Thanks for watching 💙 If you enjoyed the episode please consider subscribing to support the channel. If you'd like to support the channel further you can do so here: - Patreon: www.patreon.com/gamediscourses Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/gamediscourses
Do you even deserve to find the White Seed ship, when you don't check on your girlfriend, who is in the hospital because she got possessed by an evil sorcerer?
Isn't the whole point of finding the white SeeD ship some half assed attempt to save her by finding your big sis with magical powers? Seems like some romantic dedication to literally chase them down in your school tbh
maaaaan, that is exactly what I've been thinking this whole time, hearing about how hard it was to find, blah blah and I never had any issues. Turns out I was being rewarded for doing what literally everyone should have been doing all along. They didn't make the ship hard to find, it just ended up that way cause they expected way more empathy from the audience than what they actually got, lmao.
My friend struggled with this and I don't think ever found it. Needing to talk to Rinoa when everyone says "Lets go find the White SeeD Ship!" is a confusing story beat to be sure! I'm actually really glad I know of this now, I feel better about the hours scouring the seas for this ship as a kid knowing that I was not, in fact, going crazy lol.
I got this game when I was 12 . I was stuck at this part for a lonnnnng time. I did not have internet back in 1999 yet so I couldn't look it up. I finally was able to find it after about a month or so.
Simple answer: because they tell you to find it before the trigger scene that actually spawns it in the world, and don't bother to elaborate that you need to seek out and talk to another character after being told to find the ship before you can actually find it
Final dungeon was easy, it's right next to the space port that the game throws you at once you've gotten to that point in the plot. The real hell was navigating Dezolis with the Ice Digger. Everything looks the same, there's a god-awful snow filter making it hard to see the path, the world itself is a maze, AND your first destination is a specific random town halfway through the map!
A lot of older games were like that, like Phantasie or Might & Magic. You can just sorta go to the endgame if you know where it is, but if you don't, you can be kept wandering for quite a while.
@@KnownAsKenji Well aware. Tons of videos on my channel were made to clue people onto the fact Tactics Ogre had hundreds of hours worth of post game something like 90%+ of players at the time had no clue about....though it was also presented super weird.
White Seed Ship: as a kid I figured that foot looking set of islands was suspicious and went there first... its near the orphanage. Seems like a good guess. Happened to miss the ship and proceeded to search, with a fine tooth comb, _the rest of the entire world_ ... Finally after boring hours of sailing all over the map I decided to start the search over and found WSS straight away. :(
I love this channel. I used to play all the Final Fantasy games with my brother when we were kids basically. He's no longer with us, watching your videos makes me want to talk to him quite a lot. It's nice to know other people are out there thinking about the same things we were anyway. For me, I always thought the more tricky wayfinding moments, like the Rinoa infirmary trigger as a good example, were quite candid invitations to explore the world and attempt some side quests. Triple Triad was an ubiquitous opportunity to spend some time off the main story but given the increasing intensity of the plot there were a number of well placed moments, seemingly by design, where the developers offer up some down time. I'd imagine a lot of people discovered Odin in that particular section of th egame.
Thank you mate. I'm glad you enjoy the channel and maybe find some respite in it 🫂 You make a good point about the sidequest potential here, and FF8 was interesting in how it offered multiple opportunities to branch out into sidequest/world exploration (acquiring Garden so we could do Centra ruins etc... then later acquiring Ragnarok for Deep Sea Research lab, Cactuar island etc), whereas a lot of final fantasy games leave most of the exploration til the end with the final airship acquisition.
@@AlleywayJack Yes. It is definitely one of the flaws of some Final Fantasy titles. I remember feeling it as especially egregious in FF10. The end game seemed excessively padded out with grinding busywork, none of which really immersed you in the world and lore particularly. I guess FF8 was kind of obliged to offer you these opportunities given where the end game took you but it was still one of it's strengths.
I absolutely swear that there was a corporate conspiracy to sell more strategy guides, given how games had severe miss-able between plot point A and plot point B side quests. Tales of the Abyss was extremely notorious of that. But later, Tales of Xillia was obviously much less guilty of that, with very few side quests seeming miss-able over the course of the game.
When I played it at release as a kid I couldn't find this damn ship for the life of me even tho I thought I searched literally everywhere the description fit. After 2+ years when I finally got an internet connection this ship's location was one of the first things I used the internet for.
I legit had no idea this was even an thing, as I always went to see Rinoa in the infirmary before looking for the White Seed ship. But then again, I am the type of player who likes to do all the side content as I play and as it becomes available.
@@planescaped same. i´m almost always checking what all the npc´s have to say. Had my problems to find the ship because its realy easy to miss but never encountered the problem to miss the trigger. I think that people who rush through games like that are not doing themselves any favors with it. They missed not only the ship but many other things. I never knew that Xell's little romance was hidden content in any way. Always had it just because the way i play. Squal visiting Renoa will always happen no matter what. Either you do it from the start because you're fully immersed in the story, or because you just can't get any further and start exploring all the possibilities. Easy to say what kind of player will be more fortunate. But exactly these things where you as a player are rewarded for simply enjoying the journey and paying attention to the little things instead of just rushing through it quickly is one of the reasons why I like the FF series so much.
This could've been prevented if Squall thought to himself in a textbox. Squall: (I know we need to find the White SeeD ship, but I want to check on Rinoa first...) or alternatively, the game should've had a "hint" giver (make it Niida, he doesn't do much really...) who you can ask for advice, and maybe they can point you in the direction to say, "Hey I know you want to find that ship, but you should go check on Rinoa while you still can."
It could have gone even further, and prevent you from going to the world map until you've seen Rinoa (if you try it could bring up that textbox). That might be a bit annoying because it also prevents you from going and doing sidequests, but you can always go and do them afterwards so I don't think it would be a big deal.
@@Psyk60 That would indeed be a good solution. Or heck, may aswell just make it an automatic cutscene that the game plays out for you. Before the game lets you go and says, "alright, we've shown you what we want you to see, go out and find that ship."
Just add a journal system with quest log like Western games had since at least early Baldur's Gate or Fallout, it also wouldn't hurt to have map markers naming cities and landmarks, as real maps have. When an NPC in late game quest tells me to go to Mysydia, do I REALLY have to fly airship to every single town in one of THREE maps of FFIV until I accidentally pick the right one? Because that's how older FFs worked, maps without labels and GOOD LUCK.
@@KasumiRINA I think FFIV on the SNES did come with a physical map though. So you didn't have to fly around aimlessly, you were expected to look at the map that came with the game. The manual also had a walkthrough for about half the game.
I'm from Brazil and after the lunar series I went into FF8, I wasnt as fluent as I'm now and it was hell to find that ship, I only did because a TV show called "stargames" was doing a walkthrough of the game and that showed me the exact place. I felt happy and frustrated at the same time... A time before internet was everywhere :).
I had a magazine, Gamestation I think was the name. The very first edition was a complete walkthrough of FFVIII, and a very good one. And even with a map pinpointing it, it wasn't easy. Centra is just that difficult to navigate. But also, we had so much more time to spend hours looking for it when we were young.
I'm not saying people are dumb but I never had trouble as a kid. I think these games just expected you to care about things like Rinoa's status and want to go talk to her. They expected you to be curious enough about the world to talk to random NPCs
Same. I remember playing quite a bit of FF8 as a kid yet this particular quest didn't ring any bells. It must have been very inconsequential to my own playthrough.
This is a test of whether you/Squall grew as a person. Do you care enough about your relationships to check on Rinoa or are you still focused primarily on the mission?
@@c4h5n2o1 it wants you to do what squall would want to do at the time, which is to visit rinoa. it is actually emphasizing the role-playing elements of the genre, outside of battle and stats!!! the game already extensively showcases squall's mindset, no?
I think this part did sort of confuse me at first. But for me, what really messed me up was the missile base with Selphie's quest. For the longest time, I didn't understand that you had to drive the car and not walk to get inside, and I kept thinking they just weren't letting me in because I hadn't found some hidden trigger with talking to a character or something. I was going everywhere and talking to everyone I could. I even went back to Galbadia. It wasn't until I just randomly guessed, "Hey, maybe I need to drive" that I finally got past this. I was a kid back then, but I still feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Xd
This is one of things that let multiple people lose their saves (and sometimes entire progress) in Mass Effect, a few forum threads on Legendary edition where they walked through the tunnel at the very end on foot instead of using Mako, and couldn't get through the scene where you have to do a trench run to a portal. It's timed and you're not fast enough and if you autosaved there without transport...
I spent years trying to find that white SeeD ship when I was 13, playing it on and off again until I eventually gave at up. It's only now, replaying the game at 36, that I finally found that God damn ship! I can't tell you the joy and excitement I felt seeing it there, knowing that this time I'll actually finish the game.
Wait…how were you 13 when you played this game but are 36 now? lol. I was 14 when I played this in 1998 and I’m 39 now. I assume you didn’t play the game when it first came out and played it in 2001?
@ShockerTopper That is correct! I found a PC version of the game when i was on holiday in Europe (I sadly didn't own a PS1) I was so excited that I could finally play a final fantasy game and specifically this game which I had been lusting for since it's release. I've heard rumours that the PC version had a glitch where the White Seed Ship didn't appear, but I think I was just bad at the game and couldn't find it hahaha 😅
Was the same age when I tryed to look for it. 2 years it took me. The only information I got was "It's by an island shaped like the letter c" Found alot of new locations like the abandoned laboratory and the village that has moombas, but no ship. It's very well hidden and finding it finally was pure joy.
Glad to see some of your recent videos take off recently. You have been one of the best VG analysis channels for years. Happy to see more people finally discover your content.
I remember this. I love the ff8 world, so searching for it felt like a chance to explore the world a little more, which i enjoyed, but it really is ridiculous how hidden it felt.
I have a hard time being critical of FF6 through 9, as to me these were the absolute perfect games, everything in the 90s JRPG industry built up and built up and built up until finally these 3 masterpieces were released.
And Chrono Trigger, basically a perfect game. Heck, my actual most favorite game of all time is Earthbound, but I'll still readily admit that CT and FF6 are better games and would be quicker to recommend them to someone.
@@acerimmer8338 Honestly I don't get the "hate" that seems to be around FF 10. Most of the reasons to dislike it or put it below the PS1 titles seem pretty superficial to me: the things people who didn't bother to play the whole game would say (such as "Tidus is so dumb/annoying"). IMO, it has one of the best storytelling and most interesting settings of the entire franchise.
I remember being 11 years old and spending an age looking for this. I distinctly remember tracing the coast of every continent and not finding anything. I gave up on the game entirely and haven’t returned to it since. I concluded that the game was broken and the ship literally didn’t exist.This was the days before gamefaqs was normalised for 11 year olds so if you couldn’t find a kid on the playground who knew how to solve a game problem, or a Prima guide, you were toast. I gave up and played other games. Literally haven’t touched FF8 since. Looking back now I know, it’s really dumb to tell people to go look for something on the world map and expect their reaction to be to go talk to someone who isn’t on the world map.
I had that guidebook so i didnt have problem finding the White SeeD ship. However, as young i was back whem playing it, how could I have missed not giggling at the name "White SeeD" as a kid😂
2:14 I dunno, you're right about FF7 being railroaded but it also feels like it stands out from the previous games, the ones I got lost the most are early ones, EVEN on replay where you KNOW what's next but can't find your way over Edgar's castle, for example, or get stuck "where do I go now in VERY FIRST FF. FF4 is the most linear but even it gets confused and backtracking for sidequests is painful with all the wacky transport systems they use (one of ships carries an airboat that's the only way to get to multiple specific places but other ships don't have it, other has a drill and for landing in woods you needed a black chocobo).
I have a pretty strong familiarity with the people responsible for FF's design up through the PSX era, having heard them speak in innumerable personal interviews. I have an extremely difficult time believing these designers like Hiroyuki Ito, Hiroshi Minagawa, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and everyone else who cared deeply about the art they were making, would even dream of compromising their work in order to increase the profits of third party guide manufacturers. And if it was their intention to do so, they went about it the worst way imaginable, because these quests like Obel Lake are so completely obscured that a player wouldn't go out and buy a guide to figure out something they don't even know exists to begin with.
Omg YES. This was my roadblock for so long as a dumb child. I remember FINALLY finding it on the small tv in my grandma's kitchen and God the feeling of relief.
Yeah, I had no issue at all with the trigger as I was invested in the story. I think the ship was just very well hidden so it did take me a while. The trigger issue does explain why maybe so many others have a particular issue with this though.
Yeah I never had an issue with the trigger when I was younger because I love the story/characters - it's only lately now I just try to 100% games and think I know the whole story already I'm missing them lol
With certain upcoming event triggers, like Squall needing to check up on Rinoa, it actually makes sense that the character might have ongoing thoughts about her state, so having internal-thought popups about this would count as a diegetic prompt.
This brought back some childhood trauma. I feel so dumb for not knowing the dialogue triggers, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one who struggled with this too
Oh yeah... I remember I got stuck to this part for so many days and was so confused as to what to do. I visited all the possible places, spoke to everyone, accidentally managed to find a secret in the process (don't remember which one). So when I actually went to the infirmary to see Rinoa I was laughing so much, realizing the answer was right there. By that point I even got Squall to level 100... which wasn't, in hindsight, a good thing.
11:09 Capcom has said in interviews they purposely made the first Monster Hunter complex, confusing, and no tutorials/help specifically to have people buy strategy guides. This has been a known industry practice and was essentially the first "Pay -To-Win" injected into single player games. The side quests in FF8 are 100% way too confusing. The main quest? I don't know how you'd get lost.
Now I'm wondering - what are some of the worst flags you need to activate to progress the main story in a JRPG? A more recent-ish example was SMT 4, if you end up on the neutral alignment route you need to complete many optional quests, most are easy but there was one very random NPC you need to find in a random room in a building.
Final Fantasy 8 was a game that strongly rewarded reading comprehension, and punished those who did not have it. In the age of the budding internet where the most important thing was to not be the weakest kid on the playground that got picked on people shouldn't be shocked that a lot of boys had problems with this part of the game - It was a hard lesson, but I'll always love FF8 for being the medium that forced me to learn how to properly read in a era that what mattered most for a boy was to be strong. I do think that Rinoa being a trigger to make the ship a tangible location was bad design, and they could of made the part of interacting with Rinoa a little more linear. I did what you wanted headmaster Cid - I explored the world, and I ended up over leveled which just makes things worse! :') lol I don't hate or regret the SeeD Ship experience, I certainly didn't like it as a kid in grade 5, but I appreciate the memory now. There's a few comments calling people stupid here, and I really don't really feel it's a fair assessment to call people "stupid" for glazing over a step when they were likely younger/ a lot first time RPG players. I'm willing to bet if I sat people down calling others stupid for getting stuck here more then half of them likely don't understand how the "Same" and "Plus" rule work in triple triad, and I could just as easily be like "WOW YOU'RE SO STUPID OH MY GOD." or I could just be like "Ah, you didn't like those rules, did you?" Rinoa is also a character that aged on a lot of boys, I personally didn't like Rinoa, and even Squall comments on how he hates that everyone is forcing them together. I don't mind Rinoa now, but I certainly didn't like her back then, so it makes more sense to me why I didn't find the ship even though I was probably in the right spot at least 10 times. I think it says a lot about the effectiveness of the design in one way or another that people are still talking about it more then 20 years later. If you're a designer, or artist it's better to be daring than forgotten. When it comes to teaching people how to understand something; to understand understanding itself - don't be afraid to leave your mark on them, because that's often a big part of the lesson! To leave that lasting impression. That's what changes people. That, and a lot of failure!
I feel that, FF in general (among the other RPGs of the time) helped me to learn to read as a kid, by grade 6 I was blowing reading tests out of the water, I was the best reader in my class BY FAR, and I don't think I'd have accomplished that if I didn't read so much FF, as much as many many chapter books in a time that a kid isn't expected to read anything more involved than Goosebumps. And people try to say games aren't educational.
I too, am a defender of this amazing title, but also see why alot of folk didnt click with it being such a really overall change up in design, graphics, combat/leveling system, the junction fiascal and there interesting take on the summons from the beast that was 7 which is most people's favorite from this Era i find. Oddly enough i played through it and it just never grabbed me. I grew up watching my older brother play 7 and by the time i was old enough 8 was here and I will play it til my end times, thx for uploading!
This reminded me of how many places i was stuck at for a while lol. Leaving timber (couldnt find the house the party meet up in) galbadia garden, brothers temple, deling city, dying on the bridge leaving the prison, missile base trying to progress it, occupied balamb took me forever, white seed ship, parts of esthar. Was very rewarding getting to the next part though
Love these kind of videos. Thank you very much! Interesting take on the strategy guide selling. If we look at the FF9 strategy guide, with their weird cross-online portal, this definately could have influenced the game design to a degree. I also remembered that game magazines also used to have continous walkthroughs for popular games spread across issues as well.
I was super young when I first played FF8. I never used draw. Got all the way to the final dungeon, but couldn’t finish it when they took my summons away as that was my only way to do damage. So to say I was struggling was an understatement. Definitely remember hitting a wall with this ship. I think I gave up looking twice before I found it in my third attempt.
Just the other day I remembered during the scene where the prison starts to sink into the sand? The one where Squall has to run from those sweeping floor blocks on the prisons triangular tower bridges? This happens right at the end of the prison escape before they get into the 2 cars and seperate toward the Selphie missile and Squall balamb crews. On my second or third playthrough, I started going left instead of right as the prison was sinking into the sand which lead to a game over as there was no indicator as to the fact that you needed to go right. Rinoa and your other party member will scream "THIS WAY!" and the right side of the screen doesn't show the 2 of them which was extremely misleading. If you didn't save on that save sphere in the control room as it was hidden off camera and so you needed to move to the right to see it, you would have had to have replayed a boss fight with a red soldier and 2 of those "Haste, Slow" purple robot guys on the bridge. I often wonder how many people had this happen to them on their first playthrough.
I think a lot of it was also that social interaction they were promoting a lot at the time, all the way to 12, I believe. I might be wrong, but wasn't the Final Fantasy official site active at the time? It had chat boards and all to go and ask other players for advice. I recall that 12 had a ton of content be super vague (mainly how to spawn hunts and rare game, and what materials unlock what bazaar) to encourage people to discuss their findings. I wouldn't be surprised if FF8 was made this ooen to encourage that very same discussion... even if too early.
It's like with the old NES and SNES games where they had a couple of extra difficult levels on purpose, so people had to struggle for a while to pass them and that way they made the game feel longer than what really was
i never clicked on a video so fast. when I was a little kid, my first run I could not find the damn white seed ship. eventually came to the conclusion my save must be bugged and started completely over. I went through the whole game again, still couldn't find it. to this day, I've never progressed FF8 past the point of searching for that god-forsaken ship.
It's so funny seeing this as i just went through this again for the first time in at least seventeen years. I wasn't looking up videos on FFVIII here or anything, and yet I find this. It's hard to remember how long it took me to do this way back in 1999 but i definitely recall it driving me crazy.
One thing I really like about the White SeeD Ship, at least in concept, is how much emphasis FF8 put on really exploring the world map and giving major landmarks for finding things. I love that its hiding place is somewhere that's easy to miss something, and that the world map served as more than just an A to B system. Between that and the Obel Lake/PuPu quests FF8's world map feels like the most wholly developed world map of the franchise.
I actually kind of enjoy the frustration of finding the white SeeD ship. It's in character for the White SeeD ship to be evasive and hard to find. The actual bad part is really when you know you need to find it but you still havent actually hit the right trigger to spawn it.
Man... I remember as a kid looking for hours and days for the white seed ship. And I remember letting my friend borrow my ff8 copy and when he got to that part, he found it right away 😅 But the cherry on top was when we went to enter the seed ship, the screen would go black and the music would keep playing and the game would lock 😢 Disc wasn't even scratched or anything.
I remember getting stuck on this quest back when it first came out, around the time I was 10. I ended up restarting the game before I found it, then not being able to find it that time either. I don't even think I owned the game at the time. I had rented it from Hollywood Video.
1:50 This just brought back a strong memory of exiting Midgar and being absolutely blown away. I was still relatively young and though I had played a few JRPGs for the SNES, I didn't expect the game to go beyond Midgar. Maybe the map would open up for other sectors, or something. And then we leave and there is this ENORMOUS world to explore, far beyond anything the 2D games could provide. Blew my ten year old mind. And I think it's why FF8 is still my favorite of the PS1 era after all these years. I was expecting a large world but this one felt more, I don't know, contemporary. There were monsters, but you could analyze them like they were species of the world that been cataloged like a bunch of guys in white coats had already studied them in a lab. I don't know, it really tickled me. Off topic, I know, but I wanted to share that. Anyway, I don't really remember the SeeD ship being that hard to find but its entirely possible that I looked it up. Lord knows I had to look up what the hell the magazines were supposed to be hinting at, and why that UFO was flying around.
I remember I just found it while I was exploring when I got control of the Balamb Garden. If I'm right I found it too early, I got inside the White Seed but they told me to leave then my control returned on World Map. I'm not quite sure exactly, it was 20+ years ago.
12 year old me got all the way to the end game without a guide but for some reason, had no idea how to get to the Lunatic Pandora after leaving Esthar. I spent about a week just wandering around the world map. Finally finished the game a few years ago and couldn't believe how close I was to the end, all those years ago. And yeah, the White Seed Ship tripped me up for a few days too. Love this game though. It was some adventure for a 12 year old who'd never played a turn based RPG before. It completely blew me away. I'll always have fond memoreies of this game like no other.
When I was young I loved this game but the only thing that stumped me for over a week was finding that door in the back of the training area where you met with Quistis after the dance. The doorway was not immediately revealing itself, I was so mad because I kept running into the T-Rex over and over and having died and reset my game so much that I was just about to give up on it and I had a friend over and he saw my distress and somehow already knew where it was and as simple as it was, and the scene was not really even helpful other than the fact that it will continue you on to the next part of the game something I was having trouble with but I just felt like I was having my own problems but this was actually quite a game flaw in my eyes. I had no problem with some really complex situations like the maze of sewers under dealing city, and the caves and dungeons of other parts. I do enjoy now that I have solved all my problems with this game I can truly enjoy the story and every time I replay I remember that before these games were updated and brought to the online market bugs were hard to find because the team made the games actually work properly all the way through no matter if I got lost a few times. I love this game more than any other final fantasy.
I lucked out when I was kid. I have a cousin, who owned a PS1 copy of FF8, & she became very familiar with many aspects of the game. Although, the only bit of knowledge in the game I had over her, was knowing about the enemy level scaling system. Thankfully, she was able to help point me in the right direction, whenever I got lost, or was confused about the in-game lore. I was a kid when the game came out, only having a little bit of RPG experience. Mostly with FF4, 7 & a small amount of 9 at the time. It's kinda funny looking back, because I was shopping in an EB Games (Canadian Gamestop) store with her mom, who was looking for a birthday present for her daughter. She asked me for a suggestion of which game. I mentioned how the FF games had always been a good series for me, & that both me & my cousin had experience with RPGs (she had a SNES copy of FF4, & that was my 1st exposure to the franchise). The mom saw FF8 sitting on the rack in the store & purchased it that day. My cousin has been very grateful to me for that, & we still love the game to this day.
My biggest issue that I remember having was when you finally go to Esthar. There was no direction (afair) given to you as a player that you needed to interact with Rinoa which started the cutscene on the bridge to Esthar. Super frustrating.
I played this game as kid when I barely knew english. So most of the fun was to explore on overworld map and try to find new things to battle. I spent countless of hours just cruising in map with garden and later on with spaceship. Found white seed ship, cactuar island an deep sea research vacility easily without knowledge i need to even search them.
I played this game on stream recently and managed to find the white seed ship immediately, but that was pretty much it. I ended up joking that it wasn't an ff8 stream unless I spent an hour running around lost. Feels kind of nice to know this is an actual thing with FF8.
This is one of those things that everybody talks about and I remember being a thing when I played it, but I don't remember having any difficulty. The only thing I could think that prevented me from experiencing this was that I talked to every NPC and would go back to old towns to see what changed after major events. This kind of game design was typical of the time, Ocarina of Time employs it liberally for its main quest progression to, forcing you to talk to Goron and Zora NPCs to advance its path to their respective dungeons. I think for people who came back to this game later, even a few years later, this wasn't a common game design choice, so you'd probably lack the context to know that if you get stuck, you need to just talk to every NPC until you find what you need. For example, you won't ever need a guide for the first Final Fantasy if you follow that rule.
back then when i was 17 yrs old when its release in 1999. so much to say im good at directions. it took me like 30mins to find the white SeeD ship as instructed in where its location maybe. im kinda paying attention to the NPCs dialogue and its highlighting texts in Blue or yellow marking si i dont have problems whenever i progress in the story. cuz u have sense of awareness as my age back then. so fun memories to discover on my own. i only rely on strategy for best junctions and whatnot. but progression wise i just did it on my self and figure it on my own.
Nice to know im not the only one that spent years going on a mission looking for a tiny ship around the hole map. Must of been 12 years old and spent most my days going on a lovely vacation around the world of final fantasy. Found an abandoned factory, a village that worshiped laguna and moombas kindly let me stay over night, but no ship. When i was 15 i attempted to take another holiday around the map and eventually found it. Went past that location like 20 times, you litrely have to explore every single corners and edges of the island. Very very well hidden. The pure joy i felt finding it. I look back and laugh now but at the time, it was very fustrating. Lol
I don't recall having any problem finding that ship. Although I played the game only once and it was a long time ago, I would remember it if I had the same problem so many other people are complaining about. I finally understand why people did after hearing that checking on Rinoa is the trigger. My playstyle is to talk with everyone before moving on to the next objective. Knowing me, there's no way I would have skipped talking to her during my playthrough. However, I could see myself being unable to find the ship on a subsequent playthrough if I was more interested in rushing to the end. My aforementioned playstyle only applies to my first playthrough or when I haven't played a game for a very long time. I understand why so many people are reporting only being unable to find that ship on subsequent playthroughs.
I don't remember ever getting stuck on that part, but I am way overdue for a playthrough. However, with FF7 fining the black Materia for the first time, only one person in the world hints to you where to go and the first time you see his house no one is home so you kind of forget that that place even exists.
To be honest, the fact that you had to visit Rinoa in the infirmary made me feel pretty validated… In RPGs and especially FFs, I always talk to every NPC and visit every corner of every location before moving forward with the plot. So, I actually had a bit of a panic reaction when I spoke to Rinoa and suddenly plot was happening 😅 But it did feel good that I didn’t need a guide for that or instruction, and would have found it on my own, because of my diligence.
Haha, I miss those childhood panic moments where you think you've done something wrong and it's just plot progression.... I think when the first Laguna dream happened I reset the game because I thought i'd messed up.
I just remembered I have a low-level game of FF8 Remastered going right now where I got the Lionheart before fighting Seifer. I forgot to junction Squall at all but still one-hit him. XD
Bro as a kid I LOVED FF7. Beat it multiple times unlocking everything. I was so excited to play FF8. I was sooo invested. When I got to the white seed ship section I roamed the world for 4 days getting increasingly more frustrated. I put the game down for decades because of that section.
I was a huge fan of strategy guides back in the day. Every time I'd go to buy a new RPG, I'd buy the guide along with it. I didn't necessarily use it right away, but it was such a wealth of information that would otherwise be difficult to find and it was so nice to just have a physical book to thumb through and look at the art, etc... I sincerely miss the days when these were released for almost every large game. It's a damn shame that these are no longer common, but at least I still have my library of old guides I can pick up and go through when I get bored or I feel like playing through some of these older titles.
As a kid in the 80s and 90s I loved Strategy Guides we used to buy them all the time for all our NES games. The last Guide I bought was around 2008 in a Used Game Store for it was for GTA San Andreas, I didn't need it as by that time I had beat San Andreas multiple times over and knew just about everything but I bought it bc I was just so surprised that Brady was still making Game Guides in the early 2000s and it was a throwback to my childhood.
Some of the hidden secrets in this game are so obscure, Along with the item refinement requirements that you are right about the strategy guide sales plot. They made so many things just plain invisible too. At least 9 had the exclamation point.
On my First play through as a child I was the only one in my school I knew of that played FF and I say this because I actually leveled to lvl 100 before finding the seed ship. Its something I will never forget until the day I die because I played everyday for over a month before I found it.
Hehehehe white SeeD The only time I’ve been completely stumped and didn’t know where to go was towards the end of FF5, I probably crossed some sortve point of no return.
I was stuck for months at the orphanage. You’re supposed to head out and to the left, after Rinoa- I never noticed the path and just went back out into the world and was never able to progress the story !😅
My first playthrough I barely understood ANTHING in this game. I was 11. I was an idiot. Along with not understanding the junction system or the fact that leveling up was somewhat useless...i ACCIDENTALLY found the white whip, not even knowing I was looking for it. I just mashed X through most of the dialogue. Then, a few years later, I spent hours looking for that on a second playthrough...
I clearly remember back then 20 years ago i was spending almost 1 month finding the white seed ship, there was no gamefaqs or any walkthrough and i nearly give up and abandoned this game for good 😢
I hit a point like this on FF7 when I was a kid where I did not have a single CLUE where to go, and the only place I'd last saved was the Gelnika. So foolishly I thought Emerald Weapon was a 'defeat to advance story' sort of boss, and kept grinding the Gelnika until I could defeat Emerald, which naturally was an impossible task for child me. It was only a couple of years later when I spoke to Bugenhagen on the airship that it all clicked and I was like OHHHH, went back to the place where Aerith died and voila, the game carried on. But man I swear there was absolutely nothing telling me where to go
If you played this game in a vacuum with no one else to talk to or no strategy guide you may struggle to finish it, probably not though. I remember as a kid getting stuck around the Rinoa infirmary scene, and taking the FH railroad to Esther, but that was probably me not paying attention. But a 100% play through of side quests would be absolutely impossible, there is no way you’d discover the black shadow or half of the GFs, or learn how to abolish card rules in tricky regions etc.
AJAJAJAJAJAJJ Imagine me, I from Mexico, with poor English and my only help was a LAROUSSE CHILDREN'S dictionary AHAHAHA LITERALLY (I say it LITERALLY, not as a stupid use for today's stupid pubescents) I talked to everyone, YES ALL THE CHARACTERS NPCs IN THE GAME, I didn't leave anyone without asking and I had to go around the entire world, going all around the earth until I found the damn White seeds
I still have my old FF7 strategy guide where you can see faints marks of a nose-bleed on the Chocobo breeding page because I couldn't get a naturally raised chocobo no matter how many times I tried.
Thanks for watching 💙 If you enjoyed the episode please consider subscribing to support the channel. If you'd like to support the channel further you can do so here: -
Patreon: www.patreon.com/gamediscourses
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/gamediscourses
Suffering, succotash son you are nothing but a Shriveling little ff8 hater
Do you even deserve to find the White Seed ship, when you don't check on your girlfriend, who is in the hospital because she got possessed by an evil sorcerer?
A sound argument 😅
Isn't the whole point of finding the white SeeD ship some half assed attempt to save her by finding your big sis with magical powers? Seems like some romantic dedication to literally chase them down in your school tbh
Fair. 😂
maaaaan, that is exactly what I've been thinking this whole time, hearing about how hard it was to find, blah blah and I never had any issues. Turns out I was being rewarded for doing what literally everyone should have been doing all along. They didn't make the ship hard to find, it just ended up that way cause they expected way more empathy from the audience than what they actually got, lmao.
I approve gatekeeping content because the player is not role playing in this role playing game.
My thoughts and prayers to those who didn't find the White Seed Ship.
My friend struggled with this and I don't think ever found it. Needing to talk to Rinoa when everyone says "Lets go find the White SeeD Ship!" is a confusing story beat to be sure!
I'm actually really glad I know of this now, I feel better about the hours scouring the seas for this ship as a kid knowing that I was not, in fact, going crazy lol.
i ashamed to say i have to read the walkthrough to finish this quest
@@glorykun same, had to take a 2 year break and found a game guide at a blockbuster.
🙏
I got this game when I was 12 . I was stuck at this part for a lonnnnng time. I did not have internet back in 1999 yet so I couldn't look it up. I finally was able to find it after about a month or so.
In short "find the white seed ship, it's in an inlet on the centra continent, a continent made entirely of inlets"
I remember I had to look up what an inlet even was when I was a little kid playing this the first time lol.
Incels
HAHAHAHAHAHAAH exactly, thanks Mom Edea.
Simple answer: because they tell you to find it before the trigger scene that actually spawns it in the world, and don't bother to elaborate that you need to seek out and talk to another character after being told to find the ship before you can actually find it
Meanwhile Phantasy Star 4 was like "pfft, 3 world maps and 3 vehicles, find your own final dungeon, bitch"
Final dungeon was easy, it's right next to the space port that the game throws you at once you've gotten to that point in the plot.
The real hell was navigating Dezolis with the Ice Digger. Everything looks the same, there's a god-awful snow filter making it hard to see the path, the world itself is a maze, AND your first destination is a specific random town halfway through the map!
@@Julford Or finding the dog behind the wall for that one side job 🤣
I'm pretty sure the dialogue shortly after you get the Elsydeon says a giant hole opened near Mile? (Love your Tactics Ogre stuff, by the way.)
A lot of older games were like that, like Phantasie or Might & Magic. You can just sorta go to the endgame if you know where it is, but if you don't, you can be kept wandering for quite a while.
@@KnownAsKenji Well aware. Tons of videos on my channel were made to clue people onto the fact Tactics Ogre had hundreds of hours worth of post game something like 90%+ of players at the time had no clue about....though it was also presented super weird.
White Seed Ship: as a kid I figured that foot looking set of islands was suspicious and went there first... its near the orphanage. Seems like a good guess. Happened to miss the ship and proceeded to search, with a fine tooth comb, _the rest of the entire world_ ...
Finally after boring hours of sailing all over the map I decided to start the search over and found WSS straight away.
:(
I love this channel.
I used to play all the Final Fantasy games with my brother when we were kids basically. He's no longer with us, watching your videos makes me want to talk to him quite a lot. It's nice to know other people are out there thinking about the same things we were anyway.
For me, I always thought the more tricky wayfinding moments, like the Rinoa infirmary trigger as a good example, were quite candid invitations to explore the world and attempt some side quests. Triple Triad was an ubiquitous opportunity to spend some time off the main story but given the increasing intensity of the plot there were a number of well placed moments, seemingly by design, where the developers offer up some down time. I'd imagine a lot of people discovered Odin in that particular section of th egame.
🫂
Thank you mate. I'm glad you enjoy the channel and maybe find some respite in it 🫂 You make a good point about the sidequest potential here, and FF8 was interesting in how it offered multiple opportunities to branch out into sidequest/world exploration (acquiring Garden so we could do Centra ruins etc... then later acquiring Ragnarok for Deep Sea Research lab, Cactuar island etc), whereas a lot of final fantasy games leave most of the exploration til the end with the final airship acquisition.
@@AlleywayJack Yes. It is definitely one of the flaws of some Final Fantasy titles. I remember feeling it as especially egregious in FF10. The end game seemed excessively padded out with grinding busywork, none of which really immersed you in the world and lore particularly.
I guess FF8 was kind of obliged to offer you these opportunities given where the end game took you but it was still one of it's strengths.
I absolutely swear that there was a corporate conspiracy to sell more strategy guides, given how games had severe miss-able between plot point A and plot point B side quests. Tales of the Abyss was extremely notorious of that. But later, Tales of Xillia was obviously much less guilty of that, with very few side quests seeming miss-able over the course of the game.
Ah yes, good ole cryptic bullshit as AVGN aka James Rolfe would say
yeah. but i think it's interesting to read some books etc outside of games too
@@adventureoflinkmk2 WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? *chugs Rolling Rock*
Tales series mentioned. Based.
FF8 is deliberately designed to sell Guide books.
When I played it at release as a kid I couldn't find this damn ship for the life of me even tho I thought I searched literally everywhere the description fit.
After 2+ years when I finally got an internet connection this ship's location was one of the first things I used the internet for.
I legit had no idea this was even an thing, as I always went to see Rinoa in the infirmary before looking for the White Seed ship.
But then again, I am the type of player who likes to do all the side content as I play and as it becomes available.
@@planescaped but that's not side content, hugging her is literally on the cover. She's the main story.
@@planescaped same. i´m almost always checking what all the npc´s have to say. Had my problems to find the ship because its realy easy to miss but never encountered the problem to miss the trigger. I think that people who rush through games like that are not doing themselves any favors with it. They missed not only the ship but many other things. I never knew that Xell's little romance was hidden content in any way. Always had it just because the way i play. Squal visiting Renoa will always happen no matter what. Either you do it from the start because you're fully immersed in the story, or because you just can't get any further and start exploring all the possibilities. Easy to say what kind of player will be more fortunate. But exactly these things where you as a player are rewarded for simply enjoying the journey and paying attention to the little things instead of just rushing through it quickly is one of the reasons why I like the FF series so much.
This could've been prevented if Squall thought to himself in a textbox.
Squall:
(I know we need to find the White SeeD ship, but I want to check on Rinoa first...)
or alternatively, the game should've had a "hint" giver (make it Niida, he doesn't do much really...) who you can ask for advice, and maybe they can point you in the direction to say, "Hey I know you want to find that ship, but you should go check on Rinoa while you still can."
It could have gone even further, and prevent you from going to the world map until you've seen Rinoa (if you try it could bring up that textbox). That might be a bit annoying because it also prevents you from going and doing sidequests, but you can always go and do them afterwards so I don't think it would be a big deal.
@@Psyk60 That would indeed be a good solution. Or heck, may aswell just make it an automatic cutscene that the game plays out for you. Before the game lets you go and says, "alright, we've shown you what we want you to see, go out and find that ship."
They could have lock you out of the World Map until you visited Rinoa. With your Party Members telling you that Squall hasn't visited Rinoa often.
Just add a journal system with quest log like Western games had since at least early Baldur's Gate or Fallout, it also wouldn't hurt to have map markers naming cities and landmarks, as real maps have. When an NPC in late game quest tells me to go to Mysydia, do I REALLY have to fly airship to every single town in one of THREE maps of FFIV until I accidentally pick the right one? Because that's how older FFs worked, maps without labels and GOOD LUCK.
@@KasumiRINA I think FFIV on the SNES did come with a physical map though. So you didn't have to fly around aimlessly, you were expected to look at the map that came with the game.
The manual also had a walkthrough for about half the game.
I'm from Brazil and after the lunar series I went into FF8, I wasnt as fluent as I'm now and it was hell to find that ship, I only did because a TV show called "stargames" was doing a walkthrough of the game and that showed me the exact place. I felt happy and frustrated at the same time... A time before internet was everywhere :).
I had a magazine, Gamestation I think was the name. The very first edition was a complete walkthrough of FFVIII, and a very good one. And even with a map pinpointing it, it wasn't easy. Centra is just that difficult to navigate.
But also, we had so much more time to spend hours looking for it when we were young.
@@llKirosll yeah, tottally!
I'm not saying people are dumb but I never had trouble as a kid. I think these games just expected you to care about things like Rinoa's status and want to go talk to her. They expected you to be curious enough about the world to talk to random NPCs
Same. I remember playing quite a bit of FF8 as a kid yet this particular quest didn't ring any bells. It must have been very inconsequential to my own playthrough.
i agree, you just pay attention to details of NPCs dialogue to know some hints and where to go.
@@JoeyJoverAgbayaniThere is a ton of great world building in the dialogue too.
@@PinkMawile totally agree to that.
People are dumb brother. People seem to think the first mission in Driver is impossible
This is a test of whether you/Squall grew as a person. Do you care enough about your relationships to check on Rinoa or are you still focused primarily on the mission?
very interesting take
i love this perspective of like, extra-narrative storytelling. FF8 is such a strange beast that seems to invite reading between the lines like this
@@c4h5n2o1 it wants you to do what squall would want to do at the time, which is to visit rinoa. it is actually emphasizing the role-playing elements of the genre, outside of battle and stats!!! the game already extensively showcases squall's mindset, no?
This thought crosses my mind too. This is where Squall starts changing a lot too so it honestly does make sense.
Nice take!
To be fair, putting triggers behind talking to cute girls is a decent way to get a young man to slowly discover things.
I think this part did sort of confuse me at first. But for me, what really messed me up was the missile base with Selphie's quest. For the longest time, I didn't understand that you had to drive the car and not walk to get inside, and I kept thinking they just weren't letting me in because I hadn't found some hidden trigger with talking to a character or something. I was going everywhere and talking to everyone I could. I even went back to Galbadia. It wasn't until I just randomly guessed, "Hey, maybe I need to drive" that I finally got past this. I was a kid back then, but I still feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Xd
Had the same problem as a kid.
Replayed it recently, and it was super obvious for an adult 🙈
@katyadade1041 Glad to know it wasn't just me! 😅
This is one of things that let multiple people lose their saves (and sometimes entire progress) in Mass Effect, a few forum threads on Legendary edition where they walked through the tunnel at the very end on foot instead of using Mako, and couldn't get through the scene where you have to do a trench run to a portal. It's timed and you're not fast enough and if you autosaved there without transport...
Now imagine the White SeeD Ship as a FF9 Chocograph, with the obligatory worst camera direction possible on the given map to make it more confusing
"sea"
I spent years trying to find that white SeeD ship when I was 13, playing it on and off again until I eventually gave at up. It's only now, replaying the game at 36, that I finally found that God damn ship! I can't tell you the joy and excitement I felt seeing it there, knowing that this time I'll actually finish the game.
Wait…how were you 13 when you played this game but are 36 now? lol. I was 14 when I played this in 1998 and I’m 39 now. I assume you didn’t play the game when it first came out and played it in 2001?
@ShockerTopper That is correct! I found a PC version of the game when i was on holiday in Europe (I sadly didn't own a PS1) I was so excited that I could finally play a final fantasy game and specifically this game which I had been lusting for since it's release.
I've heard rumours that the PC version had a glitch where the White Seed Ship didn't appear, but I think I was just bad at the game and couldn't find it hahaha 😅
I hope you enjoy completing the game, have a good one 🙂
Was the same age when I tryed to look for it.
2 years it took me.
The only information I got was "It's by an island shaped like the letter c"
Found alot of new locations like the abandoned laboratory and the village that has moombas, but no ship.
It's very well hidden and finding it finally was pure joy.
@kanatapaw Yes, during that time, I really got to know the map well and discovered many locations too! So I guess that is a plus hehe
Glad to see some of your recent videos take off recently. You have been one of the best VG analysis channels for years. Happy to see more people finally discover your content.
Appreciate that, thank you man 🙏
Yeah I call this stuff the "Buy the official strategy guide" school of game design as well.
I remember this. I love the ff8 world, so searching for it felt like a chance to explore the world a little more, which i enjoyed, but it really is ridiculous how hidden it felt.
You unlocked a traumatic memory. Basically, go each continent and go around the border. EVERY border
I have a hard time being critical of FF6 through 9, as to me these were the absolute perfect games, everything in the 90s JRPG industry built up and built up and built up until finally these 3 masterpieces were released.
6,7,8,9
Four games but you only consider 4 of them masterpieces. Which one are you excluding?
I like them all but I personally find Tactics the Hidden ultimate Masterpiece buried between these. My favorite of the 5.
And Chrono Trigger, basically a perfect game. Heck, my actual most favorite game of all time is Earthbound, but I'll still readily admit that CT and FF6 are better games and would be quicker to recommend them to someone.
Correction, FF4-10 were all brilliant while the NES were excellent for their time. Yes, even 2.
@@acerimmer8338 Honestly I don't get the "hate" that seems to be around FF 10. Most of the reasons to dislike it or put it below the PS1 titles seem pretty superficial to me: the things people who didn't bother to play the whole game would say (such as "Tidus is so dumb/annoying"). IMO, it has one of the best storytelling and most interesting settings of the entire franchise.
I remember being 11 years old and spending an age looking for this. I distinctly remember tracing the coast of every continent and not finding anything. I gave up on the game entirely and haven’t returned to it since. I concluded that the game was broken and the ship literally didn’t exist.This was the days before gamefaqs was normalised for 11 year olds so if you couldn’t find a kid on the playground who knew how to solve a game problem, or a Prima guide, you were toast.
I gave up and played other games. Literally haven’t touched FF8 since.
Looking back now I know, it’s really dumb to tell people to go look for something on the world map and expect their reaction to be to go talk to someone who isn’t on the world map.
FF8 is one of my favs, but finding the White SeeD ship PISSED ME TF OFF. One of the most frustrating things in the game hands down.
Rather fight a boss that go on a mission to go around the hole map looking for a tiny ship
I had that guidebook so i didnt have problem finding the White SeeD ship. However, as young i was back whem playing it, how could I have missed not giggling at the name "White SeeD" as a kid😂
👀
2:14 I dunno, you're right about FF7 being railroaded but it also feels like it stands out from the previous games, the ones I got lost the most are early ones, EVEN on replay where you KNOW what's next but can't find your way over Edgar's castle, for example, or get stuck "where do I go now in VERY FIRST FF. FF4 is the most linear but even it gets confused and backtracking for sidequests is painful with all the wacky transport systems they use (one of ships carries an airboat that's the only way to get to multiple specific places but other ships don't have it, other has a drill and for landing in woods you needed a black chocobo).
I have a pretty strong familiarity with the people responsible for FF's design up through the PSX era, having heard them speak in innumerable personal interviews.
I have an extremely difficult time believing these designers like Hiroyuki Ito, Hiroshi Minagawa, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and everyone else who cared deeply about the art they were making, would even dream of compromising their work in order to increase the profits of third party guide manufacturers.
And if it was their intention to do so, they went about it the worst way imaginable, because these quests like Obel Lake are so completely obscured that a player wouldn't go out and buy a guide to figure out something they don't even know exists to begin with.
Omg YES. This was my roadblock for so long as a dumb child. I remember FINALLY finding it on the small tv in my grandma's kitchen and God the feeling of relief.
Yeah, I had no issue at all with the trigger as I was invested in the story. I think the ship was just very well hidden so it did take me a while. The trigger issue does explain why maybe so many others have a particular issue with this though.
Yeah I never had an issue with the trigger when I was younger because I love the story/characters - it's only lately now I just try to 100% games and think I know the whole story already I'm missing them lol
I absolutely love FF8 but I do agree that this quest is awful
With certain upcoming event triggers, like Squall needing to check up on Rinoa, it actually makes sense that the character might have ongoing thoughts about her state, so having internal-thought popups about this would count as a diegetic prompt.
This brought back some childhood trauma. I feel so dumb for not knowing the dialogue triggers, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one who struggled with this too
played this when i was about 9 years old and had no issues.
however perhaps i was just crushing on rinoa and went to check up on her lmfao!!!
The thumbnail bro hahaha
Oh yeah... I remember I got stuck to this part for so many days and was so confused as to what to do. I visited all the possible places, spoke to everyone, accidentally managed to find a secret in the process (don't remember which one). So when I actually went to the infirmary to see Rinoa I was laughing so much, realizing the answer was right there. By that point I even got Squall to level 100... which wasn't, in hindsight, a good thing.
11:09 Capcom has said in interviews they purposely made the first Monster Hunter complex, confusing, and no tutorials/help specifically to have people buy strategy guides. This has been a known industry practice and was essentially the first "Pay -To-Win" injected into single player games. The side quests in FF8 are 100% way too confusing. The main quest? I don't know how you'd get lost.
Now I'm wondering - what are some of the worst flags you need to activate to progress the main story in a JRPG? A more recent-ish example was SMT 4, if you end up on the neutral alignment route you need to complete many optional quests, most are easy but there was one very random NPC you need to find in a random room in a building.
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time had me so frustrated as a kid with its story triggers
Final Fantasy 8 was a game that strongly rewarded reading comprehension, and punished those who did not have it. In the age of the budding internet where the most important thing was to not be the weakest kid on the playground that got picked on people shouldn't be shocked that a lot of boys had problems with this part of the game - It was a hard lesson, but I'll always love FF8 for being the medium that forced me to learn how to properly read in a era that what mattered most for a boy was to be strong.
I do think that Rinoa being a trigger to make the ship a tangible location was bad design, and they could of made the part of interacting with Rinoa a little more linear.
I did what you wanted headmaster Cid - I explored the world, and I ended up over leveled which just makes things worse! :') lol I don't hate or regret the SeeD Ship experience, I certainly didn't like it as a kid in grade 5, but I appreciate the memory now. There's a few comments calling people stupid here, and I really don't really feel it's a fair assessment to call people "stupid" for glazing over a step when they were likely younger/ a lot first time RPG players.
I'm willing to bet if I sat people down calling others stupid for getting stuck here more then half of them likely don't understand how the "Same" and "Plus" rule work in triple triad, and I could just as easily be like "WOW YOU'RE SO STUPID OH MY GOD." or I could just be like "Ah, you didn't like those rules, did you?" Rinoa is also a character that aged on a lot of boys, I personally didn't like Rinoa, and even Squall comments on how he hates that everyone is forcing them together. I don't mind Rinoa now, but I certainly didn't like her back then, so it makes more sense to me why I didn't find the ship even though I was probably in the right spot at least 10 times.
I think it says a lot about the effectiveness of the design in one way or another that people are still talking about it more then 20 years later.
If you're a designer, or artist it's better to be daring than forgotten.
When it comes to teaching people how to understand something; to understand understanding itself - don't be afraid to leave your mark on them, because that's often a big part of the lesson!
To leave that lasting impression. That's what changes people. That, and a lot of failure!
What a fantastic comment :)
I feel that, FF in general (among the other RPGs of the time) helped me to learn to read as a kid, by grade 6 I was blowing reading tests out of the water, I was the best reader in my class BY FAR, and I don't think I'd have accomplished that if I didn't read so much FF, as much as many many chapter books in a time that a kid isn't expected to read anything more involved than Goosebumps. And people try to say games aren't educational.
Thank you for making this video, I thought for the longest time I was the only one who had this issue, I found it but it was a pain in the ass!
I too, am a defender of this amazing title, but also see why alot of folk didnt click with it being such a really overall change up in design, graphics, combat/leveling system, the junction fiascal and there interesting take on the summons from the beast that was 7 which is most people's favorite from this Era i find. Oddly enough i played through it and it just never grabbed me. I grew up watching my older brother play 7 and by the time i was old enough 8 was here and I will play it til my end times, thx for uploading!
This reminded me of how many places i was stuck at for a while lol. Leaving timber (couldnt find the house the party meet up in) galbadia garden, brothers temple, deling city, dying on the bridge leaving the prison, missile base trying to progress it, occupied balamb took me forever, white seed ship, parts of esthar. Was very rewarding getting to the next part though
Love these kind of videos. Thank you very much!
Interesting take on the strategy guide selling. If we look at the FF9 strategy guide, with their weird cross-online portal, this definately could have influenced the game design to a degree. I also remembered that game magazines also used to have continous walkthroughs for popular games spread across issues as well.
I was super young when I first played FF8. I never used draw. Got all the way to the final dungeon, but couldn’t finish it when they took my summons away as that was my only way to do damage. So to say I was struggling was an understatement. Definitely remember hitting a wall with this ship. I think I gave up looking twice before I found it in my third attempt.
Just the other day I remembered during the scene where the prison starts to sink into the sand? The one where Squall has to run from those sweeping floor blocks on the prisons triangular tower bridges? This happens right at the end of the prison escape before they get into the 2 cars and seperate toward the Selphie missile and Squall balamb crews. On my second or third playthrough, I started going left instead of right as the prison was sinking into the sand which lead to a game over as there was no indicator as to the fact that you needed to go right. Rinoa and your other party member will scream "THIS WAY!" and the right side of the screen doesn't show the 2 of them which was extremely misleading. If you didn't save on that save sphere in the control room as it was hidden off camera and so you needed to move to the right to see it, you would have had to have replayed a boss fight with a red soldier and 2 of those "Haste, Slow" purple robot guys on the bridge. I often wonder how many people had this happen to them on their first playthrough.
I think a lot of it was also that social interaction they were promoting a lot at the time, all the way to 12, I believe. I might be wrong, but wasn't the Final Fantasy official site active at the time? It had chat boards and all to go and ask other players for advice. I recall that 12 had a ton of content be super vague (mainly how to spawn hunts and rare game, and what materials unlock what bazaar) to encourage people to discuss their findings. I wouldn't be surprised if FF8 was made this ooen to encourage that very same discussion... even if too early.
It's like with the old NES and SNES games where they had a couple of extra difficult levels on purpose, so people had to struggle for a while to pass them and that way they made the game feel longer than what really was
i never clicked on a video so fast. when I was a little kid, my first run I could not find the damn white seed ship. eventually came to the conclusion my save must be bugged and started completely over. I went through the whole game again, still couldn't find it. to this day, I've never progressed FF8 past the point of searching for that god-forsaken ship.
It's so funny seeing this as i just went through this again for the first time in at least seventeen years. I wasn't looking up videos on FFVIII here or anything, and yet I find this. It's hard to remember how long it took me to do this way back in 1999 but i definitely recall it driving me crazy.
When he said White SeeD, I giggled a bit. But I knew it was serious when I found out the White SeeD are seamen. Never laugh at seamen.
One thing I really like about the White SeeD Ship, at least in concept, is how much emphasis FF8 put on really exploring the world map and giving major landmarks for finding things. I love that its hiding place is somewhere that's easy to miss something, and that the world map served as more than just an A to B system. Between that and the Obel Lake/PuPu quests FF8's world map feels like the most wholly developed world map of the franchise.
I don't remember the White Seed ship being hard to find. My frustration came a lot from completing my card and GF collections.
I actually kind of enjoy the frustration of finding the white SeeD ship. It's in character for the White SeeD ship to be evasive and hard to find. The actual bad part is really when you know you need to find it but you still havent actually hit the right trigger to spawn it.
Man... I remember as a kid looking for hours and days for the white seed ship.
And I remember letting my friend borrow my ff8 copy and when he got to that part, he found it right away 😅
But the cherry on top was when we went to enter the seed ship, the screen would go black and the music would keep playing and the game would lock 😢
Disc wasn't even scratched or anything.
absolute nightmare
I remember getting stuck on this quest back when it first came out, around the time I was 10. I ended up restarting the game before I found it, then not being able to find it that time either. I don't even think I owned the game at the time. I had rented it from Hollywood Video.
1:50
This just brought back a strong memory of exiting Midgar and being absolutely blown away. I was still relatively young and though I had played a few JRPGs for the SNES, I didn't expect the game to go beyond Midgar. Maybe the map would open up for other sectors, or something. And then we leave and there is this ENORMOUS world to explore, far beyond anything the 2D games could provide. Blew my ten year old mind.
And I think it's why FF8 is still my favorite of the PS1 era after all these years. I was expecting a large world but this one felt more, I don't know, contemporary. There were monsters, but you could analyze them like they were species of the world that been cataloged like a bunch of guys in white coats had already studied them in a lab. I don't know, it really tickled me.
Off topic, I know, but I wanted to share that. Anyway, I don't really remember the SeeD ship being that hard to find but its entirely possible that I looked it up. Lord knows I had to look up what the hell the magazines were supposed to be hinting at, and why that UFO was flying around.
I remember I just found it while I was exploring when I got control of the Balamb Garden. If I'm right I found it too early, I got inside the White Seed but they told me to leave then my control returned on World Map. I'm not quite sure exactly, it was 20+ years ago.
We had no internet, I had to call like three friends and all they could remember was that it was a very brown area.
12 year old me got all the way to the end game without a guide but for some reason, had no idea how to get to the Lunatic Pandora after leaving Esthar. I spent about a week just wandering around the world map.
Finally finished the game a few years ago and couldn't believe how close I was to the end, all those years ago.
And yeah, the White Seed Ship tripped me up for a few days too. Love this game though. It was some adventure for a 12 year old who'd never played a turn based RPG before. It completely blew me away. I'll always have fond memoreies of this game like no other.
What happens if you stop the garden at the very position where the ship is supposed to appear and then triggering the event in the infirmary?
I had the official FF8 strategy guide and I *still* couldn't find the dang ship! XD
6:31 in and still doesn’t talk about what the title referees to. Maybe get to the point?
When I was young I loved this game but the only thing that stumped me for over a week was finding that door in the back of the training area where you met with Quistis after the dance. The doorway was not immediately revealing itself, I was so mad because I kept running into the T-Rex over and over and having died and reset my game so much that I was just about to give up on it and I had a friend over and he saw my distress and somehow already knew where it was and as simple as it was, and the scene was not really even helpful other than the fact that it will continue you on to the next part of the game something I was having trouble with but I just felt like I was having my own problems but this was actually quite a game flaw in my eyes. I had no problem with some really complex situations like the maze of sewers under dealing city, and the caves and dungeons of other parts. I do enjoy now that I have solved all my problems with this game I can truly enjoy the story and every time I replay I remember that before these games were updated and brought to the online market bugs were hard to find because the team made the games actually work properly all the way through no matter if I got lost a few times. I love this game more than any other final fantasy.
I lucked out when I was kid. I have a cousin, who owned a PS1 copy of FF8, & she became very familiar with many aspects of the game. Although, the only bit of knowledge in the game I had over her, was knowing about the enemy level scaling system. Thankfully, she was able to help point me in the right direction, whenever I got lost, or was confused about the in-game lore. I was a kid when the game came out, only having a little bit of RPG experience. Mostly with FF4, 7 & a small amount of 9 at the time.
It's kinda funny looking back, because I was shopping in an EB Games (Canadian Gamestop) store with her mom, who was looking for a birthday present for her daughter. She asked me for a suggestion of which game. I mentioned how the FF games had always been a good series for me, & that both me & my cousin had experience with RPGs (she had a SNES copy of FF4, & that was my 1st exposure to the franchise). The mom saw FF8 sitting on the rack in the store & purchased it that day. My cousin has been very grateful to me for that, & we still love the game to this day.
My biggest issue that I remember having was when you finally go to Esthar. There was no direction (afair) given to you as a player that you needed to interact with Rinoa which started the cutscene on the bridge to Esthar. Super frustrating.
My way to find the ship is to open the map, look for the most annoying corner of that continent, and head straight there.
I never had the this problem. I always checked with Rinoa, wanted to see how she was doing.
I played this game as kid when I barely knew english. So most of the fun was to explore on overworld map and try to find new things to battle. I spent countless of hours just cruising in map with garden and later on with spaceship. Found white seed ship, cactuar island an deep sea research vacility easily without knowledge i need to even search them.
I played this game on stream recently and managed to find the white seed ship immediately, but that was pretty much it. I ended up joking that it wasn't an ff8 stream unless I spent an hour running around lost. Feels kind of nice to know this is an actual thing with FF8.
This is one of those things that everybody talks about and I remember being a thing when I played it, but I don't remember having any difficulty. The only thing I could think that prevented me from experiencing this was that I talked to every NPC and would go back to old towns to see what changed after major events. This kind of game design was typical of the time, Ocarina of Time employs it liberally for its main quest progression to, forcing you to talk to Goron and Zora NPCs to advance its path to their respective dungeons. I think for people who came back to this game later, even a few years later, this wasn't a common game design choice, so you'd probably lack the context to know that if you get stuck, you need to just talk to every NPC until you find what you need. For example, you won't ever need a guide for the first Final Fantasy if you follow that rule.
back then when i was 17 yrs old when its release in 1999. so much to say im good at directions. it took me like 30mins to find the white SeeD ship as instructed in where its location maybe. im kinda paying attention to the NPCs dialogue and its highlighting texts in Blue or yellow marking si i dont have problems whenever i progress in the story. cuz u have sense of awareness as my age back then.
so fun memories to discover on my own. i only rely on strategy for best junctions and whatnot. but progression wise i just did it on my self and figure it on my own.
Nice to know im not the only one that spent years going on a mission looking for a tiny ship around the hole map.
Must of been 12 years old and spent most my days going on a lovely vacation around the world of final fantasy.
Found an abandoned factory, a village that worshiped laguna and moombas kindly let me stay over night, but no ship.
When i was 15 i attempted to take another holiday around the map and eventually found it.
Went past that location like 20 times, you litrely have to explore every single corners and edges of the island.
Very very well hidden.
The pure joy i felt finding it.
I look back and laugh now but at the time, it was very fustrating. Lol
I don't recall having any problem finding that ship. Although I played the game only once and it was a long time ago, I would remember it if I had the same problem so many other people are complaining about. I finally understand why people did after hearing that checking on Rinoa is the trigger. My playstyle is to talk with everyone before moving on to the next objective. Knowing me, there's no way I would have skipped talking to her during my playthrough. However, I could see myself being unable to find the ship on a subsequent playthrough if I was more interested in rushing to the end. My aforementioned playstyle only applies to my first playthrough or when I haven't played a game for a very long time. I understand why so many people are reporting only being unable to find that ship on subsequent playthroughs.
I don't remember ever getting stuck on that part, but I am way overdue for a playthrough. However, with FF7 fining the black Materia for the first time, only one person in the world hints to you where to go and the first time you see his house no one is home so you kind of forget that that place even exists.
To be honest, the fact that you had to visit Rinoa in the infirmary made me feel pretty validated… In RPGs and especially FFs, I always talk to every NPC and visit every corner of every location before moving forward with the plot. So, I actually had a bit of a panic reaction when I spoke to Rinoa and suddenly plot was happening 😅 But it did feel good that I didn’t need a guide for that or instruction, and would have found it on my own, because of my diligence.
Haha, I miss those childhood panic moments where you think you've done something wrong and it's just plot progression.... I think when the first Laguna dream happened I reset the game because I thought i'd messed up.
I just remembered I have a low-level game of FF8 Remastered going right now where I got the Lionheart before fighting Seifer. I forgot to junction Squall at all but still one-hit him. XD
To be fair they outright tell you that the White SeeD ship likes to remain hidden.
I never had issues finding it, even as a child. So much so, I didn't even know this was a thing people talked about it until right now
what kind of heartless bastard do you have to be to not check in on Rinoa tho? lol
Funnily enough I always did as a kid, but now I'm old and jaded
Your dedication to FF8 lore, insight, and personal ponderings is a true gift to our community
Bro as a kid I LOVED FF7. Beat it multiple times unlocking everything. I was so excited to play FF8. I was sooo invested. When I got to the white seed ship section I roamed the world for 4 days getting increasingly more frustrated. I put the game down for decades because of that section.
I loved how Phantasy Star IV had a "talk" menu option, where your characters would chat between them about what is your next objective
I was a huge fan of strategy guides back in the day. Every time I'd go to buy a new RPG, I'd buy the guide along with it. I didn't necessarily use it right away, but it was such a wealth of information that would otherwise be difficult to find and it was so nice to just have a physical book to thumb through and look at the art, etc... I sincerely miss the days when these were released for almost every large game. It's a damn shame that these are no longer common, but at least I still have my library of old guides I can pick up and go through when I get bored or I feel like playing through some of these older titles.
I don't even remember the white ship; did it happen before or after the horrible space station with the paired enemies?
As a kid in the 80s and 90s I loved Strategy Guides we used to buy them all the time for all our NES games.
The last Guide I bought was around 2008 in a Used Game Store for it was for GTA San Andreas, I didn't need it as by that time I had beat San Andreas multiple times over and knew just about everything but I bought it bc I was just so surprised that Brady was still making Game Guides in the early 2000s and it was a throwback to my childhood.
This literally caught me out a couple of weeks ago. I've completed the game before and forgot to visit Rinoa first lol.
Reminded me of that one FFVII playthrough I had were I missed going to Gongaga when you're "supposed" to.
Some of the hidden secrets in this game are so obscure, Along with the item refinement requirements that you are right about the strategy guide sales plot. They made so many things just plain invisible too. At least 9 had the exclamation point.
6:40 "A boss fight with a deer"
I don't recall that 🤣🤣🤣🤣
On my First play through as a child I was the only one in my school I knew of that played FF and I say this because I actually leveled to lvl 100 before finding the seed ship. Its something I will never forget until the day I die because I played everyday for over a month before I found it.
Hehehehe white SeeD
The only time I’ve been completely stumped and didn’t know where to go was towards the end of FF5, I probably crossed some sortve point of no return.
I was stuck for months at the orphanage. You’re supposed to head out and to the left, after Rinoa- I never noticed the path and just went back out into the world and was never able to progress the story !😅
X might be my favourite but 8 was my 1st FF and the amount of nostalgia I feel any time I hear that Balamb Garden theme is unmeasurable.
The balamb town took me too long to finish because the settings for brightness of our tv is too high that i didn't see the door to the kitchen lmao
My first playthrough I barely understood ANTHING in this game. I was 11. I was an idiot. Along with not understanding the junction system or the fact that leveling up was somewhat useless...i ACCIDENTALLY found the white whip, not even knowing I was looking for it. I just mashed X through most of the dialogue. Then, a few years later, I spent hours looking for that on a second playthrough...
I clearly remember back then 20 years ago i was spending almost 1 month finding the white seed ship, there was no gamefaqs or any walkthrough and i nearly give up and abandoned this game for good 😢
I hit a point like this on FF7 when I was a kid where I did not have a single CLUE where to go, and the only place I'd last saved was the Gelnika. So foolishly I thought Emerald Weapon was a 'defeat to advance story' sort of boss, and kept grinding the Gelnika until I could defeat Emerald, which naturally was an impossible task for child me. It was only a couple of years later when I spoke to Bugenhagen on the airship that it all clicked and I was like OHHHH, went back to the place where Aerith died and voila, the game carried on. But man I swear there was absolutely nothing telling me where to go
If you played this game in a vacuum with no one else to talk to or no strategy guide you may struggle to finish it, probably not though.
I remember as a kid getting stuck around the Rinoa infirmary scene, and taking the FH railroad to Esther, but that was probably me not paying attention.
But a 100% play through of side quests would be absolutely impossible, there is no way you’d discover the black shadow or half of the GFs, or learn how to abolish card rules in tricky regions etc.
AJAJAJAJAJAJJ
Imagine me, I from Mexico, with poor English and my only help was a LAROUSSE CHILDREN'S dictionary AHAHAHA
LITERALLY (I say it LITERALLY, not as a stupid use for today's stupid pubescents) I talked to everyone, YES ALL THE CHARACTERS NPCs IN THE GAME, I didn't leave anyone without asking and I had to go around the entire world, going all around the earth until I found the damn White seeds
I still have my old FF7 strategy guide where you can see faints marks of a nose-bleed on the Chocobo breeding page because I couldn't get a naturally raised chocobo no matter how many times I tried.