The game designers were nice enough to let me save right in the middle of a conversation between Tightass and Rikku. So now, the conversation continues.
Rikku suggests that Tightass should go to someplace called Luca, since he plays blitzball. He might find someone there who recognizes him. I think if I were one of those people, I would pretend that I didn’t recognize him. Rikku walks around pointlessly for about 30 seconds, and then promises Tightass that she’ll get him to Luca. She also warns him that he shouldn’t talk about being from Zanarkand because “Yevon says it’s a holy place. You might upset someone.” Okay, who the fuck is Yevon?
I have lost all faith in humanity.
After the screen goes black, we get to wait 15 seconds for some Wankese. “My Zanarkand, some kind of holy place? Yeah right, I thought. Since when?” Since Tightass disappeared from there, maybe? I know I would consider anyplace without Tightass a holy land. “Yevon? Sin? Luca? I thought Sin just took me to a faraway place, that I could go back in a day or two. But a thousand years into the future?” So basically, he’s reiterating over all of the stuff we just learned not five minutes ago. In Wankese. Hooray. “No way!” Tightass screams, and kicks something. The ship starts to shake, and we get a lovely close-up of Tightass’s crotch while his leg is in the air. I think I could have lived the rest of my life quite happily without ever seeing that.
The camera pans away from the ship quickly and a geyser of water sprays up from the ocean. Boss music starts playing as a bunch of Al Bhed guys run onto the deck, shouting and falling. The big fountaining water thing approaches the ship, and the Al Bhed dudes start screaming about Sin. I like to think that they’re commanding Sin to eat Tightass. Sure, it would be a short game if that happened, but I could handle that. There’s some crazy camera stuff, and Tightass gets washed overboard. If you haven’t figured out by now that the theme of FFX is “water”, then you’re pretty stupid.
Rikku just stares at Tightass as he gets sucked into a giant whirlpool. Unfortunately, as you’ll recall, Tightass can hold his breath for a long time. I don’t understand how he can do this while unconscious, but he can. The screen goes black.
My faith in humanity has returned.
Fade in on Tightass floating in a pretty blue-green ocean. He looks dead. Don’t get your hopes up – he isn’t. He wakes up, makes some wanky noises, and stands up, screaming for Rikku. She’s not there. Just then, the best thing happens. Tightass gets hit in the head with a blitzball. There’s a big “THWACK!” sound, too! Tightass screams like a little girl. Then he looks up at the shore to see some guys in identical yellow outfits standing around. One of them, a guy with gravity-defying red hair, asks if he’s okay. I would just be laughing at Tightass. The music gets all happy, and Tightass decides to be “cool” and do some physically impossible blitzball move. He jumps high in the air, flips over, and kicks the blitzball toward the guys on shore before diving back into the water.
He’s stoned off his ass.
In FMV mode, the blitzball whizzes past red-headed wacky hair guy, does about a 45 degree turn, and flies over the hill, curving to the left as it goes. Whatever. Red-headed wacky hair guy is all impressed. “Whoa-ho!” he says in a totally pot-smoking manner. He looks baked, too. Well, you’d have to be smoking something to be impressed by Tightass.
Back in normal gameplay mode, I get to make Tightass swim to shore. I make a detour and get an item that is totally pointless at this time. Yay for strategy guides. Although RHWHG was staring at Tightass not 30 seconds before, as soon as Tightass arrives at the beach, RHWHG is deep in conversation with two non-yellow-outfit-wearing guys. They run away, up the path, as soon as Tightass approaches. I would, too. The yellow-outfit-wearing guys crowd around Tightass like he’s Jesus or something. “Yo. Hiya,” Tightass says, bending down so he’s staring right at RHWHG’s crotch. “You wanna try that move one more time?” asks RHWHG in a Jamaican-sounding accent. The voice actor is trying to match up his words with the mouth movements of the character, so it comes out with these hugely noticeable and idiotic-sounding pauses.
Even in a strange land, there should be something to help him with his constipation.
Tightass makes this really wanky “Yes!” motion and looks all constipated. “Finally, things were starting to look up,” he says in Wankese. Cut to Tightass showing off the same move, this time on land, where it’s even less believable. RHWHG is, once again, impressed, and doesn’t seem to mind that Tightass kicked the ball out into the ocean where it will probably never be seen again. “You’re no amateur. Who you play for?” he asks. “The Zanarkand Abes,” Tightass boasts. Suddenly the music stops and all the yellow-outfitted guys start muttering to each other in a fashion reminiscent of when the script called for “surprised muttering” or something of that sort in a high school play. Oops, it must be that whole “Yevon holy place” deal. Way to go, Tightass, forgetting the one thing someone told you not to do.
RHWHG asks Tightass to repeat himself. Tightass backpedals and says, “I got too, uh…close to Sin and my head’s all foggy-like.” Sure, he tries to use an excuse, but we all know the truth: he’s just a wanker. He pathetically says that he doesn’t know where he is, and RHWHG replies that he’s been affected by Sin’s toxin, but at least he’s still alive. Then he and all the other guys do the same hand gesture/bowing thing that those kids did at the beginning of the game. “Praise be to Yevon,” RHWHG says in this total brainwashed cult way. Yevon must be their God or something. Although I don’t know why they’re praising Yevon for saving Tightass. That doesn’t sound like something worth praising.
RHWHG tells everyone to get back to practice and introduces himself as Wakka, the coach and captain of the Besaid Aurochs. Tightass doesn’t introduce himself, because no one really cares who he is. He does make a really whiny sound, which prompts Wakka to ask him if he’s hungry. Wakka starts running up the path and tells Tightass to follow him to the village. Tightass opts instead to talk to the other blitzball guys to get some items. They all talk about pretty much the same things – the Aurochs are a shitty team, but Cap’n Wakka is so cool, he doesn’t even need to take a halftime breath. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took a halftime hit from his blitzbong.
“I felt like I could trust this Wakka, so I just had to ask,” Tightass wanks. He then asks if Zanarkand was really destroyed a thousand years ago. Whereas it would be funny if everyone in the world were in on some big conspiracy to fool Tightass into thinking his home was destroyed, that’s not the case. According to Exposition!Wakka, long ago, there were a lot of big cities in Spira with machines (or “machina”, as they are referred to for the rest of the game because it sounds cooler or something) and one day, Sin came and destroyed them all. There are ruins all over the island to prove this point. “People played all day and let the machina do the work,” says Wakka. Sin’s the punishment for their, well, sins. Although it’s important to repent for their sins, Wakka is a bit pissed off that they have to atone for what people did long ago. He doesn’t seem to see any problem with sitting around and playing with his blitzballs all day, or smoking weed, though. So he’s a religious hypocrite. Never met one of those before.
Wakka’s backup of Rikku’s story makes Tightass realize that it’s true, as he tells us in Wankese. Wakka starts laughing suddenly. He thinks it’s funny that Tightass said he was from the Zanarkand Abes. He grabs Tightass in a headlock. Yeah, if some random guy I just met grabbed me, I would be a bit creeped out. Wakka makes the comment that any team that ever played in Zanarkand would have to be pretty crappy because of, you know, that whole “machina doing all the work” thing. I just laugh because Tightass got dissed.
Tightass speaks in Wankese — again. “I appreciated the fact that Wakka was trying to cheer me up.” Yeah, I guess Tightass didn’t really catch the insult, but I’m not surprised. “But at that time, all I could think about was….everything that happened to me — all this — started with Sin.” Personally, I wouldn’t be thinking about what was happening to me, I’d probably be thinking about what had happened to my loved ones. But that’s Tightass for you. He walks back toward the ocean. Wakka walks up the path in the opposite direction. “Maybe if I could find Sin one more time, I could go home!” Or maybe he’ll just get eaten by Sin. Hey, I can always hope. The camera zooms in on Tightass. “For now, I’d just live life until that time came. No more worrying about where, or when, I was.” Can you add “No more wanky voiceovers” to that list? I guess not. He wanks on some more, and then thankfully, the camera fades out.
Wakka is about to find out whether the nickname ‘Tightass’ is appropriate.
Tightass walks back up the path to Wakka, who doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed that Tightass took a big wanky detour. The path forks, but Wakka tells Tightass to take the path to the right. It leads to a ledge over a pretty lagoon. As Tightass bends over and makes some wanky sounds, Wakka sneakily backs up and pushes Tightass in the water….by smacking him in the ass. This Wakka sure is touchy-feely. Does pot do that to you? Wakka dives into the water, and Tightass whines, “What’s the big idea?” We never find out, because that’s where the cutscene ends.
Apparently Wakka and whoever else lives in that area never bothered to open the several treasure chests underwater, even though there’s no physical or moral reason why someone couldn’t at some time in the past. There are some random battles with little fishies, and we find out that Wakka a) can also fight underwater, and b) uses his blitzball as a weapon. I would laugh at the idea of a ball as a weapon, but I’ve been hit in the face by a soccer ball, and it fucking hurts.
Um, yeah.
At the end of the lagoon, there’s a cutscene. As Tightass is swimming, Wakka starts giggling and grabs Tightass from behind, putting his arm around his neck. It’s just as dirty as it sounds. Tightass struggles and shrieks, “Lemme go!”, but Wakka has a favor to ask him. Ew. See, this is why you shouldn’t necessarily trust someone you just met. “You want me on your team, right?” Tightass asks in an arrogant manner. Um, some guy grabs you from behind, gyrates up against you, and asks you for a favor. Of course he wants you to “play for his team”. Oh, he meant his blitzball team.
Wakka finally lets go of Tightass, who turns over on his back in the water. Um…okay. Wakka starts blathering about a big blitzball tournament that’s coming up, and that Tightass might find someone there who knows him and he can meet up with his old team. Hm, I wonder if this blitzball tournament just happens to be at that Luca place Rikku was talking about. But that would mean repeated information, and that never happens in video games. Tightass looks all depressed, because, as we all know, he’s not going to meet up with his old team since they ALL DIED IN SIN’S ATTACK A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. He agrees to help Wakka out. Wakka doesn’t notice – or doesn’t care — that Tightass is about to cry and instead is all excited. “Dude! Our team is gonna rock, eh?” Tightass and Wakka continue swimming.