Quote Originally Posted by Lord Golbez View Post
That doesn't really matter. The whole orphanage and Cid's wife plot points, plus SeeD being Edea's idea? Those wouldn't make a lot of sense without Ultimecia. Sure you could come up with other explanations but it's hamfisting an explanation that was never meant to exist. It's obvious those plot points were intended to foreshadow Ultimecia and keeping them while changing Edea to the true villain would be clumsy. I'm not sure the whole interrogating SeeD members about SeeD's purpose in the prison makes that much sense without Ultimecia either (definitely doesn't if you keep that it was Edea who came up wih it, but even without that, don't know she has a reason to ask the question). It could be incorporated, but might be better to change it. You don't need a character to be mentioned for their existence to direct the plot. Disc 2 should probably be changed dramatically to fit an Edea as main villain game. Then there's the matter of Edea being defeated at the end of disc 2. Could be kept. Wouldn't be the first time an RPG villain bounced back from apparent defeat, but it's something to think about in terms of reworking.
Not much would actually need to be changed. If a sorceress is a figure to be feared and the only other sorceress we know of is Adel who was bat trout crazy, it's likely Edea could have created SeeD because she would know she would have to be hunted one day, that or Cid created SeeD because he knew she would go crazy one day. Honestly, none of the foreshadowing would actually change because even the player doesn't learn what SeeD's true purpose was until Disc 2, and even then, the story has it built up as Cid needing to take down his wife. Neither him nor Edea knew about Ultimecia's whole mind control nonsense, so she could very easily be written out because what little foreshadowing she has is done as a red herring throughout the first two discs until she's finally revealed at the beginning of Disc 3. Nothing major would have to be changed in Disc 2 because it is revealed why SeeD exists and was kept a secret, and Edea is being built up as the big bad throughout. No one knows Ultimecia helped inspired its creation until the ending anyway as there are no in-game references to suggest it until then.

I'm not implying that the whole second half of the game would not be re-written, but I am saying that Ultimecia feels like a cop out solution to a much more interesting dilemma the game spends the first two discs setting up, and then squanders by pulling a Zemus on us. Leaving the conflict between Squall's group and Edea would be more of an emotional conflict and the whole Orphanage and memory loss twists could easily be better integrated into such a scenario rather than being cheap thrills that have little impact beyond their initial bombshell nature. VIII could have had a much more visceral impact on the player if it stuck to Squall needing to kill a mother figure.

If you want an easier cop out solution, I'd say just drop Ultimecia and have Adel be the main villain. She has a motive, power, and it wouldn't be the first time a major antagonist spent most of the game sealed away and brain washing people to set them free. We would just end up dropping the fourth Disc and make Lunatic Pandora the final dungeon with some rewrites about Edea and Rinoa being controlled by her instead.