The quick screenshot of Squall without a face is deeply disturbing, and I'd never noticed it before because of how fast and brief it was.
I honestly don't know if the creators intended the game to be interpreted this way, but if it wasn't, then it's just a bad story told poorly. At least this theory would make sense of how incoherent and insipid it was.
Not sure if this has made the rounds on giantbomb, but I was curious as to what you guys/gals thought of this theory.
I agree with this guy's thesis though:
I choose to believe that this is how the game was intended to be understood because, to me, the game makes no sense otherwise. Everything that happens to the characters after the first disc is retarded. The ending is like recapping the game on acid. There has to be something more to the story than a simple ‘Hero Takes All’ plot.
Great storytelling is really important to me, because it can make even a game with mediocre gameplay mechanics enjoyable, if for nothing else than to see what happens next (though there is a limit to that as well). However, it is indeed a balancing act. Games that have meh-to-awful stories have to REALLY bring it in the gameplay department to compensate.
Storytelling is just another factor into what makes a game, just like the graphics, music, gameplay etc. People who tend to discount the importance of good storytelling in games do nothing to help the image of video games as crass, hypnotic brainleeches that turn us into zombie vidiots. I don't care what Kojima and his ilk say, games can be art just like anything else.
I used to love JRPGS back during the PSone period (when there was a lot of interesting experimentation with the genre going on, like Parasite Eve, Brave Fencer Musashi, Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile etc), but it seems like most of the real talented people who were responsible for that era have pretty much stopped making games and now it's all just anime cliches (I'm looking at YOU Star Oceans, Tales of series, etc!). The gameplay is usually not enough for me to stomach the obnoxious weeaboo characters or the dreadfully trite storylines.
On the flipside, I've never been a big 3rd/1st person shooter fan (always sucked at them), but there have been a ton of really good ones the past 4-5 years, and I've found myself enjoying them a lot, moreso than I could have imagined.
I just think the momentum in terms of innovation in video games as a whole seems to have shifted from the East to the West.
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