Part 9: The World is Changing

Music: Equinox of Insanity



Now that the Helix is down for good, a new path has opened up back into the Sacrifice Block. No exit sign for a change.



Back inside the sprawling structure, we find a bunch of soldiers hanging out in the final safe room of Episode 1. I’ve taken a lot of Yong Carnaps on road trips back in the day.



While we’re here, I ought to mention a dumb mechanic at work in safe rooms. Well, less a mechanic and more of a trigger. You know the conversations soldiers will hold occasionally in a safe house area? Aya actually has to Overdive into a higher ranked soldier (read: one of the idiot names with an eagle symbol next to it) in order to trigger said conversation. Otherwise, the men will just have a single generic line. Never mind the actual person initiating the conversation is usually idly sitting right there to begin with.

Is Aya just roleplaying as the commanding officer in the room while she’s possessing them? Is that how it works? Naw… That would give her some personality and agency and we cannot have refreshing vulnerability if that happens.



What are we betting, sir?
If I can make it to the next area alive or not. Let's say $100. You in?
I can't bet on somebody's life.
Just means you haven't been out here long enough. A life without gambling isn't a life worth living.

Sorry pal. Your life was forfeit and meaningless as soon as you were conceptualized as an NPC in The 3rd Birthday.





This room is the last time we’ll be able to gene splice Aya and tune her loadout. I’ve purchased most of the upgrades available at this point, outside of some of the Impact upgrades for the rifle, as those eat away at damage a good chunk. I find myself using the rifle more for quickly dealing with jerks, than going for stuns.



In any case, another exit sign most certainly leading to no exit of any type and indeed, quite the opposite direction from the exit, will bring us to the final room of the Episode. As it turns out, Aya could have avoided this entire mess if she had just leaped into someone’s body outside of the club and then just came in through the parking lot.

Oh well, you know what they say about hindsight. Oh wait… WE ARE FUCKING TIME TRAVELING AND HAVE 100% FORESIGHT INTO WHAT WILL HAPPEN!



We are just coming up on an hour and a half in our dive back to Christmas Eve of 2012. Eh… I’m from the future and it’s more like an hour total. But, I suppose that’s not that far off the mark. By the way, should we be concerned that the sky has gone blood red in the last five minutes?







What tipped you off, Aya? The different hair color, facial structure, outfit, or lack of occasional alien acne. Also not inhabiting a vague foreshadowing dreamscape.





Sheesh. Facial recognition software recording from a disembodied consciousness traveling a year in the past still has a .82% margin of error? What kind of rinky-dink clown show are you running, Blank?

Emily starts walking towards Aya…



I came to tell you something about your dream.
*gasp*
I'm sure you know. That poor girl...
*breaths heavy and raises gun*
You have to remember.



Okay. Welp. We’re gonna go there, huh game?



That is Capital T-Time. Capital Z-Zero. Time Zero. Proper. Noun.
*gasp*



I think she is trying to tell me something.
[We don’t have time for exposition now, Aya! Shoot!]



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAA!!



[Now look. You took too long. She’s powering up.]
[Is that a Kaio-ken?]
[What? No, Jesus. That is a red tinted power-up. This is clearly blue.]
[Oh… Right. My bad.]
So what should I…?
[Aya, you’ve now got to wait for her power-up and/or transformation sequence to fully complete. You should be aware of this protocol.]
…








New Music: Bloody Back



So who is ready for the final boss of Episode 1? Time to fight Emily Jefferson. She has uhh… but a bit of weight on in Twisted boss form.



[I'm analyzing the data. This is unbelievable! Aya, this Twisted is a badass! Be careful!]
[Are you scared? The dead don't feel fear. That's how you know you're alive.]

Hyde, did you write that costume datalog about the refreshing vulnerability? Is that going to be a plot reveal?



So you may notice that Ms. Jefferson has a translucent body. That is, of course, because she is completely invulnerable initially. We’re going to need to do something about that if this battle is going to go anywhere.





Emily begins the battle by just kind of hanging out and shitting out… cartoon tornados? Sure, why not? These tornados aren’t particularly dangerous. They just sort of bounce about the arena. As cartoon tornados are want to do. Mostly, they’re just there to quickly fill up Aya’s Liberation meter.



They can also really quickly shred Aya’s clothes. Like 2-3 hits from tornados will cause half of Aya’s outfit to explode. It doesn’t particularly do much damage. Just fanservice injuries.







What were are supposed to do is pop off Aya’s Liberation ASAP and perform an Overdive kill while in this mode. This will tear Emily from her transitive state between dimensions and start the boss fight proper.



Yep… That’s sure a big blobby, spikey mess of a boss design. I cannot say I can see the correlation between like 18 year old girl and this overweight beast. But here were are.



Now that Emily is a tangible creature, it is… just sort of back to the loop of setting up Crossfire linkage, dumping on her, and performing Overdive attacks. Helix was an alright boss. This… not so much.





Gone are Emily’s cartoon tornadoes (and Liberation fills up very slowly against bosses, so it probably won’t happen again.) Instead, Ms. Jefferson just kind of hobbles around and will swing its surprisingly stretchy appendages in Aya and the other soldiers’ direction.





Other than that, it will attempt to ram Aya. I mean, it is a giant gluttonous mass of a boss. Ramming or butt-stomps are one of the first items on their boss battle contract write-ups.





It’s rather difficult to avoid a charging Emily since Aya’s rolls don’t quite clear her girth unless we’re really on the ball avoiding it as soon as she decides she wants to stomp on our heroine. So, the safest course of action for Aya to take is to, of course, abandon the body facing with being pounded into the dirt in favor of a safer vessel on the far side of the room.

You know what? More games should have that “Orphans Created” stat from Alpha Protocol.



It is worth a mention that Emily does speak during this boss battle. It’s not subtitled and a hard to hear over the sound of tossing grenades and shooting her whilst teleporting into new meat puppets. Also she takes about two minutes to kill and probably won’t say all of her lines. But she says:

Where am I?
Aya?
Are you crying?
I don't exist anymore.
You have to hurry!
You don't remember?



That’s about it for Emily Jefferson. Like I said it… isn’t a particularly great boss battle. Especially considering we just fought Helix and with a bit more flare, that would have been a fine cap to the mission.



Music Ends.





Umm… Aya. Might want to take note that you seem to have been transported to a weird blood and ice dimension. That seems more pressing than the weird anime girl floating around.





RIP Emily Jefferson. No, she is not some weird reoccurring character that will appear to Aya with cryptic ramblings. She’s dead. Full stop. We never see her again.





So who is ready for some more vague memory flashbacks?









So Aya has had amnesia for a good three years and has completely neglected to look into her past, in favor of becoming incredibly passive. But, if you’ve played Parasite Eve 2… There was a clone of Aya Brea named Eve. Long story involving some secret organization setting it up so rich people could become evolutionary augmented monster people. Don't kink shame. Anyway! At the end of Parasite Eve 2, Aya became Eve's adoptive sister. Yes, this is supposed to be her. Why Aya seems intent on shooting her in the face and how she got alien acne when she hit puberty is yet to be seen.





Anyway, we did something by killing Emily Jefferson. Was… she the Big Orb we were after at Club Sacrifice? You got me! But apparently we have changed history this time around. So…

































Music: Joy to the World –for The 3rd Birthday-





I don’t want to hear that there is someone on the other end of a security camera watching Aya Brea as she sleeps. Things were creepy enough as it was…



So we’re back to exactly when Episode 1 began. Welp… What are your rules for time travel, The 3rd Birthday? I mean unless we’ve got a Groundhog Day scenario playing out here, we’re already setting up a time paradox here.



A dream?
…



*gasp* Does this mean that I’ve been sent back?
Aya.



Go to the Spanish Harlem, three days ago.



Cray's dead? What happened?
The Bureau won't authorize that kind of mission.




New Music: The Boss



So remember back in the beginning of Episode 1 when Hyde mentioned Boss and the FBI Branch was gone? Well, as it turns out, if you had read that Timeline info dump, he and the FBI were actually all fucking dead. He is very goddamn annoyed to be stuck in this terrible game.



But thanks to Aya Brea’s actions, it seems we’ve resurrected him. Also, despite his death that very day, Aya still thought he was a huge dick. I’m sure it’s great we’ve brought him back and won't unnecessarily complicate matters in a way that will ultimately prove to be more of a stupid nuisance roadblock than anything tangible to the plot. Also, we killed Cray, somehow. That would be a bummer if he had more than eight lines thus far.





Oh sure. Pulling a gun on someone in lock-up. That’s kosher for the FBI, right?



Gun whipping subordinates getting uppity. Also fully within acceptable protocol. I see why he’s The Boss.





Please, this is a crucial time. We can't lose Cray now.
…
*lowers gun* Hmph. We’ll go elsewhere. Besides, she doesn’t need to hear what we have to say.

Boss walks off…







Welp. That went well.



In any case, that concludes Episode 1 of The 3rd Birthday. In which we wandered around the world’s largest night club, killed a bunch of weird monsters, caused the death of six soldiers, and somehow got one of our support staff killed in exchange for resurrecting the biggest douchebag possible. Good work, Aya!






Video: Emily Boss Battle


Video: Part 9 Cutscenes (Some plot actually sorta, kinda happens, so recommended viewing.)





Emily Jefferson – Going from Final Fantasy X’s apex of Nomura belts and zippers to this design normalcy is a bit of whiplash.



Emily Jefferson Twisted Form – Well… I guess it’s red like her hair and umm… Girls like hearts, right? Checks out for a boss form of that character.