Why finding FF8's White SeeD Ship was awful

Following a recent episode on FF8's Fire Cavern and the question of Wayfinding, here we look back at the dubious quest to find the White SeeD Ship and question whether this was bad game design in Final Fantasy VIII.
Here we'll look at how traditional Final Fantasy games including FF7 and FF8 differed in their approach to overworld design and wayfinding, and how NPC dialogue and instruction could both help or hinder progression through a questline or game story.
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In this episode we'll cover the following topics:
FF8 fire cavern
FF8 white SeeD Ship location
Final Fantasy 8 map design
Final Fantasy wayfinding
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#finalfantasy #FF8 #WhiteSeedShip

[@AlleywayJack]

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[@raina1848]

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

[@fjthegreyy]

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.

[@m4r_art]

My thoughts and prayers to those who didn't find the White Seed Ship.

[@Starch1b2c3d4a]

Nah. Back in those days, you had to talk to NPC's and get clues. Never had a problem finding this, I always wanted to talk to everybody, that was the point to me

[@astrahcat1212]

Yeah exactly you wanted to explore, the pre-rendered cg backgrounds were really surreal and dream-like.

[@Omnicloudx13]

Edea also tells you the general whereabouts of the white SeeD ship when you speak to her at her lighthouse. There's also some other npcs that nudge you in the right direction and allow the player to explore more driving the Balamb Garden around the world and discovering new things. Final Fantasy has always been a world trotting adventure to me, so exploring the world and finding new things when the game opens up more is great in my opinion.

[@stanm4410]

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.

[@Moveset-Mastery]

The thumbnail bro hahaha

[@BAIGAMING]

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.

[@jplayer073]

Feels to me like the hint to visit Rinoa is glaringly obvious. Shes going to go check on her? Guess I should too. She's important to us, so it seems like the natural next step.

[@astrahcat1212]

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.

[@ph43draaa]

6,7,8,9 Four games but you only consider 4 of them masterpieces. Which one are you excluding?

[@jsparger]

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

[@murarmight]

I absolutely love FF8 but I do agree that this quest is awful

[@SiliconSlyWolf]

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.

[@HexenDarkside]

It's interesting. FF8 was the second JRPG I ever played, only proceeded by Mario RPG of which FF8 has a much greater scope. I was probably like 10 years old in an era with very limited internet for walkthroughs and I don't recall any instances of getting lost. It's possible I did get lost and very literally don't remember it, but overall my memory is of it being pretty straightforward. I went for a close to 100% run about 5 years ago and also don't remember any trouble. It's interesting I just never knew that the white seed ship was an infamous thing, kinda bummed I missed out on a cultural thing about a game that was really important to me for so long.

[@chaseseal1151]

I remember trying to find the white seed ship when I was 10 and it took me like a month

[@jolaneman]

This took forever when i was a kid but i also loved it, it made the world feel so real and alive

[@brianbijou9538]

Childhood nightmare... Still my favourite game.

[@fattiger6957]

I always had strategy guides (it became something of a tradition for me to buy strat guides to FF games) so I had hints. I wouldn't follow them religiously, but they were good if I was stumped or wanted to reference the bestiary or other databases they had. I do remember there still being some wandering around even with the hints.

[@jada90]

what kind of heartless bastard do you have to be to not check in on Rinoa tho? lol

[@fallenwing25]

I almost rage quit my first time looking for it lmao

[@ruolbu]

I see what you did there xD

[@holyman-emoguy8702]

Yeaah, I recently re played it and this part really annoyed me, haha