Part 39: Part Thirty-Nine: Waking Up

Part Thirty-Nine: Waking Up


Well, we've gotten what we need from under the sea, so we don't have to actually be here right now.


Instead, we need to head inland on the Saronian continent, which has these little inlets that dead-end all over the place and I can never remember which one goes where. This game's geography is incredibly forgettable, especially because most of it is just fuckin' mountains.


So, anyway, once I find the right inlet, I get to this cave.


This isn't really a shrine, but whatever, it's not that important.


Over here we can see a bird. I have a friend who quite likes birds, and she might even be reading this; she ought to know who she is.


Eloquent parrot. I once knew a guy whose mother had a parrot, and I slept over at his place after we'd gone to a party. I woke up early, and the bird was chastising itself.



Anyway, yes, Final Fantasy III. If we head over to the person sleeping on that slab of rock, it starts a scene.


Is it the timbre specifically that reaches into the world of dream? Nothing else about the sound?



PARROT: You did it! Unei's awake!


So yeah, this is Unei. Getting to her was a lot less time-consuming than getting to Doga. (Thank god!)




At this point, her parrot disappears from the physical realm.

: Hum... I need to work out these sore limbs! Hiyaaa!
_{The parrot is still visible in that sprite.}

Your limbs probably aren't so much "sore" as they are "atrophied".




Hi. We're the Warriors of Light and we fuck things up relentlessly. What's the action?

: The world of dream was a good place... But I guess I'd forgotten how exciting the real world could be!

Exciting? You just woke up and ran around like a doofus, what's exciting?

She's probably messed herself and that's what she thinks is "exciting".


I suppose this can be taken as Doga being a lucid dreamer and Unei being able to see into your mind while you sleep. She did talk to Sephy when he was unconscious, after all.

: We have to get to the Invincible, don't we? That ship will take you across the highest mountains! It's in the Ancient Ruins to the north! So...what are we waiting for, eh? Let's go!

Uh...that's it? Just go get the ship? No walking through some shitty dungeon just for you to do a suicide in front of some kids? No royal intrigue or whatever the shit in Saronia was?


Sephy, don't shit this up for me. I don't want to go through the devil's asshole to get some macguffin.


Oh, he's just being weird about this, I guess.

: N-no, ma'am. Not at all...
: Then stop staring and get moving!

This scene is supposed to be comic relief, but it's not really doing it for me. It's just kind of weird, in my opinion.


At any rate, yes, Unei joins our party. This is our last travelling companion, so let's enjoy our time together.



Unei, where did you get this?

: ...Hey, where'd you get--
: You must not lose this fang, as well as the two fangs you already hold!

Don't just ignore the kid, it's a valid question!

: They are the only things that will enable you to get past the four statues that Xande created to guard the entrance to his tower!

His tower?

I don't think they used pronouns like this in the NES version, and there's kind of a reason for that. It doesn't quite track for Xande to have built the tower or own it or anything. We'll get to that later, though.

: There's one last fang--the Fang of Earth. To get it, though, you'll first need to find the Invincible! Come on, let's hurry!


Yay! I have control back!

Now we're on another quest to get a vehicle so we can get an item to make incremental progress in the story. I'm sure you're all beside yourselves, I know I am.

As far as Final Fantasy games go, this one has a pretty boring plot design - I feel like it has more in common with the first game than it does with the second, or most of the games that came after it (possibly excluding Final Fantasy V). We're just being given the barest reasons to go to the next dungeons, and that's honestly fine, but I feel like they tried to make the story more "epic" for the remake, and so the actual events of the game fall a little flatter for it.


My analysis isn't what you're all here for, though, so here you go: conversations.

: Even when Xande stopped the flow of time in the real world, the world of dream was unaffected.

Unei's been experiencing time passing for quite a while even while being aware of the damage to the real world, which she basically couldn't do jack about.

That's fucking kafkaesque shit, game. Jesus H.

: For the thousand years that the real world stood still, I was watching it from the dreamworld...

Here's that "thousand years of darkness" thing again! I swear to god, every time I see that idea I think of something new that's wrong with it. If you're familiar with the NES version of the game, I assume you understand why a flood of darkness is nonsensical here. If you're not, well, we'll get there, too.

: And I saw that something evil was using its power to create a giant earthquake on the floating continent!

This is also stupid. Besides that, I don't even know how you could cause an earthquake on the floating continent. It's one solid mass, there aren't really a lot of tectonic plates to fuck with there.

: Xande himself couldn't have done it, since the flow of time is stopped for him as well. Who could it be?

Oh, here's another line to highlight something stupid. Xande's plan is really super dumb in this version of the game, since all he ended up doing was cutting himself off from experience - in essence, he killed himself to protest his morality.

Let's forget about the story and just move on to the next conversation:




: Have you forgotten already? We've met in your dreams once before!

: In our dreams...? Oh! That voice we heard in Amur, it was you?

The player actually gets to see Unei in that scene, so they would be able to recognise her face.

: Ho ho ho! I told you I was the guardian of the world of dream, didn't I?

I'm still not exactly clear on what that entails, though. To me, it sounds like you just spent a really long time staring out at the hellscape of reality from your metaphysical prison.


But enough of the chit-chat, let's get a move on! We want this cave!


I don't enter quite yet, because I remember that I haven't hit a restore pot since before the Cave of the Circle. I don't remember where one is except for Doga's place, and I don't want to fight the random battles, so I just go back to Ur.


Now, the cave! It's the Ancient Ruins!

Next time, we'll go through this place to get a shiny new airship!