21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Wedge will become just a slice.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Wedge will become just a slice.
RogueIce
Noctis Æternæ
- Location
- New Lunar Republic, Equestria
No, he winds up as...Dak
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
So! That! A bit ago in the LP, I had an Idea about that, but since it would have rested on a spoiler at the time, I waited to post it. But you've just reached the point where that's no longer a spoiler, so!Omicron said:
Why, indeed? After all, of the group that was sent Edea, everyone except Irvine and Rinoa were from Balamb, Rinoa isn't from any Garden, and Irvine is from Galbadia Garden, which Edea apparently wants to take over rather than blow up. So surely, Balamb is the clear greater threat?
Except, as has just been mentioned again... not all those people have always been from Balamb. Selphie just transferred from Trabia, and recently.
And the idea I had was... what if Selphie's particular violent traits aren't just her own traits? What if, for Trabia Garden, Selphie is normal? Indeed, that might even be Trabia Garden's Thing, their equivalent of Balamb's GF use and Galbadia's mechanization: Trabia goes all-in on making its child soldiers, ah, enthusiastic about their roles in life, let's call it.
So why did Edea decide to hit Balamb second?
In this hypothesis, because Trabia is an entire Garden full of Selphies.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
My personal challenge run that I did was just not ever casting magic except for some boss battles. Not really on purpose, but because I liked having 100 of each spell in my junctions and couldn't be sure when I would get more as well as not wanting to grind it more than I had to. The game is much harder when you don't cast magic unless it is a draw cast.
Well I would also cast outdated magic when I had a better version junctioned.
Well I would also cast outdated magic when I had a better version junctioned.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't have Steal/Mug available yet, actually. Diablos can learn Mug, and he's currently doing so, but it's an ability with a very high AP cost.
Final Fantasy VII was one thing.
Rebirth has entire sidequests' worth of minigames. It has not one, but multiple tower-defense RTS games with completely different rules and an unlockable hard mode. It has a Magice the Gathering-style collectible card game with its own dedicated sidequest that runs in parallel to the game's entire main plot. The Squats are back, with a vengeance. I see minigames whenever I close my eyes now.
Anyway Rebirth Review coming out at some point once I find the time in-between my other writing.
So I'd been hesitant to use Generator precisely because I didn't know if its effect was "instant kill" or "remove a target from the fight without the rewards for defeating them" but if you get the drops... Holy shit, that is stupidly OP.
I would never forget Quistis.
Instructions unclear, grinded to lv 20 in the Galbadian Desert
You know, it's interesting. Squall's (accurate) criticism of Rinoa's behavior in Timber was that for the leader of a resistance cell against an authoritarian regime she was treating all this without due seriousness and couldn't commit to any course of action or give clear orders to her SeeDs.
And here, Rinoa... Takes charge. She does it in her usual tone, being overly peppy and casual about it, and she puts it up to a vote, but she still sets out clear objectives and a division of tasks in the form of a suggestion, and because nobody has a better idea they all follow along.
That's... actually exactly what Squall wanted from her originally, just not in the tone he wanted it, because she's still doing it in a relatively casual and childish way instead of putting on airs of military professionalism and seriousness that would satisfy his 'I am a serious mercenary' brain spiders. So he's still annoyed by it, but he still ends up following her instructions, just as he'd initially promised - even though, at this point and in this context, he's no longer under Rinoa's orders for this mission, which he's undertaking for the Gardens rather than her.
It's a neat bit of character development.
- Location
- Texas
You know, there's been a dozen Mario Party games. I can't help but wonder if someday the game designers will cram so many mini-games into a FF installment that they have to split it of into its own thing.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
To be more precise, Degenerator applies the Eject status to a single enemy. It's an istant death effect, like Death/Petrify but it never fails on non-immune enemies. BTW, one of Selphie's Slots can also apply Eject.
In this game it counts as having defeated the enemy, so you get drops and Exp.
Eject is somewhat more commonly used by enemies: attacks like Atomos' Wormhole in FFV, Snort in FFVI and Blown Away in FFVII apply the Eject status. Usually the Ejected PC is flagged as habving fled the battle, so you don't get a Game Over if the rest of the party is dead/Ejected, but this depends on the game and on the attack; Ruby Weapon's Whirlsand ejects a charater and also flags them dead, for example, while Midgard Zolom's Blown Away flags them as fled.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Yeah, considering how easy it is to get, Disintegrator is obnoxiously powerful; I think there's only five or six random encountered monsters who are immune to it, if that. Amusingly, Grats are one of them.
On the Italian translation front, this wasn't really a section with much significant dialogue. Also, this was a chore to go through.
- The Moomba are named Mumba in Italian; not sure that should be considered a difference, since the "oo" sounds is pronounced "u" in Italian (unlike English, Italian letters are actually phonetic, they're spoken the same way they're written), but there you have it. All of the other monsters in the prison are either ones we've already met, or are the robots, whose name (number) is the same across versions.
- Speaking of Moomba, they're not the only thing that got a codex entry - Julia's song, "Eyes on Me", also got its own entry. It seemed worth mentioning.
- When Wedge says that perhaps he and Wedge shouldn't harass prisoners, instead of the English "so soon after we've been transferred here", which would suggest his primary preoccupation is not rocking the boat, he says "just because we're angry to have been transferred here", which comes across as a lot more sympathetic, since Wedge is making a moral objection here. Biggs silences him in the same manner though.
- In Italian, Biggs and Wedge are only identified by their names, their rank is not provided. Also, Biggs come across as less scared of them, and more eager for a rematch - instead of saying "we'll teach you the lessons we should have earlier", his line is "we can finish that unresolved business from Dollet", which shows a bit more confidence. Both segue equally in the "even if it's cowardly ("unseemly" in Italian) to attack unarmed prisoners", and then the battle and the comments at the end of the battle are mostly the same; the only real exception is that Biggs, while saying he's been demoted, never specifies what rank he's been demoted to. Minimal changes overall, just a minor characterization note that makes Wedge come of as slightly more sympathetic and Biggs as a tiny bit more self-confident than they are in English.
- Squall's line upon saving Zell is very different; the English version has "didn't think he'd go down that easy", while the Italian version has "sorry I got here in the nick of time", which, while working as the sort of one-liner somebody who thinks themselves cool might use, does emphasizes a bit more that Squall was somewhat worried about Zell (specifically, about not making it in time to save him), which makes the following ribbing from Selphie (always the best character) more understandable, while also working as a foreshadowing of Squall's growing attachment for his comrades which will be made more explicit in the "mission assignment" segment. Not sure whether it's the Italian or English translation that is closer to the Japanese original here; the take is so different that it seems like this was one of the translators taking liberties, but I'm not sure which one.
- When discussing the necessity of stopping the missiles, Selphie uses the Italian PG-13 equivalent of "we need to stop those fucking missiles", which, since Selphie has never been rude in the entire game, reads as extreme distress on her part; probably this is an attempt to convey that same "sliding into her home dialect" @Adloquium was talking about?
- Squall's worries are made more explicit here in the Italian version, with him thinking, not just "what if something happens to the people I choose", but more specifically "what if the people I choose die?"; not sure if the clarification makes his worries more clear or just emphasizes what sort of responsibility he's been assigned by the others, but it seemed worth noting.
- More interesting is his thought about Rinoa; the English translation is "but you're an outsider", which suggest he might be annoyed at her taking charge here (which she totally is, and which he'd actually asked her to do, as @Omicron pointed out), but the Italian translation has him think the equivalent of "I don't want to put you in more danger", which is an even stronger point of emphasis on the "Squall is actually starting to care for his comrades, especially Rinoa". You can even see how the "you're an outsider" English line could be read as intending to convey a similar feeling as the Italian line (something along the lines of "this isn't your battle to fight", which would make sense since the thought comes on the heels of Rinoa declaring "I'll join whichever team you want me to"), but once again, the English line muddles the water, something that translation has done in the past. It's a strange choice, and it's not clear to me if it's intentional on part of the English translators or not.
- Squall is also slightly less whiny about being elected leader, his thoughts being "I'm the leader? Since when?", rather than stating he didn't ask for it; so he's still a bit annoyed the responsibility is being foisted on him, but less because he doesn't want it and more because he doesn't think he should have it. Which I do think is a more reasonable gripe for him to have. This is also followed by a less annoyed, more resigned acceptance of his role; instead of "I've had it with this leader talk, let's get this choice over with", the Italian version has "If I am the leader now, I really should just decide", which once again is slightly less whiny and slightly more accepting of the team's decision to make him their leader.
That's about it for the differences; as I said, there wasn't that much dialogue, although the final passage with the discussion of Squall's leadership role and the emphasizing of his worry about the other members of the team was interesting.
Combined with the whole mess of Quistis' team having to escape Rinoa's home due to a timed trap that failed to keep Rinoa trapped, while the section with Rinoa going to the Sorceress open with her right next to an exit from the sewer that would suggest she should have been the one to make it through the sewers, I think there was a lot of confusion when that whole part of the game was put together; I'd probably have re-structured it entirely.
It mostly works anyway, primarily due to how much of a showstopper the Sorceress' proper declaration of intent and usurpation of Galbadia is, but I think there's a lot that could have been done to make that part of the game more coherent, and lead into the D-District prison more smoothly.
On the Italian translation front, this wasn't really a section with much significant dialogue. Also, this was a chore to go through.
- The Moomba are named Mumba in Italian; not sure that should be considered a difference, since the "oo" sounds is pronounced "u" in Italian (unlike English, Italian letters are actually phonetic, they're spoken the same way they're written), but there you have it. All of the other monsters in the prison are either ones we've already met, or are the robots, whose name (number) is the same across versions.
- Speaking of Moomba, they're not the only thing that got a codex entry - Julia's song, "Eyes on Me", also got its own entry. It seemed worth mentioning.
- When Wedge says that perhaps he and Wedge shouldn't harass prisoners, instead of the English "so soon after we've been transferred here", which would suggest his primary preoccupation is not rocking the boat, he says "just because we're angry to have been transferred here", which comes across as a lot more sympathetic, since Wedge is making a moral objection here. Biggs silences him in the same manner though.
- In Italian, Biggs and Wedge are only identified by their names, their rank is not provided. Also, Biggs come across as less scared of them, and more eager for a rematch - instead of saying "we'll teach you the lessons we should have earlier", his line is "we can finish that unresolved business from Dollet", which shows a bit more confidence. Both segue equally in the "even if it's cowardly ("unseemly" in Italian) to attack unarmed prisoners", and then the battle and the comments at the end of the battle are mostly the same; the only real exception is that Biggs, while saying he's been demoted, never specifies what rank he's been demoted to. Minimal changes overall, just a minor characterization note that makes Wedge come of as slightly more sympathetic and Biggs as a tiny bit more self-confident than they are in English.
- Squall's line upon saving Zell is very different; the English version has "didn't think he'd go down that easy", while the Italian version has "sorry I got here in the nick of time", which, while working as the sort of one-liner somebody who thinks themselves cool might use, does emphasizes a bit more that Squall was somewhat worried about Zell (specifically, about not making it in time to save him), which makes the following ribbing from Selphie (always the best character) more understandable, while also working as a foreshadowing of Squall's growing attachment for his comrades which will be made more explicit in the "mission assignment" segment. Not sure whether it's the Italian or English translation that is closer to the Japanese original here; the take is so different that it seems like this was one of the translators taking liberties, but I'm not sure which one.
- When discussing the necessity of stopping the missiles, Selphie uses the Italian PG-13 equivalent of "we need to stop those fucking missiles", which, since Selphie has never been rude in the entire game, reads as extreme distress on her part; probably this is an attempt to convey that same "sliding into her home dialect" @Adloquium was talking about?
- Squall's worries are made more explicit here in the Italian version, with him thinking, not just "what if something happens to the people I choose", but more specifically "what if the people I choose die?"; not sure if the clarification makes his worries more clear or just emphasizes what sort of responsibility he's been assigned by the others, but it seemed worth noting.
- More interesting is his thought about Rinoa; the English translation is "but you're an outsider", which suggest he might be annoyed at her taking charge here (which she totally is, and which he'd actually asked her to do, as @Omicron pointed out), but the Italian translation has him think the equivalent of "I don't want to put you in more danger", which is an even stronger point of emphasis on the "Squall is actually starting to care for his comrades, especially Rinoa". You can even see how the "you're an outsider" English line could be read as intending to convey a similar feeling as the Italian line (something along the lines of "this isn't your battle to fight", which would make sense since the thought comes on the heels of Rinoa declaring "I'll join whichever team you want me to"), but once again, the English line muddles the water, something that translation has done in the past. It's a strange choice, and it's not clear to me if it's intentional on part of the English translators or not.
- Squall is also slightly less whiny about being elected leader, his thoughts being "I'm the leader? Since when?", rather than stating he didn't ask for it; so he's still a bit annoyed the responsibility is being foisted on him, but less because he doesn't want it and more because he doesn't think he should have it. Which I do think is a more reasonable gripe for him to have. This is also followed by a less annoyed, more resigned acceptance of his role; instead of "I've had it with this leader talk, let's get this choice over with", the Italian version has "If I am the leader now, I really should just decide", which once again is slightly less whiny and slightly more accepting of the team's decision to make him their leader.
That's about it for the differences; as I said, there wasn't that much dialogue, although the final passage with the discussion of Squall's leadership role and the emphasizing of his worry about the other members of the team was interesting.
Yeah, this would have worked so much better if it was two members of the Gateway team who joined Squall in that particular fight - but then we wouldn't have been able to have the FMV shot of Rinoa reaching for Squall as he falls from the parade platform, or the declarations of courage/willingness to redeem themselves from Rinoa and Irvine that they open that particular fight with.
Combined with the whole mess of Quistis' team having to escape Rinoa's home due to a timed trap that failed to keep Rinoa trapped, while the section with Rinoa going to the Sorceress open with her right next to an exit from the sewer that would suggest she should have been the one to make it through the sewers, I think there was a lot of confusion when that whole part of the game was put together; I'd probably have re-structured it entirely.
It mostly works anyway, primarily due to how much of a showstopper the Sorceress' proper declaration of intent and usurpation of Galbadia is, but I think there's a lot that could have been done to make that part of the game more coherent, and lead into the D-District prison more smoothly.
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Saves everyone and fixed the universe via having a kid and being a mother.
Is a Moth.
Excuse you, the proper term is Mothest.
Final Fantasy VIII, Part 15.A: The Galbadia Missile Base
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII 201. Today's lesson:
The Game Gets Fun Again
But first we'll have to step through a few hurdles to get there.
First off, we're actually given 'free room' to roam around the Great Plains of Galbadia in our stolen car. This isn't actually that much room, because most ways out of the region are locked by Galbadian patrols, but it means we can go back to Deling City and talk to people, and it turns most of the citizens have updated dialogue!
And they love their new ruler.
Now, some of it is obviously the mind control that Edea has clearly been using on the city, but I don't think that mind control would work nearly as well if it wasn't rooted in some real feelings. To quote a select few Delingers:
"Sorceress Edea… Now she's what I call a queen. Oh… What strength. What power. She's beautiful."
"That guy just talked the talk. He never walked the walk. He was such a greedy bastard. Yeah it's terrible he got killed like this, but I think he deserved it."
"People follow strength, not charisma. Sorceress Edea is so strong and so alluring."
"President Deling? Yeah, a good guy on the outside, but basically a loser."
"Long live Sorceress Edea! We can take Eshtar now!" [In answer to this, everyone in the street spontaneously shouts "YEAHHHH!!!"]
"Woman power from here on in. It's about time a woman took charge of the world."
It's so funny, when you think about it. Vinzer Deling established a modern military dictatorship, used mass imprisonment against his political opponents, started conquering nearby regions, seized Dollet and Windhill… And then stalled about as soon as the Gardens opened up and neighbouring nations started hiring SeeD for their defense, and has been stuck in a holding pattern for the past seventeen years or so. All while continuing to extoll military strength as a virtue and maintain an authoritarian regimes, which, implicitly from what Deling City looks like, justifies itself based on its wealth and prosperity - wealth and prosperity it must surely struggle to sustain without further conquest. Meanwhile, Deling himself is an aging politician, a gray-haired man in a suit, increasingly unable to live up to the mythos he's himself built.
Then in comes Edea, a woman with literal supernatural powers, who could probably take on a solid chunk of the Galbadian Army on her own, and goes everywhere dressed for the Met Gala. She's the fulfillment of the ideology of power and extravagant wealth that permeates Deling City.
I think the only part of Edea's coup she really needed the mind control for was to get away with her speech about how she was promising an eternal nightmare for all of Galbadia then killing Deling in plain sight of everyone. Everything aside from that, she could sell purely on Galbadia's own ideological terms. They don't need mind control to agree with her. She's a better Deling than Deling ever was.
I mean, if I had the choice between being ruled by a bland military-officer-turned-dictator with boring conservative beliefs who hasn't won a war in two decades, and being ruled by Disney's Maleficent, I know who I'd pick.
Also it's literally a The Onion bit. "First Female Dictator Hailed As Step Forward For Women."
Anyway, let's go visit Rinoa's dad.
I can only presume that Carraway's involvement in the attempted assassination was not discovered, despite his daughter taking part in it. The old man is still sitting in his house, and he's actually willing to answer questions for us.
[Ask about the sorceress]
Carraway: "Galbadia is completely at the mercy of the sorceress. This country is now merely a tool for her. Fearing the sorceress, the rest of the world will unite against Galbadia. I fear it will be the Sorceress War all over again…"
Carraway: "Our enemy Esthar was also ruled by a sorceress… The same thing is happening with Galbadia. How foolish of you, Deling…"
[Ask about Esthar]
Carraway: "The powerful nation to the east, Esthar is our worst threat. It's the country that took over the world with Sorceress Adel. Ever since the end of the war, Esthar has kept silent. No one knows what became of Sorceress Adel. Esthar itself remains hidden and isolated."
Carraway: "We were afraid of Esthar. We occupied other countries to build up a force. Things have been going awry ever since then."
This is a timely reminder that Carraway is still a product of Galbadia's military establishment; even if he's able to acknowledge wrongdoing on Galbadia's part, he still fundamentally believes in a self-serving narrative of Galbadian imperialism as motivated by 'security concerns' and a need to protect itself from a powerful neighbor that merely 'went wrong' somewhere along the way.
Esthar is interesting, though. It's been a mystery hanging in the background for a while now, but we're starting to get more pieces to put together. Once, Dollet ruled this side of the world, and later Esthar "took over the world" with the power of a Sorceress, until they were defeated and driven back into isolation into their homeland. In one of the Laguna flashbacks, we saw she had her soldiers hunt for girls to pass on the power of a sorceress to; quite possibly Edea is one such girl, having inherited the power of the Sorceress.
It's possible she might even be Ellone herself, having been captured some time after the last Laguna flashback, but for now I'm sticking to "Ellone is the girl in blue we saw at Balamb Garden."
Carraway's opposition to Edea's rule also makes sense in the context of "the last time a Sorceress took over, the entire world united to defeat her." This isn't a winning scenario for Galbadia.
…
Also Carraway has Rinoa's Triple Triad card.
This isn't a surprise or anything, he literally has a dialogue option where he says he has it… And that he'll trade it for our Ifrit Card, but only if we beat him first.
What this means in practice is rather convoluted and takes me several attempts to figure out. What he means is that we have to throw a game using the Ifrit card, so that he'll then take our Ifrit, and only then will he start playing the Rinoa Card, which we must then win in the normal way. Because Galbadia is still under 'Random' rules, this would take an impossible amount of time to do if I still had my full collection; as things are it merely takes a dozen attempts to both draw Ifrit, lose the match on purpose, and not accidentally play a card the AI decides it wants more than Ifrit, such as Diablos.
Rinoa's card isn't even necessarily superior to Ifrit. Those two A sides are unbeatable, but her top and bottom are very weak, so she'll be complicated to play right. But we're doing this for the love of the game, baby.
Speaking of Rinoa and Carraway, though…
The Codex has updated with a new entry: An entry on "Eyes On Me," Julia's breakout song. And it's… informative.
Eyes On Me:
Julia Heartilly's song.
Julia married the Galbadian General Carraway after releasing "Eyes On Me."
Gave birth to a girl one year later.
Julia died in a car crash at age 28, right before her daughter turned 5.
So… "Heartilly" is Rinoa's last name, which we know from extra material even if it hasn't been mentioned in game, in case there was any doubt about her being Julia's daughter. And Julia died years ago, which is something we could already guess from context. These ages though… If Rinoa is 17, then her mom died 12 years ago. She would have been 23 when her daughter was born.
…if Squall and Laguna really are the same person, it would take some serious weirdness for a man very obviously in his early 20s to have somehow turned into a teenager. Still not sure what the connection is there. Julia also didn't die in childbirth, so it doesn't seem like Rinoa would be her mother's own reincarnation.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into these and these characters aren't metaphysically connected in any way, but I doubt it.
Now, it's time to go back to our adventure!
…and by that I mean grind a bunch of levels in the desert.
I've tweaked my spell junctioning a little, refined all my Tier 1 elemental spells into Tier 2 elemental spells, and now I'm going out and drawing more spells to buff those junctions while leveling up at the same time.
This may seem counterproductive - I am getting stronger but at the same time I am raising the level of the combat encounters and making them harder so shouldn't it cancel out? - but this is because I am trying to reach a specific threshold, around lv 20, where I've been informed most opponents start graduating into stronger forms.
And indeed, as Selphie's team makes her way from lv 17 to lv 19-20, I see the Draw list on enemies expand. They start getting tier 2 spells and new supports and status spells! I no longer have to draw 50 Fires to convert into 10 Firas!
Now, the process of doing this is still kind of very dull with a few exception, and for the most part unless I am Drawing spells I just use the emulator's 50x speed function and press X until everything is dead then heal everyone with a tent. Though, sometimes, these fights are surprisingly tough: That weird spinning wheel enemy you see above knows Confuse, which can actually hit pretty hard by having my character turn on one another. Another huge threat are the Wendigos, who deal considerable damage and have tons of HP, and magic damage still kind of sucks. Like…
This is Selphie, my character with the highest level of magic (100 tier 2 junctioned spells), casting Blizzara and just doing… Not much damage at all.
Something about this is weird, but we'll just keep going and see what happens. Once past the grind, it's time to head for the Galbadia Missile Base.
…it turns out that if we enter on foot, the guards shoo us off. Selphie tries to "pretty pleaaaase" her way in, and the guard says that she's just some kid and he 'prefers someone more mature.' To which Selphie replies 'Up yours!' and leaves. Which, I mean, good on that guy I guess?
Anyway, we come back with the car and they let us through without any issue. Shortly thereafter, we climb down, and it turns out the group didn't just take a car, but also, crucially, a bunch of uniforms.
Selphie complains that the uniform is 'itchy and smelly.' Notably, even though all our characters are in full Galbadian uniforms with the helmets and everything, they actually have distinct models with different sizes and their own walk cycles (Selphie runs with her hands splayed out in a stereotypically 'girly' way).
The care that's gone into the animation and design of all these PSX models never cease to amaze me.
Selphie is determined on one goal: Causing as much damage as possible, preventing the launch, and destroying the base.
God, I love Selphie. When she first showed up I never expected one of her most consistent character traits to be "love of random destruction and carnage." Fantastic headliner for this sequence. Quistis and Irvine balance her out reasonably well, with Quistis acting as the voice of calm and reason and Irvine being also pro-blowing shit up but more collected about it.
We run into our first obstacle at the door, but luckily Irvine found an ID card in the car, and soon we are in.
Our first challenge is this guard keeping watch on a door and how to get past him. I choose 'walk by quietly' (which means, actually walking rather than running as is the default) and this actually results in a meta joke - when the guard sees us pass, he first stops us to examine us then comments that 'walking in a single file' means we must have been raised with good manners. I'm pretty sure that's directly alluding to how conspicuous it is, in-game, that our characters are always moving single-file everywhere they go.
…also, we're getting Selphie's internal monologue. I hadn't immediately noticed, but outside of Laguna flashbacks the game is specifically always showing us the internal monologue of the party leader; 90% of the time that's Squall, but we've never had Selphie Thoughts before that I can recall, and now that she's party leader we're getting a front row seat to her live comments (she thinks this guy is a weirdo).
Note the missiles being moved on a platform below.
There's a console next to one of those doors that we can interact and get one of those really cool 90s strategic computer maps:
Absolutely love that stuff.
Only place we can go right now is the room north, where we find several missile launchers being moved to prep the launch; the soldiers are waiting for the last one to be delivered. There is also a full-life draw point, which is great. However, once I've talked to the guards there doesn't seem to be anything obvious to do. I end up running around a bit before finally figuring out that the space between the left-handed stairs and wall in the picture above is actually a path to another room.
Talking to those two guards makes them realize that they're supposed to be inspecting the circuit room, but with an actual real-life launch happening, they have way too much on their hands to do that kind of routine maintenance. They ask us to deliver a message for them to the missile launcher room guys to just go ahead with the maintenance on their own. We carry the message to the guy, but of course he is too busy with his new workload as well, so he sends us back to tell the maintenance team he can't do it, and so they fall back on an emergency solution - asking us if we can do it.
Just as keikaku.
Maintenance Soldier: "So, that's that. We're counting on you."
Selphie: "Yes, sir!"
Selphie, mentally: "(...Woo-hoo! Blow the place to smithereens!)"
I love Selphie.
We head back to the first guy, the one who commented on us walking single file, and tell him about our very important mission. This time, he lets us in.
Time to wreck havoc.
We actually get a very early example of a QTE in the form of just being told to mash Square repeatedly until something goes awry; the generator promptly goes out, everything goes dark for a second, then the security lights turn on. A voice on loudspeakers summons the maintenance team to the circuit room, so we quickly abscond, but not quick enough to avoid running into them.
Our options are "What the heck! Let's FIGHT!" and "...Try to talk my way out." Talking is surprisingly effective; Selphie spins an excuse like she was just going to call the maintenance team, they tell us to let them take care of everything, head into the room, and then the party immediately follows after and incapacitates out in the dark while they shout surprise and protests.
Irvine: "(...Geez… Selphie can be a little outta control at times…)"
Irvine, listen.
If Selphie was in charge of this operation this whole business with Galbadia and the Sorceress would have been over, like, yesterday.
Granted, there might not be much of a Timber or Deling City left in the process, but, you know, eggs, omelettes?
Heading back to the missile launcher room, more guards ask us what's going on and ask us for help if we continue to bluff, which has served us well so far. The power has gone out, so they need help manually slotting the launcher into place, which we do with another QTE. (I don't think it's possible to deliberately fail that minigame to sabotage the launch; not pushing Square just means it doesn't advance). This, however, proves crucial, as the soldier then sends us to confirm the launch coordinates in the control panels, giving us access to that cool Wargames computer from before.
Irvine suggests busting up the panel, but Selphie thinks to herself that in case this actually triggers the launch, probably because of some failsafe, it would be smarter to first upload the wrong coordinates, just in case, and then bust it up.
Selphie craves destruction but it doesn't mean she dumped Intelligence in the process.
I love this aesthetic so much, you guys. Pretty much half of Armored Core 1 was menus looking exactly like this and that was one of my very first video games.
It's not necessarily obvious exactly what we're supposed to do at first but just futzing with menus it eventually becomes clear: The coordinates are hardlocked in, we can't have the missiles hit Deling City or something like that (not that we should, I just wouldn't put it past Selphie), but we can raise the maximum allowed 'error bars' on the missiles to maximum, ensuring most of them will just go off-target at the end of their course. Then we must upload the data to the missiles, and we're done!
This then actually gives us our segue into the next step - since we just entered the coordinates, we now just have to report about that to whoever's in charge of the base, and so the last soldier lets us head upstairs.
Plots about infiltrating a military base by stealing a uniform and bluffing your way through are always kind of unbelievable (although not necessarily unrealistic, social engineering is weird), but as far those go, the way Selphie & Co do it by finding an opportunity to be helpful in maximally stressful circumstances so no one has time or is inclined to check their credentials and each step validates them to be sent on to the next step and gives the next person reason to just assume they're on the level is pretty well done.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes. We enter the launch room shortly after the final launch sequence is initiated, and it only takes a minute for the officer in charge to see through us.
Specifically, he identified us because our salute was wrong, which is really funny but also a realistic detail to miss in the heat of the moment? Quentin Tarantino really didn't invent anything, huh. Before the soldiers can do anything about us, though, Selphie somehow produces a flash of light that blinds everyone just long enough for the party to complete their transformation sequence back into their original clothes.
Let's be real here: They're Galbadian troops. They have upgraded somewhat (their Draw list now contains spells like Slow, Confuse and Reflect!) but they're still jobbers. I have devised a hilarious tactic wherein Quistis wacks them with a physical attack junctioned to 100% Sleep, putting both opponents to sleep long enough to call in a double serving of GF summons and obliterating them.
Once the guards are out, it's time to split up and look for the control panel to try and stop the missile launch…
And Quistis actually does manage to find the missile control panel and stop the launch! Now everyone goes looking for the 'self-destruct' mechanism.
…
What would that even look like, in real life? A self-destruct is fundamentally a fictional device, with the closest real life equivalent being the deliberate scuttling of ships in warfare. But in order for that to work on a missile base, you would need to have, like… Explosives planted all throughout the complex, that are set to detonate at any time. Everyone in the base would be walking around a death trap. Just imagine, you're doing maintenance and drill through the hidden explosive cell in the wall and you fucking explode.
What's fascinating to me is that this isn't even interrogated. No one even discusses the possibility of there being a self-destruct system; this is taken for granted by the story, and the characters find it in thirty seconds.
One of my favorite 'self-destruct' systems in fiction, incidentally, is in Alien, where the 'self-destruct' is really just a system that forcibly removes the cooling units from the starships reactor, causing it to melt down and blow up the ship just from its own reactor-ness.
Anyway, self-destruct time.
We are, as this game seems to like to do, given the option to pick the timer on the self-destruct - 10, 20, 30 or 40 minutes. I decide that I feel like a proper challenge since the game has not given me much of that, and pick the shortest length - 10 minutes.
This is going to prove trickier than expected, because the timer is constantly running, making no pause for cutscenes, so our actual 'playable' time is significantly less than 10 minutes, an effect that would be barely noticeable at 20 minutes but will matter quite a bit at 10.
The loudspeaker voice, which I can only assume is automated, broadcasts a warning to all staff to evacuate immediately. Selphie whoops in excitement, BUT JUST AS WE LEAVE!
…
You know, here's the thing.
I don't like when heroic protagonists 'double tap' their opponents. Sure, it makes sense for John Wick to always secure the kill, but one of the traits I attribute with 'good guys' is that they're capable of mercy. A guy who's on the ground unable to fight is no longer a threat to you most of the time. That doesn't even have to mean 'mercy' in the sense of actively sparing someone; it can just be that you disable opponents with what force is necessary, and if they die too bad, and if they live that is also fine. In the 1% of cases where the guy you left limp on the floor later comes back as a recurring antagonist, that's good, that's what stories are made of, rivalry and revenge and recurring characters. I like that Biggs and Wedge are recurring low-tier antagonists.
But this is now the third time in this game that our team takes out a Galbadian squad, moves on, and then the officer finds the strength to crawl to some comm device and trigger the Black Widow Mech/the prison monsters/whatever's coming our way now. At some point it's getting obnoxious. I don't like thinking 'should have capped these guys on the way out just to be sure' but this is one specific narrative device that's starting to overstay its welcome!
Ah, well. Cut for image count.
The Game Gets Fun Again
But first we'll have to step through a few hurdles to get there.
First off, we're actually given 'free room' to roam around the Great Plains of Galbadia in our stolen car. This isn't actually that much room, because most ways out of the region are locked by Galbadian patrols, but it means we can go back to Deling City and talk to people, and it turns most of the citizens have updated dialogue!
And they love their new ruler.
Now, some of it is obviously the mind control that Edea has clearly been using on the city, but I don't think that mind control would work nearly as well if it wasn't rooted in some real feelings. To quote a select few Delingers:
"Sorceress Edea… Now she's what I call a queen. Oh… What strength. What power. She's beautiful."
"That guy just talked the talk. He never walked the walk. He was such a greedy bastard. Yeah it's terrible he got killed like this, but I think he deserved it."
"People follow strength, not charisma. Sorceress Edea is so strong and so alluring."
"President Deling? Yeah, a good guy on the outside, but basically a loser."
"Long live Sorceress Edea! We can take Eshtar now!" [In answer to this, everyone in the street spontaneously shouts "YEAHHHH!!!"]
"Woman power from here on in. It's about time a woman took charge of the world."
It's so funny, when you think about it. Vinzer Deling established a modern military dictatorship, used mass imprisonment against his political opponents, started conquering nearby regions, seized Dollet and Windhill… And then stalled about as soon as the Gardens opened up and neighbouring nations started hiring SeeD for their defense, and has been stuck in a holding pattern for the past seventeen years or so. All while continuing to extoll military strength as a virtue and maintain an authoritarian regimes, which, implicitly from what Deling City looks like, justifies itself based on its wealth and prosperity - wealth and prosperity it must surely struggle to sustain without further conquest. Meanwhile, Deling himself is an aging politician, a gray-haired man in a suit, increasingly unable to live up to the mythos he's himself built.
Then in comes Edea, a woman with literal supernatural powers, who could probably take on a solid chunk of the Galbadian Army on her own, and goes everywhere dressed for the Met Gala. She's the fulfillment of the ideology of power and extravagant wealth that permeates Deling City.
I think the only part of Edea's coup she really needed the mind control for was to get away with her speech about how she was promising an eternal nightmare for all of Galbadia then killing Deling in plain sight of everyone. Everything aside from that, she could sell purely on Galbadia's own ideological terms. They don't need mind control to agree with her. She's a better Deling than Deling ever was.
I mean, if I had the choice between being ruled by a bland military-officer-turned-dictator with boring conservative beliefs who hasn't won a war in two decades, and being ruled by Disney's Maleficent, I know who I'd pick.
Also it's literally a The Onion bit. "First Female Dictator Hailed As Step Forward For Women."
Anyway, let's go visit Rinoa's dad.
I can only presume that Carraway's involvement in the attempted assassination was not discovered, despite his daughter taking part in it. The old man is still sitting in his house, and he's actually willing to answer questions for us.
[Ask about the sorceress]
Carraway: "Galbadia is completely at the mercy of the sorceress. This country is now merely a tool for her. Fearing the sorceress, the rest of the world will unite against Galbadia. I fear it will be the Sorceress War all over again…"
Carraway: "Our enemy Esthar was also ruled by a sorceress… The same thing is happening with Galbadia. How foolish of you, Deling…"
[Ask about Esthar]
Carraway: "The powerful nation to the east, Esthar is our worst threat. It's the country that took over the world with Sorceress Adel. Ever since the end of the war, Esthar has kept silent. No one knows what became of Sorceress Adel. Esthar itself remains hidden and isolated."
Carraway: "We were afraid of Esthar. We occupied other countries to build up a force. Things have been going awry ever since then."
This is a timely reminder that Carraway is still a product of Galbadia's military establishment; even if he's able to acknowledge wrongdoing on Galbadia's part, he still fundamentally believes in a self-serving narrative of Galbadian imperialism as motivated by 'security concerns' and a need to protect itself from a powerful neighbor that merely 'went wrong' somewhere along the way.
Esthar is interesting, though. It's been a mystery hanging in the background for a while now, but we're starting to get more pieces to put together. Once, Dollet ruled this side of the world, and later Esthar "took over the world" with the power of a Sorceress, until they were defeated and driven back into isolation into their homeland. In one of the Laguna flashbacks, we saw she had her soldiers hunt for girls to pass on the power of a sorceress to; quite possibly Edea is one such girl, having inherited the power of the Sorceress.
It's possible she might even be Ellone herself, having been captured some time after the last Laguna flashback, but for now I'm sticking to "Ellone is the girl in blue we saw at Balamb Garden."
Carraway's opposition to Edea's rule also makes sense in the context of "the last time a Sorceress took over, the entire world united to defeat her." This isn't a winning scenario for Galbadia.
…
Also Carraway has Rinoa's Triple Triad card.
This isn't a surprise or anything, he literally has a dialogue option where he says he has it… And that he'll trade it for our Ifrit Card, but only if we beat him first.
What this means in practice is rather convoluted and takes me several attempts to figure out. What he means is that we have to throw a game using the Ifrit card, so that he'll then take our Ifrit, and only then will he start playing the Rinoa Card, which we must then win in the normal way. Because Galbadia is still under 'Random' rules, this would take an impossible amount of time to do if I still had my full collection; as things are it merely takes a dozen attempts to both draw Ifrit, lose the match on purpose, and not accidentally play a card the AI decides it wants more than Ifrit, such as Diablos.
Rinoa's card isn't even necessarily superior to Ifrit. Those two A sides are unbeatable, but her top and bottom are very weak, so she'll be complicated to play right. But we're doing this for the love of the game, baby.
Speaking of Rinoa and Carraway, though…
The Codex has updated with a new entry: An entry on "Eyes On Me," Julia's breakout song. And it's… informative.
Eyes On Me:
Julia Heartilly's song.
Julia married the Galbadian General Carraway after releasing "Eyes On Me."
Gave birth to a girl one year later.
Julia died in a car crash at age 28, right before her daughter turned 5.
So… "Heartilly" is Rinoa's last name, which we know from extra material even if it hasn't been mentioned in game, in case there was any doubt about her being Julia's daughter. And Julia died years ago, which is something we could already guess from context. These ages though… If Rinoa is 17, then her mom died 12 years ago. She would have been 23 when her daughter was born.
…if Squall and Laguna really are the same person, it would take some serious weirdness for a man very obviously in his early 20s to have somehow turned into a teenager. Still not sure what the connection is there. Julia also didn't die in childbirth, so it doesn't seem like Rinoa would be her mother's own reincarnation.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into these and these characters aren't metaphysically connected in any way, but I doubt it.
Now, it's time to go back to our adventure!
…and by that I mean grind a bunch of levels in the desert.
I've tweaked my spell junctioning a little, refined all my Tier 1 elemental spells into Tier 2 elemental spells, and now I'm going out and drawing more spells to buff those junctions while leveling up at the same time.
This may seem counterproductive - I am getting stronger but at the same time I am raising the level of the combat encounters and making them harder so shouldn't it cancel out? - but this is because I am trying to reach a specific threshold, around lv 20, where I've been informed most opponents start graduating into stronger forms.
And indeed, as Selphie's team makes her way from lv 17 to lv 19-20, I see the Draw list on enemies expand. They start getting tier 2 spells and new supports and status spells! I no longer have to draw 50 Fires to convert into 10 Firas!
Now, the process of doing this is still kind of very dull with a few exception, and for the most part unless I am Drawing spells I just use the emulator's 50x speed function and press X until everything is dead then heal everyone with a tent. Though, sometimes, these fights are surprisingly tough: That weird spinning wheel enemy you see above knows Confuse, which can actually hit pretty hard by having my character turn on one another. Another huge threat are the Wendigos, who deal considerable damage and have tons of HP, and magic damage still kind of sucks. Like…
This is Selphie, my character with the highest level of magic (100 tier 2 junctioned spells), casting Blizzara and just doing… Not much damage at all.
Something about this is weird, but we'll just keep going and see what happens. Once past the grind, it's time to head for the Galbadia Missile Base.
…it turns out that if we enter on foot, the guards shoo us off. Selphie tries to "pretty pleaaaase" her way in, and the guard says that she's just some kid and he 'prefers someone more mature.' To which Selphie replies 'Up yours!' and leaves. Which, I mean, good on that guy I guess?
Anyway, we come back with the car and they let us through without any issue. Shortly thereafter, we climb down, and it turns out the group didn't just take a car, but also, crucially, a bunch of uniforms.
Selphie complains that the uniform is 'itchy and smelly.' Notably, even though all our characters are in full Galbadian uniforms with the helmets and everything, they actually have distinct models with different sizes and their own walk cycles (Selphie runs with her hands splayed out in a stereotypically 'girly' way).
The care that's gone into the animation and design of all these PSX models never cease to amaze me.
Selphie is determined on one goal: Causing as much damage as possible, preventing the launch, and destroying the base.
God, I love Selphie. When she first showed up I never expected one of her most consistent character traits to be "love of random destruction and carnage." Fantastic headliner for this sequence. Quistis and Irvine balance her out reasonably well, with Quistis acting as the voice of calm and reason and Irvine being also pro-blowing shit up but more collected about it.
We run into our first obstacle at the door, but luckily Irvine found an ID card in the car, and soon we are in.
…also, we're getting Selphie's internal monologue. I hadn't immediately noticed, but outside of Laguna flashbacks the game is specifically always showing us the internal monologue of the party leader; 90% of the time that's Squall, but we've never had Selphie Thoughts before that I can recall, and now that she's party leader we're getting a front row seat to her live comments (she thinks this guy is a weirdo).
Note the missiles being moved on a platform below.
There's a console next to one of those doors that we can interact and get one of those really cool 90s strategic computer maps:
Absolutely love that stuff.
Only place we can go right now is the room north, where we find several missile launchers being moved to prep the launch; the soldiers are waiting for the last one to be delivered. There is also a full-life draw point, which is great. However, once I've talked to the guards there doesn't seem to be anything obvious to do. I end up running around a bit before finally figuring out that the space between the left-handed stairs and wall in the picture above is actually a path to another room.
Talking to those two guards makes them realize that they're supposed to be inspecting the circuit room, but with an actual real-life launch happening, they have way too much on their hands to do that kind of routine maintenance. They ask us to deliver a message for them to the missile launcher room guys to just go ahead with the maintenance on their own. We carry the message to the guy, but of course he is too busy with his new workload as well, so he sends us back to tell the maintenance team he can't do it, and so they fall back on an emergency solution - asking us if we can do it.
Just as keikaku.
Maintenance Soldier: "So, that's that. We're counting on you."
Selphie: "Yes, sir!"
Selphie, mentally: "(...Woo-hoo! Blow the place to smithereens!)"
I love Selphie.
We head back to the first guy, the one who commented on us walking single file, and tell him about our very important mission. This time, he lets us in.
Time to wreck havoc.
We actually get a very early example of a QTE in the form of just being told to mash Square repeatedly until something goes awry; the generator promptly goes out, everything goes dark for a second, then the security lights turn on. A voice on loudspeakers summons the maintenance team to the circuit room, so we quickly abscond, but not quick enough to avoid running into them.
Our options are "What the heck! Let's FIGHT!" and "...Try to talk my way out." Talking is surprisingly effective; Selphie spins an excuse like she was just going to call the maintenance team, they tell us to let them take care of everything, head into the room, and then the party immediately follows after and incapacitates out in the dark while they shout surprise and protests.
Irvine: "(...Geez… Selphie can be a little outta control at times…)"
Irvine, listen.
If Selphie was in charge of this operation this whole business with Galbadia and the Sorceress would have been over, like, yesterday.
Granted, there might not be much of a Timber or Deling City left in the process, but, you know, eggs, omelettes?
Heading back to the missile launcher room, more guards ask us what's going on and ask us for help if we continue to bluff, which has served us well so far. The power has gone out, so they need help manually slotting the launcher into place, which we do with another QTE. (I don't think it's possible to deliberately fail that minigame to sabotage the launch; not pushing Square just means it doesn't advance). This, however, proves crucial, as the soldier then sends us to confirm the launch coordinates in the control panels, giving us access to that cool Wargames computer from before.
Irvine suggests busting up the panel, but Selphie thinks to herself that in case this actually triggers the launch, probably because of some failsafe, it would be smarter to first upload the wrong coordinates, just in case, and then bust it up.
Selphie craves destruction but it doesn't mean she dumped Intelligence in the process.
I love this aesthetic so much, you guys. Pretty much half of Armored Core 1 was menus looking exactly like this and that was one of my very first video games.
It's not necessarily obvious exactly what we're supposed to do at first but just futzing with menus it eventually becomes clear: The coordinates are hardlocked in, we can't have the missiles hit Deling City or something like that (not that we should, I just wouldn't put it past Selphie), but we can raise the maximum allowed 'error bars' on the missiles to maximum, ensuring most of them will just go off-target at the end of their course. Then we must upload the data to the missiles, and we're done!
This then actually gives us our segue into the next step - since we just entered the coordinates, we now just have to report about that to whoever's in charge of the base, and so the last soldier lets us head upstairs.
Plots about infiltrating a military base by stealing a uniform and bluffing your way through are always kind of unbelievable (although not necessarily unrealistic, social engineering is weird), but as far those go, the way Selphie & Co do it by finding an opportunity to be helpful in maximally stressful circumstances so no one has time or is inclined to check their credentials and each step validates them to be sent on to the next step and gives the next person reason to just assume they're on the level is pretty well done.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it goes. We enter the launch room shortly after the final launch sequence is initiated, and it only takes a minute for the officer in charge to see through us.
Specifically, he identified us because our salute was wrong, which is really funny but also a realistic detail to miss in the heat of the moment? Quentin Tarantino really didn't invent anything, huh. Before the soldiers can do anything about us, though, Selphie somehow produces a flash of light that blinds everyone just long enough for the party to complete their transformation sequence back into their original clothes.
Let's be real here: They're Galbadian troops. They have upgraded somewhat (their Draw list now contains spells like Slow, Confuse and Reflect!) but they're still jobbers. I have devised a hilarious tactic wherein Quistis wacks them with a physical attack junctioned to 100% Sleep, putting both opponents to sleep long enough to call in a double serving of GF summons and obliterating them.
Once the guards are out, it's time to split up and look for the control panel to try and stop the missile launch…
And Quistis actually does manage to find the missile control panel and stop the launch! Now everyone goes looking for the 'self-destruct' mechanism.
…
What would that even look like, in real life? A self-destruct is fundamentally a fictional device, with the closest real life equivalent being the deliberate scuttling of ships in warfare. But in order for that to work on a missile base, you would need to have, like… Explosives planted all throughout the complex, that are set to detonate at any time. Everyone in the base would be walking around a death trap. Just imagine, you're doing maintenance and drill through the hidden explosive cell in the wall and you fucking explode.
What's fascinating to me is that this isn't even interrogated. No one even discusses the possibility of there being a self-destruct system; this is taken for granted by the story, and the characters find it in thirty seconds.
One of my favorite 'self-destruct' systems in fiction, incidentally, is in Alien, where the 'self-destruct' is really just a system that forcibly removes the cooling units from the starships reactor, causing it to melt down and blow up the ship just from its own reactor-ness.
Anyway, self-destruct time.
We are, as this game seems to like to do, given the option to pick the timer on the self-destruct - 10, 20, 30 or 40 minutes. I decide that I feel like a proper challenge since the game has not given me much of that, and pick the shortest length - 10 minutes.
This is going to prove trickier than expected, because the timer is constantly running, making no pause for cutscenes, so our actual 'playable' time is significantly less than 10 minutes, an effect that would be barely noticeable at 20 minutes but will matter quite a bit at 10.
The loudspeaker voice, which I can only assume is automated, broadcasts a warning to all staff to evacuate immediately. Selphie whoops in excitement, BUT JUST AS WE LEAVE!
…
You know, here's the thing.
I don't like when heroic protagonists 'double tap' their opponents. Sure, it makes sense for John Wick to always secure the kill, but one of the traits I attribute with 'good guys' is that they're capable of mercy. A guy who's on the ground unable to fight is no longer a threat to you most of the time. That doesn't even have to mean 'mercy' in the sense of actively sparing someone; it can just be that you disable opponents with what force is necessary, and if they die too bad, and if they live that is also fine. In the 1% of cases where the guy you left limp on the floor later comes back as a recurring antagonist, that's good, that's what stories are made of, rivalry and revenge and recurring characters. I like that Biggs and Wedge are recurring low-tier antagonists.
But this is now the third time in this game that our team takes out a Galbadian squad, moves on, and then the officer finds the strength to crawl to some comm device and trigger the Black Widow Mech/the prison monsters/whatever's coming our way now. At some point it's getting obnoxious. I don't like thinking 'should have capped these guys on the way out just to be sure' but this is one specific narrative device that's starting to overstay its welcome!
Ah, well. Cut for image count.
Final Fantasy VIII, Part 15.B: The Galbadia Missile Base
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Time to make a break and try to beat the self-destruct timer!
Anyway, everyone is running and driving out of the base, and our party is close behind.
Unfortunately, but predictably, we are about to run into some trouble. First off, letting that soldier live back in the control room proves a major mistake, because he just undid whatever we did to prevent the launch.
The missiles fire, with everyone looking on in alarm.
Hopefully that trick we did with the error margins will be enough to save Balamb Garden, but it's not a great start.
Oh, and now we're looking at another giant armed vehicle.
Captain: "It would be inexcusable to Sorceress Edea! I don't want to suffer her wrath!"
I do appreciate how Galbadian weapons have just, the worst names. Like, even a real military wouldn't call a major combat vehicle the "BGH251F2," right? As bad as it gets it still "F-31" and "Mig-21," stuff a human mind can remember and human mouth can pronounce. But these guys are so consistently awful about their naming scheme that it shows up in every robot they use and at this point it's an actual character trait. Luckily they have conventional nicknames to use instead.
So, the Iron Clad. It has a ton of HP, high resistances, and devastating attacks. How devastating, you ask?
Quistis is fucking dead.
The Iron Clad's basic machine gun attacks hits for just south of 600 damage. Its Beam Cannon hits for just south of 1000. It's extremely oppressive; any two attacks in a row will kill a character, and Beam Cannon always has a chance to one-shot someone. Now, I have a ton of healing spells, so this should be manageable… Except, as you can see, the timer is ticking down in the upper right corner. Every turn I spend healing is less DPS, and less DPS means risking running down the clock to a game over.
As the timer gets increasingly low, I realize that I'm doomed playing as I do, and throw caution to the wind in hopes of putting in enough damage and scoring enough Limit Breaks to win before everybody dies.
It doesn't work.
Ah, the taste of defeat. But what is this? Excitement?
My last save was at the timer choice, and I elect to not be a coward and stick to the 10 minute timer, then rush to the fight as quickly as possible.
This time, my first step is Protect. It won't help against the Beam Cannon, but it does bring down the machine gun fire to a very manageable 250-ish damage. Spending three actions casting Protect on everyone might seem to rub against the timer issue, but it's simply more time-efficient than healing later.
Next, Summons. The Iron Clad is weak to Lightning, Earth and Water, but 'weak' here shouldn't be misconstrued: This really just means that these elements can deal any damage at all. Irvine has Ifrit Junctioned with Strength +40% and Strength +20% as well as Fira junctioned to Strength, and his physical attack deals less than a hundred damage. Out of 8200 HP. No, even Thundara, which should at this stage be a decent middle-of-the-road damage spell hitting an enemy weakness, deals a pathetic 230 damage. Irvine can cast Water, but it deals around 200 damage, a drop in the bucket. Our main damage option here is going to be Quezacotl and the Brothers - although the Brothers still deal fairly low damage for the time it takes to summon them.
I don't know why I'm summoning Ifrit here. Probably panicked.
With 1200 damage per hit, it would take Quezacotl 7 casts to full run down the Iron Clad's HP. I don't have enough time. This means Quistis and Irvine need to make up the rest with Thundara, Water, Brothers, and Limit Breaks. Can it be done?
Short answer: Yes…
…and no.
As the Iron Clad takes damage, these huge cylindrical engines blow up one by one. Each time, the pilots have some comment, basically a back and forth between the privates wanting to get out of there and the officer thinking they're this close to winning and they can't let the enemy seize this weapon. After about 80% of its HP is gone, the Iron Clod explodes… and the soldier emerge on the battlefield, smoking and burning comically but alive, and engage us in battle.
They're trivial opponents, but at this stage, we only have 30 seconds on the counter. It's simply not enough to select attacks and play out their animations in full. Quistis takes out the officer with her Laser Eye, and the countdown hits 0.
…which actually causes a very neat non-standard gameplay to play out, but put a pin in that, we'll get to it in a moment.
For now, let's do this again, and do it right this time.
My strategy from earlier was good, I just need to refine it. By going into the menu and selecting 'Memorize,' we can make it so that the cursor always starts on the same place it was last time we opened a character's menu in combat. Because at this point we have dozens of spells to sift through, this actually significantly improves the speed of selecting our offensive option - Protect/Protect/Protect on Turn 1, Quezacotl/Thundara/Water on every turn after, except when a character is injured and needs a Cura or down and needs a Full-Life.
We still might not have made it; by the time the Iron Clad explodes, we have 50 seconds left, and the animation of the soldiers entering the field takes a chunk out of that…
…but Selphie had Quezacotl just about to be unleashed as the last spell hit the Iron Clad, meaning these soldiers run right into a full-screen 1000+ damage, coming in clutch and sealing the victory. Our reward? Another Weapons Monthly magazine and 4 AP.
There's a semi-hidden cost to doing it this way - the Iron Clad is the first enemy to have Stop in its Draw list, but I simply did not have time to pause and Draw after my first, failed attempt. (I also only got to Scan it on that first try and had to operate from memory afterwards). But that's fine by me.
This… Was fun. The boss mechanics simple, and things would have gotten very frustrating very quickly if I hadn't had Quetz as a repeatable nuke to deal meaningful damage (at ~250 damage per cast, it would have taken over 25 Thundara casts to bring down the Iron Clad with my next-in-line best damage option, which just sounds soul-crushingly dull and would have just mathematically been impossible to fit in 10 minutes), but the challenge of the time pressure and sheer amount of damage making me need to optimize my action sequence was just enjoyable. For the first time in several hours I am actually enjoying FF8's combat gameplay.
So now, let us reap the spoils of victory.
The vehicle is a smoking ruin. The missiles have been fired. The base is about to self-destruct. All the troops are gone.
So… What do we do?
…
Nothing.
The soldiers locked the doors on their way out.
At first, I just assume I am missing the obvious next action, but no. There is no action to take. There is nowhere to go. We can't find a door to interact with. We can't leave through these massive steel gates. All we can is just run around like headless chickens until an arbitrary amount of time has passed and…
Selphie, mentally: "(...Are we locked in?)"
Selphie: "(Squall will take care of the rest, right?)"
Selphie: "(I wonder if he'll organize the Garden Festival?)"
Selphie: [She looks up at the sky.] "(Nah, can't count on Squall for that…)"
Selphie: [She crouches.] "(Sigh…)"
Selphie: [She slumps.] "(It's all over…)"
Quistis: [She looks up.] "It came quite quietly. I thought the end would have been more dramatic…"
Irvine: [He also looks up into the distance.] "Squall… He didn't trust me. That's probably why he put me on this team…"
Selphie, mentally: "(...What the hell are you all saying? …Squall chose us because he believed in us. I'm sure of it!)"
Selphie: "(We can do it. That's what he thought when he made this team.)" [She straightens up a little.] "(Isn't that right, Squall?)"
…
Holy shit.
I. I did not expect that.
Wow.
I mean, I - I don't think they're really dead??? This would be such a wild swerve to throw at us at this stage of the game, to literally cut our party roster and character cast in half??? I mean, they played the death fake-out with Squall at the end of Disc 1, and just - I, as a player, picked who was on that team. In terms of just, technical issues and writing around plot developments, there is no way the game could possibly accommodate "Selphie plus two extra characters, which can be any of the other four, die at this stage." I mean, we've barely even known Irvine.
But holy shit. It did take me a moment to actually process what just happened. Staring at my screen.
As we just - watch Selphie, Quistis and Irvine realize they have no way out, accept their fates, and just sit around musing about how they didn't expect it to end like this, hoping the others will take care of the rest, save Balamb Garden and carry on their unfinished business, before being… Incinerated in a nuclear fireball, and fading to Squall, Zell and Rinoa having just arrived in Balamb Garden, seeing it safe, and thinking - fuck.
That the others did it. They did their job. They saved the day.
Fuck me, I'm actually feeling a little emotional writing this the day after actually playing through it.
Those last two shots of the view-from-the-sky of the explosion going off, by the way? They're what plays when you reach the special game over for running down the timer in the base. Which I suppose could be said to spoil the final effect, but... Not for me, not really. I saw that when I lost that second fight and thought, 'wow, they really went above and beyond making missable FMVs for special game overs,' and then I watched through that final scene and the realization started to sink in that I was going to see it again.
Damn.
This game's quality of writing and gameplay really just did a Dragoon Jump after last update, huh.
God, Selphie. I always liked Selphie, don't get me wrong, and I was hopeful about a segment highlighting her, but it could have just been nothing to write home about and instead she went from a mostly background member of the party with a fun but simple quirk to a tornado of manic cheer, terrifying enthusiasm for violence, and surprisingly excellent infiltration skills. Like, she's a SeeD, but this is the first time we see that she really does have the chops for the jobs, the real skills of an elite mercenary rather than just being informed qualities and gameplay conceits, and her bubbly attitude and ASD behavior is - not a facade, it's her real self, but if you think that in any way indicates a lack of capability on her part you are in for a rude awakening.
And then…
God. Regardless of whether or not we'll find out they're okay later, that was a gut punch.
The game proceeds straight away without an immediate option to save and put down the controller, but I have that option and I am going to exercise it. We'll be ending this update here, and finding out what fresh bullshit Squall's party have to deal with next time.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: Civil war at Balamb Garden.
Anyway, everyone is running and driving out of the base, and our party is close behind.
Unfortunately, but predictably, we are about to run into some trouble. First off, letting that soldier live back in the control room proves a major mistake, because he just undid whatever we did to prevent the launch.
The missiles fire, with everyone looking on in alarm.
Hopefully that trick we did with the error margins will be enough to save Balamb Garden, but it's not a great start.
Oh, and now we're looking at another giant armed vehicle.
Captain: "It would be inexcusable to Sorceress Edea! I don't want to suffer her wrath!"
I do appreciate how Galbadian weapons have just, the worst names. Like, even a real military wouldn't call a major combat vehicle the "BGH251F2," right? As bad as it gets it still "F-31" and "Mig-21," stuff a human mind can remember and human mouth can pronounce. But these guys are so consistently awful about their naming scheme that it shows up in every robot they use and at this point it's an actual character trait. Luckily they have conventional nicknames to use instead.
So, the Iron Clad. It has a ton of HP, high resistances, and devastating attacks. How devastating, you ask?
Quistis is fucking dead.
The Iron Clad's basic machine gun attacks hits for just south of 600 damage. Its Beam Cannon hits for just south of 1000. It's extremely oppressive; any two attacks in a row will kill a character, and Beam Cannon always has a chance to one-shot someone. Now, I have a ton of healing spells, so this should be manageable… Except, as you can see, the timer is ticking down in the upper right corner. Every turn I spend healing is less DPS, and less DPS means risking running down the clock to a game over.
As the timer gets increasingly low, I realize that I'm doomed playing as I do, and throw caution to the wind in hopes of putting in enough damage and scoring enough Limit Breaks to win before everybody dies.
It doesn't work.
Ah, the taste of defeat. But what is this? Excitement?
My last save was at the timer choice, and I elect to not be a coward and stick to the 10 minute timer, then rush to the fight as quickly as possible.
This time, my first step is Protect. It won't help against the Beam Cannon, but it does bring down the machine gun fire to a very manageable 250-ish damage. Spending three actions casting Protect on everyone might seem to rub against the timer issue, but it's simply more time-efficient than healing later.
Next, Summons. The Iron Clad is weak to Lightning, Earth and Water, but 'weak' here shouldn't be misconstrued: This really just means that these elements can deal any damage at all. Irvine has Ifrit Junctioned with Strength +40% and Strength +20% as well as Fira junctioned to Strength, and his physical attack deals less than a hundred damage. Out of 8200 HP. No, even Thundara, which should at this stage be a decent middle-of-the-road damage spell hitting an enemy weakness, deals a pathetic 230 damage. Irvine can cast Water, but it deals around 200 damage, a drop in the bucket. Our main damage option here is going to be Quezacotl and the Brothers - although the Brothers still deal fairly low damage for the time it takes to summon them.
I don't know why I'm summoning Ifrit here. Probably panicked.
With 1200 damage per hit, it would take Quezacotl 7 casts to full run down the Iron Clad's HP. I don't have enough time. This means Quistis and Irvine need to make up the rest with Thundara, Water, Brothers, and Limit Breaks. Can it be done?
Short answer: Yes…
…and no.
As the Iron Clad takes damage, these huge cylindrical engines blow up one by one. Each time, the pilots have some comment, basically a back and forth between the privates wanting to get out of there and the officer thinking they're this close to winning and they can't let the enemy seize this weapon. After about 80% of its HP is gone, the Iron Clod explodes… and the soldier emerge on the battlefield, smoking and burning comically but alive, and engage us in battle.
They're trivial opponents, but at this stage, we only have 30 seconds on the counter. It's simply not enough to select attacks and play out their animations in full. Quistis takes out the officer with her Laser Eye, and the countdown hits 0.
…which actually causes a very neat non-standard gameplay to play out, but put a pin in that, we'll get to it in a moment.
For now, let's do this again, and do it right this time.
My strategy from earlier was good, I just need to refine it. By going into the menu and selecting 'Memorize,' we can make it so that the cursor always starts on the same place it was last time we opened a character's menu in combat. Because at this point we have dozens of spells to sift through, this actually significantly improves the speed of selecting our offensive option - Protect/Protect/Protect on Turn 1, Quezacotl/Thundara/Water on every turn after, except when a character is injured and needs a Cura or down and needs a Full-Life.
We still might not have made it; by the time the Iron Clad explodes, we have 50 seconds left, and the animation of the soldiers entering the field takes a chunk out of that…
…but Selphie had Quezacotl just about to be unleashed as the last spell hit the Iron Clad, meaning these soldiers run right into a full-screen 1000+ damage, coming in clutch and sealing the victory. Our reward? Another Weapons Monthly magazine and 4 AP.
There's a semi-hidden cost to doing it this way - the Iron Clad is the first enemy to have Stop in its Draw list, but I simply did not have time to pause and Draw after my first, failed attempt. (I also only got to Scan it on that first try and had to operate from memory afterwards). But that's fine by me.
This… Was fun. The boss mechanics simple, and things would have gotten very frustrating very quickly if I hadn't had Quetz as a repeatable nuke to deal meaningful damage (at ~250 damage per cast, it would have taken over 25 Thundara casts to bring down the Iron Clad with my next-in-line best damage option, which just sounds soul-crushingly dull and would have just mathematically been impossible to fit in 10 minutes), but the challenge of the time pressure and sheer amount of damage making me need to optimize my action sequence was just enjoyable. For the first time in several hours I am actually enjoying FF8's combat gameplay.
So now, let us reap the spoils of victory.
The vehicle is a smoking ruin. The missiles have been fired. The base is about to self-destruct. All the troops are gone.
So… What do we do?
…
Nothing.
The soldiers locked the doors on their way out.
At first, I just assume I am missing the obvious next action, but no. There is no action to take. There is nowhere to go. We can't find a door to interact with. We can't leave through these massive steel gates. All we can is just run around like headless chickens until an arbitrary amount of time has passed and…
Selphie, mentally: "(...Are we locked in?)"
Selphie: "(Squall will take care of the rest, right?)"
Selphie: "(I wonder if he'll organize the Garden Festival?)"
Selphie: [She looks up at the sky.] "(Nah, can't count on Squall for that…)"
Selphie: [She crouches.] "(Sigh…)"
Selphie: [She slumps.] "(It's all over…)"
Quistis: [She looks up.] "It came quite quietly. I thought the end would have been more dramatic…"
Irvine: [He also looks up into the distance.] "Squall… He didn't trust me. That's probably why he put me on this team…"
Selphie, mentally: "(...What the hell are you all saying? …Squall chose us because he believed in us. I'm sure of it!)"
Selphie: "(We can do it. That's what he thought when he made this team.)" [She straightens up a little.] "(Isn't that right, Squall?)"
…
Holy shit.
I. I did not expect that.
Wow.
I mean, I - I don't think they're really dead??? This would be such a wild swerve to throw at us at this stage of the game, to literally cut our party roster and character cast in half??? I mean, they played the death fake-out with Squall at the end of Disc 1, and just - I, as a player, picked who was on that team. In terms of just, technical issues and writing around plot developments, there is no way the game could possibly accommodate "Selphie plus two extra characters, which can be any of the other four, die at this stage." I mean, we've barely even known Irvine.
But holy shit. It did take me a moment to actually process what just happened. Staring at my screen.
As we just - watch Selphie, Quistis and Irvine realize they have no way out, accept their fates, and just sit around musing about how they didn't expect it to end like this, hoping the others will take care of the rest, save Balamb Garden and carry on their unfinished business, before being… Incinerated in a nuclear fireball, and fading to Squall, Zell and Rinoa having just arrived in Balamb Garden, seeing it safe, and thinking - fuck.
That the others did it. They did their job. They saved the day.
Fuck me, I'm actually feeling a little emotional writing this the day after actually playing through it.
Those last two shots of the view-from-the-sky of the explosion going off, by the way? They're what plays when you reach the special game over for running down the timer in the base. Which I suppose could be said to spoil the final effect, but... Not for me, not really. I saw that when I lost that second fight and thought, 'wow, they really went above and beyond making missable FMVs for special game overs,' and then I watched through that final scene and the realization started to sink in that I was going to see it again.
Damn.
This game's quality of writing and gameplay really just did a Dragoon Jump after last update, huh.
God, Selphie. I always liked Selphie, don't get me wrong, and I was hopeful about a segment highlighting her, but it could have just been nothing to write home about and instead she went from a mostly background member of the party with a fun but simple quirk to a tornado of manic cheer, terrifying enthusiasm for violence, and surprisingly excellent infiltration skills. Like, she's a SeeD, but this is the first time we see that she really does have the chops for the jobs, the real skills of an elite mercenary rather than just being informed qualities and gameplay conceits, and her bubbly attitude and ASD behavior is - not a facade, it's her real self, but if you think that in any way indicates a lack of capability on her part you are in for a rude awakening.
And then…
God. Regardless of whether or not we'll find out they're okay later, that was a gut punch.
The game proceeds straight away without an immediate option to save and put down the controller, but I have that option and I am going to exercise it. We'll be ending this update here, and finding out what fresh bullshit Squall's party have to deal with next time.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: Civil war at Balamb Garden.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This next part is also burned into my brain. I didn't get that much further than this, in an absolute sense, so I remember it very well.
somewhatLazy
Serial Procrastinator
- Location
- lurking
Forget all the (awesome) analysis of the realmism of Edea being the natural endpoint of a fascistic imperialistic state like Galbadia. The best part of Galbadia's internal politics...
Is how the Step On Me caucus has also come out in stampeding droves.
I really love this sort of cool thinking under pressure from Selphie because it demonstrates how she's a professional trained for these sorts of situations (unlike Rinoa who froze up when asked to make a decision), but this also only serves to make the following mistake weirder...
...because she's almost certainly the sort of mercenary who would kill without hesitation, even if it wasn't against people who'd already bombed one home and were in the middle of attacking another. Like, in the exam in Dollet, Squall and Seifer slaughtered t heir way through poor mooks, and it's likely that Selphie had to do at least a bit of the same to safely make it to the communications tower. I suppose it at least ties in with the running theme of haste making for sloppiness that let Selphie and co get this far in the first place?
- Pronouns
- She/They
Is it bad that my initial thought was that Selphie would do exactly that? My girl is such a chaos gremlin I fully expected her to pull something like that if given the power. I mean, how often do you have your hands on several ICBMs, it would be a crime to not at least one on some place you don't care about too much, right?
What gets me is, being inside a missile base, there is a perfectly straightforward and diagetic way to have a self-destruct mechanism in here - find a way to detonate the missile warheads within the complex itself. I'm guessing the reason they didn't go for that is that's the kind of thing you'd need to mess with the missiles themselves to do, as opposed to setting something up in the control room itself, and maybe they thought that was a less cinematic choice?
I suppose you could detonate the missiles the old Red Alert 2 way by forcing the silo doors closed when you launch them, but since they wanted that "oh no the missiles launched!" Moment they couldn't really do that. It's entirely possible I'm just overthinking this and the writers didn't want to interrogate the scene too much, but here I am.
I will say though, this update was overall fantastic. Love the idea that Edea legitimately doesn't need mind control magic and is here on her own terms, a girlboss stays winning. And getting a Selphie centric episode was a treat.
The ending was really well done though. I'm an absolute sucker for seeing characters react to the thought of their immanent demise, and that mixture of resignation but also hope for the future, and fixating on dumb little details like who's going to organize the Garden Festival now? That's just chef's kiss peak writing.
Is it bad that I immediately started coming up with chants for the rally?
"Whooo's the fairest of them all?!"
"MAL-E-FI-CENT"
"Whooo's first up against the wall?!"
"VIN-ZER DEL-ING"
It's probably bad, yeah.
FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To the tune of Spongebob Squarepants.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
No translation insights, because the Japanese script site I'm using does not have this sequence. It's probably one of those things the site owner was going to fill in later, then never got around to doing.
The script site does pick back up with Squall's team arriving at Balamb Garden, so there is that.
Could be, but it's weird for that to be the line where Selphie suddenly changes her speech patterns. For that line specifically, Selphie still talks like she usually does. Including the slightly amusing "ピンチ" as the word for "in trouble", which is generally used for "I forgot to do my homework" or "I'm going to be late for class", not "Trabia Garden is about to be destroyed by ICBM". She's insistent that Squall make a decision about splitting the teams now, repeating the "missiles are going to launch any moment now" urgency over and over, but not in her "home dialect".
It's only after the first set of missiles are launched and Selphie goes into momentary despair that she goes into her "home dialect". So that would have been where I expected the speech change to occur.
There might be some backseat psycho-analysis of why Selphie slipped back into her dialect at that moment, rather than during the urgent desperation earlier. Given what we've seen of Selphie's professional abilities here, I might speculate that pre-launch, Selphie was still in "mission mode", and post-launch she went into "mission failed, time to debrief", and the difference in tension types was what made her go back to her home dialect.
I wasn't sure whether to bring up this song earlier, because while it's introduced in-game only around this time, "Eyes On Me" was also the song used to advertise FFVIII everywhere, as its theme song. We can hear its motif in lots of other places, like the "Waltz For The Moon" BGM during the SeeD graduation ball, and Julia's theme itself.
"Eyes On Me" was sung by Faye Wong, the stupendously famous Hong Kong singer. So at least in this region, there was additional interest in FFVIII from people outside of gaming, entirely due to that; it's like having Madonna sing the theme song to a JRPG.
It's also very Engrish, which in hindsight is not surprising, given the disconnect between writers and translators at the time, and as can be seen in the translation efforts here. Faye Wong herself largely sings in Cantonese, with a few songs in Mandarin, and almost never English.
The script site does pick back up with Squall's team arriving at Balamb Garden, so there is that.
Could be, but it's weird for that to be the line where Selphie suddenly changes her speech patterns. For that line specifically, Selphie still talks like she usually does. Including the slightly amusing "ピンチ" as the word for "in trouble", which is generally used for "I forgot to do my homework" or "I'm going to be late for class", not "Trabia Garden is about to be destroyed by ICBM". She's insistent that Squall make a decision about splitting the teams now, repeating the "missiles are going to launch any moment now" urgency over and over, but not in her "home dialect".
It's only after the first set of missiles are launched and Selphie goes into momentary despair that she goes into her "home dialect". So that would have been where I expected the speech change to occur.
There might be some backseat psycho-analysis of why Selphie slipped back into her dialect at that moment, rather than during the urgent desperation earlier. Given what we've seen of Selphie's professional abilities here, I might speculate that pre-launch, Selphie was still in "mission mode", and post-launch she went into "mission failed, time to debrief", and the difference in tension types was what made her go back to her home dialect.
I wasn't sure whether to bring up this song earlier, because while it's introduced in-game only around this time, "Eyes On Me" was also the song used to advertise FFVIII everywhere, as its theme song. We can hear its motif in lots of other places, like the "Waltz For The Moon" BGM during the SeeD graduation ball, and Julia's theme itself.
"Eyes On Me" was sung by Faye Wong, the stupendously famous Hong Kong singer. So at least in this region, there was additional interest in FFVIII from people outside of gaming, entirely due to that; it's like having Madonna sing the theme song to a JRPG.
It's also very Engrish, which in hindsight is not surprising, given the disconnect between writers and translators at the time, and as can be seen in the translation efforts here. Faye Wong herself largely sings in Cantonese, with a few songs in Mandarin, and almost never English.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
It was really set up great. A lot of these sort of moments go for the 'shocking surprise' that, once the surprise is gone doesn't really mean anything.
But here having them all reflect on their deaths (each possible character has their own lines, which are all really good I think), in comparison to the mission, and what they'd want to do, it's good character moments, and reactive to who you choose. The 'Trust me' theme paying softly, rather then something defeatist or loud, makes it work really well. (FF8 has quite a lot of soft quite tunes in it's OST. Like a lot a lot.)
It's interesting how Selphie's opinion on Squall is both razor keen and not deluded (No way will Squall manage the festival committee!) But at the same time is trusting his character and caring to an extent that no one else does. She's putting faith in him that he himself probably doesn't. And if that's her projecting, and hoping, because it's all she's got left at the moment, or her seeing Squall for who he really can be is up in the air.
Either way, it's a good way to prime the idea that 'Squall is actually/could be a decent guy', which disc 2 has started to imply. Disc 1 gave us insight and maybe had us sympathize with him, but his little 'morality is just different points of view bro!' speech at the end of Disc 1 shows he wasn't supposed to be taken as a good friend or anything.
Also I'm not sure if you used a guide or not, but the mission as described should get Squall some nice SeeD rank XP.
And then no overland travel, no dicking around with travel montages, just straight to 'the garden is safe! Safe forever. I'm sure it's fine'. Great plotting going on here, compared to... all that stuff in D-district prison.
But here having them all reflect on their deaths (each possible character has their own lines, which are all really good I think), in comparison to the mission, and what they'd want to do, it's good character moments, and reactive to who you choose. The 'Trust me' theme paying softly, rather then something defeatist or loud, makes it work really well. (FF8 has quite a lot of soft quite tunes in it's OST. Like a lot a lot.)
It's interesting how Selphie's opinion on Squall is both razor keen and not deluded (No way will Squall manage the festival committee!) But at the same time is trusting his character and caring to an extent that no one else does. She's putting faith in him that he himself probably doesn't. And if that's her projecting, and hoping, because it's all she's got left at the moment, or her seeing Squall for who he really can be is up in the air.
Either way, it's a good way to prime the idea that 'Squall is actually/could be a decent guy', which disc 2 has started to imply. Disc 1 gave us insight and maybe had us sympathize with him, but his little 'morality is just different points of view bro!' speech at the end of Disc 1 shows he wasn't supposed to be taken as a good friend or anything.
Also I'm not sure if you used a guide or not, but the mission as described should get Squall some nice SeeD rank XP.
And then no overland travel, no dicking around with travel montages, just straight to 'the garden is safe! Safe forever. I'm sure it's fine'. Great plotting going on here, compared to... all that stuff in D-district prison.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
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- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
Omi, bud, we all know who you'd pick.
Not to undercut my dry cynicism earlier, but: PEAK HOT GIRL SHIT.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Ah yes, the problem with a 'might makes right doctrine'. Hard to have a leg to stand on when someone beats you in a contest of might.
Also, same.
It's a missile base. It's already full of explosives. I'd just close all the missile hangar doors and set all missiles to launch (or better yet, explode without launching if that's an option).
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