Quest to Beat Final Fantasy VII: Pre 2012

In my effort to make good with my resolutions, I decided to post some updates on the blog giving my thoughts of what was the best game of all time 15 years later.  Final Fantasy VII was a groundbreaking success when it came out in 1997 and redesigned the RPG genre since.  Although they're have been critics that doubt that the Final Fantasy franchise is nothing more than just a lame emo-complexed love story, but I think they're engaging and yeah, they're confusing to hell with some of their story, it's still captivating.  But so far, let me just breeze though this to get to my main goal.  It's been a long way coming and I am determined now more than ever to finish that damn game before the end of this year.  


Of course to do so, I took the initiative and started playing it about 3 weeks ago, with a little time set aside to obtain my goal.  Also I'm going to try to get though this based off of memory alone, no GameFAQs, no outside saves to get me to the end, not even my old strategy guide from Brady Games.  It's all a la BootLeG from this point forward.  Here's my progress so far.  I'll give it to you in text form for now, still planning on recording my progress to video, another one of the many things I need to get going on.


So far I'm 21 hours into the game.  I'm in awe with getting my base characters revisiting them all.  Cloud, my swordsman with apparently more of a mysterious past than the meat in Wendy's chili.  Barrett, who all I can think of at this point in the story is a gung-ho hippie with a machine gun.  So he's spreading his message with fire power instead of flower power.  Tifa, who's along for the ride because she new Cloud before he became a member of SOLDIER and a complete tool, wanting revenge for her father's death.  Aeris (not Aerith, because dammit I'm playing it the way it was developed not how it was actually in the story) is the lovable Ancient who is the last of her kind trying to live a simple life.  Red XIII, who is a mysterious creature that wants nothing more than to just go home to his grandfather.  And last (but not least, so far in my game) is Cait Sith, a fortune telling cat riding on an overweight mog.  


The game took me (as in they took Cloud) to blow up a reactor with a rebel group full of disposable characters as well as Barrett and Tifa; and eventually led them to their death.  Along the way Cloud meets up with Aeris rescuing her from a tyrannical militant group subcontracted by the government, which is run by a major energy sucking corporation.  All I can say at this point is "how very pre-post apocalyptic this sounds."  Later to find out this super powered being killed the president and the rebel group is caught in the middle.  They escape and flee from the home city and is on a quest to track down Sephiroth, the main antagonist from bringing the end of the world because he thinks he's an Ancient that is bent on purging the humans from existence bringing a peace to his kind only genocide could provide.  In the mean time, my team is being man-hunted all across God's green earth trying to find the sunnuvabitch that is actually trying to kill everyone.  It's like if they made The Fugitive into an emo, semi-steam punk-ish RPG.


They go to a near by place called Kalm where Cloud eventually tells his side of the story and why he needs to bring Sephiroth to justice; being that he on a mission burnt down his and Tifa's home town of Nibel and killed her father in nothing short of a powertrip thinking that he was an Ancient because he read a book with his mother's name in it.  That, and he hears voices too.  From there they start going near and far tracking Sephiroth's path to no avail.  They find themselves in a place where Barrett's story start to unravel on how he caused so much trouble to his home town of Corel to the point where he was banished.


Along the way we meet with Cait Sith who is just wanting to tag along because he read the future and doubts his own abilites to tell such and want to see it though.  We get captured and thrown in jail only to be whored out as chocobo jockeys for our freedom.  Yeah, because prison is totally like that.  Barrett meets another person with a gunhand that wants nothing more than to just die.  So he kills him.  I'm certain the story could've developed that more but it's all backstory for a secondary character and that doesn't mean a damn for later on in the game.


Later on, we go to Red XIII's home and he has to make the decision to whether he should stay home and be a complete pussy whining about his parental issues, or continue to fight with us.  His grandfather (which is practically a hybrid of Modok and Bob Barker) tells him to go and continue to fight.  Why was this so important, because everyone needs a fuckin' backstory, that's why.


Now I'm currently in Nibelhelm, where it looks completely normal, outside of half the population is in black cloaks with tattoos based off of which one drank Sephiroth's Kool-Aid first.  Cloud's shocked that everything isn't burnt to a crisp and is starting to doubt his own recounts of what happened a few years prior.  They start their trek to the Mako reactor at the top of the mountain to see what the hell is going on.


And that's where I'm stopping at this point.  Join me next month for what I've done for all of January in playing and eventually beating Final Fantasy VII.  In the mean time, a normal post for next week.

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...

Early Start on New Year's Resolutions

Here it is getting towards the end of the year and I'm certain among the list of holiday parties and presents and get-together's, I'm certain that somewhere you might have contemplated about what you're trying to do to improve yourself for the next year.  The setting of resolutions and the eventual breaking of them by spring.  Hence why I didn't set any this past year, but I'm feeling a little different this year.  I was thinking about what I could do to improve personally and what goals I thought of what I should do that I haven't accomplished yet.  So I've compiled a reasonable list and this is what I think would be great for resolutions, at least for me.

• Beat Final Fantasy VII, finally :: It was the RPG that changed the landscape of all other RPG's for a generation.  I remember when I first played it back in high school and was fascinated by how badass it was.  It's been a goal since I can remember for such.  So I figured why the hell not.  I've already downloaded it off of the Playstation Network and figured this will be the year I will beat the game that haunted me for the past 15 years.  I'll even post some updates about it later, but this will finally resolve my obsession of beating my white whale.
• Read, something else that isn't webcomics :: As a homeschooling parent the wifie and I stress very strongly the importance of reading to my sons.  They see my wife read a lot, me not so much outside of articles online.  I feel that this is a personal resolution to not help myself be more literate, but be a good example to my sons.  I'm a strong believer that reading is indeed fundamental, and I want to take that example across the board to my sons.
• Write a new song/lyric a month for next year :: I've been personally neglecting myself with writing new material for the past two and a half, well, close to about three years now.  A lot of stuff happened and I wasn't feeling much creative and that I was kind of depressed at that time.  But now since I felt that I've took a long enough hiatus, I want to bring my musical juices back and ripen them for the thoughts that I've had the past time.  I feel pretty good about this and I am assuring myself to put a new song/lyric up once I'm done by the end of each month in 2012.  Get ready for some kickass stuff to come out of this.  And to further on with this, by the end of the year, I will make sure that I learn how to play the guitar and preform one of my songs via a youtube video.  I figure guitar because bass solos, even though I like them, not as sexy as an acoustic guitar.  So look forward to some great content on that end.
• Learn to manage all that's on my plate ::  Lately I've been trying to work on other web content manage systems such as Wordpress and Joomla to help with other's requests for sites.  I have been stuck putting my stuff on the back-burner thinking of other's need before mine.  Which is in essence a good thing, but I need to take some me time to get my stuff off the ground.  I didn't do as much as I thought I would do such as videos on this blog or even upgrading the look and feel just yet, but I will with this resolution.  I want to make time for me to do what's good for me while not neglecting any of the time I devoted for others.  Of course I still need a day job and family time, that's not gonna go away, but I feel that with this resolution, I can get something going for myself as well as others.

So those are just some of the resolutions I plan on taking.  It's not as serious as others like losing weight (which I do need to do) or stop smoking (which I don't smoke to begin with), but it's stuff that I contemplated for for a long time and I really want to get this going.  I love to continue on with this blog post but I really feel that this is enough for now.  It'll be a great year, and I hope that your's will be as well.

Happy holidays and a wonderful new year.

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...