Very Interesting FFVIII article *spoilers inside*

Remembering the Orphan: Final Fantasy VIII < Features | PopMatters

I am not marking my spoilers because the game is a decade old. If you are playing through this for the first time, then why are you in this thread?

*Last Spoiler Warning*

Anyway, the article made some really good points on what I thought were weak moments in the game. Though, I still say the "GFs made us forget" plot twist would have worked a lot better if they foreshadowed it (the optional blurb on Squall's internet Facebook desk thingy does NOT count) or at least built up to it better. I know they had it planned all along, but the way it was presented made it accidentally look like very lazy writing.

Your thoughts?

I thought it was a nice article!

I saw this article recently, it is pretty interesting and makes a good defence for my favourite game in the series. I'm not sure I agree with their criticisms of the script translation though, I never noticed anything wrong with that.

Made me appreciate the game that little bit more. I've always enjoyed the story, but never quite got to finishing it. I'm going to have to buy another copy now, so I can get past the damn space station.

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Originally Posted by charliepanayi

I saw this article recently, it is pretty interesting and makes a good defence for my favourite game in the series. I'm not sure I agree with their criticisms of the script translation though, I never noticed anything wrong with that.

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Yeah...I think I remember a line or two that sounded a bit odd, as if there was an idiom or something that didn't have an English equivalent, but that was all.

Definitely an interesting article, but it seems to me far too concerned with praising FFVIII for being ambitious while refusing to acknowledge that it failed to realized many of these ambitions.

i think the author is trying to get ppl to give it another chance with a better understand of the game and its mechanics, and maybe even convince some newer players to give it a chance despite the bashing it gets from "Jaded Old School Purists"...
either way it was a good article and succeded in getting me to toss it into the old PSone for another go...

VIII was good but it did have flaws! at least it wasn't as flawed as XII though, Am i right??!!

[QUOTE=Sephex;2675199Though, I still say the "GFs made us forget" plot twist would have worked a lot better if they foreshadowed it (the optional blurb on Squall's internet Facebook desk thingy does NOT count) or at least built up to it better. I know they had it planned all along, but the way it was presented made it accidentally look like very lazy writing.

Your thoughts?[/QUOTE]


I'll read the article another time (I'm interested, I'm just a bit limited today), but I'd like to just state something about the orphanage scene. I never thought it looked like lazy writing; I thought it was handled just the right amount of foreshadowing to be concidered good, and that is true FF style foreshadowing.

What basically happens is that the foreshadowing becomes more obvious after you've had the GF thing revealed amd played the game again - just like Cloud's memories in FFVII (slightly different because in that game is apparrent from earliy on that something doesn't add up about his memories, but it changes as the game goes on.) The "internet" thing is one, but it is not the main one. The main one is more subtle, it is in dialogue and expressions, notice the way the characters are when they have "just met" for the "first time". The scenes have an air of "do I know you?" and "For some reason I expected that of you". Other examples include Squall recognizing Edea's name the first time he hears it. I shall follow up on this when I can, I really should type all this up propperly, I know opinion is opinion, but I feel there are parts of VIII (and to a lesser extent VII) that don't get the credit they deserve.

Look forward to the article, try to read it ASAP.

And notice how Irvine goes right for Selphie when he joins the party :p

The one thing about FFVIII that annoyed me the most is that they would substitute words for their numbers. Like "What are you two doing?" becomes "What are you 2 doing?" It's silly!

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Definitely an interesting article, but it seems to me far too concerned with praising FFVIII for being ambitious while refusing to acknowledge that it failed to realized many of these ambitions.

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Er...well that's probably because you think it did fail in those ambitions but the person who wrote the article thinks otherwise. Surely it's more logical to say that you disagreed with the author on this point, not that they were sticking their head in the sand over this aspect of the game.

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Originally Posted by charliepanayi

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Definitely an interesting article, but it seems to me far too concerned with praising FFVIII for being ambitious while refusing to acknowledge that it failed to realized many of these ambitions.

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Er...well that's probably because you think it did fail in those ambitions but the person who wrote the article thinks otherwise. Surely it's more logical to say that you disagreed with the author on this point, not that they were sticking their head in the sand over this aspect of the game.

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Agreed.


I personally don't find that it failed, at all. Not in those "ambitions" - as I have said before, Final Fantasy has a great method of forshadowing - it's more obvious the 2nd time.

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Definitely an interesting article, but it seems to me far too concerned with praising FFVIII for being ambitious while refusing to acknowledge that it failed to realized many of these ambitions.

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Probably about sums it up for me.

I certainly think he did praise the strengths really well but, as seems to be the consensus, wasn't quite so willing to confront many of the game's shortcomings. Having said that, the article did remind me of how much I liked various aspects of the game's visual style and particularly the set-up of Balamb Garden; an institution I felt could have been used more often within the game if only as a base for more SeeD missions or whatever.

I enjoyed the article.It did,as others have said,want me to give it another go and think less critical about it.For me FF8 is on the lower end of the game series,but I'l show you how little i understood it : i didnt gather from the game that laguna was squalls father haha,but yeah it definatly has gave me an urge to go through the game again(slowly!)and go in-depth where I failed to prevously

I really enjoyed that article. I'm always more interested in knowing the meaning behind certain scenes/scenarios. Although I had made a similar analysis by myself upon the billionth replay, I never actually really got what the hell was going on in that bit of the ending before Squall appears in the field of flowers.

And I didn't know Joss Whedon was a FFVIII fan. That's so awesome.

*basks in the warm fuzzy feelings evoked by the article*

I should have known it was this article. It must rival the now-ancient, once-similarly-inexplicably-popular "Mythology of Final Fantasy VII" for desperately grasping at symbolic and psychological straws.

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At one point, Squall’s party reaches the site of a recent battle, and one of his traveling companions casually drops a bombshell on everyone else: they’re all orphans of the previous world war and grew up at the same orphanage, but their memories of their time together have been erased by the Guardian Forces. The childhood friends that Squall can only dimly recall are in fact his new companions for this mission.

It’s a terrific, resonant metaphor:

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No.

Great article! I still love the game...after all those years. Many thanks for charing.:p

What a great article! It's been a long time since I have played VIII, but this brought back some memories, and mentioned a few things I didn't know, makes me want to play again from the start.
I have to agree with what is said there, VIII is unappreciated... I think its because everyone is so hooked up on VII, which pesonally I don't see anything in...

there's several reasons people generaly have problems with FFVIII... first is some people have trouble understsnding that by definition Sci-Fi is fantsay and therefore make the claim that it departs from the fantasy setting of previous FFs, sure there's no castles and princesses but it's still good fiction... second is the junction system, though innovative, people get intimidated by it while others thinks it makes the game too easy once you know how to exploit it, i've been playing FFVIII since it came out and i still don't see it as being exploitable unless you want to draw every bit of magic you can from every monster you enconter, but that's hella time consuming... usualy what i do to get used to a games system is i'll play like the first 30-120min then restart the game from the beginning once i have a grasp of it's system... it's also best to avoid lvling Squall as much as possible and stick to hunting things that give more AP than EXP, since monster lvls are based on Squalls lvl, and there will come a time when your party is stripped of everything (GFs included) and have to fight... another problem some ppl have is wrapping their heads around the plot twists especialy a certain revelation that happens on a basketball court, never try to involve real physics in a fantasy setting, just accept it's a fantasy story...

Great article. Nice to read such an in-depth view on my former favorite game (sadly it has now been replaced by vampires :D).

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Originally Posted by Emerald weapon

I'l show you how little i understood it : i didnt gather from the game that laguna was squalls father haha

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Don't feel embarrassed, it's never explicitly stated. You basically have to assemble the pieces, that Laguna and Raine had a child, a baby boy, and that the child and the other chick were both taken to the orphanage. Knowing one of the orphans was Laguna's son, and how bad Squall missed the chick after she left, and some other things, it becomes obvious.

I really enjoyed this article. However, there's always one complaint I have about it and its peers:

Final Fantasy VIII is not an underrated, black sheep of the franchise game.

Plenty of gamers today still cherish its memories and regard it as their favorite Final Fantasy. I still regard it as an astounding game that I didn't quite appreciate fully when it was first released. I think it has aged greatly, and part of why I came here to read this thread is because I was thinking about how much I miss it today.

I think the author glazed over the machine-meets nature aspect of Balamb garden - to me that's a major theme that many people miss. It contrasts VII's theme of technological dystopia raping the planet; instead machines and nature live in harmony as evidenced by places like Fisherman's Horizon and the race (Shumi's?) that co-operated with them to build the gardens.

I also think the orphanage-recollection scene gets more flak than it deserves. The "GFs make us forget" reason is arguably a shakey justification, but not recognizing the grown up versions of your childhood companions isn't. I think anyone on these forums can attest to the experience of meeting someone from your distant past for the first time in many years and not quite recognizing them. When put in a setting where you're not directly introduced as such, and it's a great real-life experience for the developers to put into the game, something the gamer should relate to. I think people didn't because they got too sidetracked focusing on the GF excuse and citing it so they could bash a game they probably didn't want to like in the first place (I'm sure each of us could name 5 members of this forum off the top of the head who are guilty of this).

On top of that, the game is loaded with plot devices the player is supposed to relate to. Squall is one of the best protagonists in the series almost primarily because he thinks one thing and says another, and the player is wholly confronted with his contradictions. It's sad to see people who are hurt by experience and from there shut themselves off, we all know people like this, some of us are that person ourselves, and in a coming of age story this is a beautifuly aspect to implement.

I gotta get around to playing this again...

Really good article. I can appreciate it more since I'm playing through VIII right now. I do agree with some others that he does tend to gloss over some of the game's shortcomings.

While Squall is definetly a well done character in my book, the rest of the cast is not so fortunate and most come off as 2D caricatures rather than real people. Even when they do try to break from their stereotypes it comes off more awkward and out of place rather than genuine

The main plot itself is unnecessarily convulated and downright bizarre at times, feeling more like FFIV with its "...and now another twist!" storytelling that only makes sense when you are in the heat of the moment rather than reflecting on it.

As for the Orphanage twist. My main problem with the twist comes from its lackluster foreshadowing and its terrible follow through. A lot of the best foreshadowing comes from events and scenes that are actually optional and can be easily missed like the "Full Tour" with Rinoa in Balamb Garden. The real problem comes from the fact that the memory twist never appears again. Your party learns of the averse effects of using the GF and not only do they not bother weighing in the consequences of using them, but never suffer from another memory problem to begin with. The whole "steal your memories" rule exists for one simple plot twist and then becomes irrelevant. Not to mention that the twist itself really doesn't change much in terms of relationships. It makes the party a bit more sympathetic to Edea but that only lasts a few more hours in the plot when the second disc ends.

Had it dramatically changed some relationships as though certain people who hated each other as kids are now good friends, there could have been more interesting drama and philosophy. We could have easily explored the notion of "what if we lost our memories and met under different circumstance?" question that could have really made for some great character development and story. No we lay the bombshell, feel good that we're all reunited and go back to hunting time traveling witches... VIII had a lot of potential to go to some amazing places and instead focused on probably some of the worst story elements it had to offer. This has always been my beef with VIII was that it was completely unaware of its potential awesomness.

Despite this, VIII is my "guilty pleasure" in the series. A title I have no problems picking apart but I still love it nonetheless. As for being a Black sheep of the FF family. I would say it is. Course there are a couple black sheep in the series, namely II, VIII, XI, and probably XII. IX might be added as well since the game is relegated as a footnote in the series history since it comes in the middle of the "love it or hate it" VIII and "the best thing since FFVII" X.

I'd say the list of well loved FFs is shorter than people think. ;)

Wow good find.
This is a very nice article.
VIII has always been my favorite and its good to see someone writing passionatly about why it was just an amazing game.

I agree with everything he has said, ecept the translations, i must be missing something.

it's actualy Selphie that Squall gives the "full tour" to at the beginning of disc 1... she was the new transfer student that he had to guide around, Rinoa was not a transfer student but rather a Garden client or employer depinding on how you look at it, was Rinoa using Cid or was Cid using Rinoa? hmmm...

You can give Rinoa a tour at Balamb after you save Balamb from the missiles. If she's in your party, she'll wake Squall up and you can show her around a bit but you have to be careful cause if you go into the front part of the hallway (where you see the elevators) one of NORG's men will come and ask you to see him.

If you go to any of the other rooms, Squall gives a pretty funny tour of Balamb with Rinoa doing some funny commentary. At the Library, Squall can meet up with Ellone, who asks Squall if he remembers her. She never introduces herself but Squall only remembers her from the first two times he met her in the game. Its one of the few good foreshadowing scenes for the Orphanage twist but if you accidentally go to the main lobby the tour ends no matter what.

Its kinda annoying how VIII's few really good plot/character development moments tend to be relegated to easily missable one time events. Like Zell's stalker...

oh i totaly forgot about that one but i'd hardly call it a full tour since all the hallways are gone for some reason by then, prolly to save space for other data on discs 2-4...
Zells stalker is also frequently present on the Garden BBS at Squalls desk... i think they intended for the players to visit the classroom a lot or read everything the first time because the GF memory thing is forshadowed from the minute you start the game on the desk computer (tutorial screens) as well as a lot of other events that happen later, it's really important to read everything on there, i know all that reading is boring but it's all in there even information on NORG...

The Article is great... I stand by my love for ff8