Flashbacks

One of the things I really love about FFVI is how it handled exploring the characters pasts. While you get the traditional flashback for Terra, Locke, and the Figaro Bros where the game just cuts away to the scenes in question, sometimes doing greyscale sometimes not, I really like how they experimented with some of the others.

Things like Setzer and the party walking down the stairs of the crypt while Setzer's memories play in the background, or using an Inn with Shadow to witness his disjointed dreams and then trying to piece them together, or how about exploring Cyan's dram world and stumbling upon his cherished memories like roaming phantoms in the dream version of Doma castle? I still feel like VI really did some cool things with different framing devices to tell the characters stories. Thoughts?

This was something I appreciated as a kid and made me think, "This is the best movie-like cinematography I have ever seen in a game!" I have played literal movie FMV games when I was younger (which were always laughable--even if they were good), but scenes like the ones you described above felt more appropriate for video games. When the Floating Continent lifted, I was awestruck by how well the music synced with the Mode 7 shot of the continent rising and giving the player a brief glimpse of the next major dungeon.

I would say their creativity paid off. It was nice to experience things through multiple formats. It might seem like a small or insignificant thing to us now, but at that point, it was pretty non-standard.