Chapter 8 starts off right after Lightning, Hope, Fang, and Snow were attacked in Hope's house. Some dude came in and saved our asses after that fight with the f**king airship.
The characters in this game are good, I'm not gonna deny that, but they were written into a very bad script. I don't think the bar was set too high for me, I was only expecting for the same quality that previous games had, and FFXIII feels like it was completely f**king stripped of so much.