Yoshinori Kitase shuts down "Squall is Dead", other fan theories

In a recent interview with Kotaku, Final Fantasy Producer Yoshinori Kitase responded to popular fan theories while promoting Mobius Final Fantasy at PAX West. Among the most popular topics discussed in video game forums and the internet at large over the years, two of the biggest fan theories have revolved around Final Fantasy VIII.

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On the theory that Final Fantasy VIII’s Squall dies at the end of Disc 1 when he’s stabbed by Edea’s ice spear and that the rest of the game is his dream:

“No, that is not true,” Kitase said, laughing. “I think he was actually stabbed around the shoulder area, so he was not dead. But that is a very interesting idea, so if we ever do make a remake of Final Fantasy VIII, I might go along with that story in mind.”

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It's worth noting that Squall woke up from this iconic cutscene questioning how he had no wound in the aftermath, so even if you factor in that characters in video games get shot and stabbed by enemies and monsters all the time, it was enough of a plot point to warrant questioning from the protagonist. It looks like you'll have to write it off as being healed by a heavy dose of curaga before his interrogation.

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On the theory that Final Fantasy VIII’s Rinoa is really Ultimecia:

“No, that is not true,” Kitase said. “I don’t think I’ll incorporate that even if we do remake the game. But that being said, both Rinoa and Ultimecia are witches, so in that sense they are similar, but they’re not the same person.”

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Given the influence of mind control and time paradoxes in the story, it was only natural that the thoughts of fans would come to consider the implications these would have on the characters. In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the weapons Ultimecia uses have the same name as Rinoa's weapons in the original game. Perhaps this is a developer wink to the fans?

There you have it, everybody. It's worth noting that in both questions, Kitase framed his answers with hypothetical "if we do a remake" scenarios. Never say never, especially if the Final Fantasy VII Remake does well. This gives me a few theories of my own about what the future may hold for Final Fantasy, none of which include being stabbed in the shoulder with an ice spear for wanting a remake of Final Fantasy VIII.

For answers to more theories about other games in the Final Fantasy series, please check out the full article at Kotaku.

Nice. Always found the Squall Is Dead theory reeeallly stupid. It's clear that they wanted him healed so they could torture him later and Edea's ice spell wasn't even near his chest.

Of course there's no wound Squall the ice melted JEEZ

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*obligatory Death of the Author comment*

No clarification on whether Future Esther's theories are correct or not? That's a shame...

About time someone did!

I always liked the Ultimecia theory, but was saddened that it meant Rinoa didn't get a happy ending. So I'm both happy and bummed about that one.

R=U is the kind of story twist that would be totally cool in a game set up for it thematically and narratively, which is probably why it gained so much traction in the first place.

It doesn't really fit into FFVIII that way though. The story would focus on entirely different things if it had that kind of dark twist to it. I do appreciate the creativity that went into it though and think it's really cool that it even exists as a theory =P

It's fake or someone probably paid Kitase to lie.

Squall was actually hit in the upper right area of his chest, not shoulders.

Squall=Dead being a true possibility in the remake just because he likes the idea? Nonsense.

R=U is false? I'm surprised he doesn't like this idea because this theme is not very uncommon in Japanese culture.

X sharing the same universe as 7's? Blasphemy and utterly stupid.

Fake, which it probably is, or not it very well be the Creator's canon. But I (or you) don't have to reinterpret everything just based on what he said anyway. It'd be pointless and unsatisfying.

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Originally Posted by Lone Wolf Leonhart

In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the weapons Ultimecia uses have the same name as Rinoa's weapons in the original game. Perhaps this is a developer wink to the fans?

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No, but before a battle begins, D-Ultimecia saying "Shall we dance?" is a nod to the R=U theory. In retrospect, VIII Rinoa says the same line at the dance party. Also consider that D-Ultimecia is clearly sane in Dissidia, compared to her original Self both in Japanese and English.

I say, screw all these external sources as in being not true canons or retcons, and stick with your true interpretations from the original sources.

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Originally Posted by Serapy

It's fake or someone probably paid Kitase to lie.

Squall was actually hit in the upper right area of his chest, not shoulders.

Squall=Dead being a true possibility in the remake just because he likes the idea? Nonsense.

R=U is false? I'm surprised he doesn't like this idea because this theme is not very uncommon in Japanese culture.

X sharing the same universe as 7's? Blasphemy and utterly stupid.

Fake, which it probably is, or not it very well be the Creator's canon. But I (or you) don't have to reinterpret everything just based on what he said anyway. It'd be pointless and unsatisfying.

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Originally Posted by Lone Wolf Leonhart

In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the weapons Ultimecia uses have the same name as Rinoa's weapons in the original game. Perhaps this is a developer wink to the fans?

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No, but before a battle begins, D-Ultimecia saying "Shall we dance?" is a nod to the R=U theory. In retrospect, VIII Rinoa says the same line at the dance party. Also consider that D-Ultimecia is clearly sane in Dissidia, compared to her original Self both in Japanese and English.

I say, screw all these external sources as in being not true canons or retcons, and stick with your true interpretations from the original sources.

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I cannot take a single line of this post seriously because either you are trolling or do neither understand the scenario, nor the right you get with your property.

The Author is Dead

figuritavely speaking ofc

I will not get into another discussion with you about a heavily misunderstood and misused concept that you are trying to bring up everytime whenever you want to ignore the very essence of successful communication, something that has a clear definition and structure in communication psychology or the axiomatic reasoning behind this even without knowing communication psychology.

By the way: I am the author or this post. And what I am saying with this post is what I am saying. I am not saying with this post what you want me to say. You can understand that another way but it will never be the actual message. When I ask "Can you tell me what time it is?" it is up to me to decide if I ask you really for the time or for your capability of telling me, not up to you because disturbance of communication occurs once at least one side does not get what it wants and that will automatically happen by purposely answering with a misleading answer. I can make a mistake my mis-wording what I said so actually increase the chance of misinterpretation. But what I want will always be what I want and no one can actually force me to "have wanted that instead". With property it is even more obvious that multiple rules apply because they are intellectual and legal owners and we are nothing. Nothing at all. Consumers without any rights about the franchise and a misusage of a fan-made concept that is heavily twisted nowadays to act like they can decide canonicity (what Death of the Author never actually was about) will not change anything about that. You do not want this back and forth again or do you? I do not. Live with it and walk away because I will definitely.

Edited the post so it can be read as worded to reflect more reason because hostility is not the drive here and that even though I am annoyed (and can still be seen with the opener) by ad infinitum discussions.

Inconsistency is the problem here, not intellectual property. Compare original fiction with its external sources (interlinked characters' personalities, elements, stories, etc...) and you'll sense so many holes coming from left, right, up, down, forward and backward. But try combining all of that into one and "true" interpretation, your brain may as well start ceasing to exist because you don't know what is real and what isn't, anymore. Hence my suggestion to stick with the original fiction in this case.

If they want to make "quality games," they simply can't play God by writing, re-writing or changing fiction that's nonsensical & contradicting just because they can. Oh, right. They certainly can, because it's thier right and they can do whatever they want. And we don't get a say in it at all. But wait, what about our entertainment rights? Yes, we do. We interpret/play the game and thus our entertainment(s) become fulfilled. The creators have no right to take that away from us. Did we misinterpret which was later corrected by the creator in the future? Well, our entertainment values would be still intact anyway.

The part where I said "fake" was kind of an overstatement but only because I presumed that Kitase's FF8 statements were inconsistent and have contradicted with what actually happened in his own game. Plus, him (on behalf of Nojima?) subtly saying yes to the theory about FF7 and FFX sharing the same universe, all based on one particular FFX-2 cutscene where Shinra says he's researching "pyreflies" and basically turning em into Mako just to light up the cities which would take place in many generations later. Implausibility at its best...

Death of the Author is not about canonicity, nor is it a "fan-made concept". It's a concept that's an integral part of post-modernism, which is a movement far predating fandoms being a thing at all.

What is in the book (or whatever text we're talking about it) is undeniably canon. But every story has elements of ambiguity, and what the author thinks about those points of ambiguity is completely irrelevant, since everyone's interpretation is as valid as theirs at this point. When the work is out there, the author's perspective is but one of many. Even if he claims he has the right (like the creator of the .gif extension regarding its pronounciation), he has no right, really, to change people's perspective on it.

I think what you're referring to, Seph, is more likely Fanon Discontinuity

Just for the sake of relevance, I'll make one example: Squall is Dead. Let's take what Kitase, according to the article, said into account and then compare it to the in-game proof.

Firstly, Kitase agrues that Squall couldn't be dead and in order for that to work, he was stabbed around the shoulder area. It HAS to be the shoulder area, so he's alive. Anything else is irrelevant.

Now, in game, Edea (controlled by Ultimecia) casts a shard, consisting of five icicles: one primary large and blue icicle with its secondary smaller but green ones.

https://i.imgur.com/5JPfdXw.png

At least 2 of them (the green ones) went through Squall; the first one went through the center of his chest, second one went through his upper chest. Unknown about the other green ones, but the primary icicle strikes him in the upper-right area of his chest and then it's stuck inside him.

https://i.imgur.com/7w1oXBL.gif

On close up of the blue icicle (take note that a part of his sleeve is covering it):

https://i.imgur.com/G3A0eu5.png

Clearly not shoulder or around its area. His fall damage has to be considered as well. It doesn't matter if this whole scene was poorly rendered or not, but proof is proof and it's contradicting with the claim/assumption made by Kitase in the article.

Either he forgot what he had created or he's just discarding the themes of FF8 (how the story is played out, time travel and the whole fate / destiny thing.) because they're likely to have a role in this Squall being impaled scene as well.

But either way, you can easily interpret this Squall scene however you want, or just suspend belief. This Squall scenario also creates another ambiguity; what happened after this and before the prison scene? Squall questioning his wound and looking perfect in health. Things like this are ambiguous. A work of beautiful fiction and that's how it's supposed to be.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

Death of the Author is not about canonicity

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Tell that to the fans that do use it do artificially declare canonicity. And yes, the constant misusage of it is indeed fan-made. As a matter of fact you can hardly argue that "Death of the Author" is fan-made just because fans are humans and who actually finds a liking in some facette or another of a piece of work at one point is considered a fan or at least one that invests interest - but that's semantics right here.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

But every story has elements of ambiguity, and what the author thinks about those points of ambiguity is completely irrelevant, since everyone's interpretation is as valid as theirs at this point. When the work is out there, the author's perspective is but one of many. Even if he claims he has the right (like the creator of the .gif extension regarding its pronounciation), he has no right, really, to change people's perspective on it.

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As said, communication psychology outright disproves you and chewing on the Death of the Author will not actually do you a favour with this one so you really did not do yourself a favor with your reply. As a matter of fact you can hardly seperate canonicity and what you claim to actual understand of the original Death of the Author concept exactly because the very essence of canonicity makes every other interpretation an absolute waste of time. There are people who know that "fanon" and "head-canon" holds no weight in actual canonicity, that is true. But there are tons of people who overall think that they as part of a fan community have the power to decide over canonicity (e.g. the Detective Conan fans very often) and when it comes to DotA (lol, not Defense of blabla) most people also just use it as another excuse for canonicity debates, so no, not everyone uses it with the original meaning, which is exactly what I dislike. It is true, nobody can force you to think what the author says - to now get back to the original meaning. But it will still be the message - to get back to communication psychology; and yes, fiction IS communication as well because communication is the exchange of information. Just as you can misunderstand me as much as you want but you will never be able to decide what I mean over me. That you really seem to think I am discussing with just this forum and have never heard the stuff you guys say is beyond me. Its just that the aspects are either wrong, misused or other things. No one here is denying that people can "understand otherwise". That is not the point though and I do not appreciate how you are once more making use of my obvious instinct of answering to such things. I was hoping this would be over.

The true problem is that people cannot actually seperate "like/dislike" from "counting". People really have the nerves to think that when they do not like something it has the same power as the original writer just retconning stuff instead of accepting "okay, I did dislike that but its a thing nonetheless and it is not in my realm of power to actually make it void for that story". I hate tons of things. But I would never be so insane to actually act like that has any effect on these things.

EDITed the last part because your reply was nothing bad. But to show good will I will not continue this any further because that is what I wanted anyway.

Why are you constantly referring to communication psychology when I'm referring to Death of the Author from the perspective ofliterary studies? And why is my opinion on this stuff such a personal thing to you?

Okay I think we're getting off track here. Let's stop the back and forth and bring it back on topic. Thank you kindly.

Part of me wanted Squall to die as I never took to him as a character.

Oh well.

I always found the theory fascinating even if it was never true. It raises a few good questions about that weird FMV on the closing section.

If the article is unreliable, then why believe it? Why do you let a writer dictate what's true and what's not, when he's not under the best circumstances? Now, come tomorrow or so and if he drank or did drugs and make a new interview saying the same things but repeating in such a contradicting way, again, I'm assuming you will still believe what he says regardless? After all, he's a god, the entity with no imperfections. Every now and then, he can freely change his mental state and redecorates his whole creation anytime he wants.

Smh.

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Originally Posted by Lone Wolf Leonhart

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except this is fiction

as in, its not real, whatever anyone's opinion on it is

If you're coming from the "Death of the Author" position that a work stands on its own and once it's out there in the ether it's up to you to decide how you interpret it, I have no problem with that. It's how a lot of people identify with song lyrics.

I actually wasn't addressing that. In fairness to you, my post was ambiguous.

Oh, sure, I can see that, I wasn't addressing your post in a defensive manner at all, if that's what you got from that ;)

I just find the whole message of that image interesting and meriting discussion: sure, there are true things about the world that can't really be argued because they're real no matter what you think, and yet people will aggressively defend their (wrong) stance on the thing, to the point that their opinion will be the accepted one, despite the truth being the opposite. It takes a whole other meaning when you apply it to a work of fiction - to what degree can we say that what we take as a given in a specific narrative is an objective truth? Sure, the things we see on the screen are true, but is the way we understand them the same? Like, some people may believe Squall died in that particular FMV, but we really have no measurable way of knowing that that's really not the case. Sure, the rest of the game seems to disprove it, but the rest of the theory kind of has an explanation for that too. The creator may believe otherwise, but again, his idea isn't necessarily overriding anyone else's - until we get a canon continuation outright and fundamentally disproving the theory. I know we have stuff like Dissidia, KH, and WoFF that have Squall in them alive, but those can't really count since they're not really canon to FFVIII's story.

That said, I personally don't believe any of the theories Kitase disproved anyway (though I'm still kinda partial to R=U if only because it being real would add a lot of depth to the game). It's just interesting to consider all these options as there are people who believe them and defend them vehemently, to the point of making it look like a conspiracy theory, but since all of this is a work of fiction and is not inherently real (or true), pointing out who has the right of it really depends on your point of view.

So yeah, that was just my two cents on that. Sorry if I took your post the wrong way!

I think Spoony said it best as to why the Squall is Dead theory honestly makes the story worse. Since if the theory is canon only the events first disc actually happened, then story ends with Squall dying without having accomplished anything. Maybe if the whole point of the story was finding out whether it's reality or not (like in Total Recall) it would make sense, but here it just comes off as another tacky, half-assed, ultimately meaningless idea thrown on the pile with no real depth or weight to it.

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Originally Posted by Example

I think Spoony said it best as to why the Squall is Dead theory honestly makes the story worse. Maybe if the whole point of the story was finding out whether it's reality or not (like in Total Recall) it would make sense, but here it just comes off as another tacky, half-assed, ultimately meaningless idea thrown on the pile with no real depth or weight to it.

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Wow I actually agree with Spoony when it comes to something FF8 related. :/

If the Squall Is Dead Theory is canon, it would make the whole game tacky and it would have no meaning.

i think Spoony secretly loves FF VIII, all the memorabilia scattered around his room and it takes time to make those quality FF VIII costumes... and i agree the Squall is dead theory does only cheapen it...

I agree that Squall is not dead - I have never viewed him as dead, at least not from the Ice Strike (I did consider the possibility that (SPOILER)he died during the ending, and was revived but apparently he was more "near-death" than anything), but I also agree that Kitase proved the theory wrong in a poor way by saying that the Ice Strike hit Squall in the shoulder area. I too, do not think it looks like the shoulder area, and the wound does not need to be in the shoulder area for Squall to survive, especially if you go by the possibility that he was cured by Edea so he would be alive for questioning. Maybe, the script originally called for Squall to be hit in the shoulder area, and the scene didn't reflected that, and Kitase forgot that the scene didn't match up to what was planned, or maybe he's just remembering it wrong? Either way, I believe him when he says Squall survived, he just could have proved his point in a better way.

Serapy, you and other people who want Squall to be dead or Rinoa to be Ulitimecia, or anything else are allowed to follow fanon ideas of that, but the canon explanation is that they are not. The beauty of fanon is that it is whatever you want it to be, and canon and fanon do not affect each other - it's just only the former is true when dealing with the real story.

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Originally Posted by MJN SEIFER

Serapy, you and other people who want Squall to be dead or Rinoa to be Ulitimecia, or anything else are allowed to follow fanon ideas of that, but the canon explanation is that they are not. The beauty of fanon is that it is whatever you want it to be, and canon and fanon do not affect each other - it's just only the former is true when dealing with the real story.

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This has nothing to do with fanon. It's nothing to do with "you want it to be true", either. It all comes down to interpretations; perceived differently by players; such knowledge or information is gained from the game become the bases used to draw up conclusions or theories. They don't usually use made up information or fanatises as the bases. Real data(linked with ambiguities) from game gets processed by your brain, regardless of whether you want it to be true or not, and then you maybe end up with personal answers.

I don't think Squall is dead, but his Edea scene has created an another ambiguity. Nothing is specificed or explained for his "wound", so people can interpret however they want.

R=U wasn't made up from made up information and in this case, if everything fits, well you have your answer. I do believe in R=U. Still do and always will.

My expierence/interpretation is set in stone and fullfiled when I finished the game. So, why should I let anything (legal canon) or anybody dictate me? That's just immortal, cheating, waste of expierence and time.

Not fanon.

If whatever Square created in the FF8 game was unintentional (disputable though), then that's thier fault. But it still doesn't give them the moral right to retcon FF8 at a later date just because they're bored or need to make it more interesting for new players.

Yeah, I used the wrong term there - "headcanon" would have been better, since that is more "how a fan personally interprets things that aren't spelled out to them", while fanon is more "a fans own personal version, regardless of what is stated".

Though, I actually meant that, if Squall is officially not dead, people are still allowed view the game as though he is if they prefer it that way, which is where "fanon" came in to my mind, but yeah, it is more theories than fanmade products when approaching it that way, so I understand where you're coming from.