Out of all the Final Fantasy games, I feel like 8 is probably in more need of a remake than 7 and the older ones.
There are a number of reasons why I think this is the case.
If you look at the graphics of the first seven titles in the series, they're all quite cartoonish and look like they've been designed purely as game sprites.
8 is the first game in the series where they try to make the characters look like human beings.
The first 6 games looked like this for the most part, with the enemies becoming more advanced looking as the new titles came out.
Moving on to cd-rom, with its much higher memory storage, 7 was considered a pretty major advancement.
Mainly for the cities, and world that had been built with a massive story across 3 disks.
But as you can see, the characters looked pretty unusual, even in the FMVs. 3D Character building had a long way to go at this point.
A remake of this is going to be great, but it'll feel like a leap from the original content which for me, may affect how endearing it is as a story.
In 8, not that many years after 7, we got the humans below, the graphics look very pixelated by today's standards.
If you put the game on your tele you'd be a little shocked (or at least I was) - but I remember playing this for the first time and being blown away by the advancements. It looks like night and day by comparison.
With that in mind, it feels like they could do a full HD Remaster of FF8 without too much work.
Upgrade all of the sprites with advanced graphics, the videos can be much more cinematic.
They can cast the team with voices, since this and 9 are the last two games to be completely silent.
The biggest change I think this game needs is 'more backdrop'.
There are some major cities in the FF8 world, but it always felt to me like the world was pretty empty for the most part.
Most of the towns and cities were pretty empty with vast spaces between them.
A lot of this is probably down to fitting the game on disk. There is also a canonical 'great war' that has killed a lot of people.
My 'issue' with that is there would be more evidence of that taking place, and of empty buildings where they used to live.
The world map feels huge, and with the inclusion of the trains to travel between towns in the early part of the story, it feels like they could've filled the gaps with all sorts of caves and side quests.
There are also hints to the remains of an ancient civilisation called the Centra on the world map that you can't interact with. In a remaster I'd like to see those places be expanded upon.
Airships
One thing that would be amazing in a remaster would be their incredible Airship, The Ragnarok.
This is just one example of how Final Fantasy 8 takes normal fantasy staples, and pushes them into a futuristic sci-fi style.
A ship shaped like a dragon, it looks fantastic.
I think this is my favourite of all the Final Fantasy airships. It looks so clever and original, and as with the characters above, it was one of the first incredibly high quality PSOne graphics to blow me away.
It is also the only air ship in the series that doesn't really fit the floating fortress style. But there is one of them involved in the game too!
It just looks a little odd and is more of a hovercraft than a sky fortress.
Story
This sci-fi feel is continued by the amount of robotic enemies in 8, as well as the weaponry being more gun based (Squall even fighting with a gun blade for crying out loud!)
Like many fantasy stories, in this one the characters find themselves fighting a sorceress but unlike most fantasy stories, she isn't just some witch that cackles into the night.
She's an otherworldly advanced being that essentially claims a host to possess, passing on her lineage as a sorceress.
There is a bit of space travel, some time travel, and a lot of psychedelic shared dreams through time and space to tell the story of some other characters who contribute to the history of the game.
There are some extremely clever arrangements in this game. Your characters can find money (gil) for goods, but also receive a regular wage.
You can make that wage go up by carrying out a range of tests to show how much you know about the lore of the game, encouraging engrossment.
Magic isn't controlled by MP or some kind of ability in this world. You merely find 'magic springs' that leak a finite amount of magic for you to channel.
Weapons are build by acquiring materials from enemies. The tooth of a great Behemoth, or the shell of a large and virtually indestructible tortoise.
The characters in 8 were very different from previous games.
A mixture of students, teachers, people they meet along the way, and some random twists that thread through the story and link everything together.
I often find eight swapping with seven and six as my favourites depending on how I think of them, which is why Nine is consistently fourth because its rare that I think that was the best.
Triple Triad
Eight gave us Triple Triad, the best card game in the entire series.
Adding to my statement that the world seemed under populated, you could argue that it seems weird the world's most famous card game has character cards for the game's star characters, and not many other people.
I know that is nit picking but how small could the population be that so many other inhabitants of the world haven't got their faces on a card?
For those who don't know, Triple Triad was a card game where each card has a strength value for the top, bottom, left an right facing side of the card.
The flat 'game board' has 9 slots, you play a card and then your opponent plays another, they can either 'attack' your card by placing a higher number adjacent to your card, thus flipping it over to their deck.
Or they can place a card elsewhere that does not attack you, allowing you to attack them next go if you have a decent card.
At the end of the game, the person with the most cards aligned to them wins, and is then allowed to take one or two of their opponents cards from them, for good.
The game is designed to be a side project, but whenever I've played the story I've found myself treating Triple Triad almost like a parallel quest.
They've hidden 'layers' of story within the game, like little hints as to the lineage of some of the characters, based on who owns their character card.
No other Final Fantasy has a mini game that created the level of joy Triple Triad gives.
- We had cards in 9's Tetra Master.
- 10 had Blitzball which was ambitious as hell.
- 7 had a huge arcade with Chocobo racing and all sorts.
- 15 had Fishing.
I'm going to round things off here. Let me know what you think of eight as a game. Would you like to see it re-released with a full remaster? Is there a Final Fantasy you would like me to write about next?
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