A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 17: A New Hope

By The Rocketeer Posted Wednesday May 4, 2022

Filed under: FFXII 46 comments

As is the standard of RPG’s, the Bahamut is headed straight for Dalmasca, but it will patiently check its speed so that it does not arrive until the party is done chopping off monster parts in a swamp to haggle for new boots. But Ashe & Co, LLC. already stocks the biggest boots in all Ivalice, so it’s time to get in the Strahl and set Ivalice right with a hearty bout of impassioned philosophical and ethical debate between heads of state, assuming we have time between the epic cyber-Saiyan showdown.


Enter with boldness.
Enter with boldness.

The people in Rabanastre don’t even know what the fuck when the mile-tall Bahamut rolls up over the city, mainly because its power causes it to screw up the weather and it is constantly wreathed in a vortex of clouds almost too thick to see through. Classed as a Heavy Carrier, the ship is the flagship of both the 12th Fleet led by Lord ZargabaathBut for Gabranth, the only Judge Magister still alive, who commands from his Alexander and the Western Armada led by Lord Vayne.

Within, Vayne himself stands at the CIC of his shiny new Death Star, flanked by… Larsa?! What the fuck, kid? He seems to be cool as a cucumber riding shotgun with big bro as he tears ass across Galtea, set on crushing the Rebel scum. Shit, Cid probably got the idea for the Bahamut from a drawing Larsa made when he was ten.

As the sky fortress makes ready to fire its main weapon, Vayne muses on the bitter irony of Cid being slain by his own son(‘s platonic girlfriend’s pet demon), noting that there’s a lot of that going around lately. Shit, if we’d finished off Gabranth back at the Pharos, maybe we could have given the little Hiddleston incentive enough to shiv Vayne in the neck and call the plot good.

One of these lads is a pitch-hearted monster willing to betray and kill his own family in his byzantine plot to usurp the Archadian Empire and leverage its might to conquer all Ivalice, and the other is Lord Vayne.
One of these lads is a pitch-hearted monster willing to betray and kill his own family in his byzantine plot to usurp the Archadian Empire and leverage its might to conquer all Ivalice, and the other is Lord Vayne.

Larsa tries to talk his brother out of firing on the Resistance fleet, revealing that they had already surrendered before this scene kicked off. Unfortunately for our team, they don’t make fucks small enough for Vayne to spare and the Resistance chose the wrong damn day to stand in for Yavin 4. Vayne gives the order to fire, and the Sister Ray jutting out of the top level of the fortress blasts the trireme-like Resistance airships with a direct hit, which explodes on impact with the kind of force that destroyed Ghis’ Leviathan and the 8th Fleet over Jagd Yensa, devastating the entire surrendered fleet in a single blast.

Onboard, Larsa’s jaw drops as he takes another large step to becoming a man. Vayne explains he isn’t just doing this to be a jerk: once he demonstrates the Bahamut’s force, he reasons that the Resistance will have no choice but to muster all their forces at it, where he will crush them in one go before the upturned eyes of all Rabanastre.

Of course, it might also teach the Resistance to scatter, conducting an asymmetric campaign leveraging mobility and infrastructure-focused hit-and-run tactics, taking advantage of the Empire’s geographic overextension and the over-concentration of their power in the ungainly Bahamut and its carrier group. But Vayne’s never miscalculated before, so I’d place a big bet on everyone bum-rushing the Bahamut and trying to clog up the nethicite cannon’s barrel.

Naturally, this is too out-in-the-open for Larsa, who believes that they could better end the conflict with cooperation and diplomacy. Larsa, for the first time, seems upset and angered by his brother’s ambition. Yes, this is what it took for Larsa to stop idolizing his elder brother unconditionally: not the murder of his two elder brothers; not the conquest of two nations and the utter annihilation of one of them; not murdering his father to usurp his position; not framing the Senate for the crime to remove any objection to his tyranny; not trafficking with fallen angels to build cursed weaponry of unspeakable power; but a discrepancy on the methods of subjugating the known world for Archades. This is our inside man. This is the moderate alternative for the Archadian diadem.

Vayne again gives no fucks, and drops a stone cold shutdown on Larsa: he can’t stop him because he’s shorter than Vayne. Daaaaamn. Having thoroughly pwned his lord brother, Vayne gives a short Gihren Zabi pep-talk to the eight or so lucky imperials who got stuck manning the bridge controls in full plate armor.

<b>Vayne:</b> ''Victory is the greatest tribute we can pay those who sacrifice their lives for us! Rise, our people, rise! Take your sorrow, and turn it into anger! Archadia thirsts for the strength of its people!''
Vayne: ''Victory is the greatest tribute we can pay those who sacrifice their lives for us! Rise, our people, rise! Take your sorrow, and turn it into anger! Archadia thirsts for the strength of its people!''

As we ponder whether or not they sky fortress is air conditioned, the main Resistance fleet, with the Marquis Ondore himself at the head in his flagship, the Garland, has taken the bait and attacked en masse.

What follows is a lovely and awesome cutscene of the Resistance armada and the 12th Fleet headed by the Bahamut and Alexander each releasing hundreds of small fighter airships and absolutely blowing the ever-loving shit out of each other. It actually seems like the Resistance might have the upper hand, with the fighters holding their own and dealing heavy damage as they strafe the Imperial capital ships. Ondore gives the command to fire, and the combined Resistance armada unleashes a volley trained on the Alexander, which had positioned itself directly between them and the Bahamut at the Imperial front and center. As the Alexander takes heavy damage and starts listing to port, the Marquis orders another volley as soon as a trajectory on the enemy fortress is clear… Then he quickly Ackbars his pants as he realizes the Alexander was only screening the Bahamut while it readied another shot! The fortress fires its main weapon and… misses like a champ! The beam of deific annihilation clips the Garland’s starboard hull, impacting a ship far to the rear of the Resistance lines. The ship’s telemetry and radio indicates that three capital ships are destroyed immediately, including the carrier Galuf-Bal.

I don't know what Ashe's soul is worth but I'm guessing Halim Ondore really wishes it wasn't worth more to her than one shot like this at the Bahamut's bridge.
I don't know what Ashe's soul is worth but I'm guessing Halim Ondore really wishes it wasn't worth more to her than one shot like this at the Bahamut's bridge.

Oh, God dammit Final Fantasy! Stop killing Galuf!Halim Ondore’s first name is the same as Galuf’s middle name, Halm; both are localizations of “Harumu.” Was once not enough for the Bearded Aeris?! Worry not for Ondore’s fleet, though; records show that the carrier was immediately replaced by the Krile-Bal, a carrier with inexplicably identical capabilities, which, among others, repeatedly sortied against the Imperial heavy cruiser Gilgamesh until it turned sides in battle to ram and destroy the dreadnought Necrophobe, destroying them both.

It’s worth noting that the battle takes place directly over the city of Rabanastre, and the city is spared from the blast radius only by a shimmering blue barrier that seems to stop the carnage above from reaching it. This must be accomplished by a magical— sorry, magickal— paling, the likes of which we saw at Nalbina waaaaaay back when Rasler bit the dust. Though that raises the question, if the paling is strong enough to hold back even an indirect blast from the supercannon, and is roughly no larger than a belltower and powered by a few old dudes chanting at it, is there a reason every airship in every fleet doesn’t have one of its own?

Halim Ondore is a saint. He took in these identical twins off the streets and trained them up into elite airship pilots.
Halim Ondore is a saint. He took in these identical twins off the streets and trained them up into elite airship pilots.

Oh well; I’ll easily accept that because, real talk, this scene is pretty freaking radical. But this game isn’t allowed to do anything interesting without our (and I’m airquoting here as hard as I fucking can) “heroes” sticking their collective dick in it, and Ondore spies the Strahl as it shoots past them, headed straight for the Imperial lines. Ashe calls him up on the radio and tells Ondore that she’s headed to the Bahamut, to take on Vayne directly.

Ondore, who is probably pretty pissed at Ashe by this time for doing nothing of value, ever, for the Resistance and gallivanting around the whole world accidentally helping the Empire win, tells her to pull her solipsistic ass back and, you know, not sacrifice herself in a suicide charge; someone’s gotta sit their sandy fanny on the Dalmascan throne on the slim chance the Resistance actually wins this battle.

To her credit, Ashe knows that there’s not going to be any throne or treaty table to bother with if a miracle doesn’t do something about the Bahamut right this second, but Ondore knows that this isn’t the same thing as having a sane plan. I feel you, Ondore; even I haven’t had a good grip on things since Bur-Omisace, and I’m clearly paying more attention than the party.

In the foreground, an Archadian ship takes heavy damage from Resistance fighters. In the middle distance to the upper left, Zargabaath's Alexander releases its own complement of interceptors from its wing-like structures and moves to screen the Bahamut from Resistance capital ships. To the rear, Vayne readies the vast sky fortress's primary weapon.
In the foreground, an Archadian ship takes heavy damage from Resistance fighters. In the middle distance to the upper left, Zargabaath's Alexander releases its own complement of interceptors from its wing-like structures and moves to screen the Bahamut from Resistance capital ships. To the rear, Vayne readies the vast sky fortress's primary weapon.

But the bridge of the Garland is stunned to hear another voice come over the radio: it’s none other than… Lord Larsa? Wait, what? He shakily explains that he’s been taken aboard the Strahl, so they should be able to pass enemy lines safely. Ondore can’t believe that they managed to take the lad hostage, but is even more surprised when he’s told that Larsa intends to help them talk Vayne down, of his own accord! Ondore is stunned, and silently wonders how Ashe manages to keep such huge balls from swinging around under that miniskirt. He collects himself, and gives the order to cover the Strahl as it makes its way to the Bahamut.

I don’t really get why they needed Ondore’s permission, anyway; what was he going to do, shoot down the Strahl so the Imperials didn’t get her first? Of course, we see on board that, no, Larsa can’t actually teleport, and he isn’t on board the Strahl; it was just Vaan using the ship’s outlandish voice-changer from all the way back in Bhujerba! *claps hands for genuine cleverness* It seems that the crew was just channeling the little lord’s spirit to pointlessly troll their own allies. I’m sure somewhere on board the sky fortress, he’s glowing with pride but can’t put his finger on the reason.

Balthier, of course, can hardly fly the ship straight as he comes immediately and by the bucket, understandably delirious with vindication at finally putting to practical use a novelty widget he unwittingly paid 400,000 gil for while trashed for three days on shitty serpentwyne and sick half to death with nanna fever. Congratulations, Balthier; a win’s a win. Just one question: when did you ever get the chance to put Larsa’s voice on that thing? It’s wired to the Strahl, and Larsa’s never been onboard. *shrug*

With a swarm of Imperial elites ahead, Balthier pushes his skills to their limits, unaware that the left seat's controls are non-functional and only Fran actually flies the fucking ship. Behind him, Ashe crouches and readies surprise tickles for Balthier; Penelo sorts the items she looted from Fran at the Pharos; and Basch prays silently for death, as he does every day.
With a swarm of Imperial elites ahead, Balthier pushes his skills to their limits, unaware that the left seat's controls are non-functional and only Fran actually flies the fucking ship. Behind him, Ashe crouches and readies surprise tickles for Balthier; Penelo sorts the items she looted from Fran at the Pharos; and Basch prays silently for death, as he does every day.

Unfortunately for us,I get to use that phrase a lot, don’t I? we only bother trolling our own side, who meant us no harm, and not the enemy, who intend to kill us dead with their overwhelming military advantage. A TIE ends up on the Strahlennium Falcon’s tail, which Balthier bravely does nothing at all to avoid, merely flying straight ahead while making smug comments to himself, just like everyone everywhere knew he would. The tailing fighter manages to miss the half dozen shots he bothers to fire off before running headfirst into another fighter. So, that’s it for the resistance we’ll get from the hundreds of Imperial fighters and capital ships. But once we get to the freakin’ sky fortress, what do we really even plan to do?

Well, Balthier has an ingenious plan. See, though the Sky Fortress Bahamut is heavily shielded and carries a firepower greater than half the Resistance fleet, it’s defenses are designed around a direct, large-scale assault. A small fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense! What good are stunt fighters going to do against that? Well, the Empire doesn’t consider a small, 6-man fighter to be any threat, or they’d have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Aesh has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station. The approach will not be easy: they’re required to skim the surface to a docking area. The docking ramp is only two meters wide. It’s a small access ramp leading directly to the main command tower. A precise ingress should start a chain reaction which should hand Vayne’s ass right to him! Only a direct assault will cause this brutal ass-kicking. This plan is shielded from any actual intelligence, so may Ajora be with us!

But seriously, for a second: if it’s this insanely easy to just dock with the super air fortress, why isn’t every Resistance craft making an effort to board the damn thing and overtake it from within? Especially considering the Resistance knows they can’t win against it conventionally, and, as we will prove, the interior is so pathetically defended that I’m certain the Empire really did never expect anyone would try this, or take steps to prevent it. Shit, even getting close to the Bahamut should have seen the ship lit up with all the anti-air fire that has ever existed or will exist, and once we dock, we just open up the door and walk right in? And no one’s guarding the entrance?

We're giving Penelo our two best ninja knives, a crossbow, a brace of hand-bombs, a bat'leth, and one of our magick staves, and sending her below alone to draw off the bulk of the Imperial forces. While they're distracted, we'll make a break for the bridge. If we survive the fight against Vayne, we'll meet up with Penelo at the Strahl.
We're giving Penelo our two best ninja knives, a crossbow, a brace of hand-bombs, a bat'leth, and one of our magick staves, and sending her below alone to draw off the bulk of the Imperial forces. While they're distracted, we'll make a break for the bridge. If we survive the fight against Vayne, we'll meet up with Penelo at the Strahl.

Could we have taken a bomb? Now would be a great time to set a bomb, and then just fucking leave. We have bombs, right? We have hand grenades, so the principle’s in place at least. We have forbidden magics and a menagerie of enslaved demons, we have magic ring-powered fighter jets and radioactive superlasers. I’m pretty sure bombs should be a thing. Nethicite works like a bomb. Not that we have any. Or know how to use it. Just sayin’.

It’s literally a fifteen second walk until we get to some sort of central bottomless pit area. Can we throw Vayne down this thing to win? I’d appreciate the game giving up all pretense of subtlety at this point. It would be cute. The party stops to gawp at it and whistle through their teeth at the glowy central structure, because no matter how dire the situation, we must never stop being distracted by shiny things, or the Imperials have won in spirit. Their ogling is interrupted by an explosion, because it seems like Ondore has realized that destroying the Bahamut would be totally justified, no matter how many of his no-good, pain-in-the-neck allies might be aboard at the time.

We are treated to another nice scene of one group of fighters getting chewed to shreds by the AA fire that didn’t exist only moments ago, while another manages to land a strafing run with some clever tactics. Zargabaath seems confident that the Imperial fleet can withstand the assault. He’d better fucking be right; if the Bahamut turns out to be an overrated boondoggle and the Rebel Alliance manages to push the Empire’s shit right in, the entire plot will have been a waste of the player’s time. Marqui Marq seems pretty confident, though; let’s see what happens!

Is the cast just dicking around between takes? Did no one yell ''action!'' and they're just hanging around out of character, mocking the script? I realize this is that ''lighthearted moment amid chaos when the cast shows how they've bonded over the course of their journey together'' scene, but the context and content really don't sell this cliché!
Is the cast just dicking around between takes? Did no one yell ''action!'' and they're just hanging around out of character, mocking the script? I realize this is that ''lighthearted moment amid chaos when the cast shows how they've bonded over the course of their journey together'' scene, but the context and content really don't sell this cliché!

Back on board, the party is still dicking around in the core having a little chat. I don’t even know what the fuck anymore. Sometime around Archades everyone in the party seems to start paying the narrative exactly the amount of respect it deserves, and here at the end they aren’t even managing a decent interest in the world literally exploding around them.

The conversation manages to be hilarious, though, as every single party member manages to shit-talk Ashe directly to her face. Check my work if you must, but I’ll do my best to paraphrase it here for your enjoyment.

Fran:

The Resistance is blasting this place to shit! We better hurry up and kill Vayne before they win, so it looks like we haven’t just been wasting everyone’s time.

Vaan:

No worries. Let’s just gut the fancy bastard, so I can have an “in” with the new queen.

Penelo:

Are you sure she can handle the burden of rule? It seems like more work than any of us are really cut out for. Especially Ashe.

Basch:

Well, when Princess gets sick of having a real job for the first time in her life I guess she can always pawn that other ring off to get “kidnapped” again with the first sleazy pirate that comes rifling through the good silverware.

Balthier:

That’s a good idea— the silverware thing— but buddy, I really doubt the tart needs my help to run out on her people and dick around for a few months flip-flopping about every goddamn thing.

Ashe:

Hah! You think I could make up my mind long enough to even do that?

Vaan:

Get real. You’ve been coasting off this mob of lowlifes and peasants this whole fucking trip and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had us in the palace doing all your queen shit for you while you get fat on cockatrice fritters and clean out all the good booze.

<b>Gabranth:</b> ''I sense something... A presence I've not felt since... yesterday...''
Gabranth: ''I sense something... A presence I've not felt since... yesterday...''

After the whole party lets on that they’re sick of Ashe’s shit, we stroll on down to the elevator that will take us up the central shaft. A familiar face has recently been demoted to lift attendant: Gabranth!

The Travelog continues next week.

 

Footnotes:

[1] But for Gabranth, the only Judge Magister still alive, who commands from his Alexander

[2] Halim Ondore’s first name is the same as Galuf’s middle name, Halm; both are localizations of “Harumu.”

[3] I get to use that phrase a lot, don’t I?



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46 thoughts on “A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 17: A New Hope

  1. Dreadjaws says:

    In Square-Enix news, they’ve sold a few of their more popular fanchises for, well not dirt cheal but certainly way less than they’re actually worth. Unfortunately none of those franchise is Final Fantasy, which means we probably won’t be seeing one of these games being good again for quite a bit.

    But hey, finally there’s some hope for the likes of Deus Ex and Tomb Raider to get some new good entries out there.

    1. Thomas says:

      They also managed to lose a ludicrous amount of money ($200 million!) on their Avengers and Guardians games.

      It was bad enough that they mismanaged Avengers so badly it took down Guardians with it. But what revenue were they projecting to invest that much in the first place??

      Avenger’s even sold at least 3 million copies, so the overall investment must have been much much higher.

      1. Rho says:

        They’ve had a bizarre overspending problem at least since the awful FF movie.* and They apparently project wholly unreasonable sales figures despite having good reliable data, thus causing their financial planning to go haywire.

        *I just noticed that Final Fantasy and Fantastic Four have awful films…

        1. Rho says:

          Also, Square reportedly made the sale to get cash to hop into crypto/blockchain. For me that’s a slack-jawed “Wut?” moment.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            LOL, yeah. “Our live service games aren’t making bank. Could it be the lack of interesting gameplay, the excess of pointless microtransactions or the barebones content? Nah, it’s gotta be the lack of NFTs, we have to focus on that.”

            1. Thomas says:

              There’s a rumour Sony are going to buy Square Enix out and this sale was getting rid of studios Sony already has equivalents of to make the sale more attractive (Sony don’t need a Tomb Raider when they have Uncharted for example). If that’s true maybe (hopefully) the NFT bit was just nonsense thrown in to attract stockholders.

        2. bobbert says:

          That’s something we could do while shamus is recovering – make him watch Spirits within.

          1. Elder abuse is not a joke

        3. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Yup, I’m probably exaggerating a bit since I don’t have the numbers in front of me but like very single of the new Tomb Raider games sold decently compared to other titles released in the same period but they projected it would sell anywhere from 50% more to double that.

          But hey, we might get another Legacy of Kain game out of this, though it’ll probably be a remake of the first one since nobody alive remembers that, or maybe a decent Thief…

          1. Gautsu says:

            Hey take that back. At least myself and Jeremy Jahns remember LoK

      2. Chad+Miller says:

        It was bad enough that they mismanaged Avengers so badly it took down Guardians with it.

        Having recently gotten into Guardians myself…I’m not so sure how much of its issues should be blamed on Avengers. To be sure, I’m not disputing that Avengers could easily have cut into its sales, especially since, anecdotally, I know there are definitely people who ignored it on release because of the association as I’m one of them. But for the better focus, better storytelling, and the Telltale-ish parts that manage to be better than the actual GotG Telltale game, the mechanics overall just aren’t very good. There seems to be an online opinion that GotG is a neglected hidden gem that suffered for the sins of its predecessor, but now that I’ve played it myself I think it’s a lackluster licensed game that may have been able to trick us all into buying it except that the same developer just tried that same trick.

    2. Mye says:

      Eeeeeh 16 could turn out to be good, Yoshi P seems like the last person in SE to be decent at his job so he might be able to pull it off.

      But yeah, freeing the deus ex franchise from Square”we though every game would sell 100 millions copy”Enix is probably a good thing.

    3. Scerro says:

      FF16 has the best hope of any game since FF10. The person who dragged FF14 1.0 back from the dead and brought it to finally take over WoW as the reigning king MMO is at the helm of FF16. The last two expansions of FF14 have been stellar in the story department.

      Final Fantasy 16 has lots of potential. Combat Director from DMC 5 is also on board. It’s literally the only single player game I’ve been interested in since about… Kingdom Hearts 2.

      1. Silverwing says:

        FF16 has the best hope of any game since FF10. The person who dragged FF14 1.0 back from the dead and brought it to finally take over WoW as the reigning king MMO is at the helm of FF16.

        That actually worries me more than gives me hope. MMO and singleplayer couldn’t be possibly more different beasts.

        I do hope to be proven wrong, tho.

        1. Scerro says:

          Fundamentally FF14 approaches MMOs differently by being focused on story, which is shared in common with Single Player. So many MMO players have bounced off of 14 because it doesn’t try to fast track you to endgame to start grinding.

          As with everything, only time will tell. I’m quite pessimistic for games nowadays, but Yoshida has my trust. He’s also worked with Dragon Quest, so he’s worked in the Single Player game space too.

  2. Kathryn says:

    Wait just a goldurned minute here.

    Are you saying there are Star Wars parallels in this game?

    1. BlueHorus says:

      And worse, it’s so unnecessary and mishandled.

      It’s like they wrote a fairly standard Final Fantasy story about an evil empire and the machinations of the gods, then just rammed in beats from a Star Wars film at random.
      WHY has Ondore finally decided to attack Archaedia openly, at possibly the worst time? Because that’s what happened in Star Wars!
      WHY is Gabranth there for a final confrontation? ‘Cos that’s like Star Wars!
      WHY is Balthier apparently a sky pirate? Because Han Solo was!
      WHY does Vaan exist? Because – oh, wait…

      1. Ninety-Three says:

        What gets me is how irrelevant it makes everything that came before it. It’s not just that the only thing our party contributes to affairs up till now has made them worse, but with the bad guys having achieved everything they wanted so far, it seems like all it takes to stop them is sending some thugs to board their barely-guarded flagship. Nevermind the logic, fundamentally none of this needed to happen. Even from a pure drama narrative perspective you still can’t answer any of the glaring WHYs.

        1. Sartharina says:

          The reason you have a handful of thugs board the overpowered airship is because this is a game about scrappy thugs with swords with cool airships being setpiece levels, not a tactical game about airship fleet combat.

          Unfortunately, the lead writer loves grand stories of complex strategies and international politics. It worked for the Tactics series, but not for a small party adventure RPG.

          1. Radkatsu says:

            “because this is a game about scrappy thugs with swords with cool airships being setpiece levels, not a tactical game about airship fleet combat.”

            Meanwhile, Skies of Arcadia managed to do both and is fucking fantastic. Well… apart from the combat system, which was never that great and has aged incredibly poorly. I tolerate it because everything else is so great, though.

  3. MilesDryden says:

    Oh, God dammit Final Fantasy! Stop killing Galuf![2] Was once not enough for the Bearded Aeris?! Worry not for Ondore’s fleet, though; records show that the carrier was immediately replaced by the Krile-Bal, a carrier with inexplicably identical capabilities, which, among others, repeatedly sortied against the Imperial heavy cruiser Gilgamesh until it turned sides in battle to ram and destroy the dreadnought Necrophobe, destroying them both.

    I just wanted you to know that I greatly appreciated this.

  4. So is it mere coincidence that this goes up on May 4th, the informal Star Wars Day?

    IS IT?!

    yes

    1. GA says:

      There are no coincidences, there is the Force

  5. Retsam says:

    I don’t really get why they needed Ondore’s permission

    But seriously, for a second: if it’s this insanely easy to just dock with the super air fortress, why isn’t every Resistance craft making an effort to board the damn thing and overtake it from within?

    I think these are basically answering each-other: when we convince Ondore that we have the Little Man on board, he orders his people to cover us, which is probably why we’re able to get close enough to dock. I assume this is at grievous loss to the Resistance, Wedge and Biggs are probably dying off-screen to make this approach happen.

    … actually, I’m kind of annoyed they didn’t have characters named Wedge and Biggs die here. You’ve got a tradition of killing characters named Wedge and Biggs, and we’ve got the game ending with basically a Death Star run, and this is one of the few Final Fantasy games that doesn’t have a Wedge and Biggs? (Minus a loose reference added in the English localization) This seems like the mother of all missed opportunties.

    1. Yes, after calling in, Ondore orders his fighters to cover us as we infiltrate. Although the work that the Resistance is doing to cover us isn’t well displayed; they focus more on Balthier’s rather unimpressive flying skills. That part’s fine.

      Really, the question is why we would expect the six of us to be able to fight our way through he sky fortress and assassinate the Emperor… or it would ve a question if we hadn’t fought our way through two Archadian capital ships already (some of the easiest areas in the game, as the devs don’t want you to get softlocked there!) and the Empire’s top secret science lab in the heart of their capital.

      I know this is sort of the question you generally aren’t supposed to ask at the end of a JRPG generally or Final Fantasies specifically, but setting the finale among a pitched battle between armadas really throws it into stark relief. We find the Bahamut interior all but undefended. If Ondore knew the state of the sky fortress, would he have been tempted to try and screen a handful of transports full of commandos to the Bahamut hoping at least a couple of them get through? Forty guys storming the enemy superweapon could try to seize the bridge, or at least destroy its vital components from within. Or couldn’t they?

      “NOOOOOO that wouldn’t work, because Vayne is there and only Ashe can beat Vayne >:( or Vaan I guess I forget!”

      Eh…? I guess, whatever. I don’t know why, other than union regs. We played bocce with our death crystal, we don’t have any aces up our sleeves. Well, we do have the Espers… but I think many players forgot all about those and I suspect the devs are hoping you do. That’s another topic for a coming post.

      1. Retsam says:

        Yeah, I think a lot of this actually is the gameplay dropping the ball from the story here – what makes this feel so weird is how easy the interior of the Bahamut is: like you say it’s practically undefended, we go through like three relatively small screens of mooks and then we’re at the final battle.

        I can’t imagine this was the original plan here: this is the last dungeon, the ship is shaped like a giant tower[1], it even uses the special mini-map view of the Great Crystal – I feel like this really was intended to be a more serious dungeon, with you fighting your way up multiple levels through fiercer resistance.

        Did they run out of time or budget? Use all of their “giant tower dungeon” ideas on the Pharos? Decide two big “giant tower” dungeons in a row would be too much?

        It seems like fixing the gameplay here would mostly solve the story issue – but failing that, yeah, the writer probably should have done something: maybe a big action cutscene of the party fighting their way through hoards of soldiers, or to mix our New Hope metaphors, maybe some sort of “too short to be a stormtrooper” gambit to explain why we’re getting past so much security so easily.

        [1] Also, continuing my trend of Code Geass comparisons – the fact that this ship looks so similar to the Damocles, the big “final battle” of that story, made me laugh out loud when I got to this point… I’m seriously starting to wonder if these two stories had some shared writing staff…

        1. Chad+Miller says:

          Use all of their “giant tower dungeon” ideas on the Pharos?

          I recently watched a speedrun of this game. It ran something like 6 and a half hours. A full hour of the running time was the Pharos. Lest anyone think Rocketeer is exaggerating even a tiny bit about how long that thing was.

        2. Syal says:

          it’s practically undefended

          I, um… had to retreat here. I was trying to explore the floor and got overwhelmed. It’s a short walk but the guards here are mean.

          I’m certain this was a time and budget thing. This ship is ten times larger than the ships we’ve been on, and yet it has fewer rooms. That plus Al-Cid’s weirdly over-specific explanation of how Rozarria forced this battle, plus the nonsense of fighting Cid at the top of Pharos, plus having only heard about Bahamut in the previous nonsense fight, really lends itself to “Oh no, we’re not getting another extension, just do what you can.”

          1. Parkhorse says:

            I, um… had to retreat here. I was trying to explore the floor and got overwhelmed. It’s a short walk but the guards here are mean.

            Might depend on how overleveled/overequipped you are? I remember being able to just jog through and letting my party’s gambits handle the guards without me needing to actually pay attention.

    2. Kathryn says:

      Isn’t there a side quest involving chocobo stank that stars “Gibbs and Deweg”?

      (A very easily missable side quest, btw. You have to go to Nalbina between two particular story beats and walk toward the chocobos.)

      1. Retsam says:

        That was the “(Minus a loose reference added in the English localization)” bit – it’s apparently only the English localization where those two guards have names that reference Biggs and Wedge, and the wiki describes it more as an easter egg – if you happen to ride a chocobo towards these two guards they’ll freak out and let you through early – than a side-quest.

        1. Kathryn says:

          There is a side quest if you talk to July the Archades spy. She’s trying to find out something about one of the two, which does have to do with chocobo stank. You can track her down later in Archades for a reward. (so yeah, it’s about on the level of a fetch or delivery quest, not like the multi-step Barheim Key side quest)

  6. bobbert says:

    I would like to emphasize two points.

    A. Our plan is to destroy the enemy flag ship by hitting it with a sword.

    B. This works.

    1. Kai Shiden says:

      Hey, like they say, if it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.

      Also, in response to the final question, I’m going with 0)Artesia Som Deikun did nothing wrong.

      1. bobbert says:

        Huh? Is Rocko hiding Gundam jokes in his signature now?

        1. Abraham R. says:

          His signature’s been changing for every entry. This one was

          “The Rocketeer asks: to what level of Zeon apologism have YOU descended? Choose from the increasingly depraved responses below: 1.) Garma Zabi did nothing wrong. 2.) Dozle Zabi did nothing wrong. 3.) Kycilia Zabi did nothing wrong. 4.) Degwin Zabi did nothing wrong. 5.) Gihren Zabi did nothing wrong.”

          1. bobbert says:

            Any other standouts? The previous jokes are gone for good, as signatures are global.

            1. The name link also changes from week to week. If you haven’t been checking it, you’ve missed… stuff.

  7. Paul Spooner says:

    Typo I think “on the slime chance” is kinda evocative, but as “sandy fanny” is the analogy in play it seems out of place.

    1. Kathryn says:

      I actually wasn’t sure which meaning of “fanny” he was going for.

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        The man’s a poet, but my point is that “sandy” and “slime” (especially in this context) don’t generally coincide, which I think Hayden Christensen will back me up on.

  8. Parkhorse says:

    to what level of Zeon apologism have YOU descended?

    6) Haman Karn is my waifu

  9. Mr. Wolf says:

    TBH, this sounds way more like assaulting the Star Forge than the Death Star. To the point where I’m tempted to go get shot-for-shot comparisons for these screenshots.

  10. John Fields says:

    It’s been a while since I watched Mobil Suit Gundam, but I always thought Dozle was the least evil Zabi. (also that Kycilia was more evil than Degwin)

  11. BobtheRegisterredFool says:

    Maybe I need to actually watch/read Unicorn, but it seems like Minerva Zabi may have done nothing really wrong?

    Though, it might be in line with the way they manage UC continuity for her to work her way up the ranks of the Earth government, and maybe carry out some mass murders somewhere in her forties to sixties.

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