Toggle Background Color

Chapter 117: The Final Battle

So, I got your results in for the big poll. Pretty decent response, 35 votes in all. Before we begin, let’s go over that.



Unsurprisingly, Nenji received the lion’s share of the first place votes for Gen 1 with 31 (!). That’s more than any other option received in any category. That’s good, he deserves it. He also received zero third place votes. Hijiyama and Ei were tied for last with two first place votes each, but considering Hijiyama had a good deal more second place votes, if we end up with two Gen 1 pilots, I’d have to go Hijiyama. Sorry, Ei.



For Gen 2, people were a little more split between Juro and Iori though Iori still had the most with 15 (though, oddly, both had more second place votes than first place). Most voters decisively rejected Ryoko.



For Gen 3, Natsuno was the decisive winner, and poor Miura the redheaded stepchild. Sorry, buddy. Tomi’s in second place, and I’m not-so-secretly hoping I’ll get to bring her along with Natsuno.



And in terms of Gen 4, it’s a runaway victory for Yuki, with Megumi the obvious favorite for second place.

Now, our current locks are Nenji, Natsuno, and Megumi, as they’re the only candidates with true majorities. If we calculate the ranked choice preferences, Iori becomes a lock, with the second place candidates for each category being obvious from there: Hijiyama, Juro, Tomi, and Megumi. I’d really like Megumi and either Juro (for the boosted WT recovery speed) or Tomi, probably leaning more towards Tomi, but we have to see which Sentinel generations people preferred first.



This is honestly a lot closer than it looks. It seems like Gen 4 is a lock, but it doesn’t have a true majority, and the ranked choice votes could shake out in surprising ways. Once we calculate those, it turns out that Gen 1 is actually the #1 option, with Gen 4 being second, then Gen 3, then Gen 2. So, we go with Gen 1 and Gen 4 for our “double Sentinel” generations.



This will be our party. Unfortunately, this means I have to bring Hijiyama over Tomi or Juro. This will turn into a problem.

As you might suspect, this does not end up going well for me. In fact, I recorded a 200-minute session of repeated attempts to beat this motherfucker! I could have watched Tenet in that time! Or, you know, a good movie! Here’s a catalog of my various attempts to defeat this final battle:

Attempt #1:

Natsuno died. 13 minutes, 33 seconds in, 75% complete.

Attempt #2:

Terminal breached. 14 minutes, 48 seconds in, 75% complete.

Attempt #3:

Game crashed, though the attempt was doomed anyway. 12 minutes, 39 seconds in, 50% complete.

Attempt #4:

Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 5 seconds in, 50% complete.

You know, these times don’t even include the opening preamble that I watched all the way through every single time, which itself is about two minutes and fifty seconds long. Just for the record. By the end of this recording session, 36 minutes and 50 seconds of the video were just that opening cutscene. That’s about 18.28% of the whole session.

Attempt #5:

Reset due to low health. 8 minutes, 26 seconds in, 25% complete.

Attempt #6:

Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 26 seconds in, 50% complete.

Attempt #7:

Reset. 8 minutes, 59 seconds in, exactly 50% complete.

Attempt #8:

Terminal got shredded in a matter of seconds. 10 minutes, 1 second in, 50% complete.

Attempt #9:

Terminal got shredded even faster than Attempt #8. 10 minutes, 12 seconds in, 50% complete.

Attempt #10:

Terminal got breached, though there was a glimmer of hope that we might be able to survive long enough to win. Didn’t happen. 14 minutes, 17 seconds in, 75% complete.

Attempt #11:

Terminal breached. 13 minutes, 28 seconds in, 75% complete.

Attempt #12:

Terminal breached. 15 minutes, 37 seconds in, 75% complete.

Attempt #13:

Game crashed, but we were fucked anyway. 11 minutes, 53 seconds in, 50% complete.

Here’s a helpful chart of all my survival times (not counting crashes or resets):



After attempt #13, I gave up and asked you guys in the thread here for permission to either lower the difficulty or make a pilot substitution. Honestly, I was kind of hoping you’d pick option A there because I was fucking sick of running that battle, but you graciously allowed for the substitution. Sorry, Hijiyama, but we're benching you. I consider your replacement to be within the spirit of the original vote, though, because they received way more votes than you did.

The problem with bringing Hijiyama wasn’t really about Hijiyama himself, but a simple dearth of good ranged options. So…



As you can see, I threw Tomi in as a replacement for Hijiyama and decided to see what came of it. Gen 3s are extremely valuable on this stage for their abilities to easily kill groups that have just landed or contain high-value targets like APSOS units, so hopefully having an extra one gets us somewhere. God knows we could also really just use another EMP.

First attempt with Tomi went… poorly. I died after the 50% mark at about 12 minutes, 21 seconds in. So I tried again. What you’ll be seeing is that next attempt, #15.

Music: {EDGE OF THE FUTURE} (Hitoshi Sakimoto) (Absolutely listen to this)





Well, it manages the world, right? Keeps things running smooth, keeps us thinking we're from our own eras?
So why would it let some crazy disaster like this go unchecked?
What, you're... you're saying it's not working?



If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be getting headlines of this happening around the world.




It convinces the system that’s a normal process. That’s when the Deimos appear. Universal Control has no idea it's under attack. The mainframe gets taken over before it can even register anything. It forces a manual system reset. If it was aware of any of this, it'd never let this situation even happen.
It still hasn’t picked up on the problem? This whole giant-robot-apocalypse thing is kinda hard to miss.
The Aegis severs the link. It can’t detect any of this.



It’s numb to the intrusion. And that’s why we have to wake it up, and show it the threat. We have to make the system understand… This is not normal. It’s a state of emergency.



I can broadcast the terminal link signal from the command ship I'm on. By routing the signal through here, I can reconnect the links severed by the Aegis. That should make Universal Control finally realize what's going on...
So this was your big fallback plan?
Yes. It's the only option we have left.
And that'll fix all of this...? We won't have to fight anymore?



If the final terminal is taken over before then… When the world gets reset… you’ll all vanish along with it. This is the moment of truth. The final battle. Please… Protect us all.




Video: The Final Battle (Please watch this)

This final battle is rough on Intense, holy shit. So many times I would just get fucked because I was out of Meta-Skills and there are a million APSOS units in play so I’d have a ton of shielded enemies bearing down on the terminal with nothing I can really do about it except throw out an EMP Stunner to buy a tiny bit of time and breathing room. That, and just pray.

But at the same time, it’s really cool. The entire game has been building up to this moment, this final test, for the characters and for the player. And you have a lot of interesting gameplay decisions to make. Do I risk overextending Yuki or Nenji to kill that big kaiju, knowing they’ll be at risk if they get targeted? What armaments do I use, trying to conserve EP for this utter marathon? Did I use too many Meta-Skills? Am I already fucked?

And it’s all backed by {EDGE OF THE FUTURE}, one of the coolest tracks in the game, dynamically shifting as Miyuki Inaba tells us we’re 25%… 50%… 75% of the way to finally escaping this nightmare. When Brat Overflow, the main theme, starts to play after the 75% barrier is cleared, it’s exhilarating. All this is to say, while this may have taken me almost four hours of attempts all together, it’s an amazing finale. We’ve certainly earned the payoff, I’ll tell you that much. Now, go watch that video and pat yourself on the back. We’re there. We’re finally there.