Let's Play Final Fantasy VII (Part 6): Post-Bombing Analysis

Warning: This episode contains spoilers for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI. It's also covers no new material and is purely analysis of what has already happened. If you don't want to be spoiled, go play these games because they're really good. Or at least IV and VI. They're really good.

I was planning to include small points as an aside like I normally do as an intro. However, it quickly escalated to the point where I wanted to talk about so many little points that they ended up getting their own part.

By the way, what ever happened to these soldiers? Did they run off when Airbuster came out? They weren't given any orders to fall back, and it seems like they would at least provide some fire support for Airbuster during the fight. Who knows. They aren't shown in the next scene with the reactor exploding... oh, I guess I should get into that.

In the previous update I did not show this, but as Cloud falls down to the slums below, the No. 5 Reactor blows up.

I know what you're saying. Of course it does, because we set the bomb! Yes, that would make sense, except there's no reason to believe that it would.

In the previous scene with Airbuster we see President Shinra exiting the reactor. He was inside the reactor and came out to greet us and dump a bunch of exposition. Yes, that scene is so stupid that it gets a follow-up explaining how much more stupid it is. Great job, President Shinra.

What is established in this scene is that Shinra knew there would be another attack by AVALANCHE today. It's pretty obvious that there would be one, and the mishap on the train gives them an opportunity to attack. They even have a good idea for where the attack might be if they look at a network of the train tunnels and cross-reference that with where the tunnels exit. One side of the tunnel is guarded and the other is blocked by lasers, and that could probably narrow down the targets quite a bit. Either way, they predicted correctly enough to not only deploy Airbuster but also the President to the reactor. We had to have run past wherever the President was located inside the reactor, and he came out to greet us.

So far, that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why a bomb disposal team isn't already in place inside the reactor near wherever the President was, ready to react. Ice materia exists, so they could just freeze the bomb and dispose of it. We know there are personnel inside the reactor, and since there is internet it's really not a stretch to say that there are probably radios who could notify the appropriate people to disable the bomb or at least do a controlled shutdown of the reactor to limit the damage.

Why does Shinra allow the bomb to go off? If their plan is to label AVALANCHE as irredeemable villains, they already have the No. 1 Reactor incident. Furthermore, I think they would invest more effort into, I dunno, ordering the soldiers blocking our escape to actually shoot us during our battle with Airbuster. This scene is so freaking stupid that I could probably write for months about it.

Let's get away from that though. Let's discuss the main characters and what has been revealed thus far.

Barret is the first character I'll talk about. He's a simple, emotional guy and the leader of this cell of AVALANCHE. In fact, about 80% of Barret as a character is tied up in the identity of AVALANCHE itself. AVALANCHE is a group of environmental terrorists that are trying to stop a government from destroying the world by sucking out its life energy. Despite being the good guys, AVALANCHE is willing to put innocent people at risk for the greater good. Barret seems to immediately demonize anyone who takes advantage of Midgar's prosperity, including the Shinra salaryman we see on the train. He identifies the upper city as being entirely responsible for the suffering of the people below, despite the fact that he has the money to hire an expensive mercenary to fight his battles. I don't want to demonize Barret here, though. He's an idealist, and he believes strongly enough in his ideals (which, as we'll discuss, are probably right) that he is blinded to the atrocities he's committed. I would be very surprised if the game didn't give him some kind of atonement later on.

We know a few other things about Barret. He has a gun for an arm, and given the number of other people we've seen who have visible cybernetic upgrades (none, including supersoldier Cloud), that his arm is probably special. It's likely that there's a story about that arm and we're likely to hear it. It's fairly certain that he hasn't ever worked with Shinra (or else we would have probably heard about it), so we have no good idea as to the arm's origins.

Barret also has a daughter, and his daughter is white. Marlene's skin color isn't an accident, narratively speaking. If she was his actual daughter, she would be black, even if her mom was white. I don't think the game's developers were that ignorant of genetics, and since FFVII's engine can handle way more than 256 colors, they definitely had the technology to make her look like a mulatto girl. No, Barret's daughter is definitely not his daughter. She might be a war orphan or a cousin or niece. We don't know yet, but we'll find out before the game is over.

Barret's probably the least storied main character we've met. Cloud, on the other hand, is complicated. He's a bioengineered supersoldier. He wasn't created in a lab, though. Instead, there's an entire division of the Shinra armed forces devoted to infusing volunteers who meet screening requirements with Mako energy -- the same energy that is the planet's life force.

As a result, Cloud is superhuman and it shows in his overconfidence. He regularly puts himself above others, stating that an ordinary member of SOLDIER could have single-handedly stopped AVALANCHE during their first attack. Other than that, though, there isn't a whole lot we know about Cloud. We know that there was an incident that led to his desertion, and while we have suspicions, we don't know if the incident in Tifa's past where Sephiroth killed her father is the same incident that caused Cloud to desert.

We do know that Cloud is a fairly cynical person, and that he does not openly care about anyone or anything other than money. We're not even sure that he cares that much about money. It seems as though he's a bit more warm-hearted than he lets on and his tough guy veneer is just a shield for what appears to be a nice guy on the inside.

Tifa is Cloud's childhood friend, and she and Cloud seem to have some romantic history. She clearly has strong feelings for him, and while his flame has seemed to burn out, it hasn't been extinguished completely.

Tifa hates Shinra, and most of her hatred seems to stem back to an incident in her past where Sephiroth, a member of SOLDIER, seemingly went rogue and killed her father. It's seems that other elements within Shinra were involved, likely as a catalyst. While it's possible that this is not the time when Sephiroth went rogue and that he was acting under orders, it is much more likely that these events are all connected.

Tifa, like Barret, seems OK with the terrorist acts committed by AVALANCHE, but considering that she is primarily motivated by vengeance, this seems understandable.

So let's get on the real topic I wanted to discuss, and that's the game's ending. "Wait, but we're less than two hours in and you want to talk about the ending?" Even though we've only been at the game for a little bit, we actually know a lot about how the game will end. This is a Final Fantasy game after all, and that gives us a huge amount of knowledge about how the game will play out.

First, we know that Shinra aren't the main villains of the game, but they are connected. In Final Fantasy VI, the Empire serves as a sort of catalyst that allows Kefka to rise to power. In Final Fantasy IV, the country of Baron commits atrocities under the control of Golbez, who in turn is a pawn of Zemus, who is in turn is possessed by Zeromus. In Final Fantasy, Garland is killed, sent back in time a thousand years, and puts into motion a plot to suck the power out of the pillars of the world.

In every Final Fantasy up to this point, the early parts of the game are always relevant in the ending, and because this game is not Final Fantasy XII (oops! let's not talk about the future anymore), I don't see any reason why that would be different here.

One key element in the relevance of Shinra in the finale will be the use of Mako Reactors. Mako is the planet's life energy, and it's being sucked out by these reactors. The protagonists are engaged in actively stopping these reactors by destroying them. What this tells us is that the evil mastermind's plot involves draining the power of the planet away, weakening it to achieve some other goal.

There are two ideas that pop into mind right away. The first is that there's some kind of evil entity trapped by the planet, and its plan is to manipulate humans in some way (either through agents or mind control) to weaken the planet so it can be freed.

If the plot proceeds in this way, there will likely be a major cataclysmic event that causes this entity to be freed, leading to a situation where the heroes must scramble to gather enough strength to fight the final battle. This ending prediction (including specific events) is mostly taken because a narrative needs to reach a dramatic climax and thus the bad guys need to be on the verge of winning.

The other thought that comes to mind is a malevolent planet-destroying creature who simply wants to end the world. In that case, Shinra are pawns, weakening the planet again so that the creature will have an easier time of things.

If this storyline turns out to be true, there will probably be some kind of WMD (likely using Shinra to develop it, due to the story's anti-technology message) that allows our planet-destroyer to speed things up, it will get activated, and our heroes will stop it at the last second. Alternatively, the WMD will work but not completely destroy the world, and our heroes will fight for their near-dead planet, much like in FFVI. Again, the bad guys need to nearly succeed, and the bad guys also need a more insidious method than "slowly working." There needs to be a climax.

I think this is actually more likely... due to the starfield panorama we saw in the intro. I know that I keep coming back to that, but significant imagery is put into a game for reasons, and one possible explanation is that Lavos or Giygas or some other space alien monster thing came from other worlds and wants to eat this one.

So a third possibility is Sephiroth. Let's talk about that elephant in the room. He's a great war hero who apparently went rogue, killed someone close to Tifa, and President Shinra considers him "brilliant." It's possible, though unlikely, that the entire point of the early game was to tell us about Mako and how it was used to make SOLDIER, and thus make the game's supervillain.

The game will then follow his ascension to power (much of which likely happened in flashbacks that we will piece together), and how he somehow finds the key to becoming godlike and eventually does become godlike. He then gets killed by the protagonists, because well, normal people can kill gods because it's a Final Fantasy game. The problem with that theory is that story already happened last game (hi Kefka), and it completely discounts the game's environmental message. Not super likely.

Sephiroth is important though. I'm inclined to believe that he is an agent of the super godlike planet devouring/destroying entity of either option 1 or 2 (most likely 2), and he went rogue because the entity saw a big opportunity and could not pass up on it. I'm even willing to state that he's probably the chief agent of the real mastermind, and is likely to be a major antagonist later in the game.

There's another thing that I could mention that has been pretty heavily foreshadowed. Unfortunately, it has only one reasonable interpretation, and it basically confirms the actual plot of the game, so I'm not going to include it. I will, however, re-show you the screenshot that allows me to make these conclusions so you can come to them yourself.

Enjoy.

Let's Play Final Fantasy VII (Part 5): An Unexpected Meeting

I'm actually not sure why Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie don't go into the reactor with us here. I was thinking that it was a "because plot" sort of thing where they aren't present because some plot contrivance can't happen if they're present, or at least their presence makes a plot point inconvenient. However, this doesn't seem to be the case. Either way, at least they're safely out and we only have to worry about ourselves.

The inside of the reactor area is completely identical to the No. 1 Reactor. The enemies are even tougher here than in the tunnel, and some of them are starting to deal moderate damage.

Even more troubling, the enemies are also starting to survive All + Lightning. That's not so good.

I actually used All + Restore here to heal my party, and it heals so much HP, it's ridiculous. Wow healing magic is overpowered in this game. A single cast of Cure heals my party for over two potions worth of HP. Again, it's optimal to use All + Restore here, but the enemies are still easy and All + Lightning makes fights go a lot faster.

As we go to set the bomb, Cloud has another breakdown. This surprises no one, but instead of getting a creepy voice in his head, Cloud witnesses what is either a flashback or an alternate universe.

In the scene, we see Tifa wearing a cowgirl outfit kneeling next to a dead man. The man appears to be Tifa's father. She's upset, and more importantly, Sephiroth (the Great?) appears to be responsible. There's a sword nearby and Tifa takes it and heads into the next room.

Although Cloud is in this scene, it's not clear whether he's actually in the scene or he's an outside observer, astrally projecting into some alternative reality. However, because this scene gives us a large insight into Tifa's motivations for joining AVALANCHE, I'm guessing this scene happened in the past. This scene is probably in Cloud and Tifa's hometown, and she is inside some kind of Shinra factory. The architecture has a very "Mako Reactor" vibe and Tifa mentions that she hates Mako Reactors in the scene (along with everything else about Shinra), but the layout is different from the Midgar Mako Reactors we've been visiting.  Because the No. 1 and No. 5 Reactors have nearly identical layouts, the imagery here is misleading. Again, Tifa's dialogue does suggest she's in a reactor.

Cloud's presence here is odd, since this is his hometown. We know that Sephiroth is also here, so it's possible that Cloud and Sephiroth were deployed here on some Shinra mission, and that either Sephiroth was under orders by Shinra to kill Tifa's father or he flew off the handle. Cloud is on his knees as well in this scene, so it's possible that he has also recently fought with Sephiroth and is wounded. It's also possible that Cloud isn't in the scene at all, and he is somehow telepathically linked to Tifa.

Telepathic connections to people would also explain the previous reactor flip-out, since he heard someone else's voice telling him that the No. 1 Reactor was not just a reactor. It's possible that when near a lot of Mako power, Cloud gains telepathic links with people. It's really hard to tell at this point.

Cloud's behavior afterwards though suggests that this is not his memory. This is really odd.

Either way, we get moving and set up the bomb. No further red-screened voice comes in to tell us not to set up the bomb. Barret also makes it clear if Cloud talks to him during this scene that he still doesn't trust Cloud. Also, there's no timed section as we leave, so we're free to kill enemies to farm if we want. Obviously, I'm just moving ahead. We do get some nice item drops like antidotes and deadly wastes, though.

Tifa gets her first limit break as we start to head back out of the reactor. She has a rotating slot machine that she has to land on Yeah! or Hit<3 in order to use it.

I land it on Hits and it does really poor damage, roughly as much as her normal attack. I also don't get to pick the target for her attack. Maybe if I land Yeahs she'll hit all enemies or something.

So far, Tifa's been pretty underwhelming. She has a weapon with no linked slots (thus can't use All), and only has two slots total. Her limit break is garbage and weak, and she isn't even long-ranged like Barret is. Still, she's a character and again, there's not much difference between characters in this game. If I had a choice though, I'd much rather have another character than her.

Barret runs a bit low on MP, so I swap All + Lightning over to Cloud. However, more enemies are fighting in smaller groups of two or three, so I'm using more regular attacks.

As we get close to the escape point, we run into a surprise. Okay, it's not a surprise at all. It's a surprise to Barret. Cloud doesn't act shocked in this scene, at least.

Barret, after an operation is compromised, one does not simply continue with the operation. Yes, it sucks that you have to avoid killing hundreds of innocent people to save the planet, but maybe if you actually conducted your missions in a way that wasn't completely seat-of-the-pants, this would not have happened.

Also, I'm not sure what the difference between the red-uniformed soldiers and the blue-uniformed soldiers are. The red ones are not SOLDIER, since we see one in Sector 7 say that he failed the entrance exam. It's possible that the blue-uniformed soldiers are police and the red ones are military, but that also seems unlikely due to the red-uniformed pair and the red-uniformed train conductors. It could be the other way around. More likely, the developers haven't got a clue and picked whichever sprite didn't feel overused.

Then, behind us, a completely unexpected person comes out from inside the reactor.

Tifa's response is roughly the same as mine. However, I have a pretty good reason: because the game wants to use a previously-established character to deliver some exposition, even though it makes no sense to have that character be there.

Thus far, I've been pretty critical of AVALANCHE. I tend to assume that they're bungling idiot terrorists who will get what is coming to them. However, President Shinra's appearance here puts him on the all-time biggest retard of the game. I don't actually care about anything that comes after this. There cannot possibly be something that is dumber than putting your most important VIP in danger like this. In this scene, Cloud has a completely unobstructed path to kill him, and the only thing standing in Cloud's way are a bunch of soldiers off to the side taking shots at him with weapons he has shown on multiple occasions will not even slow him down.

There is nothing stopping Barret from shooting the President here, and even if we somehow assume that AVALANCHE doesn't use guns (and there are undoubtedly a number of fired bullet cases at the No. 1 Reactor scene from Barret's arm), they have materia! They could just blast him with spells! There's no Secret Service agents near him to take the shots for him or get him to safety either.

President Shinra must be the biggest grade-A moron in the history of this game world. Seriously.

This scene gives us the expected exposition. Cloud and President Shinra have met before, but the President doesn't remember Cloud. He did know that there was a former member of SOLDIER working with AVALANCHE. Again, this shows just how stupid President Shinra is. If there were reports of a former Spetznaz joining Al-Qaeda, there'd be a full inquiry. Service records would be pulled and they would do everything they could to ID this traitor. He would be labeled immediately as an enemy of the state and hunted down. Considering that Cloud was spotted escaping from Sector 8, there's no reason why he wasn't IDed there.

In fact, the only reason why the President can identify Cloud at all is that Cloud has strange eyes. Apparently all members of SOLDIER are exposed to Mako, and it has an outward physical effect on the eyes. Also, this means that SOLDIER is a program to produce Magitek Knights. The correlation with Celes gets deeper!

Also we learn that Sephiroth "was brilliant, perhaps too brilliant." It seems likely that whatever happened in the Tifa flashback likely also resulted in him deserting Shinra as well.

The President finally gets on a helicopter and leaves us to deal with "Airbuster," a new robot weapon conjured by Shinra Weapons Development.

It's at this point that I want to talk about FFVII's translation. President Shinra labels Airbuster as a techno-soldier, and Tifa asks if Airbuster is a part of SOLDIER. Of course, she can't see the capital letters, but what allows her to hear "soldiers" and not hear SOLDIERs?

Because Final Fantasy VII was originally written in Japanese, they use the Japanese word for "soldier" (probably the word "bunjin" or "heishi" -- I don't have a Japanese copy of the game, so I don't know) to refer to normal soldiers. When referring to SOLDIER, they use the katakana "sorujaa" or literally, "soldier." When President Shinra refers to Airbuster as a techno-soldier, he probably literally says "tekuno sorujaa," which obviously causes Tifa to get confused over the term.

Personally, I would have called the SOLDIER unit RANGER or RAIDER for the English translation, which would have caused a lot less problems. If they wanted a more Final Fantasy feel, they could have just called it FIGHTER. Sticking with the word SOLDIER makes it very hard to discuss other members of the Shinra military outside of text.

Airbuster is very strong, and his attacks deal lots of damage. What's worse is that his frontal armor makes him resistant to non-magic attacks. He seems pretty worthy of the name SOLDIER. Cloud probably could not beat this guy on his own (unlike that pansy scorpion boss).

The bad news for him is that the party surrounds him during the fight, forcing Airbuster to either face Cloud or Barret and Tifa. Facing Cloud leaves him open to attacks from Cloud's allies, and facing Barret and Tifa exposes him to the enormous threat that is Cloud. The trick to this battle is to rotate your attacks, allowing Airbuster to get hit in the back. If you're stuck with him facing you on your turn, it's probably best to wait or use healing to get back on your feet.

Barret proves to be the MVP of this battle. Airbuster shows its back to Barret after a strike from Cloud, and he unleashes a devastating Big Shot, dealing over 600 HP in one shot and ending the fight.

Airbuster explodes, and destroys part of the catwalk Cloud is standing on. He hangs on for dear life. Barret expresses worry, but Tifa really pours her heart out here for Cloud.

It's possible she wants to discuss the time in her flashback, but there's no way to tell.

Cloud begins to lose his grip and tells Barret to take care of Tifa. He also says that there's no way he will die, and that they need to stop talking like he will. Then he falls.

50 meters is a fairly long fall. In order to put that in perspective, it's probably about 12 or 13 stories.

In other words, this fall would kill most people unless they had a pretty lucky landing. However, this is Cloud we're talking about. We've just recently learned that members of SOLDIER are not just well-trained, they are also bioengineered superhumans.

I'm sure he'll be fine.

Let's Play Final Fantasy VII (Part 4): Things go wrong

One thing I failed to mention in the last update (mostly due to its length) is that the game blatantly tells me that I'll be leaving Midgar in the tutorials.

Also, I really like how the game has integrated my party members thus far. It spends a great deal of time characterizing Cloud, Barret, and Tifa.

Cloud is a cold and professional mercenary, but he's not completely heartless and has complex motivations. Barret is a simple guy with a direct approach to problems and believes that Shinra is destroying the planet. Tifa we don't know a lot about yet, but we do know that she has good domestic skills, that she grew up with Cloud, and she also believes that the planet is dying. All of these characters are given time to develop, giving us feelings for each of them.

A few citizens in Sector 7 claim that they saw Cloud and Tifa talking together in the bar, and that they appear to be more than "childhood friends." I don't know about that, considering Cloud and Tifa never touch in the scene. It's possible that they meant that they slept together (though clearly without having sex) since Cloud can mention that sleeping next to Tifa caused him to sleep soundly.

Shinra soldiers near the pillar comment that Midgar is under martial law due to the bombing. We also overhear that AVALANCHE has threatened to carry out more bombings. It's understandable that the other members of AVALANCHE aren't shown, because they want to build empathy for Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. However, none one mentions additional AVALANCHE membership. It's possible that Jessie made the threats on the internet, but that doesn't explain the posters/graffiti/whatever. It's a bit of a plot hole. Still, it seems unlikely that the five AVALANCHE members we have met plus Cloud are acting alone.

Also, Biggs has had a bit of a beef with Barret in earlier scenes, which sort of suggests that Barret isn't so much the leader as he is just the strongest personality among this group.

Either way, these soldiers also state that it's been a while since SOLDIER was mobilized. At this point they really feel like Marines or Rangers; elite infantry units. It's not too unheard of for elite infantry units to be deployed in cases of domestic terrorism, especially when the attack is as significant as the No. 1 Reactor bombing was.

We board the train and Barret tells the team to split up. He picks a bit of a fight with a Shinra salaryman on board the train. There is a bit more worldbuilding here. This guy is some sort of government employee, and he's actually named "Shinra Manager." He doesn't seem like a typical government employee in that he behaves and acts like a normal businessperson (who is really upset by Barret's loud and brash nature).

The picture is starting to come together a bit. Perhaps we're looking at more of a communist government, perhaps Stalin-like, where the government controls business and industry?

It would make a lot of sense to think of President Shinra as Kruschchev and SOLDIER more like a cross between Spetznaz and the US Army Rangers. It's also fairly appropriate, since the Cold War ended only a few years before FFVII was released (and probably around the same time that the game began development).

The plan is that the team's fake IDs are no longer good, so they must jump off the train before the train reaches an ID check point. Once in the train tunnels, the team will travel on foot the rest of the way through Sector 5 and attack the reactor.

That doesn't work out though, because for some reason Shinra has set up an ID check point further up. The team goes into an emergency panic mode, and races up the train as the train systems scan each individual car. Of course, this makes no sense, but it's an excuse for some gameplay.

While we're racing up the train, one of the people we met in Sector 7, Johnny (who told us about the pillar), pickpockets us for some gil. We make it to the front of the train, and since it's still moving we get close enough to our target destination to jump out.

Barret drops another metaphorical line on us as we get ready to leave. He instructs us to jump first, and that "A leader always stays until the end." Again, I'm sure that will be a thing later on.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie will remain on the car, disguised as either legitimate passengers or train operational personnel. I'm not sure how their IDs work but ours do not, but whatever.

Now I'd have to say that any reasonable espionage agency would abort the mission. There's really no reason to continue. The authorities knows that there were suspicious people on the train car, and they will have a good idea of where those people might be. At this point, I would probably abort and relocate everyone, as there are eyewitnesses that saw us board the train in the Sector 7 slums. Continuing the mission is probably going to be suicide and there will probably be Shinra officers combing Sector 7 for us when we get back.

The best option is at this point to rendezvous somewhere on the Plate in a safe house and skip town at the earliest opportunity. Because the Plate is only 50 meters up, it's reasonable to say that we could find a way to rappel down and get the hell out of town.

Of course, we're not going to do that because terrorists do not have reasonable operational protocols or fallback plans.

There's actual enemies here in the tunnel, and we explore a bit since there's no chance of getting hit by trains. The enemies are pretty easy, though they can take a lot more damage than the enemies guarding the No. 1 Reactor.

We find that Tifa is more of a frontline fighter, as she attacks with punches and kicks. Still, her lower level and weaker weapon means that she is nowhere near as effective as Cloud or Barret.

Speaking of Barret, the Lightning + All materia combo works really well here. It's not necessary at all, and mainly serves as a way to save time. We could easily just use attack commands, which would probably be better since we'd get more limit breaks (from taking damage) and save a lot on MP.

Still, the All + Lightning combo makes these enemies easy and we still have plenty of MP. Even if Barret ran low, I could just swap over to Cloud or Tifa.

Each party member is kind of interchangable at this point, though Cloud is a bit stronger overall, and Barret has a gun so he can attack at full power from the back row. It's sort of a drawback with the Materia system; characters are more differentiated by their weapons and limit breaks, rather than Job abilities. Even FFVI had unique abilities for each character (even though they could all use the same magic and relics), which gave characters a bit of uniqueness. In FFVII there doesn't seem to be any difference between Cloud and Tifa except that Cloud is better.

We meet the rest of our team in the ducts near the reactor, and Jessie admits to making a mistake with the IDs that allowed Shinra to find us early. They head out though, leaving us to take out the reactor.

What a sec, what? Why did we send all six people if they weren't even going to do anything on the operation? All they did was get on the train, tell us where to go, then leave?

What happened to decoding the doors at the reactor?

Guys?

Let's Play Final Fantasy VII (Part 3): Seventh Heaven

I have to apologize for the last update. It has a massive 21 images in it, and it takes forever to load. I probably should have split it up into two parts, ending the first at the explosion. If you're reading this on a mobile device, I apologize.

In my defense though, these posts encompass only a few minutes of gameplay. I get to a minor stopping point, start writing, and end up with a post that is enormous. It's honestly going to be a while before that changes, too.

The team gets off the train, and Barret gives us a little pep talk.

Yay yay, let's bomb them civillian targets!

There's a couple in the left part of this screen that are making out. It's really cute. They talk about how the only place nearby where they can be alone is the "spooky" train graveyard, which sucks for them. It's pretty clear that there's going to be some sex in their near future. The minor NPCs in this game are so much better than in previous games, and they make you feel like there's a living world out there. There's so much more detail in the little things that you miss if you're not going at a snail's pace (like this LP, lol).

We find a guy just by the save point who is looking at the support structure for the plate.

This statement is frightening. To me, this guy is telling us that if we continue our bombings, we could not only cause collateral damage up by the reactors, but we could destroy the support structures and drop the entire plate, killing everyone both on top and on bottom. Does anyone here still think these bombings are a good idea?

We also see a size comparison for the pillar. 50 meters is a lot, but it still seems a lot higher. Just based on eyeballing, it looks like more than 50 meters. Also, it really gives the feel that Midgar is small. It's nowhere near the size of real-life NYC or Los Angeles, and every perspective shot we see seems to confirm that.

As we move into Sector 7, Barret and the rest of AVALANCHE race ahead of us. Barret runs into a nearby building and then we hear gunfire. What the hell, Barret? However, it looks like he was just kicking people out. Still, he's being a little excessive, don't you think?

Some of the nearby bystanders comment on the recent explosion. A kid thinks that AVALANCHE is cool, while his mom seems to disagree. Many innocents were killed, and the bombing seems to have inflicted over a billion gil in property damage. We're also told that taking out the power would shut the city's power down, shutting down communications and electricity for the entire city. I'm so not sold on anything we've done thus far. All this reactor bombing has done is hurt a lot of people.

One thing that is really noticable about the reworked visuals is that the characters are re-rendered, but the backgrounds aren't (because they're static images). The net result is characters that look really crisp (even if they're low poly) on a grainy background.

We meet a new character. What's more, she seems to know Cloud. I can guess that she's the reason Cloud is working with AVALANCHE. They seem to be childhood friends. I'm not sure what to make of this. We get to name her. She's Tifa Lockheart.

We also get to see Barret's little daughter, Marlene. She's a bit shy and seems to not like Cloud very much. I can't really blame her. He's been sort of a jerk to everyone thus far.

Cloud gives Tifa the flower he bought from the flower girl, and she gets all girly on him. Like Cloud, she also mentions that flowers in Midgar are rare.

The other members of AVALANCHE talk about how Tifa is a good cook and is good at mixing drinks. Wedge claims that his girth is largely due to the quality of Tifa's cooking.

Barret calls AVALANCHE to a meeting, and the crew activates the secret elevator built into the pinball machine. However, Cloud stops to chat with Tifa a bit before he heads down.

She's happy he made it back, although Cloud says that it was no big deal. Being a jerk, Cloud says that he's taking off as soon as he gets paid. Honestly, I would too if I was being paid to conduct terrorist bombings, but that isn't why Cloud seems to want to leave.

Then Tifa asks him out of the blue if he's feeling OK. It's a bit of an odd question because there hasn't been any indication that he wouldn't be. Cloud responds as such, wondering why Tifa would ask. She says that he just seemed tired or something.

It's pretty obvious at this point that Tifa just wants him to stay, and probably also that she has a crush on him. Unfortunately, since Tifa is a party member (since we named her and all), I think that means Jessie's chances with Cloud are about zero. It's obvious that she's upset with him wanting to leave, but she doesn't know how to say it.

At the meeting, a news briefing informs us that Shinra is a person, since it's the name of the president. Is the government named after him? The Republic of Shinra? More likely, it seems like Shinra regime might have usurped a previous government. I'm not sure.

Either way, AVALANCHE has claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Jessie is a bit upset that the explosion turned out the way it did. Perhaps the bomb was not supposed to blow out the top of the reactor? She apparently learned how to build the bomb online, which is probably a bad thing, because it means that the NSA could potentially ID her by her IP address (okay, I don't think that is very likely).

President Shinra also claims that he's going to mobilize SOLDIER to combat AVALANCHE. Uh-oh. Good thing that AVALANCHE has their own... oh, I guess he's leaving, huh.

Barret asks Cloud if anyone from SOLDIER was at the reactor bombing. Of course, Cloud is pretty nonchalant about his response.

Barret gets pissed of course, before admitting that Cloud is a powerhouse. However, he tells Cloud that he's working for AVALANCHE now, and not to get any funny ideas about going back to Shinra.

Cloud gets pissed off, and an argument breaks out. He tells Barret that there's no way he would go back to working for Shinra. Guess the severance package wasn't that good, then.

Cloud doesn't explain why he's mad at Shinra, but he also explains that he doesn't care about the Planet either. He even bothers to capitalize it, meaning that "the Planet" is their proper noun for the world they live on.

Tifa shows up but it doesn't help, and Cloud says he's going upstairs and he wants to talk about his money.

Everyone seems pretty miffed about the outburst. Wedge seems to be able to get a bit of a rise out of Cloud, claiming that Cloud talked to him, so he must really have some kind of emotions. Cloud tells him to blow off, which he uses to confirm his suspicions.

Upstairs, Tifa asks Cloud to stay with AVALANCHE, but he refuses. She begins spouting her pro-environmental message, but when that doesn't work she starts guilting him for walking out on a childhood friend.

I have to hand it to Tifa. She uses her feminine wiles well. She claims that he forgot a promise that the two of them made long ago.

A flashback begins where we see Cloud and Tifa in their hometown. Flashback Cloud asked Tifa to come see him at the well in their town, and tells her of his aspirations to join SOLDIER.

He wants to become strong, like another SOLDIER member named Sephiroth. This reveals a bit about SOLDIER. In the real world, special operations guys don't generally get individual recognition, but this Sephiroth is such a big deal that Tifa even calls him "The Great Sephiroth." Perhaps SOLDIERs are less like SEALs and more like Marines? Perhaps this Sephiroth is the FFVII universe equivalent of Chesty Puller?

Flashback Tifa asks Cloud to make her a promise that if he's ever famous, he'll come and help her if she's ever in a bind.

It's clear that even in the flashback Tifa had feelings for Cloud, and he seemed to have feelings for her too.

Jessie has no chance against this tactic, I think.

Back in the present, Cloud tells her that he's not a hero and he's not famous, so he can't keep his promise. Tifa tells him that even if he's not famous, he achieved his dream of joining SOLDIER, so he has to keep his promise to her.

Before Cloud can respond, Barret rides the lift up and tells Cloud, "A promise is a promise!" before giving Cloud his pay: a hefty 1500 gil. Not bad!

He didn't overhear the conversation, so his statement of "a promise is a promise" was coincidental. However, this seems to move Cloud. He says that that isn't enough, and if Barret has the next job lined up, he'll do it for 3000.

Barret is a bit miffed by this, but Tifa whispers to him that they're hurting for help and could really use Cloud's strength. Barret says that the money is for Marlene's education, but agrees they could use the help. After all, Shinra is mobilizing SOLDIER against them, and most likely they'll need Cloud to stand a fighting chance. He counter-offers 2000 gil, and takes the lift back down to the hideout. Tifa thanks Cloud for agreeing to stay on the team.

Hey wait a minute, I didn't agree to anything! I said 3000 gil!

The next morning, Barret tells us that the mission will be at the Sector 5 Mako Reactor (although Wedge actually told us at the meeting -- how about you display some OPSEC, Wedge). Also, Tifa will be coming along, which isn't really a surprise.

The game also gives us the tutorial on how to use Materia. As it turns out, Cloud's magic spells are because he is wielding two Materia; an Ice and a Lightning Materia. The tutorial is fairly simple; we just need to equip Materia into slots on our equipment to access its powers. The Assault Gun that was dropped from the scorpion boss has two linked materia slots, and so does Cloud's Buster Sword. Tifa's Leather Glove only has a single slot.

We shuffle materia around; Cloud gets the Restore materia, since he has the most MP. I give Barret the Lightning materia, since he has the second-most, and Tifa can carry the Ice materia. She's only level 6, while Cloud and Barret are level 8, so perhaps we'll switch things around if she happens to be more of a caster type.

We head to the weapon shop first and equip our team with new Iron Bangles that each have an additional materia slot. We also grab a Fire materia from the item vendor and an All materia upstairs. There's a bunch of tutorials up there for how to play in the ATB system, how elementals work, and all that stuff. It's really not hard. When your turn comes up, hit confirm a bunch of times.

The All materia is the most tricky new part of the materia system. While other materia can just be equipped and used, support materia like All have to be linked to another materia. For example, linking All and a magic materia will let me use my spells on all of the enemies (or allies, in the case of the Restore materia) a number of times each battle.

I'll put the All materia on Barret's gun, linking it with Lightning for use on all enemies. I could use it for Restore, but battles haven't really been that hard yet so I don't really need group healing. I should be fine healing out of combat.

Either way, we're off to go bomb another power plant. I cannot contain my excitement.

Let's Play Final Fantasy VII (Part 2): Dropping the bomb

There is a lot of exposition in the early game. You really have to enjoy this kind of JRPG storytelling in order to enjoy the game. There's tons of dialogue and not a lot of interactivity. For the most part, JRPGs would be better as films or TV series, and FFVII is honestly no exception. The gameplay isn't bad, but it isn't really meaningful. Thus far, the game's been pretty easy. I could just mash the confirm button over and over in battles and not have to worry about getting hurt.

That being said, let's continue. We enter the bowels of the reactor, where big pipes seem to be drawing out some kind of liquid. Is this Mako? The liquid is dark, but the place where the pipes meet it is producing this blue-white light. Some kind of chemical reaction? I have no idea.

We arrive at what appears to be the core of the reactor, and we find an odd green object in the middle of the path. We have to pick it up to advance. It's a "Restore" Materia, and the game must punctuate the fact that I picked it up with an exclamation point. Honestly it did the same with a phoenix down I found earlier, so maybe this Materia isn't so exciting.

However, I can't seem to use it for anything. It doesn't appear in my inventory, so I'm not sure what it is for. I just have to pick it up and continue on. It's kind of dumb that the game gives me an item and then doesn't show me how to use it or what it is for. If this Materia thing has some special use, it should at least give me a tutorial to show me how to use it.

We go to set us up the bomb, and Barret shows that he still doesn't trust Cloud. After all, a former member of SOLDIER might be...

Okay, seriously, Barret? If Cloud wanted to, he probably could have just chucked you in the Mako by now.

If he's actually a mercenary, he's less likely to betray you than any one of your other teammates. He's a professional, and he's in this to get paid. So let's get paid!

Of course, this is when Cloud decides to prove me wrong.

He grabs his head, the screen goes red. A voice in his head tells him, "Watch out! This isn't just a reactor!!"

At this point, my gut feeling says that the voice in his head is the girl in the pink dress. We know she's nearby, and maybe there's some thing that makes this reactor special. Maybe these Mako Reactors actually help the planet somehow, and AVALANCHE has the wrong idea?

I'll be honest, I'm sure AVALANCHE has the wrong idea. We're blowing up a reactor instead of shutting it down. At this point I'm not sure whether the guys I'm fighting are military or civilian authorities either. I could be killing cops!

They are using submachine guns, though...

Anyway, Barret notices that Cloud is tripping out and tells him to hurry his white ass up. He can snort some coke later. Cloud sets the bomb, and we get on our way.

Actually, we're attacked by a giant robot scorpion as soon as Cloud sets the bomb. He warns Barret that it's incoming, and we get to fighting.

Although the game's visuals are dated by modern standards, the re-rendering helped the game a lot. This boss actually looks pretty good.

Its attacks are a lot stronger. His tail attacks are doing 50+ points of damage, which is pretty painful. Fortunately, Cloud's Bolt spell can strike back for 90 or so damage. Barret's basic attacks only hit for about 35, but Big Shot manages to deal about 100 and he gets another one this fight. I also get Cloud's first limit break in this battle, but the huge boss managed to completely block Cloud while he used it.

We get pretty beat up, so I use some Potions to heal. They restore a pretty hefty 100 HP. I've been getting a few here and there from regular encounters, and they offset the boss' damage pretty nicely.

It would really be nice if I could use a "Restore" Materia or something to heal me, but I still have no idea how it works. It might heal abnormal statuses or something instead of HP. Previous games' healing spells are called "Cure," so I have no idea what this Restore thing is.

Then the boss pulls out the big guns. He raises up his tail, and Cloud tells Barret that if he attacks, the boss will counter-attack with its laser. This is a scene that I feel isn't translated well; it comes across like Cloud is being sarcastic, but I'm fairly certain that it was supposed to be interpreted as a warning.

Either way, Barret already had an attack queued when the boss raised its tail, so I eat laser to the face. It does a lot of damage to both characters.

We keep fighing, and the boss goes down. Both Cloud and Barret get another full limit gauge by the end of the fight.

The next sequence is timed, and the clock counts down even when the game is in Wait time or in the menu.

Either way, here's a scene of Cloud's first limit break, Braver. It's stronger than Big Shot, probably mostly because Cloud hits harder than Barret does naturally.

It's a panicked run out of the reactor, where Wedge is hopefully waiting at the escape point.

Along the way, we find Jessie, who has gotten herself stuck. It isn't really surprising, considering these girders and pathways we are walking on are an enormous safety hazard. Has anyone ever heard of railings? Or maybe even solid floors where your feet can't get stuck in them?

Cloud helps her out, and Jessie is surprised. However, Cloud is a true white knight, so he has to help a lady when she's in distress.

Milady.

The crew all make it out safely, and we're treated to a FMV of the fruits of our labor.

Did I mention that we're terrorists?

That explosion is pretty odd, to be honest. Our characters took an elevator down into the reactor from the ground level, and set the bomb well below the city. Then the reactor blows up from the top!

A totally reasonable justification is that the explosion blew out some key control equipment, and the reactor is designed to overload and vent overloaded power and/or fuel upwards in the event of control failure. At least, that's the best explanation I have. It does mean that, in spite of the huge explosion, the civilians in the area are probably safe. It would be amusing if we killed the pink girl and then her spirit followed us around and haunted us for what we did, though.

After Jessie's big rescue, it seems like the other AVALANCHE members have gained a lot of respect for Cloud. Jessie even seems to have a crush on him. Also, she seems to have her mouth open in every scene.

Either way, the team is ordered to split up and find their way to the Sector 8 train station.

Cloud tries to stop Barret to ask him a question, but Barret just stops him and says it can wait until they're back if it's about his money. What Cloud actually wanted to say is anybody's guess. He's been pretty quiet about stuff that has nothing to do with getting the job done. Perhaps he wanted to apologize for his cold attitude?

Traveling into what appears to be Sector 8 (west of of the North Mako Reactor, at any rate), we see that the area has not been untouched. We see most of the skyline that we saw in this area earlier, except that the explosion has caused a large amount of property damage. Unfortunately, that probably means we killed innocent people.

Cloud meets the flower girl in person, and she seems unhurt by the explosion.

She was selling flowers when the bomb went off, and while she was knocked down, she wasn't seriously hurt. Cloud tells her that it's strange that she has flowers, and she says that she's selling them for a gil each. We have a few hundred, so we can afford to buy one. She's pretty happy about that, but then Cloud takes off to meet up with his crew.

Although most of the people are panicking, at least one person notices some graffiti or a poster or something. It's some anti-Shinra, pro-AVALANCHE propaganda.

It seems like AVALANCHE is far-reaching. Back in the reactor, Jessie mentioned that many people within AVALANCHE risked their lives to get the access codes to enter the reactor. 

It's clear that the people Cloud is working with are just the operational arm of AVALANCHE. This actually is disturbingly similar to many eco-terrorist groups that exist in the real world. They have a "clean" front that participates in protests and community outreach, and other elements that participate in direct action. I'm not suggesting that real-world Greenpeace specifically did anything like blowing up a power station, of course, but they do protest real-world nuclear power.

Cloud is discovered by a group of Shinra soldiers. Judging by the quick response time, I think it's safe to say that these guys are actually civil authorities and not military.

Cloud fights them, but they get too numerous.

We actually get to fight a new kind of battle here, where soldiers attack us from both front and rear. If you get hit in the back, it does a fair bit of extra damage; I took a hit in the back for about 17HP instead of the usual single digits.

Oddly, Cloud also fully healed from the battles in the reactor, so he was full on both HP and MP for the fights with the cops.

The cops finally surround Cloud despite him killing like 10 of them, so he leaps off the bridge and onto the train below. 

Clearly this was his train, but I don't see why he was pinned down at all by these cops. Their guns deal pitiful damage, and we still have a lot of potions. We could have done this all night.

We did need to catch this train, though. It's the last one out of town, and we need to get paid.

Back on the train, the other members of AVALANCHE are wondering what happened to Cloud.

Biggs suggests that Cloud might have been killed, which Barret flat-out rejects. Jessie seems upset at that prospect, too (it's pretty obvious that she's hot for him). 

The next part is oddly translated. It seems to read as though Biggs is asking whether they think that Cloud will stick with AVALANCHE, but then Barret blames the rest of his team randomly. When I read it the first time, it seemed as though Biggs was suggesting that Cloud would fight to the bitter end for AVALANCHE's cause, just due to the context of what other characters were saying. It's clear that this part wasn't translated together, as the lines don't mesh up well.

Oh you, Cloud.

The team is surprised and happy to see him, in spite of his callousness. Barret is pissed and threatens to take it out of Cloud's pay, but it's pretty clear he's happy to see that Cloud is OK. Even though the dialogue is all text, the scene is well-scripted, so the intent of the lines is easy to see.

Wedge thinks Cloud did a great job back in the reactor, and Biggs is happy to have Cloud back on the team. Jessie wipes some of the soot off Cloud's face (probably from the explosion) and thanks him for saving her in the reactor. Everyone heads into the main part of the train, which I find kind of odd. Shouldn't they be hiding out?

We find out that the train is headed for its last stop, the Sector 7 Train Graveyard. Actually, I'm not sure whether the Train Graveyard in Sector 7 is the last stop, or if Sector 7 is simply called the Train Graveyard. Either way, we're on our way there. Also, we learn that the city we're in is called Midgar.

Jessie offers to show us the map of the rail system, which is a convenient way to give exposition on the city itself. Cloud, as a former member of SOLDIER, probably knows all of this already.

The name Midgar is an obvious reference to Midgard, which is the name of the world of men (our world) in Norse mythology.

We can draw some symbolic conclusions from this, too. Midgar might be the entirety of the game world from the perspective of the player, meaning that we might never leave the city, but I don't think this is the case, mostly due to the starfield panorama we saw in the game's introduction. It might be that Midgar covers the entire planet, but this also seems unlikely based on the information we get in this scene. It might be the only place on this planet where humans dwell, or perhaps it's supposed to be symbolic, the only part of the world that actually matters, so to speak.

There's a lot of expository dialogue here, so I'll summarize. Midgar's actually a pretty small city. The upper city, called the Plate (which appears to be a slang term), is raised about 50 meters above the ground. There's a city below that, considered to be the slums. Based on the 50 meters up statement, Midgar seems really, really small. I don't think it's more than a few square kilometers.

There are eight Mako Reactors, one in each sector of the city. When we blew up the No. 1 reactor, we escaped to Sector 8 in the west, so we can assume that Sector 1 was to our east. At some point, the towns used to have names, but people just refer to them by numbers now.

There's an ID check device at each rail checkpoint, When a train passes through a checkpoint, a bunch of red lights turn on and scan everyone in the train. Fortunately, our team is using fake IDs to avoid suspicion. The red lights effect looks identical to the red screen we had earlier, when a voice in our head warned us that "This isn't just a reactor!!" I blame the game's VFX budget.

Cloud and Barret have a talk about the people of Midgar, and how the people in the slums suffer because of the city on the Plate. Apparently, Barret feels strongly about this.

The upper city seems to pollute the lower city, and only artificial light is available in the lower city, since the plate blocks out the sky. It's a pretty bleak existence, and even Cloud says as such. He asks why people don't just move onto the Plate, and Barret suggests that, while it might be because their poverty prevents it, it might also be because the people love their homes, even if they are polluted.

Cloud replies with a rather profound statement. One rule of literature: if someone says something metaphorical, it's usually important to the work.

It's a long ride back to Sector 7.