Hold the fuck on. HOLD the fuck on. On the Balamb Garden Network computers, there’s a bit of lore that completely upends my understanding of the world of FF8.
Did you catch that? Did you fucking catch that? Dr. Odine invented magic when he was studying sorceresses, which happens slightly before the events of Laguna’s story.
That means in the world of Final Fantasy VIII, people have only had the ability to cast magic for about 20-30 years.
Holy shit??? Can you imagine how much that must have changed the world? This means that prior to Dr. Odine’s experiments, only monsters, GFs, and sorceresses could cast magic. It sounds like this skill requires a lot of training, but just the notion of “anyone can make fire out of nowhere now” is such a DRAMATIC thing to suddenly foist on the world. Laguna and his squad must be some of the earliest adopters. And now SeeDs are learning it?
I had assumed this was something that had always co-existed with GFs, but no??! What the fuck? What sort of massive shifts in power must this have created in the world? What old professions became obsolete ~15 years ago when they invented the ability to set shit on fire with their mind? Are there political debates over who gets to learn magic?
There seems to be a bottomless amount of lore in FF8, but this one is throwing me for a loop. It’s like if Sonic the Hedgehog told you that rings were invented in 1973, instead of being an intrinsic part of the universe since the beginning.
I guess the equivalent would be somebody from FF8 learning that the internet has only been around in our world for like 30–40 years. You guys used to have to use PAYPHONES? You couldn’t just contact anyone at all times? What the hell is this world???