God damn it, was nobody trying to
figure out the controls for the Garden?
I mean, sure, they only just found out
the damned thing could fly maybe a day or two ago, but holy shit, was
nobody even up in Cid's office, at least making an effort to figure
this out?
Granted, it's not like anybody stood
much of a chance of stopping the inevitable, but it would have been
nice if there had at least been an effort made to keep this fancy new
ship from crashing into something. But, crash it does, and from the
looks of things, there wasn't anybody even pretending to look at the
helm controls on this thing when it happened. Sure, Cid was up in
his office at the time, but he was too busy yapping away about how
things were under control because the PA system had been fixed.
So now that we've pulled a Mike
Nelson and rammed our nice new flying machine into the docks on
an ocean rig of some sort called Fisherman's Horizon, it's up to
Squall, Qusitis and Rinoa to go to the mayor's office and apologize
on behalf of Balam Garden. Most of the folks in FH, as the locals
call the place, seem to want Squall and the others gone quickly as
possible on account of the fact that they're all pacifists there and
don't like the idea of military sorts like us running around. They
reason that such a presence will only attract trouble. In this case,
they'd be right, but we'll get to that in a bit.
On the way to the mayor's house, where
he holds all his meetings, it seems that Squall's got the attention
span of a gnat and can't remember people he just met at most two
minutes ago. When he and the others step out onto the landing
gantry, the first people they meet tell them that they don't allow
fighting in town. It's that bit of foreshadowing I mentioned just
now. These people will show up down the way as the people who run
the lift between the dock and the town proper with their names listed
as Familiar Face, Familiar Face #2, and Familiar Face #3, and Squall
says he doesn't know who they are when we talk to them what can't be
more than five minutes later.
The mayor, a dude named Dobe, gets
right to the point and explains how they want the Garden and SeeD
gone ASAP, and are even willing to send over some techs to help fix
things and explain how the controls work for us. His aid or wife or
something, a lady named Flo, helps a bit.
Squall says he'll go tell Cid all this,
and as soon as the party leaves, Quistis says she thinks the whole
experience was unpleasant. Squall tells her that they can't expect
everybody to be happy to see them as they climb back out of the
central dish that the mayor's place was in.
We can also find Martine hanging out by
the mayor's place. He says he got banished from Galbadia Garden and
is ashamed of himself for having to take charity from the good folks
at FH. On the one hand, I can't really blame him, but then again,
given his situation, it's all he's got and really shouldn't be
embarrassed.
On the way up, the party hears a scream
as Galbadian soldiers show up, looking for Ellone. Dobe says he's
going to go talk to their leader in an effort to talk him out of
doing whatever it is he came to do. The leader says he's going to
torch the city regardless of if Dobe turns Ellone over, so his
protestations that he doesn't know anything about her don't really
matter. With that in mind, when the option to go in and kick some
ass comes up, I do so and rescue the mayor.
Of course, the same tank boss that
Selphie and her team fought at the missile base shows up right after
that and can really beat the shit out of Squall's team. Like so many
of the monsters in this part of the game, it has the protect and
shell spells, and since it's a boss, the Stop spell as well. Once
that gets beaten down, it blows up one last time and rolls back off
the edge of FH, giving Selphie and team just enough time to jump out
before it splashes down into the sea. Why the hell they couldn't
stop the tank from blasting the hell out of their own team, I'm not
sure.
Squall's happy to see the other half of
his party come back alive and it shows. After he sends them back to
the Garden, in theory to debrief with Cid, Rinoa flirts with him a
bit, saying that it's cute that he couldn't hide his true feelings
for once.
Since one of the instructions Cid gave
was to look around the place, I did for a bit. I don't know if it's
because I got the stuff for it at some point or that I used a Weapons
Monthly mag I found, but the weapons shop I found would have let me
upgrade most everybody's weapons, even if I didn't have the items for
it.
There's also a standard items shop,
which is good, because I really needed to stock up on a few things
after that last boss fight. One thing I'm hoping to find is a
specialty shop for Guardian Forces. There's an item called Amnesia
Greens that will make the summoned beasts forget some of the
abilities they've learned, which comes in handy right about now,
since some of those abilities start to become redundant as they
advance. Usually, these are percentage bonuses for certain stats.
I'll just have to look for that later.
As Squall makes his way back to the
Garden, he runs into Irvine, who asks if it would be OK to have the
FH repair crews fix things other than the Garden's control systems.
Squall says that it would be fine as long as Irvine doesn't go
overboard with it. Why Squall's the guy to ask about that, I don't
know. I can understand him being the leader of the playable party,
but how he's in charge of the Garden as a whole, I'm not sure. We'll
get to a point where he is soon enough, but that's not quite yet.
Irvine also mentions that Selphie's
feeling a bit down, and a few well placed words from Squall, who is
at least leader of the team, might cheer her up again. She's hanging
out at the stage she was setting up for the Garden Festival before,
in the Quad. But that'll be for next time. Until then, stay safe,
have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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