Salvage Ship
-Scene switches to a boat of some sort.
-The unconscious Tidus is aboard, waking up to some more rough treatment.
-The woman emerges from the ship with a tattooed dude. The language barrier is a really interesting mechanic to use here – the tattooed dude (who seems to be the leader) is aware of the barrier, and trying to communicate using a breathing device and swimming to Tidus.
-The woman can translate. She knows both languages. He can stay if he “makes [himself] useful.”
-Tutorial time: “Using the Sphere Grid.” Used to develop by activating nodes with spheres.
-Looks sort of like a talent tree common in MMOs. We get that sweet club-FF theme music. One sphere is for defense, another for ability-learning… basically, ways to customize characters. I think? The spheres are nodes, and I upgrade characters by activating nodes.
-S.Lv means Sphere Level. It indicates how far a character can get on this screen.
-AP seems to be the same as what I’d normally think of as XP. It increases your S. Lv., and as sphere level goes up, the character’s ability to access more nodes similarly increases.
-The tutorial keeps going on. I get the very general gist, but am a bit lost on the details. Will hopefully understand more as I test it out and put it in context.
-So… you can activate the node you’re at and the nodes you’re adjacent to. Does this mean that you lose prior abilities as you continue down the tree? We’ll see.
-Locks are another thing, but I’ll get a new tutorial when I gain access to whatever that is.
-Y is a button that shows me stuff. LB and RB switches between characters.
-HOLY GOD THE WIDE-SHOT OF THIS MENU IS OVERWHELMING AF
-Just tried it for real, and I think I understand. I spend S.Lv points to move on this grid, and (at least on this run) I’ll try to only move so that the new sphere opens up adjacent access points.
-Gave Tidus “Cheer,” an ability that boosts party Strength and Defense. Probably nice for bosses, though not sure I’ll use under normal circumstances. We’ll see how much the boost helps.
-Found an Al Bhed language primer, “Volume 2.” …Crap. This makes me think I missed Volume 1 back in the dream world.
-Y = A. Achieved the rank of “Al Bhed Hujela.” I’m glad I wrote that thing down before – as I pick up more letters, I may be able to translate it.
-Awesome! Now that Tidus knows y = a, when he talks to the crew he sees those previously untranslated letters in translated pink.
-OH NO – I talked to one of the crew who said something I didn’t understand. Got two response options: “Yeah” and “What?” Nothing happened with the latter, and when I tried the former it went into the whole dang tutorial again with no way to cancel out.
-This mystery woman is super enthusiastic. Dare I say peppy?
We’re going to go below to some ruins, activate the power, and salvage “the big prize.”
This makes me wonder – is the world we’re in now post-apocalyptic? If there are ruins beneath the water, perhaps we’re in the future and that water sphere with Sin in it obliterated the world. Especially if this is far in the future, that could explain the new language.
…nah. That wouldn’t explain why one person still spoke Tidus’s language, unless she studied it as an antiquity or something.
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Down to the Underwater Ruins
-Into the water, Tidus and Mystery Woman. Lolol she’s stealing grenades from these apparently well-armed Piranhas.
-I wonder if they’re going to give an in-game explanation why we don’t need air down here. (Not that I really need it or care that much, but it’s a choice either way on the storytellers’ part.)
-This game is really testing my fear of the deep ocean and sea monsters that dwell within. This image of heading to an underwater base is calling back to The Abyss and Sphere and a host of similar images.
-We enter a facility down here. Tidus takes a page from the FFVIII School of Hitting Electronics Until They Do What You Want, and it opens the door.
-These may be ruins, but they clearly have blinking lights and electronics and are pretty high-tech in general.
-Sound effects down here are great. Very “underwater.”
-Found the power. Turned it on. Let’s see what the prize is.
-THE PRIZE HAS TENTACLES. THE LIGHTS ARE RED AND THE PRIZE HAS TENTACLES.
-Boss time. Against a cross between an octopus and a hermit crab.
Tros.
-It glided away from me. Getting a “trigger command” available now – like, to chase it?
-First time it glided away, I could just “Stand By” and minorly heal up. Second time it glided away, I could change positioning (only from Tidus, not from Mystery Woman) and cut the beast off with a pincer attack. Nice!
-I’m having Mystery Woman use the Grenades she’s been stealing now. One of my mistakes in past FF games has been to save up consumable items forever and never use them. Going to make a conscious effort to use them more often in FFX.
-Victory! When Tros died, a bunch of little mini-comets flew out of it. Probably just cool particle effects, but going to keep that in mind in case they end up being story-significant. They remind me a bit of the mini-comets flying about in the in-media-res prologue.
-We swim out of this ruin together.
-Lights are activating.
-It’s pretty disorienting down here. I don’t know whether I’m swimming up or across or down.
-Get a slow pan across a stone statue or structure of some kind. I can’t tell what it is. Not ruling out that we could be salvaging the blitzball stadium though that seems unlikely.
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Salvage Ship
-More Al Bhed, but I hear the word “airship.” Is that what was down there? A crashed airship?
-So Tidus did his first mission, but is nowhere near “one of the crew.” Everyone heads into the ship, leaving Tidus on deck.
-Mystery Woman brings him some food (poor guy was really hungry). He scarfs it down, but it seems to be super spicy. He nearly chokes before she gives him some water. Oh – I was wrong, it was just that he ate too fast.
-She’s Rikku.
-Tidus is acting a bit wild. Overjoyed to have someone to talk to. She is open, but treats him a bit cautiously, like he’s an energetic dog that may want to play or bite.
-Everyone before thought that Tidus was a “fiend.” Hm. Possessed? A monster? Plague-carrier? Not sure.
-Rikku describes her and her crew as Al Bhed. Not just a name for the language then.
-The game really doesn’t need to stay zoomed in on Rikku’s butt. It doesn’t. Just saying.
-She wonders whether he’s an “Al Bhed-hater.” So Al Bhed are a race or nation or something, but clearly not the only one in whatever world/time this is.
-He says he’s from Zanarkand, a blitzball player, and she’s.. concerned. Is that a name she’s never heard of? Or something from the past?
-Ok, so Tidus tells Rikku everything. She replies: “So you were near Sin! Don’t worry, you’ll be better in no time.”
She clearly knows Sin. Again, I’m leaning towards this being like Tidus waking up in the World of Ruin and telling someone that the last thing he remembers was being around Kefka.
-Maybe not. I dunno. She definitely talks about Sin like he’s a presence in the current world. Sin has a toxin that messes with the heads of people nearby.
-Oop, yeah, one of my earlier guesses was right.
RIKKU: “There is no Zanarkand anymore. Sin destroyed it a thousand years ago.”
-Tidus is suitably floored by this. I’m proud to say that for one of the first times in history, I was… sort of prepared!
-She says he should go to Luca because of blitzball. I guess it’s a sport that endured the test of time. She’ll get him there.
-Another piece of advice from Rikku: don’t tell anyone he’s from Zanarkand. Yevon (one of the crew I guess) says it’s a holy place, and it might upset someone. Interesting.
-Rikku leaves Tidus alone to tell the others the new course to Luca. He kicks the ship in frustration.
-????CFRAP??? SOMETHING FROM THE SEA
-CRAPCRAPCRAP
-SIN’S COMING
-We still don’t see Sin itself, but a cascade of water rocketing up. It knocks the ship around, and throws Tidus into a whirlpool. Fade to black.
-Are we about to deal with some Chrono Trigger time-warping stuff, where we have to warn people in the past or investigate stuff in the past and see how it shapes the future?
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Next time: Besaid. I'll be away the near the end of this week - no post tomorrow, and last post of the week on Thursday.
