Final Fantasy VII, Part 23: The End of Act One, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where, well.
We'll see.
Following the events at the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud is unconscious, and experiences a dream that is more than a dream.
Cloud is in the Sleeping Forest, north of Bone Village, and Aerith is talking to him. Cloud is not physically present within the dream at first, instead Aerith addresses him through the camera; drawing attention to the dream reality of the scene, Aerith disappears and reappears, walking behind one tree and out of another or disappearing in white light.
Aerith: "Cloud, can you hear me?"
Cloud: "Yeah, I hear you. Sorry for what happened."
Aerith: "Don't worry about it."
Cloud: "...I can't help it…"
Aerith: "Oh… Then, why don't you REALLY worry about it? And let me handle Sephiroth."
Aerith: "And Cloud, you take care of yourself. So you don't have a breakdown, okay?"
Then, the two fall from the trees above, as if they were playing among the branches.
"Oh, well, then why don't you really worry about it?" is such a sassy Aerith line.
Aerith: "This forest leads to the City of the Ancients… and is called the Sleeping Forest."
Aerith: "It's only a matter of time before Sephiroth uses Meteor. That's why I'm going to protect it. Only a survivor of the Cetra, like me, can do it."
Aerith: "The secret is just up here."
Aerith: "At least it should be. …I feel it. It feels like I'm being led by something."
Aerith: "Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back when it's all over."
Cloud: "Aerith?"
[Aerith runs away; Cloud starts chasing after her, but is just running in place, then stops as another voice emerges.]
Sephiroth: "Hmm… She's going to interfere? She'll be a difficult one, don't you think?"
Well. That's ominous.
Aerith going off on her own is… Well, Cloud just showed himself as an unreliable actor. I can understand wanting to leave him out of this, but it's not like Sephiroth needs Cloud to act through, you know? And Aerith alone is vulnerable, no matter how well she can take care of herself as a singular fighter.
…you know, when that scene happened, it didn't surprise me, but now it's striking me that it's not clear by what means it's happening. "Dream-based communication" isn't something we've seen anywhere in the game, even with Aerith's whole Ancient deal. It's not like it's a plot hole or anything, more of a demonstration that when the vibes are right, you can throw in some mystical tropes that haven't been established in the story and get away with it.
Cloud wakes up then, surrounded by the first two characters to be involved in his adventure.
Barret asks Cloud how he's doing, and Tifa informs him of what he already knows - Aerith is gone. Everyone is looking for her, which implies she slipped away without any warning; Cloud is the one to tell them that Aerith is out looking for the City of the Ancients. Barret and Tifa are shocked, but both agree they have to immediately head out and find her before Sephiroth does.
Cloud: "Sephiroth… already knows."
Barret: "Hey! Why are you still sittin' around?"
Tifa: "Let's go, Cloud."
Cloud: "No. I might lose it again. If Sephiroth comes near me I might…"
Barret: "Yeah, goddammit! It's because of you that Sephiroth got the Black Materia. It's your damn fault!"
Cloud: "My fault?"
Barret: "I know you got problems… Hell, we all do. But you don't even understand yourself."
Barret: "But you gotta understand that there ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on, till we get to the end of the line."
Tifa: "Cloud, we've come this far… Aren't you going to settle up with Sephiroth?"
Cloud: "No… I'm afraid. If this keeps up, I may go crazy!"
Barret: "Goddamn jackass, that's what you are… Just think about it… How many people in this world do ya think really understand themselves?"
Barret: "People get depressed in life because they don't know what's up. But, they go on living. They don't run away… That's just how it is."
[He leaves the room.]
Tifa: "Cloud… you'll come with us, right? I believe in you."
[She also leaves.]
Cloud: "What… Am I supposed to do? Just pull out of here? To where?"
Cloud: "...I'm afraid to find out the truth. But… why?"
[In the next room over:]
Tifa: "Cloud…"
Barret: "Wait a minute, Tifa. Give him a little time. He has to decide this on his own."
Tifa: "Barret… You believe in Cloud… right?"
On the one hand, I like this beat for Barret. The "tough love" approach to both calling out Cloud for his denial and refusal to even acknowledge his psychological issues leading to disaster, while also pointing out that no one completely understand themselves and he needs to get over himself and get his head in the game is like - it's good! And it's specifically a good role for Barret to fulfill; Tifa is too kind, everyone else in the group hasn't really known Cloud personally or for long enough (you could argue Nanaki as well as a fellow Midgar Sequencer, but he's a teenager and lacks the requisite life experience). It's a sign of good writing when a plot-important beat for one character is delivered by another character in that character's voice, and in a way that would only make sense for that character.
On the other hand, Cloud is an actual liability. A lot of Barret's 'you have to face life even with the uncertainty and commit to the course' speech is ignoring the fact that, by all appearances, Sephiroth genuinely has a backdoor in Cloud's head and can both spy on him remotely and mind-control him.
Like, this literally just happened! If Aerith hadn't done the nice thing of visiting Cloud in his dreams somehow to try to comfort him and tell him where she was going, Sephiroth wouldn't have been able to spy on the entire conversation and follow after her ahead of us. The group knows intellectually that Cloud is compromised, but none of them, not even Aerith, have fully internalized what that means and how to act accordingly (compartmentalize information so that Cloud doesn't know anything they wouldn't want Sephiroth to know, for starters).
To potentially tragic consequences.
Man, how long has Sephiroth been actively monitoring Cloud? Back on the Cargo Ship, he didn't seem particularly interested in him, so it's possible he only really took notice (and advantage) of him after the group defeated Jenova-BIRTH. On the other hand, someone opened that cell door in Shinra HQ.
Anyway. Cloud is left alone until he (meaning the player) finds the resolve to stand up and leave the house to find his friends. As might have been apparent from the style of the house we woke up in, we are in…
…Gongaga???
I… I guess technically that is the closest town to the Temple of the Ancients? But by 'closest' I still mean, on an entirely different landmass separated by a sea and an archipelago. I guess there's not really any alternative short of the game spawning a new town just for this scene, but… Man that world is small.
Barret: "Hey, how are you?"
Barret: "I just wanna know, which is it gonna be? You wanna find out about yourself? Or are you afraid to find out? Either way, if you stay around here all you're gonna do is worry about it."
Barret: "Even if you go nuts again when you see Sephiroth… If it happens, it happens. I'll go upside your spikey head and bring you back down to normal!"
Tifa: "Cloud, it'll be all right. We're all with you."
Cloud: "But…"
Barret: "If it happens, it happens. Don't worry 'bout it."
Cloud: "You're… right. He's right, isn't he?"
Tifa: "Come on, let's go and find Aerith."
This is a touching scene, but it's one that I can't help but feel is laced with threat. Like… I am all in favor of the power of friendship, of characters reaffirming their trust in each other, or promising to be the one who'll stop the other if they 'go bad.' But they don't fully grasp the threat Sephiroth poses to Cloud - he himself has only very recently even acknowledged it at all.
But still. It's a touching moment.
I take a brief break to see if I can now conquer the Battle Square with the power of the Ribbon, and it turns out I can! With the slot-rigging technique, I've managed to roll Toad three times and Poison once, all of which do nothing; on the seventh roll, I deliberately angled for "All Materias Broken," a slot option which does exactly what it says and, appropriately, has the highest possible BP reward - my plan is to win through Limit Break; the game throws Ying/Yang as its final opponent, and Meteorain deals with it pretty effectively, allowing me to walk away with 10k BP.
Which is… not enough for the rewards I really want.
What I really want here is the Omnislash, Cloud's LB4 unlock item, but I would need to win at the Battle Square with the highest handicaps five times in a row in order to win this. And I don't even really need it: Meteorain is already a gamebreaker at this stage of the game. The way Meteorain works is that it hits random targets six times, performing each attack at 1.625 x Cloud's normal damage. Against single targets like bosses, all hits are against the same target, so Meteorain hits for about ten times Cloud's normal damage, easily outcompeting every other source of damage currently available to us. We'll be back for the Omnislash later.
Alright. We're headed for the Sleeping Forest, which is past Bone Village, so it's time to meet with the archeologists again.
The archeologists refer to the City of the Ancients as "the Forgotten City," but they don't tell us where it is, so I think the implication is that it's a legendary place people have heard of but not found the physical location of? Ironically, the literal opposite of 'forgotten'; at any rate when we get to it it's strongly implied it has lied untouched for millennia. As for Aerith, she headed into the forest; she did this with the aid of the 'Lunar Harp,' an item which allows one to traverse the enchanted Sleeping Forest without being turned around by its magic.
The Lunar Harp must have been a semi-common item, because the archeologists are pretty confident they can find another one buried somewhere around Bone Town. They just need us to sponsor the search, which is a minigame that can also be used to find non-plot-critical item.
The way Bone Village archeology works is… Peculiar. Specifically, they set up explosives and these explosives cause seismic waves which they use to sense buried objects through the vibration, like a more explosive form of sonar. There is… actual real-world techniques that work this way, though I think they're not used at dig sites themselves.
The way it works is, we pay 100 gil apiece for up to five archeologists to stand at varying spots across the map, then they set off the bomb, and each archeologist looks from their location towards the buried item, allowing us to triangulate its position from where their eyes meet. In theory, only two archeologists are needed to locate the item, since two straight lines can only bisect in a single point, but in practice unless you're applying a ruler to your screen you want more for added precision.
For instance, here, we found the Buntline, a weapon for Vincent! It's inferior to the gun he has currently equipped, but hey, it's proof-of-concept. Anyway, we do it a second time specifically asking to search for the Lunar Harp, and we find it.
Sephiroth is ahead of us.
As we enter the Sleeping Forest, the screen goes through changing colors as some magical lights play and we are informed the forest has awaken, allowing us to pass through.
This whole thing feels undercooked, honestly. We have no explanation as to what the Sleeping Forest is, why it works that way, why the Lunar Harp is called 'lunar,' the game just throws names and concepts at us with no justification beyond 'because.'
I guess the Sleeping Forest works as like - the Ancients had a capital city, but for whatever reason it was a sacred/sensitive place, so rather than it being openly accessible, access was on a member basis (which suggests most of the population lived there permanently, since mass-manufacturing Lunar Harps for regular travel by large numbers would make the whole thing kinda silly). So the Sleeping Forest and the Lunar Harp are the whimsical, fantasy version of an automated border security system and a keycard? Which suggests interesting things about the Ancients: That they both had a sedentary capital city, and that it was a place with restricted access, implicitly even from Ancients, since there wouldn't have been a separate 'humanity' to hide from at that time.
If only some Ancients can be let into the City, that means a class of Ancients who aren't allowed. I wonder what that social distinction was based on. A priest caste, maybe?
Anyway, the forest lets us through, and we find ourselves in an… Oddly marine environment; like a seabed after the water has receded.
I didn't really give much thought to my party set-up going into this. I just grabbed Yuffie and Vincent because I need them to up their Limit Breaks and might keep them as my 'main' party endgame.
Our enemies in this area consist mostly of airborne sea creatures, like walking pufferfish and floating seahorses; they are easily dealt with. Eventually, we find our way back to a very short, isolated portion of the world map, and its shape suggests that the whole thing has this marine vibe because it is based in something like an ancient, dried-out river bed.
The Forgotten City. The resolution in the far background is low, but the place does look pretty large - an actual 'city,' at least by ancient world standards, rather than a cluster of five houses. So the Ancients did have at least one major settlement - although the existence of Göbekli Tepe does show that human settlements predate sedentary agriculture, so the 'Forgotten City' could have been a sort of… Periodic sacral site to return to for the nomadic Ancients, if we follow the read that the Ancients were nomadic travelers of the Planet, rather than of the stars.
An interesting data point is that the Ancients seem to have used 'naturally' architecture to an extent; for instance, many of their houses seem to have been built out of giant crustaceans's shells.
When we interact with this mounted light, Cloud hears something, and says 'Words of the Ancients? …no good. I can't understand." There are others like it, in other buildings in the city, which prompt similar reactions.
…
I want to focus on that detail a little.
Aerith is an Ancient. Because of her heritage, she is able to hear the 'voices of the Planet,' which include the spirits of the departed in general, and other Ancients more specifically. For this reason, she's been able to partially understand the Ancient spirits in the Temple, to understand the visions shown by the magic pool, and to read texts in Ancient language. Without her, nobody in the party can understand Cetra voices or recordings.
So, when we come across this device, while on our way to find Aerith, and Cloud says 'this seems like a recording of the Ancients, but I can't understand it,' the player makes the logical connection, 'oh, this is because Aerith isn't in the party,' and implicitly comes to the conclusion, 'this is something we'll understand when we come back here again with Aerith in the party.' The expectation this creates, consciously or unconsciously, is 'we're doing a preliminary tour, grabbing Aerith, then coming back around and getting that sweet lore once she's with us again.'
It is the game, implicitly, making a promise.
One of the shell-houses has a modern bedroom built into it, which is a little weird - the other houses don't seem to have stuff like hardwood floors or normal beds, it seems a little too modern, too 'normal human civilization' after the inherent weirdness of the shell houses. We're given the option to rest here, which we need to do in order to advance the plot; I don't think there's any missable items that I lost by doing that right away rather than checking the town in full first, as I scoured the town after the game state change regardless.
Cloud: "I feel it…"
Yuffie: "Hey—, Cloud. What's your problem?"
Cloud: "Aerith is here. …and so is Sephiroth."
Yuffie: "No way—! Sephiroth wasn't invited!"
Vincent: "How did you find that out?"
Cloud: "...It's not an excuse. I feel it in my soul."
Yuffie: "That means it's pretty bad… Doesn't it?"
Cloud: "...Right. Let's hurry and find Aerith."
It's interesting, that Cloud senses Aerith's presence, and not just Sephiroth's. As if some spiritual bond were forging between the two of them. It's, hm. I'm starting to see the Sleeping Forest dream more clearly now.
For years now, Cloud has had, for some reason unknown to even himself, a metaphysical connection to Sephiroth. Only, because until recently he didn't know about this connection, and Sephiroth does, it's a one-sided dynamic which Sephiroth can use to spy on and manipulate Cloud, a totally unequal power dynamic. And now, through the awkward, slow but real progress of young romance, of a love that they've just begun to acknowledge might be love, there is another metaphysical connection between him and Aerith, only this one is actually mutual.
I've mentioned earlier that I'm not sure Sephiroth really thought much about Cloud at all until he realized he was getting in the way of his plans and started leveraging their connection. Like a toxic ex, Sephiroth walked back into his ex-boyfriend's life and started immediately and reflexively pulling at all the abuse levers he knew were lying there buried to make him act the way he wanted to, and that prompted a trauma response in which Cloud started dissociating and lashing out, even hurting his maybe-girlfriend directly. And the question is, is the relationship he's only begun to form with Aerith strong enough to affirm itself against the years-old trauma of his previous relationship?
We did find the third Enemy Skill Materia, so there's that.
It's now night in the Forgotten City.
Before we go looking for Aerith, though, we're going to explore stage left, where there are some interesting items to find.
See what I meant earlier? This is ostensibly another Cetra bedroom but with its rock architecture and weird flat stone… beds? It looks much more at home in the weird Atlantis-like ruins.
This room looks like it had some kind of ceremonial or communal purpose - the way it's constructed is strongly reminiscent of what the Coliseum looks like after centuries of degradation; there's a crystal-like light, held up in a hand of coral (and it's interesting to me how coral is such a prominent feature of the Forgotten City's architecture), though if it has any purpose beyond lighting is unknown at this stage. The chest contains the Aurora Armlet, a piece of armor with great defensive stats which absorbs Ice-type attack but only has two Materia slots.
…
One thing that's striking to me is that the Forgotten City… isn't a dungeon. There are no random encounters there. We are free to wander through the ruins, taking in the sights, looting ancient chests for old treasures, unopposed. It's… peaceful. Oddly so.
A particularly large shellfish-house stands at the end of the road straight ahead, set against a backdrop of leafless trees, perhaps dead or petrified. The house itself isn't what interests us, however. Rather, in its basement is this strange, holographic-looking stairway that goes down through what look like algae; on the upper floor is the Comet Materia, which contains the spells Comet and "Cometeor," which has to be some kind of allowance to the fact that this game's version of Meteor is so plot-important as to not be available as a combat spell. We'll see if it's any good. Then we head down the watery stairway, and end up… Wherever this is.
Cut for image count.
We'll see.
Following the events at the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud is unconscious, and experiences a dream that is more than a dream.
Cloud is in the Sleeping Forest, north of Bone Village, and Aerith is talking to him. Cloud is not physically present within the dream at first, instead Aerith addresses him through the camera; drawing attention to the dream reality of the scene, Aerith disappears and reappears, walking behind one tree and out of another or disappearing in white light.
Aerith: "Cloud, can you hear me?"
Cloud: "Yeah, I hear you. Sorry for what happened."
Aerith: "Don't worry about it."
Cloud: "...I can't help it…"
Aerith: "Oh… Then, why don't you REALLY worry about it? And let me handle Sephiroth."
Aerith: "And Cloud, you take care of yourself. So you don't have a breakdown, okay?"
Then, the two fall from the trees above, as if they were playing among the branches.
"Oh, well, then why don't you really worry about it?" is such a sassy Aerith line.
Aerith: "This forest leads to the City of the Ancients… and is called the Sleeping Forest."
Aerith: "It's only a matter of time before Sephiroth uses Meteor. That's why I'm going to protect it. Only a survivor of the Cetra, like me, can do it."
Aerith: "The secret is just up here."
Aerith: "At least it should be. …I feel it. It feels like I'm being led by something."
Aerith: "Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back when it's all over."
Cloud: "Aerith?"
[Aerith runs away; Cloud starts chasing after her, but is just running in place, then stops as another voice emerges.]
Sephiroth: "Hmm… She's going to interfere? She'll be a difficult one, don't you think?"
Well. That's ominous.
Aerith going off on her own is… Well, Cloud just showed himself as an unreliable actor. I can understand wanting to leave him out of this, but it's not like Sephiroth needs Cloud to act through, you know? And Aerith alone is vulnerable, no matter how well she can take care of herself as a singular fighter.
…you know, when that scene happened, it didn't surprise me, but now it's striking me that it's not clear by what means it's happening. "Dream-based communication" isn't something we've seen anywhere in the game, even with Aerith's whole Ancient deal. It's not like it's a plot hole or anything, more of a demonstration that when the vibes are right, you can throw in some mystical tropes that haven't been established in the story and get away with it.
Cloud wakes up then, surrounded by the first two characters to be involved in his adventure.
Barret asks Cloud how he's doing, and Tifa informs him of what he already knows - Aerith is gone. Everyone is looking for her, which implies she slipped away without any warning; Cloud is the one to tell them that Aerith is out looking for the City of the Ancients. Barret and Tifa are shocked, but both agree they have to immediately head out and find her before Sephiroth does.
Cloud: "Sephiroth… already knows."
Barret: "Hey! Why are you still sittin' around?"
Tifa: "Let's go, Cloud."
Cloud: "No. I might lose it again. If Sephiroth comes near me I might…"
Barret: "Yeah, goddammit! It's because of you that Sephiroth got the Black Materia. It's your damn fault!"
Cloud: "My fault?"
Barret: "I know you got problems… Hell, we all do. But you don't even understand yourself."
Barret: "But you gotta understand that there ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on, till we get to the end of the line."
Tifa: "Cloud, we've come this far… Aren't you going to settle up with Sephiroth?"
Cloud: "No… I'm afraid. If this keeps up, I may go crazy!"
Barret: "Goddamn jackass, that's what you are… Just think about it… How many people in this world do ya think really understand themselves?"
Barret: "People get depressed in life because they don't know what's up. But, they go on living. They don't run away… That's just how it is."
[He leaves the room.]
Tifa: "Cloud… you'll come with us, right? I believe in you."
[She also leaves.]
Cloud: "What… Am I supposed to do? Just pull out of here? To where?"
Cloud: "...I'm afraid to find out the truth. But… why?"
[In the next room over:]
Tifa: "Cloud…"
Barret: "Wait a minute, Tifa. Give him a little time. He has to decide this on his own."
Tifa: "Barret… You believe in Cloud… right?"
On the one hand, I like this beat for Barret. The "tough love" approach to both calling out Cloud for his denial and refusal to even acknowledge his psychological issues leading to disaster, while also pointing out that no one completely understand themselves and he needs to get over himself and get his head in the game is like - it's good! And it's specifically a good role for Barret to fulfill; Tifa is too kind, everyone else in the group hasn't really known Cloud personally or for long enough (you could argue Nanaki as well as a fellow Midgar Sequencer, but he's a teenager and lacks the requisite life experience). It's a sign of good writing when a plot-important beat for one character is delivered by another character in that character's voice, and in a way that would only make sense for that character.
On the other hand, Cloud is an actual liability. A lot of Barret's 'you have to face life even with the uncertainty and commit to the course' speech is ignoring the fact that, by all appearances, Sephiroth genuinely has a backdoor in Cloud's head and can both spy on him remotely and mind-control him.
Like, this literally just happened! If Aerith hadn't done the nice thing of visiting Cloud in his dreams somehow to try to comfort him and tell him where she was going, Sephiroth wouldn't have been able to spy on the entire conversation and follow after her ahead of us. The group knows intellectually that Cloud is compromised, but none of them, not even Aerith, have fully internalized what that means and how to act accordingly (compartmentalize information so that Cloud doesn't know anything they wouldn't want Sephiroth to know, for starters).
To potentially tragic consequences.
Man, how long has Sephiroth been actively monitoring Cloud? Back on the Cargo Ship, he didn't seem particularly interested in him, so it's possible he only really took notice (and advantage) of him after the group defeated Jenova-BIRTH. On the other hand, someone opened that cell door in Shinra HQ.
Anyway. Cloud is left alone until he (meaning the player) finds the resolve to stand up and leave the house to find his friends. As might have been apparent from the style of the house we woke up in, we are in…
…Gongaga???
I… I guess technically that is the closest town to the Temple of the Ancients? But by 'closest' I still mean, on an entirely different landmass separated by a sea and an archipelago. I guess there's not really any alternative short of the game spawning a new town just for this scene, but… Man that world is small.
Barret: "Hey, how are you?"
Barret: "I just wanna know, which is it gonna be? You wanna find out about yourself? Or are you afraid to find out? Either way, if you stay around here all you're gonna do is worry about it."
Barret: "Even if you go nuts again when you see Sephiroth… If it happens, it happens. I'll go upside your spikey head and bring you back down to normal!"
Tifa: "Cloud, it'll be all right. We're all with you."
Cloud: "But…"
Barret: "If it happens, it happens. Don't worry 'bout it."
Cloud: "You're… right. He's right, isn't he?"
Tifa: "Come on, let's go and find Aerith."
This is a touching scene, but it's one that I can't help but feel is laced with threat. Like… I am all in favor of the power of friendship, of characters reaffirming their trust in each other, or promising to be the one who'll stop the other if they 'go bad.' But they don't fully grasp the threat Sephiroth poses to Cloud - he himself has only very recently even acknowledged it at all.
But still. It's a touching moment.
I take a brief break to see if I can now conquer the Battle Square with the power of the Ribbon, and it turns out I can! With the slot-rigging technique, I've managed to roll Toad three times and Poison once, all of which do nothing; on the seventh roll, I deliberately angled for "All Materias Broken," a slot option which does exactly what it says and, appropriately, has the highest possible BP reward - my plan is to win through Limit Break; the game throws Ying/Yang as its final opponent, and Meteorain deals with it pretty effectively, allowing me to walk away with 10k BP.
Which is… not enough for the rewards I really want.
What I really want here is the Omnislash, Cloud's LB4 unlock item, but I would need to win at the Battle Square with the highest handicaps five times in a row in order to win this. And I don't even really need it: Meteorain is already a gamebreaker at this stage of the game. The way Meteorain works is that it hits random targets six times, performing each attack at 1.625 x Cloud's normal damage. Against single targets like bosses, all hits are against the same target, so Meteorain hits for about ten times Cloud's normal damage, easily outcompeting every other source of damage currently available to us. We'll be back for the Omnislash later.
Alright. We're headed for the Sleeping Forest, which is past Bone Village, so it's time to meet with the archeologists again.
The archeologists refer to the City of the Ancients as "the Forgotten City," but they don't tell us where it is, so I think the implication is that it's a legendary place people have heard of but not found the physical location of? Ironically, the literal opposite of 'forgotten'; at any rate when we get to it it's strongly implied it has lied untouched for millennia. As for Aerith, she headed into the forest; she did this with the aid of the 'Lunar Harp,' an item which allows one to traverse the enchanted Sleeping Forest without being turned around by its magic.
The Lunar Harp must have been a semi-common item, because the archeologists are pretty confident they can find another one buried somewhere around Bone Town. They just need us to sponsor the search, which is a minigame that can also be used to find non-plot-critical item.
The way Bone Village archeology works is… Peculiar. Specifically, they set up explosives and these explosives cause seismic waves which they use to sense buried objects through the vibration, like a more explosive form of sonar. There is… actual real-world techniques that work this way, though I think they're not used at dig sites themselves.
The way it works is, we pay 100 gil apiece for up to five archeologists to stand at varying spots across the map, then they set off the bomb, and each archeologist looks from their location towards the buried item, allowing us to triangulate its position from where their eyes meet. In theory, only two archeologists are needed to locate the item, since two straight lines can only bisect in a single point, but in practice unless you're applying a ruler to your screen you want more for added precision.
For instance, here, we found the Buntline, a weapon for Vincent! It's inferior to the gun he has currently equipped, but hey, it's proof-of-concept. Anyway, we do it a second time specifically asking to search for the Lunar Harp, and we find it.
Sephiroth is ahead of us.
As we enter the Sleeping Forest, the screen goes through changing colors as some magical lights play and we are informed the forest has awaken, allowing us to pass through.
This whole thing feels undercooked, honestly. We have no explanation as to what the Sleeping Forest is, why it works that way, why the Lunar Harp is called 'lunar,' the game just throws names and concepts at us with no justification beyond 'because.'
I guess the Sleeping Forest works as like - the Ancients had a capital city, but for whatever reason it was a sacred/sensitive place, so rather than it being openly accessible, access was on a member basis (which suggests most of the population lived there permanently, since mass-manufacturing Lunar Harps for regular travel by large numbers would make the whole thing kinda silly). So the Sleeping Forest and the Lunar Harp are the whimsical, fantasy version of an automated border security system and a keycard? Which suggests interesting things about the Ancients: That they both had a sedentary capital city, and that it was a place with restricted access, implicitly even from Ancients, since there wouldn't have been a separate 'humanity' to hide from at that time.
If only some Ancients can be let into the City, that means a class of Ancients who aren't allowed. I wonder what that social distinction was based on. A priest caste, maybe?
Anyway, the forest lets us through, and we find ourselves in an… Oddly marine environment; like a seabed after the water has receded.
I didn't really give much thought to my party set-up going into this. I just grabbed Yuffie and Vincent because I need them to up their Limit Breaks and might keep them as my 'main' party endgame.
Our enemies in this area consist mostly of airborne sea creatures, like walking pufferfish and floating seahorses; they are easily dealt with. Eventually, we find our way back to a very short, isolated portion of the world map, and its shape suggests that the whole thing has this marine vibe because it is based in something like an ancient, dried-out river bed.
The Forgotten City. The resolution in the far background is low, but the place does look pretty large - an actual 'city,' at least by ancient world standards, rather than a cluster of five houses. So the Ancients did have at least one major settlement - although the existence of Göbekli Tepe does show that human settlements predate sedentary agriculture, so the 'Forgotten City' could have been a sort of… Periodic sacral site to return to for the nomadic Ancients, if we follow the read that the Ancients were nomadic travelers of the Planet, rather than of the stars.
An interesting data point is that the Ancients seem to have used 'naturally' architecture to an extent; for instance, many of their houses seem to have been built out of giant crustaceans's shells.
When we interact with this mounted light, Cloud hears something, and says 'Words of the Ancients? …no good. I can't understand." There are others like it, in other buildings in the city, which prompt similar reactions.
…
I want to focus on that detail a little.
Aerith is an Ancient. Because of her heritage, she is able to hear the 'voices of the Planet,' which include the spirits of the departed in general, and other Ancients more specifically. For this reason, she's been able to partially understand the Ancient spirits in the Temple, to understand the visions shown by the magic pool, and to read texts in Ancient language. Without her, nobody in the party can understand Cetra voices or recordings.
So, when we come across this device, while on our way to find Aerith, and Cloud says 'this seems like a recording of the Ancients, but I can't understand it,' the player makes the logical connection, 'oh, this is because Aerith isn't in the party,' and implicitly comes to the conclusion, 'this is something we'll understand when we come back here again with Aerith in the party.' The expectation this creates, consciously or unconsciously, is 'we're doing a preliminary tour, grabbing Aerith, then coming back around and getting that sweet lore once she's with us again.'
It is the game, implicitly, making a promise.
One of the shell-houses has a modern bedroom built into it, which is a little weird - the other houses don't seem to have stuff like hardwood floors or normal beds, it seems a little too modern, too 'normal human civilization' after the inherent weirdness of the shell houses. We're given the option to rest here, which we need to do in order to advance the plot; I don't think there's any missable items that I lost by doing that right away rather than checking the town in full first, as I scoured the town after the game state change regardless.
Cloud: "I feel it…"
Yuffie: "Hey—, Cloud. What's your problem?"
Cloud: "Aerith is here. …and so is Sephiroth."
Yuffie: "No way—! Sephiroth wasn't invited!"
Vincent: "How did you find that out?"
Cloud: "...It's not an excuse. I feel it in my soul."
Yuffie: "That means it's pretty bad… Doesn't it?"
Cloud: "...Right. Let's hurry and find Aerith."
It's interesting, that Cloud senses Aerith's presence, and not just Sephiroth's. As if some spiritual bond were forging between the two of them. It's, hm. I'm starting to see the Sleeping Forest dream more clearly now.
For years now, Cloud has had, for some reason unknown to even himself, a metaphysical connection to Sephiroth. Only, because until recently he didn't know about this connection, and Sephiroth does, it's a one-sided dynamic which Sephiroth can use to spy on and manipulate Cloud, a totally unequal power dynamic. And now, through the awkward, slow but real progress of young romance, of a love that they've just begun to acknowledge might be love, there is another metaphysical connection between him and Aerith, only this one is actually mutual.
I've mentioned earlier that I'm not sure Sephiroth really thought much about Cloud at all until he realized he was getting in the way of his plans and started leveraging their connection. Like a toxic ex, Sephiroth walked back into his ex-boyfriend's life and started immediately and reflexively pulling at all the abuse levers he knew were lying there buried to make him act the way he wanted to, and that prompted a trauma response in which Cloud started dissociating and lashing out, even hurting his maybe-girlfriend directly. And the question is, is the relationship he's only begun to form with Aerith strong enough to affirm itself against the years-old trauma of his previous relationship?
We did find the third Enemy Skill Materia, so there's that.
It's now night in the Forgotten City.
Before we go looking for Aerith, though, we're going to explore stage left, where there are some interesting items to find.
See what I meant earlier? This is ostensibly another Cetra bedroom but with its rock architecture and weird flat stone… beds? It looks much more at home in the weird Atlantis-like ruins.
This room looks like it had some kind of ceremonial or communal purpose - the way it's constructed is strongly reminiscent of what the Coliseum looks like after centuries of degradation; there's a crystal-like light, held up in a hand of coral (and it's interesting to me how coral is such a prominent feature of the Forgotten City's architecture), though if it has any purpose beyond lighting is unknown at this stage. The chest contains the Aurora Armlet, a piece of armor with great defensive stats which absorbs Ice-type attack but only has two Materia slots.
…
One thing that's striking to me is that the Forgotten City… isn't a dungeon. There are no random encounters there. We are free to wander through the ruins, taking in the sights, looting ancient chests for old treasures, unopposed. It's… peaceful. Oddly so.
A particularly large shellfish-house stands at the end of the road straight ahead, set against a backdrop of leafless trees, perhaps dead or petrified. The house itself isn't what interests us, however. Rather, in its basement is this strange, holographic-looking stairway that goes down through what look like algae; on the upper floor is the Comet Materia, which contains the spells Comet and "Cometeor," which has to be some kind of allowance to the fact that this game's version of Meteor is so plot-important as to not be available as a combat spell. We'll see if it's any good. Then we head down the watery stairway, and end up… Wherever this is.
Cut for image count.
