Alyssa Zaidelle



Alyssa Zaidelle (アリサ・ザイデル) 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, while she is voiced by in the English version.

Datalog

 * 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 Personality


Initially in 5 AF, Alyssa is a 19-year-old petite woman with blue eyes and short blond 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 also 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.

Story
During the events of Final Fantasy XIII, Alyssa was one of the people who 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 decided to release 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 that she had been living a lie.

In the Bresha Ruins 5 AF, Alyssa notices Serah, Mog, and Noel emerge from a time gate. When Atlas begins causing destruction, 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 after their battle against Atlas, Alyssa rushes to where they are being held, asking for Serah. She manages to free them by claiming to the guard that she knows Serah and that she and Noel are invited guests of the Academy.

After giving Noel and Serah an Academy communicator to permit them access to the ruins, Alyssa tells them that she is helping them because she saw them enter the area, and that she is interested in the gates and paradoxes. She listens to Noel explain the fact that as long as Atlas is around causing trouble, the ruins will be closed off, leaving her unable to get any answers. Noel says that he and Serah will stop Atlas. 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. She soon tells them that a large energy surge has been detected in the center of the ruins, and that a strange device has appeared deep in the underground passages.

After Serah and Noel defeat Atlas for good, restore the Bresha Ruins, and find a nearby cemetery, Alyssa is grateful that they found it. She kneels before the tallest gravestone and shows relief that her name is not on it. She tells Noel and Serah it is Nena's resting place before revealing herself as a Purge survivor. Telling her story, Alyssa admits that she had dreams of her spirit standing in front of the gravestone and seeing her name on it.

She says, "After seeing that image so many times, I started to think that maybe I did die back then. And the life I'm living now is just an illusion." Noel playfully pokes Alyssa's head telling her she is real, and she says "Real enough, I guess." Kneeling before the grave, 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 will need with her research. Everyone learns that 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 to be 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 is restored, just like the mysterious man in her dreams tells her.

In the Paddra Ruins of Yaschas Massif 10 AF, after Noel, Mog and Serah encounter Hope, an older Alyssa appears exhausted and reprimands him for leaving her behind. When Hope says that he wants to show something to Noel and Serah, Alyssa playfully grabs his arm saying she will lead the way before he softly pushes her off and takes the lead himself.

After telling Serah and Noel about a tribe of people known as Farseers that once lived in the ruins, Alyssa, Hope, Mog and Serah watch Noel in confusion as he runs off and talks to someone in the sky. Hope eventually tells Noel and Serah that a young seeress named Yeul foretold the city's destruction, causing people to either try to change their destiny or fall into disarray.

When Serah asks why the Farseers died out if they knew about the city's future destruction, Alyssa tells her that the city was destroyed because they saw it coming. She says, "Being able to see the future is awfully dangerous. It can mess with people's heads". She grabs Hope's arm again, eagerly asking him if she can show Serah and Noel something. At her insistence, Hope shows Serah and Noel the Oracle Drive, an ancient device that shows images of events that should be considered impossible.

Noel activates it and everyone sees images of the events that took place ten years ago. Hope believes that Yeul probably left behind records of the future. He uses the Oracle Drive and projects blurry images of Lightning with Odin fighting a mysterious man.

In the Yaschas Massif 1X AF, Hope uses the Oracle Drive to show Serah and Noel that the previous images of Lightning have cleared up. As he talks with them about Lightning, Alyssa notices the Oracle Drive behind them light up on its own and promptly go back out and examines it. She warns Hope as it goes off on its own and projects images of Cocoon falling and the man who was fighting Lightning, who Noel calls Caius. Alyssa asks if the records were just rewritten but Hope says that the new images are possibly a continuation of the recording from before.

Hearing Noel say that the world in his time fell apart after Cocoon's fall, Alyssa panics and asks him if that is going to happen soon. He says it will happen in a matter of centuries, and she shows relief since none of them will be alive at that time. Serah proposes that they prevent Cocoon from falling and Alyssa asks her if a gate connected to that time even exists. Hope says that if they focus the 'now' moments that make up the future, then it can be avoided, otherwise, they will research ways to limit the damage from Cocoon's fall. As Hope talks with Serah and Noel, Alyssa looks back at them with a mysterious expression. Three years later at 13 AF, Alyssa and Hope set up the Proto fal'Cie Project which would claim their lives.

In Augusta Tower 200 AF, Serah, Mog and Noel eventually find an artificial duplicate in Alyssa's image who says that Caius and Yeul were going to the top floor. As they ascend the upper levels of the tower, a blurry video of Hope, Alyssa, and other scientists being attacked by machines plays. Fighting the machine monsters on their way up, Alyssa's duplicate reveals that they had seen a recording of tower's forbidden history and therefore can never leave. However, when Hope watched the Oracle Drive and saw Serah fighting Adam, he cancelled the project and unknowingly negated his and Alyssa's deaths as they use his time capsule to venture 387 years into the future to Academia 4XX AF, welcoming Noel, Serah and Mog when they arrive.

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 that was found next to a formerly incomplete time gate in the city. Just before Serah, Noel and Mog depart through the gate, Alyssa and Hope go to see them off. She says that people tend to turn against each other whenever 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 that he was remembering the time when he almost lost his way because of having so much hate inside him, and how his friends had helped him. Alyssa soon reveals to Hope that she and everyone else at the Academy knew about his plan to build the new Cocoon in order to eventually 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. It would later be revealed that Alyssa obtained the artefact from Caius upon realizing that 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 that she will no longer exist in the future they are trying to make, and bids them farewell.

After leaving New Bodhum 700 AF, returning to Academia 4XX AF, and talking to the man hiding outside Academy headquarters reveals that Alyssa vanished without a trace, and nearly everyone's memories of her were erased, indicating that 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 Alyssa.

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

Development
Alyssa was designed by Hideo Minaba. In the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Ultimania Omega scenario interview with Toriyama and Watanabe it is revealed that Alyssa was at first supposed to be a tough type of woman who would make fun of men and that 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.

Etymology
"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.

Trivia

 * Alyssa shares several similarities with Hope: Both of them are of the same age, they were both from Palumpolum, and they were both 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 appears to have a crush on Alyssa and after the paradox resolves, he is also one of the few people who seems to remember her.
 * Captain Cryptic's Confounding Quiz reveals name of Alyssa's friend who died during the Purge as 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 that this was merely chance and hints that someone else may have had a hand in his death, and the death of the other researchers as well. In the short book, Final Fantasy XIII-2 Fragments After, it is revealed that Alyssa herself arranged this murder after receiving the artefact from Caius, as an act of desperation to save herself from disappearing.