(FFVIII)This shit blew my mind...

[RagnorokKing]

http://squallsdead.com/

Now it all makes sense.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

What the fuck

 

[Makoeyes987]

Wow, I'll just go ahead and sort this with the "Jenova Thesis" that nutcup on the internet wrote.

 

[Bex]

Did they divide FFVIII by zero? O shi-

 

[Loxetta]

Fucked up as it is, when I finally play through FF8 this theory will be lurking in the back of my mind the whole time now

 

[Tetsujin]

Coming up with theories is all fine and dandy, but come on.

"It was all just a dream" is pretty much the lamest story twist one could think of.

 

[ForceStealer]

Now it all makes sense.

 

[Lord Noctis]

Does not compute!

 

[Althea]

lol

He died by having a spike go through his right shoulder?! Man his anatomy is fucked up xD

 

[Cat Rage Room]

i hate everyone

 

[Makoeyes987]

i hate everyone

...Okay?

 

[Cat Rage Room]

It was a joke towards my frustration towards people who make up these inane theories.

I guess it was lost in translation between my head and the keyboard.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

I wish that the FFVIII cast died at the end of disc one.

 

[DrakeClawfang]

My thoughts after reading this:

Spoiler

I mean, it all makes sense!

There you have it, Squall is dead and Clerith is canon. *rimshot*

 

[Bex]

Sometimes, I tell myself FF8 was just a dream too.
Otherwise I would have to tell myself that I wasted 100 hours of my life on bi-polar children with amnesia.

 

[Ryushikaze]

Yes, Moombas and Shumi, which you can see details of in the infodump at the beginning of the game, are nothing but fantasy.
Seriously, the man doesn't like FFVIII's plot, so he's making another one entirely. Whoo. Call me when they make something interesting.

 

[looneymoon]

Hm. I always thought Tom Cruise had a very Squall-like hairstyle in Vanilla Sky.

 

[crack]

I wish that the FFVIII cast died at the end of disc one.

Yeah except for Quistis.

 

[Splintered]

Coming up with theories is all fine and dandy, but come on.

"It was all just a dream" is pretty much the lamest story twist one could think of.

Which makes it fit perfectly with the game.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

I like how in the article, he "concedes" to the possibility that it may not make any sense whatsoever.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

When plot twists are introduced, they are fully explained and are not in conflict with existing plot information. In fact, the more you learn about this world, the more everything seems to make perfect sense. Everything fits together in an elaborate but perfectly designed puzzle. Everything connects and everything is related.

Clearly, such tomfoolery casts a cloud of suspicion over the whole damn thing.

 

[DrakeClawfang]

Okay, who went and emailed Spoony?

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/02/18/squalls-dead/

The other interpretation is that Squall’s mind is in its final throes, and in its last moments is failing to recall faces, descending rapidly into chaos and jumbled, manic flashes of traumatic memory. Squall desperately tries to replay his memories, focusing ever-harder on the obscured faces, and only having them slip away. And in hindsight, it is rather evocative of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and if I gave the authors of this game the slightest amount of credit, I might have bought this theory. But I don’t.

Look, it’s cute. I’m proud that you came up with it, and really, it’s better than what was intended. I can appreciate you finally realizing that FF8’s plot is so bad, you’ve invented a better one as a coping mechanism. But it doesn’t really work. Other stories with “crackpot” theories like this (Minority Report, Total Recall) hold more water, and were likely pitched as alternate endings. But look at the story you’re telling if the “Squall’s Dead” theory is true: Squall attempts to assassinate the Sorceress, fails, gets impaled, dies, and…then what?

He’s dead. The dream is ultimately meaningless. Nothing really happens in it that impacts the “real” world. Maybe Squall gets some internal closure, but so what? The Sorceress wins, rules the world, has her would-be assassins summarily executed, and evil triumphs. Hardly a fulfilling close to the story, wouldn’t you say? Not much of a story; a bunch of untrained, untalented pissant mercenaries attack the most powerful, evil sorceress in history and get completely annihilated.

Huh. Okay, I’ll admit that does sound more likely.

 

[DrakeClawfang]

Oh it hurts me so much to be unable to defend VIII's unfortunate failings.

I don't think Final Fantasy VIII was horrible. And I actually liked Squall - the guy acts like a jerk on purpose to push people away because he's afraid of getting close to anyone and losing them. That's a deep character actually.

So despite my joking here and elsewhere I didn't mind FF8, and actually like Squall. But I certainly understand why people hate them so much.

 

[I Am Not Me]

Hmm... to be honest, I actually like that interpretation of FFVIII. It gives me a vague sense of hope that somehow, someway, Rinoa could have died at the end of disc 1 as well.

So despite my joking here and elsewhere I didn't mind FF8, and actually like Squall. But I certainly understand why people hate them so much.

Hate who so much? I think FF8 is a great game, Rinhoa aside. It does have some of its unfortunate failures, but it's pretty enjoyable. I would like it if they employed the junction system in some other game again. That was great.

the guy acts like a jerk on purpose to push people away because he's afraid of getting close to anyone and losing them. That's a deep character actually.

If you've read as many shoujo mangas as I have you would realize that Squall is not at all that incredibly deep of a character. He has a lot of character clones, and it's all the same thing: jerks on the outside because they don't want to get close to anyone and get hurt. His character is pretty much the character of every other "cold and unsociable" main hero characters in girly romance plots.

Don't get me wrong, I like Squall and his character, but I really just fangirl over him because he's a hot mass of pixels especially when he's frowning. Minus points for the choice of woman, but I blame Square for that.



PS: I just realized... if FFVIII is a dream of a dead Squall, then FFVII could be a dream of a dead Cloud too, right? I mean, he could have died when he fell into the slum church and everything else that came after that could have been a dream, considering how surreal and morbid things went in the course of the game...

/bullshitting

 

[DrakeClawfang]

My main problems with FF8 were what I consider the plot derailment after Disk 2 (YMMV on that of course), and how easy it was to break the game's battle system.

I see what the devs were going for with the Junction system. As you progress through the game you get access to better spells like in all FF games, you junction those better spells and get higher boosts. The problem arises when you can get access to spells like Curaga and Tornado and Demi fairly early in the game, and get massive stat boosts. I get a high enough SeeD rank, I get 20000 gil, buy a dozen Tents, 100 Curagas, 3500 HP, boom the first disk is done.

The accessibility to spells is the problem. If there had been tighter restrictions on how readily the player can refine items and Triple Triad cards, it could be more balanced. Wouldn't be hard, do something like, say, have a level requirement for a GF before it can refine certain things. Like Quetzacotl or however you spell it, it can refine the Diablos card into 100 Black Holes. Those are high-level items, so make Quet have to be at a certain level before it can do that. Restrict access to the better spells early on, characters don't become overpowered so quickly, the game is harder and maybe GFs, which I found mostly useless, would be more useful.

My 2.6 cents. I like the Junction System, but its way too easy to break with such easy early game access to the better spells.

Also, the ability to get Lionheart on Disk 1, but its an easy tweak to make if the forementioned restrictions on item refining were put in place.