Entering the Golden Saucer

 I guess at this stage this is more like a video game travelogue. The Corel region in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth appears to be three if not four regions in one. After the cruise ship from Junon (with a fun little interlude that involves a cosmic-horror monster) the party gets to Costa del Sol, where Rebirth's sense of stakes and urgency are at a classically JRPG-level of conflict and the party has a fun beach vacation while keeping an eye on the mysterious robed figures.

Oh, spoilers ahead.

Again, I'll remind readers that I never played the original game, though I picked up a fair amount of lore through pop culture osmosis.

Anyway, the party stops Hojo from performing horrifying experiments on the robed guys but lets him get away (for... reasons?) Then, the greater Corel region opens up - or it seems to, because while I've done about a third of the side quests and regional research stuff, most of it is currently inaccessible. So, up Mt. Corel, the vibe changes swiftly from coastal tropical paradise to rough, rocky mountains. This takes us to the town of Corel, which is the second hub of the region, and we get a bit more of Barret's backstory.

As a note, I realized only after I'd been swapped to the Cloud/Aerith/Red group that I had missed a weapon for Barret in the coal mines there, and had to progress significantly farther in the game before I could go back and claim it - I feel like I don't have any anxiety in this game greater than failing to pick up all the weapons, and swiftly get their mastery abilities learned.

Once again, though, I'm finding myself saddened that FFXVI didn't just fully embrace the FFVII Remake/Rebirth combat system. Clive's story is not without its merit - I still think his inner turmoil in embracing Ifrit, which takes the form of an epic boss fight, is one of the most rousing moments in video game storytelling (with music that just kicks so much ass) - but boy does this just feel like a more interesting game to play.

Anyway, we come to Barret's hometown, where he's shunned because of his misjudgment, convincing everyone to let Shinra build a Mako reactor on the mountain, shutting down their coal mine and then causing devastation when the reactor exploded (while it's not officially revealed, I highly suspect that Marlene's biological father is Dyne, the former friend of Barret's who tries to speak out against letting Shinra in, and who I'm guessing dies in the explosion).

But, true to this style of storytelling, we go immediately from this deeply tragic, hard, working-class struggle narrative into the most bonkers crazy thing, which is the Golden Saucer.

    Oh, but before we gloss over other important elements: first, the giant pool of Mako where the reactor once stood now holds a "Weapon," one of the planet's kaiju-like defenders (not to be confused with the Summons - I was talking with a friend earlier today how the Summons play a particularly small role in VII compared to others we're both familiar with, like the Espers in VI, the Aeons in X, and the Eikons in XVI - I do like the idea of running a FF-style D&D campaign in a setting in which the classic summons are the deities. Hell, Bahamut's already one of them!)

    The other big reveal is that the robed men are all former SOLDIERs. They're compelled to return to some location (I'm guessing Nibelheim?) but also seem susceptible to being merged with terrible fiends to become horrifying monsters. Notably, Cloud is starting to experience the same urge to follow them, which is... not great.

Anyway, after leaving Barret's dusty miner hometown, we're treated to an extended cutscene in which Yuffie, Tifa, and Aerith are roped into a giant musical number and then Cloud has to do some kind of weird virtual boxing match literally right as they walk into the place (also just after we're reminded that there's a price on their heads).

I have not yet been able to explore the place at leisure, but we've been introduced to eventual party member Cait Sith - who is utterly bonkers - and the amusement park/resort's hotel that we're staying in is, for some goddamn reason, a spooky, haunted-house-themed one. This really feels like a callback to the era of video gaming I grew up in, when developers would have an utterly insane thought and just throw it in there, and in this remaking of the old game, they've just updated it to bleeding-edge graphics and gameplay. I'm in the Tonberry Suite, with a terrifyingly accurate-looking humidifier built to look like one of those death-machines.

Anyway, with Rude and Elena (not sure if and when we'll see Reno again) along with one of Shinra's executives (the one whose name I can't recall) here, I'm sure that we'll get into some serious shenanigans.