Lucas
Versantvoort / 7 September 2014
When Final
Fantasy VIII came out, expectations were huge, because Final Fantasy VII had rocked the western world when it came out in
1997. That game was and is one of the most well-received video games in
history, so a sequel would unfairly have to live up to those expectations. Two
years later, FFVIII emerged. For the
record, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the
story, so I’m not going to try and summarize the plot and characters.
Considering FFVIII, that would be
pretty nightmarish…
Now, for me, FFVIII is a pretty mixed bag. There is one thing I really like and
quite a few other things I don’t like. What I like the most, and what kept me
coming back time and again (though never finishing it), is the story structure
and set pieces. Mind you, with this I don’t mean the quality of the story
itself or the characters, but the literal structuring of the story, the various
locations you visit and the various types of missions you undertake. This is
where the length of a typical Final Fantasy add greatly to the experience,
because as you progress the story you get a great sense of grandeur. It’s easy
to look back at all you’ve done and admire the grandness of the adventure. As
for the set pieces, that is where FFVIII
truly shines. You begin your adventure slowly of course, being just another SeeD
of Balamb Garden. You undertake some training missions, typical tutorial stuff
to get you used to the combat system, game world and characters. Then a war
breaks out and you invade a town using a boat in some sort of Normandy-esque
mission setup. Once that’s done, you’re promoted and you’re set off on another
mission. You go to another town, take an underwater train to another town where
you’re to help a resistance group. This triggers a mission where you execute an
admittedly overly complicated plan to isolate one train cart from the rest, but
the uniqueness factor helps. Then you go to another town for an assassination
attempt on a sorceress. Later, you’re prisoned in a desert prison, go to the
moon in a rocket for a Space Odyssey-esque sequence, the list goes on. This is
what FFVIII did better than FFVII: exciting mission setups. Although
FFVII had the motorbike chase and the
Golden Saucer, etc. the game could get monotonous as you were basically going
from a to b without a lot of variation. FFVIII
breaks up this monotony by implementing the missions mentioned above, among
many other things. What I described above is just disc 1. Even when I didn’t
understand or care about the story, all these different missions were what kept
me coming back to this game again and again, despite its many shortcomings…
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able
to really get into the story itself and the characters. Whereas at first, the
story is relatively simple and straightforward, it soon devolves into an overly
complicated tale about time warps, time travel and time compression. I mean,
I’m not opposed to time travel plots, but the surrealism factor just becomes
too much as the story goes on. I know, blaming a Final Fantasy game for being
too fantastical is like blaming the Resident Evil series for being too focused
on horror. It’s just what these series do. However in FFVIII’s case, I feel my criticisms are valid, because the story
begins simple without a lot of focus on surreal elements like time compression,
magical hidden cities, etc. Because those story elements are introduced later,
it’s harder to get adjusted and to take it seriously.
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| Squall displaying all kinds of emotions |
There’s also a plot twist late in
the game that’s really pushing it in the Suspension of Disbelief department. It
turns out that Squall and co. all grew up in the same orphanage and so, they
all knew each other as kids. But, you might ask, why don’t any of them remember
that? Well, I’ve got two words for you: JRPG Amnesia. The writers come up with
some lame excuse as to why they forgot: apparently using the GF’s (literally
Guardian Forces, summoned creatures who help you in combat) causes the user to
slowly lose his/her memories. Why? How? I don’t know.
As for the characters, I don’t know.
Squall and Rinoa at least change throughout the story, but the rest of the
cast… I don’t even really remember if each one of them had important subplots.
I know how they behaved generally, but it’s hard to immediately become fond of
Zell or Selphie when Zell is the one who can’t handle Seifer, one of the bad
guys, calling him ‘chicken wuss’ and when Selphie acts like a typical, overly
happy schoolgirl. When the three of you board the train early in the game,
they’re both so excited about the concept of a train ride, that it’s hard to
take them seriously. Perhaps the fact that I remember so little about the
characters despite my playing the game multiple times is all that needs to be
said.
Also, these Final Fantasy games had the habit of
allowing you to occasionally choose what the main character would say…even
though what you say has no impact on the development of the story. It’s just a
way for the player to kind of add a piece of his own personality to the game,
to increase a sense of immersion. But in FFVIII,
what you have Squall say can actually be detrimental to his character
development. You can usually choose between a sort of empathetic response and a
brooding, not-giving-a-shit response which is more in line with the brooding
Squall earlier in the game. However, because Squall changes and becomes more
open, etc., continually choosing the brooding responses will make it seem as if
he’s not changing at all. Just one of many design flaws.
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| Draw...draw...draw... |
Speaking
of design flaws, let’s discuss the battle system. Now, it’s obvious they tried
to change the formula and that I can respect, but the new system is so
complicated and downright strange that you are treated to countless tutorials. What is perhaps the most downright annoying aspect is the Draw system.
To use magic, you have to stock magic. You do this by ‘drawing’ it from enemies
during combat. What this means is that you have to find the enemy who has the
spell you want, let him wail on you while you keep drawing magic. You can only
stock a limited amount per spell (100). Furthermore, as you progress through
the story, certain spells will of course become too weak to use. Why use Fire
when you can cast Fira or Firaga? This can mean that all your drawing of every
spell might be for nothing.
All in all, the one thing that I really like about
this game is the story structure. There are many impressive, well-designed
missions, especially considering the fact it was made on the PS1 which wasn’t
exactly a technical powerhouse. Plot-wise, character-wise, combat-wise, I have
a lot of problems with it. Nonetheless, despite its (many) flaws, it’s a game I
found myself returning to every once in a while.
Images:
http://i.imgur.com/9D5WSWe.jpg
http://www.twinfinite.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/final-fantasy-8-battle.jpg
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