Of the six possible tales following up Ceodore’s, we’ll start with
Rydia: “Rydia’s Tale: The Eidolons Shackled.” We start with a pretty
long introduction series of shifting perspectives cutscenes, shifting
between time, space, and character perspectives, and then move to
playing as Rydia in the Eidolon City and moving up through the Feymarch,
finally popping out of the cave in the open world to meet up with Luca
the Super Awesome Engineer of Awesomeness.
--
Introduction
Mist
-Rydia returns home.
-Edward’s there! Hi!
-Edward’s making a pretty good case for being an Ally. “Those of us
with powers, like Cecil and I, must think about more than just our own
lands.” Sounds like he and Cecil are going to help out Mist?
-OH!!! This is a flashback to after the events of the base game, when Mist was about to get rebuilt.
--
Eblan
-Hm. Edge is selling Eblan’s treasures to help with the recovery? Mixed feelings on that.
-Actually, that reminds me a bit of what I heard about Detroit, how the
city was in debate about whether the museums should sell off stuff for
the sake of more immediate and practical financial needs. I tend to
think no.
--
Mist
Sounds like Fabul will help Mist, too. Thanks, Yang!
--
Baron
-Fake!Cecil and Cid in a room!
-…Wait… This is Cid’s old avatar. We must be in flashback mode still.
-Yes, we are. Ceodore was just born, and we see the baby naming!
--
Mist
-Awww! The kids miss Rydia! She’s in Feymarch, her “second home.”
-…Wait… okay, I’m confused. I think we’re back in the present again.
--
Feymarch
-Now Rydia’s visiting King Leviathan and Queen Asura. Cool.
-AND THEY’RE TOTALLY REJECTING HER!! WHY? Like, telling her this isn’t
her real home, and she shouldn’t be there or visit again.
-This is kind of heartbreaking.
-I wondered a bit when in the timeline this was. I was hoping that
maybe the Evil Moon Girl Who Looks Sort Of Like Rydia (I hope we get a
name for her soon) had replaced Leviathan and Asura with Stepford
versions, like she did with Cecil and the Baron guards, but no such
luck. It turns out this scene happens right before King and Queen
teleport Rydia away, and Moon Girl turns them to stone.
-Yeah. We next rewatch the scene from the end of Ceodore’s Tale, where
Lunar Girl tells Leviathan and Asura that she’s got Bahamut under her
control and proceeds to turn them into stone.
Playable Again
Rydia in the Eidolon City
-Oh shit! ALL the Eidolons here are stone! (…I guess this is why the
Tale is called “The Eidolons Shackled.”) I just assumed it was only the
super powerful ones like Asura and Leviathan.
-Does this mean Rydia can’t use summons, since they’re all stone?
-Hm. The Eidolons aren’t stone exactly. They can talk still, though
their speech is in parentheses. This leads me to believe that they’re
whispering or straining to talk somehow. Maybe it’s like they have some
super version of Slow or Stop cast on them.
-LOL: “(I was just about… to go on a date.)” Poor Eidolons in love. :(
-A couple of the Eidolons in town have mentioned their hearts hurting. Like, physically hurting.
-Don’t blame yourself, Rydia! And why are Leviathan/Asura sort of
blaming her? They’re reacting pretty negatively to her visit. Did
something about her visit open the Eidolons up to attack?
-And Rydia’s flashing back to Kain/Cecil bombing Mist as she blames herself. This is really pretty crushing to watching.
--
Passage of the Eidolons
-Treasure!! Good to know that even with Rydia’s second home in chaos, we can still enjoy hunting for treasure.
-My theory was right. First combat, she tries to cast a summon and nobody answers. :(
-At least the mobs down here are low level.
-What?? Larva can cast Osmose? This is like playing Mike Tyson’s
Punch-Out and finding out Glass Joe has a special attack. What’s next,
goblins casting Blizzara?
-Glad the lava doesn’t affect me, even without Float.
-New moon phase! Waxing moon. Black magic down, white magic unsure (probably increased), physical attacks unaffected.
--
The Underworld
-HI LUCA!!!!
-You’re grown-up! I guess that’s what happens when time passes, but
still weird to see Luca without just a black/hidden face and little
yellow dots for eyes.
-I’m still confused on the whole time stream thing in the Feymarch.
Rydia sounds like she was expecting Luca and the Falcon to be waiting
outside the cave for her, but wouldn’t that be like the Doctor Who
episode, “The Girl Who Waited?”
-YAYAYAYAYA LUCA IS AN ENGINEER, and about to be certified as a super badass engineer or something like that by Cid.
-The Dwarven Castle is bombed??? WTF??? By who? The Red Wings?
-Oh. Right. Fake!Cecil is in charge.
--
Next time: we figure out what’s up inside the Dwarven Castle.
