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

 Part Forty Seven

 Masterpost

 Day Nineteen: The Case Of The Chicobo Bandits

 Before we begin...

You evolved with an objective morality written into your genes?
You poor lambs.

 This is one of the Sumi describing why NORG looked the way he did.

 So he was fat and hideous because he was evil.

 Right.

 Also, unnaturally long fingers.

 Well, swings and roundabouts, I guess.

 So, from notions of morality and appearance that belong in 1842 to our main goal for the day.

 Over the last couple of game play sessions, I've been having Him learn two specific abilities.

 Encounter Half and Encounter None.

 These are particularly helpful in this section because there's a time limit. You need to make your way through the Centra Ruins, work out a puzzle and defeat a powerful foe in under twenty minutes. Skipping all of the random encounters while you're working towards this goal makes things a lot easier.

 Encounter None is very recommended, and you need to get Encounter Half first.

 Do not forget to junction this as an ability before entering the ruins.

Top notch caption work, guys. Just perfect.

 The way the environments work in this game means that they knew that you'd see it from this exact camera angle. So they put the text here knowing you wouldn't be able to read it.

 Of course, if they'd used a text box you would be able to read it, but that just wasn't mysterious enough for them.

 On the plus side, though, this place is really beautiful.

 I can't help but wonder what this place was, and how it got ruined.

 Was it some kind of temple? A forum? A shopping centre?

 I don't know, but the banisters light up when you go on the stairs.

To prove I'm not making that up.

 The puzzle is pretty simplistic. Just take an eye out of one statue and put it into another, write down the code you're given and go put both eyes in the first statue.

 Then this happens:

...

 That just looks ridiculous.

 I'm not sure why anyone would think that looks good, and I can't imagine that it looked any less ridiculous in the original Japanese.

 Doug thought that it was the font, but I don't think that's the real problem here. The problem here is that it's pink numbers floating above a torch. It was going to look ridiculous regardless of the font used.

 Once the code has been put in through the holographic torch interface, a door opens and you can find Odin inside.

I took this screenshot because it looked mildly inappropriate.

 He'll challenge you to a fight, promising to give his sword to your cause if you can beat him.

 Or, rather, beat on him because he just stands there and doesn't do anything while you attack him.

 The challenge here is supposed to be the time limit, like in Final Fantasy XIII, but since I used Encounter None I had over ten minutes left.

 It didn't take anywhere near that long, even though I totally forgot to give Zell the ability to do anything other than attack and also forgot to give him the Strength +40% ability.

 Once you do defeat him, he says this:

 By which he means 'I'll show up at the beginning of random battles and kill all of your enemies for you while looking cool'.

 Of course, I do take issue with his design. Mostly that he has one eye too many and his horse has two legs too few.

 Also, he'll lend Zog his sword? Odin's signature weapon was Gungnr, a spear. This is basic knowledge, guys.

 After doing this, I took the Encounter None ability from Zog and went looking for Bombs. I needed some Bomb Fragments to upgrade Irvine's gun.

 However, instead of going to a town that actually had a junk shop, I ended up in Winhill.

 Since I was in the area, I decided to do a quick side quest.

"I need to take it onto The Antiques Roadshow!"

  Unfortunately for this guy, his vase is broken. Which will bring the price down significantly at auction.

 The pieces are scattered throughout the town, including in a suit of armour that this guy and Mrs this guy think is haunted, but really just has a chicobo hiding in it. For some random reason, you can only discover this fact if you have Quistis or Irvine with you.

 Another one is in the flower shop with the horrid old woman who turns her back on you in the street and comes across as xenophobic when she talks about Raine's death.

 One is held by a chicobo that's running on the road. For some reason, this one floats down to the ground in a way that ceramic is totally incapable of doing once you run into the chicobo and knock the shard out of its grip.

 Then there's my favourite one.

 If you go into the pub and talk to the lady upstairs repeatedly, she'll eventually talk about the smell of Raine wafting up from downstairs. For some reason she asks Zog if he can 'sense the fragrance'.

 It's called smelling lady.

 Stop trying to make it sound mysterious.

 Heading back downstairs and smelling the white flowers causes a vision of Raine to appear behind the bar.

"What are you two doing in here? You're underage! Quistis,
you can stay."

 If you try to talk to her she disappears, leaving a cat and a piece of the vase in her wake.

 Raine... did you come back from beyond the grave in order to join forces with two chicobos and break some guy's vase?

 Is the afterlife that boring? Or did you just really hate this guy's vase?

 Once you've recovered the pieces from Raine, her cohorts and the probably racist old lady, you take them back to the guy and he rewards you with a Holy Stone. Which isn't a terrible reward by any means.

 Since there was nothing left for me to do in Winhill, I headed back to Balamb, and on the way aliens happened.

Of course it's stealing a cow.

 Frankly, this overshadows the fact that the girl with the pigtail is interested in Zell.

 After this point, I just started collecting supplies for upgrading weapons. Which I'll hopefully have done in time for Part Forty Nine.