Everything about Squall Leonhart totally explained
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is the main
protagonist of
Squaresoft's (now
Square Enix)
role-playing game Final Fantasy VIII. He was designed by
Tetsuya Nomura with heavy influences coming from game director
Yoshinori Kitase. Squall has appeared in several other games, such as the
Kingdom Hearts series, where he appears under the name "Leon",
Chocobo Racing and
Itadaki Street Special. His weapon, the
gunblade, also appears in other works.
In
Final Fantasy VIII, Squall is a 17-year old student at
Balamb Garden, a prestigious military academy for elite mercenaries known as "SeeDs." As the game's story progresses, Squall becomes friends with
Quistis Trepe,
Zell Dincht,
Selphie Tilmitt and
Irvine Kinneas, and falls in love with
Rinoa Heartilly. These relationships – combined with developments in the game's plot – gradually turn him from a loner to an open and caring person.
Also as part of Squall's design, Nomura wanted to include silver accessories, which took the form of his ring, necklace and weapon. Squall calls the lion "Griever" and it seems to be symbolic of his
courage and takes on significance as the plot of the game progresses. Squall's weapon is a gunblade, a
sword using components of a
revolver to send vibrations through the blade when triggered. This weapon was intended to offer a new way for players to control weapons in battle, and Nomura feels that the weapon bears an odd appearance. Even compared to the originally indifferent
Cloud Strife of
Final Fantasy VII, he comes off as cold to his allies. His superiors, such as his teacher,
Quistis Trepe, consider him difficult to deal with but greatly respect his natural talents. He is also known to be stoic in some situations. His taciturn attitude is also used for
comic relief. In the cutscene where he first meets Rinoa, she coerces him into dancing with her at the SeeD graduation ball. He awkwardly bumps into other partygoers while staring constantly at his feet with a look of confusion. Rinoa, however, perseveres in partnering him, and Squall eventually reveals that he's quite capable of dancing, as it's a mandatory aspect of his training.
Squall is unwillingly dragged into the role of the hero when
Cid, headmaster of Balamb Garden, appoints him as leader of the academy midway through the game. He is often thrown into a leadership role, as is evident in the Timber and Galbadia missions. During a late battle against Galbadia Garden, Squall demonstrates some leadership difficulties, which are tied to his lingering isolationism. Likewise, other characters have to make efforts to pull him out of his isolation, and Rinoa has to expend a lot of energy to pursue a romance with him. It takes considerable time for him to accept the others' offered friendship and fall in love with Rinoa and care for her. As time progresses, he grows more comfortable with the leadership role, especially when it comes time to defeat Ultimecia, the antagonist.
Throughout the game, he's a distinct rivalry with
Seifer Almasy. The opening sequence depicts the duel in which Squall obtained his characteristic facial scar (and subsequently gave an almost identical one to Seifer; Squall's starts above his right eye and goes to his left cheek, while Seifer's goes from left to right) and scenes in which Squall and Seifer are supposed to be cooperating are characterized by squabbles between the two cadets. Later, Seifer seemingly allies himself with the Sorceress, requiring Squall to battle him several times. Nevertheless, despite their conflict, Squall still feels an underlying camaraderie for Seifer, and mourns him in his own way when he believes Seifer to have been executed after an attempted kidnapping of Galbadian President Vinzer Deling.
According to flashbacks in the game, Squall grew up in an
orphanage, along with many of the other main characters such as Zell, Seifer, Selphie, Irvine and Quistis. They were looked after by Edea. Though he remembers little of this past, it causes him to develop into an emotionally detached, highly cynical and introverted boy; his original goal is to go through life without any emotional links or dependencies. However, Squall gradually warms as the game progresses, and it's later revealed that his deliberate detachment from his companions is a defensive mechanism to protect himself from emotional pain, like he experienced when his older sister figure at the orphanage, one of the sole emotional supports in his early life, was forcibly separated from him.
Upon defeating Ultimecia, as his comrades are pulled back from time compression into their own respective places in the timeline, Squall takes a detour back to the orphanage, where he encounters a younger Edea. Since she doesn't want to involve any of the children, Edea ends up absorbing the dying Ultimecia's powers as part of the cycle of sorceresses (a sorceress must pass on her powers to a successor before she's allowed to die peacefully), and wonders aloud about endings and beginnings (dialogue mirroring words to Squall years later, on Disc 3). Squall plants the ideas for Garden and SeeD in her mind, creating an
in-game loop in which he must become the leader of Balamb Garden so that he can make it to this point again.
There are strong indications in the game that
Laguna Loire is Squall's father. During flashbacks induced by
Ellone's power, in which the main characters experience past events through the eyes of
Laguna,
Kiros, and
Ward, Squall is required (by the game) to assume the role of Laguna, despite the fact that any of the other characters in Squall's party may take on the role of Kiros or Ward. If Squall travels to Winhill after Garden is activated, he'll encounter inexplicable visions of Raine, a woman to whom Laguna was very close, throughout the town. Ellone also mentions that Raine died—apparently in childbirth—and that she'd a baby boy. When Squall is captured, all the Moomba keep referring to Squall as Laguna (it is later indicated that the Moomba recognize people by their blood, suggesting a tie between Squall and Laguna). Toward the end of the game, aboard the Ragnarok, Kiros and Ward make commentary as to Squall's resemblance to his mother and his dissimilarity to his father. Laguna also intends to tell something to Squall, but he opts not to due to the circumstances.
Other appearances
Squall appears as a
non-playable character in
Kingdom Hearts, although he appears older at the age of 26 (in
Kingdom Hearts II.) He wears a short leather jacket with red wings on the back, resembling the decorations on
Rinoa's duster, but he still wears his Griever necklace and he still has the scar on his forehead. He assumes the name Leon because "Squall" was shamed for being unable to protect those he cared about from the
Heartless when his home world, the Radiant Garden, was consumed in darkness. "Leon" is voiced by
David Boreanaz in the
English language version of the game and
Hideo Ishikawa in the Japanese version. Squall's role in
Kingdom Hearts is to help guide Sora in his battle with the Heartless, alongside various other
Final Fantasy characters. While his appearance and age change (in
Kingdom Hearts, he's 25, whereas in
Final Fantasy VIII, he's 17 Likewise, Squall's gunblade, the Revolver, also appears in several forms throughout the
Final Fantasy series.
Reception and criticism
Although Squall and Rinoa clearly develop a relationship, it isn't made explicit until the final cutscene.
IGN criticized this, stating that "considering that the love story is so integral to everything that happens – not to mention forming the central image of the box art – it's incomprehensible why no one says "I love you" to anyone, ever."
Game Revolution, however, stated "Frankly, you don't even have to play the game to know that love will win out in some way...very 'Hollywood.' But it's the way in which they tell the story that sets it apart from being just some teen-angst drama".
As the main character, Squall has been the subject of both positive and negative reaction. IGN disliked the attitude of the protagonist, stating "the problem is that the character at the heart of everything, Squall, is basically a pouty jerk" and that "when your story is character centered, you'd better center it on a character the audience can care about. Squall, unfortunately, just doesn't fit the bill."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Squall Leonhart'.
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