No matter how much I loved playing FFVIII, I physically did not have the time to get through the entire game before my presentation on the narrative was due. While playing the game for several hours did help me, I was barely able to get through the second sequence of cutscenes and I had little information on the story. I had hoped to piece together a presentation on the story by focusing on cutscenes, but that is difficult to do without cutscenes.

I set off to search the internet far and wide for FFVIII cutscenes from the game. I found them, but the streaming videos and low-quality versions could never hope to do justice to the fantastic animation. Fortunately, I had the foresight to record the ending scenes from the first disc as I began replaying the game as a teenager. I wasn’t sure if the video still existed, but my mother was kind enough to dig it out and send it to me.

I eagerly awaited the cutscene video. I had forgotten what was on it, and I didn’t know if it could somehow get ruined from being moved around multiple times. Luckily, it hadn’t gotten erased. I had recorded everything in the ending from the last few minutes of the final boss fight through the final movie after the credits. I had then gone through and re-played the whole first disc of the game, recording every little cutscene as I went. I was in luck.

I created a DVD of the cutscenes from the video I had. I was able to use this today as the basis for my presentation. My teacher is not particularly fond of cutscenes, but even he had to admit that they were incredible for their time and still look great today. However, his main concern was with how much story was conveyed through the cutscenes.

Looking at the beginning and the ending movies, there was relatively little story for their running time. They are rather showy and beautiful, but neither movie makes much sense without the knowledge of other story elements. In later movies, this trend is less apparent. Certain movies, such as the Edea parade sequence, seem to show some concepts very clearly. Unfortunately, non-FMV sequences (that look about the same as gameplay except you aren’t controlling the characters) are interspersed with the FMVs. This is often used to communicate lines through dialogue (all FMVs were non-dialogue, most likely to avoid sticky problems with dubbing that cheapen such art instantly). I found that the full effect of these dramatic cutscenes was diminished by the frequent interruptions. I understand that the game couldn’t afford to do the whole sequence in FMV, but I would have found it more effective if they kept it one way or the other for a longer period of time.

Although most of the story was not told through FMV cutscenes, they were quite compelling. People often talk about playing such lengthy RPGs “for the story,” but I found that I was playing for both the cutscenes and the story. While the story was certainly compelling, most of it was told through lines and lines of dialogue set to synthesized MIDI music. The music does not seem to do justice to this game. I really enjoyed re-visting the cutscenes, and, even if they did not tell the whole story, I found that they really motiveated me to continue playing the game.