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auronlu"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." ~ Aleksandr Pushkin
In the most recent two episodes, Cloud has given Sephiroth the Black Materia, punched Aeris while possessed, nearly cut her in two while possessed, and stood there like a man frozen in corbomite while Sephiroth performed Death From Above.
Let's pause for a moment to celebrate the hoary Final Fantasy tradition of playing into enemy hands.
But now that we've handed Sephiroth the Black Materia on a platter and let Aeris die, there's no way we could screw up anything else, is there? I mean, it's not like we could give him the Black Materia again, right? Ahahaha.
Well then. While Cloud was angsting over Aeris' bloodless body, Sephiroth idly mentioned his upcoming journey to the Northern Crater. Naturally, we must accept this veiled invitation.
A path leads northeast from the Forgotten City. Here I bounce up and down a spiffy spiral staircase trying to get enough screencaps to stitch together a pretty photo mosaic, somewhat hampered by the high density of random monsters inhabiting this desolate canyon.
Ta-da:
We waste another ten minutes finding the invisible pixels leading into the cliff wall behind it. Through the caves and over a snowy continent populated by wolves and killer rabbits (what?), we come to the remote village of Icicle.
Where, amazingly, the surfing contingent from Costa del Sol has managed to bypass all the obstacles we just spent the last several days traversing. They're here to get in a little skiing.
I find it amusing that Rufus traveled all the way to Rocket Town to commandeer Cid's wee airplane to cross the ocean, when he could've just booked passage with these folks. Fridge logic: Aeris must've done exactly that, in exchange for guiding them through the Sleeping Forest which can't be entered without Ancient blood or a unique artifact currently residing in our Bag of Holding.
The house that Cloud's examining in the second-to-last screencap is chock-full of backstory. Untouched for the past 22 years, it was once the home of Professor Gast, former head of Shinra's science department who discovered Jenova in an archaeological dig, and Ifalna, Aeris' birth-mother. Someone was kind enough to keep paying for the house's utilities so that we can play Dr. Gast's home movies.
The first two recordings are Ifalna spouting backstory about Jenova and about a Disc Two Boss whom we'll be meeting shortly.
I'm a little confused about some details, but here's the gist.
The Original Crisis began 2000 years ago when the "calamity from the sky" fell and blasted a huge crater near the oddly-named "Knowlespole," a northern Cetra settlement occupied by current-day Icicle. (Not explained: why Ifalna was their last descendent, living in a human settlement on the same spot 2000 years later).
While the Cetra/Ancients were trying to help the Planet heal its wound, a stranger appeared in their midst. Having not read Tolkien, they fell for Jenova's... rather spooky gifts?
"Here, let me show you your dead Mom. I'm sure that'll make you want to take me into your community." "Oh, yes, thank you! Welcome to our humble village!"
Um.
This embarrassing episode may explain why Ifalna never rakes Gast over the coals for misidentifying Jenova as an Ancient. Her own ancestors were just as clueless.
(Note: pronouns for Jenova are rather fluid. I'm not sure whether this "he" is a translation glitch.)
The Jenova virus drove the Ancients mad and turned them into monsters, much like the humans Sephiroth saw incubating in the Nibelheim reactor.
Jenova spread its virus across the planet, wiping out most of the Cetra. Finally, the Planet decided the only thing for it was to pull a Weapon of Mass Extinction out of some orifice and start over. Creatively, this weapon was called Weapon.
Before Weapon could start exterminating, the few surviving Cetra managed to trap Jenova in a deep, dark hole, waiting to be excavated by Gast 2000 years later. With its target neutralized, Weapon shrugged and went to sleep.
Professor Gast's "Confidential" home movie reveals that, surprise surprise, he is Aeris' father. What is it with Shinra scientists sleeping with lab assistants and test subjects? About the time they've settled on the baby's name, Hojo shows up on their doorstep like Rumplestiltskin to collect.
Ifalna offers to give herself up in exchange for letting Aeris and Gast go free. Hojo, of course, thinks this is a silly idea when he can have his guards kill off Gast and get two Ancients for the price of one ex-boss. (Not shown: Gast's death or Aeris' baby model, thanks to a guard shooting the camera).
Well, that's depressing.
The rest of the town offers little of note beyond a garishly-colored snowboard provided by a helpful kid. Before we can try it out (in the time-honored Final Fantasy tradition of one vehicle for multiple characters), Elena shows up and berates Cloud for "doing in" her boss, Tseng, last seen sporting a large sword-wound at the Temple of the Ancients.
Elena won't believe Cloud's claim that Sephiroth was the perp.
(Note: "doing in" was changed to "messing up" Tseng in the 2012 PC port of this game, which is either a better translation or a retcon. Tseng is alive in Advent Children, but then, Rufus is alive in AC, albeit somewhat the worse for wear. AC Extended lampshades this: Rude tells Reno not to worry about Tseng's latest scrape, since both he and Rufus have nine lives.)
I'm so busy trading dialog boxes with Elena that I fail to notice the "press a key to dodge" instruction, so she punches Cloud in the solar plexus. He comes to in Ifalna's house — just in case we missed Gast's home movies — but it isn't even locked.
So, we are now free to head to the Northern Crater, via...
...snowboarding!
Wandering around a mountain maze of snowy landscapes!
Sightseeing!
Climbing wind-blown cliffs while fighting hypothermia!
Exploring icy trails with huge drop-offs!
Spelunking frozen caves and fighting giant icicles!
Bumping into a Black-Caped Dude knocked offscreen so fast by a random dragon boss that I fail to screencap him (or it)!
More mountain climbing without proper equipment!
After a couple hours of gameplay (yes, I'm slow), we come to the lip of the Northern Crater and a scenic FMV overlook.
Ooo, aaaah.
It looks like the Planet is still trying to heal the wound in the heart of Northern Crater, two thousand years after impact (which is, after all, a blink of an eye in geological terms). There's raw Mako fountaining from the crater and a storm of whirling winds surrounding it.
We pause halfway down the crater's rim for a spot of exposition.
Cloud, planetary scientist, says yep. He reminds us that Sephiroth is trying to tap that energy to help him summon Meteor, which will make an even bigger wound than this one. In other words: Chicxulub.
A little further down, we find the second of many Black Capes stumbling towards the heart of the crater. It sounds much like all the creepy wobbly Black Cape Dudes we saw back in Nibelheim, still harping on The Great Sephiroth.
This one doesn't even need a boss to mash it; it just falls over. I get the impression these whatever-they-ares aren't very durable, but then, I don't know how they managed to cross the ocean, let alone traverse all those glaciers and cliffs.
As we approach the maelstrom, Tifa halts and tries to force an endgame boss battle with sheer willpower. She says that she's lost a great deal to Sephiroth, and she's ready to rumble.
Translation: If Tifa isn't in your battle party now, swap her in. But of course, I already had her along, because as far as I'm concerned, FF7 is the story of Cloud and Tifa. I've also brought Vincent, since Cloud lured him out of his coffin with promises that we'd confront his tormentor, Dr. Hojo.
Speaking of whom— SCENE CHANGE!
Hey, look, Heidegger's airship is fully operational. Let's hijack it.
Rufus boasts that he's the one who will attain the Promised Land, not his father. "Sorry, old man."
Hojo starts cackling at the back of the bridge, saying that no one can own the Promised Land. Is he going all anti-imperialist on us? Heck no, he's just being an exposition asshole.
(Invisible Reno is invisible. No, really, his model is right there, but someone forgot to turn it on.)
Hojo hopes Sephiroth will put in an appearance. Like so many fictional mad scientists, he doesn't give a damn what the boss-man hired him to do; he's just poking the anthillfor kicks FOR SCIENCE!
Lacking a magically impervious airship, our party must push through the fierce storms surrounding the crater's heart in the old fashioned way, on foot.
Actually, no, we just hit a battle with some wind critters and have to try again. FF7 gravity does not allow PCs to fall from great heights unless there's a church or something to catch them.
Those dark gray blobs in front of Cloud and Vincent are more Black Capes. There's a regular conga line of them on the far side, filing up the rocky slopes.
Reunion is in progress. Reunion of WHAT isn't quite clear yet: I'm thinking Black Rider Peeps. As they wobble along like maggots, a Black Cape will occasionally lose its footing (!) and tumble from sight.
Through another more intense wind barrier, we spot a familiar figure mowing down Black Capes like the no-name npcs they are.
"Sephiroth!" Cloud shouts for the gazillionth time.
"This is the end!" Vincent says. Uh, Vince, it sounds more impressive when you're not parroting the villain.
"You're right," Sephiroth says. "This is the end of this body's usefulness." The lighting turns dark purplish-red, never a good sign, and the figure of Sephiroth morphs into a taller Black-Caped figure, then vanishes in a puff of purple smoke. WTF? Someone should've left the crack back in the Gold Saucer along with those inedible pillow-mints.
The smoke continues to pulse upwards in time to an audible heartbeat to add to the weirdness. Cloud gets an earful from the other Black Capes (?) speaking into his mind.
"Our...?" Cloud wonders aloud.
"Those who carry Jenova's cells," Mysterious Voice answers.
"Master...?!" Cloud says.
"Of course... Sephiroth. Heh, heh, heh..."
The heartbeat sound quickens. Sephiroth appears from above and behind us, hurtling down like a comet, sword raised in the same gesture that took out Aeris. But he's late for an appointment, so he just knocks everyone down and brushes past them.
"Just passing through... oh yeah, and have another Jenova Boss to play with. With the Jenova boss music, in case you were missing the awesome."
Sephiroth, is that any way to treat your Mom, foisting her off on strangers all the time?
Oh, well. I wanted to show off one of Vincent'soverdrives Limit Breaks, anyhoo.
BEHOLD VINCENT THE MINI FFX BEHEMOTH! He's purple and magenta, and shoots fireballs.
He's so cute and cuddly.
Too bad two of Vinnie's four overdrive forms are "Frankenstein's Monster" and "Jason sans hockey mask." Yawn. I hope I can grind enough to see his final form. Oh, dear, I think I'm becoming Hojo.
"Jenova's cells," Cloud says, picking up the Cryptic BS baton that Sephiroth dropped along with Jenova and the Black Materia. (He dropped that? Why?) "...hmm. So that's what it's all about. The Jenova Reunion."
No, it was a plot device wearing a Sephiroth suit. Or possibly Jenova shapeshifting. Or Sephiroth remote-controlling one of his own clones. Or a space whale with long silver hair. Or, most likely, all of the above.
At any rate, Cloud insists the real, honest-to-gosh Sephiroth is here, too, exuding malevolence "from deep within the planet's wound."
Tifa, who still has a few wits about her, stops Cloud from sticking the Black Materia in his pocket.
Cait Sith is so contrite that he refuses to take it.
Then again, his own dead body is crushed inside it, unless Cait Mark One did not in fact die and is trapped inside the miniaturized Temple of the Ancients forever, trying to solve his way out of Rubik's Tesseract.
I choose Barret as the guardian. The other option is Nanaki, but I figure Nanaki is less likely to jump on Barret than the reverse if anything goes wrong.
We have to pass one last wind barrier — or rather, bang our heads against it repeatedly like my great-aunt's deranged dachshund — fighting random battles until we find a gap and push through.
On the far side, we run smack dab into the White Screen of Mind Screw.
You could say that again. Welcome to...
... your past.
"Why...is it an illusion?" Vincent says. Aww, Vinnie, I brought you along in case we encounter Hojo. It slipped my mind that he killed you here 30 years ago. I can be so forgetful.
Cloud says that it's an illusion created by Sephiroth to confuse us. This is his line and he's sticking to it. He will repeat variants of it at least a dozen times before the end of the Mind Screw.
And it won't help. :(
Remember how I said that Tifa, as a bartender, is the closest thing we've got to a therapist? Well, Sephiroth is the Therapist From Hell. He finds your psychological hangups and makes them worse.
So. The Nibelheim flashback starts to unfold as before, with one crucial difference. (Compare with screencap from Cloud's earlier recollection.)
Well, it looks a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog from this angle, but...um... *sniffle*
...maybe Cloud's dark secret is that, like Tidus, he bleaches?
Tifa senses the oncoming trainwreck and starts shaking her head. "Stop.... Sephiroth." She tells Cloud it's an illusion. He says that he knows it's an illusion, and she doesn't need to worry. Vincent may be wondering if he should stick his fingers in his ears and sing La La La to fit in.
The scene blinks out in a flash of audible static. "What's next?" Cloud wonders.
Oh, you know. The second most iconic event in FF7.
"This is what actually happened five years ago," Cloud says, "but it's probably not me that's going to come out of the Shinra mansion." Oh, really? That is an odd and strangely specific prediction, Mr. Cheesebrain. "He's going to try and show us another stupid illusion."
Apart from a stranger in his place, everything else is exactly like Cloud told us, with Tifa's mentor Zangan calling, "You're still sane, aren't you?" (loaded question) and asking him to help search for survivors.
Tifa, who's kept her composure pretty well until now, starts to fray around the edges.
The truth is hiding here in plain view. Sneaky sneaky game designers.
The screen flashes with another burst of static and a slight POV change. Current-Cloud calls Sephiroth out for screwing up the reboot.
"...That I wasn't in Nibelheim five years ago. That's it, isn't it?"
Cue the Bells of Doomy Doom. There's another white flash of static, and Sephiroth appears. A text box smacks him in the face.
Cloud tells Sephiroth that he's not fooled by this mockumentary; he remembers his pain and anguish. Sephiroth retorts that a puppet cannot feel pain and has no heart. (We'll be taking up that theme again with Vivi in FFIX.)
More speechifying. Sephiroth says that he wants to take Cloud back to hisuke "real self," the one that handed over the Black Materia.
"Hojo would die if he knew." Sephiroth, you lie a lie. Hojo would pretend he meant to do it all along and alter his lab notes.
Cloud wants to know what the heck Hojo has to do with him. Sure, give Sephiroth an opening, why don't you?
Sephiroth is only too happy to pounce. Five years ago, he says, Cloud was "constructed by Hojo, piece by piece, right after Nibelheim burnt." Presumably because Hojo's other lab rats were dead or snoozing in coffins, and he was bored. "A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of the Mako."
That's...a pretty far-fetched story. Why would Hojo do that? Then again, why did he turn Vincent into a goth shapeshifter and stick him in a coffin?
"Cloud, don't listen to him," Tifa urges. "Close your ears! Close your eyes!" She reminds Cloud that they have shared memories and childhoods, so he can't have been created five years ago.
Sephiroth butts in and laughs. "Ha, ha, ha, Tifa."
The game usually focuses on the Cloud-Sephiroth rivalry, but the fact is, Tifa's one of two(?) people to take a sword to Mr. S. I think Sephiroth enjoys tormenting her almost as much as he does Cloud. It's a twisted sign of respect, really — or possibly insecurity.
Sephiroth toys with Tifa a little longer, remarking that she looks like she's not feeling well. Then he vanishes to let his poisonous words sink in.
Cloud admits that he's confused, and his memories are a bit muddled, but still, he'll never believe Sephiroth. Tifa's faith in him is his security blanket.
No pressure, Tifa: Cloud's sanity depends on you.
Tifa doesn't quite know how to respond. She says she needs a little more time.
"Cloud, don't blame Tifa," Sephiroth says, popping in again. Did I say Therapist From Hell? Correction: demolitions expert.
Sephiroth: "Inside of you, Jenova has merged with Tifa's memories, creating you. A boy named Cloud might've just been a part of them."
...
...
MIND SCREW.
Tifa: "Cloud... Please...don't think right now."
Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha. Think, Cloud!"
Sephiroth reminds them of the bloke who snapped a picture of Sephiroth, Cloud(?) and Tifa before they headed to the Nibelheim Reactor. The photographer's body happens to be lying nearby. As is the photo.
Cloud insists that it's another of Sephiroth's lies designed to confuse them.
"Five years ago, I came back to Nibelheim to inspect the reactor. I was sixteen..." Flailing, Cloud launches into a lengthy recitation of everything he remembers from the Nibelheim incident, right down to his rifling Tifa's bedroom. It all hangs together until—
"SOLDIER? When did I enter SOLDIER?
How did I join SOLDIER?
I'm... I'm..."
BOOM.
End of flashback, signaled by Black Screen.
"....Cloud?" Tifa says.
"Tifa, let's go. I'm... I'm all right." But he totally isn't.
And through it all, Vincent looms and watches Hojo's handiwork unfold, practicing for his Silent Protagonist roll in Dirge of Cerberus.
SCENE CHANGE. President Hair Flip, Hojo, and Scarlet have reached the crystalline heart of the Northern Crater.
They look up.
Eh? It looks like it's at least one-third tree roots, but what do I know?
When Rufus calls this Mako motherlode "The Promised Land," Hojo scoffs at the name as an old wives tale. Rufus scoffs right back.
BURN. I almost like this Rufus kid.
Screenshake! For a split second, a green eye is peering at them from the back wall, but it winks out too quick for me to screencap.
"Then it really does exist," Hojo muses. "I didn't believe it." At Rufus' prodding, Hojo explains about Weapon, the Planet's self-defense system.
"You keep a lot of things to yourself," Rufus understates.
Another scene change, this time showing the rest of Cloud's party waiting and worrying about their friends. Barret is suddenly yanked through a wall of dark green, swirly plot device to find...
"Tifa" tells him that Cloud's in trouble. Barret, Mr. Gullible, dashes off to help.
Oh, Barret.
...this isn't going to be pretty.
Back in Mako Central, Scarlet and Rufus are preparing to return to the airship when Cloud and friends materialize in a flash.
President Hair Flip isn't about to take orders, and wants to know what's going on. Maybe Cloud will tell him more than Hojo. Or not...
Reunion? I don't see the rest of the class, do you? Oh, wait, here's somebody...
Cloud claps his hands over his ears and starts shaking his head, staggering towards Barret. This is another one of those distressing possession-sequences in which every button push steps Cloud forward on a path you don't want him to take.
Cloud asks about the Black Materia.
Barret asks if he's okay, but gives him the Black Materia anyway, while Tifa and I scream, "NOOOOOOO!"
I don't understand how Sephiroth (or Jenova?) turned Tifa into Cassandra of Troy. Why can't anyone hear her?
TheLifestream.net notes that Cloud's language changes here from casual to formal Japanese, indicating a personality shift.
Cloud apologizes to Barret and both party members in turn. "Especially you, Tifa. I'm really sorry. I don't know what to say... You've been so good to me. I never lived up to being 'Cloud.'"
AUGH.
Tifa shakes her head and collapses to her knees. For Tifa, this moment is as devastating as witnessing Aeris' death was for Cloud. Cloud's body is still alive, but the person she knows just died in front of her eyes, thanks to Sephiroth's mind screw.
Hojo, of course, is delighted.
He crows that his experiment was a complete success and wants to know Cloud's tattoo number. Cloud says Hojo never gave him one, because Hojo considered him a failed experiment.
DOUBLE AUGH. Cloud, once so proud of being an ex-SOLDIER, reduced to begging for a mere number to call his own? The angst goblet brimmeth over.
Hojo is angry that the most successful member of the "Reunion" turns out to be a failed lab experiment. "Shut up, miserable failure."
Cloud slumps, then rises into the air with another split-second flash of Sephiroth's face in the foreground. Once again, the laws of gravity don't really apply to PCs.
Rufus, taking the weirdness in stride, inquires who Cloud really was.
Hojo: "He's a Sephiroth-clone I created after the real Sephiroth died five years ago. Jenova cells and Mako, with my knowledge and skills, have been combined with science and nature to bring him to life. I'm not mad about the failure part, but the Jenova Reunion theory has now been proven. Blah blah blah blah [lots more exposition that I won't recap]"
Note: "clones" are called "remnants" in more recent FF7 spinoffs; they're not necessarily exact genetic copies, but constructs that incorporate Sephiroth's genetic material.
Meanwhile, Cloud listens passively, stuck to the ceiling like the Hanged Man. He calls to his nemesis when Hojo finally shuts up.
Below, Vincent runs over to Tifa and helps her up. At first I thought he was charging Hojo, but alas no. There just isn't time to deal with his vendetta against Hojo right now (or, for that matter, Barret's beef with Scarlet).
"Sephiroth," Cloud says in his mind. "So we finally meet again."
Dust and Mako begin to rain down. I am vaguely reminded of FFV's Evil Tree villain.
Cloud tumbles head-over-heels in midair as the huge egg of Mako plummets in slow motion.
Poor Tifa.
Oh, here come the Bells of Doomy Doom again. What's in the congealed Mako?
How the heck did he get in there? And exactly what did Hojo mean, that Sephiroth died five years ago? He looks to be in pretty good shape, apart from being starkers.
It's raaaining men... er, sorry.
Hojo is a proud papa. Vincent is still not picking up on the opportunity to confront his nemesis. Grrr.
Rufus is at least a little chagrinned at his company's role in bringing Sephiroth to life and ... doing... whatever was done to Cloud.
Rufus says he wants them to come with him to explain everything. Good idea: Hojo certainly won't. Hesitating, Barret and Tifa call to Cloud, but he's busy communing with his fan crush.
The Black Materia has gone from a black polyhedron to a blue/purple sphere in FMV mode. Oops, game designers.
This is all still taking place up on the ceiling, although we saw the Mako-bubble containing Sephiroth beginning to descend a moment ago.
Screenshake! The party starts to run. As they flee, a baleful green eye opens in the glassy wall behind them.
Hello, Weapon! You have a silly name.
The ceiling begins to fall in earnest now.
I don't know how Rufus managed to park the Highwind airship in the middle of that maelstrom, but we'll take it.
From the heart of the crater, a pillar of Mako energy bursts skyward and expands.
Just in case ever-regenerating bits of Sephiroth and Jenova weren't enough...
...we now have one more boss...
...to worry about...
Godzilla.
Running away now.
...but at least we have ourphallic symbol airship.
In the most recent two episodes, Cloud has given Sephiroth the Black Materia, punched Aeris while possessed, nearly cut her in two while possessed, and stood there like a man frozen in corbomite while Sephiroth performed Death From Above.
Let's pause for a moment to celebrate the hoary Final Fantasy tradition of playing into enemy hands.
- FFI: Retrieve a magical artifact for a villain masquerading as an imposter king!
- FFII: Rescue an imposter Princess Hilda and take her back to the rebel base!
- FFIII: Let an enemy steal two magical artifacts while we're returning the one he stole earlier!
- FFIV: Steal a crystal and slaughter innocents on our imposter king's orders! Let more crystals fall into enemy hands on purpose or via a possessed friend!
- FFV: Help possessed Dad destroy crystal for the enemy! Get captured so as to be used as hostages by enemy!
- FFVI: Open the Sealed Gate so the enemy can break in and kill/drain all the Espers and destroy the world!
But now that we've handed Sephiroth the Black Materia on a platter and let Aeris die, there's no way we could screw up anything else, is there? I mean, it's not like we could give him the Black Materia again, right? Ahahaha.
Well then. While Cloud was angsting over Aeris' bloodless body, Sephiroth idly mentioned his upcoming journey to the Northern Crater. Naturally, we must accept this veiled invitation.
A path leads northeast from the Forgotten City. Here I bounce up and down a spiffy spiral staircase trying to get enough screencaps to stitch together a pretty photo mosaic, somewhat hampered by the high density of random monsters inhabiting this desolate canyon.
Ta-da:
We waste another ten minutes finding the invisible pixels leading into the cliff wall behind it. Through the caves and over a snowy continent populated by wolves and killer rabbits (what?), we come to the remote village of Icicle.
Where, amazingly, the surfing contingent from Costa del Sol has managed to bypass all the obstacles we just spent the last several days traversing. They're here to get in a little skiing.
I find it amusing that Rufus traveled all the way to Rocket Town to commandeer Cid's wee airplane to cross the ocean, when he could've just booked passage with these folks. Fridge logic: Aeris must've done exactly that, in exchange for guiding them through the Sleeping Forest which can't be entered without Ancient blood or a unique artifact currently residing in our Bag of Holding.
The house that Cloud's examining in the second-to-last screencap is chock-full of backstory. Untouched for the past 22 years, it was once the home of Professor Gast, former head of Shinra's science department who discovered Jenova in an archaeological dig, and Ifalna, Aeris' birth-mother. Someone was kind enough to keep paying for the house's utilities so that we can play Dr. Gast's home movies.
The first two recordings are Ifalna spouting backstory about Jenova and about a Disc Two Boss whom we'll be meeting shortly.
I'm a little confused about some details, but here's the gist.
The Original Crisis began 2000 years ago when the "calamity from the sky" fell and blasted a huge crater near the oddly-named "Knowlespole," a northern Cetra settlement occupied by current-day Icicle. (Not explained: why Ifalna was their last descendent, living in a human settlement on the same spot 2000 years later).
While the Cetra/Ancients were trying to help the Planet heal its wound, a stranger appeared in their midst. Having not read Tolkien, they fell for Jenova's... rather spooky gifts?
"Here, let me show you your dead Mom. I'm sure that'll make you want to take me into your community." "Oh, yes, thank you! Welcome to our humble village!"
Um.
This embarrassing episode may explain why Ifalna never rakes Gast over the coals for misidentifying Jenova as an Ancient. Her own ancestors were just as clueless.
(Note: pronouns for Jenova are rather fluid. I'm not sure whether this "he" is a translation glitch.)
The Jenova virus drove the Ancients mad and turned them into monsters, much like the humans Sephiroth saw incubating in the Nibelheim reactor.
Jenova spread its virus across the planet, wiping out most of the Cetra. Finally, the Planet decided the only thing for it was to pull a Weapon of Mass Extinction out of some orifice and start over. Creatively, this weapon was called Weapon.
Before Weapon could start exterminating, the few surviving Cetra managed to trap Jenova in a deep, dark hole, waiting to be excavated by Gast 2000 years later. With its target neutralized, Weapon shrugged and went to sleep.
Professor Gast's "Confidential" home movie reveals that, surprise surprise, he is Aeris' father. What is it with Shinra scientists sleeping with lab assistants and test subjects? About the time they've settled on the baby's name, Hojo shows up on their doorstep like Rumplestiltskin to collect.
Ifalna offers to give herself up in exchange for letting Aeris and Gast go free. Hojo, of course, thinks this is a silly idea when he can have his guards kill off Gast and get two Ancients for the price of one ex-boss. (Not shown: Gast's death or Aeris' baby model, thanks to a guard shooting the camera).
Well, that's depressing.
The rest of the town offers little of note beyond a garishly-colored snowboard provided by a helpful kid. Before we can try it out (in the time-honored Final Fantasy tradition of one vehicle for multiple characters), Elena shows up and berates Cloud for "doing in" her boss, Tseng, last seen sporting a large sword-wound at the Temple of the Ancients.
Elena won't believe Cloud's claim that Sephiroth was the perp.
(Note: "doing in" was changed to "messing up" Tseng in the 2012 PC port of this game, which is either a better translation or a retcon. Tseng is alive in Advent Children, but then, Rufus is alive in AC, albeit somewhat the worse for wear. AC Extended lampshades this: Rude tells Reno not to worry about Tseng's latest scrape, since both he and Rufus have nine lives.)
I'm so busy trading dialog boxes with Elena that I fail to notice the "press a key to dodge" instruction, so she punches Cloud in the solar plexus. He comes to in Ifalna's house — just in case we missed Gast's home movies — but it isn't even locked.
So, we are now free to head to the Northern Crater, via...
...snowboarding!
Wandering around a mountain maze of snowy landscapes!
Sightseeing!
Climbing wind-blown cliffs while fighting hypothermia!
Exploring icy trails with huge drop-offs!
Spelunking frozen caves and fighting giant icicles!
Bumping into a Black-Caped Dude knocked offscreen so fast by a random dragon boss that I fail to screencap him (or it)!
More mountain climbing without proper equipment!
After a couple hours of gameplay (yes, I'm slow), we come to the lip of the Northern Crater and a scenic FMV overlook.
Ooo, aaaah.
It looks like the Planet is still trying to heal the wound in the heart of Northern Crater, two thousand years after impact (which is, after all, a blink of an eye in geological terms). There's raw Mako fountaining from the crater and a storm of whirling winds surrounding it.
We pause halfway down the crater's rim for a spot of exposition.
Cloud, planetary scientist, says yep. He reminds us that Sephiroth is trying to tap that energy to help him summon Meteor, which will make an even bigger wound than this one. In other words: Chicxulub.
A little further down, we find the second of many Black Capes stumbling towards the heart of the crater. It sounds much like all the creepy wobbly Black Cape Dudes we saw back in Nibelheim, still harping on The Great Sephiroth.
This one doesn't even need a boss to mash it; it just falls over. I get the impression these whatever-they-ares aren't very durable, but then, I don't know how they managed to cross the ocean, let alone traverse all those glaciers and cliffs.
As we approach the maelstrom, Tifa halts and tries to force an endgame boss battle with sheer willpower. She says that she's lost a great deal to Sephiroth, and she's ready to rumble.
Translation: If Tifa isn't in your battle party now, swap her in. But of course, I already had her along, because as far as I'm concerned, FF7 is the story of Cloud and Tifa. I've also brought Vincent, since Cloud lured him out of his coffin with promises that we'd confront his tormentor, Dr. Hojo.
Speaking of whom— SCENE CHANGE!
Hey, look, Heidegger's airship is fully operational. Let's hijack it.
Rufus boasts that he's the one who will attain the Promised Land, not his father. "Sorry, old man."
Hojo starts cackling at the back of the bridge, saying that no one can own the Promised Land. Is he going all anti-imperialist on us? Heck no, he's just being an exposition asshole.
(Invisible Reno is invisible. No, really, his model is right there, but someone forgot to turn it on.)
Hojo hopes Sephiroth will put in an appearance. Like so many fictional mad scientists, he doesn't give a damn what the boss-man hired him to do; he's just poking the anthill
Lacking a magically impervious airship, our party must push through the fierce storms surrounding the crater's heart in the old fashioned way, on foot.
Actually, no, we just hit a battle with some wind critters and have to try again. FF7 gravity does not allow PCs to fall from great heights unless there's a church or something to catch them.
Those dark gray blobs in front of Cloud and Vincent are more Black Capes. There's a regular conga line of them on the far side, filing up the rocky slopes.
Reunion is in progress. Reunion of WHAT isn't quite clear yet: I'm thinking Black Rider Peeps. As they wobble along like maggots, a Black Cape will occasionally lose its footing (!) and tumble from sight.
Through another more intense wind barrier, we spot a familiar figure mowing down Black Capes like the no-name npcs they are.
"Sephiroth!" Cloud shouts for the gazillionth time.
"This is the end!" Vincent says. Uh, Vince, it sounds more impressive when you're not parroting the villain.
"You're right," Sephiroth says. "This is the end of this body's usefulness." The lighting turns dark purplish-red, never a good sign, and the figure of Sephiroth morphs into a taller Black-Caped figure, then vanishes in a puff of purple smoke. WTF? Someone should've left the crack back in the Gold Saucer along with those inedible pillow-mints.
The smoke continues to pulse upwards in time to an audible heartbeat to add to the weirdness. Cloud gets an earful from the other Black Capes (?) speaking into his mind.
"Our...?" Cloud wonders aloud.
"Those who carry Jenova's cells," Mysterious Voice answers.
"Master...?!" Cloud says.
"Of course... Sephiroth. Heh, heh, heh..."
The heartbeat sound quickens. Sephiroth appears from above and behind us, hurtling down like a comet, sword raised in the same gesture that took out Aeris. But he's late for an appointment, so he just knocks everyone down and brushes past them.
"Just passing through... oh yeah, and have another Jenova Boss to play with. With the Jenova boss music, in case you were missing the awesome."
Sephiroth, is that any way to treat your Mom, foisting her off on strangers all the time?
Oh, well. I wanted to show off one of Vincent's
BEHOLD VINCENT THE MINI FFX BEHEMOTH! He's purple and magenta, and shoots fireballs.
He's so cute and cuddly.
Too bad two of Vinnie's four overdrive forms are "Frankenstein's Monster" and "Jason sans hockey mask." Yawn. I hope I can grind enough to see his final form. Oh, dear, I think I'm becoming Hojo.
"Jenova's cells," Cloud says, picking up the Cryptic BS baton that Sephiroth dropped along with Jenova and the Black Materia. (He dropped that? Why?) "...hmm. So that's what it's all about. The Jenova Reunion."
No, it was a plot device wearing a Sephiroth suit. Or possibly Jenova shapeshifting. Or Sephiroth remote-controlling one of his own clones. Or a space whale with long silver hair. Or, most likely, all of the above.
At any rate, Cloud insists the real, honest-to-gosh Sephiroth is here, too, exuding malevolence "from deep within the planet's wound."
Tifa, who still has a few wits about her, stops Cloud from sticking the Black Materia in his pocket.
Cait Sith is so contrite that he refuses to take it.
Then again, his own dead body is crushed inside it, unless Cait Mark One did not in fact die and is trapped inside the miniaturized Temple of the Ancients forever, trying to solve his way out of Rubik's Tesseract.
I choose Barret as the guardian. The other option is Nanaki, but I figure Nanaki is less likely to jump on Barret than the reverse if anything goes wrong.
We have to pass one last wind barrier — or rather, bang our heads against it repeatedly like my great-aunt's deranged dachshund — fighting random battles until we find a gap and push through.
On the far side, we run smack dab into the White Screen of Mind Screw.
You could say that again. Welcome to...
... your past.
"Why...is it an illusion?" Vincent says. Aww, Vinnie, I brought you along in case we encounter Hojo. It slipped my mind that he killed you here 30 years ago. I can be so forgetful.
Cloud says that it's an illusion created by Sephiroth to confuse us. This is his line and he's sticking to it. He will repeat variants of it at least a dozen times before the end of the Mind Screw.
And it won't help. :(
Remember how I said that Tifa, as a bartender, is the closest thing we've got to a therapist? Well, Sephiroth is the Therapist From Hell. He finds your psychological hangups and makes them worse.
So. The Nibelheim flashback starts to unfold as before, with one crucial difference. (Compare with screencap from Cloud's earlier recollection.)
Well, it looks a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog from this angle, but...um... *sniffle*
...maybe Cloud's dark secret is that, like Tidus, he bleaches?
Tifa senses the oncoming trainwreck and starts shaking her head. "Stop.... Sephiroth." She tells Cloud it's an illusion. He says that he knows it's an illusion, and she doesn't need to worry. Vincent may be wondering if he should stick his fingers in his ears and sing La La La to fit in.
The scene blinks out in a flash of audible static. "What's next?" Cloud wonders.
Oh, you know. The second most iconic event in FF7.
"This is what actually happened five years ago," Cloud says, "but it's probably not me that's going to come out of the Shinra mansion." Oh, really? That is an odd and strangely specific prediction, Mr. Cheesebrain. "He's going to try and show us another stupid illusion."
Apart from a stranger in his place, everything else is exactly like Cloud told us, with Tifa's mentor Zangan calling, "You're still sane, aren't you?" (loaded question) and asking him to help search for survivors.
Tifa, who's kept her composure pretty well until now, starts to fray around the edges.
The truth is hiding here in plain view. Sneaky sneaky game designers.
The screen flashes with another burst of static and a slight POV change. Current-Cloud calls Sephiroth out for screwing up the reboot.
"...That I wasn't in Nibelheim five years ago. That's it, isn't it?"
Cue the Bells of Doomy Doom. There's another white flash of static, and Sephiroth appears. A text box smacks him in the face.
Cloud tells Sephiroth that he's not fooled by this mockumentary; he remembers his pain and anguish. Sephiroth retorts that a puppet cannot feel pain and has no heart. (We'll be taking up that theme again with Vivi in FFIX.)
More speechifying. Sephiroth says that he wants to take Cloud back to his
"Hojo would die if he knew." Sephiroth, you lie a lie. Hojo would pretend he meant to do it all along and alter his lab notes.
Cloud wants to know what the heck Hojo has to do with him. Sure, give Sephiroth an opening, why don't you?
Sephiroth is only too happy to pounce. Five years ago, he says, Cloud was "constructed by Hojo, piece by piece, right after Nibelheim burnt." Presumably because Hojo's other lab rats were dead or snoozing in coffins, and he was bored. "A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of the Mako."
That's...a pretty far-fetched story. Why would Hojo do that? Then again, why did he turn Vincent into a goth shapeshifter and stick him in a coffin?
"Cloud, don't listen to him," Tifa urges. "Close your ears! Close your eyes!" She reminds Cloud that they have shared memories and childhoods, so he can't have been created five years ago.
Sephiroth butts in and laughs. "Ha, ha, ha, Tifa."
The game usually focuses on the Cloud-Sephiroth rivalry, but the fact is, Tifa's one of two(?) people to take a sword to Mr. S. I think Sephiroth enjoys tormenting her almost as much as he does Cloud. It's a twisted sign of respect, really — or possibly insecurity.
Sephiroth toys with Tifa a little longer, remarking that she looks like she's not feeling well. Then he vanishes to let his poisonous words sink in.
Cloud admits that he's confused, and his memories are a bit muddled, but still, he'll never believe Sephiroth. Tifa's faith in him is his security blanket.
No pressure, Tifa: Cloud's sanity depends on you.
Tifa doesn't quite know how to respond. She says she needs a little more time.
"Cloud, don't blame Tifa," Sephiroth says, popping in again. Did I say Therapist From Hell? Correction: demolitions expert.
Sephiroth: "Inside of you, Jenova has merged with Tifa's memories, creating you. A boy named Cloud might've just been a part of them."
...
...
MIND SCREW.
Tifa: "Cloud... Please...don't think right now."
Sephiroth: "Ha, ha, ha. Think, Cloud!"
Sephiroth reminds them of the bloke who snapped a picture of Sephiroth, Cloud(?) and Tifa before they headed to the Nibelheim Reactor. The photographer's body happens to be lying nearby. As is the photo.
Cloud insists that it's another of Sephiroth's lies designed to confuse them.
"Five years ago, I came back to Nibelheim to inspect the reactor. I was sixteen..." Flailing, Cloud launches into a lengthy recitation of everything he remembers from the Nibelheim incident, right down to his rifling Tifa's bedroom. It all hangs together until—
"SOLDIER? When did I enter SOLDIER?
How did I join SOLDIER?
I'm... I'm..."
BOOM.
End of flashback, signaled by Black Screen.
"....Cloud?" Tifa says.
"Tifa, let's go. I'm... I'm all right." But he totally isn't.
And through it all, Vincent looms and watches Hojo's handiwork unfold, practicing for his Silent Protagonist roll in Dirge of Cerberus.
SCENE CHANGE. President Hair Flip, Hojo, and Scarlet have reached the crystalline heart of the Northern Crater.
They look up.
Eh? It looks like it's at least one-third tree roots, but what do I know?
When Rufus calls this Mako motherlode "The Promised Land," Hojo scoffs at the name as an old wives tale. Rufus scoffs right back.
BURN. I almost like this Rufus kid.
Screenshake! For a split second, a green eye is peering at them from the back wall, but it winks out too quick for me to screencap.
"Then it really does exist," Hojo muses. "I didn't believe it." At Rufus' prodding, Hojo explains about Weapon, the Planet's self-defense system.
"You keep a lot of things to yourself," Rufus understates.
Another scene change, this time showing the rest of Cloud's party waiting and worrying about their friends. Barret is suddenly yanked through a wall of dark green, swirly plot device to find...
"Tifa" tells him that Cloud's in trouble. Barret, Mr. Gullible, dashes off to help.
Oh, Barret.
...this isn't going to be pretty.
Back in Mako Central, Scarlet and Rufus are preparing to return to the airship when Cloud and friends materialize in a flash.
President Hair Flip isn't about to take orders, and wants to know what's going on. Maybe Cloud will tell him more than Hojo. Or not...
Reunion? I don't see the rest of the class, do you? Oh, wait, here's somebody...
Cloud claps his hands over his ears and starts shaking his head, staggering towards Barret. This is another one of those distressing possession-sequences in which every button push steps Cloud forward on a path you don't want him to take.
Cloud asks about the Black Materia.
Barret asks if he's okay, but gives him the Black Materia anyway, while Tifa and I scream, "NOOOOOOO!"
I don't understand how Sephiroth (or Jenova?) turned Tifa into Cassandra of Troy. Why can't anyone hear her?
TheLifestream.net notes that Cloud's language changes here from casual to formal Japanese, indicating a personality shift.
Cloud apologizes to Barret and both party members in turn. "Especially you, Tifa. I'm really sorry. I don't know what to say... You've been so good to me. I never lived up to being 'Cloud.'"
AUGH.
Tifa shakes her head and collapses to her knees. For Tifa, this moment is as devastating as witnessing Aeris' death was for Cloud. Cloud's body is still alive, but the person she knows just died in front of her eyes, thanks to Sephiroth's mind screw.
Hojo, of course, is delighted.
He crows that his experiment was a complete success and wants to know Cloud's tattoo number. Cloud says Hojo never gave him one, because Hojo considered him a failed experiment.
DOUBLE AUGH. Cloud, once so proud of being an ex-SOLDIER, reduced to begging for a mere number to call his own? The angst goblet brimmeth over.
Hojo is angry that the most successful member of the "Reunion" turns out to be a failed lab experiment. "Shut up, miserable failure."
Cloud slumps, then rises into the air with another split-second flash of Sephiroth's face in the foreground. Once again, the laws of gravity don't really apply to PCs.
Rufus, taking the weirdness in stride, inquires who Cloud really was.
Hojo: "He's a Sephiroth-clone I created after the real Sephiroth died five years ago. Jenova cells and Mako, with my knowledge and skills, have been combined with science and nature to bring him to life. I'm not mad about the failure part, but the Jenova Reunion theory has now been proven. Blah blah blah blah [lots more exposition that I won't recap]"
Note: "clones" are called "remnants" in more recent FF7 spinoffs; they're not necessarily exact genetic copies, but constructs that incorporate Sephiroth's genetic material.
Meanwhile, Cloud listens passively, stuck to the ceiling like the Hanged Man. He calls to his nemesis when Hojo finally shuts up.
Below, Vincent runs over to Tifa and helps her up. At first I thought he was charging Hojo, but alas no. There just isn't time to deal with his vendetta against Hojo right now (or, for that matter, Barret's beef with Scarlet).
"Sephiroth," Cloud says in his mind. "So we finally meet again."
Dust and Mako begin to rain down. I am vaguely reminded of FFV's Evil Tree villain.
Cloud tumbles head-over-heels in midair as the huge egg of Mako plummets in slow motion.
Poor Tifa.
Oh, here come the Bells of Doomy Doom again. What's in the congealed Mako?
How the heck did he get in there? And exactly what did Hojo mean, that Sephiroth died five years ago? He looks to be in pretty good shape, apart from being starkers.
It's raaaining men... er, sorry.
Hojo is a proud papa. Vincent is still not picking up on the opportunity to confront his nemesis. Grrr.
Rufus is at least a little chagrinned at his company's role in bringing Sephiroth to life and ... doing... whatever was done to Cloud.
Rufus says he wants them to come with him to explain everything. Good idea: Hojo certainly won't. Hesitating, Barret and Tifa call to Cloud, but he's busy communing with his fan crush.
The Black Materia has gone from a black polyhedron to a blue/purple sphere in FMV mode. Oops, game designers.
This is all still taking place up on the ceiling, although we saw the Mako-bubble containing Sephiroth beginning to descend a moment ago.
Screenshake! The party starts to run. As they flee, a baleful green eye opens in the glassy wall behind them.
Hello, Weapon! You have a silly name.
The ceiling begins to fall in earnest now.
I don't know how Rufus managed to park the Highwind airship in the middle of that maelstrom, but we'll take it.
From the heart of the crater, a pillar of Mako energy bursts skyward and expands.
Just in case ever-regenerating bits of Sephiroth and Jenova weren't enough...
...we now have one more boss...
...to worry about...
Godzilla.
Running away now.
...but at least we have our
no subject
Date: 2013-10-30 05:27 am (UTC)It never occurred to me to wonder why the Planet sends out a bunch of MECHA to do its dirty work. This is a weird Planet.
That glob of Mako Sephiroth is in is kind of reminiscent of a womb, isn't it? Jenova keeps her baby boy close!
So...is the Reunion basically Cloud and the other Sephiroth/Jenova bits returning to Sephiroth/Jenova? Is Cloud's return actually essential to the meteor summoning process, and that's why "Sephiroth" tricked into sticking the black materia in the womby thing? I think maybe I am finally understanding this game now!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-30 08:59 am (UTC)I wonder if the Fahrenheit temps were only in the North American version of FFVII. The European edition would (I think?) be localized separately.
Womb-imagery: yes, I think you're right! That hadn't occurred to me, even though I was seeing it as egg-shaped!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-30 08:28 am (UTC)I also share your confusion in how Sephiroth can silence Tifa. Either it's through the magic permeating in that area or maybe he found a way to cancel out the noise vibrations from Tifa's voice, for he knew that getting her voice out of the equation would de-center Cloud a lot more easily. But I would love to see that, if we get a re-make of FFVII with super awesome rendered graphics, the image of fake Tifa beguiling whoever holds the Black Materia to come along to help and then slowly morphing in persona, voice and appearance into Sephiroth.
Jenova at her finest!
I sometimes wonder if the Reunion was meant to be some sort of sacrificial action rather than all the parts of Sephiroth's material returning to where the man lies in the crater. Or that for each encounter Cloud has with a remnant/clone, he carries with him the Jenova cells that the remnant has for him to collect and also retrieve to Sephiroth....
or I guess Sephiroth needed someone who is more stable than the rest of the clones/remnants/bits of sentient Jenova to carry the Black Materia and he realized that once trying to carry it towards the Northern Crater via clone, so not only does he get the Black Materia but would sate his revenge against Cloud for what happened in Nibelheim.
Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-30 08:56 am (UTC)I think it's a little of both. At some basic level, Jenova has found Sephiroth a very useful tool for reassembling all the scattered Jenova cells. (Which were probably scattered even more by the "virus" with which it infected the Cetra.)
On the other hand, we have:
-- The Sephiroth clones saying SEPHIROTH is calling them: Sephiroth is their "Master" or "The Great Sephiroth."
-- Sephiroth's face keeps appearing as a subliminal flash in the foreground at critical moments when someone is being fooled, misled, possessed.
-- The "Meteor" plan appears to be Sephiroth's idea to make himself a god, much like Seymour trying to seize control of Sin: piggybacking his grandiose yet petty plan onto the operations of the Bigger Big Bad who was operating before he came on the scene.
-- The seduction/possession/coopting of Cloud only makes sense if it's Sephiroth avenging himself and soothing his bruised ego over the fact that a nobody did him in. I can't see why Jenova would take interest in Cloud more than in other hosts of Jenova cells.
All of which suggest that Sephiroth is using the powers he acquired via Jenova and the Lifestream to manipulate lives, minds, events from afar, and control those imperfect clones of himself with his will. That's what Hojo thinks, although Hojo's theories must be taken with a grain of salt.
I'm especially bewildered that Sephiroth(?) dropped the Black Materia to force Cloud to bring it the last little step. A Sephiroth clone had already taken the Black Materia from him and carried it this far, so I don't see any real need to involve Cloud in the final delivery -- unless it was just Sephiroth being personally vindictive.
I get the impression that Jenova is a Yu Yevon type intelligence, one step removed from the details of what's going on, nudging Sephiroth and anyone with Jenova cells towards the Reunion, but not interfering as directly or as much as Sephiroth is doing.
I like your idea of a sacrificial rite for Reunion. I mean, we certainly see it in Advent Children, where the kids infected with the Jenova virus aren't simply being used to bring the pieces of Jenova back together, but seem to be sacrifices. It feels like something similar is going on here too, with the pilgrim-like Black Capes trying to reach The Great Sephiroth and finish an almost religious journey, many of them falling and being destroyed on the way. Except I don't quite see how sacrifice accomplishes anything, beyond perhaps hastening the end of the life force of the Planet? I'm not sure.
Jenova is like a cancer that infects the life forms of the planet. I don't entirely understand its motivation for doing that -- which scatters its cells -- any more than I entirely understand the Reunion. It seems like the life cycle of some kind of parasite, with rather alien reasons for doing whatever it's doing.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-30 05:43 pm (UTC)Is it stated anywhere that our favourite parasite Jenova gets anything out of infecting powerful people (like the Ancients) and bringing them back for Reunion? Maybe Cloud has certain cells in him (Sephiroth cells?) that Jenova wants.
I bet if/when Square remakes FF7 they will make this all more confusing rather than clearing anything up.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-30 06:00 pm (UTC)But then we're only one game removed from "evil clown wants to destroy everything because EVIL" and two games removed from "people locked evil spirits in woods, and concentrated evil made EVIL SENTIENT TREE who wants to destroy everything." FF7 gives Sephiroth more complex motives, but Jenova seems to me more like the traditional "evil force of destruction" of the earlier games (as well as Yu Yevon, whose sole goal os continuance.)
Cancer and a lot of fungi and parasites have no real motive beyond expansion, propagation, self-preservation and self-dissemination. So that analogy would make sense for Jenova spreading itself across the Planet. And I gather that at some point in Jenova's life cycle, it picks up and moves to another Planet to colonize. This Planet is dying, so it may be time for it to pick up and leave. Maybe it calls all the scattered parts of itself together for the journey instead of leaving parts of itself behind.
That was what I was thinking. But that doesn't explain the focus on tormenting Cloud or the secondary Evil Plan to call Meteor. Both of those things make more sense to me as Sephiroth's pet projects.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-30 06:34 pm (UTC)Splitting up Jenova and Sephiroth's motivations--hers being more of a biological imperative, his being revenge and wanting power--does make things a lot more sensical.
I like this thing where you wade through the pages of crazy game text and distill everything for us.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-31 01:06 am (UTC)The Cetra are described as a migratory people, quite ancient, not native to this planet.
To me, it seems quite possible that Jenova followed them, possibly for reasons that they can no longer remember, but she can.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-31 02:48 am (UTC)Why are you so worried and scared by those words? || Hmm...Shall I show everyone here what's in your heart?"
Kinda sad that Cloud was too dense back in the Gold Saucer date to figure out what Tifa couldn't say (or else he was feigning ignorance on purpose), but Sephiroth's picked up on it and is using it against her.
This whole Mind Screw scene was very well plotted, with Cloud perfectly cocky and self-assured in the beginning, and Sephiroth chipping away at him and at Tifa one step at a time. The arc of the scene is very convincing, despite Sephiroth's crazy claim that Cloud is a construct.
In fact, because I took so long to finish this game originally, I came away thinking that story was true. Hojo backs it up in the following scene, and Cloud himself becomes convinced that he's just a puppet, not the "real Cloud." So I thought he was a construct, and the real Cloud was dead.
I don't know why I didn't figure out that this, too, is a misrepresentation of what really happened, since we have Tifa's mind meld in a while sorting out Cloud's role in the Nibelheim incident. It's... refreshing, but confusing, when there's so much unreliable narration that the player has to take everything with a grain of salt.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-31 06:25 pm (UTC)And this is really what makes FFVII being so good with horror elements and dark sci-fi; the whole nefarious damage caused by twisted biology and new alien viruses that harms everything it touches and transforms them into amorphous beasts and possibly gaining sentience. And then people using that virus as part of biological warfare so you have these carriers walking around with them doing who knows what as they continue to live and possibly spreading it around. This is actually a huge scare for me and cause of morbid speculation XD.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-31 06:30 pm (UTC)When Sephiroth first went haywire, he still thought Jenova was an Ancient, and he told his listener in the library that humans were basically a branch that split off and wanted to settle. He believed he was the last of the Ancients and therefore the true heir to the planet.
i wonder at what point -- or if -- he learned that Jenova was NOT an Ancient, but the enemy of the Ancients. Ironically, he killed off the true heir of the Ancients that he once thought he was!
Would Jenova disabuse him of the notion, or keep deceiving him, as it had apparently done the Ancients themselves?
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-10-31 11:04 pm (UTC)Though it's interesting that in the Dissidia bio that Sephiroth is described as being a servant of Jenova when prior in both FFVII game and in other sources Sephiroth thought he took control over Jenova. I mean, I thought that both Hojo and Sephiroth made that assertion himself, but I suppose that in the future of FFVII remake development, if ever, that SE is going to retcon the entire story to include the common fan theory that Sephiroth was controlled and is made tragic in that way.
But yeah, I thought Geostigma was really gross and weird, until Vincent started saying that humanity has a Lifestream within their own bodies and i'm thinking "well, this is getting into even more interesting biology than I would have thought of."
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-11-01 02:26 am (UTC)Jenova, conscious but immobile because locked in dead-ish body, senses Sephiroth nearby:
Jenova: "You are the last Ancient and I am your mother."
Sephiroth: "I am the last Ancient, heir to all! Come with me, Mother!"
Jenova: "Yes, yes, of course you are. Let us go away from here, my son."
Sephiroth: "Good idea!" *lops*
Jenova: "Well, all right, not exactly what I had in mind, but I suppose it makes me more portable. Let's go somewhere we can be alone... together... and maybe I can take over your body."
Sephiroth: "What was that?"
Jenova: "Errrr, nothing, nothing, let's get out of here."
Cloud: "I keel you!"
Sephiroth: "I would've gotten away with it except for that pesky kiiiiiiiiiiid--!"
Jenova: "Well, that didn't go as plannnnnneed--!"
*splash*
Lifestream: "I will nom you up, you lovely dead organic matter. Also, I will chew up and spit out your icky alien minds."
Sephiroth-Jenova: "Well, crap. Now I need a body, so I can get that damn Cloud."
Jenova-Sephiroth: "I'm not really sentient any more, but I'm really hungry. Let's eat."
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-11-01 03:49 am (UTC)Ifalna did mention something about how Jenova had deceived the Cetra by masquerading as their "dead mothers or brothers," using some kind of telepathy, so it seems very likely that Jenova sensed Sephiroth's mommy-complex and encouraged / played along with it.
Re: Incoherent babbling trying to make sense of all this
Date: 2013-11-03 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-03 02:02 pm (UTC)Jenova's fluid pronouns are a translation glitch (the Japanese dialogue here has no gendered pronouns at all), but I kinda like it. When something shows up looking like your dead mothers and your dead brothers, gender's bound to get a bit wibbly-wobbly.
I think Elena's line is a retcon; in the Japanese script I've found (which I'm pretty sure is the first version, before all the International additions), she uses the same verb to describe what happened to Tseng that Cloud uses in his big flashback to describe what Sephiroth did to his family and his village. (It's one of those tricky verbs that can mean many things--Barret uses it to describe setting the bomb in the first reactor mission--but the "how dare you" context makes "do in/kill" sound the most likely to me.) Since Tseng never appears again and I'm pretty sure is never mentioned again, either, I've always assumed he was supposed to have died. Imagine my surprise during Advent Children!
Wibbly wobbly is my favorite slang in the past 10 years
Date: 2013-11-03 06:36 pm (UTC)Re: Cloud's shift to formal language, it's a pity the translator didn't think to try something like, "I owe all of you an apology, particularly you, Ms. Lockheart."
I get a lot of mileage about of it! Truly a term for all occasions
Date: 2013-11-03 07:13 pm (UTC)This is another of those parts where a remake with voice acting would be fantastic.
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Date: 2013-12-04 05:09 am (UTC)*head on desk*
I don't understand the significance of Zack being in Nibelheim five years ago instead of Cloud but I suppose that will be cleared up later.
Well I enjoyed Tiny Behemoth Vincent, and the snowboarding, mountain-climbing, sightseeing tour on the way to the Northern Crater and all the snowy environments. Icicle is really pretty.
Is that Weapon at the end? That makes the Omega and Ultima Weapons being giant monster things in other games make more sense if so.
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Date: 2013-12-04 05:39 am (UTC)They provide one or two required boss battles and several more optional boss battles.
(Omega Weapon and/or Ultima Weapon started all the way back in ... FFII? or III? I forget. They used to be a big optional boss hidden away in the penultimate dungeon, usually with no plot justification whatsoever.)
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Aeris:
At the end of Gast's Home Movies, the flashback implies that baby Aeris was captured by Hojo along with her birth-mother, Ifalna. So they survived, while Gast was killed by Hojo's guards. Hojo spent seven years experimenting on mother and daughter. Somehow -- we don't know how -- Ifalna finally broke out of Hojo's lab. Ifalna was mortally wounded, and (in another flashback you've no doubt forgotten by now) collapsed at the train station where she and a sobbing seven-year-old-Aeris were discovered by Elmyra Gainsborough. Elmyra adopted Aeris as her daughter and shielded her until the beginning of FFVII, when Aeris is still living with stepmom Elmyra in the slums and sneaking out to go gardening in the Church.
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Sephiroth:
As far as I can tell, all the Sephiroths we've seen up until now are either clones created by Hojo (high-functioning version of the Black Capes) or, possibly, Jenova disguised as Sephiroth, or both. (Remember, Jenova broke out of Hojo's lab. I can't tell whether a Black Cape disguised as Sephiroth broke her out, or whether she broke herself out and assumed Sephiroth's form). I still can't tell which of these possibilities is the correct answer, even after playing the game multiple times.
This much I'm sure of: Sephiroth died five years ago in the Nibelheim accident, and his body's been preserved in that bubble of Mako ever since for reasons we'll soon see.
I think Sephiroth has been revived enough by the Mako and Jenova cells that he's been sending his consciousness out, controlling the Black Cape clone and/or Jenova bit that we've been pursuing across two continents. So Sephiroth's like a fayth trapped in a statue, sending out his spirit and acting from afar.
An EVIL fayth.
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Cloud:
We still haven't hit Cloud's true backstory, only more half-truths. His memory is that he was at the Nibelheim reactor five years ago, saw Sephiroth wig out and burn down the town, and he ran back to the reactor to save Tifa (who'd attacked Sephiroth for killing her father), then Cloud confronted Sephiroth.
Sephiroth's claiming all of that is false memories, that Cloud is just a five-year-old imperfect clone of him (Sephiroth), with Jenova cells that allowed Cloud to create a new personality from Tifa's memories. And that he latched onto Tifa's memories of a boy named Cloud that she knew from childhood.*
SEPHIROTH IS LYING. SO IS HOJO.* But Cloud's memories are wrong, too. The next installment, finally, will reveal what REALLY happened, and how Zack fits into all this.
*Which I never realized, the first time I played the game. I thought maybe Sephiroth was lying, but when Hojo also claimed that Cloud was a Sephiroth Clone and mere puppet, and Cloud meekly gave in and accepted this "truth," I believed them too.
Very confusing. The conventional "saving the planet" story is really quite secondary to "WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH?" and Cloud's severe mental issues and memory lapses, which allow him to be manipulated.
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Date: 2013-12-04 06:42 pm (UTC)Or that Cloud's backstory was so intricate, although I don't know why I didn't expect that, since it's a Final Fantasy game. Most of what I see of this game circulating around on tumblr is goofy Dissidia fanart, shipping wars, and weird sexy pictures of Sephiroth. (DNW.)
I have a tendency to believe what characters say, too, even the patently villainous ones, and I'm always so betrayed to find out that they were lying.
I'm looking forward to finding out what really happened in the next installment!