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Academia – 400 AF
-I use the Tower Artefact on this gate.
-Noel recounts the Law of the Farseers. Farseers aren’t allowed to use their power to save themselves, as doing so would apparently doom thousands. That’s why Yeul sacrificed herself.
-Serah is feeling a classic time traveler despair. That thing where you face how difficult changing history really is. (My favorite instance of this is in Stephen King’s 11/22/63.)
-OH SHIT! Last time, Yeul said “Caius isn’t in the city” as she died. I assumed that meant that Caius left right before she died, but Serah here brings up the possibility that Caius maybe was NEVER in Academia.
If so, who was that disguised as Noel, leading us on a merry chase?
-This gate opens the way to Augusta Tower, 200 AF. It’s 100 years before our last visit to Augusta Tower, where we faced off against the hacked and hostile supercomputer.
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Augusta Tower – 200 AF
(I’m skipping the intro scroll this time. Just too spoilery for stuff the game eventually tells me about more naturally as I explore the new zone.)
-Why did Yeul want us to come here?
-Caius kept talking about forbidden history, how Noel was entombed in this tower as a consequence of learning said history. Let’s see.
-The computer immediately senses the paradox and locks the place down. At least in our trapped room we can still use the Academy Datanet.
-In 13 AF, Hope began the proto fal’Cie development project to re-levitate Cocoon. Alyssa proposed and designed the project.
SERAH: “Vanille and Fang… he did it all for them.” And then Caius hijacked the proto fal’Cie.
-A voice blares out above all: “…one.” I’ll watch these. It’s a code of some sort, like in 300 AF.
-The music here… is it new, or was it from the last Augusta Tower in 300 AF? It feels brighter.
-OK CREEPY. There are people all around here,. But they don’t react to us.
SERAH: “It’s like they have no presence. Like they’re not alive.” Ghosts? Projections? My guess is that they’re out a phase, from a different time.
-The next computer asks me for the password to temporarily unlock the lockdown. My listening pays off! It was the code the computer slowly read out. I love mechanics that rewards attention.
-The computer shows a recording of us in a different era. Caius has been watching.
-Noel is now all but certain the guy we just saw isn’t the real Caius. “We used to spend a lot of time together. We were both guardians. Warriors charged with protecting the Seeress.” !!!!!!
-Caius took off one day. That sounds like a grave sin for a Guardian.
-A portal then opened, and suddenly Noel was in Valhalla. The start of the game.
-Wait, I’m confused. I thought Noel grew up in an empty and dying time at the end of the universe while Yeul was in a much earlier time. Hm.
-Noel knows Caius would never let Yeul come to harm. This Caius sacrifices her repeatedly.
I’m not so sure about this. If he respects Yeul, Caius may will let her come to harm if it’s to fulfill her wishes and achieve her goals.
-Some of Noel’s memories are still missing. He doesn’t remember the past well enough.
-THERE HE IS! We see Caius (or fake!Caius) walking in the distance. Let’s follow.
-Found a Train Conductor Beret adornment. It’s like no train conductor hat I’ve ever seen.
Maybe it’s something worn specifically by conductors in Japan?
-We need a special August Tower Access Key 50 to solve a paradox blocking our way. Woohoo! I already got that back from Augusta Tower 300 AF.
-WHOA THAT’S ALYSSA! She’s teleporting around silently. Wtf is going on with these almost-people?
???: “Nice to meet you.” She looks EXACTLY like Alyssa, but she talks differently and doesn’t know us.
“Ah, my apologies. I must recalibrate my previous greeting. It appears you are acquainted with The Original.” UHHHHH
-She’s a “living machine.” Caius must be too. All the other workers here are like that too.
-Hm. The datalog says that duplicates cease to exist when disconnected from the tower network. Did the Caius we met just get great roaming data? Seems more likely he’s not just a duplicate.
-A fragment mission wants me to clear a paradox from the AI’s system.
-Alyssa’s Duplicate saw Caius come through here with Yeul recently. They went to the top of the tower.
-That’s… not great. Maybe this is when Caius entombed us here.
-Alyssa teleports us to the top floor.
-Things go haywire on the ride up. We’re bombarded with images of chaos. [Later edit: I didn’t recognize him at the time, but now I know this was a recording of robots killing Hope.] Guardian robots attack us too.
ALYSSA’S DUPLICATE: “This was an effect of the paradox. You just witnessed an event that took place 187 years ago.” 13 AF. We saw the real Hope and Alyssa murdered after the tower was completed. The AI killed them, “because they were in the way.”
Skynet is hostile. The AI took over the Academy early in its life.
NOEL: “A broken fal’Cie was created by a broken artificial intelligence. Humans were betrayed and then they were wiped out.”
The duplicates were created to hide what happened.
THIS IS THE FORBIDDEN HISTORY. And Alyssa’s Duplicate goes into full “now you know too much” mode, locking us on the elevator and attacking.
-Caius was confused by our presence. He said we learned the forbidden history, were entombed in the tower, and then essentially died. The paradox was our coming back to life elsewhere.
So… what’s next? Death? And if not, do WE cause the paradox that fucks up history, like Caius said?
-At least this makes Caius’s actions and thoughts make sense.
-HOLY CRAP I USED MY ULTIMA ARROW AND IT LOOKS AWESOME!!
[Non-rhetorical question: it says “chain bonus effects vary by situation.” What does that mean for this and for Noel’s commando ultimate? I know that language was present with XIII ultimate abilities, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it meant.]
-Worked my way through a long chain of light-puzzles (turning rooms around to connect different platforms) and got the key to get the elevator moving again.
-History time from the computer! 10 years into the Proto fal’Cie Project, the AI and human scientists disagreed. The AI wanted to give the proto fal’Cie dangerous combat functions. The humans disagreed.
“In 13 AF, the project director, Hope Estheim, was assassinated and the debate died with him. The Proto fal’Cie was eventually created with the fully functional ability to change humans into l’Cie or Cie’th.”
That’s so fucked up.
-Back to the central elevator (working again) and up to Floor 52 we go.
-So is Caius behind the proto fal’Cie? Noel thinks not. My current theory is that it’s the Goddess Etro somehow.
-Right. I keep forgetting – Noel knows Caius as a guardian, and this “Caius” is going against all of that by messing with history.
-And there’s ANOTHER reason he believes in Caius, but Noel can’t quite remember.
-OK NEW THEORY. I think NOEL HIMESLF is somehow behind this, and buried his memories to serve as the PERFECT MOLE.
I’m not even kidding on this. I recently re-watched a favorite visual novel where this was a thing.
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Next time: continuing to floor 52 of Augusta Tower 200 AF.
