The part in FFVIII where things get REALLY out of hand
Kim's latest video exposé takes a disciplined look at when an RPG flew off the rails.
In the words of Luke Harper, "It's Monday. You know what that means." it means it's time for another Final Fantasy VIII video! There's only one more left after this one, but this video includes some of the more extreme segments of the game -- it's the part where Squall and company go to the moon and back with a possessed girl for company, who just so happens to wake up as we get close to the other sorceress that the main evil sorceress wants to get in touch with! As ever, the video is available just here if you want to take a look.
Even in a genre where you should suspend your disbelief fairly often, the whole moon section of Final Fantasy VIII does stretch things out quite a bit. I mean, the sight of a big teardrop full of monsters descending from the moon directly onto the planet itself is just too much -- how does that work? Again, this is a part of FFVIII's M.O in that it goes to big lengths to justify those basic things in JRPG's that are always there like monsters, but if anything it just makes them seem even more out there. One other thing that I ponder is why all these disparate monsters work together anyways -- do they ever fight each other? We never see it if they do, although we do see it in Blue Dragon -- an old 360 game that I've been playing recently. It's a wonder that more RPG's don't explore that, and a surprise that the very analytical FFVIII doesn't.
And of course, there's lots of other silliness -- Ultimecia's plan to actually get to the moon is quite out there and based on nothing but luck if you think about it, it's amazing how Squall and Rinoa stumble upon a spaceship out there at random, and...well, there's Laguna's plan to sort out this whole mess by going through compressed time and so on. At least the last one is somewhat in character. That's all in the video, of course -- along with a bunch of gameplay too, as the monsters finally caught up with my party at the end of Disc 3...FFVIII is infamous in that it's final stages can be a bit of a stopper to people who do things like say, rely on GF's through the whole game (god, that'd add 10 hours onto the playtime easy) -- this video shows how to get around all that, along with analysing characters and wondering why half of them have nothing whatsoever to do now.
There's all of that, and...hey, there's the "Eyes on Me" scene too! Which is at least something good in the midst of all the space age stuff, although your mileage may vary depending on how much you dig the corny song. Perhaps a good question would be to ask where "Eyes on Me" ranks compared to other cheesy vocal songs from such games -- is it better than "I Am The Wind" from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night but worse than "Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday" from MGS2? Perhaps that's a question that you can hammer out in the comments below! Anyway, next Monday we'll be finishing this whole thing off, and talking about a couple of popular theories too -- so don't forget to tune in for that. In the meantime, enjoy the vid.
