Part 87: Part Eighty-Seven: Zell Leads the Way

Part Eighty-Seven: Zell Leads the Way


Last time, Squall was shot out of a huge gun and directly into the moon, due to his threatening ways.


Now we get to be these guys. Angelo's still in the lobby, here to replace her original owner as we rebuild the party.

: They'll be fine!
: I think they're in good hands.

These two are a little more confident that the B-Team are safe in space.

: Let's pray for their safe return.

Of course, there's not much these guys can do if something does go wrong.

: Ok, shall we go?



As soon as everyone decides to get moving, Angelo starts barking at something, then runs off.



This just serves to get whatever two characters you left behind out of your party. Making the party with Squall is the first time you have seven characters and don't just directly choose three to run around, and I guess Square didn't want players making two parties in two minutes.


Well, we can't go back to the pod room, so there's no choice but to chase Angelo.


As Zell gets close to the exit, the whole place starts shaking.

: Let's go outside!



Of course, I'm not going outside until I get this very important incidental dialogue. It should have been obvious that the place wasn't supposed to start shaking, but in case you might have thought that was just space gun recoil, it wasn't.


Now, let's go outside!


As soon as you go through the door, the shot cuts away to Esthar, where, uh...



Well, there's a huge thing over there.


Zell makes two very good points here.

: Say, wasn't the city in that direction?
: Uh-oh! Dr. Odine might be in trouble!

And then Irvine and Selphie slide in with directions for the player. Now that's teamwork!

: Zell, we'd better head for the city at once. Dr. Odine might know what's going on.
: Alright! Who's comin' with us!?


Selphie.

Like I said, I'm pretty sure the devs didn't want you making two parties immediately after one another, and that they wanted you making three in a row even less. Making a party to go back to Esthar at least makes sense.


By the way, with this sequence, you can see that the three original members of the B-Team are also the three characters you can control on the world map. You control, at various points, every character on area maps.



Driving back into the city, you can see the bottom of the huge thing. I drove all around the place trying to get a good shot of the whole structure, but couldn't. Oh well.


So, here we are, back in Esthar City for the giant box festival.


There's no absolutely no reason to do so, but you can leave the city at this point.


As the soldier points out, Esthar's symbol is visible on the weird huge thing in the cutscene. Of course, that doesn't explain what it is.




Around town, sentiments are mixed.


On the bridge at the centre of the city, though, this old guy knows something. He's not going to explain it to us, but we can at least intuit something from that "17 years ago" - that thing has to do with the Sorceress War.


His wife just wants to leave. Probably reasonable.




On the next screen, you can grab a Combat King from some soldier. Thanks, buddy.


This isn't important at all, but this car has broken down. I assume it has something to do with how the big thing flies around, an interference kinda thing.


I've probably mentioned this two or three times, but I do like when NPCs pick up new lines to react to situations like this.


We can also learn that the president apparently doesn't consider whatever's going on to be important enough to miss his tee time.



Presidential Aide: Looks like it's going to come from this side.

Talking to the aide isn't as informative.


Oh, and here's something I missed last time I ran around the city: the Esthar Airstation. You can't actually go inside, and nobody's around, but it's there.


And now for something actually interesting. Like the old guy earlier, this guy is connecting the thing to 17 years ago. He also says he thought it sank into the sea, which might sound familiar.


That's a familiar name.

Semi-Informative Guy: It reminds me of Esthar in the old days.
Other Guy: Why now...?

Good question, my man.


Now we know where Odine is, and we could go see him to move on the story.


But there are still some NPCs to chat with.




Daughter: Let's buy more stuff.
Mother: That's enough for today.

I like this little mother-daughter chat. It captures a little bit of the sense that things haven't gone to full-blown panic quite yet, but they might very soon.



Second Dude: That's strange. What could be wrong?

Outside the mall, there's another machine not working. Again, I'm putting this down to interference.


These guys don't know anything.



This slightly-older soldier, though, does. Well, he's got some ideas, at least.





By and large, people in Esthar are just confused.



Hmm, I wonder...


Now that we've gone around the place and gotten the word on the street, we can go see Odine.


Who's very happy! Great!



Odine's still using this stupid lift.


Well, let's go talk to the man.