Final Fantasy VIII
Unfinished Game #2
Type of Game
A sequel to one of the classiest games of all time, respectable to the point of not being totally overshadowed by its predecessor. A small feat in itself.
Release Date on Our Machines
October 1999, soon the year 2000 oulàlàlàlàlààààà!
Developer
Square Co, Ltd. A little untouchable at the time, these people.
Publisher
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. Who else ?
Final Fantasy VIII : available on Steam, on the Square Enix Online Store, and the PSN (remastered version).
Well, I'm talking about FF VII as one of the classiest games of all time, but at the same time, I've never really played it, nor really loved what I've seen of it. I watched a couple of mates work their way through it and thought it was cool. Well, now that half the planet despises every single cell of my existence, I can say that even when I was twelve or thirteen, I understood the extent to which this legendary title had become part of the collective unconscious. Whether for good or bad, I couldn't say, but when I heard that the eighth game in the saga was coming out, I wasn't going to sit back and watch. I jumped at it as soon as I saw it, or rather at Christmas or a birthday party. This time, I'd be the one being watched! I've no idea where I came up with this existential crisis, although I could just invoke adolescence to explain pretty much any strange behaviour adopted at the time. I needed attention at that precise moment, that's all.
First on the fail
And as the girls weren't going to lay a single eye on me for another three or four years, my mind was free... Besides, I'd been letting ultra-stylish sequels slip through my fingers for too long. Streets of Rage 3, the successor to Wipeout or the children of Golden Axe to name a few. I soon realised that holding the controller myself was much better than just sitting back and watching. Well, no, I wasn't quick to understand at all, as it took me almost ten years of gaming to grasp such a basic principle. But thanks to FFVII, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to get the hang of it.
Eighth passenger
HAHA! So you're not so smart now, are you? Well, I'm talking nonsense, obviously. As I hardly read anything, either in the menus or in the dialogue inserts, I missed out on a whole bunch of subtleties in the way of making my characters stronger; starting with the junction mechanic (zero memory whatsoever), and the ‘mug’ action to be used on monsters, in order to pick up ingredients needed to improve our equipment. As for the story, I quickly forgot about it. I know that it's about an evil organisation that wants to conquer the world, that we're up against a wicked witch who's not all that wicked, and that this ‘we’ refers to young students whose favourite pastime is taking the piss out of each other.
My status as a videogame pioneer went out the window in a matter of days. I did try to shine again through the card game integrated into the overall storyline, but there too I fell flat on my face. But then again, the rules change in each region you visit! Conclusion: just like in real life, my geek destiny only reserved second, third or even fourth place for me, never first. Ah well, now I'm crying.
If I'm not mistaken, most Final Fantasy games take place in a retro-futuristic, steampunk universe that's often a bit weird. Well, that's true from VII onwards, I think, and perhaps no longer from X onwards. And then, it depends on the places and times, and also on the space-time in which you're... Oh, I don't know, all right? I really liked the atmosphere in VIII! Complex, diverse, and a nice third adjective that I'll come up with later. The static landscapes offer us some of the most sublime on this good old PlayStation (Abe's Exoddus gets offended when he reads these words, Vagrant Story laughs, and Grandia goes off to hide under a bed crying). Proof that the console could offer us something other than 3D all squares and triangles, even if that's all we wanted at the time.
Lovelinoa
You'll find yourself stuck in front of a river flowing through a flowery forest (even though it's not flowing, as a good static image), just as much as in the middle of a freshly destroyed metropolis. As for the 3D interactive assets, the realistic style didn't stand up very well to the ravages of time. Today, I even think that the cartoonish graphics of VII looked better. You can tell that the artists behind all these sets were really passionate about what they were doing. Or earned a good salary, but I doubt it, even at Square. Sometimes you come up against such bizarre monsters that you wonder if the controller isn't shooting hallucinogenic spores in your face.
Similarly, the design of some of the characters suggests that their creators weren't just drinking water during their working hours. Later on, I'd learn to welcome every JRPG chara-design without question, but not yet in 1999-2000. Whether you like it or not, this cocktail of strangeness and mastery never leaves you indifferent. And you can immediately ignore that ready-made catchphrase that makes me speak for people, which is no longer tolerated since 1999-2000 either. In any case, I loved beating up elastic droids, tigers with tentacles, or giant mushrooms with jaws that open horizontally.
Nobleman Uematsu
Say the name Nobuo Uematsu just about anywhere in public, and you'll always find someone raising their arms and shouting “Hey, that's so my favorite composer! Let's face it, if the guy fills huge concert halls with his Final Fantasy tunes, there must be a good reason. And indeed, even if I don't find all his creations to my taste in this eighth episode, there's still an inimitable virtuosity (yeah, even the catchy stuff that goes round and round during those famous card games). What's more, we're not talking about seven two-minute compositions here, but rather a quadruple album containing almost seventy-five tracks. Of course, we can't all worship them completely. Not without becoming a psychopath forbidden to go nearer than ten kilometers of Uematsu, anyway. Some, like the victory jingle after a fight, have become more famous than the Spice Girls' Wannabe (no). And then there are the others, majestic, magnificent, epic or just plain beautiful. Like Squall and Linoa, I too would have loved to have undergone my teenage crisis wrapped up in such pretty melodies. Instead, I listened to Slipknot and Marilyn Manson. Well... nobody composed an orchestral soundtrack just for me, anyway; I found what I could.
Sad destiny
When you start playing Final Fantasy, you know you're in for an adventure lasting dozens of hours. During the weeks when my addiction lasted, the game's CD-ROM and my memory card saved files always traveled with me. This meant that I could continue playing at my mom's and dad's houses, as well as at my mates'. I could show off in front of those who hadn't reached my stage of progress, and I could count on friends who had already beaten this or that big boss to help me advance in the story. Everyone around me loved Final Fantasy (apart from a few relatives, including Jacky Tendax's father, who would pass by the TV and say with the most uncomfortable conservative pride: “Do you know what this thing is? I call it crap!"). No one would have thought of playing anything else, once a guy in the room wanted to advance a few percent in his adventure. A time with no more to worry about than figuring out how to cause 9999 damage to those freaky monsters, and yet I managed not to go through with it! I got stuck at the very beginning of the last disc, or at the very end of the third, I'm not sure. At a point where you have to search the map to find a building that's not even really hidden. I searched high and low, going through the map pixel by pixel, it took me days.
I never found it. My mates had all gone through this phase without a hitch, and here I was, left out in the cold by a bug. Well, I used the excuse that my game was buggy, which seemed easier to digest than: “Boohoo! I can't even find a floating fortress in an open world barely bigger than a soccer pitch!” I didn't have the strength to start all over again, and gave up. It hurt to let go of such a masterpiece, with its ultra-cool Ge-Force, its dreams that send us back in time, the planetary conflict too, even if I skipped three quarters of it. But already, other legends were calling out to me, demanding that I have fun with them. Little milestones in history called Gran Turismo 2 or Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Yes, I'm coming!
Follow Final Fantasy VIII publications on the social media!
