final fantasy viii (fourth* playthrough): in which 'gunblade' becomes an unusual euphemism
Once again, the number of this playthrough is asterisked because technically this was only my third full playthrough, but over the summer I did a playthrough during which I got to right before the end of disc three, and that playthrough was complete enough that I consider it to count for a playthrough. Since I never really got a chance to talk about that playthrough here, I think I should mention that I was aiming for that to be as complete of a playthrough as possible, which meant that I was doing all the ridiculous sidequests, most of which I will do NEVER AGAIN. (Queen of Cards, I'm looking at you. And the Chocobo Forests, dear God.) I would have loved to get all the way through on that playthrough because my characters' junctions were ridiculous and I got the Lionheart for Squall on disc one so most of the game was a joke, but the sidequests were driving me crazy, plus because I was playing it on my PSX emulator because I didn't have console access over the summer, I lost the save files when my hard drive broke.
This playthrough, though, was a total on-a-whim playthrough (which, incidentally, was how my playthrough over the summer started too). I had been playing FFX-2 to follow up my FFX playthrough, but after a few too many cheap deaths and a little too much frustration I literally just went "SCREW THIS, I'M PLAYING FINAL FANTASY VIII" and put in FFVIII. It took me a little less than two weeks to complete, although I didn't play any over this past weekend because my roommate wasn't around and of course I wasn't going to play without her to add to the commentary and general hilarity of things. I planned on it being a fairly quick playthrough, anyway. I could have spent more time playing cards in the beginning to get awesome junctions from the start, but then I realized that Triple Triad is rather difficult when you don't have great cards (and can't use save states), so I did a normal, card game-less playthrough.
So because FFVIII tends to be a rather divisive game as to whether people like it or not, I must state that I belong to the camp that loves it despite its flaws. Sure, the junctioning system can be a little difficult/tedious (I really had no idea of how to properly use it until my second playthrough), and the leveling is rather counter-intuitive in that the game is actually easier the lower of a level you are (another thing I didn't understand on my first playthrough, which led me to wondering why the final bosses were so difficult even though I was level 100). And the story and characters aren't exactly perfect either; some think that Squall and Rinoa's love story was rather heavy-handed and took precedence over the development of the other characters, or that the time-travel at the end was ridiculous and confusing. But even though I'll admit that the game's not perfect, I still love it dearly. It has a solid place on my ever-shifting ranking of my four favorite Final Fantasies (which consists of VI at #1 and VII, VIII, and X constantly switching in and out of the other rankings).
FFVIII has one thing in particular that I love, though, and that is the Laguna subplot. Back in the day when I was just getting into Final Fantasy but hadn't yet played any of the games (this was around two and a half to three years ago), I had a ridiculously bad internet connection that didn't allow for the watching of things on Youtube, so I instead got my knowledge of the Final Fantasy games from reading the scripts. I remember first reading the FFVIII script just about three years ago, but the only things I really remember about that first reading was the orphanage revelation and going "WTF IS THIS" when they went to space. My second readthrough of the script, though, happened in the summer of 2008, and the one thing that really caught my interest at that point was Laguna's subplot and the whole relationship between Laguna, Raine, and Ellone. I remember in August 2008 downloading a (very low quality because of my crappy internet connection) video of the ending sequence of the game, and I used to watch it over and over again just to see the scene when Laguna remembers the time that he proposed to Raine. When I finally played the game for the first time (almost two years ago now), I loved Laguna even more and his third flashback scene (the one in Winhill at the beginning of disc two) became one of my favorite scenes in the game (I always make a separate save file at the end of disc one so I can play that part of the game whenever I want). Needless to say, Laguna is one of my three favorite Final Fantasy characters ever, and Laguna/Raine are my Final Fantasy OTP.
Another character from the game that I really love, despite what some people may say, is Squall. Sure, he can be an emotionless, angsty jerk most of the time and can be mocked oh-so-easily (during my first playthrough of the game, my brother dubbed him "Emo McFacepalm" when he was watching me play and making snarky commentary--I seriously think snarky commentary must run in the family or something). But maybe because I can be a rather shy, quiet person myself, I can kind of relate to him at times. His whole mantra about never being able to rely on other people is totally the kind of thing that you can find in my journal from when I was 14 and going through what I now refer to as my "angsty emo phase"--which thankfully I had moved out of by the time I started high school. Anyway. I totally love Squall, as infuriating as he can be sometimes. Also I think he's the most attractive of the teenage/young adult prettyboy Final Fantasy males, so yeah.
Let's see, what else can I say about the game. Oh, yeah. One of the best things about this playthrough, in addition to the regular commentary that my roommate and I provide, was that starting at around the first Laguna flashback I started reading all of the dialogue to make up for the lack of voice acting, and soon I had developed (very bad) separate voices for some of the characters, the most distinctive of which were a very low, monotone voice for Squall and a high nasally voice for Selphie, along with a southern accent for Irvine that came out at the most random times (most notably during his long dialogue on disc two during the orphanage revelation, where I slipped into it and then couldn't lose it for a good five minutes afterward). I think my favorite voice that I did, though, was my tiny!Ellone voice. And my Shumi voice, which was generally deep,drawn-out, and ridiculous. I wish I could have recorded some of my one-woman voice acting work, because it was kind of terribly hilarious.
I also kept a record of an extremely long list of funny moments from the commentary, so here are the best of them (because I don't want to post all of them because the whole list is almost three pages long). A note on renames: Squall became Leon (in reference to his Kingdom Hearts name), and Rinoa became Lenore (because we were going to name her Lenne but then realized that Leon and Lenne would get far too confusing, so I decided on Lenore because apparently she was meant to be named that in the first place). Angelo also became Cupcake and Griever became MUFASA!, and the GFs all got various ridiculous names which I'm not going to list here because there are far too many of them, but here are the ones who are mentioned in the commentary: Shiva = Lady Gaga, Ifrit = Axel, Pandemona = Blowjob.
Favorite character (story): LAGUNA TIMES A MILLION. Seriously, there's a reason why I flailed around in glee for about two hours when he was announced to be in Dissidia Duodecim. And I like Squall too, of course, and Ellone and Raine. Basically that whole family is my favorite.
Favorite character (gameplay): Squall, because his gunblade and limit breaks never fail to destroy everything they come across.
Favorite location: WINHILL. I always make a point of going back there on disc two/three and doing the vase quest just so I can see Raine's ghost. Esthar is cool too, when I'm not getting hopelessly lost.
Favorite method of totally annihilating enemies: RENZOKUKEN DESTROYS ALL (it took down Ultimecia's third form in one turn). Quistis's Degenerator limit break is also awesome for ending random battles quickly, though what I like about this game is that once you get No Encounters there's pretty much no need to fight random battles for the rest of the game. Zell's "Armageddon Fist," aka repeated Punch Rushes and Booyas, was great when I was fighting craploads of Tonberries. And, of course, there's Selphie's "The End," but I never got that during this playthrough.
Preferred party: I actually switched up my party a lot in this game. I usually had Squall and Zell whenever possible, with the third member depending on whoever I had available or whose limit break was best applicable for the situation. My endgame party was Squall, Zell, and Selphie.
Character with the best lines: Can I say Laguna just because he's my favorite? Zell always brought a good amount of hiliarity as well. And, for lots of easily-mockable angst, there's Squall's inner monologues.
Favorite music: There's so much good music in this game, so I'm going to have a lot listed here. "Liberi Fatali" is absolutely epic (and is set to the equally epic opening video). "The Landing," "The Man With the Machine Gun" (TECHNO RAVE BATTLE MUSIC YEAHHH!), and "Maybe I'm a Lion" are all great pieces of battle music. And for other miscellaneous pieces, there's "The Oath," "Fisherman's Horizon," and "Fragments of Memories" (the orchestral version is perhaps even better). And, of course, special mention must go to "The Spy," aka the piece of music that totally sounds like it belongs in a porno.
Highest leveled character: Squall, at level 25.
Lowest leveled character: Selphie, at level 12 (I think).
And now I have a crapload of things planned for my next gaming exploits. In a couple of days, I'll be home for winter break which lasts until the end of January, so I'll have ample time to get a lot of gaming done. I'm planning on actually making a Let's Play for FFIV (and FFVI if I have the time)--but whether these Let's Plays will actually be posted anywhere is up for debate, since I'm mostly doing them for my own amusement. I'm also putting FFIX on my Christmas list, so hopefully I'll be playing that as well. I also want to do a replay of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and restart my Chrono Trigger playthrough (which I started back in February and played over such a long period of time that I'm tottally losing track of what's going on), plus I might play Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded when that comes out. And I want to do a FFVII replay too, but I'm probably going to wait until the spring to do that considering that I just completed my first playthrough in September. So much to do, so little time.
Oh! And I also have to mention the dream about Final Fantasy VIII that I had this afternoon while taking a nap. It involved the fact that there was going to be a live-action movie adaptation of the game. I was totally looking it up on IMDB at the end of dream and seeing who the actors were in it (nobody famous though... all I remember was that the guy playing Squall was named Max and the girl playing Quistis was named Colleen). It was also titled something other than Final Fantasy VIII, probably in an attempt to get non-FF fans interested in it, but I don't remember what it was called. I think the word fire was in the title somewhere. Anyway, I think the movie was high school AU, though, judging from what I can remember of the trailer of it that I saw in my dream (although since FFVIII begins with a school setting I guess that's something that isn't very hard to do). Squall was like the cool loner kid and had a motorcycle (and a mohawk at one point, wtf). I think Quistis was the really smart one and was fairly popular, but she was kind of a bitch too for some reason. Selphie was the one who spread all the gossip, and Rinoa was the popular new kid. Zell and Irvine weren't in it the trailer for some reason, and neither was Seifer. Most importantly, I think that in this weird AU movie version Squall was still raised by Laguna and Raine, because I know that you saw Laguna and Raine together not in a flashback context and I was all OMG MORE LAGUNA/RAINE GIMMEEEEE.
I'm sure that if this happened in real life, it would turn out to be a Very Bad Idea. But my dream!self thought it was the most awesome thing ever.
This playthrough, though, was a total on-a-whim playthrough (which, incidentally, was how my playthrough over the summer started too). I had been playing FFX-2 to follow up my FFX playthrough, but after a few too many cheap deaths and a little too much frustration I literally just went "SCREW THIS, I'M PLAYING FINAL FANTASY VIII" and put in FFVIII. It took me a little less than two weeks to complete, although I didn't play any over this past weekend because my roommate wasn't around and of course I wasn't going to play without her to add to the commentary and general hilarity of things. I planned on it being a fairly quick playthrough, anyway. I could have spent more time playing cards in the beginning to get awesome junctions from the start, but then I realized that Triple Triad is rather difficult when you don't have great cards (and can't use save states), so I did a normal, card game-less playthrough.
So because FFVIII tends to be a rather divisive game as to whether people like it or not, I must state that I belong to the camp that loves it despite its flaws. Sure, the junctioning system can be a little difficult/tedious (I really had no idea of how to properly use it until my second playthrough), and the leveling is rather counter-intuitive in that the game is actually easier the lower of a level you are (another thing I didn't understand on my first playthrough, which led me to wondering why the final bosses were so difficult even though I was level 100). And the story and characters aren't exactly perfect either; some think that Squall and Rinoa's love story was rather heavy-handed and took precedence over the development of the other characters, or that the time-travel at the end was ridiculous and confusing. But even though I'll admit that the game's not perfect, I still love it dearly. It has a solid place on my ever-shifting ranking of my four favorite Final Fantasies (which consists of VI at #1 and VII, VIII, and X constantly switching in and out of the other rankings).
FFVIII has one thing in particular that I love, though, and that is the Laguna subplot. Back in the day when I was just getting into Final Fantasy but hadn't yet played any of the games (this was around two and a half to three years ago), I had a ridiculously bad internet connection that didn't allow for the watching of things on Youtube, so I instead got my knowledge of the Final Fantasy games from reading the scripts. I remember first reading the FFVIII script just about three years ago, but the only things I really remember about that first reading was the orphanage revelation and going "WTF IS THIS" when they went to space. My second readthrough of the script, though, happened in the summer of 2008, and the one thing that really caught my interest at that point was Laguna's subplot and the whole relationship between Laguna, Raine, and Ellone. I remember in August 2008 downloading a (very low quality because of my crappy internet connection) video of the ending sequence of the game, and I used to watch it over and over again just to see the scene when Laguna remembers the time that he proposed to Raine. When I finally played the game for the first time (almost two years ago now), I loved Laguna even more and his third flashback scene (the one in Winhill at the beginning of disc two) became one of my favorite scenes in the game (I always make a separate save file at the end of disc one so I can play that part of the game whenever I want). Needless to say, Laguna is one of my three favorite Final Fantasy characters ever, and Laguna/Raine are my Final Fantasy OTP.
Another character from the game that I really love, despite what some people may say, is Squall. Sure, he can be an emotionless, angsty jerk most of the time and can be mocked oh-so-easily (during my first playthrough of the game, my brother dubbed him "Emo McFacepalm" when he was watching me play and making snarky commentary--I seriously think snarky commentary must run in the family or something). But maybe because I can be a rather shy, quiet person myself, I can kind of relate to him at times. His whole mantra about never being able to rely on other people is totally the kind of thing that you can find in my journal from when I was 14 and going through what I now refer to as my "angsty emo phase"--which thankfully I had moved out of by the time I started high school. Anyway. I totally love Squall, as infuriating as he can be sometimes. Also I think he's the most attractive of the teenage/young adult prettyboy Final Fantasy males, so yeah.
Let's see, what else can I say about the game. Oh, yeah. One of the best things about this playthrough, in addition to the regular commentary that my roommate and I provide, was that starting at around the first Laguna flashback I started reading all of the dialogue to make up for the lack of voice acting, and soon I had developed (very bad) separate voices for some of the characters, the most distinctive of which were a very low, monotone voice for Squall and a high nasally voice for Selphie, along with a southern accent for Irvine that came out at the most random times (most notably during his long dialogue on disc two during the orphanage revelation, where I slipped into it and then couldn't lose it for a good five minutes afterward). I think my favorite voice that I did, though, was my tiny!Ellone voice. And my Shumi voice, which was generally deep,drawn-out, and ridiculous. I wish I could have recorded some of my one-woman voice acting work, because it was kind of terribly hilarious.
I also kept a record of an extremely long list of funny moments from the commentary, so here are the best of them (because I don't want to post all of them because the whole list is almost three pages long). A note on renames: Squall became Leon (in reference to his Kingdom Hearts name), and Rinoa became Lenore (because we were going to name her Lenne but then realized that Leon and Lenne would get far too confusing, so I decided on Lenore because apparently she was meant to be named that in the first place). Angelo also became Cupcake and Griever became MUFASA!, and the GFs all got various ridiculous names which I'm not going to list here because there are far too many of them, but here are the ones who are mentioned in the commentary: Shiva = Lady Gaga, Ifrit = Axel, Pandemona = Blowjob.
- "THIS GAME MAKES ME SO HAPPY, I'M FLAILING MY ARMS AROUND"
- "Me and Final Fantasy X-2 are going on a break. Now I'm cheating on it with Final Fantasy VIII. It was an abusive relationship that I had to get out of."
- "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF LADY GAGA"
- "This is Cid. He looks like Robin Williams in a sweatervest." (leading to Cid always being referred to as Robin Williams)
- "NO ZELL I'M NOT SHOWING YOU MY GUNBLADE" "I'M SURE SEIFER'S ALREADY SEEN LEON'S GUNBLADE MANY TIMES"
- "I'm looking forward to the Garden Festival... IN MY PANTS!" (which led to us adding "IN MY PANTS" to all of Cid's dialogue for a while"
- "Pretty girl! PRETTY GIRL!" "He's ready to show off his gunblade" (leading to "gunblade" to forever being our Unusual Euphemism for penis)
- "You and I are to go to the 'secret area'... IN MY PANTS!"
- "I'M ON A TRAIN, AND I'M SIIIIIIINGIIIIIING!"
- "LAGUNA'S GUNBLADE IS AT FULL ATTENTION"
- "He talks to himself too much" "Look who's talking, Leon" "I guess we know where he gets it from"
- "Did we lose anything? Anyone hurt?" "ONLY MY PRIDE, SELPHIE"
- "Um, Leon? Is 'he' here?" "OH MY GOD, SHE'S ASKING ABOUT TIDUS"
- "CUPCAKE CANNON!"
- "I am not a BOY!" "SEIFER'S JUST SO GENDER CONFUSED RIGHT NOW" (which led to references to this video that my roommate and I reference all the time)
- "It was last summer. I was 16. So many fond memories..." "TELL ME MORE, TELL ME MORE, LIKE DID HE HAVE A CAR?"
- "I guess you're just a memory now, Seifer." "I WILL NEVER BE A MEMORY!"
- "Selphie, you and I are destined to be together!" "SORRY, I LIKE TRAINS"
- "Wait, why are they cheering for the sorceress?" "It's like in Revenge of the Sith when Palpatine declares the birth of the Empire and everyone's all YAYYYY!"
- "IRVINE HAS PROBLEMS PERFORMING, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN"
- "LENORE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF PRISON RAPE"
- "ZELL FINALLY GETS TO TOUCH LEON'S GUNBLADE"
- "Galbadian missiles are headed this way! *dramatic arm gesture!*" "One of these days, he's going to take someone out with that movement"
- "PUT YOUR GUNBLADE BACK IN YOUR PANTS, LEON"
- "HELP ME, LEON-WAN KENOBI. YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE."
- "YOU... DUMBASS!" "I didn't know Red Foreman lived in FH"
- "Fun?" "F IS FOR FIRE CAVERN WHERE WE GOT THE GF AXEL, U IS FOR ULTIMECIA, N IS FOR GARDEN MASTER NORG AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE, DOWN HERE IN BALAMB GARDEN"
- "QUISTIS IS SUCH AN AWESOME TAP DANCER"
- "COMMENCING OPERATION SEDUCE LEON, STAGE ONE"
- "TIME FOR THE LEONPALOOZA!"
- "NOW WE TOTALLY HAVE TO USE BLOWJOB ON SEIFER" "NO, THAT'LL JUST MAKE HIM HAPPY"
- "I like that southern accent that you suddenly have." "I know, it just kind of appeared when I was reading Irvine's dialogue. NOW IT WON'T GO AWAY."
- "YOUR SHUMI VOICE SOUNDS LIKE EEYORE"
- "Maybe Leon would be happier if we gave him some cookies"
- "LAGUNA HAS A MACHINE GUN. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID."
- "I believe that Ellone is on the White SeeD ship. We're setting out to look for it because it is ridiculously impossible to find even when you've played the game three times."
- "Lenore... you're so cold" "YOU KNOW HOW TO WARM HER UP" "YEAH, JUST STUFF HER INSIDE A TAUNTAUN"
- "I'M LAGUNA LOIRE, BITCH!"
- "Where is that mysterious White SeeD ship? Hmm, not over here, not over there..."
- "Are we ready?" "NO I'M NOT READY BECAUSE YOU TOOK MY FUCKING JUNCTIONS"
- "THEY'RE BEING FROZEN IN CARBONITE"
- "SURPRISE BUTTSEX... IN SPACE!"
- "I have something to tell you." "I'M PREGNANT"
- "Where's the her-her-hero-hero-her--I CAN'T TALK" (I was trying to say "heroine," for the record)
- "IT'S THE LAGUNA PANDORA" (another instance of me not being able to talk)
- "I'm surprised Laguna didn't actually tell Leon that he was his father. Because Laguna would totally be the sort to run around going 'I HAVE A SON! GUESS WHAT, STORMTROOPERS? I HAVE A SON!'" (in reference to this video)
- "I have a bad feeling about this" "OH WOW GEORGE LUCAS MUST HAVE SECRETLY WRITTEN THIS GAME"
- "SEIFER STOP BUTT-RAPING MY GIRLFRIEND"
- "The way Lenore's strapped on to Adel kind of makes me think of Ansem" "COME GUARDIAN! SUBMIT! SUBMIT! SUBMIT!"
- "AND NOW WE FIGHT LIKE MEN! AND LADIES! AND LADIES WHO DRESS LIKE MEN! FOR GILGAMESH... IT IS MORPHING TIME!"
- "Welcome to the acid trip that is disc four"
- "Those sorceress outfits kind of look like Queen Amidala if she went to a circus"
- "I think by this point the developers were just like SCREW IT, LET'S JUST GIVE THEM A HUGE MINDFUCK"
- "'VIVIDARIUM ET INVIGILIUM ET VIATOR' DOES NOT TRANSLATE TO 'IN THE GARDEN SLEEPS A MESSENGER.' IT TRANSLATES TO 'GARDEN AND SLEEP AND MESSENGER.' THIS GAME FAILS LATIN FOREVER."
- "People who hang out in Ultimecia's Castle: Alfred and Alexia, Sean Connery, and Nazis." "She probably has a whole room full of Nazis hiding somewhere." (this comment was actually made when we were watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with the bit about Alfred and Alexia coming from the Resident Evil playthroughs that my roommate has been doing)
- "SeeD FINALLY ACHIEVED THEIR GOAL OF SPREADING FLOWERS ACROSS THE WORLD"
- "Selphie and Irvine probably took bets as to how long it would take for Leon and Lenore to kiss" "It'd be like Lulu in Final Fantasy X: 'DAMN IT I JUST LOST 100 GIL'"
- "LEON IS SMILING WHAT IS THIS"
- "All of a sudden Selphie and company just tumble onto the balcony, because they're all totally spying on Leon and Lenore right now"
Favorite character (story): LAGUNA TIMES A MILLION. Seriously, there's a reason why I flailed around in glee for about two hours when he was announced to be in Dissidia Duodecim. And I like Squall too, of course, and Ellone and Raine. Basically that whole family is my favorite.
Favorite character (gameplay): Squall, because his gunblade and limit breaks never fail to destroy everything they come across.
Favorite location: WINHILL. I always make a point of going back there on disc two/three and doing the vase quest just so I can see Raine's ghost. Esthar is cool too, when I'm not getting hopelessly lost.
Favorite method of totally annihilating enemies: RENZOKUKEN DESTROYS ALL (it took down Ultimecia's third form in one turn). Quistis's Degenerator limit break is also awesome for ending random battles quickly, though what I like about this game is that once you get No Encounters there's pretty much no need to fight random battles for the rest of the game. Zell's "Armageddon Fist," aka repeated Punch Rushes and Booyas, was great when I was fighting craploads of Tonberries. And, of course, there's Selphie's "The End," but I never got that during this playthrough.
Preferred party: I actually switched up my party a lot in this game. I usually had Squall and Zell whenever possible, with the third member depending on whoever I had available or whose limit break was best applicable for the situation. My endgame party was Squall, Zell, and Selphie.
Character with the best lines: Can I say Laguna just because he's my favorite? Zell always brought a good amount of hiliarity as well. And, for lots of easily-mockable angst, there's Squall's inner monologues.
Favorite music: There's so much good music in this game, so I'm going to have a lot listed here. "Liberi Fatali" is absolutely epic (and is set to the equally epic opening video). "The Landing," "The Man With the Machine Gun" (TECHNO RAVE BATTLE MUSIC YEAHHH!), and "Maybe I'm a Lion" are all great pieces of battle music. And for other miscellaneous pieces, there's "The Oath," "Fisherman's Horizon," and "Fragments of Memories" (the orchestral version is perhaps even better). And, of course, special mention must go to "The Spy," aka the piece of music that totally sounds like it belongs in a porno.
Highest leveled character: Squall, at level 25.
Lowest leveled character: Selphie, at level 12 (I think).
And now I have a crapload of things planned for my next gaming exploits. In a couple of days, I'll be home for winter break which lasts until the end of January, so I'll have ample time to get a lot of gaming done. I'm planning on actually making a Let's Play for FFIV (and FFVI if I have the time)--but whether these Let's Plays will actually be posted anywhere is up for debate, since I'm mostly doing them for my own amusement. I'm also putting FFIX on my Christmas list, so hopefully I'll be playing that as well. I also want to do a replay of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and restart my Chrono Trigger playthrough (which I started back in February and played over such a long period of time that I'm tottally losing track of what's going on), plus I might play Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded when that comes out. And I want to do a FFVII replay too, but I'm probably going to wait until the spring to do that considering that I just completed my first playthrough in September. So much to do, so little time.
Oh! And I also have to mention the dream about Final Fantasy VIII that I had this afternoon while taking a nap. It involved the fact that there was going to be a live-action movie adaptation of the game. I was totally looking it up on IMDB at the end of dream and seeing who the actors were in it (nobody famous though... all I remember was that the guy playing Squall was named Max and the girl playing Quistis was named Colleen). It was also titled something other than Final Fantasy VIII, probably in an attempt to get non-FF fans interested in it, but I don't remember what it was called. I think the word fire was in the title somewhere. Anyway, I think the movie was high school AU, though, judging from what I can remember of the trailer of it that I saw in my dream (although since FFVIII begins with a school setting I guess that's something that isn't very hard to do). Squall was like the cool loner kid and had a motorcycle (and a mohawk at one point, wtf). I think Quistis was the really smart one and was fairly popular, but she was kind of a bitch too for some reason. Selphie was the one who spread all the gossip, and Rinoa was the popular new kid. Zell and Irvine weren't in it the trailer for some reason, and neither was Seifer. Most importantly, I think that in this weird AU movie version Squall was still raised by Laguna and Raine, because I know that you saw Laguna and Raine together not in a flashback context and I was all OMG MORE LAGUNA/RAINE GIMMEEEEE.
I'm sure that if this happened in real life, it would turn out to be a Very Bad Idea. But my dream!self thought it was the most awesome thing ever.