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After reading through the thread, I think it's safe to say that FF8 was a very flawed game, and it's biggest overarching flaw was a lack of coherence. It has a lot of good, interesting individual parts, but very few of them work together to form a functional machine.
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Oct 27, 2017 02:01
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There's coherence, but it is so well hidden and so subtle that it is really easy to miss.
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Oct 27, 2017 03:14
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Gnoman posted:There's coherence, but it is so well hidden and so subtle that it is really easy to miss.
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Oct 27, 2017 03:26
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Zereth posted:I feel like "you have to go looking for deeper information and if you just bumble through the main plot you'll be a bit lost" can work, but this game was extremely aggressive about hiding most of that information from you. "Stop doing this seemingly urgent thing and climb down this ladder there's no real indication is anything but a background element to talk to some guy fishing", for example. Certainly. That is FF8's greatest flaw, and the biggest reason it has such a negative reputation storywise. All one has to do to illustrate this is to point out how few people seem to have figured out why Squall acts the way he does, and that's one of the core characteristics of the game's central character.
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Oct 27, 2017 03:33
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Actually it feels like most of the obscure conversations are just mostly irrelevant background lore. Stuff like the really clumsy presentation of the whole Esthar thing feel like the bigger problem, ("wait... is this a space launching pad? Are we going to space? Why are we going to space?") where it just feels like story beats are happening without anything connecting them properly. Or the end of disk 1 cliffhanger with Squall getting impaled by an ice shard, and everyone was treating it like a big deal that you couldn't just immediately fix with magic or phoenix downs, and yet he wakes up fine and confused and it's never addressed again. Or Squall's entire disposition towards Rinoa changing on a dime (at least as far as what's ever presented to the audience). Or why Squall had to hike down a narrow railroad bridge with Rinoa on his back because it's the only way to access the Esthar continent, only for your entire team to end up there before him somehow? FFVIII is filled with a lot of plot beats that don't feel tied together properly.
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Oct 27, 2017 04:09
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True, But as a teenager I liked squall a lot because he was angsty and didn't need anyone. Now, 15 years later, I really appreciate the growing up he does across the game. I still really like the "I didn't turn out ok at all" revelation he has. As a character piece, I think it's fine. The plot is definitely all over the place though. I want to make a shout out to the ending though since it basically hammers home all the themes the game was following. Also I think it's time that I finally reveal what Cool Ghost and I agreed not to share at the start of the thread: squall is dakkon rinoa is the nameless one she rescues him from drowning in chaos
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Oct 27, 2017 05:14
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Gnoman posted:There's coherence, but it is so well hidden and so subtle that it is really easy to miss. No, it all seems completely haphazard, like they just stitched a bunch of random ideas together. That parody story about the devs getting locked in a room with a gas leak sounds completely believable.
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Oct 27, 2017 09:08
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It might be coherent on a thematic level but falls apart if you just try to take it all at face value not looking for themes or meaning.
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Oct 27, 2017 09:29
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Gnoman posted:There's coherence, but it is so well hidden and so subtle that it is really easy to miss. Subtle storytelling done well is a great thing in all forms of media as it engages you in the plot and the game world. A good example of a game that does this is Bloodborne. FFVIII on the other hand is a mess of set pieces that have been stitched together afterwards. Remember a lot of what Cool Ghost has shown us plot wise has been in hidden diary entries and conversations; Selphie’s diary entries in Balamb Garden or the lore about Hyne in the menu for example. These isn’t subtle story telling, this is something stapled on afterwards with little thought. The plot actually isn’t complicated but the presentation and execution makes it seem so 
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Oct 27, 2017 11:23
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I always thought that with R=U it would be more interesting an idea if Rinoa wasn't physically Ultimecia, but more, spiritual. Rinoa, not wanting to pass her curse of being a sorceress on upon her death has the whole not dying in peace thing the game puts out there, that combined with the sorceress powers kind of had her emotions haunting the sorceress gig. Across the generations it'd be continually passed on, SeeD would eventually go back to hunting sorceresses, and at some point, Ultimecia comes across the Greiver ring, awakening Rinoa's haunting emotions after centuries. Ultimecia now has an unexplained urge to be at a certain place at a certain time, she can't quite remember where or when, just that it's in the past, and it's important. Combine that with the fear of being hunted ever since she was cursed with the powers of a sorceress, and she uses that haunting desire combined with her own fears to attempt time compression with the ultimate goal of eliminating the SeeDs. This all assumes Rinoa tried to find a way to not pass the sorceress powers on, which I kind of feel would be in her character, but again, it's a leap, and more just a way I saw the R=U theory when I thought about it. At the end of it, the game has some fantastic concepts, but it's failure in execution leaves it very open to interpretation, especially when so many important parts to the history are hidden like they are in this game.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:57
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I feel like Ultimecia is more representative of what any sorceress could be, much like Adel. Speaking of Adel, I can't remember if it was mentioned, but she never speaks in modern day. Her only lines are from flashback (and the radio jamming).
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Oct 31, 2017 20:22
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:I feel like Ultimecia is more representative of what any sorceress could be, much like Adel. And yet the villain who never has a single line in present day and only speaks briefly in a flashback, and so never once addresses our heroes, is still the better developed villain and people argue should be the main villain because of it. Oh, FFVIII 
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Oct 31, 2017 22:49
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Though now I'm actually wondering, since Ultimecia does end up going to the past past to posses young Adel - was her villainy also somehow down to possession?
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Oct 31, 2017 23:25
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If Ultimecia could go to the past that far she wouldnt be in Squalls time burning down towns. Like Adel had Ellone in her captivety for ages and did expirements on her. Ultimecia already knows what she needs Ellone for.
Iretep fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 23:29
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She needed Ellone for going further into the past, which she does end up doing in the end as that's what kicks off time compression. Rinoa even says she was Adell. And since Edea retained quite a bit of knowledge after her possession, it's possible Adel did too. Basically we have Young Adel (gets possessed by Ultimecia/Rinoa combo), Past Adel from Laguna's timeline, no longer possessed but acting out of knowledge she gained during possession, then Present Time Adell who gets killed by Squall and co. Avalerion fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 23:38
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Bonus Update: Is Rinoa Ultimecia? Now that the story itself is done and dusted, I want to take some time out to talk about what might be the biggest Final Fantasy VIII fan theory. The short form is that Ultimecia is a version of Rinoa from the future, who has become evil. What this is meant to do is to give Ultimecia a stronger connection to the party, and to Squall in particular. My short response to the question in the title, though, is "no."  For the long version, let's start here. In this conversation about Ultimecia, we get two things right off the jump: she's possessed Edea, and she comes from the future. The first one is important, but for something else. The second one is probably the biggest logical issue with Rinoa being Ultimecia: at some point, you'd expect her to die. There's some ambiguity in "many generations" and you could potentially argue that Ultimecia is just Old Rinoa, but the problem with any question of "how did Rinoa live until the future?" is that there's no strong evidence in the game.  This is the line I find gives the strongest support for Rinoa being long-lived, but again: it's not very strong. I mentioned it in the update, but there's a bit of ambiguity in the phrase "die in peace." The argument in support of the "R=U" theory is that "die in peace" just means "die." On the other hand, it's mentioned here:  That Adel attacked Wihill/Galbadia looking for a successor. Again, at no point does the game go into detail on sorceress lifespans or mortality, but if she's looking for a successor, then that means Adel expects her reign to end at some point. Metatextually speaking, a ruler looking for their successor is shorthand for a ruler preparing to die; it's very rare for a ruler like this to be planning to abdicate. That's especially true for a dictator like Adel, and to my mind it's especially true for a dictator who's eventually taken down like this:  Adel is defeated because of her hubris. She walks into Laguna's trap knowing it's a trap, and then he just shoves her over. We don't get a lot of information on Adel, she doesn't do a lot of talking in the game, so again, there's a lot of interpretation. My interpretation of it is that Adel is the kind of person who is sure that she won't be defeated in a fight and who always thinks she's the smartest one in the room. At the same time, though, she's also a person that knows she will someday die. So, what does "die in peace" mean? Well, it must be related to how sorceresses pass their powers on - generally in death, though Edea passes her powers on after "just" a severe beating. Whatever it means specifically, it doesn't seem to mean that a sorceress can live forever by not passing her powers on.  Even Ultimecia's own death wouldn't make sense if it were true that she could just keep on living by not passing her powers on. When she shows up in front of Squall here, she's still ready for another round - Ultimecia is simply not the type of person to accept defeat. At the end of the day, all the sorceresses we see pass their powers on involuntarily, and Adel was already looking for a successor during the Sorceress War. To be honest, this is enough for me to mark this theory down as false. There's just no strong evidence for Rinoa living longer than usual, so you end up at either "many generations" meaning "about two generations" or you end up at an even more speculative explanation, like Rinoa having unusual sorceress powers or using magic to go to the future. The problem with this theory is, at the bottom, that it's not strongly supported by the text; Rinoa living long enough to become Ultimecia is the weakest link here. But, since I like to have fun, so let's look at some of the other things people talk about with this theory.  When the R=U theory is accepted, people talk about this line as foreshadowing. Stuff like this is meant to explain Ultimecia's "motives." There are, though, a lot of options here - see, the theory doesn't really ascribe any motivation to Rinoa. This line can be seen as Rinoa saying she wants to be with Squall, but something eventually comes up and they can't be together. So the theorist extrapolates from that idea to this line - Rinoa says she wants to freeze the moment, which is... kind of like time compression, if you squint. Here's the rub, though: this line already has thematic importance, and it's already in direct response to something in the game. Rinoa is afraid of the uncertain future, just like Squall is. She talks about it with him in FH:  This character moment connects Rinoa to Squall, who expresses the same fear, but ends up pushing people away because of it. He traps himself in a nasty cycle because of it, which is a major flaw of his at the beginning of the game. He pushes Quistis away from the same reason, but when he tries to do it to Rinoa in FH, she pushes back, which is part of them getting closer to each other. Now, jumping back to the Ragnarok:  This is what leads to Rinoa saying she wishes time would just stop. She knows she's a sorceress, she knows what Esthar did to Adel, and she's just committed a major crime. In the game, Rinoa is explicitly scared that if they land, she'll be killed. So, this line doesn't even need to foreshadow anything. This is my second big problem with the R=U theory: it doesn't actually explain anything. Saying Rinoa and Ultimecia are the same person gives the impression of a connection, but it doesn't add anything to either character. Let's accept, for a moment, that Ultimecia is Old Rinoa. At some point between this line and the end of the game, she decides that she wants to compress time, which involves killing Squall and the rest of SeeD. The question remains, though, what happened? And this is one the theory can't respond to.   The best response is tied into this sentiment, that Rinoa-as-Ultimecia still has this in her mind, and so ends up fighting SeeD/Squall. But... it's inconsistent with Ultimecia's character. Ultimecia isn't trying to get killed by Squall as some sort of romantic thing, she's just trying to kill Squall. There's a fundamental absurdity to Ultimecia fighting Squall that is, again, connected to one of Squall's personal flaws:  Squall ends up fighting Ultimecia because he's a SeeD, not because it's the right thing to do or even because he wants to do the right thing. Ultimecia talks about the persecution of sorceresses, and SeeD is a part of that persecution. In this way, Squall plays a role in creating Ultimecia in the first place. Rinoa plays a similar role herself, being the sorceress in the present and eventually passing her powers on to Ultimecia. If Ultimecia exists like this, the future product of SeeD and of persecution, then she represents both Squall's enemy as a SeeD and the potential for some unspecified bad thing to happen in the future. This is also clear when Ultimecia possesses Edea or Rinoa - she changes the people that Squall loves, giving a sort of literal edge to his fear that people will be taken away from him. Ultimecia lacks a personal connection to Squall (for the record, she also never addresses him by name) but they're connected by "duty" and Ultimecia makes sense with relation to the characters and the themes of the story. In the end, "Rinoa is Ultimecia" is a theory that substitutes a superficial connection - Rinoa and Ultimecia are both sorceresses, so what if they were the same person? - for what's actually in the story. It attempts to restore a supposedly missing link, but it doesn't actually connect anything together. This is a game that is often less overt about things than it should be, and I understand that some people don't like that. But, this theory just doesn't have the chops to deal with any of that. You end up with questions that don't have good answers: how did Rinoa get to the future? "Somehow." Why does she want to compress time? "For some reason." Why does she try to kill Squall? "She's evil now." It's a beginning and an end, but no middle, just a lot of baseless speculation. Rinoa is Rinoa, and Ultimecia is Ultimecia. Cool Ghost fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 02:47
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It also helps that Square said that theory was false. Thanks for the LP!
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Nov 1, 2017 02:54
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I still like the idea that Rinoa as Ultimecia was something they were going with but edited out of the script sometime after development had started. But as is, there's not a lot of support for it. Thanks for the LP. This was a lot of fun and really did show off the best parts of the game.
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Nov 1, 2017 03:06
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I don't think there's any real merit in the R=U thing either, but some stuff still bugs me.Cool Ghost posted:
I can't help but wonder if something was lost or mangled in translation here. "Looking for a successor" in this way just doesn't make any sense. First, Adel by all impressions looks "young" and healthy- like, absurdly in shape healthy. She's also a power-hungry megalomaniac. It doesn't seem to fit her character to be thinking about passing on/handing over power and her own mortality when she seems like the sort of person that thinks she's invincible and in total control. Looking for a successor might be what you do when you you start getting older and realize that you're just getting weaker and weaker; not when you're in the prime of health and in total control of all you survey. Second, if Adel WAS looking for a successor, you'd think she'd look for a candidate that was at least sort of on the same page as her philosophically. It's one thing to have a biological heir that doesn't agree with your ways but that you need to make into a ruler anyway because succession works by bloodlines- Adel can seemingly pick any female, or any witch candidate, whatever that entails. Why pick someone like Ellone? Why apply the force of your military might to hunting down and taking someone like Ellone captive? Those are really extreme measures to get someone that, by all accounts, would not rule anything like Adel thinks the world should be ruled. Third, we're given no indication that Adel did anything to groom Ellone to take over once she was captured. All we hear about is that she was given to Odine in order to figure out how Ellone's powers work. So what it really sounds like is that Adel somehow found out about Ellone's special abilities and wanted that power for herself. So she went out of her way to capture Ellone and then handed her over to her top mad scientist to find out how to replicate her powers so Adel could abuse them- a mission which Odine eventually succeeded at. Outside of that one line, everything else we hear in the game seems to point to a totally different interpretation of what was going on with Adel and Ellone. Cool Ghost posted:Even Ultimecia's own death wouldn't make sense if it were true that she could just keep on living by not passing her powers on. When she shows up in front of Squall here, she's still ready for another round - Ultimecia is simply not the type of person to accept defeat. Also, I don't think Ultimecia was ready for a fight still when she showed up in the ending- I thought Edea specifically said as much, that she wasn't there to fight, just to pass on her powers. The game sort of gives the impression that sorceresses get an almost instinctual need to pass on their powers, that sort of kicks in and makes them single-mindedly seek someone out when it's "time." And again, I think all the stuff about needing to seal Adel in space rather than just kill her also points to the conclusion that you can't just kill sorceresses as easily as that. Or it could just be part of the game's rather clumsy storytelling, like why Edea can still use innate magic like a sorceress even after she supposedly passed on her sorceress powers. Maybe she only passed on half of them? She said she was already a sorceress when she accepted Adel's powers, so she has, like, two sets of sorceress powers after that? Maybe they can be individually passed on... who freakin' knows. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 04:13
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Schwartzcough posted:
Not at all. If a sorceress automatically passes on her powers when she dies, it becomes almost impossible to get rid of one Sorceress without having another one pop up. Esthar doesn't just want "no Sorceress Adel", they want "no Sorceresses, period". So they can't simply kill her, and have to seal her away instead.
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Nov 1, 2017 04:20
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Schwartzcough posted:I can't help but wonder if something was lost or mangled in translation here. "Looking for a successor" in this way just doesn't make any sense. I've never seen Adel as particularly young, I always got the impression she was in her mid-30s or so, about the age to start looking for a successor. She's also actively at war with Galbadia, so she might have moved things up a bit.  By the way, "successor" also shows up here. It could be a mistranslation or a bad descriptor, but the idea shows up in more than one place. quote:Second, if Adel WAS looking for a successor, you'd think she'd look for a candidate that was at least sort of on the same page as her philosophically. It's one thing to have a biological heir that doesn't agree with your ways but that you need to make into a ruler anyway because succession works by bloodlines- Adel can seemingly pick any female, or any witch candidate, whatever that entails. Why pick someone like Ellone? Why apply the force of your military might to hunting down and taking someone like Ellone captive? Those are really extreme measures to get someone that, by all accounts, would not rule anything like Adel thinks the world should be ruled.  The assistant here refers to both "girls" in the plural and "sorceress research." It might be that Adel's timeline involves looking into how the sorceress power is passed on, if it gets weaker, things like that, before she shuffles off. She definitely goes to Winhill a couple times, but I don't know that she originally wanted to expend any special effort to capture Ellone specifically. As for the military might, she's basically taking children from the subjugated territories. quote:Third, we're given no indication that Adel did anything to groom Ellone to take over once she was captured. All we hear about is that she was given to Odine in order to figure out how Ellone's powers work. So what it really sounds like is that Adel somehow found out about Ellone's special abilities and wanted that power for herself. So she went out of her way to capture Ellone and then handed her over to her top mad scientist to find out how to replicate her powers so Adel could abuse them- a mission which Odine eventually succeeded at. Ellone wasn't really there for a long time, and we never see the other girls in Esthar. The way I read it, Ellone was kidnapped and then Laguna left almost immediately afterwards. It takes a while for him to get to Esthar, which gives Adel and Odine some time to learn about Ellone's ability and start looking into it, but it's maybe a couple of months. quote:Also, I don't think Ultimecia was ready for a fight still when she showed up in the ending- I thought Edea specifically said as much, that she wasn't there to fight, just to pass on her powers. The game sort of gives the impression that sorceresses get an almost instinctual need to pass on their powers, that sort of kicks in and makes them single-mindedly seek someone out when it's "time." When I said she was ready for another round, I didn't mean that I thought she had a chance of winning, just that I think Ultimecia is the type to go out fighting. She also seems to be "chasing" Squall through time there.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:03
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Cool Ghost posted:When I said she was ready for another round, I didn't mean that I thought she had a chance of winning, just that I think Ultimecia is the type to go out fighting. She also seems to be "chasing" Squall through time there. I always just figured it was narrative coincidence that Squall and Ultimecia showed up at the same place so the audience could witness the whole time loop sorceress power passing thing. Gnoman posted:Not at all. If a sorceress automatically passes on her powers when she dies, it becomes almost impossible to get rid of one Sorceress without having another one pop up. Esthar doesn't just want "no Sorceress Adel", they want "no Sorceresses, period". So they can't simply kill her, and have to seal her away instead. Well that's kinda my point- I'm saying that a sorceress has to pass on her powers, so they sealed her instead. When Edea says for a sorceress to "die in peace they have to pass on all of their powers"- that implies either: a) a sorceress CAN'T die unless she passes on her powers, implying some sort of power-passing-mandated unlife, or b) that a sorceress can die WITHOUT passing on her powers, and therefore not die "in peace." The game seems to suggest that a sorceress always passes on her power no matter what (hence their plan to get Adel's powers by killing her with Rinoa nearby, and Esthar sealing Adel instead of killing her) so that sort of rules out option b there. Which only really leaves option a. I dunno, things just don't seem to fit together quite right with the story. It's like a jigsaw puzzle where you jamb pieces together that you know don't really fit, and so it never really adds up. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 05:21
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I don't think A is as strongly implied as you suggest. I think it's clear that powers can transfer with proximity, but to die in peace is a very different turn of phrase from just "die." there's no suggestion of immortality due to sorceress powers at any point, and it's a topic that gets touched on more often than average for FF8. like in order for that to be true, it would have to be inferring a very specific outcome from a very specific interpretation of a line, and more importantly assume the writers deliberately never mentioned this presumably important bit of sorceress information. because yeah it'd alter things if it were true and sorceresses could be immortal on demand. And nobody says anything about it, no interaction between couples involving a sorceress (Squall and Rinoa, but also Edea and Cid) ... there's just a lot of big holes. Holes too big for even 8 to skip filling 
Psion fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 05:34
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Psion posted:I don't think A is as strongly implied as you suggest. I think it's clear that powers can transfer with proximity, but to die in peace is a very different turn of phrase from just "die." there's no suggestion of immortality due to sorceress powers at any point, and it's a topic that gets touched on more often than average for FF8. Well I mean, what's the alternative to B then? Why say a sorceress can't die in peace without passing on her powers if a sorceress is always guaranteed to just have her power jump to the nearest candidate when she dies? That means dying without passing on her powers is impossible. Edit: the way Ultimecia acts at the end gives the impression that sorceresses can't really "refuse" to die by keeping their powers and just remaining immortal. It seems more like when they "die" they have no choice but to find a host to transfer their power to. But you're right, this does require a huge amount of speculating. The game kind of forces speculation because it doesn't make sense with what it does tell you, though. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 05:41
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Schwartzcough posted:I always just figured it was narrative coincidence that Squall and Ultimecia showed up at the same place so the audience could witness the whole time loop sorceress power passing thing. The only way to get "Sorceress are immortal until they pass on their powers" from that line is to say "I am declaring that this is what this means, and nobody can tell me otherwise."
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Nov 1, 2017 05:44
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Gnoman posted:or c) passing on your powers as you die is much nastier for you than doing it just before you die in some unspecified way. Yeah, this is more or less the most plausible answer I think. You either find a willing successor and die with your spirit at ease, or you don't and it's a real unpleasant mess.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:51
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I also suspect that there's some degree of mistranslation involved. I remember reading that there were some oddities with FF8's translation process, so I'd really be interested to see if there's any such ambiguity in the original. If the sources I've read are correct, for example, the original version of Ultimecia's dialogue in the final battle made it clear that Ulitimecia was creating Griever from Squall's mind, because Squall conceived of Griever as the ultimate power.
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Nov 1, 2017 06:04
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Hyne was a dick, he added violent explosive death as a part of the sorceress gig, if they don’t pass on their powers, kaboom. It really hurts and feels like an eternity for the sorceress. Therefore, a sorceress that doesn’t willingly pass on her powers before death will never feel at peace. My evidence is in the death animations of Adel and Ulty. There. Solution found.
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Nov 1, 2017 06:12
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Cool Ghost posted:And this is one the theory can't respond to. The better response is that she also keeps a gf junctioned (in this case, Griever is not drawn from Squall’s mind but from Rinoa/Ultimecia having him) which drains her memories, so when she sees Squall again, the one the theory states she’s essentially doing it for, she doesn’t recognize him. This has the added benefit of not just ignoring the gf-memory storyline aspect from the moment Irvine reveals it’s all definitely true. This aspect of tying the storylines together so they strengthen each other is one of the reasons I prefer it.
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Nov 1, 2017 07:19
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The FFVIII development team didn't keep the translators in the loop so they had to use a GameShark to access the text.
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Nov 1, 2017 10:50
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Cool Ghost posted:If Ultimecia exists like this, the future product of SeeD and of persecution, then she represents both Squall's enemy as a SeeD and the potential for some unspecified bad thing to happen in the future. This is also clear when Ultimecia possesses Edea or Rinoa - she changes the people that Squall loves, giving a sort of literal edge to his fear that people will be taken away from him. One of the best things about this LP is revealing how much better the game's story is than what I got out of it playing it in high school. This is awesome.
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Nov 1, 2017 11:44
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Cavelcade posted:The better response is that she also keeps a gf junctioned (in this case, Griever is not drawn from Squall’s mind but from Rinoa/Ultimecia having him) which drains her memories, so when she sees Squall again, the one the theory states she’s essentially doing it for, she doesn’t recognize him. But that leaves open the issue of why would Rinoa keep a GF junctioned? She's not a SeeD, she knows they cause memory loss. She'd have every reason to not junction a GF once everything calms down. Hell, this wouldn't eve stop her from fighting beside Squall, if that's what she wanted to do. She's a Sorceress. She doesn't NEED no stinking GF to kick rear end!
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Nov 1, 2017 14:25
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Silver Falcon posted:But that leaves open the issue of why would Rinoa keep a GF junctioned? She's not a SeeD, she knows they cause memory loss. She'd have every reason to not junction a GF once everything calms down. Hell, this wouldn't eve stop her from fighting beside Squall, if that's what she wanted to do. She's a Sorceress. She doesn't NEED no stinking GF to kick rear end! Squall dies of old age at some unspecified point in the future, and she creates a GF in his "image" hoping it'll fulfill the same keep-me-from-going-crazy function as a Sorceress' Knight? Or alternatively, she WANTS to forget. The whole GF thing fascinates me endlessly really. For example, if the entire gang were able to recover their memories of being at the orphanage so readily when provided with a prompting, can we really say the GF destroy memories, or do they just prevent active recall?
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Nov 1, 2017 14:43
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Is "sorceress going crazy" even a thing?
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Nov 1, 2017 14:54
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The biggest counter to the "Rinoa = Ultimecia" theory is their fashion sense. Ultimecia has style and Rinoa has a horrible blue dress. Thanks for everything Cool Ghost! You made me wanna give this game another shot.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:23
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Silver Falcon posted:But that leaves open the issue of why would Rinoa keep a GF junctioned? She's not a SeeD, It's not just that she isn't one, the game goes to the trouble to specifically show how she isn't one. From the first interaction with the train hijack plan all the way through not doing the salute right in Galbadia, even in the orphanage scene, all of it - it's consistently and repeatedly brought up that Rinoa isn't a SeeD. like best I can tell this theory hinges on the gameplay conceit that everyone equips GFs because you want to raise your stats? Psion fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 17:12
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I never took it to mean that Rinoa lived for hundreds of years, just that her sorceress soul was passed on many times until arriving in the person known as Ultimecia. I took Adel's "hunt for a successor" to mean that some element of the sorceress' personality or mind would be passed on as well. It seems like a megalomaniac like Adel wouldn't care what comes after her if she doesn't get a piece of the action, so gaining new life in a new host body made sense to me. Ellone being a unique kind of superpowered mutant in her own right made her an even better host for Adel, in my mind. An upgrade. So Rinoa and Squall live a life together, Squall dies, Rinoa dies and "passes on" to someone else, on and on down the line. And the 50th person in that line still has Rinoa's impulse to go back to those moments with Squall but maybe doesn't remember why anymore. Not so uncommon even in a real-world human lifetime. There's already a causal time loop here with Ultimecia granting powers to Edea, and you have Rinoa making reference to stopping time and being killed by SeeD/Squall. And Ultimecia uses a GF modeled on Squall's ring that Rinoa is involved with for no other real reason, that the player gets to name for no other real reason. I don't think the theory is so crazy. Though I suppose there is nothing to indicate that Edea adopts any of Ultimecia's personality or memories at the time of succession, which may knock out that assumption. But we don't know much about what happens between that moment and the moment that she is possessed, so maybe she wasn't quite the same in that time. AdmiralViscen fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 17:14
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Cavelcade posted:The better response is that she also keeps a gf junctioned (in this case, Griever is not drawn from Squall’s mind but from Rinoa/Ultimecia having him) which drains her memories, so when she sees Squall again, the one the theory states she’s essentially doing it for, she doesn’t recognize him. The "In Squall's mind..." scan text is a bit vestigial, but apparently Griever's nature is more explicit in Ultimecia's Japanese dialogue: quote:Your thoughts, I shall summon the most powerful of things [from them]. The more strongly you feel these thoughts, [the greater] shall be that which torments you. Fufu. Griever coming from Squall's mind is Ultimecia using SeeD's weapon (the GF) in its conceptual ultimate form as a demonstration of power, so to say that it's a GF Ultimecia/Rinoa keeps junctioned goes beyond interpretation to out-and-out contradiction of the text.
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Nov 1, 2017 18:19
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Cool Ghost posted:Griever coming from Squall's mind is Ultimecia using SeeD's weapon (the GF) in its conceptual ultimate form as a demonstration of power Why does Squall think his ring is powerful? I don't get it.
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Nov 2, 2017 14:10
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| # ? May 3, 2024 09:22 |
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Lots of teenagers write fanfiction or whatever. He probably doodled a super loving coolass lion while sitting in the back of class so no one else could see it, and imagined that it was the best GF that could totally kick Seifer's rear end because he gave him a wedgie once in the locker room and "my awesome lion animal is going to show you what for, you meanie Seifer!!!"
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Nov 2, 2017 14:21
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