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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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With the Shinra Tower Revisit and the Proudclod's non-explosion and everything else in this update but a couple bosses using pre-existing sets and models, this really is the video game equivalent of Neon Genesis Evangelion - all the way to running out of time and/or resources to render/animate everything for the last section of story before the grand finale!
 
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Omicron said:
There's such a thing as overdoing these moments of surprise emotional reveals and this is it. The fuck is this airship, a hide-and-seek parlor? Was everyone in simultaneous separate hiding from one another? No, seriously! Barret and Cid were hiding from Cloud and Tifa, Yuffie was hiding from Barret and Cid, the airship crew was hiding from everyone as they came aboard, this is just getting silly.
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Omicron this is clearly the most obvious indicator that Cloud and Tifa were going at it worthy of being immortalised in the Italian Senate. The rest of Avalanche, the entire crew, and probably a marching band, all came back and boarded and Cloud and Tifa were so oblivious to the world they didn't notice.

And since Cid and Barrett noticed them in turn, it's not like they all shinobi'd their way aboard!
 
McFluffles said:
Boooo, gimmie more Truly Monsterous final forms for bosses, the "and then they were pretty" trend is a bother.

I mean, probably easier to draw/model/animate for complicated stuff, but come ooooon.
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Well, that's part of it, but I always thought the "Bishounen Line" trope is a combination of beautiful things being more powerful in-story, and the idea that the final transformation of an enemy is one that transcends humanity into what's functionally an angel in shape. Basically, a boss starts out ugly, but as it masters its new form, it becomes more and more beautiful to become even more of a threat.

Of course, it could be the boss realizing that making itself bigger and uglier only made it a bigger target for the heroes, so it needed to change that real quick.
Connelly said:
Athena looked at Hojo and said "What a deluded chump, what an utterly pathetic buffoon... I can do one better!"
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Who's Athena? The Greek deity, or someone else?
 
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Omicron said:
Okay, Hojo scoffing at Cloud for asking stupid question and then catching himself going 'wait, that's what science is about to be about, kinda forgot that for a second' is pretty funny.
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Hojo forgot that he was supposed to be doing science, and not just crimes against humanity for a bit there, didn't he.
 
Omicron said:
Cid is fighting for… Shera..?
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Cid: Hey guys, I'm back. I've found my reason to fight.
Yuffie: Is it Sheeeera? Are you two togetheeeer?
Cid: Sure, kid, you got me.
Barret: That's great, man. Love gives you power to go on when all else fails.

A Day Before
Shera: Yes! The Meteor will deliver onto me what the rocket could not! I feel its heat growing stronger day by day, caressing my skin, my flesh, my bones, my heart... Come to me! Bath me in the blood of dying stars!
Cid: ...So, me and my pals are gonna kill Sephiroth and stop the Meteor.
Shera: Noooo, why would you do it? Again?!
Cid: Because none of us can have nice things, can we, Shera?! Just ask Vincent!

Ok, so I think I've found my main FFVII ship, and unlike other, lesser shippers, I have the advantage of (literal) firepower. I'm unstoppable (somebody stop me).
 
Up to episode 31 of the parody now, only have the big finale movie to go now. The reason the final part is so long is because they decided that they'd cover all the parties side quests at the very end framed as "final preparations and saying their goodbyes."

ZerbanDaGreat said:
Deepground
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Honest to God when I heard they were brought back for the remake my reaction was something along the lines of "WHY!?". This would be like if Disney announced that their next Star Wars movie would feature the cast introduced in the holiday special.
 
I should probably not keep talking about FF7R, but I always liked the idea of Deepground. Not what was in Dirge, or the apparent online game that was focused on them, but the idea that Shinra's public super soldiers weren't enough for them, and two levels of Midgard wasn't enough to hold all the people they needed for their secret army of super soldiers. So they built an entire third layer under Midgard with its own special Mako reactor.

Yes it's completely insane, just like everything about Shinra. It fits right in.

The execution is bad, no question. There is so much wrong with those games, and if they want to expand the Deepground stuff for the remake it needs a lot of rewrites. How they relate to the story, just basically making the characters worth a damn, the costume designs. Hell, even the names are shit.

Having written this out, I sound like what I want is Deepground in name only, and that's exactly right. The third layer of the city and secret army, that's good. Deepground is also a good name. And that's it. Everything else can be tossed in a fire.
 
Omicron said:
Cait Sith/Reeve explains that he was planning on joining the group as they escaped after the Cannon Raid, but he couldn't 'get away' and ended up being taken in by nice Midgar people, where he is presumably sitting there enjoying their hospitality while remote-controlling the cat toy.
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The way this is phrased, I'm picturing him having been hurt in the process of being shut in the Shame Cube and the people who've taken him in are refusing to let him leave with that injury despite his protests. Sit down you workaholic. It's very funny to imagine the particular place in the Remake being the orphanage, alternating between piloting Cait Sith and awkward small talk with Biggs.

Also huh, I wonder if the interference was meant to be a hint to whatever Inspire magic Reeve was supposed to be using and that's why it still has some lingering narrative attention being paid to it.

foamy said:
Barret's Missing Score is one of two weapons that can trigger an overflow glitch in the game allowing you to instantly defeat any enemy in the game bar one, but as that requires an absolutely tremendous amount of grinding to achieve (like, 8 mastered copies of Knights) it's not a concern.
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Incredibly fitting name, considering. The fact Barret recognizes it makes me wonder if it was the specific prosthetic he got made to get revenge against Shinra, and at some point between then and the start of the game it was confiscated or he had to abandon it for some reason? There's something in potentia there, finally finding it at the capstone of his character arc about the nature of revenge, after having used substitutes the whole time. (And also adds some poignancy to using it against Hojo, if he's in the battle party.)
 
Dybbukpossesed said:
Honest to God when I heard they were brought back for the remake my reaction was something along the lines of "WHY!?". This would be like if Disney announced that their next Star Wars movie would feature the cast introduced in the holiday special.
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Technically they did that with Boba Fett. :V But in a less-joking manner, Chewie's family was introduced in the SWHS and they made the jump over in both Legends and Canon, so...
ZerbanDaGreat said:
There's some shit about Vincent's father Grimoire Valentine in there I couldn't possibly be fucked to refresh myself on too but what's important is that Hojo chooses to cause problems on purpose not until to the very end of his life, but also past it, to the point that it becomes completely inexplicable why Weiss continues to oppose Vincent after his gay BDSM afficionado brother exorcises the greasy ghost by hugging him.
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He was a Scientist (because of course he was) who dressed only slightly less edgy than Vincent does in-game. Which is weird because aside from what could be argued as "late-90's Goth hair" it's not like Vincent was all that goth/edgy before Hojo had his way with him. But I guess we needed that extra visual coding of "THIS IS VINCENT'S DAD LOOK HOW DARK HE IS" so there we go.
 
RogueIce said:
He was a Scientist (because of course he was) who dressed only slightly less edgy than Vincent does in-game. Which is weird because aside from what could be argued as "late-90's Goth hair" it's not like Vincent was all that goth/edgy before Hojo had his way with him. But I guess we needed that extra visual coding of "THIS IS VINCENT'S DAD LOOK HOW DARK HE IS" so there we go.
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The man was called Grimoire Valentine. He could either accept the aesthetic his parents chose for him, or change his name. Clearly, dressing like a late 90s vampire hunter was his decision to just roll with the hand he got dealt.
 
Omicron said:
What is this? What even is this? Was there a bet among the Square devs as to whether or not they could hang an entire character arc off Marlene without showing us Marlene again? Why would you do this? Do they think Elmyra just isn't an important enough character to meet again and talk to about her own loss and grief? I cared about those characters!
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Games are still software development projects. It's utterly plausible that those specific models miraculously crashed the game whenever used after some arbitrary trigger.
 
The Shinra building thing is rather disappointing, because they had the 'clean' backgrounds from the first run through; perhaps some flag change broke or there was some other issue but otherwise they could have just reverted it back to the pre-Breakout look?

Maybe you can make some story/world-building argument there, that the Science Division was shut down when Hojo "left" so Shinra simply never bothered to go back in and clean/repair the labs. Except he does rejoin them at some point so you'd think it'd get fixed then, but his post-Junon status is vague and confusing anyway.
 
MiskWisk said:
There's also one leftover character moment if you head back to Cosmo Canyon. Meanwhile, Ruby WEAPON is enjoying a few minigames (wink wink nudge nudge).

Other than that... I'm kinda sad you never talked about the pilot of the Highwind "levelling up" as you progressed. There's a small character arc for them where they start off struggling with the airship and aren't very confident, but as the go on they get more and more confident, even hitting a limit break for the Return to Midgar.
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Oh, yeah, that guy!

I did think his mini-arc with a level number above his head increasing over time was cute.

The problem is that the main context in which I tend to interact with that guy is me being in the Highwind on the world map, needing to check my equipment and Materia or, worse, save the game, and reflexively pressing [MENU] having forgotten that the Highwind changes inputs, having to watch the world's slowest transition screen as we fade to Cloud standing on the Highwind bridge, opening my menu and then finding out that you can't save inside the Highwind, exiting the menu, having to actually walk over to the pilot, interact with him, telling him "Yes I want to get back to the fucking worldmap, dipshit," fade screen back to the Highwind on the world map, find a grassy plains, touch down, exit the Highwind, open the menu, and save.

So I basically only ever interact with this guy when I am busy being angry at the game and resenting his very existence, which hasn't been very conducive to praising his character.

So anyway, now that we've got to Hojo finally, blessedly, dying at last, I have a question @Omicron : is Hojo a worse parent than Athena?
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A tough question to answer, but I think on the balance, while Hojo may have committed worse overall crimes, Athena is the worse parent. For all his sins, ultimately Hojo wants to see Sephiroth succeed. Sure, his idea of success is shoving him full of Jenova cells and helping him fuse with his eldritch abomination mother and turn into a nihilistic monster that will destroy the world, but ultimately Hojo is fine with dying with all of mankind if it's to allow the Superior Being to take over the earth.

Meanwhile, Athena pretty much engineered her son to be a codependent abuse victim fooled into thinking she loved him so she could use him as a template for her new humanity and him, specifically, to be fed into her divinity engine like so much raw parts and allow Athena to become a god.

So Athena wins the Bad Parent contest by a mile, I think.
 
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RogueIce said:
Except he does rejoin them at some point so you'd think it'd get fixed then, but his post-Junon status is vague and confusing anyway.
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Standard Shinra policy is to transfer people to the science department when they are fired or quit. Saves on HR staffing and benefits packages.

Hojo never really left because he is responsible for handling terminations, and the Turks have been too busy to correct that oversight. So all his security clearances are still active.

Or he just left his letter of resignation on his desk and no one has dared brave the science floors to discover it. I mean if everyone on the floor was killed gruesomely would you want to risk joining them?
 
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@Omicron: You can save in the Highwind, but because it is an interior location and not the world map, you have to use a save point, which is the guy in the operations room. Go talk to him and you can rest/swap party members/save.
 
foamy said:
@Omicron: You can save in the Highwind, but because it is an interior location and not the world map, you have to use a save point, which is the guy in the operations room. Go talk to him and you can rest/swap party members/save.
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Technically true but actually more time-consuming than just going back to the world map :V
 
foamy said:
Also maybe it's just me but I love making the Highwind Akira slide everywhere by pressing left and right at the same time while flying it.
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Hell no, I did it all the time in IX (at least I remember trying all the time, just not how succesful it was).
 
kairuf said:
Standard Shinra policy is to transfer people to the science department when they are fired or quit. Saves on HR staffing and benefits packages.
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Plus, Hojo can always use more experimental subjects.


"Welcome to your new career in research!"

"...But I'm not a scientist?"

"Mmm, not quite what I meant...step into this tube, would you?
 
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