THE FINAL FANTASY VIII STORY    

          Final Fantasy VIII opens as Squall Leonhart duels with his rival, Seifer Almasy, in a training session outside the military academy known as "Garden". During the bout, the two cadets scar one another's faces and are returned to Garden for treatment. Meanwhile, the Galbadian regime, led by Vinzer Deling, invades the Dollet Dukedom, forcing Dollet to hire the Balamb Garden branch of "SeeD" - Garden's elite mercenary force - for aid. SeeD uses the mission as a field examination for its graduation-eligible cadets,and with the help of his instructor, Quistis Trepe, Squall passes its prerequisite. While SeeD prepares for the assault, Squall is assigned to an assault squad with Zell Dincht and Seifer Almasy. In Dollet, Seifer abandons his team halfway through the mission, forcing Selphie Tilmitt to accompany Squall and Zell for the duration. After the player completes the mission, SeeD halts the Galbadian advance, Squall, Zell and Selphie graduate to SeeD status, and Seifer is disciplined for acting independently.

         Shortly after graduating, Squall meets a young woman named Rinoa Heartilly, whose attitude and approach to life are apparently the opposite of his own. Assigned to help her Galbadian-resistance on his first mission, along with Zell and Selphie, Squall learns that a sorceress named Edea is the mastermind behind Galbadia's hostilities. Edea soon kills President Deling and turns Galbadia into an imperial dictatorship. Under orders from both Galbadia's and Balamb's Gardens, Squall and his comrades - now joined by Quistis and sharpshooter Irvine Kinneas - attempt to assassinate the sorceress. Despite a nearly flawless execution of the plan - arranged by Galbadia's own General Caraway, Rinoa's father - the party is defeated and imprisoned. Squall's party also learns that Seifer has left Garden to become Edea's second-in-command.

         After escaping prison, the team splits into two units, both of which are controlled by the player in separate scenarios. Squall's group stops an internal conflict at Balamb Garden incited by NORG, SeeD's financial supporter, while Selphie's squad fails to prevent a Galbadian missile attack on the Balamb and Trabia Gardens. The missile launch forces Squall to turn Balamb Garden into a mobile fortress to avoid the attack, leaving the facility temporarily uncontrollable until it collides with the docks at Fisherman's Horizon in the middle of the ocean. While Squall negotiates with the mayor of the town, Galbadia invades in search of a girl named "Ellone", who had been staying at the Garden until recently.

         Throughout the game, Ellone sends Squall and his allies into a series of flashbacks set seventeen years in the past. The scenes center on a man named Laguna and his two friends, Kiros and Ward. During the flashbacks, Laguna changes from Galbadian soldier to the self-appointed defender of a small country village, and then from the leader of a resistance movement against Sorceress Adel, the leader of Esthar seventeen years before, to the president of Esthar, the game's technological superpower.

         Meanwhile, Squall deals with personal conflicts fueled by the game's ongoing developments, such as Balamb Garden's Headmaster Cid appointing him as SeeD's new leader, and his increasing love for Rinoa. Squall particularly struggles with the latter, as he had previously shut out all feelings of affection due to a fear of becoming vulnerable after Ellone left the Orphanage.

         As Edea and Seifer continue sweeping the world in search of Ellone, matters are complicated further during an investigation of Trabia Garden's ruins. Squall and his comrades learn that - with the exception of Rinoa - they were raised along with Seifer and Ellone in an orphanage run by Edea, and later developed amnesia due to their use of Guardian Forces. Furthermore, it is revealed that Edea is Cid's wife, and together the two had founded Garden and SeeD to defeat evil sorceresses.

         Later in the game, the full forces of Balamb Garden and the Galbadian army (using the now-mobilized Galbadia Garden), led by Squall and Seifer respectively, engage in conflict. After Balamb defeats Galbadia, the player learns that Edea is merely an unwilling tool for a greater sorceress known as "Ultimecia", who resides in the future and wishes to compress all time into a single moment. This would grant her the power of all sorceresses that ever existed; it is for this reason she has sought Ellone. A conclusive battle with Edea forces Ultimecia to transfer her powers to Rinoa, allowing Edea to survive, but leaving Rinoa frozen in a deep coma. Squall becomes obsessed with waking her and seeks the help of Dr. Odine, a renowned scientist living in Esthar. However, while Rinoa is being treated on Esthar's space station, Ultimecia uses her to free Adel, an imprisoned sorceress responsible for the war of seventeen years past. Ultimecia then orders Seifer to activate Esthar's Lunatic Pandora facility, inciting a rain of monsters from the moon in a phenomenon called the "Lunar Cry". This brings Adel's containment device from space to the planet's surface, while simultaneously leaving Esthar swarming with monsters.

         Having selected Adel as her next host, Ultimecia abandons Rinoa in the void of outer space. Squall rescues her, but they become stranded until they encounter a derelict spaceship. After using it to return to the planet's surface, they are approached by delegates from Esthar, who lock Rinoa away in fear of her sorceress abilities. Squall and his companions rescue Rinoa and finally meet Laguna, revealed to be Ellone's adopted father. Together with Dr. Odine, a plan is devised to let Ultimecia use Ellone to compress time, as it would allow Squall's group to confront Ultimecia in her own era. As Time Compression begins, Squall is forced to duel Seifer once again and kill Adel when she attempts to assimilate Rinoa. With their friendship serving as their bond to reality, Squall and his friends immunize themselves to the effects of Time Compression, travel to Ultimecia's era and defeat her.

         As Ultimecia is defeated, the universe begins returning to normal, and Squall is nearly lost in the flow of time as he witnesses the origins of the game's entire story. When a dying Ultimecia travels back in time to pass her powers to Edea thirteen years in Squall's past, he informs Edea of the concepts of Garden and SeeD that she will create. Afterward, he is warped away into the timestream and is unable to find his own way back to the present until he is rescued by Rinoa. At the end of the game, SeeD holds a banquet to celebrate their victory, and Squall is shown kissing Rinoa while smiling for the first time in the game.