If You Have Already Played Final Fantasy VIII...

by John B. 

Submitted by:	stimp_e@hotmail.com (John B.)
Spelling	2
Grammar	1.5
Coherency	3
Strength of Arguments	2.5
Presentation	2.5
Originality	1
Penalties	0
Total	12.5
Grade

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and fellow Role Playing Game (RPG) players. If you have already played and finished Final Fantasy VIII (FF8), chances are that a copy of this game is sitting in your house, wasting away into nothingness. Reading and hearing erroneous damnation's of and even lousy defenses for Squaresoft's labor of love has annoyed me so much that I have written this rant of an essay. I strongly believe that YOU, the RPG gaming community, have shot yourself into your own bloody foot.

Let me backtrack a bit... and choose a couple of games for comparison in order to make a point. Allow me to use two of my favorite RPGs: Phantasy Star 4 and Chrono Trigger. Each game had its own unique style. In Chrono Trigger the mood was relaxed; Frog and Robo were somewhat comical, the characters eyes bugged out in surprise, and Chrono's mother made funny comments about each character. In Phantasy Star 4 the graphical style suggested a more serious story: your own party member died (yes I know Chrono died as well, but there was no teary death scene), as well as a whole city full of people near the end of the game.

Every RPG should have its own distinct style so that it can create the type of mood that fits the game. People always compare the plot of FF8 to previous games, but things were done differently in FF8 for a reason.

Let me clarify something: ALL games before FF8 were limited in MANY things which Squaresoft worked around for their eight installment of the series. Final Fantasy VIII was a silent epic, as such that it seemed simple, but was actually a huge effort on the part of Squaresoft. They really did a lot of things that were missing from earlier RPGs.

Before FF8, characters were limited in scope. A character was based upon one or two characterizations; these "attitudes" would define this person and they would act this way throughout the rest of the game. A departure from this persona would result in off-character behavior.

This created a compromise in the story, because characters would behave in a manner which a normal person would never act, only to further define their "characterization". In another game, for example, Zell would have acted irrational and rash throughout the entire game.

In FF8, people complained that the "characters were boring" because they acted like REAL people. The observant person would have picked up many neat things about ALL of the main characters in the game. This is a mistake that many pro-FF8 people make; they state that the other characters had to be compromised so that Squall and Rinoa's relationship could be built upon. NO!

No one was compromised. Many characters were established. Again, Zell showed many sides of his personality: his quick temper, consequential nervousness and rashness were only the top of the surface. We saw his loyalty as a friend, in fearlessly going out by himself in the prison to recover the weapons, or getting Squall's ring for Rinoa.

Laguna...Laguna, Laguna. We witnessed his growth from a silly soldier who could not look Julia in the eyes...to a silly writer who managed to summon up the nerve to propose to Raine. His personality remained intact throughout the game, AND he matured as well. His interactions with other characters were not disjointed so that we could see how "Very Silly" he was, but they varied from person to person. Squall noted the "bond" between Laguna and Kiros and Ward. Laguna was shy around Julia. He adored Ellone. He was confused around Raine because of his earlier feelings for Julia.

Apparently many people played this game methodically. Does one read Catcher in the Rye without bothering to think about the characters or what is happening, and then at the end complain that the writer used "simple language"? Salinger used "simple language" to express Holden's thoughts. Similarly, Squaresoft finally creates a plot where the most emphasis is placed on characters, and as such the plot might seem simple, but is actually devised so that the characters are developed properly.

The single and biggest annoyance I have is people complaining about the "imbalance" of the system and Guardian Forces! (GFs)! Goodness! WHAT were people thinking? I have even seen reviewers complain about this! Did they think they were playing Final Fantasy VII, and that the GFs were really summon materia?

The Junction and Draw systems were the biggest gifts Squaresoft has offered to the gaming community. They allowed players to completely customize their characters as never before. Guardian Forces were NOT supposed to be the main source of attack! My goodness, expect for Cerberus and its Triple power, I used each GF once or twice.. and ONLY for the fun of it...or a few times as a strategy (allowing a character with low hit points to use a GF as a shield before he or she could be healed). But NEVER were they supposed to be used as thoroughly as apparently so many people used them.

After getting the GF Diablo, a player could use the Time magic refine ability to create Demi spells. Junctioned to attack, a character would be doing more damage than Diablo himself could ever hope to do. Or a player could have played some cards and used the Card refine ability to create Demi spells. OR you could have sought out monsters which carried Demi and Drew it from them. OR you could have refined Diablo's card and...

I will stop here, but as you can see I am completely astounded. Squaresoft finally creates a powerful system where one can actually THINK and be able to customize their characters as they see fit, and the RPG community spits on the system when they have not even FIGURED IT OUT.

And before some of you begin to protest, think first. Many of the complaints that you have about the game's system are INCORRECT. Having trouble drawing? Taking "endless amounts of time"? Did you try beefing up a character's magic stats and THEN drawing? Apparently many people did not.

I remember actually not wanting to fight Ultimica because I did not want to finish this great game. There are complaints that the cinematics detract from gameplay, but without them some of the greatest moments ever in a video game could not have been possible. The cinematics add to the story because we are able to see things we would not have been able to in previous games, such as the ending scene with Laguna and Raine.

Square utilizes the Playstation's capabilities to their best possible advantage: the music picks up as Laguna places the ring on Raine's hand because we are finally given proof that they are Squall's parents. We see the silly soldier and writer finally growing up...and then his aged face in the present, and the single greatest scene in a video game, as Laguna hesitantly and sadly walks toward her grave. Finally we are able to see all that we have had to guess at before in a video game: Laguna's body language and his facial expressions.

With realistic looking characters came multi rendered personalities. Open ended Junction and Draw systems created more possibilities than ever offered before. This lengthy rant is aimed not at people who have not yet played Final Fantasy VIII, but rather at the people who have. Do yourself a favor and go and replay the single greatest RPG ever created.

Notes:
I'm at rather a loss for what to comment here - this editorial, to be rather blunt, is fairly standard, another in the same vein as every other editorial in the holy war of whether or not FF8 is good or bad. There's no real arguments - it's certainly a one-sided editorial and like all one-sided editorials can be rather hard to approach, especially given the tone and especially if you hold the opposite view.

There's no real /mistakes/, for that matter - aside from the entertaining mental image borne from the grammatical error "shot into your foot" - but then again there's little that really counts towards the perfect editorial - the rigid position and possible alienation of many readers, together with the fact that there have been many editorials exactly like this, combine to make it rather average.