Self-nom — hello again everybody. I'm also a little nervous nomming this article, because something like this has not quite been done on FAC; it's uncharted waters for everyone. As always, I'd like to provide a brief overview. Character coverage of Final Fantasy VIII was initially spread out among eight character articles and a list of minor characters, all with little or no citations. Approximately two weeks ago, I started a sandbox entry with the goal of merging all the character pages with the minor character list. After this was accomplished, I placed it in namespace. I looked at some old versions of the Final Fantasy VIII page, and noticed an extremely large, sourced development section. I took this and added it into a new section, and then I went to these sources and found information for even some of the minor characters. This allowed the article to have an out of universe perspective. But even better, Teggles added a merchandise section and found image sources. A reception and criticism section was soon created, and more information was trimmed; following this, Axem — one of the people instrumental in the latest surge of project activity — performed a very nice and much needed round of consolidation and copy-editing while expanding on several concepts. Several other editors contributed to the effort as well.
Another Final Fantasy FAC may be coming soon — Final Fantasy XII. I understand that projects should not spread themselves too thin, but we should be able to withstand two fronts (we have done it in the past with Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VIII).
The article itself features a two paragraph lead; it helps establish the notability of the game as a whole, how the characters were received, and a brief overview of the cast. This is followed by a development section, which outlines the inspirations for creating these characters from the perspective of the game designers. It uses sources that are reliable in relation to this subject at hand, and many are used in current FAs. This section is followed by an outline of the major characters; Axem helped organize the information here so that we had three paragraphs for most major characters, and not four in some cases. Two other character sections follow, and the aforementioned merchandise and reception and criticism sections follow suit. An external link is provided to the Final Fantasy Wikia's FF8 character category, where extreme details of this game's characters belong. Anyway, I'm being long-winded like Laguna Loire, so let the discussion begin! — Deckiller 15:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)