Unohana Nonochi Plays Squall’s First SeeD Mission in a Blind Final Fantasy VIII Run

VARIUM — Unohana Nonochi, a member of Varium’s fourth generation, carried Squall through his first SeeD mission in Final Fantasy VIII on Tuesday, playing the game blind in a stream of nearly six hours. It ended with the sniper Irvine Kinneas joining the party and the fate of Seifer hanging over the story.

Nonochi picked up from the previous day’s save, when Squall passed the mercenary exam for SeeD, the elite corps of Balamb Garden. She opened with the in-game SeeD written exam and scored 80 on its ten questions, short of a pass, which she blamed on trick questions. She then used a cursed Magic Lamp item handed over at the mission briefing, which called up the boss Diablos. She did not win that first attempt and said she would try again at the start of Thursday’s stream. On the road to the station she ran into an enormous dinosaur-type monster near the Garden, looked up its stats and ran from it.

“Final Fantasy VIII is over, this is it.” — Unohana Nonochi, after a scene about Seifer

A shopping spree cost her at the station. Nonochi spent her first paycheck on supplies, then found the 3,000-gil train ticket to Timber out of reach, a turn chat greeted with jokes about the fuel she had bought. A fresh salary deposit of exactly 3,000 gil got the party aboard. On the train, gas put Squall, Zell and Selphie to sleep, and the game switched to the soldier Laguna and his comrades Kiros and Ward in a dream; Nonochi welcomed the new battle music and laughed at Laguna’s leg cramps as he tried to speak to a pianist. Laguna returned later, when the three soldiers blasted rocks with dynamite in a cave, and Nonochi worried aloud about Kiros and Ward after they were left badly hurt at the end of the sequence.

In Timber, the party met Rinoa and the resistance group Forest Owls, whose plan was to hijack the train of Galbadian President Deling. Nonochi memorized the passcode routine and the guards’ sensor rules, then cleared the first coupling release on her first try. The president turned out to be a decoy that changed into a monster, and she beat it with fire magic. She later lost a game of Triple Triad, the in-game card game, to a drunk man after misreading the Same rule, giving up a strong card she had just won; chat mourned the loss. At the radio station, Deling’s first broadcast in 17 years introduced a sorceress and an unexpected face, and Zell’s outburst revealed the party’s link to Garden. The party fled Timber for Galbadia Garden.

Galbadia Garden brought word that Seifer had been executed and that Balamb Garden would not be blamed. As Rinoa spoke of him in the past tense, chat typed that the game was over and Nonochi said much the same. The Garden’s leaders asked the party to help plan an attack on the sorceress, and Irvine Kinneas, a sniper from Galbadia Garden, joined as the stream saved. Nonochi read Super Chats at the close, 15 paid messages in all, most of them about Laguna’s storyline and Seifer. She said the Final Fantasy VIII stream resumes Thursday.