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Augusta Tower – 200 AF
-Continuing in pursuit of Caius on the 52nd floor.
-The sheer quantity of random and often unavoidable encounters (when they spawn right on top of me) makes this feel like an older school model of FF, for better and for worse. I can often run away when I don’t feel like fighting, but not here. The corridors are too narrow.
-Datalog: “The highest floor of Augusta Tower [as of 200 AF] is the site of a gate that behaves differently from a standard time portal, instead leading to a virtual space within the AI mainframe.”
Sounds like we’re going INSIDE THE COMPUTER. *zoolander.gif* To the top floor!
-Yeul is here. This is one we met in Oerba, who trusts us.
“There is no more need to record the prophecies. I have Caius now. The Seeress possesses the Eyes of Etro, and inside Caius beats the Heart of Chaos. The goddess has gifted him the curse of eternity.”
He’s tasked with remembering the Seeress’ visions, and apparently he can’t die now. But why? What’s the goddess’ intent?
-Serah asks a great question. If Yeul’s all about protecting history, why help us when we’re trying to change it?
YEUL: “History has already been broken.” The timeline was twisted before us, when someone screwed up the ending to XIII. We’re here to correct things.
“Someone who was meant to survive did not come home.” She must mean Lightning.
-She even confirms our enemy is the sentient machine in this tower.
The Caius we saw in this tower is real. The Caius who was leading us through Academia was a machine duplicate. This is gonna get confusing lol.
-As we leave, Yeul gets a vision of a happy future with everyone smiling. And promptly dies.
-Caius picks up her body, shedding tears over it.
“I shall remember your pain. It will be carved in my heart. Together with the memories of every other Yeul cursed to die along the way.”
Jesus, poor Caius. Eternity is the worst curse I can imagine.
-We arrive in a brighter scape. A computer grid.
-OH SHIT IT’S THE PROTO FAL’CIE ADAM, IMMEDIATE BOSS FIGHT I’M NOT READY FOR
-This phase goes down pretty quickly. I use Ultima Arrow when it staggers for huge damage/chain build.
-Adam used this nexus area to infiltrate the AI and time travel… this is some majorly paradoxical shit. The Proto fal’Cie basically manipulated its own creation.
AND THAT’S WHY THE PROTO FAL’CIE IS TRYING TO PROTECT ALL THESE PARADOXES ACROSS TIME AND SPACE! Those paradoxes sustain its existence. This is starting to come together.
-The worst part about this is that as long as the proto fal’Cie exists, it can keep going back in time and rebuilding itself. Even now, it respawns in front of us.
(Shades of Alexander in FFXIV.)
-Took down its tougher second phase, and finished with a perfect cinematic action. Woohoo!
-But it keeps rebuilding. Continuing to fight feels like a fool’s errand.
LOLOL THESE LIVE TRIGGER OPTIONS:
1) Throw Mog.
2) Lure out the original.
3) Keep fighting until it disappears.
4) Scream at Hope.
I BADLY want to pick “Throw Mog,” but I’m 99% sure “Lure out the original” is right.
-Serah has a new thought. What if it isn’t repairing itself over and over, but rather summoning copies of itself? The original hasn’t come out.
NOEL: “We just have to keep taking out copies until only the original fal’Cie is left.” That… that sounds like a terrible idea! What if it has 10 copies? 150 copies? 2,000,000 copies?
-Next phase down… Oh, I picked the wrong option and the extra phase was the penalty.
-PLEASE tell me that “Throw Mog” turns out to be the right choice, cause I’m picking it next.
NOEL: “It must have a core it regenerates from. If we can attack that directly…” YES CHUCK THE MOOGLE!
-It doesn’t work AT ALL LOLOL. Mog just kind of bounces off Adam’s torso, panics, and runs back to us. Another iteration, another phase of the fight.
-I guess I’ll go with “Scream at Hope” as the next option. It seems better than “keep fighting until it disappears” – especially since if I’m wrong, I’ll keep fighting naturally.
-Serah theorizes that if Proto Adam can manipulate the past, so can we. “Hope, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. These machines you built are driving me [wild]!”
She lunges at the proto Adam and it disappears.
-Wait. No way this worked. No way.
Did Hope literally hear this across spacetime and decide to not build the proto fal’Cie? If that’s the case, I call bullshit, but I have a feeling there’s more going on.
NOEL: “You did it, Serah!”
SERAH: “But I didn’t do anything.” RIGHT??
-The whole place goes dark. And then Serah gets the same Seeress vision eyes that we saw from Yeul. She must be have inherited her powers somehow.
-She sees a vision of Caius striking her down.
-Got the proto fal’Cie Adam fragment. It certainly looks like we defeated it.
-The next gate is available. Serah certainly thinks this is over, that we’re returning to a happier future. No chance that’s true.
-But first, let me backtrack. There’s a fragment I must’ve missed on an earlier floor.
-Huh. I went to the 49th floor and it’s undiscovered. I could’ve sworn I’d been here, but it’s unexplored on the map.
-Found another gate down here that uses a Wild Artefact, which I now have. I’ll try this before moving on to the main gate at the top.
-Took a while but found the fragment and cleared the paradox. New lore entry, from “The A.Z. Files.” Must be Alyssa’s journal. It documents her excitement at being invited to join Hope’s research team.
-Another paradox appears, the Enigma Codex. This next paradox is even easier to find and neutralize, thanks to each floor’s color coding.
-The reward is more Alyssa journaling, how there’s only one true timeline and multiple possibilities don’t exist.
“I wonder what happens to the other possibilities, the ones that aren’t chosen. And in which of those worlds will I end up?”
That last sentence confuses me. Was she thinking of traveling to other possible realities?
-Last fragment mission in the area, “Difference Engine.”
*a long amount of wandering and searching later*
-oh my god I hate the random encounters right now when backtracking to search for hidden boxes. I’ll get to an area that looks like the one in the fragment mission picture, start scanning, and three seconds later an enemy appears.
It makes this both boring and enraging. [Later edit: I’m not even sure why this part made me so salty, but it did.]
-This is one of the very few times when I just looked up the answer to an FF puzzle. I immediately regret it – I should have just given up, and normally would, but I felt unusually hostile. [Later edit: I’m sure this is mostly just about my mood at the time and not the game’s fault.]
-The place I looked it up on told me it was on floor 49, and even knowing that it took me a while to find the fragment. It was way below the level in a hard-to-mog-toss spot.
-The reward is Access Key 13, granting access to “a certain area in Augusta Tower.” Idk where, since I didn’t see anywhere especially blocked off.
-The next Alyssa journal: “I still don’t know if it was me or my friend who died that day.” I’d forgotten about this. Will she die when the paradoxes resolve? So messed up and tragic.
-So I checked around and can’t find any access point to the 13th floor though I do see it as the remaining undiscovered part of my map. I’ll check later. [Later edit: I only now remembered that there was that other version of Augusta Tower to check out, where I’ll probably go next time.]
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Next time: using the wild artefact on the gate on the 49th floor.
