In Final fantasy 8 Squall female companions are very attractive. Compared with other adventures FF7, FF9 fewer female members comprised the excursion party. For Cloud Tifa was certainly more physically attractive, while Aeris had other appealing qualities (see the imagery in the FF7 thread for details).
In FF9 it as clear garnet is arguably the most divine character in any FF game...she had the pureness of Aeris and ornament like features of rinoa (but much cuter again). What am I developing here, well in FF8 even Edea was gorgeous along with Quistis, Selphie and Rinoa...What are the creators saying? Well on the outskirts the romantic theme makes FF8 seem like titanic rip-off, in fact ff8 seems lees developed if taken literally than ff7 and until I completed FF8 and pieced themes together FF8 did seem quite ordinary. Similarly to Homers Odyssey, when taken for granted reads like an epic "Days of Our Lives" highlights the Humanness of our existence. Sure, FF8 has wars and conquest, yet these thing take heed to the more interesting preoccupations...chiefly love and human relationships. Most of the time Humans cannot readily justify their actions, as is true with Squall and Odysseus...These men encounter beautiful women, fight wars interact with gods and supernatural forces, the reasons are multiple, intertwined and complicated. In FF8 the big mission is Rinoa, the turmoil is from the heart and only the player is privy to this information. Alfred Hitchcock was well aware that characters deliver more than plot, then events deliver less than plot again. Events are circumstantial, plots are specific while characters are eternally human. When the plot takes precedence over the characters we see a degradation in the whole story... This is why FF8 was so brilliant it allowed the character to flourish.
No keeping with the inquiry that Laguna and squall are some kind of fated humanists, there appeal to women makes this even more viable, Lucifer after all was the most attractive of the angles. In previous threads we have examined the role Laguan and Squall bring in empowering humanity and it seems that no matter how clumsy and useless Laguna is some infernal power ensures he succeeds, even his entrapment of adel looks unreasonable and very idiotic. Laguna’s infernal powers are so great that all women he has contact with either die or become jeopardised to live disruptive lives. Julia, Raine and Ellone. It could also be argued that the death of Raine was attributed to the birth of Squall (fenris) the son of Laguna (Loki) - a literalist would look at these facts as "plot drivers" oh Raine died so then Squall could be brought up in Garden or else the story could not happen (this thinking is quite common in the rationalist age) ... but non the less moronic... I could be accused of going too far, but then explain why there are ample religious references in the game.