Someone tell Glick he isn't alone in his procrastination. Let me reveal something about myself...

I have never beaten an Final Fantasy game other than FF8.

I'm not even going to try to explain, but know that I own FF1, FF4, FF6, FF7, FFT, and FFMQ as well as FF8.

That is all. Well, wait, does anyone else beside me and Big Lick suffer from this disorder? There, that's all.

~Ian P.

Okay, off topic. Deal. Drew, ask Vestal, or whoever else has played the damn game, to set my worries to rest. Is there a replacement Magus, someone to fill the badass anti-hero role our favorite blue-haired wizard left vacant in Chrono Cross? I suppose asking for the real Janus would be too much, but as long as someone is there to fill his most righteous codpiece, I'll be satisfied. And please, Lion-O, er, Yamenko does not count. There has to be someone to balance all the faeries, baby monsters, cute aliens and dancing voodoo dolls. I realize Toriyama, the creator of The Origial Badass isn't around, but I own the Record of the Lodoss War. I know Mr. What's-his-name character designer is capable of thinking up much cooler characters than the cast of loonies I've seen so far. I mean, Ashram? That guy leaves more Badass on his pillow in the morning than Bruce Campbell has ever seen.

-KE

Let me just say that I'm tired of people sending in their thoughts, opinions, and theories about FFVIII. Frankly, I didn't understand a good 50% of VIII's plot and reading those letters just make my head hurt more. I prefer the more old-school RPGs where you are simply assigned to kill this guy and all of his minions. Granted, it's a bit simplistic, but as long as it's presented well and has good characters, simplicity doesn't matter, does it?

When I first played through FFVIII, I also had the same question in regards to Ultimecia's motives. However, upon employing a bit of thought for several hours, I came upon a theory that made enough sense to cause me to no longer question the matter. The problem here is that Mr./Ms. K is thinking that in order for the Ellone Machine to work, one must personally "meet" with another individual. However, in this occasion we are dealing with sorceresses who pass down their power from one body to another. Let's suppose that Ultimecia inherited Edea's sorceress power, like so:

Edea -> Sorceress 1 -> Sorceress 2 -> Sorceress 3 -> Ultimecia

Thus, the power that is handed down makes each sorceress part of an entity. It is because of this that Ultimecia can travel from Sorceress 3, whom she has met at one time or another in her life, to Sorceress 2, and so on, until the beginning of time.

Let's add the meeting that Ultimecia and Edea experienced into the equation. Supposing that the Ellone Machine only imitates Ellone's power, it is possible that Ultimecia has the ability to possess Edea because the latter contains part of her. All of the other sorceresses in between did as well, so it would be possible that Ultimecia could have decided that the control over each sorceress could simply be attributed to the entity aspect. Thus, she believes this to be an exception of sorts, and is unaware that she actually died in the past.

(And just to delve a little further into the storyline, for the fun of it...)

So why is it that Ultimecia stops at Edea? It is possible that sometime before Edea there is a schism of sorts in relation to the sorceress embodiment. Since Ellone is alive in Edea's time period, Ultimecia can make use of her powers to travel through the sorceresses whose powers Adel had acquired, and thus travel to the age of the Great Hyne herself to achieve time compression. Since in this case she would be employing Ellone's actual powers with no "modification" whatsoever, she would not suspect anything by not being able to control the sorceresses before Adel's time, and her presence in the past would simply trigger the desired effect.

While I'm at it, I would like to say that FFIX looks to have the potential to become the best Final Fantasy ever. Hopefully, however, Square will take advantage of two things they introduced in VIII and make my wishes come true. Here's what I'm hoping for:

1) The environments in FFIX look like they could have quite a bit of depth and history behind them. In FFVIII, for example, each country/location was given a bit of history by discussing its actions during the Great Sorceress War, etc. It would be great to see Square take advantage of this once more. Also, FFVIII featured a name for every single archipelago/peninsula/mountain range/etc. in the world. It would be simply stunning to see side-quests being integrated into this, beyond the "go here, go there" aspect that we were subjected to with the Obel Lake quest in VIII. For example, say that during a conversation, somebody mentions the 'Great War' that took place in Mountain X. Later in the game, you could find this mountain and enter a desolate battle field, where you can find valuable relics, and maybe even items such as diaries that would provide a glimpse into the history of the world.

2) Folk legends. Or something which would also provide a glimpse into the culture of the world. In FFVIII, if you visit the White SeeD ship later in the game, a cadet will be reading a book to young children on the creation of the world, and how the Great Hyne was involved; this type of thing adds such a tremendous amount of depth to the world that you begin to envision where it is that these characters are actually living. In RPGs, it is popular to feature development through characters, which are placed upon a backdrop often referred to as a 'world.' Development in an individual never occurs through character interaction alone, however. Culture has a lot to do with it, and the way the world shapes our views is a lot more significant than how one single individual can.

Regarding the FFVIII question about Ultimecia. She never knew what was going to happen. She didn't know she'll die etc. That's basically it - For Ultimecia, the event was futuristic. While she controlled Edea, she probably didn't have the motivation to probe into Edea's mind and find out how she got the powers, so she never "remembered" it. She had no way of knowing of her own demise.

-Zohar Gilboa

Anyway, after rereading the FF8 email you named as topic a couple of times and popping a few cold pills to see if that would help comprehension (it didn't) I think I figured out what he was asking, which would be a good trick since I haven't even gotten past Lunatic Pandora... I think K is asking why Ultimecia bothered to take over Edea and attempt time compression if she already knew she was going to die. The answer is that she *didn't* know it at the time, and actually couldn't. Let's consider time from Ultimecia's point of view (as I understand it, anyway. Watch me make mistakes that come from not having conquered the game. ;).

1) Ultimecia is from the future, such-and-such a year. She creates the Ellone Machine to send her consciousness through time.
2) Ultimecia sends her mind back into present time to control Edea, who is at the very least middle-aged at this point and has been in possession of her powers for quite some time.
3) Ultimecia skips into Rinoa's body, then gets passed to Adel. Or something. I'm still a little foggy on this.
4) I haven't gotten this far, but at this point I assume we have time compression after we beat up Adel, which sends us back to some time around Edea's birth. Or something like that. I gather that she somehow ends up around that era to pass on her powers.
5) She gets her ass kicked by Squall and Co, and so dies in the past. A helluva long way before when she started.

Although we see these events as working backwards through chronological time, Ultimecia experiences it as going forwards. If Ultimecia hadn't died in the past Edea would never have become a sorceress, which meant that she would never have fought Squall, which means Rinoa would never have become a sorceress and no one would have gone back into the past to kill her and this game would never have had a plot...did you hear that? That was the sound of my brain snapping like a taunt rubber band as it tries to comprehend and explain temporal paradox. Anyway, suffice to say time is like an endless loop -- a lot like this email. I hope this helped, because now I have to stick my head in the freezer for a while.

-L.M.

The way I see it they don't want you to think about that at all. It's kind of like when you learn the song of storms from that windmill guy in the future, only he learned in the past from you, only you didn't teach him to him yet, because you had never played it for him. (whew) I figure Ultimaciea wants time compression because she's a greedy bitch. She was probably just thinking on that large throne of hers one day, which by the way I am convinced that every time she wants to get down off of it she summons Griever to help her (really though, it's like 50 feet tall), anyway, one day she thought to herself,

"Hmmmm... I rule the world, killed some SeeD people or something, and built myself a castle, and filled it with some easy monsters ... now what? Oh I know! I think I'll take over the past or something! That way I can be a real nasty bitch to everybody!"

So just lighten up! None really cares, except for me, the people at the GIA, and some people who will write to the GIA, my friends (the smart ones), some Japanese people, and maybe Squaresoft, some other video game companies who make RPG's, and people who play FF8, and some other people who I didn't care to mention.

On a different note, why do you people always write the Roman numerals? Why don't you just say FF1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10, or 11? Do you think Squaresoft will come down to the GIA (or up to the GIA, because who really knows what direction we really are facing in space?) and say, "Look guys, you're gonna stop shortening our game titles or were gonna kick your asses!...in court.."

~ODiN

Ya know what?

I didn't understand FFVIII's plot at all after the first half of disc 3, but the game still kicked ass. Funny that some games don't make sense until about that point in the game (about 25 hours, for me at least). Actually, thats not funny, in fact I don't know if it even makes sense. Damn math class. Two weeks in to the semester and my brain is already warped...

-Lonely "math illiterate" Swedish