3. The full, actually legally binding version of the contract (as opposed to the Cliffs Notes version that Cid gave Rinoa) also has a careful definition of "full independence", which Cid fully expects will be achieved soon, possibly by another team (ie assassinating the Galbadian president or whatever). This will plunge the world into another huge war full of business opportunities, an ocean of blood for Cid to get his beak wet in.
Or some similar twisty devil in the details sort of thing; we should not underestimate Cid's capacity for Evil Schemes.
Actually, that's a good question. Did they say if the simplified version of the contract Rinoa shows is fully legally binding, or are they bound by the full legalese text and the one that Cid gave her is in nice friendly english that just so happens to leave a bunch of key details out?
It's very plausible that Cid would totally given Rinoa a non-legally binding "natural language" version of the contract to Rinoa that obfuscates some of the clauses left in the "real" contract.
He could also just... Break the contract, honestly. Obviously SeeD has a reputation to uphold but the Timber Owls are nobody. If Cid tells Squall and the other 'withdraw immediately' just as a Galbadian force is about to overrun the train base, then... Who will even know that SeeD broke their word?
One way or another the Owls are in a perfect situation for someone else to screw them over.
I'll be honest though, this part has been confusing me. I got the impression that somehow 17 years ago radio waves just ceased to function as expected, rendering radio technology functionally ineffective. But this suggests that it's just largely mundane interference, which can be punched through with a powerful enough signal, which I can't help but question.
A good remark! The responsibility here lies with me; I summarized the two bits of expositions we get from the students and the Codex as "worldwide radio interference," but they are actually a bit more specific than that. The Information tab entry says, quote, "Almost all radio communication facilities were shut down because of noise across all frequencies. However, short transmissions are still possible. Believed to have some relation to the moon, but details are unknown."
...I was totally meaning to bring up the fact that people believe it in some way to be related to the moon later and then forgot it and
never did so that's a big piece of information some people may have been missing; it's a huge part of why I am a proponent of the Moonspiracy. The Lunar Cry
and the moon is related to the radio interference? Too much to be a coincidence, even if the game doesn't make the connection yet.
But yes; the interference that makes radio communication non-function takes the form of
noise, meaning instead of getting nothing at all from radio, you're probably getting creepy garbled static that messages might sometimes come through in part, rather than nothing at all. 'Short transmissions are still possible' suggests that maybe Deling can manage to get out one brief address to the world using the Dollet tower, but that sustained communication wouldn't be possible.
Although that runs into the problem that...
You know, after seventeen years and all, even if the Dollet Tower could send a Radio broadcast world wide, considering that the President had to go to an entirely different country with an ...active? rebellion in order to send out his broadcast in the first place...who else out there can even still receive Radio signals?
...right, that. A few people have raised this issue already and I'm embarrassed to say that it didn't even cross my mind as an issue; how would people even know to tune in without the long range communication that make this entire setup necessary? It seems like even if Deling did his broadcast successfully, he'd be talking into the void.
Curious whether that'll be addressed or left as just kind of a plot hole.
This is where junctioning really started to sour the game for me. We've touched on the feeling before in this thread, what with magicite and materia where both of them had their pluses and minuses as a magic system where one of the minuses was that they sort of took away the uniqueness of individual characters...well junctioning is that on steroids. Swapping junctions make FF8 characters feel like sleeves for a junction layout, with only their LBs and cutscenes keeping the idea of a party afloat. Not helped by how arbitrary junctioning is. Is it hard? Is it easy? Does it take some special concentration? Does it hurt? Fuck dude, calm down, just go into the menu and do it.
That said, the train heist is a great sequence, really feels like it's carrying on FF7's snatching from the Resident Evil idea bin to create action-horror setpieces.
Hmmm.
I think Junction works better for me just because while GFs aren't really characters in the narrative sense, the way they're built with their own stats, character affinity, sets of ability to learn, and so on, makes them feel like they actually are cool custom monsters that you have made a psychic bond with to draw power from. So while we've lost out even more on character mechanical identity compared to previous games, that was already
pretty dead by the time VII came around, and instead it's replaced by a weird but interesting experience in off-loading your character identity to your Pokémon team, and honestly, so far, I'm not liking it
worse than Materia.
What the hell Omi, you can't do this
You are supposed to beat undead bosses the hard way, and then belatedly realize you could have used a Phoenix down. You just ruined your own bit.
IT'S CALLED CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, BITCHES, DEAL WITH IT
ONLY TOOK ME
EIGHT GAMES
Two Things:
It's been a DAY?!?!
How are these kids not exhausted, they were in combat 24 hours ago.
Although the timeline doesn't make sense, by my reckoning. If we take the beginning of the game when Squall wakes up in the infirmary as Day 1, he went to the Fire Cavern that day. Then at dawn of Day 2, SeeD lands on Dollet's Ruputan Beach; given the preparations and briefings beforehand, they likely would have set out on the day before, ie Day 1 afternoon or so. When we see the squads drive to Balamb and set off on the landing boats, it's bright and sunny, and when we see the cutscene of the landing, it's dramatically set to the moon's backdrop, with the sun being just above the horizon.
For most of Day 2, Squall and co. hang around the town square, up until Seifer gets bored and rushes the communications tower. This is probably in the afternoon, if not late afternoon. The communications tower battle happens, the tower is activated, and Selphie finally recalls her message to withdraw to the beach. Which means SeeD withdraws from Dollet at 1900h on Day 2. We see this in the cutscene with the boats sailing away into the setting sun.
So we have the concrete timestamp of the activation of the Dollet communications tower by Galbadia on Day 2 afternoon. We, including both players and Squall, see this happen, so there's no chance for confusion.
When we return to Balamb after the Dollet mission, it's bright and sunny. Now, this might be plausible in isolation due to the travel time between Dollet and Balamb via assault landing craft, since it apparently took at least one night to go from Balamb to Dollet. But that means it's already Day 3.
After an unspecified amount of "free time" on Day 3, Squall and co. return to Balamb Garden, where they receive their exam results, and the immediate investment ceremony with Cid giving his personalized advice. On Day 3 evening and night, there's the SeeD ball, and then Quistis orders Squall to the secret meeting spot.
The next day, ie Day 4, the new SeeDs start off in the morning (with Zell almost oversleeping), get on the train, get the shared dream of Laguna, arrive in Timber, meet the Forest Owls, plan out the train heist, execute the train heist, and defeat the body double, and it's apparently not even evening yet. And if you've been following along, that makes this Day 4, while the communications tower was activated on Day 2, ie not "yesterday".
The only way I can reconcile this is pretending that the Dollet mission and the SeeD ball happened on the same day. Which means the withdrawal from Dollet at 1900h, complete with red sunset backdrop, and the relaxing evening ball all happened in at most a few hours between them. Which is a lot of Garden administration to handle in those few hours, including the immediate investment ceremony. And the "bright and sunny" parts are due to the inability of the game engine to do a night sky for in-engine scenes.
This is deeply unrealistic, so I'm much more inclined to believe the word "yesterday" is the error. It's also the same in the Japanese script (昨日), when I think "the day before" (前日) would solve all these timeline problems.
Oh, yeah.
Adloquium's attempt to wrangle the timeline into making sense is a solid shot, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.
Like, it's absolutely ridiculous, but I think the timeline goes like this:
- Day 1, Early Morning: Squall duels Seifer. Squall is knocked unconscious and suffers a scar. (It's dark out; duels are traditionally fought at dawn.)
- Day 1, Morning: Squall and Quistis go to the Fire Cavern and capture Ifrit. (It's bright daylight.)
- Day 1, Afternoon: The Dollet Attack. SeeD withdraws at 19:00. (It's late afternoon, early evening, leaning on sunset.)
- Day 1, 19:00: SeeD comes back to Balamb; students are dismissed until sundown, ie at most an hour or two.
- Day 1, Sundown: SeeD candidates gather for their grade. The candidates selected for promotion are made SeeD.
- Day 1, Night: Squall meets with Rinoa at the dance, then has his conversation with Quistis, before going back to his dorm and falling asleep.
- Day 2, Morning: Squad B is gathered to receive their first mission as SeeD.
- Day 2, Undefined: Everyone falls asleep on the train for an unknown period of time.
- Day 2, Noon or Afternoon: SeeD meet with the Forest Owls and attempt to abduct President Deling.
It's an absolutely insane pace, but I'm more or less used to it from video games. For some reason gamedevs are allergic to leveraging the valuable ambiguity of time and using indicators that any amount of time
might have happened since the last plot point.
I forget what the character body language is like here, but Squall's line in Japanese has an extra "Hm?" at the end, implied to be a sort of intimidating Yakuza-esque "are you, a man asking for my help, telling me that you intend to waste my talents with running errands? Hm? Are you?"
Usually characters who do that take a step forward for more intimidation, intruding on the other person's personal space. Not sure if this is something Squall would do, since it's a bit out of character for him, but it's probably also taught in Garden's "how to negotiate and influence people" classes.
At first, Squall crosses his arms while looking away, then he looks back at Zone and puts his arms on his hips while delivering his line. Contextually I think he hesitated to just ignore it and had to psyche himself up a little bit to deliver the 'don't fuck with me' attitude that he thinks he
should have.
I didn't think we'd get a game that beat FF7's almost fetishistic love of transportation, especially railways, but FF8 doesn't just like trains and cars and boats and planes, it LOVES them.
Which reminds me:
"There's no way they'll keep all the old FF7 minigames" -You, a fool
"
What if we kept all the old minigames, and then added even more" -FF7 Rebirth dev team, geniuses
why am i here
just to suffer
