Something tells me this is not going to
be the Space Odyssey we're
supposed to take it for.
Or even the Space
Oddity that David Bowie sang about, although I suspect that might
be a little closer, and I suspect that the Three Stooges reference in
the title may be the closest of the three here.
Moving ahead with the plot, Zell and
his party finds what I'm guessing will be a boss at some point that
pretty much tosses them out on their asses over Tears' Point, and
they somehow live to talk about it. Selphie's confused; Edea says
“The Lunar Cry...”, which is out of context for now, at least;
and Zell suggests a tactical retreat for the moment, much as he'd
rather not.
Meanwhile, Squall, Rinoa, and Quistis
are arriving at the Lunar Base, which is apparently in no higher an
orbit than the ISS, for some reason. Stranger still is the docking
process on display here. Once we see the pods approach the station,
the scene shifts to C and C or Ops or whatever they're calling the
command deck of this thing, where we see three people discussing what
to do. Controller A, Controller B, and Man In Spacesuit, as we come
to know them, seem to have forgotten that yeah, they were informed
that these space pods were coming and start by debating if they
should even retrieve the damn things. Yeah. Yeah you should, ya
bunch of fuckwits. Ya really think the folks on the planet just
launch these things at ya for shits and giggles or something?
Worse yet is the fact that the only
part of this process that has much automation to it is the part that
slows the pods down when they get close to the station. Once that
happens, the crew actually has to put on EVA suits and bring the pods
the rest of the way to the docking structure manually. Well, docking
structure is rather a loose term here, as it's more like a giant
toaster that the pods get shoved into so that the occupants can be
“quick-thawed”. I'd ask if that wasn't dangerous, but I'm not
entirely sure why it was necessary to put the heroes into cryosleep
anyway, since this was just a trip into low orbit anyway. At the
same time, I'm no expert on space travel anyhow, so it's not like I
really know what I'm talking about here.
Once the party's all thawed out and the
station staff has the artificial gravity turned on for us, the head
medical guy comes in to take us to the main lab so they can get to
work on Rinoa. Squall seems really protective of her all of a
sudden, and I'm almost tempted to say it's a side effect of the
cryosleep because he's even telling off the guy guarding the door.
And that's where I decided to end the first play session of this
issue.
Picking back up at the conveniently
located save point, we follow the doctor, named Piet as per the trend
of using Star Wars names that Square still kind of had at the time,
to the control room, where we see this Lunar Cry thing starting to
happen. Basically, what that means is there's all these other
monsters that live on the moon and they're all going to mass up and
splooge their way to Earth or something.
While all that's going on, we have to
go take Ellone to see Rinoa, because I guess Ellone's on Deep Space
Whine now too, for plot reasons, I guess. Before we can actually get
that task done, the shit really starts to hit the fan, because not
only is that Lunar Cry business ramping up, but it's allowed the
Sorceress to Rinoa's head and make her start undoing the seals that
are keeping the Adel version of the Sorceress all locked up on the
needlessly complex thingamagigger that the station's there. Because
I guess just anybody can do that. No need to have special access to
the computers or the airlocks or anything.
The good thing, at least, is that this
whole sealing thing is a two-stage thing, and one needs to get direct
access to the orbital pod that the old Sorceress is in to enter the
second part of the code to turn it off. The bad news is that it
seems that just anybody can get access to the protocols to do this,
as well as the space suits and the airlock controls to get off the
station and do it, so long as they know the codes.
Possessed Rinoa does all this,
unsealing Sorceress Adel just as the Lunar Cry hits the station and
blows the crap out of it. This leads into a painfully long sequence
of barely interactive cutscenes that culminate with Squall making a
timed rescue attempt of Rinoa. Something tells me this part of the
game would have sucked badly enough if I'd have actually known what
the hell was going on. As it stands, though, it's probably a good
thing I wound up failing the rescue attempt on account of not knowing
how to fly the space suit and only having like a minute and ten
seconds to try to figure it out, since the game doesn't say how on
screen. I am definitely going to need to see the last ten minutes or
so of all that again if I want to try and explain just what happened.
Unfortunately, it may be awhile before
that actually happens. I'm gonna need a couple days' distance from
this before I try again. I'm hoping it won't be another
two-week-plus gap between issues of this, but the way things have
been going, I'd better not make any promises, either.
Until I do get back to this, stay
safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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