I swore Square Enix shot themselves in the foot when they released their tech demo for the PS3 in whatever year that was, 2007? They recreated the opening for Final Fantasy 7 with PS3 graphics. It looks cool right? Too bad Square Enix is incompetent. If they didn't want to remake Final Fantasy VII, they never should have made that tech demo about Final Fantasy VII. Now that they've actually begun the FF7 remake, there's blood in the water.
Final Fantasy VIII remake will either happen because Square Enix will cave in to "well, you remade all the other games," or it won't happen because Final Fantasy VIII is the oddball game that no one actually likes. Back in the day, Final Fantasy VIII was my favorite game for a long while. I thought Squall was a very identifiable character, I liked that cumbersome junction system, and the gameplay was enjoyable to me. The only things I didn't like about it was the low rate of drawing magic, and then later cards. Now, when I think of the game, I think about it in a load of other ways.
The first thing I think of when I think of Final Fantasy VIII is the look of the game. It's the least cartoonish, stylized, or fantasy looking game in the first 9 games (the only ones you should be counting). It was still stylized with characters having torsos measuring 2 heads and legs measuring 4, but the most realistic looking game. It had the most modern looking setting with futuristic elements I've seen in a fantasy RPG outside of Star Ocean. It was also the most boring looking game. Points deducted for having a look that didn't last or continue to inspire or evoke or what have you. Not that you can control how people retrospectively see your art.
The second thing I think about is how it was the only installment in the franchise to have a different genre. Most Final Fantasy games feature warriors of light trying to restore crystals or rebels trying to protect the environment from evil empires or gods. Seriously, most Final Fantasy games are very much in the hippy camp. I can't see how you could have missed that. It's obvious: Magic crystals, revered ancient civilizations for having greater harmony with nature, protecting earthly balance, etc. Final Fantasy VIII doesn't know if it's trying to be a teenage romance first or second.
Teenage romance sucks. You know this because you read Romeo and Juliet in high school. Teenagers don't know shit. Remember when they ate tide pods and snorted condoms for fun? Then, some guy named Cid raises them in a trope-p magic school setting to be mercenaries who contract with demons for magic powers for money and to prepare them to kill an evil sorcerers in the hypothetical scenario where she goes rogue and tries to kill everything.
That was a tangent. I hope you liked it. Squall and Rinoa are less interesting the older you get and the more experience you have with actual people and relationships. No one could care less about them making it work. I hate to say it, but Tidus and Yuna make a more interesting couple and I think Yuna is boring and stupid and Tidus is just stupid.
This game wants to be a romance and failed so hard. Your other characters are literally different versions of Squall in the literary sense. Remember the painfully long and arduous flashback where they remembered "hey, didn't we grow up together?" Irvine said something like "people say you can be anything, but I disagree. Sometimes, I didn't have many choices...I'm proud of the choices I made, it's made me who I am." That basically sums it up. 4 characters have identical backgrounds and motivations to the protagonist, they just look and talk different. They're alternate versions of Squall existing alongside him. Mocking him. "You could have been psychologically healthy, but you developed dependency issues as a small boy. Now you have a complex." That's right, this game invested all it's energy into the romance and they couldn't be bothered with creating characters who were different. They were even interchangeable in combat except for their limits but fuck their limits because Renzokuken was badass.
The romance plot was boring and it failed. It was boring. That's actually pretty damning as far as writing criticism is concerned. Boring is probably the worst thing you can say about a piece of writing or art. Squall and Rinoa are boring. Fuck it.
The third thing I think about when I remember this game is Triple Triad. That's the fancy name for the card mini-game. Fuck that mini game. Fuck it to hell. Busywork and plot derailing bullshit. If you had gameshark, you could give yourself all the crap you wanted and you wouldn't even have thought of the card game, but without gameshark, you felt compelled to play it for loot. Some of the loot was good! So good in fact that I wouldn't play the game because you had to get the loot! Awful! Way out of control. You violated the conventions of a natural progression and difficulty curves. It was a godawful boring game too and I couldn't help but exploit it. Help me, I'm sick!
Some of the other things I think about are grinding and characters I hate or parts of the game I'd like to skip. So, in summary, fuck this game now. If you remake it, and I have a feeling we'll get there. It might not be 2022 like the title says, (mostly due to Square Enix having a shittier release schedule than Spoony) but I have a feeling it's definitely going to happen as long as Square Enix is around.
But if you're going to remake it, here's a list of suggestions. The theme of these suggestions is "it's okay to not be faithful to the original this time."
1. Let me name all my party members. Show that they are distinct from NPCs and have actual significance as characters by letting me name them.
2. Fuck cards.
3. Don't do a realistic art style or a modern/futuristic setting. It sucked. Final Fantasy is a sci-fi fantasy yes, but there has always been an emphasis on the fantasy part. If Star Ocean is doing more fantasy than you, you're probably doing something wrong. Make the art more stylized or cartoony. This modern setting and realistic art lends to the game having a more serious tone which was like another cold ice spike of boring in my chest.
4. Don't make Seifer a redhead. I can't take him seriously as a redhead. Or that stupid fucking coat.
5. Give Selphie pants or make sure no one gets rotated along their vertical axis with Scan.
6. Tone Irvine down. It's like Texas fucked Montana and they sent their kid to Japan, and I actually like Irvine.
7. Do everything different with Zell.
8. Make sure you keep the pubes on all the GF.
9. Also, flesh out the GF concept. Junctioning and magic are way too abstract. Obviously, they were focused on writing a love story and couldn't make the rest of the nonsense work.
10. I want to be able to draw more than a maximum of 9 spells at a time. Fuck you for that.
11. Fuck Triple Triad.
12. Bring back Xu.
13. Esther's music sucks. It's overall feel also sucked.
14. Bring back Robin Williams as Headmaster Cid.
15. Laguna and pals were actually really interesting after a while, but flashbacks feel like punishment. These parts of the game were actually a REALLY bad execution in retrospect. These were a part of the game where the concepts of rewards and consequences seemed suspended and you were just riding a plot train in plot limbo. Nothing mattered. You just waited till you could go back to using the real heroes. I do love Laguna, Kiros, and Ward, but KILL YOUR DARLINGS, GODDAMNIT!!!
16. Make Squall funny with a dark side, not depressing.
17. More Quistis sighing sexily. Or no, more Quistis galting gunning shit. No wait, Quistis siging sexily while gatling gunning shit! No, wait. Quistis needs more conflict. All the characters do. Quistis for example sort of dropped off the fucking script after disc 1. She receded into background into the roll of "Xu's friend" and you know it. All the characters actually have a part of the script where they get to be more relevant than just being there, and what little conflict they do have is mundane, boring, and has no decent conclusion. Except Irvine, who, as it is implied, is the only PC to have a conflict unique from the others and he resolves it. Oh wait, no. Shit. Fuck. He's still cool as shit though.
18. Do not fuck with the gunblade. They are the stupidest weapon ever, but goddamnit, you can only make them worse, not better. Actually, The Revolver and Lionheart are the only good looking models Squall uses. Touch that up a bit.
19. Fujin talks like an monster. Raijin talks like an idiot. They're losers because they are have nothing else to do but serve a man regardless of his goals. Oddly enough, they still have more character development than Zell and Quistis while acting as stand-ins for Team goddamned Rocket.
20. Radio Waves don't work that way.
21. Please no more boring puzzle versions of train hijacking.
22. What is Rinoa's goal past liberating Timber? She's kind of just following me around because she's shiftless without her weird liberation friends. I think Rinoa is a bit of a loser. Squall can do better.
23. I don't have faith in your chocobos, Square Enix, but that's fine because chocobos don't suit this setting and are easily missed.
24. The shumi tribe sucked. It's a tribe full of ugly yellow betas who turn into mute lions or something. I remember being treated like a tourist.
25. You need a ridiculously flamboyant character. No, wait. There's enough of that. Don't do that.
26. Try not to write dialogue that sounds like it was written by Japanese anime nerds.
27. Let me skip cut scenes.
28. Voice overs are not worth it.
29. More songs about trains while on trainsohwaitno!
30. No fucking cards.
31. Let me do stuff in Dollet that's actually fun after the Dollet mission.
32. No grey dialogue boxes. Blue is the right color.
Ok, I'd love to make this list go on indefinitely, but here's the big things: that game needs to look different, the characters need a lot of work, Laguna flashbacks need a lot of work-shopping, and fuck cards a lot. Let's use the remake as an opportunity to put some love and craftsmanship into what was a pretty good rough draft. Also, please don't make this game nerdier than it needs to be, I'm 30 now.
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