah, the Imperial March, yeah. 00:49:50.02 Chris Whatever. Yeah, the imperial march. It's far more powerful and less menacing, but it's very similar thematically. 00:49:54.90 Dave Yeah, for sure. 00:49:57.10 Chris Yeah, I'll say that. And by the way, I know I'm not the person to talk about music, so I am kind of making shit up. But there's my opinion. 00:50:04.85 Dave But What is a podcast if not making shit up? 00:50:08.74 Chris I think you're absolutely right. So I proudly make shit up. You're welcome. 00:50:12.58 Dave There we go, yeah. um Yeah, so just like the presentation, you know, I probably helped out a little bit by the fact that I played the PSP version, but it was a pleasure all around, I would say. And I assume that the Pixel remaster, like the music, is great. um The DS version, I assume it's the same there. Yeah, it's Uematsu, he doesn't miss. 00:50:35.41 Chris One exception, the wonder swan version. 00:50:39.50 Dave There was a Wonder Spawn version. 00:50:39.74 Chris and Yes, that is a, it sounds like if they took final fantasy for his music and put it on an n NES, it is totally eight bit. 00:50:41.74 Jenny Of course there was. 00:50:50.47 Chris It's actually kind of cute. 00:50:52.49 Dave It does sound cute, in a quaint kind of way, yeah. All right, gameplay in Final Fantasy IV. Let's talk about it. This is the game that introduced ATB combat to the Final Fantasy series. And if you don't know what ATB combat is, ah listen to the many other SNES era RPGs that use it, but ah it is the... um combat where you have a bar that is filling up based on your speed stat, when that bar fills up, you get to put in your command. All of your characters have this going at the same time, so they don't necessarily act in the same order all the time, and enemies have this going on in the background as well too. It is supposed to give a more action feel to turn-based combat. 00:51:44.48 Dave I personally don't love ATB combat. I don't hate it. I am just used to it at this point. I don't think that my speed in keying in things in the menu is particularly interesting as a tactical challenge, but ah I don't hate it either. I'm just like it's one of those things. I played so many games with it. FF6 was my first Final Fantasy game, so I'm used to it at this point. ah Fans of ATB combat, Jenny, Chris, 00:52:15.14 Chris I'm a, I'm actually a big fan of it. I'm a bigger fan now than I have been in the past. And that was because of a member in our community, Dischimera from game over hell who insisted that I play a lot, insist is a strong word, but highly suggested that I give the game a try on active and says, everyone plays it on weight and that's why they don't care about it. 00:52:24.81 Dave Yeah. 00:52:36.20 Chris But if you play it actively, You feel the tension. And that's what is supposed to drive home is you have to make a decision because we don't. I know you've talked about this on the show before. 00:52:42.00 Dave Yeah. 00:52:45.74 Chris So I don't want to beat it into the ground. But yeah, I'm a bigger fan of it now. And I think another thing is that it's a common misconception with a lot of games from that era using ATB. Because if you really go back, I just think it's how ubiquitous Final Fantasy became with JRPGs. You go back to that era and Final Fantasy is really the only one doing it outside of Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve. 00:53:09.99 Dave Right, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, yeah, yeah. 00:53:12.38 Chris Yeah. But everything else was like doing either straight up turn based or assigning a character based on their speed value and their stats. And that was the two different ways of doing it. So Final Fantasy was actually doing it much differently than a lot of other games were doing it at the time and doing it and you in a unique way. And I don't think it gets enough credit for that. ah But in some circles, maybe it gets too much credit, whatever the case might be. I do think it's a misconception. 00:53:41.07 Dave You just described final fantasy in general. Yeah. 00:53:43.65 Chris Yes, yes, I did. yeah 00:53:46.26 Dave Yeah. Uh, Jenny, you are a fan of ATB. 00:53:49.16 Jenny ah For me as a younger gamer I liked how active it was and how present I was in the game ah But now as an older gamer, you know, I'm falling asleep in the middle of battles I'm waking up dead. So like I had to put things on wait cuz like I would fall asleep mid mid game So, you know, I like that it has the option to set it to wait um I also found on the pixel remaster version that the auto battler was less 00:54:06.38 Dave Yeah. 00:54:10.37 Dave yeah 00:54:15.40 Jenny useful for me than it was in, like, FF2, which I was playing at the same time, whereas when I can program everything up front, you know, at the beginning of, you know, regular turn based, you know, that, that auto battler lets me program it a little bit better. Whereas with the, you know, people constantly having their turn come up, I was constantly having to try to set up, you know, their' where I wanted them to be for the auto battler. So I found it less useful. um But I ended up turning it to weight just because I kept falling asleep during battles. 00:54:43.07 Dave Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, um I had it on active and you also have an option to change the speed at which the bar fills up and I did not touch that in this game. ah Other games I've turned it up to help myself out a little bit. 00:54:55.91 Chris you 00:54:58.75 Dave I think that Xenogears was the most recent one where I just gave myself a little bit of an edge there. But ah in this one, I just left it the way it came out of the box and it was okay. ah One thing to note, I don't know if this is the same in all of the games. ah This game has random encounters, which I think is in all the games. But what may not be in all the versions of FF4 is the encounter rate on PSP is terrible. One of the most annoying encounter rates that I think I've ever played. ah It is often you'll do a battle and then one square is another battle and then two more squares is another battle. And then the next 45 seconds, nothing. And then three battles in a row. Very annoying to me. Might be a, um what do they call that? ah Murphy's law. No, not Murphy's law. 00:55:49.47 Dave The principle that you only remember the bad things and you don't remember the things that are unremarkable, it might just be me remembering all those times when it was like three battles on three straight tiles, but um it was annoying. And it's something that was not great in the PSP version. 00:56:07.86 Chris If there's not a law or theory for it, there's a German word, I assure you, just like everything. 00:56:11.25 Dave Yeah. 00:56:11.96 Chris Yeah. 00:56:12.20 Dave Well, there is the theory that the best way to get an answer is to say the wrong thing. So hopefully someone will help me out when they hear this. 00:56:20.92 Chris Especially on the internet, because, you know, no one, no one wants to angrily tell you that you're saying something wrong on the internet ever. 00:56:22.38 Dave Yeah. 00:56:27.99 Dave Yeah. 00:56:29.93 Chris I will, so I think you bring up but another good point here, Dave, is that the difficulty here can be deceptive. Uh, where and I just felt this going through the picks remaster, someone who's played it a ton. And I do know that in the latest update through steam, they definitely changed the difficulty a little bit. Just looking at the amount of hours I played the final boss kicked my ass. but I'm not ashamed to admit it. 00:56:52.29 Jenny Same. 00:56:53.62 Chris I got my ass kicked. Uh, and there were parts of the game where. You get a lot of enemy counters when you attack them or you attack them in certain ways, probably more than any other entry in the series. 00:57:03.26 Dave yes 00:57:07.91 Chris And again, I didn't notice this or really think about it too much until members of our community pointed this out. Once again, this guy, Mara, and it was like, yeah, the enemies are always countering you in this game. And I like have always mentally prepared for that while fighting enemies by never really sat down and thought about it was like, 00:57:24.69 Dave Yes. 00:57:25.52 Chris Huh, that does happen like all the time. 00:57:27.35 Dave Mm hmm. 00:57:29.54 Chris I've just adjusted to it. 00:57:31.32 Chris But yeah, that's something you don't see really in a lot of RPGs in general. But in Final Fantasy four, it's happening a lot. And if you're not prepared, you can get wrecked and it just happens occasionally. Doesn't happen with every enemy group or in every dungeon. It'll just come out of nowhere and be like, oh, you just want to attack this cat? OK, he's going to kill you in a hit. It's just one of those things. 00:57:52.80 Dave Mmhmm. 00:57:54.02 Jenny Yeah, there are a lot of, not a lot, there's a couple of boss battles where you can't use some of your characters just because the counter mechanic will hit you and kill you. So you have characters that don't do anything other than defend or you know use items because they're handicapped. 00:58:10.16 Dave Yeah, yeah, that counter mechanic is like one thing that helps the thing that I'm about to say, but I felt like in Final Fantasy IV, most battles played out exactly the same way. And I have a bit more tolerance for this in games like this than I do in, this is something I like shit on the battle system in Xenoblade Chronicles IV, because those battles are all exactly the same. Something about the turn-based, maybe the ATB is helping, I don't know. um The strategy of using elements and things like that ah helps out in Final Fantasy a little bit more, but I did find most battles would just be like, okay, Cecil's going to attack. This other character that's an attacker is going to attack. Rosa's gonna heal somebody, and then Rydia's gonna use whatever element this enemy is weak to. 00:59:08.41 Dave And that's basically how things go. Like at a certain point, Cecil can learn some spells. I rarely use them because Cecil should always just be attacking. And there is not a whole lot of times when you need to really shake up your strategy other than the counters. And then in some of the late game dungeons, you do actually have to be like, okay, I have a specific strategy for this one enemy because if I don't do it, they will wreck my shit no matter what my level is. So. For a lot of the game, it did fall in that pit, I think. But then later on, things get due things do get more interesting from a strategic ah perspective. 00:59:51.00 Jenny See, and I feel like there's at least two dungeons early on that require you to really rethink your entire strategy, where Cecil attacking isn't the most powerful in both those scenarios. So I think that kind of breaks it up, that helps break it up, where you have to really rethink you know how you're, how you're attacking, um how you're relying on your mages in your group, how you're rationing out you know your ethers. 01:00:01.47 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:00:13.19 Jenny And that becomes really important in at least two of the dungeons. 01:00:17.83 Chris especially when your most powerful mage can't have their magic points go above 90. 01:00:23.52 Jenny Yes. That's what I was thinking. 01:00:27.46 Dave Mm, that is something that is cool about this. And this is a, um I'll say it's a divisive thing out there. ah But so you say like your most powerful mage can't have a huge mana pool to pull from basically. And there's not a whole lot you can do to change that because there is no character customization in this game, like almost whatsoever. You can maybe get some additional effects from weapons you equip or something like that. Other than that, you're not changing anybody's class. You are not teaching people new moves. They learn moves like Pokemon learn moves, basically. um I personally, I actually love this. I think that it reinforces characters from the story perspective. I actually don't like it when characters can be anything at all because they lose a bit of characterization, in my opinion. 01:01:21.31 Dave This is one of those games where if a Black Mage joins your party, they will always be the Black Mage and they will probably be the only Black Mage for most of the time that they're with you. So I actually really like this, but I think that this is a divisive thing. So I would like to get your thoughts. 01:01:41.24 Chris I actually entirely agree with you. That's one of the things that was able to push Final Fantasy 4 above six for me, is because when I would go back and play six, especially later on, it's like, what's really the point of having 14 characters when all of them are just going to be Ultima machines? 01:01:59.09 Dave Yeah. 01:01:59.78 Chris Like, yeah. 01:01:59.81 Dave Six starts out really well with characters having defined roles and stuff, but at the end they all just use Ultima. You're right. 01:02:08.69 Chris Yeah. Or if they don't learn Ultima, or you can't cast Ultima with them, you're leaving them on the airship and they're worthless. Like, just go away, Umaru. You were, you were a novelty for a bit. But yeah, I mean, here it's like every character has a purpose. 01:02:19.32 Dave Yeah. 01:02:23.88 Chris Um, you know, kind can avoid damage through his jumps. Rosa can heal. Rydia causes a massive amount of damage with her spells. ah Cecil can is a physical attacker that can heal when needed, ah especially outside of battle, and edge dies. 01:02:41.58 Dave Yeah, that's correct. 01:02:42.70 Chris So you have ah you have a purpose for every single one of your characters here, and it's always good to it's always good to know. 01:02:49.45 Dave I'm glad that transfers over from the different versions too. Cause it just seems like ah for every five times the enemy attacks, four of them are going to edge and he's always, he's always going down. 01:02:59.98 Chris Yes. 01:03:01.88 Jenny Did the PSP version have the like special ah skills that they had, like Rosa has prey? um Okay, so they had that too. 01:03:09.10 Dave Yes. 01:03:10.97 Jenny So in the DS version, there is a little bit of the customization where through the augment system where you can trade off those so you can have you know twin casts between you know two other mages and stuff like that. 01:03:11.60 Dave Yeah. 01:03:22.68 Jenny So um there is a little bit of that customization, but not nearly as to like the other Final Fantasy games where everyone can be anything. your characters are in the roles that they're gonna be in. They're not gonna move out of that very much. 01:03:36.01 Dave Yeah. And the thing that I like, so you might think if you're listening and you never played, you might think like, oh, well, this is this is boring. I'm going to have the same party makeup the entire time. And that is not how it works out because people enter and leave your party with regularity throughout the entire game. 01:03:48.51 Chris Uh. 01:03:52.35 Jenny Mm-hmm. 01:03:53.30 Dave Your cast is always different. So, the number of characters you might have is different. So your strategies are based on who's with you rather than ah like building characters, we'll say. And I thought that this was an interesting way to, you know, if they're not going to do the ultimate customization route, which I understand that, well, the first Final Fantasy game, you just kind of make characters with their classes. And other games like this early era of the series have more build crafting and stuff like that. 01:04:29.18 Dave This game has this dedication to story and characterization. And so instead of making you build characters, they trade characters out all the time. And I thought, you know, If I'm not getting customization from that other angle, the game is tailoring challenges and boss fights based on who's in the party at the time, which is good enough for me. 01:04:53.20 Jenny And I think it really helps you appreciate the characters when they leave. You're like, oh man, I just lost you know my person who does this. What am I going to do now? 01:04:58.97 Dave Yeah. 01:04:59.78 Jenny So there's a lot of appreciation for the characters and their and their roles as they shuffle in and out of the party. 01:05:06.23 Dave Yeah, you can't leave. These are my two best black mages, like I need them, so. 01:05:10.68 Jenny Right? 01:05:11.97 Chris But you can't leave, Edward. I need you to hide. 01:05:16.50 Dave Please hide so they don't kill you like that is your use in combat just just hide behind that rock over there will tell you when it's over. 01:05:25.36 Chris Yeah. 01:05:28.87 Dave So, I guess like all told. it's not It's definitely not my favorite combat system. I like the stuff in six better just because characters feel more unique for the first half of the game. I like that part of it better, but this is something that I've heard criticism for, and it's definitely something that comes with the recommendation, I think. like If you love RPGs for building crafting and customizing characters and stuff, Final Fantasy IV is like not that game. It is 0% that game. 01:06:01.88 Dave But I love that, I like the dedication to the story. 01:06:07.67 Chris And really outside of one, it's the only Final Fantasy game like that. Aside from nine, nine has some level of customization, but yeah. 01:06:19.58 Dave yeah Yeah, with the equipment system, yeah. 01:06:22.99 Chris Yeah. 01:06:23.84 Dave But yeah, a lot of Final Fantasy games at some point turn into your characters can be anything, so just go wild with it. And I don't want my characters to be anything. That stresses me out. Like, tell me, Dave, this character is a white mage. They'll always be a white mage. Use them like a white mage. And I'm like, okay, sweet, let's go. 01:06:44.90 Chris Make it easy. 01:06:46.00 Dave Yeah. 01:06:48.67 Dave So we're going. So we're getting to the end of this non-spoiler section of the show. And so while I think I know the general idea when we ask what kind of recommendations would we give people about Final Fantasy IV, what type of person we would recommend the game to, I think i I know that both of you would recommend the game in general, but what type of person do you think that this game would appeal to most? um Jenny, I'll throw this to you first. 01:07:18.90 Jenny um I think that anyone who likes RPGs in general and wants to get more of the history of where they started, um especially the history of Final Fantasies in general and where all those, you know, standard tropes started and and standard mechanics, I think that's a great starting place for the history of Final Fantasy in general. 01:07:35.01 Dave Mm hmm. 01:07:37.10 Jenny um It set the standard on a lot of RPG elements that you still see today, and I think it's a really important game in history. 01:07:47.42 Chris I would recommend this game to anyone who's thinking about going back and playing retro games, but without all the inconveniences of the really mean kind of retro games, because this game is extremely accessible. And so if you're someone who has a slight interest in going back and playing those old Super Nintendo, Nintendo RPGs, this is the definitive place to start. I don't know. I know Jenny said I'm not trying to poop on this, but I don't know if this is the place where I would say a person should start their final fantasy journey. It's not a bad place to start, certainly. But I think this is more for people who are more ingrained to the old, old games and are looking for a good place to kind of get their feet wet with an RPG experience. 01:08:32.14 Chris far more than Mystic Quest ah anyway. So ah yeah, this is that kind of game. So a traditional JRPG fan or just someone who's curious about how games used to be back in the day. 01:08:45.41 Dave Yeah, I think it's a pretty easy recommendation for Final Fantasy fans who haven't played it yet, whether, you know, no matter how far they've gone back, I don't really see, you know, unless you only played 16 and you won action games or something like that, then, you know, this is not that it's very different. But, you know, if you if your first Final Fantasy was six or seven or 10 or something like that, then I think this one's a pretty easy one to jump into and see and I do think that that historical element to it like Jenny said is really easy to see as well because you'll see like this is a thing that they're trying and like in my opinion it's not quite there yet but it's still pretty good um and the 01:09:31.69 Dave Quick pacing helps with people who might think that these games are too slow or too grindy or something like that. So I think this game does appeal to a lot of different people. you I mean, you just have to be up for a JRPG and this type of combat and this type of, you know, overworld and random encounters and all the things that come with things like ah things of this era, I guess we'll say. But With that being said, there's not a whole lot of caveats to ah recommending FF4. I had a great time with this, and so it's an easy one to say, like, you will probably have a good time too, as long as you don't hate the idea of playing a game like this. 01:10:03.13 Jenny Thanks. 01:10:12.31 Dave so ah recommendations from all three of us. So before we get into spoilers, it's time for a little bit of housekeeping and time for us to talk about the things that we make. So ah Chris, I will kick you first. Tell the people about retro hangover and everything that you guys have going on over there. 01:10:32.10 Chris Yeah, I've been here before so he hasn't listened to those previous episodes. Go back and listen to those that I was here with Dave on. I know a signalis was one amongst I think one other just not at the tip of my mind. 01:10:44.13 Dave Yeah, spec ops the line and the the retro game evaluation roundtable episode. 01:10:44.64 Chris I should have come prepared. Yes, yes. 01:10:52.29 Chris All great times I had on the show, all great episodes that go back into the backlog for those tales and 01:10:59.40 Dave That's right. There be tales in yonder backlog. 01:11:02.75 Chris There there does be. ah But if you want to know what I do on my own podcast, I have a show over there with my partner, Shane, where we talk about games that are 10 years or older, sometimes it is console retrospectives and people retrospectives. 01:11:04.42 Dave i 01:11:17.54 Chris We have all sorts of other shows over there, like a top five list and ah the King of Games, which Dave is part of, ah which is a lot of fun and is either it's probably when this is coming out. 01:11:31.12 Dave September, I think. 01:11:33.35 Chris Ooh, that's going to be close. ah which may be Which is probably coming close to the end of its run, but you should go check that out. Dave does a fantastic job, and you might be hearing more from Dave in the future with the game games. And Dave was also on our show recently with a Shovel Knight, well, semi semi-recently at this point. 01:11:46.76 Dave Yeah. yeah 01:11:52.64 Chris And that has got nothing but praise and acclaim, especially because of Dave's presence. and how fantastic he was there. So if you like Dave, go check out the Shovel Knight episode. But if you want to know where you can find those things, just head over to LinkTR.EE slash retro hangover. And just all the links to all the things are there. It's pretty easy to figure out. So I won't go over the specifics. But yeah, I would love to see you as part of our community. Would love to hear your thoughts on the show over at that link. And once again, thanks, Dave, for having me on here today. 01:12:21.84 Dave Of course, always a pleasure to have you on and um this was a Final Fantasy 4 was a game that we had ah picked out a long time ago ah to have you and Jenny on here today ah to talk about. So yeah, lots of crossover between Tales from the Backlog and Retro Hangover. I feel like I mentioned the monthly review crew in the Retro Hangover Discord often on this podcast as the reason I'm playing some games. 01:12:45.56 Chris Mm hmm. 01:12:47.48 Dave ah So there is that too. And now go check out the King of Games 96, which should be you know winding down to the big finale soon, we'll say, ah if not already. But a lot of ah good stuff in that tournament and of course on the regular show as well. I was also on the show for ah Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Metal Gear Solid in years past. 01:13:07.95 Chris Mm hmm. 01:13:12.20 Dave So people can go check those out too. And Jenny, ah your turn to tell people about your writing. 01:13:20.76 Jenny So I am a Final Fantasy IV fanfic writer, big surprise. um I have about 350,000 words across 17 stories. um That includes two novel-length stories, one-shots, like short stories of varying sizes, ah two travel collections, which are short 100-word stories, and then two podfics, actually. um You can find my work at archiveofourown.com under the username Jenneh, that's J-E-N-N-E-H, like Forrest Gump. um My podfics are on Spotify and Amazon Music under the podcast name Wordlessly. And my current project is a novel, A Theme of Love, um and it follows Kain in before and after, or during the games event, so it follows his 01:14:09.15 Jenny his narrative story so that's what I do you can find me in the discord servers all of them under Jenny um and I've heard that if you talk about Final Fantasy 4 I will eventually be summoned so you know lots of ways to get in touch with me if you want to talk Final Fantasy 4 that's that's my thing 01:14:20.70 Dave Yep. yeah Fantastic. 01:14:27.05 Dave Yeah, exactly. So again, no um no surprise why you got an invite to come on and talk about Final Fantasy IV in particular. 01:14:35.57 Dave So yeah, people can definitely go check out all of the writing if you're interested in checking it out. 01:14:40.17 Dave Jenny's a very good writer and a good podcaster. like I was very surprised when I listened. And I was like, oh, this sounds not like somebody's first podcast that they've done, ah which is always a nice surprise when you listen to somebody's first. 01:14:46.75 Jenny Oh, thank you. 01:14:49.19 Chris Yeah. 01:14:53.05 Dave I know my first podcasts do not sound like that. So um people can go down in the show notes to find everything that Jenny is doing and everything that Chris is doing. Lots of very worthwhile things to go check out. So ah for me personally, the same ways to support podcasts as always, the same calls to action. ratings and reviews I think are something that I wanna push for. I would really love it, especially if you keep coming back to the podcast. I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and the shows on YouTube also, which YouTube lets you do comments and all that shit. ah But you can do all of that. It's really helpful for people finding the podcast. So if someone goes in their podcast app and types Final Fantasy IV, 01:15:44.90 Dave They might find this episode and that's what we want. We want people to find it. You can also join the Discord server and join the conversation about games on the show, about the podcast, about what games you're playing, and then everything else that an online community has to offer. Like a bunch of really cool people to talk about, you know, what movies you're watching, talk about your pets, things like that. ah We have an awesome community. Jenny and Chris are members of the community, beloved members. and We would love to have you join too. There is an invite link in the show notes. You can also listen to my other show. It is a top three list podcast called A Top Three Podcast that Chris has been a guest on on a particularly chaotic and fun episode. 01:16:29.10 Dave So that shows a good time. It's a comedy show. It's very different from this one. And then last but not least, if you would like to support the show monetarily, you can do that at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. Every month I run polls for a game that I'll cover on the show. You can vote. You can get bonus episodes. I have a bonus retro gaming series called tales from the way backlog, uh, that final fantasy four is old enough for, but, uh, made it on the main show, but there's a lot of, uh, over a year of those monthly episodes at this point. So that is a lot of talk about me. I'm going to catch my breath. We're going to listen to a bit of music. And when we come back, it's full spoiler time for final fantasy four. 01:20:52.60 Dave All right, we're back in its full spoiler time for Final Fantasy 4. And as always, it's not going to necessarily be a chronological walk through the story. So this is like, you know, the spoilers are free to fly, however they may come out. So again, if you don't want to be spoiled, please ah Put this podcast down, back slowly away from the podcast and go play the game or something like that and come back. So ah let's start with the most famous thing about the story. Happens fairly early on in the story and it is the change that Cecil undergoes. 01:21:31.27 Dave And so you start out the story, Cecil is a dark knight. We said he's done some evil shit. I got the impression that that was part of the deal of being a dark knight was you're going to go out and do some evil shit. Is that right? 01:21:45.65 Chris Or you just in the Final Fantasy series, you just see Final Fantasy 3, where I think it was the first time I was introduced, you just change your character to it. And that's all there is to it. I mean, like, you get a, you get a cool little sprite, but that's apparently what it is, is that they use the power of darkness 01:21:56.82 Dave Yeah. 01:22:02.53 Chris in order to, whatever that might be, in order to gain power and strength. It's very much focused on physical strength, physical ability, ability, in order to become more powerful. And that's what I inferred from certain parts of the plot. Jenny, I know you're more keyed into that than probably I am. So ah specifically, like, is that pretty much what's happening? 01:22:25.09 Jenny Yeah, so I interpreted his darkness ability is that he because in some versions of the game you hurt yourself in order to produce the skill. So I always interpreted that as like a self harm thing that you have to kind of hate yourself in order to produce this darkness. And that's kind of where Cecil or Cecil's power comes from is that of his own hatred. um and that the king encouraged him to go into this, this skill, this power um and use it. Whereas like the king of Fubul tells him, you know, you can't rely on, you can't eat, beat evil with darkness, you know, no matter how powerful your darkness is. 01:23:01.31 Dave Mm hmm. 01:23:02.35 Jenny And I think that's kind of an interesting theme throughout the whole story. 01:23:02.90 Dave Hmm hmm. 01:23:06.11 Jenny We get it with Cecil in the beginning, we get it with Tellah, we get it with Rydia in the beginning too. We get it with Edge where, you know, these really powerful, detrimental emotions that are really negative emotions create power, but how stable is that power? 01:23:23.04 Dave And it was like the main thing, it was like the main thing. 01:23:23.18 Chris I was going to say, oh, sorry. 01:23:30.35 Dave And it was like the main thing that I took away from the game from a thematic perspective is this theme of ah redemption that so many characters go through as well. And Cecil's the first one. And um then we move on to other characters kind of redeeming their past acts. We're trying to. Some of them are incomplete when the game ends, which I think is nice. 01:23:51.90 Jenny Yeah. 01:23:53.46 Dave But with Cecil, what happens is eventually he realizes, you know, he's been tricked. This whole thing is a sham. And he does not like the things that he's done, probably doesn't like the fact that the darkness ability, the source of his power hurts him, um which I thought that was another awesome thing. It's in the PSP version, another one of those things where gameplay mechanics reinforce what's going on in the story with the characters. Ah So he goes on a pilgrimage up Mount Ordeals, renounces his old ways and becomes a paladin. And again, the changing of a character class is a major story moment. 01:24:33.80 Dave I knew about this before this ah before playing this, and I think that it's not necessarily like a giant spoiler at this point. 01:24:40.42 Chris Thank you. 01:24:43.33 Dave 20 plus years later, 30 plus years later, ah math is rough at an hour and 20 into a podcast, but um yeah. 01:24:54.01 Chris I wish it was 20 years later. 01:24:56.12 Jenny and Me too. I'm getting older just listening. 01:24:59.03 Dave What was surprising to me was how quickly this happens. i So I knew this was a thing in the game. I knew, okay, at some point Cecil's gonna turn into a paladin. It's gonna be this big story moment. He is, you know, overcoming the evil things he's done in his past. and forgiving himself and things like that. And he's starting on this new journey. And I was like, okay, this is gonna happen at hour 20. No, it's like, it's like hour three. It's very early in the story. And that was very surprising to me. 01:25:34.82 Chris but But going back to what I alluded to in the non-spoiler section, if you sit down and you start talking about it, you I think even people who played it and got done with the game and they're trying to talk about it again, you know just kind of ah review their experience with the game. I think most people on their initial playthrough, if they're not paying attention to the clock or anything like that, be like, yeah, that happened like six hours in. That's when that happened. 01:26:00.06 Dave Yeah. 01:26:00.22 Chris and you And then you have to tell them, no, that was two and a half. That's how much stuff is packed into those two and a half hours. so it feels natural. um And it's also probably one of the coolest moments because you have to go into a battle against yourself. in order to cement that class change. And the way you cement it is through atonement. It's not through aggression. And that is a very unique way of having player input affect the character's journey, which is something you typically don't have in very story-based games. 01:26:41.38 Chris Or even like games in general, if things change, the game just kind of does it for you. And the game is like, 01:26:45.86 Dave Mmhmm. 01:26:47.55 Chris No, you have to, this is Cecil's journey and you are Cecil. So what does Cecil have to do? And I think that's, that's extremely cool. Like if you were the player getting it, then it makes that moment even more special. 01:27:02.72 Jenny And I thought that not completely wiping the slate clean and being like, oh, he's a paladin. We're starting all over. you know none ah None of the past stuff matters anymore. That he has to defeat his past by accepting it, by acknowledging, yes, I did these things. and i i'm capable of doing these things but i'm not going to be that person anymore and i think it's such an interesting mechanic that when you fight the dark knight version of yourself at mount ordeals you know you you you don't win like you said by aggression you you just wait it out and the dark knight defeats himself using darkness because that's taking away as his hp and i thought that was such a fun like interesting really thoughtful mechanic about how you know you can't you can't just pretend all of those bad things didn't happen or that It doesn't matter because you didn't do them anymore. 01:27:39.19 Dave Mm hmm. 01:27:48.87 Jenny you know You're not doing them anymore. It matters because you did them. So you have to accept that past version of yourself. 01:27:56.05 Dave Yeah. 01:27:57.49 Chris And in the Super Nintendo version, unfortunately, if you don't you may not get that because Dark Knight Cecil doesn't have the darkness ability. So you would never know that what he was doing might be causing him to lose hit points. You're just like, what's this wave attack that comes that keeps coming at me? I don't know what this is. But yeah, that's the one thing that's interesting that I picked up on is Once the battle is over, Cecil doesn't hate his past self. It's more of an acknowledgement. 01:28:27.75 Chris He's not disowning it. Much like Jenny says, he's recognizing what he is. It's not a denial. 01:28:35.48 Dave Mm hmm. 01:28:36.56 Chris It's not a removal. It's not an abandonment. It's like, this is me. This is who I am. And this is who I want to be. But you're still me, which is also, I think, ah ah stroke of brilliant writing. 01:28:48.50 Dave Yeah, so i don't I don't mean to jump too far ahead and leave this conversation entirely, ah but there is a prophecy that's brought up later in the game where they talk about one who is of both darkness and light, and that's that's Cecil, right? 01:29:07.46 Jenny Yeah. 01:29:07.53 Chris He brought balance to the force. 01:29:09.85 Dave He did, yes, exactly. 01:29:10.00 Jenny but Yeah, he did. 01:29:11.66 Dave but So it's just like the two of you were saying, like one who is of both darkness and light, that darkness is still a part of him, even though he went through this change. And I thought one thing that was cool, another of these ah gamifying story moments, gamifying is the wrong word, but reinforcing it with ah RPG mechanics is when he becomes a paladin, he starts at level one again. So it shows you, ah because you were maybe level 15 or something like that when you did this, it shows you the player like, oh, okay, we have a long journey ahead of Cecil on this new path that he's walking. So this was really good. 01:29:53.91 Dave um And it's like emblematic of that thing I talked about earlier, where if this story were told in a new game in 2001, this would probably happen later in the game, or this would take longer to like, go through this process. It would not happen at hour two and a half or hour three. It would be a longer ordeal that Cecil would go through. There would be maybe more self-loathing before this 01:30:26.17 Dave um And this is what I meant when I was talking about how a lot more is put on you, the player, to be like, yes, this is what's going on because you don't really get a window into Cecil's mind that often. in the whole game in general, but this is one of the major things with him, where it's just like, okay, I see what they're doing here, and I see how it would be different if this game came out 10 years later, and how the storytelling approach would be a little bit different. 01:30:59.26 Dave As it is, it moves by really quickly, and it is like sometimes brought up later on in the story but then you're on to other people's things and you're on to rescuing Rosa and then you're on to going after Golbez and going to the moon and there there isn't really time to reflect on this stuff so this is yeah 01:31:21.79 Chris I would say that that's kind of a negative here, is that Cecil's development pretty much ends after the transformation. There are plot revelations that involve him, like him being Golbez's brother, him being an alien technically. 01:31:34.61 Dave Yeah. 01:31:38.58 Chris These things are revealed to the player, but in terms of his actual development, it pretty much ceases at this point. 01:31:48.25 Jenny Yeah, I wish they had spent a little bit more time with him, like, get you know, dealing with his past after becoming a paladin and that he's still struggling with it. I think that would have been a really great addition to the story, but that's what fanfictions for us. 01:32:00.12 Chris I agree. Exactly. 01:32:02.08 Dave Yeah, exactly. yeah I think that part of it, like you can infer some of that when you start to see when you learn about his relationship with Golbez and you see how he reacts to learning that Golbez is his brother. like it. It very ah obviously shakes him up and they don't portray it in a way where you're like, Oh, yeah, he's really going through it. It's just like he can't talk about it. Like he doesn't know how to handle it. And they express that in the game by just giving him the dot dot dot speech bubble whenever there's an opportunity to confront it basically. 01:32:39.56 Jenny and the sad sprite, he looks down. 01:32:39.94 Dave So like you Yeah, you can put those pieces together in your head. It's just another example of, you know, a later Final Fantasy game would give you entire cutscenes of ah Cecil going through it. 01:32:55.73 Chris Well, it's, it's also hard to relate to Cecil in a lot of ways because you don't know how he feels about family in general. You never have heard him mention anything about family or how he feels about family members, be it a mother, father, sister, or a brother throughout the entire game. So when that revelation does come to the forefront, it's like, yeah, he's your brother, but he's been trying to murder you. 01:33:13.30 Dave Mm hmm. 01:33:18.93 Dave Yeah. 01:33:18.99 Chris So ah why is this important? 01:33:20.49 Jenny That's a common theme for her. 01:33:22.35 Chris like did you have a brother? Did you lose a brother? Have you lost family members? Have you felt alone in your entire life? And these aren't things that I don't feel are fully developed. So if you're going into this and you're like, why would he care that it's his brother just because it's his brother and maybe That's a cultural difference. I don't think it's that big of a cultural difference because you know in most cultures and societies, we have very close familial bonds. But like that if he's never known, he's had any family members his entire life, and that's not expressed at all. The revelation that he had a brother, I don't know why. It should assume that that should have an immediate impact. 01:34:03.78 Dave I think the thing that helped with that for me personally was and this is not told in the game this is me coming to this on my own but like maybe he sees once he learns that this is his family and Golbez is the the evil one the antagonist for 95% of the game, just like most JRPGs in Final Fantasy games do. ah And Golbez is the evil one. And I think there's even a thing where they say like Golbez was chosen because of the darkness inside of him and how easily he would be controlled in this way by the ultimate big bad. And maybe Cecil sees 01:34:48.47 Dave You know, he has that darkness also and he sees that in Golbez a little bit. And so maybe that's kind of like the ripping off that scab of like that past life a little bit. But again, you don't get that directly told or you don't get Cecil ah thinking about it. You just get, he hangs his head and can't talk whenever there's an opportunity to. So it's on you to do some of that lifting. 01:35:17.01 Chris I also think the game is more geared towards a younger audience that might have those family members. 01:35:22.94 Dave Mm hmm. 01:35:23.19 Chris So they kind of assume that a younger person or a person with family members would fill in that gap and that being a big revelation. that could have been a thought process in writing it, which would be understandable. ah You only have so many bytes of data to fill in plot points and you still have a 20 hour game on a brand new system. So you might not be able to get into those finer details like you might want to. 01:35:48.06 Dave Yeah. One thing I do like about Cecil's characterization after this is that Cecil is not a paladin therefore perfect after this. He's still like he makes rash decisions and is gonna rush off into danger and disregards what ah his partner Rosa thinks about a lot of situations and is just very like, nope, I'm going to do this, I'm in control here, you should do what I say here, I'm going to the fucking moon, you stay behind, you know, stuff like that. So I do like that even though he switches to a paladin, you know, this this holy ah character class, 01:36:32.34 Dave That doesn't mean that he's all of a sudden this great person. He's still the same person inside. 01:36:40.19 Chris Yeah, he's still human or Lunarian human. 01:36:41.91 Dave Yeah. 01:36:42.23 Jenny sort of. 01:36:43.86 Dave this Sort of. 01:36:44.07 Jenny The moon boy And I think the whole theme of forgiveness comes into play too because what I think Cecil is struggling with is forgiving Golbez for doing all the terrible things that he did. 01:36:44.68 Chris yeah 01:36:45.12 Dave Yeah. 01:36:58.69 Jenny He was able to forgive Kain twice and you know he in some versions of the game of FF4 they refer to Kain and Cecil as being raised as brothers. So I can see where you know having one brother betray you and then finding out that your other brother also betrayed you. I think that's a lot to handle at the moment. And I think with time you know and a little bit more time in the game, Cecil would have addressed those feelings. 01:37:19.14 Dave Oh yeah. 01:37:24.74 Jenny But you know him coming around to forgive Golbez is a big ask you know with everything that's happened. So I think him just even acknowledging Golbez as his brother in the end is a big step toward that forgiveness for Cecil. 01:37:40.35 Dave Yeah. 01:37:41.26 Chris I think there's a lot of that too when you talk about his feelings towards Rosa, because when he was a dark knight, he was extremely dismissive of her. You see this in the opening scene, which even when you get to the opening scene, even though Rosa is a high priestess and everything like that, it's kind of breaking conventions because it highly suggests at least outside of the North American Super Nintendo version, that they are actively lovers at the time. So when you see that first scene where he's all mopey and he's down and he's feeling horrible, she's coming into comfort him and he's pretty much like, I'll go fuck off. I don't want to deal with you. 01:38:17.49 Chris And so at the end, he is probably feeling that his atonement means that he has to continue to protect her and keep her safe, where she's like, no, I'm here with you when she goes with him to the moon. I don't necessarily see that as him having a negative character trait, but more coming to terms with himself and what's important in his own life and what those people mean to him in those situations. Cause I really do think the same with Rydia, where he failed to protect her. And even though she's become a party member, he still feels like that's owed to her. And kind is right around with him for the ride. And he's like, well, here's this dumb ninja dude, screw him. He can do whatever, but like leaving them behind is just. 01:39:00.55 Chris It feels like that's part of his duty and part of his talent. 01:39:04.42 Dave I like that scene a lot when Cecil's gonna go barge off on his own and, um you know, the Rydia and Rosa are like, okay, we're going too, of course, we're we're we're all a group, we're doing this together. And Cecil's like, nope, you're staying here. I'm going by myself and they're like, Yeah, sure. And then they basically trick him into going along with him. 01:39:25.52 Jenny hahaha 01:39:28.43 Dave I thought that was a great scene, especially because I didn't feel like Rosa had a whole lot of agency as a character up until that point. And then that happened. And I was like, finally Rosa gets to make a decision. Let's go. 01:39:43.53 Chris which is not Which is not typical in games of this time. It was definitely not, which was cool. 01:39:47.94 Dave Yeah. 01:39:50.39 Chris It wasn't anime, but definitely not games. 01:39:50.42 Dave yeah 01:39:53.51 Jenny I was very outraged when he tried to get rid of them. I'm like, those are your support classes. What are you doing? So it was, it was nice to see them get back on. 01:39:59.08 Dave Yeah, exactly. She's a summoner, dude. Like she does more damage in combat than you do. Bring her along. 01:40:06.09 Jenny Right. What are you thinking? 01:40:07.17 Chris Yeah. You know, the best, you know, the best cure spell you have is cura, right? 01:40:07.88 Dave Yeah. 01:40:11.03 Chris Like that might restore 200 hit points. 01:40:11.37 Dave Yeah. 01:40:13.97 Chris You have like 2,500, you do the math. 01:40:18.37 Jenny Right. 01:40:18.68 Dave Yeah. 01:40:21.85 Dave I also, I think this is a good ah part to just talk about their stories a little bit too. Um, specifically with, uh, Rydia I thought was a little bit too quick to forgive Cecil and just like join up on the plan a little bit. And again, it's one of those things that I, I feel like a broken record saying it, but you know, if this game came out in 2001, you might get more of it. 01:40:41.72 Jenny Thank you. 01:40:46.78 Dave you know her side of things and why she is so quick to join up. And like at the beginning, she's a little kid, she can't live by herself, so she kind of reluctantly goes along. And Cecil is definitely trying to atone for what he did to her family and her hometown and things like that. It just felt like it was a little bit quick ah where she was like, down with Cecil as a person after everything that he did. And there wasn't really any part where like, she makes him fully confront what he did to her and how he like, 01:41:28.57 Dave you know ruined her life basically ah happened pretty quickly and then like for the rest of the game she's just well she's out of the party for a little while but even before that she's she's she seems to be on board with the plans 01:41:45.17 Chris I think Rydia's early development is kind of bad. 01:41:50.80 Chris I'll admit that. I mean, and did Cecil ruin her life? technically, yes. ah Was it really Cecil? No, it was more of the king and he was just following orders. He didn't know he was going to blow up a town. 01:42:02.60 Dave Right. 01:42:04.46 Chris And an adult radio would understand that but as like a six year old radio, you just killed my mother didn't know that it was her mother. They just had to get to the next point like this isn't This isn't personal. It's just business. And then getting to the town, like, let's drop off this package. Oh, no. Blows up the town. ah Bad times. So, like, adult radio would probably understand that. A kid's not going to understand that. Not going to have that perspective. at all, like whatsoever. 01:42:35.70 Chris So just for her to turn on a dime once he saves her from three soldiers barging in says, let's take the girl. Like it's kind of like she's kind of in a rock in a hard place, like no matter what, she's kind of screwed over. So for her to just trust Cecil Cecil implicitly. Yeah. Told you I'd swap. 01:42:53.42 Dave you made up a hidden third pronunciation. 01:42:54.91 Jenny You made him. 01:42:56.85 Chris Yeah, see Esil. I'll come up, see if I can get more. But her to just turn on a dime like that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And can I see that being a legitimate criticism if you really want to dive into the narrative, which is fair. And the other part is when and she just like, hey, we need to learn fire. And she's like, I don't want to, but you should. OK, fire. um i I think that was a little off-putting because of just the immediacy of what she just says. Yeah, it's fine. I can learn how to burn things now, even though I have massive PTSD, but I just overcame that in the span of 30 seconds. 01:43:33.66 Dave Yeah. 01:43:35.65 Jenny I think a lot could be said about the tunnel vision also applying to child Rydia in this situation where there's, you know, there's a goal and there's a task and it's a bit easier for her to blame Golbez and be like, Golbez did this, he did this, you know, to my family, to my village, and it's a bit easier not necessarily to forgive Cecil right away, but to accept that, you know, she's going on his journey with him to stop who really did this. so i think as a child that's really easy for her to kind of like convince herself and then you know she she grows up in the fame march time passes you you know she has time in her entire childhood to kind of process what happened to her so i think that her rejoining the party really really whether she 01:44:15.70 Jenny outright says, I forgive you, Cecil, which she doesn't in the game. And I feel like if she did, um we would have seen it, you know, as part of the gameplay. But I think that's something that she did for herself, that she, you know, had to forgive Cecil in order to move on with what she needed to do, and which is to stop Galvez. 01:44:33.95 Chris I mean, ah in a way, she does it by saving the party at that moment, so ah which is an amazing scene. 01:44:38.45 Dave Yeah. 01:44:39.03 Jenny It's my favorite scene. 01:44:40.69 Chris One of the best scenes in the entire game. 01:44:41.29 Dave Yeah. 01:44:41.42 Jenny Yeah. It's so good. 01:44:43.11 Chris I think it is the best scene in the entire game, how it's scripted. 01:44:43.11 Dave Mm hmm. 01:44:45.83 Chris Oh, it's so good. 01:44:46.20 Dave ah yeah 01:44:47.53 Chris But ah with the way she does it and the fact that she does it with the mist dragon. 01:44:47.64 Jenny So good. 01:44:54.19 Chris I think that to me that says I forgive you, but we got to kick this dude's ass like that's the most important thing right now. 01:44:59.38 Jenny Exactly. 01:45:01.36 Chris It's such a good scene. 01:45:01.32 Dave Yeah. 01:45:03.14 Jenny I gotta ask, in the PSP version, when Golbez is defeated and he goes and gets the crystal anyway, does he turn into a hand and like crawl over or does he just mysteriously grab it and go? 01:45:03.67 Dave Yeah. 01:45:16.68 Dave I think he turns into a hand. 01:45:18.78 Jenny Yes, it's like the best part. 01:45:19.35 Dave I think so. Yeah. 01:45:20.45 Jenny It's so ridiculous and it's so silly, but I love it. 01:45:20.98 Dave Very fucking weird. Yeah. 01:45:24.15 Chris and they all just watch it. 01:45:24.81 Jenny Some of the newer versions. Yes! 01:45:27.45 Dave Yeah. 01:45:28.33 Jenny The whole thing is ridiculous. 01:45:28.48 Dave It's, it's not like, yeah, it's like, dude, you're a paladin. Go stab that fucking thing. 01:45:34.32 Jenny Right? 01:45:34.67 Dave Like, come on. 01:45:36.66 Jenny They changed it in some of the later versions, but the hand version is just the best. 01:45:40.26 Chris It's just like crawling along. 01:45:45.03 Dave yeah it's like a zelda enemy yeah 01:45:46.67 Chris Yeah. I want I want to see Square animate that just so I can get an explanation why everyone would just like it's a hand should we stop that I want to see what it does oh it's running away 01:45:57.28 Dave Yeah. Oh, it grabbed the crystal and it's leaving. Okay. Whoops. Glad we got to see it though. Yeah. ah yeah Final Fantasy IV remake. ah Let's greenlight it just so we can see this in photo realistic 3D. 01:46:16.29 Dave um I think that like the both of you were talking about with like the different ways that you can read how Rydia processes all of this and you know comes to at least a state where maybe she does or doesn't forgive Cecil, but she definitely joins up on the quest even but She could have just stayed there and not joined them. She made the decision to join them. She made the decision to follow him to the moon and all of that. Like I think that both of these reads are possible because the game doesn't tell you any of that. You are just left to kind of fill in those blanks by yourself, which 01:46:54.93 Dave you know could be good could be could leave you wanting just a little bit more to you know want the creator to just be like to just tell me like yo how does she feel about Cecil and you don't really get that other than she's down to take down Golbez which is fair enough. And forgiveness is a thing that a lot of characters have to grapple with throughout the entire story. ah so And it's kind of messy for a lot of the characters here ah to deal with too. It's not like ah just a series of people forgiving each other. um It's a series of people with really complicated situations and some forgive the others and some of them don't. And I think that that's good at the very least. 01:47:41.81 Dave um Speaking of forgiveness, we have not talked much about Kain, but ah the reason that he did not factor into a lot of the discussion you know in these other characters' stories, and especially the first half of the game, is because ah he's gone after that earthquake um in the Mist Village, I think it's called. um He's separated from Cecil and then he comes back as a crony of Golbez. So he betrays you. 01:48:12.53 Dave multiple times in the game. um He's constantly in and out of the party, not in the way that other characters do, but in the way that he joins, you forgive him, all is well, then he betrays you, he leaves, then he comes back, he joins, all is well. And it's this repeated thing. And you end up finding out that it's because he's being mind controlled. by Golbez for the early duration, at least maybe like the first half until they hit Golbez with the meteor and it breaks it. um And what I like about this is the characters are pretty quick to forgive kind. Cecil especially is like, no, you're my brother. Come back. I love you. Come back. 01:48:58.09 Dave ah Kai never forgives himself. And this is something that continues throughout the entire game. And one of the last scenes of the game is him going to Mount Ordeals to try to work on himself. 01:49:04.49 Chris Yeah. 01:49:12.43 Dave So like, this is unresolved on purpose. And that's something I really like is that we have a lot of, you know, a lot of games. We will praise a lot of games for neatly wrapping up every single storyline before the end. And this one is not. It's left unfinished on purpose. ah Does this continue in the years after, Jenny? 01:49:35.80 Jenny It does, but I wasn't super satisfied with where it went. 01:49:37.96 Chris Ooh, their faces. 01:49:40.14 Dave Okay, fair enough. But so just for this game, Final Fantasy IV, I really liked how um we go on this journey. Some characters are quick to forgive, but then Kain is the one who's not ready to forgive himself. Even after you take down the big bad and all of that, he's still gotta go work on himself. And I thought this was really good. 01:50:05.38 Chris Yeah, so much to the point and that's important because that's the wedding between Cecil and Rosa. 01:50:10.48 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:50:11.16 Chris And it's more explained that not only is he working on himself, he is so beset by the actions that transpires to the game. He doesn't feel like he can show his face around them like that's how down and out he is about himself, even though everyone's more than willing to accept him. 01:50:29.43 Dave Yeah. 01:50:29.51 Chris that lack of self forgiveness or lack of self acceptance, something that Cecil was able to do. 01:50:34.09 Dave Mm 01:50:36.95 Chris ah Because not only are they brothers, they are rivals like friendly rivals, which is the reason that Golbez can drive that wedge. 01:50:41.85 Dave hmm. 01:50:45.26 Chris So like Cecil can overcome himself, his darkness, his darker side. I need to do the same. And I wasn't able to do that, which almost caused everything to be in ruin. So Yeah, that's really an aspect of the ending that I don't know why it just clicked so well until now, even though I've seen it a million times. But yeah, that's a very important part of Kain's arc. I just mentioned Kain as a very important part of the arc. 01:51:16.37 Chris So damn. 01:51:16.34 Dave One point for Jenny. 01:51:18.11 Jenny may And I think a detail to keep in mind is that Kain does admit that he had some autonomy over what he was doing while being mind controlled and that he was 01:51:18.60 Chris yeah 01:51:27.66 Dave Yes. 01:51:29.91 Jenny ah prompted because he wanted to keep Rosa nearby that he has feelings for her and he's jealous of Cecil and you know all these things were inspiring him to do these horrible things so I think that that struggle with knowing that he wanted to do some of the things that he did or all of the things that he did um is is a big thing that he needs to forgive himself for, having those impulses. You know We all have those impulses, but acting on them is the important part, and Kain needs to learn not to, you know, act on those now that Golbez isn't controlling him anymore, presumably. 01:52:02.88 Dave Yeah. 01:52:04.41 Chris Now, I do have a question for you, Jenny, because you're very seeped in the lore. I've always heard the description between Cecil Rosa and kind being a love triangle. I've always seen it more of kind of being a creeper because in the game roses, it's like unrequited love. Like she is just like, hey, you're you're cool. 01:52:25.55 Jenny Yeah. 01:52:28.04 Chris You're like my, my, my boyfriend's friends. You're awesome. It's cool. We can hang out every once in a while. and He's just like, you know, just sitting and it's kind of like that. 01:52:37.03 Jenny You. 01:52:39.49 Dave Haha. 01:52:40.70 Chris That's how I see it. 01:52:42.47 Jenny Well, my ongoing theory on Kain is that he's a very confused bisexual boy and he likes both Cecil and Rosa and he's very confused by the whole thing. 01:52:49.67 Chris Mmm. 01:52:50.52 Jenny So that's where I come from front with it. So he doesn't quite know what to do. So that's where the love triangle for me comes in is that it's kind of on all sides. So. 01:53:00.76 Dave I see. I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that, people describe it as a love triangle, Chris. Cause I, I got the same feeling that you did is that Cecil and Rosa are very clearly a couple. And then kind of just on the other, on the outside of that, wishing that he were in Cecil's place. 01:53:23.44 Chris I actually like Jenny's theory more where sometimes it feels like kind wants to be in Rosa's place. 01:53:30.93 Chris ah There's a lot of those vibes too. 01:53:33.32 Dave Mm hmm. 01:53:34.61 Jenny And there's a lot of like, does Kain want Rosa because he wants Rosa or does he want her because she is Cecil's possession and he wants the things that Cecil has? So that's a lot of the, does he really have feelings for her or is it something else? Is it inspired by something else? 01:53:51.99 Dave Yep. Certainly interesting to think about there. Um, let's see other characters. So, all right. So the other characters, um, to talk about, I, I had edge with his own section, although I'm not sure he deserves his own section. Um, edge is, uh, a fun character. And, um, his whole thing is that he's a prince and he's kind of like, just trying to avoid his duty as a prince, just trying to have good times, I guess, and just not have the responsibility and things like that. So he is, um, 01:54:27.98 Dave part of his arc is I guess just accepting that responsibility but this is a lot of me assuming things because you kind of learn a little bit about Edge when he joins the party then he's in the party and he's just a guy in the party for most of the game and then at the end it's like Edge went back to the throne and I was like oh yeah that's right he was uh yeah he's royal family cool um 01:54:51.96 Chris Prince of Eblon, which is such a, it sucks so much because if you look at what ninjas do in Final Fantasy III, being dual welding superclass. 01:54:54.87 Dave And then like Chris said earlier, his main contribution to the party throughout most of the game is dying in combat. 01:55:11.02 Dave Yeah. 01:55:13.47 Chris And now I could imagine if you're like ah a Japanese child in, in 1990, I think it came out in 1990, whenever, when it came out in Japan, because it always comes out earlier, when it comes out first and you're like, oh, wow, I'm getting a ninja in my party, just like I played on the Famicom and how powerful they are. And it's like you died by Lamia, critical hit that you're like, oh, he, her her um, yeah, he kind of, yeah, he kind of sucks. 01:55:41.01 Dave Ninjas are kind of lame. 01:55:42.64 Jenny His HP is so low, you know? 01:55:45.03 Chris Yeah, it's ridiculous. And he has no armor. 01:55:46.55 Dave Yeah. 01:55:48.20 Chris So, and you can't attack from the back row unless he has certain weapons. 01:55:52.64 Jenny Yep. 01:55:53.08 Chris He can throw, which is only worthwhile if you know how to do the item duplication, which went away in more modern versions. 01:55:59.59 Dave Hmm. 01:56:00.92 Chris So you can't duplicate all your spoons and Excalibur's, which kind of sucks. But, man, I think he's written very well at the beginning. I think there's a ton of potential because You could make the argument that his happy-go-lucky-plucky style is just a defense mechanism for what happened to his parents, which is a very brutal battle that you have to go through. 01:56:27.25 Chris And then after that, his arc is over, almost immediately as you get him. It's just open and done. Closed. That's it. Uh, which yeah, it's, it's really unfortunate because he's the last party member of your main party that goes and defeats the final boss. And it feels like a wasted slot. I would much rather have the bar come back. 01:56:51.25 Jenny Yeah, I feel like Edge was, unfortunately, a lot of wasted potential there. You know, you had such a great opening with his parents and that fight and how awful it was. And, you know, you get Edge becoming more of his character there. But you're right, it just drops off after that. And it's really unfortunate because they could have done a lot with his character. 01:57:11.63 Dave Yeah, he was one that I had circled as um underdeveloped and would be more explored. Again, if this just if this game were longer, maybe they would have given more time to what's going on in Edge's head. And it's notable with him because he's with you for almost the whole game or like the majority of the game. He's one of the characters that's with you the longest, we'll say. And so ah you get a whole lot of like edges just with you. 01:57:43.42 Dave He's there. And um we'll try to remember what his story was 15 hours later. The other characters, 01:57:50.71 Chris And he has a crush on Rydia. 01:57:55.97 Dave Kid Rydia or adult Rydia? 01:57:56.09 Chris Oh, he doesn't meet Kid Rydia. 01:57:58.25 Jenny Adult ready? 01:57:59.55 Chris It's adult Rydia. 01:58:00.57 Dave Okay, I was gonna say, I was trying to put the timeline together in my head, yeah. um So, the other characters, and we we I think we mentioned this earlier, I think this is what we were referring to, but um this game has a bunch of other characters that join the party for a short period of time, and then sacrifice themselves in dramatic fashion, and then Very like ah What's what's the word? I can't think of the word. It kind of like cuts the Impact of their sacrifice because they all come back later magically ah except for one 01:58:36.75 Chris like a law of diminishing returns. 01:58:38.99 Jenny Yeah. 01:58:39.44 Dave Hey There we go, we have another law. ah Yeah, by like the fifth character sacrifice, you throw up your hands and you're like, come on, like can someone get stabbed or something like that? 01:58:42.27 Chris Yes. 01:58:52.09 Dave um So we have Palom and Porom, the Black Mage twins, who sacrifice themselves by turning themselves into stone to stop a Star Wars wall crushing ah scenario. Tellahh sacrifices himself by using the last of his strength, because he's an old man, to summon the Meteor spell. And he actually dies. He's the only one who doesn't come back. 01:59:18.66 Dave Yang sacrifices himself to turn off some controls in a control room. That one was very dumb as a sacrifice, I thought. 01:59:26.78 Chris Yeah, it was achoo. 01:59:27.80 Dave And another character that I don't know, I played the whole game, I don't know anything about that character. He's just kind of like, a martial arts guy monk shows up. Yeah. 01:59:39.49 Jenny He carries your party through the magnetic cave. 01:59:41.85 Jenny you know he he That's all he really does. 01:59:43.83 Dave Yeah. Yeah. So he sacrifices himself. ah Cid sacrifices himself by jumping off of the airship with a bomb at some point. um And then every character is generally fine. And I think I brought this up in our group chat. I was like, is anyone gonna acknowledge the fact that five people have sacrificed themselves, and then finally they do ah later on. Cecil references it, and um later on Edge is about to do it, and Rydia stops him, is like, hey, enough with the sacrifices, nobody else, okay? You're staying right here. ah But it's kind of comical how many people do this throughout the game. 02:00:30.87 Chris they kind of make a reference to that when you find Cid after he blows him, supposedly blows himself up. And then you go see him and I was like, Oh, he's alive. 02:00:38.19 Dave Yeah. 02:00:40.59 Chris He's in bed. Uh, we found him, which is like the second time that happened because the first time is with Edward. Now Edward didn't sacrifice himself. He just got thrown off a boat and everyone thought he was eaten by Leviathan, but ah You find him and like, oh, he's alive. And then you find Cid and it's like, oh, he's alive. And then he works really hard on your airship to make it a fire retardant. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, he worked himself to death. Cid, Cid, are you awake? 02:01:04.33 Dave Yeah. 02:01:05.17 Chris And it starts playing the sad music and you see the Z's over his head and like, oh yeah, he's alive. And it's like, okay, so the game is having a laugh at it that they're kind of all coming back. But if I wonder, I would love to see if this was ever in any interview. I haven't looked it up or if anyone's ever asked Sakaguchi or anyone on that staff why that was the way it was. But I wonder if they were toning it down because in Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III, your party members are dying like it's going out of style. 02:01:36.74 Chris Like that they would do the same thing. Have you played Final Fantasy II, Dave? 02:01:40.99 Dave Now. 02:01:41.84 Chris So is it OK if I give slight spoilers for two here or is that because it's a different game? I should avoid that. 02:01:46.52 Dave Yeah, go ahead. 02:01:47.41 Chris Okay. 02:01:47.39 Dave I'll cut it if I don't want to. 02:01:50.12 Chris So in Final Fantasy II, you start out with three party members. you Get to name four, but the fourth one just goes away. He just disappears, kind of like kind does. And throughout the game, you get a character to fill that fourth party slot throughout the entirety of it. But almost every single time, I think with the exception of one character, when that character leaves your party, they die or sacrifice themselves or something. like That's the answer. That's the solution. And they're not like Final Fantasy IV dead. They are dead. 02:02:20.72 Chris Like gone. 02:02:21.13 Dave They're the drummer for Spinal tap. They've been through like 17 fourth members in the party. 02:02:28.57 Chris Final Fantasy II and III do some similar stuff. 02:02:31.88 Chris In fact, ah what is it? The fun fun thing about Final Fantasy II is that Kain's father is technically in it if you want to get down into that lore. Uh, also dies. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's, it's so comical, like, and the fact that that tell is the only one who dies and he's not, he's not one who has anything really happened to him on his death. 02:02:42.36 Dave Of course. Yeah. 02:02:55.32 Chris It's just because he summoned meteor. That's why he dies. Not because he blew himself up or anything like that. It's fun. 02:03:04.88 Jenny on uh... until his death i thought it was really like kind of hypocritical because you know that the the whole ark with tell is that he's he's bent on vengeance and he he he needs to you know destroy goal that is for what he did and he sacrifices himself for that and as he's dying Cecil says to him will avenge you you know will avenge you and your daughter and i was that that was a little tone deaf given what happened you know the whole the whole point of tell us ark is that you know you can't You can't do eye for an eye. You can't do tit for tat because you know everyone you'll destroy yourself in the end. 02:03:34.94 Dave Hmm. 02:03:36.76 Jenny And for Cecil to to come around and be like, oh, yeah, we'll avenge you. I was just like, oh, that's the wrong thing to say right now. But I always thought that was a little off in the script. 02:03:47.26 Dave Could be a situation where like it, maybe it's off in the script or maybe it's just Cecil being tone deaf in the moment, which is, you know, he's not necessarily like the, the most emotionally intelligent character we've established. 02:03:47.38 Chris Yes. 02:03:54.03 Jenny Yeah. 02:04:03.15 Chris Yes. I don't think that was intentional, though. I think that was probably an oversight, I would have met. 02:04:05.87 Dave Yeah, yeah. Big dramatic moment. We will avenge you. 02:04:13.38 Chris But I will say for the sacrifices, the first two actually started to impact me as I got older when I was younger. Like when you're a kid, these things don't really emotionally impact you whatsoever, especially as I start getting older and having kids as myself and seeing Palam and Purim who were kids being like, we'll be the ones who sacrifice ourselves and just the adults just incapable of doing anything. 02:04:23.14 Dave Right. 02:04:33.72 Chris Here are these two kids and they mention that and that's in the script. Like it should have been me. Why did you throw your life away? um that That got me a little bit much later in life. So did Tellahh's death. It's all that pain, all that anguish. And it's like, I have to stop you. This is bigger than me, even though it is me. ah But by the time you get to Yang, it's like, I don't care. 02:04:57.61 Jenny Yeah, it's a bit much. 02:04:58.81 Chris I still don't care. 02:05:00.98 Dave Yeah. 02:05:01.45 Chris You're an idiot. What are you doing? 02:05:04.93 Dave And then when Cid does it, I literally like, I was like, okay, here we go again. You know, there's no impact on Cid doing it at all. 02:05:10.96 Chris Yeah. 02:05:15.35 Dave And Cid is, of those characters, Cid is one of the more likable ones for sure. ah So it was like suck to see him leave, but like you said, law of diminishing returns. You have a limit for how many characters can sacrifice themselves before it doesn't mean anything anymore. 02:05:34.69 Chris You should have given him a fish before he jumped. 02:05:34.71 Dave um Yeah, a good fish, a strong, healthy fish. 02:05:42.79 Chris That's why he lived if he had the right fish. 02:05:45.31 Dave There we go, yeah, he had a nice fish in his back pocket when he jumped off. 02:05:49.26 Chris There it was. 02:05:50.49 Dave um i I did like, you know, just as I started to be like, this is fucking ridiculous. I did like how Rydia and Cecil liked to comment on it, especially Rydia's part where she was like, no, no one else is sacrificing themselves. Like there are better ways to do this. Edge, sit the fuck down. we're gonna do this a different way. So I thought it was like, okay, finally, maybe that was the writers being in on the joke a little bit too and just being like, okay, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, no more sacrificing from here on out, perhaps. So, um let's see. 02:06:31.70 Dave yeah 02:06:35.39 Dave I think we covered a lot of the stuff about Golbez and Cecil's relationship. ah But the one thing that we didn't yet talk about in detail is who the actual big bad is. And this is like the classic Maybe it is the beginning of the trope like you both talked about earlier today, but the classic JRPG trope of you have a villain throughout 95, maybe 99% of the game. And then that turns out to not be the real villain. And you just have an ultimate big bad. And we just keep increasing the scope higher and higher until it cannot be increased anymore. And you're fighting God at the end of the game. 02:07:18.92 Dave This game does that too, where Golbez is the villain for the entire game and I was like, okay, precursor to Kefka, let's go. But unlike Final Fantasy VI, Golbez was himself being mind controlled by an entity called Zemus, or Zemus, I don't know. I'm gonna call it Zemus because Zemus does not roll off the tongue. um But Zemus is an ancient evil, ah lives on the moon, I believe, or at least once the moon for power that lies there. ah We go to the moon, if we haven't said that already. I think we did. But I knew that about Final Fantasy IV also, just 02:07:58.50 Dave Hey, fun fact about Final Fantasy 4, you go to the moon at some point. So that was ah fun. But Xemus is like a new big bad that gets introduced later on. And while I don't like this trope, I do at least think that it's interesting that You do get the angle that Golbez is being mind controlled and he's related to Cecil and now Cecil and Golbez have to deal with this. It's not like, in my opinion, Final Fantasy IX, where the final boss comes out of fucking nowhere. 02:08:33.30 Dave And, uh, like just, I'm fighting it. I'm like, why am I fighting this thing? 02:08:39.31 Chris Mm hmm. 02:08:39.39 Dave At least it's not that, but it is that trope. It's here. 02:08:45.64 Chris Yeah, and then Zemus isn't really the final boss either, because he has a higher form of being called zero miss that you find out right before. 02:08:52.97 Dave Right. That's right. Yeah. 02:08:57.27 Chris Um, I think it's a I don't like it either, to be honest with you. I do like the character design. I think it looks awesome. 02:09:05.39 Dave Oh yeah. 02:09:05.45 Chris I do like the fight. 02:09:06.39 Dave On the PSP? Hell fucking yeah. 02:09:08.57 Chris Oh, yeah. ah Conceptually, I think it does give a good out for Cecil with gold as and how that all relates. I think there's a lot there. I think it's a little underdeveloped. I think that would be fair to say. But I think that if there was a revelation that he was his brother a lot earlier, that's kind of like the out. And I think it's a good idea. And I think that fulfills its duty. So I don't like the trope. I don't like the enemy out of a magic rabbit hat. Uh, then a rabbit out of a, you know, I meant, but like, I'm not a big fan of that. Um, I could see what they were trying to do. And I don't know if they did that in final fantasy three, mostly because it's like dark, like a dark cloud or a dark force or something like that was the final boss. It's no. 02:09:58.59 Chris I can't even remember. It's such a point it's like the worst villain in Final Fantasy history. But I think that also comes out like near the end. And I think it's done a lot better here to that credit. I also think it's done way better than it was done in Final Fantasy IX for that matter as well. So I'm not going to hate on it too much. It creates a fun fight. It creates an interesting battle. And it does give the player an opportunity to fight against pure evil. ah 02:10:26.12 Dave Yeah. 02:10:27.06 Chris unbridled evil as opposed to something that may have any nuance whatsoever. 02:10:33.64 Dave Yeah, that higher form, Zeromus is described as the hatred of Zemus, now given physical form, which is as JRPG as it gets. 02:10:44.44 Chris Yes. 02:10:45.97 Jenny I think the coolest thing about Zemes overall is that, and I don't know if this is in the other versions, but in some versions it's revealed that he's a Lunarian as well, just like Cluya and Busoya. 02:10:54.72 Chris Yes. 02:10:56.69 Jenny So it's interesting to see that that the Lunarians are able to channel their negative emotions into something like that, and we see where Golbez and Cecil almost went if they hadn't you know been stopped or or chose to do a different path where they could have gone um with that that using your hatred for for power and I think that's kind of the end of the. the ending of the theme of unstable power and and like raw emotions being used for, like raw negative emotions. 02:11:24.27 Dave Mm hmm. 02:11:28.01 Jenny And that's how you're able to defeat him in the end is because that kind of power isn't sustainable. um But I like the addition that he's a Lunarian too. 02:11:39.44 Chris Yeah. And I think one, one thing that could be brought back to criticize like my critique. Because at the beginning of this episode, I said, Hey, everything that happens with Cecil is really well paced and it happens within like an hour and a half, two hours. And then I'm like, Oh, at the end, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, even though it comes like an hour and a half, two hours before the end. And this is like that minor critique I had of the pacing where there's just this big gap in between that really compact pacing at the beginning. and some inconsistent pacing once you get underground and that starts and you have a lot of dead time to go do this all exploration, that when it comes to the end, that ending does feel really compact and rushed, as opposed to the beginning where it feels like it's an elongated, very nicely paced thing. It just feels like, slam, we got to get to the end, we're putting in a bunch of crap all at once, even though they're roughly the same amount of time and length. 02:12:33.57 Dave Yeah, I think that feeling of rushed comes from, like you said, you go a long time without Cecil really, not like, not without him doing anything, because he does a lot of stuff, but there's not a lot of growth along the way. And then you're dealing with other characters and their stuff. And then you get to the end. And then it's like, okay, it's Cecil time again, we're rushing through this with ah with goal beds, and they're going to try and like, come to grips with their relationship and who they are. 02:13:04.63 Dave And then you have this ultimate big bad, you're on the moon, you've got this race of beings that live on the moon, Cecil's one of them, Golbez also one of them. 02:13:15.30 Chris Also namingways. 02:13:15.48 Dave um Yeah, ah that's this there's an entire cave full of them, ah which is great. 02:13:22.60 Dave um So there is like a lot of stuff that's thrown at you while you're on the moon, but your time spent on the moon is mostly going through the dungeon. And then like story stuff all happens pretty quickly. So I definitely get that, like that kind of rushed feeling from it. Though I did like the 02:13:50.56 Dave Like, I thought that this wrapped up pretty neatly with this. I did like the revelation with Golbez and Cecil. um I did not necessarily like that Zemus came out at the end, but if Zemus is there, I like the rationale for what it is and what's going on there and how it relates to the other characters. 02:14:10.70 Chris Agreed. 02:14:10.98 Dave um And then I do like, I think Jenny, you said this, like part of the way that you defeat zero must at the end is not because you know the ultimate spell. It's not that you are overleveled and you're just going to whip its ass with 9999 damage every single time. um There is a different process for how you actually defeat this hatred given physical form. And it's not kind of again with Cecil's change to a paladin, it's not through pure force on your end. It's, ah you know, the people on earth pray, they send their strength to Cecil at the end. 02:14:53.14 Dave um I thought this was great. It's like the Final Fantasy theme is playing. People are sending their energy to help out. um I thought this was really good. Like the way this all comes together at the end. I'm a fan. 02:15:10.07 Chris Did Earthbound do the earth pound right? ah Let me rephrase that. Did Earthbound steal this? 02:15:15.89 Dave They may have. A little bit more involvement on your part as a player in Earthbound at the end, but yeah. 02:15:21.62 Chris A little bit, a little bit. Yeah, Earthbound, I'm not taking anything away from Earthbound's ending. I think Earthbound's ending is fantastic. 02:15:27.86 Dave Yeah. 02:15:28.90 Chris But it has a lot of those vibes, and I think it's just as good. You can see Tellahh again, who's with Fusoya for some reason, even though Fusoya is definitely not dead. But they come to say hi to you to give you that power. And yeah, that's that, it's really cool. I've already said that I love the battle and I agree with you. The rationale is more than good enough to, you know, avoid the fact that a magical enemy appears. I think that they deliver on that. 02:16:02.30 Dave Yeah, and just like the process that you go through at the end where like, Zeromus is kicking the party's ass, but it's the prayers and support from your... Because like, you we talked about the rotating cast and how you're locked into your party for most of the game, but it's not like that at the end. You get access to basically everybody because they didn't all die. um So you can choose who to take and the people that you leave behind on earth are sending their support via prayer. And while the boss is kicking your ass, their support is what revives the party and heals you and stuff as this is going on. 02:16:40.14 Chris Can you do that in the PSP version before you beat the game? 02:16:43.96 Dave Yes. 02:16:45.10 Chris Oh. 02:16:45.87 Dave Yeah, you can pick who's in your party at the end. I picked the cannon party, but i yeah, you don't have to take, um you don't have to, you don't have a set lineup. 02:16:57.06 Jenny I think the GBA version does the same thing but I'm not positive. 02:17:00.69 Chris I think you have to beat the game first in the GBA version, because I have done that, but in the GBA version, I think 02:17:03.03 Jenny Okay. 02:17:07.46 Chris I could be wrong because I know you can pick party members at some point, but you have to beat it with the Canon party first. 02:17:14.99 Dave Oh, interesting. Not on the PSP, um but I went canon anyway. 02:17:19.66 Chris Yeah. 02:17:19.81 Dave ah So if I was going to be like, who'd you take in the final dungeon? But apparently it's not an option and all in all the games. But yeah, Rydia, Cecil, Rosa, Edge, and Kain for me in the final dungeon, just because they were the best. 02:17:26.34 Chris Yeah. 02:17:34.37 Chris ah Apparently ah Edward has the highest base stats, by the way. 02:17:38.37 Dave Good for Edward, I'm very happy to hear that. 02:17:39.98 Jenny a 02:17:44.10 Dave it's I was gonna say like, and so Edward is gonna be like the Kamari or like the, um I don't know, the what's the the mimic guy from Final Fantasy VI? 02:17:55.18 Jenny Go now. 02:17:55.31 Chris Go, go. 02:17:56.36 Dave Yeah, so Edward is gonna be like the one that the expert players are like, no, actually you can beat the whole game with Edward if you just put in the time. 02:18:05.75 Chris Never sleep on a bard, man. and Never sleep on the bard. 02:18:08.28 Dave That's true. Yeah. um So. The final conclusion for like this theme of the darkness within you, and um I guess like living with that, as Cecil went through that earlier, is zero-mus, gives a kind of like JRPG villain speech at the end, talking about how you know humans will never be you know pure and good, I will always exist as long as there's darkness within humans, yada, yada, yada. 02:18:41.32 Dave Again, trope, but maybe maybe very early on in the history of that trope. 02:18:43.20 Chris Yes. 02:18:48.27 Dave ah so that's here we It's like it's kind of like being introduced to a band, like a new band via its greatest hits album. ah It's like if someone were to play this as their first JRPG, um So the ah the finale is that i'm after defeating Zeromus, Golbez goes with ah Fusoya to go sleep and pray for the future of Earth because it's assumed that Zerimus will be back in some form or fashion at some point. And so they're gonna need the support and Golbez and Cecil have their farewell. Again, because it's Final Fantasy IV, it's very short. 02:19:33.46 Dave But it is there. They do make a very quick piece with the fact that they are who they are. And then Golbez leaves. And it's another step on characters going through their redemption arcs. Cecil went through it. Golbez has now taken a big step, if not completed that. And then we already talked about Kain is still working on it after the game ends. 02:19:58.76 Dave So I like how we have this very clear theme of redemption. We see it through multiple characters. Multiple characters go through it at different times. One of them is unresolved, still working on it. um It's very good from that perspective. 02:20:15.21 Chris By the way, I'm going to correct myself because I just thought of something. Fusoya does not show up with Tellahh. He shows up with Golbez. 02:20:21.54 Chris Edward shows up with Tellahh. 02:20:22.04 Dave Yes. 02:20:23.17 Chris Sorry, at that final scene before anyone has to correct anything. ah By the way, I think this is one of the best endings in the Final Fantasy games. 02:20:33.45 Dave Hmm. 02:20:33.87 Chris It just wraps up. It wraps up. It's one of those happy-go-lucky ones, but it's not 100% happy-go-lucky. You know that Golbez is now your brother. and you're coming to terms with that you're accepting that and he's gone like the moon goes away ah to go do whatever they do on moon things because they have now now it went from two moons to one moon ah so now it's more like the earth which the earth looks like from space looks like the earth even though your map doesn't go figure 02:20:50.85 Dave I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. 02:21:05.25 Chris But ah Moon is gone, Kain isn't gonna come back and say hi to you. 02:21:05.39 Dave yeah 02:21:10.58 Chris You do have, you know, dead Tellah, but everything else is just like, where else do you go with that ending? I think it just ends exactly how it should. It doesn't really try to open up any other angles like a trilogy or ah like a sequel where people have to go find their dead boyfriend or something, I don't know. 02:21:26.36 Dave Yeah. 02:21:29.46 Dave I was going to say. 02:21:32.38 Chris ah It's just, it ends up perfectly fine. Wraps it very nicely. 02:21:37.23 Jenny Yeah, I thought it didn't need a sequel. I was really surprised when it did and got a sequel and how unsatisfying it was. But like in general, it wraps up really neatly, for the most part. And the stuff that doesn't wrap up, it shouldn't be. you know It's not resolved yet. 02:21:52.28 Dave Yeah. Interesting that you say that. Well, both of you say that you're very happy with how it wraps up very neatly. And then Jenny, you said that the sequel was unsatisfying and I wonder why they just didn't have a whole lot of loose story threads to work with here. 02:22:09.26 Jenny And I wasn't a big fan. 02:22:11.66 Jenny I mean, other people really enjoyed it, and I've heard good things, but I just didn't like what I played. 02:22:18.12 Dave That's fair, yeah. um The ending has a little montage, very like Legend of Zelda type montage going through all the characters and from what I, this is my first experience with this kind of ending, the Ocarina of Time. Let's revisit everybody, see what they're up to now. So Palom and Porom are back studying ah in Mysidia how to be better mages. Edge is trying to settle down. Rydia goes back to the FayMarch and is going to live her life there. Yang is back home with his wife and his wife. um Fun little side quest that you can go on with him and his wife where she gets you to smack him with a pan, I think, to wake him up. 02:23:02.57 Dave ah so Good, good dynamic for the married couple there. ah Edward wrote a song for Cecil, a paladin song. Cecil and Rosa get married. ah They're now king and queen. And like we said before, kind goes off to go work on himself to go face Mount Ordeals. And what I didn't mention, I forgot until I got to this part of the notes, he has long blonde hair now for some reason, at least in the PSP version. 02:23:28.63 Chris Yeah. Well, his hair is always covered up by his helmet. 02:23:32.16 Dave That's, did he always have long, lush, uh, blonde hair? 02:23:35.67 Chris He absolutely did. 02:23:36.35 Jenny in the, he's a very pretty boy, in the ah the DS version you can see his ponytail, his like long blonde ponytail. 02:23:36.51 Chris He is a pretty boy. 02:23:38.86 Dave Okay. 02:23:42.76 Dave Okay Gotcha. Fair enough, I thought it was going to be like a, I don't know, so just some kind of like, this is me and my new haircut and I'm off to go become a new person or something like that. So ah the the last thing in the game is they see the moon pass by and Cecil thinks he hears his brother's voice say farewell. And that is the end of Final Fantasy IV. And I do really like the ending. um I like how the storylines wrap up. And the most important storylines and I guess kind of like the more emotional themes, I think, ah do get a lot of exploration with the ending. And I think that that's quite good. So for all of the times when I thought that things were underexplored or went by too quickly, 02:24:33.61 Dave They did make a point to hit those themes at the end with the final boss and what the characters are going through. Um, and I thought that that was really nice. 02:24:43.35 Chris Yeah. I already said, wrap up neatly. 02:24:47.50 Dave Yep. 02:24:48.71 Chris Unfortunately, Rydia ends up with Edge, poor Rydia. But what are you going to do? 02:24:55.63 Dave Rough. 02:24:56.52 Jenny Does she? I mean he flirts with her or he tries to talk to her but in the ah the wedding scene but that's about it. 02:24:58.83 Chris ah I mean. Yeah. Even Leviathan and Asura are trying to push her that way. So it's kind of like, Hey, I mean you, you hung out here, but you're not really a summoned monster. So it's been nice, but yeah, go, go, go out of your nest a little bit. Have some fun. 02:25:21.96 Jenny Well, and there's the whole thing about time moving faster in the Faye March. So we don't know if she can stay because she'll continue to age or not. 02:25:27.87 Dave Mm-hmm. 02:25:30.93 Jenny you know 02:25:32.25 Chris Yeah. 02:25:34.00 Dave That's true. Yeah. If only they made a sequel, we'll never know. 02:25:40.21 Dave Well, uh, Jenny, Chris, thank you so much for, uh, for coming on and talking about final fantasy four with me. Uh, when I decided that this game was going to be something that I played, uh, this year and I put on my backlog resolutions list and knew that most of those games would end up on the podcast. I had already hoped that you two would agree to come on the show. So I appreciate you two taking the time and your contribution to the discussion. Of course, this has been a lot of fun. 02:26:10.81 Chris Yeah, a lot of fun, Dave. Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor to talk about Final Fantasy IV. I really haven't, like, as much as I love it, this is actually one of the Final Fantasy games I don't think I've talked a lot about, so happy to do it. 02:26:22.79 Dave Ooh. 02:26:24.71 Jenny And I'm always happy to talk about Final Fantasy 4, so I was really thrilled when you asked. Thank you so much. 02:26:30.21 Dave Of course, yeah. So ah thank you again to the both of you. Thank you to everybody who's listened to the end. We'll give one more plug to go down in the show notes and check for everything retro hangover and then everything that Jenny is doing on the writing and podcasting side. ah Lots of cool stuff to check out, especially if you love Final Fantasy IV. A lot of good stuff, especially with Jenny's writing and again, podcasting. So ah that is the end of the episode. Thank you, as always, everyone who listens to the end, you are my hero. And as always, tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.