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Episode 2 – Lake Bresha Ruins 005 AF
-Atlas is active, and very much visible. As he popped into view, a device appeared too. Maybe a way to stop him.
-So do I fight him head-on or use the device? Fighting him head-on seems like a bad idea, so I go to the machine.
What’s Mog’s opinion? Do he think I should go for the device or for Atlas?
MOG: “Um… I think… I like Serah more than I like Noel, kupo!” …thanks buddy. Very helpful.
-Reached the Cie’th for my fragment side mission. I was hunting. Only got 3 stars, but not too bad.
-Afterwards, Serah asks Noel if Atlas is used in some future war. Noel is unsure. His memories are messed up. A common side effect of time travel I bet.
-He remembers a war hundreds of years before his birth, when Cocoon crashed into pulse Pulse during a war. That must be from XIII.
-Oh, no. This is separate from the Day of Ragnarok. This must be some future time when Cocoon finishes crashing, no longer held up by a pillar.
-these adornments lol. I just found an Orange Newsboy Cap to give to my Cait Sith.
-Reached the device and we get sucked into some weird dimension. “The Void Beyond.”
MOG: “It’s a time labyrinth, kupo!” We’re inside a paradox.
-This zone is an escape puzzle. I have to collect different things without covering the same ground twice.
-It’s simple but fun! I have no doubt they’ll get harder.
-That gets us out of the anomaly, and back to the machine. What will it do?
-Outside, Atlas changes somehow. He becomes opaque. Did that teleport him to this spacetime?
-Alyssa radios in, says Atlas is slowing down.
-Serah’s Crystarium expanded again. Do I unlock medic or increase her ATB gauge? Gah, this is tricky… I’ll go with ATB. I think I have a solid enough defensive set-up for now that I think I should be okay without a second medic.
-Ooh, I even expanded Cait Sith’s crystarium. MED bonus boost or ATB gauge? I’ll go bonus boost.
(While there’s probably an optimal set of choices to make on crystarium expansion, I really, really hope there’s no single choice I can make that really screws me up.)
-That increased Cait Sith’s grade to 2/5 stars (or rather, 2/5 monster faces).
-Just noticed that using the machine to slow down Atlas gave me a new fragment.
-I reach Atlas outside here. Battle time. He’s starts with almost no HP. At full health, this guy must be like a final boss.
-Cinematic action after getting his HP down. A series of actions where I get Serah and Noel team up to scale him, find his weak spot, and smash it. A glowy thing on top of his head.
This is straight out of “Shadow of the Colossus.”
-Perfect cinematic action woohoo!
-The paradox begins to dissipate. Time reverses, and the ruins of this zone pick back up. Destroyed pillars reform.
-Noel’s theory is that someone specifically is screwing with timelines.
Live trigger:
1) Could it be a freak accident? Lol. If there’s a wrong answer, this is it.
2) Is that why Lightning disappeared?
3) Is that why Cocoon is gone in the future?
4) Who would do something like that?
#2-4 seem like reasonable options. But Cocoon could be gone in the future for reasons unrelated to the time screwing (however unlikely that is), so I go with #2.
-Discovered the Atlas fragment. “Academy scientists hypothesize that the machine was built to combat large-scale fal’Cie, but stress that their research is still in the early stages.”
VERY interesting! From a war, but not necessarily a human v. human war.
-There’s an area I can’t seem to reach. IGonna try approaching it from a different angle, since I think I might be able to reach it now from the Atlas controller room.
-WHAT THE FRESH HELL?? A SVAROG ATTACKS ME, WAY HIGHER LEVEL
-Survived. At least this isn’t like FFII, where I can accidentally stumble into an area like 30 levels higher.
-Chocolina’s voice actress is killing it.
-I arrive at an overgrown little graveyard, an area that was “guarded” by Atlas. Tehre’s an epitaph on one of the stones.
“Here lie the innocent victims of chance, cast out and cast down. May their souls find the path that leads them home.”
Wow. That hits you. This must be a grave of the Purged.
-Alyssa rushes up, catches up to us. This area has real power to her.
“I thought I might be... but that’s not my name.” Did she think her family was buried here?
-Alyssa was visiting a friend in Bodhum when the Purge began. She became a fugitive, and her refuge’s ceiling collapsed one day. She’s clearly suffering from PTSD flashbacks to the day it collapsed.
“The next thing I know, I rise out of my body and I’m standing before this grave.”
Wait, she didn’t think this was her family’s grave. She feared it was her OWN grave.
“I was starting to think I did die back then, and the life I’m living now is an illusion!”
She did. Jesus, this poor woman.
Yet again, her voice actress is PHENOMENAL. Really sells this sense of raw and exhausting panic.
ALYSSA: “Even if they all forget, I never will.”
SERAH: “And neither will I.”
A common theme in XIII-2. The effort to move on, and impossibility of doing so at times.
-Serah feels partly responsible for all this. But she shouldn’t! This is all the fal’Cie’s fault, and 0% hers and Lightning’s.
-Night changes to day. We’re ready to move on. Just need to find an artefact, which is possible with the paradox effect cleaned up.
CHOCOLINA: “Howdy, time-buddies! Here to help a choco-girl out by spending some gil?”
Have I said I love chocolina cause I love chocolina
-A random dude named Jed wants us to find a Silver Petal for his niece. It blooms here only in winter. I do a full check around to see if there’s a paradox where it’s here, but no luck. Must be in a future time.
-Another mission, Ars Symphonica. A student named Cordelia can’t get into her desk drawer for her notes.
This ended up being a pretty quick/easy one. Turns out that her desk was out of phase, not broken. I found her notes from the future, something about Augusta Towers.
-Yeah, the Silver Petal has gotta be in some future time. Can’t find any paradox with it anywhere.
-Another fragment sidequest, Vita Lyrica. A guard named Morris found someone with his same ID accessing Academy security. That’s gotta be his future self.
-There are a lot of parts of this zone that are currently inaccessible. I tried every way I could think of to reach them, but no luck. Those must unlock later.
-About ready to wrap up for now. Crystarium just expanded again. I go for a RAV bonus boost on Serah and a COM bonus boost on Noel.
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Next time: into the next gate.
