The destruction of Zanarkand in Final Fantasy X, the Bombing Mission in Final Fantasy VII, the Magitek mechs stomping through the snows towards Narshe, Final Fantasy XVI‘s Game of Thrones-ian slaughter. The beloved gaming series is known for some truly wild set pieces to hook you into an dozens upon dozens of hours of adventure. But one still hits, even if it takes a moment for you to actually get it: Final Fantasy VIII‘s landing at Dollet.
FFVIII—which launched on the original PlayStation in the U.S. 25 years ago today—does not open with the bombast one might typically expect of a Final Fantasy these days. Sure, the opening cutscene climaxes in twinned teen mercenaries Squall and Seifer dueling it out in sword training, but the actual opening of the game is in stark contrast to its predecessor FFVII‘s shocking act of ecoterrorism. No, instead, FFVIII opens quietly as Squall, nursing a now-characteristic gash across his face, readjusts to life in his magical, high-tech floating university, Balamb Garden. It’s an incredible contrast that Final Fantasy has become known for: the high school feelings of preparing for exams, but the exams involve flinging a sword with a revolver handle around or jumping into the nearby volcanic caverns to learn how to successfully tame and then summon a giant, furry god.
But even in that mix of the real and the fantastical, it’s quiet. There’s no real driving impetus for FFVIII‘s opening other than that Squall and his classmates are preparing for their finals as SeeD students, a nebulous last test that, even as you quickly learn that SeeD is no ordinary school body but an international mercenary organization, and Balamb its base of operations. It’s the traditions of Final Fantasy—martial combat, magic, summoning massive beings of unfathomable power—distanced and extrapolated through the lens of not Warriors of Light or revolutionaries and rebels, but a high school drama. That is, until the reality of what Squall and the rest of Balamb’s students are preparing for kicks in an hour or two into the game: their final exam is to break the siege of a nearby independent Duchy, Dollet, facing an invasion by the overwhelming might of the Galbadian army.
Everything begins turning on a dime in the legendary pre-rendered cutscene that begins playing when Squall, his mentor and instructor Quistis, cocky newcomer Zell, and, of course, his rival Seifer begin piling onto the gunboat that will take them to Dollet’s beaches. Set to what remains one of Nobuo Uematsu’s finest works in the franchise, “The Landing,” Squall pokes his head out of the top of the boat as it races across the ocean, overlaying a tactical diagram on a picture of Dollet… only to lower the photo find the exact same image of Dollet in real life, only now it’s doused in flame and explosions. Dollet’s own forces, military-looking figures covered in bandoliers and toting assault rifles, are being torn apart only for the SeeD gunboats to come smashing onto the beachhead, as students in school uniforms begin charging up the shore and towards their final test, and potentially their deaths.
Suddenly, the extrapolation that defined Final Fantasy VIII‘s opening becomes inverse. You’re no longer sitting in classrooms and roaming school hallways discussing the concept of martial training or military strategy, you are thrust into the middle of warfare where killing the enemy is literally worth points on your final exam. Everything the player does as Squall and his party makes their way up to try and secure Dollet’s comms relay—the tactical source of Galbadia’s invasion in the first place—is being scored in the background by the game as part of that final test. Are you killing enough soldiers? Are you following the right orders, are you staying on mission? Do you withdraw from Dollet in time, as you’re being chased back from the relay tower by a hulking, mechanical spider-tank, unlike anything you’ve faced in the game up to that point? What Squall and his friends have been training for becomes real in the fires of Dollet, and with it, and in some ways Final Fantasy‘s extrapolated fantasy begins to evaporate before their eyes.
Regardless of score on the test, Squall and (most) of his friends leave Dollet as full-fledged members of SeeD (the score determines your initial salary, another little biting commentary). But players leave it with a starker understanding of what Final Fantasy VIII wanted to say about the franchise, even beyond its sci-fantasy modernist aesthetic taking an even further step away from the series’ traditions than its predecessor did. Plenty of Final Fantasies before this put young people into the meat grinder of war, but few managed to capture the futility of the industrial complex behind warfare quite so succinctly as Final Fantasy VIII did in that killer opening twist.
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