MAGE |
FOR |
HIRE |
A Place of No Return
Part Twelve: Out of Tune
With the Galbadian assault on FH halted, Squall heads back
to Garden. On the way, Irvine stops him and asks if he can request some extra
assistance from FH’s technicians. Squall gives the go-ahead, and Irvine urges
him to also meet up with Selphie and offer her support, since she’s been
affected by Trabia Garden’s likely destruction. They meet up with her at the
ruined Garden Festival stage, and Squall attempts to console her. Selphie’s so
shocked by this that it seems to cheer her up slightly. Squall gets defensive
again and leaves Irvine to take over, and the Headmaster calls him away over
the loudspeaker anyhow.
With Squall gone, Irvine announces his plan to Selphie. He’s
going to get the FH technicians to fix up the Garden Festival stage so they can
have a concert after all. As Selphie reacts well to this plan, Irvine thinks to
himself that he’s set to make his move. I’m not a big fan of Irvine, and it’s
things like this that put me off him. I don’t really get the vibe that he
actually cares about Selphie when he comes up with this plan – he most just
seems concerned about getting his flirt on, and it’s never really
counterbalanced by anything deeper.
Over with Cid, you’re informed about Selphie’s diary, in
case you’ve not checked it yet. Squall, more interested in the events at hand,
reports that the Galbadians were in FH to search for Ellone, and Cid abruptly decides
it’s time. He goes on the loudspeaker again to announce that Garden is making
it its mission to defeat the sorceress, and then tells everyone that Squall’s
going to be their leader. Squall reacts badly to this, which I think is pretty
fair. He’s a fresh SeeD and none of this has been discussed with him, not to
mention his near-death experience last time he faced Edea in a cutscene.
However, just as Squall rages that Cid shouldn’t be talking
about this like it’s been decided since his birth, the conversation gets cut
off, so we never really get to see how Cid reacted to Squall’s anger. Instead,
the story moves back to Squall’s dorm, where we see his internal monologue as
he considers the possibility of just leaving SeeD, and ponders killing the
sorceress quickly as a way of finishing off this mess as soon as he can.
However, he’s troubled by the idea of Cid ordering them to kill his own wife.
Before the story can get too serious, Irvine initiates his
plan to hold a concert. You have an amusing little sequence where you have to
pick the correct instruments to play a decent tune. When I first did this
section, I deliberately picked the wrong combination of instruments to make it
sound as bad as possible.
Apparently you can also do a bunch of side stuff as Irvine
in FH here and earlier, which I have always missed, since I never take Irvine
with me to Balamb Garden. Maybe I’d like him more if I encountered these
sections? I’ll put that into my category of reasons why FFXIII forcing you to play as the different party members is a
superior system.
Anyhow, Irvine’s determined to push Squall and Rinoa
together, but gets irked when Squall interrupts his attempts to “make a move”
on Selphie. He sets up a spot for you to talk to Rinoa, marked with a naughty
magazine, and Rinoa opens up to Squall. She recognises the pressures that are
being placed upon Squall, and wants him to lean on them all a bit more.
This conversation gets a bit dark, not that it bothered me
much when I first played it. However, a lot of what Squall thinks about hits
home now that I’m a few years older. Squall is terrified by the thought of
getting used to people being around him, only to lose them later in life, and
the inevitability of that loss. He doesn’t feel that he can bear that, so he
pushes everyone away.
For all that Rinoa does a good job of reaching out to Squall
despite his sullen demeanour, she gets a bit too impatient in this section.
Squall begins to consider her words and agrees to try to open up to them some
more, but he wants out of the concert. Rinoa demands an answer to her request
for him to rely on them, and Squall says he’ll work on that, though too bluntly
for her liking. She snaps at him for just wanting to leave, and suggests that
this can’t really be who he really is, before storming off.
I don’t take any issue with the writing – I think it’s fine
here, depending on what message we’re supposed to take from it. Squall’s fears
are real, and while you shouldn’t let them consume you as he has, there are
ways to help him dispel them, and Rinoa’s tactic does nothing but reaffirm his
concern that he can’t rely on others. Indeed, once she leaves, he thinks
exactly this to himself.
The question, I suppose, is whether Squall deserves to have
someone like Rinoa expending so much effort to bring him out of his dark spot,
but at the same time, I get the sensation that Rinoa has unfair expectations of
who Squall is, and how he should act. It’s not far different from Cid, who just
blithely declares that Squall will lead the conflict against the sorceress
despite his lack of experience and knowledge surrounding the subject, declaring
it as Squall’s “destiny”. Rinoa feels that taciturn loner Squall should just
open up and be a different person when he’s taken to a party, but it was clear
from their first meeting that Squall isn’t a party person at all.
After Squall retreats to bed, he’s rudely awoken by another
of many loudspeaker demands that he report in at the bridge. Once there,
Quistis, Xu, and Nida fill him in on the situation. The Garden’s “fixed” (let’s
imagine that several days passed, unless it’s infinitely faster to mend a
damaged giant floating school space station than it is to repair my laptop), so
Squall can take command and get travelling around the world. Quistis also asks
him to let Selphie have a rest, after the Trabia Missile Crisis.
I should probably mention that, somewhere around this
section, Cid quietly sneaks out of the limelight and only reappears at the
start of Disc 3, after putting Squall in charge. Nobody seems to notice, but
then I was so busy with events that I didn’t realise either.
Quistis and the others also urge Squall to make a speech as
commander, but he instantly declines, only to realise that he’s transmitting to
the entire Garden, at which point he commands them to cut the mic. I’m bringing
this small part up because the camera shows Rinoa in the library during this
segment, laughing to herself at Squall’s grouchy reaction to the suggestion of
a speech. Her last interaction with Squall didn’t go particularly well, but it
doesn’t appear to have soured her too much towards him – she does, at least,
seem to find his demeanour amusing here.
You have a certain amount of freedom to explore the world
map at this point. The Garden can’t fly up cliffs or over mountains and other
large obstacles (like sea-spanning bridges), but you can cross the ocean, and
fly back onto dry land via beaches. There are a few new locations you can
reach, but I’m staying relatively on-course for this series, so I didn’t
explore too much this time around. Instead, I went straight to the suggested
story location – Balamb.
Uh oh. Looks like Edea got Galbadia Garden flying as well.
Balamb Town sits under the shadow of the freshly-aloft mobile base, and
soldiers now roam the streets, while some of the residents stand near the
entrance in fear and frustration, forbidden from returning to their houses. Squall
and his companions negotiate their way into town and try to work out a way to
see the commander and bring an end to the occupation, despite the threat of
Galbadian retaliation if anyone misbehaves.
This sequence is largely free of combat – in fact, quite a
lot of FFVIII seems to be light on
battles. The encounter rate in most areas up to this point is low, world map
fights can often be skipped by following roads (though these aren’t always
present), and many of the major set pieces play out more like a visual novel.
Compare this to FFXIII, where
practically every location is a combat gauntlet, with only a small handful of
peaceful locations.
Much as with Fisherman’s Horizon, the Galbadians have come
here to find Ellone. For whatever reason, it seems that this is Edea’s primary
goal, tying in with Quistis’s earlier remark that the sorceress’s goals must be
something more than “simple” world domination. I didn’t realise that global
conquest was such an easy task; I might try it some time.
Anyhow, Squall and co head into the town and set to work.
Stopping off at Zell’s house, they discover that the commander is likely none
other than Fujin. I really wonder how Fujin and Raijin became such high-ranking
members of the Galbadian army. Late in Disc 1, they declare their intent to
find Seifer in Deling City, but never appear during that segment. We then join
them in Balamb Garden during the uprising, where they help out with evacuating
people.
Unless they were already Galbadian officers during the
uprising, this presumably means that while Balamb Garden was sailing the seas
and visiting Fisherman’s Horizon, they managed to make contact with Seifer, who
asked Edea to promote them. Ultimecia, controlling Edea from the future, was
then “kind” enough to agree and raise these wayward children into commanding
roles. Or, more likely, Seifer has free rein to do whatever he likes with the
military, and everyone else has to put up with it.
Let’s not think too deeply on it – it just gives us a chance
to have revenge for all the times they’ve been rude to us so far. That being
said, Raijin and Fujin came across a lot less antagonistic than I remembered in
this playthrough.
Anyway – this sequence is basically a hide-and-seek, where you’re
barred entry to the hotel where the commander is based unless you can track
down the errant captain. There are a few different things you can do here, but
the summary is that you find Raijin slacking off at the train station, and
confront him in front of the hotel. So far, we’ve been avoiding combat with the
Galbadians because of the aforementioned retaliation, but that goes out of the
window once you get talking to Raijin. Zell declares that they’re going to
liberate Balamb, and Raijin responds with a boss fight. I’ll also note at this
juncture that Raijin’s gimmick of ending practically every line with “ya know?”
is extremely wearing.
Raijin’s boss fight isn’t too rough, but I had
thunder-element spells junctioned to my two main hard-hitters, which meant that
Raijin healed from all their hits. Consequently, this fight took about five
times as long as most others since they were basically standing around doing
nothing. Once Raijin’s defeated, Zell charges on into the hotel and challenges
Fujin to another fight, only for Raijin to join her.
Apparently everyone forgets what Raijin sounds like after entering
the hotel, as he yells out a challenge and they wonder who’s there.
In my original playthrough, Raijin and Fujin proved to be
one of my roadblocks. For whatever reason, I struggled to defeat the two of
them, and had to go through this sequence several times. Well, the reason was
likely that Fujin can reduce someone to 1hp, and Raijin often likes to thwack
them right after, but that’s not too difficult to deal with. Raijin and Fujin are
also susceptible to Sleep, which can make things a lot more peaceful.
After you defeat them, Raijin explains that they’re not
following the sorceress – their sole concern is Seifer. Since the Galbadians
are only following Seifer out of loyalty to Edea, Raijin and Fujin apparently
feel that Seifer needs them to act as his posse. Zell demands that they tell
Seifer to cut it out, and Fujin replies with “AFFIRMATIVE”, while Raijin
immediately rejects that request. Squall lets them go, but threatens that he
won’t hold back next time.
As for the Galbadian retaliation, it never happens, and
Galbadia Garden disappears.
Back in Balamb Garden, Quistis ponders their next destination, and Selphie joins them to request a visit to Trabia Garden. A sense of gloom and dread came over me on this playthrough – it was already time for my least favourite sequence in the game. However, there was also a distinct feeling of anticipation; I’ve been looking forward to this since starting this series. The main two things I wanted to discuss were the opening and this particular section, so let’s get flying over to Trabia Garden and enter the rabbit hole.