Seventh Ark



The Seventh Ark is a dummied out location in Final Fantasy XIII. It is an Ark of Gran Pulse origin, and was meant to be accessed via a teleport gate in the Orphan's Cradle after completing the dungeon, making it a post-game location. It was discovered after Final Fantasy XIII was released on Steam as data mining a PC game is easier.

The dialogue before the area's boss would depend on the current party leader.

Datalog
A Datalog entry exists across all versions of the game, although only the Spanish version is known to have a complete entry for it, as the English one says: "PLACEHOLDER — TO BE TRANSLATED LAST AS THIS IS GOING TO BE DELETED ANYWAY".

The Spanish entry for the Seventh Ark translates to:

Locales — The Seventh Ark= ''One of the military installations of which the legends of Gran Pulse speak. The Fifth Ark is clearly an arsenal ready to combat invaders; the Seventh, instead, has as its principal function to awaken the hidden power of the l'Cie.''

The entry for Nemesis, the fal'Cie which oversees the Seventh Ark, also exists, but has the same Datalog issue like the entry for the location.

The Spanish entry for Nemesis translated to:

The Fal'Cie — Nemesis= ''Fal'Cie lord and master of the Seventh Ark. Its work consists of harassing the l'Cie in the middle of cruel tests and obligating them to surpass their own limits.''

Apparently it trains them to fight against someone, but it is not known who.

Nemesis and its Ark already existed in the times before the construction of Cocoon.

Gameplay
If one hacks a save to point to the Seventh Ark they will start in what's supposed to be the entry area, a big hall with four switches and a corridor to another hall. There is a cut scene of the party arriving at the Ark, deducing it is not the same Ark they visited before as it looks different. The party speculates Barthandelus plans to use all the Arks to unleash Pulse weapons on Cocoon to destroy it from the inside, or has yet to give up on using the party to defeat Orphan and thus the Seventh Ark exists to train them further for his doomsday plan.

The second hall has three doors beside the entry corridor, they are locked and the minimap indicates there's nothing behind them. Pressing any of the switches will either leave the player unable to move or start a boss battle with Nemesis. Last option is the cutcsene where all four switches are spinning and the corridor doors open (although they are already open either way).

The only practical content is the cut scenes and the heavily broken boss fight against Nemesis.

Musical Themes
In the corridors of the Seventh Ark "Lake Bresha" plays and when the party teleports to fal'Cie Nemesis's chamber "The Vestige" plays. When the fal'Cie reveals itself "Saber's Edge", but during the battle the game's battle theme, "Blinded By Light", plays.