FFVII Crisis Core – Banora Wipeout

Starting off our final session (like I said in the previous entry, I don’t remember exactly when that was), we decided to go back to the Yuffie plotline and finish off Bahamut Fury to complete our set of summons and acquire “all characters” as per our Marathon goal. As it happened, we rolled a Summon during the battle, prompting one of us to shout: “Help me, Bahamut!” We rolled Ifrit instead.  Such a disappointment. In return for getting all of the DMW entries we were rewarded with the Fury Ring, a ring that allowed counterattacks.

FFVII Crisis Core – Just a little nap

When Zack recovers, it’s only enough to open his eyes to see Hojo carrying Cloud off on a stretcher, saying that “He’ll make a fine test subject!” Next thing we know, we’re in the next chapter, where Zack is having a vision of Angeal scolding him.  As the vision ends, Zack discovers he’s in some sort of tube, like Jenova’s, except his is in the Shinra manor basement laboratory. After a dreamlike CG wherein Zack remarks that he now wants wings like Angeal’s, Zack wakes to find the tube shattered.  Zack shakes off the butterflies despite glowing green, and punches out a research assistant. As you do. He then finds Cloud in a neighbouring tube and lets him out, but Cloud does not wake. Now that Zack has let Cloud out of this tube without checking on him or his medical charts, I’d like to tell you some fun trivia!  In Dirge of Cerberus, which was made before this one, we see one of these tubes being used because the guy inside has a big hole in his chest and they were trying to heal it! Or he’d die!  A big hole, just like Cloud had in the previous scene! Neat, huh? Just thought I’d bring that up.

FFVII Crisis Core – Falling: The Useless Killer

Our next session started with Zack and Kunsel being separated for what would prove to be the last time, only to reunite with Cloud at his briefing for the mission! Buddies! Soon, Cloud had rounded up a total of three guardsmen (including himself) to go with Zack and Sepiroth on the mission, which Sepiroth finally revealed was to the village of Nibelheim, for any FFVII fans who hadn’t already worked that out. That started Chapter 9, and Crisis Core’s recreation of the famous flashback from FFVII. And that means it’s time for us to see just how many of the flashback’s elements no longer make any damned sense when put into their “proper” context.

FFVII Crisis Core – Umbrella Braver

After yet another time skip, we follow up Zack’s inspiring speech to the new SOLDIERS with news that while Hollander has been arrested, Zack has been put on standby, the company is in shambles, Zack’s being spied on by the Turks, SOLDIER is utterly disrespected, and Zack has no motivation, which seems to nearly contradict the bittersweet previous scene involving a group full of happy new SOLDIERs and Zack inspiring them with the motivation he tries to live by!

FFVII Crisis Core – Quadriceps of Steel

After the usual post-chapter time skip, we learned that Sephiroth locked himself away in the data room, looking up Hollander’s data. After this brief introduction, Zack was called by Aerith to come work on the flower wagon.

Of course, Kyle and I continued to be min-maxing little shits. We went looking for missing side-missions, to make sure we weren’t locked out of any by proceeding too far through the story (Kyle was insistent that, even though the Summon DMW was almost useless, we should nevertheless recruit every Summon as part of our Marathon objective to “recruit every character,” so for all we knew, being locked out of side-missions might have prevented us from doing that). We were now in Chapter 6, which is where the last of the missable side-missions is unlocked: namely, you get an order to track down Wutai spies in the Shinra company, and each one of them returns a side-mission once caught.

FFVII Crisis Core – Petnapping

Zack woke up in the next chapter, thinking he was hearing the voice of his mother. This one line does, in fact, seem to be voiced by a unique character for a single line of dialogue, but I’m afraid I can’t find a credit for the actress! The whole scene starts becoming really Freudian when Zack wakes up and meets Aerith Gainsborough, one of the future party members of FFVII, and immediately gets a crush on her. Aerith is just a year younger than Zack, though it’s hard to say exactly how old, considering Crisis Core spans a fair chunk of time and it’s never clear exactly how much of it has passed at any given moment (although a look at the timeline suggests that Zack and Aerith are both 16 and 15, respectively. Yeah, sure). While I can’t place the voice of “Zack’s mother,” Aerith is voiced by Andrea Bowen, my favourite actor in the role. Bowen would go on to cameo in the role in Dissida 012 and actually appears in an unrelated bit part in Advent Children. Besides voice acting, Bowen is also known for live acting and music, and since I’m so used to doing Aerith’s voice actor credits for Kingdom Hearts, I’d feel left out if I didn’t point out that she voiced Faline in Bambi II.

FFVII Crisis Core – Zack! Zack? Zaaaaaaack!

At the start of the next chapter, Zack reported the Wutai War was over, and “Everyone’s real happy.” Naturally, this implies another time skip, and naturally we’re not given any specifics. Sephiroth then called him on his cell phone, ordering him to the director’s room. Judging from my notes, Kyle and I found the idea of great, grand, big-bad Sephiroth calling Zack casually on a cell phone to be hilarious.

FFVII Crisis Core – Detonating an Old Lady

Heading out of town the other side, Tseng called us to a cliff side which overlooked a factory just outside of town. It seemed Genesis’ forces were using the factory as a base, and Tseng ordered us to “attack from above” rather than approach through the front doors like an idiot. You know, like in the last mission. And every other mission in the game. Around this point in the game, we received a company-wide email from Lazard, talking vaguely about an “unspeakably tragic incident” (presumably the defections at large) and babbling somewhat incomprehensibly about biological and non-biological ties leading to “ill-blood,” and trying to focus on risk prevention in the future.

FFVII Crisis Core – Mugging an Old Lady

Zack and Angeal make it out of the fortress just fine, though it seems like they shouldn’t have had to worry, because no explosion ever actually occurs! I’m not entirely sure why a game that already has stock explosion effects and sounds would pass up on an opportunity like this, but there you go. Just then, Director Lazard showed up, jogging around in the middle of enemy territory. He tries to explain that he’s just trying to take a hands-on approach to the war, which is something… I don’t know, resembling a nice character moment, if you ignore the fact that there are dozens of other ways he could be doing this, like from a helicopter, or with guards, or with guards in a helicopter? Let’s just say that I don’t think you’re going to be all that surprised when I tell you that this is just a setup for him to be put in danger.

Sure enough, the three of them are ambushed by blade-wielding, masked warriors. After an initial scrum that leaves two of the attackers dead, a second ambush forces the party to separate, Angeal holding off the attackers while Zack is ordered to escort Lazard to safety. Once Zack got the director to Shinra lines, he ran back to reunite with Angeal. There, he found the corpses of the original attackers but with with no sign of Angeal or second wave. Presumably because the adrenaline was wearing off, Zack suddenly noticed that the dead men weren’t Wutai soldiers. C’mon Zack, haven’t you heard? 95% of Wutai’s population are factory-produced recolours. The human rights violations are immense.

FFVII Crisis Core – At last, I’ve won the stupidest prize of all

After the training sequence, we joined Zack talking to his (constantly masked, essentially faceless) best friend Kunsel, a SOLDIER 3^rd class to Zack’s 2^nd class. Zack was doing squats, his favourite hobby, and Kunsel informed him that there had been a mass desertion at SOLDIER and since Zack didn’t know about it, he was apparently as far out of the loop as anyone could possibly be. Kunsel explained that one of the 1^st class SOLDIERs, the top brass, has gone AWOL with a whole chunk of the others. Just then, Angeal (who we learn is another 1^st class SOLDIER) came in to inform Zack that he was being sent on a mission and to report to Director Lazard’s office on the double.