Haney 0:00
This episode of first encounter contains spoilers for the video game Final Fantasy seven. If you’ve not played this game, first off, what are you doing? Don’t be like me and second, go play it instead of listening to us. If you’d like to follow along, listen to the end of the episode for where we play to next, as well as how you can get in touch with us. We would also like to take a second to say that we are in no way affiliated with square. We’re just a couple of guys trying to have fun with the cool video game. Welcome to the first encounter experience.

Chris 0:24
Welcome back to first encounter night.

Haney 0:28
This is from a friend of ours, I guess who has sent us a package in the mail from meme topia. I don’t know what that is, but I’m assuming it’s some sort of fun company and I’m using a sharp rocket I found in my garden that I thought kind of looked like an arrowhead but it’s definitely most likely not so special. So let’s talk let’s talk about what this package looks like First of all, so we’ve got the slick brown cardboard packaging here because it’s brown so we got green gift bag with some ivory wrapping here some silver trim on the package. That’s not true. And a little curd. Dearest sir Hamdi this gift may be for you but all the joy inside is for your beautiful love crispy. first encounter podcast is number one, Ben. Thank you. I guess it’s very sweet.

Chris 1:18
I’m crispy.

Haney 1:19
You’re Christie. So now we’re going to pull some of these strings here you want to pull one of these strings with me here please. So I’ll pull this one you pull that one I don’t you’re holding balton that you sorry you hold this one. We’re gonna get into tight or not. Oh no, I think we actually did. So we were we’ve opened the experience now so there’s some some tissue paper in here. Particularly crispy tissue paper and a small box inside. So I’m gonna pull what the actual hell these are ham flavored No. flavored candy canes called the ham D canes. Why do these exist?

Chris 2:06
Where did you find these?

Haney 2:08
Why?

Chris 2:09
On the back it says Have yourself a merry little Christmas. August This is nightmarish

Haney 2:16
This is amazing. Thank you I guess and I cannot wait to suck down on some of these pork flavored sticks and go through the ingredients real quick. I really don’t know that we should these have an odor. Oh, I don’t know that. That’s really meat odor, but Chris is definitely sick now. Oh, they’re very meaty actually. That is straight ham.

Chris 2:34
So thanks very much August This is delightful. Yeah,

Haney 2:38
cheers. We Will eat these sometime in the future. I definitely can’t eat these tonight. Thanks I guess

would you like to think up

Chris 2:58
Welcome back to the first Welcome back to the sides. Very popular. Final Fantasy dirge of servers video game fucking what Final Fantasy seven dirt balls to directly in front of me and the right and left and all around is a Mr. Haney Hamby How you doing sir Would you like to plug anything while you’re here before we get started?

Haney 3:26
Not this podcast how to get people to not listen to this and listen to literally anything else

Chris 3:32
way How do you already doing it? Nobody listens to us. Fantastic. So yeah, I saw you just cracked open a nice cold beverage. You want to tell us what you’re drinking? Sure.

Haney 3:44
It’s a mill River Brewing. Beer beverage if you Will. Yeah. called the days of haze. This is a IPA, APA actually American Pale Ale. Lower alcohol radiance of 5.5%. And it’s good. It’s really drinkable. It’s definitely not my favorite beer I’ve had in a while. I like a lot of their other beers a lot better than this one. This was just a new one I wanted to try. Literally everything I eat and drink is impacted today by the fact that it’s so damn hot though. So like anything that’s not just like cold water. Just I don’t want to be fair. What

Chris 4:18
a treat.

Haney 4:19
We play some Final Fantasy today.

Chris 4:21
We did do that. So last episode we let’s see we left off with us. Getting to the junan harbor. We had a fun CPR mini game we had a fun dolphin minigame. Oh, we had fun marching mini game. Oh my god. Last episode was trash. And then we learned how to do the meta game that we did today.

Haney 4:44
Learning is a strong word. I vaguely remember you telling me the funniest thing about this is that it’s gonna be at least a week or more until you have to play this again. And you’re gonna forget everything about how to do this mini game. Turn bout to be three weeks I believe, didn’t I? It was such a nightmare. But anyway, well, we’ll get there in due time.

Chris 5:06
So we we open the stage for our heroes headed down to the docks to send off the new president, Rufus. And that’s where we begin. Yes, running down the streets.

Haney 5:16
I think it was like a barracks where we left off saving and we run out into the street and find basically that we have limited free rein over a certain area of junan hardware. So there’s a couple of streets between us and where Rufus is going to be taking off from and there’s a bunch of side alleys and side doors, so we decided to spend some time exploring. Pick Do you want weapons? Hell yeah. hard edge. I’m buying it. Oh, God. Yeah, it is. Holy shit. Grand glove. Shit. I’m gonna have to sell some stuff. Let’s sell the Buster Sword. peacemakers knew right? I just haven’t met up a beret lately. The basement of this place is like a speakeasy so there’s a bartender at a bar and sit at a table is rude seemingly gambling with a bunch of strangers. Enough of that dumb stuff let’s uh let’s go downstairs and see what the fuck is going on the secret speakeasy Oh, this is cool place is that rude and a bunch of Turks like gambling huh?

Chris 6:19
You do then take your mask off and come here that’s our rule.

Haney 6:22
No, we’re social distancing rude. I can’t get ah seems like you’re all too young to be in here sorry it’s all rented out today huh? This is weird. Something’s going on here. Something’s funky like gambling of some sort. I don’t know if it’s supposed to just be like a fun little aside or if there’s definitely something I’m missing out on their

Chris 6:43
world building man there’s so

Haney 6:45
much in this game. I’m assuming that this is part of some sort of mini game side quests kind of thing but I couldn’t figure out how to trigger it so this is just something that’s kind of curious at this point hopefully it gets revisited from there we moved on to the next door down that we could

Chris 7:04
we found some ghosts holy shit I forgot about the guests Yeah,

Haney 7:07
you see the ghosts of all of the people that were giving you the tutorials from sector seven because they obviously were crushed to death in the plane accident. It was an accident Don’t worry about it. I said why the fuck is happening? I thought fuck is happening in here wow this is a respectable in guests only you should absorb all the wisdom until it is a part of you.

Chris 7:36
So do you remember way back in the beginning of the game in Sector seven. Where you went to the like Newby Hall Yeah, and they’re like hey teach us something clubs like I’ll wrap with you for a little Yeah

Haney 7:49
Okay Mr. Know it all ex soldier let me revenge I mean review of God.

Chris 7:55
These were the people in that Hall. Why? But they all died because of the plate.

Haney 8:01
Why does this exist?

Chris 8:05
What have you done?

Haney 8:06
I don’t want that. I’m literally stuck. Yeah, I

Chris 8:10
know. It’s a tutorial.

Haney 8:11
Oh, this is awful. How long are we doing this more? Because I don’t want to play this game anymore.

Chris 8:15
Don’t you want to know how to save? You’re gonna get very far if you don’t know how to save Chris. Kraft. You did this. I don’t know what you want. world building

Haney 8:30
I don’t like this place. I talked to one of the guests and he’s like, Hey, Mr. X soldier. No at all. Your tutorial was so complex. I couldn’t be I couldn’t return to the planet and now they’re like stuck as ghosts. We also met the soldier whose uniform you’ve stolen. That was fun. Hey, how could they do that? Nobody won’t be up. Look at SAS guy from nerd out. Oh, what does that look like last year from now? I can’t find the uniform. I left. Still with kids uniform.

Chris 8:59
Everything comes full circle.

Haney 9:01
Cheese. Do you think this is what they call hazy? Oh no, Amanda is pretty bleak. Oh, that’s Parkhead. I’m not giving it back.

Chris 9:13
We found some a 1/35 soldier.

Haney 9:16
So what I think is happening is that there’s a shrunken human. I think he’s screaming. We

Chris 9:23
received 1/35

Haney 9:23
soldier is that like a little like what? 35th scale, but a lot of fucking items in this place. This is great. I’m not going to the parade. The road of becoming soldier first class is very difficult. Oh, he’s studying What a good boy. Good boy. I hope he does. Well. kiddies. Oh, that’s what’s making the noise. The cute. So we may

Chris 9:47
let me do that again. So we move through the streets headed to the doc

Haney 9:50
there’s a lot of dogs. Chris said. Wow.

Chris 9:52
I did.

Haney 9:53
Can you give me one more? Wow, there it is.

Chris 9:55
Nope. Where the hell are we now.

Haney 9:59
We’re in some back alleys Chris. What the elevator is out of order for an inspection you know right under this is a submarine dock in the underwater Mikko reactor. I’m sure it’s fine. Oh don’t worry about it. Wow the dogs and cats in this town. Like, where there wasn’t any like in the rest of the game so far speak the devil and another dog. What do you think? Like do you think they just like we’re like yeah, we’ll add some flavor.

Chris 10:22
So we got to the docks

Haney 10:24
and got to the docks and kind of jumped right into the minigame. I love the way Heidegger walks. I have him rides and I walk the same way. I know what he’s struggling with. Okay. Oh no.

Chris 10:38
Here we go. This is the mini game you learned a week ago.

Haney 10:42
Shit. I’m so fucked.

Chris 10:45
Cloud turned around. Presidents mood zero

Haney 10:52
I’m not doing so hot buddy. What is that? 13 pp that me in the background shaking his head

Chris 10:59
he’s very disappointed in you. What a mess that was. What do you think Rufus

Haney 11:04
I’m about to be executed on I whistles going off and I’m like trying to like turn and like about face and like salute and all this other shit. I’m just pressing the wrong buttons all over the place. I’m our mapping is so fucked on the ps4 controller that we have hooked up to steam that the controls haven’t really ever been the same every single game. And we have to use the joy icon instead of the D pad. So things like turning and moving are actually extremely difficult. Yeah, so didn’t do super hot. Rufus was really uninspired. He told us that we needed to do better and that there would definitely be budget cuts because of this performance. One thing that was fun about this though, is that red 13 is kind of hiding behind a barrel the entire time kind of just shaking his head at you’ve Bumble fucking your way through this.

Chris 11:53
Yep. So after that abysmal performance,

Haney 11:56
that’s all my wife calls.

Chris 11:59
So after that happens, everyone’s dismissed, but nobody leaves. Yeah, Heidegger and Rufus start talking back and forth between each other. Yeah.

Haney 12:09
Is this when Rufus kind of gives Heidegger the dressing down. Once the word gets out that separate austere cloud and his friends Will show up to Will crush them as soon as we find them. We can’t have them get in our way. Believe it to me it’s our identify on a deep personal level with Heidegger.

Chris 12:26
I thought I told you to stop that stupid laugh.

Haney 12:30
After everyone was finally dismissed, read Thirteen’s like hey, like you got to get on you’re the last one like get on, which kind of triggers you to realizing that the rest of your team, they’re already on this ship. So you follow route 13 on to a ship. And we get a little animation of a ship leaving john harbor and we find out that we’re sailing across the sea to the new continent. I believe they call it Am I going for a ride? I wasn’t ready to leave. I don’t like that they give us a little bit of a horizon line. Because that makes it look like the earth is round and we all know it’s flat.

Chris 13:08
I mean, this is a video game that’s

Haney 13:09
just not reality. Yeah. There’s so many items I’m liking how many items have been removed.

Chris 13:15
Those are good goods.

Haney 13:16
That’s a good good item.

Chris 13:18
They’re all material Yeah,

Haney 13:19
I’m gonna want that. Chris give us a little a little refresher on what happens on on the boat.

Chris 13:24
So there’s a bunch of sailors Seaman run about the place. And Clyde walks around talking to people you got to find your party members on the boat. Get to work. Both new president Rufus and Heidegger are on board the ship if we do good we could get promoted.

Haney 13:41
Judging by our performance on the dock. I don’t think any of us are getting promoted. I might be getting fired.

Chris 13:46
Club drops out of avalanche Joyce Shinra gets promoted becomes mid level manager becomes soldier first class again, hired to hunt down cloud and gang

Haney 13:57
actually being credible. Hey, what’s your story? Hey, what’s wrong, kid? You got no bet Siemens got to have home.

Chris 14:04
I’m tired. You got to keep reading everything.

Haney 14:07
Sorry. I was just flabbergasted by the fact that a man just sold me semen to drink. What? Excuse me? I

Chris 14:14
mean, what happened?

Haney 14:15
I mean, a seaman just sent me something to drink. Because I need to tell you about the nipple Haim accident.

Chris 14:22
It’s the niflheim incident now.

Haney 14:24
Oh, man. We’re almost to Costa del Sol. When I get there. I’m going to take a long overdue vacation. Maybe I’ll go down to the beach and get a tan. Just pretty cool. didn’t know there was other continents either.

Chris 14:34
Heck yeah, man, and it’s a new continent. And it spoiled that for you. Did I? You did not.

Haney 14:40
I’m doing it. Haters Will say it’s fake.

Chris 14:43
We did take this episode three times.

Haney 14:47
You start talking to people and then you hit one chin regard. And they go It’s me, Arif, and you’re like,

Chris 14:56
Master disguise.

Haney 14:57
Yeah. So Eric tells you that the rest of our lives on board also disguised and you’re just kind of all stowing away from the spine and seeing what’s happening and like just kind of following you know, the Shinra. So yeah, we discovered that one of the seamen is aerith and that the rest of your your crew is on board as well. So we go up to the deck, I think the next person we talked to you is a very awkward looking walking guide, turns out to be read 13 walking on hind legs and his tail poking out of his guard zoo. dot dot dot. It’s me, it’s me. But I shouldn’t get caught. Humans only look at appearances anyway, and have a look at a funny human being.

Chris 15:43
It might be

Haney 15:54
hard to read 13 you’d go up into the crow’s nest and find out that Tifa is their dresses the guard as well. I bet this is Barrett.

Chris 16:02
With that. You see how big Barrett is? sure everything’s quite sure. But you know what, I really hate this uniform. Sweet Tifa uniform soldiers for I hate them all. To take away all the things and people you love to wish they’d all disappear. Right cloud. Yeah, you’re right. Yes, sir. I’ll continue my watch, sir.

Haney 16:24
I like it when Tifa calls me sir.

Chris 16:25
Everyone in this is such a good character. And I’ve been ignoring what you said.

Haney 16:31
I watched 50 Shades of Grey last night you

Chris 16:33
can’t stop.

Haney 16:35
And at this point, I think I got stuck. Because I was like, I can’t get to the next point. I need to go to you because there’s guards in the way. And I was like, Everything’s ruined. And Chris had to be like, yeah, it gets just talked to everyone again. So we end up going back around the entire ship talking to everyone, just to discover that I needed to get Arif to say, Have you seen Barrett hope he’s not doing anything stupid. Right? There’s a safe point here. So I should be able to do something like you’d expect.

Chris 17:01
Thanks. So,

Haney 17:02
so maybe I can go up here.

Chris 17:04
So this part of the game is actually in real time. You have to stay on the ship for half an hour, actually. Yeah. Oh, boy. No, that’d be dumb. Oh,

Haney 17:14
dude, this game is so bizarre and some of the mechanics that literally one surprise me

Chris 17:18
that’s fair. You did give CPR for like 10 straight. God that was so awful.

Haney 17:23
Yeah, we’re almost vacation. I would like to go around you so I can fucking get over to whatever that arrow is. But that’s not happening. And apparently today,

Chris 17:31
you haven’t talked and ruin the ship more than once. Hey, hey, what’s wrong kid you got no I’m tired.

Haney 17:42
I just got the perfect thing. Invisible alpha super drink of semen for

Chris 17:46
semen. Just the one on semen. You rejuvenate.

Haney 17:50
Oh, it’s 50 semen. Hey, semen. Just that wasn’t

Chris 18:00
mean. Hey, get

Haney 18:01
to work.

Chris 18:02
I want to promotion. What is your job?

Haney 18:05
I have no idea. I would like to know. Do you have a job to give me a beret? Oh boy.

Chris 18:12
I hope he’s not doing anything stupid. That doesn’t sound like Barrett.

Unknown Speaker 18:15
Oh boy. We haven’t seen Barrett yet. It doesn’t sound like it’s fine.

Chris 18:18
I’m sure it’s good.

Haney 18:20
I can’t believe we buried it. How much pain Are you on right now? I have a grand old time. And we go back up and go to the bow of the ship and find out that that Guard has moved so we can kind of see the what Barrett’s been up to and we find Barrett in a adorable sailor suit, with his face pressed up against the glass of the like cockpit of the ship the sorry, cockpits not the right term.

Chris 18:47
Give it to me the bridge. Alright. I’ll take it.

Haney 18:51
There’s like a glass that surrounds the bridge and Barrett has faced like kind of pressed up against it spying on Heidegger and Rufus having a conversation. Oh my god.

Chris 19:01
Who’s that handsome gentle?

Haney 19:03
Is that fair enough fuckin sailor suit. Look cloud it’s Rufus and Heidegger did this close but we can’t do a thing to him How can he going off laughing like that because of him bigs wedge Jesse take it anymore

Chris 19:20
I’m gonna Limit Break I’m gonna several things here and now reports of a stowaway found those not on detail search the ship report one found

Haney 19:30
damned and they find us I don’t think it’s us they find tiefen the others gap your spiky button let’s go cloud I like spiky but banks are chatting with you and an alarm goes off and it’s like there’s still a ways and bear it’s like ah shit, they found us wait, no, they didn’t find us then they find the others and you kind of just run out into the center of the deck of the ship to reunite with all of your party members and you see run up including red team on all fours now but still wearing the guard uniform which I find Hilarious.

Chris 20:01
I don’t know if I like his outfit or berets, more hard toss up. They’re both good.

Haney 20:06
They’re both really good. But yeah, we find out that no one on the ship is looking for us, which means that the stowaway must be Sephiroth don’t don’t turn. Yeah, yeah. So we, at this point can choose a party. This is the next of many instances we’ve had of shit who I want to have in the party. I think we ended up settling for this round on Barrett and aerith. As our backup for cloud you’ve spent a little time re equipping re metiria in just making sure everyone has all their stuff, finding out that I did not buy the right things that I thought I did. And I’m also like very low on yell now and not even on the same continent as the stuff I wanted to buy. So I can only ever have three in my party.

Chris 20:49
Yeah.

Haney 20:50
Yeah, that’s hard. I have bear and aerith some level uptime because they’re both lower. I thought that Peacemaker was the gun I had. Is that not for him? Fuck, I don’t have a better weapon for Barrett then. Oh, son of a bitch. Shit. I wish I could compare this to the peacemaker I just picked up a I guess I can’t right now I can’t because I don’t have bear so if I go to the items I get this is the thing.

Chris 21:17
Yeah. The fun thing about the cannonball is it’s

Haney 21:22
hey, yeah, he’s gonna have

Chris 21:25
Joker bowler.

Haney 21:25
Oh, let me get him. Did I not buy the fucking myth?

Chris 21:31
I think you bought tifus gloves. We’re off to a good start.

Haney 21:38
I’m so upset.

Chris 21:39
This is fine.

Haney 21:40
I’m gonna grab a drink. Before I finish. I need to think about what I’ve done. So we got our party amped up and ready to go. And we run downstairs we kind of see some Carnage along the way just like some bodies and some like people who are like dead or dying. We run into the area that was previously off limits from a guard that guard is now dead on the floor. And we run into the ship’s hold it looks like and we see a guard with his back turned to us and I don’t remember who says I think it’s like cloud or aerith but one of them says like sepher off question mark and then the guard like stumbles and falls dead and someone else’s like definitely not separate off then. It saffer off. Nope, not suffer up.

Chris 22:26
After a long sleep. The time has come.

Haney 22:31
Look cloud. Oh shit. It is Sephora.

Chris 22:34
Sephora. Your life.

Haney 22:36
Who are you?

Chris 22:37
You don’t remember me? I’m cloud.

Haney 22:40
Cloud.

Chris 22:41
Sephora. What are you thinking? What are you doing?

Haney 22:44
The time is now

Chris 22:47
what what are you saying?

Haney 22:51
Well, I didn’t like any of that. Also, what the fuck is that thing?

Chris 22:55
If you mouse over you can see its name Genova birth,

Haney 22:59
fucking suffer up rises up from the floor. Straight up. I was honestly not expecting it to be a sapper off. At this point. I was like asking me some like side effect thing. But now Sephora just rises up on the floor like a little spooky, scary skeleton ghost man and talks to you a little bit. He’s like, Yeah, he like throws you out. And a little piece sounds like decent. What’s up? Yeah. He just kind of looks at you and says, Who are you? I think the cloud and clouds like, Don’t you remember me? I’m cloud and so for us? Like cloud? Like who? Okay, sure. Basically, Safra could fucking care less who you are, and ends up flying at you and kind of passes through you or into you as it was weird and then flies up towards the camera and like off screen, and then you’re in a bossfight and you just have a whore in front of you.

Chris 23:47
I’d like to take a hard stop here. Just to kind of go over this very strange encounter with Sephora off so the fuck?

Haney 23:55
It’s weird. It didn’t strike me as sefer off ask because he was like, he didn’t have the same like personality. It seemed like it was like more like spectral and ghostie like rising up from the floor and like flying around and shit. Like it was a little weird. I wasn’t expecting that. And it just it just didn’t seem like I don’t know it’s something felt off about it like and I don’t know if that like, if that’s just because like that’s who he is now, five years after the Neville Haim incident but just like we don’t really know what’s happened to him or what he’s done in the past five years but it was a weird encounter. It was very very weird and like no way he would just throw an arm at you and then be like yeah and then fly away No. Fly out like angels in the outfield that was my my my thoughts were is weird that he was ghostly and like spectral and just, we his dialogue seemed weird. I just don’t i don’t know how to feel about it yet. I’ll get there. I’ll have feelings. I’m sure. This bossfight though. Let’s talk about that. That monster was weird. So this was Genova birth was the name of this monster. And it was just like twisted flesh mass. It was like kind of like a central stock. I’d say it’s probably like three or four times the size of cloud like height wise, with like kind of a protruding face on it. It looks vaguely like Genova but not a lot, and then had like, kind of like appendages that weren’t really arms. They were like kind of technically ish. This obviously grotesque and like, human humanity gone very wrong, like, obviously twisted by like overexposure to Maiko or something. This fight the monster uses mostly like these laser attacks, and then also uses a cool ability called stop, which seemed like it prevented them from being able to execute their next move or to Genova birth aggressively use that against Eric, which is super cool when you have a healer really, really could have used some more heals at one point had to resort to using Barrett to heal himself.

Chris 25:55
Just picture bear a gotcha cloade just like you

Haney 26:00
did That’s awful. That thing is terrifying tale laser. You know how your mom has to tell laser?

Chris 26:08
waves Mother, you only describe what you’re seeing right now.

Haney 26:11
I can’t it’s a humanoid face on the blog. It looks like when a tattoo goes nuts at the end of Akira.

Chris 26:19
Alright yeah, yeah call back to Akira. Flesh being

Haney 26:24
w laser. I don’t like all these lasers seems pretty strong.

Chris 26:28
It’s a lot of lasers.

Haney 26:29
Oh, a lot of lasers. Hit me with your big shot. Hit me with your big shot

Chris 26:36
shot away. No, seriously fire

Haney 26:42
like actually you’re you’re all very flat. What a stop like that. Oh, that’s a really cool animation but what the fuck did I just do? Genova afterbirth level 25 Hp Oh we got a long way to go the fight I think overall went pretty well. Cloud did get down to 1525 I was at 25 Health at one point but luckily managed to aerith Limit Break off at the last second heal him up and heal the party up and finish pretty strong. I also did get to use the first non choco mug summon which was Shiva so I got to see diamond dust which was really fucking cool and yeah battle ends out just like a little chunk of the Genova afterbirth wiggling on the ship

Chris 27:31
that’s Genova birth.

Haney 27:33
Yep. I said what you said to Nova the arm of Genova Oh is it like exam Do we have to collect all the pieces?

Chris 27:41
You mean he’s been walking around with that thing?

Haney 27:44
So what Sephora were you kind of end up doing at that point is getting an alarm that you’re approaching Casa Del Sol and then time for like all the deckhands to make their way to the front of the ship. So you docking Casa Del Sol you’re able to exit the ship and Upon exiting, you see just like a kind of tropical coast. damn sure it’s hot here. But I sure feel better. You can say goodbye to this sailor suit. How do I hack the game so that fair? It has to wear the sailor suit the rest of the game? sure

Chris 28:14
there’s something in scheme.

Haney 28:16
Yeah, listen up. Y’all Be sure to mingle like regular folks here. Too bad. I like to parents sailor suit. He looks so cute. What do you mean q? What do you use that sailor suit for pajamas? Right cloud?

Chris 28:29
Looks like a bear wearing a marshmallow.

Haney 28:31
What? statement? The Hell’s that supposed to mean this happens to be the most comfortable so shut up. And we get to see Rufus and Heidegger have a really great exchange roof is basically just is like Heidegger. Sephora was on that ship and he’s like, yep, he’s like, and cloud and all of his friends. Yep. He sees me Yeah, yep. And Rufus is like Is that all you can do is just like give apologies and Walmart answers and excuses like what the fuck is wrong with you do better and Rufus kind of storms off into his helicopter and he’s just like, like what the fuck? Heidegger runs around the port just like pushing and like shoving anyone he can get his hands on people run away from him it’s very funny. We kind of just decided to start exploring because the Del Sol and I think this is probably the most disappointing town I’ve been to to this point yeah, yeah. Just not feeling it man.

Chris 29:26
You know feeling that vibe not feeling that beach

Haney 29:28
surf life attitude. Here you are because the full Tourist Information guide What do you want to know? Like how you can just tell them this is not going to be on the show me around. Wait a minute, I’m gonna look at my guidebook. It says cuz Del Sol is the gateway to the west and as a prominent world renowned resort, just been around for ages. Come on. I don’t care about that. If you want to get time go to the beach. There are lots of beautiful women. You wouldn’t happen to be dot dot dot are rich.

Chris 29:57
Oh yeah.

Haney 29:58
You’re kidding. You can’t tell just by looking Oh, Fuck you. But I’ll tell you just in case after relaxing at Costa del Sol stopped by the gold saucer, it’s a rich and exciting place to play at that we’re done with Walmart. We run down to the beach, where we are confronted with

Chris 30:14
probably the weirdest scene in the game so far

Haney 30:17
Hojo surrounded by women in bikinis sunbathing, quote, unquote, while wearing a full suit and lab coat.

Chris 30:26
Yeah, there is a moment we glossed over. Somebody said that. Heidegger was feeling stressed because Hojo has disappeared. Oh, right

Haney 30:33
where he gave his resignation gave us he left a resignation and then just like bailed.

Chris 30:38
Apparently he was going on vacation. Yep. Costa del Sol.

Haney 30:42
Why is Hojo here? Hey, who do you think you are? Professor Hojo. That scary man says he wants to talk with you. I’m busy right now. I Will always remember the Hojo voice. Not too bad. No, I remember you all now. Yes, yes, I remember now. It’s been a long time cloud. hasn’t really been that long. It’s been like two days. Sometimes you just got to do something like this. What are you doing? It should be obvious. I’m getting a tan. Is he wearing a full like suit though?

Chris 31:17
Answer me.

Haney 31:19
I believe we’re both after the same goal.

Chris 31:22
You mean Sephora. Did you

Haney 31:24
see him? Just stands up on his fucking beach share wearing a full lab coat?

Chris 31:28
What is it? Nothing. I

Haney 31:30
just remembered a certain hypothesis. Haven’t you ever had this feeling that something is calling you? Or that you had to visit someplace?

Chris 31:38
I’ll go anywhere that Sephora is that to beat him and put an end to all this?

Haney 31:42
I think this could be interesting. Were you in soldier? Would you like to be my guinea pig? I think the first question we both had in you with your experience of playing this game was why the fuck did no one tried to like kill him immediately. Literally the last time you saw him, he had aerith in a cage and was going to breed her. You’re the fuck he should be dead. Hojo calls here the ancient he’s like you’re the ancient right. And she’s like, my name is Arif. And like, the least you can do is respect me and give me my personhood back. You asshole. Yeah, um, Hojo talks a little bit about what was I was so distracted by the conversation that like didn’t sink in.

Chris 32:22
There’s a lot happening here. But he does have a very interesting exchange with cloud. And he kind of asks cloud for some reason like Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being like drawn

Haney 32:34
right? Like you’re being like, told to go somewhere? Like, my thought was Yeah, it’s a video game doc.

Chris 32:39
Do you remember what cloud said?

Haney 32:41
No, I don’t you he said

Chris 32:42
basically, I’m hunting Sephiroth wherever he goes. Yeah, follow him to put a stop to this. Yeah. Eric also asks him a couple things she’s like the the ancients Genova suffer off. Do we all have the same blood? Oh, yeah.

Haney 32:56
And he asked about her mother. And she’s like, Oh, you didn’t know she died? And he’s like, yeah.

Chris 33:03
give a shit. Yeah.

Haney 33:04
This is like, Yeah. Hey, I don’t like whoa, no, no, I’m not.

Chris 33:09
He’s no good.

Haney 33:09
Not a big fan. Whoa, bad. Yeah, whoa, whoa, bad, bad. Not good. So for some reason, we let Hojo live and and not only live but go back to sunning himself. He starts mumbling. Yeah, and we kind of get our direction to go west past mount Carl. So we kind of have our marching orders. So we’ll be heading there. Pretty soon. But before we do, we decided to finish looking around the coast of Costa del Sol. Route 13 doesn’t happen in the shade. Oh god. Can you even imagine how bad for 13 must smell how crusty? Just a wet dog? That’s interesting. That’s not as if I’m doing this because I want to see let’s tell him my most quite independently of my Well, this is wagging his tail and happy and sunbathing.

Chris 33:54
What a nightmare to have an appendage that just moves on its own free Will.

Haney 34:03
Is this the young puppy class? Oh, yeah. mukhisa young monkey. Like this town. You can walk around here naked and no one looked twice.

Chris 34:12
The bodies. Were just gonna stay here, right? Yeah,

Haney 34:15
this is where we live now. Really, not much of interest happened except hard stuff. Except for my heart being ripped from my chest and stamped out in front of me. When I find Tifa laughing hysterically at the jokes of one. Gianni bardell soul. Photo talk. upper right. I remember that too. What the hell’s going on in here? Clap Would you mind leaving us alone for the day? We haven’t seen each other for ages. And sometimes it’s fun to talk about old times for a change. The fuck is this?

Chris 34:54
joke? Yeah, don’t get mad or anything.

Haney 34:59
I’m already mad. I’ll try not to be back too late, so please don’t worry about us worry. I don’t like that.

Chris 35:06
I don’t care for this development.

Haney 35:10
I’m just livid right now. Sorry. I Will kill Johnny. I hope you know that if I need to. I Will kill Johnny. I walk in to the inn. And Johnny and Tifa are just laughing together and Tifa says cloud Would you mind just leaving us alone the rest of the day Johnny and I catching up just fucking yucking it up just having a giggle and

Chris 35:35
also there’s a woman in the shower

Haney 35:38
was that place it said bar on the outside but inside there’s no bar. No other people there’s a woman showering and then like two beds with Tifa and Gianni talking a lot of questions a lot of questions. Really, really don’t like this

Chris 35:52
when you find them just having a ball Tifa says sometimes it’s good to kind of reminisce

Haney 35:59
Yeah, there’s more to Johnny I just need to know more about john old Jonathan Who is this john character is Jonathan and I think at that point, we really decided to save it and pack it in probably not the most thrilling episode of first encounter but I really enjoyed I think the the gentleman’s eyebrows chunk that is probably the most major thing to happen in the game. There’s also some pretty big revelations in terms of like oh like we’re gonna start running into Sephiroth now this is gonna be a problem and also like how many times is he gonna drop chunks of Genova and we’re gonna have to fight like some monster that like grows out of whatever piece of Genova he throws at us.

Chris 36:40
Yeah. anything left to Would you like to plug anything, Kenny? I’d like to plug our Twitter account. first encounter first with a one st encounter. Is that our Twitter?

Haney 36:53
I think that at one st.

Chris 36:55
One St. encounter, yeah, hit us up. That’s me running that. I’m not doing too much with it. But I’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of first encounter,

Haney 37:05
and we’ll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the first encounter podcast If you enjoyed the episode, please go leave us an apple review. They make a huge difference and we would really appreciate it. Additionally, you can find all of our past episodes and how to connect with us on first encounter. podcast.com. Please come say hi. Next time on first encounter, we’ll be picking up right after we get asked politely yet firmly to leave the golden saucer. We’ll see you then.