(contains minor implied spoilers)
Final Fantasy VIII is a game trying to be about love that is really about war, history repeating itself, and the glorification of shallow romance–Final Fantasy VIII is bland at best (with a dash of socially-destructive narcissism), and intellectually hopeless. Sorry Square! Close but not quite.
My conclusions as to the game’s meaning:
- German scientists are smart and know everything, even things that haven’t happened yet–or, plot devices are great when you’ve painted yourself into a corner and there’s no time to write yourself out, and if a scientist with a German accent says it, players will believe it.
- A man will eventually be some lucky woman’s knight in shining armor, a woman will eventually become an evil sorceress/ex-wife (hmm, male chauvenism here?), and both their lives will consist of dwelling on the past and self-pity since shallow romance is assumed to be the only good thing in life (a pathetic default m.o. for existential materialists the world over).
- War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. (of course, you have to read into the game fairly excessively to even see a theme that deep…)
- If you add enough incongruous facts to a game’s plot, people will believe it makes sense and is brilliant, even if the game plays like a stark and overly-drawn-out silent movie and has relatively few locales or characters.