"It's my friend's. She died here. Running from the Purge. And me? I'm one of those who survived."

—Alyssa to Serah

"One of the young Academy researchers. Bright and cheerful, she is a popular figure within the institute. She is also a smart and canny scientist, and she has become Hope's trusted assistant."

—Online Description

Alyssa Zaidelle (アリサ・ザイデル, Arisa Zaideru^?) is a major supporting character from Final Fantasy XIII-2. As a member of the Academy, she starts as a trainee but climbs the ranks and becomes the assistant of its leader, Hope Estheim. Together, they help Noel and Serah in their journey to change the future.

In the Japanese version, she is voiced by Yōko Hikasa, while she is voiced by Kim Mai Guest in the English version.

DatalogEdit

See also: Fragment/Academic Reward.

Idea Circuit

The A.Z. Files

I got a message the other day, and when I saw who it was from, well golly, I nearly keeled over in surprise. It was from Hope Estheim himself! I remember when Elida used to be classmates with him in middle school. It's hard to forget the names of the people who were involved in the catastrophe.

Anyway, he said he was really interested in my report about the gates, and wanted to know if I'd be willing in joining his team. Team Alpha. Wow. With them, I'd have all the resources I need to continue my research.

Enigma Codex

The A.Z. Files

We're learning more and more about the properties of spacetime. We know that when the future is altered, the past is reorganized to maintain the logic of the timeline. Even people's memories are overwritten with the new reality. And we also know that multiple possibilities do not co-exist.

In the end, one timeline is chosen, and that becomes the true history.

I wonder what happens to the other possibilities, the ones that aren't chosen. And in which of the those worlds will I end up?

Difference Engine

The A.Z. Files

I still don't know if it was me or my friend who died that day. No matter how many times I check that gravestone, the doubts remain.

Timelines that are not chosen eventually disappear. Other possibilities only exist for as long as spacetime is broken. When the paradoxes are resolved, and the true timeline restored, will it be like the man in my dreams says it will? Will I disappear forever, gone even from the memories of the people who remain?

Appearance and PersonalityEdit

"Director Hope! There you are! What were you thinking? Taking off and leaving me all on my own."

—Alyssa to Hope

Initially in 5 AF, Alyssa is a 19-year-old petite woman with blue eyes and short blonde hair. She wears a puff-sleeved yellow and white top with a light blue necktie, and a red vest tied in the back like a corset. She wears dark gray fingerless gloves, two red packs (one on a belt around her waist, and another on her upper right leg), small gray shorts, and black knee-high boots.

From the years 10 to 13 AF, Alyssa ages to 24 and 27 years old, and remains the same. As a researcher, Alyssa is popular within the Academy and seen as an idol; she is charming, bright, and always eager to help out her friends. She can express certain emotions in a broad manner and she has an energetic and spunky disposition, along with an adventurous curiosity. In Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fragments After, it is revealed Alyssa is a good liar and believes lying to be a good way of moving forward, creating past lives and entertaining people. Her strong belief in lying is a result of her accompanying her father on his numerous travels around Cocoon because of his job.

StoryEdit

"Sometimes, when it looks like all hope is lost, people can turn against each other. They end up full of hate. But really, when they stop and think about it, they're making themselves sad for no reason."

—Alyssa to Serah

During the events of Final Fantasy XIII, Alyssa became involved in the Purge when she visited her friend, Nena Stein, in Bodhum. She escaped and hid from the army with other Purgees, but they got buried under a pile of rubble in a cave-in. When the goddess Etro released those who fought to defend Cocoon from crystal stasis, the resulting distortion of the timeline revived Alyssa. Since then, Alyssa has been having nightmares of her original fate and knew deep down she was living a lie.

In the Bresha Ruins 5 AF, Alyssa notices Serah, Mog, and Noel emerge from a Time Gate. When Atlas goes on a rampage, Alyssa inches towards him out of curiosity, but is taken to safety by a soldier before nearly being crushed by falling debris. After Noel and Serah are taken into custody frees them by claiming to the guard she knows Serah and that she and Noel are invited guests of the Academy.

Alyssa gives Noel and Serah an Academy communicator to permit them access to the ruins, and tells them she is helping them because she is interested in the gates and paradoxes. As long as Atlas is around causing trouble the ruins will be closed off, leaving her unable to get any answers and Noel and Serah promise to put a stop to it. Alyssa keeps them up to date on the activity within the area through radio communication, asking them to let her know if they find a cemetery along the way.

After Serah and Noel defeat Atlas and restore the Bresha Ruins, they find a nearby cemetery. Alyssa kneels before the tallest gravestone and is relieved her name is not on it. She tells Noel and Serah it is Nena's resting place before revealing herself as a Purge survivor. Alyssa admits she had dreams of her spirit standing in front of the gravestone and seeing her name on it and after seeing it so many times she started to think maybe she did die back then. Alyssa says she will never forget the Purge and what she went through, even if everyone else does.

Sometime after Alyssa makes a report documenting the events at Bresha, she gets a message from Hope, who is impressed by Alyssa's report about the gates, and asks if she'd be willing to join his team. Now a part of Team Alpha as Hope's assistant, Alyssa has the tools she needs with her research. Everyone learns the past is reorganized to maintain the logic of the altered future, and people's memories are overwritten accordingly.

As multiple possibilities cannot co-exist and only one timeline is chosen as the true history, Alyssa wonders what happens to those possibilities and which world she will end up in. She admits that despite not seeing her name on the gravestone at the Bresha Ruins, she still doubts whether or not it was she or Nena who died in the Purge. Since certain possibilities can only exist as long as spacetime is broken, Alyssa wonders if she will disappear from the world as well as the memories of the people left behind if the paradoxes are resolved and the timeline restored, just like the mysterious man in her dreams tells her.

In the Paddra Ruins of Yaschas Massif 10 AF, Serah and Noel learn about the Farseers and Oracle Drives from Hope and Alyssa. When Serah asks why the Farseers died out if they knew about the city's oncoming destruction, Alyssa tells her the city was destroyed because they saw it coming and that being able to see the future is dangerous.

In the Yaschas Massif 1X AF, the Oracle Drive projects images of Cocoon falling and the man who was fighting Lightning, whom Noel calls Caius. Noel says the world in his time fell apart after Cocoon's fall, and Alyssa panics and asks him if that is going to happen soon. He says it will happen in a matter of centuries, and she is relieved. Serah proposes they prevent Cocoon from falling and Hope decides to get the Academy to help them. As Hope talks with Serah and Noel, Alyssa looks back at them with a mysterious expression.

Each of Hope's discoveries make her realize she is still alive because of a paradox and how he, Serah and Noel will soon kill her if they solve the paradoxes. Now having a hatred for them for trying to kill her, Alyssa tries to stay alive by choosing to help the man from her dreams, Caius Ballad. Believing that Caius may know a way for her to survive, Alyssa tries to find him but to no avail. Three years later at 13 AF, Alyssa and Hope set up the Proto fal'Cie Project which would claim their lives. In Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fragments After, it is revealed Alyssa herself arranged this murder as an act of desperation to save herself from disappearing.

In Augusta Tower 200 AF, Serah, Mog and Noel find an artificial duplicate of Alyssa who shows them a video of what happened to Hope and the real Alyssa. Back in an alternate 13 AF, when Hope watches the Oracle Drive and sees Serah fighting Adam, he cancels the project and unknowingly negates his and Alyssa's deaths. Hope and Alyssa use his time capsule to venture 387 years into the future to Academia 4XX AF. In Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fragments After, it's revealed that while sleeping in the time capsule, Alyssa met Caius and got a fake artefact from him to give to Serah and Noel.

After Hope reveals the New Cocoon Project he is overseeing, Alyssa tells Noel and Serah that crystals called Graviton Cores can give the new Cocoon the power to float. After they return with the cores needed, Alyssa gives them the Vagabond Artefact before she and Hope see them off by the new Time Gate. She says people turn against each other when they believe all hope is lost, but when they think about it, they do not understand why they let themselves be consumed by hate and despair. Alyssa asks Hope why he is looking at her strangely, and he replies he was remembering the time he almost lost his way and how his friends had helped him. Alyssa reveals to Hope she and everyone else at the Academy knew about his plan to build the new Cocoon to free Fang and Vanille from the crystal pillar, but still wanted to help him anyway.

As they all go their separate ways promising to meet again in the future, Alyssa stops and looks back in Noel, Mog and Serah's direction, smirking with a grim expression, though Mog is the only one who notices. Alyssa obtained the artefact she gave them from Caius upon realizing the actions of Serah and Noel restoring the timeline would result in her ceasing to exist. After Serah, Mog and Noel are separated in the Historia Crux, Alyssa apologizes to them for her betrayal, saying she will no longer exist in the future they are trying to make, and bids them farewell.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fragments After reveals that after betraying Serah and Noel, Alyssa and Hope go to Augusta Tower to investigate an intruder in the system. Hope finds a diary belonging to Alyssa telling the events in the Bresha Ruins at 5 AF, detailing her hatred of the Pulse l'Cie for causing the Purge, how everyone would forget her and none of her research would be remembered as hers but someone else's instead, her life ultimately having meant nothing. Alyssa holds Hope at gunpoint and tries to kill him, but starts to disappear before she can, begging for Hope not to forget her.

The man hiding outside Academy headquarters says Alyssa has vanished without a trace, and nearly everyone's memories of her have been erased, indicating Serah and Noel fixed the paradox that allowed Alyssa to survive the cave-in. Hope and a few people in Academy headquarters now only have vague memories of her. In Fragments After, it is revealed that a century later at 500 AF, Alyssa had been replaced by an intern named Aina Stein, an implied descendent of her friend Nena.

In the paradox ending, "The Future is Hope", Snow Villiers stops Alyssa from giving Noel and Serah the artefact and has her arrested by the Guardian Corps.

Creation and DevelopmentEdit

Alyssa was designed by Hideo Minaba.^[1] In the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Ultimania Omega scenario interview with Toriyama and Watanabe it is revealed Alyssa was at first supposed to be a tough woman who would make fun of men and her relationship with Hope should have changed them both. Her personality was re-designed, however, as a character like that would have resembled too much of Jihl Nabaat.

The Final Fantasy XIII-2 Ultimania Omega producer and director interview reveals scrapped plans for a Hope DLC scenario episode, involving a journey through the Augusta Tower. Players would have ventured through the tower, completing a number of Live Triggers as they did. The aim of DLC was to stop Alyssa from killing Hope and based on player's Live Trigger choices, the player would have either continued the game or receive a Game Over. However, this scenario was scrapped.^[2]

GalleryEdit

Concept for Alyssa's apparel.

Alyssa's in-game model.

Alyssa's in-game model.

Alyssa in Bresha Ruins 5 AF.

Alyssa shows Serah her friend's grave.

Hope and Alyssa in Academia 4XX AF.

Alyssa in Academia 4XX AF.

Alyssa reacts to Hope's strange wistful look.

Alyssa frees Serah and Noel from captivity.

Alyssa with Hope, Serah, Mog and Noel in the Yaschas Massif.

EtymologyEdit

"Alyssa" is a name of multiple origins. In Greek, it means "rational", and in German, it means "noble", "truth", or "of good cheer". It can also be derived from the name of the alyssum flower, which symbolizes "worth beyond beauty" and "against madness" as the flower was thought to be a cure for madness.

TriviaEdit

• Alyssa shares several similarities with Hope: They are the same age, are from Palumpolum, and were caught up in the Purge as victims of circumstance.
• Alyssa shares the same English voice actor with Shalua Rui from Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-.
• The man hiding outside of the Academy headquarters in Academia 4XX AF has a crush on Alyssa and after the paradox resolves, he is one of the few people to remember her.
• Captain Cryptic's Confounding Quiz reveals the name of Alyssa's friend who died during the Purge is Nena Stein.
• If the player speaks to Hope after receiving the defective artefact from Alyssa, he states that although the AI of Augusta Tower may have been malfunctioning, he doubted this was merely chance and hints someone else may have had a hand in his death, and the death of the other researchers as well.

ReferencesEdit