It’s Final Fantasy XV week, which means that it’s the perfect time to talk about Final Fantasy VI—especially in the wake of a bunch of fun trivia that’s been unearthed thanks to old interviews. Did you know, for example, that Cyan was meant to have an older “sister”-type role model named Angela?


Over the weekend, the excellent website Shmuplations posted a few translations from old Japanese magazine interviews with the makers of FFVI, and it’s full of fantastic tidbits that will be fascinating to anyone who has played the Super Nintendo classic. For example, on Terra’s fate:

Hironobu Sakaguchi: At the end of the game, we originally were going to have Terra disappear along with all the other Espers. We thought it would be a waste, though, to have Terra erased like that just when she had awoken to her humanity. So instead we made her lose her magic powers and remain in the world.


On Edgar’s romancing ways:

Kaori Tanaka: In the beginning of the planning, Edgar was the stereotypical “sleazeball.” But I thought was too cliched, so I removed that aspect of his personality. As for his love of women, because he lost his Mother as an infant, he has an especially strong attachment to women generally. Moreover, his first crush/love (an older woman—one of his Father’s cousins) was always very firm in telling him he must grow up to be a good man, so Edgar studied with great fervor the art of chivalry. Ultimately, this woman was killed in a political rivalry, and Edgar’s feelings toward her remained forever unrequited. Her spiritedness and lively wit, however, left their mark on Edgar and have influenced his personal vision of the ideal woman. He’s a little bit different from the typical “ladykiller” character because he was written by a woman (me!), so if anyone notices that I’ll be very happy.

On a cut character named Angela:

Staff: During the development, there was another character named Angela, who acted like a stereotypical “big sister” to Cyan. She wielded a whip. She would half-jokingly flirt with Cyan, and he would always brush off and cringe at her attention, but later when he was alone he’d pause and flatter himself to think it was all true. It allowed us to show a shy, private side of his character. There were never any actual romantic connections between the two of them, though: he remains loyal to his departed wife’s memory.


And on what could’ve been an incredibly cool way to recruit Gogo:

Staff: Umaro was originally a character who wandered around the world map. You could meet him in a random encounter, and catch him with bait, much like the event with Gau on the Veldt. During the development, Gogo was actually a lot harder to find. He was a mysterious character who wandered between the different pubs in the World of Ruin, disguised as one of the main characters who you hadn’t yet got to rejoin the party. For example, he might be disguised as Locke in one town, and if the players tried to talk to him thinking it was Locke, they’d only get rude, curt responses from him. After the player gets the real Locke, if they realize something is weird and come back to that pub and talk to the fake/disguised Locke, he would reveal his true self and join the party as Gogo. The pub he appeared at would change on a timer, though, and he’d also change which person he was disguised as. Tracking him down was very difficult.


Head on over to Shmuplations to read it all. Highly recommended.