By Nora.
Well, Squaresoft's powerhouse RPG series continues in this latest
installment in the Final Fantasy saga, Final Fantasy 8 (FF8). Built for the Playstation
like its predecessor Final Fantasy 7 (FF7), this one truly tests the limits of the
Playstation's specs, with lengthy CGI movies and massive animated battle sequences, and
including realistic human-modeled character motion and astonishingly detailed backdrops
and renderings.
But who cares? There are probably a hundred other reviews of the game out there online which will get into its technical and developmental presentation. See those (there's a good one at http://psx.ign.com/reviews/3847.html) if you actually care about buying or playing the game. This review is intended for potential readers of FF8 yaoi doujinshi, who don't want to actually spend 100+ hours of gameplay time figuring out what's going on. NOTE: If you *do* plan to play the game, or if you haven't finished it yet, you might want to skip all of this; spoilers abound.
The story starts very simply. Balamb Garden is the name of a special academy (one of three Gardens) for young mercenaries-in-training. Graduates of this school are called SeeDs (read: "seeds"). Squall Leonhart is a SeeD trainee about to undergo his final examinations to try and become a SeeD. His friends at the Balamb Garden include the boisterous Zell Dincht and the goofy transfer student Selfie Tilmitt. His rival, for unclear reasons, is a hotheaded and proud student named Seifer Almasy, who has his own clique of best friends---the rough-hewn goofball Raijin and his one-eyed, terse partner Fujin. All of them are currently being instructed by the youngest and least-experienced teacher at the Garden, Quistis Trepe.
After a number of trials, Squall, Selfie, and Zell manage to achieve full-fledged SeeD status. Seifer, who disobeyed orders and proved himself too arrogant to be a good SeeD during the final exam mission, fails. At that point, Cid, the Headmaster of Balamb Garden, gives the new SeeDs (and Quistis) their first real mission: they have been hired to go to the country of Timber, and there assist a fledgling rebel movement fighting to free Timber from the nation which has recently conquered it, Galbadia. Squall and his pals travel to Timber, where they meet up with Rinoa Heartilly, a young woman trying to be a revoluntionary leader, who has more enthusiasm than strategy. The mission at first seems simple---help Rinoa kidnap the President of Galbadia. However, they discover that the real power behind the Galbadian leadership is a darker one: the Sorceress Edea. Sorceresses aren't entirely human; in addition to their great powers, which can be passed on to any female, they also have long life... and almost all of them are evil. Cid gives them a new mission: they are to assassinate Edea. To that end, he introduces them to a new SeeD graduate from Trabia Garden: Irvine Kinneas, a master sharpshooter.
So the kidnappers become assassins, and they infiltrate the Galbadian capitol. On the way there, a strange event occurs: they all pass out, and find themselves dreaming about Laguna Loire, a young Galbadian soldier, and his friends. The dream (and several others which follow) seems to make no sense, so they push it aside and resume their mission as soon as they recover. However---the party is crashed when Seifer and his friends, seeking to prove themselves, interfere with the mission. During the resulting chaos, Edea seduces Seifer over to the dark side, promising that he can regain his tarnished honor as a Sorceress' Knight.
So Squall, Rinoa, and friends---who really do care about Seifer, in spite of his behavior---go to try and save him, and complete the assassination. They manage to defeat Edea, but then they discover that Edea was just the pawn of a much bigger enemy: the Sorceress Ultimecia. Ultimecia is a Sorceress in the future, who has been manipulating events (by sending her essence back in time and taking over the minds of less-powerful Sorceresses living in the present) to achieve something called "time compression," in which the past, present, and future will all become one. Time compression will increase Ultimecia's power to its utmost, but normal reality can't survive the process---Ultimecia would become a goddess, but the world would be essentially destroyed.
Squall and the gang manage to free Edea from Ultimecia's control, and she becomes their ally. She also reveals that the strange dreams they've been having, of Laguna, are actually visions of events which occurred about 20 years in the past. These visions are being transmitted to them by Ellone, a young woman who has the amazing ability to "project" people into various points in time. Through Edea, Ultimecia has been looking for Ellone in order to steal her power, which will help her achieve time compression. This isn't the first time she's gone after Ellone, however. 20 years before, she took over the mind of a powerful Sorceress named Adel, in an attempt to do the same thing. In that time, however, Laguna is the one who stopped her.
So the quest to free a conquered nation becomes a quest to save the world. In
the course of this quest, Squall and his friends travel all over the planet (and even into
space), facing all sorts of hazards and dire foes, including the Ultimecia-controlled
Seifer. Eventually, they join forces with the now-fortysomething Laguna, and together they
face Ultimecia, with the fate of the future hanging in the balance. That's the basics of
the story---epic in scale, as all games in the Final Fantasy series have been. This
installment in the saga is unique, however, in that for the first time, it includes
several canonical romances... which may explain why there seem to be far fewer yaoi
doujinshi out there based on this game, as compared to the volume of FF7 doujinshi. Squall
and Rinoa eventually become a couple, and even Laguna (who's sweet and handsome, but a bit
of a yutz with women) finds happiness, sort of. As romances go, FF8 is as cliched as they
get---sweet romantic songs and gazes across a crowded room and worse. Fortunately, there's
still ample opportunity for slash. See the Character Summaries, or the Primary Slash
Pairings, for more details on this.
So on its own, FF8 is an excellent game---powerful and sweeping in scope, and full of eye-boggling special effects that are truly cinematic. It's only in comparison with FF7 that the game truly suffers, in the eyes of the yaoi/slash lover. For good slash, characterization---from physical character design to personality and history---is everything, and in terms of characterization, FF8 falls flat on its face. The biggest problem is the main character, Squall. He's dour and humorless and although he's only 17, he's as jaded and grumpy as an old man. He's not much worse than FF7's Cloud, but unlike Cloud, he never gets any better, and the explanation that he had a rough childhood never seems to be quite enough to justify his personality. The game could perhaps have been saved if any of the other characters had been especially interesting... but here again the game suffers in comparison with FF7. In FF7, the "supporting" characters each had fully-fleshed histories and personalities, including tragedies and past loves and family connections. In FF8, the only history given most of the characters is that they all grew up in the same orphanage. And they can't even remember that. (A side effect of a type of magic they use in combat: long-term memory loss.)
Other slash-related problems include the fact that the game's central villain is female. This is probably fantastic for fans of shoujo-ai and yuri (although Ultimecia's a bit skanky for my tastes), but it does little to inflame the yaoika hordes. Another problem: there's just no one in the game with Sephiroth's ultrasmooth brooding seme-ness---Seifer is a blustering child by comparison. Yet another problem is that the same realism which has game enthusiasts raving about FF8, works against its yaoification. Squall and Seifer and Laguna are human beings, modeled on real actors, rendered into only slightly less realistic graphics. They even have pores. While live action has always had its place in yaoi, it's never been hugely popular---not in comparison with yaoi based on manga. FF8 is, for all intents and purposes, live action.
So: is the game good? Yes. Is the game as good as FF7? Depends on what you're looking for, but in yaoi terms---not by a long shot. Is there a lot of doujinshi and fanfiction out there based on it? Quite a bit, but nothing like the horde that's appeared for other Square Playstation games (FF7, Xenogears); read the preceding paragraphs for my suspicions as to why. Do you have to buy the game to read the doujinshi? Nah; just read this section. Are the characters slashable? C'mon, *anybody* is slashable. *Should* they be slashed? What the heck kind of question---you don't belong here. Turn off your computer and go read Newsweek.