- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
*shoots Kuja a few times*
THERE WAS NO SEQUEL TO CHRONO TRIGGER!!
(Okay, not true, but tbh, Cross should have been its own thing, as it was stuck in the frankly ginormous shadow of its older sibling)
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
THERE WAS NO SEQUEL TO CHRONO TRIGGER!!
(Okay, not true, but tbh, Cross should have been its own thing, as it was stuck in the frankly ginormous shadow of its older sibling)
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
My own opinions are a mix between becoming more positive (insights into Squall's character development, general improvement in translation accuracy compared to FFVII), and more negative (realizing how weird a lot of the mechanics are, and how much I benefited from having a guide). So it's difficult to describe other than "mixed to mixed".
Having said that, a very large part of why I follow this thread is to see other viewpoints and insights on the games I liked and disliked. I'm particularly looking forward to FFXII (which I disliked), but FFIII, FFVII, and now FFVIII have had me change at least some of my existing opinions. Which is a good thing, of course.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, that and people who don't like Rinoa looking for an excuse to hate her even more. But hardly just them of course, as Omi obviously didn't hate Rinoa.
The reason you cite for the Ultinoa theory reminds me a lot of the 'Prince is Death' theory for the Disney Snow White, in that it's popular because it gives the character at least something.
I've also been told Ultimecia did get more characterisation in Dissidia, but when you get more characterisation in a spinoff game from years later than your own game, that's an issue unto itself
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I mean, just from her speech in Deling City and the one before the final battle, Artemisia has more characterization than Kefka, in that we at least know why she does what she's doing: anger at being persecuted and a desire to keep time still. And, all of her wins make sense in the story, instead of being ass-pulls out of nowhere.
That's got to count for something, surely?
That's got to count for something, surely?
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Nnnnnot really. They're both good speeches with a lot of depth but...they're kind of her only points of characterization? In stark contrast, we know who Kefka is. He's the bastard who poisoned Doma's water supply, the dickweasel who gets his minions to polish his shoes when he gets sand on them in the middle of a desert, the cackling lunatic who destroyed the world just because he could. We've spent the entire game interacting with him, we know what he'd actually DO if you put him into a given situation. Hell, we've even got a good idea as to what drove him insane with the Magitek Knight experiments.
Other than those speeches, we don't know anything about Ultimecia. We don't know who she is, what her personality is other than "evil," we don't know how she'd react in a given situation etc etc. I...want to say she's one of the least fleshed out villains in the series? We know more about Adel than we know about Ultimecia! Sure you can make a solid guess at the circumstances that that drove her to attempt Time Compression...but frankly, that's no better than guessing about what drove Kefka insane.
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
We do know how she operates though?
She manipulates others, using them as her pawns and then discarding them when they're no longer useful - she does this to Edea, Seifer and Rinoa at various point, and to Galbadia in a broader sense. We know she's prideful, too, from the way she interacts with SeeD and how annoyed she is at them daring to interfere in her wishes. And we know she dislikes the company of people enough that she'd rather craft herself animated servants out of statues and people's memories than seek the help of other people - it makes her a good foil for Squall, in that he spends the whole game learning that it's ok to let other people in and seek their help. That's very far from "nothing" in terms of characterization, and a lot more than we got from, say, Xande.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's a great villain in a general sense, but when the meter of comparisons are the other Final Fantasy villains, I think she comes out ahead. Especially on the "presentation" front - while we can argue over the lack of characterization she might or might not have, I don't think it's in any way arguable that she smokes any other villain out in terms of style, is it?
She manipulates others, using them as her pawns and then discarding them when they're no longer useful - she does this to Edea, Seifer and Rinoa at various point, and to Galbadia in a broader sense. We know she's prideful, too, from the way she interacts with SeeD and how annoyed she is at them daring to interfere in her wishes. And we know she dislikes the company of people enough that she'd rather craft herself animated servants out of statues and people's memories than seek the help of other people - it makes her a good foil for Squall, in that he spends the whole game learning that it's ok to let other people in and seek their help. That's very far from "nothing" in terms of characterization, and a lot more than we got from, say, Xande.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's a great villain in a general sense, but when the meter of comparisons are the other Final Fantasy villains, I think she comes out ahead. Especially on the "presentation" front - while we can argue over the lack of characterization she might or might not have, I don't think it's in any way arguable that she smokes any other villain out in terms of style, is it?
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Aliya
Someone I might become
- Location
- Kazakhstan
- Pronouns
- They/She/It
You know, Homestuck actually pretty concretely explained why Timeloop based predestination doesn't absolve you of guilt. It does so by pointing out one thing: if you are not the type to do a thing, if you are someone who would look at a prophecy or a time traveller and say no, time loop will have to find another way. It is explicitly stated by one character (Terezi), and also implicitly presented by two time travelers: Dave and Aradia only had timeloops happen to them when they were the type to follow along; when they stopped being that type of person, timeloops stopped explicitly including them, cause they would never naturally decide to time travel outside of very specific circumstances.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
None of that is what I'd call solid characterization. The first and third points are basically secondhand information, learning about her from the results of her actions rather than learning about her actual personality, including why and how she made those decisions. There's a place for that kind of thing, but here it's like if the majority of Sephiroth's characterization was finding his sword embedded in President Shinra's back and finding the corpse of the Midgar Zolom, and we never got the NIbelheim flashback.
Hell, her characterization is so vague that you're wrong on the pride thing! Going back to the Japanese version of that speech, with added emphasis on one line...
It displeases me…
Why do you interfere with sorceresses!?
Why won't you let me be free!?
In just a little longer, my perfect world of time compression would have been completed…
I won't allow you to interfere…
This sounds more like desperation than pride to me, like a victim hounded by witchhunters until she's little more than a cornered rat who's decided to end the world because she has nothing else left to her.
I wouldn't say she smokes out any other villain in terms of style when she's got a grand total of five minutes screentime at best. She's got a cool design, sure, but that's it.
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Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well...yes, but also no?
I mean for one, even though the two games are only separated by 5 years (1994 vs 1999) Kefka benefits from being in the SNES era of videogames, where storytelling expectations were different...and frankly lower.
For two, while Kefka has very little character building, he also doesn't really need much, because Kefka runs on vibes, and even though I'm one of the very people who doesn't like Kefka because of the story's asspulls, his vibes are immaculate. He's in your face ranting and raving almost from the beginning of the game, and thanks to the English translation he's funny as fuck.
For three...well, Artemisia's character building has three very large problems, in my opinion.
First is that we don't get a hint of her until well into disc 2 - we spend a large portion of FF8 thinking Edea is our enemy, which necessitates a gear change on disc 3 when the truth comes out that she was mind-controlled and the real villain gets name-dropped. This isn't an insurmountable problem by any means, but I think coming as it does after the orphanage reveal and the battle at the garden, the game is asking the player for a substantial emotional redirection to shift their attention from Edea to Artemisia. "Oh, this person we spent half the game fighting was really just a meat puppet for the real enemy." (This is a place where the intent for people to replay FF8 multiple times hurts it - if you play FF8 once and only once, the impact of those early events ends severely blunted.)
The second problem is that...frankly IMO Artemisia doesn't really get many Ws. She gets a cool speech, kills the Galbadian president, spears Squall like a stuck pig...but she's wearing Edea's face through all that and we don't know the real Artemisia exists yet. Moreover, the events of the end of disc 1 are pretty far removed from her first name-drop in disc 3, by which time Squall is all better and back in control. So...who cares. Meanwhile, she gets Seifer to join her as her knight...but Seifer (at least when he's on screen) ends up being less a rival for Squall and more a speed bump. She launches missiles at the gardens...but only gets Trabia, the squad foiling her attacks on Balamb. Then during the Esthar sequence, she's frankly being upstaged by Adel's sheer presence in the story. She doesn't kill Zell's adopted parents, or Cid, or even Xu or Dr. Kadowaki, or burn Balamb City to the ground, or institute war crimes in Dollet. It's not really until the final moments of the game that Artemisia, as we know her, really feels like a personal threat, and that's way too late.
And thirdly, we keep coming back to my personal bugbear of how FF8 just kind of gestures at ideas. Sure, Artemisia has her rage at being persecuted as a sorceress and her desire to compress time to make it all stop. That's good villain motivation! But it's empty, because we don't know anything about her. Was little baby Artemisia the victim of rock-throwing assholes in school? Did someone try to drown her, old Europe-style? We just don't know fuck-all. Unlike Kefka, Artemisia's vibes are DOA because she spends half the game hiding behind Edea and then her motivation is extremely threadbare.
"Have you heard of witch hunts?" FF8 asks me, unprompted.
I look up from my computer. "You mean, like the Salem Witch Trials, or how the Inquisition tortured people?"
"Yeah."
"Yes..." I let the moment linger.
"Okay."
I mentioned before that maybe yes, FF8 did, in fact, need to show us people burning an accused witch in fear and hatred, because you can't just vaguely gesture at "persecution" and expect people to apply "ok, history of witch burning, got it" to your fantasy world and expect it to fly.
Add this to the way FF8 throws so many fucking rugyanks at us, between the reveals of "Edea is Cid's wife, Edea was the squad's childhood mom figure, Edea was mind-controlled by a different person, from the future, who might also try to grab this other person named Adel, but btw this Adel is really jacked and might reverse-chokehold her, actually wait, she's in Rinoa now, actually wait, Seifer just fucking grabbed Rinoa offscreen, actually wait, Adel has Rinoa now-
I think something FF8 needed, something it truly, desperately needed to make the sorceress from the future work, is for a single extended scene where Squall and/or Rinoa sit down with Artemisia and talk. Just talk. Some moment between the end of Edea's possession and the appearance of Adel. Maybe Artemisia is trying to convince Rinoa to join her, or for Squall to be her knight, or even both, but we needed something. I think we did need to hear that she escaped being hung by witch hunters. I think we do need a moment where Rinoa being kind or Squall being honest are rejected in favor of doubling down on "no, no more second chances, I rule time forever now."
We just ... needed more time.
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- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Very minor added context: the line there is "なぜ私の自由にさせない". Which might be valid to translate as "Why do you not allow my freedom", but I would personally translate as "Why do you not let me do as I please".
It's less desperation borne of persecution, and more a sort of whining about being opposed in doing Time Compression. It could still be "why do you not allow my freedom", and I might be misinterpreting it myself, but the issue that we're all facing is we don't really know based on the rest of the context.
The rest of Ultimecia's speech in her castle is just villainous ranting, so it does not provide new insights into her characterization.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
That might help or maybe we could see some of her backstory during the Time Kompression while traveling to the future, but it does feel like it needed something more.
EDIT: For that matter, Ellone's whole thing is showing people visions of other people's pasts.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I feel like the best time for this would be at the end of the game, where a dying Ultimecia is with Squall and Edea. Hell, it could even shed new light on why Edea let Ultimecia possess her so deeply.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
That's fair; there's certainly plenty of reasons to be disappointed with the way Artemisia was handled, but the very fact we have something to be disappointed about points to the fact that Artemisia has in fact at least a core characterization that can be detected (otherwise we wouldn't have reasons to be disappointed that such core characterization wasn't expanded upon), and we do know plenty about her, even if not enough to paint a complete picture.
This is completely disingenuous. Everything that she does while possessing Edea's body is part of Artemisia's screentime, and everybody in the thread was awed at how impressive she was in terms of nailing her villainous introduction in disk 1, back when that was going on. You can't just dismiss that as "not her screentime" due to the possession, because it was made very clear from early disk 2 that Edea was being mind-controlled, and in any case once finished the game we know that was Artemisia making all the choices, so the big, operatic showstopping sequence in Deling City is 100% a demonstration of her style.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Maybe it's ten minutes. Either way, even with her time in Edea factored in she's barely ever around. Even at her most present you basically just get glimpses of her, often from a distance, or you get into a fight with her and then she's gone, either from Squall getting oneshot, her jumping from Edea to Rinoa, or just killing her outright during the final battle. There is no scene where she interacts with the protagonists for an extended period of time.
Every time her screentime follows the same pattern: she shows up, says something, maybe fights you, then vanishes without meaningfully interacting with anyone other than Seifer, sometimes.
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- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
At least for me, one part that made me less impressed with Ultimecia is how a large part of why Sorceress Edea was so dramatically imposing and fearsome in Disc One was the whole "impaling Squall with a spear of ice" thing, and then later when Edea is in our party we learn that it's just something she can do anyway.
- Location
- Italy
Ah fuck, are you telling me FF8 is the prequel to RWBY? How could you do this to me I thought we were all friends here.
It's a good introduction, true. But it's kind of... almost all she has?
She spends the next Disk basically being a borderline ineffectual eminence grise with no real personality until Squall beats her out of his adoptive mom's body. She has the neat Ultinoa possession sequence in Disk 3, but then she essentially poofs out of the present time while Adel takes over her leading baddie role with aplomb.
I mean, hell, she's more or less vanquished in the present until the party tricks her into bringing her future into stabbing range, as Omicron so eloquently put it. At this point, she does have a pretty neat boss fight and a little glimpse into deeper characterization, but she mostly rants about making space-time into her dress, people into footstools, and TIME KOMPRESSION.
Sephiroth, Kefka, Exdeath, and even Golbez all benefit from feeling like a consistent and present threat. Ultimecia is not only not usually here, she's not even now.
At least it means they've got the fucking moon.
Good job to finish it Omicron !
FF8 is one of my favorite FF, so, it has been interesting to see how other people react to it. The only downside with FF8 in my case, is that it is probably the cause of my dislike of FF7.
I have played FF8 before FF7, and the consequence is that FF7 was a huge disappointment for me.
The reasons is that Squall has been a particular relatable character in my case, I love the love story part, and FF8's FMV are a full banger even 25 years later (NA release was the 9 September 1999, you almost have missed to finish your Let's Play the same day as the 25th anniversary by a hair).
So FF7... Cloud is absolutely not relatable in my case (and then, just uninteresting dude), love story is mid, and well FMV are very very far from what FF8 proposes. I suppose if I have done FF7 before FF8, my opinion would be sightly different on both games, but I think it's interesting to see how perception of FF can change depending the order you play them.
By the way, I want to point out something : the true hero of this game, the most powerful warrior is Angel, Rinoa's dog. Don't believe me ? Look, she can without incentive :
- attack enemies to protect her mistress
- restore health of people
- resurrect fallen warriors !
- look for rare items
And if Rinoa asks her help ?
She will :
- Suplex an enemy
- Attack all of them
- Give everyone Invincibility !
- Has the most powerful damaging attack because it hits every enemy. It hits with 80k damage for one, so, with 3 enemies, you can reach a whole 240k of damage, and no one can beat her. The attack is simply so powerful that it breaks dimension, like most powerful GF or strongest enemies do.
You can check all of them here :
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okT8QmY0qv4
Angel is the perfect (and cute!) doggo, the R2D2 of FF8 which has allowed the hero team to do the job. Angel is the true hero of the game (well, Rinoa is a good master too, because she never forget to reward her doggo for her good deeds !).
Let's be honest here : FF8 dev team wanted a make a game about a dog and his master and their reciprocated love, but as it would not have fly by, they choose to represent it by a teenager love story. But in reality, Squall is just a mistreat puppy who is saved by his new mistress (aka Rinoa). And they just let Angel to be around. All the thing about saving the world is about decoration and the only and real message of FF8 is :
DOGS ARE CUTE AND COOL, LOVE THEM AND CARE FOR THEM AND THEY WILL CARE OF YOU AND LOVE YOU !!!!
I have no problems to die on this hill.
Well, I suppose it will be a good time to rererererereread my 450 pages FF8 continuation fanfic and see how it holds 20 years later (with a lot of problems probably
). But yeah, as it's almost the only fic I have written, I suppose it shows how much I have loved this game and well, as people have noted, there are a bunch of things to explore in it (like Fujin and Raijin which didn't have enough screentime to my taste and works a little bit on their past, Seifer redemption arc, what the fuck is going on with the monster on the moon, what the Garden will become, (and no, I totally forgot about Norg if I remember right), what about Hyne, cetera...).
FF8 is one of my favorite FF, so, it has been interesting to see how other people react to it. The only downside with FF8 in my case, is that it is probably the cause of my dislike of FF7.
I have played FF8 before FF7, and the consequence is that FF7 was a huge disappointment for me.
The reasons is that Squall has been a particular relatable character in my case, I love the love story part, and FF8's FMV are a full banger even 25 years later (NA release was the 9 September 1999, you almost have missed to finish your Let's Play the same day as the 25th anniversary by a hair).
So FF7... Cloud is absolutely not relatable in my case (and then, just uninteresting dude), love story is mid, and well FMV are very very far from what FF8 proposes. I suppose if I have done FF7 before FF8, my opinion would be sightly different on both games, but I think it's interesting to see how perception of FF can change depending the order you play them.
By the way, I want to point out something : the true hero of this game, the most powerful warrior is Angel, Rinoa's dog. Don't believe me ? Look, she can without incentive :
- attack enemies to protect her mistress
- restore health of people
- resurrect fallen warriors !
- look for rare items
And if Rinoa asks her help ?
She will :
- Suplex an enemy
- Attack all of them
- Give everyone Invincibility !
- Has the most powerful damaging attack because it hits every enemy. It hits with 80k damage for one, so, with 3 enemies, you can reach a whole 240k of damage, and no one can beat her. The attack is simply so powerful that it breaks dimension, like most powerful GF or strongest enemies do.
You can check all of them here :
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okT8QmY0qv4
Angel is the perfect (and cute!) doggo, the R2D2 of FF8 which has allowed the hero team to do the job. Angel is the true hero of the game (well, Rinoa is a good master too, because she never forget to reward her doggo for her good deeds !).
Let's be honest here : FF8 dev team wanted a make a game about a dog and his master and their reciprocated love, but as it would not have fly by, they choose to represent it by a teenager love story. But in reality, Squall is just a mistreat puppy who is saved by his new mistress (aka Rinoa). And they just let Angel to be around. All the thing about saving the world is about decoration and the only and real message of FF8 is :
DOGS ARE CUTE AND COOL, LOVE THEM AND CARE FOR THEM AND THEY WILL CARE OF YOU AND LOVE YOU !!!!
I have no problems to die on this hill.
Well, I suppose it will be a good time to rererererereread my 450 pages FF8 continuation fanfic and see how it holds 20 years later (with a lot of problems probably
). But yeah, as it's almost the only fic I have written, I suppose it shows how much I have loved this game and well, as people have noted, there are a bunch of things to explore in it (like Fujin and Raijin which didn't have enough screentime to my taste and works a little bit on their past, Seifer redemption arc, what the fuck is going on with the monster on the moon, what the Garden will become, (and no, I totally forgot about Norg if I remember right), what about Hyne, cetera...).
- Location
- Sweden
Especially when you actually consider what we do see of Sorceresses and how they're treated: We got... nothing about Edea being persecuted, Rinoa only gets treated as a threat after she got bodyjacked by Ultimecia and wrecked the lunar base but is let go with very little issue, and Adel was a tyrant. There is quite frankly little to no evidence in the game that anti-Sorceress persecution has actually really been a thing?
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
A possible speculation is all the persecution will happen after the events of the game, due to handwave reasons about anti-Sorceress sentiment stoked by SeeD.
Which does mean without the mind control in Deling City, Sorceress Edea's speech about being persecuted would have led to the audience going "We don't even know who you are."
Honestly it does feel like a lot of FFVIII's themes and setting lore keeps being undermined by other parts of the setting lore, due to the desire to include so many different ideas and concepts but not wanting to explore most of those to any degree. So we have the Lunar Cry, the Persecution Of Sorceresses, the effects of Time Compression, GF memory loss, Romeo And Juliet being a well-known story in the setting, and so on, and very little of it goes anywhere.
Like the romantic sequence in the middle of the Battle Of The Gardens, or the space rescue, FFVIII seems to rely on vibes and vague "don't think about it too hard" to carry its story.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
Honestly, all discussion about the obviously rushed development time aside (Hyne! Norg! Adel! Laguna's entire side of the plot was planned to be equal with Squall's at one point in development!), I kind of think that Ultimecia's lack of screentime and clarity might be largely intentional for thematic reasons. That doesn't necessarily mean that she's executed well as a villain, because that's how 8 is honestly.
Alright, so.
Final Fantasy 8 is about learning to accept vulnerability, because there's no relationship where you can have only happiness without the risk of being hurt.
Squall in the beginning can't accept this at all, and that just leaves him miserable because he has no friends. His fear of emotional vulnerability is so great that he can't even beat the thought of being seen and found wanting, so he elaborately constructs an entire "loner mercenary" persona complete with two belts so that no one will ask questions. Of course, the image that Squall cultivates isn't Squall, as much as he might wish it was.
But he can't escape it, as is empathized with his freakout over how people eulogized the otherwise hated Seifer after his seeming death. He doesn't want his very self to be redefined by other people like this. It's terrifying…
And, I think, also something that 8 treats as being able to be beautiful. After all, what are friends but people who see the best in you?
"Love, friendship, and courage!" When Squall is lost in time compression, his very sense of self fading, Rinoa's memory and love of him is what allows her to save him. Not just this one dramatic moment either, but a running theme throughout. Squall braves time compression to defeat Ultimecia because of the love between him and Rinoa drives them to new heights. Laguna survives thanks to his mere perception by Squall and company and defeats a tyrant because of people who see the hero, not just the ditz. Seifer is (off-screen, admittedly) pulled back from the brink of madness thanks to his loyal friends who guide him back to when he was Seifer and not just Ultimecia's Knight. Even the very fact that 8 is a JRPG designed for a party rather than one singular protagonist.
It might not seem important compared to the end of the world, but for the people who love, these relationships are the world. The centrality of feelings over major geopolitical events like the Lunar Cry or the return of the tyrant-sorceress is a very deliberate thematic choice.
With all that in mind, Ultimecia. As the main villain and final boss, she is thematically the antithesis of 8's themes and thus Squall's failure state:
A lonely woman who made an "evil sorceress" persona so that no one will ever see anything more vulnerable about her (and her implied tragic childhood just like Squall's), to the point where her very face falls away and her human half is entirely subservient to her sorceress half at the end of her boss fight. She has no one and so she is no one.
Even we will never know Ultimecia.
Alright, so.
Final Fantasy 8 is about learning to accept vulnerability, because there's no relationship where you can have only happiness without the risk of being hurt.
Squall in the beginning can't accept this at all, and that just leaves him miserable because he has no friends. His fear of emotional vulnerability is so great that he can't even beat the thought of being seen and found wanting, so he elaborately constructs an entire "loner mercenary" persona complete with two belts so that no one will ask questions. Of course, the image that Squall cultivates isn't Squall, as much as he might wish it was.
But he can't escape it, as is empathized with his freakout over how people eulogized the otherwise hated Seifer after his seeming death. He doesn't want his very self to be redefined by other people like this. It's terrifying…
And, I think, also something that 8 treats as being able to be beautiful. After all, what are friends but people who see the best in you?
"Love, friendship, and courage!" When Squall is lost in time compression, his very sense of self fading, Rinoa's memory and love of him is what allows her to save him. Not just this one dramatic moment either, but a running theme throughout. Squall braves time compression to defeat Ultimecia because of the love between him and Rinoa drives them to new heights. Laguna survives thanks to his mere perception by Squall and company and defeats a tyrant because of people who see the hero, not just the ditz. Seifer is (off-screen, admittedly) pulled back from the brink of madness thanks to his loyal friends who guide him back to when he was Seifer and not just Ultimecia's Knight. Even the very fact that 8 is a JRPG designed for a party rather than one singular protagonist.
It might not seem important compared to the end of the world, but for the people who love, these relationships are the world. The centrality of feelings over major geopolitical events like the Lunar Cry or the return of the tyrant-sorceress is a very deliberate thematic choice.
With all that in mind, Ultimecia. As the main villain and final boss, she is thematically the antithesis of 8's themes and thus Squall's failure state:
A lonely woman who made an "evil sorceress" persona so that no one will ever see anything more vulnerable about her (and her implied tragic childhood just like Squall's), to the point where her very face falls away and her human half is entirely subservient to her sorceress half at the end of her boss fight. She has no one and so she is no one.
Even we will never know Ultimecia.
ChildishChimera
A umbran summon
- Location
- New York
Unintentionally or not RWBY is truely the child of FF8
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, it's almost like I noted this before
Finding out that everyone had been going apeshit over something I initially threw out as a semi-joke then started thinking 'wait a minute...' has been one of the highlights of this conclusion. This is why I like having an audience.
I am fully integrating this into my belief system.I have a theory I developed during the course of the LP.
At some point in preproduction, the moon was supposed to be FF8's endgame.
Consider the story of Hyne the Great. There are two versions in-game, with a third being published in the companion book FFVIII Ultimania (in the framing device of a SeeD professor lecturing students):
Hyne's legend hints at something fascinating: a world where the planet's lifestream, rather than creating people and animals and plants and spirits, instead created a single being of unimaginable godlike power who then in turn created all such things until a living, breathing world existed.
There then follows a predictable turn of events where said god creates humanity and, in his hubris, attempts to force them to do his bidding like an abusive parent. Very "Cronus eating his children" stuff.
But the interesting part is the idea of the 'halves' of Hyne. One half, the weaker, given to humanity to get them off his back, while he absconded with the other half. Where did he go that primitive humanity never found him? Well, not too far. Somewhere close by, actually. He might even be watching you.
The moon. A place well beyond humanity's reach.
But Hyne was still arrogant, and his plan backfired. The moon was never meant to hold even half the amount of power in a planet's lifestream. Hyne's powers of creation bubbled to the surface in a swarm of nightmare monsters that occasionally burst forth to attack the planet below.
And what about his body? The corrupted half that he sloughed off to trick humanity? Well, in most Final Fantasy games, the power of the lifestream and the natural energy of the world takes the form of crystals.
A crystal.
From a single, godlike being.
I think at some point in preproduction, there was no Adel. Artemisia (named for the lunar goddess) was the ruler of Esthar, and seeking to become the most powerful being in existence and end the persecution of sorceresses forever by ruling as god-queen, she intended to take control of both halves of FF8's creator deity. 20 years ago, a whole Final Fantasy title starring Laguna & Co took place to stop her first attempt. Except they fucked up; by putting her into orbit, they gave her exactly the proximity to draw Hyne's power from the lunar surface. At that point, all she needed was a wake-up call.
But then a swerve happened. Someone came up with the idea of a time loop. A villain from the future. Lunatic Pandora was rejiggered to be a crystal from the moon that can conveniently call the monsters, while the moon itself was stripped of its place in the story, reduced to an outer horror production factory with no particular origin. Except that some of the storyboards still featured it because of the legacy. Artemisia was moved into the future and Adel took her place as the setting's deposed tyrant.
this thread is an ATB hate safe space
in that it's a safe space to express hate for ATB
Fluffles please.
I've been resisting the urge to use this emulator to replay MGS1 since the moment I downloaded it
I don't have time
I was previously an advocate for FFVI Remake but you know what, we got a Pixel Remaster for that one at least, I am now fully committed instead to playing a boombox outside Squeenix HQ every day until they give us Final Fantasy VIII: Remake
Which is funny considering that my final runtime on the game is easily 10 to 15 hours longer than my VII runtime, which, given how compressed (hehe) the final disc is, leads me to only one possible conclusion:
Those are ten to fifteen hours of Drawing spells in combat padding the length.
The more I think about it, the more I start asking myself questions like: "Is the reason Ultimecia talks so little to the protagonists that, if she directly said 'In the future, SeeD's mission to combat evil sorceresses becomes twisted and perpetuates the persecution of all sorceresses, leading to my suffering and desire for revenge and freedom,' rather than leaving it partially implicit, then the characters would realize the issue at hand and work towards solving it in the present, which they can't be allowed to do by the needs of a stable time loop?"
It's not ideal!
Genuinely though, after we spent the entire game pulling Rinoa from one Damsel In Distress situation after another, it's incredibly refreshing and heartwarming that she is the one who finds and saves Squall in the Time Compression, rather than the opposite.