Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

I appologize if this topic has been asked, and I appolgize doubly being a newbie.... But I was playing the PS1 edition of FFVI and noticed that after I gained all 14 characters, there are still two slots left. Now coffee and bacon to whoever creates the best theory to who/what takes the extra slots. But it leaves me to believe there were different editions of FFVI in it's beta version.


For example, when you gain the 14 characters... there is a specific order. Terra, Locke, Cyan, Shadow, Edgar, Sabin, Celes, Strago, Relm, Setzer, Mog, Gau, Umaro, and Gogo.

It's presumable, that Terra is the lead being the 'star' of the game.... or as close as you get to a star; and Gogo is last with little to no plot relivency. Following that train of thought, one could conclude the plot relavency of the characters durring it's programing.

I'm not surprised Cyan is third on the list, despite being one of the most hated characters due to his SwdTech, he has more dialog then other characters.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

For example, take him to Vector's banquet, or the coin flip event on the Blackjack.

Addtionally I believe the last 4 characters on the list were added tword the end of programing, or at least plot writing. Mog has excellent skills, but has little plot relivence and doesn't appear in several group cut scenes. Gau and the Veldet appear to have been stuffed into the Cyan/Sabin chapter, and his lack of any cut scenes beyond his father and the "Mr. Thou" rant. Umaro and Gogo appear to be only ports of the Berserker and Mimic from FFV. It's not a large leap considering most classes are ports, such as Ninja, Dragoon, Knight etc... and considering many graphics were ported from FFV such as the dragon sprites.

I have also had thoughts of the Figero under fire scene in the begining of the game. Figero is best known for being a underground transport above else. I'm convinced it was origionally supposed to be an event latter in the game. Then the plot writers decides to move Figero to the begining and add constricting towers to appeal to new players and boost sales.



Back to the 2 character slots, I am some what convinced General Leo was not intended to be one of the 2 slot characters. This is due in most to his Shock command. It does massive damage, and can be easily alternated with Attack with little to no punishment/reward for alternating, (IE, doesn't cost MP, doesn't attack poorly, doesn't put status on the casted, doesn't attack randomly(?), doesn't invoke berserk etc...) If General Leo was intended to be a PC then his skills would easily rock over characters like Cyan, Gau, and possibly Umaro. It may have been his death was not origionally intended but his skill, which might have origionally been thought of as a good one, was too powerful for general use and the writers decided to kill him off.

What're your thoughts?

Using a Game Enhancing Device™ you can put Leo and Kefka in the remaining slots, for what it's worth. It doesn't necessarily mean that they would've been playable, of course, but they do have battle characters that are used during the game.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the shop screens only have exactly enough space for your fourteen-character group.

I never knew about Kefka and Leo being playable fighters using some sort of GED. What attacks/magic are available to them?

--------------------

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

I'm also interested in this, do they have any restraints on Equipment/Relics?

Quote (Tiddles @ 10th December 2004 10:50)

Using a Game Enhancing Device™ you can put Leo and Kefka in the remaining slots, for what it's worth. It doesn't necessarily mean that they would've been playable, of course, but they do have battle characters that are used during the game.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the shop screens only have exactly enough space for your fourteen-character group.

Did you read anything Tiddles said? You can't buy anything for them, therefore they weren't playable. Besides, have you noticed you can't edit Leo's stuff when you control him?

I was assuming that what he ment was they are not ment as PC's durring the normal course of the game, but that their battle stats are dormant in the game's programing. If I am wrong I do appolgize for my nieveness.

Leo is in there because he's used that one time in Thamasa. Kefka is there because of those cut-scene battles where you see him fighting espers etc.

If you activate Leo, he's just like Leo from Thamasa. Kefka crashes the game when his turn comes up because he has no commands (unless you use more codes to give him some) and has Terra's portrait, presumably as a fallback because he was never meant to appear in the menu. Predictably, neither have any dialogue, and they both act like special characters whose equipment can't be changed, IIRC.

Hey, y'know that dead end in the cave to figaro? I'm sure there was an alpha version of the game where something was planned because it'd make absolutely no sense otherwise! :D

(Sorry, I just had to.)

The window used to select your characters is as wide as the screen for esthetic reasons. A sprite is 16x24. That this arrangement leaves 2 free spaces at the end of the list is a coincidence, plain and simple, and not some evil ploy by the government to revive Aeris. :)

The "additional" characters, Gau and Mog, both have a number of cutscenes throughout the WoB and are included in the event scripts as special cases because they may or may not be in the party at the time (you can leap Gau off at the Veldt and Mog is plainly optional). Gau even has his own cutscene (which technically cannot be accessed without a GED) if he's in your party when you take the ship to Thamasa. He has as much involvement in the game than Relm, frankly.

Characters have an order because programs do not run with abstract concepts. You can't say "there's a character." You have to say something like "character 1 is... character 2 is..." It bears no relevance; in fact, Kefka has 7 slots in the character lists, each of which are used for the different battle events he appears in. And his internal ID is quite further down the list than, say, Umaro's. However, well, let's just say his involvement in the game should logically put him quite a bit ahead of everyone. ;)

A quick look at the event script reveals that completely moving an event from further in the game to the beginning when it has a solid impact on the storyline would be ridiculously difficult. Game planning does not occure like that, anyhow: you don't throw events at random and string them together to form a storyline. :) And the event bit set when you meet Edgar, $1E00 bit 3, required to activate the "castle burns" scene, is the 4th bit in the "storyline" bits the game uses to keep track of the plot. Would Square decide on a whim to shift roughly 512 event flags ahead by one, edit every event script to reflect the changes, and spend a few weeks debugging slight overlooks here and there, just to have something orderly? Hmm... no, not really. :P

Leo and Banon both have VERY hastily coded skills. They're just commands that call Cure 2 with the targetting flag set to target the party and Megashock (forgot the exact name..), respectively. Even Gogo has a series of variables used to store the attack type and ID everywhere in the code, and Umaro even has his own little section that checks his equipped relics and jumps to the appropriate code. But Leo and Banon? Not even a custom spell animation...

My thoughts, with all due respect, are that you're looking a little too hard into this. ;) Take up ROM hacking and see the guts of the game for yourself. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there (such as the dummied out "Summon" command and a number of unused character stats slots filled with dummied out names; no associated characters though) but frankly, very little to even come close to supporting that FF3e was designed with a "change as we go along" plot. ;)

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Hm.... I'm a newbie, too, so don't feel bad, but I also think you're thinking waaaaay too much. Sure, Leo's got the awesome Shock attack and all, but he was just a plot character to help Terra understand herself, which would smoothly lead to the event in Mobliz in the WoR. If Leo hadn't tried to explain to her then, she wouldn't have stayed in Mobliz to try to understand what she was feeling, I think. (Woah, maybe I'm thinking too much to?!)

--------------------

The ninja alights on a rocky outcropping on Mount Koltz, surveying his territory. Satisfied he gets up, and starts his walk home expecting a signal from the desert of Figaro, but...

"Sabin Rene Figaro! Get your head out of the clouds and come home for dinner!! And get rid of that ninja outfit!"

Hmm... Very interesting. Thank-you very much for the lesson in gaming programing. I was under the impression event codes could be slided using a simple script that re-calculated the event order. I also hadn't considered Gau's Leap.

I think I may look into rom hacking... It would be interesting to see what can and can't be changed and how it all effects eachother.

Quote (Silverlance @ 10th December 2004 16:34)

such as the dummied out "Summon" command

That wasn't dummied out, it was never intended to be used in the command menu. You use it whenever you use an Esper from the Magic menu in combat. The commands are switched between the menu and the actual attack to put the attack name in the name box before the actual strike (if you used Magic instead, you would get the Esper's name up there, like in the early versions of the Test patch).

--------------------

The Unoriginal White Sheet

-Master ZED

Quote (Master ZED @ 10th December 2004 20:16)

Quote (Silverlance @ 10th December 2004 16:34)

such as the dummied out "Summon" command

That wasn't dummied out, it was never intended to be used in the command menu. You use it whenever you use an Esper from the Magic menu in combat. The commands are switched between the menu and the actual attack to put the attack name in the name box before the actual strike (if you used Magic instead, you would get the Esper's name up there, like in the early versions of the Test patch).

Well, that settles that then.

My point about the dummied out stat entries stands though; there's some unusual stuff to be found poking about, but nothing really exceptional (except maybe the Gau scene, but technically that's not "removed" as such. It's just a logically impossible situation since you can't go back to the Veldt to get him... IIRC, that is.)

Other weird stuff includes dummied out level up bonuses for espers (Level +50%? I have to try that one someday out of curiousity), dummied out event items (though IIRC Imzo was playing around with event bits so maybe he'll figure out something about them), and the dummied out scene where you can revive Aeris if you hook up your PSX memory card to your SNES in South Figaro. No hidden espers, dungeons, equipment, commands (unless you count summon), or any major things of the sort.

Well, except for the dummied out dungeon where a rather buggy Ghestal can be found, but that's old news by now, I gather, and even newbie ROM hackers have stopped toying with that. No point in beating a dead horse. :/

--------------------

"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."