We fight and defeat the constantly evolving Creator. On our escape, we take the Maenad child with us, and the Maenads themselves help protect our escape to save the child. The Creator, broken and collapsing herself, chases us half-heartedly, welcomes her death, and then as perhaps her first kind act in a long time, reverses the falling moon’s course and sends it away from the Blue Planet.
This is a long one. No real natural break points.
---
Bottommost Depths
-Ok. Let’s see what’s here.
-WHAT
-THE FUCK
-IS THAT
-Fighting time.
Designed by Ridley Scott.
-Nothing hits back yet.
-It morphed mid-fight. The door got covered with a kind of white film.
-And it morphs again now. The door opens!
-It’s… a doll? A kid?
-Calls itself the “keeper of the crystals.”
-The nameless boss is giving us some crystal back story.
The crystals bestow wisdom to our world, but also record all evolutionary steps. That’s their main purpose. This guy has been using earth to experiment on evolution. I think it may be implied strongly that he made us.
-The Maenads are also part of his experiments! And they were sent to Earth to harvest the crystals as records.
IT MAKES SENSE! FINALLY THE CRYSTALS MAKE SENSE!
The crystals present on all these different worlds, all these different dimensions that the boss visited (or even set up and created himself), were recording all the fiends and monsters that were products and representatives of the evolution of those planets, those worlds.
-This is some major league meta. I may be misreading it, but if I’m even close, then wow.
-Will the boss’s final form be Hironobu Sakaguchi?
-This guy wants to kill our planet because we didn’t advance enough. So he’s ending the experiment by crashing this moon, his spaceship, into it.
-This is some “Prometheus” bullshit right here.
-The boss now has a name: “The Creator.”
---
Boss time!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
-Looks SO TERRIFYING. Like a melted cyborg bunny rabbit.
-Uh-oh. It seems to copy us. Megaflares in response to Bahamut.
-Not going too badly so far… but that can’t be it.
-Of course not.
-Apologies for pronouns. Clearly is a she now.
-She’s NOT a god. Or at least not a supernatural god. The Creator grew up on a blue planet similar to ours, but the land was dying. So the inhabitants set out towards space to find a new home.
They spend GENERATIONS on the ship, and slowly died out. She’s the last of her kind. This moon is their final spaceship. Her whole purpose with Earth, with all her experiments, was to try creating a new home.
-And she’s evolving. Crap.
Next Phase
-Looks like a woman now.
-Spamming Holy. And Meteor. OW.
-Phase down. Still doubt we’re done.
---
Next Phase
-WHAT IS THAT
-It’s…
-I don’t even know. A woman riding on a mutant orc/mushroom/planet/machine.
-Charging us.
---
Meanwhile, on the Blue Planet
Similar to the base game’s pre-Zeromus shenanigans, we take a brief break here to pan back to how things are going on the Blue Planet. (I’m trying not to call it Earth). Things aren’t going well. People are fighting off monsters driven to aggression and lashing out due to the moon.
-Baron Castle, where everyone in the throne room senses something.
-Rosa’s house, where Rosa’s mom hears her trouble.
-Mist, where the kids and chief sense Rydia.
-Eblan, same thing for Edge.
-Dwarven Castle, same thing for Giott and friends.
Everyone senses the party’s in trouble.
---
Lunar Whale
-All the sidelined party members sense the same thing, and just like those back on the Blue Planet, they give what encouragement they can.
---
Bottommost Depths
-Interesting.
-The crystals we took, all the Blue Planet crystals, form a protective circle around us. They regain their light.
---
Boss Time!
-We’re fighting this mutant form of the Creator now. It has a weakness that explicitly keeps changing, but it’s too tough for me to keep exploring the weakness each time (since a spell that doesn’t hit its weakness heals it instead of damaging it). Libra and Bestiary don’t work. I just melee instead.
-WIN! Not too tough, to be honest.
-The Creator herself tells me to… run? Yeah, even if she dies, we haven’t stopped the moon. Not sure how we get out of this predicament. And by “predicament,” I mean “apocalypse.”
-GET TO THE CHOPPA/LUNAR WHALE!
-Racing back out of the Depths now, retracing my trail, while things shake and collapse behind me.
---
Depths - B27
-I get back-attacked by the Creator here. I get the sense she’s not fully in control. Not that she’s a puppet of someone else, just that all the isolation and eons alone have left her in a highly volatile mental place. Despite her whole “Destroy the Blue Planet because it didn’t meet my horrific eugenic standards” thing, I feel bad for her. It can’t be easy to be the last of your race, especially when you are so long lived and had to watch your fellows die slowly over generations, homeless and wandering.
-Despite going into a fight with her, it’s not a real boss fight. She keeps using “Crush” and “Collapse” on herself for massive damage. We can get in maybe a few hits or heals before it ends. Meant to symbolize her chasing/following us as her massive construct/evolution is falling apart.
-Can’t Emergency Exit and the interdimensional elevators up to the Lunar Whale are offline. I really hope I don’t have to run through all 43 levels right now.
-Back attacked again by the Creator.
-And
-wait
-A MAENAD joins our side of the fight, and helps win?
-What?
-The Maenad kid is still out here in the Stasis Chamber room, awaiting our orders. WE TAKE HER. WE TAKE THE CHILD OF THE MAENADS WITH US.
-Really cool narrative set-up here. We keep getting back-attacked by the rapidly-collapsing Creator. Each time a fight comes now, a Maenad shows up on our side of the fight, healing us or attacking the Creator. It gives the sense that we’re trying to run from this juggernaut, and the Maenads are helping cover our escape.
-It also gives us a chance to hear from the Maenads as chaos and the destruction of their world/ship ensues.
-The collected words of the helpful Maenads:
“Watch that child.”
Like, in a [ST:TNG] Obet Dhrra sense, or a more metaphorical “the children are our future” sense? Probably the latter. They’re so focused on evolution and see their race’s home about to be destroyed. Her, and their, best chance probably lies with us on the Blue Planet.
“That child is our future.”
“Creator, how could you?” Poor, betrayed, used Maenads. I still think they’re awful with the havoc they’ve caused, but to be honest, it’s hard for me to hate them here at the end of things.
“You are our father!’ Ow. Yeah. Poor Maenads.
-The Creator attacks us one last time. Clearly at the end of her long, long, murderous and still somehow sad life. Dying words:
This “thank you” seems sincere. I feel like this supports my earlier theory, that the Creator is not totally in control of or accountable for her actions at this point her life. She’s relieved for all of this to be over. Can’t imagine the exhaustion.
-Fade to white.
---
Agart
-The astronomers. They see the moon leaving.
---
Lunar Whale
-Apparently the Creator’s last act was to repent, and send the falling moon away with her dying breath. So much of this game has been about waking shackled Eidolons. Perhaps we finished by waking a Creator shackled by her own life, her own past, her own actions.
That’s that.
---
Next time: Probably the wrap-up.
