Part 32: A Desert Tale

Chapter 32 - A Desert Tale





This would be a good time for Sephiroth to show up and do his magic.



Uh, no, I'm pretty sure we're all locked up here too!



I think this is the perfect time to come up with a Cait Sith related story.



The first thing you need to do is to hear his theme music. Here, click here.



Going down here you find nothing, just an empty chest. Makes sense, right? After all, you're in a prison.

This well serves actually no purpose, but it has so much secret in that it gets its own entry in today's Bugs & Bytes.



Anyway, back to Cait Sith. If you know what I'm gonna talk about, then you probably... well, know it's about it.




Our story dates back to 2003.



So, back in 2003 this fella decided to start a project in OC-Remix, the FF7 Musical.

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Problem is, he wasn't very talented. He showed some mockups and, well, was mocked for it, a lot.



Eventually he did his version of the Cait Sith song. There are absolutely no words to describe this Eldritch horror.



You can read the whole story here, as well as download the rest of his stuff.



Well, technically it IS, from what was written in the hole we were thrown into.





I can't help but wonder. Why is this Corel Prison if it's so far away from Corel? Was this originally Corel?



Maybe they mention it somewhere and I missed it, but God knows that I read everything. Maybe we should check the Final Fantasy Wikia.



So yeah, these guys are worthless. We can't actually talk to any "Boss" yet.





This is actually funny as hell. I specially like the "mysterious" part.



This guy actually follows us. If you talk to him he just laughs. It's unsettling.



Eventually you enter the only available house and Barret complains again. What do you want me to say, Barret? "Uh, sure, sorry for being tossed here as a prisoner. I'll just go back and leave you to your business."



Oh God, he's aiming his gun at us and Cait Sith is freaking out, whatever he is.



He shoots and a guy behind the couch drops dead. We're safe... for now.





AERIS OUT OF NOWHERE hahaha.



How did you see him? Weren't you at the Saucer? Ahh I'm so confused.





Ohh no.



Noooo a Flashback GET OUT OF MY SCREEN.



I hate to talk about anime, but the only flashback I actually enjoy is the one in Claymore.



Perfect timing!



Yeah I don't think so, Dyne.



It's very hard to show these action scenes in screenshots. Basically, some guards show up top and start shooting Barret and Dyne, who start dancing to dodge the bullets.





You gotta love a character who's having fun with the Stormtrooper stereotype.



She actually slaps the guard to the ground. Man, these Shinra officers are SO EVOL.



Then she starts shooting herself.









You can guess what happens here. They shoot at their arms, and Barret lets Dyne fall.





All things said, it's very dramatic.



Let's think about Barret for a moment.



Barret is a very tragic character. He's 35 and is a completely broken man, with no light in sight. He's psychologically tortured and has lost almost everything he's had twice.



It's easy to overlook those things because he acts like, as Tifa put it, a complete retard. Between the bad mouth



But if you think about it, he has a very kamikaze/suicidal behavior. His acts in the beginning of the game were mindless vengeful behavior, and they didn't really work out very well.



Surviving huge falls is no mystery to Dyne either. I suppose he and Cloud can have a nice chat.









I was gonna make a joke about guns being useless here, but Scarlett seemed to have made a good use of them. Too bad people in FF7 have the NO FALL DAMAGE mode turned on.





Ah, the Barretian logic. The same logic that brought us "walking together is dangerous, let us split in two groups to wander the wastelands."





This right here. If you like what you're reading here, then don't ever watch Advent Children.





We get to choose one last member to make a party, then set off. You can get back here anytime and talk to the other characters to switch.



Ah, I guess that explains why Yuffie is walking with us. We're all happy mercenaries here.



No it's not. We're in the desert. It's hot. And I hate heat. Do you know one thing about Rio? It's hot. It's really, really, really hot. During Summer we have the second/third hottest felt air temperature in the world.



It's so hot, SO hot, that even with a good air conditioner turned on 24/7 it's still hot.

And when the night falls... it's still hot. Seriously. It's freakishly hot during night too. I read even deserts get chilly during the night. Not Rio.



To the bottom of the Corel Prison we find Mr. Coates.





This whole set of rules makes me think that Dio is a crazy sociopath and the Corel Prison is actually an excuse to have slaves ready to race for free so he can entertain the masses.





It doesn't take a genius to deduct that the boss is actually Dyne.





This is one of the weirdest places in the game. If we go to the right we'll keep on with the plot, but if we follow to the left or top, we'll end up in the desert, and the desert is home to some weird creatures.



Following to the right we end up in a junkyard.



It's curious how we see all these car models everywhere, but we don't actually see cars being used, or even roads at all. I think that adds to the dystopic value of the game.



Ok, so his wife is buried here. And there's a destroyed house. This place definitely was Corel. But wasn't it surrounded by mountains and within view distance from North Corel's bridge? I AM SO CONFUSED.






Why? Barret wasn't the only man accepting the Reactor. Last I remember, he actually tried to save you too. What an ungrateful bastard.





VENGEANCE HURRRR.



Yeah, that boat has sailed.







In case you've been wondering, Marlene is Dyne's daughter.











Maybe it's something they put in Corel's water that makes their citizens completely crazy. Is this the same logic applied to "let's split, it's safer"?



Or maybe it's the heat. Oh God, will this happen to me?





This might be the first Boss fight that we saw coming!






Am I getting comic books right?



Dyne's gimmick is that the lower his HP is, the more powerful are his attacks. Strategy-wise, the point of this fight for the player to figure out would be that when his health is low enough you can't outheal him so you have to go all in. In practice, there are so many ways to breeze through his 1200 HP that it doesn't matter.

Look, I know some of you don't like that I show fights like this but there's literally nothing to show in this fight.

On the other hand, this is the last non-optional boss that is a complete joke though, in a good while. From here on the bosses are actually hard if this is the first time you're playing the game. Their HP starts to leap and the game starts to assume you're doing your fair share in leveling up, specially if you haven't got Beta.

Also, why is Molotov Cocktail a bunch of lasers? Oh God































And that concludes Barret's very, very depressing sidetrack.





NEXT TIME!

Chocobos! Turks! Backtracking! Sidequests!






Chapter 32 - Bugs & Bytes


So what's up with Corel?


Wow, talk about some revisionist story! Still, it doesn't explain the geographic inconsistencies, but if we worry too much about that in FF7, my brain might collapse in on itself.


The Basement, Part I

Remember the well that we entered in the Corel Prison? The Well leads to a room called "Basement". That room is very, very peculiar.

The first thing about this room is a rumor that was spread from the FF7 Versus Book:



Wow, an enemy that doesn't fight back and drops 40k Gil!
Now, these things usually reek of baseless rumor. However, in this case, it is not - The Test0 monsters REALLY do exist, in the Japanese version of the game. You can see them here.

They can actually be fought in the game without a need for Gameshark or cheating. You just run around the place and VOOOSH.


The Basement, Part II

But this is not all the creepiness that you can find at the Basement, oh no. The fine folks at the FF7 Citadel (You might to avoid the other links in that page if you haven't beat the game yet) found something very weird:



The original background features... this weird, little red guy to the left, next to the Guard Hound skeleton. Apparently, he's part of the foreground layer which is masked in-game so you never see him. But still, to this day, no one knows what the heck is he doing there or what was his original purpose.


Secrets of the Corel Desert

I didn't include the Corel Desert in the main update because I didn't want to interrupt the plot.



The Desert consists of one screen that repeats itself over and over no matter where you go - and you can exit the screen by going north, south, east or west.

There are two enemies of note in the desert - the Land Worm, and the Cactuar.



The Land Worm is a very tough common encounter. It has 1500 HP and deals more damage than your common critter. It does, however, have a very good item to steal - the Turbo Etter.



The Cactuar is a classic Final Fantasy enemy.



Cactuars are famous for their enormous Dodge rate. They don't have much HP, but this here is the Cactuar avoiding a Beta.



In fact, Cactuars dodge all attacks 87.5% of the time. Even Limits. With Tifa here, he dodged all previous attacks.



Couple that with the fact that Cactuars have only a ~6% chance to be found in the desert, and that the desert is optional, and he is one of the rarest seen enemies of the game. The fact he gives 1 EXP and 1 AP doesn't seem to help much...



Until you see how much gil he drops. 10,000 to be exact! Too bad his encounter rate is abysmal.



At any rate, even trying to go the way back in the desert will result in the same screen popping up over and over again. Your way out? Tandan - sometimes a Mysterious Chocobo Rider will appear and offer you a ride back.



Leaving you back at the entrance where you can go right and continue the plot.



In the car junkyard you can find these enemies called Death Claws. They're very useful for one reason - they have an Enemy Skill called Laser, which essentially casts Demi 2 (an upgrade version of the Graviball - it deals 50% of the enemy's current HP). In the above screenshot you're also seeing our first use of [Manipulate], Cait Sith's Materia.



Manipulate replaces your turn with up to three enemy abilities. In this case, we're forcing him to use Laser on us, so we can learn it.



It looks more or less like Matra Magic. Which you can also learn in the junkyard.

And that's it for today!