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Final Fantasy leaves Nintendo and goes 3D

Final Fantasy VIII:  Love Blooms

It cannot be overemphasized what a watershed moment Final Fantasy VII was for both Square and the PlayStation brand. It introduced an entirely new audience to the series and the role playing genre as a whole, and helped Sony become the dominant force in the console market. All eyes were on Square and the Final Fantasy team, and like the games that had come before, what was to come next would be quite different than the previous release.

Development for Final Fantasy VIII began in 1997 during the English localization of Final Fantasy VII. This time around, Sakaguchi took a big step back from the project. He was still billed as executive producer on the game, but his main attention was focused on the CG motion picture, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Yoshinori Kitase once again sat in the director’s chair, with Tetsuya Nomura handling character designs, battle visuals, and the backstories for the main characters. While the overview of the story was crafted by Kitase, the actual scenario for the game was written by Kazushige Nojima. Nojima had worked on Final Fantasy VII prior to this, and he had a concept for the characters to all be the same age. Nomura had an idea of a game that took place in a school, which fit in well with Nojima’s thinking. Nobuo Uematsu once again provided the music, but in a first for the Final Fantasy series, the eighth game featured a vocal track. Titled “Eyes on Me”, this love ballad was performed by Chinese pop singer Faye Wong. The song was later released as a single in Japan, selling over 400,000 copies.

The core of Final Fantasy VIII was that of a love story, given further evidence by the image of main protagonists Squall Leonhart and Rinoa Heartilly embracing for the game’s logo. While other games in the series had dealt with love stories, it had never been the core focus of the story. The tale of an academy of warriors embroiled in a struggle against an evil sorceress was the backdrop for the budding and angst-ridden relationship of Squall and Rinoa. As a love story, the game took quite a few cues from popular romance manga, with lots of quiet moments between the sullen and stoic Squall and the energetic Rinoa.

A shift in the art direction of the series was needed in order to properly coincide with the manga-style storyline. The biggest change was the abolition of the cartoony, SD overworld characters. From now on, the character models that traversed the overworld would be the same ones that appeared in the battle scenes. In an attempt to reach a wider audience, Tetsuya Nomura made the cast of Final Fantasy VIII look more realistic and less like traditional anime characters seen in most RPGs of the time. All of the polygonal models were texture-mapped, giving the game a far different look from the flat-shaded polygons of Final Fantasy VII. Square once again impressed critics and fans alike with their lavishly rendered CG cutscenes, which were also the first use of motion capture for the studio.

While the core ATB mechanics remained in place, the magic and ability systems saw a massive overhaul. Instead of characters depleting magic points when casting spells, each piece of magic needed to be “drawn” out of enemies and specific wells called “Draw Points”. While this added a layer of tactics to the actual battle system (deciding whether to use one of your last Flare spells on a boss, for example), it was outside of battle that the magic system was most useful—and most divisive—amongst players.

The Junction System allowed for magic spells to be “junctioned” to a specific stat or attribute on a character. In this way, players could augment a character’s strength by placing a strong spell into that stat, or bump up hit points, defense, and more. The tricky part came from using spells that were junctioned; cast one of those spells and the stat it was connected to would decrease as well. While this allowed for tons of customization, it also made using magic a dicey proposition.

In addition to the complex magic system, the popular summons returned, now called Guardian Forces. These GFs could also be strengthened by junctioning, and each character could only summon one of these mighty beasts at a time. Doing so would prompt a button-pressing mini game of sorts, where players could boost the strength of a GF attack by pressing the button repeatedly when instructed to.

While Final Fantasy VII had introduced new players to a variety of mini games, Final Fantasy VIII only had one, but it was far more complex. Triple Triad was a fully realized card battling game, similar to collectible card games that were all the rage at the time. While this mode was completely optional, playing this game was the key to unlocking rare items for weapon augmentation, as well as finding Squall’s ultimate weapon. Like the white-hot Pokemon, the need to “catch ‘em all” was a big draw for obsessive compulsive gamers everywhere. Triple Triad got an actual physical card release in Japan, but the game never made its way overseas.

Final Fantasy VIII was released in Japan in February of 1999 and sold over 2.5 million copies in its first few days on store shelves. The game was published in the United States by Electronic Arts through a unique deal with Square, who would publish the sports game company’s titles in Japan. EA bet big on Final Fantasy VIII, releasing it on September 9, 1999, the same day as the Sega Dreamcast console. EA had made it their mission to bury the Sega system, and the release of one of the biggest games of the year on the console’s launch day was a powerful volley. Even people who were in line for the new machine also left their game retailers with a copy of FF VIII in their bags.

In the years since its release, Final Fantasy VIII has become a very divisive title in the series. The massive changes to the gameplay left some players cold, while others hail it as one of the best battle systems in the history of the franchise. Similarly, the love story was met with some confusion from some gamers not used to the manga romance style. Still others took the story and ran with it in the form of fan fiction that is best approached with caution.

But if Final Fantasy VIII was a divisive game after the fact, the next title would be a highly contentious release from day one.