FFVIII – Part 45: Transformative Architecture

Summary: It’s a Garden! It’s a bunker! It’s a plane! It’s a ship! The team wards off the attack on the Balamb Garden. Visually stunning ending. Also, a frustrating death that I way overreacted to, as I tend to do.


B-Garden – MD Level

-Quistis says monsters here are weak to fire, so I use Ifrit’s salvage ability to give Squall Firaga to junction and to give Quistis Fira to cast.

-Came to a valve to turn. A message says “Hit B1 repeatedly after this message.” I spam B1, but nothing happens. Bad directions I guess.

-DUDE I’M HITTING IT AS FAST AS I CAN WTF

-Whatever. Eventually after three failures it just has mercy and lets Squall and company turn the valve.

-We keep going down. I’m getting some serious Dirge of Cerberus flashbacks here from when we went to Deepground.

-What the hell is this place? A lab of some kind? P.s. plz give me a save point asap thx

-Squall heads up a rickety ladder to explore this place. The ladder falls and drops him near a control panel up top. Presses some buttons, which opens… something? I don’t really know what is going on.

-…You’ve gotta be kidding me. A monster blew up Squall and killed confused Quistis and Rinoa. They’re just spinning around and casting random heals and stuff on the monster.

God. Fucking. Dammit. I’m gonna have to replay the whole last 40 minutes again?
FGUCANHCUILASNUCONAUIL

I’m raging right now. So pissed.

-Yup. My last save was back in the Dormitory. WHY. WHY. WHYASDIFUnhDUIOSFHDS

Super bored right now. There’s literally nothing fun about having to replay large chunks of content. Why didn’t the game give me a save point at the start of the basement exploration? Bad job, game.

-Running through all this again, I gave Rinoa the ability to see hidden Draw points. Maybe there’s one of those in the sewer.

-Look. I’m not against challenges, or tough monsters. But give me a save near the tough part so I don’t have to spam-click through the story that I’ve already seen before I get to it. Ugh. Major pet peeve.

-Descending into the sewer again. Still not seeing a save point.

-Got back to the control tower where Squall opened up a new way to go down. Before I wandered around the area a bit, didn’t see where to go. This time I notice a ladder going down, and right at the bottom of the ladder descending to the next area? A save point.

Heh.

[Later edit: it was sort of quick, and I agree with my earlier self that wrote this section that another save point would’ve been nice before the sewers, but I’m a bit embarrassed tbh. This comes off as whiny, but I’ll leave it in as an honest reaction. I really don’t like having to repeat lots of content. Sorry!]

-There’s a lake of dirty water around us.

Two boss monsters attack us that look like big blobby facehuggers, but a single boosted Ifrit GF wipes them out.

-Seriously! It was just an inkling before, but this place feels straight out of Dirge of Cerberus right now.

-We head down one more level.

-Camera shows that missiles are still streaking in the sky.

-The team arrives at a control panel in front of what looks like a massive Van De Graaff generator – a lightning conductor or something like that.

Saw one of those as a kid at MIT and it scared the shit out of me to be that close.

Getting flashbacks to it now.

-Squall starts pressing buttons, that core SeeD tactic. It does something.

-I wasn’t far off thinking it was like a Van de Graaff generator. It starts lighting up - spinning, bolts of electricity, the works!!

-The machine shoots a platform all the way up from the basement level to the very top of the B-Garden, even catching Cid and putting him on the same platform as the SeeDs.

-It’s hard to tell what happens, but it appears that the Garden both turned into a protective shell and is it moving?

-YES! It turned into a flying fortress and repelled the missiles!

Wonderful cinematic of all the extraneous doodads attached to the Garden going all “TRANSFORMER” mode.

-Cid stays up top while Quistis, Rinoa, and Squall take the elevator down to join the rest of the school.
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Inside the Flying Garden

-Lots of students clustered in the halls. I assume most of the students were in Cid’s faction, since so many didn’t know the other faction even existed.

-We head out to the balcony where that kid was hanging out during the attack.

…wow.

See, this is something FFVIII does in a way that I don’t think any of the other FFs really did. It has a sense of visual wonder. Not just nice graphics. FFVII had nice graphics too. But a sense that this is a beautiful and details and rich world it’s presenting and it wants to adore that.

It’s hard to express how I love this, since I don’t mean to sound like I’m ripping other games. I’m not! FFVII for instance built itself on a grungier and more worn-down aesthetic, which is awesome. It’s more a matter of personal taste.

I have to be “that guy” who keeps referring to an old favorite, but this visual sense puts me in mind of FFV near the end when the team is remembering the fallen Galuf and birds streak across the sky and flowers blossom below their feet.

Really heart-aching beauty.

-We head back inside and up to meet Cid.

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Above the Garden

-Ruh-roh, Raggy. Controls aren’t working. What do we do?

-Come on, guys. You’re SeeDs! You know the answer. (spoilers: the answer is “mash random buttons as fast as you can.”)

-Quistis and Rinoa are yelling, “Squall, do something!” and stuff like that, which seems a bit unfair to me. Why would he know any better than you, let alone better than Cid, what to do? He’s not an engineer.

-hahahha YES there’s that patented “uhhh smack ALL the buttons!” strategy!

-It worked (because of course it worked). The Garden turns around. We get a nice view from Balamb itself below of someone confused about the flying Garden.

-They’re gonna crash into the sea rather than Balamb.

-The Garden just floats along.

I say again: beautiful.

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Next time: a time of rest.