Well, at the least it's vastly entertaining to read about. Final Fantasy VII, much like the system jump of Final Fantasy IV before it, represents the devs really getting to flex that story muscle with all the extra space they have, and boy howdy do they put it to work. Anyone have any idea how large the script for FFVII is compared to previous games?
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Broke: Pepe Silvia conspiracy board
Bespoke: Sender conspiracy board.
Who is Sender. Why does mail gets returned to him?
Bespoke: Sender conspiracy board.
Who is Sender. Why does mail gets returned to him?
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Going to the wiki's script page for VII, entering reader view, and pressing print, it tells me 845 pages. Doing the same for the FFVI Advance script (the one I'm pretty sure the pixel remaster uses) gives a total of 244 pages.
Given that the amount per page this yields isn't too much, this is basically a useless comparison in terms of comparing length to other things, but it should suffice for giving relative length between the two.
(incidentally, the selection of scripts the wiki has is very, very inconsistent. They've got V advance, VI Advance and SNES, FFVII, FFVII remake split into three pages for story battle and field dialogue, FFVII Crisis Core, FFXIII-3, World of Final Fantasy, Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia (yes the gacha game), the FFXV prequel movie script, and for some reason the Chocobo Racing script.)
Last edited:
have you found the Grey Man yet
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pretty sure it's this one (don't think simply posting songs counts as a spoiler):
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvC6dxI-oPk
That and the name similarity I pointed out earlier are enough for me to declare that Sans Undertale is somehow a Sephiroth equivalent/reference/clone/???.
- Location
- Texas
Speaking of music, anything interesting about the Gold Saucer soundtrack according to our resident experts? I'm pretty sure it's pulling bits from previous FF songs, but I can't tell which ones.
Or any of the recent music tracks, for that matter. It's been a while since there was a music deep dive.
Or any of the recent music tracks, for that matter. It's been a while since there was a music deep dive.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
It isn't a spoiler, that's the song that plays when you look at Jenova's headless corpse in Shinra Tower.
And whaddaya know, Sephiroth mentioned a "Professor Gast" during the Nibelheim flashback!
Final Fantasy VII, Part 15: Corel Prison
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where strict consistency of plot sometimes takes a backseat to imagery and feelings.
Last time, Dio Goldsaucer kicked us down a garbage chute into a scrapyard-prison. We found Barret there, and he refused to talk to us and ran. So now we get to explore a bit!
Well, 'explore.' It's not a very large area, and…
…it has random encounters in it.
The prison has inmates in it, that we can talk to, but it's also a dungeon where any step can trigger a random encounter. This makes walking around… Onerous; I'm not going to be running back and forth every which place if I have to deal with mobs the more steps I take. I want to keep things as short and direct as possible.
Now, you might recall that the last game we played also had what was ostensibly a 'settled' area with NPCs that could be talked to while also being a dungeon with monsters attacking every five steps in the form of Zozo. Well, the game knows it too, and is throwing in this cheeky tribute to Corel Prison's predecessor:
There are three prisoners who only ever say the opposite of the truth, echoing each other every sentence. "This place is Heaven," They have never met "a guy with a gun on his arm," and "If we want to talk to the boss we should head Southwest." So, this place is hell, they definitely know Gun Arm Dude, and the boss is going to be to the Northeast. Thanks, guys, you were really helpful!
It's interesting that this prison just… doesn't have any guards at all, as far as I can tell. Its security measures appear to be limited to "is in the middle of a giant desert surrounded by quicksand" and "is full of monsters." Which… you know, fair. That would deter almost anyone from wandering outside of the small fenced settlement at the center, and anyone who tried their luck anyway would probably just die.
In fact, speaking of settlement…
…hm.
These houses are dilapidated, but they're not makeshift. They're simple but well-built houses, with glass windows and attics and tiled roofs. They weren't built by the prisoners, they predate them, but neither were they built for the purposes of housing inmates, they're too nice for that. And they show signs of structural damage, while Mako energy infrastructure was built among them without apparent care for the navigation of the place as a settlement. The houses are merely standing relics that nobody bothered razing while building up the infrastructure which powers the Gold Saucer.
And it's called 'Corel Prison.'
I think it's obvious where we are. These are the ruins of Corel, Barret's mining town. Now a garbage dump which serves only as the soil in which the Gold Saucer takes root, like a parasitic fungus growing on the corpse of the old town.
Yeah. Previously I'd chalked up "Shinra faked/deliberately engineered the Corel Reactor incident as an excuse to raze the town and build the Gold Saucer there" as merely plausible, but now that it's clear the casino is literally built on the carcass of old Corel, I think this graduates to "all but certain." Those motherfuckers.
Talking to some of the prisoners here, it grows apparent that there is one way to make it out of Corel Prison - from time to time, the Gold Saucer staff pick one prisoner to enter the chocobo races. Win the race, and you win your freedom.
It's an odd approach to sentencing and prison terms, but, well, it would be a stretch to call Corel Prison part of any kind of 'justice system'; Dio can just drop anyone into the hole any time he wants to without investigation or accountability. Might as well release them just as arbitrarily, I suppose. However, there's a second layer of arbitrariness - in order to have a chance to participate in the chocobo race, we must first obtain permission from "the boss," the man running the prison. Prison hierarchy, guy in charge acting as a direct intermediary-enforcer for the Gold Saucer administration, all that tracks.
That Shinra truck you can see near the bottom of the second picture, incidentally, is guarded by two tough guys in sunglasses, who tell us that, as newbies, we need to pay our respect to 'Mr Coates,' the man inside. Sounds like that boss we're looking for!
Sometimes when I initiate conversation with an NPC I accidentally do it from uncomfortably close and the whole discussion has to go on that way.
Mr. Coates: "You don't seem to understand how things work down here. This is the Gold Saucer's garbage dump. And that makes alluv ya scrubs."
Mr. Coates: "The only way to get back up here is to win the Chocobo Race. But, it's not as easy as you rookies think."
Mr. Coates: "Of course, if you got the boss's permission it'd be a different situation, but YOU'll never get that! Ha ha ha ha."
Okay, so this guy isn't the boss, he's the second in command. And, by the looks of it, the guy managing operations, taking visitors, impressing the law on newbies. So I'm guessing the boss himself is a… Less social type. The toughest guy on the block, who leaves the running of operation to someone with the right skillset.
Also there's a well/underground silo with an empty chest, a dead monster old enough to have become a skeleton, and a sword planted in its jaw. Did an adventurer come and slay this beast to get its treasure? Neat environmental storytelling even if useless to us.
Without further guidance on finding the boss (the path to the Northeast is blocked by a prisoner) or Barret, we just head to the next dilapidated house - surprise! That's our next plot step. As we enter from one side, Barret does from the other, to confront us about following him.
There's something to the way some FF7 environment have that particular vibe of run-down, abandoned for years, that reminds me so much of Bethesda-era Fallout - only much more believable, because instead of still looking that way a century after a total nuclear Armaggedon, it's merely a few years of neglect after humans were driven out. It's less post-apocalyptic and more… Currently-apocalyptic?
Barret: "Didn't I tell you not to come here!?"
Cait Sith: "Ju… Just hold on for a second! We just want to talk! You'll understand if you hear us out!"
No time, though. Barret raises his gun, and fires at the group.
…or behind the group, rather. As everyone flinches and covers their face, the bullets miss them entirely… And shoot Some Guy who was hiding behind the couches and falls over dead. Huh. Well, we've been fighting "bandit" types enemies along with the monsters as random encounters, so I guess diegetically some of the inmates are hostile. Barret gruffly turns around and says he "Didnd't want none of ya to get involved."
Then suddenly, the rest of the party shows up.
Okay, Aerith poking fun at Cloud never gets old.
Aerith's way of pointing out to Barret that his behavior is ridiculous being comparing it to Cloud's, who drives Barret nuts with the exact same attitude, is flawless.
Anyway, she just says that she "saw us and hurried here." How did you do that, Aerith? Did you sneak into the garbage chute and jump down? Were you spying on us getting captured and decided to bide your time until you could act? Did you rappel down the side of the Gold Saucer? None of this is like, impossible or a 'plot hole,' it's just, it would be nice to have an explanation of what actually happened rather than the characters, for all intents and purposes, teleporting into the middle of the desert prison just so the full party can be here for the conversation.
Barret: "You guys…"
Red XIII: "I heard that the murders at the Battle Arena were done by a man with a gun-arm… was that you?"
Barret: "There's another… another man that got a gun grafted inta one of his arms. It was four years ago…"
Turns out? Like everyone else in this story, Barret was selective with the truth and did not disclose the most important details of his past when he explained his backstory to the others. He had hoped to never have to mention this next part.
I love how the game uses these staggered and incomplete reveals of information over time, with characters seeming to confess everything but actually holding back information that they're not ready to disclose, because (so far) instead of total ass-pulls, these are foreshadowed within the original information.
For instance, Barret's original flashback puts a very strong emphasis on the character of Dyne as someone important to Barret, to the village of Corel, and to the fate of the Mako Reactor - but then he disappears entirely from the picture. We know he, along with Barret, were out of Corel when it was attacked, and thus survived the attack - but then Barret makes no mention of what happened to Dyne. It's obvious there's something he's not telling us, and there it is.
This is meant to be 'the' Mako Reactor under construction, ie the Corel one; Barret isn't going around visiting random Mako Reactors for the sake of it.
As an unsuspecting Barret and Dyne approach Corel, the village elder comes running in a panic, shouting to them that the village is under attack by Shinra soldiers. Shocked, Barret and Dyne rush to the side of the mountain and catch sight of the burning Corel.
Hmmm.
Is this a valley proper or, like, an elevated plateau merely surrounded by peaks? One thing it is, is green. Not so much anymore. The Mako Reactor really did a number on this place, and it did it in the space of four years.
Okay, okay, sorry Barret, I'll be getting back to your flashback momentarily, there's just something I need to take care of first.
Let's go to the view from space.
Alright.
In the picture from Barret's flashback, we see a settlement located between an incomplete ring of mountains. We do not see all the way to the right of them, but we can guess that this is the part that "opens" onto a path that leaves the mountain. Now, I have circled three spaces above. #1 is North Corel; it's where the survivors of the Corel massacre are living, and it's where we find the ropeway that leads to the Gold Saucer. As it is "North" Corel, it's likely to be either a separate settlement from Corel proper (as in "South Figaro" vs Figaro), or merely "the North section of the original Corel village." But, seeing as Barret told us the original Corel was "buried under the sand in only four years," I feel like they're two separate places?
So, comparing the pictures and the maps, we have two possible locations for the destroyed village of Corel, the conservative guess that best fits the visual data and invalidates my cool theory, and the radical one which plays loose with the data but ties it all together narratively and thematically. .
The conservative guess is that the original Corel is in Circle #2. It's directly south of North Corel, it's situated in a corridor between two mountains like in the Barret flashback, it's a green-but-no-longer-forest area as fits a place under recent Mako drain, it's close enough to North Corel that it doesn't stretch belief for those two to have been the same settlement, both burned down, and North Corel just being the surviving north district that hasn't been buried yet. It keeps the world relatively large. All of it is situated between mountains, making the mining operation easy to explain. Original Corel no longer exists on the map, we don't pass through it, but we know it's been buried.
The bold guess is that original Corel was at the center of Circle #3. I made the circle particularly large to highlight the issue with this, namely the border, because they don't fit Barret's flashback at all: Only a quarter-circle of this region is bordered by mountain, unlike three-quarters in the flashback, and the flashback doesn't show any of the coastline you'd expect to see from atop the mountain looking at it. It would also mean Corel is pretty far from North Corel or, indeed, from the mountain they extracted charcoal from. So that doesn't fit the evidence, and doesn't support my "Gold Saucer was built on the ruins of old Corel after Shinra used a pretense to massacre the inhabitants and burn the town."
On the other hand, shrinking the map enough for Gold Saucer to be built on top of original Corel while still being close enough to North Corel and the mountains for the backstory to work would make the Ropeway a lot more sensible as effectively a fancy taxi and not a continental airway meant for one casino specifically, and it would explain the whole village at the foot of the Saucer without imagining an extra destroyed village, it would give a direct reason for Shinra to wipe out Corel instead of "just because" now that we've seen in the last flashback that Barret and Dyne were coming straight home from the Mako Reactor which had not suffered any kind of explosion that they knew of, so the excuse of an incident being blamed on the villagers was clearly bullshit, and there would be a pretty dramatic effect to the wide forested area Barret is looking at down in the flashback now being the Gold Saucer Wastes. But…
No, dammit. It just doesn't fit.
I think the truth is somewhere in betwixt, and is somehow even worse and less flattering to Shinra.
I think that the Gold Saucer is built on a second, different settlement from Corel, and that they destroyed Corel so that they could put the Ropeway Station there. People have to come through the mountain from Costa del Sol to get to the station and from the station to the Gold Saucer, and the Ropeway Station could have been a boon to the town, bringing in a steady flux of tourists they could fleece before they got to the Saucer - same way the first slot machines in Las Vegas are in the airport, trying to trip you at the starting line and drain your pockets before you ever make it to an actual casino, and Shinra decided that was less money in their pockets. What could have been a prosperous (if based on a fundamentally extractive and questionably ethical economy) village was turned to rubble, and who cares if it puts off some of the patrons going through.
They didn't raze Corel to build the Gold Saucer, they razed Corel to build a tram station. Dozens if not hundreds died for the convenience of a bus stop. That's somehow even worse.
That or the distances on the map are just completely fucked, either/or.
…
…where was I?
RIGHT. BARRET'S BACKSTORY. WOW.
Dyne tells Barret not to lose hope, there's still time to get back to the village and help people. Then they turn around, and…
…the Village Elder is gunned down from the back, while fleeing, by a Shinra soldier.
Yeah. This is a massacre in the literal, purposeful sense of the world. Mass murder of unarmed civilians. Probably the second most evil action we've seen Shinra commit on screen, after the plate drop.
…then a comedy beat plays where the Shinra soldiers all shoot mass fire at Barret and he does that classic Western trope where he is forced to "dance" in place dodging the bullets hitting the ground at his feet, doing a little jig while Dyne tells him to hurry up and follow him, which is weirdly and wildly misplaced. Eventually though, Barret does manage to make it under the bridge and follow after Dyne, all while doing little dancing bouts as the soldiers fire, until the two friends have grouped up and Barret and Dyne take cover behind a rock - one that's too small to provide comprehensive cover, however.
Then, the local leader appears, scolding her men for their awful aim.
Hmm. We don't know much about Scarlet so far, really, aside from her being totally cold-blooded and having a kind of femme fatale affect, and being the one who managed to sway the village to let Shinra build the reactor near them. The fact that she was the one who convinced them to build the reactor and the one to lead the massacre further reinforces the theory that this is all part of one operation planned from the start.
Scarlet looks like she's wrenching a rifle from a soldier's hands so she can shoot Barret and Dyne properly, knocking him off the bridge in the process, but the soldier still has his rifle as he falls, so it's not clear what she's doing. She orders the rest of the men to cover her while she personally shoots down Barret and Dyne, but the game doesn't bother modeling a firearm on her Playmobil model, so it looks like she's just... Miming a gun with her hands.
Like. Guys. C'mon. Give her an actual gun or something.
Amazing. Her fire draws them out of cover, and in fact knocks Dyne off the cliff, and Barret must reach out to catch his hand, holding his friend dangling into the void, and then…
"Yeah..." Dyne answers, "I ain't lettin' go..."
…the rifle fire sprays over their joined hands, tearing through them both and breaking their hold, and Dyne plummets into the deep.
Barret: "From then on, I couldn't use my right arm no more. I was depressed for a while.
Barret: "But then I threw away my artificial arm and got this gun grafted in."
Barret: "Got a new right arm to get revenge on Shinra, who took everything away…"
Barret: "Back then, I heard the doc say there was another man who got the same operation as me. But, his was the left arm."
Aerith: "But… Dyne's injury was the same as yours, right?"
Tifa: "Yeah, that's right. He was deceived by the Shinra too. He'll probably join us to fight against the Shinra."
Barret: "...Wouldn't bet on it. I gotta 'pologize to Dyne before I can rest in peace."
Barret: "An' that's why I gotta go alone."
Cloud: "Do whatever you want… Is that what you want to hear? Well, I can't let you do it. We need your help to save the Planet."
Aerith: "Barret, this isn't the end."
Tifa: "Weren't you going to save the Planet?"
Barret: "@#$%! Tifa, you oughta know by now."
Tifa: "...That's all right. I'm not so different from you."
Aerith: "That's easier to understand. It's you, Barret."
Cloud: "So there it is, Barret. So I guess it'll be Barret, me, and…"
[The party selection menu opens; Barret and Cloud are locked in, so we only have one extra character to pick.]
Aerith is back on the team.
Man.
This has layers.
Okay so first off.
Barret's turn from "coal miner fooled by Shinra" to "victim of Shinra's evil" is embodied in the loss of his right arm, ie his working arm, ie his ability to perform physical labour, ie his ability to provide for those he cares about. Setting aside the dubious coal mining politics, he is being invalidated, ie, made invalid. Disability is used here as a literalization of Shinra taking away his livelihood, but not just that - the loss of his family in the destruction of Corel his translated into his very flesh as the loss of the arm which should have been able to protect/provide for his family. Then he goes through a phase of "depression" - it's glossed over in one line of dialogue, but it is a very unusual admission of vulnerability by Barret, openly admitting that he was worn down, powerless, emotionally wounded. In this phase, he is implied to have had an ordinary prosthetic arm, implicitly a weaker, diminished form of his old arm. Then, his turn from "victim of Shinra's evil" to "avenger of the Planet" is manifested in him throwing away that prosthetic and bolting a gun to his arm. By making the choice to implant the gun-arm, Barret is reclaiming his bodily autonomy, but not just that; he is engraving in his very flesh the promise of revenge for Corel, punishment for Shinra, and salvation for the Planet. He fully abandons "ability to perform physical labour," "the ability to provide," and instead adopts "the ability to fight," making himself a more perfect avenger and defender.
This is why he keeps angsting over his relationship to his daughter, over being absent for long periods of time, having to draw into her school fund to hire a mercenary; because he has traded the role of provider for the role of fighter. But is it a path of revenge that is doomed to end in self-destruction, or is it the path of one who is fighting to save the Planet? This is where Barret is right now, at the literal bottom of the world (well, the Gold Saucer), in the middle of a waste of Shinra's making (WHICH INCIDENTALLY WOULD BE EVEN COOLER IF WE KNEW FOR SURE IT WAS THE RUINS OF THE OLD COREL HINT HINT), chasing after a ghost (his old friend once thought dead), having to confront the question: Revenge set him on this path, but is it still what truly drives him, or has he come to care for something greater, the fight for the Planet itself? Will he die when he meets Dyne again because neither of them could truly move on from the hatred and anger that consumed them and set them on a path of destruction, or will he survive, because he is fighting for something greater? That is literally what the other characters are saying/asking in this scene!
Also, fuck, it's so stupid but so good. Barret was holding Dyne by his hand, Dyne dangling over a bottomless chasm, Barret the only one keeping him alive, their friendship embodied in these two holding hands against death, and Shinra literally tore through it with gunfire, which (physically) wrecked their hands and (consequently) caused Dyne to fall and (figuratively) cut through their friendship. And then THEY BOTH GRAFTED GUNS TO THEIR ARMS, ONLY ON REVERSE ARMS, LIKE MIRRORS OF EACH OTHER, BECAUSE THESE WERE THE ARMS BY WHICH THEY WERE HOLDING ON TO ONE ANOTHER IN THEIR LAST MOMENTS BEFORE THEIR FATEFUL SEPARATION.
It's so dumb. It's so cool. I love it.
Except except except ALL THAT IS DIFFERENT IF YOU ARE USING A TRANSLATION CLOSER TO THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE.
Because it turns out in the original Japanese Barret didn't lose his arm entirely and replace it with a prosthetic; rather he lost the use of his arm, as in he suffered a loss of fine motor control/dexterity/couldn't work with it anymore; he wasn't "depressed," rather he "thought things through", and then HE HAD HIS OWN ARM AMPUTATED TO REPLACE IT WITH THE GUN. This is way more psychotic than the prosthetic thing, in that instead of the injury/disability already being there and Barret turning it into a weapon, it's him making a deliberate choice to take what's left of his original arm and remove it to replace it with a weapon, mutilating himself for the sake of revenge. Which then feeds into something else: rather than there being an ambiguity about how much Barret is acting for revenge as opposed to the Planet, there is a line which is entirely missing in the English (not a poor translation, literally the dialogue box is missing), after everyone tells him "you can't throw your life away, what about your fight for the planet?" in which Barret says (paraphrasing, specific details will differ according to translation) "Tifa, you know me better than that, it might have looked like I was doing it for the Planet, but really all I cared about was revenge against Shinra." At which point Tifa says "It's okay, I'm not so different myself," and Aerith says "It's who you are, Barret."
Which is wild because instead of a conflict between "will you fight Shinra for revenge, or for the planet," it's Barret saying "Revenge, 100%, the rest was a front," and Tifa and Aerith nod and say "yeah, that's valid, rock on." And while I think we could do with more stories about how revenge is cool and based actually and sometimes assholes have it coming, in this case here it's…
…I prefer the English script of this scene? For all that the text itself is kind of muddied and a lot of the different details are rooted in straight-up mistakes rather than deliberate changes in adaptation, this is the one time where I think actually, the translation has the better version of this character beat?
Wild.
Well, now it's time to meet with Dyne. Who, in case it wasn't apparent by now, is the boss of Corel Prison people have been talking about without naming him (this causes some issues but we'll get to that later).
Yuffie is the best, in that she's the worst, but in a way I love. Absolute shitkid sigma woman teenager.
It's small touches like the fact that we're in a scrapyard/garbage dump so the 'inn' is literally a van with enough room on the reclining seats to sleep on that absolutely elevate this game's commitment to its aesthetic.
There's a pub that is our local item shop but it's not super-interesting, by contrast.
As before, our main clue on where to find Dyne is the guys saying he's "Southwest" who are always lying; so we head back up north to the screen where Cloud landed after the capture robots took him down, and there we find a guy who used to guard the fence dead on the ground.
Hmmm. Is Dyne shooting his own subordinates? Has he fully lost it?
Why was he even in the Gold Saucer, anyway? Did he go on the hunt for Shinra soldiers? How did he escape?
Well, we'll see. For now, let us hasten to a fateful confrontation.
Behold: The endless wastes stretching to the infinite horizon. Notice how the line of the fence is used to convey the sheer scale of the space as it continues endlessly, narrowing in the perspective until it can't be seen anymore even though it is still there, still continuing in the immensity.
Once we step outside of the 'settlement' part of the prison, the monsters get noticeably more fucked up. These fucked up multi-armed guys you might recognize as Death Claws, back from III and V, with their design mostly unchanged, which gives us a neat look at how an enemy with a weird but consistent monster design has evolved with the move to 3D. According to the wiki, they have a cool Enemy Skill called Laser which halves enemy HP, which we didn't learn because I forgot to equip the Enemy Skill Materia on someone during this section. Oops.
We go through a scrapyard section which seems mostly an excuse for the devs to show us a bunch of cool cars being all crumpled and stuff.
And then, finally, in the northeast of the prison, we find him. As we enter the next screen, all music cuts off. Pulling out a trick VI had used at the Solitary Island, the only sound is the diegetic noise of the wind, howling through the ruins - and, soon, gunfire.
Oooh, I don't much like the look of these two crosses over shallow graves. And Dyne is doing that classic anime emoting where he starts out standing but slumped forward with his head down, then lifts it dramatically while looking slightly too high up when he reacts to someone entering the scene, only he is also shooting into the sky at a steady rhythm with no apparent reason.
Yeah. Dude's lost it. Unfortunate.
As Dyne approaches, he has a noticeable limp, one of his legs dragging behind. It's unclear what is causing this; likely it's just a physical injury, but the way it impacts his walk cycle makes it feed into a general sense that this man is not right, that he is unhinged.
Dyne: "Now that's a voice I haven't heard in years… A voice I'll never forget…"
Barret: "I always hoped I'd be able to see you again someday… I knew you were alive somewhere… We had the same operation."
Barret: "Listen, Dyne, I want to…"
Barret takes a step towards Dyne - and Dyne raises his gun arm and shoots.
…probably next to Barret. Probably on purpose. An issue with the low resolution of these scenes is that they just don't have the degree of detail to really show what happens when someone does something like shooting at someone else unless the person being shot collapses and says "I've been shot!" I think it was a warning shot to tell Barret to step back, but it could be Dyne just missing because he's gone loopy.
Dyne: "I can hear her voice. What's that?"
Barret: "...?"
Dyne: "It's Eleanor's voice. Begging me… Not to hate your rotten guts. That's why I never hunted you down…"
Barret: "...I know I was stupid. I'm not asking you to forgive me. But… what're you doin' in a place like this? Why ya wanna kill people who ain't even involved? Why?"
Dyne: "Why!? The hell do you care!?"
Dyne: "You think the dead understand why's? Is hearing Shinra's excuses gonna make people in Conel understand anything? I don't CARE about reasons!"
Dyne: "All they give us is artillery and stupid excuses… What's left is a world of despair and emptiness…
'All they give us is artillery and stupid excuses' is such a weird line. The retranslation has it as "All they give is bullets and bullshit," which is outstanding, especially in a very utilitarian translation which for the most part takes care to convey the intended meaning but doesn't do a lot of flourish. Please mentally substitute it for the original.
Dyne: "You still want to hear 'why'? All right, I'll tell you."
[Here, Dyne proceeds to punctuate his words with gunfire, first at nothing in particular, then towards Barret again.]
Dyne: "'Cause I want to destroy everything."
Dyne: "The people in this city."
Dyne: "The city itself."
Dyne: "The whole world!"
Dyne: "I got nothing left in this world. Corel, Eleanor… Marlene…"
[Barret tries to reach for Dyne with his flesh-and-blood hand.]
Barret: "Dyne, Marlene… Marlene's still alive."
[Dyne turns around to look at him.]
Dyne: "...?"
Barret: "I went back into town. I thought she was gone for sure. Barret wandered around town for awhile… That's when I found her… …found Marlene."
Dyne: "..."
Barret: "She's in Midgar. Let's go see her together, all right?"
Dyne: "So… she's still alive? All right, Barret. Then I guess you and me gotta fight."
Barret: "What!?"
Dyne: [Doing the anime 'madman spreading his arms wide and tilting his head a bit' pose] "Eleanor's all by herself. I gotta take Marlene to her."
Barret: "Dyne… Are you crazy!?"
Dyne: "Marlene wants to see her mom, don't she?"
[Dyne starts shooting at Barret, who covers behind his own arm, somehow.]
Barret: "Stop, Dyne! I can't die yet!"
Dyne: "Oh yeah? Well my life's been over ever since then."
Barret: "Stop it! I don't wanna fight you!"
At this point, Cloud and the third party member come back into focus (they were off-screen during this entire exchange, though we knew they were there; it's a really neat way to use the camera to frame an exchange that's being watched by others as a solitary face-to-face between two people alone), call out to Barret, and Barret tells them to stay out of it - this is his fight.
Cue battle music.
So, at this point, I don't think it's any surprise to anyone that Dyne was Marlene's biological father. Barret rescued her, and raised her as his own - knowing her father might be alive, somewhere out there, but not knowing where. And I do say 'biological' because as it will become clear soon, Marlene was just a newborn when Barret rescued her, and she pretty much only knew him growing up - as far as she knows, he's her dad.
Man though, there's a lot in there. Of course, there's the angle where Dyne and Barret are mirrors and foils of each other - if Barret is teetering on the edge between vengeance and salvation, Dyne has fully fallen over to one side; he is the final end state of what Barret could become, if he gave himself wholly to his anger and hate. And the difference between them comes, in part, from grief, and who they have left.
Both Dyne and Barret lost their wives. And though Barret obviously grieved, most likely is still grieving, though he is someone who is reserved about that kind of vulnerability, he isn't defined by that grief - he has someone else. His life, today, is much more about his living daughter Marlene than it is about his late wife Myrna, whereas Dyne has no one left, and so his entire existence is about the loss of his wife Eleanor driving him to all-consuming grief and madness.
But also.
Dyne is Barret's Sephiroth.
I mean, look at all the ways in which this is true. Person from Barret's past whom he respected? Aesthetic similarities and similar fighting styles? Was once a helpful friend, was thought dead for years, came back haunted and mad? He hears the voice of a dead woman. His grief and madness have led him to wanting to kill the world. Obviously Dyne lacks the power, the sense of threat that Sephiroth has in that regard, but the mental quirks are the same - even his 'arms spread, head tilted back as he rants about insane stuff' pose is the same. Only the twist is that Sephiroth talks to Jenova about all the things he already wanted to do and how her existence validates his sense of superiority, whereas Dyne hears his late wife's voice trying to tell him to stop and show forgiveness and mercy.
It's fascinating.
And now, it's time for a gun duel. I love that. I'm always a sucker for a good fateful 1v1. Although there's one thing I'll note - Dyne is probably the first case I see of a real mismatch between field model and combat model? Like, his field model looks relatively young, he doesn't particularly look old or weathered, his eyes are sharp. Meanwhile, his field model looks like this:
This guy looks like he's in his fifties and worn by life. Which, from a coal miner old enough to be a dad, isn't all that surprising! But still, it's a weird mismatch, especially with how rectangular and square-chinned his face is.
As a fight, it's fairly simple. Dyne's basic attack is "Needle Gun," which is just him firing at Barret, and he has additional 'explosive' attacks like S-Mine or Molotov Cocktail (which doesn't look anything like a molotov cocktail and is just a kind of spray-beam).
It's a decent way of conveying the idea that Dyne (and Barret)'s gun is a polyvalent weapon with cool special ammunition for special shots, which in turns helps the player buy that "replacing your arm with a gun" is, like, something that makes sense to do in this universe and will make you into an especially effective fighter. We're operating on cyberpunk rules here.
Dyne has 1200 HP, Barret's basic moves (attacks, tier 1 spells) deal around 100 damage, but he has Ifrit equipped heading into the fight and his Big Shot Limit Break hits for 350+ damage, so running through Dyne's HP isn't really difficult, and we have Cure and Potion to heal up Barret. It's a fight we can't really lose, which is true of the two 'duel' boss fights we've had so far (this one and the one against Rufus); the boss attacks about once per ATB and deals less damage than Cure or a Hi-Potion will heal, so mathematically we can always heal faster than they can damage us even while taking turns to attack them. Something to keep in mind if the game keeps doing it.
Eventually, Dyne grunts and falls to one knee, and the fight ends.
Dyne shouts at Barret to stay away, then gets back up and slowly limps towards the destroyed house, leaning against the wall, clearly too injured or winded to stand.
Dyne: "...I didn't just lose an arm back then… I lost something irreplaceable. I don't know where it went wrong…"
Barret: "Dyne… I don't know either, man. Is this the only way… We can resolve this?"
Dyne: "I told you… I… I wanna destroy everything… Everything… This crazy world… Even me…"
Barret: "And what about Marlene? What's gonna happen to her!?"
Dyne: "Think about it… Barret… How old was Marlene back then? Even if I did go see her… she wouldn't even know me… And what's more… Barret… My hands are too stained to carry her anymore…"
Barret: "..."
Dyne: "Barret…"
[He throws something to Barret.]
Dyne: "Give that pendant to Marlene… It was… Eleanor's… My wife's… A memento…"
Barret: "All right…"
Dyne: "So… Marlene's… already 4…"
[He slowly limps towards the edge of the cliff.]
Dyne: "Barret… Don't… you… Don't ever make her cry…"
At this point, the cloud parts, and sunlight shines on the edge of the cliff as Dyne stands on the edge with his arms spread.
The sunlight is a really nice touch.
Barret rushes towards Dyne to keep him from jumping, but he's too late; Dyne's body tips backwards, and he falls over the edge of the cliff. Barret screams Dyne's name and falls to his knees, lamenting that Dyne and him are the same - that his own hands aren't any cleaner, and he has no right to hold Marlene either. Then the camera pans up as Barret raises his fists to the sky and screams his pain, his sorrow in contrast to the bright sunlit sky.
Damn.
I… Hmm.
This is one of the most emotionally layered scenes in the game so far, I think, even if it has some weirdness. There's a lot to Dyne and Barret's confrontation.
I think… On some level… Finding out that Marlene is alive is what killed Dyne?
Even if the game never has a character explicitly say it, it's pretty clear that these two graves, with one big cross and one small cross, are there for Dyne's wife and child, Eleanor and Marlene. This place, whatever it is, is where he chose to memorialize his family, even though he did not have their bodies. I.. want to say that this makes it more likely that this place is actually the old Corel, but it could just be that Dyne chose to make these graves where he happened to have made his 'base of operation.'
…between the crosses and the church in Sector 5, though, this game's use of overt Christian aesthetics is a little conspicuous, especially as we still have no idea what religion looks like in this world. Why crosses? Is there a savior figure that was martyred on a cross in the past of FFVII? Does it have a completely independent origin? Trick question, of course, the answer is likely just 'the devs wanted a familiar aesthetic that felt more Western than Japanese,' but it bothers me.
UNLESS YOU SUBSCRIBE TO MY 'HUMANS CAME TO THE PLANET FROM EARTH AND CARRIED OVER THEIR CULTURAL SIGNIFIERS' THEORY, WHICH EXPLAINS EVERYTHING-
Ahem. Where was I?
Right. I think as long as Marlene was dead, Dyne didn't have to deal with her existence. His dead daughter was merely a motivator for vengeance; he has no obligation to her, no responsibility as a parent, no fear of facing her judgment for his action as he grows older. The only duty Dyne has to a dead Marlene is to avenge her. It frees him to be a murderous hobo gang leader. Marlene being alive… Destroys that. Now Dyne has to face the prospect of meeting his daughter's gaze. He can't avenge someone who is already alive. His rampage of death and destruction is abandonment of someone he has a responsibility to. One day, he will have to give an account of his actions to someone who has every right to judge him for it. All while still being consumed by hate and anger.
Faced with the contradictions between responsibility to his daughter and his all-consuming desire for vengeance, Dyne makes the choice to resolve it by ending his own life. One might perhaps call this cowardice - although part of what drives him to suicide is the realization of how far he's gone, and that he can't go back to a normal life when he has not just a trail of dead behind him, but an overpowering bloodlust still consuming him even now.
…where the weirdness comes in is that, as emotionally complex and compelling as this conflict is, it's not clear what Dyne actually does. Like, the facts as we know them are:
There's stuff we can infer from that, but that's all it is - inference. When and why did Dyne get captured and put in Corel Prison? How did he escape and return to the Gold Saucer? What has he been doing this whole time? Was he leading a guerilla war against Shinra, or was the Gold Saucer massacre a one-time event? Cait Sith tells us that there is a "special exception" to no one ever getting out of Corel Prison, and we've been told that the boss decides who gets to join the Chocobo Races, so it sounds like Dyne might have been Shinra's point of contact with the prison population - since they don't have guards or an administrative staff in the prison and rely entirely on the quicksands and monsters to keep everyone inside, Corel Prison is less a 'prison' than it is, effectively, a vassal country left to self-administrate as long as it keeps giving Gold Saucer what they want, with Gold Saucer's interest stopping at dropping people in and leaving them to fend for themselves and in occasionally taking on a new chocobo racer, and Dyne ended up the de facto "head of government" of Corel Prison, and thus the one Gold Saucer's administration interacts with when they want something from the prison. (They also probably have to deliver food somehow, otherwise considering the Mako wastes Corel Prison would be less a 'prison' than it would be an open-air graveyard.)
So it's not difficult to imagine that Dyne might have had some degree of freedom of movement between Corel Prison and the Gold Saucer. And while the Gold Saucer is Shinra-affiliated (Shinra-owned?), it is partially independent with its own security force, so Dyne was able to interact with it - until he met those Shinra soldiers (on leave or investigating Sephiroth) and snapped, killing them all, running back to the prison but, having fully gone off the deep end, started shooting his own men. This makes sense and accounts for the events of the game, but Dyne talks as if there was more to it, as if this was but the latest in a long trail of death dealt by his hand - and sure, a prison gang leader isn't going to be a nice person, but in a different way from, like, a serial killer or a terrorist.
As for Barret… It's kind of fascinating how the early game has basically zero concern for the human cost of Avalanche's ecoterrorist actions, then suddenly a dying Jessie tells Cloud "kinda fucked up we killed all those people tbh, I probably deserve it" and now Barret is saying his hands are too stained with blood to deserve holding his daughter again. Like, it kind of snuck up on us?
I don't know, I think it could have been better introduced. I think Remake's choice of putting the devastation caused by the destruction of Mako Reactor 1 and Jessie's own doubt and remorse front and center helps make this contrast better balanced… Too bad at the same time it's telling us Avalanche wasn't actually responsible for said devastation, it was just a Shinra conspiracy. I remained baffled by that narrative choice.
For good and bad, this is definitely one of the most "I have a lot to say about this" moments in the game.
The screen fades to black on Barret's cry of anguish, and we transition to the truck where Mr Coates is holding court. The party wants to go up, Coates says they still need the boss's permission, and Barret says Dyne is currently incapacitated but shows his pendant as proof that they totally got his approval. It's a weird move, and Coates correctly deduces that they probably killed his boss - but he's not too broken up about it; in fact, he muses that now that Dyne is gone, the place might actually get some peace and calm, as Dyne was a violent man who didn't care about anyone. This shit-talking of his dead friend upsets Barret, who grabs Coates by the collar and pulls him up, yelling "The hell do YOU know!" and Coates quickly tries to appease him.
With the man appropriately cowed, Cloud asks if he'll help them get out, but Coates explains that they're mistaken - the "Chocobo Race" isn't an arbitrary criterion put in place by Dyne, but by the Gold Saucer; even with the boss's authority, they still have to take part in the race and win in order to be let out. No matter how much they threaten Coates, he can't change that. Additionally, only one racer can go up at a time.
So the plan is that Cloud will join the race and, once he's won, deal with Dio directly to get his friends out. In order to register for the race, Coates explains, they need a manager; cue a woman named Ester, who 'happened to hear our story' and enters.
This is a very conspicuous "we didn't want to pause the action by having Coates send to contact someone and flash forward to when that person gets here so the necessary character was Conveniently Overhearing You, don't question the fact that she was clearly spying on you it's just a plot contrivance" moment. Coates introduces Ester by saying she "may look kinda funny, but there's no better manager in the races," ("That's so rude," she replies) which, yeah, she's basically giving Hunger Games Panem fashion, for sure, but I dig it. Without further ado, Cloud and Ester head up the elevator connecting the prison to the Gold Saucer, and Cloud explains the situation off-screen; Ester assures him she'll talk to Dio personally and he just needs to focus on the race.
Ester: "Oh yeah, getting back to the other thing, there are many different types of Chocobo jockeys. It's not just for criminals. Some people compete for the fame, some people compete for the money, some only for glory… And then there's people like you."
Man, it's kinda fucked up that Chocobo Racing is apparently this things where a bunch of professional jockeys compete for the normal things athletes normally compete for (fame, money) and then you've got this one guy for whom this is his only way out of life in prison after he was thrown into jail without a trial on an indefinite sentence. Gold Saucer really is a dystopian place.
Ester explains the rules of Chocobo racing to us - basically, the Chocobo will always move forward on his own; our input is in moving it from left to right to better navigate the track and the other racers, as well as choosing whether to speed up or speed down and pressing OK for a special momentary speed boost, with higher speed consuming the Chocobo's Stamina.
If you want to control the Chocobo yourself, that is. Ester explains that we can choose between "Manual" and "Automatic" mode for the Chocobo, and my assumption was that this would, like, have the Chocobo monitor its own speed, but in fact Automatic mode completely cedes control to the Chocobo to run the race on its own without player input. More on that in a moment.
Cloud is led to the preparation room where the other jockeys are waiting for the race, and…
…okay, the Elevator opens up directly on the lockers for the Chocobo Race? God, the prisoner participation is truly baked into the sport, isn't it? Prison Corel is basically just there as a source of unpaid labor for Chocobo Racing!
The flirtatious guy in the hat is Joe, one of the Gold Saucer's top chocobo jockeys; Ester says Cloud was down there for just one day and 'already made it up here,' which Joe is impressed by; he asks Cloud why he was down there, then corrects himself - people aren't supposed to talk about "the past" here.
RIGHT. BECAUSE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN JOCKEYS WOULD REVEAL THE GOLD SAUCER JUSTICE SYSTEM FOR THE SHAM THAT IT IS. CHOCOBO JOCKEYS OF THE WORLD, RISE UP, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.
Ahem.
Joe says he has a feeling he and Cloud will meet again, salutes him and leaves. This is very obviously signaling the Final Boss of the Chocobo Races. I don't know if we'll get into that in this playthrough, though.
Ester tells us she'll go take care of the chocobo and leaves. We can talk to the jockeys, but they don't have much interesting to say.
Quick question: did you spot the Materia in that picture above? Because I almost did! Red against a brown color, tucked in a corner, I almost missed it. It turns out to be the Ramuh Materia, so we've now officially completed the elemental trio! As usual though, it'll be a while before we can try it.
Alright. Chocobo racing time.
We've seen the race track before, it was the same I bet on in Gold Saucer, only now we are the one in control. Due to being busy controlling the Chocobo I don't really have a lot of pictures, but, basically, things go extremely well for me at first and then extremely poorly.
As you can see, I am currently in first place, but my stamina has almost run out. Taking the lead was easy, but the other Chocobos have more endurance and, eventually, I am overtaken by the main group and end up falling in fourth place.
Obviously, this is a loss. Fortunately, it's no real obstacle; Ester just says she'll find us a better Chocobo and a new race is immediately announced.
Now, the fact that we have to win the race or else we can't advance the plot could be a problem… If actually playing through the race wasn't a sucker's bet. As I have mentioned before, on the Automatic setting, the Chocobo just handles the race on its own, and it's strong enough to win it. So the best way to win the race is to just… Not do anything at all.
On Auto, the Chocobo takes the lead quickly and easily, and wins with about a third of its Stamina remaining. Easy win. I was literally just making it harder for myself by trying to actually play the game.
I'm not convinced this is excellent design, you guys. But I guess it beats failing five times in a row and ragequitting.
Ester: "Oh yeah, the owner told me to give this letter to you if you won."
Letter from Dio: "Boy, if you're reading this letter, then you must've won. I know you earned it. I heard about Dyne from Ester. Now that you've won, I'm granting you and your friends a full pardon, and setting you all free. And by way of apology, I have a little gift for you to use on your journey. Sorry I couldn't be there to tell you this in person, but I'm a very busy man. Sincerely, Dio."
Cloud: "A gift?"
[At this point, the PHS rings, and Cloud answers.]
Aerith: "Cloud, this is great!! The assistant manager just stopped by and dropped off a 'buggy!' Now we can go over 'deserts' and 'rivers,' no problem. OK, Cloud, I'll be waiting outside."
Cloud: "(Hmm? The letter continues…)
Letter: "P.S.: I recently met Sephiroth. I bet he's pretty popular with boys your age. Why don't you get his autograph? He was heading towards Gongaga, south of the river."
Cloud: "Sephiroth…"
Ester: "I guess this is goodbye. Yeah. Well, if you ever get your own Chocobo, come back again. I'll take care of your registration and everything. I'll see you again."
I…
Okay.
I know the game doesn't want us to think too hard about this. I just.
Ester went to Dio and explained the situation to him and how we were blamed for murders committed by Dyne. Dio believed this. And his response was to…
…do nothing until we were actually able to win the race, letting us rot in jail forever if we couldn't pull it off, and then only pardoning us once Cloud actually won.
So that's an absolute scumbag move. No wonder he did it all by sending a letter, if he tried to show his face he would get a terminal case of Buster Sword to the face. This 'buggy' gift is clearly him trying to bribe us into not storming into his office and wrecking his face.
God. The Dyne sequence was strong, but everything surrounding the race is so weird and hilariously fucked up if you pay any attention to what people are actually saying.
But, well, it's done! We have won the Chocobo Race, escaped Corel Prison, made it out of the Gold Saucer, and now we have… Something we've never had in any Final Fantasy game to date… A true innovation that marks Final Fantasy VII's evolution into a unique modern setting…
A car.
Outstanding move, game.
Well. That was an adventure. The Corel Prison sequence is really interesting - it's not flawless, it leaves me with some unanswered questions, and Dyne isn't really enough of a presence in the plot for me to have felt emotionally moved by it, but there's a lot of interesting psychological and thematic depth here, and it's really digging into the character of Barret. I'm… not sure where I fall on the emotional conflict is trying to drive at with "actually Barret was motivated by vengeance and saving the planet was an excuse and he sees himself as being as much of a bloody-handed murderer as Dyne," hmm. There's something interesting there but I'm not sure if I fully buy it?
Also I just gotta say it's incredibly funny that Sephiroth is apparently just going around doing Normal People Stuff, talking to people, getting tickets to the Gold Saucer, chatting with the owner, just, like, casually hanging out in public places while working on his plan to destroy all mankind or whatever. I had no idea how badly I needed fanart of post-Nibelheim Sephiroth having Normal Human Interactions in casual settings, STAT.
This is a good stopping point for today, I think. We have returned to the world map and now have the freedom granted by a sweet-ass car, and we have a new lead on Sephiroth!
Next Time: Probably heading for Gongaga, whatever that is!
Last time, Dio Goldsaucer kicked us down a garbage chute into a scrapyard-prison. We found Barret there, and he refused to talk to us and ran. So now we get to explore a bit!
Well, 'explore.' It's not a very large area, and…
…it has random encounters in it.
The prison has inmates in it, that we can talk to, but it's also a dungeon where any step can trigger a random encounter. This makes walking around… Onerous; I'm not going to be running back and forth every which place if I have to deal with mobs the more steps I take. I want to keep things as short and direct as possible.
Now, you might recall that the last game we played also had what was ostensibly a 'settled' area with NPCs that could be talked to while also being a dungeon with monsters attacking every five steps in the form of Zozo. Well, the game knows it too, and is throwing in this cheeky tribute to Corel Prison's predecessor:
There are three prisoners who only ever say the opposite of the truth, echoing each other every sentence. "This place is Heaven," They have never met "a guy with a gun on his arm," and "If we want to talk to the boss we should head Southwest." So, this place is hell, they definitely know Gun Arm Dude, and the boss is going to be to the Northeast. Thanks, guys, you were really helpful!
It's interesting that this prison just… doesn't have any guards at all, as far as I can tell. Its security measures appear to be limited to "is in the middle of a giant desert surrounded by quicksand" and "is full of monsters." Which… you know, fair. That would deter almost anyone from wandering outside of the small fenced settlement at the center, and anyone who tried their luck anyway would probably just die.
In fact, speaking of settlement…
…hm.
These houses are dilapidated, but they're not makeshift. They're simple but well-built houses, with glass windows and attics and tiled roofs. They weren't built by the prisoners, they predate them, but neither were they built for the purposes of housing inmates, they're too nice for that. And they show signs of structural damage, while Mako energy infrastructure was built among them without apparent care for the navigation of the place as a settlement. The houses are merely standing relics that nobody bothered razing while building up the infrastructure which powers the Gold Saucer.
And it's called 'Corel Prison.'
I think it's obvious where we are. These are the ruins of Corel, Barret's mining town. Now a garbage dump which serves only as the soil in which the Gold Saucer takes root, like a parasitic fungus growing on the corpse of the old town.
Yeah. Previously I'd chalked up "Shinra faked/deliberately engineered the Corel Reactor incident as an excuse to raze the town and build the Gold Saucer there" as merely plausible, but now that it's clear the casino is literally built on the carcass of old Corel, I think this graduates to "all but certain." Those motherfuckers.
Talking to some of the prisoners here, it grows apparent that there is one way to make it out of Corel Prison - from time to time, the Gold Saucer staff pick one prisoner to enter the chocobo races. Win the race, and you win your freedom.
It's an odd approach to sentencing and prison terms, but, well, it would be a stretch to call Corel Prison part of any kind of 'justice system'; Dio can just drop anyone into the hole any time he wants to without investigation or accountability. Might as well release them just as arbitrarily, I suppose. However, there's a second layer of arbitrariness - in order to have a chance to participate in the chocobo race, we must first obtain permission from "the boss," the man running the prison. Prison hierarchy, guy in charge acting as a direct intermediary-enforcer for the Gold Saucer administration, all that tracks.
That Shinra truck you can see near the bottom of the second picture, incidentally, is guarded by two tough guys in sunglasses, who tell us that, as newbies, we need to pay our respect to 'Mr Coates,' the man inside. Sounds like that boss we're looking for!
Sometimes when I initiate conversation with an NPC I accidentally do it from uncomfortably close and the whole discussion has to go on that way.
Mr. Coates: "You don't seem to understand how things work down here. This is the Gold Saucer's garbage dump. And that makes alluv ya scrubs."
Mr. Coates: "The only way to get back up here is to win the Chocobo Race. But, it's not as easy as you rookies think."
Mr. Coates: "Of course, if you got the boss's permission it'd be a different situation, but YOU'll never get that! Ha ha ha ha."
Okay, so this guy isn't the boss, he's the second in command. And, by the looks of it, the guy managing operations, taking visitors, impressing the law on newbies. So I'm guessing the boss himself is a… Less social type. The toughest guy on the block, who leaves the running of operation to someone with the right skillset.
Also there's a well/underground silo with an empty chest, a dead monster old enough to have become a skeleton, and a sword planted in its jaw. Did an adventurer come and slay this beast to get its treasure? Neat environmental storytelling even if useless to us.
Without further guidance on finding the boss (the path to the Northeast is blocked by a prisoner) or Barret, we just head to the next dilapidated house - surprise! That's our next plot step. As we enter from one side, Barret does from the other, to confront us about following him.
There's something to the way some FF7 environment have that particular vibe of run-down, abandoned for years, that reminds me so much of Bethesda-era Fallout - only much more believable, because instead of still looking that way a century after a total nuclear Armaggedon, it's merely a few years of neglect after humans were driven out. It's less post-apocalyptic and more… Currently-apocalyptic?
Barret: "Didn't I tell you not to come here!?"
Cait Sith: "Ju… Just hold on for a second! We just want to talk! You'll understand if you hear us out!"
No time, though. Barret raises his gun, and fires at the group.
…or behind the group, rather. As everyone flinches and covers their face, the bullets miss them entirely… And shoot Some Guy who was hiding behind the couches and falls over dead. Huh. Well, we've been fighting "bandit" types enemies along with the monsters as random encounters, so I guess diegetically some of the inmates are hostile. Barret gruffly turns around and says he "Didnd't want none of ya to get involved."
Then suddenly, the rest of the party shows up.
Okay, Aerith poking fun at Cloud never gets old.
Aerith's way of pointing out to Barret that his behavior is ridiculous being comparing it to Cloud's, who drives Barret nuts with the exact same attitude, is flawless.
Anyway, she just says that she "saw us and hurried here." How did you do that, Aerith? Did you sneak into the garbage chute and jump down? Were you spying on us getting captured and decided to bide your time until you could act? Did you rappel down the side of the Gold Saucer? None of this is like, impossible or a 'plot hole,' it's just, it would be nice to have an explanation of what actually happened rather than the characters, for all intents and purposes, teleporting into the middle of the desert prison just so the full party can be here for the conversation.
Barret: "You guys…"
Red XIII: "I heard that the murders at the Battle Arena were done by a man with a gun-arm… was that you?"
Barret: "There's another… another man that got a gun grafted inta one of his arms. It was four years ago…"
Turns out? Like everyone else in this story, Barret was selective with the truth and did not disclose the most important details of his past when he explained his backstory to the others. He had hoped to never have to mention this next part.
I love how the game uses these staggered and incomplete reveals of information over time, with characters seeming to confess everything but actually holding back information that they're not ready to disclose, because (so far) instead of total ass-pulls, these are foreshadowed within the original information.
For instance, Barret's original flashback puts a very strong emphasis on the character of Dyne as someone important to Barret, to the village of Corel, and to the fate of the Mako Reactor - but then he disappears entirely from the picture. We know he, along with Barret, were out of Corel when it was attacked, and thus survived the attack - but then Barret makes no mention of what happened to Dyne. It's obvious there's something he's not telling us, and there it is.
This is meant to be 'the' Mako Reactor under construction, ie the Corel one; Barret isn't going around visiting random Mako Reactors for the sake of it.
As an unsuspecting Barret and Dyne approach Corel, the village elder comes running in a panic, shouting to them that the village is under attack by Shinra soldiers. Shocked, Barret and Dyne rush to the side of the mountain and catch sight of the burning Corel.
Hmmm.
Is this a valley proper or, like, an elevated plateau merely surrounded by peaks? One thing it is, is green. Not so much anymore. The Mako Reactor really did a number on this place, and it did it in the space of four years.
Okay, okay, sorry Barret, I'll be getting back to your flashback momentarily, there's just something I need to take care of first.
Let's go to the view from space.
Alright.
In the picture from Barret's flashback, we see a settlement located between an incomplete ring of mountains. We do not see all the way to the right of them, but we can guess that this is the part that "opens" onto a path that leaves the mountain. Now, I have circled three spaces above. #1 is North Corel; it's where the survivors of the Corel massacre are living, and it's where we find the ropeway that leads to the Gold Saucer. As it is "North" Corel, it's likely to be either a separate settlement from Corel proper (as in "South Figaro" vs Figaro), or merely "the North section of the original Corel village." But, seeing as Barret told us the original Corel was "buried under the sand in only four years," I feel like they're two separate places?
So, comparing the pictures and the maps, we have two possible locations for the destroyed village of Corel, the conservative guess that best fits the visual data and invalidates my cool theory, and the radical one which plays loose with the data but ties it all together narratively and thematically. .
The conservative guess is that the original Corel is in Circle #2. It's directly south of North Corel, it's situated in a corridor between two mountains like in the Barret flashback, it's a green-but-no-longer-forest area as fits a place under recent Mako drain, it's close enough to North Corel that it doesn't stretch belief for those two to have been the same settlement, both burned down, and North Corel just being the surviving north district that hasn't been buried yet. It keeps the world relatively large. All of it is situated between mountains, making the mining operation easy to explain. Original Corel no longer exists on the map, we don't pass through it, but we know it's been buried.
The bold guess is that original Corel was at the center of Circle #3. I made the circle particularly large to highlight the issue with this, namely the border, because they don't fit Barret's flashback at all: Only a quarter-circle of this region is bordered by mountain, unlike three-quarters in the flashback, and the flashback doesn't show any of the coastline you'd expect to see from atop the mountain looking at it. It would also mean Corel is pretty far from North Corel or, indeed, from the mountain they extracted charcoal from. So that doesn't fit the evidence, and doesn't support my "Gold Saucer was built on the ruins of old Corel after Shinra used a pretense to massacre the inhabitants and burn the town."
On the other hand, shrinking the map enough for Gold Saucer to be built on top of original Corel while still being close enough to North Corel and the mountains for the backstory to work would make the Ropeway a lot more sensible as effectively a fancy taxi and not a continental airway meant for one casino specifically, and it would explain the whole village at the foot of the Saucer without imagining an extra destroyed village, it would give a direct reason for Shinra to wipe out Corel instead of "just because" now that we've seen in the last flashback that Barret and Dyne were coming straight home from the Mako Reactor which had not suffered any kind of explosion that they knew of, so the excuse of an incident being blamed on the villagers was clearly bullshit, and there would be a pretty dramatic effect to the wide forested area Barret is looking at down in the flashback now being the Gold Saucer Wastes. But…
No, dammit. It just doesn't fit.
I think the truth is somewhere in betwixt, and is somehow even worse and less flattering to Shinra.
I think that the Gold Saucer is built on a second, different settlement from Corel, and that they destroyed Corel so that they could put the Ropeway Station there. People have to come through the mountain from Costa del Sol to get to the station and from the station to the Gold Saucer, and the Ropeway Station could have been a boon to the town, bringing in a steady flux of tourists they could fleece before they got to the Saucer - same way the first slot machines in Las Vegas are in the airport, trying to trip you at the starting line and drain your pockets before you ever make it to an actual casino, and Shinra decided that was less money in their pockets. What could have been a prosperous (if based on a fundamentally extractive and questionably ethical economy) village was turned to rubble, and who cares if it puts off some of the patrons going through.
They didn't raze Corel to build the Gold Saucer, they razed Corel to build a tram station. Dozens if not hundreds died for the convenience of a bus stop. That's somehow even worse.
That or the distances on the map are just completely fucked, either/or.
…
…where was I?
RIGHT. BARRET'S BACKSTORY. WOW.
Dyne tells Barret not to lose hope, there's still time to get back to the village and help people. Then they turn around, and…
…the Village Elder is gunned down from the back, while fleeing, by a Shinra soldier.
Yeah. This is a massacre in the literal, purposeful sense of the world. Mass murder of unarmed civilians. Probably the second most evil action we've seen Shinra commit on screen, after the plate drop.
…then a comedy beat plays where the Shinra soldiers all shoot mass fire at Barret and he does that classic Western trope where he is forced to "dance" in place dodging the bullets hitting the ground at his feet, doing a little jig while Dyne tells him to hurry up and follow him, which is weirdly and wildly misplaced. Eventually though, Barret does manage to make it under the bridge and follow after Dyne, all while doing little dancing bouts as the soldiers fire, until the two friends have grouped up and Barret and Dyne take cover behind a rock - one that's too small to provide comprehensive cover, however.
Then, the local leader appears, scolding her men for their awful aim.
Hmm. We don't know much about Scarlet so far, really, aside from her being totally cold-blooded and having a kind of femme fatale affect, and being the one who managed to sway the village to let Shinra build the reactor near them. The fact that she was the one who convinced them to build the reactor and the one to lead the massacre further reinforces the theory that this is all part of one operation planned from the start.
Scarlet looks like she's wrenching a rifle from a soldier's hands so she can shoot Barret and Dyne properly, knocking him off the bridge in the process, but the soldier still has his rifle as he falls, so it's not clear what she's doing. She orders the rest of the men to cover her while she personally shoots down Barret and Dyne, but the game doesn't bother modeling a firearm on her Playmobil model, so it looks like she's just... Miming a gun with her hands.
Like. Guys. C'mon. Give her an actual gun or something.
Amazing. Her fire draws them out of cover, and in fact knocks Dyne off the cliff, and Barret must reach out to catch his hand, holding his friend dangling into the void, and then…
"Yeah..." Dyne answers, "I ain't lettin' go..."
…the rifle fire sprays over their joined hands, tearing through them both and breaking their hold, and Dyne plummets into the deep.
Barret: "From then on, I couldn't use my right arm no more. I was depressed for a while.
Barret: "But then I threw away my artificial arm and got this gun grafted in."
Barret: "Got a new right arm to get revenge on Shinra, who took everything away…"
Barret: "Back then, I heard the doc say there was another man who got the same operation as me. But, his was the left arm."
Aerith: "But… Dyne's injury was the same as yours, right?"
Tifa: "Yeah, that's right. He was deceived by the Shinra too. He'll probably join us to fight against the Shinra."
Barret: "...Wouldn't bet on it. I gotta 'pologize to Dyne before I can rest in peace."
Barret: "An' that's why I gotta go alone."
Cloud: "Do whatever you want… Is that what you want to hear? Well, I can't let you do it. We need your help to save the Planet."
Aerith: "Barret, this isn't the end."
Tifa: "Weren't you going to save the Planet?"
Barret: "@#$%! Tifa, you oughta know by now."
Tifa: "...That's all right. I'm not so different from you."
Aerith: "That's easier to understand. It's you, Barret."
Cloud: "So there it is, Barret. So I guess it'll be Barret, me, and…"
[The party selection menu opens; Barret and Cloud are locked in, so we only have one extra character to pick.]
Aerith is back on the team.
Man.
This has layers.
Okay so first off.
Barret's turn from "coal miner fooled by Shinra" to "victim of Shinra's evil" is embodied in the loss of his right arm, ie his working arm, ie his ability to perform physical labour, ie his ability to provide for those he cares about. Setting aside the dubious coal mining politics, he is being invalidated, ie, made invalid. Disability is used here as a literalization of Shinra taking away his livelihood, but not just that - the loss of his family in the destruction of Corel his translated into his very flesh as the loss of the arm which should have been able to protect/provide for his family. Then he goes through a phase of "depression" - it's glossed over in one line of dialogue, but it is a very unusual admission of vulnerability by Barret, openly admitting that he was worn down, powerless, emotionally wounded. In this phase, he is implied to have had an ordinary prosthetic arm, implicitly a weaker, diminished form of his old arm. Then, his turn from "victim of Shinra's evil" to "avenger of the Planet" is manifested in him throwing away that prosthetic and bolting a gun to his arm. By making the choice to implant the gun-arm, Barret is reclaiming his bodily autonomy, but not just that; he is engraving in his very flesh the promise of revenge for Corel, punishment for Shinra, and salvation for the Planet. He fully abandons "ability to perform physical labour," "the ability to provide," and instead adopts "the ability to fight," making himself a more perfect avenger and defender.
This is why he keeps angsting over his relationship to his daughter, over being absent for long periods of time, having to draw into her school fund to hire a mercenary; because he has traded the role of provider for the role of fighter. But is it a path of revenge that is doomed to end in self-destruction, or is it the path of one who is fighting to save the Planet? This is where Barret is right now, at the literal bottom of the world (well, the Gold Saucer), in the middle of a waste of Shinra's making (WHICH INCIDENTALLY WOULD BE EVEN COOLER IF WE KNEW FOR SURE IT WAS THE RUINS OF THE OLD COREL HINT HINT), chasing after a ghost (his old friend once thought dead), having to confront the question: Revenge set him on this path, but is it still what truly drives him, or has he come to care for something greater, the fight for the Planet itself? Will he die when he meets Dyne again because neither of them could truly move on from the hatred and anger that consumed them and set them on a path of destruction, or will he survive, because he is fighting for something greater? That is literally what the other characters are saying/asking in this scene!
Also, fuck, it's so stupid but so good. Barret was holding Dyne by his hand, Dyne dangling over a bottomless chasm, Barret the only one keeping him alive, their friendship embodied in these two holding hands against death, and Shinra literally tore through it with gunfire, which (physically) wrecked their hands and (consequently) caused Dyne to fall and (figuratively) cut through their friendship. And then THEY BOTH GRAFTED GUNS TO THEIR ARMS, ONLY ON REVERSE ARMS, LIKE MIRRORS OF EACH OTHER, BECAUSE THESE WERE THE ARMS BY WHICH THEY WERE HOLDING ON TO ONE ANOTHER IN THEIR LAST MOMENTS BEFORE THEIR FATEFUL SEPARATION.
It's so dumb. It's so cool. I love it.
Except except except ALL THAT IS DIFFERENT IF YOU ARE USING A TRANSLATION CLOSER TO THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE.
Because it turns out in the original Japanese Barret didn't lose his arm entirely and replace it with a prosthetic; rather he lost the use of his arm, as in he suffered a loss of fine motor control/dexterity/couldn't work with it anymore; he wasn't "depressed," rather he "thought things through", and then HE HAD HIS OWN ARM AMPUTATED TO REPLACE IT WITH THE GUN. This is way more psychotic than the prosthetic thing, in that instead of the injury/disability already being there and Barret turning it into a weapon, it's him making a deliberate choice to take what's left of his original arm and remove it to replace it with a weapon, mutilating himself for the sake of revenge. Which then feeds into something else: rather than there being an ambiguity about how much Barret is acting for revenge as opposed to the Planet, there is a line which is entirely missing in the English (not a poor translation, literally the dialogue box is missing), after everyone tells him "you can't throw your life away, what about your fight for the planet?" in which Barret says (paraphrasing, specific details will differ according to translation) "Tifa, you know me better than that, it might have looked like I was doing it for the Planet, but really all I cared about was revenge against Shinra." At which point Tifa says "It's okay, I'm not so different myself," and Aerith says "It's who you are, Barret."
Which is wild because instead of a conflict between "will you fight Shinra for revenge, or for the planet," it's Barret saying "Revenge, 100%, the rest was a front," and Tifa and Aerith nod and say "yeah, that's valid, rock on." And while I think we could do with more stories about how revenge is cool and based actually and sometimes assholes have it coming, in this case here it's…
…I prefer the English script of this scene? For all that the text itself is kind of muddied and a lot of the different details are rooted in straight-up mistakes rather than deliberate changes in adaptation, this is the one time where I think actually, the translation has the better version of this character beat?
Wild.
Well, now it's time to meet with Dyne. Who, in case it wasn't apparent by now, is the boss of Corel Prison people have been talking about without naming him (this causes some issues but we'll get to that later).
Yuffie is the best, in that she's the worst, but in a way I love. Absolute shitkid sigma woman teenager.
It's small touches like the fact that we're in a scrapyard/garbage dump so the 'inn' is literally a van with enough room on the reclining seats to sleep on that absolutely elevate this game's commitment to its aesthetic.
There's a pub that is our local item shop but it's not super-interesting, by contrast.
As before, our main clue on where to find Dyne is the guys saying he's "Southwest" who are always lying; so we head back up north to the screen where Cloud landed after the capture robots took him down, and there we find a guy who used to guard the fence dead on the ground.
Hmmm. Is Dyne shooting his own subordinates? Has he fully lost it?
Why was he even in the Gold Saucer, anyway? Did he go on the hunt for Shinra soldiers? How did he escape?
Well, we'll see. For now, let us hasten to a fateful confrontation.
Behold: The endless wastes stretching to the infinite horizon. Notice how the line of the fence is used to convey the sheer scale of the space as it continues endlessly, narrowing in the perspective until it can't be seen anymore even though it is still there, still continuing in the immensity.
Once we step outside of the 'settlement' part of the prison, the monsters get noticeably more fucked up. These fucked up multi-armed guys you might recognize as Death Claws, back from III and V, with their design mostly unchanged, which gives us a neat look at how an enemy with a weird but consistent monster design has evolved with the move to 3D. According to the wiki, they have a cool Enemy Skill called Laser which halves enemy HP, which we didn't learn because I forgot to equip the Enemy Skill Materia on someone during this section. Oops.
We go through a scrapyard section which seems mostly an excuse for the devs to show us a bunch of cool cars being all crumpled and stuff.
And then, finally, in the northeast of the prison, we find him. As we enter the next screen, all music cuts off. Pulling out a trick VI had used at the Solitary Island, the only sound is the diegetic noise of the wind, howling through the ruins - and, soon, gunfire.
Oooh, I don't much like the look of these two crosses over shallow graves. And Dyne is doing that classic anime emoting where he starts out standing but slumped forward with his head down, then lifts it dramatically while looking slightly too high up when he reacts to someone entering the scene, only he is also shooting into the sky at a steady rhythm with no apparent reason.
Yeah. Dude's lost it. Unfortunate.
As Dyne approaches, he has a noticeable limp, one of his legs dragging behind. It's unclear what is causing this; likely it's just a physical injury, but the way it impacts his walk cycle makes it feed into a general sense that this man is not right, that he is unhinged.
Dyne: "Now that's a voice I haven't heard in years… A voice I'll never forget…"
Barret: "I always hoped I'd be able to see you again someday… I knew you were alive somewhere… We had the same operation."
Barret: "Listen, Dyne, I want to…"
Barret takes a step towards Dyne - and Dyne raises his gun arm and shoots.
…probably next to Barret. Probably on purpose. An issue with the low resolution of these scenes is that they just don't have the degree of detail to really show what happens when someone does something like shooting at someone else unless the person being shot collapses and says "I've been shot!" I think it was a warning shot to tell Barret to step back, but it could be Dyne just missing because he's gone loopy.
Dyne: "I can hear her voice. What's that?"
Barret: "...?"
Dyne: "It's Eleanor's voice. Begging me… Not to hate your rotten guts. That's why I never hunted you down…"
Barret: "...I know I was stupid. I'm not asking you to forgive me. But… what're you doin' in a place like this? Why ya wanna kill people who ain't even involved? Why?"
Dyne: "Why!? The hell do you care!?"
Dyne: "You think the dead understand why's? Is hearing Shinra's excuses gonna make people in Conel understand anything? I don't CARE about reasons!"
Dyne: "All they give us is artillery and stupid excuses… What's left is a world of despair and emptiness…
'All they give us is artillery and stupid excuses' is such a weird line. The retranslation has it as "All they give is bullets and bullshit," which is outstanding, especially in a very utilitarian translation which for the most part takes care to convey the intended meaning but doesn't do a lot of flourish. Please mentally substitute it for the original.
Dyne: "You still want to hear 'why'? All right, I'll tell you."
[Here, Dyne proceeds to punctuate his words with gunfire, first at nothing in particular, then towards Barret again.]
Dyne: "'Cause I want to destroy everything."
Dyne: "The people in this city."
Dyne: "The city itself."
Dyne: "The whole world!"
Dyne: "I got nothing left in this world. Corel, Eleanor… Marlene…"
[Barret tries to reach for Dyne with his flesh-and-blood hand.]
Barret: "Dyne, Marlene… Marlene's still alive."
[Dyne turns around to look at him.]
Dyne: "...?"
Barret: "I went back into town. I thought she was gone for sure. Barret wandered around town for awhile… That's when I found her… …found Marlene."
Dyne: "..."
Barret: "She's in Midgar. Let's go see her together, all right?"
Dyne: "So… she's still alive? All right, Barret. Then I guess you and me gotta fight."
Barret: "What!?"
Dyne: [Doing the anime 'madman spreading his arms wide and tilting his head a bit' pose] "Eleanor's all by herself. I gotta take Marlene to her."
Barret: "Dyne… Are you crazy!?"
Dyne: "Marlene wants to see her mom, don't she?"
[Dyne starts shooting at Barret, who covers behind his own arm, somehow.]
Barret: "Stop, Dyne! I can't die yet!"
Dyne: "Oh yeah? Well my life's been over ever since then."
Barret: "Stop it! I don't wanna fight you!"
At this point, Cloud and the third party member come back into focus (they were off-screen during this entire exchange, though we knew they were there; it's a really neat way to use the camera to frame an exchange that's being watched by others as a solitary face-to-face between two people alone), call out to Barret, and Barret tells them to stay out of it - this is his fight.
Cue battle music.
So, at this point, I don't think it's any surprise to anyone that Dyne was Marlene's biological father. Barret rescued her, and raised her as his own - knowing her father might be alive, somewhere out there, but not knowing where. And I do say 'biological' because as it will become clear soon, Marlene was just a newborn when Barret rescued her, and she pretty much only knew him growing up - as far as she knows, he's her dad.
Man though, there's a lot in there. Of course, there's the angle where Dyne and Barret are mirrors and foils of each other - if Barret is teetering on the edge between vengeance and salvation, Dyne has fully fallen over to one side; he is the final end state of what Barret could become, if he gave himself wholly to his anger and hate. And the difference between them comes, in part, from grief, and who they have left.
Both Dyne and Barret lost their wives. And though Barret obviously grieved, most likely is still grieving, though he is someone who is reserved about that kind of vulnerability, he isn't defined by that grief - he has someone else. His life, today, is much more about his living daughter Marlene than it is about his late wife Myrna, whereas Dyne has no one left, and so his entire existence is about the loss of his wife Eleanor driving him to all-consuming grief and madness.
But also.
Dyne is Barret's Sephiroth.
I mean, look at all the ways in which this is true. Person from Barret's past whom he respected? Aesthetic similarities and similar fighting styles? Was once a helpful friend, was thought dead for years, came back haunted and mad? He hears the voice of a dead woman. His grief and madness have led him to wanting to kill the world. Obviously Dyne lacks the power, the sense of threat that Sephiroth has in that regard, but the mental quirks are the same - even his 'arms spread, head tilted back as he rants about insane stuff' pose is the same. Only the twist is that Sephiroth talks to Jenova about all the things he already wanted to do and how her existence validates his sense of superiority, whereas Dyne hears his late wife's voice trying to tell him to stop and show forgiveness and mercy.
It's fascinating.
And now, it's time for a gun duel. I love that. I'm always a sucker for a good fateful 1v1. Although there's one thing I'll note - Dyne is probably the first case I see of a real mismatch between field model and combat model? Like, his field model looks relatively young, he doesn't particularly look old or weathered, his eyes are sharp. Meanwhile, his field model looks like this:
This guy looks like he's in his fifties and worn by life. Which, from a coal miner old enough to be a dad, isn't all that surprising! But still, it's a weird mismatch, especially with how rectangular and square-chinned his face is.
As a fight, it's fairly simple. Dyne's basic attack is "Needle Gun," which is just him firing at Barret, and he has additional 'explosive' attacks like S-Mine or Molotov Cocktail (which doesn't look anything like a molotov cocktail and is just a kind of spray-beam).
It's a decent way of conveying the idea that Dyne (and Barret)'s gun is a polyvalent weapon with cool special ammunition for special shots, which in turns helps the player buy that "replacing your arm with a gun" is, like, something that makes sense to do in this universe and will make you into an especially effective fighter. We're operating on cyberpunk rules here.
Dyne has 1200 HP, Barret's basic moves (attacks, tier 1 spells) deal around 100 damage, but he has Ifrit equipped heading into the fight and his Big Shot Limit Break hits for 350+ damage, so running through Dyne's HP isn't really difficult, and we have Cure and Potion to heal up Barret. It's a fight we can't really lose, which is true of the two 'duel' boss fights we've had so far (this one and the one against Rufus); the boss attacks about once per ATB and deals less damage than Cure or a Hi-Potion will heal, so mathematically we can always heal faster than they can damage us even while taking turns to attack them. Something to keep in mind if the game keeps doing it.
Eventually, Dyne grunts and falls to one knee, and the fight ends.
Dyne shouts at Barret to stay away, then gets back up and slowly limps towards the destroyed house, leaning against the wall, clearly too injured or winded to stand.
Dyne: "...I didn't just lose an arm back then… I lost something irreplaceable. I don't know where it went wrong…"
Barret: "Dyne… I don't know either, man. Is this the only way… We can resolve this?"
Dyne: "I told you… I… I wanna destroy everything… Everything… This crazy world… Even me…"
Barret: "And what about Marlene? What's gonna happen to her!?"
Dyne: "Think about it… Barret… How old was Marlene back then? Even if I did go see her… she wouldn't even know me… And what's more… Barret… My hands are too stained to carry her anymore…"
Barret: "..."
Dyne: "Barret…"
[He throws something to Barret.]
Dyne: "Give that pendant to Marlene… It was… Eleanor's… My wife's… A memento…"
Barret: "All right…"
Dyne: "So… Marlene's… already 4…"
[He slowly limps towards the edge of the cliff.]
Dyne: "Barret… Don't… you… Don't ever make her cry…"
At this point, the cloud parts, and sunlight shines on the edge of the cliff as Dyne stands on the edge with his arms spread.
The sunlight is a really nice touch.
Barret rushes towards Dyne to keep him from jumping, but he's too late; Dyne's body tips backwards, and he falls over the edge of the cliff. Barret screams Dyne's name and falls to his knees, lamenting that Dyne and him are the same - that his own hands aren't any cleaner, and he has no right to hold Marlene either. Then the camera pans up as Barret raises his fists to the sky and screams his pain, his sorrow in contrast to the bright sunlit sky.
Damn.
I… Hmm.
This is one of the most emotionally layered scenes in the game so far, I think, even if it has some weirdness. There's a lot to Dyne and Barret's confrontation.
I think… On some level… Finding out that Marlene is alive is what killed Dyne?
Even if the game never has a character explicitly say it, it's pretty clear that these two graves, with one big cross and one small cross, are there for Dyne's wife and child, Eleanor and Marlene. This place, whatever it is, is where he chose to memorialize his family, even though he did not have their bodies. I.. want to say that this makes it more likely that this place is actually the old Corel, but it could just be that Dyne chose to make these graves where he happened to have made his 'base of operation.'
…between the crosses and the church in Sector 5, though, this game's use of overt Christian aesthetics is a little conspicuous, especially as we still have no idea what religion looks like in this world. Why crosses? Is there a savior figure that was martyred on a cross in the past of FFVII? Does it have a completely independent origin? Trick question, of course, the answer is likely just 'the devs wanted a familiar aesthetic that felt more Western than Japanese,' but it bothers me.
UNLESS YOU SUBSCRIBE TO MY 'HUMANS CAME TO THE PLANET FROM EARTH AND CARRIED OVER THEIR CULTURAL SIGNIFIERS' THEORY, WHICH EXPLAINS EVERYTHING-
Ahem. Where was I?
Right. I think as long as Marlene was dead, Dyne didn't have to deal with her existence. His dead daughter was merely a motivator for vengeance; he has no obligation to her, no responsibility as a parent, no fear of facing her judgment for his action as he grows older. The only duty Dyne has to a dead Marlene is to avenge her. It frees him to be a murderous hobo gang leader. Marlene being alive… Destroys that. Now Dyne has to face the prospect of meeting his daughter's gaze. He can't avenge someone who is already alive. His rampage of death and destruction is abandonment of someone he has a responsibility to. One day, he will have to give an account of his actions to someone who has every right to judge him for it. All while still being consumed by hate and anger.
Faced with the contradictions between responsibility to his daughter and his all-consuming desire for vengeance, Dyne makes the choice to resolve it by ending his own life. One might perhaps call this cowardice - although part of what drives him to suicide is the realization of how far he's gone, and that he can't go back to a normal life when he has not just a trail of dead behind him, but an overpowering bloodlust still consuming him even now.
…where the weirdness comes in is that, as emotionally complex and compelling as this conflict is, it's not clear what Dyne actually does. Like, the facts as we know them are:
- Four years ago, he was thought dead after falling into a chasm, but survived and had his arm replaced with a gun.
- Today, he is the 'boss' of the Corel Prison gang.
- A few hours ago, he murdered a bunch of Shinra troops and civilian employees in the Gold Saucer, then returned to Corel Prison and killed a few of the inmates there.
There's stuff we can infer from that, but that's all it is - inference. When and why did Dyne get captured and put in Corel Prison? How did he escape and return to the Gold Saucer? What has he been doing this whole time? Was he leading a guerilla war against Shinra, or was the Gold Saucer massacre a one-time event? Cait Sith tells us that there is a "special exception" to no one ever getting out of Corel Prison, and we've been told that the boss decides who gets to join the Chocobo Races, so it sounds like Dyne might have been Shinra's point of contact with the prison population - since they don't have guards or an administrative staff in the prison and rely entirely on the quicksands and monsters to keep everyone inside, Corel Prison is less a 'prison' than it is, effectively, a vassal country left to self-administrate as long as it keeps giving Gold Saucer what they want, with Gold Saucer's interest stopping at dropping people in and leaving them to fend for themselves and in occasionally taking on a new chocobo racer, and Dyne ended up the de facto "head of government" of Corel Prison, and thus the one Gold Saucer's administration interacts with when they want something from the prison. (They also probably have to deliver food somehow, otherwise considering the Mako wastes Corel Prison would be less a 'prison' than it would be an open-air graveyard.)
So it's not difficult to imagine that Dyne might have had some degree of freedom of movement between Corel Prison and the Gold Saucer. And while the Gold Saucer is Shinra-affiliated (Shinra-owned?), it is partially independent with its own security force, so Dyne was able to interact with it - until he met those Shinra soldiers (on leave or investigating Sephiroth) and snapped, killing them all, running back to the prison but, having fully gone off the deep end, started shooting his own men. This makes sense and accounts for the events of the game, but Dyne talks as if there was more to it, as if this was but the latest in a long trail of death dealt by his hand - and sure, a prison gang leader isn't going to be a nice person, but in a different way from, like, a serial killer or a terrorist.
As for Barret… It's kind of fascinating how the early game has basically zero concern for the human cost of Avalanche's ecoterrorist actions, then suddenly a dying Jessie tells Cloud "kinda fucked up we killed all those people tbh, I probably deserve it" and now Barret is saying his hands are too stained with blood to deserve holding his daughter again. Like, it kind of snuck up on us?
I don't know, I think it could have been better introduced. I think Remake's choice of putting the devastation caused by the destruction of Mako Reactor 1 and Jessie's own doubt and remorse front and center helps make this contrast better balanced… Too bad at the same time it's telling us Avalanche wasn't actually responsible for said devastation, it was just a Shinra conspiracy. I remained baffled by that narrative choice.
For good and bad, this is definitely one of the most "I have a lot to say about this" moments in the game.
The screen fades to black on Barret's cry of anguish, and we transition to the truck where Mr Coates is holding court. The party wants to go up, Coates says they still need the boss's permission, and Barret says Dyne is currently incapacitated but shows his pendant as proof that they totally got his approval. It's a weird move, and Coates correctly deduces that they probably killed his boss - but he's not too broken up about it; in fact, he muses that now that Dyne is gone, the place might actually get some peace and calm, as Dyne was a violent man who didn't care about anyone. This shit-talking of his dead friend upsets Barret, who grabs Coates by the collar and pulls him up, yelling "The hell do YOU know!" and Coates quickly tries to appease him.
With the man appropriately cowed, Cloud asks if he'll help them get out, but Coates explains that they're mistaken - the "Chocobo Race" isn't an arbitrary criterion put in place by Dyne, but by the Gold Saucer; even with the boss's authority, they still have to take part in the race and win in order to be let out. No matter how much they threaten Coates, he can't change that. Additionally, only one racer can go up at a time.
So the plan is that Cloud will join the race and, once he's won, deal with Dio directly to get his friends out. In order to register for the race, Coates explains, they need a manager; cue a woman named Ester, who 'happened to hear our story' and enters.
This is a very conspicuous "we didn't want to pause the action by having Coates send to contact someone and flash forward to when that person gets here so the necessary character was Conveniently Overhearing You, don't question the fact that she was clearly spying on you it's just a plot contrivance" moment. Coates introduces Ester by saying she "may look kinda funny, but there's no better manager in the races," ("That's so rude," she replies) which, yeah, she's basically giving Hunger Games Panem fashion, for sure, but I dig it. Without further ado, Cloud and Ester head up the elevator connecting the prison to the Gold Saucer, and Cloud explains the situation off-screen; Ester assures him she'll talk to Dio personally and he just needs to focus on the race.
Ester: "Oh yeah, getting back to the other thing, there are many different types of Chocobo jockeys. It's not just for criminals. Some people compete for the fame, some people compete for the money, some only for glory… And then there's people like you."
Man, it's kinda fucked up that Chocobo Racing is apparently this things where a bunch of professional jockeys compete for the normal things athletes normally compete for (fame, money) and then you've got this one guy for whom this is his only way out of life in prison after he was thrown into jail without a trial on an indefinite sentence. Gold Saucer really is a dystopian place.
Ester explains the rules of Chocobo racing to us - basically, the Chocobo will always move forward on his own; our input is in moving it from left to right to better navigate the track and the other racers, as well as choosing whether to speed up or speed down and pressing OK for a special momentary speed boost, with higher speed consuming the Chocobo's Stamina.
If you want to control the Chocobo yourself, that is. Ester explains that we can choose between "Manual" and "Automatic" mode for the Chocobo, and my assumption was that this would, like, have the Chocobo monitor its own speed, but in fact Automatic mode completely cedes control to the Chocobo to run the race on its own without player input. More on that in a moment.
Cloud is led to the preparation room where the other jockeys are waiting for the race, and…
…okay, the Elevator opens up directly on the lockers for the Chocobo Race? God, the prisoner participation is truly baked into the sport, isn't it? Prison Corel is basically just there as a source of unpaid labor for Chocobo Racing!
The flirtatious guy in the hat is Joe, one of the Gold Saucer's top chocobo jockeys; Ester says Cloud was down there for just one day and 'already made it up here,' which Joe is impressed by; he asks Cloud why he was down there, then corrects himself - people aren't supposed to talk about "the past" here.
RIGHT. BECAUSE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN JOCKEYS WOULD REVEAL THE GOLD SAUCER JUSTICE SYSTEM FOR THE SHAM THAT IT IS. CHOCOBO JOCKEYS OF THE WORLD, RISE UP, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.
Ahem.
Joe says he has a feeling he and Cloud will meet again, salutes him and leaves. This is very obviously signaling the Final Boss of the Chocobo Races. I don't know if we'll get into that in this playthrough, though.
Ester tells us she'll go take care of the chocobo and leaves. We can talk to the jockeys, but they don't have much interesting to say.
Quick question: did you spot the Materia in that picture above? Because I almost did! Red against a brown color, tucked in a corner, I almost missed it. It turns out to be the Ramuh Materia, so we've now officially completed the elemental trio! As usual though, it'll be a while before we can try it.
Alright. Chocobo racing time.
We've seen the race track before, it was the same I bet on in Gold Saucer, only now we are the one in control. Due to being busy controlling the Chocobo I don't really have a lot of pictures, but, basically, things go extremely well for me at first and then extremely poorly.
As you can see, I am currently in first place, but my stamina has almost run out. Taking the lead was easy, but the other Chocobos have more endurance and, eventually, I am overtaken by the main group and end up falling in fourth place.
Obviously, this is a loss. Fortunately, it's no real obstacle; Ester just says she'll find us a better Chocobo and a new race is immediately announced.
Now, the fact that we have to win the race or else we can't advance the plot could be a problem… If actually playing through the race wasn't a sucker's bet. As I have mentioned before, on the Automatic setting, the Chocobo just handles the race on its own, and it's strong enough to win it. So the best way to win the race is to just… Not do anything at all.
On Auto, the Chocobo takes the lead quickly and easily, and wins with about a third of its Stamina remaining. Easy win. I was literally just making it harder for myself by trying to actually play the game.
I'm not convinced this is excellent design, you guys. But I guess it beats failing five times in a row and ragequitting.
Ester: "Oh yeah, the owner told me to give this letter to you if you won."
Letter from Dio: "Boy, if you're reading this letter, then you must've won. I know you earned it. I heard about Dyne from Ester. Now that you've won, I'm granting you and your friends a full pardon, and setting you all free. And by way of apology, I have a little gift for you to use on your journey. Sorry I couldn't be there to tell you this in person, but I'm a very busy man. Sincerely, Dio."
Cloud: "A gift?"
[At this point, the PHS rings, and Cloud answers.]
Aerith: "Cloud, this is great!! The assistant manager just stopped by and dropped off a 'buggy!' Now we can go over 'deserts' and 'rivers,' no problem. OK, Cloud, I'll be waiting outside."
Cloud: "(Hmm? The letter continues…)
Letter: "P.S.: I recently met Sephiroth. I bet he's pretty popular with boys your age. Why don't you get his autograph? He was heading towards Gongaga, south of the river."
Cloud: "Sephiroth…"
Ester: "I guess this is goodbye. Yeah. Well, if you ever get your own Chocobo, come back again. I'll take care of your registration and everything. I'll see you again."
I…
Okay.
I know the game doesn't want us to think too hard about this. I just.
Ester went to Dio and explained the situation to him and how we were blamed for murders committed by Dyne. Dio believed this. And his response was to…
…do nothing until we were actually able to win the race, letting us rot in jail forever if we couldn't pull it off, and then only pardoning us once Cloud actually won.
So that's an absolute scumbag move. No wonder he did it all by sending a letter, if he tried to show his face he would get a terminal case of Buster Sword to the face. This 'buggy' gift is clearly him trying to bribe us into not storming into his office and wrecking his face.
God. The Dyne sequence was strong, but everything surrounding the race is so weird and hilariously fucked up if you pay any attention to what people are actually saying.
But, well, it's done! We have won the Chocobo Race, escaped Corel Prison, made it out of the Gold Saucer, and now we have… Something we've never had in any Final Fantasy game to date… A true innovation that marks Final Fantasy VII's evolution into a unique modern setting…
A car.
Outstanding move, game.
Well. That was an adventure. The Corel Prison sequence is really interesting - it's not flawless, it leaves me with some unanswered questions, and Dyne isn't really enough of a presence in the plot for me to have felt emotionally moved by it, but there's a lot of interesting psychological and thematic depth here, and it's really digging into the character of Barret. I'm… not sure where I fall on the emotional conflict is trying to drive at with "actually Barret was motivated by vengeance and saving the planet was an excuse and he sees himself as being as much of a bloody-handed murderer as Dyne," hmm. There's something interesting there but I'm not sure if I fully buy it?
Also I just gotta say it's incredibly funny that Sephiroth is apparently just going around doing Normal People Stuff, talking to people, getting tickets to the Gold Saucer, chatting with the owner, just, like, casually hanging out in public places while working on his plan to destroy all mankind or whatever. I had no idea how badly I needed fanart of post-Nibelheim Sephiroth having Normal Human Interactions in casual settings, STAT.
This is a good stopping point for today, I think. We have returned to the world map and now have the freedom granted by a sweet-ass car, and we have a new lead on Sephiroth!
Next Time: Probably heading for Gongaga, whatever that is!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You can revisit the desert, but not the prison proper. Hopefully that means Omi can still acquire Laser, which is pretty strong. The jockey room is one-and-done, too, so yeah, good thing they got Ramuth.
It's amazing how much absolutely heinous shit Shinra did that I've just forgotten about over the years. I had vague memories of the entire Corel situation, but actively destroying them intentionally to build Gold Saucer/the Tramway? Yeah, went right over my head.
Sephiroth strikes again, getting places just before Cloud does to... kill random well monsters this time, I guess.
Everyone else went to rest in the inn at the end of a nice long day of losing all their gil in Gold Saucer, only to be reminded that the party is forcibly sucked into Cloud's body whenever they finish sleeping. And unfortunately for them, Cloud is in Sand Jail, so here they are
I choose to believe that mid-flashback, Cloud actually pulled out a map of the area and started lecturing Barret on all these details for the next half hour. He could totally be socially awkward enough to do that without thinking about it.
4Kids Entertainment Strikes Again.Scarlet looks like she's wrenching a rifle from a soldier's hands so she can shoot Barret and Dyne properly, knocking him off the bridge in the process, but the soldier still has his rifle as he falls, so it's not clear what she's doing. She orders the rest of the men to cover her while she personally shoots down Barret and Dyne, but the game doesn't bother modeling a firearm on her Playmobil model, so it looks like she's just... Miming a gun with her hands.
Like. Guys. C'mon. Give her an actual gun or something.
It really is. It's one of those bits of Barret's backstory that's still clear in my head all these years later, that cutscene where he gets shot and forced to drop Dyne in particular, very well done-
Wait what
...Yeah, just going to agree with Omi here. There's something a lot more... human, I guess? About English version Barret's slow turn to extremism.
Look Yuffie, just because you're a ninja so they taught you magical sand walking powers, doesn't mean the rest of the party can just Naruto-run across the desert and be fine.
Yuffie is the best, in that she's the worst, but in a way I love. Absolute shitkid sigma woman teenager.
Yeah, unfortunately that's not one of those things that's easy to communicate with FFVII models unless they either use a cutscene (a fairly limited disk resource at the time + pretty sure they just didn't use voices in these), or swap to the battle models similar to FFVI playing out cutscenes that way. It'll probably be a little more legible for things like this as the series goes on to more complicated map models, or particularly when we hit the PS2 and open up in terms of data per disk.
...Well, not something I'd ever considered, but the comparison works, can't deny it.
To be fair to these unlosable boss fights, both have also been mandatory story battles in a game where a good 90% of your character's capabilities comes from their materia so they can't make it too hard in case little Jimmy has a case of the dumbass and sells them all or something. I'm sure there can be an optional 1v1 boss or two eventually that's a bit tougher.
Realistically? Probably just the "devs wanted familiar aesthetic" part, not to mention jury-rigging a cross for a grave is probably easier to do stuck out in the middle of a desert than carving out an actual tombstone.
It's honestly kind of fascinating how even if FFVII as a whole isn't 100% cyberpunk dystopia once you get out of Midgar, it still has the vibe of "corpos run the world, everything is fucked for the little guy" down pat.
I've been immediately ninjaed on this, but I quoted this part of the post so I'm damn well going to say it anyways: this was your only opportunity in the entire game to get the Ramuh materia, because... Square hates completionists, I guess, that's all I can assume with some of the missable materia in FFVII.
FFVII's Shitty Minigame Syndrome strikes yet again. I get the feeling this is going to be a point or three against actually dealing with Chocobo races later in the game, doubly so since you've already mentioned how ass catching Chocobos feels.
Fun fact about the car: with it's ability to drive over small rivers, and the fact that for whatever reason you can ship it back over to the previous continent, this actually opens up a bit of side material! Most importantly, more RTS battles in Fort Condor yaaaaaaaaay
(but for real, does open up some extras if you want to explore)
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
Hold on the game actually made you win at chocobo racing to escape the prison, and had Dio give you a pardon and car via letter? I honestly assumed that was something TFS made up for the parody because it was so weird.
A car.
Outstanding move, game
I missed this when I was playing through this section last year, but this is the same room that they met Scarlet in. I guess Barret decided to visit his old house.
So yeah, this is 100% old Corel.
Last edited:
IIRC there are only two or three permanently missable enemy skills. One is missable only because of a bug so it is particularly infuriating.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Laser isn't permanently missable, but if you don't get it in this window your next opportunity is the actual literal final dungeon, I believe. Which is the case with a few other E. Skills as well.
Also, speaking of which, now that you've got the Manipulate materia and the buggy @Omicron, you can get Big Guard off the Beach Plugs.
- Location
- Portugal
Damn, that's a lot. Barret is a good character. Barret is a great character and his thing with Dyne is compelling and really grim, and the party's contributions to Barret's perspectives are also a good part of it. Honestly kind of getting goosebumps at how Rebirth might handle this story arc with the remakes' Barret's charisma and performance.
This is a really dense and strong analysis, it is enjoyable seeing you go over all the reasons and beats that make these story elements work (though some others, like strictly what Dyne was doing all over the place, are more awkward). I also think I fall on your interpretation of how to best sell the tense emotional conflict within Barret between the different scripts compared. Not that there isn't a place for the more overtly vengeance-set conclusion... but I would say it feels like the most "incomplete" out of the ways the emotional depth of all can resolve.
This is a really dense and strong analysis, it is enjoyable seeing you go over all the reasons and beats that make these story elements work (though some others, like strictly what Dyne was doing all over the place, are more awkward). I also think I fall on your interpretation of how to best sell the tense emotional conflict within Barret between the different scripts compared. Not that there isn't a place for the more overtly vengeance-set conclusion... but I would say it feels like the most "incomplete" out of the ways the emotional depth of all can resolve.
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
For the longest time, I thought that image of Dyne falling also included him holding Barret's hand (the brown splotch that seems to actually be his glove). Like, I imagined that Shinra soldiers shooting off the hands, but the hands themselves still being locked in a deathgrip, which is an image all its own.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You say it's an innovation, but the only innovation about the buggy is the control scheme. In terms of usage, it's basically the hovercraft from IV.
Just, with wheels instead of hover to fit the dieselpunk aesthetic.
Just, with wheels instead of hover to fit the dieselpunk aesthetic.
Last edited:
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
This is bananas. Does anyone else feel like this section was written by random idea generator? Like, imagine some Japanese writer in the 1990s: "Hmm, I have horrible writer's block, and yet they're telling me to add more to the story! Well, this deck of cards might help. Let's see...setting: an amusement park. New character: a hardened criminal. Moral conflict: the desire for vengeance. And, in order to fulfill their goals, the characters must...win a sporting competition? Yeah, sure. As long as Sephiroth was allegedly there, we can make the party go goddamn anywhere."
Last edited:
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
Yup, that was my read on it to. Not actually confirmed anywhere though.
So! This is actually addressed in one of the spin off games. Sticking it in a spoiler box but what I'm going to put in there isn't referenced anywhere in 7, so feel free to look if you want.
Turns out it was actually terrorists this time.
Wouldn't be out of character for Shinra to decide not to let a crisis go to waste.
Wouldn't be out of character for Shinra to decide not to let a crisis go to waste.
Or the fire spread through the forest and the reactor simply stops the regrowth.
Yeah, it's the biggest argument against it being Corel. I just go with the distances being screwed up.
Wha... how did? I thought for sure you'd get lost in the desert!
I suppose actually paying attention to the three liars paid off.
There's a fan theory regarding the bombing that uses a spin off detail. That I'll talk about if I remember when you're done.
And then there's this FUCKER.
Sorry, PTSD. Let's just say he becomes a right pain in the arse if you do certain things later.
I think Dio is just really disconnected from reality rather than malicious or anything. The sort of rich person who would unironically say, "let them eat cake," in response to bread rising in price.
Glad you enjoyed the Barret backstory though. Going to be fun to see the Remake's take on it.
The Gold Saucer is just lucky that Chocobos don't seem to be fighters on this planet if they'd to deal with Choco meteor spam it'd be more of a Melted Saucer
Any way have Official art of Cloud on a chocobo
Any way have Official art of Cloud on a chocobo
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Yuffie: "Man, Barret has a dramatic, tragic backstory too? That's crazy. I... wait. Wait. Did I... Did I join a party of Protagonists without realizing it? I just like stealing money from folks."
Yuffie is the best, in that she's the worst, but in a way I love. Absolute shitkid sigma woman teenager.