Part 106: Into Light, Part I

Chapter 105 - Into Light, Part I




Now that we're done with the side-quests...



It's time for us to delve into the North Crater one last time.









The best crew.



Well, this was awkward. Let's go!



Speaking of awkward - Cue sound in a screenshot Let's Play. Imagine an off-screen monster just screamed. You're more likely to imagine a better sound than the one used in the game anyway.



Luckily for us hordes of enemies are no match for game mechanics.










































Cloud: "I'm fighting here too."






I have a strong feeling they just want to get rid of Cloud.



Of course this is just an excuse to adhere to the game limitations.





Yuffie really hates this job. She's an optional character you kinda have to go out of the way to grab. All she wants to do is to steal your materia.



We're rolling with the C Team here.



I dunno man, it still sounds like a suicide mission to me. I'm kinda getting ME2 vibes here.



So we're down to one of the last screens in the game, the pathway to the Crater's core. I love this background. Once you jump into this last descent, Jenova's theme starts to play.



No need to worry about Materia Growth at this point so let's roll with the Ultimate Weapons.



Each rock has about a 30% chance of presenting you with a random encounter. The battle starts the very moment you step on the rock.



Of note is the Iron Man.



Which can only be fought here, but there's a 50% chance the encounter will be against him.



He's otherwise easy. I just really like his design.



There are two series of floating rocks. This one...



And this one.



This is very much how a final dungeon in a Final Fantasy game looks like.



Oh yes, you can fight Dragon Zombies in here.



Otherwise a fairly easy descent. A++ would do it again.







Jesus Christ.



This is the stuff of nightmares.






So, our final encounter with Jenova.



The first thing you'll notice is that this battle has a unique theme. A pretty nice theme.

In fact, there are three unique themes for this series of final bosses.



So let's have a talk about it. The second thing about the final encounters in this game is that they're super weird. They're filled with multiple parts and custom scripts that to be fairly honest are super bizarre. So I think they deserve to be mentioned, it's clear a lot of thought went into designing these bosses.

The most important script about Jenova-SYNTHESIS is that if you cast a Knights of the Round during this fight (which can one shot her), a global trigger is turned on that will increase the Maximum HP of the next two bosses later on.

Jenova-SYNTHESIS has two arms. The abilities she uses depend on which arms are alive - Bio 2 requires both to be alive for example, while some of them requires one arm alive and one arm dead, etc. The arms are revived from time to time and while they're down Jenova's defense is reduced considerably.

Her health pool is only 60k. When her health is down to 15k she will start a 5-turn countdown to cast Ultima. Also, if you take 13 or more turns to get her down to 15k health the game will pity you and enable the Super Easy version of the next fight, which is honestly a very good thing considering how long the next fight is. Then again Jenova is so slow that 13 turns against her probably offsets that advantage a little bit.




None of it matters much because if you've managed to get to this point odds are that you're gonna completely ignore her mechanics and just steamroll, unfortunately. This is still a fairly simple battle compared to the next one (which is totally nuts, scripts-wise).

By the way if you're so slow that Jenova actually manages to complete her Ultima cast...





Yeah. It's very hard to lose this battle. Moving on!




Once you defeat Jenova for good (or let her do an impression of FFIX's ending) the entire place starts to crumble.





Trippy!



And this is why nobody wanted to come with us.







Seriously this is super trippy.





"Is this..."







Thankfully everything collapsed.



These guys were really counting on not coming down.







Barret: "Ugh...! Is this... the true power of Sephiroth?"





So, this is the moment of the final confrontation. The settling of scores. Sephiroth stands in front of Holy, there's a very Final Fantasyesquece prison built around it.



And our heroes are getting their asses kicked.



Cloud: "There... it's... there..."



Tifa: "Holy..."

Cloud: "It's not over yet!"



Barret: "Holy is the prayer of AVALANCHE... of Marlene and Dyne... and everyone on the planet!"



Red XIII: "I understand now, Grandpa. This is my mission! I won't let the Lifestream... or the life of the Planet wither away!!"





Cloud: "And Sephiroth!! To the settling of everything!!"



Shit's about to get serious.






So, remember when I was talking about adhering to game mechanics?



Sephiroth's fight kinda throws it all away. You need to make three parties for this battle, one of which composed of only two members (gee thanks Aeris).

This is by far the craziest fight in the game script-wise. There are three versions of this boss - like I mentioned, if you take too long against Jenova you get to play the easiest version (requiring only one party). If you haven't recruited either Yuffie or Vincent and your average level is below a certain threshold you play the two-parties version.



I want to point out that I both like and dislike this fight. It's a weird, weird fight. Let's talk a bit. But first, here's the theme.



Your primary objective is to destroy the main body. However, the energy core heals the main body. However you need to destroy two additional cores to make the main core vulnerable, which are only targetable by the left and right parties. However to make these two cores vulnerable, you need to destroy the left and right wing with their respective parties. Lots of howevers!

Which means this fight is either super easy (if you can damage the body faster than the core can heal it, you can ignore the mechanics) or super bizarre. I guess this is why it's called Bizarro-Sephiroth.



Bizarro's design is very reminiscent of traditional Final Fantasy bosses that are usually amalgams of things. Compare Bizarro's design -



- With Neo Exdeath, from Final Fantasy V:



Or the Tower of Gods, from Final Fantasy VI:



Which is heavily influenced by Horror cinema. Again, compare these designs with Tetsuo: The Iron Man.







You should be able to see the influence even in this FFVI Goddess concept by Nomura, which also screams Amano all over.



This cyberpunk-infused body horror genre is very present in Japanese horror in general. It's also very influenced by Cronenberg movies:



You can see this theme repeated over and over in the Tower of Gods, for example.

This is of course very in line with the rest of Final Fantasy VII. Our gateway to this world of oddities here being Jenova.



As annoying as I find this battle to be, this bizarre theme is well reflected in the crazy gameplay change. All these parts keep reviving constantly, which is well in-line with the body horror theme going on in the game.



It is however super obnoxious because it's not particularly intuitive. Also, the scripts and animations in this battle are slow. Like super slow. Like "You might think the game crashed" slow. Honestly the entire game is like this if you've been paying attention to scripts in boss fights (they idle a lot before using some abilities) but this battle takes the cake.



I tried to show as much of the fight as possible, but it's far easier and faster to just brute-force it by damaging the main body.



We did it! Oh wait.



As soon as you defeat Bizarro Sephiroth the music changes and a new battle starts immediately.



If you haven't played the game - this is really ominous the first time it happens. You see this entire purple haze and Sephiroth slowly descending from above.



And this is presented by what is by far the most famous and infamous theme in Final Fantasy VII. And it certainly evoked a huge "what the fuck" from everyone playing this game in 1997. One Winged Angel.



Now this is a final boss.



Safer Sephiroth is an incredibly remarkable final boss for numerous reasons, all of which have been played to death in the past two decades, which can get fans a bit jaded about it.

The highlight is the music. You'll seldom see someone point One Winged Angel as their favorite theme nowadays, but it was a gigantic mindfuck back in the day, especially after playing the entire game without hearing any vocal tracks. It's crazy, unexpected and surprisingly ominous.



The boss design is pretty wild too. People have analysed its symbolism to death (like pointing out the wings have the same colors as the Jenova bosses we fought before), but I want to point out something I don't ever see mentioned. Noticed something in common between Safer and Bizarro?



The reason they don't have legs is because they're the real Sephiroth, who, in fact, does not have legs. You can interpret the rest however you want, if it's an illusion, if it's made with Jenova cells, but it's a pretty interesting touch, given how odd the whole thing is. You can even see a more humanoid figure of Sephiroth "riding" Bizarro so for all we know the entire boss could have been just a growth from his real torso since neither of them have legs, and the real Sephiroth is just Bizarro Sephiroth's head. Which goes in line with the fact that every time you kill Bizarro Sephiroth's head, Safer Sephiroth's HP goes down by 100 (seriously).



The boss itself is harder than Bizarro and, while it doesn't have an AI as complicated, it also has a fair share of strange scripts. The most important aspect of the fight is that its stats can change wildly depending on how many Level 99 characters (excluding Aeris) you have. Its HP and every attribute (especially the defenses) go up. Also, as I said before, its HP goes up (by 80k) if you used KoR during Jenova SYNTHESIS.

So in other words its Health can go from ~55000 (if you kill Bizarro's head enough times) to 80k (baseline) to 160k (what you'll most likely face if you have KoR) to 400k (if you used KoR and you have every character at Level 99). Not to mention its defenses can vary from ~20% damage reduction to ~50%. Pretty wild!



Watch me toy around with Sephiroth until Tifa decides to put an end to his misery and ruin all the fun.

Other than the music, the most remarkable aspect of the fight is one of the abilities Safer Sephiroth uses. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll let you watch the video and see by yourself.

Yes, Super Nova is a 2 minutes long summon (it even plays the summon sound) that Sephiroth casts. Yes, it blows up our solar system just to deal percentual damage. It's gloriously over-the-top and he can cast it multiple times.

It's also wildly different from the Japanese version, which you can see here.

And this is it guys. The final boss. It's a pretty cool fight. It took us long to get here but we've done it. We've killed the final boss.







Of course, I wouldn't let it end like this. You know that, right?






Now I'm complete. Let's move on.




Once you kill Sephiroth he disintegrates into the aether, and the battle ends. It's over.



It's a victory, but a bitter one. The Meteor is too close, and we don't know if what we did is gonna help Holy at all.



Tifa: "...You're right."

Tifa: "We've done all we could do."



Cloud: "Alright, everyone."



Cloud: "We'll leave all our worries here."



That's a pretty nice attitude. Don't become boring like in the EU, Cloud.



And thus, our journey seemingly ends.








Cloud: "I feel it... he's still... here."






Oh no.



Of course, we still have an unresolved issue. The fact that Cloud could be a vessel for Sephiroth all this time.




Tifa: "Cloud?!"
Cloud: "He's... laughing..."




Cue one of the coolest cinematics in the game.

























Our last battle is a battle of willpower.



The Limit bar goes up and you'll be able to cast Omnislash even if you didn't get it before. If you take too long Sephiroth will hit you for percentual damage and you'll automatically counter him, so this is a battle you can't lose. This kind of final battle is a recurring theme in the series.

It's a symbolic fight. It represents Cloud's willpower overwhelming Sephiroth's and the fact that he's taking control of himself again.



Even though they didn't use blood in Aeris' cutscene, we get to see the big bad guy bleeding here.







We did it, we killed the bad guy! And with Sephiroth's death, we conclude this update!


Next Time:

The Ending!



Music we've listened in this update:

Jenova Theme - Plays in the background after you cross the point of no return.

Jenova Absolute = The theme for Jenova Synthesis. One of my favorite battle themes in the game. I mean, they're all good. They're all my favorite.

Birth of a God - The theme of Bizarro Sephiroth, a very good piece.

One Winged Angel - Safer Sephiroth's theme. It is played at every Final Fantasy concert ever, and was remade into a somewhat different version for Advent Children.