The Complete Evolution of The "Four Fiends" Part 1 (Final Fantasy I - VI)

as the Final Fantasy franchise has developed one of the fundamental principles has been around evolution and indeed more recently revolution whether it has been in relation to the story the gameplay or other elements such as the music there are often many aspects that are changed between the various iterations boss fights are one specific example of this acting as the tentpoles of any game they are often the most exciting and stimulating moments a test of your prowess that can reward you with powerful new tools have major story developments within the Final Fantasy franchise things are no different as boss fights appear in their droves but there are some boss fights that are rather symbolic and that's where this relates to our earlier point about evolution and revolution as some more nuanced aspects that were introduced in earlier iterations of the franchise have persevered even if they aren't immediately apparent which brings us onto the subject of one of the franchise's oldest tropes the four fiends if you've played Final Fantasy one four or nine you will no doubt remember these powerful forces of nature who impede your progress they are either lieutenants of the big bad manifestations of the elemental forces you're trying to save or both when they do show up they are some of the biggest encounters in their respective games and the idea behind them is steeped in history and culture in Japanese they are called the XI T know the four heavenly generals or the big four this term harkens back to samurai society in the single period when a leader would appoint four of his best generals his four divine generals to special positions of honor underneath him and that idea itself is derived from the Buddhist faith specifically its four gods who represented the cardinal directions and there are also ties to ancient Chinese astrology with regards to the Japanese interpretation specifically you may recognize similar groups in other video games that were created by Japanese companies like the Elite Four in the Pokemon franchise and the four heavenly kings helmed by m.bison in Street Fighter but it also extends beyond that into other properties like anime with shows such as Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon also utilizing this trope but if we're going back to Final Fantasy outside of those three games mentioned prior did you know that within the franchise this trope is actually very expansive and that there are even multiple interpretations of what the four fiends are did you know that Gilgamesh and ultros have a pretty cool connection to the four themes and what does Dungeons and Dragons have to do with any of this well that's what we're about to dive into as we run through the second video in our series on the evolution of Final Fantasy however unlike last time where Chris Lauren and I looked at the warrior of light trope this time we're not just going granular we're going super granular and it's for that reason that we've chosen to split this particular topic into two videos as well I'm sure you'd all love listening to me talk for approximately forty to fifty minutes straight in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one has the chance to interrupt me I'm not sure that's particularly healthy for anyone let alone me who has to do all that talking rest assured though in Part II we will most definitely be delving into the MMOs and mobile games and this video will help to ensure that everything we talk about in that second video is nicely tied together so without further adieu my name is Daryl and together with Chris and Lauren we are going to be analyzing the use of the four fiends motif all the way up to Final Fantasy 6 so let's kick things off with how it all came to be in the original Final Fantasy much like the warrior of light theme and other tropes the four fiends began with the series itself they were positioned as the biggest bosses in the game outside of the final boss and they were the foes that you had to vanquish in order to relight the and saved the world from annihilation each of the fiends represented one of the essential elements and crystals there were a prominent part of the games law which was the undead fiend of earth Meredith also known as Corey was the fiend of fire Kraken was the fiend of water and Tiamat was the fiend of air and these dastardly creatures lurked deep within the game's biggest dungeons draining energy from their respective elemental crystals as the player discovered at the end of the game the fiend actually served chaos better known as garland and it was their interference that enabled the time loop which gave garland the strength to become chaos and that helped to make the game's storyline extra complicated now each of these prototypical fiends was drawn from Dungeons and Dragons like many other features in the original Final Fantasy the lich was Undead like the many necromantic monsters in Dungeons and Dragons who were also powerful mages that seeks to gain immortality by becoming undead skeletal monstrosities this connection between Earth and death then became a trend in later games subverting the usual role of Earth as the giver of life meredith was named cauri in the nez version partly due to character limitations but it was also a reference to the snake woman hybrids that also featured in Dungeons & Dragons the name was a reference to Kali the Hindu god of destruction and was probably changed in later games to be more sensitive to cultures and copyrights Tiamat was a deity in the world of Dungeons and Dragons a Mesopotamian ocean goddess adapted into an evil five headed dragon and it acted as the counterpart to Bahamut who also appeared in Final Fantasy 1 and lastly we have the Kraken who should be pretty recognizable as a monster of the sea from Greek and Norse mythology's in terms of the game itself the player had to fight these four monsters twice once in their respective layers to restore the crystals and then once again in the final dungeon the temple of chaos these second encounters act rather unpleasant surprises as the game didn't even remotely warn you that these rematches were inbound there wasn't any indication given as to where they lurked in wait and well saving was a bit of a chore in the original so you can see how that may have been a tad frustrating but that summarizes everything pretty well so here's the trope in its original bare-bones form tough battles against the big bads elemental infused lieutenants which must be defeated for a second time and a gauntlet during the final dungeon so let's see how that developed throughout the rest of the series as we move on to Final Fantasy 2 like many Ness era sequels Final Fantasy to distance itself from its predecessors in quite a few ways but one of the features it did retain was the concept of the four fiends albeit with some significant variations in the course of the final dungeon called pandemonium you can choose to face off against four strong bosses zombie borgin Tiamat the elder Bob and Astaroth instantly you can see a similarity there Tiamat but despite sharing a similar name to its Final Fantasy 1 counterpart there aren't actually that many similarities between the two bosses and in terms of the rest of them there are quite a few elements that do distinguish them from what we saw in the original game but the core theme is still very much present it's insinuated in the Japanese novel adaptation final fantasy 2 momento make you that these bosses are the four lieutenants of Satan ruler of hell and looking closer we can see some isolated similarities outside of the fact that there are of course four of them for example if we focus specifically on Borgen you do fight him twice throughout the course of the game and when he's fought for a second time as one of the four lieutenants of Satan he's now Undead and he's also the weakest of the four much like glitch was in the first game if he'd also had an earth elemental status it would have been almost identical outside of the name but the four lieutenants of Final Fantasy - all had their elemental focuses removed as a collective the four lieutenants of Satan appeared as a challenge in the final dungeon but this time they weren't mandatory and they weren't specifically tied to the story either defeating them did yield great rewards though in the form of the ribbon and the Genji equipment it meant that at its core the trope was still there as there were four powerful lieutenants of the big bad and they did appear in the final dungeon but with the exclusion of borgin throughout everything I'm about to say you only had to fight each of them once and there was no elemental infusion they also weren't mandatory and they weren't integrated with the story things would change though as we headed into our next core experience with Final Fantasy 3 as the developers chose to bring many of these elements back to the forefront acting as a swan song for Final Fantasy on the nares Final Fantasy 3 took many cues from the first game in the franchise including the return of the crystals and the light warrior motif and of course it also featured its own version of the four elemental fiends motif but with quite a few of modifications including a whole new suite of enemies that acted as part of an octet as opposed to the classic quartet throughout the floating continent there were classic dungeons that housed within them four elemental crystals and each of these crystals was guarded by an assortment of bosses Titan appearing for the first time in the franchise protected the earth crystal but despite Titan going on to become the summon associated with the earth element there was no elemental affinity associated with this boss in either the nares version or the 3d remake of Final Fantasy 3 likewise the land turtle which guarded the wind crystal and acted as the first boss in the game also had no elemental affinity probably because there would have been no way if you'd actually exploited at that time in the game the salamander and Kraken both did have elemental affinities though and they guarded the fire and water crystals respectively the appearance of the kraken guarding the water crystal no less could also be taken as an homage to the four themes from the original game as you then ventured into the world of darkness had the four fiends troit been replicated in full force from the original game you would have expected to square off against the same four enemies again just all powered up but as the game had changed you now had to square off against four unique foes that were much harder unlike the previous four some of whom had been summoned by Sandy these four new fiends were summoned by cloud of darkness and they were summoned for the purpose of guarding the dark elemental crystals but also killing the warriors of light should they be encountered there was the arrow man who guarded the dark earth crystal the two-headed dragon who guarded the Dark Fire crystal the echidna who was found at the dark water crystal and the Cerberus he watched over the Dark Wind crystal it meant that although there were some twists the four fiend stroke was back in full force except unlike before where we had four fiends now we had eight the majority of them though were summoned by various guises of the big bad and because of this they were all related to the story some of them also had elemental affinities associated to the crystals that they were guarding and the harder versions were faced in succession during the final dungeon the only real deviation aside from the numerical differences was that the bosses themselves were rather different compared to what we have seen in the original game indeed Final Fantasy 3 didn't include Lich Meredith or Tiamat and neither of the earth crystal guardians were Undead but things would be rather different or rather the same as Final Fantasy entered into a new era with Final Fantasy 4 like many franchises in this era this new 16-bit game tried to take everything its 8-bit forefather did and make it super like super mario well did for Super Mario Bros and Super Metroid did for Metroid four the four fiends concept this meant that there would be some changes to spruce things up even further and perhaps the biggest change again came in the naming convention as in Final Fantasy 4 an entirely new group of enemies were encountered they did still represent the classic four elements there was scar million a the undead fiend of earth Canas oh the fiend of water barber each year the fiend of wind and Rubicon Tate the fiend of fire this change may have been made to avoid following Dungeons and Dragons too closely again or just made to make things interesting as it represented another collection of for famed entities this time the names all came from Dante's The Divine Comedy which has inspired countless other video games including Dante's Inferno each of these names is found in the poem in the eighth circle of hell where counterfeiters hypocrites Sadducees and sorcerers amongst other things are punished for all eternity they seek to lead Dante and his guide virgil astray from their path to purgatory and paradise like the servants of chaos Satan and cloud of darkness before them final fantasy force fiends served the big bad Zemus who placed them under the command of his mind controlled general dole bez and going along with the super theme of the snares the four generals this time had much bigger roles to play with in the game's story as chameleon a was first encountered when Cecil was still a Dark Knight and his sword with weak against the undead monsters Canas o killed the king of baron long before the story even began and was manipulating Cecil courting his inner turmoil Barbarita tries to manipulate Kain viewing the Dragoon as a kindred spirit through their share connection to the sky and perhaps her similarity to his childhood friend Rosa and Rubicon Tay was the worst of all destroying edges kingdom of Evelyn and turning his parents into horrible monsters these generals weren't just memorable boss battles they were now bitter enemies with personal connections to our heroes and us as players and true to form with the original version of the trope they did return in the final dungeon but this time it was a true boss medley they had to be defeated one after the other in a single battle in the 3d remake they even went one step further and created a combined super boss Bulgarian which was another name taken from the Divine Comedy it meant that aside from the name changes all of the elements were there tough battles against the big bad elemental infused lieutenants which must be defeated for a second time in a gauntlet during the final dungeon they were also mandatory and completely integrated within the story but even though with Final Fantasy 4 they chose to revive the trophy faithfully things would start to drift and follow a new course as we moved on to final fantasy 5 like Final Fantasy 1 3 & 4 Final Fantasy 5 was a game that focused heavily around crystals but the way in which they were presented was rather different and it meant that there was only one foe who could actually be considered a guardian of the crystal which was RKO avis who protected the earth crystal the other enemies you fight in relation to the crystals are either just happenstance or the opposite they're actually trying to destroy them it means that the notion of the four fiends wasn't aligned to the crystal theme and indeed it wasn't aligned to the final dungeon either as you ventured through the interdimensional rift you would most definitely face some very tough fights and both Omega and Shinri represented some of the most powerful super forces we'd ever seen but they weren't exdeath doing and they certainly weren't his generals or his lieutenants this doesn't mean the exdeath didn't have his own twist on the four fiends trope though as this is where we got to see our first revolution as opposed to an evolution and it's or rather his name was Gilgamesh Gilgamesh has become rather synonymous in his own right and when he first appeared in Final Fantasy five you ended up squaring off against him numerous times six to be exact but the last two appearances were scripted and not really true battles in the final dungeon he pulls his punches against the party before recognizing them and fleeing and when he appears during the battle with the Necker foe he delivers a monologue in these encounters he's mostly considered an enemy solely for the sake of allowing the player to steal the last pieces of the Ginji equipment so that means the player actually only fights Gilgamesh properly four times at Castle exdeath at the big bridge at Caesars fleet with his psychic Enkidu and upon returning to castle exdeath where he reveals his true form for real battles against one lieutenant a rival who has plagued the party and formed the personal grudge against the protagonist it meant that although we had seen evolutions of the trope since its appearance in the original this represented a significant change in how it was represented so this then becomes its own derivative which will now call for fiendish battles it becomes less about the identity of the so called fiend and more about the significance and as we'll see through the rest of this video and into the next video this new form became much more of a standard for the main serious games and sometimes we would even see both of these interpretations appear within the same game which is something that happened in Final Fantasy 6 with Sakaguchi stepping aside and adopting the role of producer for the first time Yoshinori guitars a and here yo kitto decided to try and put their stamp on the franchise as they directed Final Fantasy 6 together it meant that there would be some significant deviation from what we had previously seen in the franchise as for example for the first time in a while elemental crystals were no longer a prominent motivator in the story they could have chosen to put something else in their place so that some Guardians would have something to protect but due to the narrative that was decided upon that concept just would never have worked that doesn't mean the concept of the four themes disappeared though as not only was there a strong connection to the original trope in the game but they also chose to bring back our new 4 fiends derivative the four fiendish battles but how do you build upon the legacy of Gilgamesh well you double down on silliness and make the new rival in Final Fantasy 6 a big purple octopus called ultros as we saw with Gilgamesh ultros is again fought four times throughout the game during the let a river sequence at the Opera House on Crescent Island and the final showdown in the air this aligns well with everything we've established before except ultros also represented a significant departure for the trope as for the first time in the franchise the notion of the four fiends in either its original form or its derivative form wasn't connected to the big bad in any way whatsoever ultros didn't serve anyone it was just a pain for the sake of being a pain if you look closely at the rest of the game though you will also see a representation of the four fiends in the warring triad the player first sees the statues of the goddess the fiend and the demon on the floating continent when kefka awakens them and i know you're thinking right now that actually daryl there's only three of them but immediately afterwards you encounter the ultima weapon flash forward to the final dungeon kefka's tower and the player must fight each member of the warring triad properly as well as the Ultima Buster right after so you could make a correlation that the warring triad along with Ultima represent kefka's lieutenants what's more although there's no official material supporting it there's a strong notion that you essentially fight the warring tried once again in the final battle against kefka when they become part of the literal tower of kefka as visage power and lady in a way these three tough bosses or four if we also include Ultima weapon in Ultima buster check most of the boxes for the classic fourteen trope they are four powerful foes who serve the big bad and they're fought twice with the second set featured in a gauntlet they do also have elemental affinities when you fight them for the first time as the goddess is weak to lightning the fiend is weak to ice and the demon is weak to fire as a bonus Final Fantasy 6 also featured eight legendary dragons which were released during the end of the world they each also had an elemental affinity and in every version of Final Fantasy 6 since the Game Boy Advance version they can also be for twice as tough of versions that appear in the Dragons Den collectively once they're defeated they grant a magicite for the summon called Crusader which when summon is comprised of the three members of the warring triad it's probably reading too much into things scratch that it definitely is but it's still a rather new way of connecting everything into a nice little package but where Final Fantasy 6 spoiled us with all these different interpretations as the franchise moved on to the PlayStation with Final Fantasy 7 the full fiends trope in its original form at least would start to become a little sparse but that's a story for next time though as we will be running through the appearance of the four themes in Final Fantasy 7 through two Final Fantasy 15 including of course Final Fantasy 11 and 14 as well as its appearances in as many spin-offs as we can possibly find be sure to let us know in the comments though which has been your favorite interpretation of the four fiends within the games that we've covered and of course if you enjoyed this video please hit that like button and subscribe to our Channel this video represents our second look into recurring motifs and tropes running through the series and hopefully you've really appreciated just how granular we've chosen to be with this one we took on board your feedback from the last video and we really wanted to address that feedback where we possibly could and even though this particular topic will feature a part two we're always on the lookout for suggestions on which topic to cover next so be sure to let us know in the comments if there are any specific ones that you would like us to take a look at and while I've got your attention at the end here why not also consider supporting us on patreon this video series actually started out as a suggestion from a patreon supporter who was on our top tier and that's just one of the rewards that we have on offer another is getting your name seen at the end of videos alongside these guys all right thank you so much for watching guys this video with its upcoming second part has been a significant undertaking and I would really like to thank Chris aka who Cathy for helping Lauren a myself out with its production for now though this is Daryl signing out I will see you all soon for more Final Fantasy videos [Music] [Music]

Channel: Final Fantasy Union

Views: 308,271

Keywords: four fiends, four fiends ff4, final fantasy four fiends, lich final fantasy, kraken final fantasy, tiamat final fantasy, marilith final fantasy, final fantasy 4 rubicante, final fantasy 4 scarmiglione, final fantasy 4 barbariccia, final fantasy 4 cagnazzo, gilgamesh, ultros, ultima weapon, ultima buster, tower of kefka, final fantasy

Id: bWZq3olnyCo

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2018