Sabishii

 Final Fantasy VI explores human pain through its shattered geography

“Sabishii” is how Hironobu Sakaguchi described the type of game he wanted to make when creating Final Fantasy. It’s a Japanese word that means “lonely.” Right out of the gate, Square’s role-playing series nailed that feeling, the games’ inherent austerity enhanced by painter Yoshitaka Amano’s ghostly art and Nobuo Uematsu’s delicate soundtrack. No Final Fantasy game has been so committed to loneliness as Final Fantasy VI, though, which is strange considering it has the largest cast of colorful world-saving heroes. Stranger still, they fail to save much of anything, and the world ends, at least for a while. But the World Of Ruin isn’t a place for nihilistic moping or stoic melodrama, though there are dollops of both here and there. Final Fantasy VI uses its gutted world to explore how people overcome failure and loss to build hope in new lives.

Great write-up about what made Final Fantasy VI so heart-wrenchingly great.