Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Final Fantasy VI: Feed A Man A Fish

Final Fantasy VI has a ton of awesome events/cutscenes as you play the game. And then it has some events that aren't all that awesome. And then there's the event right after the end of the first world which is really frustrating. In this day and age with the internet and being able to look up how it works it's merely really annoying. Back in the day it was almost game breaking.

The event in question happens on a deserted island. Your only character is Celes and she's stranded with only Cid who is dying. The only thing around to eat are fish and Cid asks you to get him some. Walk a little bit away and you can find some fish which spawn. Wade into the water and hit A to pick one up. Then you can carry it in to Cid who will eat it and whine a bit. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

How it works is there's an internal counter. If it gets high enough then Cid recovers and sends you on your merry way. If it gets low enough then Cid dies. Celes tries to commit suicide, is saved by a bird who has Locke's bandana, and moves on. If it stays between those two values then you stay stuck on the island. You have to break out of the boundaries to move on but the number is hidden and there isn't a whole lot of hints to let you know what you need to do.

The easy way out is to stop feeding Cid fish entirely. His health slowly decreases so if you just walk away for a while he'll eventually die. The Celes suicide scene is actually pretty impactful so this isn't the worst idea. Of course it does kill off Cid which isn't something any Final Fantasy fan should want to do...

In order to save Cid you need to fight his steady health decrease by feeding him fish. There are four different types of fish. Some of them raise his health, but some of them actually help kill him. So if you don't know what's going on and just keep feeding Cid all the fish you can be playing for hours. Even this time, knowing what was going on, it took me more than one bus ride to save him. I probably should have just killed him off... Especially since it meant missing this:

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