I'm playing through all of Final Fantasy, and everyone is invited (Playing Lightning Returns now)

[nataeryn]

The classic "crystal colors" are probably intentional as far as the Huge Materia goes, at least. You get Bahamut ZERO rather than a "Master Support" from blue, so I imagine it was a conscious decision.

Bahamut-ZERO was the only thing I got from those. haha. I got the one summon, and just assumed that was all they were for. Well, i'll take the accidental insight about crystal colors at least.

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of stuff in FF8 too. There's no gaps in my GF lineup, but there's a bunch of empty spots past Alex and I've pretty much stuck to the story, so there's got to be side stuff I've missed.

 

[gogglebob]

NORG is Cid's landlord and must be killed. There's nothing complicated about it.

 

[RT-55J]

I mean, yeah, but technically you never kill the dude. You just forcibly advance his lifecycle to the metamorphosis egg stage, and presumably sometime after the end of the game he finishes transforming into a Moomba (or perhaps something else?).

Now, whether or not Moombas are free of sin is another question entirely.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

his landNORG

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

despite the rather hackneyed writing in multiple spots

I'd be interested in an audit of FF8's original script versus the translation we got here in NA, and if that has anything to do with the perception of "hackneyed writing". The translations of Squaresoft games from that era was not the greatest, were often riddled with errors, and took far too many liberties with their 'localization' for my comfort. For FF8 specifically, I know that there was a lot of texture within just Squall himself that got lost in translation. There were dozens of instances where he would say/react/emote in some manner that all got reduced to a simple "Whatever" each time.

For my decades old memory of the game, I always thought that game's narrative was pretty inherently interesting and well written. A lesser game would have hit the player over the head with the revelation that Laguna was Squall's father, and yet FF8 had the restraint and narrative complexity to let the player come to that epiphany themselves without ever outright stating it to the player.