Chapter 24: Limit Breaking Concerto

Chapter 24 begins with a shot of each of the Turks in a stylish, collage CG – including Legend, which may confirm that his bonus episode was out by now. It was one thing to just include his sprite in a group shot, that might have been dynamic, but I can’t imagine this early cell phone game going to the trouble of loading two full-screen CGs depending on whether you’ve unlocked him or not!

The game recaps the events of Chapter 23, and we pick up on the highway. Reno and Rude can’t believe that Tseng shot the boss, and refuse to get on the truck with him as he rides with the bodies. The two are left behind, despite Tseng repeatedly nudging them to follow and so learn the truth of his deception.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – For Good Men to Do Nothing” →

Chapter 23: On a Runaway Train to Certain Doom

Chapter 23 opens by turning back a few minutes, where we see Shotgun place a phone call to an unknown party to take care of Elfé. While this is happening, the game informs us that “there were many who were unaware of the coming crisis.” What, unaware of the giant light show outside? The game shows President Shinra and Rufus as examples, two people who should absolutely be getting a call about this, but whatever, President Shinra’s creepy, evil pride in having his son back is still interesting in its own right, now that the man’s a fully (or near-fully) fleshed character instead of a cartoon. Anyways, this scene doubles as the game’s only attempt to explain why no one talks about the giant final boss fight that took place not long before the start of FFVII, despite Shinra Sr. and Jr. standing in high tower with huge windows, and it is simply pathetic.

We next learn that Tseng’s group has recovered Elfé and reunited her with her father. As a matter of fact, she’s on her feet! Sort of! The two have a brief chat, Elfé dealing with a lot guilt over hosting Zirconiade. Unfortunately, the group is just getting ready to leave when they’re found by some Shinra Grunts, who are also so invested in their current activities that they haven’t noticed a magical nebulae the size of the Burj Khalifa, which by all signs is not a hundred yards from their current location!

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – Invisible Cataclysm” →

Chapter 22-2: Threatening to Shatter the Very Firmament, Continued

Verdot’s voice from the past (Episode Tseng) reaches out to Tseng in the present (Chapter 22-2), and empowers Tseng to somehow take down the robots that nearly wiped him, Rude and Reno combined. The power of pride in your job, people. Believe in the Turks and you’ll be able to do anything! After getting everyone back on their feet offscreen, the trio continue their rescue attempt.

Back with our main protagonist, Shotgun is for some reason wondering why AVALANCHE kidnapped Elena. She… already told you this, lady, she’s a witness and they’re just looking for a place to dump her corpse. But it turns out there really is more to it and Shotgun has just read the script: we cut to the Ravens, who contact Fuhito to inform him that they captured Elena as some sort of pre-arranged objective. This just adds to my suspicions that Elena never witness an attack in an earlier draft, and the introduction in her gym was her original debut!

Meanwhile, Sears is running around Wall Market, having apparently learned there’s a way to summon a “Perfect Zirconiade.” “Who knew that there was a way to summon a perfect Zirconiade?” And that I’d learn about it in the Honey Bee Inn! Unfortunately for him, he’s been found by Fuhito, who had previously hinted that he had a loose end to tie up, i.e. Sears himself. It seems Fuhito’s brought Elfé with him in a truck, and is preparing for the summoning. Fuhito demands the doomsday materia that Sears is holding, and Sears rationalizes that there’s no harm in giving it to him. After all, he wanted to summon Zirconiade anyways, and all that really matters is that he be near enough to the materia to break it after the fact. Sears surrenders.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – Another Prisoner with a Greatsword” →

Episode Tseng

If Ririn’s playthrough can be taken literally, and the clues suggest that it might, Episode 22 part 1 and part 2 are interrupted by an update containing one of the game’s bonus episodes. Tseng was just reminiscing about it before he started to bleed out! He’ll make a more concrete reference on the far side, so it’s clear it was released before Episode 22-2, though I guess we can’t be positive that it was released after or along with 22-1. Episode Tseng is the earliest playable segment in FFVII’s timeline, occurring in “mu 1997,” the previous era, which the opening narration points out is before Kalm was shelled by Verdot’s incompetent artillery crew. As you can expect, we’ll be exploring that time when Verdot saved Tseng’s life.

We get started in Costa Del Sol, where Tseng, using the sames sprites he’s had this entire game, is investigating the curious kidnapping of an otherwise unremarkable reactor guard, a curious thing for the big, bad Turks to be doing. The kidnappers took the victim onboard one of Shinra’s own cargo ships, and Tseng contacts Verdot to tell him that he’s going to look for the control room. Unlike Tseng, Verdot is not using his current sprite, but a younger one with fewer wrinkles and no facial scar. This is the sprite that we accidentally saw during the rating sequence of Episode 19 for no adequately explained reason. Throw that into the evidence pile, I don’t know what to make of it.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – A Company Man” →

Chapter 22-1: Threatening to Shatter the Very Firmament

It seems that this episode was released in halves, and perhaps in an even more complicated fashion that we’ll get into later. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! We’re too shitfaced to get ahead of ourselves. Well, Shotgun is, anyways.

We start the chapter by learning that Tseng still hasn’t been kicked out of Top Secert Turks HQ, and is trying to hack his way to find Verdot’s location. Reno is with him, but they’re otherwise alone. It’s now one day to Verdot’s execution, and the other Turks, true to their character from FFVII, can be found in a dive bar.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – I Get Knocked Down” →

Chapter 21: Ready to Head to the Finale

That chapter title might be a little overeager, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves, even if it wants us to.

In fact, a related complaint: I want to mention about how the ongoing, “plot coupon” structure is leaving us with no tension in the build-up to the finale. We’re one plot coupon away from the finale and this doesn’t rightly feel any different from the last few missions, or honestly better than filler in general. I’m reminded of “Twenty-THANXty Six,” a Homestar Runner cartoon that would probably take too long to contextualize, but I’m going for it. The cartoon in question is a Thanksgiving episode parody, of the kind of holiday special you’d see in American cartoons in the 80s, but it’s taking place in a poorly-localized anime for, uh… well, Homestar Runner’s AUs are a little hard to explain, so just roll with it. So as everyone knows, holiday episodes can be great, but they usually aren’t. In fact, they have a reputation as being infamous wastes of time, especially in plot-driven shows, since they often break continuity even more than even the worst filler. Notable tropes include: “It’s suddenly a different season and will stop being that season soon as the episode ends,” “ham-fisted and even fourth-wall-breaking aesops in shows that might not otherwise have life lessons,” or “the villains literally trying to steal Christmas.” Fast forward to Homestar Runner.

The final joke in “Twenty THANXty Six” surprises by flipping the script, declaring that the episode isn’t just “in continuity” with a (supposed, fictional) ongoing show, but is incredibly important to the ongoing plot, rewarding the characters with one of the show’s plot coupons as a prize for finding the true meaning of Thanksgiving. What elevates the final gag, is the observation that infamous holiday eps and bog-standard plot coupon eps actually aren’t all that different, and that it doesn’t take more than a teeny, tiny nudge to make an “important” plot coupon episode (especially a poor-quality one) look indistinguishable from the pariah filler of holiday episodes. That’s the lesson I’ve remembered from it for the past eleven years.

In short, Before Crisis has (sort of) 25 chapters, and we’re four chapters from the end with no feeling of incoming resolution whatsoever.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – I Swear Dirge of Cerberus Is Relevant” →

Chapter 20: Accepting the Price of their Resolve

The chapters get longer again from here on out, and part of that is because enemies are catching up to Ririn, forcing combats to run for more than three seconds. This one in particular is probably the longest single chapter in the game in Ririn’s playthrough, so let’s get to it!

We’re in Shinra HQ, where several grunts have found Cait Sith lying on the floor, and mistake him for a doll. They take to talking about work: these grunts are trying to find Turks HQ to spy on them on orders from Scarlet (who doesn’t know that the Turks have Rufus locked up and that the big boss doesn’t want anyone to learn about him). Luckily for the “heroes,” no one knows where Turks HQ actually is inside the labyrinthine HQ. Really? I’m not so hung up on the secret HQ so much as the fact that the Turks are really still inside the building, after your open betrayal. Cocky little punks, ain’tcha? After the guards say as much, the Cait Sith doll gets up and walks away.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – At last, I have bound the evil to my command” →

Chapter 19: The Choices Made in the Beginning and the End

Grimoire Valentine normally adds a sprite of Grimoire-Valentine-the-character when Ririn is on a loading screen. but today he substitutes Lucretia. I should note that neither sprite is used by the game itself, so they’re either impeccably on-model fanart, in which case major props to the artist, or were created by the BC team for some other purpose.

December 19^th: Zack and Cloud break out of the Nibelheim Manor through a side door or window… before moving right in front of the open main doors. A hell of an opening shot. We cut away to the surrounding forests, where Shotgun has arrived with orders to capture the “samples,” preferably before the army finds them, fights them, gets mowed down in an emotionless massacre on Zack’s part, that sort of thing.

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – Morse’s Nightmare” →

Chapter 18: The Howl Echoing Through Heaven and Earth

Chapter 18 begins with Shotgun waking up after being in a coma for some time. The two new Turks are here to meet you: Katana (Male), also known as Balto, and Shuriken (Female), also known as our old friend, Cissnei from Crisis Core! Grimoire switches to proper names for the new Turks in this scene, probably because of Cissnei. Later in the scene, the game establishes that the two of them have been with the Turks for a while, just not in Shotgun’s group, which the writers would later loophole as an excuse to put Cissnei into CC.

Very bad news: Shotgun’s been in a coma for three years. Balto tells you this almost right away, making me wish he had been the one to meet up with Zack, because Cissnei forgot to convey that particular piece of information, didn’t she? The translation is a little wonky here, as Cissnei credits either your coma or your survival to the pyramid materia, which they’ve apparently been keeping by your side this entire time. I assume it’s the latter, and that they left it there figuring it was helping?

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – Get Well Soon (And Kidnap Someone)” →

Chapter 17: Fangs of Chaos

Thoughts on semiotics in Final Fantasy: when the game says “Fangs of Chaos,” am I supposed to think of the literal fangs of the demon Chaos, progenitor of evil in the Final Fantasy series? Because I do, even if they didn’t intend that.

This is a shorter chapter overall, and we’ll be seeing other short chapters in the next stretch. Ririn has taken between 30-40 minutes for every chapter from Chapter 4 to Chapter 16 (bearing in mind that Ririn can instantly kill enemies and already knows the optimal route), but all of a sudden we regress to the 20-30 minute range for most of the next few missions. Maybe the money was running out, or maybe design sensibilities were changing as the months went by, who can say? My gut instinct is to bundle up two or so small chapters into the same posts, but since I’m still stalling for time with regards to P2EP, maybe it’s best if I settle for short posts for a few weeks. In fact, I just managed to line things up so that BC and P2EP will end on the same week, at which point we can move on to the next game (FFIX) without any left-over mess!

Continue reading “FFVII Before Crisis – Toenails of Chaos” →