Final Fantasy VII Part #61

Part 61: Upward Slope

Chapter 61 - Upward Slope

After a very long journey, we've arrived at this huge-ass crater.

As everything points out, this is likely the original Jenova landing site.

As you can see from the first image, there's a massive amount of Lifestream flowing through this place.

Now I usually don't do things like this, but I cannoy reinforce how much of an important plot point occurs in this chapter.

We're somewhat away from it, but I want you to keep the mind set for when it happens so you don't forget it until the end of the LP.

Other than Cloud freaking out, the Crater is host to a bunch of enemies. These giants are called Gigas and they have an attack called... Moon Wars. Which is a wek-ass punch. Go figure.

Now you're just being silly.

I like how their models, given the engine limitations (each separate part of the body needs to be a separate object for animation purposes), are so complex. It's really jarring comparing to our SD models in the world map.

We can steal [Gigas Armlets] from them. In fact, this is the only place in the game these can be stolen, which I'm sure drive completionists mad. Gigas Armlets have a hidden bonus - They add a what-the-fuck-30-Strength to your character.

Tifa becomes an obligatory party member in this area. Shit is going to happen.

I love when people abuse game mechanics and just join Cloud knowing he can't do shit about it. I'M IN YOUR PARTY NOW.

As we march onwards, we see some of the cloaked men falling off cliffs. It's pretty depressive.

It's hard to miss this one. It's another Dragon summon. Hooray.

More importantly...

We see that we're not alone. Rufus & co. are in an airship bridge around the area.

Remember the Promised Land, according to the president, was a land full of Mako, where Lifestream would flow freely and he'd be able to build the very creatively-named Neo-Midgar.

Rufus: "Sorry, old man."

Hojo: "Heh heh heh... "

Hojo: "I wonder if we'll see... Sephiroth?"

Alright, back to normal schedule.

There's an annoying timing event. See how in the previous image the wind barrier seems stronger? You have to wait until it almost fades then cross over.

The cloaked men pretty much die once you talk to them. The other one turned into an [Ether].

In case you touch the barrier, you're knocked away and have to fight these annoying recolors. Fuck you wind barrier.

Holy molly.

It's really depressing - they just keep falling along the way or off the cliff.

Kaiser Knuckle is Tifa's Spellcasting shitty weapon of choice. Kaiser means emperor in German but I'm sure you know that.

I don't even know what these little things are. Since we're talking about languages...

Did you know Treis was Three in Proto-Indo-European? Three is Três in Portuguese. Thought you should know.

Our Religion teacher in high-school had a bizarre obsession in teaching us Latin and Greek. It was a Catholic school.

The worst thing is that he taught us better than the Spanish teacher taught us Spanish. Or the English teacher, for that matter. He was also the Philosophy teacher, which we all found to be somewhat amusing.

This screen has additional bursts of Lifestream to make sure anyone with poor coordination hates life.

You might think the Kaiser-Languages-Highschool train of thought is pointless but the reason I mentioned it is because that professor also happened to be the one who told us what Sephiroth meant when he overheard us talking. In pre-wikipedia days, you had to count on awesome people instead.

Alright, let's focus on this. We've, FINALLY, reached Sephiroth.

This seems to be the final destination of his journey so, even if he escapes now, he isn't going anywhere far. In other words, this has to be it.

Oh...kay?

Why can't we have nice things?

Cloud: "Our...?"

Cloud: "Master...!?"

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Before we move on with the plot, we have to fight Jenova*DEATH. As the name implies, this is the last of these Jenova bosses (we fought BIRTH, then LIFE, then DEATH).

So, yea. Jenova*DEATH can only deal Fire-based attacks. We put a Fire Ring in a character, a Fire Armlet in another, and lastly an Elemental-Fire. Thus, our entire party is immune to Fire and the boss absolutely can't do anything to hit us.

Jenova is also weak to both Slow and Paralysis. I attack with Tifa to Slow her (Added Effect-Time on Weapon) and use the item Dazers to Paralyze her.

Otherwise this is a pretty boring fight and she has tons of health (25k), I show Neo-Bahamut and Alexander again to those who might have missed it and pound her with big-damage spells and some amusing weapon tossing.

Alright, so pay attention. This is one of the most important parts of the game, even more so because, for some ungodly reason, everyone seems to forget about this sequence.

This here is not figure of speech, it's literal. Hold this in your mind for a while.

Tifa: "But Sephiroth is..."

Ok, so what the hell is going on?

So here's what happened:

1) "Sephiroth" attacked us here. It wasn't referring to itself in the first tense.

2) We defeated it.

3) Once we defeated it, it disappeared, and the Black Materia fell into the ground.

With all the puzzle pieces, the characters put 2 and 2 together and even spelled it to the player -

The person we've been chasing all along has never, ever been Sephiroth.

No one ever broke in at Shinra HQ. No one ever mentioned anyone breaking in, except us. The only thing we saw was the trail of blood after Jenova was "captured", coming out of her pod, nothing building up to it and Sephiroth hasn't really been stealthy about his mission. Jenova was never captured - it escaped on its own.

This is also the answer of the question "Whence Sephiroth gets his swords?" after he left his sword on President Shinra. I really got some PMs asking me about it because I said it wasn't a plot hole. It wasn't - there's no sword. Jenova can assume (as we've seen and we've been told repeatedly) any form it wants. The sword is just one Jenova's appendages like the ones we've been defeating time and time again.

Which gets back to the Jenova boss fights. "Sephiroth" has been throwing parts of his body off to us and, after we defeat it, they become alien appendages. These are Jenova body parts. We've defeated her last proper body part that escaped from Shinra. Since it was Jenova who had stolen the Black Materia all along, that means she was carrying it too - hence, we now have the Black Materia in our possession.