#usually these character/game writeup things are like half that length. look i just think hes neat

[beatcroc]

turns out i have to make an unnecessarily wordy thoughtspost about doombox too bc there is nothing about this character that isn't fucking ridiculous and also really funny and i'm kind of really obsessed with all of it. ordinarily i would just start firing but in this case I need to just. paste his bio and then go through it step by step because every phrase here is absurd when looking at how he's handled along with the other characters and the world as a whole. here we go

first sidenote: i should also add 'nonsensical' to the list of descriptors up there, because this is a fighting game and no doubt has the typical Bad Fighting Game Writing at play that doesn't really hold up when put under scrutiny as i'm about to, but understand that this is something i've come to love about the genre and its typically batshit lore, and it further enhances the experience for me. it's all utter nonsense and its my favorite shit ever.

the biggest thing to me that makes his entire shtick ridiculous is that he was explicitly made to be a weapon. like his express purpose is destruction and/or killing people, and he certainly has the disposition to be doing that. except that he is not doing that. he's out there playing Ball Game, evidently of his own volition.

i feel it is also important to highlight that he was not originally or intentionally a boombox; he just kinda lives in there. his own bio frames it as happenstance, but sonata's dlc skin lore** implies he isn't permanently stuck in there and can kinda just hop out and take control of whatever he wants whenever he wants. there is an entire goddamn tank just sitting there in the background of one of these stages. he is a weapon. there is heavy artillery readily available to him that he could be commanding if he wanted to, but he's not doing that either. he is still a boombox. i think he likes it in there. *there's an argument to be made that maybe he's not powerful enough to control something that large, or maybe just that switching hosts is really tiring or risky. im just saying though there's like a bajillion host devices better suited for A Fucking Weapon than a boombox, but he seems really committed to this for some reason. while im here btw it's fucking terrifying that he apparently can possess thing that are Not tech as well **as a side note from that the specific mention of her boomhammer is interesting. i don't think it's an intentional implication but i enjoy the idea he has an affinity for sound-based devices; i like to think the boombox left an impression on him with its being the initial thing he possessed and got used to

and then there is the berserking. the 'rampaging', as it is otherwise called. not exactly strange on its own given his temperament and designation, but strange for the way it's characterized as only a tendency. it's only that he's prone to rampaging. he rampages often, but not all the time. just often! what is he doing he is not rampaging? getting a custom trimmed jacket with his own logo emblazoned on it? like a nerd? and on the flipside, what exactly do these rampages even entail? because it's apparently not anything destructive or disruptive enough for anyone to care about stopping him under normal circumstances.

like how are you a giant angry "not exactly stable" weapon of a guy and everyone's like 'yeah that's fine. that's our doombox!' toxic's specific wording regarding his getting unfucked postgame is "back to his old raging self", which implies to me there's almost a certain fondness, or at least amusement, at his being like this. i know one of the core themes of lethal league is letting these oddball misfit dudes do their thing and freely be who they are, but like. is doombox sincerely just not a threat for that? like really? dice's interactions also sort of imply that his actually trying to kill someone is really out of the ordinary for him so truly like. db my man what ARE you doing out there. * re: toxic and dice's talking about him; i do also find it amusing that one of his defining traits is just being pissed off all the time. again, not surprising given his purpose/designation as a weapon, but funny in that it's like. how he's KNOWN; in the sense that it is immediately noticeable and a cause for concern for other characters to see he is Not angry. fuckin social barometer of a guy. local angry guy isn't angry, something's wrong.

the "reasons for playing in the league unknown" bit also strikes me as a little odd even though it REALLY shouldn't. i'm like 97% sure it's just written like that to make him seems mysterious and unpredictable and dangerous, but it's a weird thing to call attention to when you consider that...less than half of the other characters' reasons are known? raptor is there trying to get info on his dad, that one's well out there. dust & ashes i think have some kind of implied reason for being there as well but it of course isn't elaborated on, and grid is like trying to impress "the youth" and establish a profile or something. nitro seems like he might not actually be IN the league as an official competitor? it's just helpful for him to know how to ball for the situations he gets into with his investigations. everybody else's "reason" pretty much seems like they're just out there to have fun. and toxic says as much in the story mode intro! the game was developed for people to escape the monotonies of shine city! so to imply doombox has a separate, non-recreational reason for being here is weird. the easiest read on it for me is just that he was drawn to it cause it's intense and destructive but at the same time.... if all he wants is an excuse to wreck shit....why are you competing in a structured sports game with rules and shit my dude. you are a weapon. just go attack people. except that we've established that he doesnt really do that. so. once again. what IS he doing out here

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aside from the bio though, there's of course random little tidbits of characterization throughout the game itself and they are all also likewise ridiculous.

he refers to himself in third person, which is always an amusing choice for a character in general. it carries with it a certain sense of ego, an awareness of and and pride in one's presence and gravitas. this was mostly just surprising to me bc before i started looking at everything, i'd assumed he was more or less mindless and, yknow, robotic; without much personality/reason for being there beyond being the Biggest Baddest Best At Ball Game Guy doombox is already very imposing, so this is frankly a well-earned sense of pride for him to have.....but it still doubles back to being funny again because, as i've established above, he could stand to be a hell of a lot scarier! but he doesn't seem to notice or care that there are many readily-available options for becoming more powerful and/or establishing himself as unquestionable top dog. so instead he is a boombox. third-person is also often used for characters who are a little dumb, and i think this applies to doombox as well. he is a weapon, and clearly a brute-force-over-precision type of weapon at that, he doesnt need smarts. i think this is also sort of hinted at with his voice lines; where the other characters have some kind of snarky phrase or one-liner for their kill/score voice line, doombox just goes "bye-bye". Which is still appropriately Disrespectful, but it's also very, uh... simple. again i just think there are... more imposing things a guy like him could be saying there, but i guess he hasn't got anything more than fucking. bye-bye.

anyways the ego thing i think is well-echoed by his stupid fucking jacket. none of the other characters have their logo as part of their design and i'm pretty sure the rest of the symbols are just game abstractions and don't exist in-universe, but like. doombox is just going around wearing a jersey with his own damn face on it. ok. to be clear i love his jacket but it is literally so silly for him to have that. imagine being the guy having to custom-fit a fucking boombox. did db pay for it? how? we're getting into unproductive territory here but you could ask a million questions about that jacket and they all have hysterical implications. while im on the topic of designs i'd also like to say that while i don't count any of the other blaze redesigns as "canon" like actual events the characters went through between games [like raptor in particular would have already had to have the stitches since that's his backstory, it's just they weren't a design point before], doombox is in a weird spot since the first game's design for him was very specifically referencing its HUD in a meta way for his flavor and that was pretty much the entire extent of his flavor; while in blaze he and the HUD are very much separate distinct things with their own flavor. there's more to talk about here later but as it pertains to design what im saying is i think he just went out and found a better and cooler boombox to be in between games. and also got a funny jacket. *actually i have no idea if there's even a Timeline here. the gut vibe i had been running on was that blaze happens a couple years after the original, but looking at it now that doesn't seem right. does blaze Replace the timeline of the first game? are there even Events in the first game to count as a timeline? do they run concurrently?

alright anyway the last point here is the 3rd-person thing is even moreso interesting to me though bc i was under the assumption that 'doombox' was something akin to a codename he was given when other people saw this big fucking Thang rampaging through the streets. but seeing as 1. he's definitely aware of it, and 2. not even the damn scientists who made him knew he was in a boombox [as implied in his dlc skin lore], i'm led to believe he came up with the name himself. the fucking tape in his cassette player does just say 'doom' on it so i am choosing to believe that's either where he got the name, or that he put that on there himself.

MOVING on, another really good thing is that he does this

i just think it's funny he's continuing to use the thing as an actual boombox; i feel like that isn't something he necessarily Has to do. obviously he's susceptible to certain quirks and limitations of being a boombox re: mind control tape, but i don't think that means he has to play out its every function. i think he's doing that on purpose and i am filing it under "he likes it in there". hes listening to his jams.

also on a similar note,

this is also not important and i realize it's mostly just a quirky videogamey way to get around saying the robot kinda character is "asleep", but i do enjoy the implication that shine city's biggest terror is like out there running on 4 D-cells.

also i'm making this guy out to be a city street menace, and the vibe i had assumed for him before was like, a random encounter in the back alleys that you super do not want to run into; but his associated stage/hangout seems to be the desert/scrapyard? which i don't really have anything interesting to say to that, but it's definitely a different vibe for his character if he typically hangs out in more desolate areas.

---

i think maybe the most baffling thing doombox has going on is the apparent "rivalry" with dice. this is also bizzare from dice's side of things. what the fuck does it even mean to be "rivals" with doombox? what are they competing for? what kind of things does dice get up to that doombox would even give a shit about in the first place, let alone to be considered a rival in? i mean, like, the league, probably, but why dice specifically, out of everyone? would doombox's league rival not just be whoever's the [second] strongest there? i believe dice when he says they're evenly-matched, but there isn't really anything that implies dice is of particularly high prestige within the league so it feels like he shouldn't hold much interest as a target. to be fair dice doesn't seem like the type that would care about prestige, but again, if he's not out there flaunting his shit or trying to claim he's the best or whatever, why does db care? this would be a lot easier to understand if it was a one-sided thing on doombox's part like okay maybe dice pissed him off one day and he's still mad about it. whatever. that's the vibe they go for in story mode, but then there's dice's dlc skin description, which seems to run entirely counter to that and has dice as the aggressor:

when deprived of his usual sense and restraint, dice's first thought is I Gotta Go Fuckin Kill Doombox? even if he's over it under normal circumstances, it's clear both of them have some deeper-rooted beef in this exchange. there is yet another layer to this in that doombox is, weirdly enough, not really shown to be the kind of guy that's interested in revenge. again, going back to his own dlc description, he- and i quote- "couldn't care less" about the guys who made him capturing him and chaining him up. his only interest there is breaking out and getting back to doing his thing. if you want to be really generous, you could also read this vibe from the story mode epilogue: doombox was not the one hunting down the safety league, that was nitro. doombox was simply, as stated before "back to his old raging self". both of these to say, he simply does not seem to give a shit about people who have directly wronged him and only wants to Do His Thing. so. once again. what the fuck is going on with dice that they both have lasting beef here. i truly cannot fathom what either of them did to be so mad specifically at eachother. this rivalry is something they reference a LOT too like it's a big deal in-universe, or something otherwise really important to portray. like

lore so strong you gotta put it on an achievement!!!!! really!!!!! and there are no details whatsoever about this????? * while i'm here i'd just like to say have more questions about dice than fucking anything else in this game. sadly there's practically nothing to intuit from the game about any of his situations so i don't have much for coherent thoughts to post on him, but my god. what the fuck, dice. this rivalry is arguably the single strangest thing doombox has going on but it doesn't even break top 5 weird things about dice.

anyways, the final section and MOST interesting thing to me in all this is that, coming out of the first game, i was really under the impression that doombox is just the arbitrary final boss monster you gotta kill; no real purpose or personality his own to speak of, and most importantly just synonymous with the game itself and its aesthetics re: mirroring the HUD design. he certainly still holds the role of big scary final boss monster in blaze too, but blaze 1. has him much more fleshed-out as his own Guy, and more importantly, 2. doesn't really consider him a Problem like your typical big angry final boss monster. or at least not moreso than anything else going on in the game. he's not a threat to be eliminated, he's respected as a character and as a competitor in the league; and more than that he just seems to be... liked? as in, liked by other people in-universe? and he's liked enough that they'll readily help him out so he can keep doing his thing? i do think latch fixed him up postgame mostly bc he felt bad about being the one responsible for getting db brainwashed in the first place but like. the game could have just as easily gone "and then doombox was defeated yay" and left it at that. instead, they seem to have a vested interest in keeping him around. most transparently this is likely just a "we can't get rid of any of the playable characters or else story mode would be noncanon", BUT the point of this post is trying to read cohesive narrative sense into places there probably isn't any, and my read here is that doombox is a sort of inadvertent guardian of the league. for 1, he does still very much embody a lot of what the game [both The Videogame and the league itself] is about, but more importantly i think his presence is just really good at keeping a lot of the more minor threats at bay. if you try to fuck with the league, you will eventually be squaring off with doombox, most likely having freshly pissed him off in the process, and i can't imagine that goes well for who or whatever is in that situation. there's probably not much that wants to stand up to him by himself, and there's even less that can challenge the league as a whole unit; he's really just a good guy to have on your side like in general when you are running an illegal sports operation. i think at Worst toxic might see him as the league's funny little mascot but realistically i think she has more respect for him than that. either way i don't think he's going to care and it doesn't affect him much regardless. for this, doombox simply gets to keep doing his thing, whatever the fuck that may be. there are certainly still forces beyond his control at play here [as demonstrated in story mode by the safety league], and when these come into play, the league in turn looks out for him and keeps him on top of his game. i'm not sure if he has the, uh.... kind of cognitive ability that he could be grateful for this, but if nothing else, we know he seems to enjoy playing in the league, so he probably at least recognizes that he's not going to meet a lot of resistance in it and/or that it's a good environment to keep doing as he pleases. i don't mean for this all to sound so transactional, but it's hard to say whether he has much charisma in-universe for people to want him around for more "legitimate" reasons. likewise, there's also still a lot up in the air on how like... sapient doombox actually is. whether he can have complex motivations about anything or if he has some concept of "having friends" or if he can experience emotions besides rage; i tend to lean to "no" on those because i am really trying my damndest not to woobify this guy, but ultimately i don't think it matters much; in the end, he and the league are still mutually beneficial for eachother, and they still enjoy having the other around. and i think that's pretty cool :)

#lethal league blaze #lethal league #doombox #babygirl i can write misplaced analysis about anythinggggg #also ik im making this post in 2024 but to be clear i've been playing this series since 2016 #i never talk about it much but it has always held a special place 4 me. #i come back to it briefly like semi-anually. it just happened to REALLY grab me this time around for whatever reason #and i got really obsessed w doombox. as it goes i suppose #speaking of which the final word count for this one is.... apparently a little over 3k this time. oh my god. #usually these character/game writeup things are like half that length. look i just think hes neat #as my friend said: ''He seems like he should be so self-explanatory but he just isn't'' #and ''We learn just enough about Doombox to know we don't know fucking anything about Doombox'' #boy id like to know. the things id do for literally any kind of external loredump for this game. auuggghhh

[retphienix]

Usually I spend this final post talking at length about every part of the game, and sure this will be a lengthy post but honestly? This game gave me something to talk about at every turn. I've already said it all, and don't really see a reason in repeating myself here beyond summing things up.

The final boss was... fine.

Honestly that's about how I'd rank her. She was fine. Multiple forms, some deadly attacks. If this was any other RPG I'd say she was "fine", but it's worth mentioning that "fine" in FF8 is nearly god-tier because every encounter is usually utter garbage.

She even managed to kill me once because I got a bad trio and remained cocky, resulting in two dying and Squall (my third) sitting at 1000 HP using his Limit Break instead of healing.

I lost because of my ego on that one, but she gets the credit I suppose.

The story throughout was usually passable. I feel it was stronger at the start, was performed better towards the middle (with things like the garden battle and space scene which still ranks as my favorite moment in the game), and obviously dumb at the end because the weak plot points from the middle become the main emphasis.

It feels like some of the plot was left at first drafts or written by different people without consulting each other, and it's annoying to follow.

Like the GF memory issue brought up in the orphanage scene was, in my opinion, totally fine! It would have been MORE fine if it CONTINUED to be important to the story.

If GFs ended up being the reason Edea turned evil through brain rot, and the final boss ended up being the GF inside of her, I'd be saying the story was pretty decent to good!

Instead they latched onto possession which was unbelievably stupid and only made worse by saying it's not just possession, it's FUTURE possession.

At that it was still "passable, but disappointing" to me, because I much prefer expanding on the GF idea. But it just got worse!

All of a sudden the reason Ultimecia is doing this is revealed and it's just dumb.

Time Compression means nothing! It's a plot device with no form! It has no reasoning, it has no real world equivalent, it MEANS nothing and we're never given the slightest hint as to WHY she wants this or even WHAT this is.

If you would have said she was evil because evil is cool I'd be more forgiving, but this plot point and LITERAL GOAL of the antagonist means NOTHING.

The characters started out as cardboard and slowly became actual characters (with some exceptions who merely became decorated cardboard).

I started this game utterly amazed that such an unlikable character was made the main protagonist, but as it's wrapping up I must admit I like Squall and friends.

Squall explained why he was a little craphead and has begun (and in some cases succeeded in) growing out of it and becoming a better person who's willing to trust.

Rinoa becomes much more serious compared to her reveal in the plot and towards the end she's a key part in major plans necessary to defeat Ultimecia instead of just dipping her toe into making a change.

Irvine mostly just goes from acting like a playboy to fawning over Selphie. There's a little more to it, but not as much as I wanted from him.

Zell mostly just becomes a more emphasized version of himself, and that's fine too, but he's in the same boat as Irvine.

Selphie remains pretty much unchanged, but at least she gets a little backstory with Trabia in which I became curious if she's always been a beacon of optimism or if Trabia made her into one. Saaaame boat.

Quistis only gets any characterization at the very beginning with her getting fired from her position, and a small bit when her infatuation with Squall is explained to be a misinterpretation of forgotten emotions. She's "interesting", but she got the least out of everyone here. She's not only in the same boat as the majority of the main cast, she's captain of the sucker.

The characters are arguably the weakest part if you ignore the god-awful gameplay, but I ended up liking them more than this writeup implies.

I LIKE Squall and Rinoa and hope they enjoy each other's company.

I LIKE Irvine and Selphie for being who they are and wish the same.

I LIKE Zell as a character, and I WANT to know more about Quistis.

That's a pretty big difference from Disc 1 where I generally didn't like anything that was going on.

The gameplay is TRASH~~~~

I've said so many things on it, so I'll leave it at just this.

They innovated in a lot of ways. They added a lot of things. They tried to emphasize a feature that was extremely well received in 7 (summon animations) but they just messed everything up.

Features either ruin balance or ruin another feature. Half the features work against each other. Most of the features appear to have been developed in bubbles without knowing or testing with other features.

Some features exist for very specific reasons like enhancing world exploration, but they just don't work. (That being enemies leveling with you, as it unbalances literally every boss and it makes leveling in itself counter productive to getting stronger.) While others are solutions to non-problems, like replacing loot with draw spots (lowering the excitement value).

It's bad. Like really bad.

And if the best thing I can say about the gameplay is either "On paper it's interesting" or "You can skip most of it by using this broken feature to negate all the rest" or "Just throw Encounter-None on and never fight again", then I don't think I need to explain how bad it is.

As for the ending itself, my interpretation is pretty definite and good enough for me.

Squall gets lost in the compression and, as Ultimecia hinted towards, it begins to delete him from existence.

Earlier in the game they say the safest way to make it through the compression is to believe in each other and keep their bonds and relationships in mind at all times because they don't belong in that time so time will try to erase them if nothing IN that time is bound to them (so stand together or vanish apart).

Since Squall is bad at that kind of thing, he gets lost. When he gets lost he begins to doubt because he has a history of losing everyone around him, and when he doubts he begins to be deleted by time itself.

The memory loops and distortions are that process happening in his brain as it not only began because he failed to hold onto his friends, it makes it harder to rebound because it deletes all those memories in the first place.

Once it finally deletes his memories we get that meme'd up void face and he falls back and sheds a tear, a husk of a man. This is cemented by the feather he caught falling easily to the ground as if it had fallen straight through him.

Squall is gone.

Follow that by Rinoa refusing to give up and proving this is a two way street, just because Squall failed to believe in everyone strongly enough doesn't mean she can't do it for the both of them. She believes so hard he comes back, the end.

I gave it a less than serious tone towards the end there, but in all truth I'm serious in my interpretation.

Continuing beyond just Squall's freakout, I liked the ending. It suited the goals we all had and it showed some MUCH. NEEDED. CHARACTERIZATION- that would have been fantastic to experience in the core game! *cough*

They got to choose when they went back to, so Laguna chose to go back to marry Raine and lived up to this current time again?! THAT'S GOOD STUFF.

Irvine being Irvine in ways I WISH were in the main game because LOOK AT HIM. HE'S BEING A TOTAL DORK AND I LOVE HIM FOR IT.

Zell choking like the dork he is and then immediately starting a fight, just FANTASTIC stuff there that I wish there was more of.

Selphie and Quistis showing that they care about their friends through the traditional "Save you from choking and mock you for it" way.

Selphie even stole Irvine's hat. It wasn't much, but if she did more "silly" things like that we might have had an excuse to understand her more and get more character out of her. The most I recall is singing on trains and hijacking the Ragnarok, that’s not enough.

There are so many little good things in this game overshadowed by miles of poorly thought out mechanics and glossing over details in the story that shouldn't be, or deciding to follow through with unbelievably bad plot points.

I WANT this to be better because some of it IS good.

But I would be lying through my teeth if I said that all made up for the gameplay. The only reason I’m remotely singing these praises is because (ironically) it’s so broken you can ignore 90% of the gameplay and just play through the ridiculous story to find the good bits.

In the end though. I'm happy.

If you would have told me beating FF8 would make me happy as a kid, I'd have believed you because I liked it then.

If you would have told me this when I was wrapping up disc 1 I'd have called you a liar.

But here I am.

I'm happy with the end result, despite the poor turns the story took, despite the lack of sufficient characterization for the main cast, despite the TERRIBLE TERRIBLE gameplay, I'm content and happy with this.

And now I know so much about the inner workings of this piece of garbage that I could probably beat it in no time flat with almost no fighting outside of boss fights. lol.

#RetPlays #FF8 #Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy 8