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

 Part Forty Five

 Masterpost

 Day Eighteen: We Could Have Had It All

 According to Edea, the futuristic city of Esthar was ruled by the Sorceress Adel during the last great Sorceress war.

 The Galbadians believe that Edea has inherited Adel's power, but she says that this is not the case at all. Edea inherited her powers from a previous sorceress at the age of five, and that Adel is still alive, although her current location is unknown.

 A living Adel is apparently a big problem.

 Edea believes that Ultimecia left her body in order to possess Adel instead.

 Adel is apparently a very selfish and thoughtless woman who is happy to use her powers for her own ends regardless of the consequences.

 This would make her an attractive prospect for Ultimecia.

Well, crap.

  Another random gap appeared, and I tried to leave again, just for the hell of it.

 This time I was chastised by Zell.

 Zog thinks that he knows that what Edea is saying is important, but he's worried about Nina. Wisely, he asked Edea if she knows what happened to her.

 Edea only vaguely remembers what happened after the battle, so Zog needs to clarify. He explains that Nina's body temperature has severely dropped and that she's not moving.

 Cid asked if she's dead in a panic (you can tell because of the interrobang), and Zog replies:

"I would have said she'd died if she'd died! Weren't you
listening?!"

 Edea apologises to Zog because she doesn't think she'd be any help.

 Which is fair enough, and admirable that she's so calm and motherly here. In the short time Edea has been Ultimecia-less she's come across as a kind and caring woman.

 A kind and caring woman who happens to be married to the worst human being to ever live.

In a better game, this guy would be the final villain.

 Allow me to remind you that Cid here is the entire reason that Zog is in a leadership position. He forced Zog into that position, he didn't give the boy a choice and Zog couldn't leave because he had nowhere else to go.

 This man is the headmaster of Balamb Garden, and the closest thing Zog had to a parent.

 Anyway, he tells Zog that the students in Balamb Garden have a right to know what's going on, so he should take this information back and share it with them.

 Then this happens.

 And Zog turns around to punch that wall.

 ...

 What is there to say?

 This man abandoned the children in his care to shove all of his responsibilities onto the shoulders of one of those children. He broke his promise of running the day to day affairs of the Garden and ran away at the first sign of trouble.

 Then he has the audacity to act like he has the moral high ground while Zog is scared for Nina when he literally abandoned children because he didn't want to see his wife get beaten up.

 He's a monster, and Zog fails to stand up to him once again.

 During Edea's explanation of events, Zog runs an internal monologue about his relationship with Nina.

 The two things run concurrently, but I'm going to go through them one at a time to make it a little easier to understand.

 Edea reiterates that Ultimecia's plan is to use Ellone's power to send conciousness back into the past.

 Which raises the question of why she's here in this time period instead of further back in time in the first place.

 Edea also explains what her goal is. She seeks to compress time.

 As for Zog's internal monologue, he thinks about the first time they met at the ball and how he felt when she smiled at him.

 He also thinks about how they argued at first, but then how things changed between them.

 He wishes for another chance.

 Which makes sense, his behaviour barely changed, it was Nina who changed to fit the situation.

 Honestly, I'm still not really feeling much of a romance here.

 He could just be talking about a tumultuous friendship.

 His train of thought is interrupted by Zell and is chastised for not listening by Selphie.

 He then proves he was listening and summarises their goal as 'get Ellone, ???, stop Ultimecia, profit'.

 Quistis' response to this is 'yes, but...', but Zog interrupts her saying that they need to get back to the Garden to give this news to the others.

Irvine, I lost patience with you a long time ago.

 Considering that Zog was literally just chastised for showing his concern for Nina, it isn't surprising that he's as screwed up as he is.

 Right now, none of these people deserve for him to be nice to them.

 Well, except Edea. She's been lovely.

 From here we cut to the end of Zog disseminating this information to the rest of the Garden.

 He explains that they're looking for the white SeeD ship because that's the last place they know Ellone was. He also says that Edea probably isn't their enemy anymore, so they're going to leave her alone.

 Then another cut, this time to Nina and Zog in the infirmary.

 Of course she's cold, you left the bloody window open and didn't give her a bloody blanket! Anyone would be cold in this situation!

 Also, how can you tell? You're wearing gloves.

 In his distraught state he goes on about how he wants her to talk to him, and how she was so full of life.

 Which makes sense, as the only time he's shown concern in front of others, he had it thrown back in his face.

 Then this happens:

This surprised me.

 They actually gave me the option to choose who corresponded to whom in the next 'Ellone likes to fuck with Zog's head' section.

 This one is from when Laguna was inexplicably in a movie.

 A movie that seems to be about the whole 'Sorceress' Knight' concept that Seifer keeps going on about.

 It seems as though Kiros made Laguna take on the leading role because he spent all their money on hotels.

 Presumably Laguna got the role based entirely on his good looks, because he's not a great actor by any stretch of the imagination.

 Not that the movie is that great. The director is also the camera man and their monster is one man in a suit. Who was ill that day, so Kiros had to put on the suit instread.

 Which he didn't.

 Once filming began, the monster came down (on cue, mind you) and turned out to be a real dragon. Something that took Laguna, the woman playing the sorceress and the director/cameraman an embarrassingly long time to work out.

 This leads to Laguna fighting the dragon with a prop gunblade (which seems to be a weapon used by the Galbadian army in basic training, as he mentions that he hasn't used one since then).

 Now, he doesn't do this in a proper battle, it's another ridiculous action section.

These are your only two options.

 Blocking is useless.

 There is this huge delay between pressing the button and Laguna actually blocking, and then the block lasts for a ridiculously short amount of time. You could attack three times in the amount of time it takes to block once.

 I think I might have managed to block one of the dragon's attacks, but Laguna still took a lot of damage.

 He went down a depressingly large number of times, and after each one I was given the option to keep fighting, or give in.

 I was sick of this section, so I picked option two, and lost all of my progress from today.

 So I'm going to have to do this all again.

 I guess I'll see you guys on the other side, in Part Forty Seven.