Is it? It's basically the same dynamic of a (slightly) older teacher who spends a lot of time with a shy student in a way which has romantic undertones. The point is just that swapping the genders basically creates YA romance for girls, which can be problematic sure, but is also pretty anodyne.
Granted, in most shoujo stories the shy quiet girl doesn't have a running internal monologue of "everyone is stupid, I am the only smart person in the room". Usually she has low self-esteem and only lets loose her grievances in small gag panels.
Granted, in most shoujo stories the shy quiet girl doesn't have a running internal monologue of "everyone is stupid, I am the only smart person in the room".
if quistis was the shy introverted student with a bunch of issues who is always monologuing in her head and squall was the slightly older (but not threateningly older just like one year) cool and brooding gunblade-wielding teacher who is really more like a TA who keeps taking her on field trips and explaining to her how magic works and helps her beat up monsters by being several levels higher than her and showing her how to bind monsters to her will and also he has a badass scar that he got from a honor duel with his nearly-as-hot rival that he only talks to her about on the night of the prom ball while standing at the training grounds balcony, then i am sorry to tell you this but final fantasy 8 would have made ten billion dollars by selling outside its intended demographic and every non-lesbian woman on this forum would cite it as a core memory and formative experience
if quistis was the shy introverted student with a bunch of issues who is always monologuing in her head and squall was the slightly older (but not threateningly older just like one year) cool and brooding gunblade-wielding teacher who is really more like a TA who keeps taking her on field trips and explaining to her how magic works and helps her beat up monsters by being several levels higher than her and showing her how to bind monsters to her will and also he has a badass scar that he got from a honor duel with his nearly-as-hot rival that he only talks to her about on the night of the prom ball while standing at the training grounds balcony, then i am sorry to tell you this but final fantasy 8 would have made ten billion dollars by selling outside its intended demographic and every non-lesbian woman on this forum would cite it as a core memory and formative experience
So, now that you've opened this can of worms, how would the story continue afterwards then, seeing how big of a role the romance with Rinoa has in the canon? Will Quistis refuse Squall on Prom Night and then be slowly seduced by Rinoa as a girl? Will Rinoa also be swapped to a boy, hot brash rebel leader to contrast with dark brooding teacher Squall as the better love interest? Will the romance arc remain between Squall and Quistis, and if so, how would that impact the plot? Or will things be resolved, untypically, with our plucky heroine going for the harem ending? So many possibilities...
Yeah, that's what Young Reese did.
Literally, IIRC. Saw it and actively tried to stay away from it. Because as mentioned, I completely failed to break the game, fights were quite hard, and here was one I could actually avoid (I don't think I'd gotten Encounter None, either.).
Zap Rowsdower said:
Gotta wonder what was in the water at Squaresoft HQ in those days.
So, now that you've opened this can of worms, how would the story continue afterwards then, seeing how big of a role the romance with Rinoa has in the canon? Will Quistis refuse Squall on Prom Night and then be slowly seduced by Rinoa as a girl? Will Rinoa also be swapped to a boy, hot brash rebel leader to contrast with dark brooding teacher Squall as the better love interest? Will the romance arc remain between Squall and Quistis, and if so, how would that impact the plot? Or will things be resolved, untypically, with our plucky heroine going for the harem ending? So many possibilities...
...So I was starting to think this over, and then I realized:
We've swapped Quistis and Squall, though.
Does Rinoa get swapped too, then?
With whom?
And from that question, well, it seemed obvious.
Instructor Squall's nearly-as-hot rival isn't Seifer, it's Rinoa, the Galbadian girl from an officer class old-money military family. It's not a student rivalry -- Squall is an instructor, after all -- but a rivalry between faculty members at different Gardens.
Nearly-as-hot still applies because Quistis is bi, but Quistis is the orphan who's been having to put in her own hard work.
And then Quistis graduates at the same time Squall is demoted -- but there's also this hot, brash guy in a long coat who dances with Quistis at the graduation ball...
So Quistis gets sent out on her first mission, which turns out to be working with that hot guy, Seifer, who's a resistance leader in Timber. ...And not all that good at strategy even if he's good at tactics and direct combat. So the group kidnaps the president...'s body double, oops, and then Seifer just goes ahead and charges into the TV station with the others trying to keep up -- But!
Before they can get to the president, while they're still working their way through the building, someone else attacks him and takes him hostage -- none other than Rinoa! And Squall is hot on her heels!
It turns out that Rinoa, from her and her family's position, knew about the big reveal that now happens, that Galbadia has found and is working with a sorceress to conquer the world, and Rinoa saw a chance to sidestep out of the shadow of her family's legacy and its expectations for her and overcome the still somewhat patriarchal Galbadian military and political establishment. The sorceress doesn't have to deal with any of that, and Rinoa is here to try and impress her and be taken on as her apprentice!
And at first that seems to go very badly, because the sorceress teleports Rinoa away and seems to still be on the side of the president Rinoa just attacked. The party, now including Seifer (whose friends and fellow resistance members Raijin and Fujin (sp?) are lying low elsewhere) and Squall, regroups at Galbadia Garden, which is now trying to frantically deny they had any idea what Rinoa was going to do... while also secretly planning to assassinate the sorceress.
(Also it turns out Rinoa and Seifer dated a bit at one point, adding further Romantic Complications.)
So the party gets roped into that, is surprised to discover that apparently Rinoa actually has become apprentice to the sorceress (though also, given the sorceress killed the president _herself_ in front of a cheering crowd, maybe not so surprising in retrospect), boss fight happens, it goes badly.
Then prison break time, and etc.! Not sure the main plot between that point and where we are now goes that differently? Just swap Seifer the Sorceress's Knight with Rinoa the Sorceress's Apprentice, Seifer's friends for Rinoa's, etc. And of course speculating past here would be spoilery.
The romance, though, well, now instead of Rinoa romancing Squall, we've got the preexisting tension between Quistis and Squall, the rapport Quistis and Seifer have started developing, and some tension between Squall and Seifer.
Squall seems like he might be interested in her, but he's cool and professional -- and under that just awkward at romance. Getting to know him better reveals that he's actually kind of adorkable.
Seifer is much more brash and open about his feelings, and on the surface has a much easier time connecting to people -- but only a select few people, really, and since Fujin and Raijin aren't here, he's actually worse off than Squall, who's with people he's at least comfortable with from Balamb Garden. Getting to know him more reveals that he has a dream of being a Great Hero, but he secretly worries that he's not very good at it, and that perhaps sometimes he cares more about being a Great Hero than actually helping people.
So neither of these guys are going to pursue Quistis on their own. If she pursues neither of them, they eventually develop a friendship with each other, which then turns into more than friendship. She can help them both deal with their Wait What I Have A Boyfriend Now Aaaaa, but it still works out, just somewhat more slowly and rockily, without her helps. Squall/Seifer ending, with Quistis, depending on player interpretation, either deciding she's just not interested in romance at all, or fine with not finding a partner until some point after the credits roll.
Alternatively, Quistis can actively pursue one of them, for Quistis/Squall or Quistis/Seifer endings. Not sure what happens with the one left out, though depending on how the game ends Quistis/Squall might be able to include renewal of Rinoa/Seifer.
For the _golden_ ending, though, Quistis needs to balance things such that it results in a Quistis/Seifer/Squall polycule.
[scrolls up]
...Well. Didn't expect to be typing so much on that idea, buuut here we are?
If you guys want to pretend that had anything to do with Quistis hitting on him rather than Squall's actual, told and shown on-screen multiple times, issues with fear of emotional attachment (and the hurt that comes from relying on people and losing them which he copes by trying to turn himself into an emotional mercenary machine) then sure that's your prerogative.
Because from what we see nothing in his rejection in of her attempts at connecting with him has anything to do with her apparent romantic interest compared to "how dare you try to make an emotional connection with me! I am a strong independent lone wolf who don't need no friends (and I'm afraid of losing people again but I won't admit that part even to myself)!" and it would still be the same rejection even if the writers didn't make Quistis (believe she had a) crush on him.
if quistis was the shy introverted student with a bunch of issues who is always monologuing in her head and squall was the slightly older (but not threateningly older just like one year) cool and brooding gunblade-wielding teacher who is really more like a TA who keeps taking her on field trips and explaining to her how magic works and helps her beat up monsters by being several levels higher than her and showing her how to bind monsters to her will and also he has a badass scar that he got from a honor duel with his nearly-as-hot rival that he only talks to her about on the night of the prom ball while standing at the training grounds balcony, then i am sorry to tell you this but final fantasy 8 would have made ten billion dollars by selling outside its intended demographic and every non-lesbian woman on this forum would cite it as a core memory and formative experience
I find it telling that you didn't even bother capitalizing this monstrous run-on sentence of a paragraph, you were WAY too excited to get this idea out of your head and onto the forum.
re the first:
I thought I mentioned that?
[checks]
Aye, I did, though also maybe not clearly enough to communicate my idea (though I'm also not entirely sure what "there" you mean). What I was thinking was that Seifer and Rinoa's friends-slash-subordinates would also swap, so those two are still off with the Timber resistance or whatever while the OTL other Timber resistance members whose names I forget form Rinoa's personal miniboss squad.
re the second:
The name "Mister Torgue" isn't ringing a bell for me, sorry.
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII, 301. Today's lesson:
If Squall Keeps Pressing 'Skip Cutscene' I Am Turning This Car Around And No One Is Getting McDonald's Today
We open, as we so often do, on Squall in his bed.
At some point, this opening went past 'this is getting repetitive' all the way around into 'oh, this is a motif.' The rhythm of Squall's life is set by Balamb Garden, he wakes up every day in his dorm room, goes out among the students, talks to people whose dialogue has been updated to reflect the latest evolutions of the story. It gives a sense of the passing of time that's helpful to the structure of the story.
It's also nice that one of my earliest guesses were correct - after disappearing for much of Disc 1, Balamb Garden did come back and is sticking around. Squall's school is serving as an anchoring point, giving a home, a community that he is part of that's something none of the other games have ever really had, with their hometowns either left behind early on or destroyed entirely. The hallways of Balamb Garden are familiar to us now, their students recurring characters whose small drama vignettes update over time if you're bothering to keep track of them.
Although things are getting a little more morose; it seems like many of the students didn't wish to stick around for the ongoing world conflict.
Squall visits Rinoa after waking up, but it looks like she's still in a coma.
Quistis on the speakers tells Squall that Edea is at the orphanage and to head there at once. So of course, we delay for some good old fashioned card games.
Is this shipping?
Didn't think I'd forgotten about those, did you? These may yet prove the best way to deal with our magic issues by just spamming refinement. Oh, and after forty hours, one of the lovestruck Trepies finally drops Quistis's card.
We grab it and are on our way once we've talked with all the students (all party members can be found scattered at different places in Balamb Garden). Most of it is on the sad or melancholy side, worrying about Rinoa or lamenting that most students dropped out, while some others are impressed with their collective success in the fight against Galbadia Garden. One Library Committee Member has the amusingly practical comment that traveling all over the world is nice, but if you're not careful, you might end up stranded if the Garden just leaves a place without you! And yet, throughout it all, students are still having to pass exams and complaining about it. That's Balamb Garden: an anchor of stability in Squall's chaotic life, still a school despite it all.
Of note, though, is the underground floor.
Master NORG's cocoon appears to have been broken. The Master, most likely transformed into a whole new kind of being, is somewhere out there. A few Shumi Tribe members are also here; they have come to apologize for NORG's actions, it seems, and his fate seems to confirm them in their belief that they are not meant to leave their village. There's little else to do with them at this time.
Irvine is still being Irvine.
Selphie tells us the Garden BBS (that's a bulletin board system, an ancestor to web forums) is fun, which reminds us to check the terminals. Turns out, the BBS has updated with praise and encouragements from the students to Squall! That is really sweet.
Selphie's corner has also updated. There are now entries introducing themselves by all the other party members, as well as new diary entries; I won't quote those in full but they're neat little bits of characterization (Quistis is frustrated that she can't stop talking in Teacher Formal even when writing on a website). At first, she gushes over the concert, then says she's feeling blue over not knowing what happened to Trabia, then says good-bye to Fujin and Raijin and wishes they could meet again on better term. This concludes on one quasi-final entry in which, after visiting Trabia Garden and discovering the truth about GFs and memories, Selphie makes a paradoxical decision: That she doesn't want to keep writing, even though that diary might help preserve her memories. She is afraid that if she continues to write down her feelings in her journal, "a weak side of her will begin to show." I think part of her would rather not have remembered Matron, not had her resolve risk being weakened by remembering that she once loved her as a mother figure. It's a strange decision.
This is followed by one last entry, from after the Edea fight: "I know I said there'd be no more entries, but I just had to write one more thing. Excellent job everyone! I love you all!!! WHOO-HOO!"
It's, overall, exceedingly bittersweet; a lot of Selphie's nuance and character depth is contained in the pages of that diary, paradoxically both something where she posts her feelings out in public for all to see and something a player might miss entirely.
Alright.
Let's head for Edea's house.
This place has certainly known better days. It also looks a lot more like a Greek or Roman temple than anything like a house, with even columns out in front and a front engraved with friezes. I wonder about its history. It's even clearer when we enter the 'inside,' which is utterly exposed to the elements with entire chunks open to the sky. Geez, stone construction doesn't usually waste away that fast, you know? And as we enter…
PROFESSOR ROBIN WILLIAMS!?
Cid Kramer is here, entering stage right when we are about to leave for the outside.
He has some explanations to give us, to say the least. In case you missed it, he's been gone ever since he appointed Squall leader of SeeD.
Headmaster Cid: "...Many thanks for your hard work. …Hahaha… Are you angry with me? Haha… I don't blame you. All I do is talk big, but in times of trouble, I run away. I was in a no-win situation… Your defeat would be the end of you. Your victory would mean losing my wife. I just couldn't bear… To face either outcome." Headmaster Cid: "I don't care about myself… But… please forgive Edea…"
He leaves, back to the beach, and we follow, to find him standing protectively in front of his estranged wife, though she soon steps forward to talk to us.
So. There it is. Time for the fateful confrontation. Edea moves past Cid and, her head hanging low, begins to apologize.
Edea: "My children… Please forgive me… I raised you as my own, yet still, I…" Squall: "We feel the same way." Zell: "We fought you, too, knowing you were our Matron." Quistis: "Matron…" Edea: "You are SeeDs. You cannot back out of battle, I know." Edea: "You were magnificent. However, it is not over yet. At anytime, I may…" Edea: "...I have been possessed all this time. I was at the mercy of Sorceress Ultimecia." Edea: "Ultimecia is a sorceress from the future. A sorceress many generations ahead of our time. Ultimecia's objective is to find Ellone. She is after Ellone's mysterious power." Edea: "I knew Ellone very well. Ultimecia is a very fearful sorceress. Her heart is filled with anger and hate. There was no way I was going to let Ultimecia get a hold of Ellone. The only thing I could do was…" Edea: "...Surrender my soul to Ultimecia and lose control of my mind. That was the only way I could save Ellone. And the end result… Well, you all know. The sorceress that appeared in Galbadia was in fact Ultimecia… inside my shell…" Cid: [This is optional dialogue if we talk to him during the pauses in Edea's speech] "Please listen to what Edea has to say. Who knows when she may be possessed again…" Edea: "Ultimecia has yet to achieve her goal. I believe she may use my body again to carry out her plans. I plan to make a stand this time, but… if that does not work… I may have to face you in battle once again." Edea: "I ask for your support, young SeeDs." Edea: "Have you all heard of Sorceress Adel before?" Zell: "She was the ruler of Esthar during the Sorceress War. No one knows of her whereabouts… That's what I learned." Edea: "The Galbadians must have thought I was the sorceress who received Sorceress Adel's powers. However, that is not the case. I received the powers of the previous sorceress at the age of 5." Quistis: "Which means…" Edea: "I believe Sorceress Adel is still alive. And that Ultimecia released my body in order to… To use the body of Sorceress Adel…" Edea: "Sorceress Adel is the type who will not hesitate to use her powers for her own selfish desires. Should Sorceress Ultimecia from the future bequeath her anger and hatred unto Adel, their power could be unimaginable…"
…
Well, that was a lot. If you're wondering why the bolded and italicized names, that's because the game consistently uses a blue font for Ultimecia and a yellow font for Adel; while at first this does a good job at highlighting 'this is an important name, pay attention,' the fact that it continuously repeats ends up feeling a little like the game is holding my hand. Like, I get it.
AND SO IT IS CONFIRMED: EDEA WAS POSSESSED BY AN EVIL SORCERESS SPIRIT THIS ENTIRE TIME.
…that's not all we've learned, of course. The game is actually doing something pretty skillful here: while it finally confirms the obvious (yes, Edea was not evil, she was possessed), it also reveals that a fairly natural conclusion had actually been a red herring (neither Ellone nor Edea inherited Adel's power; there are multiple sorceresses and Adel is still alive somewhere), and throws in a totally out-there twist on top of it (Ultimecia is FROM THE FUTURE). I don't know why I didn't expect this. Time travel has been a part of the plot since Ellone showed up. I guess because I don't like time travel I just compartmentalized it as 'memory stuff' and didn't expect an enemy from the future reaching into the present.
Why would Ultimecia need Ellone if she can already project into the past to possess Edea, though?
Wait - Of course. She is literally doing what Squall has been doing with Laguna this whole time! Except instead of a gentle, cooperative form of riding along someone's spirit in the past, she is violently taking over. Which is something Squall probably could do, if he had his mind to try at all? Unless it requires more raw power, more will, the mind of a sorceress.
…
Is it possible Ultimecia is Ellone from the future? That would explain her being able to reach into the past. But it doesn't quite work with her being from 'many generations' in the future, so probably not. Given Final Fantasy's past history, it seems likely that Edea fulfills the role of moral complexity in the story - she is a good woman who is unfortunately being puppeteered by an evil spirit from the future, and Ultimecia herself probably has about as much psychological depth as Exdeath. The Golbez to Ultimecia's Zeemus, as it were. We'll see if that holds up.
Now that we've had the exciting stuff, though, it's time for the frustrating part: Squall doing the worst thing a protagonist can do and deciding he's no longer interested in hearing about the plot.
Squall, mentally: "(I've heard enough.)
To grasp how frustrating this is, you have to understand how this scene plays out: Edea's dialogue is broken up into several chunks. She says a few things, then you must interact with her again for her to continue. However, at one point, she just repeats "Sorceress Adel is the type who will not hesitate to use her powers for her own selfish desires" indefinitely. Talking to Quistis or Zell gives nothing, and talking to Cid just has him say "Please listen to what Edea has to say. Who knows when she may be possessed again…" again, but talking to Edea just repeats that last line. It takes me a minute to realize that what the game wants me to do is to just walk out without hearing the rest, and will not volunteer anything else until I've had Squall act like a dickhead. Now, to be fair, he does have a serious concern on his mind: Rinoa's fate. And at first, he's even polite about it, but of course Cid has to talk to him in the worst possible way so that we can get our obligatory 'protagonist decides to stop listening to the plot' beat because it's drama.
Squall, mentally: "(I've heard enough. I understand that listening to what Matron has to say is important, but Rinoa…)" Squall: "Matron, do you know what's wrong with Rinoa?" Edea: "Rinoa is the girl in light blue? I remember vaguely… What happened to her?" Squall: "She was with us when we fought you. After the battle… Her body was cold… She didn't move…" Cid: "Did Rinoa die!?" Squall: "NO!!!" Edea: "Forgive me, Squall. I don't think I can be of any help." Squall: "It's all right." Cid: "Squall, I understand how you feel. But you are in a position of leadership. The other students at Garden have a right to know about the outcome of the battle and what's to come. Take whatever information you can get here, back to Garden. Remember, it wasn't just Rinoa. Everyone fought." Squall: "I understand… But…" Cid: "But, but, but… That isn't something a leader should say." Squall: "......"
[He turns around, and punches one of the walls in anger. The screen goes dark.]
Cid's "pep talk" is, of course, about as effective as RotS Yoda hearing Anakin's fears and responding with "Tried ghosting your girlfriend, have you?" Squall gets angry and just completely disconnects from the proceedings; the screen goes dark as he reminisces about his relationship with Rinoa while Edea carries on explaining the plot to others while he absolutely isn't paying attention.
Thankfully, thankfully, we do get to see the dialogue boxes from the people he isn't listening to. And it's a doozy.
Voice: "Ultimecia's objective is to find Ellone." Squall: "(First time we met was the day I became a SeeD. We met again… In Timber…)" Voice: "Ellone's mysterious power… Sending one's consciousness into the past." Voice: "So, Ultimecia wants to use Ellone's power, right?" Squall: "(We had a lot of arguments at first. But in time, things began to change.)" Voice: "I get it. Ultimecia wants to send her consciousness from this period further into the past." Voice: "What's she going to do in the past?" Squall: "(You were looking at me… You smiled when our eyes met.)" Voice: "Time compression." Voice: "Time compression?" Squall: "(It made me feel calm, tranquil.)" Voice: "It's time magic. Past, present, and future get compressed." Voice: "What's going to happen to the world? Why do something like that?" Squall: "(Rinoa… Give me another chance.)" Voice: "I can't even imagine a world where time is compressed!" Zell: "Yo, Squall!"
[The surroundings come back into view.] Selphie: "You're not even listening!"
I really, really wish Squall's epiphany about how he actually always cared about Rinoa, and from even the first moment their eyes meeting made him feel at peace, was happening at any other time than while Edea is explaining the ultimate objective of our antagonist.
TIME KOMPRESSION.
What an incredible name. What the fuck does that even mean? I assume some kind of metaphysical jumble of collapsing time where every moment is happening all at once, but who fucking knows how that would even look like. Will it kill everyone? Who knows! We won't get a chance to find out more for now anyway, because Squall has decided to press 'skip cutscene.'
Selphie: "You're not even listening!" Squall: "So basically, all we have to do is prevent Ultimecia from getting a hold of Ellone." Quistis: "Yes, but…" Squall: "We're going back to Garden. We have to let everyone know." Irvine: "Hey, we're worried about Rinoa too, y'know?" Squall: [He makes an aggressive hand gesture] "Then why don't you…!? Forget it."
[End dialogue. We flash forward to the bridge of Garden, where Squall just finished broadcasting an explanation to the students.]
I hate him. I hate him so much. This is like I'm watching someone press 'skip cutscene' through Shadowbringers. I want to shake him by the shoulders. GO BACK TO THE PLOT, YOU IDIOT? WHAT THE FUCK IS TIME COMPRESSION
Whatever. Squall updates the rest of Garden's population, says that our next step is to find Ellone and for that our only clue is the White SeeD ship which we need to locate. Credit where credit is due, he also warns everyone that Edea is probably not their enemy anymore, and that it'd be best if everyone left her alone; some incidental dialogue with Xu reveals that this opinion is far from universal and a lot of people haven't gotten over her actions, possession or not.
Honestly, if Edea is still a security threat (she suggests Ultimecia might take over again), then why aren't they… Doing something about that? They could put her under custody, or under watch.
Granted, we've seen Edea phase through walls before, and she can use mind control, so it's entirely possible that no prison could hold her and putting her under SeeD watch would only provide her with minions right at hand for brainwashing the moment she manifests, and nobody is willing to actually kill her. But maybe this calls for one of those fancy magic-disabling widgets we established earlier in the story?
We now have an objective, at least, even if no leads to follow on how to find the ship.
But first, it's time to take a couple of hours off to do some sidequesting. And yes, this includes card games.
Edea has the Edea Card, of course. She thankfully drops it quickly. Cid also has some unique cards, though he takes too long to actually play them and I eventually decide to just leave. The Edea Card refines into three Royal Crowns, each of which would teach Mag+60% to a GF, but we'll leave it alone for now. We have a more important objective to take care of right now:
To commit genocide.
As I've mentioned before, the Centra Ruins are home to Tonberry, the classic little murderous critter that's become one of the franchise's mascot. It turns out, there's a secret to these Tonberries: Despite the fact that they don't give XP and barely any AP, they are actually key to a major, and easily missed reward, one we would be unlikely to ever run into if we didn't know ahead of time, precisely because it requires grinding an opponent who gives no visible reward. And tough opponents, at that: Tonberries use an attack called Everyone's Grudge which deals damage equal to 20 times the total number of enemies a character has killed in the game. That's hefty for some characters (and inconsequential for others; Selphie only takes 760 damage from it, because she's only killed 38 monsters), and the damage of their final stab after slowly walking forward over several turn is not light either. In fact…
…our first attempt ends in a Game Over. Oops. I need to actually treat these weird lizards seriously.
And by 'seriously,' I mean 'abuse the game's Limit mechanics.' With 20k HP apiece, Tonberries would be a nightmare to fight conventionally; even Squall's Darkside only deals around 4k damage and would take five turns to bring one down while costing 50% of his HP. It's just… So slow.
Thankfully, here's what we can do:
1) Junction a high-value spell to Irvine's HP, so that he is in crisis even at around 1k HP and doesn't risk being one-shot.
2) Abuse the Round button, which 'refreshes' a character's action menu, to proc Irvine's Limit Break.
3) Fire Armor Piercing Ammo at Tonberries for up to 10k damage.
4) Repeat next turn.
It feels like cheating, but hey, it works.
Then, we run around the first floor of the Centra Ruins to trigger Tonberry battles over and over for about an hour. It's very dull work, and not at all rewarding in the short run, although the Tonberries drop Chef's Knives which can be refined into AP Ammo for Irvine's Limit, so it is, at the very least, self-sustaining. I once again recommend podcasts.
Thankfully, once twenty Tonberries have been dispatched, the next encounter contains a surprise: First, a Tonberry as normal, then once it dies…
…the Tonberry King enters the stage.
Unfortunately, hm. I didn't know he would appear mid-battle. My team isn't properly healed or prepared in any way. I just left Squall dead on the floor from an earlier fight. Ah.
Well, thankfully I am constantly quicksaving, so I just reload to before the fight before the King can show me my just desserts, change my team around a bit, and head back in.
The Tonberry King is the vengeful embodiment of a massacred people, explicitly here because I murdered a horde of Tonberries, with no rhyme or reason, not even getting any reward out of it, to draw him out of hiding. I'm the bad guy here!
Looking back at this game from the perspective of twenty years later, it's striking me that, when I originally played Undertale, I assumed the point of the Genocide Route was, like, an abstract argument, that it was about the idea of completionism at the expense of story investment etc. It didn't occur to me that it was riffing off specifically this, right here. I mean, among other things, I'm sure; but the Tonberry King encounter, which can only be obtained by mindlessly killing monsters who don't drop any valuable reward for hours on end until their king shows up to take revenge for the massacre of its people only to be killed in turn, is way to close to what happens in a Genocide run of Undertale (with the Undyne encounter as a parallel to the King himself) for it to be a coincidence. It's just that FF8 doesn't interrogate this at all; it puts a monster that is explicitly the avenging spirit of a slaughtered people hunting you down specifically and has nothing at all to say about it. This is just another sidequest reward.
One of the Tonberry King's moves literally just drops trash on us too, it's pretty funny.
The Tonberry King has 72k HP, an absolutely absurd number, several times higher than any opponents we've fought so far. Its attacks aren't too damaging - "It's sharp!" is a stronger Everyone's Grudge that deals 30 times the number of killed enemies in damage, the junk attack causes between 500 and 1000 damage to everyone, and the basic knife attack deals around 600 damage. Not excessive, but the King's sheer bulk is going to make this an absolute chore if we can't optimize our own damage output. We can't put Irvine in crisis because then the King might kill him in one hit, so we need another way to abuse Limit Breaks: The Aura spell, which puts characters into a Limit-OK state regardless of HP. Then we abuse AP Ammo, Renzokuken, and Darkside. Quistis is there for moral support.
Literally, even: I took Quistis along for the specific purpose of pushing my party's average level above 30, because if the Tonberry King crosses that threshold, then it starts carrying Full-Life in its Draw list.
Still, this is no picnic. Getting too greedy with the Draws ends in disaster on our first attempt, as I am not focused enough on healing and a series of It's sharp! takes out the entire team.
I should have cast Full-Life on someone instead of going for that Limit, and it ends in a Game Over.
So, we try again. This time, any time a character is KO'd (which happens a lot), I immediately have the next one up Draw-Cast Full-Life. Making the Tonberry King higher level ironically made our life easier; below the lv 30 threshold he only carried Life, which would have raised characters still within one-shot range. All in all, this is still an eleven minute battle, so thank god I didn't have to do it a third time. When the King goes down, we have 100 Full-Lifes stocked, and his death animation reveals that the 'King' is not a true singular entity, but rather a mantle of some kind assumed by Tonberries, which dissolves and reveals its original inhabitant.
The Tonberry apologizes, and joins our party as a GF.
Again: Our requirement to reach this point was massacring his species, and this is played almost as a comedy beat.
But hey, new GF!
The Tonberry offers no Junction, which is novel. Instead, it provides us with a list of abilities and rare buffs: Evasion +30% and Luck +50% to start with, and Initiative (which starts a fight with a full ATB gauge), Move-HP Up (which regens HP while walking around), Auto-Potion (which automatically consumes potions to heal damage), and a couple of stranger ones: Haggle, which reduces item prices in shops (irrelevant, we have infinite money), and Familiar, which just says 'Easier to buy rare items.' I guess this… expands item lists in shops? It's very unclear what that will do but I decide to train that one first on account of it being the most unique ability that seems exclusive to Tonberry.
And of course, in the process we also acquired 100 Full-Lifes; junctioning these to a character's HP instantly pumps it to 9,999. What the hell.
With this out of the way, we can finally go back to the plot. Which we do by heading back to Rinoa's bedside.
This is what it took for Squall to begin to accept his feelings: For Rinoa to be taken away from him. Alive, but motionless.
Squall: "(Rinoa… You feel so cold. Are you going to be like this forever?)" Squall: "..." Squall: "Isn't there anything I can do!?"
[He stands up.] Squall: "You were so full of life. Now you don't even make a sound…"
[He puts his head into his hands; it looks like he might be crying.] Squall: "I want to hear your voice." Squall, mentally: "(This is like talking to a wall.)"
…
Okay, I respect that the writers waited for Squall to be at his lowest possible point, finally willing to accept his feelings yet unable to act on them, to pull a callback to the "I just want you to listen."//"Then go talk to a wall." exchange from Disc 1. SURE DOESN'T FEEL SO GOOD NOW, DOES IT?
And then he passes out.
I am not occluding part of the narrative here. It really is that sudden. He is crying over Rinoa's body and then boom, lights out. Congrats to whoever guessed Disc 3 would open with a Laguna sequence; you were off by only a single mandatory plot scene and then my Tonberry genocide side quest.
And for extra points: This is a comedy Laguna sequence. It's very short (shockingly so, really) and played purely for laughs, in the middle of Squall's emotional breakdown over Rinoa's coma. Baffling decision.
If you'll recall, one of the Timber Maniacs issues we collected referenced Laguna featuring in a movie. This is that flashback: Kiros and Laguna are broke from staying at expensive hotels too often during their world search, and Kiros has somehow talked Laguna into an acting gig to pay the bills. Kiros finally talks Laguna into putting on his costume, to the latter's great embarrassment: It turns out he's been cast as a literal knight in shining armor.
We'll see it closer shortly.
His co-star is not given a name, but she's been cast to play the role of the sorceress, so it looks like we're dealing with a kind of pseudo-historical epic. Unfortunately, the guy they hired to play the dragon is sick; the director sees Kiros and asks him to play the dragon.
How the turns table.
The fact that the monster is played by a guy in a costume and that anyone will do points towards this being some kind of B-movie, or perhaps a tokusatsu; with the lead actor being played by a nobody who has never acted before, we're not dealing with high art.
Although Kiros being a tall, slender Black man who is hired on sight to play the part of the monster is reminiscent of Bolaji Badejo's casting as the xenomorph in Alien, so that's neat.
Kiros agrees to the role, but as he steps off-screen to put on his dragon costume, we 'hear' a scream of surprise and horror. Might our dear Kiros have stumbled upon a real monster?
Director: "Ok, people, here we go. Scene 12, 'Death of the Sorceress.' ACTION!!!" Sorceress: "Oh, Sir Knight… Save me from the wicked dragon…!" Laguna: "Oh… Ok… I… I'll s-save you from the dragon…" Laguna, mentally: "...Darn it. I'm gettin' all nervous here. And what's with this gunblade? Haven't used one of those since training. Kinda like this?)"
[He draws the gunblade and swings it, using the same motion as Squall often does.] Director: "Hey, not bad. I'll just put in some voice overs… Ok! Bring on the dragon!!!"
The fact that the director is transparently not going to use Laguna's actual lines and just have him dubbed over by someone else makes this entire trash fire even funnier. Also funny is Laguna getting his hands on Squall's iconic weapon and being just kind of confused and annoyed by it. I do wonder about the actual plot of the movie, though; it features the Sorceress (and she dies, presumably at the dragon's hands), but she is apparently one of the protagonists, with her knights as the main hero of the piece, which is at odds with what we usually hear about the sorceress: that her role in the collective culture of the world outside Esthar is entirely as a villain.
…
This is the movie Seifer watched as a kid which gave him this idea of the sorceress' knight as a romantic ideal to aspire to, isn't it. Fuck. This makes too much sense.
Moments later, the dragon enters the frame… And Kiros's costume is really, really convincing.
Seeing as this is a comedy beat, it takes everyone several minutes to grasp the obvious, that this costume is a little too 'realistic' and that this is, in fact, an actual dragon. Long enough, in fact, for Laguna to start play-fencing with the beast, which angers it! Enough to take a bite at Laguna, who still takes a few moments afterwards before realizing this isn't Kiros.
This idiot. This beautiful, beautiful moron.
The director and the co-star (she still in-character) immediately abandon ship, leaving Laguna behind to hold off the beast with just fake armor and a gunblade that he barely knows how to wield.
Cue (heavy sigh) minigame.
Why did 90s FF devs believe they had what it took to include fighting games in their RPGs. This is similar, yet different, from the airborne duel of the Galbadia Garden battle. We need to correctly time defenses when the dragon attacks, and attack when it's passive. It's slow, unresponsive, tedious, and I don't like it.
There's at least a redeeming factor in that we can just try again when we lose rather than eat a gameover - that would have tilted me. It's a pain, but eventually we manage to delete the dragon's health bar, which creates enough of an opening for Laguna to run off. The dragon, roaring, follows shortly.
Kiros is back, and took with him Laguna's equipment, allowing the knight to ditch his embarrassing costume and his gunblade in favor of his old outfit and his rifle, declares it's "time to kick some dragon butt!" and initiates battle.
Then we reload because it turns out the UI we were shown when picking whoever was getting 'subbed in' for Kiros didn't actually exchange their Junctions, so Kiros has no abilities and terrible stats. Thankfully, just before the fight we're given a dialogue option to check our stuff, so we can reload to there and give Kiros some actual junctions.
He promptly annihilates the dragon with his Limit Break, Blood Pain.
Unfortunately, this dragon was not the last of the monster seemingly drawn by the movie production; the fight ends and fades to black and Laguna saying "H-How many are there? They just keep comin'! We're outta here!!!" Then a transition back to the first screen of this flashback, where something… Strange has happened.
It's far in the pre-rendered background, so you could miss it, or assume it was there to begin with, but Laguna is talking about that strange monolith off to the left, which appears to be hovering over the ground and shining at its tip; no clue what it is, but the perspective there gives me the sense that it's enormous.
Unfortunately, we don't get to see what happens after. The screen fades to black, and to a strange conversation.
Voice: "...I can't disconnect." Squall, mentally: "(What is this connect thing…?)" Voice: "Is it you, Squall?" Squall, mentally: "(Yeah…)" Voice: "'Connect' is just what I call it. It's when I use my special power." Voice: "Oh, I know… I must be asleep. That's why I can't control it. I'm sorry, Squall. Just let me use your spirit for a little while longer." Squall: "(Let me go back.)"
New flashback. Laguna is at the orphanage, talking to Edea. This is set before Ellone was there; in fact, she is the subject of their discussion.
Laguna: "She ain't here, either…" Edea: "If I may ask, what happened to this Ellone?" Laguna: "She was kidnapped by Esthar soldiers. I've been travelling, tryin' all I can to get inside Esthar but…" Edea: "They were looking for a successor to the sorceress, Adel?" Laguna: "Yeah, yeah! Exactly it!" Edea: "Is she your daughter?" Laguna: "No… but she's just so cute! Oh, I wish I could hear her voice!" Squall: "(I want to hear Rinoa's voice.)" Edea: "Is something the matter?" Laguna: "No… Just the faeries…" Squall: "(I don't care if it's in the past or what. I want to hear Rinoa. I want to see Rinoa. That way, there might be a chance to save her.)" Ellone: "You can't change the past. I just found that out. When I was kidnapped, Uncle Laguna went on a journey to find me… But because he did, Uncle Laguna wasn't able to be by Raine's side when she died." Ellone: "Raine wanted to show Laguna her newborn baby…" Ellone: "Raine kept calling out for Laguna. So no matter what, I wanted Laguna to stay in the village… But it didn't work. I can no longer make it back to that moment." Ellone: "And also… I can only send you inside someone I've met before." Ellone: "I'm sorry, Squall. I'm about to disconnect. I'll try again to speak to you this way." Squall: "(Sis! Ellone! I'm…)"
[He wakes up.]
…
This is a lot.
It's looking worryingly like the plot of the game might come down to the specific mechanics of Ellone's weird time travel power, who specifically she can back to when and why, which is always a risky move in any time travel story - time travel is inherently messy and can be unsatisfying and the more mechanical complexity you add to it the more you risk fucking it up, creating a scenario that's nonsensical or raises questions it can't answer.
Sorry, I'm just reflexively suspicious of time travel as a plot device in all circumstances that aren't, like, 'let's teleport to Ancient Rome,' in which case it's great. Ellone saying you can't change the past and Squall starting to think 'maybe I can change the past' has me worried this is going to turn to stable time loop bullshit, but… We'll see.
And it seems like we have something approaching a timeline. Ellone is captured by Esthar soldiers, leading to Laguna wandering the world looking for her, eventually meeting Edea. Then, presumably, Laguna finds Ellone and gets her back before Adel can pass down her powers to her; however, while he was gone, Raine had died. Laguna, perhaps not feeling up to the task of raising a child, then… Hands Ellone over to Edea? I don't know, he doesn't seem like that much of a deadbeat. If he died, perhaps?
Oh, and Raine had a child while Laguna was gone. Which… would probably be Laguna's child, right? And the ages line up just right for it to be one of our protagonists.
It's Squall, isn't it. Raine died in childbirth (how's that for an overused trope) giving birth to Squall, who is her and Laguna's child. And thus the 'little brother' to Ellone, who was raised by Raine, although as I recall she's not her biological mother. And they somehow ended up in the same orphanage after Raine died and Laguna [REDACTED]. I assume he must have died too, right?
And now Ellone can use her connection to Squall to talk to him across distances in his sleep. That's neat.
Squall shouts out to Ellone to send him back in time to the moment Rinoa went into a coma, but of course there is no response, as he's now awake. He mulls over what he knows, that the White SeeD are Edea's Seed, and therefore Edea might know the location of their ship.
And that is where we'll leave off for today: Squall has a new lead, and we'll investigate it next time. For now, we're left on fewer answers than I'd wished, and more new question than I'd expected. But at last we have a name for the true villain of our peace:
Ultimecia.
…
Fuck that is so extra. That name might genuinely challenge "Exdeath" for the title of silliest, most over-the-top villain name in the series so far. Ultimecia.
Fuck that is so extra. That name might genuinely challenge "Exdeath" for the title of silliest, most over-the-top villain name in the series so far. Ultimecia.
Ultimecia's name might originally have meant to been Artemis.
Some translations refer to her as Artemisia, and the way you spell/pronounce her name in Katakana - アルティミシア/Arutimishia - is very similar to how Artemis is spelled/pronounced in Katakana - アルテミス/Arutimisu
This is the movie Seifer watched as a kid which gave him this idea of the sorceress' knight as a romantic ideal to aspire to, isn't it. Fuck. This makes too much sense.
Seifer's arc is compelling in its own way, even though we've actually spend very little of it on-screen with him actually exploring its implications, and most of our protagonists have shown very little interest in debating his motives and actions with him. Behind all his smug arrogance and aggressive demeanor, there's a romantic, a child who dreams of being knight to a great sorceress. He picked a role that must have been vilified in popular histories and decided, this outcast, this lone and gallant figure protecting the persecuted villain of human history, this is who I want to be, this is noble and beautiful. For this dream, he's let himself be turned into a monster; he tortured his former comrade, he attempted to wipe out his home with weapons of mass destruction, he killed without compunction. He blinded himself to the fact that the woman he served was not the one who had once cared for him. To embody a romantic dream, he made himself into a monster. Like the knight of fairy tales meeting the knights of history. Yet still, he showed incredible resolve, he fought against impossible odds, he got up after being defeated to push himself to his (literal) Limit.
And what's his reward for it? The Sorceress barely addresses him as he fights for her, and when he goes down, she only speaks to him in contempt. 'Worthless.' 'Useless.' She has no affection for him, she does not care about him except insofar as he can be of practical use to her.
He's a fool, and more than that he's a tool, in every sense of the word.
Here is his just deserts, lying on the ground as the Sorceress takes the stage.
Which makes this whole thing exceptionally funny in hindsight. Seifer's big romantic dream is basically his equivalent of Squall's dumb OC Griever. Him and Squall make fantastic foils for each other, especially in regards to their stupid childhood fantasies. The virgin Squall covers it up and is embarassed about it, while the CHAD SEIFER bases his entire life around a shitty movie he saw as a kid starring the world's biggest dumbass, destroying the lives of everyone he knows in the process.
And this is the original meaning of the chad/virgin meme, where the Chad's actions are so insanely over the top and erratic that nobody in their right mind would imitate them.
Looking back at this game from the perspective of twenty years later, it's striking me that, when I originally played Undertale, I assumed the point of the Genocide Route was, like, an abstract argument, that it was about the idea of completionism at the expense of story investment etc. It didn't occur to me that it was riffing off specifically this, right here. I mean, among other things, I'm sure; but the Tonberry King encounter, which can only be obtained by mindlessly killing monsters who don't drop any valuable reward for hours on end until their king shows up to take revenge for the massacre of its people only to be killed in turn, is way to close to what happens in a Genocide run of Undertale (with the Undyne encounter as a parallel to the King himself) for it to be a coincidence. It's just that FF8 doesn't interrogate this at all; it puts a monster that is explicitly the avenging spirit of a slaughtered people hunting you down specifically and has nothing at all to say about it. This is just another sidequest reward.
"It was about 10 years ago when we were working on the original Drakengard that I thought about the meaning of "killing." I was looking at a lot of games back then, and I saw these messages like "You've defeated 100 enemies!" or "Eradicated 100 enemy soldiers!" in an almost gloating manner. But when I thought about it in an extremely calm state of mind, it hit me that gloating about killing a hundred people is strange. I mean, you're a serial killer if you killed a hundred people. It just struck me as insane. That's why I decided to have the army of the protagonist in Drakengard be one where everyone's insane. and then we worked on Nier...we created this game called Nier, and after the world experienced the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq, the vibe I was getting from society was: you don't have to be insane to kill someone. You just have to think you're right."
- Yoko Taro, creative director of the Drakengard & Nier games
Look at Laguna's stance when he's fighting the dragon. It 100% is.
Which makes this whole thing exceptionally funny in hindsight. Seifer's big romantic dream is basically his equivalent of Squall's dumb OC Griever. Him and Squall make fantastic foils for each other, especially in regards to their stupid childhood fantasies. The virgin Squall covers it up and is embarassed about it, while the CHAD SEIFER bases his entire life around a shitty movie he saw as a kid starring the world's biggest dumbass, destroying the lives of everyone he knows in the process.
And this is the original meaning of the chad/virgin meme, where the Chad's actions are so insanely over the top and erratic that nobody in their right mind would imitate them.
The greatest tragedy of FF8 is that amnesia and prenatal child abandonment meant Squall never had the opportunity to make the greatest, most niche "my dad can beat up your dad" put down the world has ever known
Oh hey I recognize that dragon and valley! it appears in the background game footage during a remix of Man with the Machine Gun, was wondering when it was going to show up
If you'll recall, one of the Timber Maniacs issues we collected referenced Laguna featuring in a movie. This is that flashback: Kiros and Laguna are broke from staying at expensive hotels too often during their world search, and Kiros has somehow talked Laguna into an acting gig to pay the bills. Kiros finally talks Laguna into putting on his costume, to the latter's great embarrassment: It turns out he's been cast as a literal knight in shining armor.
