Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster Soundtrack

Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster Soundtrack, Nobuo Uematsu / Various, 2022

A select few video games acquire an almost mythical aura, something that elevates them even beyond classic status. Few players would dispute that Final Fantasy VI belongs in that rarefied company. One could argue that the game did not radically reinvent its genre or introduce wholly new mechanics. What Square’s young developers achieved instead, buoyed by the success of the company’s earlier SNES triumphs, was the perfection of the JRPG formula. In many ways, it was a work of unrestrained ambition, determined to tell as sweeping and dramatic a story as 16-bit technology would permit. After all, how many games, before or since, have allowed their antagonist to destroy the world, shown one of their protagonists driven to throw herself off a cliff, and inserted a ten-minute opera sequence?

That opera-house scene alone indicates how crucial music was to realising the developers’ vision. Fortunately, series mainstay Nobuo Uematsu matched those ambitions at every turn, creating what is, by broad consensus, one of the greatest game scores ever written. Indeed, the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack represents a quantum leap for Uematsu, and one can understand why he later said that “Final Fantasy VI was a sort of ending point” for him and that he felt he “could quit doing game music with no regrets”. The earlier Final Fantasy scores had of course already been excellent. But Final Fantasy VI raised the quality of Uematsu’s writing, the depth of his thematic thinking, the strength of his melodies and the subtlety of their emotional effect to a new level.

Even the barest facts suggest the scale of that accomplishment. Uematsu and other RPG composers had used leitmotivic structures before, but never to the extent heard here. Final Fantasy VI contains more than a dozen recurring motifs, each stunningly versatile, and Uematsu eventually gathers almost all of them together in “Ending Theme”, whose 22-minute duration lies far outside the usual bounds of game, or indeed film, music. Nor is this simply a matter of quantity. Uematsu’s melodic inspiration has never been stronger than it is here. A comparison with Ennio Morricone feels apt in several respects. Neither composer’s work depends greatly on dense contrapuntal complexity or technical display. Instead, both rely on unparalleled melodic instinct and on the ability to draw every possible ounce of emotion and gravitas from instrumental colour used with supreme judgement.

Given the soundtrack’s elevated status, anticipation for the Pixel Remaster was naturally intense, especially since the score had never received a major update since the SNES original in 1994. Throughout the earlier Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, the arrangers had generally stayed close to Uematsu’s original writing while embellishing and enhancing it, usually to good effect. Given Final Fantasy VI’s impeccable pedigree, it always seemed likely that they would approach this score with greater reverence than usual, resulting in fewer experiments and interventions. That is indeed what happened. Then again, one could argue that even a simple sonic upgrade of the SNES original would still have resulted in a masterpiece.

A significant number of cues in the remaster do take exactly that route, give or take a measure of reorchestration, and it is hard to resent them for it. There is little real innovation in the Pixel Remaster’s “Opening Theme”, but the improved sound quality only makes clearer how elegantly the piece moves from the almost cosmic to the profoundly personal within a matter of minutes. “Gau”’s solo cello melody remains as gorgeous as ever, while the arrangers lift the rushing melodicism of “Celes” to genuinely operatic intensity. And of course there is the legendary opera sequence, arguably strengthened now that its classical aspirations are realised through live performers. Unsurprisingly, “Aria di Mezzo Carattere” drew the most scrutiny, and apart from the irritatingly flat delivery of the English lyrics, the new arrangement wisely stays out of the way of the heart-rending melody.

As in the earlier Pixel Remasters, the arrangers occasionally extend cues by repeating them in altered orchestration before the loop. This does happen in Final Fantasy VI, though less frequently than elsewhere. In several cases, the results are stupendous. The clearest example is “Kefka”, already in its SNES form one of game music’s smartest and most multifaceted character portraits. The Pixel Remaster takes a satisfyingly cerebral approach to this depiction of a violent, deranged clown hiding behind pomp and affectation. The cue’s first pass feels tamer than the SNES version, but only because the arrangers shape a new internal arc, adding percussion effects and nervous strings around the main melody as though both the music and its subject were becoming progressively more unhinged. Other extended cues such as “Locke” and “Setzer” take their already pronounced swagger and heroism to thrilling new heights.

Other pieces in the remaster make subtler, but still meaningful, adjustments to the emotional profile of their originals. The addition of violin and accordion in the second pass of “The Day After” lends the cue a surprisingly apt Mediterranean warmth. “Searching for Friends” changes more drastically, moving from hopefulness to outright bombast over the course of its repeat, but doing so in a way that feels entirely natural. Then there are cues such as “Forever Rachel”, “Catastrophe” and “Final Dungeon”, which simply receive a little new material. Outright reworkings of the sort that appeared elsewhere in the Pixel Remasters are largely absent here. “Mines of Narshe” suggests why that is perhaps a slight pity: the way the arrangers expand its breathy, cavernous atmosphere by inserting an entire new noir-jazz section produces the soundtrack’s single most imaginative moment.

Outstanding though the original Final Fantasy VI soundtrack is, it is not flawless, even if its many triumphs easily overshadow its few weaker spots. As in the earlier Pixel Remasters, the arrangers manage to improve a handful of cues that previously fell short, though they do not seem to be pushing quite as hard as they did in Final Fantasy V. The brassy pomp of “Edgar & Sabin” was never one of the original soundtrack’s most inspired moments, but the remaster’s punchier, more colourful orchestration helps the cue surmount that limitation. A similar treatment benefits the previously rather rote “Troops March On”. On the SNES, “The Wedding Waltz – Duel” felt somewhat fragmented, whereas its short sections now register as far more fully realised. And while the final section of “Dancing Mad” was never exactly in need of rescue, its furious, rhythmically head-spinning progressive hard-rock makeover turns it into a far more spectacular showstopper.

Unfortunately, not everything here turns to gold. One can forgive the arrangers for not transforming gimmick tracks such as “Techno de Chocobo”, “Slam Shuffle”, “Spinach Rag” and “Johnny C. Bad” into masterworks. Similarly, the first two sections of “Dancing Mad” remain more a sequence of grand pseudo-operatic gestures than fully shaped compositions. More problematic are cues such as “Shadow”, “Blackjack”, “Another World of Beasts” and “The Fierce Battle”, all of which made a strong impression in the SNES original but are weakened here, something that happened only rarely in the earlier Pixel Remasters. The issue is repetition: these arrangements simply repeat material with too few meaningful changes in orchestration or structure, turning once-vivid pieces into slogs that overstay their welcome. Elsewhere, arrangement decisions such as the more prominent, overbearing organ-ostinato chords in “Dark World” create the same deadening effect.

That means this version of the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack is not quite the triumph it might have been. Even so, it gets most of what it attempts right, and when the results are as awe-inspiring and frankly epochal as “Ending Theme” and its endless procession of melodic marvels, it is difficult to feel short-changed. Put simply, this Pixel Remaster does, by and large, exactly what game music listeners hoped it would do: take one of the greatest scores ever written for a game and make it better still.