What does the fat chocobo do?

[Uncle Jon]

I just found it in the game, all I see is that it can carry my items like a storage unit? But in this version off FF3 I think there is unlimited amount of items I can carry? In the original was there limited inventory you could carry? Is there another point to the fat chocobo?

[Koby]

Originally posted by Darunia:

I just found it in the game, all I see is that it can carry my items like a storage unit? But in this version off FF3 I think there is unlimited amount of items I can carry? In the original was there limited inventory you could carry? Is there another point to the fat chocobo?

There's no point to the fat chocobo since item inventory isn't limited like it originally was, unless you simply want to declutter your inventory without selling things.

Maybe eventually modders will make a limited inventory mod and give fatty a use again for those who wish for it.

[PC2070]

Store items, but it's basically pointless though

[Lil Daphne]

NES couldn't hold all the items back in the day. That Chocobo is a novelty for those that want to store extra stuff like back in the NES version.

[the_atolm]

This was something that I found somewhat disappointing about the approach taken with this remaster -- the Fat Chocobo is such an iconic figure in FF lore, but his importance to players, and thus his continued citation in later FF games, is a function of his utility as a central element of the game's system and the player's prolonged exposure to him. Here, he is reduced to being an inconsequential non-entity. The same could be said of several aspects of the game and its narrative -- any attachment players of the original version of the game may have developed with the guest characters (Elia, Dessh, etc.) would have been a function of having them trail behind you for hours as you try to find your way to the next objective, and the sort of terror that the Cloud of Darkness held for those Famicom gamers and the sort of quasi-legendary status of FF3's infamous endgame were direct products of design decisions and the constraints they imposed on the player.

Before anyone jumps on me for this being a criticism of these new versions of the games, it is not -- I have enjoyed these remasters greatly, and at my advanced age have limited patience for the sort of abusive mechanics prevalent in early RPG design.

That said, the changes made do result in a qualitatively different experience, and the etiology of that difference is itself interesting, as is as how that difference articulates itself in the sort of relationship the player cultivates with the narrative dimension of the experience. Ultimately, it gestures towards the way in which the total narratological effect of a video game exceeds the sum of the conventional narratological mechanisms expropriated from other narrative media (text and dialogue, scripted cut scenes, musical cues, mise-en-scene, etc.) it may employ. Remasters/remakes of this sort, which make substantive changes to the game mechanics of their source text/original game, provide a useful heuristic for thinking through these sorts of issues.

For instance, the streamlining of the experience with the unlimited inventory, unfettered access to a world map and mini-map, etc., precludes the possibility for players to forge the same sort of affective investment in the characters and game world that those in the eighties would have -- few new players of FF3, for whom this is to be the first experience of the game, are going to remember the sunken world theme, Elia's name or her theme, or have even met the Fat Chocobo. Those that do are those whose experience has already been conditioned by exposure to the discourse about the game, usually elaborated by the citations and references to them in subsequent FF titles or ancillary media (soundtrack arrangements, etc.), but I wouldn't be surprised if the reaction would tend towards disappointment: certainly, much of the impact of the discovery of the sunken world and the haunting melody buttressing it is neutralized by the map that points you to your only possible destination, and the total of five minutes Elia spends with you before she takes that poison dart or whatever it is seems inadequate justification for the importance all subsequent discourse around the game attributes to her. With autosave and quicksave, the descent into Eureka or the climb up the Crystal Tower carries little if any sense of danger or risk.

If the pixel remaster version of FF3 had been that originally released, what sort of discourse would it have engendered? What would have been the "memes" or recursive citations it generated? Certainly not those that the original did, one would wager. What is interesting in some of the debate surrounding these reinterpretations of the games is, on the one hand, the contentious issue of what constitutes the authentic or legitimate "identity" of these games, on the one hand, and, as a corollary, a sublated desire for a particular category of experience, but an experience that is at best simulated, and that furthermore is ultimately epistemologically and phenomenologically incommensurate with the conditions of playing these games, in whatever iteration, in the present moment.

tl;dr, Why do I feel for the poor fat chocobo? Why do I feel compelled to feed him greens and listen to his song?