Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Seventy Four

 Part Seventy Three

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Two: A Reticent Sonise Shipper

 Since I couldn't defeat the Ultima Weapon, I gave up the ghost and decided to get back to the plot.

 Oh, god, there is a lot of plot.

 Well, I say plot, I mean exposition.

 So much exposition.

 We're talking about forty five minutes worth of traveling from one place to another and reading endless text boxes.

 It starts with Zog heading to the Sorceress Memorial in the plains of Esthar because Quistis told him that respecting his girlfriend's decisions was for losers.

It's a cool looking building, though

 They head into the building under the pretence of saying goodbye to Nina and then attack the innocent scientists who were just trying to prevent Nina from being possessed again and wreaking havoc on the world and all the people in it.

Yeah, threatening people like this generally works better when you have a weapon, Zell.

 The weirdest thing about this is, that they don't menace the scientists into letting Nina out. Zog runs off until he gets to the orb thing that Nina is in and tries to break it.

 With his fist.

 Let me point this out, he can use magic and summon elemental forces, and his initial attempt to release Nina ia to hit a glass ball with his fist.

 Zog, you're not Zell, there's no way in hell that you can punch a glass sphere open. It's a sphere, the glass is in its strongest form! Zell would have difficulty. Heck, Snow with a sledgehammer would have difficulty.

 You're like the second weediest person in this game, get a clue!

 (Irvine's the weediest, for reference.)

 Then he decides to get out his gunblade and cut a tube open.

 Does he know what the tube does?

 Nope.

 But somehow it magically works and Nina is released from the orb amongst a cloud of white gas that could have been anything.

I'll give them this, it's dramatic.

 He could have killed them both and severely harmed everyone else in the building.

 But never mind that, we have a logo shot!

Well, at least they're together as the poisonous gas kills them.

 Nina thinks this is a poor idea, and says as much to Zog.

 He, however, doesn't care that she's a Sorceress and could lead to the deaths of hundreds. I'd say millions, but let's face it, I've not seen evidence that more than a hundred people live in this world.

 Either way, it genuinely startles me that he doesn't care.

 I'm always bothered by 'I don't care about the world! I just care about you!', to be honest.

 I didn't like it in Sonic '06, but it's worse here. A lot worse.

 Not only is Zog placing Nina in a position of more importance than the world, he's also showing that he doesn't care if she's possessed and kills people.

 It wouldn't be her doing the murdering, but it would be her body and if she ever stopped being possessed, she would be riddled with guilt.

 But Zog doesn't care about Nina's mental health or the lives of others, he just wants her to be physically near him.

 Not to mention that, unlike Elise, Zog is a shitty significant other.

 Yeah, I'm more pro a teenage girl and a hedghog than I am these two.

 Let that sink in.

 (To be fair to Elise, she did actually do the right thing in the end.)

 After this touching scene of Zog disregarding Nina's decisions and feelings, Quistis calls them to leave and they end up facing a bunch of soldiers who think letting a sorceress roam the world in a time of crisis is a bad plan.

 However, Zog and Co. are saved from having to fight their way out by a strangely familiar large man with a beeard who doesn't say anything...

 Ward, it's Ward.

 I'm not going to pretend that it's not Ward. There's no point.

 I'd like to point out that Zog doesn't recognise this man, even though it's kind of obvious.

 So, once you've kidnapped your girlfriend and put the world in immense danger, what do you do?

 Head to the childhood home you don't really remember because said girlfriend asked you to, of course!

 Yes, I am still bitter over the GF induced memory loss thing.

  Though, to be fair to Nina, she does say she feels embarrassed because she was set on staying in Esthar, but when they turned up to kidnap her she felt happy.

 This might be some of the better characterisation that any character's had in this game.

 She's been in a situation where she'd be trapped for an undisclosed amount of time in isolation and then she's taken away from it.

 Regardless of the fact that she chose to be in that situation, her reaction is completely natural.

 She's happy, but also torn and scared, because this is a decision she made for the benefit of others. Including those who came to save her.

 Her actions aren't bound to make a whole bunch of sense at this point, she's at a loss.

 On the othr hand, Quistis isn't making much sense either, but it's clearly just bad writing in her case.

I really want to stab you right now.

 "Why don't we just picture a brighter future?"

 (That was meant to be in a whiny, mocking voice, by the way.)

 There's a monster epidemic, an evil sorceress is on the loose, another evil sorceress could possess your friend at any time, one of your childhood companions has gone evil and is clearly suffering from some form of mind control and a global superpower is seeking to take over the world at the behest of evil sorceress number two.

 Yes, picturing a brighter future is a much better tactic than trying to work out what to do next.

 I hate you so much right now.

 With nothing else to do, and no other ideas, they head to the orphanage. So we'll cover that next time in Part Seventy Five.