Interview Reveals Final Fantasy VI ‘World of Ruin’ Was Only Created Because Team Was Ahead of Schedule

Final Fantasy VI is celebrating its 25th anniversary and with that, the creators have come together to reflect on their time working on the game. During an interview in the Japanese magazine Famitsu, the creators discuss why they implemented certain features as well as their favorite systems.

One important key moment during the interview happened when the team discussed the “World of Ruin”. Evidently, it wasn’t supposed to happen. Series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi says, “Actually we didn’t initially plan to make the World of Ruin at all.” and Kitase adds, “We originally planned for the party to save the world and defeat Kefka just as things were looking grim and the world was about to be destroyed. Then we started talking about reworking that.”

[SPOILERS] For some fans, this will come as a pretty big shock given that the World of Ruin is an important moment in the game. This is where Kefka destroys the world and you wake up to the once lively green map littered with pollution and sadness. Emotionally, its a moment that you wouldn’t see coming given that heroes typically win before these events happen, but FFVI provided an alternative where the heroes must come back together and try again.

Sakaguchi-san adds, “The game was coming along more smoothly than we expected, so we were able to free up some time in our schedule before the release date and implement that.”

To round off the World of Ruin facts, Kitase-san mentions that Celes is his favorite character saying, “After creating the World of Ruin, which we hadn’t originally planned to do, I had a strong emotional attachment to Celes ever since I started event planning for the second chapter where we tried to make her the main character. And of course the scene that sticks with me the most is the opera.

Thanks, OneMillionPower for the translations.