8 Cool Squall Pics

‘Let’s give them actual hairstyles this time’, perhaps somebody in a Square Soft board room said sometime during the mid 90s. 

And with that hypothetical conversation, the Tetsuya Nomura that exists within the JRPG zone we’ve ALL been coexisting with for decades now went to work creating a more modern, sleeker, realistically haired protagonist.

You might think ‘but who's wearing that giant fur collar’ and let us tell you about these host boys you’ll still find crawling on the streets of Shibuya.

The gosh darn legend. 

Up there with Leonardo Di Vinci’s Mona Lisa and that chapel he painted that one time, the screenshot of this game’s Aerith telling our dear bachelor he’s ‘the best looking guy here’ bubbles up a well of laughter and joy in our guts. 

His face sweaty with pixels, Squall posing on the wall as he mosaically bleeds into the environment around him, and Rinoa’s right! 

Squall really is the best looking guy here. 

That plasticine sheen only makes ‘the best looking guy here’ an ever better looking guy, almost sickeningly stylish.  

3D graphics may have arguably peaked here; Enough definition to make something discernible, but not yet defaulting in ugly Unreal 4 style clay realism.

As impressive as it was to see Cloud swoop off that train, Squall’s capital C cool fight with Seifer playing out as Liberal Fatali dazzled the ears was what really set the stage for SquareSoft turned Square Enix FMVs for years to come. 

This, of course, apexed in the opening cutscene for Kingdom Hearts.

Man, we don't know anything about the Final Fantasy trading card game.

We didn’t even know there was a damn trading card game, but hell if Squall doesn’t simultaneously look like he’s about to kick my ass AND join some nondescript KPOP outfit. 

*insert Goofy gawrsh sound here*

Back before all culture was homogenized, before even the dopiest of adults and the youngest of teenagers alike, knew the difference between ‘based’ and ‘cringe’ installing locks on our hearts that should have never been placed, teens spent hours and hours in pirated copies of photoshop finding cool pictures of Squall and making them look even cooler with Epic Graphics and Rare Photoshop Brush Files. 

Now it's all done with built in instagram and Tim Tok filters. 

Disgusting to think about what we lost.

Yo, we found Squall doing the Gangnam Style? 

Not only that, Zack Fair AND Advent Children Cloud are there too? 

This is too dope!