FFVII – Part 56: Under the Sea

Summary: Back to the real world. The party heads to Junon, makes our way to the underwater reactor, and chases the Huge Materia onto a departing submarine.


 
Mideel

-Everyone’s there waiting for them.

-Friendship!

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The Highwind

-Cloud apologizes to everyone, tells them the truth. He is who he is.

-He wasn’t in SOLDIER. Wasn’t strong enough. SOLDIERs are infused with Jenova’s cells, but Cloud got lost in it somehow. (Still not sure why he was chosen for Hojo’s clone thing.)

“Everyone knew that I’m Cloud. Master of my own illusionary world.” He believes his self-delusion was what made him such easy pickings for Sephiroth’s afterlife puppetry. This is pretty powerful stuff imo.

-He will stay and help us, imperfect and all. Everyone laughs. Hurray!

LOLOL

Cid on the challenges of leadership.

Nice self-referential humor, game.

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Under Junon

-Holy crap, I have a ton of new limit abilities! I didn’t even notice that there was an option to set them up, but balthier7285 and djinn87 on Mark Spoils told me to check it, and there’s this whole menu of stuff I didn’t even both to look at. Will be messing around with this in the coming sessions.

-Shinra’s been active here.

-There’s a pipe that’ll lead me to the underwater reactor. I’m really hoping there’s no breath meter, that Cid engineers us breathing apparatuses so we don’t have one of those underwater timers. (Thinking of Gogo’s area in FFV.)

-Hey, it’s Priscilla, the fish girl! And… she wants Cloud to marry her one day? Where did that come from? This is now a “thing” in the FF series. Back in FFVI, there was a kid who kept talking about how she’d marry Edgar.

-Nothing doing at the dolphin beach.

-Lol. We bribe the elevator guard with 10 gil and he lets us pass. Easier than I expected. XD

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Junon Airport Area

-So a few huge materia things are going on. One, they’re bringing other huge materia here. Two, there’s huge materia at the reactor here already. Three, it’ll be used to power airplanes as they try to make like Bruce Willis in “Armageddon.”

-Oh, not quite. Shinra plans to use the planes to transport the huge materia to Rocket Town, and that’ll probably be used to shoot down the meteor. (Again, I wish our party would at least discuss maybe not trying to stop this. Shinra’s bad, but isn’t the apocalypse worse?)

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Upper Junon

-Early on here, Cloud stops and says, “It feels like we’re missing something.” Thought I explored the town… hm. Moving on.

-Explored Upper Junon, but not much going on. Just soldiers minding their own business. Found the path to the Underwater Reactor up top though.

-Pretty weird elevator scene. There’s a woman operating the elevator, and two guards who I think I’m supposed to believe are dudes. Cloud and the party gets in and starts to banter with the Shinra guards about whoever survives their coming fight gets to take the elevator operator out. A prize I guess?

I like FFVII, but I feel like it’s making me go “really, game?” more than prior entries in the series.

-After we kill the guards, the elevator operator says, “gulp… (There went two perfectly good men.)” Not sure if she means, “Jesus, this party of terrorists just stormed in here and murdered my coworkers in cold blood. This is horrifying,” or, “Dang. I was rooting for the guards because they were cute. Oh well.” My money’s on the game intending the latter.

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Junon Path

-Fighting some “submarine guards” here. There’s also a dog guarding an entrance I can’t get past. Glad I don’t have to attack the dog.

-Is it just me, or did FFVII lower the number of random fights I face in these dungeons? Not at all a negative in my book if that’s the case, but it could be me misreading a small sample size.

-Down even further, another elevator.

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Underwater Reactor

-Ok, already this place is creepy.

Probably not meant to feel that way, but has kind of an “Alien” vibe to it.

-THIS IS BEAUTIFUL! An underwater tunnel surrounded by the sea.

Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to see the water Weapon from this angle?

-Into the reactor proper. More weird enemies here, including a soldier that looks dressed like a badger.

-Submarines!

-Found the huge materia. It’s being taken onto one of the subs.

-Hey, it’s Reno!

-He runs off to tend to the huge materia and sends a big, gangly robot after us.

Carry Armor.

-The boss fight against Carry Armor is pretty tough. It grabs and chokes Barret, and shoots a nasty laser at us. Bahamut and Neo-Bahamut make short work of its arms, and we finish off the rest.

-Also got a chance to test one of Cloud’s new limits, Meteorain. It’s an awesome aoe attack that seems a bit irresponsible given the Planet’s current troubles with meteors.

-This was all a distraction to keep us away from the submarine. We hop on at the last minute.

(Though not before getting some of the treasure from the loading area. I love the mental image of Barret and Tifa freaking about the departing submarine while Cloud runs around like a magpie after the shiny treasure.)

-We fight our way onto the submarine.

The voice of reason.

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Next time: Yay for submarines!