Final Fantasy VIII Part #92 - Part Ninety-Two: Space Oddities

Part 92: Part Ninety-Two: Space Oddities

Part Ninety-Two: Space Oddities

Squall jumped into space to rescue Rinoa, fully intending to die while doing so. Fortunately, this mean-lookin' spaceship showed up. No clue what's inside, but it can't be worse.

So, here we are.

You can wander around for a couple of seconds here.

But, soon enough, Squall realises there's air. It would be kind of darkly funny if they climbed in the spaceship and just died anyway because it was open to the vacuum.

Shortly afterwards, the artificial gravity kicks in and we stick to the floor.

There's nothing else to do here (I already used the save point, don't worry), so let's check out the next room.

They dumped the space suits in the room transition, so we're back to street clothes.

Rinoa just stares at Squall while he looks around the place.

: Thank you, Squall.

At least she's gracious.

: You rescued me again. I can't thank you enough.

: Don't worry about it. I just did what I wanted to.

This is the third time we've had a conversation like this, and you can track the change in their relationship through them. In Deling City, he's following orders. Outside Galbadia Garden, he tries to act cool. Here, well, I assume you can read.

Rinoa knows how this is supposed to go.

Squall, on the other hand, not so much.

: The space suit was in our way before.

: (Huh?)

I love the idea of an action hero who, having just rescued the female lead, stands around like a dumbass because he's spent too long acting tough to know how to follow up.

: I need to know that I'm alive!

: (...Alive?)

This isn't the first time we've seen this kind of response from Squall. It recalls the scene with Quistis in the secret area - Squall spent essentially all of his childhood pretending to be a cool, emotionless mercenary, this is totally outside of his area of expertise.

This is a painfully naive take on the situation.

: You want to live, right? You want to go back and see everyone, right?

: And not become other people's memories?

The line about being a memory relates to one of the central fears these two share, but more directly it alludes back to the scene in the Galbadia Garden waiting room, when Squall yells about being talked about in the past tense. Nobody talks to him about that directly, but we find out here (and at Trabia Garden, and a little bit at the FH concert) that Rinoa understands exactly what he was worried about.

And that is how Squall talked his way out of hugging a girl.

Well, let's go find the cockpit and try to get home.

Once you get out onto the bridge, the game stops you to talk about something off-screen.

Apparently, there are aliens aboard this ship.

As if to remind us that we're trespassing, the theme for the aliens/area is called "Residents:"

: (I don't know...)

: Doesn't look like a very friendly creature.)

: Let's just try to sneak by it.

You know, the fact that he's thinking this makes me sceptical of the sneaking plan.

And of course the door's busted.

And this guy's still hangin' out downstairs.

Oh, hey, I managed to run past him. Didn't expect that.

And behind door #2...

I'm going back to the purple one.

Meet our newest friends, the Propagators.

Let's give them the traditional SeeD greeting, murder.

Even though they're not particularly strong or interesting, the Propagators have the classic boss feature of not giving any EXP.

As far as items, they just randomly drop spell stones.

If you look closely, you can see the other thing they drop: corpses. They're not particularly useful to us, honestly.

There's another Propagator behind the little door, so let's check this one.

Ah, dammit.

And over here?

Yeah, quelle surprise.

They're fuckin' everywhere.

On the bright side, at least we got that door... wait, you weren't there before. How'd you get there? Where'd you even come from.

Christ, what a hassle.

Ah, Jesus!

Fuck off, you yellow bastard!

The Propagator's charge pushes you out of the room, but at least its corpse doesn't lock the door or anything.

So we can get a gander at this note.

Survival Horror File: We eliminated all the monsters on this ship, but we leave this report in case they breed again. The monsters are 3-6 meters tall, extremely hostile and savage.

You know, for a spaceship, this thing has a very roomy interior.

Survival Horror File: They are ferocious carnivores and have attacked and devoured numerous crew members.

It's a real tragedy that the entire crew was murdered by monsters but hey, at least it saved our lives.

And here's an explanation of the puzzle we've found ourselves in.

Survival Horror File: The 8 monsters work together to maintain their colony. They seem immortal, but they are not. Killing them in a certain order prevents them from reviving one another.

A shorter version of this is "the monsters work in pairs to revive each other."

Survival Horror File: If you kill monster B right after you kill monster A, monster A will never be able to revive. We have confirmed that the monsters that are paired up have similar features. That is all the information we have. Good luck.

And there you go. All we have to do at this point is figure out how they're grouped.

Thankfully, Rinoa's here to spell it out for us. It's fairly obvious if you pay attention, but there you go.

Well, the last one I killed was yellow, so I guess that's what I'm looking for. This one's purple.

And this one's red...

But it caught me when it charged.

It even did damage to me!

Nothing's ever easy, but at least it's dead now.

And we already know where the second red Propagator is.

These things are pretty nasty-lookin' if you take the time.

While I'm here, I let it get some hits in on Rinoa.

Eventually, despite Angelo being left behind back at Lunar Gate, her Limit Break comes up.

One small difference, though. I suppose the "Angel Wing" is how the dog's gonna get here.

...Huh. That's new.

So, uh, that's the move. That's Angel Wing. Hope you enjoyed it.

Nah, I'm just messin'. What Angel Wing does is puts Rinoa into a "magic Berserk" state, where she'll cast spells without the player having to put in the command (thankfully, the spells don't come out of her inventory). I think it chooses randomly from what she's got on hand, but the couple times I used it here, she just cast whatever was first in her list.

Also, the spells are a lot stronger than usual - 5 times normal power - so if you buff up Rinoa's Magic stat and give her only good spells (Meteor is generally considered best, since it hits multiple times), you can make her shit out a ton of damage using Angel Wing.

Anyway, the red Propagator's dead soon enough. Moving past it, we can see a yellow one has moved into the airlock.

I actually let that one live so I could show off, yes, the Propagators revive if you kill them out of order. So I came back to the file room and did this one in.

On the way back to the airlock, I moved Meteor to Rinoa's first magic slot so I could set her up for an Angel Wing special.

The individual hits aren't that special, with a power value of 20, but it hits 10 times, which actually gives it a way higher damage potential than Ultima (power value of 80, but it only hits once). Also, Propagators top out at 11,000 HP, so this is a lot of overkill.

Buh-bye, yellow Propagators.

Next up, purple. These are the ones I usually start with, since there's one right here when you come in.

I went in the wrong door, but managed to dodge the green guy.

This is the last time anyone ever saw a purple Propagator.

It was also around this point that I remembered I really want DoomHouse to learn Med LV Up. It's necessary to doing a small but significant sidequest.