Haney 0:00
Hey listener first encounters an explicit podcast by grownups for grownups. Content warnings can be found in the episode description. Did you know that first encounter is joined to collective the stilt action collective is a nerdy and independent Arts Collective form to support indie creators while promoting community inclusion and the drive to grow and improve

Chris 0:15
go to spell pushing comm to learn more.

Haney 0:19
Okay, so here we are back in Fort Condor. The restream for Condor Yeah. Did anyone watch that? That wasn’t a friend of ours. Thanks. So now that our friends watch, I don’t think that’s let me in your fort. Record has

Chris 0:54
it been recording this whole time?

Haney 0:55
No. Just for the past just now. Okay.

Chris 0:58
Can I have a beer please? No. fuckin ungrateful host I made you a star and this is how you treat me.

Haney 1:05
Wait, let me see if I don’t make a noise.

Chris 1:10
That was awful. Is the fun. Wait, I gotta get another Are you gonna smash this one? Yeah. That was

Haney 1:20
Welcome to the first encounter. patrol unit squad industrial Alfa unit

Chris 1:27
one first encounter stands for what is what is first stand for Give me the words to the acronym

Haney 1:34
fellows in response to storytelling.

Chris 1:41
Well, that’s going on the website now. Gonna put down to the perfect. Hey, hey, man, how you doing? All right. How are you? I’m doing okay. You know what we could do actually is because these are glass we could clink them. Oh, I’m gonna

Haney 1:54
let me bring my microphone over here for the clinking I was expecting it to shatter no joke, though.

Chris 2:01
It’d be fucking hilarious.

Haney 2:03
I’m sure my wife would love to broken beer bottles that are full all over the floor. That sounds genius. I love

Chris 2:09
what you’re saying. Yeah, but I’m gonna have to ask you to stop. Okay, cuz we got a promo to play. Do we from our friends. Final fan TV.

Haney 2:18
Final fan TVs? Yeah. Well, I would love to hear it. Well, take us away. Click. Take me. Hey, Chris, how do I change the tape in the VCR? Is it is it? I take the cassette? Oh, oh, okay, I got it. Okay. All right, pressing play now.

Unknown Speaker 2:36
Hello, everyone. This is Daniel Hall. flitch. I run the Final Fantasy entertainment and Podcast Network final fan TV. When this fantastic episode of first encounter is over. Perhaps you could tune in to final fan TV and to our two weekly shows final podcast where we spotlight and interview Final Fantasy developers, voice actors and community members. And then final forecast, where we look ahead at the future of our beloved franchise and discuss news rumors and make our own wild predictions and conjecture. Head to final fan tv.com for links to find us on social media, your favorite podcast services, YouTube and Twitch channels. That’s pretty much anything.com slash final fan TV. I look forward to you joining us. And if you do, drop a comment and say you discovered us through first encounter podcast. Back to you Chris and Haney.

Unknown Speaker 3:33
What’s your drinking?

Chris 3:34
It’s a mountain ale by shed brewery and you ever had this before? I don’t think so. It looks kind of familiar. But I think I would have recognized this taste because it’s delicious.

Haney 3:43
This is one of my favorite winter drinks. Hmm. The taste of it is very robust. I feel like as a good way to describe it. It’s not something you wouldn’t drink on like a hot day and middle of August. You know, this is definitely like a zero degrees out and there’s three feet of snow on the ground. But I still want to be here like let’s have this. I believe this is a brownie Oh, yes, it is.

Chris 4:06
I think I’ve had shed by haven’t had this before. It’s really good though.

Haney 4:09
I believe they have a couple ones. But I feel like they’re often overlooked in terms of like craft beer from the area. So yeah, I was I was grocery shopping the other day and saw it in the store and it was like hey, doesn’t taste good. Yeah, very nice. Snack one. What have you been up to lately, Chris?

Chris 4:24
Still editing? How’s that going? It’s gone. Okay. It’s interesting to edit podcasts that aren’t the first encounter because it highlights everything that we’re doing. I’m not gonna say wrong, different,

Haney 4:38
different, like different,

Chris 4:40
different is correct. If you’re not aware of our editing process, dear listeners, we play the game.

Haney 4:47
Dear listeners, I’m right there with you. I

Chris 4:51
was just gonna say like we play the game and record that whole thing. And then we talk through it and record our talk through we have done that. So that’s like a total of four hours that we’re editing down. Yep, and the other stuff I’m editing guys like 15 minutes. Yeah, editing. I don’t know, getting ready for some cool stuff, doing some stuff with spill potion, we have a newsletter now

Haney 5:09
that’s cool, you should definitely go to www dot spil passion comm and sign up for our newsletter, there is a pop up that Will come up on screen just put your first name and your email address in there and we Will not sell it we Will not spam your inbox you Will only get spilled potion related news on a semi regular basis. Semi regular being once a month. Yeah, it’s far enough between where we’re not going to be a nuisance. We don’t want to be a nuisance. We just want to be your friend. Yeah. And the other reaches out sees how you’re doing every once in a while

Chris 5:37
gives you the finger guns walking by.

Haney 5:39
I hope everyone Will hear that noise and immediately see me doing finger guns even if they don’t know what I look like on a podcast medium.

Chris 5:46
Well, don’t look us up. I wouldn’t want you dear listeners to change your mental impression of me just being a massive hunk of

Haney 5:55
I believe the most polite way I’ve ever heard someone describe your physique is twink.

Chris 6:00
I don’t know that we’ve kept that in the past episode, but I have sure been described that way.

Haney 6:09
You read whoever submitted the listener survey?

Chris 6:12
Yeah, it was the only response to a survey we’ve had. Oh, if that survey still there. What are you been up to? What are you doing?

Haney 6:20
Oh, you know, got to take some time for myself for a little bit. Now I’m kind of just getting back into the first encounter, still pushing kind of workflow trying to figure out what needs to be done. Have my task list executing on my tasks. And yeah, I haven’t been doing a ton I’ve been watching the CBS all access standard miniseries which I really like. I’m looking for a new game to pick up. And I think I found the winner today was Assassin’s Creed. It is not Assassin’s Creed. I Oh, so sorry, Eric and Ryan from Tales from the cartridge. That is on the list still, but I think they’ll approve because it is Hades.

Chris 6:59
Oh, excellent. I’m actually kind of excited for you.

Haney 7:02
That game looks like cute as hell art wise. And I think it’s available on the switch so I can play a comfy. Yeah, my living room. Would you like to talk about our grind time and Final Fantasy seven today? Beautiful.

Chris 7:12
Nailed it. Good transition. Got

Haney 7:15
them.

Chris 7:15
So last episode, we left cloud in the deal. We left Tifa in the deal, caring for cloud caring for cloud.

Haney 7:22
So we started today’s episode by trying to just get our bearings and figure out where we needed to go. So I remembered that there were two locations that were given to us last episode and I was just trying to figure out where to head and so the one I remember was coral. And the one I didn’t remember I didn’t remember until later when someone explicitly said it. So we headed over to the gold saucer thinking that Oh, now that I have sweet airship I can just dock with the gold saucer if you Will and don’t need to go through the nonsense of navigating to it on a rail car from coral. Turns out that’s wrong still so I’m zoomed around the map a little bit I was like well alright, so this is the gold saucer Let’s go find Carl it a little mountain cave over there. I want to explore that I don’t think we’ve been in but we’ll do that another day when Chris isn’t breathing down my neck to get something he can work with for the podcast and we touched down outside of Carl and decided to head in inside we’ve talked to just a handful of people kind of checked out the shops again

Chris 8:25
please buy something anything we’ll do purchase buy my wares

Haney 8:33
I don’t need this man’s garbage What do you got? If you want to survive then you’re gonna need some of my weapons terrible Alright, North Carlos where I need to get right oh I remember this now All right. Oh, this is fucking kill the fucking Phoenix with the Oh yeah, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was bad. They gave us kind of the oh yeah Shinra is up at the reactor looking for huge materia that’s cool. No worried about it. Yeah, so we got kind of the gist of it. We didn’t talk to everyone in the village or like hey, let’s just get this over with so headed up to North coral and made our way over to the reactor didn’t take very long to get there had a couple encounters thought a bomb kind of blew up on it. I was gonna say I didn’t really get a fight on upon its first move. It used detonate so I was like, I ain’t well. Goodbye. Yep, that’s fine. You’re gonna you’re watching the Dream Team at work, Chris,

Chris 9:34
leading with a minute break guys now. Oh, well,

Haney 9:36
goodbye. All right. How are we all doing?

So we make our way over to the old abandoned reactor except it doesn’t look super abundant anymore. All the lights are on. There’s a couple of guards stationed around it and there’s real cars that are leaving from it. We make our way over to the guards and they recognize us unfortunately. At this part, we are playing as Syd Barrett and Kate Seth aces. Really? Hey, you should use Kate setmore he’s really fucking powerful.

Chris 10:09
I’m good, Natalie.

Haney 10:10
We’re gonna learn who Kate says In today’s episode. It’s my

Chris 10:14
goal. It’s just a demonic entity that’s taken over a stuffed animal.

Haney 10:18
Why did they get a pre emptive attack on them? They literally saw them walking at them. Couldn’t tell you. What was nappin said that actually. Yeah, that’s that makes sense. Good. we confront the guards after they recognize us and somehow we get a back attack in which was very funny because they like shout at us and see us coming. And then we’re in a fight and they’re facing the other way. And I was like, well, that’s not how this works.

Chris 10:45
It turned around to holler at the guys who are still in the reactor. It’s them

Haney 10:49
that’s actually not a bad hypothesis.

Chris 10:52
All they want I can come on literally

Haney 10:54
the only way that that could happen so we spank these puppies put them to bed single lullaby

Chris 11:00
send them on their way. Yeah,

Haney 11:01
so we see the cart full of the huge materia jennison out of the reactor away from us at high speed barrier is like shit, what are we going to do? Like we got to catch it and said like, hold on. I got an idea runs inside the reactor you get like just a pause for a couple of minutes while there’s some clanging inside and then he just comes out riding it choo choo. Let a delay said I got this high wind. Oh, that’s perfect. He comes out gets everyone on his choo choo. And then we learned how to drive a train. Hey, you know who I am? I’m sick. That’s who the hell I am. Now just let me handle it. I’m just letting them handle it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Please tell me what’s about to happen is about to happen. Just say yes. Yes. Hey motherfucking Juju train time vlogger if this episode isn’t called conductor said I don’t want to be involved in this podcast anymore. listener. You know how much I love me a train of a time we get a countdown we’re said tells us what he thinks we have about 10 minutes to catch up to the

Chris 12:08
so Is that why you weren’t concerned about the countdown is because you thought it was purely for catching up to the train. So that countdown was how long you have until it crashes into coral?

Haney 12:17
Yeah, yeah. So we get a short tutorial on this mini game how to operate the train. It’s basically just alternating a directional pad and a button to make the train accelerate. Choo Choo said how can they even drive this? Don’t ask me I don’t know. What Don’t worry, I can handle this. Two leavers, one on the rat one on the left. Just alternate the two leavers up and down right. Judging from the enemy speed, I’d say it’ll take about 10 minutes. We’re gonna fly hold on tat.

Chris 12:51
Trains are easy.

Haney 12:52
And I just like trying to pump it as fast as I can.

Chris 12:54
Here we go. Rome, Rome, Rome. Rome. Train time.

Haney 12:59
Do I have to do this for 10 minutes? Yeah.

Chris 13:01
What do you want? Not that.

Haney 13:04
I am pumping like I’ve never pumped before. Took me all of 20 seconds to catch up to the train. I was like, Oh, I got nine minutes left. This is perfect.

Chris 13:12
Did it No problem. countdown didn’t stop them.

Haney 13:15
No. And then I had to pirate style board their train and their train is made up of a handful of carts linked together and every time you jump onto a cart and then move forward, you have an encounter and the encounters that we had started off pretty chill like just a group of some material he beasties or Maiko beasties. I

Chris 13:37
think, Beastie Boys,

Haney 13:39
Bobby just chill us. It’s the Maiko boys. Don’t judge me. Um, as you progress down the train cars jumping across the tops they get progressively harder. The fight where we have to go against a mechanical bird like thing with guns for wingtips gun bird that got pretty aggressive in some spots.

Chris 14:06
So how’s your train time going?

Haney 14:08
Good. Love it. Yeah, yes.

Chris 14:10
What you want it?

Haney 14:10
I mean, it’s not not what I wanted. Yeah. What is that thing?

Chris 14:17
That’s pretty sweet design. Yeah,

Haney 14:19
it looks a little bit like if Lugia was a Mac

Chris 14:23
effluvia was made of guns. It would be that Oh, those are those are guns. Yeah, that’s why I said if Lugia was made of guns, good help, but notice that the countdowns at three minutes?

Haney 14:34
Yes, getting there. I don’t think I wouldn’t.

Chris 14:37
No, no, I think it’s perfectly okay. So that’s something you’ll have to remember that you Will not remember at all. What’s that? said his reflector ring. So any magic that casts on him is going to bounce to the other side. That includes healing.

Haney 14:54
Interesting. So after we fight our way to the front of the car, there is a singular Soldier staring the thing we get into a fight it wasn’t much threw him off the truck just absolutely murdered him after we kill him though I believe it was bear it was like wait how are we gonna steer this thing we killed the conductor young says like now I got this How hard could it be? So to stop the train from just absolutely killing everyone in Coral village by crashing into it you have to just button mash in the correct order to get the train to stop my controller stopped working at this point there was like a whole bunch of things just flashing across the screen. It was just a mess. Gonna do we killed the engineer. The timer is still ticking no already just shut up and sit tight for him. The sub Will crash right into North coral.

Chris 15:46
Yeah, two minutes, dude. Make this count.

Haney 15:49
Let’s see if we use the levers alternately to accelerate should stop if we move the levers up or down simultaneously.

Chris 15:57
Left lever up. Directional button up directional button down. Right lever up menu.

Haney 16:01
Hey, it’s not working. The other way, Buck? Hey, Hey, Hey, dude,

Chris 16:10
you’re speeding up the train is what’s happening. So you got to do it the other direction that you’re trying to do

Haney 16:14
and I’m trying Look, you’re supposed to do them both at the same time down right. Oh, good. Well, the game’s frozen. They get it? I fixed it. How did what? What the fuck? Wait a minute. Received key item huge. fuck just happened. somehow managed to successfully stopped the train at the absolute last second.

Chris 16:38
Yeah, I’m not sure about this. Because in game terms, it was Barrett screaming it said, because you’re speeding up the train like?

Haney 16:49
Yeah, and like the animations getting faster, like crazy fast, but somehow managed to stop it. I mean, it’s just really just, I think I would call it a pro gamer move is what I pulled. But yeah, I managed to stop that train right before coral and disembark and something kind of sweet happens here, which is we’re seen as heroes for stopping the Shinra from, you know, hurting this village even further than it has. And it seems like they might have re accepted Barrett a little bit this time, as opposed last time when they all jumped in. Yeah. So we

Chris 17:25
also got the huge material. Yeah, what was the huge materia? Big materia? Yeah. All right. It’s a big material.

Haney 17:32
We got the huge materia and then as a reward that kid from all the way back in Episode 13, I believe who is like real into his well shiny object, you remember, they just did it out and gave us his shiny object, which turned out to be something called the ultimate materia just some rock. I haven’t gotten to use it yet, but I equipped it to sit linked to all so we’ll see what that does. That’s purely for Chris and listeners to determine if that was a good move on my part. I did it while Chris was in the bathroom. Aren’t you the ones that stopped the shinar train the Shinra we’re just about to destroy our lives again. Might be full of junk, but this is the only home we got Barrett. Of course. We’re all born and raised in the coal mines. No matter how tough it gets our hearts burn bright red like coal.

Chris 18:14
To hell with Meteor. We’re coal miners aren’t we? Will dig a deep tunnel and hide from the media or that’s it. Hey, kid, how about giving something to these guys funding the Shinra give

Haney 18:25
me this thing from your Well, you’re all give me your shiny thing from the well. Hey,

Chris 18:31
I got it out of the well and amazing work. Okay,

Haney 18:35
received the ultimate metiria What is that?

Chris 18:38
Probably nothing good. I already talked to the end zoner today you can rest for free. Cuz

Haney 18:45
Hey, they don’t hate Barry anymore.

Chris 18:46
Making progress.

Haney 18:49
Like progress. I’m a progressive guy. Progressive the auto insurance.

Chris 18:54
You know, it’s also progressive, the spell potion collective.

Haney 18:59
So we get back on the high end and talk to you. I believe it was Kate stuff. It was like two places that they’re looking for huge materia are in coral and Fort Condor. And I was like, Ah, that’s

Chris 19:12
right. In case it’s not Kate Smith, and it’s actually Barrett who tells you that I need you to do it for Barrett as well. Go say the exact same thing but as Barrett.

Haney 19:24
Barrett Barrett, so someone tells us on the high on What a nightmare. So someone on the highway and one of the party members tells us that Shinra was looking for huge material in coral and Fort Condor. What’s next, shall we head for for Condor?

Chris 19:40
Thanks. Yes. Yeah. Should we take off? Yeah, we’re taking off.

Haney 19:48
I can’t believe we took off together. Let’s see if I was a fort. Condor. I believe I’d be in the lower part of this continent.

Chris 19:58
Hey, that’s an ocean not a continent. crest

Haney 20:01
as junan Harbor, we’re gonna go back to two non harbor and just show. I want you to tell our listeners how I just flew and navigated correctly directly to for Condor you know,

Chris 20:13
we’re not telling them that right, that’s fair. We don’t want to ruin your image we’ve carefully cultivated over the entire series.

Haney 20:21
I have to make Chris admit on microphone that I got there immediately in a straight line without any direction and it was very impressive.

Chris 20:31
He did pretty good.

Haney 20:35
So we beeline for for Condor. And we haven’t talked about fort Condor on the podcast before but Chris and I did a stream many, many months ago where we did the fort Condor mini mission. So I was already mostly familiar with what to do in this area. You know, we talked to the guy at the entrance who’s like, we’re at war with the Shinra we need your help. They’re trying to get up to the top of the reactor and disturb the Condor up there. Any minute now, this Will be a battlefield against Shinra You’d better get down before you get involved. Shinra the hell are those jackasses doing here? It appears you have a problem with the Shinra too After all, you clammed up here. Why not? Listen to what I have to say for a moment. All right, sock on. Do you know what’s at the top of this mountain? No matter how you look at it, that’s a reactor. Now on top of it. Is that the Condor? I can see you’re very perceptive. Yes, it’s a reactor and the Condor looks like there’s a special materia up in the Mikko reactor, then came the condors. There shinar dispatched the trips to get rid of it. Their plan is to get rid of the Condor and the people on this mountain and to get the main tyria from the mega reactor. Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to fight Shinra ourselves, as our sponsor, you can help us with a contribution are about fighting alongside of us. What do you think you want to join us in our fight? Hey, we’ll come to the rescue.

Chris 21:55
I don’t think any of that was Barrett’s voice.

Haney 21:57
So we did a little minor exploration of arcandor. But again, we’ve already been here. We’ve already done this. I think that did end up buying a couple of new materia.

Chris 22:05
We sure did see that all material you could buy but sure it did pass it all up.

Haney 22:09
Yeah, me, whatever. We make our way up to kind of the shed at the top of Fort Condor. And we have to just talk to a guy who’s like, Oh, we need your help. But you have to use your own Gil and buy your own supplies and hire your own soldiers. And

Chris 22:27
what are they fucking here for? I

Haney 22:28
have no idea.

Chris 22:30
They were like we’ve been fighting this shinar for all these years. And with what is me your sponsor?

Haney 22:36
I don’t want to do this again.

Chris 22:38
So shall I let you in on a strategy. The enemy has targeted our mountain reactor and Will be climbing to reach it. We must set a trap and hire soldiers to protect the place. This village doesn’t have any money. Even if we want it to fight. We can’t because we’re broke. Oh, we need 400 gil to hire one soldier. We need to ask you to use your own money to hire these soldiers, buy the equipment, set it up and give the commands. We sent our wives and children to another village. But we’re resigned to stay. That’s selfish,

Haney 23:09
super selfish. After we talked to this guy, he explains how we do this crazy mini game. And we kind of just hopped into it. Chris, I need you to explain the mini game because it is just bonkers. Weird. For me.

Chris 23:22
It’s just Age of Empires. If you forget your vampire,

Haney 23:24
how dare you first,

Chris 23:26
okay, it’s a strategic minigame where you’re hiring and placing different soldiers to intercept the Shinra troops that are climbing the mountain. So basically, you place down soldiers, you tell them where to stand? You know, you tell them where to go during the mini game.

Haney 23:42
How did I do in your opinion? I mean, I mean, I lost the mini game. I just won the fight at the top. Yeah, um, you did? Talk to me.

Chris 23:55
You definitely got swarmed? Yeah, I do. take offense to your strategy, which is which is putting a lot of falling rock traps. And then instead of putting people behind them to like fire any guys who are approaching the rock traps or putting people in front of the rock traps to block the invaders from them, you just sent everyone off on their own. They just

Haney 24:16
do that. Like if you tell them to attack they just start walking even the archers on them. It’s like don’t do that. Like you have a bow like stop.

Chris 24:23
But when you send them to attack, they’re gonna go toward the target. So you have to have them just like wait for the enemies to It’s fine. It’s fine. Listen, you did it.

Haney 24:33
You nailed I don’t know how I feel about it. Right fighter, attacker, defender, shooter, repair worker, stoner fighter catapult? Yes, please. Then I’ll put another catapult down.

Chris 24:49
Okay, all right. This is a unique strategy. Can you describe to me what the plan is here?

Haney 24:56
Yeah. Just trying to not let them get up here.

Chris 24:58
Okay, okay. I love Have they started coming up yet? Yeah, no, they won’t start coming in until you’re done this.

Haney 25:05
They won’t start coming in. They don’t stop coming. What do you think of my

Chris 25:08
this is excessive is what I think.

Haney 25:10
How do I finish? Do I actually have to do anything?

Chris 25:13
This is probably my favorite mini game

Haney 25:15
out of all it’s really not that bad. I actually remember enjoying it quite a lot.

Chris 25:19
I don’t remember you enjoying it quite a lot. No, I feel like you’re filming.

Haney 25:23
I don’t think I’ve ever filmed before. Hey, yeah, that’s cool shit. Why are they fucking so much stronger than me? Oh, shit.

Chris 25:33
Oh, it’s Rock paper scissors, right? Is it right what you’re gonna say your Archer cherrytree that’s fine.

Haney 25:41
He died.

Chris 25:41
Yes. What does that warning? There’s too many on the hill. Yes sir. killing them faster.

Haney 25:48
Can they’ll die. Be cool if they died a lot faster. Obviously, they swarmed the shed at the top and we have to get into a fight. It was fine. It wasn’t that bad. I murdered the monster. It was a Maiko beast. It was fine. After you stop the Shinra from approaching there’s a reaction I guess is the best way to say at the top of the reactor. So there’s an egg guarded by a giant Condor. The egg starts hatching and it kind of engulfs the Condor that’s up there and just kind of explodes into a bright white light. The Condor dies and falls and themes, and a little chick is born.

Chris 26:25
Can I interest you in a phoenix?

Haney 26:28
Is that dead Condor? Huh?

Chris 26:31
Like just now? The Condor the egg? What? Would you go outside and see what it was?

Haney 26:38
I feel like everyone would be absolutely fucking just running. Does he have that? Give me this. Give me this materia? Yeah, Phoenix materia.

Chris 26:46
That’s like a cross between a choco and a Cates.

Haney 26:48
I kind of love it. Goodbye. Goodbye, old friend.

Chris 26:53
I’m glad we could be here for that. See?

Haney 26:59
Well, that was fun. Wasn’t it, though? Yeah, my favorite part of the entire gameplay of today was going back up to the viewing window after and then just seeing a broken egg and nothing else. And it’s like, well, that’s a lot less magical. Now.

Chris 27:13
The beauty of nature.

Haney 27:14
I love it, love to see it. So we make our way out of Fort Condor. And at this point, I really don’t have a direction so I started talking to people in side the ship and I don’t remember who it was, but someone says there was a third location. Oh, what was it? I started racking my brain I was like, Where’s a reactor that we know exists? But we haven’t been to yet. And I got an idea. So I beelined it to June and harbor got there. Got there. It was great. Nailed it.

Chris 27:42
Awesome. See a nerds. Good luck with the Shinra

Haney 27:47
I’m sure it’s fine. Oh, here’s materials that coral for con Dory. And I’m sure there was another place that had it. Where was that? Alright, Chris. I have an idea. We’re gonna go get that big, huge large last materia. Are you ready?

Chris 28:00
Yeah. Where are you headed?

Haney 28:02
Don’t raise your eyebrows. I forgot how many shops there were in June on hi Ray. Welcome.

Chris 28:08
I just can’t believe it. I never thought monster like weapon really interested?

Haney 28:14
noise? What’s your magic?

Chris 28:16
Remove status afflictions

Haney 28:18
that’s looking great. Why don’t I have that?

Girl that me. I just imagine the wasted runs the entire time like we went to June and harbors lower village, we bribed an officer to give us a ride in the elevator up to like the Shinra headquarters at the top of Jenin Harbor, where the cannon is talk to some people about weapons impact on the area. But no matter what, we still couldn’t get into the reactor, it’s still guarded. Our forces are in the process of gathering the huge material from the corner on Fort conroe reactors. Once these two missions are completed, the underwater reactor Will be our next target. I knew it can I can kind of skip through. So I was not right. only authorized personnel are allowed past this point, you know, to write about junan Navy’s important classified information, a new submarine has almost been completed using shinners top technology,

Chris 29:19
you should probably be fired immediately.

Haney 29:24
So not really entirely sure what to do at this point. I decided to head back to talk to you cloud and Tifa back in the deal to see if maybe we needed to just have a conversation to trigger where we need to go next. There was also a moment where we’re talking to I believe it was read 13 who’s on the ship who says hey, we should go visit cloud and Tifa just from time to time, so be lined our way back to the deal. And that’s where Chris said, Hey, good job. Save the game and turn it off. That’s where we’re stopping today. Yeah, and that was This episode of first encounter Chris, how are you feeling? I’m

Chris 30:05
feeling okay. feeling okay. Yeah, I mean, I know this episode wasn’t the most action packed for you.

Haney 30:10
Yeah, I definitely wanted to keep going. But I definitely know that like, you have to walk the line. Okay, you can get through an hour and a half to two hours of gameplay. But if you get to this next part, you’re gonna have to long haul in for another two hours at least so Yeah, a little bummed out that we didn’t get much in the way of good good in this episode, but we definitely got to the story progression got good good materia. We did get good. I’m actually really excited to see what the ultimate materia does. I have no idea. Yeah. And also see what the Phoenix summon looks like. Where would you rank Phoenix on your summons?

Chris 30:43
Let’s see. I really like behind it. I really like Neo Baba Neo Bahama, I think is my favorite summon Neo Bahamas great. It’s probably Neo Bahama, then Odin. Odin is great, too. And then either Bahamas or Phoenix, I think. Oh, cool. So it’s, it’s, it’s pretty high up there. I like Titan, just because he’s a big beefy boy like, crushes people. Titans.

Haney 31:03
Great. I like to jata a lot. Yeah,

Chris 31:05
he’s really cool. very relatable.

Haney 31:08
Same hard, same. But it was a fun episode, though. Like I had a really good time just like get into us characters who weren’t cloud, you know, and have the focus on not cloud for a little bit. Obviously, clouds, awesome, great character. But it’s really nice when you get to just do something a little different. And this game does a lot of things just a little different, which keeps it fresh. You know, like, it’s pretty unusual that the main character is comatose for a section of the game, or that the other main character is murdered only a third of the way through the game. You know, there’s like a lot of things like that, where it’s like, oh, shit,

Chris 31:43
so that might be a good thing to touch on, as I’m teasing you and edging you toward the good waves edge me. So you knew, unfortunately, unfortunately, that Earth’s death was coming up. And that was like the big major thing you knew about in Final Fantasy seven? Yeah. How do you feel about cloud just being taken away from you? after that?

Haney 32:03
I had no idea what’s gonna happen at all. I’m at the point in the game, where the only spoilers I have are from adventure children. So okay, well, I know that in Advent Children, I think I remember seeing read 13 for a second in that movie. I feel like he wasn’t a huge part. I remember seeing Vincent for a couple of minutes. I can’t guarantee you that they’re alive, though, because I remember seeing aerith in that movie, too. And she was obviously dead. So I remember seeing most of the characters, but I feel like the main characters of the movie are just cloud really, he’s pretty solo in it. Aside from Cloud, maybe the Kadosh character plays the second biggest role, but I don’t remember his fucking deal at all. So like, all I have is 15 year old memories of a movie I saw maybe twice. That didn’t make any sense to you. That made no sense. And I had no impact on and like, honestly, like 15 when I watched it, I had no like, memory or like appreciation for what the movie was or wasn’t so like, at this point, knowing that aerith is that there’s not a lot for me to fall back on, aside from the fact that the rest of the party is seemingly alive. Okay, fine. That really doesn’t do much. You don’t expect the party to die, usually in a video game like aerith is pretty big outlier. So I’m pretty lost in a great way. Where I finally feel like I’m at the point where I’m not expecting anything. Yeah, I’ve met everyone. I think that I know I’m going to meet. I’m not anticipating a character. I’m not anticipating a fight. I’m not anticipating an event. The only thing I can assume is that we stopped Meteor because it’s not an average children from what I remember, but average children could take place in the last 20 minutes of this game. For all I know, right? Like, sure. Yeah, I assume that we stopped media. And that’s basically the only thing I have left at this point. Just like he assumed that you’d stop the plate from falling. And yeah, man, I think that’s still probably the most jarring thing that’s happened in this game for me because I had no context for it happening. And it was incredibly traumatizing when it did happen. So yeah, that’s still one of my favorite parts that we’ve gone through. It’s not my favorite part, but it is up there and like, Oh, yeah, let’s go. I think niflheim is still really high up there. And Cosmo Canyon is still really high up there. What’s your favorite part that you and I have played through together? Like your favorite thing that you’ve watched me do?

Chris 34:22
So number one, definitely the last cetera? I thought that was like easily the most powerful.

Haney 34:28
Is it because I saw like a little boy with a skinny.

Chris 34:31
I mean, you have to though,

Haney 34:33
of course, looks incredible. It’s beautiful. Yeah. It’s upsetting. It was heartbreaking. It was gorgeous. It’s perfect.

Chris 34:39
Yeah, so that was easily my favorite episode. At least nibble. Haim is always going to be special to

Haney 34:44
me so good. So good. Just so fucking good. Yeah,

Chris 34:47
that’s what kicks off everything.

Haney 34:49
Oh, yeah. I really liked the fall nine Professor gas stuff too. That’s sneaking its way up there as it becomes more and more relevant. The cutscene with weapon was amazing. to like, that’s been really cool. That’s really cool. Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot going on now that’s really good. I’m very excited to see where we go next. But at this point, all I can guess like I know, in the immediate future, like Next week, we’ll go to probably talk to cloud and Tifa. See how they’re doing. And I suspect we’ll go back to June and hardware and be able to actually access the underwater reactor, but I could be wrong. Yeah, we could be heading back to MIT Gar, I wish

Chris 35:27
someday I’m sure we’ll get that.

Haney 35:28
I would love to go back there.

Chris 35:31
All my best memories are from Midgar.

Haney 35:34
Well, here’s the problem with cloud a memory.

Chris 35:38
Lot. Everything.

Haney 35:40
Yeah, who knows whose memories

Chris 35:42
they are? Now that you’ve had some time to still digest? If you Oh, yeah, now that you’ve had some time to stew and digest the previous episode, do you have any new thoughts on clouds deal? The whole situation in general,

Haney 35:55
I think clouds current deal makes a lot of sense. He fell into the live stream and washed up elsewhere. And I think the doctor was very clear like he has Maiko overdose. Yeah, he might not come back. He probably Will. Because of you know, adventure ildren. I don’t know that though. Like, who knows? I haven’t children could be his micklefield nightmare. Right. So I think there’s probably two things happening right now. Right. So like the makeup poisoning has driven and probably pretty far into his own brain. And I think he’s trying to wrestle with all the good, good. We’ve gotten so far about like this person with dark hair, who seemed to actually lift to the nibble what’s in it, I said it was Zack. But I think in gameplay, they never actually give that person a name. And the memories that are seemingly stolen from Tifa and others and placed into Cloud. I think he’s probably pretty deep in his own head trying to untangle the spaghetti, that his his memories and his life and really conquer what everyone’s telling him because the thing that I’ve noticed is that everyone’s telling him a whole lot of stuff. And he’s not thinking for himself. And I think the turning point for cloud is going to be like, I don’t fucking care what Tifa says, I don’t fucking care what Safra says, I don’t care what Shinra says, I’m my own person regardless. So I think clouds going to find himself in a way. And that’s really going to be the turning point in his character from pre livestream falling into post live stream falling. I don’t know that he’s going to be entirely the same coming back out of this. Because he’s gone through a lot. aerith dine him knowing that he can be controlled by suffer off him being told in a way that he’s a failed experiment of how does that didn’t even deserve a fucking number? And the fact that he begged for a number just to have meaning it’s still so haunting to me. Like so fucked up and haunting? Yeah, I think there’s a lot going on inside of his head. And I think it’d be really cool to navigate some of that as like part of the game. I’m really hoping we get to, but I’m not sure that that’s where the game is really going. I don’t. It doesn’t seem to me though, that he’s gonna snap out of it and be a different person. It seems like we’re gonna have to spear into clouds head and play through some scenarios that are running through his head to figure stuff out. And when he comes out, he’s going to be a little bit different.

Chris 38:14
He’s come a long way from the first class soldier. I don’t care what your names are.

Haney 38:18
Right, exactly. It’s interesting closet. Great character. What other questions you got for me today? Anything?

Chris 38:23
No, you got anything for me? asked me any one thing and I’ll answer it.

Haney 38:29
How soon until we get cloud back.

Chris 38:31
I had my fingers crossed, you fucking idiot. Fuck.

Haney 38:35
I think with that, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Unknown Speaker 38:39
Bye.

Haney 38:39
Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the first encounter podcast. If you want the journey to continue, why don’t you hit us up on Twitter at one st encounter pod. You can email us at mail at first encounter podcast comm or you can check out our website first encounter podcast.com our intro and outro music is written and performed by Holden. Zach