...hahaha oh boy. XD BASICALLY the premise of FF8 is that there's a bunch of these elite mercenaries called SeeDs, many of whom are young and basically trained from childhood to be such (such as most the main characters), and things happen and it turns out there's an evil sorceress causing trouble that they need to stop! And things just spiral on out from there as it turns out that many things aren't QUITE what they seem and there's more to the story than anyone was told at first, and it generally is a big overcomplicated mess of sorceresses and war and interconnected events across the timestream that actually manages to have some amazing continuity if you can manage to put all the pieces in order. Really there's no good way to explain without spoiling pretty much the entire story. XD

Laguna's role in particular is primarily that he keeps on showing up in these "dreams" the main characters keep on having, though he actually makes a first hand appearance himself later on.

I can't remember if camp still has chocobos (I know we had stables back when there was a FF7 cast...) but IF THERE ARE would Cesare want to learn to ride one?