Heh, El Cid, your thoughts on DS2's soundtrack remind me eerily of mine on DS1's.
More Xenogears!
Hour 24: The party returns to the Ethos HQ so that Billy can file his report and... oh shit stuff is happening! Wandering the halls we learn that someone has ordered a purge of the Ethos. The party guts a few assassins without learning who they are working for. Finally, they reach the mainframe computer of the facility. (And while it sounds odd for a church to have one of these, in fairness the Ethos is the church of technology, more or less.)
We learn several things here, written in Solarian (as a nice touch, Elly has to translate... obviously Citan could too, but well y'know). One, Ethos has been supplying Solaris with much of their salvage, making it clear that they're just another arm of the empire. This pretty much confirms that Solaris has absolutely manipulated both countries and caused their war. We also learn that they've been using the battler data of Kislev and information on the demihumans there as part of their research. And finally we learn that Shakhan is, secretly, still an active agent of Ethos. As Citan says, "the plot thickens", although for Kislev it's really more a form of closure at this point.
The immediate concern is that Ethos is a client organisation of Solaris. Shortly after, Billy's immediate superior, Verlaine, shows up and confirms that Solaris itself is behind the attack on Ethos. It seems that Ethos wasn't a very good little client organisation and was secretly witholding much of their salvaged technology in order to make a stand for world domination, baby. It seems a questionable decision on their part (since how would they reasonably compete with Solaris unless they got one hell of a trump card), but I can still buy it readilly enough as Ethos was powerful enough that some of them probably got too powerhungry. Also, they may have in fact had a trump card, as they had secretly discovered Zeboim, which is pretty much the height of technology in the history of this world.
But too late for them; Solaris figured out their betrayal and has eliminated them. Verlaine blathers for a shocking while for a minor PC, revealing his disgust for Ethos, which in a bit of a real world callback, had sheilded child-molesting priests. And further, we learn that the leader of the Solarians who are purging the church is none other than Bishop Stone, Billy's mentor. Swerve. We find this out because he murders his underling Verlaine for talking too much, just to establish that yes this guy is a colossal dick.
Stone goes on to talk about how faith is all a big lie and that Billy should feel bad. He also reveals he has more terrible things to tell Billy but is too big a jerk to say now. Billy in general is obviously incredibly shaken by this and I have a hard time not feeling for him. Despite some bad things that Ethos was involved in, Billy was a true believer, and from the dying cries of some of the people you find in the church, he was far from alone. As hard as the game is on the church here, it at least paints a pretty glowing picture of faith itself, which is a little relieving (especially in contrast to the bungling Xenosaga has of the issue) and makes sense in the context of Japanese approach to such things.
Jessie also shows up. It's revealed that Stone is his "rival" though not really more than that yet. Needless to say, Jessie turns out to be on the side of good, opposed to the evil Solarian agents of Ethos. At this point Stone decides that maybe fighting a whole lot of people at once is a bad idea so he runs away in a giant, named gear. I'm sure we won't have to fight that soon!
Meanwhile, things are going from bad to worse, as Solaris makes an overt attack on the Thames. We see the Gazel ordering it, and speaking their thoughts on the Ethos (a bunch of foolish greedy mortals... of course the Gazel want the things they want but they have GOOD REASONS trust them). We also meet Krelian, who is established as man extremely interested in the technology of Zeboim. For now, he seems a decidely evil (he orders reapers to be released on the Thames as part of the attack) but also competent, in a bit of a contrast to Ramsus. I actually quite like him in his early scenes; too bad with the direction they end up going with him.
Fortunately, though, Krelian isn't too interested in destroying the Thames fleet, just crippling it so it can't compete with his salvage operation in Zeboim. We learn that Ethos had recently ordered them to go participate in the slavage of Zeboim, so I guess Krelian really doesn't like competition. Fair enough, you dick.
The party decides that it wants what Solaris wants, and so heads for Zeboim. En route, we get a scene between Grahf and Miang, who apparently don't want to be outdone by the appearance of this new villain. Miang reveals that there is something in Zeboim which both Grahf and Miang need (i.e. nanotechnology), and entreats him to go get it. This line is interesting. Miang wants the nanomachine colony because it is part of the plan to get Deus operational again (same reason Krelian does), but Grahf? Though it's never stated and not explored further, I have to imagine that he has inherited memories of one of his past selves... the father of Emeralda. And doesn't want to see that handed over. Though I'm not certain how his motive syncs up with Miang's in this case. Regardless, he too heads for Zeboim...
Hours 25-26: Into Zeboim. I take Billy and Elly with me, which matters for story reasons. As advertised, Zeboium is a ruined city, although for now we only explore a research lab, after one view of the city. Visually they probably could have done a better job of presenting this, but so it goes.
This is really more of a gameplay section, despite the significance of the location; Zeboim is probably the largest on-foot dungeon thus far in the game, and features two of the game's more competent on-foot boss fights (though this isn't really saying much). The first is against Tolone and Seraphita. They come across as comic relief bosses: Seraphita remarks on Tolone's quick thinking due to her "gin and tonic futon brain" while Tolone just hopes some of the game doesn't get in trouble for cribbing things from "Star Trech". That said Elly identifies them as dangerous, elite fighters, and they do in fact live up to that pretty well.
Also interesting to note, when Elly arrives at the core of the research lab, she starts acting really weird, both remembering the password to get in and freaking out about blood and death. The game designers definitely want us to feel the magnitude of what is here, even though it's not obvious for now, as it's just... a green-haired girl who for now doesn't even appear to be conscious. Stone shows up and reveals that she is a nanomachine. He also has some unique dialogue with Billy here. Interestingly he's still quite interested in getting Billy on his side and tries to convince him that what Solaris is doing is just. He uses some arguments based on the Ethos creed that "only the chosen will be saved". Billy does the perfect choir boy equivalent of flipping him off, saying that he believes everyone should have a chance of becoming "the chosen" through faith, not just Stone and his buddies. Unfortunately, Stone still escapes (again!) with Emeralda because Tolone and Seraphita cover his retreat. They reveal that they don't give a shit about Stone or his boss Krelian, but that they're loyal to Ramsus.
Meanwhile, Fei wakes up, and we get a cutscene of two people looking like Fei and Elly in Zeboim, as soldiers besiege their lab, and the Elly lookalike talks about not handing her child over. Creepy scenes occur with a creepy child appearing to awake and the cross neckalce. We've seen this before and it's never good...
The party chases Stone all the way out of the research facility and back into the city, catching up with him there. But oh shit, Id shows up! This is actually the first time he gives his name. He insists Stone return the nanomachine colony. But for some reason, rather than fight Stone, he fights the party (at least he is nice enough to get out of his gear first). This never made sense to me and still doesn't! Needless to say Stone escapes after the fight (for a third time!). The fight itself is interrupted as Wiseman shows up and engages with Id, so the party can escape chasing after Stone once more, but too late...
The previous scene offered yet more evidence for Fei = Id, which anyone more savvy than younger me who first played the game should really have picked up by this scene if not previously, but it's also noteworthy for the first solid Wiseman = Grahf evidence. And both have a connection to Emeralda... the parallels are certainly increasing!
Hour 27: The party returns to the Yggdrasil, and finds Fei in the gear hangar. Interesting! Of course it's brushed off as Fei just walking around confused shortly after awakening.
Meanwhile, after Stone has dogged our steps and generally been a big ol' dick, it's time for the throwdown with him. Okay, cool, 'sup Stone... wait. Wait wait wait.
What the FUCK happened to your face, bro? I mean Grahf even shows up and grants him "the power" a moment after his appearance (this time, it manifests as an invicible barrier instead of the power boost it was for Vanderkaum) but that's not nearly as weird as Stone's face.
He says he got a new body. I guess it... makes him better at piloting gears? Something? I dunno man, Stone seemed kinda sane if very evil, now he just comes across as weird as fuck. His personality's not much different, though. He finally tells Billy the secret he was holding: that reapers are in fact just humans which Solaris has modified with experiments (which, incidentally, were homeless humans Billy had "rescued" and sent into Ethos care)... so in fact Billy has been killing humans all this time! Ha-HA! Stone furthermore reveals that he always desired Billy's mother until she was "dirtied" by Jesiah, and that the reason he adopted and raised Billy was to make him suffer by having a pious, kind man like him butcher all those reapers HUMANS! Oh Stone, you charmer.
Jessie shows up and actually does a pretty good job of cheering Billy up, pointing out that in a way he was "saving" the reapers, who lived in agony and could only find release in death. He also rides a mech which turns into a gun which Billy fires... and apparently Jessie is in the bullet, killing him! Whoa. Citan tries to warn him but does so only just too late. Fortunately, the attack destroys Stone's barrier, so the party can take him out. Stone becomes the first actually important (if secondary) villain to bite the dust. I guess he was only really a villain for less than 3 hours, but he was a memorable one.
The party does a sendoff for Jessie... which Jessie breaks up by showing up still alive. Billy gained the ability to use that attack as often as he wants! Well I guess given his opinion of his dad, maybe he won't feel so bad about doing so.
At this point, the party needs a new objective, and it gets one. Jessie finally reveals why he's been away all this time... he learned about the reaper experiments (and reveals Krelian to be their author) and its connection to Ethos. He also reveals that the key scientist who participated in the plan sent his daughter and gear away with information on the project, so he spent all this time trying to track her down. ... A bit weird but it wouldn't be Jessie if it didn't kind of rub me the wrong way. Anyway, he reveals that he believes that girl is in Shevat. Well, what isn't at this point?
A Shevat agent who had been captured by Ethos and saved during the crisis now pipes up, confirming the presence of the girl, Maria, but not knowing much more... and in particular, not knowing how to get back to Shevat herself. (Inconvient...) She suggests climbing the Tower of Babel, which is where Shevat used to be located and still -maybe- has the ability to communicate with it. Quite a climb for a maybe, but a now-healthy Fei is psyched to go to Shevat and learn more about himself, and it's not like they have anything better to do. So off they go. Terrible platforming awaits!
