|
| |
|
| |
17
|
| |
6' (183 m)
|
| |
November 24th
|
| |
Rifle
|
| |
Shot
|
| |
An expert gunman and consummate lady's man
|
is a
Playable Character from
Squaresoft's (now
Square Enix )
Computer Role-playing Game ''
Final Fantasy VIII ''.
He is a student from
Galbadia Garden , one of three academies for training elite mercenaries in the ''Final Fantasy VIII'' world; unlike his teammates
Squall Leonhart ,
Quistis Trepe ,
Zell Dincht , and
Selphie Tilmitt , he has not yet graduated to the rank of SeeD. He uses
Rifle s in combat, and despite his student status, he is the most skilled sharpshooter in Galbadia Garden.
In appearance, Irvine is a
Bishounen with long brown hair that he wears pulled back in a ponytail. He wears a purple shirt, a long khaki-colored coat, and a black cowboy hat.
Irvine is known for being a
Playboy ; his relentless pursuit of the opposite sex is perhaps his most obvious character trait. He never passes up an opportunity to flirt with a woman, and at one point in the game he even has a pornographic magazine. However, over the course of the game, Irvine comes to focus his romantic attentions more and more exclusively on Selphie; a flashback at one point implies that he has had a crush on her ever since they were small children. Although she shows relatively little sign of returning his affections for most of the game, in the final
FMV Selphie is wearing Irvine's hat, and becomes jealous when he turns to stare at other women. Most - but not all - fans take this as evidence that the two are beginning a romantic relationship, and they are a popular pairing in
Fanfiction .
Like most of the characters in ''Final Fantasy VIII'', there is more to Irvine than there appears at first. Despite his shallow, carefree demeanor, he gradually reveals himself to be a perceptive and sensitive individual, and he often has important insights. For a number of reasons, he often finds himself something of an odd man out among the protagonists, and he is acutely aware of this, voicing his concern about it to Squall at one point.
On Irvine's first mission in the game, he is assigned to assassinate the
Sorceress Edea . At the crucial moment, however, he suddenly becomes nervous and finds himself unable to take the shot, telling Squall that he always freezes under pressure. However, for the rest of the game, Irvine never shows any other sign of difficulty performing in high-stress situations.
As the so-called "odd man out," of this ''Final Fantasy'' adventure, Irvine has his own motives for becoming one of the world's unlikely heroes. His motivation stands in contrast to the collective motives of Squall, Zell, Selphie, and Quistis, who were SeeDs serving their duty, and Rinoa, who follows the group under the protective clauses of Balamb Garden's contract with Timber. Unlike the aforementioned, Irvine could be considered at worst a coward and at best a self-preservationist.
After the battle with Edea in Deling City, Irvine presumably flees the scene in the confusion that ensues after Squall is downed and a riot forms. Irvine reports back to General Carraway.
When Caraway discovers his daughter Rinoa's involvement even after he tried to prevent her from participating, Irvine is sent to retrieve Rinoa from the D-District prison. He intends only to free Rinoa and leave the others to their plight. On his way there, he falls into a dream-like fugue state and views
Laguna Loire 's past through the eyes of
Kiros Seagill . He wakes up in confusion, but carries on with his mission. Shortly afterward, he rescues Rinoa and escapes the prison. She convinces, or more appropriately, coerces him to go back for the others (after "scratching him to death," as she puts it). He reenters the prison and a gunfight ensues. Although he had no intention of jeopardizing his life and soldiering career to begin with, Irvine takes the opportunity to pump up his reputation by gunning down the Galbadian guards and saving the SeeDs - at least until Rinoa explains what he did beforehand.
While helping his friends escape from the prison, Irvine finds that he has lost his place as a Galbadian soldier candidate and now stands a deserter and fugitive in his homeland. With no place to return to, Irvine decides to make a new home in Balamb Garden with Squall and the others. He fights for their cause for the duration of the story.
Although it is never made explicit, it is possible that Irvine was actually lying about freezing under pressure to cover up a different reason for being reluctant to kill Edea — see below.
Balamb Garden , where Squall, Quistis, Zell,
Seifer , and eventually Selphie were all trained, encourages the practice of junctioning powerful magical beings called
Guardian Force s, or GFs. GFs can be summoned to fight in battle, and they convey magic and other abilities to the person to whom they are junctioned. However, the junctioning process causes severe long-term memory loss as a side effect.
Galbadia Garden does not practice the junctioning of GFs. Because of this, Irvine is at first the only character who remembers that he, Squall, Quistis, Zell, Seifer and Selphie were all raised together at an orphanage run by Matron Edea Kramer, who by the time the game starts has become the evil Sorceress Edea, yet inexplicably does not mention this for some time.
