Also, to my great annoyance, the reason I'm trying Ramuh on the overworld right now is that it turns out unlike every vehicle in every game to date, the Buggy… doesn't avoid random encounters.
So that's a pain in my ass that's going to make stuff like "return to Fort Condor for the battles" a huge hassle that I don't want to deal with.
Luckily, Fort Condor Sucks Ass so you can skip out on that!
Still other potential rewards with buggy access though, so I
guess you still want to go back at some point.
Reno and Rude are talking about…
…who they 'like'? And they're specifically talking about the people they're pursuing.
Let's be fair Omi, if you were one of the Turks would you
not be in group "I know we have to capture her but damn Tifa got legs"?
For the story, at this point, the connection of the Turks to the Sector 7 plate collapse is now firmly "Cloud kicked Reno's ass and Reno holds a grudge even though Cloud (pretends to) not even remember it happening," which is funny, as opposed to "the Turks murdered all of Barret and Tifa's friends." It is what it is, you just have to roll with it.
And so, the Turks complete their descent (or ascent?) into becoming nothing more than the Quirky Miniboss Squad.
Unlike Reno, who fights with a baton/cattle prod, Rude is a bare-handed boxer (well, technically he's wearing black gloves). Ultimately though the fight is trivial; a couple of summons blast through Reno's HP, at which point he flees, and then Rude, though he still has HP, promptly follows.
It looks like you blasted the hell out of the duo too fast for it to matter, but fun fact: Rude's crush on Tifa has actual mechanical effects on the battle. As long as any other party member is still standing, he will
never target Tifa with an attack, and if she is the only party member left alive, he both has a 33% chance to hesitate and not attack her, and will only use basic attacks instead of things like magic against her.
Really, Cloud?
Really? Really really really really? You trust everyone?
You trust, say, THE TEENAGE NINJA THIEF who has no connection to Avalanche or investment in our cause and joined us for vague reasons and who TRIED TO ROB US MULTIPLE TIMES? You trust the walking fortune-telling machine that was probably designed by Shinra and forcibly inserted itself into our group under bizarre pretense while carrying around a mind control Materia and who has been with us for all of five minutes total? You trust everyone? These are your two best buddies in the world that you would trust not to betray us to Shinra? YUFFIE IS PICKING TIFA'S POCKET AS WE SPEAK-
Look Idunno what you're going on about, I would trust Yuffie with
my life she was in my party from recruitment to final boss.
Whether or not this was an intelligent decision rather than a teenage crush remains to be seen.
Can't help but notice Shinra didn't react by slaughtering the locals, though.
Already fulfilled their local-slaughtering quota for the week, thankfully for this group.
I mean either that or it wasn't parked in Prime Platinum Saucer (The Better Gold Saucer!) territory, either or.
…I forgot to mention that before heading on with the plot, I took a brief break to head to the beach and fight these weird mollusks. With the Manipulate Materia, I was able to force one of them to use its Big Guard ability on our party, which allowed us to learn it with the Enemy Skill Materia.
Big Guard, if you're unfamiliar with the game, is a spell which casts Haste, Barrier, and Shell on the whole party at the same time. If you've been reading this Let's Play throughout, you'll remember that Hastega, "cast Haste on the whole party," was a spell single-handedly powerful enough to make the entire Time Mage class endgame-viable (or, more truthfully, Time Magic worth an entire slot of its own on a Mimic). So… Yeah, I'm guessing this is going to be pretty good.
It's honestly pretty nuts just how early FFVII lets you get ahold of Big Guard. In FFV it required finding some super rare encounter in a few specific ocean squares in World 3 and
also controlling the enemy to cast it, in FFVI it was only learned from either endgame enemies and bosses like Mover and The Guardian
or by using Control as fast as humanly possible on Celes's Solitary Island to make the 1 HP enemies cast it before they died of starvation...
And in FFVII you just kind of go for a quick beach visit after your Gold Saucer vacation, I guess.
Aerith is shocked, but unusually open about things when we talk to her: She explains to Cloud, as we might have guessed, that Zack was her 'first love', the boy she told us about all the way back during that discussion at the abandoned playground. Zack, SOLDIER First Class, "same as Cloud." Cloud says it's weird - there aren't many First Class, yet he's never heard of Zack.
Yeah Cloud, that is weird. Could it be SOMEHOW RELATED TO YOUR CRIPPLING MEMORY ISSUES?
Surely not. I must be overthinking things.
AS LONG AS HE DOESN'T THINK ABOUT IT THEN IT ISN'T AN ISSUE
THIS WILL NOT BE PLOT RELEVANT I AM SURE
Okay, Tifa and Aerith both knowing whoever the hell 'Zack' is seems like… kind of a streeetch… Especially as Zack comes from this village we've never heard of before? But it's very clear Tifa here is the one hiding something - in uncharacteristic contrast with her typically earnest affect.
Man, there's absolutely some small gremlin part of me giggling at the implications of this part where Aerith outright confirms Zack was her first boyfriend and Tifa implies she knew him as well, and how absolutely assmad this must have made a few Sweaty Gamer types back in the day.
Hope they make it a ten minute unskippable cutscene discussion in the Remakes.
Well, we've more or less covered Gongaga and the reactor, I think, and no trace of Sephiroth, despite Dio's indications. So let's grab the buggy again and head out.
A few others mentioned it, but there's a materia hidden in the reactor if you check it out.
Man, what a gorgeous background. And - I know I don't talk about the music as much as you guys would like, but I really, really dig Cosmo Canyon's theme:
Can't deny it, Cosmo Canyon got one of the best area themes in the game.
I had assumed that there was some kind of reason for this weird exchange - that Red didn't know his birth name, or that it was secret for some plot relevant reason, but no. Dude's called Nanaki, knew he was called Nanaki, had no particular reason to keep his name hidden, and just… Didn't tell us for whatever reason, so we've been calling him by his experiment serial number this whole time. And now his name is recorded as Red XIII in the menu, so I guess we'll just… Keep calling him that. It's so weird.
I always assumed it was just a matter of Red not really caring about this group of randos that showed up to skewer Hojo enough to go "yeah here's my real name". Probably figured he'd be with them long enough to get out of Midgar, then bail, so whatever they call him doesn't matter to the somewhat aloof guy.
Okay.
I have it now.
I know why the game is being weird with Nanaki/Red XIII's name.
Nanaki is a teenager with a very formal affect who doesn't talk much and brings up "logic" and stuff. One thing we can say for sure is, he's a Redditor. And when he was captured by Hojo, however that happened, and assigned an experiment name, his reaction to hearing himself called "RED THIRTEEN" was "holy shit, this is the coolest shit ever," like he was named like some kind of fucked up mad science experiment or superweapon, so when Cloud asked for his name, he did not miss his shot at having everyone call him by his super-cool mad science nickname instead of his boring normal name. Because he's a teenager who really wants to look cool.
Rock on, Red.
...Of course, this headcanon is also hilarious, and as we all know hilarious headcanon most override all. So yes, now Red XIII is an edgy teenager forever.
The Steam version of FF7 straight up shouldn't be on sale. It's literally broken. Fucking hell.
Hey, now, could be worse!
Could be FFVIII's Steam Version using
goddamn MIDI tracks because Square can't be bothered to spend ten minutes copy-pasting updated files over to give us
the actual PS1 soundtrack.
Should probably keep that in mind for when FFVIII rolls around actually, pretty sure there's mods to fix the OST.
So, there it is.
Soylent Mako is people.
A twist that was pretty heavily foreshadowed by this point... but still a twist, nonetheless.
So Cait Sith has been to Cosmo Canyon before. That's interesting, because nobody seems to recognize them, even though they are a talking cat riding a giant moogle plushie. You'd think that'd stick in people's minds!
Look, they just get
so many of these giant moogles showing up to Cosmo Canyon. Can you really expect the locals to be able to tell one giant moogle from another? Have a little heart, Omi.
And here we have basically the conclusion of Barret's character arc, at least the part of it we've seen so far - the events in Corel and around Dyne have forced him to confront the question of whether or not Avalanche stood for saving the planet or for revenge against Shinra, and if the latter, was he lying to Biggs, Wedge and Jessie? Did they die for nothing? And now, he's reaffirming his resolve. Whether or not Barret was fighting for the planet or only for vengeance is in the past, and doesn't matter: From now on, he'll be fighting for the Planet and everyone living on it. That's what matters.
…and again, the English translation here affects the meaning of this dialogue. In the Retranslated version, Barret is much more explicitly saying that his friends didn't die for the Planet but that it was all for his hate, and asking if he has any right to continue on his crusade when his motives were so flawed, before deciding that he doesn't know the answer, but he'll keep fighting for the Planet, and let others decide whether it was for justice or revenge for themselves.
It's subtle, but it's not quite the same characterization, right? Either way, it ends in Barret reaffirming his resolve and committing to the path of saving the Planet.
Man, all the Barret stuff in the last few updates just reminds me of an arguement I had with someone a few weeks ago who claimed Barret is a terrible person and character who never actually reflects on his actions, and I'm left wondering... did they actually play FFVII? Or at least, replay it in the current millennium? Because Barret gets
tons of moments of small reflection no matter which translation you're using.
It looks like Professor Gast was a man with a sense of ethics, not at all like Hojo. He was someone the scholars of Cosmo Canyon were willing to talk to and cooperate with, even though he was Shinra, which is really interesting - and might have been for the worst in the end. More importantly, it looks like Gast's identification of Jenova as one of the Ancients was wrong. I already suspected that, what with her looking like a Resident Evil final boss instead of a normal person like Aerith, but importantly, the information in the Shinra Mansion was not up to date with that fact. Which means Sephiroth is operating on completely false premises! Jenova was never one of the 'rightful heirs' to the Planet, one of the Ancients!
Well, I'm sure once we encounter him and confront him with that fact he'll just see reason and totally change his ways. Can't see any problem with that.
Okay but
actually imagine that happening though? Now
that would be the twist of a lifetime for FF7 to have in its back pocket.
Sephiroth: "Haha Cloud and other puny party members, soon I shall destroy the humans and rule over the planet as the chosen ancient with my mother JENOVA!"
Cloud: "Nah man turns out Jenova ain't an ancient, here's Gast's notes"
Sephiroth: "Ah shit I've been a doof haven't I. Damn, Hojo sucks can we go kill him and Shinra?"
Cloud: "Word"
Sephiroth has joined the party
The Mystify/Transform Materia I don't care about, but man. MP Plus and HP Plus? These are the kind of like, baseline performance enhancers that I would put on everyone if I could, immediately, and then never take off. I would 100% sacrifice a couple of spellcasting Materias or a Summon or an All for everyone to always have MP/HP enhancers growing throughout the game.
Buuut I can't. A single one of those Materia would almost entirely deplete my 10k gil. Having a full set of both (ie three of each, for a full party) would cost me 48k gil. That is completely unfeasible.
Urgh. Well, something to keep in mind for later, I suppose.
Well, it's not like Cosmo Canyon won't still be here in another five to ten hours when you're hitting that point where the game's economy starts to snap in half because you find ways to get near infinite gil, right? So can always just come back for these later.
That blue Materia you can see in the corner will require a little bit of navigation to get through, and turns out to be the Added Effect Materia, which is to status effects what the Elemental Materia is to elemental typing; that is to say, if we pair the Materia with the Poison Materia on a weapon, the weapon will have a 20% chance to inflict Poison with any normal attack, whereas if we equip it on a piece of armor, it will grant the character immunity to the Poison status effect. Which sounds potentially pretty neat! It's going to run into boss immunities as usual, but at least it's a versatile offense/defense option so it won't be entirely useless.
Honestly my first thought is "can we combine this with an Enemy Skill Materia with Bad Breath for maximum status effect coverage?" Probably not since Enemy Skill is kind of
special among materias, but it's a fun idea.
I hate running in old games. Like. Why did we think, for decades, that it would be okay for games to have two speed, "walk at a snail's pace which is useless for getting anything done" and "move at a functional pace," except the difference between the two is that for the functional speed you need to be constantly holding down the B button? How did we, as a civilization, accept this? Walk/run should be a toggle.
I think what really gets me for a lot of these games (particularly ones like Final Fantasy) is... why is it that you
walk by default? If your playtesters spend 80% of their overworld time holding down the B button to run faster, then maybe said B button should make you walk instead of run by default?
The Gi Nattak is not resistant to fire, but we need the Soul Fires out of the way if we want to use Ifrit without healing them, or indeed, without using my Fira spells tied to All Materia, because the way the All Materia works means we cannot choose to only target one enemy if we still have All castings remaining. Which honestly feels like a straight downgrade in functionality compared to previous games.
I am like 95% sure using an All cast is optional and you just have to hit a shoulder button to single target your spells if you don't want to waste one of your 1-5 uses of multi-targeting. Tiny chance I'm wrong on that, granted, too lazy to boot up the game and check right now.
There is no reason, for anyone, to do this. Just Say No to making up a story about how your kid's cool dad who sacrificed himself to save everyone in your village was actually a cowardly asshole who ran away to leave you to die.
Yeaaaaah, I can see where you're coming from, really doesn't make much sense for everyone in the know to just leave Red wallowing in his own hatred for potentially decades on end.
Good music though.
