Given the reflection in the water as the ships approach Dollet, the moon must have been nearly directly overhead at the time (and also, since it was full, pegs the time at about modnight).
However, that doesn't say anything about where it'll be when/if this anticipated broadcast happens.
I mean, assuming that they have an Earth-style moon, instead of one that rains monsters; that's not a safe assumption. For all we know the moon hovers ominously overhead all day every day.
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII 101. Today's lesson:
Dorks VS The Television
Last time, we tried to hijack President Deling's train and abduct him, only for it to turn out the President was actually a body double who turned into a zombie. Now the Forest Owls' next plan is to raid the TV station where Deling is planning to deliver an address to the world, take over and declare Timber's independence.
It's a neat symbolic gesture if they can pull it off, but I can't help but feel like they think it's more than that, like they will actually make Timber independent if they pull it off. I think there are a lot of men with guns who'll have an issue with that. Ah, well. We'll see how it goes.
We get a funny scene where a soldier is informing his officer about a suspicious soldier asking strange questions (Watts in a uniform), which prompts all the soldiers to go and harass every teenager in Timber before the officer is even done giving them orders, which he meant to urge care in interacting with Timber's inhabitants, who are citizens with rights, unfortunately everyone is already gone. It's funny and serves as a justification for the fights we'll soon be getting into.
The train base arrives back in Timber to drop off the party; Watts gives us directions to the TV station, but before he's done Zone sees Galbadian soldiers arriving and drives off, leading to poor Watts having to run after the train on foot.
Oh, also, I reloaded an earlier save so I could challenge Watts to a card game.
Turns out he has a card of Rinoa's dog. How adorable.
The difficulty of Triple Triad has incidentally dropped sharply after acquiring Diablos. Things were iffy when Ifrit was my only good card and everything else was garbage so I had to be careful with my plays, but since Triple Triad is played with hands of five cards, just having two good cards (Ifrit and Diablos) means a sharp uptick in victory odds, which in turns means I can grab more good cards from opponents, and in a short time I have acquired a set of five good cards which is enough to steamroll most players. Alas.
Also, the Timber pet shop sells GF items. Which suggests that Guardian Forces are considered in-universe as a kind of pet, which is hilarious. That 'pet house' item? It heals all GFs' HP, which makes it the Tent equivalent for GFs, so the way you heal your Guardian Forces is by having them hang out in a tiny model house. Fantastic. The Pet Shop also sells more magazines for Angelo/Rinoa.
"The moon's mysterious power can make all allies invincible"??? WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE MOON. WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME ABOUT THE GODDAMNED MOON.
Ahem.
The Galbadian army has shut down all train stations; the soldiers are also out in force in the city. This unfortunately means…
…there are random encounters in the city.
This isn't the first time FF does this and I will never stop complaining about it. When you put random encounters in a town, you're punishing players for exploring the area and engaging with the world. Just don't do it. This is especially annoying here because Timber is 1) really cool and pretty with a ton of ambient dialogue, 2) kind of hard to navigate!
I've mentioned this before with Balamb, but FF8 has a completely new approach to town from VII; instead of towns occupying a single screen with a three-quarters top-down view, towns are split up into multiple screens representing small sections of the town. This is very neat and means those towns feel bigger than VII's tiny villages, but also… VII had that option you could toggle on an off where every exit from a given screen was highlighted by a red arrow, which was extremely convenient sometimes, and as far as I can tell VIII doesn't have that. It's not a big deal in places like the above screenshot, where you can guess that there is one exit at each end of the road plus two doors for the Weapon store and the Hotel, but sometimes it's not clear at all that a given direction will lead to a new screen which makes it possible to miss areas entirely.
Anyway. Timber! Remember how we talked about how the Forest Owls were an incredibly small group to be opposing Galbadian occupation all on their own?
It turns out, everyone in Timber is some level of sympathetic to the resistance and most of them seem to personally know Rinoa, know that she's a resistant, and know that she is planning something related to the TV station.
This is terrible OpSec Rinoa, holy shit. Like okay I get that you're all loyal Timber citizens fighting the good fight etc but come on, have you never heard of an informant!? Anyway, the hotel is taken up by Galbadian soldier so we can't stay here, but more importantly, the train model in the lobby gives us another chance to do the most important thing in the game:
Keep ragging Rinoa for her arts and crafts skills.
Flawless.
One of the streets is blocked off by Galbadian soldiers arguing with Timber's "security guards" which I'm pretty sure are actually the local militia, from their uniforms and weapons. Things start off as 'open threats against the locals' families' and degenerate quickly:
Galbadian Soldier: "Better keep your eyes peeled. If you let one resistance member in here, your dear kids are… well, dead meat. Heh heh heh." Security Guard: "..." Rinoa: "We have to get to the TV Station fast. I can't bear to watch them suffer like this." GS: "So I heard everyone here supports the resistance. You guys are such fools. Just imagine how much this place would thrive if you were loyal to us. This place is gonna be stuck in the backwoods forever." SG #1: "...And you? Are you happy with your life? Blindly following orders everyday, doing things you probably don't believe in? So what if we're underdeveloped. We're not looking to thrive. All we want is to be able to stand on our own feet; to be independent and live according to what we believe." SG #2: "You guys will probably never understand, having thrown away your pride and dignity. We're not the fools. You are." GS: (Shaking in anger): "You're both DEAD!" Rinoa: "No!"
At this point, we initiate combat to try and save the Timberians from the Galbadians' wrath. The two soldiers are just ordinary elite soldiers and are quickly dispatched, although this marks the first appearance of…
OH MY GOD HOW ADORABLE. LOOK AT IT! SUCH A GOOD BOY.
Ahem. It looks like Angelo triggered randomly in the middle of the fight, instead of by me inputting a command while at low HP. Maybe it's an oddity of Rinoa's mechanics? I tried to look up Angelo's mechanics and ended up accidentally learning that Rinoa has a separate Limit Break that is unlocked on Disc 3 and I quickly closed the window before reading any further. It's annoyingly difficult to look up anything about the mechanics of these games without spoiling yourself on the plot, I'll say this much. Thankfully I have the thread to explain stuff to me when I can't look it up.
Once we've cleared the soldiers, the Timber guards thank us for our helps but say they really can't let us through, the threat to their family is too much. I would think that cat is already out of the bag after we murdered two Galbadian soldiers in front of them, but I guess they can at least argue duress as long as they don't actively cooperate with us. So we have to turn around and find a new direction.
The close-up shots really emphasize how, huh, triangular the PSX character models are.
We can visit the local newspaper! Timber Maniacs is that newspaper we found an issue of back at the Balamb Hotel. We can explore a little - one of the side rooms has a Blizzaga draw point??
Wild escalation in power there. Although… Hm. We'll be talking about spell levels a bit more towards the end of this update.
The guy in charge of Timber Maniacs appears to be complaining about how shounen mangas are the best-selling books in this fallen age instead of whatever his paper is about, which is a funny bit to have in a game that feels so much like a shounen. Squall has the option of asking him one of several questions, including, weirdly enough, bringing up Laguna; I think by implication this is meant to suggest that the newspaper Laguna had his letter published in was Timber Maniacs. Whatever we pick, the old timer's answer bores the hell out of Squall while the camera goes unnecessarily hard with movie style angles.
Seriously, those are gorgeous shots and they were made exclusively for a missable gag. This game had resources to spare.
Incidentally, hmm. Squall's internal monologue in this exchange is focused on how he resents adults, for being boring, for projecting their wasted dreams onto young people like him, all while the guy rants about how the times have changed and young people used to strive for things but now they're all lazy. It's… interesting, considering so far all our playable characters have been teenagers; it feels like generational divides might be a deliberate theme the game is going for.
…
I feel like I'm going to need to gloss over most of the rest of this; Timber is a place that's full of life, with a lot of small interactions with the locals, most of them incidental, and recounting them all in detail would take me hundreds of words. There are children who try to make us pay for looking outside their window, a poor family whose secret savings we have the option to steal, a couple out on a neighborhood watch patrol, a teenage girl moping because her boyfriend broke up with her for the 15th time this year…
There's so much little detail that went into this place, it's kind of amazing.
In order to access the TV station, we need to find the pub and take the back alley behind it. When we get there, we find a couple of Galbadian soldiers gloating about shaking down a local; we promptly beat the tar out of them, winning a minor card in the process.
Here you can see me decide to experiment with casting Blind on Selphie while she's in critical HP to see if I can abuse her Limit Break. It works moderately well.
Inside the pub, we find a drifter who's stuck in town since the trains are no longer running, drinking and complaining about the resistance being responsible for his trouble while the locals berate him for it. We give him his card and he gets out of the way of the door, thanking us by letting us keep the card and giving us another one as an extra (although both are worthless).
The kids who tried to make us pay to look out their window can be seen looking down as we pass through the back alley, playing at being resistance.
And then we get to one of Timber's most recognizable landmarks: The giant TV.
It's apparently still on, but all it's broadcasting is this spooky string of words that flow, blur and flash; this is the worldwide radio interference. Not a shutting down of the signal as I might have implied earlier, but a noise that drowns out all other communication. Pretty spooky.
…do these letters mean anything? I'm genuinely struggling to tell on this low resolution. I think I might be seeing a "Kill," a "Never let" something…
*squint*
"I WILL NEVER LET YOU [something] BACK"? "BRING ME BACK THERE I AM ALIVE HERE"?
Okay, that definitely rates on the spook-o-meter.
Current theory: The radio interference is the result of something (Hyne?) trapped on the moon screaming to be heard and released from its prison drowning out every other radio wave.
…
This is unfortunately where the plot starts getting weird with character locations and motivations. First off, Watts (who was last seen, if you'll recall, running after the train) kind of pops up out of nowhere to tell us that there are too many guards around the studio so we can't storm the place.
Why? Since when? We've been chewing through Galbadian troops like a dog on a bone, since when are they something we can't handle? And yet, Rinoa immediately takes this at face value and decides we need a new plan - we'll just wait until the President is done and has left along with his troops, then do the resistance broadcast then. She herself acknowledges this won't have the impact she intended but it's "better than nothing" and we "don't stand a chance if we take 'em head on."
She saying this in a way that suggests she is looking for Squall's approval to validate her fears, which goes as well as anyone looking to Squall for validation does; he tells her they'll fight her enemies if she wants them to, it's their duty, and Selphie adds in that she's ready for anything.
Rinoa: "How sad… Act on my decision? That's your duty?" Squall: "Call it what you want. All we want is for you to achieve your goal using our help." Squall: "I find it hard to believe that you can do it, though…" Rinoa: "W-what did you say!? If you have something to say, just say it!" Squall: ["Yeah, I'll tell you."] // "Forget it" Squall: "How serious are you…? Really…? The 3 of you plop down on the floor to discuss strategy? On top of that, you can't make a decision without our input, right? How do you think we feel, working for such an organization?" Selphie: "(You're being a little too hard.)" Squall: ["...Guess I'll follow up"] // "We'll just leave it at that" Squall: "...Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away." Rinoa: "You know… Maybe this was all a big mistake. I thought everything would work out fine once SeeD came to help us. But, I guess it's not that easy. You were all hired. It's not like you're one of us." Rinoa: "Um, let's see… We'll cancel the plan, and we'll disperse for now. We don't stand a chance if we take 'em head on, right? So… You guys probably think this is all a game to us." Rinoa: "...Well, it's not! We're serious. So serious… It hurts."
[She runs off, at which point Zell pops up out of nowhere.]
Zell, what the fuck are you doing here. We left you back on the train.
Ah, whatever.
Squall is pretty rude in this exchange but also… Everything he said is true. And considering that the Owls are involved in a life or death struggle, they kinda need to hear it! Rinoa has been handed out tremendous power in the form of three SeeDs, but she doesn't know how to use that power - she wavers between decisions, is afraid to commit, has no clear roadmap to victory. We're currently working on a plan she improvised an hour ago, which will only accomplish a symbolic victory, and she's already backing down. And her reaction to being confronted with that fact is to run off in tears, which is not the emotionally mature reaction of the leader of a resistance cell fighting an empire that is not holding any punches.
We'll get back to her soon, but for now, it's time for President Deling's address to the world; the string of words clears up and an image comes into view.
An announcer appears, overwhelmed by the fact that he is delivering a live broadcast to the world for the first time in 17 years, before apologizing for losing his composure and introducing the "lifelong president of Galbadia, Vinzer Deling."
President Deling: "Greetings. I am Vinzer Deling, lifelong president of Galbadia. Today, I stand before you to make the following proposition. We the people of this world have the power to end all wars." Selphie: "See, see! It's a peace proposal to the world! I knew it!" President Deling: "Unfortunately, there are some trifling problems standing between Galbadia and other nations, and they must be resolved. I plan to convene with other nations' leaders immediately to resolve these problems. At this time, allow me to introduce the ambassador who will be my representative for the conference." Zell: "Man! All this just to introduce an ambassador." President Deling: "The ambassador is the Sorceress…" Squall: "...The Sorceress?"
[A commotion off-screen interrupts Deling before he finishes his sentence.]
Yeah, the odds that Deling's plan for his "peace conference" to set aside "trifling problems" between Galbadia and other nations are "reveal Galbadia just developed a new superweapon, all other nations are to immediately submit to Galbadian rule or die" are 90%. And out of the remaining 10%, all of it is "this Sorceress ambassador is going to mind-control other world leaders into submitting to Galbadian rule." This is purely semi-nice phrasing for Deling announcing his intent to declare total world domination. I wonder if this is related to Gerogero and Galbadia figured out a way to harness and control monsters, making them able to take on the entire world at once.
Anyway, Zell's sudden teleporting onto the scene is about to be handily topped by the person responsible for the commotion that interrupts Deling before he can name the Sorceress and someone can provide us with more context on what Sorceresses even are.
Seifer.
We were just having a whole bit of character drama about how the studio is too heavily guarded to risk a frontal assault and this guy solos. Also Quistis is there? To be clear she's not helping Seifer, she's trying to keep him in check, telling the guards to stand back before he does something restless like assassinate President Deling on live TV to a worldwide audience.
This guy makes us all look like a pack of jobbers.
Zell, panicked, asks Squall what they're going to do, and Squall calmly answers "Nothing." Their job is assisting the Owls, and this is not an Owl action, so he doesn't care. I respect the cold-blooded attitude. However, Quistis then proceeds to turn to the camera and calls out: "Timber Team, are you watching? Get over here right now! You HAVE permission! I need your help!"
…you know, technically, I don't think she has the authority to make that call. She's no longer an instructor, just a senior SeeD, and the Timber Team has a contract with Rinoa which should overrule anything but a direct order from the hierarchy. But, well, we know that the SeeDs are all hungering for action from Dollet, so they immediately jump to the call.
This shot here shows the scale of Timber; it's an actual legit city.
…how did we even get into the allegedly heavily guarded studio? What even is happening anymore? Did the Galbadian soldiers actually evacuate the studio when someone is literally holding the President hostage?
The problem with VIII's more grounded approach and its emphasis on verisimilitude in its politics and character motivation is that when something happens that isn't making sense to me, it is incredibly more jarring than it is in a more fantastical V or VI, and this, right there, isn't making sense to me.
Quistis: "We need to restrain him!" Squall: "What do you think you're doing?" Seifer: "It's obvious, ain't it!? What are you planning to do with this guy?" Squall: "...Planning to do?" Squall, mentally: "(That's right… He knows Rinoa. Is that why he's here?)" Zell: "I get it! You're Rinoa's…" Seifer: "Shut your damn mouth! Chicken-wuss!" Quistis: "He broke out of the disciplinary room, injuring many in the process." Zell: "YOU STUPID IDIOT!" Squall, mentally: "(Zell, please.)" Squall: "Be quiet." Zell: "Instructor, I know! You're gonna take this stupid idiot back to Garden, right!?" Squall: "Shut up! NO!" President Deling: "I see… So you're all from Garden. Should anything happen to me, the entire Galbadian military will undoubtedly crush Garden. You can let go of me now." Seifer: "Nice going, Chicken-wuss! You and your stupid big mouth! Take care of this mess! Instructor and Mr Leader!"
[Seifer starts walking backwards off the stage, still holding Deling at gunblade point.]
-____-
I don't object to "characters blurts out critical information in front of an enemy" as a plot point in principle, but this is so forced. Like the exchange doesn't lend itself to it at all, Zell just brings it up randomly. Also am I supposed to take it that Deling wasn't aware of Balamb Garden's assistance to Galbadia's enemies? I know they're undercover in Timber specifically but SeeD can't exactly be hiding its assignments in general, considering the whole, y'know, 'being a mercenary' thing.
Also did Seifer literally break out of containment and then do a cross-continental trip with Quistis hot on his heels, literally chasing him all the way to the TV studio? I get that the game wants me to wonder about Seifer and Rinoa's connection instead of that but I can't, none of this is holding together for me.
Seifer backs away from the studio into a room that is conspicuously empty instead of being filled with a hundred Galbadian soldiers waiting for an opportunity to shoot him, and there we are introduced to a new character.
A ripple effect plays as a masked woman teleports into the room from behind a curtain and comes face to face with Seifer. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that this is, in fact, the Sorceress Deling was talking about.
Seifer: "Stay away from me!" Sorceress: "Such a confused little boy. Are you going to step forward? Retreat? You have to decide." Seifer: "Stay back!"
(The Sorceress gestures and a light appears; Quistis runs onto the stage but whatever spell was cast instead drives her to her knees where she appears paralyzed.) Sorceress: "The boy in you is telling you to come. The adult in you is telling you to back off. You can't make up your mind. You don't know the right answer. You want help, don't you? You want to be saved from this predicament." Seifer: "Shut up!" Sorceress: "Don't be ashamed to ask for help. Besides, you're only a little boy." Seifer: "I'm not… Stop calling me a boy." Sorceress: "You don't want to be a boy anymore?" Seifer: "I am not a BOY!"
(At this point, the Sorceress gestures with her fingers at Seifer, and Seifer releases President Deling, who runs off and disappears.) Sorceress: "Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood."
(Squall arrives in the room; Seifer turns around and waves his gunblade at him without a word. Zell and Selphie quickly follow, and the Sorceress casts another spell that incapacitates everyone. Seifer walks behind the curtain and disappears with the same ripple effect as before, followed by the Sorceress.)
Well!
I'm gonna guess she mind-controlled Seifer. The 'waving my fingers at you then you suddenly stop talking and start acting weird' is very suggestive, and if she isn't mind-controlling them there is zero explanation for his sudden choice to follow her.
Evidence that adulthood and coming of age are themes this story wants to be about is gathering up; Seifer's repeated insistence that he is not a boy and the Sorceress offering him a passage to adulthood in some fashion plays into it very obviously.
It's certainly a really cool introduction selling this character as mysterious and dangerous, although the way the group who all ran after Seifer all at once arrive staggered while making sure to leave the Sorceress enough time to monologue in between each arrival is very amusingly for the convenience of the drama.
At this point it might be fair to wonder if President Deling is really his own man - he was a dictator to begin with, but is he in control anymore? That Sorceress definitely seems like she might be the woman behind the curtain. Whether she's calling the shots or not, she's definitely the new asset that Deling is hoping will get him world power.
Then Rinoa just… pops up.
The spooky light effect is gone, indicating it was most likely caused by the Sorceress.
We are still. In the TV station. Which was full of Galbadian soldiers. Who just saw their president be assaulted on live TV.
I think the only take away that makes sense here is that Seifer personally killed every single soldier in the building, and then no backup whatsoever was sent. Despite, again, Deling's assault being broadcast on a gigantic screen in the middle of the town. Except, wait, no, we saw a bunch of soldiers standing back hesitating while Seifer had his blade to Deling's throat!
It's all just Things Happening. Which is a shame because it hurts what is otherwise a pretty high-tier introduction from the Sorceress.
Rinoa asks where Seifer is, they tell her they don't know, she asks if he'll be alright, but nobody has any idea, so we just leave.
On the way out, Rinoa explains that the Galbadians found the Owls' base and destroyed it, though the Owls themselves managed to escape unharmed. They have to skip town now; Rinoa asks Squall and the others if they know a safe place for her to stay, and adds that this is "an order from their clients."
The Timber resistance, everybody. Six people who had one big plan, then when that failed and they had to adapt immediately choked, failed to hide their location, and now have to scatter and flee their own country to escape reprisal. Does the contract even still apply if there's no resistance left?
Squall says "alright," but doesn't actually provide a solution; we just move on and then a woman (specifically the mother of those kids who tried to get some money from us) pops up and says she heard Rinoa was in trouble and offers her to stay at her place until things quiet down.
That woman, we learn, is the leader of the Forest Fox, another resistance group; pretty much everybody in Timber belongs to some kind of resistance cell, they're just not at all unified and most of them aren't actually active.
If most of your population belongs to a resistance cells but none of them are actually doing resistance actions then you're not the resistance, you're just members of a fancy club to make yourself feel better about living under occupation. This has the same energy as 1945 France when it turned out that everyone in the country definitely belonged to a resistance cell, yes sir, Occupied France was three collaborators and 40 million resistance members, don't ask what they were doing though, they were resisting, that's what matters.
We do a brief flash forward (unspecified amount of time).
Selphie: "I still don't get it. What did Seifer come here for?" Rinoa: "I think… he came to help us. The 'Forest Owls.' I talked about it a lot with him. So… Please don't think too badly of him." Galbadian Soldier: (Banging on the door) "Anybody in here!?" Forest Fox: "What is this!? I have 2 small children in here. Don't do anything to frighten them!" Daughter: "Upstairs… Hurry!" Rinoa: "Will she be okay?" Daughter: "She'll be fine. The legend goes… That my mother took down many soldiers with her strength, cooking, and beauty." Selphie: "That 'beauty' part sure makes it sound like a legend."
Selphie. Selphie what the fuck. Why are you so rude. What did that poor woman do to you.
Everyone hangs out in the kids' bedroom for a while, where Selphie explains that Seifer was angered when he learned that only 'three rookie SeeD members' had been sent to Timber to possibly fight the whole Galbadian forces. Squall and Rinoa have an argument - Squall wants to be clear-headed about the possibility that Seifer might be dead, having fallen right into the arms of a sorceress allied with the President after trying to kill him, while Rinoa wants to hang on to the hope that he's alive even without evidence; Squall pretty much directly states that his pessimism is a defense mechanism to keep himself from being disappointed and hurt, but like, he talks it up like it's a cool and rational attitude instead of some really sad behavior coming from a teenager. Rinoa calls him a 'Meany,' which is accurate, but also she comes across as very childish in this exchange; neither of our protagonists is exactly winning this argument.
Finally, the Forest Fox comes up to tell everyone that the excess Galbadian forces have withdrawn from the city, leaving behind only the normal occupying garrison. Meaning staying here is still dangerous, but at least things have calmed down enough for us to skip town. This still leaves the question of where to go. Quistis cites "Garden Code, Article 8, Line 7: In the event that returning to the assigned Garden is not possible, report to the nearest Garden," which in their case would be Galbadia Garden.
…
First off, it's not clear why they can't return to Balamb Garden; I thought it was because trains still weren't running but then no, the characters say they'll take the train to a station called East Academy and travel from there to Galbadia Garden, so… Why can't they take the train back to Balamb?
Second, it's nice to have some confirmation that the Gardens are in fact part of an organization and mutually support one another, and I'm really curious to see what a different Garden from Balamb handles training and whether they have their own counterpart to GF junction.
Third, literally the only thing I know at this stage about Galbadia Garden is that it's in Galbadia, and that the tutorial computer has a bit about how Galbadia Garden graduates are directly fed into the Galbadian military. Why would you go there! This is definitely going to turn out wrong! They're active participants in Galbadian imperialism!
Well. With the group now all together, it's time to pick our party members, with, for the first time, Quistis being part of the roster.
I end up picking a party made up of Rinoa, Squall and Quistis for the time being.
Once outside, we find Watts in a Galbadian soldier uniform; he's gathered up some info. Apparently, all the trains are about to be shut down, but coincidentally the last train out of Timber is headed the way we want to go, to East Academy. It seems like the reasoning leading us there would have made a bit more sense if the order in which we acquired that information was simply reversed, but oh well.
Rinoa promises Watts she'll be alright, and Watts asks Squall to take care of her; we can either have him reply that it's his job, or actually show concern about Watts by asking him if he'll be safe here. He responds with… "I'll be fine, sir! I'll put up the fight of my life!", which has me mildly concerned as to whether Watts understands what 'staying safe' means.
And now we save, and leave things here for today.
Real ups and downs this update. Possibly more downs than ups. The whole TV station sequence really trips up my 'I need character actions to make internal sense' organs.
But! We're not done. There's a couple of things I want to hit.
For one thing, I checked the Codex to see if it updated with new information, and it did, and that information has me wondering if I didn't wildly misunderstand the dynamics at play in this setting:
"Countless invasions of other countries [by Galbadia] are attempted, but most are deterred by SeeD."
This frames SeeD as not just amoral mercenaries, but specifically the counter to Galbadian power, the reason their invasions fail. Which suggests that Dollet wasn't an isolated incident but, like, standard procedure: Galbadia invades somewhere, that place recruits SeeD, SeeD puts a stop to the invasion. That's a lot more partisan than I expected; I had imagined that SeeD would sell their services to Galbadia as easily as to any other country.
It's possible that Galbadia and SeeD are colluding to create worldwide conflict that keeps SeeD employed, but it'd be a weird conspiracy because it's not clear to me what Galbadia would get out of it, or why SeeD wouldn't profit more from just being hired by Galbadia in the first place.
It's strange! We'll find out more eventually, I'm sure.
Also - people in the thread have talked about SeeD written tests before, so I figure now is as good an opportunity as any to bring them up.
Written tests are a means to increase SeeD rank. From the tutorial menu, Squall can take an online test, and getting a 100% correct score will result in a rank increase. There are multiple ranks of tests, each one supposedly harder than the last. So what do those tests look like?
They're questions about the mechanics of the game.
Each test contains 10 yes or no questions: They ask us stuff like "This symbol means Command ability, Y/N," "Poison inflicts damage every time you take an action, Y/N," "There is a limit to how much magic you can Draw from an enemy, Y/N." The first rank is pretty trivial, but starting from the second it asks contextual knowledge that requires digging into FF8's unique mechanics (for instance, in this game poison deals damage when you take an action, not over time).
If you fail a test, you can retake it; the tests are always the same. It would therefore be trivial to look up the answers and correctly answer all tests for all levels right now, getting to max SeeD rank immediately. I'm… Not going to do that, because where is the fun in that? I've been answering tests every now and then, but some of the questions are tricky, and I limit myself to one test at a time even when successful, so it'll be a little while before we reach max level.
Not that it matters.
I already broke the game.
Final Fantasy VIII is a game that is infamously easy to break in half using its game systems, specifically Junctioning. I deliberately avoided looking up any such method to see what my experience of the game would be like organically; as a result, it ended up taking all of eight updates before I accidentally snapped it in half.
Here's how it works. So far, the only way we've had to obtain Magic is by Drawing it, either from monsters or draw points within the world. However, there is another way advertised in our GF menu; you see, each GF has at least one ability like this:
"Refine [thing] from an item." For most GFs, this is the elemental magic associated with them; Quezacotl can refine Lightning Magic from items, Diablos can refine Time Magic, Siren can refine Life Magic. Refining means you take an item and break it down into a number of casts of a spell. For instance, these M-Stone Pieces we've been getting off random encounters can typically be converted into 5 Tier 1 spells:
You can turn it into 5 Thunders, 5 Slows, 5 Cures. Others are more thematic - the Holy Water, which cures the Zombie status effect, can be refined into 2 Zombie casts. That's great! Very convenient. It gives us a way of obtaining magic without farming Draws off enemies. I gravitated towards these abilities very early because it seemed like a massive convenience gain. And it is that!
It's also not just that. Because the thing is, the refine list is cracked. The Wizard Stone, an item we got from, I think boss fights, refine for Tier 3 spells. In theory, this is fine; it means we have a limited supply of items we can refine into a limited number of Firagas for burst damage from some encounters.
But some high-tier refinable items are sold. Cheaply.
A Tent, the basic "heal everyone while on the world map" item, refines into 10 Curagas. Tents are sold for 1,000 Gil in every shop. I get paid at least 5,000 Gil every time I receive my SeeD salary. This makes refining 100 Curagas trivial. "Oh wow Omi," you say, "that surely means you will find healing your characters really easy now!" Well yes, sure, but remember.
The Junction system exists.
I junctioned 100 Curagas to Selphie's HP and her HP quintupled. She went from 500-600 HP to 2797. I can have her in critical range (to get her Limit Break) while still at the same HP as Rinoa's maximum.
It's ridiculous. And I can just do the same with Blizzaga Junctioned to Strength or whatever. Game balance basically just became a polite suggestion.
And remember, I did that unintentionally, just taking a quick look at the system, going 'this seems like a useful ability,' going for it, and then putting 2 and 2 together a couple hours later. This isn't even me trying to break the game!
I'm beginning to see why people call VIII the most broken Final Fantasy.
We'll have to use this new power wisely. How wisely, I suppose we'll see next time.
I think I see at least one "I WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET ABOUT ME" in there, which might be either the proper form of that first phrase or there could be three or more phrases mixed together.
The game starts you with Tents in your inventory, it was only a matter of time. Thankfully, Junctioning is one game breaking ability you can always equip or unequip between battles if you believe it's breaking the game too hard for you.
Even if it's really hard to put the proverbial cat back in the bag.
This is about the point where it happens naturally, so yeah.
Once FFVIII's difficulty crumbles like a cheap pastry in your hands, it's really hard to... pretend you don't know how to shatter it into a million pieces.
And this isn't even some tricky combo or exploit, it's just a matter of using the game's systems as intended. So there's no real challenge except the one you make by deliberately handicapping yourself.
"The moon's mysterious power can make all allies invincible"??? WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE MOON. WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME ABOUT THE GODDAMNED MOON.
Speaking purely as an amateur history enthusiast, I think the whole TV station thing makes a little more sense in the context of Japan's love for half-baked and abortive coups. There were a bunch of incidents stretching back to the feudal era where a handful of dissidents got together, got really upset about the current state of affairs, and then ran off half-cocked to overthrow the government.
The usual prevailing assumption was "We show up, strike a blow for our pet issue, spread news of our success to the nation, and then everyone will cheer and rise up with us". In practice, this mostly got a lot of dissidents killed. This kept happening, with ebbs and flows in popularity, up to and through the 1970s (possibly later; I'm not an expert).
Unfortunately, a lot of the people who tried this sort of thing tended to be fascist and fascist-adjacent, with their big idea being "kill a government minister," and for a while they had a lot of success in driving the government rightward, so it's not just a quirky fun bit of history.
Anyway, this sort of thing obviously happens and happened in other societies too, but there's an awful lot of it in Japanese history, so it's possible that FF8 is drawing on a long and storied national tradition of rebels with more enthusiasm than sense who think their one big moment will translate into lasting social change.
If anything, Rinoa is an example of a relatively intelligent practitioner for calling it all off at the last minute. Seifer, on the other hand...
I've mentioned this before with Balamb, but FF8 has a completely new approach to town from VII; instead of towns occupying a single screen with a three-quarters top-down view, towns are split up into multiple screens representing small sections of the town. This is very neat and means those towns feel bigger than VII's tiny villages, but also… VII had that option you could toggle on an off where every exit from a given screen was highlighted by a red arrow, which was extremely convenient sometimes, and as far as I can tell VIII doesn't have that. It's not a big deal in places like the above screenshot, where you can guess that there is one exit at each end of the road plus two doors for the Weapon store and the Hotel, but sometimes it's not clear at all that a given direction will lead to a new screen which makes it possible to miss areas entirely.
Man, we need to Retvrn to this style of town design in Final Fantasy. It's just so much more resource efficient to create a small handful of sumptuously detailed prerendered backdrops to run across Resident Evil style than fully 3D shit that will always inevitably look too small or artificial for what it's trying to convey. And just imagine how good a nice prerendered backdrop could look made with today's technology...
Anyway, the hotel is taken up by Galbadian soldier so we can't stay here, but more importantly, the train model in the lobby gives us another chance to do the most important thing in the game:
Keep ragging Rinoa for her arts and crafts skills.
I like how Rinoa fully went fetal position in response. Fuckin same, girl, I would definitely do that if the superpowered gigachad mercenaries I hired to liberate my country were relentlessly dragging my arts & crafts.
t this point, we initiate combat to try and save the Timberians from the Galbadians' wrath. The two soldiers are just ordinary elite soldiers and are quickly dispatched, although this marks the first appearance of…
OH MY GOD HOW ADORABLE. LOOK AT IT! SUCH A GOOD BOY.
Ahem. It looks like Angelo triggered randomly in the middle of the fight, instead of by me inputting a command while at low HP. Maybe it's an oddity of Rinoa's mechanics? I tried to look up Angelo's mechanics and ended up accidentally learning that Rinoa has a separate Limit Break that is unlocked on Disc 3 and I quickly closed the window before reading any further. It's annoyingly difficult to look up anything about the mechanics of these games without spoiling yourself on the plot, I'll say this much. Thankfully I have the thread to explain stuff to me when I can't look it up.
Ach, shame. For what it's worth I looked it up and it seems to be a hybrid. Basically Angelo has four moves he can do which can randomly trigger during standard battle based on a number of factors, Angelo Rush (known by default) being one of them and triggered in response to an enemy successfully hitting Rinoa. He also has four conventional Limits (which you have to learn from magazines like the other moves) of which one will be randomly selected from by the Limit command if Rinoa's current Crisis level permits. Angelo Cannon, the second move he knows by default, is one of these.
Here you can see me decide to experiment with casting Blind on Selphie while she's in critical HP to see if I can abuse her Limit Break. It works moderately well.
Okay but just imagine this actually taking place in-universe. Squall says "think fast", throws pocket sand directly into Selphie's eyes, then turns to Rinoa completely dead-eyed and stone-faced to say "i did it to increase her effectiveness in combat". SeeDs are Built Fucking Different.
Sorceress: "Don't be ashamed to ask for help. Besides, you're only a little boy." Seifer: "I'm not… Stop calling me a boy." Sorceress: "You don't want to be a boy anymore?" Seifer: "I am not a BOY!"
Here's how it works. So far, the only way we've had to obtain Magic is by Drawing it, either from monsters or draw points within the world. However, there is another way advertised in our GF menu; you see, each GF has at least one ability like this:
Unironically the spoiler thread is at this point by volume like 50% people discussing in hushed tones which completely fucked sorcery you will blindly stumble into that breaks the game over your knee. It's like watching a Mister Magoo cartoon but instead of narrowly avoiding grievous bodily harm he's constantly wandering within a hair's breadth of like a Doom Berserk pack of a Quake Quad-Damage.
Okay wow, that. Was a lot of things falling apart very quickly. The entire TV station segment feels like a mess, when that should be a big defining moment in the early game that needs to hold together.
As for Seifer showing up and threatening a president for life (which, I love that that is his official title), going off of the Gardens being a group of incredibly amoral profit-seeking mercenaries, I almost wonder if Seifer was sent on an official, if under the table, mission by the Faculty to do exactly this.
Like let's think about it: Deling's address amounts to "we are now able to enforce global hegemony through newfound power, and are politely informing everyone else to prepare to submit or die." It turns out though, global hegemony is terrible business for people seeking to profit off violence. So if Deling's threats are credible, than removing him from power snd destabilizing Galbadia as a nation is a fantadtic way to ensure future business stays booming.
Now, making it public knowledge that you capture/assassinate world leaders who are too successful also isn't too great for business, but it Seifer is a "rogue independent agent?" And Quistis is doing her duty so well for the Garden by trying to stop him? Well they did everything they could, it's a shame things turned out how they did in the end.
Of course, it's unlikely Seifer would be able to remain gainfully employed after that kind of operation, but going down in history as an infamous operator - and living out the rest of his days as a deniable asset for the Faculty, possibly under a new identity - well given all his talk of romantic dreams and wanting to go out and prove himself, he might find that a perfectly acceptable fate.
Really, the only issue here for the Garden is the Sorceress mind controlling their agent and ruining the attempt. Though simply showcasing the flaws on Galbadia's security that allows a lone agent access to the president enough to threaten his life might be sufficient for their purposes.
If this is all true, Quistis would have been meant to fail to stop Seifer, which means she'll likely be thrown under the bus. She just cannot catch a break.
Oh wow, I knew about refining as a mechanic but I did not know it broke the game that bad so organically. It's like you say, an item you're expected to have several of in your inventory can be used to buff your HP THAT MUCH? They want you to snap the game in half.
Such a great bit of the game. Really nails down the characters and their interactions. Seifer finding out that his rival and two randos were sent to help his sorta-girlfriend and deciding to assassinate the president of a superpower and almost doing it is such a him move.
The tent/curaga thing is actually infamous, so much so I find it hard to believe it wasn't at least somewhat intentional to find for people looking at the system, like the codex in stashed three menus deep as a reward for people who dig very deeply into the system. There's quite a lot of ways to get strong end-game magic through various methods, with different level of effort, and even at a low level the game steadily increases the methods to easily get late-game magic.
Considering that there is no real limit to leveling up to level 40 with everyone while trying to max out your GF's ability list literally anywhere, it actually makes sense. FF8 being so broken is actually a feature, not a trap.
You mentioned that FF7 had all these cool combos and interactions, but none of it actually mattered since the game was so easy, even before getting all the secret end game items. You were just never meaningfully challenged by mechanics outside a few exceptions.
FF8 has that same 'not really any challenge' issue, but it makes you feel as if you earned/figured out the way to do it. It left so many ways to do so, but it doesn't explain to you how to do it. It probably leads to lots of people going 'well, I completely figured out the game and broke it in half early on and steamrolled everything'. The nature of the junctioning means even if you only figure out one or two things, you still have 'gaps'. Sure, your HP might be super high, but your attacks are weak. Or maybe you put curaga on your VIT, so you take single-digit damage from physical attacks, but can still be wiped out by spell AoE.
It puts a level of agency that was more absent in FF7. And of all the ways to have unstandard difficulty, 'made it too easy to break' is one of the more forgivable options for a story-and-spectacle-driven game.
@Omicron So the Sorceres talked about making a man out of a boy and put on some mood lightning all the while a girl his age fails to distract him? All in a , dare I say French Art Deco city under occupation by ther Ger-Galbadians? View: https://youtu.be/GlpDf6XX_j0
Ahem. It looks like Angelo triggered randomly in the middle of the fight, instead of by me inputting a command while at low HP. Maybe it's an oddity of Rinoa's mechanics? I tried to look up Angelo's mechanics and ended up accidentally learning that Rinoa has a separate Limit Break that is unlocked on Disc 3 and I quickly closed the window before reading any further. It's annoyingly difficult to look up anything about the mechanics of these games without spoiling yourself on the plot, I'll say this much. Thankfully I have the thread to explain stuff to me when I can't look it up.
So, how the Angelo limit break works is, it's actually two limit breaks in one.
The first one works the same as the other Limit Breaks: when you are in critical, the arrow appears, you pick Limit Break, and Rinoa "randomly" (there's mechanics to it, but they're not worth learning, since there's always some RNG involved) executes one of four attacks; you have three of these, being Angelo Cannon, Angelo Strike, and Invincible Moon. Note that you can choose not to learn some of these option, in which case the RNG will spit out the option under it - so until you learn one of the others, the Limit will always spit out Angelo Cannon, and if you learn Invisible Moon but not Angelo Strike, then, until you find the fourth option, you'll use Invisible Moon when the fourth would come out, but Angelo Cannon when Angelo Strike would come out.
The other four Angelo options are different; these manifest randomly in battle. You currently have Angelo Rush, which attacks one enemy; the other two open to you are Angelo Recovery (which will have him show up to heal a character who is in critical, handily removing the chance to trigger Limit Break for that character if you were leaving them in critical on purpose), and and Angelo Reverse, which only shows up if somebody is dead and uses a single Phoenix Down on them.
Now, these actually interfere with each other, in that FFVIII has a mechanic where things can happen randomly in battle, which basically checks a RNG every tot amount of time. The amount of time it checks is increased the more of these options you have available, and the game will check starting from the weaker and moving to the stronger - meaning that learning any of these two moves will lower the chance to use the fourth Angelo option for this (which is substantially better, but I won't explain why to avoid spoilers), and much more importantly, it lowers the chance to see the other, much more interesting options that will be unlocked way later into the game. There's one of those you ABSOLUTELY won't want to miss, so I suggest you seriously consider leaving Angelo Recovery and Angelo Reverse unlearned.
Anyway, Zell's sudden teleporting onto the scene is about to be handily topped by the person responsible for the commotion that interrupts Deling before he can name the Sorceress and someone can provide us with more context on what Sorceresses even are.
The Sorceress gestures and a light appears; Quistis runs onto the stage but whatever spell was cast instead drives her to her knees where she appears paralyzed.
So, if you want my suggestion, the problem is not with Refine itself. Refine is fine in most cases, putting you a bit ahead of the intended difficulty curve but not shattering the game. So here's my suggestions; I don't think they're spoilers at this point, it's just a matter of how much you're willing to limit yourself.
Life Refine is bonkers. It has no business being given to you this soon in the game, and refining Tents is not even close to the worst it can do to game balance. So, my suggestion is, wait to use this until the start of Disk 3. Just pretend you don't have the ability until then; you can get yourself Cura with Mid-Magic Refine, and some of the Status spells can be used as stepping stones for junction until Curaga becomes available.
Space-Time Refine is nearly as bad as Life Refine; the only difference is that the items to refine aren't as easy to find as "literally being in your starting inventory", but if you do get some of those items, then those are endgame level spells. So... I would suggest that you wait to use this until... let's say the first GF you collect in Disk 3; that's more or less the point where having access to these spells isn't game-breaking anymore, and just makes you quite strong - assuming you let the enemies level up, that is.
The other magic refines, as you noticed, have a handful of powerful options; you mentioned the -aga spells, but nearly all of the magic refine options (I can think of only a single exception) have a "engdame" level spell that is even stronger than the -aga spells. As you mentioned, a few casts of these can be nice for magical casting, and I do suggest actually casting them for magic-focused characters, but I would still suggest that you hold back from junctioning anything that matches the -aga until you've collected at least 8 GF, and wait until you've collected 13 before you start junctioning the top-tier spells of the respective list. Which, I'm sure you'll know them when you see them, but if you want to get spoiled, they are: Tornado from Thunder Magic Refine, Flare from Fire Magic Refine, Meltdown from Status Magic, Pain also from Status Magic, and Aura from Support Magic. Anything else from those magic refines (unlike the Life Refine and Space-Time Refine lists) is mostly fine, and won't break the game the moment you can give 100 of it to your characters.
Again, this is really just a suggestion that I'm making based on my own knowledge of what the game's difficulty is like; you're free to ignore me and experiment on your own, but I'm doubtful your findings will be different.
The difficulty of Triple Triad has incidentally dropped sharply after acquiring Diablos. Things were iffy when Ifrit was my only good card and everything else was garbage so I had to be careful with my plays, but since Triple Triad is played with hands of five cards, just having two good cards (Ifrit and Diablos) means a sharp uptick in victory odds, which in turns means I can grab more good cards from opponents, and in a short time I have acquired a set of five good cards which is enough to steamroll most players. Alas.
Yeaaaah, while Triple Triad is pretty neat and there's eventually more rules to make the game a bit more interesting... it's also trivially easy to pick up some of the one of a kind GF/Character cards early on and then just sweep basically every single match. especially at this point in the game, where you have access to those powerful cards, but everyone's still just playing with the basic rules instead of some of the ones like Elemental or Same.
This isn't the first time FF does this and I will never stop complaining about it. When you put random encounters in a town, you're punishing players for exploring the area and engaging with the world. Just don't do it. This is especially annoying here because Timber is 1) really cool and pretty with a ton of ambient dialogue, 2) kind of hard to navigate!
Can't disagree, honestly. Probably one of the reasons I have Diablos grinding out Encounter Half/None right now, so I can avoid Random Encounters when I really don't want to deal with it (like towns or areas with NPCS).
OH MY GOD HOW ADORABLE. LOOK AT IT! SUCH A GOOD BOY.
Ahem. It looks like Angelo triggered randomly in the middle of the fight, instead of by me inputting a command while at low HP. Maybe it's an oddity of Rinoa's mechanics? I tried to look up Angelo's mechanics and ended up accidentally learning that Rinoa has a separate Limit Break that is unlocked on Disc 3 and I quickly closed the window before reading any further. It's annoyingly difficult to look up anything about the mechanics of these games without spoiling yourself on the plot, I'll say this much. Thankfully I have the thread to explain stuff to me when I can't look it up.
So, looking it up since I haven't actually had Rinoa's limit break affect much as of yet, she basically learns two different types of Angelo skills. Some like this one are automatic in response to triggers like "Rinoa takes damage", some are selected from her Limit Break menu the same way some other characters have menus (think FFVII I guess, if you took out the Limit Levels).
We can visit the local newspaper! Timber Maniacs is that newspaper we found an issue of back at the Balamb Hotel. We can explore a little - one of the side rooms has a Blizzaga draw point??
Now I know that this seems ridiculous for the game to just hand you Blizzaga this early... but this specific draw point is both A) Only viewable with Siren's Move-Find ability, and B) will never recharge, so tbh it's more useful to have a few casts of powerful ice magic than for junctioning.
I mean, assuming you don't refine more Blizzagas on top of these, but we'll get there.
Seriously, those are gorgeous shots and they were made exclusively for a missable gag. This game had resources to spare.
Incidentally, hmm. Squall's internal monologue in this exchange is focused on how he resents adults, for being boring, for projecting their wasted dreams onto young people like him, all while the guy rants about how the times have changed and young people used to strive for things but now they're all lazy. It's… interesting, considering so far all our playable characters have been teenagers; it feels like generational divides might be a deliberate theme the game is going for.
Weirdly, Squall and company might be the most teenager characters we've had in the series? Not that other games didn't have a few like Yuffie (and Rydia maybe idk???), but I guess here it's the intersection of semi-modern realism and teenage characters that does it for FFVIII.
It's apparently still on, but all it's broadcasting is this spooky string of words that flow, blur and flash; this is the worldwide radio interference. Not a shutting down of the signal as I might have implied earlier, but a noise that drowns out all other communication. Pretty spooky.
…do these letters mean anything? I'm genuinely struggling to tell on this low resolution. I think I might be seeing a "Kill," a "Never let" something…
*squint*
"I WILL NEVER LET YOU [something] BACK"? "BRING ME BACK THERE I AM ALIVE HERE"?
I know at least one person in the spoiler thread had the exact text, so I suspect they'll post it here sooner or later. Certainly some... interesting stuff to leave broadcasting on a giant television over the city for decades on end though.
Squall is pretty rude in this exchange but also… Everything he said is true. And considering that the Owls are involved in a life or death struggle, they kinda need to hear it! Rinoa has been handed out tremendous power in the form of three SeeDs, but she doesn't know how to use that power - she wavers between decisions, is afraid to commit, has no clear roadmap to victory. We're currently working on a plan she improvised an hour ago, which will only accomplish a symbolic victory, and she's already backing down. And her reaction to being confronted with that fact is to run off in tears, which is not the emotionally mature reaction of the leader of a resistance cell fighting an empire that is not holding any punches.
Suffice to say, early Rinoa is... kind of a doof. I mean I like her, but she's basically 100% enthusiasm without most of the actual planning and thought necessary to back it up if she really wants to be some kind of rebel leader.
We were just having a whole bit of character drama about how the studio is too heavily guarded to risk a frontal assault and this guy solos. Also Quistis is there? To be clear she's not helping Seifer, she's trying to keep him in check, telling the guards to stand back before he does something restless like assassinate President Deling on live TV to a worldwide audience.
This guy makes us all look like a pack of jobbers.
Personally, my take on this is that while Squall and company could easily bust their way in the front door and take over the broadcast, what they would be more worried about is how do they get back out afterwards? It's one thing to smash through an armed position with superior force, it's another thing entirely to then defend that position from what's likely to be increasingly well-coordinated and armed waves of soldiers while Rinoa does her broadcast, and then also safely remove themselves from the situation afterwards.
Seifer, on the other hand, is a king of not giving a shit and just charging in anyways, and tries to get around the "how do I escape" part by taking the president hostage.
Yeah, the odds that Deling's plan for his "peace conference" to set aside "trifling problems" between Galbadia and other nations are "reveal Galbadia just developed a new superweapon, all other nations are to immediately submit to Galbadian rule or die" are 90%. And out of the remaining 10%, all of it is "this Sorceress ambassador is going to mind-control other world leaders into submitting to Galbadian rule." This is purely semi-nice phrasing for Deling announcing his intent to declare total world domination. I wonder if this is related to Gerogero and Galbadia figured out a way to harness and control monsters, making them able to take on the entire world at once.
…you know, technically, I don't think she has the authority to make that call. She's no longer an instructor, just a senior SeeD, and the Timber Team has a contract with Rinoa which should overrule anything but a direct order from the hierarchy. But, well, we know that the SeeDs are all hungering for action from Dollet, so they immediately jump to the call.
Could be some kind of SeeD special background rules thing, where overall Garden will prioritize its agents linking up and working with each other over potential conflicts, considering the amount of effort that likely goes into building up each individual SeeD. After all, later in the update we do see references to some kind of SeeD handbook.
And now, story time for the other major roadblock against me finishing FFVIII back in the day! What, you thought it was going to be gameplay related, or some super difficult game section I couldn't pass after last time's was "I am too stupid to see a set of stairs"?
Nope, the answer is instead "small eight or nine year old McFluffles is happily playing Final Fantasy VIII for the Playstation when one of their parent's friends walks in to see what I'm playing, sees Seifer Say A Swear, and reports it to my mother"! And that's the story of how my parents discovered the video game ratings system, that Final Fantasy is rated T for Teen, and promptly absconded with like 40% of my video game collection until I was older!
Also am I supposed to take it that Deling wasn't aware of Balamb Garden's assistance to Galbadia's enemies? I know they're undercover in Timber specifically but SeeD can't exactly be hiding its assignments in general, considering the whole, y'know, 'being a mercenary' thing.
Plausible Deniability, I assume. It's one thing to declare war on the supersoldier child army when they only might have been involved, it's another entirely when there's a live broadcast to the entire world (and thus your political constituents or whatever) of the president of your empire being held at Gunblade point by someone clearly identified as SeeD and a member of Balamb Garden. Find me an evil empire that wouldn't be clamoring for war after that, and I'll find you an evil empire that's currently planning to assassinate Cid at the very least.
First off, it's not clear why they can't return to Balamb Garden; I thought it was because trains still weren't running but then no, the characters say they'll take the train to a station called East Academy and travel from there to Galbadia Garden, so… Why can't they take the train back to Balamb?
Once outside, we find Watts in a Galbadian soldier uniform; he's gathered up some info. Apparently, all the trains are about to be shut down, but coincidentally the last train out of Timber is headed the way we want to go, to East Academy. It seems like the reasoning leading us there would have made a bit more sense if the order in which we acquired that information was simply reversed, but oh well.
Also - people in the thread have talked about SeeD written tests before, so I figure now is as good an opportunity as any to bring them up.
Written tests are a means to increase SeeD rank. From the tutorial menu, Squall can take an online test, and getting a 100% correct score will result in a rank increase. There are multiple ranks of tests, each one supposedly harder than the last. So what do those tests look like?
They're questions about the mechanics of the game.
And all 30 ranks of tests are nothing but True or False questions, too!
So yeah suffice to say while the test questions can get pretty neat, and even very specific to the point of things like "does this specific enemy drop this specific item", it's also not particularly hard to cheese your way through considering there is zero penalty for failing. The only limitation is Squall's level.
Final Fantasy VIII is a game that is infamously easy to break in half using its game systems, specifically Junctioning. I deliberately avoided looking up any such method to see what my experience of the game would be like organically; as a result, it ended up taking all of eight updates before I accidentally snapped it in half.
Here's how it works. So far, the only way we've had to obtain Magic is by Drawing it, either from monsters or draw points within the world. However, there is another way advertised in our GF menu; you see, each GF has at least one ability like this:
It's ridiculous. And I can just do the same with Blizzaga Junctioned to Strength or whatever. Game balance basically just became a polite suggestion.
And remember, I did that unintentionally, just taking a quick look at the system, going 'this seems like a useful ability,' going for it, and then putting 2 and 2 together a couple hours later. This isn't even me trying to break the game!
I'm beginning to see why people call VIII the most broken Final Fantasy.
So yeah, suffice to say... just discovering "oh that's what Refine skills do" is... pretty much the fastest way to snap the game in half. Like I've mentioned breaking things early on, pre-Fire Cavern? That was just mainlining the Card ability to be able to defeat enemies without them giving EXP (so junctioning makes me stronger but enemies don't scale higher), and Water/Ice refine working on some drops that get given out in huge amounts by earlygame enemies to slap Water junctions on my main stats (which scales to about halfway between -ra and -ga spells, so very useful). And it only gets even more crazy from there.
Really, the answer to "I don't want to break FFVIII in half" is... probably about as Egleris put it, you have to outright ignore some options available to you. For example, I only have Cura junctioned to my character's HP because I can get that by refining Cure spells into Cura, and have ignored tents entirely.
Or of course, you can grind levels until everything scales up to kick your ass anyways. Also a possiblity.
Ahem. It looks like Angelo triggered randomly in the middle of the fight, instead of by me inputting a command while at low HP. Maybe it's an oddity of Rinoa's mechanics?
It is indeed randomly triggered. Leading to the common strategy of deliberately *not* learning most of the Angelo limit breaks, so that he has a higher chance of using the actually good ones.
We get a funny scene where a soldier is informing his officer about a suspicious soldier asking strange questions (Watts in a uniform), which prompts all the soldiers to go and harass every teenager in Timber before the officer is even done giving them orders, which he meant to urge care in interacting with Timber's inhabitants, who are citizens with rights, unfortunately everyone is already gone. It's funny and serves as a justification for the fights we'll soon be getting into.
It's amusing in a bleak way that you have an officer carefully considering the balance of the occupation in Timber, knowing they're loathed and wanting to avoid a backlash, and all the soldiers running off to do some casual occupying brutality. Like, they all know the score and what the SOP is.
Seriously, those are gorgeous shots and they were made exclusively for a missable gag. This game had resources to spare.
Incidentally, hmm. Squall's internal monologue in this exchange is focused on how he resents adults, for being boring, for projecting their wasted dreams onto young people like him, all while the guy rants about how the times have changed and young people used to strive for things but now they're all lazy.
Going back to the conversation with Quistis at makeout point, you had Squall of the firm opinion that people should rely on themselves and not inflict their problems on others. Feels like this is more of the same here. He asked a question and wanted a brief informative answer, but then got stuck listening to a bunch of unrelated whining.
We'll get back to her soon, but for now, it's time for President Deling's address to the world; the string of words clears up and an image comes into view.
It's notable the broadcast starts with a bunch of technicians wandering across the frame. By normal television standards that's incredibly sloppy and unprofessional, but there haven't been any broadcasts in nearly two decades, so that specialist knowledge is gone.
Selphie: "See, see! It's a peace proposal to the world! I knew it!" President Deling: "Unfortunately, there are some trifling problems standing between Galbadia and other nations, and they must be resolved. I plan to convene with other nations' leaders immediately to resolve these problems.
Squall: "What do you think you're doing?" Seifer: "It's obvious, ain't it!? What are you planning to do with this guy?" Squall: "...Planning to do?" Squall, mentally: "(That's right… He knows Rinoa. Is that why he's here?)" Zell: "I get it! You're Rinoa's…"
Seifer got pissed about being pulled out of Dollet, his reasoning being 'We could have been heroes!'
Whatever his connection to Rinoa, Seifer clearly stepped in to help, as best as he deems he can. Kind of reckless and stupid, but hey, you can see the rationale. The resistance wants Deling, the resistance gets Deling.
…how did we even get into the allegedly heavily guarded studio? What even is happening anymore? Did the Galbadian soldiers actually evacuate the studio when someone is literally holding the President hostage?
That woman, we learn, is the leader of the Forest Fox, another resistance group; pretty much everybody in Timber belongs to some kind of resistance cell, they're just not at all unified and most of them aren't actually active.
I like to think they disagree about what government Timber will form after they throw out the Galbadians. Insert 'We can be friends until the revolution. After that it gets difficult'
The bit you're missing is I WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET ABOUT ME. The word "FORGET" is missing in most of the lines - resulting in the line reading as I WILL NEVER LET YOU ABOUT ME most of the times it appears - but you can see it at the start of both the second row from the top and second row from the bottom. Errors in the transmission, perhaps? Or maybe just a fuckup from the devs.
I junctioned 100 Curagas to Selphie's HP and her HP quintupled. She went from 500-600 HP to 2797. I can have her in critical range (to get her Limit Break) while still at the same HP as Rinoa's maximum.
The game starts you with Tents in your inventory, it was only a matter of time. Thankfully, Junctioning is one game breaking ability you can always equip or unequip between battles if you believe it's breaking the game too hard for you.
Even if it's really hard to put the proverbial cat back in the bag.
This is about the point where it happens naturally, so yeah.
Once FFVIII's difficulty crumbles like a cheap pastry in your hands, it's really hard to... pretend you don't know how to shatter it into a million pieces.
And this isn't even some tricky combo or exploit, it's just a matter of using the game's systems as intended. So there's no real challenge except the one you make by deliberately handicapping yourself.
So yeah, suffice to say... just discovering "oh that's what Refine skills do" is... pretty much the fastest way to snap the game in half. Like I've mentioned breaking things early on, pre-Fire Cavern? That was just mainlining the Card ability to be able to defeat enemies without them giving EXP (so junctioning makes me stronger but enemies don't scale higher), and Water/Ice refine working on some drops that get given out in huge amounts by earlygame enemies to slap Water junctions on my main stats (which scales to about halfway between -ra and -ga spells, so very useful). And it only gets even more crazy from there.
Really, the answer to "I don't want to break FFVIII in half" is... probably about as Egleris put it, you have to outright ignore some options available to you. For example, I only have Cura junctioned to my character's HP because I can get that by refining Cure spells into Cura, and have ignored tents entirely.
Or of course, you can grind levels until everything scales up to kick your ass anyways. Also a possiblity.
This is a big part of the reason I decided to take the L on missing Diablos and press on without him instead of restarting (also the wasted time, but still) since it means I have one less HP junction to use until later.
...Third, literally the only thing I know at this stage about Galbadia Garden is that it's in Galbadia, and that the tutorial computer has a bit about how Galbadia Garden graduates are directly fed into the Galbadian military. ...
This frames SeeD as not just amoral mercenaries, but specifically the counter to Galbadian power, the reason their invasions fail. Which suggests that Dollet wasn't an isolated incident but,... That's a lot more partisan than I expected; I had imagined that SeeD would sell their services to Galbadia as easily as to any other country.
My impression is not that SeeD doesn't have any business with Galbadia, but that it's structurally different.
I also wonder how much of this is because Galbadia doesn't want to hire super-soldier mercenaries; if Deling is doing a long-term world conquest plan, surely he can also recognize how evil and sinister Cid is (game recognizes game, after all), and would be very nervous and paranoid about making his military operations too dependent on outside contractors that could betray him at the worst possible time, as Cid obviously would do.
It would therefore be trivial to look up the answers and correctly answer all tests for all levels right now, getting to max SeeD rank immediately. I'm… Not going to do that, because where is the fun in that?
I absolutely did this as a boy; I printed off an answer sheet from GameFAQs and stuffed it in the game case. I think that's the only thing I looked up online; I don't remember getting spoiled on anything, either in plot or mechanics.
"I am going to cheat at Child Soldier School" I whispered to myself as I banged through tests to push my SeeD rank up to 30 before even leaving for Timber.
This is a big part of the reason I decided to take the L on missing Diablos and press on without him instead of restarting (also the wasted time, but still) since it means I have one less HP junction to use until later.
To be fair, with Diablos it really isn't the HP junction gamebreaking that you're missing out on, there's multiple other GFs with that and iirc there's eventually items that can teach any GF some of the basic ability and junction skills.
No, it's the other skills that he's absolutely loaded up on. Mug? Encounter Half/None? Several Magic Refines? The first GF to have Ability x3 for stacking %stat buffs from other GFs (My Squall has Str+20% and 40% stacked from Ifrit right now for some absurd attack power even with my half-assed junctions)? Diablos is cracked.
If nothing else, the quality-of-life from his encounter abilities can only be super helpful if you're doing a lets play.
It's rather useful that in the game where leveling up is not a straight uncomplicated upgrade also give you very early on access to abilities that straight up remove random encounters from the game. And if you're the type to get lost, or want to play a scene multiple times, it's a hell of a time saver.
