the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

I always preferred the "squall is dead" theory, where the majority of FFVIII is just a flash dream Squal has while he's dieing after being impaled by the giant icicle.

Cloud can jump with a sword heavier than he is, he's been skewered by Sephiroth and then he pulled himself further down the Masamune just to try to strangle the jerk. Tifa, by the laws of physics, should not be able to stand up. You can defeat GoGo by not doing anything. One of your strongest characters in FFX was dead the whole time.

If we're going to look at Final Fantasy realistically, FFXI and FFXII are about as close to that as we're ever going to get. When you have an economy, politics and things of that nature, a game's story starts to skew to realism. Other FF games have never done that.

So can Squall recover from getting a big icicle jammed into him?

I'd say yes. I'm not seeing how discs 2 through 4 could even be interpreted as a near-death experience, Yoshinori Kitase is not clever enough to pull that off. And Squall wouldn't have dreamt up something as stupid as Irvine informing everyone "We were all orphans together!" or the party concluding "The GFs made us forget all this!"

If I'm having my NDE, last thing that's going to be in it is Irvine, Selphie and Zell. I'd run off with Quistis, but that's just me.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

And Squall wouldn't have dreamt up something as stupid as Irvine informing everyone "We were all orphans together!" or the party concluding "The GFs made us forget all this!"

If I'm having my NDE, last thing that's going to be in it is Irvine, Selphie and Zell. I'd run off with Quistis, but that's just me.

That's ignoring the possibility that you (general), or at the very least Squall (specific), lack that amount of lucidity over near-death experiences.

[Kailea]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

If you have not beat FFVIII don't look, or if you don't care, go right ahead ;p

WARNING

When I first beat FFVIII it was back during its release, so I honestly don't remember much of it, and I know I did not get the ending. I do remember the ending not making sense and I was left with a "huh?" feeling. I now know why, the "Squall's dead" theory makes the ending not so random for me.


Also unless pointed out, these two images fly by so fast, I never noticed them when I beat it back in the day..........


really? WTF is this?....


the hell is this........ Rinoa, dead in a space suit.... interesting


and lest not forget that this keeps happening when they show here in the ending......





None of the ending FMV made sense to me, until after I read the Squall's Dead theory.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

FFVIII's story is one big time loop, a loop that each time has variations, but one in which the SeeD find their way to her and Ultimecia always dies. And each time, that loop is broken for everyone except Ultimecia. And when there are an infinity of timelines, what's to say Squall didn't die in one and live through another? What's to say there wasn't a timeline where Rinoa became Ultimecia, but there were countless ones where she didn't.

Ultimecia is the sorceress that passed her powers on to Edea directly before dying when the loop was broken, she was thrust back to the time where Edea was running her orphanage. And this is something she's powerless to prevent, apparently.

Since she can only go so far back on her own, she could go back in time to possess Adel, but return to Edea when defeated. Edea knew she was a sorceress because of Ultimecia, that's why Edea and Cid created SeeD to defeat her while she still had control over herself.

The SeeD are the Legion of Superheroes and Ultimecia is the Time Trapper, if you follow comics at all. Time Trapper has had like four different identities, the most recent being Superboy Prime, but he's also once been a Legion member, too. He's gone through the cycle of defeat so many times that he can only exist at the end of time, where he has access to an infinity of different timelines and universes.

Time Trapper hates Superman, but cannot reach far back enough through time to kill him, so he instead focuses on the heroes Superman inspired a millennium later or finding the people with the abilities to travel through time to get to him.

So even if there's a timeline where she cuts Squall and company to ribbons, another set of SeeD from another timeline show up to kick her ass anyway. Its because of Time Compression. When she merges all timelines into one, there's just going to be a new set of SeeD following the previous one. SeeD from infinte timelines because she created them.

She said "Kurse all SeeD" for a reason, they never leave her alone for too long.

So the ending FMV might have hinted at Squall as dead because in one timeline, he did die. Someone else took the lead and went on to defeat Ultimecia and everything reset for Ultimecia. One timeline Rinoa dies in space. In another timeline, Rinoa becomes Ultimecia for certain, but not the one we play through. And maybe in one timeline Seifer, Rajin and Fujin defeat Ultimecia and Squall was her "knight."

I mean, you heard Squall make that pledge to Rinoa, to be her knight.

That's what I take the FMV to mean. I think the "dream" Squall has is really just his timeline restoring itself, he's seeing echoes of other things that did happen in other timelines because of the loop they freed themselves from. He's seeing the other lives he could have had.

[Feba]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

FFVIII's story is one big time loop, a loop that each time has variations, but one in which the SeeD find their way to her and Ultimecia always dies. And each time, that loop is broken for everyone except Ultimecia. And when there are an infinity of timelines, what's to say Squall didn't die in one and live through another?

Or: There is one time line. Squall gets hit through chest with ice falls down dies. Ultimecia never actually existed.

Squall dying does make more sense.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

Or: There is one time line. Squall gets hit through chest with ice falls down dies. Ultimecia never actually existed.

Squall dying does make more sense.

One timeline means Ultimecia won.

She didn't. She lives in a cycle of failure, not victory.

Biggest hole in the "Squall is dead" theory is Irvine Kinneas

He was a coolheaded sniper until Edea was in his sights, when he looked through the scope he realized it was the Edea that raised him in the orphanage. Realizing he was now supposed to be killing the woman that raised him shook him to his core. Also, why would Squall have flashbacks about Edea inheriting her powers from Ultimecia? As of Disc 2, anything that doesn't involve Squall directly shouldn't be seen if its all just his NDE fantasy.

The claim that everything goes the way Squall wants it to doesn't hold up, either. If that were true, everyone in the party would have stopped sounding like a nagging parent at the start of Disc 2 and Selphie and Zell would be intelligent people. Squall felt nothing for Rinoa until Disc 3, when he almost lost her. If he really had feelings of attraction to her and was nearly dead, she would have loved him from DIsc 2 onward.

[Feba]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

One timeline means Ultimecia never existed.

Fixed. I really don't see where you're assuming Ultimecia has to be real from. I don't recall any appearance of hers on Disk 1.

He was a coolheaded sniper until Edea was in his sights, when he looked through the scope he realized it was the Edea that raised him in the orphanage.

I don't remember this scene specifically, but even if he actually said he paused because she raised him in an orphanage, there are a number of other explanations than that than "oh we all grew up together and forgot".

Also, why would Squall have flashbacks about Edea inheriting her powers from Ultimecia? As of Disc 2, anything that doesn't involve Squall directly shouldn't be seen if its all just his NDE fantasy.

Last night I had a dream where I was in an English classroom attended by 15 Konatas. From Lucky Star. It's the subconscious, it doesn't have to make sense. This concept also makes more sense if you're familiar with the concept of Lucid Dreaming, which Squall may well have been doing. He may have realized it was a dream, and sustained it anyway. That can give you a ton of control, but also not be completely manageable.

If that were true, everyone in the party would have stopped sounding like a nagging parent at the start of Disc 2 and Selphie and Zell would be intelligent people. Squall felt nothing for Rinoa until Disc 3, when he almost lost her. If he really had feelings of attraction to her and was nearly dead, she would have loved him from DIsc 2 onward.

What we want isn't always the same. Some people don't want love, they want romance. Some people don't want intelligent friends, they want interesting ones. Or it could be that he honestly didn't want it until that point. It doesn't really matter.

[Ziero]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

Cloud can jump with a sword heavier than he is, he's been skewered by Sephiroth and then he pulled himself further down the Masamune just to try to strangle the jerk. Tifa, by the laws of physics, should not be able to stand up. You can defeat GoGo by not doing anything. One of your strongest characters in FFX was dead the whole time.

If we're going to look at Final Fantasy realistically, FFXI and FFXII are about as close to that as we're ever going to get. When you have an economy, politics and things of that nature, a game's story starts to skew to realism. Other FF games have never done that.

So can Squall recover from getting a big icicle jammed into him?

I'd say yes. I'm not seeing how discs 2 through 4 could even be interpreted as a near-death experience, Yoshinori Kitase is not clever enough to pull that off. And Squall wouldn't have dreamt up something as stupid as Irvine informing everyone "We were all orphans together!" or the party concluding "The GFs made us forget all this!"

If I'm having my NDE, last thing that's going to be in it is Irvine, Selphie and Zell. I'd run off with Quistis, but that's just me.

Who talked about reality? I'm talking about how the story of FFVIII likes to pull things out of no where and have them be universally accepted by everyone as completely normal, despite not existing moments ago.

The state Cloud was in while he was impaled was near psychotic, and this was after he was Mako enhanced as well so he in effect was a crazy, adrenaline fueled super human at that point, pulling himself down the length of the Masamune to attack Sephiroth is actually quite feasible. I'm not sure why Tifa wouldn't be able to stand though? Because she has big boobs? She's also physically fit far moreso then most people and boobs don't weigh all that much. Jugs that size may cause her long term back problems, but they really won't keep her down. With Gogo, it's not really that you're defeating him by not doing anything, you're showing him you're not a threat. Not attacking him prompts him to not attack you and instead join your group. And the fact that Auron was strong and dead aren't mutually exclusive, but rather dependent on each other. Despite being dead, his will was so strong he was able to maintain his physical form without fault, remembering his years spent in battle resulting in him being as strong as he was.

However, having a MASSIVE shard of Ice shoved through the entire torso of the main character at one point AND NEVER SPEAKING OF IT AGAIN is a bit bizarre. All the monsters on the entire planet coming down in a massive bloody raindrop from the moon...completely out of no where...is a bit bizarre. A group of people suddenly remembering that they all knew each other when they were kids but conveniently all 'forgot' with absolutely no foreshadowing to the entire concept...it's pretty damn bizarre. The storyline in and of itself really doesn't flow well together...but it does make a lot of sense if you think of it as some weird, twisted dream of a dieing boy.

He was a coolheaded sniper until Edea was in his sights, when he looked through the scope he realized it was the Edea that raised him in the orphanage.

Wasn't that Irvine's first real mission where he had to kill someone?

The claim that everything goes the way Squall wants it to doesn't hold up, either. If that were true, everyone in the party would have stopped sounding like a nagging parent at the start of Disc 2 and Selphie and Zell would be intelligent people. Squall felt nothing for Rinoa until Disc 3, when he almost lost her. If he really had feelings of attraction to her and was nearly dead, she would have loved him from DIsc 2 onward.

No one said everything went Squall's way, that's not how dreams work anyway. We very rarely have control of our dreams and very rarely do we have everything go right for us. Things never make sense in hindsight but at the time everyone is always accepting of whatever circumstances occur.

In his subconscious, he had feelings for Rinoa and was jealous at Seifer for having her, despite him actually being a comrade and kind of a friend. These feelings caused his brain twisted itself into seeing Seifer as the unrepentant badguy of this dreamworld he created and turned him into Rinoa's 'knight' in his place. There's a whole big website out there that explains everything much better then I could. I personally never liked the game's story because so many things just felt so out of place. But if it was really just the dreams of our dieing protagonist, those inconsistencies would actually be understandable and the entire story in and of itself would be boosted up a few dozen notches in my eyes for being something different and unique in the most twisted way possible.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

Wasn't that Irvine's first real mission where he had to kill someone?

I don't think it being the first time had much to do with it, I think who the target was had a lot to do with his actions.

Also, dreams are wildly erratic things and don't really even have continuity.

I can have a dream about being a lifeguard at a lake in the middle of a major metropolitan city on a hot summer day and then I see a polar bear chasing down my sister. Then suddenly I have a Pokeball to capture the bear and I'm in the middle of a forest with a legion of knights riding horses and they're all armed with nerf bats. We march to combat an army of Keebler Elves.

I need scissors!! 61!!

Following that path of dreaming:

Shortly after Squall dies, we discover we're all Edea's orphans. Selphie should not only like trains, but have the power to transform into one. Angelo starts talking and smokes a pipe. Rajin and Fujin are replaced by Jay and Silent Bob and the ultimate villain of the story is really a giant turnip wanting ultimate control over all time just because he really wanted to be Mila Kunis.

[Feba]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

Also, dreams are wildly erratic things and don't really even have continuity.

Not always. I've had some damn boring dreams right alongside the weirdest ones.

[Ziero]

Re: the videogame plot twist almost no one discovered!!!!

I don't think it being the first time had much to do with it, I think who the target was had a lot to do with his actions.

Also, dreams are wildly erratic things and don't really even have continuity.

Which means that it's still a possibility that being his first time killing someone, he may have been a bit nervous.

Also, the storyline of VIII was pretty damn wonky, jumping all over the place and pulling out plenty of "wtf" moments. Not to mention the fact that this flash dream of a dieing boy would be much different from a normal r.e.m. dream state. Of course, even in normal dreams, continuity can exist as Feba pointed out.

Basically, it seems that the story can be explained either one of two ways. It's either a bizarre convoluted tale of multiple universes and dimensional times all looping through themselves where everything happens in a different manner while an incredible magical force tries to pull all these time lines together, causing time itself to rupture and waver until they eventually collapse into a singular point in time where nothing exists but the sorceress who manipulated all of the worlds and planes of existence around her to compress into an empty void of nothingness.

Or

The bitch be dead.

I'll admit, either one can be entirely possible. But I personally prefer the second version for two reasons. 1) It would make for a much more dramatic, much more surreal experience. Something that isn't just good guy does the impossible to save the world and get the girl. But rather instead of the usual story book happy ending, the vast majority of the game is the subconscious fantasy of a dieing boy. It's a dark, deep twist on the usual way Final Fantasy games play out and far more interesting of a tale then anything involving time/interdimensional traveling and holes in the fabric of the universe itself. And 2) I never liked Squall so the thought of him dieing amuses me.

In the end, unless the creator comes out and explains his point of view of the story, it's really up for debate.