Final Fantasy VIII turns 15 today: a time for sweet nostalgia

Cards on the table: I love Final Fantasy VIII (FFVIII). I love Squall, I love Rinoa, hell, I even don’t hate Irvine. I love the overly-dramatic love story, I love the ridiculous weaponry and I love the fact the mercenary badasses are called SeeDs (pronounced seeds) and are trained in a Garden. It’s over-the-top-awesome and today is its fifteenth birthday.

In Scotland, birthdays for a loved ones usually involve heavy drinking and swapping stories. I’m all out of beer but I have a thing or two to say about the game I remember so fondly.

You never forget your first

FFVIII was the first game my father ever bought for me; there had been other games from other sources and I had gotten hand-me-downs from him in the past, but this was the first time I had asked for a game just for me. I saw it in a second hand store on George Street in Aberdeen and actually I chose it by mistake because I believed it to be a copy of Final Fantasy VII (FFVII). I had seen a friend play FFVII several months before and been intrigued by its weirdly static battles and odd visuals, so when I thought I saw it, I had to have it. However my roman numerals weren’t so great back then and I ended up with a copy of FFVIII. I didn’t regret it.

FFVIII was my first JRPG and it blew my mind in ways I cannot express. It was more than a door being opened, it was like a wall had been knocked down and for the first time I was glimpsing unending possibilities. I had always been a reader and consumed books way above my age level so even at that age I realised I was experiencing more than a game, I was experiencing a story, and a beautiful one at that. After years of playing action games like Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot and Fighting Force I suddenly knew that there was something else, something bigger that I had been missing all this time.

I never knew that games could do what FFVIII did: tell a story of depth and imagination equal to book or film. I was intrigued by the complex mix of friendship, enmity and competition that fuelled Squall and Seifer’s relationship. I was shocked at how they dissected the Zell’s overconfidence and Quistis’ lack of leadership. I was compelled by the love story that changed the protagonist so completely. Say what you will about the overly-dramatic nature of FFVIII, but my god it’s a good story and it was the first time that I had seen a game achieve anything like this level of complexity.

It made me hungry for more.

Why did FFVIII have such an effect on me?

Simple: because like many boys in their late pre-teens, I was Squall; I was a moody, enraged little asshole. I snapped at friends, parents and teachers, I lusted after girls whom I simultaneously found annoying. If I liked you, I was dick to you, if I didn’t like you I ignored you until you left. Sound familiar? Squall’s infamous “whatever” was something that I could understand, as was his lack of understanding, angst, and general surliness. It all clicked for me and made me feel like I wasn’t the only one going through this awful stage in life.