(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); This quote is taken from the topic You must login or register to view this content. that I posted a few days ago. I wanted to make this it's own thread though so people reading/commenting there don't accidentally read spoilers they don't want to.

THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS TO FINAL FANTASY 8, DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM



I thought I'd have to write out the basics of the theory myself but there's actually a really good website that explains the basic theory over here.

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The website is a really good read and I suggest anyone who enjoys Final Fantasy VIII and is interested in a more in depth interpretation of the game check it out. I'll summarise it here and I warn now, there will be spoilers but as we're going into the games ending in depth it's not worth using the spoiler tags.

SUMMARY:
If you consider that Squall has died during the game the story elements in Final Fantasy 8 make more sense. I'll now explain.

If we assume the first disc of the game is actual events it makes sense, you play as Squall a person at a military college studying to be a SeeD special forces soldier due to your ability to make a mental link with the Guardian Forces, rare spirit creatures that can aid you in battle. You use the signeture weapon of SeeD special forces, the Gunblade.

At the end of disc one, Squall and Friends face Edea on a parade float in Deling City. After the fight, when Edea seems defeated, she conjures an enormous ice shard and propels it through Squall’s chest. Squall stumbles back and falls off the platform. He sees Rinoa above, reaching to him as he falls. Squall closes his eyes and dies. The entire remaining game time, from the beginning of disc two to the second half of the ending movie, is a fevered dream from a dying man which makes less and less sense, becoming more and more outlandish as the brain slowly dies eventually becoming a nonsense driven delusion.

Support for this.

1. In the latter half of disc one, two conversations take place concerning Seifer’s fate and if he will be executed for attacking the president of Galbadia. During these sections of dialogue, Squall muses to himself on the existential qualities of death. "“Will they talk about me this way if I die too? Squall was this and that. Using the past tense, saying whatever they want? So this is what death is all about…”" In this manner Squall considers his own death and what little difference it will make for the world. This serves as foreboding, an ominous suggestion to the viewer that ill times are ahead.

2. At the beginning of disc 2 there is no wound or even a scar on Squalls chest. Now in some JRPGs this would be fine, but this game has already made it clear that people can die and woulds are not easily healed with the flashback (despite the cure magic, I never said it was perfect).

3. As some of you may have noticed, the plot takes a few unanticipated turns after the end of disc one. At first the transition is rather subtle. When plot twists are introduced, they are fully explained and are not in conflict with existing plot information. In fact, the more you learn about this world, the more everything seems to make perfect sense. Everything fits together in an elaborate but perfectly designed puzzle. Everything connects and everything is related. And yet it still seems absolutely ridiculous.

The story takes on a dream-like quality that centers itself on Squall and everything Squall has ever wanted. The dream goes on to explain everything Squall wanted to know, but it also treads through the realm of egoist fantasy. It spins off into a world of impossible where monsters come from the moon and Squall, merely a newly recruited cadet, goes on to save our world as we know it from an evil sorceress from the future. And he gets the girl.

eg.

a) Moombas - The first disc had a fairly high level of realism despite the fantasy and low sci-fi topics present. The characters were all human, and outside of “monsters” there were no unearthly creatures to be seen. Rinoa had a dog that attacks for her at times, as earthly dogs are known to do. But there weren’t any fluffy feline creatures running around yelling “Laguna! Laguna!”. Sure the game plays this straight, but it would, when you're in a dream, the dream always seems real.

b) The Master of Garden is a giant yellow sloth alien creature? As the writer of 'Squalls Dead' put it, I dunno about you guys, but this is typical dream material in my opinion. Of course, NORG and his kind are fully explained in the game if you take the time to seek the information they present, but there are no hints presented in the story to suggest this sort of twist was coming and he's never even hinted to in the first disc. It comes out of no-where and doesn't fit the established setting, just like a dream.

c) The Garden can FLY! At no point, ever, in any way, was the Garden in disc 1 made out to be anything more than a military academy. It makes no sense for it to fly, the physics are never explained, and it's even less likely that a rookie cadet (ie. Squall) would be given captain level decisions on what is apparently a flying battleship at this point. But it's played straight again and comes across as plausable until you analyse it, as it would in a dream.

d) Esthar. The technological city of wonders. This, if you think about it makes again no sense because the city simply couldn't survive on it's own. Every city so far has been at an equivalent tech level but Esthar is a bustling city with a massive cloak yet doesn't trade with the outside world, has no apparent farming infrastructure and seems completely disconnected. Almost as though the person dreaming didn't know what that foreign country was like and as such their mind just made up his idea of a believable idealised world, as is common in dreams.

4. The romance is entirely unrealistic but subtley so which makes it incredible to analyse. It's a perfect fantasy, just as you'd expect from the dream of a dying brain. The romantic plotline, which many fans consider to the most successful element of the game, is completely fabricated for Squall’s personal satisfaction. Not only does Rinoa show little appreciation for Squall through disc one, but there are many allusions to her on-going relationship with Seifer. Their relationship appears to have been on a sort of hiatus while Seifer was studying at the Balamb Garden, but their affection and romantic connection is still in place when this story occurs.

In the ballroom scene, Rinoa flirts with Squall casually, but appears to take no actual interest in him as an individual. She tells him honestly, as she drags him out to dance, that she’s waiting for someone else. After a quick dance and a swoon from the female fans, Rinoa wordlessly brushes him off and leaves to find Seifer. Her abruptness suggests that her real interest lies elsewhere. There is more, but, this is getting long, check out the site for the details.

5. The Ending. It's just plain weird.

At the very end of the game, just as you’re beating the final boss, Ultimecia, she starts to say some strange things, statements that appear very out-of-context for a final battle.



With every attack, you bring down Ultimecia’s hit points, and you bring Squall’s dream to a close. Squall, oblivious, fights on, and only this figment of his imagination seems aware of what is happening. The fight ends and there is one of the most outlandish trippiest scenes I've ever seen played out in a video game which honestly looks exactly how I'd imagine the internal views of a dying brain to be. It's disjointed and makes little sense, and again the website explains this in much more depth.

At this point Squall is dead. What has taken three game discs and from Squalls perspective, months of real time in reality only took a few seconds and was all in his fevered mind which cannot hold on any more.

The final FMV sequence starts up and the strangeness clears and everyone is OK. The world is perfect, the sorceress failed... because we wished really hard... or maybe this isn't the case. We see a white feather fall to the ground, and last ten minutes of the FFVIII ending movie are, in the simplest terms, of “heaven”, or some equivalent thereof, alternatively, perhaps it's squall finally comming to peace with his death, his brain no longer panicing and it quietly and peacefully coming to it's end.

If this was really how the game was meant to be interpreted, why did they make the “dream” so subtle? I can think of fifty ways to make it more apparent to the audience that the events taking place after disc one are not real. So, if the creators meant for Squall to die, they also meant for his death to be obscured and subtle. We view the dream as if we are the dreamers, and even though sometimes events take place that could never, ever happen in the “real” world, we do not become aware that it is a dream. This is what makes this such a brilliant storyline and it's the reason I love it.

Now, hopefully this has opened some eyes as to how I and many others interpret the storyline of FF8. I tried to summarise the website as best as I could (although much of what is written here is lifted from the website, I'm not claiming it as my own though, in case there's any confusion). I love this game, and feel it deserves deep analysis and discussion, I hope you all can join me in that.