A Tale of Two Scripts: Let's play FF3 US & FF6 RPGOne!

That's something I find interesting about games with "Prayer" commands. I mean, who are they praying to? (With such infallible response, too.) I don't remember whether the FF6Adv translation included that little tidbit, but the legend engraved on the statues in FF3US implied that there were "others" amused at the Three Goddesses' little war, and of the same origin and nature. If that's true, then I wouldn't have much faith (ha) on the purpose and benevolence of FF6's divinities!

Aerith.

Don't I wish I knew. That character has more name issues than anyone else in this game, and that's saying something when you consider Cefca/Kefka. His "official" name is Mash, his translated name is Sabin, and his logical name is Matthew, while one of the game's creators apparently said his name should be Matias. I'm sticking with the last one just because it fits into the 6-letter name limit.

his name is sabin. end of story.

But do you say "Sab-in" or "Sa-been"? I always said Sab-in, but Maz kept calling him Sabeen (long E).

I'd stick with Mathis.

Ha, and his secret middle name is Rene, right?

He'll always be Macho for me.

or "say-bin" I forgot to add.

It's this one.

From now on, he's going to be Chris Sabin.

say bin.

That's why it's Say-Bin. Wikipedia agrees:

クリス・セイビンのリングネームは、大好きなファイナルファンタジーVIに登場するキャラ「セイビン・レネ ・フィガロ（日本ではマッシュ・レネ・フィガロ）」から取っている。これからも分かるように、大のゲーム好 きである。

God-er, Kefkadammit, there's so many Final Fantasy LPs going on right now it's hard to keep track of 'em all. Guess I've got this to watch, too.

i'm with nich. I'd really love to see side by side comparisons, and methodology analysis. Localization and translation is super interesting, and having sky render here to explain why he chose this or that phrasing is a remarkable opportunity that i'd love to see explored.

Don't you guys know anything? That won't happen until the 2nd or third LP of this game!

I've already made quite a bit of commentary on my translation decisions, albeit most of it not in the LP itself thus far. Rest assured, there will be more to come, as well. The most interesting translation decisions I made haven't even had the chance to come up yet, so there's plenty yet to come.

If we're making requests, I would like to see more economical use of space. I really think you guys could cut the number of screenshots you have at least in half.

- Eddie

p.s. I would also request one of you do a low level game because it is the best way to play the game, but I'm unsure if that's really in the cards. I was going to do one with Alixsar when it was his baby, but you know. I've already got a handful of an LP to deal with.

I can't remember the last time I stopped to level up in FF6 anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem. I often end up at the big revelation point with sub-20 levels.

And yeah, the screenshot count was definitely overkill for both of us this time. I'll be fixing that next time on my end; can't speak for Lucas.

NEVER.

In a somewhat more serious tone, I'm trying to, how should I put this... help maintain the thread of the game for any readers who have never actually played before. I will try to cut down on incidental shots - like transcribing dialogue where it's just two people staring at each other and resisting the urge to post ever single hidden item in South Figaro.

I'm enjoying your mea culpas about the translation you did. So much has already been done about this game's mechanics and themes, so this is a fresh look at it for me.

Yeah. I don't get what the point is of the normal run without comparison shots here. It seems like it would be more interesting if the focus was on making fun of the retranslation comparison/contrast, which the current format doesn't really provide.

Doing the comparison format could be accomplished by using a tabular format (I don't really know what vbulletin allows there).

EDIT: Meaning, both people play from X to Y, both write their posts, compare what they want to say and put it in two table columns.

When we last left off, our brave heroes were standing at the opening to Figaro Cave after sinking Figaro Castle.

Edgar: Through the cave, and eastward to South Figaro. Return to the castle, and tell the others we’re safe.
Soldier: Yes, Sir! Take care!

And off he zips.

Figaro Cave is not very exciting. Here’s the high point of the “dungeon,” literally on screen as soon as you enter:

That’s two recovery springs so far! Anyway, Figaro Cave does not last long. Partly it’s short just because it’s mostly a nowhere location between plot points and partly it’s because you now have Edgar and his autocrossbow, who takes out most enemy groups with one shot, like so:


Terra happened to level up after that fight, hitting level six and teaching her Antdot, letting her cure poison for the cost of a few MP. Speaking of levels, your characters don’t have much endurance here, so don’t even pick up the treasure – you’ll be back and the chests here will change over time into stronger items, so hunting for the chests here at this point is a waste of HP both now and later.

If you want Locke to be useful in this dungeon, your best bet is to have him steal from an enemy in each group before Edgar massacres them. The most he’ll get is a tonic, but that can still be useful at this level. Terra’s best use is just whacking things with her sword (if you give Mog’s mithril spear to Edgar, he can pass on his nice-for-this-level sword to Terra) if you notice any monsters are too tough for one shot of the autocrossbow, and using Cure outside of battle if you need to.

Leaving the cave, it’s easy to find South Figaro. However, if you head north of town there’s a small house with an easily missed scene you can only get before the next dungeon.


The king’s twin brother has been living in the foothills a few miles out of the one city in the Kingdom of Figaro this whole time!? Hrm... three beds and three chairs. I wonder who could have been living here with him. (It’s worth noting that, if you want, you can slip into one of these beds and get some free healing.)


Hey, this old man wasn’t here when we walked up to the house!

Edgar holds up his most recent photo of his brother [actually, he flashes his finger-wagging sprite for a second, but the idea’s there]: You know this guy?
MAN: Of course. He left a couple of days ago after he heard Master Duncan was slain. He headed into the mountains. I heard Duncan’s son, Vargas, is missing as well. I have a bad feeling about this...

And then he walks off. Now we know Sabin was living here with his kung-fu master and the master’s son when the master was killed, and both students disappeared. I have to agree with MAN here, this is ominous. There’s nothing else we can do here though, so we head back south to where the story wanted us.

Here we are in South Figaro, Jewel of the Figaro Coast and-

Is that a ninja!? We follow him! He must be going somewhere exciting! ...That being the Cut Jewel Inn and Tavern, it seems.


Locke: At the very least you could give me a response...
Edgar: Stand back! He seems vaguely familiar... Wait a minute...!

Edgar: That’s Shadow...! He’d slit his mama’s throat for a nickel!
Locke: Better steer clear of him, I guess.

Good plan. But maybe his puppy is friendly, at least?

Guess not.

Let’s go check out some other places in town. There’s not a whole lot to do in town at this point, but the big house up north, which we’re told belongs to the richest man in town, does have a few tidbits.

Rich man’s precocious daughter: Uh, I, uh, just made that up!

So, the man’s daughter claims he recently dined with a top-ranking warrior of the same Empire that just tried to burn down our castle. Let’s see what the man himself has to say about this.

Rich man: Hey! Whaddaya think you’re doin’? Barging in here while I’m trying to write a letter! Harumph! Oh, uh, sorry... Even a millionaire can be... startled.

That’s it, where’s our “royal prerogative to execute traitors to the kingdom” button? Oh well, at the very least now I don’t feel guilty at all about searching and ransacking this guy’s house. I find the passage to his basement and check it out.


First is this tiny, suspiciously prison cell-like room. Next to that is another cell, that one with a save point, and then this:

We ransack the room for all we can get, which is a few thousand GP (already grabbed from the chests when I took this screenshot) – at this point 3000G is a small fortune, so we go shopping. The weapons and armor stores provide the incremental bonuses you’d expect; on top of that, thanks to ganking Mog’s mithril equipment we only have to buy about half as much equipment to max out as we otherwise would. The real gem in this town is the Cut Jewel Inn pictured above.

That jewel sign actually represents a relic shop (here, at least; other towns with different tile sets use a sign with a pair of... earrings, or bracelets, or something) that takes up the floor under the inn and bar. Relics are a special type of equipment - while a few of them give simple stat boosts like equipment, most of them change the rules of the game somehow with effects like changing your commands or making the equipped character take hits meant for wounded teammates; unlike, say, helmets, each character can equip two relics at a time. For now we buy a group Sprint Shoes to double our walking speed and three Star Pendants to protect everyone from poison.

Shopping done, we take off out of town and head northeast to Mt. Koltz. The enemies here are tough enough that a single use of the AutoCrossbow often isn’t enough to finish them off, but one attack from Locke or Terra and an AutoCrossbow will do the trick. The real threat of this dungeon is the fact that if you’re unprepared, you can spend most of it with the poison status or using all your MP on Antdots. Thanks to our Star Pendants and all the tonics Locke’s been stealing (I’ve almost never had him attack), though, the place is mostly toothless.

One weird thing about this dungeon is that you seem to get a lot of special starts, both preemptive attacks in which you start with full ATB bars and can act before the enemy does, and side attacks where you surround the enemy instead of just standing to one side of them. Check it out:

Notice how the enemies are facing different directions. Edgar shoots the AutoCrossbow from his position on the right, and the Brawler facing away from him takes half again as much damage as the one facing him. This is what the guy back in the Narshe Classroom was alluding to when he said you’d take more damage while running from battle – while running, you’ll be facing away from the enemy and taking back attack bonus damage.

(Incidentally, the computer gets two special starts of its own. In a back attack, the enemy comes at you from behind, so any of your characters in the back row will be treated as being in the front row and vice versa; this also seems to give the enemy a preemptive attack. Pincer attacks are the enemy version of a side attack, with all your characters in a straight line down the middle and facing left or right. It’s worth noting that sprites will face whatever direction they attacked last, so if Terra starts the pincer attack facing right but then attacks an enemy to the left, she’ll face left until her next action. Same thing for enemies in a side attack.)


Coming out from a cave, we spot this mysterious shadow person and start chasing them all over the mountain. They give us the slip, however, by hopping right down the side of a ravine we have to cross via rope bridge.

On the other side of the ravine, we run into a less shadowy but no less shady character (are white-haired bodybuilders ever nice people in RPGs?).


Without even waiting for a reply, dude does a triangle kick off the mountainside and

He, Vargas, knocks us all down.

Locke: Who’re YOU?
Edgar: Sabin? Is he here?
Locke: You were shadowing us earlier, right?
VARGAS: Brilliant! And how unlucky it is that you have run into me...!

And now we must fight! Vargas, big brave martial artist that he is, hides behind his pet bears. Notice that even multi-target attacks like the AutoCrossbow will only target the bears – nothing can reach Vargas himself until the ipoohs (I didn’t get a shot of it, but yup, that’s what they’re called) are dead while he can still hit us. Fortunately for us, the henchbears go down after only a couple rounds of AutoCrossbow from Edgar and Fire from Terra.

(If you look closely, you’ll notice that Edgar is set back from the front line of Locke and Terra. Since his Tools are all long-distance at this point in the game, he can go in the back row to reduce his physical damage taken without reducing his own damage output.)


Once the ipoohs are gone he taunts us, then breaks out some nasty attacks. After another couple rounds of damage on each side (hint: Vargas shares the weakness to poison attacks that most humanoid enemies seem to share, so Edgar’s Bio Blaster will do almost twice as much damage to him as the AutoCrossbow), he cries out:

Vargas: Enough!! Off with ya now!
Mysterious voice: Give it up, Vargas!

Sabin: Vargas, why’d you do it? How could you do your own father in like that?!
VARGAS: Fool! He made the mistake of choosing you as his successor! He snubbed me, his only son!
Sabin: No! You were the one he chose!
VARGAS: You’re a liar!
Sabin: Our Master wanted you to be his successor, not me. He appreciated your fine spirit... ...
VARGAS: Enough of your lies! Now, have a taste of my superior technique! Mortal Attack! Blizzard Fist!

Everyone except Sabin is blown away by this massive attack that doesn’t actually do any damage.

VARGAS: Ahh, Sabin! The master taught you well!
Sabin: I guess there’s no avoiding this!
VARGAS: Fate made us train together, and fate will send you to your doom!

He immediately uses Doom Fist, doing a small amount of damage and inflicting the Condemned status on Sabin – if we don’t finish this in the next minute Sabin will give up the ghost and we’ll have to start all over. As the fight starts, Vargas taunts Sabin some more:

”Phew... I tire of this! Come on, Sabin!”


If you hadn’t noticed yet, each character has their own special command none of the other playable characters have (with a very few exceptions we’ll see later). Terra has Magic, Locke Steals, Edgar uses Tools, and Sabin can Blitz. Blitzes are, as you might guess, martial arts moves akin to a Hurricane Kick or some such – and they really do require fighting game-style inputs. Sabin starts the game knowing three Blitzes, and fortunately for us he’s about the one fighting game character whose moves I’ve ever memorized. I choose the Blitz command, press down up down, confirm, and watch the fireworks...


Dammit. Suplex is probably the funniest of the Blitzes, but as you can see a lot of enemies are immune to it. You’ll see it happen later in the game though, don’t worry about that.

Diddle around in this fight long enough and the game will tell you the command for the simplest of the Blitzes (which, if you’ve never played before, you would have no way of knowing otherwise). Left right left gets us:

(Pummel’s damage isn’t anything to write home about, but the fight’s scripted to end after any Blitz is successfully used on Vargas and you’ll probably never use the move again anyway.)

VARGAS: W... ... what the... ...?! He... ... already taught you that?!
Sabin: If only you hadn’t been in such a rush for power... ...

And Vargas fades away, like dust in the wind. If I remember correctly, there are four death animations in the game: regular enemies disappear in a poof of purple smoke, the final boss has a unique animation, and bosses do either this disintegration thing or the rumbling red fade away of Whelk. I want to say humanoid bosses are disintegrated and other bosses do the red smoke (some of the old-fashioned games censorship? We can’t imply humans explode into a cloud of blood on death?) but I’m really not sure.


Sabin: Big Brother?
Locke: The brothers are reunited!
Terra: Younger... “brother”? At first glance I thought he was some bodybuilder who had strayed from his gym...
Sabin: Bodybuilder?! *starts laughing* I’ll... take that as a compliment... [Seriously? Could that have been interpreted as something other than a compliment? Maybe Sky Render will show us some translation weirdness here; either that or this world doesn’t find conspicuous muscles attractive.] Anyway, brother, what are you doing here?
Edgar: We’re on the way to the Sabil mountains.
Sabin: To the Returner hideout, no doubt? I’ve been watching from afar, hoping that the world might regain some sanity... At this rate, Figaro will be reduced to a puppet state.
Edgar: Our time to strike back has arrived. The Empire’s going to pay for what it has done...
Sabin: Think a “bear” like me could help you in your fight? [This line makes me think that Terra is supposed to call him a bear in her line above, which I would swear I remember seeing her do in a previous playthrough. Not sure which version of the game that would have been, though, if it happened at all.]
Edgar: You’d... join us? Sabin...!!
Sabin: I think Duncan would rest easier if he knew his disciple played a part in bringing peace to the world.
Locke: Let’s get going!

And we’re off! We do get in one last fight before leaving Mt. Koltz though, and I thought I’d use it to show off Sabin’s third starting Blitz, and the one we’ll be using most for the upcoming parts of the game:

This is his Hadouken. Down down-left left – Blitz commands don’t care which way you’re facing - lets us whip out this pearl-elemental laser beam. AuraBolt is the strongest attack we have right now (OHKO against any non-bosses for a decent part of the game) and is magic, so it hits full strength from the back row. It does have the minor problems of targeting a single random enemy, but I can live with that. For reference, at this point AuraBolt is consistently hitting in the range of 300-400 damage to a single target; Fire can hit that against a single weak target, and AutoCrossbow does in the neighborhood of 200 damage to all enemies.


Anyway, we finally get out of Mt. Koltz and walk north up this valley to the Returner hideout. But that’s a tale for another day.

Question and and a comment.

Question: Why didn't you grab the Hermes Sandles in South Figaro? They're the best accessory for some time.

Comment: If you're having problems doing Sabin's Blitzes (particularly the ones with diagonal directions), you can perform them really easy by simply inputting the directions one at a time. The game considers a diagonal to be 'inputted' if either of the two up-down-left-right directions that are to the left and right of the diagonal are pressed as well.

That means Aurabolt can be inputted by doing a 'fireball' motion (down, down-left, left), but it's often easier to instead press down, down, left OR down, left, left. Either works, and it doesn't matter how much time is taken between inputs.

Aurabolt is one the best special abilities in the game; it's basically Sabin's go-to attack (like Dispatch is to a future character). You can collect a few Earrings that boost Magical power early in the game, and they're perfect for boosting Aurabolt's damage.

- Eddie

Huh. Now that you mention it I don't think I've remembered about that secret room for years. Oh well.

Yeah, I was going to go over that later on. AuraBolt is easy enough to do without it, but that trick is invaluable for later Blitzes if you have fingers as clumsy as mine. (Oddly enough, AuraBolt seems easier to pull off on a keyboard than on a gamepad to me, but all the longer blitzes are borderline impossible to do on a computer without resorting to chicanery.)

To this day, I have NEVER been able to pull off a blitz...
Then again it took me years to realize i needed to input the commands after hitting blitz instead of waiting for the light flash... thats me for ya though