Okay, Penis decides that Lloyd is heading home to craft the spectacular necklace, and asks if he can accompany him part of the way. As you may recall, Lloyd lives outside the village, so there’s actually somewhat of a trek involved. Lloyd manages to pick up on the weird way Penis didn’t name a specific destination, so he asks his underage companion where he’s off to. “I’m going to see a friend,” Penis announces. This whole friend thing is news to Lloyd, but Penis gets so defensive over it, my first thought is “dirty pedo shenanigans.” Seriously, he’s meeting a secret friend in the woods? I can’t think of any other possible explanation. Lloyd doesn’t have as fine-tuned a perv-dar as I do, so he just lets the whole thing slide with no further questions.

I’m surprised anyone in this game has any friends at all.

The two of them head over to Penis’s house for supplies, but are hijacked along the way by a skit. Well, it’s the first skit I’ve had to deal with in three and a half years, so I guess I can’t complain. The title of this one is “Sole Redeeming Feature” and I’m strangely relieved that it’s not about shoes. Lloyd, contrary to his one or two lines of mild protest back at Suelette’s house, is actually seething over Kratos’s refusal to let him join the traveling party. Penis surmises that Lloyd’s pissed off because Kratos didn’t feel his swordfighting skills were up to par. “I guess I’d feel bad too if someone put down the only redeeming quality I had,” Penis snots. And then he giggles when Lloyd gets mad. If this exchange happened between Phoenix and Edgeworth, there would be some angry courtroom buttsex afterward. Here, I’m sure Penis was just trying to give his buddy a bad time. I’m not ruling out the “trying to engage in angry buttsex” option, though.

Inside Penis’s house, no angry buttsex ensues, but there’s an awful lot of dialogue involving sandwiches. Eventually, I find out about the cooking feature, which allows me to — wait for it — cook stuff if I have the right ingredients. Basically, if the monsters drop lettuce and cold cuts and such, I can heal myself with a sandwich at the end of battle. After that whole spiel from Penis, I have the option for an official detailed explanation from whichever Text God explains shit in this game. Whatever, the last time I played through this game, I cooked even less than I do in real life, and I subsist on ramen.

How awesome would most games be if we could ditch the healer and just pig out on snacks?

As soon as Penis is done stuffing sandwiches in his sack, it’s finally time to head out of the village. This time, they take the south exit, which has a guarded gate. I use the term “guarded” loosely, because the colander-wearing pitchfork wielders are the extent of the protection in this town. The commotion from earlier has, unsurprisingly, been completely forgotten, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems afoot. How long is it going to take me to get out of this fucking village anyway? Does every other step need to trigger a cutscene? I didn’t realize I was playing Xenosaga, here. The guards are having a problem with something they refer to as Lloyd’s pet. As it turns out, they’re not referring to Penis, but instead a strange creature standing just outside the gate.

The creature resembles a dog more than anything, but it’s fairly obvious the thing isn’t really a dog, in the same way it’s fairly obvious that Nall isn’t really a cat (SPOILER). It has the body shape of a large dog, but the large wing-like ears and green markings set it apart from your typical Labrador Retriever. Thankfully for our eardrums, the thing doesn’t talk. Lloyd refers to his furry friend — again, I wish I hadn’t typed that — as Noishe. The ‘e’ is silent — think of how a hypello would pronounce the word “noise.” I don’t know Noishe’s gender, so I’ll refer to it as a ‘he.’ As Noishe stands there and whines, Lloyd chews him out for entering the village. Even though he’s still technically outside the village. “Hey, you always have him bring you to the village! Don’t talk to him that way!” Penis screeches. Noishe seems unfazed by all the yelling, kind of like my rabbits. I think they like it when I get pissed off.

We haven’t had any awkward segues for a minute or so, which means that one of the guards has to butt in with a question that is apparently from Mayor Hitler: “It’s about the northwest forest that you go through. You know there’s a human ranch on the way through, right? You haven’t been playing near the ranch, have you?” Yes, that’s the actual question. Now, we haven’t yet had the pleasure of encountering a human ranch, although we’ve heard of their existence. Because of the name, and the implication that Lloyd and Penis would be playing near it, I can’t help but associate it with My Pokemon Ranch. I’m imagining a bunch of humans frolicking about a fenced in field, unwrapping festive presents to reveal things like oversized cannons and pitfalls. I’m sure the Desians, wearing flannel shirts and neckerchiefs, find themselves engaged in all sorts of crazy hijinks with those mischievous humans. Who wouldn’t want to stop by and check that out?

Lloyd denies that he’s ever visited My Human Ranch. Penis denies it too, but his suspicious ellipses indicate that he’s not being at all truthful. No one can resist the fun-filled paradise of My Human Ranch! The inept villager guards and Lloyd don’t bat an eye at Penis’s fibbing. They’re all too concerned about Noishe and whether or not he’s a dog and whether or not he’s out of the village. No one ever says exactly what will happen if Noishe ever enters the village, so I can’t tell if everyone’s just weirded out by him or if there’s some more specific fear involved. I’ll leave it up to you.

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Penis, now conspicuously nervous, decides they need to get going. I wonder where he’s planning to stop along the way — it hasn’t been telegraphed quite enough yet. You might think that Lloyd and Penis are actually going to leave the village at this point, but that’s not how this game works. After yet another extraneous exchange with the guards, Lloyd has to wonder why Noishe was trying to get into the village anyway. This is quite the dilemma — I don’t know why anyone, human or beast, would want to enter this craphole. Noishe is much better off staying far away from these backwater hicks. Penis is sure that Noishe was just looking for Lloyd because he missed him or some shit. If that’s true, I’m even angrier at the pointlessness of this conversation. If it’s not, then I guess I’ll just have to stay tuned for the undoubtedly awesome plot point they’re foreshadowing.

Now I finally have control of Lloyd again, and I wish there was a way to walk him over the edge of a cliff. Two seconds after entering the world map, the party ends up at Iselia Forest, just to the west. And it’s time for another cutscene. Jesus Christ on a bouncy ball, I think I’m actually looking forward to fighting some random battles. Next to a rock wall, with no trees in sight, Noishe starts to whine again. Lloyd and Genis share some awkward exposition about how Noishe hates the forest because he’s a total chickenshit who’s afraid of monsters. Despite my previous comments about random battles, I can’t really blame Noishe for wanting to avoid that whole experience. Suddenly, Noishe makes like a tree and gets out of there like he has the resident furry literally on his tail. Lloyd seems more pissed off than concerned about his pet, which makes him kind of a douche. “I keep thinking, if he’s going to run away, he should at least take us with him,” Penis comments. What does that even mean?

Cutest random battle monster ever.

With that completely essential scene out of the way, it’s time to run around the forest and fight things. It’s really not much of a forest — just a bunch of hills and rocky cliffs with some trees on either side of the wide path. The monsters, thankfully not black blobs, consist of your basic forest fare: giant poisonous spiders, wasps, mushrooms, bunny rabbits, and so on. These show up as walking flowers and foxlike mammals on the main screen, naturally. At a fork in the path, Penis stops in front of a strategically placed — I mean, random — save point. I notice that a skit option pops up just before this point, but before I can choose to experience the masterful dialogue within, I’m forced into another cutscene. This is like having a choice between doing it with Tidus or Rinoa.

The other cutest random battle monster ever.

Penis announces that he will be stopping here. “At [My Human Ranch]? Doesn’t going there violate the non-aggression treaty?” Lloyd exposits for our benefit, just in case we forgot in the last two minutes that visiting the ranch is a Bad Thing. But Penis rationalizes his actions by pointing out that the Desians already broke the treaty by attacking the temple. Even Lloyd isn’t dumb enough to buy this. It turns out that Penis has someone — possibly his special adult friend — who needs to hear all about the thrilling events surrounding the oracle. So by this point, we all know without a doubt that Penis has been visiting My Human Ranch on a regular basis. Still, Lloyd is suddenly worried about Penis’s safety and decides to go with him. I’m sure with Lloyd’s stealth and intelligence, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Someone who’s a worse cook than I am!

After the cutscene, the skit option is still on the screen. What a relief I didn’t miss out on it. This one is called “[Penis]’ Friend” which means that I’m in for a disturbing experience. “So who’s this friend that we’re gonna go see? Is it the one you’ve been giving your school lunch to?” Lloyd’s anime character portrait asks Penis’s anime character portrait. Penis is surprised that Lloyd is so perceptive. I don’t get this — if Lloyd knew that Penis has a special friend who’s been receiving multiple sack lunches, then why did Lloyd originally act like this is the first time he’s heard about this friend? It’s almost like the game designers didn’t think about this at all, but that can’t be true. Everything else in this game has been so carefully planned. In this scene, we find out that Penis’s special friend is female and she’s apparently starving. This makes the special friend thing seem slightly less sinister, unless she’s starving for some sweet statutory. When Lloyd makes a huge deal over Penis’s generosity, Penis blushes like a schoolgirl. Before he can confess his feelings to Lloyd, however, Lloyd reveals that he thinks the special friend is actually a dog. This makes even less sense after the last cutscene. Penis’s angry response that his friend is human, damn it, makes it clear that he’s having second thoughts about giving up his underage candy to Lloyd. I’m sure that will pass in a few moments.

So now we know that Penis’s friend is a human, that she’s starving, and she lives somewhere in the vicinity of — OR IN! — the ranch. Have we had enough foreshadowing yet? I hope so, because it’s time for our first view of My Human Ranch. Against a backdrop of some sinister porno music, the camera pans up a forbidding metallic gate to give us a clear view of what’s happening inside the walls. Contrary to my hopes, My Human Ranch is not a playful place where humans drop Desians on top of the barn or freeze them into blocks of ice for fun. Instead, humans wearing beige rags push a bunch of large blocks around while armored Desians with whips supervise them. I can tell that moving the blocks is hard work because of the animated sweat drops next to the humans’ heads. When one human doesn’t push the block fast enough, she gets whipped by a Desian who calls her “swine.” I don’t think they could have come up with a more cliched portrayal of a prison camp if they tried.

It’s obvious that the human ranch has more in common with a concentration camp than with My Pokemon Ranch, but since Hitler is one of the Miis that oversees my own Pokemon ranch, the comparison has come full circle, so I’m not changing the name. Also, I realize that no cliched prison camp would be complete without some kind of backbreaking labor, but what the hell is with those giant blocks? Are the Desians building a pyramid? I’d say this calls for a poll.

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The camera cuts to Lloyd standing in front of the oversized gate, right in the center of the wide, clear path that leads to this forbidden area. He runs around for a full three seconds before triggering another cutscene. Once again, we’re inside My Human Ranch, this time at ground level for a different view of the terrible conditions within. The game designers are not going for subtlety here, and clearly we are supposed to be horrified at what the Desians are doing to these poor, enslaved humans. But I don’t know — every time I read the internet, or go out in public, or drive, I encounter so many shitty examples of humanity that I can’t help but imagine these sack-clad prisoners are some of the very people who have made my life a living hell. The woman who posts her graphic birth photos on Facebook, the douchebag who cuts me off in traffic and then goes 10 mph under the speed limit, the guy living in his parents’ basement who thinks it’s fun to bitch at me for lack of site updates — these people are all pushing giant blocks in My Human Ranch. It’s kind of difficult to summon up any sympathy when I use my imagination this way. It’s kind of therapeutic, though.