Analysis of Final Fantasy VI: Playable Character Themes Part 1

My Favorite video game composer of all times is Nobuo Uematsu who is famous for doing the Final Fantasy games. This is one of my favorite games he did and so I decided to analyze it first. One of my goals for analyzing this game it to show how the music works as a unified whole. The music for this game was the strongest written for the franchise up to it's time due to it's compositional unity and memorable themes. one of the aspects that set this game so far above it's predecessors was that every single playable character their own theme. Not only that but many of these themes are developed and altered throughout the game to fit with different situations and emotions that a specific character was experiencing (though the amount of development varied depending on the importance of the character.) This is especially true about the track "Balance is Restored" which plays over the ending sequence of the game and is 21 minutes long. During this composition each of the playable character themes are stated in a new altered form. the alterations of the themes match the full extent of the changes that each character experiences by the end of the story. This is all an enormous musical undertaking considering that there are fourteen playable characters. I am going to start analyzing each characters theme along with any variations of the theme throughout the game play. I will also have a post specifically for the use and variation of each of the themes in "Balance is Restored." All these posts will be coming soon.