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Historia Crux
-I head back to Bresha Ruins to use my Reunion Artefact on the next gate. This is the flan one.
-More visions for Serah as we enter. But Serah is weird about it. “It’s nothing, just staring into space!” Why deny having visions?
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Episode 3, Part 2: Oathbrand - Sunleth Waterscape – 300 AF
-Good to be back here. I love this place.
-This is concurrent with the version I saw of Augusta Tower.
“Each reunion is a twist of the knife… a fear that soon the time will come when you must bid farewell again.” Who will we be reunited with this time? Sazh? Snow?
-We arrive to the strange scene of flans teleporting in.
NOEL: “So this is what the end of the world looks like.”
-A voice blasts into Serah’s head: “The daughters of the sundered cocoon are sacrificed to beasts that warp time itself. The pillar crumbles to ashen sand and down to earth the cocoon does fall.”
The game does not capitalize “cocoon” here. It makes me wonder again: if Cocoon is a real cocoon, what is it protecting?
Maybe this refers to Fang and Vanille, and we have to preserve their sacrifice.
-She then sees a brief vision of Snow fighting a titanic flan.
-Serah runs off, leaving a solo party of just Noel. He wonders if she has the same power as Yeul.
A very good question. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe something of the seeress’ power seeped over to her back when time shenanigans started at the end of XIII.
-The flan itself is nearby, and it’s unusually disturbing for a normally comic monster. It’s overgrown, has large vegetation growing from it. There’s also the head of a smaller flan growing from its stomach.
-Hi Snow! Serah saved him temporarily.
-Boss fight. Snow is with us, but as an uncontrollable guest character. I still keep my monster paradigm.
-Very interesting music. Electronic rock of some kind, with a singer reminding me vaguely of Marilyn Manson. (That’s a good thing imo.)
-Ewww, the boss is even grosser than I imagined. It’s got a lot of little heads growing at its base.
-Cinematic action to finish things off. Perfect! Before I start these cinematic actions, I always have to remind myself verbally which buttons are A/B and X/Y. Hard to get the SNES controller out of my muscle memory, which is opposite these X-Box controller configurations.
-Got a Crystal Heart as a cinematic bonus.
-The monster is reforming. We just stunned it. The little flans are already re-congealing.
-oh my god, snow is trying to get into a pissing contest with noel. My least favorite part of Snow. Noel warns him to back down from the monster, and he’s all “No, I gotta make a stand! Some of us are tougher than others!”
*eyes roll into 900 AF*
-So what’s Snow’s story? How’d he end up here?
-Lightning appeared in Snow’s dreams! She told him to protect Cocoon. He’s been time-traveling like us to explore, and “the giant jelly bean back there” (lolol) is the thing that eventually knocks Cocoon down.
This still doesn’t explain how he got time-travel powers.
-Noel heard stories that Cocoon was brought down by war. Interesting. Multiple causes?
-The flan is melting the pillar holding up Cocoon, bit by bit. People feel the tremors, start to panic, and war breaks out. The flan is still the root cause.
-We gotta save Cocoon, but more importantly, we gotta save Vanille and Fang. I don’t know if they’re conscious in some way, but it doesn’t matter. PROTECT VANILLE AND FANG. At all costs.
-This definitely smells like it’s caused by a paradox. Specifically, that so many flans are warping here from out of nowhere. Let’s find an artefact and the next gate.
SERAH, to LIGHTNING: “Noel’s still as hotheaded as when I met him. It makes me so mad!” DUMP HIS ASS, #TeamNoel! (I’m mostly kidding. Like, 60%.)
-The datalog on Snow tells me one major new tidbit: “His arm still shows the glowing brand of servitude. It appears the irrepressible hero encountered more than just Time Gates during his journey to find Lightning.”
He’s a l’Cie again? Which fal’Cie impressed him into service, and with what focus?
-There’s a conga line of flan moving in a single direction. Hopefully they can lead us to the artefact.
Wheee! Vine-swinging.
-We find the artefact. It’s crystal, like Serah’s crystal tear.
SERAH: “[Being turned into crystal] was the loneliest, scariest moment of my life.” I always wondered what that was like for her. Whether it was like going to sleep, or a moment of peace, or terror.
It sounds comparable to getting anesthetized before a surgery you don’t think you’ll survive.
-She dreamed while in crystal. “Good dreams. Dreams about turning back to normal. Being with my friends again.” At least there’s that. I was at least a bit afraid she’d remain conscious while crystallized, one of the more terrifying things I can imagine.
-Snow hopes Fang and Vanille are dreaming now too. “I hope they’re happy in there.” This is the part of Snow I like best, the version of him centered on his friends over his own self-image.
-Noel relates how in the future, the “daughters of the goddess” saved Cocoon. I like that Fang and Vanille have that sort of legacy.
-Something about my actions gave me a Blue Flower adornment. I hope my Spiceacilian is happy with it because it’s never leaving him.
-Noel doesn’t like Snow. “I just don’t like his type. He goes around telling people he’ll protect them… who is he to act all in charge?”
*cough #TeamNoel cough*
-Found one of those giant woolly Sunleth Waterscape bosses.
NOEL: “No way we can take that. We have to turn back.”
SNOW, heedlessly endangering his loved one without reason: “HEY FURBALL! OVER HERE!”
-Ohhhh! He doesn’t want to fight it. He wants it to give us a ride through the valley and JUMPS ABOARD
-mother of god, it actually worked. The monster roars in what appears to be delight.
-There are a bunch of treasure spheres just out of reach. Snow proposes THROWING Mog.
Lololol THIS IS A NEW MECHANIC! “Moogle Throw.” I vaguely remember that term from the controller map.
-What tickles me most about this is that the game says “The bonds of trust between you and your winged companion” have enabled me to toss him. But right before this window came up, Mog was begging me not to do so, begging me to save him from Snow’s throws.
I guess now that we have his trust, the first order of business is to abuse it.
-So this is a way to toss Mog at distant treasure spheres… OH HEY, this is probably how I access that one treasure sphere in Bresha Ruins!
-There’s risk though. If I throw Mog and enemies appear, the Mog Clock ticks very quickly.
“Once the moogle has been launched…” what a sentence. This is the best mechanic ever.
-This makes me legit uncomfortable with how much unhappy mog seems to be here. At least the game tells me to give him a hug afterwards in thanks. Mog likes hugs.
-We explore a bit more and find another artefact.
-The two artefacts we’ve found here are a Thundering Artefact and a Combat Artefact. The Thundering is “cool to the touch.” Not sure where that’ll lead.
The Combat is “a sinster artefact to which the faint tang of blood still clings.” Maybe that’ll take us to the war caused by the imminent crash of Cocoon.
-Three objectives: check out the two gates and kill the flan. Going for the flan first.
-Mog is freaking out. His pom is glowing, and I can’t figure out why. [Non-rhetorical question: does he do this when there’s a treasure sphere I can throw him to?]
-I reach the Flan. Serah says we can’t do this right now, but I have the option at least to fight. This feels very Chrono Trigger-esque, with the option to deal with Lavos even when we probably shouldn’t.
“His Royal Ripeness” omg ffxiii2.
-I expect to get destroyed quickly without weakening him in another time, but I’ll check it out.
-His Royal Ripeness obliterates me. No real chance. I’ll come back later.
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Next time: through one of the gates.
