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ImpAtom posted:To be honest I feel like a lot of people only remember the first 1/4th to 1/2 of any given FF game. I generally agree for really any given game, but FF8 is especially grating because it is very aggressive from the outset about nothing about its planet making sense. "Quick, lets defend a nearby country from invaders who want to repair the country they are invading's satellite communications tower that has sat there for 30 years by discussing these plans on the internet. 2 hours later they will broadcast from another unrelated building entirely and never mention said lack of global communication again."
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Aug 27, 2015 03:05
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There's a lot of awesome poo poo in VIII, I feel like "put all these awesome ideas in a blender" is a good way to describe how it unfolds. But as a result, it never comes together in a satisfactory or meaningful way. If they had been able to lay things out properly in a way that actually made sense and created a narrative that was more than "shy boy gradually falls for quirky girl with daddy issues, oh and also a bad future lady is trying to destroy the world(?)" it might have been more widely appreciated. It probably wasn't possible within the development space of Squaresoft at the time, but if they had approached the discs in an episodic style, where each focused on a particular subject which naturally built up the player's understanding and paved the way for the next, I think it would have been much better overall. Disc 1 focuses on Squall becoming a SeeD and being dispatched on missions until turmoil within the Garden forces him to choose sides and fight NORG, Disc 2 is about learning the "true purpose" of SeeD and liberating Galbadia from Edea, Disc 3 is about discovering Esthar and trying (and failing) to prevent the return of Adel, and Disc 4 would (ideally) be about fighting Ultimecia and Hyne, who you could have actually hinted at throughout the story and made a legitimate threat; as it's established that the Sorceresses were created from a part of Hyne and Ultimecia is essentially mashing them all into herself to achieve ultimate power, it follows that when she loses control of that power Hyne would reappear as the "real" final boss instead of whatever her Griever junction / fusion was supposed to be. I mean yeah VIII has a lot more problems than just its story structure but I feel like ordering the plot in a way that flows more naturally would be a good first start to making it all make sense and have a point. The step after that would be to give more characters focus and motivations, instead of relegating them all to the sidelines.
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Aug 27, 2015 03:21
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Barudak posted:Squall's completely random and never really touched on again meltdown featuring "DON'T TALK ABOUT ME LIKE THAT WHEN I DIE! I'M ALIVE" is solid gold and I don't care if you think otherwise. His party members are either really good friends who don't wanna bring it up around him, or they just barely acknowledge his existence.
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Aug 27, 2015 03:37
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The White Dragon posted:His party members are either really good friends who don't wanna bring it up around him, or they just barely acknowledge his existence. Or don't even know what he was talking about because 99% of that meltdown was in his head nad he just shouted out the last thing. What are they supposed to think?
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Aug 27, 2015 03:38
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Cake Attack posted:i don't care what the hosed up rapist would have thought about FF games
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Aug 27, 2015 03:41
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CeallaSo posted:There's a lot of awesome poo poo in VIII, I feel like "put all these awesome ideas in a blender" is a good way to describe how it unfolds. But as a result, it never comes together in a satisfactory or meaningful way. If they had been able to lay things out properly in a way that actually made sense and created a narrative that was more than "shy boy gradually falls for quirky girl with daddy issues, oh and also a bad future lady is trying to destroy the world(?)" it might have been more widely appreciated. That's a lot of words for "I need to go play FF6" Gotta get your retro RPG credentials in check,
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Aug 27, 2015 03:47
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:That's a lot of words for "I need to go play FF6" See my previous post about VI, which was an emphatic "eh." VI starts great and doesn't really fall below "good" until you reach the World of Ruin, where it all falls apart. Though you are correct, it is definitely a more structured story than VIII's while managing to make the better part of its cast interesting and endearing in spite of having more than twice as many to focus on.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:04
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just play saga frontier 2 if you want good characters
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Aug 27, 2015 04:08
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CeallaSo posted:See my previous post about VI, which was an emphatic "eh." VI starts great and doesn't really fall below "good" until you reach the World of Ruin, where it all falls apart. Though you are correct, it is definitely a more structured story than VIII's while managing to make the better part of its cast interesting and endearing in spite of having more than twice as many to focus on. Your previous post is exactly why I said that. corn in the bible posted:just play saga frontier 2 if you want good characters Jesus christ what
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Aug 27, 2015 04:13
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corn in the bible posted:just play saga frontier 2 if you want good characters See, the problem then is that you just got roped into playing a SaGa game.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:20
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Jesus christ what "G, gimme a sec. Yo Narciss my nigga c'mere. Hey, who the gently caress is this?" "I, uh" "Guys, it's Johann. Super assassin? You recruited me in the super secret chapter you may or may not have unlocked? Ring any bells?" "... No" "  "
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Aug 27, 2015 04:23
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corn in the bible posted:just play saga frontier 2 if you want good characters This guy gets it. Pyroxene Stigma posted:Your previous post is exactly why I said that. I've played and beaten VI multiple times, though. I like it, I just feel that the mediocre endgame hurts it a lot. Also I don't really understand what my post about FFVIII had to do with playing VI, since what I described isn't really like VI at all.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:26
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The White Dragon posted:"Lord Gustave, escape while you can! I'll hold them off here!" ...Based on this paraphrasing alone I am now intrigued to play this game.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:28
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YoshiOfYellow posted:...Based on this paraphrasing alone I am now intrigued to play this game. an august 2015 regdate 
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Aug 27, 2015 04:31
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I'm extremely late to discovering cool things on the internet forgive me. 
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Aug 27, 2015 04:33
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its cool im glad new people are still occasionally joining this dead forum
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Aug 27, 2015 04:35
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YoshiOfYellow posted:...Based on this paraphrasing alone I am now intrigued to play this game.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:36
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I do like how Adel was wizard Hitler of futuretopia, but he went out unceremoniously after a single battle.
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Aug 27, 2015 04:42
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Gustave is great and cool
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Aug 27, 2015 04:46
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Level Slide posted:I do like how Adel was wizard Hitler of futuretopia, but he went out unceremoniously after a single battle. Adel was a woman. All sorceresses are women.
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Aug 27, 2015 05:04
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It's been a while, but I could have sworn Adel was walking around shirtless during Laguna's flashback.
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Aug 27, 2015 05:05
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Adel does what she wants and if she has to gently caress up time to do so, well that's just a price to pay.
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Aug 27, 2015 05:07
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CeallaSo posted:Adel was a woman. All sorceresses are women. Wow nice  shitlord.
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Aug 27, 2015 05:21
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corn in the bible posted:just play saga frontier 2 if you want good characters This post is so bad I'd rather hear what the rapist thinks about FF8.
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Aug 27, 2015 06:35
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Level Slide posted:It's been a while, but I could have sworn Adel was walking around shirtless during Laguna's flashback. She's an incredibly buff woman with no breasts. Characters refer to her with feminine pronouns several times, and it's established in the lore that only women can become sorceresses.
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Aug 27, 2015 06:45
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Well I'll give you that. The thing is she died unceremoniously after all that build up. Granted I kinda forgot what happened between Adel dying and Ultemicia castle popping up.
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Aug 27, 2015 06:59
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FF8 just stunk to high hell of over-design and too many cooks in the kitchen with overly-ambitious direction. The original concept was that Laguna was an old-school RPG hero with a positive outlook and Squall was a "new type of hero," a young mercenary learning the ropes which was odd since the previous game also starred a mercenary. You were supposed to play the stories alternately in a way similar to Front Mission 4, only each story would reflect the same themes in different ways. Somewhere along the way, the concept got sort of lost and garbled with other directives and ideas like love being pushed as the "actual main theme" and the countless disconnected set pieces. The alternating stories ended up not being connected heavily the way they were envisioned. A lot of threads look like they were just stomped on or forced to connect disparate parts of the story like the orphanage and the walking plot device that was Laguna's step-daughter. It feels like a definite opportunity lost. Of course, the gameplay was broken to hell.
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Aug 27, 2015 07:29
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FF8 is a girl's manga.
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Aug 27, 2015 07:39
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A bad one.
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Aug 27, 2015 07:43
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Game had a great soundtrack though, and it gave us Triple Triad, so its existence is at least somewhat justified. That is, if you're not too bitter about the way it crippled Xenogears.
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Aug 27, 2015 08:34
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Xenogears crippled itself.
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Aug 27, 2015 08:43
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I guess in my head you are playing VIII through Squall, an introverted autist who gives no fucks about anyone but himself and his mission. The other characters could have backstories but gently caress 'em. Squall has no interest in getting to know any of them as when some sorceress hurls an icy blade at one of them instead he can get on with the task at hand without getting all emotional. Selphie in particular, Shes a gargling fuckwit. No raging autist speaks her language. It's a coming of age story where some indoctrinated teenage soldier slowly learns he cannot do it alone, and through him so does the player. I don't really see the love theme, more just letting people in and getting a bit of snatch at the end of it all is just a part of that. Alone, Squall's character development is as rich as anything I've seen in a game since. You all do have a point though, it is only Squall. The rest of the characters don't really stand up and for the most part their existence is pretty arbitrary beyond giving the player a feeling of children sent off to war. Honestly I put a lot of the poor character development down to translation, but then I don't have a lot of time for Japanese comic culture so maybe I just gave the shallowness of it all too much benefit of the doubt. Both VII and IX have a tendency to spout anime gibbrish at points as well, IX just has the humor to give it substance and VII has the plot to end all plots. I did enjoy the game though. I've gone back to it just as much as VII or IX.
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Aug 27, 2015 10:25
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What's interesting about VIII is that it was their attempt at a completely literal, accurate translation. When VII was being localized it was pretty much 3 guys total, with 1 guy doing the bulk of the work. When VII exploded, and Squeenix suddenly realized the West wanted JRPGs, they brought way more people into the localization team to make sure FF8 didn't have any "This guy are sick" goofs happening this time. The result was more accurate to the original Japanese script... which apparently wasn't very good to start with. VIII had good graphics and good gameplay for the time, but the story... what a mess and then IX rolled around and the localizers had found their 'groove', balancing faithful translations with some stuff unique to the english version that made dialogue sound more natural. they even wove accents into the writing where applicable. it was good stuff Excels fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 10:47
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VIII was the first FF game I ever played (I rented it after hearing friends rave about VII), so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it even if it's become progressively obvious as I've gotten older that it's an extremely flawed game. I like the settings, the art is wonderful, and it might still be my favourite soundtrack of the series. I do think that the gameplay was half-baked at best and that the characters and story completely collapse after a point. The "basketball court reveal" and the orphanage sub-plot have always seemed particularly contrived to me, and it just spirals onwards from there. It also seems quite crucial to stick Rinoa with Squall when the party splits up in Disc 2, as the relationship gets a small amount of much-needed "development" during that time; without it, it just seems like Squall finds her annoying until, one day, he's suddenly being pleaded with by the others to save her (and only her) during a ferocious battle, followed by him walking half the world with her on his back in order to bring her out of a coma. Squall probably gets some sort of character progression (though it probably comes too late; note how when Rinoa finally recovers in space, Squall almost reacts like he preferred her to be comatose... which is a little bit unsettling), but Rinoa overall isn't strong enough to sustain what's supposed to be the driving love story. A minor aside, I also don't like how most of the sidequests were really cryptic. Lake ghosts and stone faces, anyone? Even Triple Triad got hit pretty hard if you cared about collecting certain cards/spreading certain rules. Barudak posted:Or a plot whose entire cosmology is buried in two, semi-conflicting optional text dumps one of which is one time only in an area that is not remotely obviously one-time only and also disappears from the game and is never mentioned again because I think the writers flat out forgot it existed. I know the first one was the tutorial stuff you could get at the start or through the menu, what was the other one? I played the PS1 FFs quite a lot when growing up, but it's been quite a few years since then! Actually, this brings something else to mind. As passé as it probably was by 1997 (after almost a decade of Akira-inspired Japanese media), I feel like the cyberpunk city intro to VII is crucially important: it quickly communicates that the story will concern a society oppressed by a crooked corporation, amongst other things. I really like the school setting at the start of VIII (for reasons I'm not entirely sure of), but it just doesn't pin down the key aspects of the story or world quite so well. The result is that the following set pieces taking place in various attractive settings barely seem connected, even though they're apparently supposed to be? Excels posted:they even wove accents into the writing where applicable. it was good stuff That said, I do remember cringing pretty hard at the not-quite-Scottish dwarves. Hedgehog Pie fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 11:52
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Excels posted:What's interesting about VIII is that it was their attempt at a completely literal, accurate translation. When VII was being localized it was pretty much 3 guys total, with 1 guy doing the bulk of the work. When VII exploded, and Squeenix suddenly realized the West wanted JRPGs, they brought way more people into the localization team to make sure FF8 didn't have any "This guy are sick" goofs happening this time. Uh, not at all.
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Aug 27, 2015 11:56
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In this light, the changes make a lot of sense. They figured an American audience couldn't empathize with a Canadian main character. 
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Aug 27, 2015 12:07
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I wouldn't mind all the smack talk about FF8, if people didn't wildly exaggerate things like thisThe White Dragon posted:How so? She gets like twenty boxes of text in the entire game Selphie writes a blog entry after nearly every single tiny plot event in the whole freaking game. It's like people who claim characters have no lines when they never even bother to try talking to them on their own once in a while. I kinda like it when the game doesn't ram every little detail down your throat in unskippable cutscenes.
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Aug 27, 2015 12:51
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corn in the bible posted:Vanille I love her
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Aug 27, 2015 13:05
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I don't like VIII because the gameplay sucks rear end.
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Aug 27, 2015 13:10
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My favorite part of VIII was when Rinoa's dancing with Squall and then Squall has a hole for a face. The gameplay is fun to break.
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Aug 27, 2015 13:24
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