The thing about VIII is that it has all the pieces of a really interesting story, but they completely fail to cohere into a narrative that supports the themes.

The thing about VIII is that it has all the pieces of a really interesting story, but they completely fail to cohere into a narrative that supports the themes. The Laguna dreams are a fantastic narrative concept that results in an incredibly dumb reveal, for instance. If you play the game with the idea that it's a story about Squall overcoming his fear of forming connections with others, you can kind of do some surgery on the story as you go, but it still feels like a fever dream. (The story almost makes more sense if you interpret everything after the failed assassination of Edea as being Squall's dying fantasy -- which is not a good sign for the coherence of a narrative!)