FFVI – Part 31: Devil’s Lab

Summary: We move into the heart of the facility: Cid’s laboratory. More magicite that Kefka tries to steal. Possible betrayal by Celes, but probably not since she saves us. We flee the lab and leave Vector.





First: a little mood music.

Magitek Research Facility

-We reach a new area, where we see the “canisters.” *shudder* They’re empty.

-Got a sweet weapon for Celes, “Stoneblade.” It has a chance to insta-kill enemies.

-Someone waiting at the door. BOSS FIGHT! “Number 024.”

He looks like an 1800s military figure.

-Hm. Easy fight. He cast “Overflow” once, but Cyan blocked it, so don’t know what it would have done. He just stood there the rest of the fight.

-Oh God. The next room has filled canisters. Filled with espers.

A whale, a unicorn, a hyena thing, a horned human, a plan gremlin ninja tin, a… other thing. (They’re esper sprites, so kind of hard to describe.)

-The music changed on entering this room. I’ve heard it before, but can’t remember where. It’s haunting and sad.

-We try to free the espers. They say they haven’t long to live, and make the same sacrifice all the other near-death espers have made, turning into magicite.

-Cid shows up. Hey, Cid: fuck you. No sympathy this time. Totally different scenario from prior FFs. Unless you brainwashed or something, no sympathy.

-CID: “Wh-what are those? “ Um. You’re the head researcher. Don’t pretend.

-Oh, I see that he’s referring to the magicite which he’s never seen before. This confirms my theory that magicite is only the product of a willful sacrifice, which Cid hasn’t seen before.

-The magicite all converges on us, giving us a stack of new stuff to play with.

-Cid and Celes know each other.

CID: “Is it true you worked your way in amongst the rebels as a spy?”

W T F W T F W T F

-Ok. After my initial freak-out, I don’t believe this. I think it’s more likely that she genuinely rebelled, and the Empire spread the spy stories to make it sound like they were still in control.

-Kefka enters.

-WHAT. HE CONFIRMS THE “CHARADE.” Celes protests. I have to keep in mind that Kefka could well just be fucking with us, but something in Celes’s protests makes me think there’s at least a seed of truth here.

-Kefka laughs at Locke’s and Cyan’s shock. This is actually the second time Kefka’s expressed this. It’s something that pushes Kefka beyond mischevious and cements him as flat-out evil. He took special pleasure when he thought Edgar was abandoning his kingdom by jumping off Figaro Castle, just as he takes special pleasure now when he sees Locke feel betrayed.

He simply enjoys seeing loyalty and friendship unveiled as sour and corrupt. It doesn’t even matter that he was wrong in Edgar’s case (and I think wrong here as well). We saw what gives Kefka joy. That’s some next-level evil.

He doesn’t just want victory. He wants his enemies to fail morally.

Whatever is in store for Kefka’s storyline, I simply can’t see him going down Gilgamesh’s path of turning on the Empire to join us. Not a chance.

-Kefka sends his magitek-armored soldiers in to take the magicite, charging us and knocking our party out. Celes says she wants to save Locke for once…

-YES

-CELES WASN’T LYING!

She casts teleport to magic Kefka and the magitek soldiers away, along with herself. She didn’t betray us. We still have the magicite.

-The lab’s going to explode. Cid leads the way out.

-Ok, Cid doesn’t say he was brainwashed, but does claim he was threatened by Kefka.

Damn straight, Cid.

Fine. Believable. But I have a hard time thinking of a threat that would excuse him committing what seems like a genocide against the espers.

-Cid’s plan to atone and move forward is to try to convince the Emperor to stop building his empire and stop draining the espers. I mean, good on you and all, but that doesn’t sound exactly like a winning strategy.

-Kefka’s laughter rips in. He’s near. Cid stays behind, and he shoves us onto a mine-cart-thing to escape.

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TW: genocide, the Holocaust

I’m Jewish. I’m not really religious, but I did go to Hebrew school for years growing up, leading to a Bar Mitzvah. A lot of the religious teachings didn’t stick in my memory, but much of Hebrew school is more than purely religion. It’s also about Jewish culture. And a huge element of Jewish culture through the millennia is a sense of constant flight and persecution, recently manifested in World War II and the Holocaust.

To put it bluntly: much of what FFVI sets up reminds me of what I learned about World War II.

I’m not saying this is intended. The game is Japanese, and so if they intended to make a World War II parable, they may have focused instead on the Pacific theater while I’m thinking of Europe, but the aesthetics and themes seem at least loosely similar. Aesthetically, the brown-shirted Empire, the speechifying demagogue at its head, the technology and settings.

Thematically, the Empire’s invasion of its neighbors, its focus on gobbling up more and more land to rule, hearing Cid here basically giving a following orders defense – not quite that, but something that smells of it at least.

And then there are the espers. To grow their own power, the Empire captured as many espers as it could, shoved them in this death factory to experiment on them and systematically kill them. How many were killed? How many deaths count as genocide? I don’t know, but I think it’s about more than numbers. This certainly looks like a genocide.

There’s plenty that doesn’t match up with Nazi Germany. For example, there aren’t really any themes of racial purity that we’ve seen in Gestahl’s empre. But I’m not claiming it’s a direct parable for the Nazi Germany. Just that there are plenty of themes running throughout this game that bring that to mind, and I’m both horrified and unsurprised seeing the Magitek Factory and Research Facility as its played out.

TW over.

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Mine Cart

-Wheee! We’re riding out of here on rails, in every sense of the word.

Literal rails.

It’s like the Serpent Trench as we race along without any control, encountering monsters along the way.

-And what awesome monsters they are.

They’re like motorcycle-riding purple goo monsters.

-After a few of these, boss fight. “Number 128.” I guess this means they’re experiments guarding the lab?

This boss has a left arm and right arm that help it, but we basically just attack and win pretty easily.

-End of the line. Back in Vector. Setzer meets us in town (he was worried), and we escape together.

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Next time: Leaving Vector.