daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not to brag too much,
But I grew up in the Southwest on the US/Mexico border and rolling from Halloween right into Dia de Los Muertos was off the hook.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy IX]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
But I grew up in the Southwest on the US/Mexico border and rolling from Halloween right into Dia de Los Muertos was off the hook.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
We got the same in Denmark, with the added 'bonus' that there's a more traditional "dress up in costumesEvery year towards the end of October, you're guaranteed to see at least one news report on a major channel about how "Halloween used to not matter/not exist here until it was imported from the US in the 80s through the influence of Hollywood." I mean, once you've seen one you've seen them all since there isn't that much to say about the topic, but a bunch of people who pointedly remember not putting on costumes on October 31st as children are insistent on reminding you every year how this is a newfangled American thing that didn't exist in their youth when they went to school uphill both ways in the snow
So there's a fair bit of grumbling going on here as well.
Final Fantasy VII, Part 27: World Tour & Mideel
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where Cloud is taking a little time-out and Tifa has become party leader!
Also, we have a bitchin' new World Theme to go along with it, all sinister and shit, I love it.
Does that make FF7 the first Final Fantasy to have a (temporary) female lead? People kept telling me VI didn't really count because it had an ensemble cast instead, much to think about 🤔 Well, I'm sure this all won't be just a pointless sleight of hand.
We've also unlocked the Highwind, which means we're free to go anywhere. With caveats. Emphasis on the caveats.
So here's the thing: Unlike the Pixel Remasters of previous games, VII's map is inconvenient in that it doesn't label map locations and doesn't differentiate between visited and unvisited locations. The map is also just really low-res and only visible in transparency across the overworld screen. With all that said, and doing some counting by hand, it turns out we have visited all but one location currently indicated on the map.
Which makes this feel somewhat less like 'let's expand our horizons' and more 'you can revisit places you were to previously and also visit literally the only place not yet explored.' Feels like my hand's being held a bit. Of course, the locations displayed as dots on the map are not the only ones that exist, and I assume we'll find new ones later - and there's also at least one that's 'hidden' in that it doesn't show up on the map, though we can find it easily enough with some buzzing around the North Pole.
…is that an Ancient?
It's using the same model as the Ancients in the Temple, though seen from closer. And it's a lot more articulate. This being has lost most of its memories from sheer isolation over time, but it eventually remembers that its name is the 'Chocobo Sage.'
I am starting to think calling Aerith the 'Last Ancient' was something of an exaggeration. Granted, these spirit forms aren't all there, but I'm sure with enough shaking by the shoulders he will eventually spout something we can actually use against Sephiroth. What's that, Tifa? Not inclined to violence against the elderly? See, this is why Jenova is winning.
Anyway, we can buy Nuts and Greens from him, which are items that only have relevance to the chocobo minigames if we ever get into them. He doesn't remember the name of the green chocobo in the stable near him, but talking to the fluffy bird has him happily 'Wark!' and give us a 4th Enemy Skill Materia.
We're never going to use it, but that's nice. Good bird.
Attempting to enter the North Crater gets us knocked back by a force field.
So now we'll just be visiting some old locations! Time to do a tour of the world! See how everything's change! Taste the despair in the air and compare it side by side with VI's World of Ruin! Starting… with Midgar!
[The gate to Midgar is locked. Sad trumpet sound, booing from the crowd]
…starting with Kalm, the first post-Midgar town we ever visited!
It seems the game might have anticipated I would do something like that, as the first NPC we encounter is also the one who gives us immediate clues as to where to look for Cloud, somewhere near the Southern islands. Which are incidentally the last unexplored dot on the map, so where we were going anyway. But patience.
Everyone in town has updated dialogue to reflect their take on the giant meteor hanging in the sky and slowly approaching.
The kind of reactions we get vary wildly from townsfolk to townsfolk, representing a really interesting buffet of human reaction to looming disaster. Some are in denial; an old-timer scoffs at the idea that something like 'a meteor falls and kills everyone' could happen as just childish, despite the evidence before his very eyes. Others put their trust in Shinra, believing that they'll save everyone. Others aren't so confident and wonder what will happen to them, struggling to imagine the scope of the disaster. Others yet are in full doomer mode, saying we're all going to die. And others, finally, just want to stop talking about it, because there's nothing they can do and it only makes them feel bad.
It's… honestly a pretty accurate snapshot of human reactions to climate change, only missing the guys who are saying that the meteor literally doesn't exist or hoping that it specifically blows up the liberal elites in Costa del Sol. But I can't blame the writers for not being quite that thoroughly disillusioned.
Wait, no, there's one guy saying that because Midgar is a "Mako Metropolis," it will be totally safe from Meteor, which is close enough to "Global warming? Have you seen the snow outside? Ho ho ho!" for my purposes.
Other than that updated dialogue, not much to be found here other than this information about Cloud, and also someone saying that Shinra is "taking its biggest artillery from Junon and other facilities and gathering it in Midgar to fight Meteor and Weapon."
Hmm. Maybe Shinra did listen to my previous comment on how if the Junon Gun had wings it might be able to fight the Weapons. There's definitely… Well, while this is partially understandable from a basic 'how do we we practically accomplish the concentration of forces necessary to destroy such monsters as the Weapon,' thematically it says something that Shinra's reaction to the threat is to pull everything back to Midgar, the only place that's ever mattered to them, and leaving the rest of the world out to dry.
I appreciate the game's dedication to capturing a whole spectrum of 'technically understands the apocalypse is coming but is unable to come to terms with its scope' human reactions, like this woman wondering where to stash her cash for the end of the world.
This old man in Kalm is saying he is going on a journey to pray for the souls of his friends who've died, and makes reference to three items he would need on his journey, a Guidebook, a Desert Rose, and an Earth Harp, which I guess indicates some kind of sidequest we should keep in mind.
Well, that's all for Kalm - there's no new equipment in the stores or anything so let's head out. How about we visit the next place we found on our journey through the game? The Chocobo Charm!
…yeah, we're being introduced to the Chocobo Raising minigame. Oh boy.
We are not touching this today. But, to at least cover the presentation by Choco Bill and his son, we are offered the opportunity to rent up to 6 chocobo stables for 10,000 gil per stable, then we have to capture the chocobos ourselves, feed them which will impact their abilities, and if we find male and female chocobos that like each other, produce new chocobos that will inherit the traits of their parents.
I would just like to emphasize there for a second: We are being offered to raise multiple generations of Chocobos, while running around trying to save the world from Meteor.
Speaking of nothing in particular, I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 ever since patch 2.0 massively improved the game, and one of the major issues hanging around the writing of the game as a whole is that it is simultaneously 'a story about how your runner makes a name for themselves in Night City picking up gigs in an open world and slowly building up a rep and making lasting connections with people' and 'THE BIOCHIP IN YOUR BRAIN IS KILLING YOU YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS TO LIVE YOU ARE DYING RIGHT NOW YOU NEED TO FIND A SOLUTION OR YOU WILL DIE" and those two just, don't gel.
At least the Chocobo thing is a completely optional minigame, though!
We do a brief detour by Fort Condor, where we're asked if we want to take part in the next RTS minigame, at which point I laugh nervously, throw a bunch of gil into the fighters' face to distract them and escape through a Yuffie smoke bomb. Nothing else to see there, thank god!
Heading to Junon, there's an old lady there who informs us that while the [Sapphire] Weapon was defeated, there are four more. I… was not expecting this! I thought there had been specifically four in total! It's possible I misread the FMV, though. If we tell the villagers Cloud is missing and enquire about the Lifestream, they point us to Priscilla, that girl Cloud saved earlier in the game (she also doesn't seem to recognize Tifa at all, which is a bit odd).
Her… dolphin friend told her that the Lifestream runs below the 'three-taloned island' in the south. Sure, why not. That dolphin goes places, man. Priscilla implores us to help Cloud, as he is very important to her. It's a sweet scene.
In Costa del Sol, we learn that Gold Saucer is closed. Which means… no going through the Battle Square with Tifa. Dammit. Why even live?
Costa del Sol is having a… Costa del Sol reaction to the apocalypse. Mainly, while the local innkeeper is just lying in bed depressed, everyone else is settling on some 'let's just party until the end of the world'; drowning the despair in cocktails, getting in 'one last vacation,' drinking at the bar, sunbathing… Well, it's not 'partying' in the sense that there is very little wild hedonism on display, it's more just relaxing and drinking and enjoying the sun and trying not to think about it all. Some wax philosophical about how Meteor is, in a way, like the stars of their youth burning out, while the guy with the seaplane is confident he can just escape the disaster by flying (and musing that he's not sure there'll be any land left for him to land on). The most proactive of the guys here are the surfer bros who want to beat the toughest waves in Costa del Sol that they haven't gotten a chance at yet before it's all over. All in all, very appropriate to the vibe of the place, IMO.
Costa del Sol also has some new mechanical unlocks, so that's nice; we can buy some new weapons!
…unfortunately and somewhat inexplicably, said weapons don't include anything for Tifa, and Tifa specifically?? There's new stuff for everyone else except, for some reason, Tifa and Cid. Frustrating, although, well, it doesn't matter. You'll see what I mean.
Wutai is similar, but not identical to these other places; here the mood there leans far more towards 'depression' and 'despair' than towards the kind of denial of hope in Shinra that we see displayed elsewhere, which makes sense given Wutai's circumstances; the War had already dealt a massive blow to the national psyche, and unlike others they don't think of Shinra as providing them with prosperity and relying on them for safety, so they're kind of just… morose.
They're also, maybe, the first place in which we see people practice actual living religion?
Yutai townsfolks are in the temple next to Lord Godo's house, offering prayers and supplication before the statue of one of their gods.
Again, there's been a kind of undercurrent of religion having been abandoned in the game that's present in both Midgar and Wutai for different reasons (modernization in Midgar, war trauma in Wutai), but it's often hard to differentiate it from the general lack of overt religiosity that's a background in most Japanese works - even a lot of manga or anime with clear Buddhist or Shinto themes rarely feature a visible focus on the practice of religion. But even if it's understated in FF7, it's there, and the fact that some of the Wutaians are returning to religion and praying to the gods for help in the face of disaster, whereas the people in the Shinra sphere of influence are placing their faith in Shinra instead, is notable.
The only happy guy in Wutai right now is the senile old man who thinks Meteor is the moon coming out at noon and the great panic is everyone celebrating that auspicious celestial event, lmao.
I am actually wondering if that woman's faux-profound wisdom isn't meant to be deliberately poking fun at Wise Old Mentor characters in both Asian media and Western depictions of Asian characters. Some real dril tweet energy from her. "'The wise woman bowed his head solemnly and spoke. 'there's actually zero difference between meteor killing everyone and it not doing that. you imbecile. you fucking moron.'"
Also we can now fly over the peaks of Nibelheim, which is fun!
The main change in Nibelheim is that all of the Copies are gone, and that everyone is in such a state of despair that they no longer bother being secretive about their working for Shinra, instead openly asking what's the point of keeping up this charade and asking what Shinra is even doing. Also, if we head for Tifa's house, she has this strange line:
Which unlocks a hidden compartment and reveals another Elemental Materia (frankly, at this point we have more than we need, but still, neat).
But, hm. If she's saying "Cloud was playing" - she's obviously referring to Cloud's account of playing the piano back when he was telling them about it in Kalm; an account she knows can't be the truth, and yet… She speaks as if that particular detail lingered in her mind, perhaps an inconsistency with the story she now knows, perhaps a hint at something else?
Well, that's it for Nibelheim. We've kinda lost the plot on the whole 'retrace our steps' though. Retracing quickly back to Corell, the locals' general poverty-induced despair is now mingled with Meteor-induced despair for a special brand of misery for the people who already have nothing but their lives to begin with and are now threatened with losing even that; grim, but not much else to explore there.
Most of the changes we can find across the world are 'flavor text,' changes in the dialogue of the townsfolk, rather than 'world state' changes like in the World of Ruin - Meteor's arrival has changed how people behave and talk, but the game doesn't seem to be hiding an entire second map with places relocated and towns changed.
Quite possibly this is because it would be impossible for the CD storage to handle and they simply can't do a more radical change than text edits and a new skybox. There are some world state changes, but they're very small, in the forms of places that were previously inaccessible to us now being open to reward the thorough player or the player with a good memory who remembers stuff that was previously there but out of reach. For instance, in Cosmo Canyon, there's now a path open to behind the counter of the weapon store clerk that allows us to enter his room, which has some valuable stuff indeed in it:
The 'Full Cure' Materia is unique in being a Magic Materia that doesn't have a spell by default; by default it doesn't do anything but take up a Materia Slot. However, if leveled up to lv 2, it unlocks Curaja (FullCure), which heals a character to full HP. Probably worthwhile, if we ever get it to level up! I slap it on Yuffie for the time being.
Speaking of Cosmo Canyon, Meteor has been rough on the locals. For all that they are closest to the Planet, wisest in its Study, the closest to having faith in the world, Meteor has shaken everyone. The gatekeeper tells us all the children are too scared to even go outside; the visitor who'd come here to hear about the Study of Planet Life and see the observatory is despondent, the subject feeling meaningless to him now, and is planning to go back to his homeland for these final days.
Some of the locals do find comfort in the Study, but it's a kind of philosophical comfort in the greater scope of life rather than true reassurance about their safety. Elder Bughe muses about "Living with the Planet, dying with the Planet," but admits himself that he's drowning his fears in booze, and that when he thinks about the children whose futures will be cut short, these philosophical muses seem little, and he wonders how they, at least, might be saved. Elder Hargo, meanwhile, is completing his 'Book of Stars,' which he intends to be pretty much what the ruins of the Ancients were to us - something that some distant people might use to learn that we, too, once lived.
Man, this is grim. The way the game is first setting up, then deliberately undercutting the whole 'life is ephemeral and something will live past us' really hits, especially the part where a drunk Bughe tries to muse about the poetic idea of humanity living and dying with its Planet only to bring up the children, who are far, far removed from such lofty ideas. They're just scared, and soon, they'll be dead.
It's weird that this sequence in which nothing has actually happened yet (beyond the Weapon attacks, I suppose, though we've only seen one so far), manages to sell the existential dread of Meteor better than the World of Ruin, where the apocalypse had actually happened.
Maybe that's the key. Because the World of Ruin has had its apocalypse happen but needed the story to keep going anyway, it couldn't be as desperate and sad as the concept called for, whereas FF7 can be as bleak as it likes because it's only talking about a potential future in which everyone is dead.
Bugenhagen doesn't have much to say beyond being another person who points us to the Southern Islands to find Cloud, adding in a grim warning that nobody could survive being put through that much spiritual energy. Sadly, Nanaki doesn't get any unique dialogue for this.
The Materia clerk having an existential crisis over having wasted his life is a big mood, though.
Oh, and we briefly zip by Rocket Town - like in Cosmo Canyon there are a couple of unique items including a new armor called, for no reason I can explain, the "Fourth Bracelet," but the townsfolk dialogues is much the same; Shela just wonders aloud what will happen and there's no particular dialogue for having Cid in the party. And checking Gongaga, there isn't any new dialogue with Zack's parents with Tifa as party leader and both Cloud and Aerith gone. Damn, I really thought I might have struck upon something there.
And… that's it. We've completed our tour of the world (minus the places I was too lazy to check out). There were decent enough rewards for revisiting these places, and the mood it establishes is strong, but all in all it's still just the same towns with updated dialogue.
So let's head to the Southern Islands and find out what's there!
As a side note, in this entire time I haven't had a single random encounter.
This is weird, because at least in the Pixel Remasters, the previous games were pretty drastic about enforcing encounter rates; I don't know if they 'counted steps' exactly, but several times I was assaulted by random encounters five steps outside a town or inside a cave even after reloading multiple times for unrelated reasons because the game decided my time was up and I wasn't getting away with "random" rates. In every game it's most noticeable with the airship, where going a particularly lengthy distance on foot without encountering enemies before boarding it almost guarantees that you will be attacked the second you set foot anywhere, whether it's in the toughest dungeon in the game or in the starting goblin areas. Maybe that's Pixel Remaster-exclusive tech, maybe it's how the old games worked, I don't know.
By contrast FF7 seems to forget how long I've been on foot each time I take the Highwind up, and as a result, despite landing a little ways from each town and walking there a dozen times now, I just… haven't met any opponent. Even here, for this new jungle village, I have to actually have Tifa pace around a little so she can get at least one fight.
These bugs are easily destroyed anyway, and as I've said multiple times, I don't much care for overworld encounters as gameplay content. But in order for Tifa to get some proper punches in as team leader and catch up to Cloud a little in levels, we're going to have to count on the new setpiece or dungeon that is definitely coming up next!
This place, it turns out, is Mideel, a 'hot springs town' populated mostly by old people living out their retirement, who've been largely preserved from the chaos and strife outside - whether it's Meteor or Shinra before that, they've only vaguely heard of troubles and are content with their peace.
It's a small town, using mostly wooden construction, with a kind of rural living feel to it. In the local item shop, we meet a curious white chocobo chick:
This is a piece of totally missable content that, in most circumstances, I would have flown right past by and have my readers go "Ooooomiiii you missed the white chocobo's unique item ooooooomiiiiiii" but, exceptionally, I lucked into the right set of triggers? In order for the chick to take an interest in Tifa, we need to have in our inventory "Mimett Greens," which are one of the chocobo-luring items, and specifically the most expensive of said items. I bought one Mimett Greens ages ago for 1,500, which was not an inconsiderable sum at the time, purely on the basis of "if I ever suddenly need a chocobo-luring plant, better have the best variant on me just in case."
Having the Mimett Greens on us causes the Chocobo to take an interest. While the chocobo is eating, Tifa finds it adorable and wants to tickle it; we have a long list of options of where to tickle it, and it so happens that having revisited the Chocobo Farm as part of my grand tour, Choco Billy's daughter told me that white chocobos like to be tickled behind the ears and behind the ears only and hate it everywhere else. So we scratch him behind the ears, and the little creature reacts by giving us…
…a new Materia.
The "Contain" Materia. Which, despite its name, only loosely deals with 'containment' spells (specifically Freeze and Break, which are high-damage Ice and Earth spells that have a chance to Freeze or Petrify respectively, while Tornado is a high-damage wind spell with a chance to Confuse), but which is also, as you can see in this screenshot,
The Flare Materia.
They put Flare on a hidden missable Materia handed by a chocobo chick in an isolated small town that only interacts with you based on a secret trigger.
This game is obtuse in a way no prior game has been, goddamn. Unlocking Ragnarok feels positively easy compared to this nonsense.
Also, as usual with Materia, "obtaining the Flare Materia" doesn't actually mean we've unlocked Flare, or, indeed, that we will ever unlock Flare in this run. It has taken this long to (checking my Materia briefly) reach lv 4 out of 5 on a single Restore Materia and 3 out of 4 on a single Fire Materia. We'll almost definitely have at least one mastered Materia by the end of the game, but unless I take deliberate pains to grind, I don't think Contain will be one of them. I mean, Flare is lv 4, on a Materia we literally just unlocked.
I will still equip it on a character, because Freeze and Break have finally solved the previous games' conundrum of "Break would be really good if anything that actually mattered was weak to it" by making the instant Freeze/Petrify a rider effect on what is, effectively, Ice4/Earth4/Aero4 or "Blizzaja"/"Earthaja"/"Aeroja" a more powerful variant of the max-level spell available on the standard Ice and Earth Materia (There is no Wind Materia, the Aero line are only available as Enemy Skills). So that's good! We will be using it.
There's other stuff in town (apparently the weapons I was missing for Tifa notably) but we won't be seeing it yet, as our next interaction will precipitate the next stretch of the plot. There's a stray dog in the street, and upon interacting with it, Tifa shows that not only is she caring about animals (as we saw in the chocobo chick scene), but also that she's, huh, prone to projection a little.
Tifa: "What's the matter? Are you all alone?"
Tifa: "You got lost didn't you? Separated from someone you love? Silly thing…"
Tifa. Tifa this isn't about the dog, Tifa you need to talk to someone-
Anyway as she is petting the dog she overhears a conversation between villagers.
Townsfolk: "I guess it's been about a week now since he washed up here on the shore… Poor pokey-headed young thing…"
Townsfolk: "It was really sad… But weird. He was holding this really long sword. I dunno. The whole thing feels unlucky to me. But the amazing thing was those weird blue eyes…"
Tifa: "Wha!?"
Okay, I do have to admit I laughed a little at these guys going "LET ME RECITE ALOUD THE LIST OF CLOUD'S MOST NOTABLE VISUAL TRAITS SO THAT ANYONE EAVESDROPPING MIGHT IDENTIFY HIM FROM THIS CONVERSATION ALONE."
Tifa rushes to talk to the townsfolk, asking for more details about the person they were just talking about, and they explain that a week ago a villager found the young man washed up on the shore a little ways down the coast.
God. He really did sink into the Lifestream at the North Pole, got dragged the entire way across the globe, emerged through an underwater vent and and floated up to the surface to wash ashore. I don't care what state Cloud's in, that he survived at all is a genuine miracle.
Even now that she's emotionally invested in Cloud and the group's fate, Yuffie still has the most tactless way of going about celebrating it. I love her.
Tifa is extremely excited by these news, to the point that the villagers are mildly put off as they point her towards the village's clinic, and Tifa races there shouting Cloud's name so fast even Yuffie and Vincent are left in the dust shouting to her to wait for them.
…
Honestly it's kind of interesting how Tifa was self-effacing and too insecure to voice her feelings as long as Aerith was around and she and Cloud and were growing closer but a combo of Aerith's death and Cloud himself nearly kicking it as her now commandeering airships and racing 100m sprints shouting "WHERE IS MY FUTURE BOYFRIEND."
Tifa: "Cloud!?"
Doctor: "Hey! You barged in here like Meteor was crashing down or something."
Tifa: "I'm sorry… But I heard a friend of mine was here…"
Doctor: "A friend? Oh… That young fellow!? Don't worry. He's next door. But his condition isn't good."
'You barged in here like Meteor was crashing down,' holy shit doc, too soon!? Well, in any case, Tifa is directed to the other side of the room, where… Well…
It is Cloud, but… He's not looking good. Seating in a wheelchair, he shows some level of response to stimuli, but he doesn't talk and doesn't seem to be fully cognizant of his surroundings or who is talking to him, and expresses himself only in incoherent moans.
Tifa, who had first had thought he was fine, is shocked, and asked what happened to him; the doctor's answer is… "Advanced Mako poisoning."
Hmm. We know overexposure to Mako can be a dangerous thing, from the Nibelheim Flashback and Hojo experiments, but this is usually paired with obvious physical mutations. Mental side-effects always come with it, typically in the form of the mind degenerating to a 'monstrous' state, but… I think this is the first time we see a case of overexposure to Mako leaving the body intact, but the mind too damaged to function at all.
Doctor: "It appears this young man's been exposed to high levels of Mako energy for an extended period of time. He probably has no idea who or where he is now… Poor fellow, he can't even speak. He's literally miles away from us. Some place far away where no one's ever been… All alone…"
Tifa: "Doctor!!"
Yuffie: "You lyin' or what!?"
Vincent: "..."
Yeah, I'm on Tifa's side here, it's kind of fucked up to talk about the patient in front of his friends like that. Although, it's such a strangely particular description. Miles away? Some place where no one's ever been? Almost as if he were saying that Cloud's mind remains intact somewhere, lost in some great distance, lost in some kind of darkness, but still the same in its isolation. I'm not sure how he could know that, and it's probably just a figure of speech, but… Probably related to where the plot is going with Cloud, at the same time.
Tifa kneels in front of Cloud, pleading to him, but he doesn't look at her, his eyes wandering to the ceiling then his head slumping down, deaf to her supplications; the doctor, seeing that this is a difficult moment for her, takes everyone else out of the room, leaving Tifa alone with Cloud, for all the good that does.
It's… genuinely kind of a difficult scene to watch! I always have a hard time with characters suffering severe cognitive decline (however temporary in the grand course of the plot) and things that are purposefully designed to evoke senility or dementia even if they're, in this case, a fantasy condition induced by magic juice affecting a 21-year old. Tifa embraces Cloud's knees, weeping into his lap about how she's "made it this far believing in the memories we shared," and that finding him like this, after all this search, is too cruel.
In a sense, by trying to believe in a past that didn't fit, by hanging onto those impossible memories to guide her back to Cloud, Tifa somehow managed to gaslit herself. Her character arc really has a kind of tragedy to it. This whole thing is sad.
ALTHOUGH.
Considering that controlled Mako exposure literally makes super-soldiers and that Cloud's current predicament is a mental impairment from too much Mako exposure, if this was an anime rather than a JRPG I would estimate the odds that once he's recovered Cloud discovers that his trip through the Lifestream infused him with a massive superboost from a 'Mako overload' that leaves him able to Dragon Punch Sephiroth to be about 90%. The JRPG genre makes it trickier because the game can't easily hand out power boosts like that since it's already so wedded to stats, level progression, and Materias as it means of advance, so I estimate the odds that we're at least told Cloud received such a power boost narratively to be about… 50%, give or take.
Outside, the rest of the cast are talking to the doctor.
Yuffie: "Hey Doc, is he okay? Is he gonna heal?"
Doctor: "I'll say it again, he's got Mako poisoning. I've never seen a case like this. An immense amount of Mako-drenched knowledge was infused into his brain. It's a miracle he survived! No normal human could have."
Yuffie: "No lie. After fallin' head first into the Lifestream."
Doctor: "But remember, the light of hope can be found anywhere. If you give up hope… What will happen to him?"
Yuffie: "Yeah, that's right. Besides, WE'RE here for him. He's gotta get better!"
[Tifa comes out.]
Tifa: "..."
Yuffie: "You okay, Tifa?"
Tifa: "Yes… I'm sorry to worry you all. There's something I want to say to you…"
…it's genuinely fascinating to me that, having rolled into this town with Tifa and the two optional characters, the game put pretty much every non-Tifa dialogue (including the responses to the Doctor while Tifa isn't on-screen) on Yuffie, while Vincent literally doesn't say anything but stands around grimly silent. Like, this is almost completely accidental because it's just a factor of which character I ended up liking the most in my party, but Yuffie sort of developed an arc from 'total shitkid actively planning to con the party without remorse' to 'genuinely emotionally invested in her friends, their quest to save the world, and Cloud's health,' being the one to say that "WE'RE here for him," so he has to get better, and it makes sense for her to have arrived at this point because I have been taking her along almost constantly so she's had enough secondary dialogue to sorta see this arc, even if it's blurry, in progress, whereas if I had never taken Yuffie along as a party member and had jumped straight from Wutai to here and taken her for that specific scene, it would come off as completely out of character.
…in fact, couldn't it be possible to have Yuffie have never met Cloud by delaying recruiting her until after Cloud leaves the party, then running into her and recruiting her with Tifa as party leader, then do Wutai, then meet Cloud?
An unlikely scenario but just wild to think about.
Anyway, all this to say, there are probably emergent character arcs just like Yuffie's that might have arisen if I had landed on other characters as my favorite to take along most of the time, but it'd be impossible to experience them all in a single playthrough - but this one, at least, I enjoy. It's strong.
Vincent meanwhile is sadly underperforming. There are in-character reasons for it but dude's default reaction to anything happening is the dramatic "..." of the character who is watching things happen and refusing to emote.
Also, "an immense amount of Mako-drenched knowledge was infused into his brain"? Yeah, zero doubt: Cloud might not come out of this with a power-up in the most literal sense but the odds that he'll come out of it suddenly capable of hearing the voice of the Ancients and of guiding us to the path Aerith didn't have time to show us just skyrocketed.
Tifa asks Yuffie and Vincent alone back into the clinic (poor doctor and nurse got kicked out of their own building) and confesses something.
Tifa: "I don't care about anything else, only Cloud… I… want to be by his side…"
Yuffie: "Then you gotta do it. You gotta be true to yourself."
Vincent: "Do what you wish."
Tifa: "I'm sorry, everyone… Especially now…"
Yuffie: "No big, no big. I'll pop in again later."
Vincent: "Take care of him."
Tifa: "Right…"
Yuffie: "Hey, shouldn't we be gettin' back to the Highwind?"
[Scene transition.]
…
…….
……….
I'M SORRY?!?
ALL THIS FOR THAT!?
The game dangles "Tifa party leader" in front of me… It introduces some genuinely compelling character conflict for her, recontextualizes her earlier actions and characterization in fascinating way, throws in a few twists of the knife, some guilt and some stuff to make up for, pushes her into the awkward and bittersweet role of leader in Cloud's absence…
And all of this only lasts as long as it takes for me to revisit previous towns for some new dialogue text from townsfolk and she's gone before we've had a single setpiece or boss fight or dungeon or anything with her as leader? And the way she's taken out of the party is "she finds Cloud again and decides that she doesn't care about anything more than she does about Cloud so she'll let the group try and find a way to save the world on their own while tending to him?"
I. Legitimately. Feel cheated. Perhaps that's on me; perhaps I expected too much from this cool new development. But holy shit I feel robbed. Maybe, if my expectations had been different, I would feel like Tifa making the choice to focus on caring about Cloud, on nursing him back to health, would fit into her characterization as a sweet, nurturing person, but… Holy shit right now my mind wants to jump straight to "there is a line between 'it's really neat how the Strength-focused punch girl has a paradoxically sweet and caring personality to the point that she's too non-confrontational for her own good' and 'it's time for the buff girl to settle down and adopt Acceptable Female Occupation #3 and become a nurse to an ailing male character' and you crossed it." Uncharitable reading, probably!
I'm so mad.
"Well, Omi," I hear some of you say, maybe, "that's a little harsh. We haven't seen what comes after this scene, give it a few minutes, maybe. We don't even know who the new leader of the group will be."
Well yes you see maybe I am projecting from the future back onto this scene. Because let's see. Now that Cloud and Tifa are gone and Aerith is dead, there are only six characters left in the party. These include:
…of course, laying it out like that, it's pretty obvious. Barret has been with the group for the longest, Cloud and Tifa joined him in the first place rather than the other way around, he's had a lot of time and opportunity to reflect on his character and motivation, and so on. And indeed, he's the one who leads the next cutscene, facing the Highwind's bay, and wondering where to go next.
The fact that Cid is literally asleep on the floor is a funny way to reference how much impact he's had on the plot lately. You'd almost forget he was in the party at all!
Barret: "What're we gonna do now! What can WE do?"
[He turns around to look at everyone.]
Barret: "Huh? Ain't there nothin' we can do? An' don' go tellin' us to wait for Cloud to get better."
Cait Sith: "Oh, I've got some news."
Barret: "Yeah, what!? That you a spy?"
Cait Sith: [Approaching.] "Yeah… I already told you I was." [He turns to the group.] Both Gya ha ha and Kya ha ha are up to something. Wanna eavesdrop?"
…and there the game is finally making me like Cait Sith. The combo of clarifying 'everyone knows Cait Sith used to be a Shinra spy and looks askance at him even after he redeemed himself by saving them at Junon, because that's still a difficult thing to rebuild trust after such a betrayal,' Cait Sith referring to Scarlet and Heidegger as 'Gya ha ha' and 'Kya ha ha,' their respective Evil Laughs, and Cait Sith going 'by the way guys spy comms go both ways, who wants a direct in on the Shinra meeting room?' is exactly where I want that character to be. Real ups and downs in this update.
Rufus: "Now then… We're faced with two issues. 1. Destroy Meteor. 2. Remove the barrier around North Cave and defeat Sephiroth. Any ideas?"
Heidegger: "Gya haah haah hah hah! The first problem's already solved! Meteor will soon be smashed to bits! The plan is already in motion. We are collecting Huge Materia from each region."
Rufus: "What?"
Scarlet: "Huge Materia is a high-density, special type of Materia made through a special compression process in Mako reactors. The energy extracted from it is 330 times the strength of normal Materia. Kya, ha, ha! How about that!? We will gather all the Huge Materia together and ram it into Meteor. That will cause a huge explosion, reducing Meteor literally to bits!!"
Rufus: "You're going to ram Meteor? Do you think we have the technology to do it?"
Scarlet: "First things first! Right now, we've got to collect Huge Materia from each area."
Heidegger: "We've already collected Huge Materia from Nibelheim. All that's left are Corel and Fort Condor. I've already dispatched troops to Corel. Gyaa haa ha ha!"
…
Alexa, when did Armageddon come out?
…for real???
Man, what was on the mind of late 90s writers for all of them to come up with "We must NUKE THE METEORITE to save the planet!" independently at around the same time?
Anyway, there are serious concerns with 'blowing up a meteorite' as a defensive strategy, namely that you're turning a singular impact into dozens or hundreds or thousands of distributed impacts across a vast area, but like, it's not inconceivable at all that, however awful the shrapnel rain of meteorites might be, it's still better than an impact that ends life as we know it on the planet. Ideally you'd try anything else instead, but, well, when you're Shinra and all you have is a Materia-shaped hammer… Incidentally I guess this is the payoff to both the Fort Condor 'storyline' (I am using my words loosely here) and the Huge Materia setup in Gongaga, so that's neat!
Earlier when I said that Shinra would be content with the world ending as long as they kept control to the end, I should have said that of course they would still actively attempt to thwart the apocalypse because they would all still prefer 'being alive' to 'not being alive,' it was just sort of kind of implicit to me but as I reflect back I didn't really say that. I think Shinra, specifically, is going to oppose the end of the world as hard as they can as long as they oppose it on their own terms, struggling to the end to maintain both absolute control over human society and opposition to Sephiroth and Meteor. They'll try to kill the godlike white-haired bishie, of course they will… They are just so fundamentally limited in their vision and willingness to let go off power that they won't be able to, not on their own.
…with that said, do we want to stop them?
Like, do we have any actual reason to not let them grab all that Huge Materia and try to blow up Meteor?
Barret: "Corel! What else can they do to Corel!?"
Red: "And the Huge Materia… You mean the Huge Materia, don't you? I've heard about it. When our small Materia nears the larger one, there should be some reaction. I'm certain of it. That's why we're using the Materia power in our fight…"
Barret: "Can't let Shinra get a hold of the Huge Materia! Besides, when Cloud gets back, I wanna show him this Huge Materia. He's gonna be shocked."
Wait, but - can't we?
Like, I don't need much, here! Just throw in a comment about how 'Shinra's plan is reckless and will bombard the Planet with meteor shards and kill almost everyone except them, we have to stop them', or something like that! Anything that isn't "We can't let Shinra hurt Corel again (by seizing a Materia that Corel isn't actually using, in order to enact a plan to save the world from Meteor that nobody is challenging as unworkable)." Like… Literally just throw in a textual indication that their plan is bad and that's (part of) why we won't let them enact it, as opposed to… 'Just because.'
Ah, well.
At least we have some Barret content coming up, so this is nice. He even admitted that he actually cares about Cloud and is trusting him to come back, which is a lot from the big guy, and of course Cait Sith immediately needles him about it.
Cait Sith: "So, what are you saying, Barret? Even though you're always knocking him, you really want Cloud to return."
Barret: "I ain't sayin' nothin' 'bout nothin'. So just… shut your face!"
Barret: "Every group's gotta have a leader. An' that's me!"
Barret: "Or at least I wanna be… But I ain't cut out to be no leader. I never knew that till lately. That's what it is."
Wait, what do you mean, you're not cut out to be a leader, Barret.
Okay, okay, I am still having the Remake goggles on, I am still struggling to not be swept in Barret's incredible charisma, he's made some character conflict fairly explicit - is this about Dyne and his realizations in Cosmo Canyon? I mean… I guess there hasn't been much Barret-specific story since then to help him resolve that issue, but… From there to him actively throwing away the title of leader.
I mean, I guess it falls upon Nanaki? But he's a teenager. Technically. In dog years. Though I guess by JRPG standards it's not that exceptional, right? I mean, the alternative would be…
Cid: [Waking up suddenly] "Wha? What's goin' on?"
Barret: "You've been chosen to be the new leader."
Cid: "Pain in the ass. Forget it."
Barret: "But for us to fight, we gotta have Highwind, and you. We need it to save the Planet. An' who's runnin' this ship? You!"
Barret: "That's why you're our new leader. Ain't no one else can do it."
Cid: "Hmm… this ship's gonna save the Planet, huh? Ain't that gonna be just a little tough?"
Cid: "Oh man, stab me in the heart. I'm a man, too! Okay, I'll do it! Everyone, follow me!"
Barret: "Alright, now here's the first job. The Operation Room's waiting for you!"
Cid: "Yeah!!"'
I'M SORRY?? CID???
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
THE GAME DANGLED PARTY LEADER TIFA IN FRONT OF ME FOR LIKE HALF AN UPDATE AND THEN THE MOMENT THE NEXT PLOT BEAT ABOUT A SHINRA THREAT HAPPENS IT KICKS HER OUT TO BE A STAY AT HOME NURSE AND REPLACES HER WITH CID? CID!?
ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH FINAL FANTASY VII FOR TODAY
THANKS FOR READING
NEXT TIME: I TAKE MY FRUSTRATION OUT ON SHINRA GOONS
Also, we have a bitchin' new World Theme to go along with it, all sinister and shit, I love it.
Does that make FF7 the first Final Fantasy to have a (temporary) female lead? People kept telling me VI didn't really count because it had an ensemble cast instead, much to think about 🤔 Well, I'm sure this all won't be just a pointless sleight of hand.
We've also unlocked the Highwind, which means we're free to go anywhere. With caveats. Emphasis on the caveats.
So here's the thing: Unlike the Pixel Remasters of previous games, VII's map is inconvenient in that it doesn't label map locations and doesn't differentiate between visited and unvisited locations. The map is also just really low-res and only visible in transparency across the overworld screen. With all that said, and doing some counting by hand, it turns out we have visited all but one location currently indicated on the map.
Which makes this feel somewhat less like 'let's expand our horizons' and more 'you can revisit places you were to previously and also visit literally the only place not yet explored.' Feels like my hand's being held a bit. Of course, the locations displayed as dots on the map are not the only ones that exist, and I assume we'll find new ones later - and there's also at least one that's 'hidden' in that it doesn't show up on the map, though we can find it easily enough with some buzzing around the North Pole.
…is that an Ancient?
It's using the same model as the Ancients in the Temple, though seen from closer. And it's a lot more articulate. This being has lost most of its memories from sheer isolation over time, but it eventually remembers that its name is the 'Chocobo Sage.'
I am starting to think calling Aerith the 'Last Ancient' was something of an exaggeration. Granted, these spirit forms aren't all there, but I'm sure with enough shaking by the shoulders he will eventually spout something we can actually use against Sephiroth. What's that, Tifa? Not inclined to violence against the elderly? See, this is why Jenova is winning.
Anyway, we can buy Nuts and Greens from him, which are items that only have relevance to the chocobo minigames if we ever get into them. He doesn't remember the name of the green chocobo in the stable near him, but talking to the fluffy bird has him happily 'Wark!' and give us a 4th Enemy Skill Materia.
We're never going to use it, but that's nice. Good bird.
Attempting to enter the North Crater gets us knocked back by a force field.
So now we'll just be visiting some old locations! Time to do a tour of the world! See how everything's change! Taste the despair in the air and compare it side by side with VI's World of Ruin! Starting… with Midgar!
[The gate to Midgar is locked. Sad trumpet sound, booing from the crowd]
…starting with Kalm, the first post-Midgar town we ever visited!
It seems the game might have anticipated I would do something like that, as the first NPC we encounter is also the one who gives us immediate clues as to where to look for Cloud, somewhere near the Southern islands. Which are incidentally the last unexplored dot on the map, so where we were going anyway. But patience.
Everyone in town has updated dialogue to reflect their take on the giant meteor hanging in the sky and slowly approaching.
The kind of reactions we get vary wildly from townsfolk to townsfolk, representing a really interesting buffet of human reaction to looming disaster. Some are in denial; an old-timer scoffs at the idea that something like 'a meteor falls and kills everyone' could happen as just childish, despite the evidence before his very eyes. Others put their trust in Shinra, believing that they'll save everyone. Others aren't so confident and wonder what will happen to them, struggling to imagine the scope of the disaster. Others yet are in full doomer mode, saying we're all going to die. And others, finally, just want to stop talking about it, because there's nothing they can do and it only makes them feel bad.
It's… honestly a pretty accurate snapshot of human reactions to climate change, only missing the guys who are saying that the meteor literally doesn't exist or hoping that it specifically blows up the liberal elites in Costa del Sol. But I can't blame the writers for not being quite that thoroughly disillusioned.
Wait, no, there's one guy saying that because Midgar is a "Mako Metropolis," it will be totally safe from Meteor, which is close enough to "Global warming? Have you seen the snow outside? Ho ho ho!" for my purposes.
Other than that updated dialogue, not much to be found here other than this information about Cloud, and also someone saying that Shinra is "taking its biggest artillery from Junon and other facilities and gathering it in Midgar to fight Meteor and Weapon."
Hmm. Maybe Shinra did listen to my previous comment on how if the Junon Gun had wings it might be able to fight the Weapons. There's definitely… Well, while this is partially understandable from a basic 'how do we we practically accomplish the concentration of forces necessary to destroy such monsters as the Weapon,' thematically it says something that Shinra's reaction to the threat is to pull everything back to Midgar, the only place that's ever mattered to them, and leaving the rest of the world out to dry.
I appreciate the game's dedication to capturing a whole spectrum of 'technically understands the apocalypse is coming but is unable to come to terms with its scope' human reactions, like this woman wondering where to stash her cash for the end of the world.
This old man in Kalm is saying he is going on a journey to pray for the souls of his friends who've died, and makes reference to three items he would need on his journey, a Guidebook, a Desert Rose, and an Earth Harp, which I guess indicates some kind of sidequest we should keep in mind.
Well, that's all for Kalm - there's no new equipment in the stores or anything so let's head out. How about we visit the next place we found on our journey through the game? The Chocobo Charm!
…yeah, we're being introduced to the Chocobo Raising minigame. Oh boy.
We are not touching this today. But, to at least cover the presentation by Choco Bill and his son, we are offered the opportunity to rent up to 6 chocobo stables for 10,000 gil per stable, then we have to capture the chocobos ourselves, feed them which will impact their abilities, and if we find male and female chocobos that like each other, produce new chocobos that will inherit the traits of their parents.
I would just like to emphasize there for a second: We are being offered to raise multiple generations of Chocobos, while running around trying to save the world from Meteor.
Speaking of nothing in particular, I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 ever since patch 2.0 massively improved the game, and one of the major issues hanging around the writing of the game as a whole is that it is simultaneously 'a story about how your runner makes a name for themselves in Night City picking up gigs in an open world and slowly building up a rep and making lasting connections with people' and 'THE BIOCHIP IN YOUR BRAIN IS KILLING YOU YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS TO LIVE YOU ARE DYING RIGHT NOW YOU NEED TO FIND A SOLUTION OR YOU WILL DIE" and those two just, don't gel.
At least the Chocobo thing is a completely optional minigame, though!
We do a brief detour by Fort Condor, where we're asked if we want to take part in the next RTS minigame, at which point I laugh nervously, throw a bunch of gil into the fighters' face to distract them and escape through a Yuffie smoke bomb. Nothing else to see there, thank god!
Heading to Junon, there's an old lady there who informs us that while the [Sapphire] Weapon was defeated, there are four more. I… was not expecting this! I thought there had been specifically four in total! It's possible I misread the FMV, though. If we tell the villagers Cloud is missing and enquire about the Lifestream, they point us to Priscilla, that girl Cloud saved earlier in the game (she also doesn't seem to recognize Tifa at all, which is a bit odd).
Her… dolphin friend told her that the Lifestream runs below the 'three-taloned island' in the south. Sure, why not. That dolphin goes places, man. Priscilla implores us to help Cloud, as he is very important to her. It's a sweet scene.
In Costa del Sol, we learn that Gold Saucer is closed. Which means… no going through the Battle Square with Tifa. Dammit. Why even live?
Costa del Sol is having a… Costa del Sol reaction to the apocalypse. Mainly, while the local innkeeper is just lying in bed depressed, everyone else is settling on some 'let's just party until the end of the world'; drowning the despair in cocktails, getting in 'one last vacation,' drinking at the bar, sunbathing… Well, it's not 'partying' in the sense that there is very little wild hedonism on display, it's more just relaxing and drinking and enjoying the sun and trying not to think about it all. Some wax philosophical about how Meteor is, in a way, like the stars of their youth burning out, while the guy with the seaplane is confident he can just escape the disaster by flying (and musing that he's not sure there'll be any land left for him to land on). The most proactive of the guys here are the surfer bros who want to beat the toughest waves in Costa del Sol that they haven't gotten a chance at yet before it's all over. All in all, very appropriate to the vibe of the place, IMO.
Costa del Sol also has some new mechanical unlocks, so that's nice; we can buy some new weapons!
…unfortunately and somewhat inexplicably, said weapons don't include anything for Tifa, and Tifa specifically?? There's new stuff for everyone else except, for some reason, Tifa and Cid. Frustrating, although, well, it doesn't matter. You'll see what I mean.
Wutai is similar, but not identical to these other places; here the mood there leans far more towards 'depression' and 'despair' than towards the kind of denial of hope in Shinra that we see displayed elsewhere, which makes sense given Wutai's circumstances; the War had already dealt a massive blow to the national psyche, and unlike others they don't think of Shinra as providing them with prosperity and relying on them for safety, so they're kind of just… morose.
They're also, maybe, the first place in which we see people practice actual living religion?
Yutai townsfolks are in the temple next to Lord Godo's house, offering prayers and supplication before the statue of one of their gods.
Again, there's been a kind of undercurrent of religion having been abandoned in the game that's present in both Midgar and Wutai for different reasons (modernization in Midgar, war trauma in Wutai), but it's often hard to differentiate it from the general lack of overt religiosity that's a background in most Japanese works - even a lot of manga or anime with clear Buddhist or Shinto themes rarely feature a visible focus on the practice of religion. But even if it's understated in FF7, it's there, and the fact that some of the Wutaians are returning to religion and praying to the gods for help in the face of disaster, whereas the people in the Shinra sphere of influence are placing their faith in Shinra instead, is notable.
The only happy guy in Wutai right now is the senile old man who thinks Meteor is the moon coming out at noon and the great panic is everyone celebrating that auspicious celestial event, lmao.
I am actually wondering if that woman's faux-profound wisdom isn't meant to be deliberately poking fun at Wise Old Mentor characters in both Asian media and Western depictions of Asian characters. Some real dril tweet energy from her. "'The wise woman bowed his head solemnly and spoke. 'there's actually zero difference between meteor killing everyone and it not doing that. you imbecile. you fucking moron.'"
Also we can now fly over the peaks of Nibelheim, which is fun!
The main change in Nibelheim is that all of the Copies are gone, and that everyone is in such a state of despair that they no longer bother being secretive about their working for Shinra, instead openly asking what's the point of keeping up this charade and asking what Shinra is even doing. Also, if we head for Tifa's house, she has this strange line:
Which unlocks a hidden compartment and reveals another Elemental Materia (frankly, at this point we have more than we need, but still, neat).
But, hm. If she's saying "Cloud was playing" - she's obviously referring to Cloud's account of playing the piano back when he was telling them about it in Kalm; an account she knows can't be the truth, and yet… She speaks as if that particular detail lingered in her mind, perhaps an inconsistency with the story she now knows, perhaps a hint at something else?
Well, that's it for Nibelheim. We've kinda lost the plot on the whole 'retrace our steps' though. Retracing quickly back to Corell, the locals' general poverty-induced despair is now mingled with Meteor-induced despair for a special brand of misery for the people who already have nothing but their lives to begin with and are now threatened with losing even that; grim, but not much else to explore there.
Most of the changes we can find across the world are 'flavor text,' changes in the dialogue of the townsfolk, rather than 'world state' changes like in the World of Ruin - Meteor's arrival has changed how people behave and talk, but the game doesn't seem to be hiding an entire second map with places relocated and towns changed.
Quite possibly this is because it would be impossible for the CD storage to handle and they simply can't do a more radical change than text edits and a new skybox. There are some world state changes, but they're very small, in the forms of places that were previously inaccessible to us now being open to reward the thorough player or the player with a good memory who remembers stuff that was previously there but out of reach. For instance, in Cosmo Canyon, there's now a path open to behind the counter of the weapon store clerk that allows us to enter his room, which has some valuable stuff indeed in it:
The 'Full Cure' Materia is unique in being a Magic Materia that doesn't have a spell by default; by default it doesn't do anything but take up a Materia Slot. However, if leveled up to lv 2, it unlocks Curaja (FullCure), which heals a character to full HP. Probably worthwhile, if we ever get it to level up! I slap it on Yuffie for the time being.
Speaking of Cosmo Canyon, Meteor has been rough on the locals. For all that they are closest to the Planet, wisest in its Study, the closest to having faith in the world, Meteor has shaken everyone. The gatekeeper tells us all the children are too scared to even go outside; the visitor who'd come here to hear about the Study of Planet Life and see the observatory is despondent, the subject feeling meaningless to him now, and is planning to go back to his homeland for these final days.
Some of the locals do find comfort in the Study, but it's a kind of philosophical comfort in the greater scope of life rather than true reassurance about their safety. Elder Bughe muses about "Living with the Planet, dying with the Planet," but admits himself that he's drowning his fears in booze, and that when he thinks about the children whose futures will be cut short, these philosophical muses seem little, and he wonders how they, at least, might be saved. Elder Hargo, meanwhile, is completing his 'Book of Stars,' which he intends to be pretty much what the ruins of the Ancients were to us - something that some distant people might use to learn that we, too, once lived.
Man, this is grim. The way the game is first setting up, then deliberately undercutting the whole 'life is ephemeral and something will live past us' really hits, especially the part where a drunk Bughe tries to muse about the poetic idea of humanity living and dying with its Planet only to bring up the children, who are far, far removed from such lofty ideas. They're just scared, and soon, they'll be dead.
It's weird that this sequence in which nothing has actually happened yet (beyond the Weapon attacks, I suppose, though we've only seen one so far), manages to sell the existential dread of Meteor better than the World of Ruin, where the apocalypse had actually happened.
Maybe that's the key. Because the World of Ruin has had its apocalypse happen but needed the story to keep going anyway, it couldn't be as desperate and sad as the concept called for, whereas FF7 can be as bleak as it likes because it's only talking about a potential future in which everyone is dead.
Bugenhagen doesn't have much to say beyond being another person who points us to the Southern Islands to find Cloud, adding in a grim warning that nobody could survive being put through that much spiritual energy. Sadly, Nanaki doesn't get any unique dialogue for this.
The Materia clerk having an existential crisis over having wasted his life is a big mood, though.
Oh, and we briefly zip by Rocket Town - like in Cosmo Canyon there are a couple of unique items including a new armor called, for no reason I can explain, the "Fourth Bracelet," but the townsfolk dialogues is much the same; Shela just wonders aloud what will happen and there's no particular dialogue for having Cid in the party. And checking Gongaga, there isn't any new dialogue with Zack's parents with Tifa as party leader and both Cloud and Aerith gone. Damn, I really thought I might have struck upon something there.
And… that's it. We've completed our tour of the world (minus the places I was too lazy to check out). There were decent enough rewards for revisiting these places, and the mood it establishes is strong, but all in all it's still just the same towns with updated dialogue.
So let's head to the Southern Islands and find out what's there!
As a side note, in this entire time I haven't had a single random encounter.
This is weird, because at least in the Pixel Remasters, the previous games were pretty drastic about enforcing encounter rates; I don't know if they 'counted steps' exactly, but several times I was assaulted by random encounters five steps outside a town or inside a cave even after reloading multiple times for unrelated reasons because the game decided my time was up and I wasn't getting away with "random" rates. In every game it's most noticeable with the airship, where going a particularly lengthy distance on foot without encountering enemies before boarding it almost guarantees that you will be attacked the second you set foot anywhere, whether it's in the toughest dungeon in the game or in the starting goblin areas. Maybe that's Pixel Remaster-exclusive tech, maybe it's how the old games worked, I don't know.
By contrast FF7 seems to forget how long I've been on foot each time I take the Highwind up, and as a result, despite landing a little ways from each town and walking there a dozen times now, I just… haven't met any opponent. Even here, for this new jungle village, I have to actually have Tifa pace around a little so she can get at least one fight.
These bugs are easily destroyed anyway, and as I've said multiple times, I don't much care for overworld encounters as gameplay content. But in order for Tifa to get some proper punches in as team leader and catch up to Cloud a little in levels, we're going to have to count on the new setpiece or dungeon that is definitely coming up next!
This place, it turns out, is Mideel, a 'hot springs town' populated mostly by old people living out their retirement, who've been largely preserved from the chaos and strife outside - whether it's Meteor or Shinra before that, they've only vaguely heard of troubles and are content with their peace.
It's a small town, using mostly wooden construction, with a kind of rural living feel to it. In the local item shop, we meet a curious white chocobo chick:
This is a piece of totally missable content that, in most circumstances, I would have flown right past by and have my readers go "Ooooomiiii you missed the white chocobo's unique item ooooooomiiiiiii" but, exceptionally, I lucked into the right set of triggers? In order for the chick to take an interest in Tifa, we need to have in our inventory "Mimett Greens," which are one of the chocobo-luring items, and specifically the most expensive of said items. I bought one Mimett Greens ages ago for 1,500, which was not an inconsiderable sum at the time, purely on the basis of "if I ever suddenly need a chocobo-luring plant, better have the best variant on me just in case."
Having the Mimett Greens on us causes the Chocobo to take an interest. While the chocobo is eating, Tifa finds it adorable and wants to tickle it; we have a long list of options of where to tickle it, and it so happens that having revisited the Chocobo Farm as part of my grand tour, Choco Billy's daughter told me that white chocobos like to be tickled behind the ears and behind the ears only and hate it everywhere else. So we scratch him behind the ears, and the little creature reacts by giving us…
…a new Materia.
The "Contain" Materia. Which, despite its name, only loosely deals with 'containment' spells (specifically Freeze and Break, which are high-damage Ice and Earth spells that have a chance to Freeze or Petrify respectively, while Tornado is a high-damage wind spell with a chance to Confuse), but which is also, as you can see in this screenshot,
The Flare Materia.
They put Flare on a hidden missable Materia handed by a chocobo chick in an isolated small town that only interacts with you based on a secret trigger.
This game is obtuse in a way no prior game has been, goddamn. Unlocking Ragnarok feels positively easy compared to this nonsense.
Also, as usual with Materia, "obtaining the Flare Materia" doesn't actually mean we've unlocked Flare, or, indeed, that we will ever unlock Flare in this run. It has taken this long to (checking my Materia briefly) reach lv 4 out of 5 on a single Restore Materia and 3 out of 4 on a single Fire Materia. We'll almost definitely have at least one mastered Materia by the end of the game, but unless I take deliberate pains to grind, I don't think Contain will be one of them. I mean, Flare is lv 4, on a Materia we literally just unlocked.
I will still equip it on a character, because Freeze and Break have finally solved the previous games' conundrum of "Break would be really good if anything that actually mattered was weak to it" by making the instant Freeze/Petrify a rider effect on what is, effectively, Ice4/Earth4/Aero4 or "Blizzaja"/"Earthaja"/"Aeroja" a more powerful variant of the max-level spell available on the standard Ice and Earth Materia (There is no Wind Materia, the Aero line are only available as Enemy Skills). So that's good! We will be using it.
There's other stuff in town (apparently the weapons I was missing for Tifa notably) but we won't be seeing it yet, as our next interaction will precipitate the next stretch of the plot. There's a stray dog in the street, and upon interacting with it, Tifa shows that not only is she caring about animals (as we saw in the chocobo chick scene), but also that she's, huh, prone to projection a little.
Tifa: "What's the matter? Are you all alone?"
Tifa: "You got lost didn't you? Separated from someone you love? Silly thing…"
Tifa. Tifa this isn't about the dog, Tifa you need to talk to someone-
Anyway as she is petting the dog she overhears a conversation between villagers.
Townsfolk: "I guess it's been about a week now since he washed up here on the shore… Poor pokey-headed young thing…"
Townsfolk: "It was really sad… But weird. He was holding this really long sword. I dunno. The whole thing feels unlucky to me. But the amazing thing was those weird blue eyes…"
Tifa: "Wha!?"
Okay, I do have to admit I laughed a little at these guys going "LET ME RECITE ALOUD THE LIST OF CLOUD'S MOST NOTABLE VISUAL TRAITS SO THAT ANYONE EAVESDROPPING MIGHT IDENTIFY HIM FROM THIS CONVERSATION ALONE."
Tifa rushes to talk to the townsfolk, asking for more details about the person they were just talking about, and they explain that a week ago a villager found the young man washed up on the shore a little ways down the coast.
God. He really did sink into the Lifestream at the North Pole, got dragged the entire way across the globe, emerged through an underwater vent and and floated up to the surface to wash ashore. I don't care what state Cloud's in, that he survived at all is a genuine miracle.
Even now that she's emotionally invested in Cloud and the group's fate, Yuffie still has the most tactless way of going about celebrating it. I love her.
Tifa is extremely excited by these news, to the point that the villagers are mildly put off as they point her towards the village's clinic, and Tifa races there shouting Cloud's name so fast even Yuffie and Vincent are left in the dust shouting to her to wait for them.
…
Honestly it's kind of interesting how Tifa was self-effacing and too insecure to voice her feelings as long as Aerith was around and she and Cloud and were growing closer but a combo of Aerith's death and Cloud himself nearly kicking it as her now commandeering airships and racing 100m sprints shouting "WHERE IS MY FUTURE BOYFRIEND."
Tifa: "Cloud!?"
Doctor: "Hey! You barged in here like Meteor was crashing down or something."
Tifa: "I'm sorry… But I heard a friend of mine was here…"
Doctor: "A friend? Oh… That young fellow!? Don't worry. He's next door. But his condition isn't good."
'You barged in here like Meteor was crashing down,' holy shit doc, too soon!? Well, in any case, Tifa is directed to the other side of the room, where… Well…
It is Cloud, but… He's not looking good. Seating in a wheelchair, he shows some level of response to stimuli, but he doesn't talk and doesn't seem to be fully cognizant of his surroundings or who is talking to him, and expresses himself only in incoherent moans.
Tifa, who had first had thought he was fine, is shocked, and asked what happened to him; the doctor's answer is… "Advanced Mako poisoning."
Hmm. We know overexposure to Mako can be a dangerous thing, from the Nibelheim Flashback and Hojo experiments, but this is usually paired with obvious physical mutations. Mental side-effects always come with it, typically in the form of the mind degenerating to a 'monstrous' state, but… I think this is the first time we see a case of overexposure to Mako leaving the body intact, but the mind too damaged to function at all.
Doctor: "It appears this young man's been exposed to high levels of Mako energy for an extended period of time. He probably has no idea who or where he is now… Poor fellow, he can't even speak. He's literally miles away from us. Some place far away where no one's ever been… All alone…"
Tifa: "Doctor!!"
Yuffie: "You lyin' or what!?"
Vincent: "..."
Yeah, I'm on Tifa's side here, it's kind of fucked up to talk about the patient in front of his friends like that. Although, it's such a strangely particular description. Miles away? Some place where no one's ever been? Almost as if he were saying that Cloud's mind remains intact somewhere, lost in some great distance, lost in some kind of darkness, but still the same in its isolation. I'm not sure how he could know that, and it's probably just a figure of speech, but… Probably related to where the plot is going with Cloud, at the same time.
Tifa kneels in front of Cloud, pleading to him, but he doesn't look at her, his eyes wandering to the ceiling then his head slumping down, deaf to her supplications; the doctor, seeing that this is a difficult moment for her, takes everyone else out of the room, leaving Tifa alone with Cloud, for all the good that does.
It's… genuinely kind of a difficult scene to watch! I always have a hard time with characters suffering severe cognitive decline (however temporary in the grand course of the plot) and things that are purposefully designed to evoke senility or dementia even if they're, in this case, a fantasy condition induced by magic juice affecting a 21-year old. Tifa embraces Cloud's knees, weeping into his lap about how she's "made it this far believing in the memories we shared," and that finding him like this, after all this search, is too cruel.
In a sense, by trying to believe in a past that didn't fit, by hanging onto those impossible memories to guide her back to Cloud, Tifa somehow managed to gaslit herself. Her character arc really has a kind of tragedy to it. This whole thing is sad.
ALTHOUGH.
Considering that controlled Mako exposure literally makes super-soldiers and that Cloud's current predicament is a mental impairment from too much Mako exposure, if this was an anime rather than a JRPG I would estimate the odds that once he's recovered Cloud discovers that his trip through the Lifestream infused him with a massive superboost from a 'Mako overload' that leaves him able to Dragon Punch Sephiroth to be about 90%. The JRPG genre makes it trickier because the game can't easily hand out power boosts like that since it's already so wedded to stats, level progression, and Materias as it means of advance, so I estimate the odds that we're at least told Cloud received such a power boost narratively to be about… 50%, give or take.
Outside, the rest of the cast are talking to the doctor.
Yuffie: "Hey Doc, is he okay? Is he gonna heal?"
Doctor: "I'll say it again, he's got Mako poisoning. I've never seen a case like this. An immense amount of Mako-drenched knowledge was infused into his brain. It's a miracle he survived! No normal human could have."
Yuffie: "No lie. After fallin' head first into the Lifestream."
Doctor: "But remember, the light of hope can be found anywhere. If you give up hope… What will happen to him?"
Yuffie: "Yeah, that's right. Besides, WE'RE here for him. He's gotta get better!"
[Tifa comes out.]
Tifa: "..."
Yuffie: "You okay, Tifa?"
Tifa: "Yes… I'm sorry to worry you all. There's something I want to say to you…"
…it's genuinely fascinating to me that, having rolled into this town with Tifa and the two optional characters, the game put pretty much every non-Tifa dialogue (including the responses to the Doctor while Tifa isn't on-screen) on Yuffie, while Vincent literally doesn't say anything but stands around grimly silent. Like, this is almost completely accidental because it's just a factor of which character I ended up liking the most in my party, but Yuffie sort of developed an arc from 'total shitkid actively planning to con the party without remorse' to 'genuinely emotionally invested in her friends, their quest to save the world, and Cloud's health,' being the one to say that "WE'RE here for him," so he has to get better, and it makes sense for her to have arrived at this point because I have been taking her along almost constantly so she's had enough secondary dialogue to sorta see this arc, even if it's blurry, in progress, whereas if I had never taken Yuffie along as a party member and had jumped straight from Wutai to here and taken her for that specific scene, it would come off as completely out of character.
…in fact, couldn't it be possible to have Yuffie have never met Cloud by delaying recruiting her until after Cloud leaves the party, then running into her and recruiting her with Tifa as party leader, then do Wutai, then meet Cloud?
An unlikely scenario but just wild to think about.
Anyway, all this to say, there are probably emergent character arcs just like Yuffie's that might have arisen if I had landed on other characters as my favorite to take along most of the time, but it'd be impossible to experience them all in a single playthrough - but this one, at least, I enjoy. It's strong.
Vincent meanwhile is sadly underperforming. There are in-character reasons for it but dude's default reaction to anything happening is the dramatic "..." of the character who is watching things happen and refusing to emote.
Also, "an immense amount of Mako-drenched knowledge was infused into his brain"? Yeah, zero doubt: Cloud might not come out of this with a power-up in the most literal sense but the odds that he'll come out of it suddenly capable of hearing the voice of the Ancients and of guiding us to the path Aerith didn't have time to show us just skyrocketed.
Tifa asks Yuffie and Vincent alone back into the clinic (poor doctor and nurse got kicked out of their own building) and confesses something.
Tifa: "I don't care about anything else, only Cloud… I… want to be by his side…"
Yuffie: "Then you gotta do it. You gotta be true to yourself."
Vincent: "Do what you wish."
Tifa: "I'm sorry, everyone… Especially now…"
Yuffie: "No big, no big. I'll pop in again later."
Vincent: "Take care of him."
Tifa: "Right…"
Yuffie: "Hey, shouldn't we be gettin' back to the Highwind?"
[Scene transition.]
…
…….
……….
I'M SORRY?!?
ALL THIS FOR THAT!?
The game dangles "Tifa party leader" in front of me… It introduces some genuinely compelling character conflict for her, recontextualizes her earlier actions and characterization in fascinating way, throws in a few twists of the knife, some guilt and some stuff to make up for, pushes her into the awkward and bittersweet role of leader in Cloud's absence…
And all of this only lasts as long as it takes for me to revisit previous towns for some new dialogue text from townsfolk and she's gone before we've had a single setpiece or boss fight or dungeon or anything with her as leader? And the way she's taken out of the party is "she finds Cloud again and decides that she doesn't care about anything more than she does about Cloud so she'll let the group try and find a way to save the world on their own while tending to him?"
I. Legitimately. Feel cheated. Perhaps that's on me; perhaps I expected too much from this cool new development. But holy shit I feel robbed. Maybe, if my expectations had been different, I would feel like Tifa making the choice to focus on caring about Cloud, on nursing him back to health, would fit into her characterization as a sweet, nurturing person, but… Holy shit right now my mind wants to jump straight to "there is a line between 'it's really neat how the Strength-focused punch girl has a paradoxically sweet and caring personality to the point that she's too non-confrontational for her own good' and 'it's time for the buff girl to settle down and adopt Acceptable Female Occupation #3 and become a nurse to an ailing male character' and you crossed it." Uncharitable reading, probably!
I'm so mad.
"Well, Omi," I hear some of you say, maybe, "that's a little harsh. We haven't seen what comes after this scene, give it a few minutes, maybe. We don't even know who the new leader of the group will be."
Well yes you see maybe I am projecting from the future back onto this scene. Because let's see. Now that Cloud and Tifa are gone and Aerith is dead, there are only six characters left in the party. These include:
- Yuffie and Vincent, who are optional characters and so cannot be leaders no matter what, as any given player might not have them in the party.
- Cait Sith who, while partially redeemed, is still not someone the group would trust as leader any time soon.
- Barret, Nanaki and Cid, the only mandatory, not-on-probation party members.
…of course, laying it out like that, it's pretty obvious. Barret has been with the group for the longest, Cloud and Tifa joined him in the first place rather than the other way around, he's had a lot of time and opportunity to reflect on his character and motivation, and so on. And indeed, he's the one who leads the next cutscene, facing the Highwind's bay, and wondering where to go next.
The fact that Cid is literally asleep on the floor is a funny way to reference how much impact he's had on the plot lately. You'd almost forget he was in the party at all!
Barret: "What're we gonna do now! What can WE do?"
[He turns around to look at everyone.]
Barret: "Huh? Ain't there nothin' we can do? An' don' go tellin' us to wait for Cloud to get better."
Cait Sith: "Oh, I've got some news."
Barret: "Yeah, what!? That you a spy?"
Cait Sith: [Approaching.] "Yeah… I already told you I was." [He turns to the group.] Both Gya ha ha and Kya ha ha are up to something. Wanna eavesdrop?"
…and there the game is finally making me like Cait Sith. The combo of clarifying 'everyone knows Cait Sith used to be a Shinra spy and looks askance at him even after he redeemed himself by saving them at Junon, because that's still a difficult thing to rebuild trust after such a betrayal,' Cait Sith referring to Scarlet and Heidegger as 'Gya ha ha' and 'Kya ha ha,' their respective Evil Laughs, and Cait Sith going 'by the way guys spy comms go both ways, who wants a direct in on the Shinra meeting room?' is exactly where I want that character to be. Real ups and downs in this update.
Rufus: "Now then… We're faced with two issues. 1. Destroy Meteor. 2. Remove the barrier around North Cave and defeat Sephiroth. Any ideas?"
Heidegger: "Gya haah haah hah hah! The first problem's already solved! Meteor will soon be smashed to bits! The plan is already in motion. We are collecting Huge Materia from each region."
Rufus: "What?"
Scarlet: "Huge Materia is a high-density, special type of Materia made through a special compression process in Mako reactors. The energy extracted from it is 330 times the strength of normal Materia. Kya, ha, ha! How about that!? We will gather all the Huge Materia together and ram it into Meteor. That will cause a huge explosion, reducing Meteor literally to bits!!"
Rufus: "You're going to ram Meteor? Do you think we have the technology to do it?"
Scarlet: "First things first! Right now, we've got to collect Huge Materia from each area."
Heidegger: "We've already collected Huge Materia from Nibelheim. All that's left are Corel and Fort Condor. I've already dispatched troops to Corel. Gyaa haa ha ha!"
…
Alexa, when did Armageddon come out?
Man, what was on the mind of late 90s writers for all of them to come up with "We must NUKE THE METEORITE to save the planet!" independently at around the same time?
Anyway, there are serious concerns with 'blowing up a meteorite' as a defensive strategy, namely that you're turning a singular impact into dozens or hundreds or thousands of distributed impacts across a vast area, but like, it's not inconceivable at all that, however awful the shrapnel rain of meteorites might be, it's still better than an impact that ends life as we know it on the planet. Ideally you'd try anything else instead, but, well, when you're Shinra and all you have is a Materia-shaped hammer… Incidentally I guess this is the payoff to both the Fort Condor 'storyline' (I am using my words loosely here) and the Huge Materia setup in Gongaga, so that's neat!
Earlier when I said that Shinra would be content with the world ending as long as they kept control to the end, I should have said that of course they would still actively attempt to thwart the apocalypse because they would all still prefer 'being alive' to 'not being alive,' it was just sort of kind of implicit to me but as I reflect back I didn't really say that. I think Shinra, specifically, is going to oppose the end of the world as hard as they can as long as they oppose it on their own terms, struggling to the end to maintain both absolute control over human society and opposition to Sephiroth and Meteor. They'll try to kill the godlike white-haired bishie, of course they will… They are just so fundamentally limited in their vision and willingness to let go off power that they won't be able to, not on their own.
…with that said, do we want to stop them?
Like, do we have any actual reason to not let them grab all that Huge Materia and try to blow up Meteor?
Barret: "Corel! What else can they do to Corel!?"
Red: "And the Huge Materia… You mean the Huge Materia, don't you? I've heard about it. When our small Materia nears the larger one, there should be some reaction. I'm certain of it. That's why we're using the Materia power in our fight…"
Barret: "Can't let Shinra get a hold of the Huge Materia! Besides, when Cloud gets back, I wanna show him this Huge Materia. He's gonna be shocked."
Wait, but - can't we?
Like, I don't need much, here! Just throw in a comment about how 'Shinra's plan is reckless and will bombard the Planet with meteor shards and kill almost everyone except them, we have to stop them', or something like that! Anything that isn't "We can't let Shinra hurt Corel again (by seizing a Materia that Corel isn't actually using, in order to enact a plan to save the world from Meteor that nobody is challenging as unworkable)." Like… Literally just throw in a textual indication that their plan is bad and that's (part of) why we won't let them enact it, as opposed to… 'Just because.'
Ah, well.
At least we have some Barret content coming up, so this is nice. He even admitted that he actually cares about Cloud and is trusting him to come back, which is a lot from the big guy, and of course Cait Sith immediately needles him about it.
Cait Sith: "So, what are you saying, Barret? Even though you're always knocking him, you really want Cloud to return."
Barret: "I ain't sayin' nothin' 'bout nothin'. So just… shut your face!"
Barret: "Every group's gotta have a leader. An' that's me!"
Barret: "Or at least I wanna be… But I ain't cut out to be no leader. I never knew that till lately. That's what it is."
Wait, what do you mean, you're not cut out to be a leader, Barret.
Okay, okay, I am still having the Remake goggles on, I am still struggling to not be swept in Barret's incredible charisma, he's made some character conflict fairly explicit - is this about Dyne and his realizations in Cosmo Canyon? I mean… I guess there hasn't been much Barret-specific story since then to help him resolve that issue, but… From there to him actively throwing away the title of leader.
I mean, I guess it falls upon Nanaki? But he's a teenager. Technically. In dog years. Though I guess by JRPG standards it's not that exceptional, right? I mean, the alternative would be…
Cid: [Waking up suddenly] "Wha? What's goin' on?"
Barret: "You've been chosen to be the new leader."
Cid: "Pain in the ass. Forget it."
Barret: "But for us to fight, we gotta have Highwind, and you. We need it to save the Planet. An' who's runnin' this ship? You!"
Barret: "That's why you're our new leader. Ain't no one else can do it."
Cid: "Hmm… this ship's gonna save the Planet, huh? Ain't that gonna be just a little tough?"
Cid: "Oh man, stab me in the heart. I'm a man, too! Okay, I'll do it! Everyone, follow me!"
Barret: "Alright, now here's the first job. The Operation Room's waiting for you!"
Cid: "Yeah!!"'
I'M SORRY?? CID???
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
THE GAME DANGLED PARTY LEADER TIFA IN FRONT OF ME FOR LIKE HALF AN UPDATE AND THEN THE MOMENT THE NEXT PLOT BEAT ABOUT A SHINRA THREAT HAPPENS IT KICKS HER OUT TO BE A STAY AT HOME NURSE AND REPLACES HER WITH CID? CID!?
ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH FINAL FANTASY VII FOR TODAY
THANKS FOR READING
NEXT TIME: I TAKE MY FRUSTRATION OUT ON SHINRA GOONS
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
This is an important emotional payoff for that time Cid, you know, did a thing, probably, sometime, I guess.
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Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Utterly bonkers move, making a man who's so unimpressive that even compulsory cutscenes with him in them don't use him ever your party leader for... reasons. Has he even had a single line since he was recruited?
Also why are you not taking Cloud with you on board your extensive airship which almost certainly has a fully-stocked medical bay so that he can't be, I dunno, kidnapped by Shinra to use to bypass that shield around the North Cave they mentioned, or whatever the MacGuffin he's going to have in his head will turn out to be? Or at least so you can keep him close and therefore keep Tifa around to kick ass and take names?
Also why are you not taking Cloud with you on board your extensive airship which almost certainly has a fully-stocked medical bay so that he can't be, I dunno, kidnapped by Shinra to use to bypass that shield around the North Cave they mentioned, or whatever the MacGuffin he's going to have in his head will turn out to be? Or at least so you can keep him close and therefore keep Tifa around to kick ass and take names?
I'm assuming the writers realised that Cid has had nothing to do all game so might as well give him something? Given his whole schtick has been not being invested in anything it does give him a reason to be I suppose. Still wild that Tifa got nothing to do though.
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
Hohoho, silly player, expecting a fragile little woman to hold the reigns. Might as well ask a fish to fly or a stone to swim, hohoho.
(I am fucking seething right now.)
(I am fucking seething right now.)
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Chicxulub crater was identified as the KT impactor site in 1991, pretty firmly putting the asteroid hypothesis in first place to the "what happened to the dinosaurs" question; then Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter in 1994, so satellite video of Jupiter getting smacked by comet fragments went on TV as a neat "oh by the way Asteroid Stuff still totally happens."
There were congressional hearings in the USA, and asteroid deflection with a nuclear device (kind of the least-crazy way to handle a definite impactor that NASA had) entered the public consciousness then.
That's the context.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Wow Nanaki's dialogue is just... nonsense.
Nanaki: "Huge materia? You mean that huge materia? The one I've heard about? Our small materia will react to huge materia, that's why we use materia."
What? Nanaki, bud, did you get into the catnip again?
Nanaki, /eyes huge: "Trust me."
Ghost of Palmer: "fiiiinallyyyyy"
Rufus: "You work with what you have. What do we have?"
Scarlett: "... Shoot the moon?"
Rufus: "Let's do it."
Nanaki: "Huge materia? You mean that huge materia? The one I've heard about? Our small materia will react to huge materia, that's why we use materia."
What? Nanaki, bud, did you get into the catnip again?
Nanaki, /eyes huge: "Trust me."
Scarlett: "Of course! We've had the Space... Department... all this... hmm."
Ghost of Palmer: "fiiiinallyyyyy"
Rufus: "You work with what you have. What do we have?"
Scarlett: "... Shoot the moon?"
Rufus: "Let's do it."
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wild thing is, Cid has at least one genuine, major achievement that had a considerable impact on the plot and proves that he both has interesting characterization and brings value to the team: he convinced a whole Shinra air crew to mutiny and steal the Highwind and side with Avalanche as our first real 'rebel crew'...
...which happens entirely off screen, and which you only learn about in one short, missable conversation with a crew member, so it has absolutely none of the impact it sounds like it should have.
Thank you very much, that's precisely the kind of context I was missing that illuminates the whole trend.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Now, this might just be me, but I suspect that the developers did not want Tifa to be the one to decide that opposing Shinra's plan of "just blow up meteor with a Materia-powered rocket" was a good idea. Here, with Barret having the idea and Cid leading, the lack of a good motive to stop Shinra doesn't ruin the characterization of the actually important characters.
I also imagine that giving Cid a reason to be part of the plot right at the time when rockets enter the picture was intended to be thematically meaningful or something.
Of course, it's still enormously annoying that they did the bait-and-switch with Tifa and Cid, and they really could have just come up with a good reason that Shinra needs to be stopped and let Tifa provide it. They could have even tied it to "finding a cure for Cloud's condition" to still keep the important character beat of "Tifa is ready to be honest about her feelings for Cloud now" without relegating her away from the action. That they didn't is a mark against them, and the fact that they put Cid in charge of the team instead, when if I could I would not even have him as part of the team (I really don't like his character at all, for many reasons that should be easy to guess), is even more disappointing.
So... yeah, next stretch of the game will be "Cid leads the team". Looking forwards to see what you'll think of this, @Omicron.
I also imagine that giving Cid a reason to be part of the plot right at the time when rockets enter the picture was intended to be thematically meaningful or something.
Of course, it's still enormously annoying that they did the bait-and-switch with Tifa and Cid, and they really could have just come up with a good reason that Shinra needs to be stopped and let Tifa provide it. They could have even tied it to "finding a cure for Cloud's condition" to still keep the important character beat of "Tifa is ready to be honest about her feelings for Cloud now" without relegating her away from the action. That they didn't is a mark against them, and the fact that they put Cid in charge of the team instead, when if I could I would not even have him as part of the team (I really don't like his character at all, for many reasons that should be easy to guess), is even more disappointing.
So... yeah, next stretch of the game will be "Cid leads the team". Looking forwards to see what you'll think of this, @Omicron.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
I know it won't happen, but I really want the team to switch leaders every story beat going forward.
Cid: "Fuck this leader shit is hard. Who else wants in on this?"
Yuffie: "Oh gawd can we have this discussion once we're off the ship, I hate thiiiis..."
Barrett, /desperately: "Vincent, you used to be into that corpo ladder shit, right? You wanna-?"
Vincent, /has disappeared into the shadows.
Barrett: "... ... Our leader Vincent says we're going to Corel!"
Cid: "Zzz..."
Cid: "Fuck this leader shit is hard. Who else wants in on this?"
Yuffie: "Oh gawd can we have this discussion once we're off the ship, I hate thiiiis..."
Barrett, /desperately: "Vincent, you used to be into that corpo ladder shit, right? You wanna-?"
Vincent, /has disappeared into the shadows.
Barrett: "... ... Our leader Vincent says we're going to Corel!"
Cid: "Zzz..."
I absolutely do not remember this music existing, but yep it certainly does a good job encompassing "world's fucked we're all gonna die" vibes.
It's a surprisingly wide array of dialogue on display, and I do agree it does a lot to sell "hey, literal meteor from the heavens on its way to wipe out the world".
THE MINIGAMES WILL NEVER END
THEY JUST GO ON AND ON, MY FRIEND
Ah, the classic video game issue in anything with a remotely open world. "THE WORLD WILL END IN SEVEN DAYS oh by the way hero wanna hit up the casino and do some gambling? Maybe play some Kart Racing minigames?"
Funny enough one of the few games I remember addressing this decently was Breath of the Wild of all things. While there's absolutely the looming threat of "eventually Calamity Ganon is going to bust out and raze Hyrule (again)", more than one character also points out Zelda has already been holding him in check for one hundred years... so what's a few months of Link adventuring around and helping the locals, and getting his strength back for the big final battle in the meanwhile?
Look, Lifestreams are just another kind of stream, ergo just another kind of water, ergo Ecco the Dolphin over here can explore it just fine. Easy, makes 200% perfect sense!
To some degree, it probably helps that Meteor is entirely fresh on people's minds, and is an obvious looming threat that you can't really ignore in your day to day life. In the World of Ruin, the fact that there's a one year or so timeskip before Celes sets off means people had time to sort of... get settled and accept "yeah we live in a hell world now but life goes on", and the threat of Kefka blowing up your hometown for fun is easier to go "out of sight out of mind".
See, I totally get having only vaguely heard of Shinra, but... do these people really not react to "there is literally a massive meteor in the sky, slowly coming closer to kill us all?" Maybe they can't see it through the treeline???
To be fair, by this point I think the game has handed out a few pieces of equipment with double or maybe even triple AP growth, as well as enemy AP rates should have been increasing all game. I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or later you'll hit whatever area that has enemies that make grinding some AP super easy, the way FFV had a few specific encounters good for job grinding.
What, you don't loudly talk about your acquaintences that way Omi? Must not be a French thing.
Could be either or, honestly? I wouldn't be too surprised if the already existing "characters outside of the party still get partial experience" applied to Cloud and he shows back up still the highest level among your party members, and that's used to represent his power boost.
Or hell, they could always do something similar to Sabin where while he can totally learn Phantom Rush naturally through leveling, you also just get it automatically in a story event. Just boom, Cloud returns later and goes "I now know the knowledge of the ancients, they called it OMNISLASH BITCH I'M TURNING SEPHIROTH INTO SASHIMI JUST WATCH ME"
Once again, Yuffie proves herself to be Best Girl.
Sadly, having a character who's the broody guy in the back as an actual party member... often means their contributions to the plot are being broody all the time and not actually adding much to the plot. Just look at Shadow if you didn't get his flashback dreams.
Sorry Omi, this is a BOY'S ONLY zone, gurls got the cooties and gotta leave the party, can't have a WOMAN doing a MAN'S job
Man just think, if optional girl Yuffie weren't around, you'd straight up have a full sausagefest party at this point since Aerith is dead and Tifa is playing nurse. Can we go back to FFV where it's just Bartz surrounded by girls who are perfectly capable of keeping up? (At least, in gameplay terms, Lenna absolutely plays damsel in distress a few times iirc).
I know this is entirely because you're foreshadowing the shitpost that is "Cid is party leader" that's happening in about 2 minutes, but it's still hilarious knowing what's coming up.
Despite a rocky start to the whole "whoops Cait Sith is a spy watch him redeem himself 20 minutes later", I do think over time he's absolutely progressed as a character.
Honestly, everyone's gotten some nice progression over time bar Vincent (who's optional and hasn't gotten his sidequest yet) and Cid! Good thing Cid isn't that important in this game, huh?
Lmao
Even the fucking game is lampshading the fact that Cid shouldn't be leader and it's entirely arbitrary, huh?
An understandable place to end it, not gonna lie.
Like, I absolutely remembered "oh hey there's this chunk of game where Cid is the leader of the party", but I forgot it was this... out of left field? That the game just spontaneously goes "quick chuck Tifa out the airlock so we can make Cid the man in charge", and Cid... doesn't really hold up as well as a character as he did when I was a teenager, when "swearing chain-smoking spear man" absolutely would have been in my main party if he wasn't competing with "genki ninja girl" and "GUN ARM MAN".
Probably just "FFVII popular get that Cid", to be honest. His design is at least "cool and iconic" enough that he'll stand out, with the only real competition being maybe FFIV Cid.
I mean, who else are we gonna choose, Banana Mengele? Old Man with six lines of dialogue from FFII?
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd say FF8's Cid certainly has an iconic design, given who he's modelled off of. Plus, Disney was actually on speaking terms with Robin Williams again when KH came out
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
Cloud: "Unfortunately, the Ancient knowledge that got pumped into my brain turned out to be 70% building techniques for death-trap temples and 30% snowboarding. Is that going to help?"
Tifa: "M... Maybe? ... ... No. No it will not."
Cloud: "Oh wait, so there's this thing called huge materia-"
Nanaki: "Told 'em."
Cloud: "..."
Yuffie, /supportively: "We're happy to have you back even if your new power-up is totally useless, Cloud!"
Cloud, /leaves the party.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The very first time I started the game and got through the intro sequence, before the game even got to the first real action bits, I (age 12) was like "this guy runs a mercenary army of child soldiers that use forbidden magic. It is screamingly obvious he is the Big Bad Guy who we must eventually defeat, for his many and obvious Crimes"
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
So this is something I literally never did. Benefits of having a strategy guide it just told me where to go, though it did mean I missed out on a lot of this dialogue (not that I would have been old enough to really get it).
That said, the guide did try to couch the information initially with one location to find it: Icicle Inn. The logic was that it was the last town Cloud was in, so it might be he wound up there somehow. I believe one of the NPCs there gives similar information to what you got at Kalm.
How the bloody hell did you spot that?! I remember it taking ages to figure out how to navigate back there. And that was with help.
Notes for later.
I think there's some dialogue somewhere about how this is actually really bad for the Planet but... yeah, this is probably one of the weakest parts of the story.
I guess you could go with something about how it's burning more of the Planet's soul for power, but it's moral relativism at that point. Damage now to try and survive, try and find another way but potentially have higher odds of failure, do nothing and die. The options aren't great, but the game not really explaining why using the Huge Materia shouldn't be done is a weakness.
*Cackles*
Oh this was one of the moments I was waiting for. Even the game sort of acknowledges Cid is out of left field.
Well, look at it this way Omi, you'll get to have Cid develop now. Whether you want him to or not.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's some encounters around Mideel that should yield something like 200AP a shot, and the rolly dudes ('Spirals') you can swipe X-Potions from. The Materia Keeper screen in Mt. Nibel retains its save point and fetches between 100 and 170 AP a shot, with commensurate gil and XP, and will drop Hi-Potions and Ethers. All of 'em are pretty easy encounters to clear with Omi's levels and kit -- the trickiest is probably the paralysis dudes in Mt. Nibel, but a Gem Ring or Ribbon trivializes them. Fury Ring on the other two people in the party, easy money.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If Heidegger and Scarlet support it, I'm against it. The only thing worse would be if Hojo signed on.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
For all we know Hojo did pitch a plan before Gya-ha-ha and Kya-ha-ha went "have you heard about nukes?" Cait Sith just didn't turn on the wire for that pitch because A. he knew that even Rufus has standards and B. nobody deserves to be subjected to Hojo rambling about how catgirl breeding can save the world.
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21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well.
At least Cid has a funny run cycle.
At least Cid has a funny run cycle.
- Location
- PA
Man. It's a shame that clearly the Worst Cid yet got to have a free ride in THE Final Fantasy game of all time.
Like no one in thread that I've noticed (please let someone be able to say SOMETHING in this man's defense!) has tried to stand for him, it's just kicking him down the coolness ladder at every turn.
Like no one in thread that I've noticed (please let someone be able to say SOMETHING in this man's defense!) has tried to stand for him, it's just kicking him down the coolness ladder at every turn.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This Cid has committed no warcrimes.