Ah, so Edea is possessing the Moon. Someone warn Sokka.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ach. As I feared, while I was out of town the next update dropped, and it was the one that got to The Twist. I'm later to the party than I would have liked but oh well. C'est la vie. I'm just gonna write the post I wanted.
So. The Twist. There is nothing so infamous in FF8 as The Twist. Twenty years ago, if you talked about FF8 the discussion would instantly become centered around The Twist. Not the Squall/Rinoa romance. Not junctioning. No. You were arguing about The Twist.
Let's talk about contrivance in writing.
In a broad sense, everything in a work of fiction is contrived - after all, an orphan only exists if the author decides an orphan exists. But when we say something in a story is contrived, we mean something more than that - things like a mishandled plot point, or a sense that a creator has overlooked something important. Or the sense there's just a bit too much convenience in the way things play out. Do you remember when I quoted this post?
Here's a question for you. Why does General Caraway have a timed locking door to his office?
Of course, Omicron immediately nailed the out-universe answer: it's so Rinoa can disobey her father and run out, missing team Quistis and leaving them to get locked in the room in a moment of comical exasperation and raising the stakes for the confrontation with Edea.
But what's the in-universe answer? There isn't one given. We can posit some weird possibilities: like, we know the house used to be a castle, was the room formerly an armory or the like (and why didn't he change the door out)? But it's such a weird, artificial situation that it's hard to imagine a reasonable explanation. But the game just brushes it off in the high-tension moment to focus on the PC shenanigans.
So with that in mind, here's another question.
Why do GFs erase memories?
This is the eighth numbered game in the Final Fantasy series. Summons have been a part of the series for a long time now; they've even been major parts of the plot on more than one occasion. There's never in this series been the idea of a mental or physical cost to using such creatures, apart from the MP used for their summon spell. Of course, Final Fantasy has made an icon of itself through constant reinvention, and just because such an idea was never used before doesn't make it suddenly invalid when it appears here.
But why do GFs erase memories?
We are deep in FF8 at this point and for all the way the GFs are central to Squall and SeeD, they've barely been discussed. Our first mission was to capture Ifrit, but since then the GFs have mostly been toiling away as a game mechanic, apart from a comical sublot about the Minotaur Brothers. Why the memory-erasure plot beat? Do GFs share brain power with their junctioned summoner, destroying brain cells in their need to remain cogent? Does the magical aetherial essence of the GF mix with that of their summoner, distorting one's sense of personality and potentially even "swapping" memories? Or do the GFs maliciously extract a silent Faustian bargain for their services, destroying a few moments of a person's life every time their powers are called upon?
Of course, we know the real reason. It's so FF8 can have The Twist - because without some form of memory erasure, you cannot possibly insert The Twist and expect it to fly as a plot point. You need memory erasure, and you need it to effect most of the main characters. Hence, you tie it into the game mechanics. Simple. Sensible. This is, in the spherical form, not a bad idea.
The problem with FF8 and the reason for the long discourse about The Twist is that I think the game badly drops the ball in foreshadowing it.
Hell, I remember 20 years ago people swearing up and down that it was a complete asspull, that nothing in the game had warned you, and fuck you Irvine, fuck you and your smug cowboy hat, you stupid [insert words used to describe attractive male characters].
One great thing about this LP is that as we've watched Omicron follow the plot, we've been able to see where that's not quite true:
-Of course, the most famous rebuttal to the "no warning at all" is the computer console at the beginning of the game.
-But that's A. one line of text B. that you're most likely to read early in the game and forget about and C. possible to miss.
-There's also been a couple of scenes following the retaking of Balamb Garden where Squall has failed to remember someone's name.
-Unfortunately, the game plays it off as comedy because you the player never knew these characters to begin with, which makes Squall just look like an awkward dork instead of signposting potential trouble.
-Then there's Squall's flashback to baby Squall in the rain.
-But its short and frankly, repressed childhood memories are a common enough plot device that it doesn't feel connected to the GFs in any way.
Final Fantasy 8 plants the idea of memory loss in the first hour of the game and then walks away, leaving it to wither on the vine. Maybe something went wrong in the writer's room. Maybe there was an attempt at an ironic double-whammy where they hoped that as the characters were told of their secret backstory, the players would themselves remember that little seed and go "ohhhhh the memory loss" and be blown away. Maybe if this was about Squall alone (or maybe Squall and anime rival Seifer), the foreshadowing could have been enough. But it's not enough for everyone except Rinoa was there + Cid & Edea were your caretakers.
(and my god I had forgotten how Irvine just fucking upstages Rinoa's emotional moment with this - this game is incredibly schizophrenic towards its romantic interest)
I am...to my own surprise, not as virulent about The Twist as I expected to be when the LP got here. Some of that is because going through the game again like this, 20 years later, has given me a more nuanced take on characters like Squall and Quistis and Irvine - it really helps to not be yelling at the main character "oh my god you fucking tool" with all the maturity a 19-year old possesses. (Man, I've said this a bunch of times, maybe FF8 should have been rated ages 30+)
But I still think it's a bad twist, badly executed, that tries to do too much to make itself a defining moment of the game and comes off as comical rather than shocking. "You were all orphan kids together (except you). The guy who runs the PMC you work for used to be your surrogate dad. The evil witch is his wife. Oh, your parents? Well you must have been adopted out - get back in the comic relief closet, Zell."
It makes FF8 feel artificial...and contrived.
So. The Twist. There is nothing so infamous in FF8 as The Twist. Twenty years ago, if you talked about FF8 the discussion would instantly become centered around The Twist. Not the Squall/Rinoa romance. Not junctioning. No. You were arguing about The Twist.
Let's talk about contrivance in writing.
In a broad sense, everything in a work of fiction is contrived - after all, an orphan only exists if the author decides an orphan exists. But when we say something in a story is contrived, we mean something more than that - things like a mishandled plot point, or a sense that a creator has overlooked something important. Or the sense there's just a bit too much convenience in the way things play out. Do you remember when I quoted this post?
Here's a question for you. Why does General Caraway have a timed locking door to his office?
Of course, Omicron immediately nailed the out-universe answer: it's so Rinoa can disobey her father and run out, missing team Quistis and leaving them to get locked in the room in a moment of comical exasperation and raising the stakes for the confrontation with Edea.
But what's the in-universe answer? There isn't one given. We can posit some weird possibilities: like, we know the house used to be a castle, was the room formerly an armory or the like (and why didn't he change the door out)? But it's such a weird, artificial situation that it's hard to imagine a reasonable explanation. But the game just brushes it off in the high-tension moment to focus on the PC shenanigans.
So with that in mind, here's another question.
Why do GFs erase memories?
This is the eighth numbered game in the Final Fantasy series. Summons have been a part of the series for a long time now; they've even been major parts of the plot on more than one occasion. There's never in this series been the idea of a mental or physical cost to using such creatures, apart from the MP used for their summon spell. Of course, Final Fantasy has made an icon of itself through constant reinvention, and just because such an idea was never used before doesn't make it suddenly invalid when it appears here.
But why do GFs erase memories?
We are deep in FF8 at this point and for all the way the GFs are central to Squall and SeeD, they've barely been discussed. Our first mission was to capture Ifrit, but since then the GFs have mostly been toiling away as a game mechanic, apart from a comical sublot about the Minotaur Brothers. Why the memory-erasure plot beat? Do GFs share brain power with their junctioned summoner, destroying brain cells in their need to remain cogent? Does the magical aetherial essence of the GF mix with that of their summoner, distorting one's sense of personality and potentially even "swapping" memories? Or do the GFs maliciously extract a silent Faustian bargain for their services, destroying a few moments of a person's life every time their powers are called upon?
Of course, we know the real reason. It's so FF8 can have The Twist - because without some form of memory erasure, you cannot possibly insert The Twist and expect it to fly as a plot point. You need memory erasure, and you need it to effect most of the main characters. Hence, you tie it into the game mechanics. Simple. Sensible. This is, in the spherical form, not a bad idea.
The problem with FF8 and the reason for the long discourse about The Twist is that I think the game badly drops the ball in foreshadowing it.
Hell, I remember 20 years ago people swearing up and down that it was a complete asspull, that nothing in the game had warned you, and fuck you Irvine, fuck you and your smug cowboy hat, you stupid [insert words used to describe attractive male characters].
One great thing about this LP is that as we've watched Omicron follow the plot, we've been able to see where that's not quite true:
-Of course, the most famous rebuttal to the "no warning at all" is the computer console at the beginning of the game.
-But that's A. one line of text B. that you're most likely to read early in the game and forget about and C. possible to miss.
-There's also been a couple of scenes following the retaking of Balamb Garden where Squall has failed to remember someone's name.
-Unfortunately, the game plays it off as comedy because you the player never knew these characters to begin with, which makes Squall just look like an awkward dork instead of signposting potential trouble.
-Then there's Squall's flashback to baby Squall in the rain.
-But its short and frankly, repressed childhood memories are a common enough plot device that it doesn't feel connected to the GFs in any way.
Final Fantasy 8 plants the idea of memory loss in the first hour of the game and then walks away, leaving it to wither on the vine. Maybe something went wrong in the writer's room. Maybe there was an attempt at an ironic double-whammy where they hoped that as the characters were told of their secret backstory, the players would themselves remember that little seed and go "ohhhhh the memory loss" and be blown away. Maybe if this was about Squall alone (or maybe Squall and anime rival Seifer), the foreshadowing could have been enough. But it's not enough for everyone except Rinoa was there + Cid & Edea were your caretakers.
(and my god I had forgotten how Irvine just fucking upstages Rinoa's emotional moment with this - this game is incredibly schizophrenic towards its romantic interest)
I am...to my own surprise, not as virulent about The Twist as I expected to be when the LP got here. Some of that is because going through the game again like this, 20 years later, has given me a more nuanced take on characters like Squall and Quistis and Irvine - it really helps to not be yelling at the main character "oh my god you fucking tool" with all the maturity a 19-year old possesses. (Man, I've said this a bunch of times, maybe FF8 should have been rated ages 30+)
But I still think it's a bad twist, badly executed, that tries to do too much to make itself a defining moment of the game and comes off as comical rather than shocking. "You were all orphan kids together (except you). The guy who runs the PMC you work for used to be your surrogate dad. The evil witch is his wife. Oh, your parents? Well you must have been adopted out - get back in the comic relief closet, Zell."
It makes FF8 feel artificial...and contrived.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Isn't that Caraway's office, not Rinoa's bedroom?Kuja said:
What makes a good twist?
Dunno (my two cents can't buy much, I'm afraid), but...
This twist, ain't making you go "oh my gd it makes so much sense now!", nor "it recontextualize everything".
Doesn't makes you say "I should have known, the hints were all here", barely answers any questions, and the questions it rises are more "huh?" than "I wanna know more!"
So... What does it add, really?
Dunno (my two cents can't buy much, I'm afraid), but...
This twist, ain't making you go "oh my gd it makes so much sense now!", nor "it recontextualize everything".
Doesn't makes you say "I should have known, the hints were all here", barely answers any questions, and the questions it rises are more "huh?" than "I wanna know more!"
So... What does it add, really?
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fixed that.
So, IIRC, Omicron identified FFV as a Saturday morning cartoon, FFVI as a grand opera, and FFVII as prestige TV.
So is FFVIII a soap opera, then?
It's magical school battle shonen manga, complete with the non-blood-related sister (Quistis, who also moonlights as a hot teacher) crushing on the protagonist.
- Pronouns
- She/They
This definitely feels like the main issue with it. If it had been more of a central theme, if the idea of GF induced memory loss had been discussed and explored and debated, something that several characters think about and rationalize in their own ways, you would get a lot closer to making this acceptable. It would help turn it into a natural culmination of questions raised throughout the game, but as it is the only reason I remember it is because this thread involves us all analyzing and dissecting the game - someone playing it through blind is extremely likely to forget it.
The more I think about it though, the more I think that just limiting the scope would have been the best way to do it, with Squall and Seifer growing up together (and maybe Irvine so he can be dying inside over the course of the game). He'd be a much more natural fit as to why it never came up before - his defining character trait may as well be aggressive avoidance of addressing his feelings - and we'd avoid the incredibly contrived feeling of literally everyone growing up together.
And also for the love of god separate out The Twist and Rinoa's big moment of self-doubt entirely, smashing them together like they did is just utterly baffling.
I object to that on the grounds that it's very funny.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Basically every game since III I've made some comment to the effect that it's a shame Summons are both 1) mechanically very important and 2) clearly individuals who can speak and have personalities and yet 3) the games never really engage with them as characters in their own right for any extended period of time (IV being sorta kinda an exception), and by VIII it's old hat and felt not worth remarking upon, but like...
At least in VI every summon you equip is dead. It's frustrating for various reasons I went into in my LP of the game, but it serves as a decent explanation for why you're never talking to Bahamut: You're carrying its crystalized soul, not an actual person.
But in VIII, the GFs are self-willed beings who are capable of speech and have agreed to join you willingly. We've had two separate recruitment missions (Ifrit and the Brothers) in which we actually talked to the GFs before they joined us and they made an explicit agreement to serve us. We've stolen multiple other GFs from various monsters. And these GFs are having a direct, profound impact on the game; junctioning them is drastically impacting the characters' life and psychology. This is a major component of the plot.
And... We still don't talk to them. At no point does Squall pull Quetzcotl out of his soul to ask "hey buddy, you know anything about this?"
It wouldn't even take much time or require much effort. You could have the GF make some vague noises about how all power has a cost but it didn't know it would take this form or whatever. Like, anything at all to remind us that GFs are (maybe) people(?). Or aren't.
It's baffling.
Also making me look at FFXIV's primals in a different light, in a way.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You know I wonder how much of that could genuinely be because of how the company structured the teams working on the game.
Like... thinking about it structurally here, compare your complaints about how in FF7 the Materia weren't deeply integrated into the story so much as you'd expect; and how the GFs here are the structural foundation of how gameplay happens, but they aren't that important to the plot, and the part that is important - the Junction Amnesia - exists entirely in the Dialogue Tree and doesn't have any effect on the Menu, compared to how the part implied by the Menu - these are Symbiotes that are as much a part of The Party as the humans, in their own way - how yeah you don't like, talk to them.
So I wonder if this is structurally a result of the Writing Team having a certain idea of how this Stuff should work, that doesn't quite match what the Gameplay Team is doing with like the random encounter play-testing, and those two teams are siloed enough that this (everybody say it with me) ludonarrative dissoance just sort of inevitably creeps in.
Like... thinking about it structurally here, compare your complaints about how in FF7 the Materia weren't deeply integrated into the story so much as you'd expect; and how the GFs here are the structural foundation of how gameplay happens, but they aren't that important to the plot, and the part that is important - the Junction Amnesia - exists entirely in the Dialogue Tree and doesn't have any effect on the Menu, compared to how the part implied by the Menu - these are Symbiotes that are as much a part of The Party as the humans, in their own way - how yeah you don't like, talk to them.
So I wonder if this is structurally a result of the Writing Team having a certain idea of how this Stuff should work, that doesn't quite match what the Gameplay Team is doing with like the random encounter play-testing, and those two teams are siloed enough that this (everybody say it with me) ludonarrative dissoance just sort of inevitably creeps in.
It ties into the whole "what the fuck is draw, anyway" thing. FFVIII mechanics are bafflingly divorced from the narrative while also being tied into it. Some previous games had similar problems (Materia only being good for throwing in cutscenes), but I don't think any of them match the dissonance of FFVIII.
For me, personally, the closest fit is actually FFV because it really feels like there should be something more to calling upon memories of heroes past than just class selection. A little interlude where you confront them in a dream memory and see them ruling over ancient magitech empire as divine tyrants, majestic and monstrous, until their cunning viziers and brave lieutenants betrayed them and stuffed their power into a crystal prison or something.
But even then I can accept crystals as a simple power source, and I could accept materia being absent from cutscenes as a minor flaw not reflecting much on the work as a whole. With GFs, though, there is this weird combination of importance and negligence that's really hard to move past.
On well, I'm sure we'll forget about it soon enough, once we get the next GF.
None of the games really handle summons well. Even when the summons have major in story significance, it mostly boils down to 30 seconds of exposition then boss fight. There are a few attempts to integrate them better but they end up being sabotaged by either not knowing that something is related to the summons until way too late, or the main baddie crashing the scene and making it all about them again. Over and over, the summons get relegated to power up of various utility.
- Pronouns
- She/They
It doesn't help that summons are often relegated to some level of collectable - like with the GFs, sure we've talked with Ifrit and the Brothers, but besides the other starters, how many of them are not only completely optional, but fully missable?
I feel like between that and the sheer number of GFs there are, the developers maybe got a little gunshy about actually having them talk? Maybe they were worried about it becoming too much dialogue and too much work, and talked themselves out of integrating them more deeply in the narrative because of that.
Or it's possible they just never thought about it that deeply and had the early dialogue as throwaway info.
I feel like between that and the sheer number of GFs there are, the developers maybe got a little gunshy about actually having them talk? Maybe they were worried about it becoming too much dialogue and too much work, and talked themselves out of integrating them more deeply in the narrative because of that.
Or it's possible they just never thought about it that deeply and had the early dialogue as throwaway info.
On the matter of Zell joining Balamb Garden, you guys are forgetting that BGU is actually the closest thing this world has to a college/university and that graduating from it automatically makes you a hot commodity.
Why wouldn't a kid that just graduate Middle School want to enroll into the best High School/College/University in the country ?
Why wouldn't a kid that just graduate Middle School want to enroll into the best High School/College/University in the country ?
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Every single GF other than Quetzal, Shiva and Ifrit can be missed.
Diablos is a corner case in that missing the Magical Lamp is nearly-impossible, but you still can, and even if you do get the Lamp, you still have to win the fight against him, which can be tricky. The Brothers are much easier to miss than Diablos is, and are behind a somewhat long puzzle + dungeon combo. All of the other ones shown so far (Siren, Carbuncle, Leviathan and Pandemona) need to be Drawn from bosses (four out of the six drawable GF in the game), and are thus inherently missable. The ones yet to be revealed can all also be missed, and obviously the non-GF that are summoned by items, such as Phoenix, are the easiest ones to miss of all.
You will notice that this leaves you with exactly three GF that are mandatory, just as there are exactly three party members in the battle team. I don't think that's by accident, I think the programmers were fully aware that all of the GF other than those three were optional and they were fine with some people being limited to the elemental trio - which happens to be where Card Mod, Refine Ammo (for Irvine's limit) and the Refine for the three main elemental magics is placed. It was probably a bad idea, but it was nevertheless done intentionally.
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E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Which adds a notable complication to having them be characters with the story as we have seen it so far:
The party fully split, with a potential death included, for a notable length of time.
How do you handle a character GF if you only have three, and you have one team rushing to the Garden while the other faces the Missile Base?
When the characters can both use all of the GFs.
At best it results in some confusion, at worst it totally ruins the potential death subplot by giving a character that can say "those summoners still live" or similar.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I end up in a slightly different place. Putting together the 'characters have plot-important memories that they've forgotten' thing, the time and possession weirdnesses, and my theory about how everything comes back to the Moon somehow, I arrive at one inescapable conclusion as to the genre:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bBpiHJm3t0
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Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"In the name of the moon, I will punish you!"
-a giant flood of nightmare creatures emerges from the full moon and swarms the sorceress' enemies leaving only bones-
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Re-encountering it 25 years on, there is every reason why FF8's twist became a punchline the way it did. A punchline so absurd and well-known that I used it to torment my players in a D&D campaign I wrapped up only this year, threatening to establish that all six of them had secretly come from the same orphanage (and also Areelu Vorlesh worked there) just because three of them decided so of their own accord.
It really does just feel like an incomplete idea for how Zell and Selphie stick out. It's almost like it was originally just going to be Squall, Seifer, Quistis and Irvine at the orphanage, but that would leave Zell and Selphie as the odd ones out in a manner that wasn't intentional like it clearly is with Rinoa, so they got roped into the orphanage twist, but then it doesn't really... mean anything to them. They have no particular opinions on it, no particular chemistry with Squall that gets recontextualised, Irvine's crush doesn't seem particularly deepened with conflict about specifically remembering Selphie when she doesn't remember him, it's like... the bones are there but it's an anatomy model, there's only half the flesh there needs to be for you to see it as a human body.
It really does just feel like an incomplete idea for how Zell and Selphie stick out. It's almost like it was originally just going to be Squall, Seifer, Quistis and Irvine at the orphanage, but that would leave Zell and Selphie as the odd ones out in a manner that wasn't intentional like it clearly is with Rinoa, so they got roped into the orphanage twist, but then it doesn't really... mean anything to them. They have no particular opinions on it, no particular chemistry with Squall that gets recontextualised, Irvine's crush doesn't seem particularly deepened with conflict about specifically remembering Selphie when she doesn't remember him, it's like... the bones are there but it's an anatomy model, there's only half the flesh there needs to be for you to see it as a human body.
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
An orphanage as run by Areelu Vorlesh would be hilarious.