Ah, FF6~ If you were a console RPG fan in the 90's you couldn't not love this game.

Looking back at it though, I can't help to think about and miss some of the varied, odd, and fun looking character designs of the old days and to feel a little bit disappointed that we don't have more of that today. Some characters I like to look back to as examples of this are Yangus from Dragon Quest 8, Steiner from Final Fantasy 9, and Cid from FF4, and though not as much on the extreme side as the other three, Cyan from FF6.

So much of our media is littered with super star model men and women, being cute, cool, and or sexy, so much to a point that it's kinda become a big turn off for me. When Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn launched and was receiving overwhelmingly positive reception, I still couldn't help but to feel resistant in checking it out simply because I felt the characters were too "pretty."

I'm not saying that I necessarily want to play "ugly" characters though; I understand that it's a little harder to feel attached to them if so, but characters can still be "not pretty" but very appealing through art and design. In a way, it's similar to the idea of visual game design in that, sure, we have the computer power to create and render very realistically, but "realistic" isn't always more beautiful or interesting, sometimes it needs a flare, flavor, colors, and/or style to push it into something grander.

I don't expect things to change anytime soon, but at least I know that interesting designs will never die out as long as there are artists out there in the industry with the cartoonist spirit.