Board 8 > In FF6, Cyan's story is so dumb (mild early game spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Kefka poisons the water, turning it purple. Cyan says "the water looks weird." And then like 50 people die immediately. Basically everyone in the kingdom drinks the water in that little 10 second window, including the guards on the second floor and the child sleeping in her bed. No one noticed the water was purple except Cyan.

Here's the scene, watch it yourself. It's so dumb lol

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WGqAO_umr9o&si=ltq5VaJUxSnMuWiT

Nah dude that shit was tragic back in 94. And it gave us one more reason to love Kefka

You can chalk it up to artistic license. Perhaps an undisclosed amount of time passed after Kefka poisoned it, and by the time Cyan noticed the water's color, too many people had already drunk it (which is likely what would happen in real life).

Maybe everyone in the kingdom is colorblind. That'd explain how no one noticed it changing vastly in color!

i took it to mean that it was so poisonous it released into the atmosphere around the castle

still dumb of course lol

Big_Bob posted...

Perhaps an undisclosed amount of time passed after Kefka poisoned it, and by the time Cyan noticed the water's color, too many people had already drunk it (which is likely what would happen in real life).

This is how I took the scene, or at least the explanation that makes the most sense.

I feel like games in that era would sometimes have weird things like that, where they expected you to use your imagination to make it work. In FF4, your characters would swing weapons nowhere near the enemy and hit them, heh.

This always bothered me too.

Fiop posted...

I feel like games in that era would sometimes have weird things like that, where they expected you to use your imagination to make it work.

/topic

There's something to be said of people who expect too much realism from fantasy games

Yeah it was always a little dumb at face value but you get the point. Imagine it was a summarized version of the events

the story itself of lone survivor of a poisoned kingdom has an undeniably effective impact

the execution is just... very 16-bit, working with a limited set piece of the Doma stage so we can see Cyan rush out in a rage to fight the Imperial forces and meet our party

Leonhart4 posted...

There's something to be said of people who expect too much realism from fantasy games

Which breaks from reality am I calling dumb in this scenario?

The whole "it's summarized" version doesn't even work right because then it means Sabin had to be hiding in the Imperial camp the whole time. I guess it's kinda believable if he has Shadow with him, but it's still a stretch.

Did you want a week to pass in real time?

Mewtwo59 posted...

The whole "it's summarized" version doesn't even work right because then it means Sabin had to be hiding in the Imperial camp the whole time. I guess it's kinda believable if he has Shadow with him, but it's still a stretch.

Youre one of those people who left your PS2 running for a week to beat The End in MGS3, arent you?

its a fucking SNES game

8:00 PM - Kefka poisons the water. It's dark, so nobody notices.

That night, people drink water getting off their shifts or getting up to start their shifts. Cyan and the Guard up top are too dedicated to their job to drink the water.

8:00 AM - As the sun rises, Cyan notices the water looks funny. They quickly run to check on everyone, but they've already drunk the water.

Just 12 hours have passed between Kefka poisoning the water and the cut scene where Cyan realizes the water looks funny. Nobody else noticed because it was too dark. Their only source of light at night is probably a torch.

Why does Cyan let his kingdom drink the grape colored water? Is he stupid?

Ashethan posted...

8:00 PM - Kefka poisons the water. It's dark, so nobody notices.

That night, people drink water getting off their shifts or getting up to start their shifts. Cyan and the Guard up top are too dedicated to their job to drink the water.

8:00 AM - As the sun rises, Cyan notices the water looks funny. They quickly run to check on everyone, but they've already drunk the water.

Just 12 hours have passed between Kefka poisoning the water and the cut scene where Cyan realizes the water looks funny. Nobody else noticed because it was too dark. Their only source of light at night is probably a torch.

Does this work with the locations of Shadow and Sabin? This would indeed fix it if the water was poisoned at night and the next scene happened the following morning

ff6 is an abstraction, quite literally written as a play. it's not meant to be taken as realism in the slightest. that's not defending ff6, because it's not perfect, but trying to logic your way through it will never work with those old snes rpgs.

I don't think there's an actual connection between being written as a play vs realism. Surely there are theater works that are actually quite realistic.

pjbasis posted...

I don't think there's an actual connection between being written as a play vs realism. Surely there are theater works that are actually quite realistic.

Right, but with plays you also go in watching them with the suspension of disbelief needed with the limitations of the presentation.

Similar to having to consume a game's story like this with the limitation of the SNES.

pjbasis posted...

I don't think there's an actual connection between being written as a play vs realism. Surely there are theater works that are actually quite realistic.

Eh, there's always going to be an aspect to plays that requires the audience to use their imagination to fill in the blanks for themselves.

Friendly reminder there is actually another survivor and the game never references him again

transience posted...

ff6 is an abstraction, quite literally written as a play. it's not meant to be taken as realism in the slightest. that's not defending ff6, because it's not perfect, but trying to logic your way through it will never work with those old snes rpgs.

What do you mean by this? I only watched a little bit of it on a stream last night; are there other instances of the game being like this? I don't remember anything like this from when I played back in the day but I also don't remember being bothered by this scene either so I probably missed something lol

They could've shown this in another way too. Like maybe a flower drops into the water and instantly wilts or a mouse drinks it and instantly dies. It's just the choice to represent the poison as purple water makes everyone in Doma seem really dumb.

if it helps, i'm colorblind and it looks basically the same color to me. we can say the people of doma had the colorblind gene.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

What do you mean by this? I only watched a little bit of it on a stream last night; are there other instances of the game being like this? I don't remember anything like this from when I played back in the day but I also don't remember being bothered by this scene either so I probably missed something lol

They could've shown this in another way too. Like maybe a flower drops into the water and instantly wilts or a mouse drinks it and instantly dies. It's just the choice to represent the poison as purple water makes everyone in Doma seem really dumb.

Sorry, but you making this post only makes you seem dumb.

it's 16 bit storytelling people come on

Well complaining about the water being purple is a little trite. It's obviously a storytelling technique to let us know what happened visually.

I think it's more that it doesn't really make sense that Cyan somehow was the only one who didn't drink the water, and everyone else basically died at the same time without being alarmed.

Dels posted...

if it helps, i'm colorblind and it looks basically the same color to me. we can say the people of doma had the colorblind gene.

I love the implication that the water is actually blue in FFVI. Like it changes from blue powerade to grape powerade lmao

pjbasis posted...

Well complaining about the water being purple is a little trite. It's obviously a storytelling technique to let us know what happened visually.

I think it's more that it doesn't really make sense that Cyan somehow was the only one who didn't drink the water, and everyone else basically died at the same time without being alarmed.

He says the water looks weird. He identified the problem with visual inspection. It's not a symbolic thing like stink lines or whatever, the actual in-universe color of the water is purple.

Cyan being the only person who didn't drink the water is another problem. Both of these issues could be resolved but they just weren't.

There were small bombs in the water.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

He says the water looks weird. He identified the problem with visual inspection. It's not a symbolic thing like stink lines or whatever, the actual in-universe color of the water is purple.

uhhhh it happened at night, Cyan checked in the morning. Still falls under the problem of why Cyan decided to go thirsty for a whole day. But you know, maybe he was just so busy worrying about the siege that he didn't eat or drink!

There's no fucking way Sabin can suplex a fucking train!

Maybe the color is just slightly off but it's shown to us as bright purple because otherwise it wouldn't be noticeable at all with the SNES visuals.

Cyan is named after a color and by extension a lethal poison, so he's particularly observant about these things.

Seanchan posted...

There's no fucking way Sabin can suplex a fucking train!

It was a phantom train, they don't really weigh all that much.

pjbasis posted...

It was a phantom train, they don't really weigh all that much.

Don't use your logic with me!

I didn't see Shadow or Cyan picking up the train

they don't know how to suplex even the simplest of things, the form is all wrong

Played FF6 for the first time in 2003 and found it to be aggressively underwhelming.

I'm just gonna say it: the story blows. The cast is bloated, the POV-shifts kill the pacing, and the overall structure is a mess due to the WoR. Worse yet, characters like Terra and Cyan lack the star power to carry their plotlines while more interesting cast members like Locke, Celes, and the Figaro brothers don't get nearly as much screen time as they should.

Obviously FF6 was ambitious back in 1994, but we need to stop pretending this game is still the gold-standard for JRPGs.

plasmabeam posted...

and the overall structure is a mess due to the WoR

best part of the game

FFVI is still great, so I'm fine with people still calling it the gold standard

I wouldn't call it a standard for anything, but it's a solid and fun game overall.

I'll take Chrono Trigger. It's just Dragon Quest with nicer production values and it works smoothly as a result.

Chrono Trigger is a perfect videogame.

It's not the best at anything it does, or superior to modern games, but it is absolutely flawless at what it tries to do, like no other game is.

FF6, on the other hand, has some noticeable flaws, but it's still very fun and engaging most of the time, sometimes even more than CT.

plasmabeam posted...

Obviously FF6 was ambitious back in 1994, but we need to stop pretending this game is still the gold-standard for JRPGs.

Nah it's still really really good

i don't think i call anything a gold standard anything

but ff6 top tier

Raka_Putra posted...

There were small bombs in the water.

really should've known kefka was responsible for all of those murders too...

Chrono Cross is the gold standard obviously

Radical Dreamers is the true peak though