A few weeks back, someone started an argument with me about Final Fantasy VIII. They asserted that everyone had always hated Final Fantasy VIII, and that I was somehow wrong for remembering that my friends and I were super-hyped for it, enjoyed it immensely when it came out, and that reviews of the time were also very kind to it. Review scores aren't the be-all and end-all, of course, but they do act as a pretty good barometer of roughly how positive the critical reception for a given title was.
I bowed out of the conversation early on because it was pretty clear from the outset that the person attempting to start this argument was not going to listen to any viewpoint other than their own, even when it was coming from someone who lived through the experience of that game coming out, and they just wanted to hate on something that had, in recent years, become fashionable to bash.
Now, I'm not going to attempt to convince you one way or the other about Final Fantasy VIII at this point. It's one of those games that you either "get" or you don't, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't "get" it. But to extend "I don't get this" out to "everyone everywhere always hated this" is ridiculous. It's absolute revisionist history, and it's something that drives me absolutely bonkers about online discourse over video games these days.
It happens with more recent games, too. Take Mario Kart World, a game which does some really interesting things with the Mario Kart formula, and one which is designed with so much polish that I really can't take anyone who says it is a "bad" game seriously. And yet to some folks it is "the worst Mario Kart there has ever been" and, again, "everyone hated it". No, no they did not.
Or another example: I saw a post just this evening that implied that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was a bad game, primarily due to the fact that none of the original team who worked on the first ever The Legend of Zelda game (which is celebrating an anniversary milestone right now) worked on it. I take two issues with this: one, that everyone who worked on the original The Legend of Zelda is probably either an old man or dead at this point, and thus should be left to get on with their life in peace, and two, Echoes of Wisdom wasn't a bad game! Not even a little bit!
EDIT: The account in question has since clarified that they meant it was "sad" that Echoes of Wisdom was the first game without any of the original team that was involved, not that they thought it was a "sad" game due to it not being any good. I have left the preceding paragraph as-is to take ownership of my own misunderstanding — and to acknowledge that I wasn't alone in it, hence the account's clarification of what they said.
And don't even get me started on Final Fantasy XIII.
There is one thing that all these examples have in common, though, and that is the fact that all of them do something different to what is expected as "the norm" in their respective series. For Final Fantasy VIII and XIII, this should be no surprise to anyone who has ever paid attention to the series and its core philosophy of "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy" (as I wrote about nearly ten years ago right here), but, to this day, people are confused by the fact that Final Fantasy VIII and XIII are very unconventional in a lot of ways. (Interestingly, very few people seem to have a problem with Final Fantasy XII these days, despite, in many ways, it being a way more significant disruption from the series "usual format" than many other entries.)
For Mario Kart World and Echoes of Wisdom, those two games were always in a bit of a no-win situation. Do something the same as previous games and they would be regarded as pointless and unambitious. Do something a bit different, as they both did, and people complain that they're not like all the other games in the series! Seriously daft.
The most annoying thing about this constant revisionist history is that it makes it impossible to have sensible discussions about these games. Pretty much as soon as it became clear someone was spoiling for a fight over having the "correct" opinion about Final Fantasy VIII (and what "everybody" thought of it, apparently), the entire thread derailed and became impossible to have a reasonable discussion in. Anyone who attempted to highlight the things that they, in fact, liked about it was shouted down, and it just became pointless to even try. I've seen enough threads like that in my time to know that it really wasn't worth trying in the first place, which is why I bowed out of it early.
When it comes to Final Fantasy VIII, I'll just leave you with one little story from my past. In the period between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII coming out, our friendship group had a perpetually running joke with the local computer shop owner, in which literally every time we went in there (and we went in there a lot), we would ask him if he knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply by mumbling something mostly incoherent about "stocks". This became such a notorious exchange among our friendship group that during our obsession with the Klik and Play games-making software, one of our number immortalised the discussion in his project Resident Evil EX, by incorporating a fully-voiced scene in which the protagonist, Agent Wesley Wilson, would walk into a computer store in the in-game mall, ask if the shopkeeper knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply "asfhgblaskbkljblkl stocks".
That's how excited we were for Final Fantasy VIII to come out. And when it eventually did come out, I had people in my university room almost every night to come watch and see what would happen next.
So don't fuckin' tell me that "everyone always hated" something. Because, inevitably, it isn't true. In pretty much every instance like this, what the person saying that "everyone always hated" something means is "I didn't really like this" and "I'm unwilling to entertain the possibility that anyone else did".
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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