They ride, ride, and ride some more. (Visual Effect Artists Yuko Hatae) Somewhere along the line, the ‘Questrians switch to running their Chocos through the water so the game’s designers can show off the PSX’s “ripple capacity.” It looks like they are running through a river of Jell-o. (Main Program Taku Murata) More running. The ChocoQuestrians switch to running through a dark, mist-filled forest. One ChocoQuestrian has to jump a fallen tree. (Sound Programmer Hidenori Suzuki) Overhead shot of Misty Forest, the ChocoQuestrians cross a bridge, more floaty along the ground effects, yadda yadda yadda. (Planners Kiminori Ono) Finally, the Lead ChocoQuestrian skids to a halt outside of a giant stone building. (Produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi) The camera has much less responsive reflexes and slams into the front door. Whoops.
No wonder they don’t have noses. The eyes consume all.
Orbonne Monastery. Heh. “Bonne.” …Like I was saying, inside Bonneor Monastery, the style changes from CG mode to Sprite mode. The camera rotates around a strangely familiar–yet just different enough so as not to arouse the suspicions of the gamer–totem and finally settles into the game’s standard three-quarter view as we see “God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice” roll across the center of the screen. We can see a young woman in elegant red robes kneeling in front of the totem, which is made of wood and looks like a cross without the top part is fashioned in the shape of a T. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she’s the one doing the praying. Behind her stands an old bald man in yellow robes, and a younger woman with a red braid. The woman with the red braid looks like she’s from Switzerland, for some reason, so I’m going to call her Heidi, which is much more interesting than “Female Knight.” Plus, she totally has the same vibe as that prude nurse from Robin Hood: Men in Tights and I totally don’t care enough to look up that character’s name.
Heidi says, “Princess Ovelia, let’s go.” Princess Ovelia, who from here on out will be Princess Ophelia to keep my spellchecker from killing me and vice versa, responds, “Just a moment, [Heidi]…” and resumes praying. Heidi won’t take no for an answer, and extends her hand to Ophelia. “The guards have already arrived,” she whines, and the old bald dude walks forward and pleads with Ophelia to just go so Heidi (whose real name is Agrias) will let up with the wank already. The front door slams open and three men walk in. The one in brown armor (and a cuuuute feathered collar) whines, “What’s going on? It’s been nearly an hour!” Heidi gives him a “Bitch, please, she’s the Princess!!” and lets us know that Brown Armor’s name is Gafgarion. Due in no part at all to his dour disposition, dark clothes, and fabulous collar, I’m going to name him Gaffy. It’s really because his full name is Gaff Gafgarion. Snicker. That’s like naming your kid John Johnson or Harry Richards. Oh, wait…
Anyway, the three men kneel to show respect for the Princess and Gaffy inquires, “Is this going to be alright, [Heidi]? This is an urgent issue for us.” Heidi gets her knickers in a twist over his impatience, even though she wasn’t exactly the perfect model of the trait just moments ago, and wonders aloud if there are “rude knaves even among the Hokuten?” Gaffy totally sidesteps her insult and comments that he is being “more than kind to the guard captains here.” Even though he is clearly the leader of the three guards. Way to be nice to yourself, Gaffy. “Besides,” he snits, “we’re [just] mercenaries hired by the Hokuten. I’m not obliged to show respect to you. Neener. Neener. Neener.” Ophelia finally gets her fill of these two bitching at each other and pulls a “Don’t make me stop this car and come back there.” She warmly exchanges goodbyes with Simon, the bald priest, just as a Female Knight with a sucking chest wound bursts in through the front door. “Lady [Heidi]!” she calls, “The enemy!” Damn. I was kind of hoping something non-conventional would happen, like butterflies developing a craving for flesh and mauling people or something. Oh well.
Simon rushes to the Knight’s side and kneels beside her. “[B!LL]’s men!?” he wonders, and Heidi rushes out the front door. Gaffy takes this most opportune moment to exposit that the young blond man with him is named Cesario, and he’s no longer a knight, yadda yadda yadda, and then they run outside as well. Ophelia, who hasn’t said anything for a while, mumbles, “Oh God,” as the camera flickers and fades out completely.
Woah, was that backbone?
Outside Bonneor Monastery, we can see Heidi and two female knights in heated argument with the five ChocoQuestrians, who have somehow lost their collective Chocos since the opening CG five minutes ago. “The crest of the Black Lion!?” Heidi duhs, making the link between Goltana and the Black Lion all by herself, “What’s wrong with [B!LL]!? He’s such an idiot!” she yells angrily. “Does he want to start a war?!”
B!LL’s Knight is all, “Knave! Give us the Princess!” Because “knave” is totally one of those words that just gets better and funnier every single time you use it. Kind of like “wanker.” Then he and the other four ChocolessQuestrians start borging, “Resistance is futile!” as Gaffy and company emerge from the Monastery and the battle begins.
Right off the bat, Heidi warns Gaffy that if they kill this Quintet of Losers, it will escalate hostility between B!LL and W!LL or some such. Then she walks forward a few panels and mercilessly slaughters one of the ChocolessQuestrians with her “Stasis Sword,” an attack that summons huge blocks of ice from the sky and causes, among other things, major ouchies. (Only she messes up and calls it Steady Sword the first time she says the incantation. Whoops, localization team.) Way to practice what you preach, Heidi. Gaffy also displays some pyrotechnic sword techniques of his own as he uses his “Night Sword” to siphon off enemy HP and heal himself. The three Generics, Alicia, Lavian, and Rad, are basically there to serve as targets other than Cesario, Heidi, and Gaffy for the enemy to attack, so they just stand around and get beaten on for most of the battle.
The only character I can control in this battle is Cesario, and everybody else is a pawn of the AI. So, I take a few turns maneuvering Cesario around the board and experimenting with his attacks, and before I know it, Gaffy, Heidi, and their respective Generics have killed the ChocolessQuestrians. After their mangled bodies evaporate into blue dust, the party hears a scream from inside Bonneor Monastery and the camera zooms around to the back door, where a Knight in gold armor is leading away Ophelia. She struggles weakly against his manly grip, so he punches her in the stomach to knock her out, places her on a conveniently-located Chocobo, and prepares to make his escape as Heidi rushes out the back door of the Monastery and yells weakly for him to stop instead of blasting him to hell with her Steady Blade or whatever the hell she calls it. “Tough… Don’t blame us,” Knight says, “Blame yourself or God.” (Hee!) And with that, he rushes his Chocobo off the ledge and into the water. Heidi takes his advice to heart, falls to the ground, and screams “God!” as the camera migrates back over to Cesario. He recognizes the Knight as “Delita” and muses about Delita’s allegiance with B!LL. The camera soon gets as bored with this scene as I am and flies off into outer space.
Loading ...The Black Screen of Perpetual Loading ushers the camera into a large room filled with students, frozen in time, and covered with a brown haze. “Delita’s name appears for the first time a year before the Lion War broke out,” Alazam writes across the center of the screen, in such a way that each letter is presented one by one, v e r y. s l o w l y. So slowly, in fact, that I actually was able to copy that line of dialog without pausing the tape. That’s pretty exciting! Anyway, over the next several hours days minutes, Alazam tells us that after the 50 Year War, people were poor and sad. So sad, even, that they became thieves and “rebels plotting rebellion” instead of, say, rebels throwing quaint tea parties for all their poor and sad friends. Talk about a glass being half empty. Blah blah blah, we find out that many heroes rose out of the struggles following the 50 Year War, and I won’t keep you in the dark, one of said heroes is Cesario. Remember ‘him’? The hero? Of this game? …Sigh. Let’s just move on, shall we?
Chapter One: The Meager. The brown haze lifts from the room, which we find out is the Military Academy’s auditorium, and the freeze breaks. We catch part of one young Squire Generic’s casual pre-class conversation with one of his fellow students as he tells her (and us) that “another wagon bound for Igros” was recently attacked. His classmate, a nubile Squire Generic, deduces that the attack must have been orchestrated by the <spooky voice> Death Corps </spooky voice>. Cesario, one of the two unique sprites in the room, now sporting a feminine ponytail, somehow manages to piece together these cryptic messages and figure out that something is up. ‘He’ asks Delita, the other unique sprite, what the hell is going on. The fact that they are talking to each other instead of fighting for the Princess or whatever and Cesario’s youthful ‘doo help clue me into this chapter being a flashback. Anyway, Delita exposits that Prince Larg is coming to town. (That’s W!LL, remember?) Cesario is all “OMG that’s big news!” and Delita nonchalantly mentions that Marquis Elmdor of Limberry is coming in to town as well. Maybe they’re on a daaaate!
Maybe they think if we can’t read it, we won’t try to understand it.
Cesario echoes my ramblings and wonders if the two are on an “official” visit. Delita replies that “there are danger zones everywhere in Ivalice” and that the Hokuten Knights are spread too thinly for the bigwigs to be adequately protected. “So, they need us Cadets.” Cesario duhs. The light before-class chatter is cut short as a voice calls from outside the auditorium for everybody to “fall in.” The eight sprites in the room arrange themselves into lines as a Knight Generic walks into the room. “You have a mission!” he yells, “As you know, [but I’m going to tell you anyway because my job is to provide exposition goddammit,] barbarians are rapidly increasing here in Gallione. The traitorous <spooky voice> Death Corps </spooky voice> detest the royal family. [Plus, their land is sitting on top of majorly bankable oil fields.] We cannot overlook them. We will begin exterminating these traitors. By order of our Master.” He shiftily adds, “Then we will all drink the special purple Kool-Aid as Halley’s Comet passes overhead, and we will ride it to the Promised Land!” The Knight also tells the Cadets that they will be stationed at Igros to be rent-a-cops or something equally stupid prestigious, as a female Knight Generic runs into the room and whispers something to the Knight. The Male Knight clenches his fist and yells, “Cadets, ready your swords!” Hee!
“A band of tortured theives (sic) is trying to sneak into this town” and our job is kill them all. Brutally. Convenient that the “theives” are pre-tortured, yet still haven’t encountered any opposition from the Hokuten, who somehow know that the thieves are sneaking in but haven’t made moves to stop them, aside from sending a bunch of greenhorn students to fend them off. THIS MAKES NO SENSE! Before I can throw my Playstation out the window, just to watch it fall, the screen fades to black and I’m stopped by the hypnotic allure of the Screen of Perpetual Loading. Foiled again! Oh well, there’s always Xenosaga.
After a brief visit to the save screen, I am taken directly to the pre-battle screen, in which I can choose the characters I want to participate in the upcoming battle and where I want them to stand and so on. Cesario is already placed on one of the eight spots I have to choose from, so I fill the rest of my party with four of the random Generic students from the previous scene and start the battle. As the character-filled grid drops off the bottom of the screen, the words MAGIC CITY GARILAND roll across the middle. After getting an FFNostalgia!Pie to the face from FF1’s Garland, I take a moment to think up ways that a city can be magical.
Loading ...MAGIC CITY GARILAND. The camera swoops in and over the battlefield to the head thief, appropriately titled “Thief” even though he is inappropriately employed as a “Squire.” SquireLiar has a good laugh at Cesario and company’s expense, noting that they are just kids and how lucky this tortured band of rogue thieves is to encounter a group of kids led by a strangely effeminate young “lad.” “All we have to do is kill these kids and we can escape!” he yells to his fellow Not!Thieves. Wait, I thought they were trying to sneak into the MAGIC CITY GARILAND. Now they want out? That mistake will cost them…THEIR LIVES! BWAH HA HAHA! Seriously, though, it will, because my objective for this battle is to Kill All Humans! Defeat All Enemies!