His wife-to-be was hovering on the edge of death (she was not dead, mind) while he searched for the one artifact which was supposed to be able to restore life to her. How is that demented, again?

I interpereted the story as her being dead.  That and the one artifact (ember) that was meant to restore life is the ember that symbolizes a pheonix.  So in order for such an artifact to hold true to its purpose, you would need to be dead to be ressurected (also pushing my belief that she is in fact dead).

That would kind of make sense if the guy who was taking care of her didn't say she specifically was not dead.

Also going along with my theory of her being dead, the accident happened before the world of ruin (so an unknown time, but more than likely several years).  Also her position in bead would be similar to a dead body (arms folded on top of her chest).  The other big piece of evidence would be the loads of flowers placed around the room, and I would generally associate large amounts of bouquets with funerals, not get better soon.

So if she is indeed alive, but really ill, the story of Locke isn't that sick, but I believed her to be dead for years.

EDIT: and the walkthrough at RPGClassics calls this section "A new spin on necrophilia" http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/ff6/walkthrough/walkr11.shtml

I wish they'd remake V and VI soon.. Threads like these torments me!

^You mean VI and VII...

No, he means V and VI. They haven't done V yet.

I know that. I just meant that VII is a way better game than V.

Let us not forget the 2 player option in FF III ( VI)

Story was not about a boy that looked like a girl, was not about someone that had social issues. Was for hell sure not a love story gone wrong.

If remade and enhance story wity FMV ( the opera scenario would be sweet). The Blitz street fighter moves enhanced,love the full range of characters and what they brought.

There is one piece of FF III that has never really been carried over to any other FF, the Esper stats boost per level up. I totally wrecked the game with a 100 speed , my action bar would full in aprx 1 sec or less combined with the Genji glove and whatever else skills you want to add and you can do 8 x 9999 etc . Ahh memories.

So much was right with that game, then VII and up, seems things weren't. Sure I still did hundreds of hours on them and killed every NM omega weapon/emerald/ etc etc but I think that was the only thing FF III didn't have, was some super hard bosses hidden. Maybe they were some but you can be so powerful I guess you own them just as easy.

I liked five dozens of times more then seven.

They had about equal ammounts of character depth but V had less "pointless" filler story wise.

and Job System killed Materia when it came to the upgrade/battle system.