A random NPC near the edge of town recognizes Mr. T right away, which triggers a reaction from another NPC further into the town. Before things get out of hand, Mr. T advises Bitch and Gay Lion to wait behind while he takes care of this. They comply. Everything is all tense as Mr. T walks over to a small group of townsfolk — will this be a warm welcome, or is Mr. T on their shitlist? One blue-clad NPC clone — a tiny white guy whose sprite is roughly half the size of Mr. T’s massive form — punches Mr. T in the face. I believe it would be the shitlist option, then. The NPCs continue to taunt Mr. T, unaware or unconcerned about the danger posed by his gun arm. “These people over there, they with you?” one guy — let’s call him Bill — wonders upon spotting the rest of the party. Originally I was going to make a comment about Bill’s crappy vision, seeing as how one of the “people” in question is actually a lion, but how can I give this guy a bad time when I can’t tell what things are in this game half the time? Just because Bill is formed of the same shitty graphics doesn’t mean he’s going to automatically know that he’s looking at a flaming red lion and not a guy in a red shirt, you know?
Hee…he said ‘balls.’
Anyway, as soon as the remainder of my party is spotted by these angry jackasses, I pray for a West Side Story style rumble to break out, complete with snapping and random twirls. To my extreme disappointment, Bill only wants to spout a passive-aggressive insult at Mr. T’s companions: “Well, I feel sorry for ’em! Hanging’ around a walkin’ death sentence like Mr. T.” According to some more exposition-laden insults, Mr. T is responsible for this town’s current shitty state. Whether these accusations have any basis in fact or if these guys are just a bunch of dickheaded racists remains to be seen. Whatever the case, Mr. T apologizes, which as you can imagine goes over about as well as a female stripper in a Phoenix Wright courtroom. One of the guys even calls Mr. T a “Techno-freak” — so they’re racist and biased against the differently-abled. And don’t forget whiny povs, just to add to that trifecta of win.
Eventually, the smacktalking gang of dillholes disperses and Mr. T returns to his buddies. “You heard ’em… It’s my fault this town was…destroyed…” he sighs before he and Gay Lion merge back into Bitch, allowing me to take a look around this dump. Not that I’m anxious to recap the obligatory Tragic Backstory Flashback, but I wish they’d fucking hurry up and tell me what’s going on already. In the meantime, Bitch drunkenly fumbles his way around the random tents and shacks. You might think said stumbling is just me trying to unsuccessfully interpret the game’s crappy graphics, but no — Bitch is just that pathetic.
Loading ...One NPC — let’s say it’s Bill again, so I don’t have to think of any more names — shrieks at Bitch to get out of his God damn way, making sure to add that the town’s livelihood now consists of “collecting junk.” I don’t see how that would create any profit, unless they’re actually selling the junk or making art out of it and charging people to view it. Or maybe they are just collecting it, which is why they can’t make any decent money from it. Seriously, if all you had to do was collect junk to make a living, I’d be a God damn millionaire. It turns out that they’re actually selling the junk, and half of the NPCs lounging about town are actually fronting shops. I have myself a bit of a giggle when I realize that said shops consist of piles of wooden boxes.
When I talk to the first shopkeeper, not only can I buy merchandise from him, but I can “listen to [his] story.” Now, how could I pass up that glorious opportunity? Instead of wanksting over his own personal tragedies and heartaches like I expected, the shopkeeper tells me that something called the Ropeway on the next screen will take me to something called the Gold Saucer. It looks like Bitch has found his next destination — he wonders how Sephiroth would look lounging nude on a gold saucer. Naturally, the shopkeeper has to follow up this information with, “It don’t mean much to us poor folks though…” Wait a minute — you mean there’s something that the impoverished people of this town can’t afford? Holy crap, someone alert the media!
Bitch boosts the town’s waning economy with a quick round of Buy Some Shit. And by odd coincidence, some of the junk scavenged by the ex-miners in North Corel is of higher quality than the legitimate merchandise sold in all the previous cities I’ve visited. I know I’ve harped on this point before, but since these guys have made such a big deal about their pitiful state of affairs, I just thought I’d point out that they’re not exactly selling rusty butter knives here.
Wait, people here are poor?!
Another self-pitying pov sitting on his ass outside a shack wants to talk to Bitch about tattoos, of all things. This is an awkward segue to some information about a “young man” with a ‘1’ tattooed on his arm who just happened to be meandering on over to the Ropeway. “That Black Cape he had on was really cool,” the NPC says, sighing over the fabulous hottie Sephiroth. It really says something that the majority of the NPCs of this town would rather bitch and moan about their situation than talk about a rather unusual visitor. That’s the type of shit that NPCs usually can’t shut up about — and I had to find it out by picking a particular option during a dialogue with some out-of-the-way loser. These people suck.
Well, I can take a hint, even if the font color didn’t change, so Bitch heads toward the Ropeway. I’m sorry, but every time I see that word, I think it says “Rapeway.” But Bitch already experienced that back in Part 3. Anyway, the Ropeway consists of a shiny blue phallic vehicle attached to a pair of cables. Standing with their thumbs up their asses in front of the blue vessel are the three ladies. Hey, the townsfolk didn’t mention them either. That, combined with the fact that there appear to be no females in the town, would normally make me wonder about the, um, preferences of the male inhabitants. But no self-respecting gay man — even a poor one — would allow himself to live in such drab decor. I would expect them to at least fashion some nice curtains or maybe a huge-penised male statue out of some of the junk they collect.
But I’m procrastinating again. Instead of chasing down Sephiroth at the Gold Saucer, the party decides it’s time to hear the story of Mr. T and the downfall of Corel. Yes, a drawn-out tale always takes priority over the main plot in this game. Well, we may as well get started.
“My hometown used to be around here,” Mr. T begins with a statement of the obvious. Gay Lion apparently became blind and retarded at some point, as he asks for clarification. “It ain’t here no more. Heard it got buried…in just 4 years,” Mr. T responds, without giving any details about what buried it. A horrible earthquake? A flood? Massive amounts of wank? Also, the near-altercation between Mr. T and the North Corel townsfolk must have taken place at record-level decibels, because Airhead heard the whole thing. She wants to know why everyone was such an angry bitch to Mr. T. “An’ it’s my fault. ALL my fault,” Mr. T drama queens, before we fade into the actual flashback.
Before Mr. T screwed everything up, Corel was a…well, judging from what I’m seeing on the screen right now, it wasn’t exactly a beautiful, high-end neighborhood. It still had nothing but dirt on the ground and the houses were still wooden shacks. They were just bigger, slightly more decorative wooden shacks. We see people milling about the town, looking pretty much the same as their present-day counterparts in North Corel. Well, except that there are a couple of women, too. Of course, the women are standing around gossiping with each other like a pair of clucking hens as we chicks are wont to do. Mr. T’s text overlay on this idyllic scene exposits what we already know about Corel being a coal mining town. “It’s so dusty, but calm and so poor…… A real small town, this one,” he adds. Let’s all stop and think for a moment about how someone actually paid these translators. Just so you don’t think that was the single piece of fecal matter in the otherwise delicious chocolate exposition cake, he immediately follows with, “That’s the first time I ever heard the word ‘Mako Reactor’ mentioned since that time…”
“Since what time?” you may ask. “Gosh, I hope the next sentence tells us exactly when that previous time was.” But no. That’s it. The “since that time” appears to be a completely extraneous addition to the sentence. I just came to the sad realization that I would probably have less trouble recapping from the original Japanese than from this aggravating English version. But then the vast majority of my comic material would disappear, since that time…
Okay, back to the “action”! The scene switches to a room full of burly, coal-mining men standing around a room containing two ornate couches, a simply divine decorative rug, and the worlds largest china cabinet. The thing takes up the entire back wall, and in this game where they spent all of five minutes creating all the character models, the game designers actually bothered to fill the glass front cabinet with dishes and trinkets. Honestly, this game.
The men are discussing Serious Business which is why none of those silly womenfolk are present. The Village Headman — a guy with a grayish block stuck to the back of his head, signifying his advanced age — addresses the room. “What are we going to do? The only one against this is Dyne…” Yes, Dyne. The most popular RPG name in existence. We don’t know yet just what Dyne is against, but he’s not budging. “There’s nothing to talk about if you’re thinking of throwing away our coal!” Yes, Dyne is all about the freaking coal because their fathers and their fathers’ fathers and so on were all miners. Dyne represents the obligatory individual who is against any sort of change, kind of like fanboys who still insist the first Final Fantasy on NES was the best in the series.
Mr. T doesn’t want to be a technological fuddy-duddy like Dyne: “No one uses coal nowadays. It’s the sign of the times.” I didn’t even notice her because she was hidden behind the massive dialogue boxes, but Scarlet from Shinra and her sexy red outfit are there too, flanked by two very intimidating henchmen. I’m trying to spice up this scene a bit. Now everything is becoming clear. Well, for this game, anyway. Scarlet is trying to convince this town of backwater hicks to switch from their traditional ways — that would be coal mining, for those of you who haven’t caught on from the fifteen times it’s been mentioned so far — to the sexy new world of Mako. This would involve building a reactor nearby. “It’ll be all right, Dyne,” Scarlet says smoothly, displaying a little cleavage for his benefit. “Shinra, Inc. will guarantee your livelihood once the Mako Reactor is completed.”
‘I…I love you, Mr. T!’
Back before Mr. T was a terroristic anti-Shinra crusader, he bought their bullshit hook, line, and sinker. His motivation is to end his wife Myrna’s suffering. I love this — all these NPC women with names like “Myrna,” “Marlene,” “Elmyra,” and so on, like they’re a bunch of old geezers. Before anyone with any of these names writes me an angry e-mail, remember that my name is Jeanne. For the first twenty years of my life, I never met anyone with that exact spelling of my name who was under 80.
I’m not sure how exactly Myrna is suffering — maybe she broke a hip — but Dyne feels Mr. T’s pain. He’s just not willing to sacrifice his morals and his beloved coal for the sake of progress. “Dyne…you’ve got to understand,” the Village Headman says, placing a hand on Dyne’s bare shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. This vague statement causes Dyne to collapse on the couch in despair, beaten. “That’s how the Corel Reactor was built……and completed,” Present!Mr. T monologues.
The screen changes to a shot of the village with a cheesy flame overlay. I bet this means that the villagers’ hearts were enflamed with hope, and everything worked out just as well as Shinra promised! Not in an RPG — who in the hell has a happy backstory? Mr. T and Dyne were on an unspecified out-of-town trip when Shinra forgot they weren’t in a Suikoden game and burned down the village. And that immediately makes me even more suspicious that Mr. T and Dyne were groping each other. Come on — a weekend trip out of town? Don’t be naive, people. While the two men were holed up (no pun intended) in a hotel somewhere, everyone — including Mr. T’s wife — burned to death. To drive the point home, the game designers animated a couple of blocky sprites stumbling out of a house and randomly collapsing in the middle of the street. No, not…that random NPC! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
This unintentionally hilarious display segues back to the present day. No one thinks to ask, “Wait, don’t you have a daughter? How did that happen if the whole village turned into crispy critters while you were boning that guy in the wifebeater?” Instead, Bitch wants to know why Shinra went all pyro on the town. “There was an explosion at a reactor,” Mr. T says. What he really means is, “There was an explosion at the Corel Reactor.” At least that’s what I think. Because he follows this with, “Shinra blamed the accident on the people. Said it was done by a rebel faction.” I doubt Shinra, even in their buttholishness, would blame Corel if, say, the reactor over in South Bumfuck exploded. Plus, we saw that the Corel Reactor is all busted up and stuff. But to explain this clearly would break all the laws of Final Fantasy VII, so I’m left making assumptions here. And I think we’re supposed to be breathless with the irony that Mr. T now leads a rebel faction that blows up Mako Reactors.