Last year, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and finally dipped into the Final Fantasy series. What started as a simple curiosity ended up giving me two of my favourite games ever made: Final Fantasy 7 and 10.
These two titles are such shining examples of JRPGs and are undoubtedly the best in their genre. Since they’re both ageless masterpieces, it seemed like a no-brainer to buy the games released in between them. It’s the same team, in the same time period, working on familiar hardware - what could possibly go wrong?
Well… Guys, I wanted to like Final Fantasy 8. I really, really did. I spent 16 quid on it, I have to like it. But damn, those opening few hours just suck.
Friends, rivals, antagonists, GFs, junctioning, drawing - all of these key aspects of the game are crammed into the first two hours, and none are introduced well. There are so many characters, but which ones am I meant to care about? I’ve barely started playing, but they keep popping in and out of the story. What’s the story even going to be about? What are the themes? What’s the driving force?
Obviously (or maybe “hopefully”), if I keep playing I’ll have the answer to my questions. I get junctioning now, and I’m getting there with the GFs, but it’s an absolute failure of an opening if it doesn’t get the basic facts to you from the get-go, or at the very least give you a reason to care. I play plenty of RPGs that are more complex than Final Fantasy 8 - both in combat and narrative - but they’re introduced and explained in ways that are easier to digest.
Take Final Fantasy 7, for example. That is how you do a game opening - by communicating so much with so little, and doing it so subtly that the player doesn’t even realise that they’re being taught.
Immediately you jump off a train and are thrown right into the action. As soon as Cloud looks up at the reactor, you know two things: you're playing as the little guys, and this game's gonna be about taking down the powerful. It doesn't give away the story - you learn nothing of Sephiroth or the full extent of Shinra’s villainy for some time - but that one shot tells you why you should care enough to keep playing.
With Final Fantasy 8, I have no idea why I should keep playing. I will though. My fellow writer says it's really good (I'm sorry Meg). But right now, I'm so lost, and I’m craving that initial Shinra reactor moment - just something that tells me why I’ve gotta help Squall get through this.
Instead, so far, I’ve pissed away some time in a high school, sat through a million lines of tutorial text, and had a brief flirt with action. Is the story about some dystopia where kids are trained in an army high school and rented out for missions? Is this commentary on the military-industrial complex? And everyone's high school anime attitude is juxtaposing the horrors of such an existence? That would be cool as hell. I hope that is what the story’s about.
Games can recover from an awful opening, but it doesn’t excuse them. Once I’ve brute-forced my way through the tutorials and weird story pacing, I’m almost certain I’ll love the game as so many do. It just feels like Square got a little too cocky with this one, and it highlights how important good communication is in games, and especially in openings.