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

 Part Seventy Seven

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Three: The Epic of Seifer

 As we chase after Fuujin and Raijin, we run into Biggs and Wedge for what is probably the last time.

 Much like grown men in the real world, Biggs isn't pleased with taking orders from someone younger than him.

 Wedge finds his complaint about having to take orders from some punk amusing. Probably because as spineless as he is, Wedge is fully aware that Biggs acts like a boy in his mid to late teens at best.

 He jokingly suggests that Biggs find a different career and Biggs decides he's right and quits on the spot.

Hmmm, my gaydar is pinging

 I can only presume that Biggs has strongarmed Wedge into going with him because he's secretly been in love with him the entire time and this is the end result of his pigtail pulling.

 Well, good for you Final Fantasy VIII. Look at you being all representative.

 (It's gonna get better, but we'll get to that.)

 After the end of this romantic arc (still better than Twilight), the party is free to continue their chase of Fuujin and Raijin.

 Well, I say chase. That's not acurate because the word 'chase' implies that I was hot on their heels and they were only a little way ahead of me at any given time.

 In reality, I got lost and found five dead ends and one path that just led me in a big circle.

 I didn't explore, explore implies that there was a motivation to find interesting things, or the belief that I could find interesting things. No, I was attempting to chase down the plot and just got lost.

 The worst thing about getting lost is that there was more than one dead end that looked like an exit, but wasn't. It was just an indent in the wall that I could squeeze the whole party into.

 Basically, I was being exit-teased.

 On one occasion I did get something out of it, so that's handy.

It raises a character's compatibility with a GF. It's not creepy.

 I mostly lucked my way into going the right way, but I can give you one piece of advice: Take Lift 01. It'll save you a fair bit of time.

 Before I move on, though, I feel that it's necessary to bring up the strange camera angles employed inside of the Lunatic Pandora.

Here's the most egregious example.

 It was really annoying on the space station, but it made far more sense there than here. After all, on the space station we were in spaaace, but here the normal rules of gravity apply.

 I can only presume that the awkward, and mildly annoying, camera angles were used here to prevent each suspended corridor from looking identical.

 It worked, but it still got on my nerves.

 So, after seeing all the dead ends and strange camera angles that the Lunatic Pandora had to offer, I finally caught up with Fuujin and Raijin.

 Raijin was happy to fight Zog and Co, despite the repeated history of that going poorly for them, but Fuujin put a stop to it.

 She's basically the brains of this operation. If they were superheroes, Raijin would be her sidekick.

 Again, she used a full sentence, which was something of a shock.

I said it was full, I never said it wasn't broken.

 These two then set a monster on me.

 Rude.

 It wasn't too tough, it had a couple of Ultima Weapon level dick moves, but I managed to kill it before I really even noticed that.

It looks pretty cool though.

 It sort of reminds me of a Chrono Trigger boss, but that's hardly unusual for a Final Fantasy game.

 After this, we finally catch up to them properly, also catching up to Seifer in the process.

 He does not look like he's in good shape.

Geeze, look at his coat.

 The poor lamb, I just want to scoop him up and give him a hug. Unlike Zog, this guy is actually suffering during this plot. The antagonist is a more interesting character than our hero.

 Speaking of people who like to screw Zog over, Ellone is here too. She's being womanhandled by Fuujin.

 While Raijin is happy to continue following Seifer's orders (or is so used to doing so he does it automatically), Fuujin says no and releases Ellone.

 She then goes on to talk at length, in a totally normal tone of font, about how she and Raijin care about Seifer and that they always want to support him and his dreams, but that he's being manipulated.

 She's tried to get through to him, but she's failed, so now all she has left is to rely on Zog to try and get through to him. A situation that she's clearly not happy about.

 During this, Zog sent Ellone outside to where he guesses Laguna is, and after Fuujin and Raijin leave, having failed to get through to Seifer once again.

 Zog confronts Seifer, but not with any attempt to talk him out of this behaviour, and it's gotten to the point where he feels like he's so invested this course of action, he has no option but to continue.

 Then a fight begins!

 This one is particularly interesting, because Odin appears at the beginning of it. He doesn't usually do this for boss fights, but this time he does.

 And is promptly murdered.

Holy crap!

  Screw Zack and Cloud, this guy is the one who deserves the wolf imagery and Fenrir association. He just killed the All-Father.

 I mean,  Baldr the pure, what's he going to do next? Eat the sun?!

 (I'd suggest eating the moon, but all those monsters will doubtlessly cause indigestion.)

 Surprisingly, for a guy who killed the All-Father, he's surprisingly not that tough.

 He has this really cool looking attack called Blood Fest.

Not as bloody as advertised.

 For such a cool looking attack with such a metal name, it didn't really do much damage.

 Since Odin's been killed (and Doug's read the walkthrough), I didn't really put any effort into defeating Seifer.

 This is because a dozen or so turns in, this guy shows up.

 This is Gilgamesh, and he's probably looking for Enkidu.

 But we'll get into more about him next time, in Part Seventy Nine.