Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Forty Seven

 Part Forty Six

 Masterpost

 Day Nineteen: Boy, Does This Section Dragon

 Sometimes, I like to imagine what it would be like if Charlie from Casualty was working in the Balamb Garden infirmary. It's really the only way to retain my sanity when Dr Kadowaki does something like this:

He's not a nurse, lady.

 At least a qualified medical professional would be left in charge while she's off eating the souls of babies, and he'd have a go at her every time she did something stupid or evil.

 He'd also make sure the bloody window was shut and there was a blanket on the comatose teenage girl.

 ...

 Charlie from Casualty is great. More video games would be improved by him being included.

 Having him show up would have made doing the 'nuuu, Ultimecia might possess Adel!' section again more bearable.

 One thing that made it less bearable was the realisation that the game forces you to try and walk away from the conversation by having Edea endlessly repeat herself instead of just going on the next part of the conversation.

 Look.

 If having Zog walk off in the middle of a conversation was so important to you, you should have made a cut scene for it where he walks off by himself instead of roping the player into his rude behaviour.

 Just because your protagonist doesn't have manners doesn't mean your players don't.

 (By the way, this time I didn't happen to find the Library Couple. I'm not sure why this is.)

 Once the Laguna flashback kicked in and I got to have another go at that dragon, it went down easier than the time previous. This was because I didn't bother trying to block.

 To be fair, it was a close run thing, but the defend move was so useless last time that it wasn't worth trying to use again.

 After winning that totally pointless break from regular gameplay, Laguna runs off only to be headed off at the path by another dragon.

 Luckily for him, Kiros wasn't killed by the first dragon and brings Laguna his gun and his clothes.

 Much to my amusement, Laguna changes back into his regular outfit using the celebrated WonderWoman spin.

 Now he has a proper weapon and a buddy, we can get into a proper fight.

 Oh, before we get into that, allow me to remind you of something from Part Forty Six.

Why does Zog have such odd shading compared to everyone else?

 Remember this? How we had the opportunity to assign junction set ups to Laguna and Kiros?

 Turns out that it was totally pointless.

 See, between the last time Zog and Co. were in a battle and when Zog passed out on Nina's bed, the game had stripped every character apart from Zog of their junctions.

 It keeps doing this and it makes me increasingly angry every time it does.

 Luckily, the dragon didn't present too much of a challenge, so Laguna and Kiros managed to defeat it with little difficulty despite Kiros having no junctions.

 The two of them run away with their tails between their legs, because fighting a bunch of creatures who would like to be left alone in their natural habitat is both a stupid idea and a dick move.

Aww, Lagunakins is out of breath.

 This little scene ends with Laguna noticing the floating landscape back there which I suspect may be Esthar.

 From here it becomes a psychic conversation between Zog and Ellone.

 She says that she cant disconnect, which is what she calls it when she uses her 'special power'. Which she apparently can't control right now because she's asleep.

 Wait. She hasn't necessarily been doing this to Zog and Co. on purpose?

 I guess this does make her a less monstrous human being, but it does also mean that she's been putting their lives at risk since she hasn't been able to choose times when it would be less likely for them to be killed if they randomly passed out.

 One thing, though. I can just about buy that she can't stop her powers from flailing around and screwing her brother over by accident when she's asleep, but I'm having real difficulty believing that she can have conversations with him when she's unconscious.

Shouldn't that be "Nnnnghzzzzzzzzzngnnnnn"?

 I don't know about you, but I can't handle abstract concepts when I'm asleep. I especially can't hold conversations about them with people hundreds of miles away using the ill defined powers of my mind.

 Seriously, they said she could transfer consciousnesses to the past, not that she was telepathic.

 They're not really the same thing, now are they?

 Ellone then takes Zog and sticks him into Laguna's mind midway through a conversation with Edea.

 No, she's not evil yet, so don't worry.

 It turns out that they're talking about Ellone, who Laguna says was kidnapped by soldiers from Esthar, who believed her to have received the powers of the Sorceress Adel.

 He went to Edea's place hoping that she may have somehow ended up there. Possibly because the Esthar soldiers realised that she hadn't received the powers of their missing, presumed dead, leader and abandoned her to continue their search.

 Which... well I guess it makes sense.

 Whatever his logic was, it was misplaced as it turns out she wasn't there in the first place.

 Edea asks him if Ellone is his daughter, and he has this adorable answer.

"No, but I wish she was!" basically.

 Laguna = DILF in the making.

 Zog sadly thinks that he'd like to hear Nina's voice (although I wouldn't put much stock in Square's ability to not pick an annoying high pitched squeal for her if I were him) and Laguna deals admirably with a random voice in his head.

 When Edea asks him if something's the matter, he says it's nothing, just the faeries.

 In contrast, Zog is not dealing well with his not-girlfriend being in a coma. Idly hoping that time travel may be a method to save her.

 Ellone says that the past cannot be changed.

 That she'd tried to stop Laguna from leaving the village when she was kidnapped so that he would be with Raine when she gave birth. Only it didn't work, and now she can't get back to that point in time.

 Kind of like when Booster Gold tried to stop Barbara Gordon from being shot in the stomach by the Joker and ending up in a wheelchair that one time.

 Only less awesome and more child birth-y.

And cue the immature giggling.

 That stipulation to her powers makes total sense, and I won't question it.

 But then she apologises to Zog and says she's about to disconnect, which makes me think she was lying when she said she couldn't earlier.

 Is everyone this guy knows totally awful?

 Well, except Nina and Edea, they seem mostly okay.

 She promises to speak to him again using this method, and he wakes up.

 Unfortunately, Ellone telling him that they can't save Nina using time travel seems to have convinced him that they can, and he starts yelling into the ceiling at Ellone that they need to try this.

 I'm not surprised this has happened, I am not surprised at all.

 He decides that if anyone knows where the white SeeD ship that Ellone is on is, it's Edea and resolves to go and ask her.

 Which we won't be doing in Part Forty Eight, we've got a GF to get.