Dude, what you have to remember is that Ultimicia was a sorceress (and no doubt the strongest sorceress ever). So it would not have taken her much to look inside her opponents (Squall’s) mind to find the image of what Squall thought as the strongest creature (namely Griever), and then to create it. That way she has something to attack them physically, as well as mentally.
So hence, Ultimicia is NOT Rinoa.
Of course we know what happens to Laguna. He left the army, had a son and became leader of Esthar. Wow, there’s so much to do with his character.
And no, the whole Ultimecia is Rinoa is completely stupid. There are rarely any hints of this and the only reason this theory is so popular is because it has circulated around the net so much, not because of hard evidence, because there’s basically none.
And yeah, she’s pretty powerful, Squall’s the leader of the group, um, it makes sense to taunt him in the final battle. She has like three frigging forms, I’m sure she could work out a way to understand her enemies and provoke Squall personally. Just because she junctioned Griever doesn’t in any way suggest she is Rinoa. Griever was this kinda deux ex machina throughout the whole game. He was there, but hardly explained, so it makes sense to throw SOMETHING of that whole story bit in there- example, making him a final GF. Without it, Griever would have been this majestic sign or symbol that nobody really cared about, since he would have been absent and forgotten most of the game (he hardly gets mentioned)
Then why does Ultimicia, at the end of the battle start rambling on about Squall’s promises, and what he said? It couldn’t be about his youth when he was four at the orphanage, because little Squall had not come back from trying to find Ellone, and was not present when Ultimicia came before Edea and the grown up Squall. She the sorceress did not say anything to the boy squall.
What’s more, Squall had not yet gone back into the past, so he could not have said anything for the sorceress to tell him to remember about his past in the orphage, because the adult Squall had not gone there yet.
So there IS a connect, and Squaresoft has left us guessing.
Again: It’s no proof that Ultimecia knows stuff about him. She’s a sorceress. That’s her job. And basing your idea on something as flimsy as that is pretty sad.
Don’t forget: you take the facts and build a theory based on them. You don’t take a theory and try to scrunch the facts up to fit them.
Okay so give me the FACTS that she and Rinoa are NOT the same person.
By default they are not the same person, since people are generally not the same as other people. You’re the one presenting a claim that two separate people are actually the same person, so you’re the one who needs the evidence.
But sorceress’ can live a long time Edea said that Ultimicia had lived for numerous years, cultivating her hatred. Would it not make since then, that Something happened to Rinoa, made her snap (she was a very powerful sorceress after all, since she absorbed Adel’s powers, AND Edea’s – who by the way absorbed Ultimicia’s when squall was 4) and turned twisted. The powers she had gained grew through the years, and allowed her to grow ancient centuries. Thus Ultimicia could be the future version of a twisted Rinoa.
But there is no PROOF. If they wanted Rinoa to be Ultimecia, she would. All you’re doing is saying “She can”, and while that might work in a discussion, there is absolutely no proof in the game that is can work. Square would not leave out a little tidbit of proof here and there, in the game. With a major character such as Rinoa, do you think they would just leave us to find out and discover on our own what might have happened? No. There would be some mention of Rinoa becoming Ultimecia in the game. There is none.
Taken from rpgamer.com.
Fact 1 Counterpoint: Granted, sorceresses in FF8 seem to either age very slowly or not at all. It is conceivable that Rinoa could live long enough to become Ultimecia, though Ultimecia is destroyed as the game notes during her own time. Time compression forces past, present, and future to exist simultaneously. It is conceivable that, in the endgame sequence, Squall the elder could stand next to Squall the younger when Squall the elder is from another space-time, but if all of space-time has been “compressed” into a kind of supreme “now,” then it is not consistent that Rinoa and Ultimecia could stand next to each other, actively pursuing the death of “herself;” that is, each trying to kill the other.
Fact 2 Counterpoint: A quick review of the FF8 script shows the explanation for Rinoa’s inherited power. Zell says, “Matron’s not a sorceress anymore.” “Matron gave away her power to someone without realizing it.” Squall thinks, (To Rinoa…). Earlier Edea states that she inherited her sorceress power at the age of 5. The ending sequence shows her inheriting power from Ultimecia when she is obviously grown and running the orphanage. If she bequeathed her original power to Rinoa, there is no conflict here. I could not locate the statement in the game that a sorceress was required to die to pass on their powers, only the suggestion that such was the usual progression of events.
Fact 3 Counterpoint: The self-proclaimed theme of FF8 is love. Obviously the Rinoa=Ultimecia theory provides antithetical interpretation for the story’s ultimate “take,” if you will, on love. The traditional interpretation of the story’s ending-that is, the obvious way to interpret the gist of the story’s ending, though there are any number of details that are left open to be pondered by the player-suggests a positive view of love as a thing that gives light in a world where, as Ultimecia suggests, everything comes to an end. This is a classically romantic ideal-the mutability of our world. Everything, no matter how wonderful it might be for a time, eventually comes to an end. Numerous poets from centuries past spent their lives pondering this tragic element of our reality. That Ultimecia as a character would be consumed by the sadness of this element of her reality, that she would, in her insanity, desire to absorb existence into herself, to bring things to an ultimate end as a way to stop the pain of never-ending change, is not a meaningless role for her to fill as an element of the story. Her speech during the final battle scene reflects such ideals and gives the player insight into her motivations, as we have precious little in the way of direct address from Ultimecia in the game.
The R=U theory would present a completely opposite theme, one in which love is an ultimately futile entity in which the already unbearable pain of change is brought to a climax in the degenerative insanity of the Rinoa to Ultimecia transition. While admittedly an intriguing idea, this is not consistent with the way in which the game deals with its theme in other ways. The final CGI especially demonstrates the value being placed on human relationships-it recounts just about every one we encounter, from the Seifer/Raijin/Fujin friendship, to Cid and Edea, to Selphie and Irvine. All of these end on a decidedly positive note. This last bit of story is presented in such a way as to build the player’s suspense-yes, yes, we see all of these people happy after the final battle, but what about Squall? Is he alive?-that is finally answered at the end. Love, the game’s theme, is vindicated. It brought Squall back to Rinoa through the miasma of chaos in which he found himself after the final battle.
Fact 4 Counterpoint: The placement of Ultimecia’s castle might be just as easily attributed to any number of different things. That it is attached to the former orphanage doesn’t necessarily indicate anything, and the castle is over the water, not over the field. If the castle was placed near the field intentionally to suggest an alternate meaning such as this, one might easily ask why the castle was not floating over the field itself. The symbolism would certainly be much more clear if this were the case. Instead, we only have the silent testimony of the dead SeeDs to inform us of why Ultimecia wound up there instead of somewhere else.
Fact 5 Counterpoint: This is a bizarre use of logic. Ultimecia’s inability to recognize Squall in no way supports the Rinoa=Ultimecia argument-in fact, it is evidence against that argument. If Ultimecia remembered something like which field Squall promised to meet her in, one would think she’d have at least some small inkling of what her lost lover looks like. It is not that she “does not recognize [that] squall is squall,” it’s that she’s never seen or known the kid before.
Fact 6 Counterpoint: This is not supported by the available information in the game. The game states that Griever is, “in Squall’s mind, the strongest GF.” Squall knew about this GF beforehand, and if he believes it to be the strongest GF, then he clearly named his ring after this, the strongest of all Guardian Forces. This connection is strengthened by the fact that you can change the name of the ring/GF. There is undoubtedly a strong connection there, but the information available in the game suggests a different cause-effect relationship-Squall named his ring after the GF. There is no actual evidence within the game to suggest that the ring itself contains the GF, unless you assume that Ultimecia is Rinoa, in which case it does make sense. Granted, this relationship can be viewed in such a way to make it consistent with the Rinoa=Ultimecia theory, but it does not work as fundamental support, as it is just as consistent (arguably more so) in the traditional interpretation of the game’s plot
Okay all of those facts, with the exception of of Fact 2 make sense.
Fact 1. Edea says to Squall in the end of the game, right before taking the powers of Ultimcia that she “was” a sorceress. Was as in at one point in time. Which meant she no longer had her powers when she took Ultimicia’s. Now this is in the past. This means that her previous powers are gone. She couldn’t have given THOSE to Rinoa. So she must have given the powers of Ultimicia to Rinoa.
Now here is some speculation. It could also be possible that she is a future offspring of Rinoa and Squall. This could explain how she knew about Griever, and Ellone as well as The machine that merges time together. True she could have found this out herself, but there is no harm in my speculation here.
She’s a fucking sorceress who can merge all time together! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’s almighty and can do all the shit she wants! She doesn’t need to ask Squall or anyone about Griever. She KNOWS. She knows a lot because she’s a SORCERESS. WHich equals POWER AND KNOWLEDGE. The whole “How could she have known about Griever?” is the only weak defence that fans of this “theory” can fall back on.
As for your first statement, it totally and utterly confuses me. Edea got her powers from some sorceress (who is unknown to us), and that was the only time she was a sorceress.
Okay forget the griever thing anf lets fall on the fan fiction idea of her being an offspring of the two. As to Edea, she got her powers when she was five, and sometime after taking the children into the orphanage, she lost them. If she did not lose them, then why did she say “I was a sorceress” to Squall before she takes Ultimicias?
Okay, here’s what happened:
The REAL Sorceress was Zell. Zell’s actually a girl, but she crossdressed to look like a guy just like Adel did. Anyway, when Zell was 4 she passed her powers to Edea, and that’s why Edea said she was a sorceress before she got Ultimecia’s powers. Is that clear?
Lol, thanks man, I needed a laugh.
Vanguard she was saying “I was a Sorceress before Ultimicea” as in, she had powers before Ultimicea took over her body. And if she had lost her powers before, there would have been another sorceress running around causing general mayhem.
How do you think Adel got her powers? Besides that Cid said she had become a sorceress when she was a young girl, was he lying?
Adel got her powers from an unknown sorceress. There WERE others we don’t know of you know. The whole circle doesn’t consist of Edea Rinoa Adel and Ultimecia…
And Adel and Edea were born on different continents. I doubt they had come into contact and I’m pretty sure a sorceress has to be near someone to pass on her powers. And what does her getting her powers when she was a young girl have to do with anything. And whoever said she didn’t recognize Squall is wrong. I’m pretty sure that when you fight her in Galbadia Garden, she says “So, you are the SeeDs destined to face me.” or something like that.
You are right about the SeeD’s in Galbadian Garden encounter, but how the hell do you know where Adel and Edea were born? Just couse they are in the ruling different countires, does not mean they were born there. Arnold is not a native Kali-fornian, is he, no, but IS the governor. We don’t have anyway of knowing of the ff8 countries had laws restricting their rule to residents only
Scratches head. Well maybe, but Arnold is also a complete jackass. And I always had the impression that Edea was born in Galbadia and Adel in Esthar. Could be I’m wrong, I suppose.
What does Adel and Edea being born together, have to do with anything? They offer no evidence for the fact that Rinoa is Ultimecia, which she isn’t.