G&C Podcast - Episode 162: In Defense Of Final Fantasy VIII! (ft. Rick Firestone of Pixel Project Radio)

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, on this episode of Gaming and Collecting, I am joined by Rick Firestone

[00:00:04] of Pixel Project Radio for us to discuss Final Fantasy VIII.

[00:00:09] Quite possibly one of the most polarizing Final Fantasy games ever made.

[00:00:12] But does it truly deserve that hate?

[00:00:15] Let's find out. reasons but um she just got a new one and tomorrow's her last at the time of this recording because this is probably gonna be up away after she's already started at the time of this recording though she's her final days tomorrow and she's going to New York for the weekend so good for her yeah that's awesome good job Alex yeah and a longtime viewers might remember Rick he was previously on

[00:01:43] our studio Ghibli episode and the wonderful controller debate episode that with, yay, I haven't had time to play games. Like, Persona 3 Reload just came out, and I've seen from all your posts and everyone else's posts that it looks really good and I really wanna play it, but I just don't have time. I have always said that Persona 3 has been my favorite of the series. It wasn't my first one, and I did not play it

[00:03:00] whenever it was contemporary.

[00:03:01] I played it in 2020 for the first time, actually.

[00:03:04] Blew me away.

[00:03:05] But I was really missing is the FEMC, but putting in, my understanding is that that changed pretty much every social link and a lot of dialogue,

[00:04:22] and putting that in would have delayed this significantly

[00:04:25] because it would have taken a lot more work.

[00:05:23] off for a couple of days and it won't affect you in the long run.

[00:05:24] In three, I felt like if you missed one thing,

[00:05:26] your playthrough was screwed and you had to start over.

[00:05:30] So I'm not super in depth with that yet,

[00:05:33] but I mean, it's largely the same to be honest.

[00:05:36] I mean, social links can still get reversed.

[00:05:38] So that's something to look out for.

[00:05:41] Certain social links will not appear

[00:05:43] until you have other social links at the appropriate levels.

[00:06:45] of two remake are true. At the very least, I mean, just re-release a definitive port that has both of them, you know? It's still such a pain to figure out how to play both

[00:06:50] of those today if you are a citizen of one country because of how they just, yeah, that

[00:06:57] release was so bizarre.

[00:06:59] Yeah, we didn't get the first half initially, I've mostly just been catching up on manga and anime, because I've got to do that for the other shows now. Yeah, absolutely. I've been thinking about, I just realized that Grand... Gee, I can't say that. Grand Blue Fantasy, that is hard for me to say,

[00:08:24] is on YouTube, the season one of the anime,

[00:08:26] which I guess is just, you know, time. It's just never enough of it. It's literally, I just don't have the time or like I'd rather do a number of other things in that period of time I'll be watching.

[00:09:40] So I just kinda, it always gets pushed back.

[00:09:44] That's a big one too.

[00:09:45] It's like, it or you hate it. And I've been kind of in that minority that really I do think at a certain point, the quality gets significantly more inconsistent. I had by and large a great time with it. I think it's a really good game. Would I put it in my top three Final Fantasies?

[00:12:21] Personally, no.

[00:12:22] But that doesn't mean that it's not good.

[00:12:24] I mean, I just played 16 and it was significantly better than 16 in my opinion. He shit on 10-2 as well and like I love 10-2. Yeah I don't know, he wasn't doing so well for a while but yeah it's unfortunate because you know 8's a good game. Have you heard my story about how I ended up with 8?

[00:13:41] I don't think Roman numerals very well. And it was safe to say that that Christmas I got eight.

[00:15:02] And I've always wondered if it was more of my parents

[00:15:04] that was just the first one they saw and they grabbed

[00:15:06] or they actually read the Roman numeral. I have such a high tolerance for complicated battle systems and RPGs at this point because this was my first one and we'll get into it later but 8 has a very ahead of its time I guess you could say RPG system that takes quite a bit to figure out but once you figure it out it's pretty simple I'd say. Yeah like your magics around this is a very bad way of explaining it but basically you don't have XP. XP's not doesn't work the same way anymore now it's instead you have to junction magic to different attributes that you get through your

[00:17:43] guardian forces which are this game's forms of the summons and by doing by junctioning certain myself wondering if I would like the junction system more if the enemies didn't scale with you. I don't know, I'm not even sure that they're related to be honest. Do you have any thoughts about that? It would be really rewarding, for example, to go to an area where you know you are not

[00:19:00] going to be able to beat the monsters, but then junction in such a way that you can.

[00:19:05] I don't know, that's the draw system, it's not the junction system. And it ultimately, it comes down to, I mean, it is a bit tedious. You obviously, you don't have to just sit and draw, but the fact that the number of these magic spells that you have directly increases your stats,

[00:20:21] or rather is directly tied to how your stats increase,

[00:20:25] it is beneficial to nice kind of a return to form. Equipment is critically important in that game. That is what makes or breaks your stats and abilities. In VIII, you really only have,

[00:23:00] I mean, do you just have weapons?

[00:23:03] Is there armor, am I forgetting?

[00:24:01] I think it was squall. I had just the standard,

[00:24:03] just the standard gun blade through the whole game.

[00:24:06] So I was actually gonna get into that.

[00:24:08] I'm actually glad you jumped over to it.

[00:24:10] The weapon system,

[00:24:11] like the traditional weapon system in this game

[00:24:14] is probably my least favorite aspect of the combat.

[00:24:18] Like it's a cool idea and I like the whole

[00:24:22] kind of like an early crafting kind of mechanic.

[00:24:25] It just feels so unnecessary at times though.

[00:24:27] Like I'd rather just go to the store and buy, that I find to be quite true, is that in most RPGs, you know, when you buy new equipment, that is pushing your stat up several levels, right? It could raise your attack from the attack of a level five to a level seven or level eight. And I feel like that's almost absent from eight.

[00:25:40] It's the stat boosts from these weapons are so minuscule

[00:26:45] slots and then continually do over until I got full cure many many times. Yes it's like one of those things where it's kind of like oh cool limit breaks those are

[00:26:50] fun and it's like oh they only ever happen if you're not playing well and darn they're

[00:26:56] not very useful in the end.

[00:26:59] Yeah yeah I I some of them are are quite nice the original style that they went back to with 9, but that sort of inventiveness is really neat and they do that more going into like 10 and 12 and 13 especially too. It's very neat, it's much cooler than just Big Sword, like Cloud. Yeah, and Squales at least has this really fun design to it.

[00:28:22] I will say Cypher's Gunblade, not as. Yeah, like that's like a one thing that I found a little disappointing in this game is the summons themselves aren't particularly useful in a lot of ways. Like, a lot of times

[00:29:42] they have this really awesome like animation like all the more funny, I think. I agree because like honestly, like one of my favorite points is like during the opening tutorial segment, when you go and meet up with you face off against Efreet, Efreet like

[00:31:00] makes like all these like comments and comments about how you have a shiva in your party.

[00:31:04] And it's just it's like, I love that like little very exciting. And these days, they just put it into a cut scene. Yeah. Into your, you know, just spoon fed. But again, I don't mean to go off onto a tangent. But yeah, the GFs, I honestly didn't use them a whole lot. My main thing with them was just getting as much use out of their abilities that they can learn.

[00:32:21] Oh, I don't remember.

[00:32:23] Is it Siren that gets the card ability

[00:32:26] that lets you turn cards into magic? past it and never even get it or like you mentioned, Diablo's. Yes. Yeah, because Cerberus is legit just sitting on a table and you don't even have to interact with it. You can just walk past it and you're like, that's funny. That's like a weird, it's a Cerberus sitting on a table. That's cool. But you talk to it, it begins a battle

[00:33:40] and you base off with it to capture it.

[00:33:43] Well, capture it, I guess is the best way to put it.

[00:33:47] It's got some of the better abilities. One thing that we didn't mention is that each GF is going to affect your stats differently. So this isn't a concrete example, it's just I'm pulling this out of thin air, but GF1, let's say Efreet, might give you HP Junction to HP and Strength, whereas GF2, Siren, is

[00:35:03] going to Junction Magic and Speed. gets kind of forgotten because it's kind of a last minute thing is your menu. So eight's menus are a little intimidating at first, just cause there's a lot of different folders and stuff you can go through. One of the things you can change is like your onscreen, like options, you get five options, but you can only have four in your menu during battle.

[00:36:23] So one thing has to get dropped. because you never know when you're gonna get hit with a status effect that you might not have an Asuna for or something like that. True. Yeah, I like the fact that they let you pick it per party member, because this game uses the seven established three party members in battle at once mechanic, that nine would drop in favor of going back to four

[00:37:43] and then all games since have immediately gone back to three.

[00:37:47] It's really interesting drawing the parallels that a certain someone here might be working on right now. A certain someone is absolutely varied in editing. Highly recommend checking those out, though. Moving on. So combat-wise, we've kind of covered everything. So my last thoughts on the combat system

[00:39:01] before we move on.

[00:39:02] I see a lot of articles saying that if they

[00:39:05] were going to change anything from eight,

[00:39:07] they'd change the combat. to me like I feel like it could be tweaked a little bit, just with modern sensibilities. Sure. To me like the thing that this game I feel like is, could use the most work is probably either like you said, the localization or aspects of the story, I feel like could use some work,

[00:40:20] but we'll get into that I guess shortly,

[00:40:23] cause next I wanted to talk about the characters

[00:40:25] a little bit.

[00:41:24] into that position so often and functionally can't say no. He doesn't want this and we get to see all of this through internal dialogue of his.

[00:41:31] He is a really human character.

[00:41:34] I think some of the hate comes from him being quote, too emo, which I think is a bit reductive,

[00:41:41] but also it's a localization issue because his catch won't lie, I grew up I had some pretty bad social anxiety. Talking to people wasn't always the easiest. I kind of related to Squall because one of my favorite aspects of Squall's character is like, yeah, there's the dot dot dot whatever we it's been known. But there's also the, a lot of times his inner monologue will come through and like in the

[00:43:03] parentheses where he'll actually like kind of describe what he's actually thinking a little bit in 9. We didn't really see it from Cloud very much at all until like the later half of the game. Yeah exactly and I think that's really special I think that's one of the that's one of my favorite parts about the characters in this game to be quite honest with you. Yeah because that is a good point they're all so the main gimmick of this

[00:44:21] game is that it takes place in a some arguably probably the most modern Final Fantasy in for a minute there. yeah seed. she gets demoted to a regular just a average seed and there's a scene after like squall passes the seed exam where they kind of go off to this little like private area out in the battle ground kind of like training zone and they have this

[00:45:44] like heartfelt talk to talk well Quistis has this heartfelt talk to talk squall kind of on the cover in the form of its logo. I don't have my copy nearby. Do you, I can't quite see yours in the background. So. Oh, sure, yeah, okay. Yeah. It's pretty clear from the start that you know who the official pairing of this game is gonna be.

[00:47:00] And if you know anything about the dev history,

[00:47:02] like Uematsu is on record as saying

[00:47:04] like the theme around the game is love, right?

[00:47:06] That was his theme for the soundtrack. And in Japan, I believe she reflects this more, but the Japanese kind of culture, like differences between Japan and America. In America, when they translated her, she kind of came off as more of a spoiled brat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that. And I feel like that kind of turned a lot of people off to her like from the start,

[00:48:21] because she is, she gets better pretty quick,

[00:48:24] but her like first real appearance,

[00:48:25] she's a little annoying, I'm not gonna lie.

[00:48:28] That's interesting. naive, but I kind of liked it. So I don't hate her by any means, like she's actually one of my favorite characters in the game. I actually I think this is a bit more of a praise in a way. I think her development is some of the strongest in the game. Okay, in what way?

[00:49:40] Like she starts off like, like you said, time which is kind of cute. there's stuff like that like there's the point when like you actually go to infiltrate a galbadia and you meet up with her dad and her dad literally just sends her to her room. yeah which is all and of course she breaks out but it's like kind of stuff like that where it's like

[00:51:01] you realize she's like starting to like. Like this, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy 9, some of the best things you'll ever see on the PS1.

[00:52:22] But sometime after that, and not even just talking

[00:52:27] about the scene directly after where she just affection for Rinoa and then it just kind of grows but if you play it a certain way it comes off as completely out of the blue like it's it's so weird. I think the problem is this is drawing from Seven a little bit I think they really liked the whole relationship value system that Seven has but then they kind of realized real quick

[00:53:40] wait this entire plot is kind of based around is very um they're important but at the same time they're more to the background in a lot of cases like we've mentioned uh Quistis where she's she's important but she gets kind of forgotten in the we just love for no reason so we were talking about um selfie um I think uh her most significant plot points are obviously the um she's the head of like the garden committee and like they do the whole festivals and she's also

[00:56:23] the um she's a transfer student from the characters get randomized because I know during that that section there's like two separate party groups. And there's like a fake there's one of the squall being a jerk to Rinoa moments that actually can happen there were if Rinoa is in the other party. When they finally reunite. Rinoa is

[00:57:42] like, did you miss me? And you can either, again, I mean if it just had a little longer to bake in development

[00:59:00] we maybe could have got that.

[00:59:02] Because like kind of similar with Zell, like's diary there It's like it's like a little website that she made for the committee that you also just get to read her thoughts She'll summarize missions. She'll write diary entries things like that That's where a lot of the world building in this game comes in and it's entirely missable

[01:00:22] specifically a major plot point about

[01:01:41] The GF's and how it affects memory. on your seed rank. And it actually raises your, so this game does an interesting thing with money where you actually get paid like a military stipend every couple of hours of gameplay.

[01:01:45] Depending on your seed rank, of course, curiosity, you'd go through the other things in the terminal. They just don't give you an incentive to ever use it.

[01:03:02] And they also don't make it clear or maybe maybe they do party member we should talk about and that's Irvine or urban. Not sure. What are your thoughts on urban? I'm curious. I you know, I like the character archetype of the guy with such deep insecurities about what he's trained in,

[01:04:20] you know, like his, his quote unquote, profession, and he's

[01:04:24] just so insecure that it? Yeah, it's a weird choice, but probably like, you're like, okay, Irvine is like a main character, so we'll give that mechanic, it's just, I don't know. I don't like, there's a character in Xenogears that kind of does the same thing, same way, I'm just, I don't wanna worry about it. Plus he's not like, I don't know, he's not super great,

[01:05:44] is he, as a fighter? like do what he was going to do involving the sorceress and his gun, I'm sure you can put that together. That was really cool. That whole scene was really tense and I thought they, I mean they wrote Squall really realistically there. He's just like, dude, you don't have time to be nervous right now. You can worry about that later.

[01:07:01] Like right now you just need to do your job.

[01:07:03] And it was, I thought that was really effective. had all of your party members minus Rinoa at and he sees her as a mother figure because Irvine's one of the few characters that actually kept a journal and remembered things because of the GF's of the whole eroding memories thing but... Oh I'm my the wires are kind of connecting right now he knew in that

[01:08:21] moment who she was.

[01:08:23] Yes.

[01:08:24] Oh my god so is that where his hesitancy came from? nickname thing but squall and reno did not have nicknames because of reasons. Yeah yeah yeah yeah that that scene where it's revealed Irvine just kind of out of nowhere says yeah you guys know that's the case right and everybody is like what no what are you talking about and he's like this is literally the in-game explanation he was like yeah I

[01:09:44] just thought we weren't talking about it. their adventures and this happens periodically throughout the first half of the game. It's a, I mean, revealed is a strong word. It's heavily implied that this is in the recent past as well because you learn about this previous war with the Galbionan army against this city of Esthar, Esthar, right? Yes. And that is the first thing we've all known at the workplace that isn't particularly good at what he does But he is really good at being a people pleaser and talking to people so everybody likes him Yeah, so going through the Lagunas, Kyros Ward sections, they kind of follow this like

[01:12:22] Pretty, pretty self contained where a lot of people like, I'll be talking about Aidan, I'll mention it, and they'll

[01:13:40] be like, what? And I'll be like, yeah. It's really, really like outsiders very much and their way of kind of fitting in is they're monster hunters basically and you go on little monster hunting missions every now and then and I love the I love these scenes because like Lagoon is like all like super serious about like he's like all right we did our mission ma'am and he's talking to

[01:15:00] Rain's adopted daughter alone who might look a little familiar if you've been paying attention While we're on the subject of Laguna, we find out where Laguna went. We do later find out what happens with the pianist Julia. We learn, and this is actually super cool, we learned that she, Julia in game wrote Eyes on Me, which is a track in the game, like I believe it's during that scene with the third scene with Laguna where like I think Kyros mentions that oh did you hear Julia got married or something like that yeah yeah yeah and um I guess going back now to the main plot

[01:17:40] so

[01:17:43] the whole game is kinda confusing at the start cause like

[01:17:47] you're constantly switching back and forth scene of disc one, because it ends famously with Squall getting impaled with a nice shard, and it kind of just literally just cuts to black there, and it's like, insert disc two. It's like holy shit, what happened? Does it still, so you played the remastered version, does it just immediately go to the

[01:19:00] next scene on the remastered version?

[01:19:03] Uh, yeah, after like a little blackade it like who knows it's like no no no no no no do not do that that's like there's a lot of fan theories about eight that is like that one's funny but it's not it's not a good one like that's not my desired ending it doesn't even look like it's through

[01:20:22] the heart like it's pretty clearly in the shoulder military. Yeah and eventually there's like a scene where the lower ranked of the two I forget which one it is is talking and the higher ranked one is just like just get out of here man like go have a family like do something meaningful this sucks and they just go AWOL basically.

[01:21:41] Yeah not the most entertaining pigs and wedge in the series but they're one of them.

[01:21:46] I like their little like charming like banter whenever they pop up.

[01:22:41] It's like, how? And it's like, yeah, we just kind of showed up.

[01:22:42] And it's like, alrighty then.

[01:22:44] Yeah, they took the Laguna route

[01:22:46] of just kind of failing forward

[01:22:47] and just seeing what happened.

[01:22:50] See, that's like one of the things I like about it

[01:22:52] is its story has problems,

[01:22:54] but there is a lot of really charming moments throughout it

[01:22:56] that like make it stand out in a way.

[01:23:00] Oh, most definitely.

[01:23:01] Yeah, yeah.

[01:23:02] I don't think, I really don't think the missteps

[01:23:04] in the writing take away from the story as a whole.

[01:24:05] like suddenly there's like a power struggle going on between headmaster Sid who I like to affectionately refer to as Robin Williams Sid.

[01:24:10] Yeah.

[01:24:13] You'll understand if you see him.

[01:24:15] And then there's this benefactor for the garden known as Norg who we've yet to hear from.

[01:24:22] We have not heard of at all throughout the game, but suddenly he's just important. to and they're kind of controlling him because they work directly for Norg. Norg was the benefactor of the garden. He put up the money to have this built and now the civil war is like do you side with Norg the true garden ruler or do you side with Cid and I'm blanking on the specifics because there is a reason they got sent, Squall's that whole subplot of how that species turns into the little Moombas. Yes. I love that little village. I love the conclusion of that scene, though, because like, the whole time this is going on the whole the missile still heading towards Balaam. And the reason why that the way they get away is rather than evacuating the garden, Sid's

[01:27:04] like, Wait, we have a contingency plan for this. explore around like in basically the workers at Fisherman's Horizon are going to convert the garden so that you can properly control it. But you have to kind of like hang out and do some story beats while we're here. And then following that is the Battle of the Gardens, which is

[01:28:24] probably the most important scene in this entire game.

[01:29:41] I don't remember if this is the like a realism wrinkle that I'm not

[01:29:44] clued into. I thought that was really interesting, because squall steps in, and he's like,

[01:30:45] He's not really a main he's not the main villain. He's just kind of an annoyance throughout the game in a lot of ways.

[01:30:48] Yeah, he's squalls rival. They kind of get into their trainings together go too far and

[01:30:55] they end up hurting each other.

[01:30:58] cipher is really strongly egotistical.

[01:31:02] It's one of those things and and because he like you just cut Odin in half. Okay, and then he goes immediately back to being pathetic right after Yeah, yeah, he's a he's an interesting character, I'm not I'm not certain whether or not I like him I Feel like he if they did more with him He'd be more interesting cuz like he literally will show up at random times. He's basically a bully like that's really his main character

[01:33:24] his hype man. Yeah, and Fuji. Meanwhile, we'll just say rage

[01:33:26] in all caps. In the Japanese version. It's really interesting. Fuji and only speaks in kanji. So if you're

[01:33:30] familiar with Chinese, Chinese is only kanji. Japanese uses

[01:33:35] three writing systems of hiragana, katakana and kanji.

[01:33:40] And most sentences are going to use all of those. hiragana is

[01:33:44] used for like, designating subjects and predicates and like speaking rhymes or riddles or something. Yeah. Or just not speak at all. Yeah. Yeah. Something like Zorn and Thorn where it's just like Yoda speak and rhyming. Oh God. I mean, at least I'll give them credit. They're still both more interesting than Cypher is. Yeah, honestly.

[01:35:00] Cause I mean, they actually,

[01:35:02] they have some character growth at a certain point.

[01:35:04] They kind of realized like, yeah,

[01:35:06] we can't keep following Cypher.

[01:35:07] He's making a lot of bad decisions. to, what is it? It's that scene with him and Rinoa. He transfers, oh, he transfers the consciousness into Rinoa, right? Yes, I believe that's part of it because Rinoa previously to the events of the game was quote unquote dating Cypher at one point. And for some reason, she still trusts him there. And

[01:36:22] that's basically how he gets a hold of her like right after. And depending on the options, because you get you pick them in different order, and depending on the options the way you pick, they'll either be like, hey, that was a great speech.

[01:37:41] You'll be like, yeah, that was kind of lame, dude.

[01:37:44] Yeah, you could either get scolded by Shu or the nurse, I think her coma starts after that scene with her and Cypher when he's being manipulated by Ultimecia. I don't think that's quite right here though because directly after this scene there's this really phenomenal scene where the background is like full FMV. Oh right

[01:39:03] that's the running scene. And encounters in the battle go right.

[01:40:20] I think so.

[01:40:23] It's been a while since I've played this part. sorceress from the past that is able to time travel and has taken over Edea because her grand plan is time compression. Yes. Which, what was her goal with time compression? I'm a little fuzzy, was it just stopping everything? Yeah, I believe so.

[01:41:40] It was like really arbitrary like that.

[01:41:42] I'm a little fuzzy on that, but essentially,

[01:42:43] sorceress and... Yeah, and we know that, we've been told that,

[01:42:45] but we've assumed it's Edea, but it's not.

[01:42:48] No, it was...

[01:42:51] Was it Altimicia or was it the other sorceress?

[01:42:54] Or was it just sorceress in general?

[01:42:56] It was the one before Altimicia

[01:42:59] that we encounter later in space.

[01:43:02] Oh, Adele.

[01:43:04] Adele, yes.

[01:43:05] Yeah, because Adele got a little too powerful, some people can have like so they have like the i guess like they can be sorceresses they don't have the outward like magical abilities yet i i don't remember i i think that's the implication because um when renoah gets um adia's power it's implied that she can only she is

[01:44:21] technically a sorceress herself but she just doesn't have active powers so when adia gives her where he knows in like a coma and he suddenly like his only goal is to protect for Noah. And he's legit walking across the country with her on his back to bringing her to safety and it's it's such a bizarre like scene because it's like his personality has just gone like 180 at this point. And it would be believable if once she was revived. He stayed that way. But as soon as

[01:45:45] she comes like he's saying all these really tender things to her. Like he basically has for some reason I thought it was it was more fancy yeah Esther they they come across Esther and it's legit this like barren desert and they just tap on this invisible wall and a door just appears and that's how they get into Esther and it is like when I first got

[01:47:01] there in the game I was like what reminded of every now and then and then once you get here You figure it out Yes, because there's um, so once for Noah gets um basically once they bring Rinoa to Esther they um, they want to send her essentially into

[01:48:26] They basically want to freeze her essentially in stasis know how I feel about it. I thought it was a sweet scene. They kind of forget about it after but... Yeah, but upon landing that's when like, she's just a permanent and she's like, they're like, yeah, you have the sorceress with you, Rinoa. And that's that's how you're told like as the player. And it's never it's not treated as like an aha moment.

[01:49:41] It's just like, yeah, that's just how it is.

[01:49:44] And it's until until Zell. And you're like, that's weird. Until you find out who the president is later. Yes, the president is very eccentric and bumbling and very reminiscent of another character

[01:51:03] that we've already met.

[01:51:04] But I didn't put this together at the time.

[01:51:08] I didn't gonna say like, you kind of have to like aim for, she's like this little speck in the background that's slowly getting closer to the camera. And you have to kind of aim and reach out and grab her before she flies away. And if you miss her- Yeah, you have to just keep her in the center of your screen, basically.

[01:52:21] Yeah, but if you miss her, a text box pops up

[01:52:24] and it just says, Renoa was lost in space forever.

[01:52:28] Yeah. in the world at this point basically. After you save Rinoa though in space, it's like, yeah, you saved her, but we're both still floating in space. They happen to come across this random spaceship that's just there. Literally it is just a random spaceship that happens to be there and they're somehow able

[01:53:42] to grab onto it.

[01:53:44] Yeah, it's implied through dialogue boxes. Yeah I was following a guide at this point so I I just did that. My first playthrough I spent a good hour just killing aliens and just raising my level up not knowing and I was like oh I had that realization. Yeah you can just do it. The whole reason I always like to do it though is because it's the one time you get to hear the chocobo theme. Oh, right, right, right. Which is like the really hard rockin one reason. Yeah, I did not do that. Because I think I think you need a chocobo to get the fat chocobo

[01:56:20] summon, right?

[01:56:21] Yes, that's there's, that's like the one reason you do it. It's just kind of like it's so

[01:56:26] out of your way. And it's like five months after that. That's terrible. Because when I was a kid I didn't know about making multiple saves to avoid that but yeah

[01:57:40] that happened but I guess getting down to it now like certain like I know they like they split up your party at multiple points and to me the most annoying thing is that the final boss like just randomizes your party. Yeah, yeah, that sucks. Like that was like, you just kind of have to deal with it. I love that final boss theme though. Oh, yeah, there's you'd be hard pressed to find a bad track in this game.

[01:59:05] I know I know everybody says this is the best OST.