SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Well, I just learned a thing today. Apparently Kissinger is now dead.
This thread is surprisingly informative, I suppose.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
This thread is surprisingly informative, I suppose.
He just slides through Lifestream and back out again on his hair grease.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
The "soul seeking Holy" part is a bit odd. In Japanese, the phrase is "ホーリーを求める心が星にとどけ", which translates closer to "if/when a heart wishing for Holy reaches the Planet". So it's not a given that the wisher needs to die and "return to the Planet".
The primary concern are the words "心" ("heart") and "とどけ" ("reach"), I would say. "Heart" here refers to the metaphysical idea of "hearts and minds"; translating it to "soul" is less common, and certainly doesn't mean a literal "animating life force"/"ghost of the dead" soul. It's more like "purest intent", like "spirit of the law".
Meanwhile, "reach" is usually intended literally, as in "to be able to touch (from a distance)". (Advent Children watchers might remember the bit where everyone flings Cloud up to the skies. "とどけ"/"todoke" is what Vincent tells Cloud on the way up.) There's no implication of "merging" like a soul returning to the Lifestream, but in this case I would assume it's used in the sense of "feelings reaching the Planet".
It's just that the two put together is a bit too poetic for a straightforward interpretation. If Bugenhagen meant "a wish for Holy reaching the Planet", he could have used the words for "wish" or "feelings" or "hopes". Instead, he uses "heart".
So while I don't think what Bugenhagen says is evidence that Holy matches Meteor in requiring a sacrifice before it can be used, I cannot fully rule it out either. Personally I would have translated it as "If a heart that wishes for Holy manages to reach the Planet with that wish", making it a longer line, but with potentially more clarity. However, I cannot say this is what the Japanese script truly intended for certain.
Almost completely irrelevant trivia: Bugenhagen uses a slightly odd word choice here, by saying "green" in katakana, ie a transliteration of the English word "green" ("グリーン"). I'm not sure why he uses katakana, but I have a wild suspicion:
FFXIV players who've played early Stormblood might recall Hancock being all insufferable and nerd-explainy (yes, I am aware of the irony given my posts) about why the Blue Kojin are called "blue". This is referencing the problem of the blue-green distinction in several languages, including Japanese (and ancient Chinese from whence it came). The word in question is 青 ("ao"), which can mean both green or blue depending on context. The word is used for both fresh green vegetables and clear blue skies.
Now, in modern (post WW2) Japanese, "ao" usually refers to blue, and green is "midori" (緑). But some older things that pre-date WW2, like traffic lights and vegetables, get called "ao" for green, despite "ao" meaning blue in other situations (like clothes or eye colour).
And Bugenhagen is an archetypically old man, so he is exactly the sort to use "ao" to mean green. But Cloud and the rest of the party are young, so they would interpret "ao" to mean blue.
Thus, it's possible the Japanese script has Bugenhagen use the English word for "green" to sidestep all these issues. Which is a surprising amount of thought for characterization this late in the game, in that it is both more than expected with the consideration of Bugenhagen being an old man with old vocabulary, and less than expected with using "グリーン" to avoid the topic entirely.
If anyone is wondering, this is another localization in the translation. Bugenhagen just says "I can't read it" in a flippant way in the Japanese script.
Speaking of his "quirky humour", Bugenhagen's speech patterns also include a lot of drawn-out words. For example, the aforementioned "pale green" would normally have been "あわいグリーン", but Bugenhagen says it like "あわ～いグリーン". This makes him sound sing-songy when he says the White Materia would be "glowing paaaale green". Which, as you say, is a little disconcerting when he's talking about possibly the extinction of human life.
It's not the only example of Bugenhagen drawing out his syllables either. It makes him the sort of old sage who floatily bounces around the room going "Ho ho hoooo", always smiles with eyes that don't appear to be viewing reality, and goes "the end of the woooorld is coming, and that's baaaaad".
In other words, Yoda when he was pretending to be just a random silly hermit on Dagobah.
It's also not particularly clear in the Japanese script. "力つきた" ("chikara tsukita") does mean "used all his energy" (accounting for the lack of subject in grammar), but "energy" here could mean both "life force" or "power". The phrase could be used to describe someone writing a final dying message before expiring from their wounds, or it could be "I used all my power to lift the car". Or it could even be "I tried my utmost to decipher this text".
In context, I would probably go with that last: the unnamed scholar used all their "power" of Ancient archaeological knowledge to decipher just two words of the Ancient writing, and could not figure out any others.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In regards to things not being clear on proper intent, its worth noting that at this point they were not consulting with original writers to determine best translation yet - they only did that after Richard Honeywood set up the translation department post Xenogears, which wouldn't have had a chance to impact anything until VIII or more likely IX.
- Location
- East Coast
I can only immortalize this moment with the proper somber music.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVyNAjAijg
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As the dude responsible, will also say 10/10 experience and is definitely going on my highlight reel for when St. Peter judges me.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
okay the idea you're going to respond to divine judgement with a highlight reel of... greatest sins? best hits of virtue? I genuinely cannot guess from context but either one would be amazing.
Oh hey, somewhat relevant to the thread since Omi has talked about enjoying the series before and the latest one finally came out:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24gq7J9rhWo
Can't wait for the FFVI episode sometime around when Omi has finished FFXVI and moved on to playing all the Final Fantasy spinoffs in release order
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24gq7J9rhWo
Can't wait for the FFVI episode sometime around when Omi has finished FFXVI and moved on to playing all the Final Fantasy spinoffs in release order
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
HOLY SHIT, IT'S ACTUALLY OUT?
LMFAO
Like for the record all the previous New Frame Plus videos on Final Fantasy design were published within, like, a year of each other? And The Animation of Final Fantasy IV was itself a year ago. It took them more time to make this one video than it did the entire rest of the series. I genuinely thought he'd just given up, incredible.
I always assumed it was at least coming eventually, since I'm pretty sure he mentioned progress being made in some other videos like the one about Link's Tears of the Kingdom animations. But yeaaaaah, it's been a crazy long gap between FFIV and FFV, especially considering the rate they were originally coming out at.
cB557
voOOP
Yeah we've known it's probably coming because he did some streams of FFV for the footage gathering process, he's just got the same conundrum as this thread where there seems to be exponentially more to talk about with every new entry.
Sort of tangentially related via Youtubes, if y'all haven't heard of the 8-bit Big Band, they do excellent jazz covers of various game music, and a while back they posted a jazz waltz version of Tifa's theme that officially dropped with their most recent album a couple weeks back:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljw3xTG50Lg
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljw3xTG50Lg
kairuf
(Verified Kaiger) (Not the Siberian)
- Location
- The land of Potatoes
I think that the 4 things that I remember from AC are
The motorcycle fight scenes
Rude looking all sad that his sunglasses were broken and then immediately pulling out another pair
That all of the cast was wearing the pink ribbon in remembrance of Aerith (nice detail)
The sound track,
The motorcycle fight scenes
Rude looking all sad that his sunglasses were broken and then immediately pulling out another pair
That all of the cast was wearing the pink ribbon in remembrance of Aerith (nice detail)
The sound track,
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've watched this scene more times than I can count, but rewatching it now I can actually see the way they integrated her Limit Break moves into her fight in a really cool way. It's really good.
Which makes it even more annoying that the whole thing is a setup for her completely jobbing and getting taken out in a single hit
cB557
voOOP
With the NFP video on FFV, I'm thinking about how when characters are downed, their downed sprite is always their default freelancer outfit. One would assume this to just be the one place they decided to be economical with their character sprites, but given the way jobs work as magically granted to you by crystal shards in FFV, I would instead put forth that this implies that all the different job outfits are magical girl transformations that are dispelled when you get knocked out.
It'd explain them also not impacting the field sprites, I suppose, but I'd assume the activation would have to be reflexive or even done on the part of the shard itself considering it still takes place in cases of ambush.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
That was infuriating to me, too.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Like all magical girl transformations the ambushing random encounters are polite enough to let them go through their sparkly stock footage transformation sequence before attacking.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
that would be a very final fantasy 5 moment, anyways
kairuf
(Verified Kaiger) (Not the Siberian)
- Location
- The land of Potatoes
Every fight scene in AC is so good, until it remembers that the villains need to win for plot purposes.
Also, poor Rude, he is even more of a buttmonkey than Reno is
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YypPkFTEYsU?t=01m025s
Imagine the first time that it happens, it's just "Huh why am I in my unifoooooooooorm-wham"
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Final Fantasy VII, Part 34: The Ultima Weapon & The Midgar Raid
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII.
The Ultima Weapon is a punk bitch and I destroyed it with trivial ease.
First, let's start with some introductions. This is the Ultima(te)* Weapon:
*I'm going to keep calling it Ultima because, like, it is. Sorry if this is another Aeris/Aerith deals for you.
We find it floating in the center of the crater in the Junon Area, its head slumped, appearing to be in a kind of resting or hibernating state (although still floating). Upon bumping into it with the Highwind, we are kicked into battle, using a very special background on the deck of the Highwind, which is really cool.
Now, the Ultima Weapon's most common and most powerful attack is its Ultima Beam, which hits the party for around 1500 damage by default. That's decent damage, especially for a raid-wide, but still not so much that I couldn't deal with it with Cure All. Now throw in Big Guard, and…
…damage is reduced to the mid-700s, at which point I don't even need Cure All; part my default boss strategy is to combo Big Guard with Regen All, and the passive healing from Regen is enough to make everyone safe from these attacks, freeing up optimal attack potential.
The Ultima Weapon has one defense going for it, which is that it's flying, and as such neither Tifa nor Cloud can reach it.* While this does make it safe from their potent physical attacks, even Cloud, equipped as a physical tank, can still whip up a Firaga for 4000 damage a piece, while Yuffie and Tifa, who happen to have Ultima and Cometeor between the two of them, hit it for even higher damage. Notably, I hadn't noticed, but that massive 35000 AP victory over the Diamond Weapon resulted in Yuffie learning Flare.
*Speaking of which, the Ultima Weapon apparently has valuable Steals, but I hate Steal (because it has an abysmal hit rate and sitting around having two characters use Defend for fifteen turns while another one whiffs stealing over and over), and while I did equip Yuffie with Steal to give it a fair shot, it turns out you can't steal from a distant opponent. You need a Long Range Materia, which is a unique Materia found very early in the game in the Mythril Mine, which I missed at the time and never bothered to go back to get because its use is so niche.
Okay, so the size of the Weapon makes the camera angles weird which makes the spells hard to see, but whatever. The point is, even without Knights of the Round, I have tremendous magical offense power. Now, what does our friend Ultima have to counter that?
Well, it's leaving, for one.
Picture my outraged face.
The Ultima Weapon is actually pulling a double reference to VI. One, there is, obviously, its name and narrative role as an ancient super-dragon monster. But it's also modeled after Deathgaze, the World of Ruin monster that appears at random locations of the sky, escapes after a few turns and whose HP does not regenerate between fights, and which must be fought repeatedly until killed. Ultima boasts an impressive 100,000 HP, but escapes the fight after taking a certain amount of damage or a certain number of attacks, I'm not sure which. Then…
…it reappears in the sky above the Junon Crater and starts flying around at high speed in random patterns. Attempting to ram it with the Highwind again causes a violent pushback and Cid to complain about what is probably some kind of force field surrounding it. His comments 'You think I'm just gonna give up?' is a hint that, however pointless that may seem, we should keep ramming the beast - eventually, it will stop its erratic flying and head straight for a new location.
…is it charging up a magical attack? It sure looks like it's charging a Frieza-style "blow up the planet" attack. Well, we won't give it time to do that.
This is the Ultima Weapon being hit by Ultima. Which, again, looks like shit.
For a lark, I equipped Yuffie with Quadra Magic on Ultima. The result is that each Ultima cast deals 2300+ damage, and she casts it four times, for a total of a little over 9200 damage. We are getting close to breaking the 9999 ceiling, but we're not quite there yet. Bahamut-ZERO's Tera Flare hits for 9500 damage, though, so that's nice.
After only one turn of this treatment, the Ultima Weapon flees again, and this time we find it over Midgar.
It's definitely preparing to blast the city to oblivion.
This one is neat, because instead of the Highwind deck, this one actually uses the backdrop from the Motorball fight! Also, this time the Weapon is on the ground - this means it expands its attack repertoire as it can now use Claw to attack one character and Quaka on everyone, but it also means it's no longer out of reach of physical attack. That's a neat shift!
This time we deal with it using Doom of the Living, Yuffie's second LB3 which has a really cool animation where all grows dark and she jumps around doing sick backflips and melee attacks. The individual damage of each attack is very low (500+, as you can see above), but she hits 15 times. So that's… Somewhere north of 7500 damage total. That's beefy, and it's with her using a somewhat outdated weapon. A fitting name.
(Also I forgot to equip her LB4 which is why she's using her LB3 Instead.)
Ultima escapes again, we chase after it, find it other the mountains of Nibelheim, and then hit it again, and it runs away again. We find it again, this time over Cosmo Canyon - where it's no longer doing its casting animation, and instead has returned into its 'hibernating' stance; this is the final battle.
Or 'battle,' as it were.
Omnislash doesn't look like anything on screenshots - you have to see it in action to get the feeling it's going for, of Cloud unleashing a flurry of attacks too fast for the eye to track, the screen flashing as impact effects flash on every side of the enemy, his sword trailing light, then terminating on a single jumping overhead cut that shines with the power of a star and explodes.
Omnislash hits 15 times for ~2500 damage per hit, for a total of, uh, over 35,000 damage? The trigger for the Ultima Weapon going to its final location is its HP going down below 20k, so it dies instantly.
The Ultima Weapon is defeated.
…
The reason why this is so easy, of course, is because Ultima runs away after every fight. If this was one single stand up fight, I would need to manage my resources, ensuring timely buff refreshing, heals, and managing MP counts, because some of these overkill spells do have a huge MP cost. As it stands, every time the Weapon runs away, I can just… use a Tent and refresh all resources. So I can go loud every time, from the start. Would this be different if I didn't do that? I mean, it would certainly cost me more, but like… It's going to just amount to "oh I have to spend a Megalixir to top up MP once," isn't it?
…
Let's try it anyway.
Final Heaven.
It doesn't matter. Even applying to myself a 'rule' that I am not using any item and rushing to the next fight immediately after one ends, which also gives the Ultima Weapon a free hit (as it always goes first each fight), I can finish the fight before even a single one of my character runs out of MP for their overpowered spells.
As a last, defiant death cry, the Weapon casts Shadow Flare, the ultimate spell in the game, hitting Tifa for four thousand damage.
EVER ON AND ON, I CONTINUE CIRCLING WITH NOTHING BUT MY HATE IN A CAROUSEL OF AGONY-
It doesn't even kill her.
In the end, the 'Ultimate' Weapon was yet more cannon fodder.
…
We'll get to the Emerald Weapon soon enough.
I still need to reload this fight, because it turns out that Shadow Flare is an Enemy Skill, and in fact the most powerful Enemy Skill in the game, and it is specifically cast on the character who dealt the killing blow, so I need to make sure it hits the right character to learn it.
Also, the reward for defeating the Ultima Weapon… Is the Ultima Weapon.
It has enormous damage, maxed out Materia slots, no Materia Growth, the whole deal. It also has a very high fantasy look, with a purple blade and a flared guard. I've said in the past that I prefer Cloud's swords when they lean towards the industrial aesthetic than when they do the fantasy one (which isn't a statement about my taste in swords in general, just Cloud's), and while the Ultima Weapon is fine… The Buster Weapon is still an immaculate design. Sorry.
Also the defeat of the Ultima Weapon left this huge crater in the Cosmo Region, though we don't seem able to interact with it in any particular way.
And that's the Ultima issue settled!
Let's swallow our disappointment and move on with our lives. We'll be strong enough to deal with the Emerald Weapon soon enough.
Now it's time to head for the North Crater.
Alright! The path is open! We can just head on in!
…or not. Just as the pilot is about to take us in, Cait Sith starts getting agitated - he moves away from the room, looking erratic, and calls out:
Cait Sith: "Scarlet! Heidegger! What's going on?"
…
Surely not.
Reeve: "Not the President. To Sister Ray!"
Scarlet: "Kya, haa, haa. What is it, Reeve? You're speaking strangely."
Reeve: "None of that matters! The reactor's output is increasing all by itself!"
Scarlet: "Wait a minute. That's not wise! It must cool for 3 hours or it won't work. Reeve, shut off the machine!"
Reeve: "We can't do that! It's inoperable!"
[Reeve turns around, talking on the phone.]
Operator: "Someone has switched the machine over to mainframe operation! We can't operate it from here."
Reeve: "What about the mainframe? Who!?" [Turning to Heidegger.] "Hey, call the mainframe!"
Heidegger: "Huh? Why are you giving the orders?"
Reeve: "I don't care how you do it!!"
[Reeve turns to the camera, answering the phone again, and we move to Hojo]
Oh my god, Shinra, you fucking imbeciles, WHY IS HOJO STILL AROUND. ARGH. WHO LEFT HIM UNFETTERED ACCESS TO - WHY.
Hojo: "Ha, ha, ha… Just you wait, Sephiroth. I'll give you all the Mako you want."
Reeve: "Hojo, STOP! The cannon, no, Midgar itself is in danger!"
Hojo: "Ha, ha, ha… One or two Midgars? …It's a small price to pay."
Reeve: "Hojo! HOJO!"
Hojo: "Show me… Sephiroth. It should be near… Ha, ha, ha… Go beyond the power of science… Before your presence, science is worthless… I don't like it, but I'll comply. Just… Let me see it. Ha, ha, ha…"
So, this is it. Hojo has gone full-on cultist. Sephiroth has broken past his understanding of the limits of 'science,' and so though it does not fit in his worldview, Hojo has dedicated himself to this new god that is beyond his understanding. And of course, his dialogue has a tone that suggests he is acting on his best approximation of 'fatherhood' - this is his son about to destroy the world, and he admires him and is proud of him, and is acting in the closest he can approximate a nurturing role by routing as much Mako as possible towards him to give him the power to fulfill his dreams.
God, but everyone who allowed him to live so far, including Shinra, who know how his actions led to the Sephiroth issue in the first place, is so stupid for letting him just… Go unchecked.
Well, perhaps this means, at least, that we're going to have to kill Hojo to keep him from helping Sephiroth. Which means we get to murder his face. God, I hope so.
I'm also not sure in what way firing a giant gun at Sephiroth is supposed to make him stronger, but we'll just have to go with the game telling us that it is.
…
So, here's a funny thing.
There's a twist here that's incredibly obvious in Japanese and in the Retranslation, but which took me a bit to understand was happening in the original.
Cait Sith, in Japanese, talks using the Kansai dialect, a Japanese dialect which is often used as a character statement in Japanese media, to reflect 'rougher' or 'rural' characters - if you read manga, you've almost definitely heard at some point or another about the difficulty in translating the Kansai dialect into English; you can't really just shift the register to a more familiar one. There are some (in)famous decisions in localizations as various localization teams tackle the issue in their own way.
In post-FF7 media, Cait Sith's Kansai dialect has been translated with what I have at some point called a 'thick Scottish brogue' - he has a very strong Scottish accent. But this isn't the case in the original localization, which mostly elides the matter of Cait Sith's accent entirely. So when Heidegger asks Reeve why he's 'speaking strangely,' it doesn't visibly connect to anything.
Because in Japanese, Reeve just addressed Heidegger in Kansai dialect.
Because Cait Sith was Reeve putting on a funny voice this entire time and he was still in-character when he started shouting at Heidegger.
Oh my gooood. I mean - REEVE?!? I mean, I guess - this whole time I had been expecting like, a pilot. An operator. Someone with like, a drone remote control set-up? Someone strapped to a chair with a visor on? A professional?
But no! It was Reeve fucking psychically controlling Cait Sith live from the Shinra boardroom. Look at him! He doesn't even have a remote! A controller! Anything! He is operating the Mooglebot through vibes alone. How could I possibly have seen this coming? I guess - I guess I should have because Reeve is the only Shinra character with both a name and a sympathetic personality, but…
We've literally been carting around a Shinra exec this entire time.
We've literally been carting the wet cat sad dog bullied boy of the Shinra execs this entire time.
But no. Not this time. It's clear, in the way he speaks and acts now, that he's found the decisiveness he's always lacked. Now, at long last, after an entire game's worth of being a doormat to the rest of the Shinra leadership, he remembers who he is - he, too, is an executive. With Rufus dead, his authority is no lesser than the other two's. He is taking charge. He is giving the orders.
This, at last, is Reeve Tuesti's finest hour.
Ah, well.
Weirdly enough, despite the other executives laughing at him and having him pulled away by guards, Reeve is still in control of Cait Sith and capable of talking to the rest of the party. The only explanation I have at this stage is that they truly are psychically bonded and Reeve's consciousness can inhabit Cait Sith even if he's deprived of any communication equipment. This isn't technology that's ever been stated to exist in the game, and it's not stated to exist here either, it's just, by implication, the only possible explanation for what's happening here.
Just in case the player missed the implication, there's an exchange in which Barret explicitly calls out Cait Sith as being Reeve, then Cait Sith has a long technobabble explanation which amounts to 'shutting down the Mako supply to the cannon would blow up a chunk of the city, we have to stop Hojo directly at the cannon itself,' and so Cid directs the Highwind with all speed towards Midgar.
…
So, about winning the W-Summon Materia at the Battle Square-
I'M JOKING I'M JOKING. I took care of the Ultima Weapon earlier and I just want to advance the plot for now, so we fly straight to Midgar.
However, once there, there is a slight hiccup: Shinra has closed all access to the city. We can't enter the city through a land route, which means…
…we'll have to do it from the air.
PARACHUTING INTO MIDGAR. AWESOME.
What follows is a really cool scene of the whole group moving in a file to the deck of the Highwind, moving together as one group, with one purpose, as a dramatic, inspiring military-style music plays. It's really going for that action movie 'everyone doing a walk montage as they head towards the climax.' And it is a climax of a kind - just as Sephiroth has supplanted Shinra as the true evil of the game, we must defeat Shinra before we head towards our final confrontation with Sephiroth.
It's time to finally settle the score with all of them - Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, even maybe Palmer (if he's there?), find Reeve and take his measure in person rather than through the proxy of a robot cat. It's time to end the Shinra threat once and for all.
We're taking Barret and Vincent on foamy's recommendation, if it wasn't worth it I will be mad. As you can see from this picture, Cait Sith continues to be fully playable even as Reeve is in jail.
…huh. That's a visual reference to FFVI, isn't it?
Like, the enemy has an evil base that is a tower that can't be reached from the ground, so our group mounts a raid using their airship, and in order to reach the Bad Place they all jump from the deck. That's the Tower of Kefka! I like that.
Also, the scene of everyone coming in freefall to Midgar looks sweet as hell.
Meteor in the background, looming in the sky like the eye of an angry god, our characters all adopting diving poses and falling towards the massive, iconic steel giant of the upper plate, reactors burning Mako around them, the city stretching out…
Fantastic stuff, just, chef's kiss.
Heidegger and Scarlet have decided to compound their bad decisions with even further bad decisions, and are sending out Shinra troops and automated weaponry to scour the streets for us, instead of going after Hojo.
God, but Rufus accounted for 90% of the brainpower of this whole operation. It's frankly hard to imagine any of these people got anywhere in life on their own.
Our whole group gathers at the entrance to the underground railroad (no, not like that, I mean literally a railroad underground) that connects all sectors and which we've used once before; we can talk to everyone for some last minute hype lines, save, and then, we dive into the guts of Midgar.
It's a sprawling, labyrinthine environment of chutes and ladders, navigated in a way that gives the partial effect of side-scrolling 2D. Our opponents are largely made up of wandering robots, although there's a funny wack-a-mole imp who moves between pothole covers.
The most interesting of these opponents, however, is this one:
Look, it's Behemoth! Staple enemy of the franchise looking fairly decent for his first 3D outing! It's a bit outclassed by now though, so we don't have much trouble defeating it and moving on. On the way, we find a bunch of high-value items like a Starlight Phone for Cait Sith or the Max Ray for Barret, powerful weapons that sit one tier below their ultimates. Eventually, we make our way to the aforementioned underground railroad.
Here, we have two options: We can head north, which is the direction that takes us towards the plot, or we can head south, which is a direction that takes us into an entire loop around all of Midgar before terminating into a dead end. Since I have no clue, I pick the wrong one and spend the next half hour running in a circle around Midgar.
…
But actually this is not a bad thing, because that dead end has some neat rewards.
They even put a pity save point there.
There are a bunch of Sources there, as well as the W-Item Materia, which causes any item we consume in battle to take effect twice. If someone hadn't already told me what the W-Summon Materia does, it would be fairly easy to deduce it from that.
Why is the letter W used to signify "dualcast" Materia? I have no idea.
Also, now that I think about it, we've been accumulating enough Sources in the game that if we spent them all on three characters, we might inch into the domain where defeating the Emerald Weapon is feasible? (For those who don't keep track, Source items permanently increase a given stat by 1 when consumed.) I've been hoarding them in part because the game is already easy enough without them, but this might be the cause to use them.
Anyway, then we go all the way back around and head for our actual destination, Sector 0. But just as we're about to reach it…
…the Turks are here.
Elena is visibly afraid of having to fight us, while Reno berates her for her weakness and Rude stoically tells her they're Turks, and trying in vain to stop us is their job, and they'll do their job.
It's pretty clear the Turks don't believe they can win this fight. They were ordered to seek us out and kill us, but Elena doesn't have the stomach for that line of work and struggles to even say the word, while even Reno's usual braggadocio has guttered out to an admission that 'he's not really up to it'.
We've beaten them in Sector 7, we've beaten them in Gongaga, we've beaten them on the Gelnika. At this point, they know they can't stand in our way. They probably don't even want to - we helped them save Elena in Wutai, didn't we? It's only that sense of duty and pride that has them ready to throw their lives away in one last attempt. I like that. It's strong writing.
…and, fittingly enough, this time, the game gives us the same choice they took in Wutai: the choice to look the other way.
This show of 'pity' insults Elena's pride, but Reno, his too-tough-to-care yakuza act finally worn away, tells her to hold up. Shinra is finished, they can see it. Rufus is dead. Tseng is probably still in a coma. The hollow shell of the corporation is run by raving maniacs. The world is ending. Their mission is over.
Reno tells Elena that she was a great Turk, and wishes her farewell. If they somehow survive, and their lives are spared in whatever new order arises, maybe they'll meet again. Then, one by one, each of the Turks turns around, and leaves. Elena tells us to 'remember the spirit of the Turks' before she leaves, and then they're gone.
…
This is as good an ending as you might salvage from the mess of tone and narrative role that the Turks have been in this story. They're not bad characters by any means, I even like them, but they don't really get enough screen presence to be emotionally compelling, and the jump from 'mass murdering hitmen' to 'quirky sympathetic minibosses' was always awkward, if completed relatively early. But between Wutai and this scene, they get enough to make a mark, and for me to want to spare them.
And I like that we can do that. I like what it says about Cloud's own growth.
And with this, the path forward is open.
…
Specifically it's open on three separate paths, none of which is labeled as the direction of the plot, and some of which are mutually exclusive, so that if we randomly pick the one that is the next step on the story it actually locks us out of one of the other paths.
Guess which one I picked!
God I hate that kind of design. If your game has 'optional areas' and 'mandatory plot areas that lock previous optional areas,' FUCKING LABEL THEM. I don't care how! Find something!
So yeah, I went left, found a whole boss fight, then found out afterwards there was an area I couldn't explore after beating that boss, so I had to quit and reload. I haven't played again and so haven't done that optional area yet, either.
Which makes this a good stopping point for today! I had planned to do the full Midgar Raid in this update, but it's 2am and ultimately there isn't that much difference between me making it two updates and me making it one update that I end up splitting into two posts anyway. We haven't progressed very far all in all, but it was actually a pretty huge time commitment tracking and fighting Ultima Weapon multiple times (and then doing its final battle three times to get the right rewards), and we have hit some interesting plot beats - Shinra totally out of control without Rufus, Hojo going full Jenova Cultist, the Turks having their last stand and being spared…
And, of course, Cait Sith's true identity.
Reeve.
Of all people.
I really should have seen this coming - it explains a lot: Cait Sith's complicated feelings towards Cloud's party are born of longing for a group that actually takes care of each other unlike the Executive Board who are all sociopathic assholes, his moral ambiguity is because he's still a Shinra suit whose moral and ethical sense are buried under years of conditioning by an environment where ruthless selfishness is the only way to get ahead, his managing to bug the boardroom was because he never bugged it at all, he literally just turned on his phone mid-meeting, and, perhaps trickiest of all to figure out until we had that information, the reason he stays with Shinra even after joining the party and admitting his duplicity is because he has a genuine emotional commitment to the safety of the people of Midgar, something we saw all the way back in the Midgar Sequence, and probably a massive burden of guilt regarding the plate collapse. There are other weird bits of Cait Sith acting like 'Shinra but not quite' that are explained by the fact that Reeve is running this whole thing as a secret op, on his own, without having alerted anyone - he must have used his executive access and authority to get the Cait Sith controls without being accountable to anyone, and nobody knows he's doing it, which is why he can get away with betraying Shinra without anyone showing up at his pilot desk and putting a bullet in his head.
It all makes sense. I could have seen it coming. I only didn't because, well:
This entire twist is only possible at all because it turns out there was never a pilot desk, there was no remote controller, no drone cabin, no netrunner chair, Reeve was operating Cait Sith with the power of his mind, in the middle of Shinra board meetings, while talking to other execs.
There was no way I could have anticipated that because it is completely inexplicable and could not have been anticipated.
So does that make it a good twist, or a bad one?
I'll leave that up to you to decide. Thank you for reading.
Next Time: The Midgar Raid.
The Ultima Weapon is a punk bitch and I destroyed it with trivial ease.
First, let's start with some introductions. This is the Ultima(te)* Weapon:
*I'm going to keep calling it Ultima because, like, it is. Sorry if this is another Aeris/Aerith deals for you.
We find it floating in the center of the crater in the Junon Area, its head slumped, appearing to be in a kind of resting or hibernating state (although still floating). Upon bumping into it with the Highwind, we are kicked into battle, using a very special background on the deck of the Highwind, which is really cool.
Now, the Ultima Weapon's most common and most powerful attack is its Ultima Beam, which hits the party for around 1500 damage by default. That's decent damage, especially for a raid-wide, but still not so much that I couldn't deal with it with Cure All. Now throw in Big Guard, and…
…damage is reduced to the mid-700s, at which point I don't even need Cure All; part my default boss strategy is to combo Big Guard with Regen All, and the passive healing from Regen is enough to make everyone safe from these attacks, freeing up optimal attack potential.
The Ultima Weapon has one defense going for it, which is that it's flying, and as such neither Tifa nor Cloud can reach it.* While this does make it safe from their potent physical attacks, even Cloud, equipped as a physical tank, can still whip up a Firaga for 4000 damage a piece, while Yuffie and Tifa, who happen to have Ultima and Cometeor between the two of them, hit it for even higher damage. Notably, I hadn't noticed, but that massive 35000 AP victory over the Diamond Weapon resulted in Yuffie learning Flare.
*Speaking of which, the Ultima Weapon apparently has valuable Steals, but I hate Steal (because it has an abysmal hit rate and sitting around having two characters use Defend for fifteen turns while another one whiffs stealing over and over), and while I did equip Yuffie with Steal to give it a fair shot, it turns out you can't steal from a distant opponent. You need a Long Range Materia, which is a unique Materia found very early in the game in the Mythril Mine, which I missed at the time and never bothered to go back to get because its use is so niche.
Okay, so the size of the Weapon makes the camera angles weird which makes the spells hard to see, but whatever. The point is, even without Knights of the Round, I have tremendous magical offense power. Now, what does our friend Ultima have to counter that?
Well, it's leaving, for one.
Picture my outraged face.
The Ultima Weapon is actually pulling a double reference to VI. One, there is, obviously, its name and narrative role as an ancient super-dragon monster. But it's also modeled after Deathgaze, the World of Ruin monster that appears at random locations of the sky, escapes after a few turns and whose HP does not regenerate between fights, and which must be fought repeatedly until killed. Ultima boasts an impressive 100,000 HP, but escapes the fight after taking a certain amount of damage or a certain number of attacks, I'm not sure which. Then…
…it reappears in the sky above the Junon Crater and starts flying around at high speed in random patterns. Attempting to ram it with the Highwind again causes a violent pushback and Cid to complain about what is probably some kind of force field surrounding it. His comments 'You think I'm just gonna give up?' is a hint that, however pointless that may seem, we should keep ramming the beast - eventually, it will stop its erratic flying and head straight for a new location.
…is it charging up a magical attack? It sure looks like it's charging a Frieza-style "blow up the planet" attack. Well, we won't give it time to do that.
This is the Ultima Weapon being hit by Ultima. Which, again, looks like shit.
For a lark, I equipped Yuffie with Quadra Magic on Ultima. The result is that each Ultima cast deals 2300+ damage, and she casts it four times, for a total of a little over 9200 damage. We are getting close to breaking the 9999 ceiling, but we're not quite there yet. Bahamut-ZERO's Tera Flare hits for 9500 damage, though, so that's nice.
After only one turn of this treatment, the Ultima Weapon flees again, and this time we find it over Midgar.
It's definitely preparing to blast the city to oblivion.
This one is neat, because instead of the Highwind deck, this one actually uses the backdrop from the Motorball fight! Also, this time the Weapon is on the ground - this means it expands its attack repertoire as it can now use Claw to attack one character and Quaka on everyone, but it also means it's no longer out of reach of physical attack. That's a neat shift!
This time we deal with it using Doom of the Living, Yuffie's second LB3 which has a really cool animation where all grows dark and she jumps around doing sick backflips and melee attacks. The individual damage of each attack is very low (500+, as you can see above), but she hits 15 times. So that's… Somewhere north of 7500 damage total. That's beefy, and it's with her using a somewhat outdated weapon. A fitting name.
(Also I forgot to equip her LB4 which is why she's using her LB3 Instead.)
Ultima escapes again, we chase after it, find it other the mountains of Nibelheim, and then hit it again, and it runs away again. We find it again, this time over Cosmo Canyon - where it's no longer doing its casting animation, and instead has returned into its 'hibernating' stance; this is the final battle.
Or 'battle,' as it were.
Omnislash doesn't look like anything on screenshots - you have to see it in action to get the feeling it's going for, of Cloud unleashing a flurry of attacks too fast for the eye to track, the screen flashing as impact effects flash on every side of the enemy, his sword trailing light, then terminating on a single jumping overhead cut that shines with the power of a star and explodes.
Omnislash hits 15 times for ~2500 damage per hit, for a total of, uh, over 35,000 damage? The trigger for the Ultima Weapon going to its final location is its HP going down below 20k, so it dies instantly.
The Ultima Weapon is defeated.
…
The reason why this is so easy, of course, is because Ultima runs away after every fight. If this was one single stand up fight, I would need to manage my resources, ensuring timely buff refreshing, heals, and managing MP counts, because some of these overkill spells do have a huge MP cost. As it stands, every time the Weapon runs away, I can just… use a Tent and refresh all resources. So I can go loud every time, from the start. Would this be different if I didn't do that? I mean, it would certainly cost me more, but like… It's going to just amount to "oh I have to spend a Megalixir to top up MP once," isn't it?
…
Let's try it anyway.
Final Heaven.
It doesn't matter. Even applying to myself a 'rule' that I am not using any item and rushing to the next fight immediately after one ends, which also gives the Ultima Weapon a free hit (as it always goes first each fight), I can finish the fight before even a single one of my character runs out of MP for their overpowered spells.
As a last, defiant death cry, the Weapon casts Shadow Flare, the ultimate spell in the game, hitting Tifa for four thousand damage.
EVER ON AND ON, I CONTINUE CIRCLING WITH NOTHING BUT MY HATE IN A CAROUSEL OF AGONY-
It doesn't even kill her.
In the end, the 'Ultimate' Weapon was yet more cannon fodder.
…
We'll get to the Emerald Weapon soon enough.
I still need to reload this fight, because it turns out that Shadow Flare is an Enemy Skill, and in fact the most powerful Enemy Skill in the game, and it is specifically cast on the character who dealt the killing blow, so I need to make sure it hits the right character to learn it.
Also, the reward for defeating the Ultima Weapon… Is the Ultima Weapon.
It has enormous damage, maxed out Materia slots, no Materia Growth, the whole deal. It also has a very high fantasy look, with a purple blade and a flared guard. I've said in the past that I prefer Cloud's swords when they lean towards the industrial aesthetic than when they do the fantasy one (which isn't a statement about my taste in swords in general, just Cloud's), and while the Ultima Weapon is fine… The Buster Weapon is still an immaculate design. Sorry.
Also the defeat of the Ultima Weapon left this huge crater in the Cosmo Region, though we don't seem able to interact with it in any particular way.
And that's the Ultima issue settled!
Let's swallow our disappointment and move on with our lives. We'll be strong enough to deal with the Emerald Weapon soon enough.
Now it's time to head for the North Crater.
…or not. Just as the pilot is about to take us in, Cait Sith starts getting agitated - he moves away from the room, looking erratic, and calls out:
Cait Sith: "Scarlet! Heidegger! What's going on?"
…
Surely not.
Reeve: "Not the President. To Sister Ray!"
Scarlet: "Kya, haa, haa. What is it, Reeve? You're speaking strangely."
Reeve: "None of that matters! The reactor's output is increasing all by itself!"
Scarlet: "Wait a minute. That's not wise! It must cool for 3 hours or it won't work. Reeve, shut off the machine!"
Reeve: "We can't do that! It's inoperable!"
[Reeve turns around, talking on the phone.]
Operator: "Someone has switched the machine over to mainframe operation! We can't operate it from here."
Reeve: "What about the mainframe? Who!?" [Turning to Heidegger.] "Hey, call the mainframe!"
Heidegger: "Huh? Why are you giving the orders?"
Reeve: "I don't care how you do it!!"
[Reeve turns to the camera, answering the phone again, and we move to Hojo]
Oh my god, Shinra, you fucking imbeciles, WHY IS HOJO STILL AROUND. ARGH. WHO LEFT HIM UNFETTERED ACCESS TO - WHY.
Hojo: "Ha, ha, ha… Just you wait, Sephiroth. I'll give you all the Mako you want."
Reeve: "Hojo, STOP! The cannon, no, Midgar itself is in danger!"
Hojo: "Ha, ha, ha… One or two Midgars? …It's a small price to pay."
Reeve: "Hojo! HOJO!"
Hojo: "Show me… Sephiroth. It should be near… Ha, ha, ha… Go beyond the power of science… Before your presence, science is worthless… I don't like it, but I'll comply. Just… Let me see it. Ha, ha, ha…"
So, this is it. Hojo has gone full-on cultist. Sephiroth has broken past his understanding of the limits of 'science,' and so though it does not fit in his worldview, Hojo has dedicated himself to this new god that is beyond his understanding. And of course, his dialogue has a tone that suggests he is acting on his best approximation of 'fatherhood' - this is his son about to destroy the world, and he admires him and is proud of him, and is acting in the closest he can approximate a nurturing role by routing as much Mako as possible towards him to give him the power to fulfill his dreams.
God, but everyone who allowed him to live so far, including Shinra, who know how his actions led to the Sephiroth issue in the first place, is so stupid for letting him just… Go unchecked.
Well, perhaps this means, at least, that we're going to have to kill Hojo to keep him from helping Sephiroth. Which means we get to murder his face. God, I hope so.
I'm also not sure in what way firing a giant gun at Sephiroth is supposed to make him stronger, but we'll just have to go with the game telling us that it is.
…
So, here's a funny thing.
There's a twist here that's incredibly obvious in Japanese and in the Retranslation, but which took me a bit to understand was happening in the original.
Cait Sith, in Japanese, talks using the Kansai dialect, a Japanese dialect which is often used as a character statement in Japanese media, to reflect 'rougher' or 'rural' characters - if you read manga, you've almost definitely heard at some point or another about the difficulty in translating the Kansai dialect into English; you can't really just shift the register to a more familiar one. There are some (in)famous decisions in localizations as various localization teams tackle the issue in their own way.
In post-FF7 media, Cait Sith's Kansai dialect has been translated with what I have at some point called a 'thick Scottish brogue' - he has a very strong Scottish accent. But this isn't the case in the original localization, which mostly elides the matter of Cait Sith's accent entirely. So when Heidegger asks Reeve why he's 'speaking strangely,' it doesn't visibly connect to anything.
Because in Japanese, Reeve just addressed Heidegger in Kansai dialect.
Because Cait Sith was Reeve putting on a funny voice this entire time and he was still in-character when he started shouting at Heidegger.
Oh my gooood. I mean - REEVE?!? I mean, I guess - this whole time I had been expecting like, a pilot. An operator. Someone with like, a drone remote control set-up? Someone strapped to a chair with a visor on? A professional?
But no! It was Reeve fucking psychically controlling Cait Sith live from the Shinra boardroom. Look at him! He doesn't even have a remote! A controller! Anything! He is operating the Mooglebot through vibes alone. How could I possibly have seen this coming? I guess - I guess I should have because Reeve is the only Shinra character with both a name and a sympathetic personality, but…
We've literally been carting around a Shinra exec this entire time.
We've literally been carting the wet cat sad dog bullied boy of the Shinra execs this entire time.
But no. Not this time. It's clear, in the way he speaks and acts now, that he's found the decisiveness he's always lacked. Now, at long last, after an entire game's worth of being a doormat to the rest of the Shinra leadership, he remembers who he is - he, too, is an executive. With Rufus dead, his authority is no lesser than the other two's. He is taking charge. He is giving the orders.
This, at last, is Reeve Tuesti's finest hour.
Ah, well.
Weirdly enough, despite the other executives laughing at him and having him pulled away by guards, Reeve is still in control of Cait Sith and capable of talking to the rest of the party. The only explanation I have at this stage is that they truly are psychically bonded and Reeve's consciousness can inhabit Cait Sith even if he's deprived of any communication equipment. This isn't technology that's ever been stated to exist in the game, and it's not stated to exist here either, it's just, by implication, the only possible explanation for what's happening here.
Just in case the player missed the implication, there's an exchange in which Barret explicitly calls out Cait Sith as being Reeve, then Cait Sith has a long technobabble explanation which amounts to 'shutting down the Mako supply to the cannon would blow up a chunk of the city, we have to stop Hojo directly at the cannon itself,' and so Cid directs the Highwind with all speed towards Midgar.
…
So, about winning the W-Summon Materia at the Battle Square-
I'M JOKING I'M JOKING. I took care of the Ultima Weapon earlier and I just want to advance the plot for now, so we fly straight to Midgar.
However, once there, there is a slight hiccup: Shinra has closed all access to the city. We can't enter the city through a land route, which means…
…we'll have to do it from the air.
PARACHUTING INTO MIDGAR. AWESOME.
What follows is a really cool scene of the whole group moving in a file to the deck of the Highwind, moving together as one group, with one purpose, as a dramatic, inspiring military-style music plays. It's really going for that action movie 'everyone doing a walk montage as they head towards the climax.' And it is a climax of a kind - just as Sephiroth has supplanted Shinra as the true evil of the game, we must defeat Shinra before we head towards our final confrontation with Sephiroth.
It's time to finally settle the score with all of them - Scarlet, Heidegger, Hojo, even maybe Palmer (if he's there?), find Reeve and take his measure in person rather than through the proxy of a robot cat. It's time to end the Shinra threat once and for all.
We're taking Barret and Vincent on foamy's recommendation, if it wasn't worth it I will be mad. As you can see from this picture, Cait Sith continues to be fully playable even as Reeve is in jail.
…huh. That's a visual reference to FFVI, isn't it?
Like, the enemy has an evil base that is a tower that can't be reached from the ground, so our group mounts a raid using their airship, and in order to reach the Bad Place they all jump from the deck. That's the Tower of Kefka! I like that.
Also, the scene of everyone coming in freefall to Midgar looks sweet as hell.
Meteor in the background, looming in the sky like the eye of an angry god, our characters all adopting diving poses and falling towards the massive, iconic steel giant of the upper plate, reactors burning Mako around them, the city stretching out…
Fantastic stuff, just, chef's kiss.
Heidegger and Scarlet have decided to compound their bad decisions with even further bad decisions, and are sending out Shinra troops and automated weaponry to scour the streets for us, instead of going after Hojo.
God, but Rufus accounted for 90% of the brainpower of this whole operation. It's frankly hard to imagine any of these people got anywhere in life on their own.
Our whole group gathers at the entrance to the underground railroad (no, not like that, I mean literally a railroad underground) that connects all sectors and which we've used once before; we can talk to everyone for some last minute hype lines, save, and then, we dive into the guts of Midgar.
It's a sprawling, labyrinthine environment of chutes and ladders, navigated in a way that gives the partial effect of side-scrolling 2D. Our opponents are largely made up of wandering robots, although there's a funny wack-a-mole imp who moves between pothole covers.
The most interesting of these opponents, however, is this one:
Look, it's Behemoth! Staple enemy of the franchise looking fairly decent for his first 3D outing! It's a bit outclassed by now though, so we don't have much trouble defeating it and moving on. On the way, we find a bunch of high-value items like a Starlight Phone for Cait Sith or the Max Ray for Barret, powerful weapons that sit one tier below their ultimates. Eventually, we make our way to the aforementioned underground railroad.
Here, we have two options: We can head north, which is the direction that takes us towards the plot, or we can head south, which is a direction that takes us into an entire loop around all of Midgar before terminating into a dead end. Since I have no clue, I pick the wrong one and spend the next half hour running in a circle around Midgar.
…
But actually this is not a bad thing, because that dead end has some neat rewards.
They even put a pity save point there.
There are a bunch of Sources there, as well as the W-Item Materia, which causes any item we consume in battle to take effect twice. If someone hadn't already told me what the W-Summon Materia does, it would be fairly easy to deduce it from that.
Why is the letter W used to signify "dualcast" Materia? I have no idea.
Also, now that I think about it, we've been accumulating enough Sources in the game that if we spent them all on three characters, we might inch into the domain where defeating the Emerald Weapon is feasible? (For those who don't keep track, Source items permanently increase a given stat by 1 when consumed.) I've been hoarding them in part because the game is already easy enough without them, but this might be the cause to use them.
Anyway, then we go all the way back around and head for our actual destination, Sector 0. But just as we're about to reach it…
…the Turks are here.
Elena is visibly afraid of having to fight us, while Reno berates her for her weakness and Rude stoically tells her they're Turks, and trying in vain to stop us is their job, and they'll do their job.
It's pretty clear the Turks don't believe they can win this fight. They were ordered to seek us out and kill us, but Elena doesn't have the stomach for that line of work and struggles to even say the word, while even Reno's usual braggadocio has guttered out to an admission that 'he's not really up to it'.
We've beaten them in Sector 7, we've beaten them in Gongaga, we've beaten them on the Gelnika. At this point, they know they can't stand in our way. They probably don't even want to - we helped them save Elena in Wutai, didn't we? It's only that sense of duty and pride that has them ready to throw their lives away in one last attempt. I like that. It's strong writing.
…and, fittingly enough, this time, the game gives us the same choice they took in Wutai: the choice to look the other way.
This show of 'pity' insults Elena's pride, but Reno, his too-tough-to-care yakuza act finally worn away, tells her to hold up. Shinra is finished, they can see it. Rufus is dead. Tseng is probably still in a coma. The hollow shell of the corporation is run by raving maniacs. The world is ending. Their mission is over.
Reno tells Elena that she was a great Turk, and wishes her farewell. If they somehow survive, and their lives are spared in whatever new order arises, maybe they'll meet again. Then, one by one, each of the Turks turns around, and leaves. Elena tells us to 'remember the spirit of the Turks' before she leaves, and then they're gone.
…
This is as good an ending as you might salvage from the mess of tone and narrative role that the Turks have been in this story. They're not bad characters by any means, I even like them, but they don't really get enough screen presence to be emotionally compelling, and the jump from 'mass murdering hitmen' to 'quirky sympathetic minibosses' was always awkward, if completed relatively early. But between Wutai and this scene, they get enough to make a mark, and for me to want to spare them.
And I like that we can do that. I like what it says about Cloud's own growth.
And with this, the path forward is open.
…
Specifically it's open on three separate paths, none of which is labeled as the direction of the plot, and some of which are mutually exclusive, so that if we randomly pick the one that is the next step on the story it actually locks us out of one of the other paths.
Guess which one I picked!
God I hate that kind of design. If your game has 'optional areas' and 'mandatory plot areas that lock previous optional areas,' FUCKING LABEL THEM. I don't care how! Find something!
So yeah, I went left, found a whole boss fight, then found out afterwards there was an area I couldn't explore after beating that boss, so I had to quit and reload. I haven't played again and so haven't done that optional area yet, either.
Which makes this a good stopping point for today! I had planned to do the full Midgar Raid in this update, but it's 2am and ultimately there isn't that much difference between me making it two updates and me making it one update that I end up splitting into two posts anyway. We haven't progressed very far all in all, but it was actually a pretty huge time commitment tracking and fighting Ultima Weapon multiple times (and then doing its final battle three times to get the right rewards), and we have hit some interesting plot beats - Shinra totally out of control without Rufus, Hojo going full Jenova Cultist, the Turks having their last stand and being spared…
And, of course, Cait Sith's true identity.
Reeve.
Of all people.
I really should have seen this coming - it explains a lot: Cait Sith's complicated feelings towards Cloud's party are born of longing for a group that actually takes care of each other unlike the Executive Board who are all sociopathic assholes, his moral ambiguity is because he's still a Shinra suit whose moral and ethical sense are buried under years of conditioning by an environment where ruthless selfishness is the only way to get ahead, his managing to bug the boardroom was because he never bugged it at all, he literally just turned on his phone mid-meeting, and, perhaps trickiest of all to figure out until we had that information, the reason he stays with Shinra even after joining the party and admitting his duplicity is because he has a genuine emotional commitment to the safety of the people of Midgar, something we saw all the way back in the Midgar Sequence, and probably a massive burden of guilt regarding the plate collapse. There are other weird bits of Cait Sith acting like 'Shinra but not quite' that are explained by the fact that Reeve is running this whole thing as a secret op, on his own, without having alerted anyone - he must have used his executive access and authority to get the Cait Sith controls without being accountable to anyone, and nobody knows he's doing it, which is why he can get away with betraying Shinra without anyone showing up at his pilot desk and putting a bullet in his head.
It all makes sense. I could have seen it coming. I only didn't because, well:
This entire twist is only possible at all because it turns out there was never a pilot desk, there was no remote controller, no drone cabin, no netrunner chair, Reeve was operating Cait Sith with the power of his mind, in the middle of Shinra board meetings, while talking to other execs.
There was no way I could have anticipated that because it is completely inexplicable and could not have been anticipated.
So does that make it a good twist, or a bad one?
I'll leave that up to you to decide. Thank you for reading.
Next Time: The Midgar Raid.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I said it earlier, didn't I? He's just proud of his baby boy.
Why is the letter double-u used to signify doing things twice, one might say, doubling their use? It clearly is a mystery.
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