T w e n t y S i d e d

We, the heroes, have a loooooong walk ahead of us. Yes, while great Yensan Sandsea before the Tomb of Raithwall consisted of the Ogir-Yensa and Nam-Yensa, the road to Archades’ capital will see us depart from Nalbina Fortress through the Mosphoran Highwaste, the Salikawood, the Phon Coast, the Tchita Uplands,Pronounced “SEE-ta” and the Sochen Cave Palace,Pronounced “SAW-shen” with detours through the Nabreus Deadlands and the Necrohol of NabudisPronounced “nah-boo-DEES” itself if I feel like a badass, and I always feel like a badass.Pronounced “tool”

After moving so very hurriedly for most of the game, the pace slows to a near crawl around this point. Know merely that a daunting length of time passed between that last paragraph and this next one; nothing of any note happens, save for one small but significant scene at a small camp in Phon Coast.

She takes offense at his mocking tone, but he has a cautionary tale to share: about a man who came to love nethicite, babbling to himself about its majesty; who began to believe in some entity named “Venat,” whom no one else knew; who built a multitude of weapons and airships of greater and greater power in the name of researching the stone; who pushed Balthier into becoming a Judge.

Ashe is shocked at that last point, but Balthier brushes her off. He speaks, of course, of Cidolfus Demen Bunansa: Dr. Cid, of Draklor Lab, Balthier’s father.A reference to Cidolfus Orlandeau, Final Fantasy Tactics’ famed Thunder God Cid. In the original Travelog, I consistently misspelled this name as “Cidolfo.” Balthier’s real name is Ffamran mied Bunansa, although I’m not sure aught but his first name is ever spoken aloud in Final Fantasy XII. Frankly, I can understand his want of an alias. Le gasp! He begs her not to walk that same path. It was Cid’s descent into slavery to the stone that drove him to run from life in Archadia, seeking freedom as a sky pirate. Yet it isn’t lost on him how fate never let him out of its sight: he ran after a stone that turned out to be nethicite, got locked in with Ashe, and is now on his way back to Archades to confront his father about the stone itself.

Ashe spends a moment to reminisce, too, about a moment during her engagement to Rasler, standing on a high balcony of Rabanastre’s palace with him. The marriage of Ashe to a Nabradian prince was seen as a marriage of convenience, useful for the political tie between the two nations. But they did dearly love each other, and, despite the sometimes-tiresome roles they had to play, each would rather be with no one but the other.

Which reminds me: what was the bunk arrangement for Ashe and Rasler, anyway? Shouldn’t she have been living in Nabradia when the country fell? Was the Crown Prince of Nabradia crashing on his father-in-law’s couch in Rabanastre until he had to go die doing his duty to his country? Was this marriage-by-correspondence? Or was King Dad keeping the 17-year old Ashe close to home? Hey, I think I just figured out Ghost Rasler’s unfinished business!

Back in the present, Balthier tells her she’s too strong to become a tool of the stone like his father had been. She can only hope he is right.

Hey Balthier, would you consider a personal revelation about responsibility and not running from the past or fate or whatever as “more valuable” than a certain ring? No? This whole sequence has a lot of really deliberate shots of Ashe and Rasler’s ringed hands, dude. I mean, I was just thinking we could have a nice scene here on the beach, maybe at sunset, where you and Ashe, unlikely foils, kinda connect and reconcile those past tensions? And then when Balthier hands the ring back to Ashe, they realize that (especially to an audience viewing this from a silhouetted, low-angle profile shot) it kinda looks like a proposal, and they hurriedly turn away and cough into their hands and tug on their collars?

What’re you looking at me like that for? Fuck you.

After two more areas and a couple of random bosses, we come to— oh. Oh no.

Ugh. Archades.

This fucking town.

Archades. Everything about Archades sucks. Everything. To make it through the place, you have to engage in a very long, extremely pointless quest that consists of running through every zone talking to every NPC about four or five times each. Even if you use a guide to tell you exactly how to get through this quest, it still takes three times as long as it should. Archades has way too much brown in what would otherwise be a very pretty place (in a game that’s otherwise beautiful), and the music is no real consolation either (in a game that otherwise has fan-fucking-tastic music).

I know they’re trying to give the player a break from combat and running through the wilderness, but this is like taking a break from a long drive by sorting through the gum under the tables of the truck stop diner, picking them up in a particular order, then eating them in turn. And why do we do this?

Well, the first time, to start a fight, to distract some guards, to slip by the wide open pathway they were guarding. We absolutely could not do this by bribing one of the starving, desperate lowlifes of the lower city to punch one of the guards and then run off. Hell, we couldn’t even bribe the guards, whom I’m sure are paid so handsomely and respected by everyone they meet. We couldn’t, I don’t know, cast a silence spell on the pair of them and visit the kind of suffering on them that legends are written about.

No, from here until Draklor we’re operating on Adventure Game Logic. Our mission now is to take a cab. Oh! Well, that’s actually simple. Except, we have to have a special seal that marks us as a big shot before he’ll take us to the nice part of town. How much are cab drivers paid again? What would a suitable bribe be? Is it less than half a million gil? Because I’ve got about that much, and I would pay every fucking penny to skip this shit. Oh, they tell us: without a chop, it’s a million fucking gil. Can I buy a bike, too, you fucking prick? In order to get the sandalwood chop we need, we need a bunch of pine chops to trade up for it. How does one get pine chops? Like a boy scout getting a handful of merit badges, that’s how.

Essentially, there are a bunch of NPC’s with problems, the likes of which are so mundane and uninteresting that I would not dare document them, for fear that I would age several years in the few moments it took to type them. And corresponding with each one is someone who can solve that problem, whom you must find for them. You can only “hold” one problem at a time, though, because Vaan stood in the sun too often as a kid and his brain has gone a bit soft; you cannot just jot them all down in your Bombers’ Notebook, and then find all the people you need in a sweep. No, you must track down Nameless, Faceless NPC With a Problem #1, bug every NPC in Archades until you find their corresponding NPC, receive pine chop in reward, then track down Nameless, Faceless NPC With a Problem #2, etc. etc. until your blood pressure prevents you from seeing the screen properly.

If you’re waiting for me to explain why it makes sense that we need to collect fucking thank-you cards to Horadric Cube them into a bus pass, well, you’re in the same boat as me because I waited for the fucking game to tell me and it never does.

And the most insulting part of it is that through all of it we get information from someone who practically tells us outright, the very first time we meet him, that he plans on selling us out, because he knows Balthier and can get a ton of money from ratting all of us out. This honestly might be my least favorite part of the entire game to play through, and that’s saying a whole goddamn lot.

Except.

Except that you actually can pay your way out of this quest; it’s just really obtuse. Walk into any shop, and upstairs you’ll find a bloke called the chopmaster, who normally doesn’t do anything except trade your pine chops for the fancy sandalwood chop. Talk to him, tell him you don’t need anything, and talk to him again and he’ll give a long spiel about weeeelllll it’s not really allowed BUT I could sell you a pine chop for 20,000 gil. You need twenty-eight of them. For every one, you have to talk to him twice, wait through his overlong dialogue, and shell out as much as 560,000 gil. And it’s still totally, completely worth it.This is much more money than an average player will have at this point of the game, and you need to reserve a nest egg; your money tends to be depleted all at once when a slew of new equipment and abilities becomes available for sale all at once. I had 600k+ on hand and I made it rain.

Oh, and when you get to the central district after all that work? Balthier’s already there, after having left your ass as soon as you got into the city, that smug prick. And you know what he tells us? He gave that shady streatear type enough chops for us to get up to Central, and the fucking lowlife cheat pocketed them while we worked the streetcorner. All so he could get a leg up in Central making life difficult for us: by the time we get up there, a heavy guard’s been posted on the route to Draklor, and we can’t get in without agreeing with fucking Pazuzu here to get dirt on the lab for him to sell. God damned if I am ever seeing that horse’s ass again.

Moving. Swiftly. Onward.

We do, at least, have a ride to Draklor lined up. Upon arriving, it seems that the place isn’t quite so heavily guarded as we thought; everything’s a bit quiet. Turning into the next hall, the reason for this becomes apparent: everyone’s dead already. Well, that was easy! Our destination is on the top floor, but getting there isn’t exactly simple, of course. I mean, just once I’d like to visit an eight story building in a game and not have to turn out every broom closet to get where I was going. Just once…

In keeping with the theme of Archades, Draklor fucking sucks. Every floor is a maze, with two sets of doors throughout: red doors and blue doors. When one set is open, the other is closed. You see where I’m going with this. Getting through requires running blindly around looking for switches to flip that might open the set of doors we need to make it to the next switch, until we run across a keycard or whatever. All the enemies are either boring Imperials or oddballs taken from other areas. Of all things, rats make their first and last reappearance. It is an empty timesink and typing this out took twice as much mental effort. Seriously, alternating, mutually-exclusive sets of doors? People work here! Who would do this?! What if there’s a fire?!

So it is with great pleasure that I introduce a new face. As we arrive at the top floor, a man with dark skin, white hair, and wielding two curved bladesno it’s not Drizz’t ambushes Basch and nearly knocks his teeth right in. But after a quick standoff, he apologizes, realizing we aren’t with the Imperials. Yes, it seems like the other intruding force was just this fellow. Before introductions can be made, Cid’s taunting voice draws him up the stairs to the landing pad.

At the top, we come face to face with the man himself. Let me say right now: I fucking love Cid. He’s bombastic, delightfully mad, his voice acting is top-notch, and he makes for a fun fight. He stands atop the stairs to the landing pad, challenging the dark-skinned man, but Balthier cuts in. They exchange some glib commentary as Balthier demands the Dusk Shard, but Cid brushes him off. Something unseen catches his interest, and he chats with the air for a bit. Recognizing Ashe, he accuses her straight-up of lusting madly for the awesome power of nethicite, and her reaction betrays the truth of his words. He challenges her to a fight: a test for the Dusk Shard! Two floating devices float down and hover around him, and he draws two rifles. An intense glow of energy blazes around him, the power of nethicite swirling around the mad scientist who pioneered it. The battle is joined!

Aaaaand it’s over all too soon. Really, everything about fighting Cid is fun; his weapons are a joy to watch as they blast away at you, and his running commentary never fails to entertain. The sheer energy that goes into his performance is admirable. But at the end of the day no amount of fancy toys and glittery auras can save the old man from a well-placed knightsword, and he falls to his knees. Our guest with the two swords sees his chance, and leaps through the air to finish him once and for all! But the instant before the blow is struck, he is flung away like a leaf.

Cid takes a moment to thank “Venat,”pronounced veh-NAH and in the air beside him appears the spectral creature we spied with Mjrn and Bergan. So maybe the mad scientist isn’t quite as mad as he is well-acquainted! Balthier is dumbfounded to see that the Venat he had heard of so often years ago actually existed. The mad well-acquainted scientist taunts Ashe, bearing the Dusk Shard in one hand and the Midlight Shard in the other. How far will she go for the stones? He knows just how tempting they can be better than anyone, and he casually suggests she head to someplace called Giruvegan. After all, he teases, she just might get a new stone there. She calls his ruse as he steps toward a small airship, but he seems not to hear, musing to himself those fateful words: “The reins of history, back in the hands of man.” Remembering where he is, he laughs, and announces that he himself is headed to Giruvegan, so if they want to chat anymore they’ll just have to chase him down.

After he flies off, our mysterious guest introduces himself as Reddas, a sky pirate, and the scene fades to Ondore’s narration once more.

With the Senate purged and dissolved, Vayne holds absolute power over a loyal armada bracing for the inevitable counterattack against Rozarria. Meanwhile, the Resistance, led by Ondore, musters its forces at the borders of Archadian airspace. All the tinder is in place, just waiting for the match.

Ondore stands at the helm of his flagship, the Garland, directing his forces in mock sorties, training for the inevitable. Meanwhile, they track Reddas moving away from Imperial airspace to the port at Balfonheim, apparently with Ashe and the gang in tow. It seems Reddas was trying to pilfer the nethicite from Cid, but I guess we know how that worked out. We get to hear Curly speak! Oh Curly, it’s been too long. Why didn’t the sequel about you and Supinelu ever emerge? It seems he’s confident in the Resistance’s ability to go toe-to-toe with the Imperials, and if Curly believes it, then by God that’s good enough for me.

At Balfonheim, Ashe finds the port not to her taste; she doesn’t like the idea of a city that funds the Resistance without fighting for it, because she’s a fucking child that still doesn’t understand a goddamn thing about war or politics. Reddas lets on as much as gently as possible, and she asks if Ondore really is set on war. Lady, I don’t really think Ondore has much of a say at this point. In any case, Reddas points out that it isn’t exactly secret by now that the Marquis’ actions got her sprung from the Leviathan, and it won’t be long before he has to make a stand on the Empire in some official capacity. Quite frankly, it’s amazing this hasn’t happened already, what with his leading an airship fleet capable of fighting the Empire just outside their airspace.

We have a short flashback to Reddas meeting with Ondore himself. Ondore is optimistic, thinking that having such a strong fleet might make even Vayne turn to negotiations, but Reddas doesn’t believe it’s possible as long as Vayne controls the nethicite. All the more reason, Ondore says, for Reddas to try his infiltration plan; with the nethicite in Ondore’s hands, the tables would be turned rather completely.

Reddas puts the hammer down: just because he might steal the Midlight Shard doesn’t mean he would turn it over to Ondore, or anyone for that matter! Ondore seems upset with Reddas’s refusal; without the Stone’s power, the Resistance will be forced to ally with Rozarria for aid.

Back in the present, the party realizes that this is just what Vayne wants: lure all his enemies to one place, then annihilate them in one stroke with the nethicite, which no force could outmatch. Balthier makes a good point, though: manufacted nethicite is one thing, but Cid has both the legendary stones with him, and he’s not in Archadia at the moment. It seems we’ll be setting out to chase him after all.

Fran rouses from her stupor for a moment and starts reading from the Wikipedia page for Giruvegan, where Cid seemed eager to entice us. It seems it’s set somewhere rich in mist, and Reddas thinks it must be the Feywood in the Jagd Difohr. Considering that Cid spent a good six years disappeared in the Jagd Difohr and returned a changed man with a spectral acquaintance, it seems a good bet.

Everyone runs out except Balthier and Ashe, and the former asks if Reddas might be tagging along. No such luck; he has another lead to look into. Vaan pokes his head in and tells them to pack their shit and hurry the fuck up, but Reddas tells him to let the adults talk and go rap with his cronies, since he had them check up on the Feywood for him.Already? Reddas already knew where Giruvegan was? Not impossible, but suspiciously convenient. Reddas teases Balthier about Vaan being “his apprentice,” grievously wounding Balthier’s ego in the process. I like this guy already!

Balthier staggers off in shambles, and before Ashe can follow, Reddas confronts her. He isn’t happy hearing about the possibility of more nethicite coming from Giruvegan, and wants to hear her opinion on using the stuff. She’s troubled; she knows she needs its power to fight Vayne, yet she’s seen how terrible its use can be. Reddas doesn’t think she’s seen the half of it, though. He tells her that any discussion of nethicite begins and ends with Nabudis, and the conversation is over.

The Travelog continues next week.

The Rocketeer —PLEASE—STAND—BY—