…Adel is yoked as hell. She has guns for days. Put Michael Bay on the phone because she's about to deliver Pain and Gain. Someone call the Buff Lady Enjoyers because I think they might be in danger. Adel might gaslight and girlboss, but she's definitely gatekeeping that workout equipment.
...I was going to save this for later, but honestly I see no reason to.
When this LP reached FF8, I described it as a "love it or hate it" game, putting myself in the latter camp, saying it all rolled off me like the proverbial water off the duck's back. Even when I was writing it, I knew it was an oversimplification, because there was stuff about FF8 that I enjoyed, or I wouldn't have kept it in my brainspace for 20 years. The train robbery sequence. The Balamb Garden reveal. Doomtrain.
And Adel.
I was in my late teens. I was raised by middle of the road white Catholic Americans. I had never really questioned my sexuality.
A 12-foot tall redhead built like Mr. Universe was one of the first characters that made me ask some questions.
Throughout my life I've flip flopped back and forth on calling myself "nominally straight" and "a little bit bi" and it probably wouldn't have happened without the Final Fantasy series.
I'll have more to say on Adel later, but for now? Truly one of the character designs of all time. Critical support to a problematic queen, etc.
This is technically speaking the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet discussing a contract with the leader of the strongest mercenary group on the planet.
And don't forget, if we extend it to the in-laws, Squall's girlfriend is a powerful (if inexperienced) Sorceress, as well as the daughter of a prominent military leader in a nation that is currently governed by the military leader that succeeded the last two dictators, one of which was a Sorceress as well. And Rinoa has political motivation enough to lead a rebel group and was born in the country that seems to have taken "being under the heel of the Sorceress" as a kink rather than a threat; it's not entirely inconceivable that she could potentially take over Galbadia at some future point after the end of the game.
That's a ridiculous concentration of political power within the hands of a single family - very much of the "we're ruling the world" variety, when all put together.
A Three Stars. A Three Stars teaches a GF "Expendx3-1," an Ability that makes it so when a character triple-casts, they only expand one stored spell instead of three.
Incidentally, Squall's card can be refined into 3 Three-Stars, meaning it'll provide you with 300 Triple all by itself, whereas Quistis' card refines into 3 Soul of Thamasa, which each refine in 60 Triple each, so putting them all together that's 480 Triple spells that you now have sitting in your inventory - 580 if you collected the Three-Star from Obel Lake as well.
Cid and Edea have the surname Kramer, so clearly they didn't give their adopted kids their surname.
Laguna is Laguna Liore.
Squall is Squall Leonhart, he clearly didn't inherit Laguna's surname.
Raine... we are never told what her surname was. Liore, presumably, but we don't know her maiden name. Presumably because telling us outright she was Raine Leonhart would have ruined their "imply heavily without saying directly" thing.
I'm kind of struggling to parse what the exact chain of events meant by "once Ellone feels it, she'll cut Rinoa and Ultimecia off from ze past. Rinoa will come back to this world. Ultimecia also goes back to her own world. Vat would be left is ze time compressed world." Is the idea there to stop time compression while in progress, so that time is only 'partially compressed'?
So, it sounds like the idea is to use some sort of time slingshot method to reach Ultimecia. Basically they stretch her has much as possible and then release the hold, hoping that it'll take them forward into the future where Ultimecia is based.
Mind you, I haven't played this game, so I could be wrong, but that's what it seems like to me.
Obviously, just letting Time Compression happen is silly. Now uploading your consciousnesses into robots before you time travel, that's just common sense ~
I don't know who that milliard guy is but I must ask, for those who are not French here in this thread:
Your thoughts about the first thing we learn of the man being whatever Wikipedia decides to tell us at the time!?!
Heck, just for that, Odine's accent is hilarious. I can see how it would be odious, but you just did the French thing of dropping a reference ready to mock us for not getting it, from my POV.
Cid and Edea have the surname Kramer, so clearly they didn't give their adopted kids their surname.
Laguna is Laguna Liore.
Squall is Squall Leonhart, he clearly didn't inherit Laguna's surname.
Raine... we are never told what her surname was. Liore, presumably, but we don't know her maiden name. Presumably because telling us outright she was Raine Leonhart would have ruined their "imply heavily without saying directly" thing.
This is, theoretically, a powerful item. In practice it is absolutely not worth the effort to go through this baffling quest. I have summed it up so you're not getting the full experience, but the quest is only feasible with a guide that points you to each step exactly, and even with that there'll still be significant running around figuring out where exactly you need to press X to unlock the next step or reward.
Like I said: I don't resent this Quest, because its reward is so meaningless it is very obviously a completionist trap, and I was fully prepared to drop it at any moment without remorse. I just wanted to include it there as an example of just how obtuse and overcomplicated the quest design of that era could get. But if there was a GF locked behind the Obel Lake quest? You'd be hearing about me on the news.
The UFO doesn't move or attack and has pathetic HP - we attack it and it starts exploding, flying off into the sky and disappearing across the horizon. For this, we are rewarded with an Aegis Amulet, which teaches a GF Evasion Junction. This is, again, a fairly meaningless reward.
But it's not over. From there, we must head to the crater where Balamb Garden used to sit. There, we can trigger a random encounter:
The alien has 10 HP, its name is PuPu, and it is asking us for Elixirs to help it out.
…unfortunately, I didn't think to give anyone the Item Command for this fight. So I can't actually use Elixirs on PuPu. Oops. I try escaping the encounter to trigger it again, but it seems like PuPu only ever triggers once. There are a variety of outcomes to this encounter - if killed, it drops an Accelerator, which teaches Auto-Haste. It can be eaten alive using the Devour Command, which is unlocked by Eden but we're not going to care about that in this playthrough. And finally, helping it out results in it giving us its Card, which is unique and can be refined into a Hungry Cookpot, which teaches Devour to another GF. Running away is the only option which has no reward and locks us out of any further reward. Unfortunate.
However, I last saved before starting the entire quest and I'm not doing it again, so PuPu will sadly have to remain stranded on the planet.
…Adel is yoked as hell. She has guns for days. Put Michael Bay on the phone because she's about to deliver Pain and Gain. Someone call the Buff Lady Enjoyers because I think they might be in danger. Adel might gaslight and girlboss, but she's definitely gatekeeping that workout equipment.
I don't know why it's so funny to me that Adel isn't just huge, she's huge; that wasn't obvious from the cinematic shots of her inside her prison. It's also fairly novel for the FF series; none of its female characters, even one-shot antagonists, have ever been visibly muscular. Even Tifa, the last game's resident punchgirl, was not particularly buff, she was just magically incredibly strong. But no, Adel finds the time to hit the gym every day between committing war crimes, and we love that for her. Also, depending on whether these black markings on her torso are some kind of absurdly adhesive skintight fabric or tattoos, she may in fact be fully tits out on display. You go, queen.
Adel is as far as I can tell completely flat-chested, so shredded and masculine that according to the wiki the French version occasionally slips up and uses masculine pronouns for her. But sorceresses can only be women and the original Japanese term literally being 'magic woman' and analogous to how the word 'witch' is implicitly gendered in English so there's no getting around that Adel must be a woman.
Supernaturally-Validated Transwoman (Evil) and we love that for her-
She isn't tits out btw, those black bits on her chest are ever so slightly raised and glossy going by the FMV screencap attached to her wiki page so it appears to just be Skimpy Stick-On Armour.
I said earlier I'd expected Laguna dealing with Adel to be the final time travel flashback, but… In a sense, it's important that here, he does succeed without a proper fight, that is to say, he succeeds without Squall's power. At the last moment, when everything is in the balance, Laguna saves Ellone and ends the threat of the sorceress not with borrowed magic from the future, but by being himself: a silly overdramatic but extremely sincere guy who makes 'perfect plans' that immediately fall apart but who still manages to pull off a win in the clutch, because there's someone he cares about on the line. I think that's the perfect ending for his side of this story.
Is the idea there to stop time compression while in progress, so that time is only 'partially compressed'? Or is it just that time compression will still be happening but by acting quickly enough we can kill Ultimecia before everyone dies?
Now I'm not sure, but my understanding is that this is another case of the single guy in a shed responsible for the localisation beginning to flame out and fumbling the original script. Basically my understanding is that the latter is correct and Time Kompression is a process that will take long enough for the party to bushwhack Ultimecia in the grace period before the fabric of reality breaks down entirely and they lose everything that Laguna claims will connect and bind them, so the group intend to use Speedrun Strats and TerminalMontage their way into Ultimecia's Present Of Future Past shagloft and drop Doomtrain on her.
And the cherry on top? Squall may be the densest neutronium brick on Earth when it comes to certain things, but him just standing there and letting Ward and Kiros directly comment on his mother and father's appearances to his face and him not responding at all just, goes way past what my suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the 'dialogue outside of mandatory cutscenes isn't allowed to affect the plot or character development' principle. There is only one way I can make sense of this:
Squall has already figured out Laguna is his father, and he is simply refusing to acknowledge this or ask Laguna about it out of sheer stubborn frustration at being related to this ridiculous man.
Spawn-camping Adel to murder her before she's had time to wake up and get her morning coffee is very funny in a callous 'I believe SeeDsl would do that' way (no one is even suggesting asking her if she'll consider the errors of her ways), and it denies Ultimecia the primary host body she was after, the one that would make her most powerful, instead locking her within Rinoa's babby sorceress body,
I think it's worth repeating that Odine says it also removes the risk that Adel will eat Ultimecia and become two sorceresses strong and blow up everyone in this time period or at least convince Ultimecia to do such before going back in time. These are very important considerations!
And I like the fact the story acknowledges someone other than the heroes might be able to stand up to Ultimecia.... It would just be even worse if Adel won.
Squall has already figured out Laguna is his father, and he is simply refusing to acknowledge this or ask Laguna about it out of sheer stubborn frustration at being related to this ridiculous man.
Laguna: "Now, here comes the tricky part! Adel will need to pass on her powers before being defeated. Rinoa, will you be willing to accept them?" Rinoa: "Yes!"
Laguna: "What the heck has he done with his life? Don't you wonder? When Ellone was about 2, there was a massive hunt for girls in Esthar. The massive hunt was to find the successor for Esthar's ruler, Sorceress Adel. Ellone was raised by Raine who lived next door. And I came to know her. Then there was another massive hunt for a successor in Esthar again. Elle was taken away, even though I was there… It's the most painful episode of my life. So I rescued her and sent her off to Winhill. Shortly after that, Raine died. And Ellone was sent straight to an orphanage."
Not too happy with how the translation phrases this part. It's a bit too literal, and doesn't flow very well.
The first two sentences would be more naturally "I'm sure you're wondering 'what has this person done with his life?'." The word used for "this person" is あいつ, which is more literally "that person (over there)", gender-neutral. So using the "his" pronoun is partly an assumption that Laguna is talking about himself, while the Japanese text doesn't really clarify.
"It's the most painful episode of my life" is more "It's the most frustrating event of my life" (悔しかったこと). Followed by "Then when I finally rescued her and sent her back to Winhill, Raine died shortly after. Because of that, (Ellone was) sent to an orphanage." It's supposed to be a litany of misfortune rather than a bland recitation of events.
Later, Laguna saying "I don't know how she could have been happy on a ship" should be "There has to be a happier life (than living on a ship)". Laguna isn't anti-ship as such, but wishes he could have given Ellone a better life than travelling on an orphanage ship for ten years.
Together, they used Odine's laboratory to sink the Lunatic Pandora into the depths of the ocean, but they 'were found out'. It's unclear what they mean by that but it's not like the Lunatic Pandora would be discreet to move, that thing can probably be seen from the entire country on a clear day. So they prepare for a 'final battle' to lure Adel… Which turns out not to be a battle at all.
In the Japanese text, Laguna says Odine gave instructions (via control panel) to route the Lunatic Pandora into the ocean, and "of course" Adel found out. So either they never expected this plan to be discreet, or Laguna was going "maybe Adel will notice, maybe not, we'll handle it when it happens".
Given the speculation we had on Squall not noticing the entire team overtaking him on the Fisherman's Horizon bridge, I cannot say this is without precedent.
I just want to note Adel's line here is "何事か", which is quite calm and mildly interested in events. Adel isn't angrily demanding an explanation of why the Lunatic Pandora sank itself into the ocean; she's just inquiring on what happened, like someone accidentally tripped the apartment circuit breaker. I have no idea if Adel is supposed to sound more imperious, due to the lack of tone of voice.
Laguna: "Odine made a lot of noise about wanting to do research on Ellone. It was a mistake to send Ellone alone back to Raine. Raine died, and Ellone was sent to the orphanage. If I had only gone to Winhill with Elle… I would've been able to see Raine one last time." Laguna: "Raine was dead. Ellone, missing. My job kept me busy. I was left there thinking this and that, and before I knew it, all this time had passed."
Laguna describe Odine wanting to do research on Ellone is more direct and Laguna-esque in Japanese. If I were to translate it like the rest of the dialogue, it would be "Odine was making Odine noises of 'I vant to do ze research on Ellone'". Not just "made a lot of noise", Laguna even brings up Odine's verbal tic in describing that noise.
Also I'm not sure if it was in the English text, but the Japanese script has Laguna add "Well, everything was my decision. For good or for ill." Which I think is an interesting line from Laguna, showing how he's not just impulsively acting on his whims, but acknowledging that his decisions have consequences that reach beyond just himself, and he may or may not have made the right decisions. Whatever the case, those decisions were still made.
And what a plan it is. I… don't even know how to sum it up, so I'll just tell it in the man's own words, which means we'll all have to put up with his silly accent:
Odine's silly verbal tics get even sillier here. He doesn't just append "ojaru" to every sentence, he starts going "ojajajaja" and "jajajajaja" like he's a Pokemon. The English translation thankfully removes most of it, although I think it does add "egh" to indicate that silliness.
The mission briefing is mostly accurate. The only bits that might be notable is how Odine talks about Rinoa being possessed by Ultimecia as a single name, "Rinoa Ultimecia". Which might be the script's way of indicating "Rinoa when possessed by Ultimecia" without being so verbose, and I think "Rinoa and Ultimecia" as in the English text is fine for a translation.
As was mentioned previously in the thread, the Ragnarok's name in Japanese katakana (ラグナロク) contains the same katakana as Laguna's name. So in the Japanese script, Laguna saying "the name sounds so cool" is instead "it sounds just like my name".
In Japanese, Laguna is saying this battle plan is now called "Operation Love, Friendship, And Courage".
Overall, the impression I get of this whole mission briefing is the writers wanting to have some excuse to get the player party within stabbing range of Ultimecia, and so they came up with brand new metaphysics and babble, handwaving much of it with "Odine is a genius". Questions like how anyone present even knows what Time Compression means, especially for the survival of anyone stuck in it, are implicitly answered with "Odine figured it out somehow".
Laguna: *hands over 100 gil*
Cid: "..."
Squall: "..."
Squall: "A single SeeD paycheck pays more than that."
Laguna: "Yes, well, it's funny, you know. As President, my lodgings are free, and I can have as many meals as I want, any time I want. I just. Don't get paid. At all. Ever."
Doc Odine: "There iz only one way to defeat Ultimecia. You must kill her in ze future. There iz nothing we can do unless we go to ze future. There iz no way to jump to ze future under normal circumstances. But there iz still a way!"
...this is basically fucking canon. I checked Rinoa's stat growth and while Magic is higher than Strength early on, in her later levels — presumably in the endgame after she meets Adel — Strength becomes higher than Magic. Oh, and she's also got the highest Strength of all the playable characters.
...this is basically fucking canon. I checked Rinoa's stat growth and while Magic is higher than Strength early on, in her later levels — presumably in the endgame after she meets Adel — Strength becomes higher than Magic. Oh, and she's also got the highest Strength of all the playable characters.
On a serious note, I do like these hints of how being a sorceress long-term is likely to cause someone to 'mutate' and adopt an inhuman appearance to some extent. Edea has a little of it, Adel has a lot of it, and Ultimecia is pretty far along as well.
Hey wait, wasn't there a bit a few updates ago about how Ultimecia is already dead and only exists in the present as a spirit? Was that just some other random Sorceress then?
