Square Enix’sFinal Fantasy Pixel Remasterseries of games have been a surprising and delightful way to re-experience some of the first entries in the franchise. ThesePixel Remasters update the first six gamesof the franchise, giving them stellar new pixel art work that are more faithful to the originals, add quality-of-life improvements, and even update the game’s original music too. The last entry in this series of remasters,Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster, was released a few days ago to the joy of fans on both Steam and mobile devices.
Plenty of changes also went into the Pixel Remaster ofFinal Fantasy 6, while other parts were retained from the original. For example,Sabin’s incredible Phantom Train Suplexfeat has been retained like the original, to a more faithfully translated version of the story that omits the censorship from the SNES release. However, one of the biggest changes made to the game is one of its most iconic scenes, the opera with party member Celes.
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Final Fantasy 6’s opera scene has been radically changedwhere it would be more akin to Square Enix’s other 2D-HD titles likeOctopath Traveler. The scene now also features vocals, with voice recordings in seven different languages. In a new video from Square Enix that featured veteran composer Nobuo Uematsu, he pitched that since the original version didn’t have vocals, it’d be nice if thePixel Remasterdid. He explained that this idea was suggested “half-jokingly” and that he believed that was initially impossible.
Uematsu however had the support of fellow co-director Yoshinori Kitase, where he explained that he helped actualize Uematsu’s idea. Upon Uematsu receiving the data for all seven voice recordings of the opera, he said that he was emotionally overwhelmed hearing it for the first time. “No matter what language it was, even when I couldn’t understand [the language], I still couldn’t help getting overflowed with tears,” Uematsu said. “When I had those tears, I definitely thought that doing this [multi-language song] is the correct way. Thank you Square Enix for doing it, I’m really moved by that.” It’s clear that this scene fromFinal Fantasy 6still holds up to this day.
Fans who have played the pixel remaster ofFinal Fantasy 6did notice that Celes' vocals for the scene were less operatic than other performances of the song at concerts like Distant Worlds. Uematsu revealed that this choice was deliberate, as Celes herself isn’t an opera singer, where the team intentionally chose singers who were more inclined to music instead.
Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remasteris available now for Mobile and PC.
