LogFAQs > #976327480

Mobilezoid posted...

Assuming you aren't against the concept if reading data-logs, I remember them being interesting and informative. I would've been totally lost in the plot without them! Many would call that bad writing, but I enjoyed reading them whenever a new one popped up.

Read through most of that. It helped me on a few accounts, namely refreshing what "the Purge" is and why it's being done. Denizens of Cocoon seem to think any contact with Pulse - their "underworld" - is toxic and want to rid any potential influence of it from their "utopia." But Sanctum, the governing body of Cocoon, is painting Pulse as this toxic wasteland, an undesirable hell. In all honesty, that sounds like North Korea. Everything they say is a lie, and Pulse is actually a place of freedom, away from the oligarchic tyranny that everyone knows. They just don't want anyone to find out. To me, this is the obvious conclusion. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Why hasn't anyone exiled to Pulse come back? There's gotta be at least one person who could get out, so why didn't they return?
2. Why does PSICOM (the high-level military, private to Sanctum) have to kill people en route if they disobey if they're gonna be left for dead anyway? It doesn't make any sense.
3. Why does all the evidence point to Pulse being a living hell if nobody has seen it with their own eyes in 300+ years? Is that because it's actually propaganda?

It's quite obvious to me that, when you combine these three things, that it's because things are being hidden by the powers that be. If it was just #1, it could be because there's no way to return. If it was just #3, it's hard to know. Because #2 connects the others, there's only one way it makes sense.

Anyway, we pick off where I left off. Snow joins his lieutenants Gadot and Lebreau and they start kicking ass:
"Real heroes don't need plans!"

Lebreau's quote there is quite accurate, honestly. The real heroes are the ones who don't hesitate to save somebody without even thinking, or ones who only have a couple minutes to formulate a plan to do something awesome.

They pass out guns - along side an inept newbie whose name I forget - to civilians who want to join the resistance (NORA), ones who feel they've been unfairly stripped of their free will by being marked for execution for unjust reasons. One of these civilians is a woman of unknown age whose name is simply "Mother" and I immediately realize she's gonna die, since her son is Hopeless. And die she does, in the process saving Snow's life, but he tries to return the favor and she lets go. Hopeless sees this and is naturally - and justifiably devastated, but boy is he awful.

Our champion Vanille, who's with him, needs to remind him that if he stands there and wallows, he's gonna die too, so he needs to worry about that later. He refuses to talk to Snow right after saying he needs to tell him off, which leads her to physically push him forward. He combats her when he starts making excuses as to why he can't fly the thing there right after he said he could. He's nothing but a barrel of whining and excuses, and it doesn't take very long for Vanille to ask him "What's your problem?" This is awesome. She's mature beyond her years, recognizing that while Hopeless absolutely has a right to be grief-stricken, he shouldn't be making so many excuses and immediately backing out of anything he gets himself into. Granted, I don't know how old she actually is, but she's old enough to broadcast that she likes watermelon by wearing a bra for her top. IIRC, she's a relative of Lightning's. May be wrong there. But yeah, I'm enjoying her, because she's actually pissed off at how weak Hopeless is. He's a brat who doesn't seem to recognize that Snow was trying to save his mother since she'd saved him. I get that he's a kid, and I can cut him a little slack, but this is why I don't typically like kid characters. They aren't mature enough to properly process their emotions when thrust into adult situations.

Eventually, everyone ends up inside the Fallacy (NEW IN-JOKE ALERT), though it's unclear how Lightning managed to plead her way in there. She says she's also looking for Serah, her younger sister and Snow's fiancee, and wants to save her just the same. Snow, while prioritizing Serah, recuses Hope and Vanille from a ZOMBIE BOZOBLIN UPRISING... or, no wait, sorry, can't resist any of my longstanding in-jokes. No, these are Cieth, l'Cie who failed their contractual obligations, called a Focus, and were stuck to roam inside the Fallacy as zombies. They ain't human. Snow realizes he can't let Hopeless wallow with only Vanille to protect him so he escorts them out... or at least to Serah, where Lightning's already waiting. Everyone finally gets to converge! At least for now.

Serah is a l'Cie already, and completes her Focus just by talking to Lightning and Snow about saving everyone in Cocoon. She turns into a crystal being, which Sazh says that, according to legend, means she's granted eternal life. I don't know if I buy that, and Lightning doesn't either. She wants to keep the promise and so does Snow, but Snow wants his girl back even if it means it costs him his own life. As the bad guys start attacking this thing, leading it to become unstable, emotions are running high and Hopeless isn't the one responsible, how amusing. Lightning realizes that the Fallacy needs to die to complete that promise, but that sets off a security alarm and leads us to fight it. We beat it up and then all goes black. We see Snow's arm suddenly get something etched upon it, presumably a l'Cie tattoo like Serah's, meaning he now has a Focus to fulfill. Last thing I saw was Vanille saying during times like that, she likes to reminisce... and I save when given the opportunity.

All I know is that if a Focus is to help save Cocoon, the l'Cie aren't the enemy. Sanctum is. They're the ones trying to keep this fake utopia - and I'm familiar with enough dystopian fiction to know that this is along the same lines.

Now, one side note I wanted to mention. Something that I think contributed to me quitting last time is how dumbed-down this battle system is. I like how it combines turn-based with real-time, with the ATB gauge generating how often you can act and it being different for each character. That part is awesome. But I noted how there's no EXP, only three stats (HP, P. ATK, M. ATK), minimal available skills at an early juncture, very little to buy in the shops, and almost no way to have character growth. I do hope there's something introduced soon that helps rectify that, like FFX's Sphere Grid, because without something like that there's no real way to feel like you're doing anything other than playing the exact same battles on repeat. I've noted just how redundant these battles are so far - very much so by JRPG standards, and I attribute that to the lack of skills available, no growth system, and the missing enemy diversity. I hope this doesn't stay a problem, because this battle system will be a lot of fun if you get to input all kinds of different combos early enough in the game.