Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Thirty Eight

 Part Thirty Seven

 Masterpost

 Day Sixteen: Is This Really The Time?

 I have a new Balamb Garden ship.

Woo! New ship! Marvel as we end up never seeing them again!

 The fellow in the wheelchair is a strategist for the quad defence team, and he gave the girl some instructions and she was all 'I look forward to working under your command'. She seemed very excited, so I stand by my ship.

 Speaking of ships, I couldn't go to the library to look for that couple again. I think I'm just going to have to accept that I'll never see them again.

 But I have hope for these two!

 No, no I don't.

 Now, there's some plot to be getting on with.

 Zog and the gang head down into the quad where Zell is currently in charge.

 For some inexplicable reason, Zog says this: "I thought you were sleeping."

 Zog... you do know that people can wake up, right? Because the fact you seem so surprised by the fact that Zell woke up isn't convincing me that you fully understand how sleep works.

 Although, if we're going to be totally fair (and here at Nine Over Five we have no interest in not being), it does behove us to point out that Zell does react in a suspicious way.

 So I assume he had been masturbating when the announcement was made.

 Oddly though, this is not the weirdest thing that happened during this section.

 No, the weirdest thing was this:

...Wait, what?

 Okay, what ring?

 I never saw a ring. Did you see a ring?

Well? Did you?

 This piece of jewellery has never been brought up before. Why would it? Zog is wearing gloves.

 And it's on his hand, it isn't on his necklace. We see him take it off his (right?) hand.

Without removing his glove. He's been taking lessons from Hansel.

 I can't really remember which hand it was, but you've seen the pictures, the point stands.

 It turns out that Zell wants the apparently invisible ring for Nina's sake.

 Who, speak of the devil, wants to help them fight!

 If this was any of the others saying this I'd criticise them for the inconsistency of their attitude, but we've been through why Nina's inconsistency towards fighting makes sense before.

 One word: civilian.

 Before she can go into too much detail, Nida calls Zog up to the bridge and we get another pretty FMV cutscene of Galbadia Garden looking freakishly like a lobster. However, this one has a point.

 It shows that Seifer is on board.

Two words, mate: Prescription Sunglasses.

 Nice showing, Square. You know, just like you didn't with that ring.

 There's also a cutscene showing soldiers on rocket powered motorcycles being launched off Galbadia Garden to land on Balamb Garden and drive over the curve of the building before landing in the quad.

I'm rarely kidding.

 Does this look awesome?

 Yes.

 Does this make any sense?

 No.

 Do I really care about that?

 No. It's stupid, but I can suspend my disbelief for this level of pretty and awesome.

 This, by the way, is the thing about suspension of disbelief. I can suspend my disbelief for flying Gardens and rocket powered flying motorcycles, but not a large facial scar that no one ever mentions and an invisible ring.

 The more mundane a thing is, the less likely people are to over look it.

 Oh, and speaking of the invisible ring.

 We cut to Zell, Irvine and Nina in the quad with Galbadians on motorcycles zipping by them, and they need to head to the left to try and slow down the attack.

 Except that they do nothing to slow down the attack.

 In fact, Zell stops the party in order to give Nina Zog's ring.

 They, in fact, have an entire conversation about this ring and how Zell will make a copy of it for Nina and how this one doesn't fit. Honestly, I'm sad about that last part, I wanted to mock Zog for having girly hands.

 Usually I title these after the fact, but this time I did it beforehand because you can see that this habit of wasting time is a real problem here.

 After this they finally feel like heading to where the Galbadians were coming from.

 And then Galbadia Garden bashes into Balamb Garden and the ground crumbles beneath their feet.

 It transitions into a pretty nice FMV cutscene, where we see Nina fall and skid down the newly formed dirt cliff. She manages to grab on just before the bottom and holds on like a total BAMF.

A suspiciously clean BAMF...

 Now, this is a pretty sizeable dirt cliff face, there is no way that anyone aside from Mr Tickle could actually reach her from the top. So please don't judge me too harshly for laughing at Zell when he dramatically complained that he couldn't reach her.

 Dude, what made you think you could? You're not Plastic Man, or He Who Must Not Be Named, for crying out loud.

 Once they determine that neither of them are the spawn of Elastigirl, Zell and Irvine go looking for something that they can use to pull her up.

 While on the hunt, this happened:

Clearly, Xu would be played by Ming-Na Wen in the movie.
She'd also not rely on a seventeen year old boy as much.

My reaction to this was pretty much: That's nice, but I've gotta find some rope.

 So I basically just left Nina hanging off a cliff for five minutes as I went everywhere the game would allow me in an attempt to locate the aforementioned item.

 I didn't find it, the game actually expected me to get side tracked and go ask Zog for help instead of letting him take care of the fact that Balamb Garden was under attack while Zell and Irvine helped Nina.

 Call me crazy, but I thought this was the reasonable thing to do.

 During my search I found where the pre-pubescent children were hanging out under the protection of a single SeeD.

Lady, you do not have your priorities straight.

 Apart from the fact that they didn't have rope, I think it's worth mentioning that the kid in the cargo trousers and football shirt there said that he's just mastered Firaga.

 That's the highest level Fire spell that my team knows.

 This kid is a genius.

 I also checked with Nida if he had rope, but he didn't answer because he was too busy piloting the Garden. So he might have been able to help Nina, but we'll never know now.

 With no other option, I decided it was time to have Zell and Irvine follow Zog and Co. to the front gate.

 We'll cover what happens there next time, in Part Thirty Nine.