I don't imagine you get some particularly unique dialogue from bringing her to talk to her dad in Deling if you put her on the Missile Base team, either?
As I can now confirm, no, you do not. Selphie is the team leader at the time, and Caraway only speaks with her, although he did say "take care of Rinoa", so there's that. But he says it whether Rinoa is there or not.
So, in the next set of notes about the Italian translation, I need to mention that this was tricky because this section has a lot of incidental dialogue, and unlike with the main plot, it's very hard to find English sources for what that's like that I can compare to highlight differences. So, if something was changed that wasn't mentioned in the let's play posts, I won't know. I'll still point out anything that seems interesting to check if @Omicron didn't find the particular dialogue, or if it just didn't seem worth remarking upon.
With that in mind!
- While it wasn't highlighted in the let's play posts, talking with the various soldiers in Deling City gives a lot of information about the political situation in Galbadia. As far as I can tell, these are identical between the English and Italian version, so I'll just give the cliff notes, which are that the Sorceress made Galbadia Garden her base of operations, that it seems like the SeeD of Balamb Garden are opposing the Sorceress but it's no big deal since she'll squash them like bugs, that the government workings have been temporarily shut down as all powers are transitioned to the Sorceress, that Caraway was dismissed from the army due to unconfirmed suspicions of complicity with the attempt on the Sorceress' life, and of course how the formidable Sorceress that was once an enemy is now Galbadia's leader and how that's wonderful, just in case anybody was thinking the soldiery wasn't as on board with worshiping the ground the Sorceress walks as the rest of Galbadia is.
- For the various conversations in Deling City that were highlighted, they all appear to be exactly the same.
- As mentioned, Caraway doesn't have a line if Rinoa is present, but he does changes his dialogue about cards after you win the Rinoa card from him; specifically, he mentions that he lost the Ifrit card "the other day" (how did that happen, when we didn't leave between losing Ifrit and winning Rinoa, is a mystery for the ages) to Martin/Dodonn, the headmaster of Galbadia Garden - or rather, former headmaster, as Caraway says "he too, like me, has lost his job due to Edea". Which is confirmation that, indeed, Caraway did face some consequences, even if pretty tame ones, all things considered.
- Next, the Missile Base. The exchange at the gate if Selphie approaches on foot is phrased a bit differently; it still starts with "this is a restricted area, what are a bunch of kids doing here?", followed by Selphie asking "can you please let us by?". However, instead of referring to Selphie's attempt with "this isn't a club, and I like mature women anyway" (unsurprising, by the way, considering what we got of the Galbadian population's reaction to Edea), which suggests that Selphie's pleas where of a certain type, the soldier instead says "don't try to persuade me, I don't like little girls", which is way more neutral. As a result, this parses more like he's just an old man yelling at youngsters, rather than implying that Selphie is trying to flirt. It seemed like an interesting note.
- Once inside the base, Selphie is all for destruction, as per her usual ("We break everything inside, then we get out and break everything outside too!"), with Irvine expressing support.
- The dialogue then mostly follows the same beats as in English, but when the group takes out the maintenance team and Irvine has a thought bubble about Selphie, instead of the English's "geez, she's a bit out of control", Irvine is actually appreciative in the Italian version, as his comment voices the common sentiment of "wow, Selphie is great!", which I think we can all agree with. Although I do wonder which of the two takes, the English or the Italian one, is closer to the original Japanese, because those are two very divergent opinions for Irvine to have.
- The next relevant bit of dialogue change is at the end of the sequence, where Selphie says "they locked us in", which makes it more intentional on part of the Galbadian soldiers to trap Selphie's team inside the base to be exploded. Then, when reflecting on Squall, she says "I shouldn't always rely on him", a more general comment than the one referring to him specifically not being a good person to count on to keep the festival going. It is the only change, the rest is almost verbatim with the English version, but I thought it was worth mentioning, even if it's a small tweak.
- The civil war is next. The section already opens a bit differently, with Zell saying "We arrived in time!" rather than the English "Alright, the Garden's safe"; same sentiment, different expression of it. Then Squall also doesn't think "they did it", but rather "I hope they others are safe", which gives a different feeling as the follow-up to the base explosion; not sure if it's more or less effective, but it feels softer. The sequence then still follows into "let's warn the Headmaster", same as the English version.
- Following that, the interactions with the first two members of the faculty and the wounded student at the gates are identical. Instead, the first change in dialogue is that Fujin says "PROBLEMS, CAUSE UNKNOWN" rather than the simpler "DISTURBING" from the English version. The following exchange proceed along the same line, although in Italian they managed to have Rinoa fully ask "are you with the Headmaster?", instead of her aping Fujin and only asking half the question as she does in English. Naturally, Fujin and Raijin confirm that, as usual, they're on Seifer's side, which prompts Squall's thoughts wondering it that means they'll side with the Sorceress because Seifer did.
- In the interaction at the Quad, after saying that we're on the Headmaster's side, there's a line that in English is clearly intended to belong to a student, "I thought so! Who's this Master anyway?", but in the Italian version, while the dialogue isn't attributed to anybody, it's framed as if it was a follow up line from Squall, since it goes "at least, I think so; I don't know who this Master even is." That's an interesting quirk that seemed worth mentioning.
- I think it's worth mentioning that the members of the faculty always blow a whistle before each battle, which always suggested to me they're using monsters specifically trained to answer to the whistle, like some dog breeds can be. I might be wrong, but it seemed the best explanation.
- In the Training Center, after saving the kids and receiving their thanks, the boy says to Squall "when I grow up I'll become a great SeeD warrior just like you!", which is cute. Also, about the man selling stuff, if you challenge him to a card game, he says "I don't play with beginners; come back to play with me later, when you're stronger".
- The dialogue with Cid is different. He opens with "you too, run away and help the other escape", to which Squall thinks to himself "run away?!", clearly none too happy with the idea. When he says he has a lot to report, and Cid brushes him off with "later", instead of thinking that Cid might die, he just thinks "but why...?" to himself, and when Cid ask him if he's alright, he wonders and then asks Cid what he wants to do, same as in the English version. The next deviation is that, in Squall's thoughts, he doesn't think about Cid's plan, instead remarking that, if anything useful can be done, he wants to be a part of it, which is an interesting change.
Then, instead of the straight up lie of "my feeling have nothing to do with this" that he uses in English to try to look cool, he goes with a much more honest "it's hard to explain", to which Cid react the same as in the English version by saying that Quistis is right about squall being bad at expressing his feeling, which I think comes off less patronizing when it's Cid agreeing with Squall's comment instead of calling his bluff, so to speak. And indeed, instead of saying "what, am I being judged now?", Squall's next thought is a less annoyed, more embarrassed "why are we talking of this instead of about saving the Garden?", which then follows into "tell us your plan", and from there follows the English version beat by beat.
So... once again, the Italian translation softens Squall slightly to make him a bit more likable, and in this instance does the same with Cid to a smaller extent, while still mostly following the general line of development. Or the English line made him harsher, I guess - it depends on which translation is closer to the original text's intention, as usual.
- Not sure if this is the case in the English version as well, although I imagine it is, but speaking to Cid after the discussion gives a chance for saving the game. You also can't play cards with him at this time. (Always try to play cards with everybody is rule #1 of a true collector!)
- We have the first new monsters in a while! The Grendel doesn't count, as it can in fact be fought in the small forest where the group had the dream of Laguna at the excavation site - one needs to hug the mountain range so that the name of the forest changes to "Monterosa plateau", but when it does, the Grendel is the only encounter there - and also wouldn't matter since it has the same name. But the Tri-Face and Oilboyles are new, and in Italian they're renamed to, respectively, Triarchigos and Olimassa.
- Upon reaching the core, Squall says "we've reached the lowest level" rather than simply "we're here"; which is an interesting alteration because it seems so needless, but does help put things into context spatially. He's also more group-oriented in his thoughts when in front of the command panel, saying "if the headmaster doesn't know what to do, how could we?", whereas the English version has it as "how could I know?" instead. I think this is another of those little changes that is meant to show how Squall is starting to think of himself as part of a group, a new, if small, step down the road of developing his character.
- Once the Garden lift offs, which is really just one example of why FFVIII flaws can be so easily overlooked due to concentrated awesome (which really prove how it is the true heir of FFVI), when Cid tells Squall to go check, the Italian version has it worded as "would you check on the rest of the students?", whereas the English version just has a more general "on the others?", with no elaboration on who these others are. I think having him worry specifically about the other students helps in making Cid more likable, which is something he probably needs, considering.
- As we make our way to the observation balcony, one of the students in front of the lift, after complaining about the chaos, asks Squalls if he knew that the Garden could fly; meanwhile, the English version asked him if he was afraid. A strange change. Whatever answer you give (in both versions) has him just remark that Squall always seems so confident, which is hilarious after this sequence just finished highlighting all the many ways in which he's really not.
- Unrelated to the translation, one of the the people in front of the lift is a Trepie and has a different sentence if Quistis is there.
- That's it for the differences in dialogue, at least to the point that the Garden starts to drift. Although it's probably worth mentioning that, at this point, the Codex has information about the MD Level and the Centra Shelter; this provides some context on how the Garden came to be.
If you try to go with the whole group, they (Rinoa in my case) comment that "that ladder doesn't look like it can hold the weight of all three of us", and Squall sighs and volunteers to go himself.
If you choose "send one of the others" rather than "go yourself", Squall looks back and forth between Rinoa and Zell (or whichever party members you happen to have along), thinking their names and then a long set of ellipsis, clearly unsure which of the two to send, and then volunteers himself instead, a clear sign that he cares enough about the two of them he wouldn't risk them if he can take the burden upon himself. It's a nice character beat. Although I suppose it could be read as him not trusting either of them with the task; I don't like that reading, and I think it's less likely than the one I'm using, but it's an option.
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII 201. Today's lesson:
We Kill Flesh Blob Jeff Bezos
Last time, we defeated the Garden Faculty in the Balamb Garden Civil War, saved Cid, turned the school into an airship, and ended up stranded at sea. A lot went down! Today's update is, by comparison, less action-packed but full of discoveries.
First, though, some set-up. There's an implicit time skip, which is rare in these games, but we're not told how much time has passed. The students and staff spent most of the time taking care of the monsters running around the school, and Cid has been too busy restoring order to the Garden to answer questions or to give Squall an opportunity to give his report on their mission, which he really wants to do.
This was established in the last update and is going to be a running theme here. Squall really wants his debrief, and I think it's about more than just informing Cid of important developments. I think it's a matter of closure, that's related to the extensive brain spiders he has regarding his role as a mercenary; the job isn't complete until he's given his report and the mission is filed away with a "CASE CLOSED" stamp on it.
He's also bored, and has a really interesting line - "I hate having nothing to do. It gets me thinking too much." For someone who spends so much time in his own head, Squall doesn't really like having to think about things, huh? It makes sense, considering how much he values orders, clear instructions, and having a task to focus on. In this particular case, it also means he starts worrying about Selphie, Quistis and Irvine, whether they're all right and whether sending them on that mission was the right choice.
Squall's inner monologue: "(That sorceress… Who is she? Why fire missiles at the Garden? Is Seifer ever coming back? I'll get even with him next time.)"
Squall goes to sleep, and next thing he knows, Rinoa is hovering above his bed.
Rinoa: "Hey. You looked so adorable, sleeping like a baby. Come on, get up, let's go." Squall: "Go where?" Rinoa: "Give me a tour of the Garden." Squall: "...Is this another one of your orders?" Rinoa: "No. I just want you to show me around. You know, to get acquainted with the place. Please?" Squall: "...Fine."
[Rinoa claps happily.]
And that's a date!
I mean, Squall probably doesn't realize that it's a date, but that is transparently what Rinoa is looking for. Interestingly, giving someone a tour of the Garden is how this whole story started - with Selphie.
Which makes it interesting to draw a comparison between the two: Squall gives practical, bare-bones information; when Rinoa asks about this place or that, he simply says "That's the cafeteria" or "that's the parking lot," until Rinoa actually tells him that while she's grateful he's showing her around, she'd like him to make it more fun. Notably, Squall was more helpful when talking to Selphie; it's almost like being with Rinoa specifically is making him shut down.
Visiting the cafeteria gives us another comedy beat of Zell failing to get hot dogs - Squall explains the whole hot dog (or bread, in Japanese) situation to Rinoa as the queue gets progressively closer to the counter only to run out just as Zell is up. Flawless.
The whole thing makes Rinoa laugh, but not at Zell - she's amused by how serious Squall is when explaining this. Which is… actually a pretty teenage trait, yeah; young people often explain things that seem trivial to their elders with life-or-death seriousness, and Squall would absolutely be the king at this. That man could probably explain Triple Triad rule like they're WW1 trench runs.
There's a bunch of updated student dialogue reflecting on recent events. In a very post-liberation France, one student is calmly talking about the rebellion as something that happened to other people that he was left out of and doesn't really get only to be called out by one of his friends as having been on the Garden Master faction running around calling for Cid's head. High comedy.
It does suggest that after the whole rebellion was over, the Garden just… Went back to normal and tried to forget that they'd just tried to kill each other the day before?
Which, considering that they are all currently stranded at sea together, is probably for the best. Any attempt by the victorious faction to impose punishment on the Garden Master faction would be logistically very difficult and ethically fraught in these circumstances, but the fact that they try to pretend nothing happened will probably lead to some long-held grudges.
Outside the cafeteria, I challenge a student to a Triple Triad game. She tells me "Let's play using Galbadia's rules," and following useful advice from the thread, I say "no" repeatedly until she finally drops it, and next time I challenge her, she uses non-random rules. Nice!
There's a sweet-then-funny beat where three girls are swearing to one another that they'll stay in touch after school and never forget each other, and that they'll tell each other as soon as they get a boyfriend… And talking to one of the other two girls reveals that she already has a boyfriend and is now afraid of saying it after hiding it and swearing she'd tell them when it happens. Which is weird, because it's our first time seeing the inner monologue of an NPC by talking to them, I'm pretty sure?
The two students at the bottom of the image above are contemplating the 'boundless ocean' and having some couples chat.
Also, there is that eternal ghost haunting high school grounds, here just like it is in every memory of high school I have:
The guitar player. Not just, a guy who plays guitar, but that guy who will take any slow day as an opportunity to whip out his guitar and make you hear him go "Anyway, here's Wonderwall."
Enjoy peaking in high school, motherfucker.
Visiting Kadowaki has her drop the bomb on Squall's lap by asking him directly if Rinoa is his girlfriend, and we actually get to choose our answer… Sort of. Saying no has Rinoa pout that we could have at least played along, while saying yes will prompt her to ask if Squall is serious, to which we can also answer yes, to which he says… "Seriously joking."
Rinoa has to concede that, for Squall, that actually qualifies as a funny joke.
Not much happens on the Parking Lot aside from Rinoa shaking her head at Squall's dry presentation.
…
You know, yeah, now that I'm thinking about it.
The central 'drama' in this scene, minor as it is, is that Squall doesn't know how to do a date, and the way he doesn't know how to do a date is that he never makes his tour interesting by throwing in a funny comment, or an interesting anecdote about the place they're visiting, the way a good tour guide would. And you could say, well, sure, that's his drab personality in a nutshell… But this place is literally Squall's entire world. He has seemingly never known anything else until a couple of weeks ago. He literally thinks of the Garden as 'his home.'
And he can't find anything interesting to say about it! It's really remarkable.
The closest he gets - and this is amazing - is that the one place he has the most to say about is the training ground, he even has a nickname for it, and he asks Rinoa if she wants to try fighting the monsters. To which Rinoa says "You know, I can imagine you doing this on a first date. You're so romantic…"
And the thing is she's right. That's Squall's idea of fun! That's what he would propose on a first date! The man has Laios Dungeon Meshi levels of monofocus and 'surely other people must find my special interest as interesting as I do' thinking.
What a guy.
Rinoa, though, is much more enthusiastic about the library (that Squall disdained as obsolete now that they have computers at the start of the game, if you'll recall), and actually asks Squall if she can look around a bit on her own.
That initially seems a little odd to me… Until we walk over to the next screen.
Mystery Girl from the start of the game and prom night is here.
Can I call her Ellone yet? Because I am so sure she's Ellone, unless Edea is, but the ages don't really match.
Squall: "...I saw you in the infirmary." Mystery Girl: "You saved me from the monster." Squall: "Who are you?" Mystery Girl: "Try to remember." Squall: "Remember?" Mystery Girl: "It'd be heartbreaking for me to know I was forgotten." Squall, mentally: "(...Remember? …So I know this girl?)" Mystery Girl: "I'd be nice to talk about old times again."
GODDAMMIT, SQUALL, I DEMAND THAT YOU GET OVER YOUR AMNESIA PROBLEMS AND VALIDATE MY THEORIES RIGHT FLIPPIN' NOW
Ah, well. …is this the fourth game in a row to feature a protagonist with memory issues? V and VI put it front and center from the start with Galuf and Terra, VII was sneakier about it by not letting you know Cloud had memory troubles at the start, and now VIII is… Well it said 'GFs may cause memory issues' right at the start, but it's left Squall's own deal as merely hints. Hm. Did Djidanne have any memory issues in IX? I can't remember.
Anyway, once we've done a full circle and head to the atrium we run into…
…wait. What?
The Garden Faculty are still around?
I - they tried to murder Cid! They tried to kill multiple students! How are these guys still hanging around and in uniform?
Now, the 'stranded at sea' angle does make it difficult to remove them from Garden grounds, I'll fully grant that, everyone is stuck together on the same ship, but like… There is an entire empty level they could be put in custody in. Or you could at the very least strip them of their uniforms and authority? Is the implication here meant to be that not all the Garden Faculty were on the Garden Master's side? Even that isn't going to hold up in the coming scene.
I think what may be happening here is that the Faculty have been in hiding since the rebellion failed, and that this one is just now popping up like a jack in the box to jumpscare us. That's the angle that makes the most sense to me.
Anyway, this guy tells us that the Garden Master wishes to see us, and to report to the Master's Room, a basement level of the Garden facility that is not normally accessible by elevator, for which he gives us a special authorization.
So. There it is. At long last, we are going to find out what's up with Garden Master NORG. We take the elevator down and…
How delightfully ominous. Look at this style. These curved lines, these reliefs, these Art Déco lines and brazen ornaments…
This is the same architectural style as the outer Garden, not the hidden layer; this dates from around Cid's refurbishing rather than earlier.
As soon as we arrive, we overhear a conversation between Cid and someone else, off-screen, though no details, Cid is just urging someone to listen to him. Also, we are quickly joined by Zell, who saw Squall and Rinoa head for the elevator and decided to follow them and see what they're up to. Hm, I wonder if Quistis or Irvine have any special scenes in the Garden the way Zell had that bit with the hotdogs. In any case, the 'third party member shows up with a vague excuse' strongly suggests we're about to see a boss fight.
Headmaster Cid: "Greedy son-of-a-bitch! Why did I even bother talking to you!"
Cid is being bodily pushed away from the next screen by the Faculty members while complaining about the 'greed' of the Garden Master, which is certainly interesting. "SeeDs were brought up for the future…" Hm.
We've talked a lot about Balamb Garden's mercenary attitude and profit-driven approach to conflict, and a long running thread has been to what extent Cid is contributing to it or more idealistic in his motives, and it looks like we just might be finding out. And the answer is that Cid falls squarely in the category of a naive idealist who didn't realize, or refused to see, how Balamb Garden's use of SeeDs was driven by greed above all else.
The Faculty member grabs Cid and lifts him bodily off the ground, then tosses him away, and the headmaster falls to his knees. He laments that he "never should have trusted you," and that he wishes he could go back in time "ten or so years." "To tell myself that you're nothing but a money-grubbing son-of-a-bitch! Then I would've never built this place."
It looks like the relationship between NORG and Cid has fully broken down, but not to the extent that Cid can freely separate himself from the Master.
Noticing the students looking at him, Cid says he's embarrassed to have lost his temper, and that they should leave. Squall says he still needs to give him his report and Cid tells him to come by his office later.
And now, at last, it is our turn. The Garden Faculty member tells us NORG has been waiting for us, and guides us on to… Whatever the hell this is.
Garden Faculty: "Whenever Master NORG calls you, be sure to be there within 3 seconds." NORG: "Fushururu… 3-SECONDS-ARE-UP."
…
What the fuck is that.
Is that Jabba the Hut in that life support pod? What? What the fuck?
That… thing… is sort of humanoid, but it has this huge fleshy sack hanging from its chin, and its arms are too long and too large, with very long fingers. It's… a monster? I mean, we've established by now that monsters can be sentient, talk, and even take on social roles within some society. But whatever NORG is, he's not human - Squall even comments as much. And it speaks using weird onomatopeias that feel like they were transliterated from Japanese by a translator who didn't know what to do with them (kind of how Bakura's laughter in the French translation of Yu-Gi-Oh is rendered as 'kurururu', which is not a word I've ever seen outside that manga), and talks in all caps with em dashes instead of spaces, probably to represent an inhuman diction, maybe a kind of robotic way of speaking that emphasizes each word.
I was originally going to sum up this dialogue because it's a pain to type out, but I really don't want to be missing or accidentally omitting details here, so here goes:
NORG: "FushiruruFushiruru… GIVE-YOUR-REPORT-ON-THE-SORCERESS." Squall, mentally: "Now where do I start…?" Garden Faculty: "Answer him quickly. Be concise." Squall: "..." Squall, mentally: "(...It's going to be a sad report.)" Squall: "...We failed to assassinate Sorceress Edea. Confirmation of Headmaster Cid's order was made at Galbadia Garden. After Irvine Kinneas of Galbadia Garden joined our party…" Squall: "...We set off to carry out the 'Sorceress Assassination' order from Balamb and Galbadia Gardens…" NORG: "Bujurururu! BALAMB-AND-GALBADIA'S-ORDERS!? Bujurururu! YOU-WERE-FOOLED!"
[Everyone registers surprise.] Squall, mentally: "(Fooled!?)" NORG: "Fushurururu… EXPLAIN-TO-THEM." Garden Faculty: "Master NORG has known about the alliance between the President of Galbadia and the sorceress. He heard it from the Galbadia Garden Master himself." Squall: "The Galbadia Garden master…?" NORG: "Fushurururu… THE-MASTER-OF-GALBADIA-GARDEN-IS-A-SUBORDINATE-OF-MINE-NAMED-MARTINE." Garden Faculty: "Yes. In fact the sorceress and Garden are closely connected. That is why the sorceress will definitely try to gain hold of all Gardens. So, Master NORG sent an official order to Galbadia Garden. It was to kill the sorceress. An assassination was thought to be the best means. But…" NORG: "Bujurururu! THAT-SLY-WEASEL-MARTINE-USED-YOU-AS-A-LAST-RESORT-FOR-THE-ASSASSINATION. HE-GAVE-THAT-ORDER-TO-PLACE-THE-BLAME-ON-ME! THAT-THAT-BASTARD." Squall: "Are you saying that Balamb Garden had nothing to do with that order?" Garden Faculty: "You just happened to show up just before the mission was to be carried out. They used you. But the operation failed. The sorceress is still alive and…" Other Garden Faculty: "The sorceress retaliated. Just as we suspected. No doubt, it was the sorceress who ordered the missile attacks." Garden Faculty: "Something must be done to appease the sorceress's anger." Squall: "Wait a minute. That's just…" Garden Faculty: "In order to do so, we needed to hand over those involved in the assassination of the sorceress. We had to show Balamb Garden's sincerity." NORG: "Bujurururu! OFFER-THE-SeeD's-HEAD-ON-A-SILVER-PLATTER-AND-PRETEND-WE-OBEY-THE-SORCERESS!" Squall: "Wha…"
…
If you got all that on your first read, congrats; I didn't. The exact chain of events and authority initially just confused me. Like, this exchange says both that NORG sent the order to Martine to carry out an assassination, and that Balamb Garden had nothing to do with the order?
I think it's ultimately pretty simple and, on getting a second read in doing this update, I understand now: Martine and NORG were just playing a game of hot potato with the blame for the assassination. NORG is the Garden Master for Balamb, but he's never been mentioned as Garden Master for Galbadia. Martine is his subordinate and a decoy Garden Master. NORG asked Martine to carry out the assassination so that, if it failed, the blame would fall on Martine and Galbadia Garden, away from NORG and BGU. That's why cat's paws are for, after all. Because NORG seems to hold serious power and influence over the Garden headmasters, Martine couldn't refuse or duck out of that order; however, when we showed up on his doorstep as if delivered by the hand of providence itself, Martine told us the order was on behalf of Cid, so that when we failed and were captured, the sorceress put the blame on Balamb Garden, Cid and NORG, rather than Galbadia Garden and Martine.
It may have been short-sighted. Edea was always planning to take over Galbadia Garden, so that scheme did not deflect her attention - but it might have saved Martine's life. We'll find out when we go back there, I suppose.
Which means, yes. The Balamb Garden Civil War started before anyone could have communicated with the sorceress or know about the incoming missiles because it was NORG trying to get ahead of the problem by rounding up the SeeDs to offer to the sorceress as a peace offering. It might even have worked… if there hadn't already been demon nukes on their way to annihilate the Garden, making the whole point moot.
I like this. This interplay of motivations by multiple competing actors with varying relationships and allegiances, conflicting interests, and limited information, being forced to try and outfox each other while operating on days-long communication delays due to the lack of long range communication. This is strong writing, just, it could perhaps have been presented more clearly at a first glance.
…
Either that or the localization is just plain wrong. Hold that thought.
First off, Squall is pissed at this development. In one of his rare bouts of actual emotional outbursts, he shows genuine anger.
Squall: "Why aren't we fighting the sorceress!? What about the training we endure everyday!? What good is it!?"
And yeah, it makes sense. This is hitting Squall in his most vulnerable spot: His identity as SeeD. He's always been okay with being a mercenary working for the richest client and unconcerned with the morality of the job, but this isn't that, this is telling him to not even do that much, to lie down and show his belly to the sorceress and hope she doesn't trample all over Garden, when he has spent his entire life developing a single skillset, to fight and kill.
And this actually seems to be getting to the Faculty members, who have so far been staunch NORG loyalists (from this and later context, I think the key here is that NORG is the one who signs everyone's paychecks); they muse that Squall is sounding like Cid in a way that suggests they're finding the words compelling.
But NORG isn't impressed. These SeeDs lost to Edea in a straight fight, after all. He has no intent to try some bold stand against her conquest. And as for Cid…
Okay so which is it. Who sent the fucking orders. Was it NORG who ordered the assassination, or Cid!? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.
Anyway. NORG is extremely mad at Cid for risking 'his' Garden; he specifically says that he put up the money to establish the Garden, which is just. Fascinating in its implications. Like, a monster can not only be involved in like, conspiracy stuff and ruling stuff from behind the scenes, but also, specifically, be incredibly rich. How? How did NORG make that money? Was he sitting in a cave on a dragon's hoard? Was he just involved in the industry and finance of a society that has fully integrated monsters like the way Galbadia might be heading in the future? I'm fascinated by the implications.
NORG isn't feeling like contributing to the world building today, though. He cries that he wanted to offer Cid and the SeeDs to the sorceress but the students betrayed him by siding with Cid, even though this is his Garden, which is, of course, Squall's cue to cut in.
Squall: "NO! It's not just yours." NORG: "Bujurururu! THEN-WHAT-IS-IT? IS-IT-CID-AND-EDEA'S? THAT-PATHETIC-MARRIED-COUPLE'S?"
Wait.
What?
WAIT BACK UP WHAT DO YOU MEAN MARRIED COUPLE-
NO WAIT COME BACK
Ah, well.
NORG closed back his pod, and opens the battle by saying, 'BLUE-YELLOW-RED. LOTS-OF-MAGIC-WHEN-RED!' AS-LONG-AS-COLOR-STAYS, 'I-WILL-ATTACK-SeeD-WITH-MAGIC.'
So, huh, thanks?
This fight was… Interesting. Here's what the Scooter tells us about NORG's power level:
There are three components to this boss: the central Pod, which doesn't do anything but needs to be destroyed to access NORG himself, and the Left and Right Orbs, which use attack magic and support magic, respectively… In theory.
I didn't look up anything about this fight, I just played it by ear based on what NORG said at the start and what the Scan told me. Very early, I notice that all components are incredibly resistant to damage, but the Orbs in particular take single-digit damage from everything. Destroying them is not an option… But I don't need to. The Orbs don't do anything while they're blue; but across the duration of the fight, they shift from blue to yellow, like so:
And then, I assume, from yellow to red.
…
I say "I assume" because I tentatively threw an attack at one of the orbs and it reset it from yellow to blue. So… Every turn I have one character attack the NORG pod, and the other two characters hit the orbs to keep them in the blue zone forever. With this pattern, they do nothing and the boss is entirely harmless for its first phase.
Also, Diablos just unlocked Mug, which means that now, every time the character I've junctioned him to attacks, he steals at the same time. And NORG has some sweet drops - items like Mag Up and Spr Up permanently increase a character's Magic or Spirit stat. Sweet! I'm glad I didn't miss any of the rare missables from this boss fight thanks to proper preparations, hahaha. (This is foreshadowing.)
Once the NORG Pod's HP is run down, it is forced open, revealing the Garden Master in all his… glory… at which point the fight starts resembling an actual fight, as NORG is capable of casting magic.
He even deals decent damage! His favorite spell is Water, and FF8 has a very funny answer to the question "how does 'water damage' work as an element, it's not like fire where it burns you on contact' - Water physically picks you up in a water bubble and slams you to the ground.
However, NORG is unlucky. I recently refined 100 Quake and Junctioned them to Zell's Strength and gave him Ifrit's Str+40%, pushing his Strength in the 70s; gone are the days of ineffective damage, Zell is now my hardest hitter at around 800-900 damage per punching attack. Just by repeating my simple pattern of "Zell attacks NORG every turn, Squall and Rinoa either attack the Orbs to reset them or cast a spell at NORG for extra damage.
It's very smooth, perfectly efficient, presents no risk, and as a result I completely forget to Draw from NORG.
It's only while writing this update that I thought to look it up and learned that NORG…
Has a Summon in his Draw list.
Spoiler alert: It's exactly the one you'd think from the fact that he keeps spamming Water as his main spell.
So.
I'm going to finish this update and then I'll reload a save and then do everything in this update over again so I can get that Summon.
Fuck my life.
Once we run down NORG's HP, he plays out a dying cutscene, yelling, "Fushurururu… I'M-DONE-FOR! I'M-AFRAID-OF-YOU! ME-WHY-ME…?"
The camera pans up from his body as he lays lifeless on the ground. It's a surprising amount of pathos for such a weird-ass monster industrial tycoon kind of guy.
…
If you'd put a gun to my head and asked me earlier to guess as to the truth behind the Gardens, at no point would my theory have been that the greed was the secret dark motive behind the curtain, the monster isn't part of a Moonspiracy, NORG wasn't planning to use the SeeDs as part of a nefarious plan to take over the world, he was literally just trying to make oodles of cash and he died because he intersected with other characters having actual ideological motivations.
Like. Balamb Garden dangles 'all the Garden cares about is cash' as an ostensible red herring early on, then introduces the Moonspiracy angle, the Faculty being shady motherfuckers, Cid having secret goals he won't explain, it would seem by all rights that the greed is hiding something darker and more esoteric… And then it turns out it was a double red herring, it was the conspiracy stuff hiding the greed.
NORG really did just want to make a norgillion dollars from war profiteering and then people had to bring in 'ancient sorceress lineages' and 'SeeDs should stand for an ideal' and 'nukes homing in on your location as we speak.'
What a guy.
…this is President Shinra all over again, huh. We had to kill Monster Jeff Bezos so that we could face the real stakes of the story regarding the existential war with the sorceress and get the problem of war capitalism out of the way. I am… a little disappointed.
There's a weird glowy sphere that appeared over the pod afterwards, no idea what that's about.
Zell and Rinoa ask what the hell just happened, and Squall tries his usual shtick he's used with the dream world sequences before, that being 'since we have no available answers, let's just ignore it for now', and Rinoa actually calls him out on this. Even when there is no quick answer you can figure out just from context, pretending nothing happened under the assumption you'll figure it out when you have more information is crazy.
And here, Squall actually slows down and shows vulnerability himself.
Squall: [He turns away from the group and holds a hand to his forehead.] "This is crazy. I don't know what's goin' on anymore. I feel like a helpless puppet being manipulated in some major scheme."
[At this point, Rinoa approaches him, and, I think, physically leans against him - it's hard to tell with the crispy PSX models.] Rinoa: "Squall…"
[He takes a few steps away from her.] Squall: "Yeah… I'm going to see the headmaster."
We regain control of the party, and now it's time to meet Cid for some actual answers.
…
At least once we've found him. He's not in his office, so I end up running around the school a bit looking for him - I didn't check every room for updated dialogue, but there was some, like these two girls studying for an exam together:
The school's still running, huh. I guess what else would they be doing with their time at sea?
One of the students tell us that there is a "CC Group" for "Card Club Group" who are elite card lovers looking for tough opponents to challenge at Triple Triad. Neat! I'll worry about meeting them later, though, right now I want some fucking answers, Cid.
Turns out, he was at the infirmary the whole time. 'Because of his fatigue? Injuries from being manhandled by Faculty?' you ask. No, he was crying.
God, is he really just the doddering emotional old man he appeared to be at first? There has to be more to it than that, come on.
And now. There it is.
A list of actual question we can actually ask to obtain some actual answers.
First off, we can, at long last, finally submit our report to Cid. What's the reply?
Come on. Deep inside you all already know it.
Cid: "No, no. It's not necessary. I can guess what happened."
Anyway, so.
First, I want to learn about NORG. Cid informs us that NORG was a member of the Shumi tribe - that same tribe we saw mentioned as being from Trabia. So I guess Selphie wasn't a Shumi. Or she was raised by monsters, which… Actually would explain a lot, huh. NORG was a 'black sheep' among the tribe, and Cid met him while he was looking for funds to build the Garden. It was only thanks to NORG's funding that the Garden was completed, but even afterwards, there were considerable costs to keeping the Garden running - so they began to dispatch SeeDs all over the world to finance the Garden. This drew enormous amounts of capital to BGU, and "The Garden began to change. We lost sight of our high ideals, the truth was covered up…"
So that's the secret. SeeDs were never meant to be mercenaries profiting from conflict the world over. Cid had a different vision in mind for them, whatever that was - only that vision couldn't be realized without money to sustain the Garden, and once they started working for profit, they turned out so profitable that it couldn't help but pervert whatever the original vision for Balamb Garden had been.
It's… Hm. Let's put a pin in that.
What was that vision, then? According to Cid, SeeDs' purpose is to 'defeat the sorceress'. All these missions were only training for the final battle against the sorceress. Cid simply hadn't expected her to become a major threat this early, but now, 'our true mission has begun.'
…
I will give this to the game: It takes a certain audacity to reveal that the premise of your story was secretly, "the BBEG is too high level for you to fight right off the gate so we need to give you bullshit quests to gather XP until you've leveled up enough to fight her," in-character. Especially when you're the first game in the series where that is no longer true out of character and leveling up doesn't make you comparatively stronger.
Incredible stuff today.
So what's this about Cid and Edea being a couple?
Squall: "Please tell me about Sorceress Edea. I heard she's your wife." Headmaster Cid: "You're quite right… She had been a sorceress since childhood. I married her, knowing that. We were happy. We worked together, the two of us. We were very happy." Headmaster Cid: "One day, Edea began talking about building the Garden and training SeeD. I became obsessed with that plan. But I was very concerned with SeeD's goal, that one day SeeD might fight Edea…" Headmaster Cid: "She laughed and told me that would never happen. However…" [He trails off.]
…
Okay, this only raised further questions. SeeD was Edea's idea? Didn't Cid just say that SeeD was started to fight the sorceress? Was the original plan to raise SeeD to fight a different Sorceress? How did Cid and Edea split up? Why did Edea react to seeing us with utter contempt at the 'accursed SeeD'?
I feel like I know so much more, and yet so little.
When we ask Cid what to do next, he just says we'll probably be done drifting soon, and that he only hopes we can 'get things bad to the way they were.'
He's just as lost and clueless about where to go next as we are, huh.
There are no immediate indications on what to do next - we're just left to roam the campus again.
I pick a quick fight with a T-Rexaur for some quick XP/AP, which results in us unlocking Darkside, another new Command, though we won't be using it today. In the library, we get another cute scene with the library girl with the pigtail where Zell asks about a book and she stammers that she'll put a search for it.
When we hit the atrium, however, we're intercepted by Xu who asks where the headmaster is. We point her to the infirmary and ask what's up and she points us to the observation deck - there's a ship approaching, which could be a Galbadian ship or even the sorceress's own.
Well, nothing to do but hurry there!
…we know those guys.
They're the guys who picked up Mystery Girl during Prom Night.
Mystery Dudes: "Is Headmaster Cid here!?" Squall: "No, he's not here. Are you from… Galbadia?" Mystery Dudes: "We are SeeDs! This is Edea's ship. We are Sorceress Edea's SeeD!" Squall, mentally: "(...SeeD!?)" Edea's SeeDs: "We're coming aboard! We're unarmed!"
[At this point they literally do a front flip off their ship a dozen feet into the air to land on our deck.]
Squall and the others understandably draw their weapons at this sudden and threatening behavior, but before things can degenerate, Headmaster Cid approaches with his usually conciliatory tone, and they say…
Edea's SeeDs: "Headmaster, we've come for Ellone. It's too dangerous now." Cid: "...Yes. I'm afraid so." Squall, mentally: "(Ellone? That girl from Winhill?)"
…
DID I FUCKING CALL IT OR WHAT!?
Okay, so, if Cid and Edea worked together on SeeD as a project, then it makes some measure of sense that the creation of the first SeeDs predated their separation, resulting in two divergent SeeD branches, one under Edea and one under Cid, with Cid's SeeDs having no idea of the existence of the other. What is weirder is that Ellone is apparently valuable to them somehow but given the timeline, she must have already been at the Garden when the missiles were sent (since afterwards the Garden was stranded at sea and inaccessible for an indeterminate amount of time) and Edea must have known she was there (otherwise she wouldn't have known to send her SeeDs to retrieve Ellone), and yet she still fired the missiles to nuke the Garden knowing Ellone was there, despite her having some kind of importance in her eyes.
…Seifer launched the missiles on his own initiative, didn't he? Like, he said that Edea 'wants the Gardens destroyed,' but he didn't say specifically she had ordered the missile launch, and the guards reported to Seifer directly. A lot of things seem to make more sense if Seifer heard 'we will destroy the Gardens' and, with the zeal of the convert, took that to mean 'nuke the Gardens immediately.'
No… I don't think it works. So far, the only emotion we've ever seen Edea express is contempt. She has been killing everyone who gets in her way without a second thought. None of her behavior matches either Cid's picture of her wife, or someone who would send a diplomatic mission of her SeeDs to Balamb Garden in peace. And Seifer, notably, isn't on that ship. Are 'Edea's Seeds' acting without her knowledge?
…is it possible that Edea herself is a victim of mind control, and the Edea we've seen so far isn't the 'true' Edea? Baseless speculation at this stage, we''ll see.
Oh, right, Ellone. Cid sends us to get her and bring her to Edea's SeeDs, without telling us where to find her or what she looks like, but like, the game obviously trusts us to have basic literacy here. The characters don't connect the dot, though, and 'split up to search for her.'
Of course, she's in the library.
Squall: "Are you… Ellone?" Ellone: "Yes…" Squall: "You're Ellone? THE Ellone?" Squall, mentally: "(What is going on?)" Squall: "You know… Laguna, don't you?" Ellone: "I do. I really love Uncle Laguna." Squall: "Then tell me! What is it that we experience!?" Ellone: "I'm sorry, Squall. It's hard to explain." [She looks down at her lap, then at Squall again.] "But… One thing… It's about the past." Squall: "(...So we were viewing the past?)"
[Ellone gets up and walks off some distance, her back turned to Squall.] Ellone: "People say you can't change the past. But even still, if there's a possibility, it's worth a try, right?" Squall, mentally: "(Change the past? Is she serious? Give me a break…)" Squall: "Are you the one responsible!? Are you the one taking us to that 'dream world'!?" Ellone: "I'm sorry." Squall, mentally: "(Not again. So much I don't understand.)" Squall: "Why me!? I have enough problems as it is! Don't get me involved in this!" Ellone: "I'm sorry." Squall: "Don't… Don't count on me."
[He slumps into a chair, looking away from her.]
Well.
…
The "character who knows everything refuses to explain shit because it's too complicated" plot beat is one of the most frustrating in fiction. With that said, over the years, as a writer, I've grown more sympathetic to it; a lot of the time the truism of 'you wouldn't believe me if I told you' is true in the sense that if Character A explained the plot to Character B, Character B would have no reason to believe any of it, but the reader would, because they understand that this is a story and that information is likely explaining the premise of the story. That makes it tricky to handle; it's entirely plausible that if Ellone did explain the plot to Squall, he would have no reason not to say 'bullshit, I'm not believing any of this,' but we as the audience would immediately grasp that this is likely the truth and spend the rest of the game waiting for Squall to catch up.
And we're seeing a smaller scale example of this in this very scene: Squall only caught up that Mystery Girl was Ellone and, even more jarringly, that the Laguna scenes were happening in the past just now, despite this having been obvious to us-as-the-audience for several hours now.
Still. Ellone going 'sorry, it's not time to explain the plot yet' is a little grating.
Anyway, Xu comes in, asks Squall if he's found Ellone, and she steps forward to announce herself.
Before leaving, however, Ellone approaches Squall and leans in to whisper something in his ear. We don't see it in her own dialogue, but it is not kept secret for long.
Squall: "(What Ellone said under her breath was…)" Squall: "(You're my only hope.)"
Squall does not join Cid or Ellone on the bridge. We do not see what words of goodbye they share. Instead, we get an internal monologue of Squall reflecting on life and connection as a form of 'text-based voice over' over Ellone's departure.
Squall: "(Why do people depend on each other?)" Squall: "(Sure, I couldn't do a thing when I was a kid…)" Squall: "(I've depended on others, but…)" Squall: "(I'll be the first one to admit that I'm here because of other people.)"
*slow blinking*
I'm sorry.
You'll be the first to admit that you're here because of others? You? Squall? Literally when has this been true all game???
God. Okay, I'll admit, Squall lying in bed thinking about how he's totally independent now, only to curl up in fetal position as he admits to himself that he's lying to himself and is lost and confused and just wants to not depend on anyone but doesn't know how to do it, that hits.
This chapter began with Squall lying in bed, having his inner monologue reflect on his circumstances. It ends with Squall lying in bed, having his inner monologue reflect on his circumstances… Only then it goes just a little step further, into aching, child-like vulnerability.
Our boy's a mess.
And…
Wait. Could it be?
SQUALL BACKSTORY!?
There's… very little of it. It's only that one shot of Squall as a child, standing under the rain.
Squall's inner monologue: "Someone tell me… Someone? So I'll end up depending on others after all." Child!Squall: "...Sis… I'm… all alone." Child!Squall: "But I'm doing my best…" Child!Squall: "I'll be okay without you, Sis. I'll be able to take care of myself."
…
Fuck.
Yeah, that's our Squall right there. Abandoned by or having lost the person closest to him, alone in the rain, telling himself and her that he'll be okay. He'll take care of himself.
He'll never depend on anyone.
And then that sentiment twisting itself over the years into what Squall has become now, someone who is pathologically afraid of relying or depending on anyone, completely shutting out others and unable to ever express his feelings, only slowly beginning to open up and connect to his friends.
This has been a lot.
And that's going to do it for us with this update. We have learned only enough to ask further questions. What's the connection between Ellone and Edea/Cid? I will not entertain the theory that Edea is Raine and Cid is Laguna, no, not even if Laguna and Cid are both weird goofballs who constantly embarrass themselves in public, not even if Cid occasionally falls over like someone who has a bad leg - no, absolutely not. That's a step too far.
…
I don't know how I feel about the twist that SeeDs were always meant to have an idealistic vision that was corrupted by the profit motive and they've now been redeemed by NORG's demise. It feels, once again, like Final Fantasy moving away from an interestingly realistic/modern but grim premise, as with Shinra in the previous game. On the other hand… As far as redemption arcs go, the Balamb Garden Civil War was compelling, and it's interesting to think of it as like… The Dark Knight/Paladin connection of IV wrought at the scale of a whole organization.
There's a lot to ponder there, and I probably haven't disentangled half the implications. I'm intrigued to see what you all make of it.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: Omi redoes this entire section to get Leviathan and then we move on.
This is a really interesting section of the game. It's very very heavy on plot and introspection, a few things happen but most of it is digging in deep to Squall and the setting. Up until now we've seen Squall struggle actively, striving to get something done or just not have things be his problem, but him in bed, multiple times, grappling with his thoughts and insecurities is actually super engaging. Somehow more so then when I was closer to his age.
And while there are lots of mysteries, people aren't being dicks or inscrutable for no reason. They're just muddling through on their end. NORG trying to figure out in real time how to save his hide and why his money-making-machine is trying to kill him.
Cid going 'yep, that's my wife. It was her idea to make SeeD you know, the same forces that are now locked in a death struggle you know.' is just... well, if he's telling the truth, what else is there to say? Cid has been raising and training teenagers to kill his wife, because of an idea his Wife wanted to bring into the world.
Lots of respect for him supporting his Wife-Goals. Dude put in multiple world-changing schools on the planet, the sort of force that casually changes the fate of nations for their own reasons. I'm not sure how many people could do the same.
Squall goes to sleep, and next thing he knows, Rinoa is hovering above his bed.
Rinoa: "Hey. You looked so adorable, sleeping like a baby. Come on, get up, let's go." Squall: "Go where?" Rinoa: "Give me a tour of the Garden." Squall: "...Is this another one of your orders?" Rinoa: "No. I just want you to show me around. You know, to get acquainted with the place. Please?" Squall: "...Fine."
[Rinoa claps happily.]
Kind of wild to consider that this entire date/tour scene is 100% optional? Like you could have sent Rinoa on the Missile Base team and just straight up lose on this entire chunk of characterization and development because she's busy being Schrodinger's Dead.
Which makes it interesting to draw a comparison between the two: Squall gives practical, bare-bones information; when Rinoa asks about this place or that, he simply says "That's the cafeteria" or "that's the parking lot," until Rinoa actually tells him that while she's grateful he's showing her around, she'd like him to make it more fun. Notably, Squall was more helpful when talking to Selphie; it's almost like being with Rinoa specifically is making him shut down.
My first thought was that with Selphie, it might have been easier for Squall to file it under "oh this is a mission", if that makes sense. Of course it's good for him to give a proper tour to a transfer student to make sure she knows her way around the Garden, she's a potential future teammate and asset. Meanwhile, Rinoa is that moderately annoying sort-of employer who he's *really* not sure where to place or whether he wants to be spending time with her.
Alright but being fair, wouldn't *you* take children's card games as seriously as WW1 trench runs if you could then consume those cards for unlimited magical power and shitloads of strange items and materials? If I knew beating up some kid for his Blue Eyes White Dragon meant I could refine it into twenty copies of Flare, I'd be min-maxing the shit out of my Triple Triad deck.
Omi didn't mention it for some inexplicable reason, so I guess it falls on me to also drop in the absolutely banger theme that Norg has playing here to establish the scene even more: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7HyxzzPIHo
Cid is being bodily pushed away from the next screen by the Faculty members while complaining about the 'greed' of the Garden Master, which is certainly interesting. "SeeDs were brought up for the future…" Hm.
We've talked a lot about Balamb Garden's mercenary attitude and profit-driven approach to conflict, and a long running thread has been to what extent Cid is contributing to it or more idealistic in his motives, and it looks like we just might be finding out. And the answer is that Cid falls squarely in the category of a naive idealist who didn't realize, or refused to see, how Balamb Garden's use of SeeDs was driven by greed above all else.
The Faculty member grabs Cid and lifts him bodily off the ground, then tosses him away, and the headmaster falls to his knees. He laments that he "never should have trusted you," and that he wishes he could go back in time "ten or so years." "To tell myself that you're nothing but a money-grubbing son-of-a-bitch! Then I would've never built this place."
So... yep, that's Cid. I know we've all memed "war crimes child soldiers evil mastermind Cid Kramer for a disk and a half, but well... the jig is up. Cid really is just an idealistic guy who was trying to do a good thing with SeeD.
...Probably. Could still be a double bluff. Keep your eyes open everybody.
I'll give him this, Norg may decide to show up for literally just one scene in the game before going "BUJUJUJU I'M FINISHED" like an NES copy of Kid Icarus, but between his theme, his room, and his appearance, he absolutely leaves an impression. This entire sequence is one that I remember a lot better than other parts of the game.
Which means, yes. The Balamb Garden Civil War started before anyone could have communicated with the sorceress or know about the incoming missiles because it was NORG trying to get ahead of the problem by rounding up the SeeDs to offer to the sorceress as a peace offering. It might even have worked… if there hadn't already been demon nukes on their way to annihilate the Garden, making the whole point moot.
I like this. This interplay of motivations by multiple competing actors with varying relationships and allegiances, conflicting interests, and limited information, being forced to try and outfox each other while operating on days-long communication delays due to the lack of long range communication. This is strong writing, just, it could perhaps have been presented more clearly at a first glance.
…
Either that or the localization is just plain wrong. Hold that thought.
Sounds like you've made sense of it all to me, just people playing ping-pong politics with Squall's team while trying to keep their heads off the chopping block.
Also, Diablos just unlocked Mug, which means that now, every time the character I've junctioned him to attacks, he steals at the same time. And NORG has some sweet drops - items like Mag Up and Spr Up permanently increase a character's Magic or Spirit stat. Sweet! I'm glad I didn't miss any of the rare missables from this boss fight thanks to proper preparations, hahaha. (This is foreshadowing.)
Yeah I can understand why you would miss it, since you can only draw said summon when the pod is open, but still gotta always remember that Draw command every new enemy or boss, that's just how FFVIII be.
The camera pans up from his body as he lays lifeless on the ground. It's a surprising amount of pathos for such a weird-ass monster industrial tycoon kind of guy.
…
If you'd put a gun to my head and asked me earlier to guess as to the truth behind the Gardens, at no point would my theory have been that the greed was the secret dark motive behind the curtain, the monster isn't part of a Moonspiracy, NORG wasn't planning to use the SeeDs as part of a nefarious plan to take over the world, he was literally just trying to make oodles of cash and he died because he intersected with other characters having actual ideological motivations.
Like. Balamb Garden dangles 'all the Garden cares about is cash' as an ostensible red herring early on, then introduces the Moonspiracy angle, the Faculty being shady motherfuckers, Cid having secret goals he won't explain, it would seem by all rights that the greed is hiding something darker and more esoteric… And then it turns out it was a double red herring, it was the conspiracy stuff hiding the greed.
NORG really did just want to make a norgillion dollars from war profiteering and then people had to bring in 'ancient sorceress lineages' and 'SeeDs should stand for an ideal' and 'nukes homing in on your location as we speak.'
That ever hilarious/maybe disappointing moment in a story where all the trains come crashing together, and a bunch of cool theories end up as so much dust in the wind. The double red herring is pretty hilarious to me though, not gonna lie.
Man can you fucking imagine if your college campus just got up and flew into the ocean and started floating away in the middle of an all out faction war between dorms
And then the teachers came by afterwards just to go "sorry doesn't excuse you from your HOMEWORK" and now you can't even head into town on the weekends? FFVIII may, in fact, have accidentally created a new circle of Hell.
Squall: "Please tell me about Sorceress Edea. I heard she's your wife." Headmaster Cid: "You're quite right… She had been a sorceress since childhood. I married her, knowing that. We were happy. We worked together, the two of us. We were very happy." Headmaster Cid: "One day, Edea began talking about building the Garden and training SeeD. I became obsessed with that plan. But I was very concerned with SeeD's goal, that one day SeeD might fight Edea…" Headmaster Cid: "She laughed and told me that would never happen. However…" [He trails off.]
…
Okay, this only raised further questions. SeeD was Edea's idea? Didn't Cid just say that SeeD was started to fight the sorceress? Was the original plan to raise SeeD to fight a different Sorceress? How did Cid and Edea split up? Why did Edea react to seeing us with utter contempt at the 'accursed SeeD'?
My first thought is they created SeeD after seeing what kind of mess the Sorceress in Esthar (am I remembering that part correctly?) caused years ago, and decided to try and preempt anything like that happening again by creating an anti-Sorceress taskforce. So of course the potential threat wasn't going to be Edea, it would be some other sorceress that might emerge in the future.
Though this does bring up the question of if Edea was so involved from the start, and even literally had her own separate SeeD group you run into later, why the hell does she has Seifer questioning you about the actual super secret meaning behind SeeD?
The "character who knows everything refuses to explain shit because it's too complicated" plot beat is one of the most frustrating in fiction. With that said, over the years, as a writer, I've grown more sympathetic to it; a lot of the time the truism of 'you wouldn't believe me if I told you' is true in the sense that if Character A explained the plot to Character B, Character B would have no reason to believe any of it, but the reader would, because they understand that this is a story and that information is likely explaining the premise of the story. That makes it tricky to handle; it's entirely plausible that if Ellone did explain the plot to Squall, he would have no reason not to say 'bullshit, I'm not believing any of this,' but we as the audience would immediately grasp that this is likely the truth and spend the rest of the game waiting for Squall to catch up.
And we're seeing a smaller scale example of this in this very scene: Squall only caught up that Mystery Girl was Ellone and, even more jarringly, that the Laguna scenes were happening in the past just now, despite this having been obvious to us-as-the-audience for several hours now.
Still. Ellone going 'sorry, it's not time to explain the plot yet' is a little grating.
Yeah, understandable but frustrating is what I would call this. At least we got some in-text confirmation on "hey the Laguna stuff, that is in fact happening in the past".
Yeah, how missable many of the GFs are is one of the big annoyances about FF8, and one of the main things I'd imagine most people check walkthroughs for.
Her knowing the secret meaning behind SeeD doesn't mean she actually tells the poor partially mind controlled sap she's leading around like a lovesick puppy that secret, much less that she knows it. Particularly when leaving him entirely in the dark makes him angrier at her enemies.
Just imagine how all those Galbadians who want Edea to step on them would react if they learned she was married to some school principal-looking school principal.
…Honestly a part of me wonders if this bit with NORG was in part a take that/reaction to FF7 hitting like the literal Black Material Meteor on society at large.
And if you ask which society? Yes.
And it speaks using weird onomatopeias that feel like they were transliterated from Japanese by a translator who didn't know what to do with them (kind of how Bakura's laughter in the French translation of Yu-Gi-Oh is rendered as 'kurururu', which is not a word I've ever seen outside that manga), and talks in all caps with em dashes instead of spaces, probably to represent an inhuman diction, maybe a kind of robotic way of speaking that emphasizes each word.
Okay but seriously, who gave the orders??? Whether it was NORG or Cid, this part doesn't make sense! It's not that Squall was fooled, it was that Edea wasn't fooled.
The whole business of the orders is completely incoherent, the same person gives three different versions of events without anyone acknowledging the inconsistency.
Look, I totally get the appreciation for the lo-fi aesthetic, but there have been kind of a lot of these "I can't tell what the character models are meant to be doing" moments. I'm just saying, maybe there was a reason the Steam version used character models that weren't aliased to hell to fit 320x240p and meant to be displayed on a CRT monitor.
Okay but seriously, who gave the orders??? Whether it was NORG or Cid, this part doesn't make sense! It's not that Squall was fooled, it was that Edea wasn't fooled.
Galbadia gave Squall fake orders "from Balamb" to take part in the sorceress assasination. They were supposed to use their own people so as to not implicate Balamb. Squall was fooled by Galbadia Garden.
The whole business of the orders is completely incoherent, the same person gives three different versions of events without anyone acknowledging the inconsistency.
Gotta love how NORG just drops the reveal that Edea was married to the school principal, then just refuses to explain and jumps into a boss fight against you instead. And you can't get answers afterwards as you probably killed them.
My God, NORG is basically Mammon from K6BD. An exile from weird-looking but kind monster society based on his all-consuming greed. He then proceeded to make himself a king of the world through his accumulated wealth only to be attacked by a powerful witch because he happened to be hosting her enemies at the time.
As time marches forward, as Squall is adapted into Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia and other Square-Enix properties, the writers depict Squall as a stone-cold, snarky, cocksure badass, completely forgetting that he's actually a psychological basketcase full of unresolved childhood trauma.
Outside the cafeteria, I challenge a student to a Triple Triad game. She tells me "Let's play using Galbadia's rules," and following useful advice from the thread, I say "no" repeatedly until she finally drops it, and next time I challenge her, she uses non-random rules. Nice!
Fucking losing it imagining this interaction taking place in-universe. Squall standing over this woman, staring unblinking with lifeless eyes, asking her if she wants to play Triple Triad over and over again only to harshly say "no" and reset the loop every time she suggests Galbadia rules until eventually she's too scared of him to keep bringing it up. Authentic Sigma Male Rizz (You Will Be Arrested For This).
That's his Gooncave and he's very upset that you interrupted him. Why do you think the two gems turn blue when you prevent him from blasting your party with forceful pulses of magic?
He even deals decent damage! His favorite spell is Water, and FF8 has a very funny answer to the question "how does 'water damage' work as an element, it's not like fire where it burns you on contact' - Water physically picks you up in a water bubble and slams you to the ground.
Which is crazy when you think about it because anybody who's seen a firehose or a pressure-washer or a tidal wave or the average flood should know full well that water doesn't need that much help to 'damage' you.
I'm telling you man I would not be strong enough to play this game I fucking hate fiddly little gamechangers hidden and permanently missable like this.
If you'd put a gun to my head and asked me earlier to guess as to the truth behind the Gardens, at no point would my theory have been that the greed was the secret dark motive behind the curtain, the monster isn't part of a Moonspiracy, NORG wasn't planning to use the SeeDs as part of a nefarious plan to take over the world, he was literally just trying to make oodles of cash and he died because he intersected with other characters having actual ideological motivations.
Like. Balamb Garden dangles 'all the Garden cares about is cash' as an ostensible red herring early on, then introduces the Moonspiracy angle, the Faculty being shady motherfuckers, Cid having secret goals he won't explain, it would seem by all rights that the greed is hiding something darker and more esoteric… And then it turns out it was a double red herring, it was the conspiracy stuff hiding the greed.
NORG really did just want to make a norgillion dollars from war profiteering and then people had to bring in 'ancient sorceress lineages' and 'SeeDs should stand for an ideal' and 'nukes homing in on your location as we speak.'
What a guy.
…this is President Shinra all over again, huh. We had to kill Monster Jeff Bezos so that we could face the real stakes of the story regarding the existential war with the sorceress and get the problem of war capitalism out of the way. I am… a little disappointed.
Think of it this way - between FF7 and FF8 and all the way back in FF3 with Goldor the series has been quite consistent with its message; "if a greedy capitalist is getting in your way, immediately kill him with hammers and steal everything he owns". Very based if you ask me.
Squall: "Please tell me about Sorceress Edea. I heard she's your wife." Headmaster Cid: "You're quite right… She had been a sorceress since childhood. I married her, knowing that. We were happy. We worked together, the two of us. We were very happy." Headmaster Cid: "One day, Edea began talking about building the Garden and training SeeD. I became obsessed with that plan. But I was very concerned with SeeD's goal, that one day SeeD might fight Edea…" Headmaster Cid: "She laughed and told me that would never happen. However…" [He trails off.]
Squall's inner monologue: "Someone tell me… Someone? So I'll end up depending on others after all." Child!Squall: "...Sis… I'm… all alone." Child!Squall: "But I'm doing my best…" Child!Squall: "I'll be okay without you, Sis. I'll be able to take care of myself."
Now, this might count as a spoiler, so I won't go into details, but if you don't want to replay the section, much later on into the game you get a second chance to draw any of the drawable GF that you might have missed. Of course, not collecting the GF right now means you'd not be able to use the GF until that much later point in the game, but it's an option if you'd rather avoid replaying this section.
By the way, considering what we've been told, about how the original goal of SeeD was to fight the sorceress, and how Norg (and thus, probably Cid as well, especially if he was keeping tabs on what his wife was doing) knew that Edea had joined forces with Galbadia for some time (likely before the SeeD exam), do you think that might shed some light on the reason Squall's team was assigned the Timber mission, in direct opposition to Galbadia, for so little payment? I know it's the sort of thing that one tends to forget this far into the game, but I think you have more material to speculate a reason for that now.
Just imagine how all those Galbadians who want Edea to step on them would react if they learned she was married to some school principal-looking school principal.
Now, this might count as a spoiler, so I won't go into details, but if you don't want to replay the section, much later on into the game you get a second chance to draw any of the drawable GF that you might have missed. Of course, not collecting the GF right now means you'd not be able to use the GF until that much later point in the game, but it's an option if you'd rather avoid replaying this section.
I'm going to defend my boy Laios here and say he's painfully aware most people don't find his special interest as interesting as he does, but just can't keep it in a lot of the time and gets super enthusiastic at the slightest hint that it's relevant or someone actually IS interested (level of actual interest unknowable), because that's how the autism be. I'm dying on this hill that Squall is less self-aware than Laios on this matter, because there's never been anything to the contrary for him. He's at the His Special Interest School, surrounded by fellow students, and he will get a good grade in it.
I will not entertain the theory that Edea is Raine and Cid is Laguna, no, not even if Laguna and Cid are both weird goofballs who constantly embarrass themselves in public, not even if Cid occasionally falls over like someone who has a bad leg - no, absolutely not. That's a step too far.
the Balamb Garden Civil War was compelling, and it's interesting to think of it as like… The Dark Knight/Paladin connection of IV wrought at the scale of a whole organization.
They're just muddling through on their end. NORG trying to figure out in real time how to save his hide and why his money-making-machine is trying to kill him.
This is delicious and I'm eating it up. I guess the equivalent of sheathing your sword and letting your dark shadow destroy itself was Cid just walking off and leaving NORG to a couple of SeeDs, the organization's most vaunted product, that are about to be really pissed off (and Rinoa).
Also the guy's hot dog fingers are giving me traumatic Everything Everywhere All At Once flashbacks.
My first thought is they created SeeD after seeing what kind of mess the Sorceress in Esthar (am I remembering that part correctly?) caused years ago, and decided to try and preempt anything like that happening again by creating an anti-Sorceress taskforce. So of course the potential threat wasn't going to be Edea, it would be some other sorceress that might emerge in the future.
We do know she doesn't seem to like hypocrisy, and maybe she considers the SeeD idea to have been corrupted from what it once was, but man this whole thing is weird, especially considering Seifer and Ellone. It's an interesting soup but nothing is really cohering yet.
...I was joking about Exalted before, but SeeD is basically the Wyld Hunt, isn't it? I knew the game took inspiration from FF7, but now I'm wondering how much if any it took from FF8 as well, or the general zeitgeist. The timelines aren't impossible. It would have been fresh and new and have come out just two years before the first edition released.
1. Does going to war against your ex-wife qualify as Most Divorced Man status?
2. I am about 70% that Ellone is Squall's sister.
3. I am reminded that there should be a new Dungeon Meshi episode to watch.
So, now that we know who Edea was before taking over Galbadia, we can go back and look at some things with new context. FF8, as I've discovered with this playthrough, has some very interesting elements that are only obvious on a second time through, once you know all the twists and turns. Specifically, I'd like to draw attention to President Deling, and how he must have seen the events as they played out:
Quistis: "We need to restrain him!" Squall: "What do you think you're doing?" Seifer: "It's obvious, ain't it!? What are you planning to do with this guy?" Squall: "...Planning to do?" Squall, mentally: "(That's right… He knows Rinoa. Is that why he's here?)" Zell: "I get it! You're Rinoa's…" Seifer: "Shut your damn mouth! Chicken-wuss!" Quistis: "He broke out of the disciplinary room, injuring many in the process." Zell: "YOU STUPID IDIOT!" Squall, mentally: "(Zell, please.)" Squall: "Be quiet." Zell: "Instructor, I know! You're gonna take this stupid idiot back to Garden, right!?" Squall: "Shut up! NO!" President Deling: "I see… So you're all from Garden. Should anything happen to me, the entire Galbadian military will undoubtedly crush Garden. You can let go of me now." Seifer: "Nice going, Chicken-wuss! You and your stupid big mouth! Take care of this mess! Instructor and Mr Leader!"
[Seifer starts walking backwards off the stage, still holding Deling at gunblade point.]
Deling's response to learning that the people attacking him are from SeeD reads very interestingly now that we know that Edea is not just Cid's wife (and a high-ranking member of the organization to the point where she's got her own private army) but the founder of Garden itself. The instant that Zell blurts out that they're from SeeD he calms down and basically says to leave him out of what he has to assume is a dispute between Cid and Edea, since there's no way he doesn't know who she is.
That's probably why he was so eager to work with her when she showed up on his doorstep, in fact. After the whole Esthar thing a random Sorceress showing up would have been looked at with skepticism, but this wasn't any old Sorceress. This was one of the highest ranking members of the only force standing between Galbadia and world domination offering to turn coat. And her motives could be easily inferred - if she's decided to abandon her PMC and secretly join up with Galbadia instead she's probably had some sort of falling out with her husband. This would make her, in Deling's eyes, a known quantity.
But to go back to this scene, his assumption of the whole scenario is almost certainly "they're here for Edea and Cid sent them to retrieve her, I'm just in the way" rather than "they're here to assassinate me." He has absolutely no idea that SeeD has been hired by the anti-Galbadian resistance and are actually here for his head. Or, at least, Seifer is. This whole thing probably didn't change Deling's opinion of SeeD - he probably expected something like this sooner rather than later - but it probably improved his trust of Edea massively. The fact that a strike team was ready to go the instant he announced that he was working with Edea meant that Garden has probably cut all ties with her and might potentially be trying to kill her. Her defection is legit.
Edea: "...Lowlifes." Edea: "...Shameless filthy wretches." Edea: "How you celebrate my ascension with such joy." Edea: "Hailing the very one whom you have condemned for generations." Edea: "Have you no shame? What happened to the evil, ruthless sorceress from your fantasies?" Edea: "The cold-blooded tyrant that slaughtered countless men and destroyed many nations?" Edea: "Where is she now?" Edea: "She stands before your very eyes to become your new ruler. HAHAHAHAHA." Edea: "A new era has just begun."
…
I think maybe we haven't considered this situation from all appropriate angles. Squall did draw our attention earlier to the fact that conflict is never really between good and evil but between people with different perspectives and, when you think about it, isn't it natural for Galbadia to be worried about Balamb Garden's obvious imperialism and to seek security guarantees within its rightful sphere of influence? After all SeeDs have been ruthlessly cutting down poor Galbadian soldiers so it's only natural for Galbadia to seek the support of the great Sorceress -
NO STOP BONKING ME I WON'T BE SILENCED
Ahem.
President Deling, clearly concerned with the contents of Edea's speech, yet interestingly not so concerned that he'd call guards or worry about his safety, instead approaches her and asks "E-Edea… Are you alright..?"
Edea's response is to stab him through the chest with her claws, effortlessly lifting him up into the air as purple flames engulf his body.
Edea: "This is reality. No one can help you now. Sit back and enjoy the show."
One might expect confusion from the crowd, even a wave of panic, if not at Edea's speech, at least at the apparent public murder of their leader. But no. The camera pans up over the crowd, just as vast, just as enthusiastic, still cheering.
Edea tosses Deling's body aside, and a weird kind of smoke starts emanating from it, but he's not moving anymore. Without any further attention for what was once the most powerful man in the world, Edea turns back to the crowd.
Edea: "Rest assured, you fools. Your time will come. This is only the beginning." Edea: "Let us start a new reign of terror. I will let you live a fantasy beyond your imagination."
(She turns around and leaves.)
…
Okay.
This is quite the sudden upset. It was always in the cards, even likely that the Sorceress was playing Deling somehow; he is a bland technocrat in a suit, she is a fantasy witch with a horned headdress who is heir to a millennia-old tradition of magic.
But I wasn't expecting her to just murder him in front of the nation on her first public address.
And even more baffling, the population of Deling City just… Did not react in any way except with more cheers and flag-waving.
Are they all mind-controlled? They didn't seem that way when we talked to the Deling City population earlier. But it's entirely possible she's been using a more… Wide-ranging, low-key kind of mind influence that's nudging them towards obeying her, even as she promises them a reign of terror. If so, then her threat level is clearly incredible; the ability to influence thousands of people to go along with her desires obviously presents an incredible threat to the world.
It's also possible that no mind-control is necessary. The Forest Owls claimed that Deling was massively unpopular even within his own country, maintaining power through military force. It seemed like at least partially cope, but if it was true, then… It's possible that the people of Deling City are accepting this coup because Deling unwittingly already presented the Sorcerer as a potential better leader while hyping her up to his people, setting the stage for her to usurp him. But if so, you'd expect something like at least a reaction of shock from the crowd before they went along with it. And it's… Possible that I misread the crowd cheering during the camera pan and they were instead screaming in shock, but if so, they immediately went back to cheering.
So, provisional theory: widespread but subtle mind control.
…
Edea's speech is so interesting, though.
Like, she is casting herself as the Wicked Witch of legend. She is all but cosplaying Maleficent. She is literally telling everyone that she is the boogeyman of all their fairy tales, the villain of their history books, and that she will now rule them and usher in a new reign of terror. And at the same time… There is a palpable bitterness and spite that is oozing through her every word. This is a woman who feels she's been wronged; who despises ordinary mortals for generations of villainizing her and her kind, of attributing her whatever evils she may or may not have committed.
It's entirely possible we're looking at a genuine Wicked Witch who has been evil this whole time and is now relishing a chance to visit that evil upon the world. It's also possible we're looking at a victim of lifelong persecution, driven into hiding and made a monster of in the world's tales, who has now decided that if the world will cast her as a villain, she will play the role to its fullest.
Which means she may very well have a sympathetic backstory… But her next move makes it clear that either way, right now, a villain's part is what she will play.
Edea heads back into the building, pauses to say she'll "end this ceremony with a sacrifice,' and joins her hands.
As you noted, Deling's response to Edea's big speech is unusual. He doesn't call the guards or call for help, he walks up to Edea and nervously asks her if she's alright.
He isn't afraid of her. He's confused. This isn't at all how he expected this to go, and this isn't what he was expecting her to say.
And indeed, Edea's speech about the persecution of witches and the bitterness of the world must be very confusing coming out of the mouth of possibly the most powerful woman in the modern world. And not just magically but politically - if she wanted something as a leader of SeeD, the entire non-Galbadian world probably would have bent over backwards to get it for her. SeeD is, after all, the only thing holding Galbadia back. The world has basically been divided into three power blocs, Galbadia, Esthar and those under the protection of SeeD, making Garden functionally the power holders of one third of the planet. This is like if Donald Trump defected to Russia while he was still President.
It all makes me wonder how he thought this would play out, and what he thought was happening here. At the least, he'd clearly misunderstood the situation on a fundamental level and misread Edea's motivations and intentions.
