Final Fantasy as a whole is past being of influence and importance to gaming. There will always be people who will cheer when a new final fantasy is announced, but they are becoming less and less. How many new fans did the last ff game gained? Aren’t most of the current fans pretty much the old fans?
I like Final Fantasy 4 because it was my first one and therefore my favorite one.Not that I would have a discussion about which one was the best one, although tactics is always the right answer.
Actually, FF8 is probably the most interesting one because it took the most risks. I read an article about how Squall died in disk 1 and the rest of the game are his dying thoughts as he passes away.
The Theory***
*At the end of disc one, Squall and Friends face Edea on a parade float in Deling City. After the fight, when Edea seems defeated, she conjures an enormous ice shard and propels it through Squall?s chest. Squall stumbles back and falls off the platform. He sees Rinoa above, reaching to him as he falls. Squall closes his eyes and dies. The entire remaining game time, from the beginning of disc two to the second half of the ending movie, is a dream.*
***A dream?***
*Uh huh. A dream, a fantasy, a vision, or whatever you want to call it. The ?dream? is basically an extension of the ?your life flashes before your eyes? concept. The entire dream takes only a matter of seconds, but for Squall is passes in real time. For Squall, it?s about the endless possibilities he could have seen realized. Squall explores the questions that were raised on the first disc but he was not able to answer in his lifetime. These questions include, but are not limited to:*
*Who is the Sorceress Edea? What are her goals and motivation? Where do her powers come from? Why was Seifer in the parade with Edea when he was reported executed? Who was the girl (Ellone) that Squall and Quistis saw in the Garden training center? Who is Laguna and why did Squall, Selphie, and Zell all have the same dream about him? And, most importantly, who is Squall? Who were his parents? Why did they leave him at the orphanage? Where does he come from, and what would he have done with his life had he not died?*
The gayest weapon to get was the Danjuro dagger in FFXII. I can’t remember the name of the item you had to get, but it took ages to collect if I remember correctly.
It’s an okay weapon. Highest speed in the game i think? But i dunno if it’s worth it.
Zodiac spear is good. Tournesol is slightly better just cause of combos. Wyrmhero blade would be the bomb if it wasn’t slower then my grandma. Whale Whisker is decent as well. And of course Masamune + Genji really good.
The problem is that by the time you get these weapons, your character is already well over-powered.
Tactics is always the right answer. And FF8 was under-rated. FF13 was one of the prettiest games ever, but also one of the most boring… the story was ok, I guess. Square definitely needs to do something if they want to revive the FF name, or just end it.
As for that theory of Squall’s dream, how does it explain all the events during the ending credits? Neat theory, but Vanilla Sky sucked ;).
Click on the link I posted. I think I like many forget all the weird shit and only remembers the happy ending. Still, wasn’t it too perfect? Squall got everything he wanted. Do you remember how Sofie was the other dudes girlfriend and suddenly that’s all dropped after disk 1? Or how about how no one discussed that huge chunk of ice that went through Squall? It’s all very interesting.
I’ll paste it here for everyone who doesn’t want to click but I suggest you go read it at the site. It’s much better presented there. Again, this is only part of the document.
* 4. The End
At the very end of the game, just as you?re beating the final boss, Ultimecia, she starts to say some strange things, statements that appear very out-of-context for a final battle.
"Reflect on your... Childhood..."
"Your sensation... Your words... Your emotions..."
"Time... It will not wait..."
"No matter... ...how hard you hold on. It escapes you..." When I read those words, a chill ran up my spine. With every attack, you bring down Ultimecia?s hit points, and you bring Squall?s dream to a close. Squall, oblivious, fights on, and only this figment of his imagination seems aware of what is happening.
There is a short story segment here involving Squall going back in time to the orphanage and seeing Ultimecia pass on her powers to Edea in the past. Then Squall leaves in search of his ?own time?, and is shown wandering in a desert place. He appears to be ?lost in time? and unable to find his way back his normal time period.
Squall finds himself on a small rock island, isolated and helpless. He drops himself on the ground, exhausted. Then, upon catching a feather floating towards him, he finds himself where Rinoa is. He calls out her name, and she turns to face him. This is where the weird shit starts happening.
Rinoa turns to Squall, but her face is blurred. There?s a shot of Seifer as the movie cuts to the ballroom scene. Here we see Rinoa again, and again she turns towards the camera as she did in the ballroom scene on disc one. But she?s blurry and messed up again. The shot continues to repeat, and every time Rinoa?s face and form are blurred, and the effect seems to be getting worse each time. What is happening here?
It is my belief that as Squall?s dream is coming to a close, he is starting to lose touch with his own memories. He is trying to picture Rinoa, the object of his fantasy, but he can?t quite remember the shape of her face. He is going over that moment in the ballroom, when he first saw her, again and again in his mind, focusing closer on her face and trying to see her the way that she was.
I have seen this specific visual symbolism once before, in Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind. In Eternal Sunshine, the protagonist, Joel, has his memory erased because he wants to forget his ex-girlfriend. But, in the course of the procedure, Joel realizes what he is losing and tries to hold on to his precious memories. He tries to remember the things they have already erased, just to find the characters in his memory are faceless, blurred beyond recognition.
As Squall is visualizing Rinoa in the ballroom, we start to see some quick shots interrupting the movie. The first one, as I already mentioned, was of Seifer. What is noteworthy about the shot of Seifer is that it shows him in the torchlight from the parade float where Edea tried to kill Squall with an ice spell.
Then some quick shots of Rinoa appear. These are as blurred as the Rinoa from the ballroom scene, but these images of Rinoa come from the scene where Edea makes her speech before the parade. Rinoa, who appears to be under Edea?s spell, follows the Sorceress out see the screaming crowd.
We see some shots of Rinoa floating in space, and then we?re back in the ballroom looking for Rinoa. Then there is another assortment of shots from throughout the first disc of the game. First we see the mechanical spider monster from the final exam in Balamb followed by a shot of each of the party members but Squall (Quistis, Zell, Rinoa, Selphie, and Irvine, in that order). The images of Quistis, Zell, and Selphie are from the final exam in Balamb, and the shot of Irvine is from his introductory fmv clip. This is the shot of Rinoa:
This frame was taken directly from the scene in which Squall was killed. Rinoa is turning to Squall, who has just been impaled.
We see some shots of the Balamb communications tower, the Ragnarok, and there?s a clip of Rinoa, still blurred, with her hair in the wind. A shot of Seifer pushing Rinoa into Adel goes by, then we see more of the Balamb tower, and a clip of Rinoa reaching to Squall from the parade float.
There?s an explosion, and we see the arch from Deling City under which Squall died. The camera takes us through the arch and we?re back in the ballroom for more blurred face action. There are a lot of images in this section, including Edea from the parade float, Ultimecia, Rinoa in space, the eyes from all the cast members fading into each other, and probably a lot more than that. There?s also a frame from the last moment in disc one, the image of Squall?s eye as he falls from the parade float.
At this point in the movie, and for the last few minutes as well, Squall?s life has literally been flashing before his eyes. I feel that there is a particular focus on the two main events of disc one: the final exam at Balamb and the encounter with Edea on the parade float. But of course the ballroom scene, which was of particular importance to Squall, is by far the most covered event in the first half of the ending fmv. However, as I?ve been mentioning throughout this section, there are also snippets of images from the latter half of the game, particularly Rinoa in space.
At the very end of this part of the ending movie, we see Rinoa coming towards the camera, arms open for embrace. As before, the closer she gets, the more obscured she becomes. Then we see our first shot of Squall.
This shot keeps me up at night. Seriously.
So far, the best analysis I have this for this screenshot is that Squall feels empty, that he losing his sense of self and everything that comes with it. He?s having trouble visualizing his memories, or even remembering reality from fiction. Think back to what Ultimecia said, at the end of the last battle. “Reflect on your… Childhood? Your sensation… Your words… Your emotions… Time… It will not wait… No matter… …how hard you hold on. It escapes you…” His life is fading from him. You can?t hold on forever.
Or they just wanted to give me nightmares.
There is one last shot of Rinoa, floating in space. The glass on her space helmet cracks and sends large pointed shards towards the camera. There is a sound, like someone being struck by a sword. We cut to Squall, eyes wide, a tear escaping him. He throws back his head and is consumed by white.
Here’s a video of the ending up to this point:
And now, finally, Squall is dead. We see a white feather fall to the ground, and the screen fades to black. The last ten minutes of the FFVIII ending movie are, in the simplest terms, of ?heaven?, or some equivalent thereof.
That horrible ?Eyes on Me? song boots up, and we see Rinoa wandering around. She finds Squall, and holds him, apparently thinking he?s dead. The clouds whirl open so the sun can shine through, pink flower petals swirl in the wind across a gorgeous green grassy plain, and Rinoa looks back to Squall with a look of amazement. Those pink petals turn to white feathers on the wind, and the movie cuts to Balamb.
At the Balamb port we see Seifer, Fujin and Raijin fishing in the same gorgeous sunny weather that Squall and Rinoa were experiencing. Fujin kicks Raijin into the bright blue water, and Seifer cracks up laughing like a schoolboy. Seifer, who I thought we had finally defeated for the last time, looks up and smiles as Balamb Garden sails by overhead.
The movie cuts to Laguna, who?s standing out at Raine?s grave. We get to see Laguna propose to Raine in the past, and they embrace. Laguna in the present sees Ellone coming back to see him, and they look up as the Balamb Garden goes over them as well.
During the credits they show a home video-type clip where all the characters get to act like complete retards. All the party members are there celebrating but Squall and Rinoa, and even Cid and Edea are in attendance. Irvine dances like a goon, Selphie bounces around like an airhead, and Zell stuffs his face with hotdogs. Yay.
After the final credits we get to see the stuff that makes the fangirls go wild. Rinoa stands out on the Garden?s balcony with Squall under a starry night sky. She raises her finger, just as Squall remembers, and Squall smiles back at her.
Watch the second part of the ending below:
**One last thing**
If this was really how the game was meant to be interpreted, why did they make the ?dream? so subtle? I can think of fifty ways to make it more apparent to the audience that the events taking place after disc one are not real. So, if the creators meant for Squall to die, they also meant for his death to be obscured and subtle. We view the dream as if we are the dreamers, and even though sometimes events take place that could never, ever happen in the ?real? world, we do not become aware that it is a dream.
A similar plot can be seen in the film *Vanilla Sky* (just fyi, if you haven?t seen it, don?t read on; spoilers etc) in which Tom Cruise plays a character who chooses to have himself put to sleep. At a certain point in the movie, he begins dreaming, and the entire remainder of the film is a fabrication of his mind. At first there is little indication that anything is amiss. The plot continues as though nothing is different, except of course that everything starts to go his way.
After a while, though, things start to get a little crazy, and he ends up awaiting the death penalty for beating his girlfriend to death during sex while experiencing what appeared to be a delusion. And all the while the audience watches on in confusion, as unaware as the character that this is all just a dream. Now, the problem I had with Vanilla Sky was that they couldn?t just leave it alone. I think it would have been a really cool movie if they had left it up to us to discern what had really happened. Instead we, the audience, received a full exposition dump in the final moments of the film as a character carefully explains to the protagonist, and the audience, that the whole movie was really just a dream.
Maybe the only real difference between Final Fantasy VIII and Vanilla Sky is: they just never told us what really happened. In Final Fantasy VIII, they let us live in the dream as Squall did and we never know the difference.
**Conclusion**
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The truth is, I don?t think there is a substantial amount of evidence to conclude whether or not the writers intended for the audience to interpret the game in this fashion. I choose to believe that this is how the game was intended to be understood because, to me, the game makes no sense otherwise. Everything that happens to the characters after the first disc is retarded. The ending is like recapping the game on acid. There has to be something more to the story than a simple ?Hero Takes All? plot.
Sometimes, while writing this article, I really felt that this is the real story of Final Fantasy VIII. But sometimes it all just sounds like poppycock to me. In any case, I think Squall's Dead is an interesting theory, worth considering at least, and I hope you think so too.
Thanks for reading, & let us know what you think in the comments below!
Black hole is when you get 4 level 1 mist quickening, four level two and four level three. Ive only gotten it 3 times ever.
Yeah the only ultimate weapon I got was zodiac. Like I said im looling forward to going hard in this game.
Ffxiii didn’t get new fans, maybe it did but its because they fucked up. its a stupid story from a franchise I expect good stories from. Just a really inane game
Battle system is the best ever though. Good soundtrack and pretty, but characters and story were ass.
Oh yes, I remember now. Lol, those mist concurrences were absolutely insane. So luck-based. I didn’t try for any of the cool ones, but maybe I should have.
FF13 is underrated imo. It’s not the best FF but I’ve played worse games. Some of the characters were annoying, though I’ve talked to respected gaming friends of mine that really liked the story. To each his own I guess. shrug
I wish there was more diversity in the game, though. After FF12 had so much diversity, it was a bit of a shame to see a big lack of it in FF13. But I guess that’s how HD games go… the assets are so incredibly expensive to make it’s harder to make the game expansive. Not sure if that complaint can be levied against Square, though. :looney:
No complains about SquareEnix, they made make Dragon Quest 9 this year. Just stating my thoughts. Plenty of good RPG’s coming from Bioware. Go Canada! We make the best RPG’s now.
Was Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden made in Canada?
Perhaps, but FF14 is indeed Square’s fault. And MGS4 was just as, if not better looking than FF13 and an even greater number of high quality fmv’s, and has way more to do than run forward and press x ;). I don’t buy the HD excuse.
Haha yeah, there’s absolutely no justification for FF14. Probably the worst designed game in the last 10 years (from any “real” company). My brother and several of my friends are big MMO freaks who really wanted to play FF14, so despite not playing it myself I know all about how terrible it is.
I think it’s the Japanese philosophy in general to just do what has worked in the past (not only in game development, but in life in general). Lots of Japanese games are really sweet, but you can see that they’re scared to embrace the future at times, instead relying on what has “worked” in the past (but doesn’t work now). Wasn’t it Keiji Inafune that said Japanese game developers are totally screwed unless they really shape up and start to learn lessons? To be honest I think the Japanese public is as much “at fault” as the developers are, because they keep buying the games and don’t really ask for anything different. And, when they’re provided with something different (from the West, from a risk-taking Japanese dev, etc), they don’t buy it.
Pretty soon I fear Japanese games will be so far behind the times that they’ll ONLY be for the ever-accepting Japanese market and not for anyone else. They won’t be the innovators (or even the copiers of innovation). They’ll just be making games for people who are scared to experience new things. </generalization>
