The second time you hear about it is when Cloud is wondering why this bothers him so much — in a "Dammit, did I forget to feed my cat this morning?" sort of way, more than anything else.
Then he trips balls for the second time and the name sparks some more memories. At the moment, the Trippy Mindfuck levels are nestling comfortably around 2 or so — as was the standard. At this point, I still hated the game with a passion for being so damn cliched and was just waiting for someone to tell Cloud, this snotty douchebag of a protagonist, he was the chosen one and was having visions. Snore.
Before then, that... particular scene happens in the Honeybee Inn, and the trippy level skyrockets to a 7 momentarily before settling down to one as Cloud gets fricked in the booty. Oh, Japan, you're so silly!
(I continued to hate the game at this point.)
Annyway, yadda yadda yadda, you go to rescue the damsel in the tall tower, I keep hating the game... and then you find her and save her from dogrape, and get captured.
And then VII truly embraces it's VII-y-ness.
Lemme type.
edited 9th Mar '14 8:43:09 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistSo, President Shinra explains his eeeeevil plan to journey to the Promised Land, a land said to be overflowing with milk and honey mako, guaranteed to make him rich, and build Neo Midgar there. They build up Shinra a lot, too, constantly talking about the terrible things Shinra is doing to the environment. The few times I actually liked Cloud at this point was when he was nice enough to roll his eyes and go "JESUS CHRIST, I DO NOT CARE." for me. Then you get dragged off to be executed/experimented on in Aeris's case in the morning. You have a chat with your love interests and go to sleep. Then you wake up sometime later in the middle of the night for reasons unknown to you. At the time, anyway. "Wake up" indeed. You see what they did there?
A couple things to note about this part before you wake up:
- Cloud has just finished tripping balls at this point, having seen a fucked up headless alien with eyeball nipples and gone into convulsions after being compelled to put his hand against the glass for reasons unknown.
- The headless alien reacts to your presence and moves, seemingly coming back to life for reasons unknown.
Several things to note about when you wake up:
- The door to Cloud's cell — and his alone — has been neatly opened, without force, and obviously on purpose.
- The guard outside your door has been cut in two.
- The freaky animal thing in your party is incredibly on-edge.
- Everyone in the building is fucking dead. Except you. Their organs are strewn everywhere like confetti.
- The pod with the alien in it has been torn open from the inside.
- The mess is surprisingly methodical.
- There are no disturbances and no guards. All alarms have been tripped but are going uselessly.
- Several of the experiments from one of Hojo's funhouses have gotten out.
- And, to top it all off, the main antagonist of the game, President Shinra, is found taking a nap on his desk when you go upstairs to finish the deed, with a replica of Masamune, Sephiroth's blade and the only one able to wield it, nestled firmly in his spine for comfort.
I started to like the game immensely at this point. (And it becomes all the more hilariously ironic if you know why it all happens this way after hitting the shitstorm on disc 2...)
Your main antagonist is dead. And killed for the same reasons you were going to kill him? What's with this guy?
Cloud seems less than pleased by this development, and informs Barret that whatever squabbles he had with the evil dictatorship are secondary now.
Then a chase scene happens.
On a motorcycle you stole and crashed out a window.
And you get to explore the overworld.
(And then I fell in love with it and never looked back.)
edited 9th Mar '14 9:02:43 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistYou picked the stairs? Sucker.
Though it might have all been worth it for that one line from Tifa.
But seriously. You see that shit? THAT IS HOW YOU FUCKING DO SUBTLETY. I AM LOOKING AT YOU, CRISIS CORE.
But it only gets better from here. (Back to relating to Sephiroth. Typety type.)
Guuuuys, I post this stuff to spark discussion, and you won't even give me a buffer post. Doubleposts eat my soul.
edited 9th Mar '14 9:09:20 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistMore experience and items, and also some funny dialogue scenes as well as a bit of slapstick where you can chase around civvies with your sword and watch them flee in terror. VII takes itself surprisingly not very seriously for a good chunk of it. At one point you open up the elevator with weapons drawn, expecting to fight the robots and guards in mechsuits that appear every time you stop it (since security hacks the floor counter), and instead scare the piss out of some poor middle manager.
Anyway, you see what happens in Sephiroth's wake, but you still have only heard about the man himself. Cloud leads the party to Kalm to start explaining to Barret why this man should be his new priority (apart from the thing where Rufus Shinra will be going where Sephiroth will be going so it'll be a good time to score some assassinations).
Then Cloud drops this little chestnut: "Sephiroth's strength is unreal. He is far stronger in reality than any story you might have heard about him."
And then he trips the fuck out when trying and failing to remember his mother, the town Tifa, and basically everything, bumping the game's trippy levels up to 5. You still never truly see him in action.
(More coming. POST, DAMN YOU.)
edited 9th Mar '14 9:21:58 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistAnd this is why they manage to make him work. He was moderately interesting by himself, but it's more the atmosphere around him that truly pulls it off.
Crisis Core tried something like this. HAY LOOK HE'S SUPER STRONG HE'S FITAN THESE STRONG PPLS AND CUTTIN THRU METAL LOOKIT HOW COOL HE IZ
Also it did not help that Genesis was in that scene. And ruined it with his poetry bullshit.
I am too busy typing to make a joke about this.
edited 9th Mar '14 9:27:07 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistSo, it's at this point the player becomes immensely suspicios of Cloud. Is he in cahoots with Sephiroth? Is he even telling the truth? Why does his story have so many holes? Is he leaving things out on purpose? Is Sephiroth a good guy?
At the moment, these are all very real possibilities to the uninitiated player, as the thing at the Shinra Tower has demonstrated that any and all traditional JRPG rules have been discarded entirely, and anything is fair game. Not that it had many intact to begin with — the main character is an adult, not a kid or teenager, of gambling age, no less (practically a geezer compared to most games and the oldest FF protagonist to date), as is the entire party (the youngest being Tifa, at the age of twenty, an old maid by Japan's standards amirite HEYOOO).. There's also the whole cyber/diesel/whatever punk thing. And the lack of an evil empire or bad spirit monster god to defeat as a primary villain.
It also becomes clear that Tifa's avoiding questions, too. Cloud trips balls and has seizures and hears voices and is compelled by feelings he can't explain to do shit more and more often, and any attempts at questioning her lead to her immediately changing the subject. Six hours into a seventy hour game (not including sidequests), and the trippy level has already spiked to 7 again and remained there.
Aeris dodges questions, too, though it is less noticeable as she is not questioned as much.
Anyhoo, you go through all that song and dance to avoid being butchered by the Midgar Zolom (Serpent of Midgard, anyone?), and when you get to the other side of the swamp you find one. Impaled on a goddamn tree like a five story SEPHIROTH WAZ HERE sign.
(By the way, the impaled serpent is another Kabbalistic symbol. As is Sephiroth, the ten aspects of god, but literally meaning "Numbers". Though you probably knew the latter bit. Still, u c wat they did ther? I do like it when Japan at least uses its Judeo-Christian references in a way that is at least clever, rather than just there to look cool. Like Norse mythology, but with more Hebrew, y'know?)
edited 9th Mar '14 9:44:43 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistThey are one, definitely, but they're really incidental, seeing as how it's Cloud's story that is the main focus of the game after the Shinra Tower.
I'm gonna stop here because if I go any further I might as well just write a goddamn synopsis, but am I making sense with this?
edited 9th Mar '14 9:47:54 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon AlchemistTee hee.
Though really that was after the fact.
The fact that Cloud nearly butchered her himself, though. 'Twas amusing. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, I guess.
By then Cloud completely accepts something is very, very wrong with him (though he did that in/after the Temple anyway when the game's trippy levels hit eight for a moment and went dangerously close to nine before settling back down to seven), and asks them to come with him not because of the power of friendshipt or whatever, but because he is by his own admission afraid of what he'll do and wants them there "to save me from doing something terrible."
Guy's nucking futs.
Aaaaand this all got simplified to WHOARGH AERIS IMSOSAD
Fucking spinoff retcon bullshit...
edited 9th Mar '14 10:03:37 PM by GameSpazzer
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon Alchemist

This is partially a demonstration of how Sephiroth is awesome for a different reason than Square wants you to remember (unfortunately), and partially about how good VII was at mindfucking you.
Okay, so, the first time you ever hear about Sephiroth, it's back when the game is still baiting you with the standard U R HERO U MUST DEFEAT EVIL EMPIRE fake-out plot (since lest we forget, this is a deconstruction of basically every JRPG released up to that point), and he is brought up by the perceived-primary antagonist of the game, President Shinra. He comments about how you've been a thorn in his side, yadda yadda, "like Sephiroth. He was good. Perhaps too good..." And Cloud recognises the name... sort of. He seems a bit confused by it, too, for some reason. (Which is later revealed to be because he [REDACTED], but more on that later, maybe.
So your first thought is, hey, maybe this guy's like a hidden party member later, since it sounds kinda like he's a rogue Soldier, too. He and Cloud can be rogue Soldier buddies and FIGHT THE MAN, FUCK YEAR. But that's all he is at first — a quick name drop.
MY SOUL IS DARK BUT MY HAIR IS COLORFUL — Brahian Pokémon Alchemist