ApocalypticFish
Been reflecting lately.
clearly, foamy's next trick should be to follow in the footsteps of that one guy and train cloud and barret up to level 99 in the game's introductory sequence
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No. A key point in the grinding loop is getting rewards for same. Once I get above 'can sustain indefinitely' / 'can oneshot the mooks', it's time to move on unless I'm after something specific.
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- Location
- UK
No such thing as being TOO prepared!
Come now, obviously mastering all your materia before Guard Scorpion so you can just cast Bolt3 is fully worthwhile!
ApocalypticFish
Been reflecting lately.
You mean you don't want to spend multiple years of your life on grinding for minimal reward??? Who could have seen this coming
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I said earlier that several of my friends loved FFVII back in the day? One of them actually did this.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Reading from the start of the FFVII LP (and I will be going back for the others) I kept having random thoughts that would normally go into replies, only to decide it would be weird to plonk them down while I was still weeks or months behind, then forgetting them by the time I started reading again. Buuut I'm now all caught up, so it's time for one batch of random musings that came up toward the end of the last few updates.
SOLDIER, Jenova, and Shinra. So, Shinra, right? They're an energy company, one big enough to have its own army, which makes sense. They also have combat robots, which is within expectations; lots of manufacturing power. They also have... genetic supersoldiers and Resident Evil science experiments. That always felt kind of weird, to me. A bit of a mismatch, both aesthetically and in terms of needs. Sure, they're an evil corporation, but all of Shinra's military rivals are pre-stomped by game start, so supersoldiers never seemed like a profit-maker, or something Shinra would need, above and beyond conventional forces - not to mention, the only "executive" invested in them is Hojo, who clearly doesn't care, which leaves the more conventional military and weapons represented by Heidegger and Scarlett more prominent as narrative "faces" of the company. Plus, as you've noted repeatedly, we barely see SOLDIER as opponents in FF7.
I was turning this over in my head after a few updates, and here's what I got.
We know Shinra started out in weapons manufacture, then transitioned to being an energy company once the process to refine mako into electrical energy on an industrial scale was discovered. Shinra immediately cornered the market, presumably repurposing its existing infrastructure to construct huge numbers of mako reactors and power systems in prime locations. As arms manufacturers, they must have had cosy military and/or mercenary contacts, which they likely capitalised on to acquire security forces for establishing reactors in dangerous locations, or "securing" inhabited areas for reactors that would fuel the needs of their clients.
Access to a new form of cheap and plentiful energy leads to an industrial boom, which - as a manufacturing company - secures even more wealth and contracts for Shinra. Within a few decades, let's say, Shinra makes itself so powerful and necessary that it effectively absorbs most of the governments it's been working with. It establishes its own private military (most of whom are probably existing soldiers it was already using and arming anyway), sets up its old corporate legbreakers and spies as "special agents", gobbles up or destroys every competitor, and expands into every sector of life and the economy. Maybe the Wutai War happened before this, with the East India Company-Shinra trying a mako-grab in Wutai, getting slapped, and running back to their government daddies to cry that the other kids aren't playing nice - or maybe it happened after. Either works.
This culminates in the foundation of Midgar. Shinra either establishes a bunch of new company towns around a cluster of mako wellsprings, which eventually merge into one, or it takes over and combines a number of existing, neighbouring city-states with mako reactors - i.e. former clients of Shinra - into a new supercity. As the effects of mako energy (barren land, monsters) become more pronounced, Shinra's technology becomes more vital to survival, and its safe haven of Midgar becomes more attractive.
All of this makes internal sense - but then SOLDIER kind of comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? Even if Shinra snatched up a bunch of medical companies, there's no obvious link between an oil company and Umbrella Corps pumping out genetically engineered supersoldiers. Except in this case, there is - the "oil" is mako.
Shinra didn't discover mako - just like it didn't discover materia. These things have existed since basically forever, people know about them - obviously there's Cosmo Canyon, who aren't exactly shy about teaching people, but the doctor in Mideel casually talks about how getting dunked in the lifestream pumps you full of too many memories, so your brains can leak out. People know this stuff. Very old weapons have materia slots. This isn't new.
In fact, it's probably that last application - materia in weapons - that led to the discovery of mako energy in the first place. Shinra was an arms manufacturer. Of course they'd want some way to create materia on an industrial scale. Up until that point, materia would have needed to form naturally, excavated from mako hotspots and cut like gemstones - a slow process requiring individually skilled prospectors and craftsmen. At most, materia might have been deliberately "cultivated" over time at mako springs. Finding a way to induce, accelerate, and standardise materia formation at a mako spring would have been a real coup for Shinra's weapons sales - and in the process, by sheer accident, they discovered that you could do more with the siphoned mako than just form materia.
After decades of materia mining, decades of materia research, then decades of mako reactor research, Shinra would have had a lot of experience with mako exposure and mako poisoning. Mental illness, brain damage, hallucinations - nasty stuff. Treatments would have been an obvious research project - to maintain a workforce, if nothing else - as would weaponisation. Controlled doses. Repeatable exposure. Possible cures. Who lives and who dies? Genetic research.
It's easy to imagine a sadistic hack like Hojo getting his feet under the table here, brute forcing his way into useable data through reckless experiments. And it's easy to imagine that this was the birthplace of SOLDIER, in the form of a supersoldier programme. Shinra's last military rivals are squaring up, and Shinra realises that those who survive controlled mako exposure can develop a remarkable talent for materia. Duh, of course they can, they've been dunked in the raw "knowledge" that materia encapsulates. And perhaps they also acquired improved physical abilities - or perhaps that came later, with Jenova.
The lore of the Ancients is pretty "out there" as a research project, but Doctor Gast is clearly a charismatic guy on top of being a skilled and respected scientist - while President Shinra is wildly ambitious with an inflated sense of his own destiny. Telling his boss/patron all sorts of wild stories about a land of infinite mako and people who could identify and control mako hotspots would be a surefire way to secure funding.
This pipe dream eventually results in Gast excavating Jenova's "corpse", which he thinks is an Ancient, but is inarguably pretty wild regardless of its true nature. Now the Cetra research is no longer President Shinra's ego-stroking vanity project - it's something real. He's gleefully vindicated, and pivots to hurl resources at it (including, in this version of events, Hojo - his star gene-fiddler, who is pulled away from his own division and assigned to work under Gast as an assistant, instead of being a distant peer). Everyone wants results, and they are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
This is where I think SOLDIER in its final form comes from. We know Shinra wanted to create a Cetra who could lead them to the Promised Land - the original goal of the Cetra research - but I don't think it makes sense to merge that project with your supersoldier programme.
Instead, I think they discovered that "Cetra" tissues were naturally resistant to mako poisoning - either because Jenova is a planetary parasite who eats souls rather than being overwhelmed by them, or because she's an alien who doesn't belong to the lifestream at all. Developing a Jenova retroviral can't have been hard - she's more like a virus than an animal herself - and now you can take a supersoldier programme which requires exposure to Soul Radiation, and combine it with an injection which makes you resistant to Soul Radiation (and possibly feeds on Soul Radiation to make you stronger and faster). Boom. You have modern SOLDIER.
You also have Hojo, who takes the aforementioned Jenova retroviral and starts doing weird shit with it, because a) psychopath in a labcoat, b) YOU SHORT-SIGHTED FOOL GAST, I WILL SHOW EVERYONE THAT THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE CANNOT BE BARRED BY PETTY ETHICS- At some point during all this, Gast realises he made a terrible mistake and gets out of dodge. He's no angel, he presumably stuck around long enough for Sephiroth to meet him as a child, but whatever his precise motives for fleeing, Hojo immediately seizes control of and credit for everything he discovered, and everything gets even worse and much stupider.
In the Remake, President Shinra mentions most SOLDIERS die of accelerated cellular degeneration. No mention is made of cellular degeneration - or physical damage of any kind - after Cloud falls directly through the lifestream. Hell, Tifa does the same thing, and no-one suggests she's going to end up with materia tumours, cool though an Arknights crossover would be. So I don't think that's down to the mako - that's down to Jenova. Their Jenova cells keep SOLDIERS insulated from the mental damage caused by mako exposure, but eventually symbiosis becomes parasitism - they're eaten alive from the inside. It resembles cellular degeneration, and they're disposed of or fall apart before anyone can tell any different.
The planet is dying because Shinra wanted to make cheaper magic bullets and lucked into nuclear energy. Sephiroth was born because Shinra would rather take the opportunity to research radiation poisoning than invest in proper shielding. Jenova is spreading across the world because President Shinra has already paid to become an eighth level Operating Thetan.
SOLDIER, Jenova, and Shinra. So, Shinra, right? They're an energy company, one big enough to have its own army, which makes sense. They also have combat robots, which is within expectations; lots of manufacturing power. They also have... genetic supersoldiers and Resident Evil science experiments. That always felt kind of weird, to me. A bit of a mismatch, both aesthetically and in terms of needs. Sure, they're an evil corporation, but all of Shinra's military rivals are pre-stomped by game start, so supersoldiers never seemed like a profit-maker, or something Shinra would need, above and beyond conventional forces - not to mention, the only "executive" invested in them is Hojo, who clearly doesn't care, which leaves the more conventional military and weapons represented by Heidegger and Scarlett more prominent as narrative "faces" of the company. Plus, as you've noted repeatedly, we barely see SOLDIER as opponents in FF7.
I was turning this over in my head after a few updates, and here's what I got.
We know Shinra started out in weapons manufacture, then transitioned to being an energy company once the process to refine mako into electrical energy on an industrial scale was discovered. Shinra immediately cornered the market, presumably repurposing its existing infrastructure to construct huge numbers of mako reactors and power systems in prime locations. As arms manufacturers, they must have had cosy military and/or mercenary contacts, which they likely capitalised on to acquire security forces for establishing reactors in dangerous locations, or "securing" inhabited areas for reactors that would fuel the needs of their clients.
Access to a new form of cheap and plentiful energy leads to an industrial boom, which - as a manufacturing company - secures even more wealth and contracts for Shinra. Within a few decades, let's say, Shinra makes itself so powerful and necessary that it effectively absorbs most of the governments it's been working with. It establishes its own private military (most of whom are probably existing soldiers it was already using and arming anyway), sets up its old corporate legbreakers and spies as "special agents", gobbles up or destroys every competitor, and expands into every sector of life and the economy. Maybe the Wutai War happened before this, with the East India Company-Shinra trying a mako-grab in Wutai, getting slapped, and running back to their government daddies to cry that the other kids aren't playing nice - or maybe it happened after. Either works.
This culminates in the foundation of Midgar. Shinra either establishes a bunch of new company towns around a cluster of mako wellsprings, which eventually merge into one, or it takes over and combines a number of existing, neighbouring city-states with mako reactors - i.e. former clients of Shinra - into a new supercity. As the effects of mako energy (barren land, monsters) become more pronounced, Shinra's technology becomes more vital to survival, and its safe haven of Midgar becomes more attractive.
All of this makes internal sense - but then SOLDIER kind of comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? Even if Shinra snatched up a bunch of medical companies, there's no obvious link between an oil company and Umbrella Corps pumping out genetically engineered supersoldiers. Except in this case, there is - the "oil" is mako.
Shinra didn't discover mako - just like it didn't discover materia. These things have existed since basically forever, people know about them - obviously there's Cosmo Canyon, who aren't exactly shy about teaching people, but the doctor in Mideel casually talks about how getting dunked in the lifestream pumps you full of too many memories, so your brains can leak out. People know this stuff. Very old weapons have materia slots. This isn't new.
In fact, it's probably that last application - materia in weapons - that led to the discovery of mako energy in the first place. Shinra was an arms manufacturer. Of course they'd want some way to create materia on an industrial scale. Up until that point, materia would have needed to form naturally, excavated from mako hotspots and cut like gemstones - a slow process requiring individually skilled prospectors and craftsmen. At most, materia might have been deliberately "cultivated" over time at mako springs. Finding a way to induce, accelerate, and standardise materia formation at a mako spring would have been a real coup for Shinra's weapons sales - and in the process, by sheer accident, they discovered that you could do more with the siphoned mako than just form materia.
After decades of materia mining, decades of materia research, then decades of mako reactor research, Shinra would have had a lot of experience with mako exposure and mako poisoning. Mental illness, brain damage, hallucinations - nasty stuff. Treatments would have been an obvious research project - to maintain a workforce, if nothing else - as would weaponisation. Controlled doses. Repeatable exposure. Possible cures. Who lives and who dies? Genetic research.
It's easy to imagine a sadistic hack like Hojo getting his feet under the table here, brute forcing his way into useable data through reckless experiments. And it's easy to imagine that this was the birthplace of SOLDIER, in the form of a supersoldier programme. Shinra's last military rivals are squaring up, and Shinra realises that those who survive controlled mako exposure can develop a remarkable talent for materia. Duh, of course they can, they've been dunked in the raw "knowledge" that materia encapsulates. And perhaps they also acquired improved physical abilities - or perhaps that came later, with Jenova.
The lore of the Ancients is pretty "out there" as a research project, but Doctor Gast is clearly a charismatic guy on top of being a skilled and respected scientist - while President Shinra is wildly ambitious with an inflated sense of his own destiny. Telling his boss/patron all sorts of wild stories about a land of infinite mako and people who could identify and control mako hotspots would be a surefire way to secure funding.
This pipe dream eventually results in Gast excavating Jenova's "corpse", which he thinks is an Ancient, but is inarguably pretty wild regardless of its true nature. Now the Cetra research is no longer President Shinra's ego-stroking vanity project - it's something real. He's gleefully vindicated, and pivots to hurl resources at it (including, in this version of events, Hojo - his star gene-fiddler, who is pulled away from his own division and assigned to work under Gast as an assistant, instead of being a distant peer). Everyone wants results, and they are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
This is where I think SOLDIER in its final form comes from. We know Shinra wanted to create a Cetra who could lead them to the Promised Land - the original goal of the Cetra research - but I don't think it makes sense to merge that project with your supersoldier programme.
Instead, I think they discovered that "Cetra" tissues were naturally resistant to mako poisoning - either because Jenova is a planetary parasite who eats souls rather than being overwhelmed by them, or because she's an alien who doesn't belong to the lifestream at all. Developing a Jenova retroviral can't have been hard - she's more like a virus than an animal herself - and now you can take a supersoldier programme which requires exposure to Soul Radiation, and combine it with an injection which makes you resistant to Soul Radiation (and possibly feeds on Soul Radiation to make you stronger and faster). Boom. You have modern SOLDIER.
You also have Hojo, who takes the aforementioned Jenova retroviral and starts doing weird shit with it, because a) psychopath in a labcoat, b) YOU SHORT-SIGHTED FOOL GAST, I WILL SHOW EVERYONE THAT THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE CANNOT BE BARRED BY PETTY ETHICS- At some point during all this, Gast realises he made a terrible mistake and gets out of dodge. He's no angel, he presumably stuck around long enough for Sephiroth to meet him as a child, but whatever his precise motives for fleeing, Hojo immediately seizes control of and credit for everything he discovered, and everything gets even worse and much stupider.
In the Remake, President Shinra mentions most SOLDIERS die of accelerated cellular degeneration. No mention is made of cellular degeneration - or physical damage of any kind - after Cloud falls directly through the lifestream. Hell, Tifa does the same thing, and no-one suggests she's going to end up with materia tumours, cool though an Arknights crossover would be. So I don't think that's down to the mako - that's down to Jenova. Their Jenova cells keep SOLDIERS insulated from the mental damage caused by mako exposure, but eventually symbiosis becomes parasitism - they're eaten alive from the inside. It resembles cellular degeneration, and they're disposed of or fall apart before anyone can tell any different.
The planet is dying because Shinra wanted to make cheaper magic bullets and lucked into nuclear energy. Sephiroth was born because Shinra would rather take the opportunity to research radiation poisoning than invest in proper shielding. Jenova is spreading across the world because President Shinra has already paid to become an eighth level Operating Thetan.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Excellent post, and a hypothetical on the backstory of Shinra research that I think works very well. I will integrate this into my belief system.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's some stuff that actually goes a bit to this:
Following the Rocket Town sequence, the group decides to go to Cosmo Canyon and talk to Bugenhagen again. As part of this you learn Bugenhagen worked for/with Shinra in the past.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I always thought Shinra were like, just the Mitsubishi Group?
Shinra just seems like a very typical Zaibatsu seen through the specific 90s cyberpunk anarcho-capitalist "company outright replaces The State" lens.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It pretty much is a Zaibatsu, a giant congolmeration of companies and industries so powerful it's basically a global superpower. I mean, the idea of megacorporations so common in cyberpunk stories (which FF7 sort of is as a cyberpunk game but with dieselpunk/zeerust technology) are as much inspired by Zaibatsus as they are by the larger American corporations.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
It's not just in cyberpunk stories, Tekken (1995) also features the Mishima Zaibatsu as promoter of the titular turnament and the CEO is the final boss. And the Mishima Zaibatsu is present in more or less every mainline Tekken.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
IIRC Retro Studios did back when they were planning Prime 1, and "freak out" would be apparently the understatement of the year.
The way it was taught to us about 28~ years ago, it was indeed both such a test and done in behest of the Fascist side.
I'm also concerned about what exactly Sakaguchi & Co. had first planed for any military vehicle at all that they decided to name it fuckin' Guernica.
Final Fantasy VII, Part 31: The Big Shinra Rocket
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where I just got my ass kicked by the Emerald Weapon.
With 6+k damage per attack and one million HP, there is no way in hell we can defeat the Emerald Weapon now, if ever. We'll perhaps come back later. For now, let's advance the plot. First off, there's some interesting new dialogue with the rest of the crew - Cait Sith reveals that all of Shinra (I assume he means the executive board, not the thousands of employees) is gathered at Rocket Town, admitting that he "loves giving out secrets more than anything." Vincent asks Cloud how it feels to live for "no one but yourself," which seems a strange thing to say to him in particular. Nanaki has an amusing comment where he says that Shinra thinks only in the short term, but he plans "to live for 500 years and won't stop for that kind of thinking." Getting a little bit elf-y, are we, Red?
The best conversation, though, is with Yuffie, who is still feeling horribly sick.
Yuffie: "Huh? How would you even know? You don't know how tough it is… getting sick on boats and rides… So, please… just leave me alone."
Cloud: "I really do understand, Yuffie. When I get sick on a flight, it's a real killer. When I was in SOLDIER, I completely forgot about my motion sickness."
Yuffie: "Oh…"
Yuffie: "Isn't there a way to prevent this?"
Cloud: "Well, according to my research… First off, if you're nervous a lot, you won't get sick. But you can't always be nervous."
Cloud: "With this much space, your best bet is to move around while you're riding. It also might be a good idea to stretch sometimes, too. But in SOLDIER, we spent a lot of time in trucks. That sucked!"
Cloud: "And there's one thing you mustn't do when riding. And that is… Read!"
Cloud: "Once you get sick, there's nothing anyone can do. I know it's tough…"
Yuffie: "...So you're a little better off than me. But I don't feel… well."
…
Okay so that's a really sweet scene once you get past the translation being, like. "If you're nervous a lot, you won't get sick"? What? Cloud literally saying "when I was in SOLDIER" while we've just been over the fact that he wasn't and this is in fact a scene of him acknowledging his real younger self who was a puny grunt with no sea leg - whatever. The idea behind this exchange, of Cloud actually offering Yuffie genuine help and advice, and doing so from a place of vulnerability, responding to Yuffie's assertion that he doesn't know how bad it feels by admitting that he used to get sick in transports all the time, is great. The arc of Cloud and Yuffie's relationship is a little undercooked (perils of an optional character), but the way they progressed from 'Yuffie is conning everyone and Cloud literally doesn't care about her troubles" to "Yuffie breaks down after Aerith's death and Cloud gives her some comfort" to "Yuffie is worried about his health but confident he'll pull through" to "they're getting along fine and Cloud is actually giving her advice that come from both a position of greater experience as well as the experience of weakness," is great. Generally speaking, Yuffie has been a pleasure this playthrough.
Also, I really feel this bit about the most important thing being not to read. This hasn't been an issue for me for years, but as a child, I would insist on reading during family car trips (the alternative was unthinkable, unbearable boredom), and that would inevitably result in my getting sick at some point during the trip. Even once I understood the correlation, though, I couldn't not do it.
There's this crater here now that wasn't there before, on the Eastern Continent.
And now, our next destination - Rocket Town!
It looks like Shinra is planning to mount the Huge Materia onto the rocket and fire it at Meteor. I mean, not much reason to be in Rocket Town otherwise, but it's kind of baffling that they expect that rust bucket that has received no maintenance in years to still function well enough to take off and not just crash and take out Rocket Town with it. Granted, given that they apparently canceled their entire space program, they don't have a lot of other options. Time to head for the Rocket and… prevent them from launching… for some reason!
By now you know the drill. We obliterate the Shinra troops as we advance. As a minor twist, though, Cid joins us partway through and requests to join us since we're kicking Shinra out of his rocket. This means retooling our party in between combat encounters, which is annoying, although ultimately inconsequential.
Ignore the fact that Tifa jumped five levels since last update. Nothing is happening here.
We climb the ladder to the top of the rocket, where we run into a familiar figure - Rude, who exclaims "You again?"
As much as I like Rude, standing at 9,000 HP with only two Shinra soldiers as backup, he is one of the easiest boss fights we've encountered. Both soldiers are easily dispatched, and then a couple of Tier 3 spells take care of him.
Don't worry, he'll live.
Inside the rocket, we run into one last Shinra officer, who cries that the Turks should have stopped us; upon learning that we just dispatched Rude, he expresses fear, but nonetheless decides to bravely and foolishly stand in our way.
At least he might live.
It's honestly kind of amazing how Shinra manages to somehow retain that degree of loyalty from its soldiers. Like, it would be one thing if they were presented as arrogant bad guys who have convinced themselves they can totally take us no matter how many guys we just cut through; but they clearly understand the danger we pose, and still choose to sacrifice their lives to stop us.
I guess it makes sense here, though. The entire Huge Materia arc is us trying to stop Shinra's attempt to save the world. Sure, their plan may be half-assed, but they are trying to save the Planet. And from the point of view of their soldiers, we're a bunch of crazed ecoterrorists who've spent most of the game trying to return humanity to pre-industrial levels of technology. For once in their lives, these guys might be feeling like they're not fighting for a paycheck, but for the benefit of all mankind.
Too bad for them, I suppose.
We enter the cockpit, where we find the… Pilots, mechanics, engineers, whatever. These guys aren't random Shinra employees dispatched from Midgar, they're locals, and Cid and they know each other;
Cid: "Hey! What the hell're you guys doin'!?" [They turn around.] "Hey! Just when I thought somethin' was goin' on, you come back!" (I have no idea what this means.)
Rocketeer 1: "Listen to me, Captain. We're gonna launch this rocket!"
Cid: "Huh? What are you talkin' about?"
Rocketeer 1: "We're gonna load a Materia bomb in this and blow up Meteor."
Rocketeer 2: "Our rocket's gonna save the planet!"
Rocketeer 3: "Urrrrgh. Man this is so COOL!!"
Cloud: "Wait a minute!"
Cid: [He turns around to look at Cloud.] "Shut up!! Just shut the hell up!" [Back to the mechanics.] "How's the rocket?"
Rocketeer 1: "It's pretty much OK."
Rocketeer 2: "But…"
Rocketeer 3: "We planned to run it into Meteor on Auto-pilot, but the most important device is broken."
Cid: "Broken? How's the repair goin'?"
Rocketeer 3: "Shera's doin' it…"
Cid: "Oh great! What a buncha wizards you guys are! She's gonna take 100 years!"
Cid: "I'll take over, so don't worry about the Auto-pilot! Hey, go ahead! Tell everyone!"
Rocketeer 2: "All right, Captain. Good luck."
[The rocketeers leave.]
Cloud: "Hey, Cid! What're you doing!? There are generations of knowledge and wisdom inside the Materia. We're gonna borrow their powers and save the Planet from Sephiroth. There's no way we can lose the Huge Materia. You understand that, right?"
Cid: "Yeah, I understand. I understand that Materia is precious, and I also understand what you're thinking. But listen. I don't give a rat's ass whether it's science or magical power. No, I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather put my money in the power of science. Humans only used to walk around on the ground but now they can fly! And finally, we're about to go into outer space."
Cid: "Science is a 'Power' created and developed by humans. And science might just be what saves this Planet. I was able to earn my living, thanks to science. So to me, there's nothing greater!"
Cid: "Now quit your worryin' about what Shinra's gonna do! I don't want to regret not having done something later."
Cloud: "But, Cid… Shut the hell up!! I don't wanna hear it! Alright, time to get to work! Anyone who ain't involved, get the hell outta here!"
Okay. A bunch to unpack there.
First off, I guess we now know why the party is running around trying to sabotage Shinra's plans to destroy Meteor - it has nothing to do with the asteroid itself or Shinra's estimated chances of success, it's purely a combination of 'Materia is too precious to be destroyed like this' and 'we can use that power to defeat Sephiroth.' Which is a bit of a headscratcher - if Meteor hits and everyone dies, that knowledge won't be doing anyone any good, and if the group fails to thwart Meteor, we still all lose even if Sephiroth is defeated. But at least there is a logic, an actual explanation for why they're doing what they're doing, even if that logic is "only we can properly use this magical power to stop Bishie Satan."
The science/magic angle with Cid is a bit more out of left field. It's not that technology/magic hasn't been a conflict in the game before, it obviously has, it's that… Science is bad when it's exploitative and ruins the world, and it's good when it's used for the benefit of all; the game isn't down on science as a concept, we have Cosmo Canyon's planetology to stand as testament to that, but they have never been presented in a way where Cid going "Actually I want to trust this rocket to save the Planet rather than Materia" has been, like, a conflict we've seen?
Also I'm not clear what Cid is planning on doing here. Is he telling us to leave because he intends to pilot the rocket into Meteor himself? If an auto-pilot exists, there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to -
Ooooh, right. It's because Shera is the one fixing the auto-pilot and he automatically doesn't trust her to do the job on time and is willing to sacrifice his life just like she almost committed suicide-by-rocket to finish her job back during the first launch. Because these two people are insane and Cid is a good ol' sexist.
Or more charitably it's because he sees this as his one chance to actually fulfill his dream and go to space, and he's willing to die for it. But let's be real it's the Shera thing.
Then the ship suddenly starts to rumble. Everyone looks up and goes 'what the hell,' and a voice comes over the comms. It's… Heavy sigh… Palmer.
Shera unexpectedly and uncharacteristically finished fixing the Auto-pilot ahead of time, and so Palmer just launched the rocket of his own initiative without any warning.
I think the implication here is that Palmer, knowing Avalanche was inside the rocket, pushed the Auto-pilot without any warning as a way to trap them in the rocket and blast them off into space, getting rid of two problems at the same time by blowing them up alongside Meteor. I say I think because Palmer is a bumbling idiot comic relief character and it's entirely possible the intended read is that he's just too stupid and careless to think of giving a warning or a countdown before launching the rocket on a random impulse.
This is a real 'we just threw something in to drag the plot along' moment. I think I've said the Huge Materia arc has an episodic vibe to it and that just continues it. The Gang Gets Trapped In A Rocket. It's dumb, but it's Palmer, so who cares? Just roll with it. Next plot beat please.
The rocket blasts off with thunderous noise, rattling every window and shop sign in Rocket Town and swaying a bit on its course, but, incredibly, still functional and on course to break orbit. This is not such good news for our protagonist, even if Cid does take a moment to be overwhelmed by the fact that this is it, after all these years, he's made it - he's gone to space.
The rocket is set on a collision course with Meteor, and Palmer locked the Auto-pilot from the ground, so we can't change course. At this point I'm just not going to question Shinra's OSHA practices. Cloud asks if we're all fucked, but Cid tells him he's too young to give up that easily - as it turns out, the rocket is equipped with an escape pod for emergencies like this!
Before we escape, though, we need to grab the Huge Materia before it gets blown up along with the rocket. Cid points us to a ladder and from there, we find that the rocket inexplicably had a whole Sci-Fi Power Room for the Materia. I guess maybe it was always intended to use Materia as a power source?
I realize what I'm going to say is extremely silly, but I expected the Huge Materia to be… bigger. I suppose it qualifies as "huge" simply by virtue of being too large to be slotted into any wearable equipment, though; this is Materia that cannot be used conventionally, so 'Huge' is a good enough descriptor for most purposes, I'd just… Assumed bigger.
Anyway, here comes a new minigame.
Oh, boy.
Okay, so. In order to unlock the Huge Materia, we need to input a four-symbol codes. The symbols correspond to the face pad of the PSX controller and, on PC, to the OK/CANCEL/MENU/SWITCH inputs. We have three minutes to find the correct code. Each time we fail, Cid tries to remember a hint as to the code, which he used to know for some reason.
I don't know how many possible combinations there are for four keys picked from four digits with repeats allowed. I don't care. Cid's hints are "Did you use MENU? I'm pretty sure you didn't…" "The second code wasn't CANCEL…" "I have a feeling you push OK only once…" and "I'm pretty sure the last code was MENU. No, maybe it was CANCEL?"
I would love to work it out like that, but I'm not doing that shit on a three minutes deadline when our last save point was two cutscenes, an FMV and several combat encounters ago. I just tab out and go look for it (the answer, it turns out, is OK, SWITCH, CANCEL, CANCEL. This means Cid's hint to use MENU is a red herring, I assume due to a poor translation from a line originally saying to not use MNU, it's the only explanation I have for it; all my attempts included MENU because of the line "Did you use MENU? I'm pretty sure you didn't," so I would never have found it in time on my own.) This is probably the cheapest move I've pulled in this LP, literally looking up the code mid-minigame, but like I said before, I don't respect these puzzles and, judging from the fact that the hint system was lying to me, they don't deserve my respect.
Fuck you, Cid.
And with this, we've unlocked our third Huge Materia and are free to make a break for the escape pod!
Unfortunately, while making said escape, a piece of equipment explodes, throwing a huge sheet of metal onto Cid and pinning him into place. Tifa and Cloud try to pull it off him, but it's too heavy for the both of them to leverage. Cid tells them to just leave him, they have to escape before the rocket hits Meteor, but Cloud tells him he won't "go without his friends." Character growth, yada yada, Cid calls him stupid, it's meant to be an important character beat but I'm not really feeling it. Then while Tifa and Cloud vainly try to move the metal sheet, Cid notes that this metal sheet isn't any random metal sheet… It's Oxygen Tank Number 8 that blew up. It really was malfunctioning and Shera was right.
…
Cid, it's been years of the rocket just lying around. I'm surprised it functions at all. No, I guess we're supposed to take this at face value - what's the message here, that Shera was actually right to just lock herself into the rocket without warning to be incinerated alive upon takeoff so she could finish fixing the tank shave off a few minutes off the launch? This entire plotline baffles me and WAIT WHAT THE FUCK-
SHERA???
DID SHE LOCK HERSELF INTO THE ENGINE SECTION OF THE ROCKET AGAIN?
OH MY GOD THIS WOMAN IS LITERALLY SUICIDAL, THIS IS IT, HER ENTIRE PLOTLINE IS ABOUT HER LIFELONG ATTEMPT TO COMMIT SUICIDE BY ROCKET
No, there is an escape pod. I guess she was just planning on taking it as her way out of the rocket once it was confirmed safely on its course. I have to believe this for my own sanity. Anyway, Cid throws some more slurs at her just for old time's sake before apologizing, and the noodly-armed scientist somehow proves all that was needed for Max Strength Fighters Tifa and Cloud to leverage aside the metal door and free Cid, allowing everyone to race for the escape pod.
Cid: "Hey, Shera! Does this pod really fly?"
Shera: "It'll be OK. I've checked it."
Cid: "...Then I'm relieved."
Shera: "...Thanks."
Listen, I realize that this is meant to be Cid showing he's experienced character growth by actually displaying trust in Shera's safety obsession and the accuracy of her checks, but what these two have got going on is fucked up, probably some kind of kink, and I want no part of it. Let's mosey.
…
The fact that Cid literally had this exact same line five minutes ago while in the cockpit of the rocket tells me that at this point the writer of this sequence was fully checked out. Not that it matters really, we're not here for the dialogue (Cid mournfully says goodbye to the Shinra N°26 rocket), we're here for the FMV.
The rocket collides with Meteor, exploding in first a point of light, then a great flash which, for a moment, obscures the entire asteroid. We see the the streets of Midgar, where citizens look up in awe and wonder, Cosmo Canyon over which hangs the great fireball, Bugenhagen watching the explosion play out in the holographic display of his observatory… The game seems to really be milking this for 'what if it worked?' effect even though it seems obvious it won't? The light drenches the spires of Midgar, the entire city cast in its fiery glow, then as it fades, the citizens fall to their knees in despair and Bugenhagen shakes his head sadly.
Meteor has been severely damaged, but the occult force of the spell is holding it together, its outer fragments held up by lightning around a peculiarly spherical, veined core; this may be meant to suggest there is a second supernatural layer to the core of the meteorite but I think it's just the artists' rendition of an iron core, which do look something like this in real life.
Cloud: "Rufus and the other's (sic) plan was a failure…"
Barret: "What a bust… But I kinda hoped it'd work."
Cait Sith: "We been botherin' them as much as we can… But there ain't no other way… Wonder if we've been wrong all this time?"
Red: "Makes you worry, doesn't it?"
…
GUYS.
YOU TOOK THE PAYLOAD OUT OF THE ROCKET.
You literally stole the explosive from this missile! In fact this has been your entire plan for the past several hours! You have been systematically robbing Shinra off the power source for their 'detonate Meteor' plan! All this damage to Meteor was done by a dud, a rocket exploding entirely from its fuel! What are you saying 'hoped it'd work' 'was a failure' you literally worked to make this happen.
I'm going to go insane.
It's… Fine. Because now it's time for Cid's big epiphany. You see, now that Cid's actually been to space, he's being hit by the Overview Effect, a real thing which affects astronauts.
Tifa: "Don't worry! Think!"
Cid: "Hey! The girl is right. You start worryin' and there's no stoppin' it. Things just start fallin' apart and get worse and worse."
Barret: "You're pretty damn optimistic! You up to somethin'?"
Cid: "Yeah, I been thinkin' about this and that. All the time we been up lookin' at the planet. I been thinkin' even when we were floatin' in the ocean in that escape pod."
Cloud: "I've… been thinking, too. About the universe… planet… ocean. How wide and big… No matter where I go and what I do it won't change a thing."
Cid: "Maybe you're right. But I came up with something different. I always thought this Planet was so huge. But lookin' at it from space, I realized it's so small. We're just floatin' in the dark. …kind of makes you feel powerless. On top of that it's got Sephiroth festerin' inside it like a sickness."
Cid: "That's why I say this Planet's still a kid. A little sick and trembling kid in the middle of this huge universe. Someone's gotta protect it. Ya follow me? That someone is us."
Tifa: "Cid… That's beautiful."
Barret: "Yo! Cid! You even got to me! Now what? How're we gonna protect the Planet from Meteor?"
Cid: "...I'm still thinkin' about that."
…
On the one hand, the Earth/Gaia/Mother Nature are so often presented as either a mother figure or an immense, distant, awesome force (even when wounded and crying), that Cid actually describing the Planet as a child, sick and trembling and alone in a vast dark universe, that it falls to humanity to protect, is genuinely a novel and touching metaphor.
On the other hand I just can't get emotionally invested in this because the foundations for this scene are built on quicksand. The poorly justified Huge Materia Heist, everything about Cid and Shera, the baffling reactions to the rocket misfire, I am not there.
At this point, Red makes a noise of surprise, runs to the bridge, and asks everyone if they heard something. Of course, the soundtrack decided it didn't feel like cooperating, so the character proceeds to go 'What was this, was it the cries of the planet?' in response to total silence. The same 'planetary cry' as in Bugenhagen's observatory is supposed to play out here, and just like back then, it's not. Who knows why? Anyway, this reminds the characters that Bugenhagen exists and knows a lot about the Planet, so perhaps he can help!
There's interesting new dialogue where Vincent reveals that the machines in Cosmo Canyon were Gast's presence and that "science and the Planet" lived side by side in his heart; Barret notes that he used to think Bugen was a "naturalist" but now thinks about how he had all these machines, and then finally Cait Sith drops the minor bomb that Bugenhagen actually used to work for Shinra, although he 'never bought weapons or Mako.' Strange man.
Bugenhagen exhorts Cloud to dig into his memories and recall something that would be of use, but Cloud can't think of anything, and so Bugenhagen decides to call for a general brainstorming session with the whole party.
Cloud: "I remember Aerith a lot."
Cloud: "No… Not that. You haven't remembered. You haven't forgotten. That's not it…"
Cloud: "How would you say… Aerith was right there all along. Right by our side. She was so close, we couldn't see her. What Aerith did… The words she left behind…"
Tifa: "That reminds me… I was the same."
Red: "...As was I."
Barret: "Me too…"
Cloud: "She said she was the only one who could stop Sephiroth's Meteor."
Tifa: "But Aerith is gone."
Red: "Is it impossible for us to carry on… what Aerith tried to accomplish?"
Barret: "We ain't no Ancients, if that's what you mean."
Cid: "What? Did that girl go off to that place?"
Cloud: "That's it!!"
Cid: "What's it?"
Cloud: "We don't know about it. What did Aerith know? Why did she face Sephiroth without running away?"
Red: "I see, she returned there once again, correct?"
Bugenhagen: "Hmmm. Perhaps I'll have you take me there."
Red: "You're going too?"
Bugenhagen: "What's so surprising about that? Even I like to get out from time to time and see the outside world. I wonder what did it? I haven't felt like this in ages."
Red: "It must be the planet. The planet is calling you!"
Cid: "Yeah, hoo boy, the planet calling… alright."
Bugenhagen: "Ho Ho Hooo. Then let's go."
God, the translation script is increasingly just… Breaking down to the point that even when the meaning of a particular exchange is clear, it's composed of sentences that don't connect to each other in any coherent way, like they were all translated independently of each other. Sure, we can grasp what they're saying - "What? Did that girl go off to that place?" // "That's it! We don't know about it. What did Aerith know?" is Cid asking why did Aerith go the City of the Ancients, and Cloud answering that they don't know, and that's important and they should find out. This has been an obviously dangling plot thread ever since Aerith's death - it's of course understandable for the protagonists to have kind of forgotten in the rush to chase down and kill Sephiroth before he could summon Meteor first, then later Cloud's mental breakdown throwing everything into disarray, especially as they had no means of actually looking into what Aerith was planning, but now that we have no other lead, our best bet is heading there. Maybe Cloud can now understand the records of the Cetra after his dip in the Lifestream, or maybe Bugenhagen can!
Before we do that, though, Cloud asks Bugenhagen if they can store the Huge Materia in his observatory. Given that Cosmo Canyon is a town of unarmed pacifist and its only defender is on a world tour with us, that seems much less safe than keeping them aboard the Highwind, but whatever; Bugen shows Cloud how to operate the commands of the holographic projection room, the elevator takes us up, and Cloud leaves the Huge Materia to float around in the room.
Bugenhagen, studying the Materia, declares that Materia of such exceptional rarity is sure to have a 'special consciousness' enclosed in it. This is our hint to approach each of the Materia in turn; each one has an interaction prompt which causes Cloud to study it and comment on its color being the same as one of the main types of Materia.
When we have interacted with all three Materia, one of our own Materia shows a reaction - or rather, two of them.
…Bahamut ZERO?
Okay, so we have found a third upgraded tier of Bahamut. We should test it out, just to see what it's like. Let's pick a fight, any fight.
…
A view of the planet from orbit, followed by a transition to the moon, a lens flare, and then a dragon coming from behind the moon, spreading its wings like some kind of laser satellite opening its solar panels, and then unleashing an orbital beam on the the enemy.
Absolutely outstanding. This is the real juice. Neo Bahamut was cool but this is even cooler.
…
And also longer. With this summon animation, the game has officially broken the minute mark. Each Bahamut ZERO summon takes a full minute. That's… A problem. That is too long.
Hey, do you remember way back in FFV, when I said this?
Yeah. One saving grace even the most boring fights and grindiest dungeons had in previous FFs was that combat was fast. Autobattling made random encounters even faster but even for real fights, summons and spells were lightning-quick. I am starting to dread having to actually fight FF7's superbosses; like, when I took a shot at the Emerald Weapon and saw the 20 minute timer, my immediate reaction was to dismiss it as a mechanic that probably didn't matter because the idea of any Final Fantasy boss aside from the final boss setpiece taking that long or more seemed… Ridiculous.
I now realize that was foolish. Well. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it - or we won't, as the case may be.
Bugenhagen accompanies us back to the airship, where, having brought up the topic of Aerith, everyone has new dialogue to reflect their feelings on the matter. Barret muses that Aerith must have turned into spiritual energy and returned to the Planet, and it's unlikely we'll ever meet her again. Cid wishes he'd had the chance to give her a ride on the Highwind. Red reminisces about Aerith patting him on the nose, and how he both hated being treated "like a child" that way but also loved the attention, and wanted to apologize for the circumstances of their first meeting. Vincent muses that in time, we too shall become the "Ancients" of some future people. Cait Sith says… What?
Cait Sith: "Elmyra cried herself silly… And so did little Marlene…"
WHERE ARE ELMYRA AND MARLENE, YOU ACCURSED CAT!?
Argh, never mind. In all this, it's Tifa who has by far the most important exchange.
Tifa: "I wonder what Aerith felt… when she was on that altar?"
Cloud: "I'm sure she wanted to give her life to the Planet."
Tifa: "Really? I wonder? I don't think that was it. I don't think she wanted to die at all, but was planning on coming back all along. She always used to talk about the 'next time'. She talked about the future more than any of us…"
This is so important.
As far as we know, Aerith didn't sacrifice herself. She didn't go to the Forbidden Capital knowing she might never come back. She was both trying to get others out of harm's way but also getting away from Cloud whom she loved but who was a liability, in order to enact some kind of plan to save the Planet, whatever its true nature. She didn't give up her life willingly; she was stabbed in the back. She was murdered. And romanticizing that death - projecting a saintly innocence on her, a totally self-abnegating virtue that had already planned to die, that was okay with it, is a terrible disservice to her memory, and years before any sequel, this is something Cloud is already doing himself.
And I can't blame him for it. It's a coping mechanism. It's a way of imparting sense and worth on grief and tragedy.
But it's not true. And Aerith deserves better.)
(At least until we discover some 11th hour twist that Aerith planned for her death in order to send her soul into the Planet Saving Contingency Room, which in other circumstances I would love as a happy twist but here I feel would undermine some of the story's strongest themes regarding the brutality and suddenness of death.)
Well; we didn't cover up a lot of ground event-wise, but I've been pretty busy with unrelated things so you'll have to do with this somewhat meandering update about the end of the Huge Materia arc where I haven't even collected all the Huge Materia yet. Don't worry, though! I'll be looking for the sunken submarine with the last one soon, plus a couple of other things like the crashed Guernica that is allegedly somewhere.
Please ignore this chocobo.
Oh, before we leave, let's talk to Bugenhagen.
Bugenhagen: "Smells like machinery. I love this smell. Of course, I also love the smell of nature, too…"
Bugenhagen: "Hmm? The deck's up there? Then I'll be on the deck just passing the time. I can feel the workings of the Planet in the smell of the wind. I also feel the greatness of Man's wisdom and knowledge in the smell of machinery…"
Bugenhagen is such an interesting character. The way he embodies Planetology as a combination of near-religious awe for the planet and belief in the power and goodness of science and technology, this man at the line between two forces that could so easily be cast as inherently in opposition, as opposed to merely in opposition due to human evil abusing one with the other… And the fact that he is a former Shinra employee makes this even more fascinating. Like, how did he become this great sage of Cosmo Canyon? How did he get that weird crystal ball he's hovering around? All questions to which we will never…
Have…
The answers…
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE
WISE FORMER SHINRA EMPLOYEE WITH A MYSTERIOUS BACKGROUND WHO SPENT HIS LIFE STUDYING THE ANCIENTS AND THE PLANET
LOVE OF MACHINERY AND SCIENCE IN SPITE OF A POWERFUL LOVE OF NATURE AND THE WORLD
PARENTAL FIGURE TO WEIRD ORPHANS FROM ANCIENT BLOODLINES OF PROTECTORS OF THE PLANET THAT DWINDLED OUT IN THE MODERN DAY?
OLD MAN, CHECK, MOUSTACHE, CHECK, ROUND GLASSES, CHECK, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS
Bugenhagen was Gast in hiding this entire time.
Just... Ignore the fact that Bugenhagen is over a hundred years old and Gast was clearly no older than his 40s in the Icicle Inn flashbacks. Just ignore that and the theory totally holds.
Thanks for reading.
Next Time: Some right bullshit, let me tell you.
With 6+k damage per attack and one million HP, there is no way in hell we can defeat the Emerald Weapon now, if ever. We'll perhaps come back later. For now, let's advance the plot. First off, there's some interesting new dialogue with the rest of the crew - Cait Sith reveals that all of Shinra (I assume he means the executive board, not the thousands of employees) is gathered at Rocket Town, admitting that he "loves giving out secrets more than anything." Vincent asks Cloud how it feels to live for "no one but yourself," which seems a strange thing to say to him in particular. Nanaki has an amusing comment where he says that Shinra thinks only in the short term, but he plans "to live for 500 years and won't stop for that kind of thinking." Getting a little bit elf-y, are we, Red?
The best conversation, though, is with Yuffie, who is still feeling horribly sick.
Yuffie: "Huh? How would you even know? You don't know how tough it is… getting sick on boats and rides… So, please… just leave me alone."
Cloud: "I really do understand, Yuffie. When I get sick on a flight, it's a real killer. When I was in SOLDIER, I completely forgot about my motion sickness."
Yuffie: "Oh…"
Yuffie: "Isn't there a way to prevent this?"
Cloud: "Well, according to my research… First off, if you're nervous a lot, you won't get sick. But you can't always be nervous."
Cloud: "With this much space, your best bet is to move around while you're riding. It also might be a good idea to stretch sometimes, too. But in SOLDIER, we spent a lot of time in trucks. That sucked!"
Cloud: "And there's one thing you mustn't do when riding. And that is… Read!"
Cloud: "Once you get sick, there's nothing anyone can do. I know it's tough…"
Yuffie: "...So you're a little better off than me. But I don't feel… well."
…
Okay so that's a really sweet scene once you get past the translation being, like. "If you're nervous a lot, you won't get sick"? What? Cloud literally saying "when I was in SOLDIER" while we've just been over the fact that he wasn't and this is in fact a scene of him acknowledging his real younger self who was a puny grunt with no sea leg - whatever. The idea behind this exchange, of Cloud actually offering Yuffie genuine help and advice, and doing so from a place of vulnerability, responding to Yuffie's assertion that he doesn't know how bad it feels by admitting that he used to get sick in transports all the time, is great. The arc of Cloud and Yuffie's relationship is a little undercooked (perils of an optional character), but the way they progressed from 'Yuffie is conning everyone and Cloud literally doesn't care about her troubles" to "Yuffie breaks down after Aerith's death and Cloud gives her some comfort" to "Yuffie is worried about his health but confident he'll pull through" to "they're getting along fine and Cloud is actually giving her advice that come from both a position of greater experience as well as the experience of weakness," is great. Generally speaking, Yuffie has been a pleasure this playthrough.
Also, I really feel this bit about the most important thing being not to read. This hasn't been an issue for me for years, but as a child, I would insist on reading during family car trips (the alternative was unthinkable, unbearable boredom), and that would inevitably result in my getting sick at some point during the trip. Even once I understood the correlation, though, I couldn't not do it.
There's this crater here now that wasn't there before, on the Eastern Continent.
And now, our next destination - Rocket Town!
It looks like Shinra is planning to mount the Huge Materia onto the rocket and fire it at Meteor. I mean, not much reason to be in Rocket Town otherwise, but it's kind of baffling that they expect that rust bucket that has received no maintenance in years to still function well enough to take off and not just crash and take out Rocket Town with it. Granted, given that they apparently canceled their entire space program, they don't have a lot of other options. Time to head for the Rocket and… prevent them from launching… for some reason!
By now you know the drill. We obliterate the Shinra troops as we advance. As a minor twist, though, Cid joins us partway through and requests to join us since we're kicking Shinra out of his rocket. This means retooling our party in between combat encounters, which is annoying, although ultimately inconsequential.
Ignore the fact that Tifa jumped five levels since last update. Nothing is happening here.
We climb the ladder to the top of the rocket, where we run into a familiar figure - Rude, who exclaims "You again?"
As much as I like Rude, standing at 9,000 HP with only two Shinra soldiers as backup, he is one of the easiest boss fights we've encountered. Both soldiers are easily dispatched, and then a couple of Tier 3 spells take care of him.
Don't worry, he'll live.
Inside the rocket, we run into one last Shinra officer, who cries that the Turks should have stopped us; upon learning that we just dispatched Rude, he expresses fear, but nonetheless decides to bravely and foolishly stand in our way.
At least he might live.
It's honestly kind of amazing how Shinra manages to somehow retain that degree of loyalty from its soldiers. Like, it would be one thing if they were presented as arrogant bad guys who have convinced themselves they can totally take us no matter how many guys we just cut through; but they clearly understand the danger we pose, and still choose to sacrifice their lives to stop us.
I guess it makes sense here, though. The entire Huge Materia arc is us trying to stop Shinra's attempt to save the world. Sure, their plan may be half-assed, but they are trying to save the Planet. And from the point of view of their soldiers, we're a bunch of crazed ecoterrorists who've spent most of the game trying to return humanity to pre-industrial levels of technology. For once in their lives, these guys might be feeling like they're not fighting for a paycheck, but for the benefit of all mankind.
Too bad for them, I suppose.
We enter the cockpit, where we find the… Pilots, mechanics, engineers, whatever. These guys aren't random Shinra employees dispatched from Midgar, they're locals, and Cid and they know each other;
Cid: "Hey! What the hell're you guys doin'!?" [They turn around.] "Hey! Just when I thought somethin' was goin' on, you come back!" (I have no idea what this means.)
Rocketeer 1: "Listen to me, Captain. We're gonna launch this rocket!"
Cid: "Huh? What are you talkin' about?"
Rocketeer 1: "We're gonna load a Materia bomb in this and blow up Meteor."
Rocketeer 2: "Our rocket's gonna save the planet!"
Rocketeer 3: "Urrrrgh. Man this is so COOL!!"
Cloud: "Wait a minute!"
Cid: [He turns around to look at Cloud.] "Shut up!! Just shut the hell up!" [Back to the mechanics.] "How's the rocket?"
Rocketeer 1: "It's pretty much OK."
Rocketeer 2: "But…"
Rocketeer 3: "We planned to run it into Meteor on Auto-pilot, but the most important device is broken."
Cid: "Broken? How's the repair goin'?"
Rocketeer 3: "Shera's doin' it…"
Cid: "Oh great! What a buncha wizards you guys are! She's gonna take 100 years!"
Cid: "I'll take over, so don't worry about the Auto-pilot! Hey, go ahead! Tell everyone!"
Rocketeer 2: "All right, Captain. Good luck."
[The rocketeers leave.]
Cloud: "Hey, Cid! What're you doing!? There are generations of knowledge and wisdom inside the Materia. We're gonna borrow their powers and save the Planet from Sephiroth. There's no way we can lose the Huge Materia. You understand that, right?"
Cid: "Yeah, I understand. I understand that Materia is precious, and I also understand what you're thinking. But listen. I don't give a rat's ass whether it's science or magical power. No, I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather put my money in the power of science. Humans only used to walk around on the ground but now they can fly! And finally, we're about to go into outer space."
Cid: "Science is a 'Power' created and developed by humans. And science might just be what saves this Planet. I was able to earn my living, thanks to science. So to me, there's nothing greater!"
Cid: "Now quit your worryin' about what Shinra's gonna do! I don't want to regret not having done something later."
Cloud: "But, Cid… Shut the hell up!! I don't wanna hear it! Alright, time to get to work! Anyone who ain't involved, get the hell outta here!"
Okay. A bunch to unpack there.
First off, I guess we now know why the party is running around trying to sabotage Shinra's plans to destroy Meteor - it has nothing to do with the asteroid itself or Shinra's estimated chances of success, it's purely a combination of 'Materia is too precious to be destroyed like this' and 'we can use that power to defeat Sephiroth.' Which is a bit of a headscratcher - if Meteor hits and everyone dies, that knowledge won't be doing anyone any good, and if the group fails to thwart Meteor, we still all lose even if Sephiroth is defeated. But at least there is a logic, an actual explanation for why they're doing what they're doing, even if that logic is "only we can properly use this magical power to stop Bishie Satan."
The science/magic angle with Cid is a bit more out of left field. It's not that technology/magic hasn't been a conflict in the game before, it obviously has, it's that… Science is bad when it's exploitative and ruins the world, and it's good when it's used for the benefit of all; the game isn't down on science as a concept, we have Cosmo Canyon's planetology to stand as testament to that, but they have never been presented in a way where Cid going "Actually I want to trust this rocket to save the Planet rather than Materia" has been, like, a conflict we've seen?
Also I'm not clear what Cid is planning on doing here. Is he telling us to leave because he intends to pilot the rocket into Meteor himself? If an auto-pilot exists, there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to -
Ooooh, right. It's because Shera is the one fixing the auto-pilot and he automatically doesn't trust her to do the job on time and is willing to sacrifice his life just like she almost committed suicide-by-rocket to finish her job back during the first launch. Because these two people are insane and Cid is a good ol' sexist.
Or more charitably it's because he sees this as his one chance to actually fulfill his dream and go to space, and he's willing to die for it. But let's be real it's the Shera thing.
Then the ship suddenly starts to rumble. Everyone looks up and goes 'what the hell,' and a voice comes over the comms. It's… Heavy sigh… Palmer.
Shera unexpectedly and uncharacteristically finished fixing the Auto-pilot ahead of time, and so Palmer just launched the rocket of his own initiative without any warning.
I think the implication here is that Palmer, knowing Avalanche was inside the rocket, pushed the Auto-pilot without any warning as a way to trap them in the rocket and blast them off into space, getting rid of two problems at the same time by blowing them up alongside Meteor. I say I think because Palmer is a bumbling idiot comic relief character and it's entirely possible the intended read is that he's just too stupid and careless to think of giving a warning or a countdown before launching the rocket on a random impulse.
This is a real 'we just threw something in to drag the plot along' moment. I think I've said the Huge Materia arc has an episodic vibe to it and that just continues it. The Gang Gets Trapped In A Rocket. It's dumb, but it's Palmer, so who cares? Just roll with it. Next plot beat please.
The rocket blasts off with thunderous noise, rattling every window and shop sign in Rocket Town and swaying a bit on its course, but, incredibly, still functional and on course to break orbit. This is not such good news for our protagonist, even if Cid does take a moment to be overwhelmed by the fact that this is it, after all these years, he's made it - he's gone to space.
The rocket is set on a collision course with Meteor, and Palmer locked the Auto-pilot from the ground, so we can't change course. At this point I'm just not going to question Shinra's OSHA practices. Cloud asks if we're all fucked, but Cid tells him he's too young to give up that easily - as it turns out, the rocket is equipped with an escape pod for emergencies like this!
Before we escape, though, we need to grab the Huge Materia before it gets blown up along with the rocket. Cid points us to a ladder and from there, we find that the rocket inexplicably had a whole Sci-Fi Power Room for the Materia. I guess maybe it was always intended to use Materia as a power source?
I realize what I'm going to say is extremely silly, but I expected the Huge Materia to be… bigger. I suppose it qualifies as "huge" simply by virtue of being too large to be slotted into any wearable equipment, though; this is Materia that cannot be used conventionally, so 'Huge' is a good enough descriptor for most purposes, I'd just… Assumed bigger.
Anyway, here comes a new minigame.
Oh, boy.
Okay, so. In order to unlock the Huge Materia, we need to input a four-symbol codes. The symbols correspond to the face pad of the PSX controller and, on PC, to the OK/CANCEL/MENU/SWITCH inputs. We have three minutes to find the correct code. Each time we fail, Cid tries to remember a hint as to the code, which he used to know for some reason.
I don't know how many possible combinations there are for four keys picked from four digits with repeats allowed. I don't care. Cid's hints are "Did you use MENU? I'm pretty sure you didn't…" "The second code wasn't CANCEL…" "I have a feeling you push OK only once…" and "I'm pretty sure the last code was MENU. No, maybe it was CANCEL?"
I would love to work it out like that, but I'm not doing that shit on a three minutes deadline when our last save point was two cutscenes, an FMV and several combat encounters ago. I just tab out and go look for it (the answer, it turns out, is OK, SWITCH, CANCEL, CANCEL. This means Cid's hint to use MENU is a red herring, I assume due to a poor translation from a line originally saying to not use MNU, it's the only explanation I have for it; all my attempts included MENU because of the line "Did you use MENU? I'm pretty sure you didn't," so I would never have found it in time on my own.) This is probably the cheapest move I've pulled in this LP, literally looking up the code mid-minigame, but like I said before, I don't respect these puzzles and, judging from the fact that the hint system was lying to me, they don't deserve my respect.
Fuck you, Cid.
And with this, we've unlocked our third Huge Materia and are free to make a break for the escape pod!
Unfortunately, while making said escape, a piece of equipment explodes, throwing a huge sheet of metal onto Cid and pinning him into place. Tifa and Cloud try to pull it off him, but it's too heavy for the both of them to leverage. Cid tells them to just leave him, they have to escape before the rocket hits Meteor, but Cloud tells him he won't "go without his friends." Character growth, yada yada, Cid calls him stupid, it's meant to be an important character beat but I'm not really feeling it. Then while Tifa and Cloud vainly try to move the metal sheet, Cid notes that this metal sheet isn't any random metal sheet… It's Oxygen Tank Number 8 that blew up. It really was malfunctioning and Shera was right.
…
Cid, it's been years of the rocket just lying around. I'm surprised it functions at all. No, I guess we're supposed to take this at face value - what's the message here, that Shera was actually right to just lock herself into the rocket without warning to be incinerated alive upon takeoff so she could finish fixing the tank shave off a few minutes off the launch? This entire plotline baffles me and WAIT WHAT THE FUCK-
SHERA???
DID SHE LOCK HERSELF INTO THE ENGINE SECTION OF THE ROCKET AGAIN?
OH MY GOD THIS WOMAN IS LITERALLY SUICIDAL, THIS IS IT, HER ENTIRE PLOTLINE IS ABOUT HER LIFELONG ATTEMPT TO COMMIT SUICIDE BY ROCKET
No, there is an escape pod. I guess she was just planning on taking it as her way out of the rocket once it was confirmed safely on its course. I have to believe this for my own sanity. Anyway, Cid throws some more slurs at her just for old time's sake before apologizing, and the noodly-armed scientist somehow proves all that was needed for Max Strength Fighters Tifa and Cloud to leverage aside the metal door and free Cid, allowing everyone to race for the escape pod.
Cid: "Hey, Shera! Does this pod really fly?"
Shera: "It'll be OK. I've checked it."
Cid: "...Then I'm relieved."
Shera: "...Thanks."
Listen, I realize that this is meant to be Cid showing he's experienced character growth by actually displaying trust in Shera's safety obsession and the accuracy of her checks, but what these two have got going on is fucked up, probably some kind of kink, and I want no part of it. Let's mosey.
…
The fact that Cid literally had this exact same line five minutes ago while in the cockpit of the rocket tells me that at this point the writer of this sequence was fully checked out. Not that it matters really, we're not here for the dialogue (Cid mournfully says goodbye to the Shinra N°26 rocket), we're here for the FMV.
The rocket collides with Meteor, exploding in first a point of light, then a great flash which, for a moment, obscures the entire asteroid. We see the the streets of Midgar, where citizens look up in awe and wonder, Cosmo Canyon over which hangs the great fireball, Bugenhagen watching the explosion play out in the holographic display of his observatory… The game seems to really be milking this for 'what if it worked?' effect even though it seems obvious it won't? The light drenches the spires of Midgar, the entire city cast in its fiery glow, then as it fades, the citizens fall to their knees in despair and Bugenhagen shakes his head sadly.
Meteor has been severely damaged, but the occult force of the spell is holding it together, its outer fragments held up by lightning around a peculiarly spherical, veined core; this may be meant to suggest there is a second supernatural layer to the core of the meteorite but I think it's just the artists' rendition of an iron core, which do look something like this in real life.
Cloud: "Rufus and the other's (sic) plan was a failure…"
Barret: "What a bust… But I kinda hoped it'd work."
Cait Sith: "We been botherin' them as much as we can… But there ain't no other way… Wonder if we've been wrong all this time?"
Red: "Makes you worry, doesn't it?"
…
GUYS.
YOU TOOK THE PAYLOAD OUT OF THE ROCKET.
You literally stole the explosive from this missile! In fact this has been your entire plan for the past several hours! You have been systematically robbing Shinra off the power source for their 'detonate Meteor' plan! All this damage to Meteor was done by a dud, a rocket exploding entirely from its fuel! What are you saying 'hoped it'd work' 'was a failure' you literally worked to make this happen.
I'm going to go insane.
It's… Fine. Because now it's time for Cid's big epiphany. You see, now that Cid's actually been to space, he's being hit by the Overview Effect, a real thing which affects astronauts.
Tifa: "Don't worry! Think!"
Cid: "Hey! The girl is right. You start worryin' and there's no stoppin' it. Things just start fallin' apart and get worse and worse."
Barret: "You're pretty damn optimistic! You up to somethin'?"
Cid: "Yeah, I been thinkin' about this and that. All the time we been up lookin' at the planet. I been thinkin' even when we were floatin' in the ocean in that escape pod."
Cloud: "I've… been thinking, too. About the universe… planet… ocean. How wide and big… No matter where I go and what I do it won't change a thing."
Cid: "Maybe you're right. But I came up with something different. I always thought this Planet was so huge. But lookin' at it from space, I realized it's so small. We're just floatin' in the dark. …kind of makes you feel powerless. On top of that it's got Sephiroth festerin' inside it like a sickness."
Cid: "That's why I say this Planet's still a kid. A little sick and trembling kid in the middle of this huge universe. Someone's gotta protect it. Ya follow me? That someone is us."
Tifa: "Cid… That's beautiful."
Barret: "Yo! Cid! You even got to me! Now what? How're we gonna protect the Planet from Meteor?"
Cid: "...I'm still thinkin' about that."
…
On the one hand, the Earth/Gaia/Mother Nature are so often presented as either a mother figure or an immense, distant, awesome force (even when wounded and crying), that Cid actually describing the Planet as a child, sick and trembling and alone in a vast dark universe, that it falls to humanity to protect, is genuinely a novel and touching metaphor.
On the other hand I just can't get emotionally invested in this because the foundations for this scene are built on quicksand. The poorly justified Huge Materia Heist, everything about Cid and Shera, the baffling reactions to the rocket misfire, I am not there.
At this point, Red makes a noise of surprise, runs to the bridge, and asks everyone if they heard something. Of course, the soundtrack decided it didn't feel like cooperating, so the character proceeds to go 'What was this, was it the cries of the planet?' in response to total silence. The same 'planetary cry' as in Bugenhagen's observatory is supposed to play out here, and just like back then, it's not. Who knows why? Anyway, this reminds the characters that Bugenhagen exists and knows a lot about the Planet, so perhaps he can help!
There's interesting new dialogue where Vincent reveals that the machines in Cosmo Canyon were Gast's presence and that "science and the Planet" lived side by side in his heart; Barret notes that he used to think Bugen was a "naturalist" but now thinks about how he had all these machines, and then finally Cait Sith drops the minor bomb that Bugenhagen actually used to work for Shinra, although he 'never bought weapons or Mako.' Strange man.
Bugenhagen exhorts Cloud to dig into his memories and recall something that would be of use, but Cloud can't think of anything, and so Bugenhagen decides to call for a general brainstorming session with the whole party.
Cloud: "I remember Aerith a lot."
Cloud: "No… Not that. You haven't remembered. You haven't forgotten. That's not it…"
Cloud: "How would you say… Aerith was right there all along. Right by our side. She was so close, we couldn't see her. What Aerith did… The words she left behind…"
Tifa: "That reminds me… I was the same."
Red: "...As was I."
Barret: "Me too…"
Cloud: "She said she was the only one who could stop Sephiroth's Meteor."
Tifa: "But Aerith is gone."
Red: "Is it impossible for us to carry on… what Aerith tried to accomplish?"
Barret: "We ain't no Ancients, if that's what you mean."
Cid: "What? Did that girl go off to that place?"
Cloud: "That's it!!"
Cid: "What's it?"
Cloud: "We don't know about it. What did Aerith know? Why did she face Sephiroth without running away?"
Red: "I see, she returned there once again, correct?"
Bugenhagen: "Hmmm. Perhaps I'll have you take me there."
Red: "You're going too?"
Bugenhagen: "What's so surprising about that? Even I like to get out from time to time and see the outside world. I wonder what did it? I haven't felt like this in ages."
Red: "It must be the planet. The planet is calling you!"
Cid: "Yeah, hoo boy, the planet calling… alright."
Bugenhagen: "Ho Ho Hooo. Then let's go."
God, the translation script is increasingly just… Breaking down to the point that even when the meaning of a particular exchange is clear, it's composed of sentences that don't connect to each other in any coherent way, like they were all translated independently of each other. Sure, we can grasp what they're saying - "What? Did that girl go off to that place?" // "That's it! We don't know about it. What did Aerith know?" is Cid asking why did Aerith go the City of the Ancients, and Cloud answering that they don't know, and that's important and they should find out. This has been an obviously dangling plot thread ever since Aerith's death - it's of course understandable for the protagonists to have kind of forgotten in the rush to chase down and kill Sephiroth before he could summon Meteor first, then later Cloud's mental breakdown throwing everything into disarray, especially as they had no means of actually looking into what Aerith was planning, but now that we have no other lead, our best bet is heading there. Maybe Cloud can now understand the records of the Cetra after his dip in the Lifestream, or maybe Bugenhagen can!
Before we do that, though, Cloud asks Bugenhagen if they can store the Huge Materia in his observatory. Given that Cosmo Canyon is a town of unarmed pacifist and its only defender is on a world tour with us, that seems much less safe than keeping them aboard the Highwind, but whatever; Bugen shows Cloud how to operate the commands of the holographic projection room, the elevator takes us up, and Cloud leaves the Huge Materia to float around in the room.
Bugenhagen, studying the Materia, declares that Materia of such exceptional rarity is sure to have a 'special consciousness' enclosed in it. This is our hint to approach each of the Materia in turn; each one has an interaction prompt which causes Cloud to study it and comment on its color being the same as one of the main types of Materia.
When we have interacted with all three Materia, one of our own Materia shows a reaction - or rather, two of them.
…Bahamut ZERO?
Okay, so we have found a third upgraded tier of Bahamut. We should test it out, just to see what it's like. Let's pick a fight, any fight.
…
A view of the planet from orbit, followed by a transition to the moon, a lens flare, and then a dragon coming from behind the moon, spreading its wings like some kind of laser satellite opening its solar panels, and then unleashing an orbital beam on the the enemy.
Absolutely outstanding. This is the real juice. Neo Bahamut was cool but this is even cooler.
…
And also longer. With this summon animation, the game has officially broken the minute mark. Each Bahamut ZERO summon takes a full minute. That's… A problem. That is too long.
Hey, do you remember way back in FFV, when I said this?
Article: One thing I will give FFV's superboss: it's not time-consuming. I have, at this point, been battling Omega for over half an hour, which is nothing compared to my time spent on Soulsborne bosses; any given attempt at the big robot lasts two minutes top, even a dozen failed runs take up very little time.
Yeah. One saving grace even the most boring fights and grindiest dungeons had in previous FFs was that combat was fast. Autobattling made random encounters even faster but even for real fights, summons and spells were lightning-quick. I am starting to dread having to actually fight FF7's superbosses; like, when I took a shot at the Emerald Weapon and saw the 20 minute timer, my immediate reaction was to dismiss it as a mechanic that probably didn't matter because the idea of any Final Fantasy boss aside from the final boss setpiece taking that long or more seemed… Ridiculous.
I now realize that was foolish. Well. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it - or we won't, as the case may be.
Bugenhagen accompanies us back to the airship, where, having brought up the topic of Aerith, everyone has new dialogue to reflect their feelings on the matter. Barret muses that Aerith must have turned into spiritual energy and returned to the Planet, and it's unlikely we'll ever meet her again. Cid wishes he'd had the chance to give her a ride on the Highwind. Red reminisces about Aerith patting him on the nose, and how he both hated being treated "like a child" that way but also loved the attention, and wanted to apologize for the circumstances of their first meeting. Vincent muses that in time, we too shall become the "Ancients" of some future people. Cait Sith says… What?
Cait Sith: "Elmyra cried herself silly… And so did little Marlene…"
WHERE ARE ELMYRA AND MARLENE, YOU ACCURSED CAT!?
Argh, never mind. In all this, it's Tifa who has by far the most important exchange.
Tifa: "I wonder what Aerith felt… when she was on that altar?"
Cloud: "I'm sure she wanted to give her life to the Planet."
Tifa: "Really? I wonder? I don't think that was it. I don't think she wanted to die at all, but was planning on coming back all along. She always used to talk about the 'next time'. She talked about the future more than any of us…"
This is so important.
As far as we know, Aerith didn't sacrifice herself. She didn't go to the Forbidden Capital knowing she might never come back. She was both trying to get others out of harm's way but also getting away from Cloud whom she loved but who was a liability, in order to enact some kind of plan to save the Planet, whatever its true nature. She didn't give up her life willingly; she was stabbed in the back. She was murdered. And romanticizing that death - projecting a saintly innocence on her, a totally self-abnegating virtue that had already planned to die, that was okay with it, is a terrible disservice to her memory, and years before any sequel, this is something Cloud is already doing himself.
And I can't blame him for it. It's a coping mechanism. It's a way of imparting sense and worth on grief and tragedy.
But it's not true. And Aerith deserves better.)
(At least until we discover some 11th hour twist that Aerith planned for her death in order to send her soul into the Planet Saving Contingency Room, which in other circumstances I would love as a happy twist but here I feel would undermine some of the story's strongest themes regarding the brutality and suddenness of death.)
Well; we didn't cover up a lot of ground event-wise, but I've been pretty busy with unrelated things so you'll have to do with this somewhat meandering update about the end of the Huge Materia arc where I haven't even collected all the Huge Materia yet. Don't worry, though! I'll be looking for the sunken submarine with the last one soon, plus a couple of other things like the crashed Guernica that is allegedly somewhere.
Please ignore this chocobo.
Oh, before we leave, let's talk to Bugenhagen.
Bugenhagen: "Smells like machinery. I love this smell. Of course, I also love the smell of nature, too…"
Bugenhagen: "Hmm? The deck's up there? Then I'll be on the deck just passing the time. I can feel the workings of the Planet in the smell of the wind. I also feel the greatness of Man's wisdom and knowledge in the smell of machinery…"
Bugenhagen is such an interesting character. The way he embodies Planetology as a combination of near-religious awe for the planet and belief in the power and goodness of science and technology, this man at the line between two forces that could so easily be cast as inherently in opposition, as opposed to merely in opposition due to human evil abusing one with the other… And the fact that he is a former Shinra employee makes this even more fascinating. Like, how did he become this great sage of Cosmo Canyon? How did he get that weird crystal ball he's hovering around? All questions to which we will never…
Have…
The answers…
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE
WISE FORMER SHINRA EMPLOYEE WITH A MYSTERIOUS BACKGROUND WHO SPENT HIS LIFE STUDYING THE ANCIENTS AND THE PLANET
LOVE OF MACHINERY AND SCIENCE IN SPITE OF A POWERFUL LOVE OF NATURE AND THE WORLD
PARENTAL FIGURE TO WEIRD ORPHANS FROM ANCIENT BLOODLINES OF PROTECTORS OF THE PLANET THAT DWINDLED OUT IN THE MODERN DAY?
OLD MAN, CHECK, MOUSTACHE, CHECK, ROUND GLASSES, CHECK, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS
Bugenhagen was Gast in hiding this entire time.
Just... Ignore the fact that Bugenhagen is over a hundred years old and Gast was clearly no older than his 40s in the Icicle Inn flashbacks. Just ignore that and the theory totally holds.
Thanks for reading.
Next Time: Some right bullshit, let me tell you.
I interpret this as "did you {aka me, back when I remembered this password} use Menu? I'm pretty sure you {again, not referring to you the player on your attempt, but on the actual password} didn't"
aka, this is trying to say that the password doesn't use MENU, but the translation is bad enough that it's possible to read it the other was around. It makes more sense when you realize that Cid's hints almost certainly don't actually pay attention to what you inputed, beyond it matching or not.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
For the record? The Rocket fails even if the Huge Materia's still in it. It's just that by this point the devteam is screaming in fatigue and exhaustion and so they didn't design an alternate discussion.
But yeah, at the end of the day, the Huge Materia is just icing on the cake, if the rocket itself hitting wasn't enough to stop Meteor, then a little extra boom in the payload wouldn't change matters. The entire outer shell is ablative armor for the core, which as you can see is completely unharmed.
But yeah, at the end of the day, the Huge Materia is just icing on the cake, if the rocket itself hitting wasn't enough to stop Meteor, then a little extra boom in the payload wouldn't change matters. The entire outer shell is ablative armor for the core, which as you can see is completely unharmed.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
LOL welcome onboard the Ship.
My first playthrough (age 12, Apollo Nerd Phase) I was like "OK Cid you convinced me" and didn't even try to take the Materia out; I just left it in the rocket.
Anyway the dialogue is exactly the same when you leave the payload in, so I think it's just iffy writing.
The scene worked a lot better that way.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
It's "Attack it when it's tail is up!
It's gonna counterattack with its laser!" All over again. I can see what the translation is trying to say, but it doesn't matter, because I can also see the exact opposite and seeing that opposite could cause a wipe.
It's gonna counterattack with its laser!" All over again. I can see what the translation is trying to say, but it doesn't matter, because I can also see the exact opposite and seeing that opposite could cause a wipe.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
...holy fuck you might actually be right.Bugenhagen: "Smells like machinery. I love this smell. Of course, I also love the smell of nature, too…"
Bugenhagen: "Hmm? The deck's up there? Then I'll be on the deck just passing the time. I can feel the workings of the Planet in the smell of the wind. I also feel the greatness of Man's wisdom and knowledge in the smell of machinery…"
Bugenhagen is such an interesting character. The way he embodies Planetology as a combination of near-religious awe for the planet and belief in the power and goodness of science and technology, this man at the line between two forces that could so easily be cast as inherently in opposition, as opposed to merely in opposition due to human evil abusing one with the other… And the fact that he is a former Shinra employee makes this even more fascinating. Like, how did he become this great sage of Cosmo Canyon? How did he get that weird crystal ball he's hovering around? All questions to which we will never…
Have…
The answers…
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE
WISE FORMER SHINRA EMPLOYEE WITH A MYSTERIOUS BACKGROUND WHO SPENT HIS LIFE STUDYING THE ANCIENTS AND THE PLANET
LOVE OF MACHINERY AND SCIENCE IN SPITE OF A POWERFUL LOVE OF NATURE AND THE WORLD
PARENTAL FIGURE TO WEIRD ORPHANS FROM ANCIENT BLOODLINES OF PROTECTORS OF THE PLANET THAT DWINDLED OUT IN THE MODERN DAY?
OLD MAN, CHECK, MOUSTACHE, CHECK, ROUND GLASSES, CHECK, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS
Bugenhagen was Gast in hiding this entire time.
Just... Ignore the fact that Bugenhagen is over a hundred years old and Gast was clearly no older than his 40s in the Icicle Inn flashbacks. Just ignore that and the theory totally holds.
Thanks for reading.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am pretty sure at least one of the translation issues in the conversation with Yuffie is Cloud saying "when I was a soldier we rode in trucks a lot" and the translator then making that into the proper noun SOLDIER.
My best guess at the "nervous" thing would be that Cloud's saying you should distract yourself somehow? If you have nothing to think about but being sick the sickness gets worse.
Be interesting if someone could find a comparison/retranslation of that scene in particular.
Re: the sound issue: My steam copy does have the planet scream in place. Not sure why Omi's having so many issues with their sound but this is the first time in particular I can confirm that there's a difference between that they're experiencing and what I am.
The 20m timer is a serious limiter. FF7's superbosses were added after the fact -- they don't exist in the original version of the game -- and they were specifically created, I suspect, as a 'you think you're so tough? Well, try this on', challenge to players who rolled into the endgame with a full party of 99s and maxed out everything and thought things were too easy.
FWIW though I believe there's only one other summon with an animation time longer than Bahamut Zero's.
My best guess at the "nervous" thing would be that Cloud's saying you should distract yourself somehow? If you have nothing to think about but being sick the sickness gets worse.
Be interesting if someone could find a comparison/retranslation of that scene in particular.
Re: the sound issue: My steam copy does have the planet scream in place. Not sure why Omi's having so many issues with their sound but this is the first time in particular I can confirm that there's a difference between that they're experiencing and what I am.
The 20m timer is a serious limiter. FF7's superbosses were added after the fact -- they don't exist in the original version of the game -- and they were specifically created, I suspect, as a 'you think you're so tough? Well, try this on', challenge to players who rolled into the endgame with a full party of 99s and maxed out everything and thought things were too easy.
FWIW though I believe there's only one other summon with an animation time longer than Bahamut Zero's.
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Well, he does have the whole extended elf lifespan thing going on already.
Yeah, for an optional character Yuffie has turned out to have quite a bit of characterization going on, hasn't she? I mean, compare characters like Umaro or Gogo who are basically one-off gimmicks, or... well honestly there's a decent chunk of the FFVI cast that doesn't get much development, let alone as much as Yuffie.
Granted, Vincent on the other hand is over at the sidelines with basically nothing.
I never really had car sickness issues, but I can absolutely say I would have done the same if I did.
My man really confronting the party with less HP then the three of them combined
You know, I hadn't actually considered that up to this point. Yeah, from the average Shinra soldier's point of view, Could and company are absolutely grinding a grudge against Shinra when it really isn't the time and stopping them from saving the planet. Hell, probably not helped by the fact that just recently there was the attempt at pushing the blame on Barret and Tifa with a couple of public executions involved.
Okay but are they wrong???
Oh, nevermind, this rocket is never taking off.
Okay, but to be fair to Cid, even sexism aside would you trust Shera to finish a job like this on time after how far she kept trying to push back the first launch back in the day for random safety inspections?
I call bullshit.
OH B-
Yeah, that.
Yeah no, I don't blame you in the least between how obnoxious it is with the keyboard inputs of "MENU COMMAND" instead of... you know, Triangle/Circle/Square on a PS controller
Oh no, not... Cid
How would the party and the game ever go on without Cid
Man, if only there were a less important party member to sacrifice
like
Whoa, jeez Omi, don't need to kinkshame, if a girl wants to go out in a blaze of exploding space rocket glory, it's a pretty dope way to go, you know?
"We did it, we saved the planet!"
I would be absolutely unsurprised if by this point, sentences were in fact translated independently, it wouldn't even be the first game where something like this happened. For example, did you know Oblivion had their voice actors record lines in alphabetical order, instead of with... you know, things like context to better act out the lines?
Man, remember when just standard Bahamut was the peak of summon powers? Just going "Hahaha here's my LASER DRAGON".
And now we got Neo Space Super Satellite Laser Murder Dragons. And there's still yet more to come.
Yeaaaah, suffice to say? The jump from 2D to 3D makes this a bit of a recurring problem, though it's probably most pronounced in FFVII (particularly this version) since it means lacking things like Quality of Life improvements, or game design that takes into account "hey maybe the players don't want to have enough time to go make a sandwich while the summon animations play out".
Though granted, said QoL improvements in the Pixel Remasters already saved a bunch of time overall. Like just off the top of my head, there's things like the Quicksave Anywhere slot helping with things like long dungeon runs between save points (looking at you, FFIII and the Crystal Tower), or grinding being much easier when you just tap the auto key on and walk back and forth for 20 minutes, or just plain faster/more effective gameplay. For example, I don't know if this came up during those LPs since it's been a while, but did you know in the original versions of FFI and FFII when you selected a target for the turn, if it died before that character's action came around then it was just a wiffed attack? For example, you play FFI with four fighters, and all four of them target the same goblin. If Fighter 2 kills the goblin, then Fighter 3 and Fighter 4 just stick their swords up their bums or something on their turns because they target absolutely nothing, meaning you often had to guesstimate "boy I hope this attack kills them and I'll get started on something else in the meanwhile".
Cait Sith is making it all up
He was making it up the whole time, he doesn't even know where they are, Marlene's voice was just AI generated back in Gold Saucer
Fucker's taking you for a RIDE he's not even a SHINRA EMPLOYEE at this rate, he's just a superfan of Cloud that wanted in on this whole Avalanche thing
...Well, seeing as I don't remember what precisely comes next, now I'm just curious.