With Girl Power in Gaming, we’re exploring the role of females in our favorite hobby for the month of September. The series will attempt to explore gender dynamics, pre-assigned roles and both positive and negative examples of female characterization in the digital world. In many Final Fantasy titles, and RPGs in general, the game begins with …
There’s a particularly telling moment toward the end of Final Fantasy VIII that really lets you know what kind of finale you’re in for. After a climactic space battle with the sorceress, Adel, players are blasted through time, 1000 years into the future, to face their true foe. When they arrive they find the last members of a dead army, their dead army, still valiantly committed to fighting the war against evil. Unfortunately, they have failed. As the party traverses a desolate landscape, littered with their dead comrades, a mournfully operatic tune evokes a sense of menace to this already horrific future. Finally the player crosses a giant chain, one of many, that holds Ultimecia’s Gothic castle aloft in the sky.