in an alternate universe i'm playing FF8 Remake (the first of three games) and noting how weird it is they put Ultimecia at the end in the SeeD exam (where the first game ends)
"that's so early in the game though"
yeah they made Balamb Garden like 30 hours of content (including a lore-critical hot dog serving minigame), before doing the Fire Cave that is now a 4-hour dungeon.
everyone would be like "wow normal remake really high quality its so good" until they reach the end of (what is normally in ff8) disc 1. and they'd go real high detail on the part where squall gets stabbed with the ice spike and everything would suddenly get really weird and melt all around him and go dark and THEN you'd fight ultimecia in space and everything would seem slightly weird and wrong the whole time during the fight and also in the ending scene after where everyone is taken to the desert prison. everyone online would be going nuts and being like "oh my god!!! Squall's Dead dot com Theory Secret Real!!!!" (but actually it's all just foreshadowing time compression)
the Fire Cave would be four hours long though yeah