Friday - The Will of Men
There’s no dream sequence tonight since we’re heading into completely unknown territory, but for some odd reason the opening scene of Hibiki waking up in his room is pretty much identical to the opening scene of Day 4, with an agitated Makoto on the other side of the door telling him to come down to the command center (and yes, we can still call her a pervert for old time’s sake). In the command center Miyako’s words from last night are hanging heavily in the air, and she soon contacts the group again. She asks if we’ve come to a decision, and Yamato says that it comes down to two things: how much they trust Miyako, and if they won’t be able to overcome the scenario that she’s trying to convince them of, that sacrificing their lives is the only way to save the world. He says the answer should be clear to all of them, and indeed it is. We have Hibiki deny her plan and insist that they’ll find another solution, one that doesn’t involve sacrificing anyone, including herself.
Miyako again says she’s a little surprised that they (well, really Io still) are still concerned for her well-being but refuses to budge otherwise, insisting that sacrificing something is the only way to save the world. Hinako says that she gives up too easily so Miyako shifts gears a bit and asks them what will they do if they do succeed in reactivating the Astrolabe. Polaris and Arcturus aren’t the only Administrators, she says, there are countless other stars out there with the potential to sit upon the Heavenly Throne. She even names a few: Errai whom we’ve already heard of as Polaris’s natural successor, and Alfirk and Alderamin, two stars in the Cepheus constellation. The hot-blooded Keita says that that’s fine, they’ll just beat down any other Administrator that shows itself, but Miyako objects on the grounds that that will simply lead to a nigh-eternal war against the heavens, a war that mankind would be unlikely to win. Once again she asks us to agree to her plan, and once again we deny her, leading her to say that if negotiations have broken down, then she will have to force us to comply with her plan.
With the line drawn in the sand she signs off and with the conflict with JP’s about to restart Yamato says that the first order of business will be to restore his fully control over the Dragon Stream so that he’ll be a match for his opposite number. That requires a ritual of some sort, and we will need to return to my favorite map of the game: the JP’s facility on Mt. Fuji with the Dragon Stream stakes. Fumi’s charged with hacking into the JP’s database again for its Terminal code, so in the meantime we’re turned loose on the map. We actually have a lot of time until we’re forced to head for Mt. Fuji, as Fumi won’t call to say that she has the code until we watch a scene called “Astrolabe” which we will eventually be railroaded into watching in three hours at 9:30. If “Astrolabe” was seen yesterday, in the evening after Arcturus was defeated, Fumi would instead call up after a single half-hour.
I’ll be starting off with Daichi’s scene, for reasons that should become apparent by the end of this update. He’s at Shinobazu Pond, and I notice compared to its appearance in Overclocked the water plants lining the walkway are shown yellowed since this game takes place later in the year. Have I mentioned that I really like the background artwork in these games? I can’t state it enough. Anyway, the subject of this scene is that Daichi and Hibiki come across a distraught mother who’s lost her child and they offer to help out. After fruitlessly scouring the rest of Ueno for a bit the two encounter a guy from one of the shelters that Daichi’s been volunteering at, and it gives him an idea. He tells Hibiki to return to the mother, and once Hibiki does Daichi soon reappears, lost child in tow. His idea was to call in some favors at the shelter and everyone there agreed to help search for the kid, finding him in no time. Though, Daichi gets the wrong idea from this and says that he couldn’t do anything on his own after all, and we have to get the point through his head that that’s not true at all, as the search wouldn’t’ve succeeded without his ability to form bonds with people and bring them together. He finally realizes that he does have a talent after all, jokes that Hibiki should’ve told him sooner, and achieves Fate Stage 4.
Next, Yamato at the Nagoya branch’s command center, since once we see “Astrolabe” his events get put on hold for a bit. It opens with Daichi saying that they’ve been depending on Yamato a lot, and he thinks they should get him a gift or something to show their appreciation. Only problem is, Yamato doesn’t seem to have any recreational interests or hobbies at all, so he’s stumped. He tries to ask the former chief, as subtly as he can, if there’s anything he likes or wants but Yamato does not seem to understand the implications of the question, for he replies that he willpower is great as is strength, physical or otherwise, and if there’s anything he’d like right now, it would be capable personnel. Daichi gives us and passes the buck to Hibiki ‘cause Yamato actually likes him, and we have to literally spell out Daichi’s intention to him. Yamato goes into a consternation-induced silence for a moment before deciding that he can accept our offer if that’s the case, but there isn’t anything he feels he’s lacking. Whenever he’s had a need, he says, he simply examines the problem and solves it, so he’ll simply examine this “problem” again in the future. Okaaay.... He does achieve Fate Stage 3 though, so he ends up giving us the gift of Mithra instead. I took the opportunity to update my demons a bit here, and decided to give Hibiki a Baihu with Elec Dance because why not?
The last of the character-based events that I’m going to see for the time being is Makoto’s. She’s by the Edo Castle moat watching the aftermath of a JP’s rescue operation, and the survivors are a bit torn, since while they’re safe the JP’s agents had to leave a smaller group behind. Watching this reminds Makoto of some of the arguments she used to have with Miyako, until one day she presented her with the trolley problem
thought experiment. Miyako’s solution was of course to switch the rails and let the train kill the one person instead of the other five, but Makoto admits that she couldn’t bring herself to answer. She asks Hibiki what he would choose, but we’re spared from answering by Yamato coming along and inviting himself into the conversation. His solution to the trolley problem is to declare that the choice is meaningless, and that he would do nothing: regardless of his decision, the capable will find ways to survive, while the weak will perish sooner or later anyway. Gee, “nice” to see that darwinistic worldview is still under there...
But on a more positive note, he continues by saying that that’s not the point; his lesson to Makoto is to not get bogged down in a simple binary view and look at things from every angle instead in order to Take a Third Option. That’s just what Makoto needs to hear, as she achieves Fate Stage 4 and we are done with Tokyo-based events for the time being.
Back to Nagoya, Yamada Park in particular, for the next Jungo event as it’s a rather quick one where we find that he’s been reunited with his beloved cat Jungo. And not just Jungo, but a veritable zoo of other stray cats and dogs! Jungo says that he’s very, very, very happy that he met up with his animal friend again and attributes it to all the bonds the party managed to form being strong enough to last between worlds. He promises to do everything he can to protect this small bit of happiness and achieves Fate Stage 4.
Next I decided to return to the Nagoya branch for the “Astrolabe” event. It starts with Hibiki encountering Airi and Hinako where they explain that they want to have Yamato elaborate on what Administrative Authority is, and they figure he’d open up a bit more with Hibiki present. In the command center Yamato explains to the trio that simply put Administrative Authority is held by the rightful Administrator, allowing them to use the Astrolabe. It also seems to be a tangible thing in some respect, for Al Saiduq took the Authority upon ascending the Heavenly Throne and divided it up amongst the thirteen human party members instead of keeping it all to himself. This was done because, as a mere Sword, he would’ve been bound by the “Laws of the Administrators” and forced to surrender the Authority the moment a rightful Administrator appeared, leaving humanity at their whims once again. Since humans are not part of the Akashic Record’s control system, the Authority would thus stay out of the next rightful Administrator’s hands, in this case Errai. The same goes for Arcturus.
Airi asks why can’t they just give the Authority back to Al Saiduq instead of having to sacrifice themselves to do so, and it’s pretty much a catch-22. In order to move the Authority around use of the Astrolabe is required, and they currently can’t use it because Al Saiduq used it to move it into us. Airi realizes that that must be why Miyako was so eager to help get the whole ground back together again, and Yamato speculates that the reason JP’s was spreading Nicaea was so that the chances of them regaining their memories would be that much greater. So there are basically two requirements that need to be fulfilled before they can regress the world again now that everyone’s together: get Al Saiduq back, and reactive the Astrolabe. Hinako says she’ll tell all the others what they’ve just discussed, and Yamato offers to tell Hibiki more about what the Astrolabe is capable of, as it may grant them more options in the future. Hibiki, however, is apparently feeling that this is one infodump too many, as both of his dialogue options ask if they can talk about this later. Yamato agrees.
Watching that scene opens up a chain of three more events, and seeing them all to the end is mandatory if you want to unlock all of the endings for the Triangulum Arc. So I’m going to go ahead and watch the next event in the sequence “World Creation.” Here Professor Yamato discusses the uses of the Astrolabe, and while they are pretty much infinite, they can be broken down into three broad categories:
The first is world regression, the act of simply using past data stored in the Akashic Record to overwrite the present. This is what was done in the original Restorer and Triumphant endings, as well as what Al Saiduq did in the Triangulum Arc’s version of events.
The second is world modification, wherein the very nature, the social psyche of the world is altered along with whatever other changes the user desires. This is what occurred during the Meritorious and Egalitarian endings, and likely you could do a lot more than simply making everyone good Samaritans or assholes.
Finally, there’s world creation. Instead of altering the current world, an entirely new one in every sense of the word is made. Naturally this is what happens in the Kingmaker ending, and given how Hibiki was the one to push Al Saiduq into taking it it’s a little ironic that here he seems to be a little wary of the prospect of a wholly new, primeval world. Yamato says that while it’s true that such a world would be difficult to survive in, in fact that was why he was opposed to Al Saiduq’s plan, there is a silver lining in that such a world would be outside the rule of the Administrators, and humans would no longer need to fear their attacks. Basically it’s the game’s way of assuring us that even with the lore the Triangulum Arc is adding to the original story, the Kingmaker ending does not result in an Inferred Holocaust. The version of our party that went the Liberator route and just killed Polaris is probably still screwed though.
Yamato promises to talk more about the Administrative Authority next time, but for now I’m going to move on to the next story mission. Before we take the Terminal to Mt. Fuji Yamato has everyone meet up in the Science Museum’s planetarium because a bunch of JP’s agents just arrived by train and it’s apparently safer to meet up here rather than at the Terminal, but that turns out to be a very bad idea for Daichi ends up letting himself get tailed and a whole platoon of agents arrive to trap us inside the planetarium. Uh, whoops?
Mission 17: JP’s Strikes
- The whole party must successfully escape from the planetarium
- The whole party cannot die
U-G-L-Y, ugly! That’s how this melee turned out. So there are a total of eight JP’s agents, four at each of the planetarium’s two entrances at either end. Once one party member reaches a set of exit panels, the other set will disappear. We simply have to break through one of the two squads and escape, right?
Well this mission turns out to be a little more complicated. As we start beating down JP’s agents reinforcement will start to arrive, and once they do they will start showing up a constant rate, immediately replacing the guy or gal you just sent packing. Thus becomes a problem when we reach a set of escape panels because the replacement for the guy you just beat, as he or she enters through the doors you’re trying to escape through, will end up camping the escape panel so we can’t get out. It got to the point where I had to basically have some guys wait in the center of the map to pick off the agents that were coming up from the southern end of the map while the rest of the party went north to fight off the agents camping that set of panels. Since the map seems to have a carrying capacity of only four reinforcements present at once, once I had four fresh agents at the top I had to double back in order to reach the now-unguarded south exit. This took a while to accomplish, so much so that I ended up getting two new add-ons in the same mission, which practically never happens outside of exploiting the respawn gimmick of the Nebiros and Beelzebub bonus missions. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed, and by the end I was indeed rather battered, but I managed to get out of there.
Completing the mission earns us 7900 EXP and 15000 macca.
The endless horde of JP’s agents continues to pursue us outside of the museum so Ronaldo and Keita propose to act as a diversion, and Makoto goes along so that there’s another person, as does Daichi since he feels responsible for landing the group in this mess to begin with. The others head to the Nagoya branch’s Terminal where they find guards already posted, but after waiting a moment their radios come to life and they’re drawn away by the commotion Ronaldo and co. are causing. Yamato says that we’ll wait for the others here, though we’re still free to go elsewhere as long as it’s not too far.
Might as well take the opportunity to head out for the next leg of Yamato’s lecture. Today he’ll be at Osu instead of the JP’s branch, ready to talk some more about the Administrative Authority. Hibiki’s question is what will happen to the Authority if one of them dies, and Yamato’s answer is that had Arcturus succeeded in killing all of them, himself included, than it would’ve automatically inherited it. Now that it’s been defeated, the Authority will instead go to Errai should they die, which he assumes is the reason that Miyako wanted to keep the group alive. Of course humans can die from other causes not related to battle like old age or illness, so Al Saiduq’s plan was to use the Astrolabe to continuously recollect the Authority and pass it down to humans he deemed worthy as time went one, and the reason for that ties into what he’s always talking about: human potential. Yamato says that while he didn’t pick up on this until recently, but those with the Authority seem to have the power to unconsciously influence the world’s psyche through their actions, which ties into what Ronaldo spoke of earlier about everyone having “echoes” of their prior lives and actions. It’s sort of a chicken-and-the-egg thing though, like do they have the Authority because of their potential, or is it their potential that enables them to possess the Authority? I personally prefer the latter interpretation, as it jives more with what we saw in the Triumphant ending and the echoes talk. Yamato concludes his lecture with the statement that whether we choose to regress, reform, or remake the world, he’s sure that if the two of them carefully consider everything they’ve learned they’ll be able to decide what is the best possible course for humanity.
With that taken care of we return to the Terminal to find that Ronaldo’s team has returned...but Ronaldo himself has a crestfallen expression and reveals some bad news: Daichi was captured. Oh, and just in case you were thinking that he went out like a hero, trying to hold off reinforcements or something, Ronaldo says that he was caught out trying to take a leak, and the others didn’t notice until they started wondering why he was taking so long. Goddammit Daichi, and you were doing a better job accounting for yourself lately too...
Unfortunately we cannot just drop everything and run off to rescue him, as Yamato insists that they are not yet ready to fight Miyako; he must regain his full control over the Dragon Stream first. So we take the Terminal to the Mt. Fuji facility and it looks about the same as it used to. It’s swarming with demons though, included four especially powerful teams set by JP’s lead by two Murmurs, a Vritra, and a Laksmi that are guarding each of the four consoles we need to activate. Yamato says that more are likely on their way too so, joy.
Mission 18: The Ritual
- The mission ends when either:
- All demons are defeated
- All four consoles are activated
- Yamato cannot die
- Yamato must be dispatched
Actually, this mission isn’t as bad as “Barrier Failure” from Day 6 was. The first of the mitigating factors is that there aren’t any Evil Bind-spamming Legions around; in their place are Abaddons, but those guys aren’t quite as annoying. Next, we don’t have to trigger each console one by one in a set order, and finally we can actually start our guys at opposite ends of the map so it takes much less time getting everyone to the designated spots.
The four guardian demons, with the exception of the Laksmi, are endgame level so they’re about seven to nine levels higher than our current levels, but their movesets aren’t anything like what you would see on a boss demon: they’re basically just regular ol’ enemies, just early bird ones. They can still be defeated just as easily as most other enemies, they just have more HP. The Laksmi though has a special role in that she’ll cast Recarm to revive a fallen guardian on her turn, and because The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard it’ll reappear right next to the console it was guarding, in other words right in front of whoever just defeated it. But since she’s using Recarm they’re revived at only one-third their original HP and since they lack their allies they’ll go down even faster, so this can be exploited for some nice grinding potential. The Laksmi’s also the first enemy that we can crack Mediarahan off of, and I desperately need it. The Vritra’s a little dangerous since it’s a Dragon...but it’s only attack is Maziodyne, and Hibiki’s team, the one I assigned to that console, is completely immune to Elec attacks, so sucks for it!
Oh, and that thing Yamato said about reinforcements? It’s a lie, no demons appear other than whatever Laksmi revives.
Completing the mission earns us 8300 EXP and 15500 macca.
Everyone takes out their phones to activate the consoles on Yamato’s orders, and the giant stake rises a bit until a burst of Dragon Stream energy comes flying out of it and he rises into the air himself like he did when fought at the Tsuutenkaku. Once the light show is done he flexes his hands and remarks in satisfaction that he should be just as powerful now as he was in the previous world, though sadly that does not translate to an in-game stat buff. Once the party exits the facility out onto the slope of Mt. Fuji Hibiki gets a phone call and to little surprise it’s Miyako, stating that she has Daichi in her custody (a wimpy “I’m sorry guys...” wafts by in the background). She says to meet her at the Skytree at noon, otherwise we may consider out hapless, bumbling friend “lost”.
That’s it. Once Hibiki tells the others what the call was about Ronaldo tries to apologize again but Yamato tells his former enemy that if he wants to make amends he should do it in the coming operation. He suspects that Miyako has some preparations of her own to make before the designated time, so we will make preparations of our own. It’s time, he says, to teach that “annoying vixen” a lesson.
And speaking of, as soon as the party leaves the volcano we get to see Daichi’s fate: locked up in a prison cell, pleading with Miyako that there has to be another way than forcing conflict. The JP’s chief is still resolute, cynically believing that there is no other way. If there was, it would be a miracle. Then she gets angry at him for continuing to call her “Miyako-chan” by declaring that they are not friends. As she walks away, leaving him alone, she mutters that she doesn’t deserve to have any.
Compendium
- Spriggan◊
- A large and especially ugly type of fairy from Cornwall, England. Their activities go beyond the usual fairy acts of mischief as they are known for summoning storms and kidnapping infants.
