Part 38: The Neverending Story

Chapter 36: The Neverending Story

Okay, so we beat the last fuckin' boss, didn't even touch him once, and now

--wait, what game? Just begun? I just fuckin' beat you, what are you talking


about


... Game, you still want me to do more of your faggot errands, don't you.


Well, shit.






I just don't even know.


She leaves this behind.




Its stats are pretty much worse than the Tri-emplem. Poor consolation prize considering what just happened to the game in terms of mechanics.

To see this Private Action, you have to have met Filia in Clik much earlier in the game, and have saved at, not just reached the room or touched, the final save point at the top of Fienal. Upon viewing it, Indalecio becomes incredibly powerful, but we'll address that later.

So there's a series of one-line PAs involving Chisato in Central City, but I did that between killing the first three Wise Men and the final battle, so those screenshots were lost. Basically, if you recall an earlier update in which I talked to this guy:

he wanted to get into Nede's secret history. Chisato has Connections (who you never meet) who help you hack into the world history supercomputer via this dude.


You get into the computer and download all the encrypted "real history" files, then this guy proceeds to decode them.


This is the hidden backstory of the Ten Wise Men.

It spans a couple dozen blocks of text, so I'll summarize.

• A few trillion years ago, Nede enslaved the known galaxy. Their slaves got their hands on some Nedian technology and rose up against their alien overlords, so the Nedians developed the genetically-engineered bio-weapons that we know as the Ten Wise Men.

• Each Wise Man had a specific purpose, all of which is silly and pointless. Basically their task was to kill all the revolting colonies.

• The slaves in revolt (sometimes localized here as "terrorists," but only occasionally) targeted the head scientist's daughter, Filia, and killed her. The Nede Defense Force kept this a secret from the head scientist, Dr. Lantis.

• Dr. Lantis found out about this and basically went batshit insane. He changed the Ten Wise Men's preprogrammed purpose from "kill some slaves" to "destroy the fucking universe." Upon completing the tenth Wise Man, Indalecio, he uploaded his memories into its brain (these were interpreted as bugs by bystanders, hence Cyril's note that Indalecio is a "bug-filled fool"), and dumped his daughter's brain processes into the meatsack that we met in Clik (and later Central City).

• In a backwards enough fashion, even after doing this, Dr. Lantis actually willingly imprisoned himself and the other Wise Men in a Magic Space Prison that can only be opened from the outside.

• None of this necessarily makes the game any less retarded, and actually makes it make even less sense at some points, such as how genetically engineered space elves can be programmed--in which case I need to get my hands one so I can program it to get my groceries with Futuristic Space Magic--or how the fuck they got out of Slam-You-In-The-Ass Space Prison in the first place, just now, right before the beginning of Star Ocean 2, are never discussed. Ever.


Incredibly retarded.


And now for something completely different.


No, we aren't going to fight 50 dudes in a row again.




(past memories of shitty image editing)










Suddenly, we're back on Expel.

Everyone who's played this game before knows about the bonus dungeon, but some of you don't, so here's the rundown.


If you talk to that old man before saving at the end save point in Fienal, he'll be like "nah I'm just joking," but once you've saved and walked all the fucking way back down Fienal, you can talk to him and he'll warp you to a virtual Expel, complete with your Synard.


There is one change on the entire planet. This boy is now in the house of the young lovers in Arlia (they're newlyweds and he isn't there at the beginning of the game), so clearly you've been on this adventure for some years seeing as how he's old enough to coherently use words like "embarrassed," let alone to know what it means to be embarrassed of your parents.


Anyway, he has the hardest Pickpocket DC in the entire game.


Here we go, Santa's Boots.


Now, what these things do is, whenever you stay at an inn, you have about a 50% chance of getting an item.


It's usually crap, but sometimes, you can actually get Seraphic Garb, which can somewhat break the game in that its "hidden" defense goes up as your HP goes down.


It can also give you the Holy Sword of Farwell, the second-strongest weapon in the game.


You might be able to use it to sequence break in the bonus dungeon, but it's a rare drop, so I've never actually tried getting it before going there.


However, since the rest of the item pool is just so run-of-the-mill by this point, it's really not worth it.


If you want to stay at inns for hours on end some day, be my guest.


If we head back over to Lacour,


we can check on our book royalties.


It looks big, but this is pocket change for us by now.

Also this is totally faggot sell-out territory because I want to write picture books, but Penguin Young Reader Group's subsidiary DAW is taking unsolicited full-length fantasy novels, so I guess I know what I'll be fully dedicating my time to once this LP is finished. daw will totally know how to appreciate sarcastic bittersweet high fantasy with a king who smokes more weed than rock tumbler

heheheheheh high fantasy

--I mean, uh, okay, so there's this desert island in the bottom-left corner of the Expel world map.

It is separate from the desert we made all our dollaz in early in the game, but I think the encounter pool is the same, which is why they drop all those crazy metalworking materials.

And here we are: the infamous bonus dungeon, the Cave of Trials.





Whoops!




So there's a shortcut to the ninth floor on the first floor.


Needless to say, the enemies here can kick your ass, but they can't kick my ass, because I'm a badass. Or just OCD about gaining 100 levels before leaving Expel, however you wanna size that one up.


If we had the Holy Sword Farwell, we could theoretically use it to sequence break and get the best weapon in the game right here. Failing that, we continue on.


Uh


Uh what the fuck is supposed to mean game

Oh no, is that an enemy encounter I see?

Yeah, we are off to a great start.