I think Garnet being so subdued works well. She's in shock at the betrayal of her own mother. Yeah, getting Ramuh probably helps, but that's treating her sense of helplessness more than helping her accept what's happened. Not to mention, the appearance of Atomos and the attack on Lindbulm are a completely different set of traumas. At least Zidane and Vivi witnessed Burmecia, watched Odin annihilate Cleyra. They have some measuring stick of how bad things can get. Garnet? She missed all of that (Plan failed successfully, I suppose) and is having to come to terms with this latest calamity on top of everything else. So, yeah, muted Garnet works. For now at least. If she doesn't recover within an update or two, then I'd say we have a problem.
Atomos I do absolutely remember though. That's just a brutal scene. Part of me feels that the only reason Lindblum got the chance to surrender was luck of the draw. Brahne is picking each Eidolon in turn, like a child trying out new toys. Lindblum just got lucky they got an Eidolon that couldn't instantly wipe out their city.
You nailed it, Atomos wasn't a nuke, it's a Warwolf. It's a shiny new toy that Brahne wanted to take for a spin so she can gape at the gratuitous violence.
As a bit of a digression, I'm playing through and catching up to Omi and just got done with Beatrix #3.
For reference, my team levels are 15 for everyone except Steiner, who is 10. It's worth mentioning that Zidane, Vivi, and Freya have not gained any levels since they fought her in Cleyra. We're no stronger than we were for Round 2, arguably we're weaker now because we don't have Quina.
Which is to say that she was absolutely kicking my ass left and right. Her special attacks were a guaranteed OHKO, and the only thing that kept her damage in line was the fact that her basic attacks have a chance to miss. I spent essentially the whole fight stealing and reviving.
tl;dr: the whole, "oh the 3rd fight is to show how your party has grown and triumphed over an obstacle" line is BS and basically a refusal to engage with the game on its own terms. To put it another way: she's not an obstacle you're supposed to inevitably surmount, she's an overpowered horror movie monster that hounds your every step.
This is an anecdotal observation, but does it feel to you to that in a story, whenever a character states their intention to hole up somewhere for a while to "figure out their next move," there's a 90% chance they won't actually be able to do that because writers abhor downtime? It's positively an invitation to having your plotline hijacked in the name of Make Something Happen.
This came up recently, I don't remember what I/we were playing, but someone announced their plan in a video game, and then we got to their plan, and it just... happened? It played out... a-as intended? And I was just sort of left there thinking... "That can't be right..."
And why this bothers me is that the worm we fought, "Ralvhurahva," had "larva" clearly in its name just mistranslitrated, and it escaped at the end of the fight. So it seems like an incredibly obvious read that this Ralvuimago is the imago stage of the "Ralvhu", that being, the adult stage. The very same larva we fought the first time matured into an adult and is coming back from round 2. But the game falls short of making that clear, and instead makes it sound like we just ran into two different, unrelated giant worm enemies. Ah, well.
Can confirm, I'm only realizing this now thanks to you pointing it out. I always found these "unrelated" worm bosses disappoint, but I guess there was more to it than I thought!
In addition to the problems you just described, don't forget that we've only been away from this worm for a little more than the duration of a timed sequence! Unless there was a very large gap during the fade to black after Garnet is captured, it must have moulted and metamorphed in the last... half hour, or so?
(One of these two characters is on the cover of the PSX CD and in the intro movie and the other isn't, but for now we'll pretend we haven't seen this.)
A minor, spoiler-free advantage to playing the digital version first! I had no idea this guy was going to be important until the plot got around to it.
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Ramuh's story about Josef is one of my favourite parts of the series, since we see Square re-examining its old writing choices. This is one of the things I'm most fond about Kingdom Hearts, which loves to interrogate old conclusions, but Kingdom Hearts isn't set in dozens of isolated bubble franchises! Stepping out of there way to make this happen shows some real deliberateness of intent, something you don't see outside of the rare, latter-day sequel, like TAY. It makes me happy.
Our party follows Dagger out, and everyone hangs out on a giant branch looking out to the horizon. I really like the subtle nuance of dark blue they're using to show that the sun has set but night has not quite fallen yet, it's that particular shade of twilight before actual night and it takes work to depict in artwork. Also, all this running up and down on giant tree branches makes me wonder if Tarzan (1999) was a visual influence for a couple of the sections of this game.
I agree with you, and we'll be seeing even more Tarzan stuff as the game goes along. Still, it's a quick turnaround time from Square, if we're right. Maybe they were inspired by early trailers or behind the scenes stuff, especially since one of the Tarzan influences later in the game is in a pre-rendered CG, and those took forever to make.
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There was a real vibe in 90s Square about technological progress accelerating their villains, and not always as weapons of war. Cid from FFIV invents the airship and Baron becomes a world power despite not even having a Crystal; the Crystal-tapping powers of FFV leading to Exdeath's freedom; basically everything involving the Gesthallan empire in FFVI; the power of mako being flooded into urban development, weapons development, human development... FFVIII arguably turns things around, putting the advanced technology more in the good guys' hands (the Gardens and Esthar), even if it does erase a few minds in the process, but come FFIX and we're back on the boat. FFT doesn't qualify so overtly, but its backstory includes elements of technological decline, instead.
I also treated Brahne's weapons as nuclear allegories at this point! I find that reassuring, I didn't think it was resonating with some fans I was talking to, but it admittedly was just the once.
This is a new model of Alexandrian soldier, who shockingly seems to wear pants. I assume we'll eventually fight them as "Alexandrian elite soldier" or something like it.
Whispering begins to spread through the Linblum army, soon followed by sparks of panic. "She's wearing pants!" "My god, they've discovered pants! It's the one edge they needed!" Retreat is inevitable.
You know, I just finished wrapping up Vagrant Story last night, and was outright shocked by a change they made to a character model that they arguably didn't have to make. "Oh, look, that's clever, they're going to use the camera angles to avoid looking at--nope, nope, there it is!" Some of you who know the plot might even be able to guess why I found that outright alarming.
Strangely mixed update. A bunch of huge things and some really interesting developments happening, but I feel like this might be the part of the game where the story is kind of stumbling to connect events in order to proceed at speed because it feels obligated to keep up the same level of tension.
I am all for a spotlight on summons as actors with interiority and conflict regarding their agency as summoned powers again in the series, finally, and the trial being more of a philosophical and thought-provoking one to discern the cut of the potential summoner's character is very fun. Despite the push from Ramuh though, this feels like a low point in Dagger's character, and whether it is intentionally so or not, there is maybe some awkwardness in this stretch to the extent that it swallows some of her established role in the group, as you pointed out.
It's a little strange, thinking about the devastating attack on Lindblum and the use of another summon on a huge scale there. Because we saw Odin destroy Cleyra and eradicate all the survivors in an immense and horrific display of power. And that was such a tremendous event (genuinely a shocking move to leave Freya in such despair and make even your efforts to bring just a few characters to safety amount to nothing), it kind of tricked me into a false sense of security, assuming that Odin exploding another city/giant tree wouldn't be happening again so soon. But it has been established that multiple eidolons were extracted from Dagger, and it's perfectly logical that Brahne would use them again. So it's still a sobering thing to witness Atomos let loose on Lindblum like this.
Alongside that, it's still kind of fascinating to see the Black Mage teleporting raids be used so effectively as a warfare tactic that has no easy response. That general strategy is turning out so terrifyingly successful for the Queen of Alexandria that I fear she's not going to slow down any time soon.
Some more belated thoughts from the previous update and past which I let myself get way too delayed in sharing.
Dagger being fond of the giant tram bug is pretty fun. That is a neat world detail in itself that I like, insects as beasts of burden and mounts is a novel thing. But, damn, that was a wild swerve for Beatrix. Even looking at the original translation, that's awkwardly paced when Steiner is right there, and Dagger being left wholly passive by the storytelling for that sequence in Alexandria Castle and escaping it is disappointing, though we might see it as the first slope in her downward arc that continues into watching more of her mother's atrocities.
Repetitive forced loss aside, I feel like it would be a lot less weird if Beatrix taking a stand against mindlessly following orders and healing Dagger over her doubts tipping over just... Didn't involve her explaining herself or expressing regret as a motivator there and turning around to tell Steiner to face reality too like she just clued in faster than him. Even with the Japanese script that's such a fast flip, I think it would benefit from feeling more gradual and silent at first. The Steiner beat when he joins Beatrix and Freya to allow Zidane and Vivi to flee with Dagger is a good one, there are layers, but the spotlight felt yanked out from above him minutes earlier nonetheless.
As a bit of a digression, I'm playing through and catching up to Omi and just got done with Beatrix #3.
For reference, my team levels are 15 for everyone except Steiner, who is 10. It's worth mentioning that Zidane, Vivi, and Freya have not gained any levels since they fought her in Cleyra. We're no stronger than we were for Round 2, arguably we're weaker now because we don't have Quina.
Which is to say that she was absolutely kicking my ass left and right. Her special attacks were a guaranteed OHKO, and the only thing that kept her damage in line was the fact that her basic attacks have a chance to miss. I spent essentially the whole fight stealing and reviving.
tl;dr: the whole, "oh the 3rd fight is to show how your party has grown and triumphed over an obstacle" line is BS and basically a refusal to engage with the game on its own terms. To put it another way: she's not an obstacle you're supposed to inevitably surmount, she's an overpowered horror movie monster that hounds your every step.
I think for a lot of people including me the issue isn't that Beatrix always wins, but that the game doesn't do anything creative with it. It's the same fight three times over even as Beatrix grows increasingly hesitant over her actions. It's mechanically boring and makes you go "come on, I know you can do better."
I'm not sure if Zidane is actually knowledgeable about the ecology of giant underground critters, or if he's just yelling stuff without thinking about it too much, but the word Zidane uses here is 天敵 "tenteki", which means "natural enemy". As in an enemy that is "naturally" and obviously so, like the claim "spiders are natural enemies to flies", or "extroverts are the natural enemies to shut-ins". An enemy designated by fate or heaven, so to speak.
Given the questionable degree of sapience between the gargant and the Ralvuimago, this could be an indication that the Ralvuimago is the natural predator of the gargant. I'm not sure how this works, especially since the gargant should have been protected like any other draft animal, but it would explain why this thing keeps hunting the gargant.
超音波 "chou onpa", ie ultrasonic wave. I suppose "Ultra Sound Wave" is a direct translation and thus not incorrect, but "ultrasonic" is right there.
Also I didn't manage to see its "become compact" move, or see it "run away", because I may be over-levelled greatly and spamming Blizzarra meant the Ralvuimago did the "fall down and fade out" animation for death/defeat.
This doesn't change the scene immediately afterwards of the Ralvuimago chasing the gargant, so it's kind of a weird disconnect between gameplay and plot.
The line about "cannot live without backing" is roughly the same in Japanese, although it's more general about having a backer (後ろ盾 "ushirodate", literally "rear shield") at all, rather than specifically Queen Brahne.
"Cannot live" is phrased as "living (as a continuation of existence) would be no good". A possible interpretation is "our lives would have no meaning", but I cannot rule out the jesters literally requiring a backer in order to survive, whether due to some vital resource or metaphysical genie magic.
Without further context, the ambiguity of the English line does match the ambiguity of the Japanese line.
Lani: "It's a pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty. I hear things aren't going too well." Brahne: "Have you no manners? This is what I get for hiring a lowlife."
I wonder if the confusion might be due to the English text not being able to clearly distinguish between the formal and informal registers.
Lani (incidentally にぎやかな女 "nigiyakana onna", "lively woman") starts with the correct formal pleasantries: "Your Majesty Queen Brahne! It is an honour to meet you."
Then her next line is "You are... in a pretty foul mood, looks like."
So part of the poor manners is the switch from formal register to a more casual one when Lani noticed Brahne's anger, and part of it is mentioning it out loud as opposed to pretending Brahne is perfectly fine.
This is supported by Brahne's line: "Hm, with your lowborn way of speaking, you do not appear to know any manners..."
The English text works, but might need to further separate the formal and informal registers. Maybe have Lani not use contractions until her second line, while Brahne, being the social superior in this situation, gets to use informal register the entire way.
It does get weird, since after that one "you look like you're in a bad mood" line by Lani, she goes back to formal register and stays there for the duration of her talk with Brahne. This is clearly a deliberate decision by the writers, but I don't know what it means. Was Lani affected by Brahne's criticism? Is she being passive-aggressive, but in such a subtle way that nobody noticed?
Also I'm interpreting Brahne's line as more of a grumpy "what can I expect from a vulgar peasant", rather than a direct accusation of rudeness. So that might be another point to consider.
The HD remaster is making the green guy look especially weird. From dreadlocks to what looks like a bizarre rocket pompadour? And what is going on with his neck?
Anyway, the English translation left out some pretty important information here. After the green guy asks what is up with the target "dressed like a Black Mage soldier", Brahne elaborates: not a human, but just a golem without a heart. A defective product that is moving about aimlessly. And the Black Mage is a target because it must not fall into the hands of other countries.
Brahne isn't specifically targeting Vivi out of a personal grudge or hatred towards wayward Black Mages. She is placing a bounty on Vivi because she doesn't want military espionage and other countries potentially reverse-engineering the secrets to producing Black Mage soldiers. So before the "defective product" wanders into another country, she wants the problem "cleaned up" (片づけ "katadzuke").
So yeah, making Vivi disappear is an actual national security concern for Brahne.
Lani: "If that's the case, I will use this weapon to the fullest, and solve this problem quicker than that big man over there!"
Possibly in keeping with the Empire Strikes Back scene, this makes it clear it's a competition between bounty hunters, rather than Brahne forming a temporary bounty hunting unit.
This is an unintentionally funny dialogue box, entirely because the game wants the player to know this person is a Badass, but doesn't quite trust the player's ability to understand that.
The Japanese label for this character's dialogue box is 焔色の髪の男 "homura-iro no kami no otoko", ie "man with hair the colour of flames". Which is a suitably badass descriptor, but the game goes out of its way to specify the reading of 焔, with the game font's approximation of furigana. I suspect this might be because 焔色 could be seen as a fancy variant of 炎色 "enshoku", which does mean "flame-coloured" in the sense of "bright scarlet" or possibly "bright reddish orange".
The net effect is the dialogue box label going "guys, listen, this guy's hair is not flame-coloured, it's the colour of flames. That's an important difference."
Later dialogue box labels for this character omits the furigana, possibly because the point has been made.
Also I did find it oddly amusing how the Red-Headed Man is searching for his personal target via the description "a boy with a tail", which can be applied to plenty of other people, eg Puck. Between this and the time Steiner was described only as "a middle-aged man", I get the impression people in this setting just don't have useful powers of description.
Just then, another of the Alexandrian Soldiers returns to inform Brahne that the "Alexandrian fleet has returned to home waters" and to "please prepare to depart on the Red Rose." Which… Hm. It's been established that sea travel basically died out after the Mists came onto the continent, replaced by airship travel. So there are two possibilities here: One, the translation is mistaken and it's supposed to be the Alexandrian air fleet that came back to the city. Two, Alexandria has been keeping its actual navy in reserve for a special coup that no one expects due to ship travel being considered dangerous and obsolete. We'll find out more soon, I assume.
Yeah, as we later saw, this is referring to the actual water navy. "Home waters" is 近海 "kinkai", which translates to "nearby seas" and includes coastal waters and such; I assume "home waters" is the proper nautical term.
As an additional note, the fleet is called the Brahne Fleet, ブラネ艦隊 "Burane kantai". I don't know if this is Brahne's personal pet project fleet of seagoing vessels, or if Brahne just took over the former Alexandrian sea navy and renamed it after herself.
[Dagger falls to her knees in despair.] Dagger: "I was confined while Cleyra was destroyed…" Zidane: [He kneels beside her.] "It wasn't your fault, Dagger. They knew. That's why they stayed behind." Dagger: "Everyone…"
If it helps, the Japanese text is a bit clearer on what Dagger's despair is about here. After Ramuh tells her about Cleyra's destruction via summon magic:
Dagger: "I didn't know something like that happened..." Dagger: "And yet... I've only been protected..."
Dagger is feeling guilty about how so many people are sacrificing themselves for her safety, all while she wasn't able to use her own summoning magic. Her concern right now is of the trio who stayed behind in Alexandria doing what is basically a last stand, with maybe Blank and Marcus possibly being able to help them. All so Dagger, and Dagger specifically, could escape.
Which leads to a slight change in nuance from the translation:
In Japanese, Dagger is still scared of her summon magic, but she has decided not to run away anymore.
So I'm interpreting this as Dagger wanting the power to protect herself and stand with the others, rather than being protected all the time. Ramuh asks if this might be another "mistake" (あやまち "ayamachi"), and Dagger tells him while she's still scared of that, her desire to stop the sacrifices for her protection is overriding that fear.
There are a lot of these hollows in the trees with wooden bars across, like windows, or, y'know, a prison cell. It's very strange and we'll be provided no explanation as to their nature; this could be a moogle village, but there's only one moogle here, Monty, the same moogle we found in Evil Forest, who appears to have escaped and found his way here. Nothing particular in the Mognet this time so we just save and move on.
That's odd. I did have a letter from Mosh (the Alexandria underground chapel Moogle) to Monty. The letter itself isn't significant (Mosh just asks if Monty managed to escape the Evil Forest, which, well, obviously), but Monty does mention his escape from the Evil Forest.
Monty barely managed to escape the petrification of the Evil Forest, and did so only by following "some suspicious people". Along the way, Monty accidentally picked up the verbal tic of "the guy with the hammer", zura.
So Tantalus escaping the Evil Forest also led the Moogles out. Also Cinna is contagious.
Human: Historian's explanation: The fact that they didn't report Joseph's death to his daughter was indicative of their guilt for failing to protect him. In the end, heroes are also human. Hero: Historian's explanation: Although Joseph's death was not reported to his daughter, the manner of his death speaks for itself. This is the story of a true hero.
I'm posting two screenshots; the first is the "Human" text, the second is the "Hero" text.
The "Human" text is more or less as written in the English translation. The Heroes did not report Joseph's death due to the traitor's rockfall trap, because they felt guilty about their "mistake" (あやまち again), and thus lied by omission. Therefore, heroes are also human with human foibles, and so on.
The "Hero" text in Japanese is much more positive about the Heroes.
"Hero" interpretation: "It may have been due a rockfall trap set by a traitor, but that does not change the fact the daughter lost her family. Rather than speaking about it using words, they avenged the death with actions. This led to their later being hailed as heroes."
It does still seem like a jerk move to keep the death secret, but at least the motivations are explained better. In the "Human" interpretation, the guilt led the Heroes to hide their shame by lying, and so Heroes are only human and make human mistakes, and so on. In the "Hero" interpretation, the Heroes decided to use Shounen Anime Rules and refuse to elaborate, because everyone (including the daughter Nelly) can do Sense Motive and figure out what they really meant via their actions.
Tangential trivia: the "Silence" part of the story in Japanese does name Borghen as the traitor. It's just stated with no emphasis ("the traitor Borghen", 裏切り者ボーゲン "uragiri-mono Bougen"), so I speculate the English translation left it out because they weren't familiar with FFII, and didn't know what the official transliteration of "Borghen" was supposed to be.
Return To Lindblum later, due to both time and image limit concerns.
I speculate the English translation left it out because they weren't familiar with FFII, and didn't know what the official transliteration of "Borghen" was supposed to be.
Checking dates, there may not have been an official transliteration of Borghen yet - II's first official release outside of Japan wasn't until '03, well after IX came out.
It finally happened after 8 full games and hundreds of updates, we arrive here: the update parts got split by page break and messed up my notifications. Genuinely, I don't think that happened before?
This is really quite a beautiful area, but I'm increasingly wondering if all these 'windows' with bars are meant to suggest this was once a prison. Probably not.
I'd just assume they're here to keep the wildlife out. Whoever lived here, they lived very close to nature, presumably before the Mist, and even without monsters you don't want to wake up to find a bear in your living room unless you're a libertarian.
Makes sense. Unlike Steiner, Beatrix is powerful, cool and composed, she'd have no trouble escaping danger to reunite with us, her crew. Unlike Steiner.
Describing Kuja as a "weapons dealer" feels a little like calling Sephiroth a "Shinra security officer" or Ultimedea a "Galbadian advisor." Technically accurate! Almost certainly understating the scope of the threat.
now, this would raise the question of "why doesn't Vivi change his outfit," but that would require acknowledging the possibility that Vivi might even do that and answer the question "what does he look like if we take off his hat," and that's something the game does not want to do, so no one in the cast is allowed to acknowledge it. And I honestly am not bothered, it's just a necessary conceit for the fiction of Vivi to work; it's how Season 1 of The Mandalorian asks you not to think too hard about the logistics of Mando never taking his helmet off, and answering these questions in later seasons doesn't necessarily improve the story because it draws attention to these fine points of details. It's a story; nobody can take off Vivi's hat because we are not supposed to see what's under it because that's how Black Mages look. Don't think about it too hard.
Valid point, but an old DOS-era adventure game Loom did it better: the main character (almost) never takes off his hood because seeing his undisguised face kills people.
And given that we've spent the whole game up to this point on the Mist Continent, whose whole recent history, politics, and geography is defined by the Mist, I'm really curious about discovering a new continent.
I give it even odds between racist caricatures of tribal natives (of which Kuja is an exception, having found a magitech spaceship or something) and hyperadvanced civilization looking at the kingdoms of the Mist Continent with contempt.
Yeah, the Japanese text is slightly clearer. "There are Alexandrian soldiers everywhere, so a Black Mage like you loitering around would be a bad idea."
I think the implication is even if the Alexandrian soldiers here haven't heard about Brahne's edict to dispose of Vivi, there's still the possibility the Alexandrian soldiers will think Vivi is part of the invasion force, attempt to give him orders, and when Vivi resists (or, more likely, stands there silent and puzzled), their cover is immediately blown.
I did take note of this dialogue box because I think this is the first time Zidane is explicitly linking the Black Mage automatons to Vivi, rather than avoiding the issue. It does raise the persistent question of "what is a Black Mage in this setting", in the context of whether non-automaton Black Mages are a known population. That would be the difference between Zidane going "there's a bunch of Black Mage automatons invading, best not to be confused with them with your own Black Mage outfit", and him going "you are a Black Mage automaton like them, but with free will, so try not to get mixed in with them by accident".
One of the Alexandrian soldiers is genuinely shocked, and kind of horrified, by the swiftness and completeness of their victory; she compares the black mages and eidolons to "opening Pandora's box."
One of the soldiers asks us about a group called the "Vigilantes"; I've never seen that name in the game before, and one night seems a little short for an insurrection to have formed, but given this game's disregard for reasonable timelines I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Tantalus crew have started a rebel cell overnight.
The name of the group is ヴィジランツ "Vijilantsu", which is transliterated as "Vigilants". So I don't know if it is intended to be "vigilantes" and the Japanese writers didn't bother checking the correct transliteration into katakana, or if it's a proper name "Vigilants" and the English translator assumed it was "Vigilantes".
Since you didn't mention anything further about this conversation, I'm not sure if you saw the subsequent dialogue, but if you chose "I know of them", there is an interesting follow-up:
Alexandrian Soldier: "If the leader (of the Vigilants) is named Justin..." Alexandrian Soldier: "Please tell him this on my behalf." Alexandrian Soldier: "Don't do anything stupid for now." Alexandrian Soldier: "Tell him it's from Nicole, and he'll understand."
This is the sort of thing I would assume you'd definitely have thoughts about. It's certainly something I think will stick in my mind to ponder over for the next few days.
Unrelated, also on this screen:
This Alexandrian soldier tells us to rejoice, for this nation shall be part of the Empire Of Alexandria.
This is a clear and deliberate change from previous text, which consistently said the Kingdom Of Alexandria: アレクサンドリア王国 "Alexandria oukoku". Now, it's "empire": 帝国 "teikoku".
I don't know if this is official policy and Queen Brahne has ambitions to become Empress Brahne, or if this one soldier is extrapolating the conquest a bit further than intended.
As Dagger wonders this, a commotion starts; some of the guards spot a black mage and start yelling about it and grabbing hold of it, until it starts complaining and Zidane and Dagger realize that this is Vivi, who is then escorted into the, uh, outdoors throne room.
It's a bit confusing how the Lindblum soldiers found Vivi. Before they come on-screen, the soldiers were yelling about how "this Black Mage Soldier is still moving", and "Oh? This one seems smaller than the others".
Their actual report to Cid is the soldiers took Vivi into protective custody, because the citizens were attacking him. So to the Lindblum soldiers, Vivi is a random lost Black Mage automaton who shares the lack of any sense of self-preservation, but still the military property of the nation which conquered Lindblum. So having that Black Mage Soldier be destroyed by angry citizens might make Alexandria displeased with them; not murder, but perhaps vandalism.
Which does contradict the scenes we saw earlier, where the Alexandrian soldiers simply didn't care about fallen Black Mage Soldiers being attacked by Lindblum citizens, but maybe the Lindblum soldiers wanted to err on the side of caution.
The Japanese text has a bit more information: the Outer Continent is so unknown and unexplored that Cid says he doesn't know if any "races" (種族 "shuzoku") there can even use magic. So in all probability, Kuja is the only one from the Outer Continent who is supplying weapons to Brahne.
In other words, Kuja is a private individual causing this turmoil, rather than a representative of a hostile state on the Outer Continent initiating aggression.
Interesting that it's Zidane who says "Defeat" and Dagger who says "Eliminate," I wonder what it's like in Japanese. Here it seems to indicate that Dagger is a little more bloodthirsty than she lets on about the asshole who corrupted her mom - maybe even displacing a little of Brahne's actual guilt onto Kuja.
Possibly this is due to the English translator checking a thesaurus and picking a term that is literal, but might have unintended extra implications.
Zidane's word for "defeat" is 倒す "taosu" (well, 倒しちまえば "taoshi chimaeba"). Which is a sort of generic word for "defeat", and literally means "to bring down"; as mentioned in this thread before, this was famously "knock down" in the original FFI translation.
Dagger's phrasing is a little different. クジャさえなくなれば "Kuja saenaku nareba" can be translated as "If Kuja would be gone". As in "go away" or "be removed" or "cease to be present" or other similar sentiments. The exact method is unstated, and only the end result of Kuja no longer being there matters.
So Zidane is being direct in wanting to go punch Kuja until Kuja falls down, while Dagger wants Kuja to not be a problem anymore. "Eliminate" might fit in the sense of "eliminate this issue", but as seen here it sounds more bloodthirsty than intended. It's a bit like reading "If only Kuja wasn't here" and interpreting it as "If only Kuja ceased to exist"; technically correct, but might want to rephrase.
And on the one hand, it's nice of Zidane to be hyping up his teammates. On the other hand, it feels painfully funny to refer to Freya as "the best dragon knight of Burmecia," when 1) we know that this explicitly not true, Fratley is better, 2) she's only that by default because every other dragon knight is dead.
Yeah, in Japanese Zidane just says "a dragon knight of Burmecia", without any superlatives.
I do think it's a bit funny how Zidane is hyping up the trio by giving lofty titles like "a Dragon Knight of Burmecia", "the Lady General of Alexandria", and "Old Man". One of these is perhaps not as grand as the other two.
Of course, "there's an old excavation site" and "foreign monsters are spotted there sometimes" isn't much to base this conclusion on, and both Zidane and Cid are aware of this, but Zidane declares that "not knowing is half the fun," and so our next course is set.
I'm a little curious why the English translation chose to use "excavation site" for 採掘場 "saikutsuba", when the usual translation is "mine", ie a location where mining occurs. "Excavation site" brings to mind archaeological research, rather than the resource extraction of "mine".
Cid also says there was a "large cavity" (大きな空洞 "ooki na kuudou") found by chance while the mine was in operation, and the rumour is this cavity hollow eventually leads out to another continent. Thus, this tunnel might have been around before anyone on the Mist Continent discovered it. Could be a natural formation, or it could have been constructed long ago and forgotten.
But it has been established that multiple eidolons were extracted from Dagger, and it's perfectly logical that Brahne would use them again. So it's still a sobering thing to witness Atomos let loose on Lindblum like this.
There's a funny thought experiment about what would happen if Brahne was just gacha-ing the eidolon summons, and while preparing to nuke a city, what comes out is Chocomog or Cactuar.
However, given Dagger's summon list before getting extracted, the devs obviously thought of that, and put in the less joke-y summons. Ifrit and Shiva might still be starter summons at this point in Final Fantasy's trajectory, but one can imagine them causing widespread havoc against defenseless civilians too.
Describing Kuja as a "weapons dealer" feels a little like calling Sephiroth a "Shinra security officer" or Ultimedea a "Galbadian advisor." Technically accurate! Almost certainly understating the scope of the threat.
You know, this comment made me realize something: Kuja, despite his appearance, is quite possibly our most subtle true villain yet.
Think about it; previous times Final Fantasy did the "fake out Big Bad" trick, they've either introduced the actual Big Bad in the opening hours as the main face of the villains (Golbez, Kefka) or they have the actual Big Bad make their enterance into the plot by killing the fake one (Sephiroth, Ultimecia*). Kuja, meanwhile, only shows up at the end of Disc 1, approximately a fourth of the way through. And even now that we're starting to give him more focus, Brahne is still being treated as the main threat by the narrative, with Kuja being set up as more of a Hojo figure**.
It's very interesting, and it makes me wish we could see a playthough from before Dissidia made sure everyone was spoiled on this.
*(Okay, Ultimecia's a bit weird here because of the whole possession thing, but possessed!Edea is effectively Ultimecia under a pseudonym in my books)
**(Except, you know, Kuja actually has the rizz that FF7's writers think Hojo has for some reason)
I gather you didn't try to fight Tantarian then? Don't get me wrong, that's fine, but it's something the developers would have needed to consider when deciding how difficult beating Beatrix the third time around was going to be.
It was extremely obvious that Kuja was the main villain from the moment he walked on screen even back then. You don't have the silver-haired guy who rides a dragon remain the subordinate of the overweight manic pixie blue queen for very long, it just doesn't make sense visually; Kuja looks like a mastermind, Brahne looks like a bully.
If Brahne had looked and acted more like Artemisia, and Kuja had remained the same, maybe then it'd have been harder to tell, but with the design decisions they went with, I don't think anybody ever failed to recognize that Kuja was the real threat. If Brahne remained the main villain, that would be a twist.
In addition to the problems you just described, don't forget that we've only been away from this worm for a little more than the duration of a timed sequence! Unless there was a very large gap during the fade to black after Garnet is captured, it must have moulted and metamorphed in the last... half hour, or so?
It was extremely obvious that Kuja was the main villain from the moment he walked on screen even back then. You don't have the silver-haired guy who rides a dragon remain the subordinate of the overweight manic pixie blue queen for very long, it just doesn't make sense visually; Kuja looks like a mastermind, Brahne looks like a bully.
If Brahne had looked and acted more like Artemisia, and Kuja had remained the same, maybe then it'd have been harder to tell, but with the design decisions they went with, I don't think anybody ever failed to recognize that Kuja was the real threat. If Brahne remained the main villain, that would be a twist.
Okay, yeah, I'll admit the designs are working against what they were going for here. It is hard to imagine a purple people eater as the Big Bad of a Final Fantasy game.
Still, if nothing else, it's nice to see that they seem to be going for a smooth transition of villains here. It's a nice change of pace after the previous two main games had big, dramatic shifts.
You might notice that Vivi's ATB gauge is yellow in the screenshot above. This is because the Running Shoes (which should be Hermes' Shoes) we acquired last time grant the Auto-Haste ability, which grants a character Haste at the start of battle… And, in a monumental departure from past games, appears to just keep it up even if a character goes down and is raised, immediately hasting them back again?
In any other FF game this would be incredibly busted. In FFIX, with its queuing issues and mildly broken ATB… We'll have to see.
Sounds like they should go on Zidane. You yourself said (was it you that said? my brain is swiss cheese) that there's a kind of 'soft difficulty' to fights where Zidane is the strongest party member by a country mile but you lose his DPS in the opening turns constantly Stealing to try and grab everything a boss has, so it seems to me that giving him the Running Shoes lets you get the stealing over and done with sooner and output more damage overall once you do.
There's something that is making this battle incredibly easy, though, but it's something that's actually going to bite me in the ass very soon:
You see, I have equipped everyone with Auto-Potion. Auto-Potion causes a character to chuff the lowest grade of potion available whenever they take damage.
Whenever they take damage. There is no "sufficient damage" threshold to be met. That means every turn, the battle system takes a little break as it plays an animation of all our characters smashing potion bottles over their own heads. That's mildly annoying, but the more important part is: I forgot to check my potion supply. During our last few battles, my party has been drinking their way through my entire base potion supply. This means the lowest grade of potion now available is my precious Hi-Potions, and by the time this battle is done, they will have drunk them all.
I am coming out of this boss fight with my entire party at near full HP and not one single Potion or Hi-Potion left. I don't even know if shops sell Hi-Potions!
My god. It's you. You're Edward now. "Oh yes this is just free party healing, trust me" says Omi, conveniently blinking every time his arm spasms and hurls a valuable Hi-Potion at the back of Zidane's fucking skull.
This ties into something that's been bothering me about Dagger's characterization ever since her rescue but that I couldn't quite identify and now I've finally put my finger on it.
Dagger's dominant characterization for the whole stretch of the game up to her capture is that she is kind, sheltered, a little clueless about something, but also thoughtful, with strong emotions she rarely voices, and has a deep romantic streak and a craving for adventure, and her sheltered upbringing makes her just as unexpectedly open as it does make her naive, with her being unafraid of bugs and gross things and always willing to give anyone a chance. But the Dagger we got back after the eidolon extraction has mostly just been… Sad and withdrawn and characterized mainly by self-doubt. Her dialogue contains a shocking amount of 'repeating the word someone just said as a way of asking for clarification', which I know is a common thing in Japanese but I feel she used to do it less? Also lots of variations on "Mother…" and "Mother!" and "M-Mother!?" and looking forlornly as other characters stay behind to protect her and she doesn't say anything to them but clearly feels guilty for them putting themselves in danger for her.
And like, yeah, in character this is understandable: Dagger has been suffering a series of heavy emotional blows that would be devastating to anyone, let alone a sheltered teenager. But I feel like we lost Dagger the Adventurer and her replacement has less agency and like… Just, her not knowing what an "Outer Continent" is and needing it explained by Zidane kind of embodies it in my eyes. She's a princess! She had a tutor! We saw a flashback of that tutor teaching her about the world! But no, because we have Moping Dagger, she inexplicably doesn't have this basic knowledge about the world.
It's kind of damning to be saying this in the same update Dagger had her major character moment with Ramuh, reconnected with her summoning power and convinced her first eidolon to serve her, but also I guess it explains while I kinda felt underwhelmed by that beat in terms of Dagger's character writing, even if in terms of "writing about summons" it was the best in a while?
Woman Character Writing. Like that's all I can see it as rn, the big thing happened that finally established why Dagger is important to the story and it activated her sleeper agent programming. I would be delighted to be wrong and see Dagger start acting different a chunk later into the story so as to establish this part as being 'oh yeah she's just incredibly depressed and shaken about her mother doing consecutive 9/11s at increasing speed' but I have this feeling of dread that actually she's just gonna be like this forever now.
Sounds like they should go on Zidane. You yourself said (was it you that said? my brain is swiss cheese) that there's a kind of 'soft difficulty' to fights where Zidane is the strongest party member by a country mile but you lose his DPS in the opening turns constantly Stealing to try and grab everything a boss has, so it seems to me that giving him the Running Shoes lets you get the stealing over and done with sooner and output more damage overall once you do.
While this is true, there is an opportunity cost to be had here. As was mentioned way before near the beginning of the game, passive abilities cost "magic stones/magicite", of which each character has a limited amount, to activate; and Auto-Haste is a costly ability - where Auto-Potion costs 3 stones, Auto-Haste costs 9.
Additionally, whereas Vivi doesn't really have much else to assign stones other than the status defenses like Insomniac (prevents Sleep, costs 5 stones), Zidane also has to consider abilities unique to him (Bandit for no steal misses is 5 stones; Protect Girls, which is relevant when Garnet is several levels behind, is 4 stones) and offensive abilities the mages don't get (MP Attack is 4 stones, Beast Killer is 4 stones and other "Killer" abilities range from 3 to 5, Counter is 8 Stones), and the supply isn't high - at the current levels, character will have less than 30 Magic Stones.
So... yes, having Auto-Haste on Zidane would probably be more beneficial than on most others, but there might be an opportunity cost in prioritizing him for the ability over characters whose more costly abilities aren't currently available yet.
Also Dagger just said that she was afraid of her summon power so all my earlier guesses about how the whole menu/MP thing meant that Dagger was unaware of the power yet slumbering inside her were completely off-base. Girl knew the entire time that she was a potential summoner who was merely afraid of using her powers and she just never brought it up at any point in the game so far.
This is a little frustrating. A lot of the game's plot seemed perfectly coherent so far, and now the game is doing a thing where it repeatedly turns to the camera and says "oh, that perfectly sensible justification for this plot point? Yeah that's not actually true, what's true is a different, less sensical explanation we're just informing of you now."
Looking back on it, not having her summon or having her party even aware that she had the ability makes a certain amount of meta sense.
How do we know about a character's abilities? We can see their menu, their battle options... but in the story we only get to see abilities that are used, or a character tells another about.
So, meta thoughts: Dagger not being able to call eidolons then could be taken as it's something she actively doesn't want anyone to know about, thus her MP will remain low enough that she's not able to summon any of them until after this point in the story. ... power-leveling and cheat codes aside, that is.
Obviously just a convenient shorthand from whoever was translating the text from the original Alexandrian
Honestly though, I can see the people on this continent having a very similar type of myth, but specifically as an explanation for the origins of Mist on the continent. That'd be fun to get some insight on
Alongside that, it's still kind of fascinating to see the Black Mage teleporting raids be used so effectively as a warfare tactic that has no easy response. That general strategy is turning out so terrifyingly successful for the Queen of Alexandria that I fear she's not going to slow down any time soon.
On Dagger, I-don't really see any issues? Knowing about the summons might be odd, but as said she didn't really have a reason to bring up I can destroy cities with a word. In fact she had very good reasons not too.
Though it does make some of her recent decisions rather questionable.
Also in Linblum I'm...deeply confused about that chain of events. Solid attack tatics on the Queen's part, but being able to move through the City so easily to do...what exactly? Feels weird. More so that the goverment is apparetnly fully functioning and sort of still in charge?
And why are we just suddenly leaving the continent?! Didn't people not know what was out there?
...Kuja is less of an issue since I don't think any of them know he lives there, and clearly doesn't have his...operations in the City.
Also in Linblum I'm...deeply confused about that chain of events. Solid attack tatics on the Queen's part, but being able to move through the City so easily to do...what exactly? Feels weird. More so that the goverment is apparetnly fully functioning and sort of still in charge?
What about this doesn't make sense? Lindblum was conquered, the local government was offered the "sever or die" ultimatum (Cid choose to serve), which isn't that uncommon in an historical context, and while there's Alexandrian soldiers on the streets, the people are being put to work and can thus circulate, which again, is what usually happens when a place is conquered rather than razed to the ground.
Because Kuja is based outside the continent, and cutting Brahne's weapon supply would allow for counterattack. Cid literally said so. This is about as straightforward and logical of a plan of action as it can get.
This whole section seems very straightforward to me; certainly more than about half of FFVII's plot, or most of FFVIII. Things are proceeding in a very logical fashion right this moment, and really, outside of the super-condensed section between Cleyra's fall and Pinnacle Rocks, I don't think that FFIX's plot has shown any lack of coherence, and in fact managed to make complete sense at every step of the way. Even the "rescue Garnet" section makes internal sense, it's just rushed.
In terms of solid plotting, we've not had anything even close to this in anything outside FFV, as far as I'm concerned, so saying that what's happening is nonsensical leaves me quite puzzled.
On Dagger, I-don't really see any issues? Knowing about the summons might be odd, but as said she didn't really have a reason to bring up I can destroy cities with a word. In fact she had very good reasons not too.
Though it does make some of her recent decisions rather questionable.
Just as Dagger also knowing about her Summon command is diagetic, I assume that the good but not gamebreaking amount of damage the summons do is also diagetic. Level 1 mage Dagger might just not have the mana or knowledge needed to really bring the summons out to their full potential.
Just as Dagger also knowing about her Summon command is diagetic, I assume that the good but not gamebreaking amount of damage the summons do is also diagetic. Level 1 mage Dagger might just not have the mana or knowledge needed to really bring the summons out to their full potential.
