Tuesday, April 21, 2015

FFVII – Part 53: A Cloud Divided

Summary: Yo dog, I heard you like Clouds. So I put some Clouds in your Cloud so you can question the foundations of all that you think you know while you question the foundations of all that you think you know.


Mideel

-LOL - Took an elixir from an old guy’s house, and as I was about to leave he noticed I stole from him! Subversion of video game logic to the max.

We have the choice to lie and say we didn’t take it or tell the truth. I opt for truth, and he lets us keep it. I wonder if I hadn’t taken it whether he would’ve given us something better? I’ll bet if we lied to him, he would’ve snatched it back.

-Cloud’s still out of it, and Tifa’s understandably upset.

-Then the ground starts quaking. Cloud: “They’re coming.”

-The lifestream seems to be bubbling from beneath the earth. We get a lightshow outside.

-Another Weapon flies above, a black dragon thing. Mecha Godzilla or a different one? Boss time!






-Pretty easy. She does heavy damage with spells, but All + Restore materia for Cure 3 keeps us topped off. Nanaki’s awesome limit buff helps us make short work of Mecha Godzilla.

-Well… sort of. We win, but she just flies off and escapes. The trippy lifestream light show stops.

-OH SHIT I WAS WRONG IT DIDN’T STOP. It kicks into high gear now.

-Cid, Barret, and Nanaki scatter.

-Meanwhile at the clinic, Tifa and the doctor try to move Cloud somewhere safer during these quakes.



-THEY WENT OUTSIDE, SHIT COLLAPSED, AND THEY FELL INTO THE LIFESTREAM

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The Lifestream?

-Tifa’s floating in a black expanse. If she’s dead, I’m throwing my keyboard.

-The sounds are weird bloop-bloops.

-She seems to interpret the bloops as someone talking, and she responds with, “I know nothing about that!” What’s she hearing?



-Ok, I’m pretty sure this isn’t aliens. But with the sounds and the questions and her running in place and everything…



Just saying.

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CLOUD’S BRAIN???

[Later edit: “Cloud’s Unconscious Mind” or something might be more accurate, but this is how I thought of it while playing.]

-Is that where she is? We see different versions of him floating around or sitting, planets, it’s this whole weird dreamscape.



-She senses this, and senses also that Cloud’s searching for himself somehow. Tifa, wonderful awesomeness that she is, decides to help.

-1st Cloud: Talking about a secret wish or feeling of some kind.

-2nd Cloud: At the gates of Nibelheim, when Sephiroth came there five years ago. All this started.

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Cloud’s Brain – Nibelheim

-It’s the town as they remember it.

-Five years ago. She met the real Sephiroth for the first time, who came with “a young, vibrant SOLDIER.”



-Tifa remembers Sephiroth as cold even then. Jenova his mother, and his father still unmentioned.

-Ok, the truth comes out fully (or maybe not so fully yet?). She was here, and was hoping Cloud would be assigned, but no luck. It was a different SOLDIER.

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Cloud’s Brain

-And yet, this isn’t the whole truth. She says the black-haired dude was there, but won’t give an answer about who that person was. Huh. She’s not lying – it seems more like one of those “You must seek the truth yourself” things.

-I tried that other “tender feelings” Cloud again, but still no luck.

-The next Cloud she talks to remembers the night they spent outside, under the stars. He wonders if that was a lie too. She doesn’t confirm or deny, just asks him to remember at his own pace.



(-This is beautiful. So well done.)

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Next time: Onward through the brain.

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