Insane Difficulty: Garbage Self-Referential, Immature, Inconsistent writing. - Insane Difficulty

Title. I really hate to shit on another's work as an ex-modder myself, but this is too amateur.

The changes to the gameplay are what drew me to the hack, and they seem to mostly deliver, but what is with the lack of respect for the writing and the original developers themselves? You use a player quote as your blurb of sorts: "this is what FF6 would be like had its developers not been on crack"? OK, cool. It was a flawed game, and there's plenty room for improvement, so lets see if the mod makers can one-up the developers in hindsight!

...And I'm met with what appears to be a "revised" script written by a British adolescent stoner, with such pop-culture referencing lines as "STOP! HAMMER TIME!", Overly immature cringey dialogue referring to "Edgar's Spear" as a metaphor for his junk, inconsistent tonally-deaf lines such as "piss off you bloody wanker", and even fourth wall breaking lines with people in the game specifically referring to the player and the mod.
Thanks for ruining FF6 for me. The game was hardly a masterpiece in the story department, but it was professional and consistent, and all great modders should strive to be just that.

Now, I know there's a "clean" version, but given the mod-maker's writing ability or lack thereof I'd rather have the script entirely untouched. Yet the readme only implies the "clean" version removes the swearing. Given the mod maker's lack of common sense to leave the script alone if they can't write, I am questioning if this hack is any good at all. I think it possibly is in the gameplay sense. The readme made a compelling argument for individual changes, but seriously. Learn your limits. Just because you can change a particular thing with the toolset available, doesn't mean you should if it is beyond your capability.

If you only knew how much of a weird, creepy pedophile and grandma chaser Edgar actually is in the japanese version...

The original translation is good, however it's extremely truncated. Woolsey had to revise it 3-4 times due to space limitations. The original japanese script isn't much better and in itself cringey at times. Hell, play any JRPG; they're loaded with cringey moments. Prime example is Celes convincing Setzer to join them in the WoR. The point of a mod is to either have fun or break your balls in frustration until you rage quit. They went for a bit of both here, but more so the fun part. You can't call something hardly a masterpiece and then praise it for being excellent. Compared to many FF stories, 6 had one of the better ones, and the cast of characters and their depth only added to it. It was a time when Square semi-knew what it was doing.

The clean version was actually made solely for one guy to play through with his daughter I believe, and they kept it around incase anyone else couldn't handle adult words or had little kids. The script is a mix of the english and japanese script, with some rewriting done to make some scenes a bit better. The most popular japanese mod of this game does that and is highly praised for it. It seems your grief is with pop culture references added in or the creators just you know, having fun with it and hoping others did to. Did you know the japanese version had a lot of that, too, that had to be removed? Cause you know, western culture and such, with inside dev jokes that no-one would understand. Again, Edgar is extremely creepy. They poke fun at it here.

If all you can do is insult someone else's work as a fellow modder (sorry, ex-modder) and claim to learn their limits, when they've done things other FF6 mods haven't, and is probably one of the best well-rounded and balanced hacks out there, then seriously, the door's that way. It's very apparent from your attitude you have zero business being in a modding community and really, if you can do any better, have at it.

From my own personal experiences with the mod, I cannot say that this is actually as you say it is, but perhaps I can agree with it in some extreme cases.
Fact is, outside of the 'fan wankery' that you have witnessed (The King's Spear is *maybe* the most agregious immature dialogue jokes in the mod, Mog breaking the 4th wall appears amateur but is actually done in the old Japanese commercials and done as a minor personal touch if you happen to actually talk to him in Vector.), I can't exactly say the script work is entirely bad at all. In fact, except in spots here and there, Sabin channeling his inner Rei from BoF III, and rather obscure references, most of the dialogue changes come from a translated cross section between the Japanese Dialogue and the English Dialogue, making most of it far more faithful to the original Japanese dialogue.
Another thing to keep in mind, and this you should hopefully be aware of bring an ex-modder, is that dialogue space is not infinite. More often than not the creators have run into cases where they cannot change much more because they have literal bytes left to work with, barely enough to fork another whole word, let alone work a deeper and closer revision to the original game.
While there is also occasional bashing of Ted Woosley, there is still an acknowledgement that he was working within extreme time constraints, without much or any context to the game, and also working within a limited dialogue bank just like the mod authors had to work with. They also agree that there are parts that were very well done by him even under these conditions.
So, yes, while the dialogue is somehow so obtuse and rotten to you that you appear to have almost entirely written off a mod, it doesn't mean that the mod authors haven't done proper research into the dialogues of both major language versions and worked with it proper, while adding their own flavours so that it can be more unique, regardless of ametuerity, than just straight ripping off one dialogue or the other.
That all being said, I would believe that you, like anyone else that plays this mod and comes into here to give feedback, we can appreciate your point of view on the mod and its various aspects. If you have more specific areas of the dialogue that you feel might be able to be improved upon, I'd ask you to share those. If perhaps you have other questions or feedback to give to us about the games inner workings past the dialogue, we'd be happy to hear those as well. And thank you for taking time to come here, because although you dislike the dialogue, we don't dislike you for coming forward with your feedback.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, BTB and Synchisi made the mod they would want to play. Even if you don't like references and semi-ironic immature dialogue, many people do. No script is going to suit everybody; one that you enjoy and consider consistent might be considered stiff and boring by somebody else.

Anybody who wants to make the script of their dreams with BNW's gameplay changes as the base is free to do so, at any rate, if they are willing to put the time in to see that happen. But BTB and Synchisi put their time in to make the script they wanted, so here we stand.

I actually like very long diatribes that bitch about literally nothing other than the script,. It means one of two things is true. One, the gameplay is so good that even someone as negative as this doesn't have anything bad to say about it. Or two, the person has not actually played the mod... or at the very least is so incensed by the writing that they've basically written off every other aspect of it; either way, this person is outside of our target demographic. In any case, it tells me that all is well on the gameplay front, and that's really what I'm concerned about since dialogue is subjective.

In all honesty, I must ask... exactly what kind of response were you expecting to this thread?

Pretty much echoing what BTB is saying. If the script is your only grief, then BNW has done its job. Thanks for the compliments.

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This. Although I did note the encounter rate had also been increased substantially which also seemed like an odd decision, but it could have been location/condition-specific, or just generally had some kind of deeper intention not recognizable initially, so I've no opinion on it without enough playtime.

What did I hope to achieve? Well, I was frustrated that I had played the game for a couple hours and felt the reunion I was having with a childhood classic was absolutely butchered. I was mostly letting off steam. I wouldn't mind someone touching the script if it were either subtle or highly engaging, and it was neither. It's also entirely inconsistent with the themes and tone of the game.

Nonetheless, you clearly have your fans, so you must have done something right (marketing or cultism, perhaps? ), and maybe there's a FF6 hack around here that's right for me.

The encounter rate wasn't touched.

Also, I have to commend you and your fans for a mostly mature response to my unrestrained bashing. So kudos for that. If I could find it in myself to appreciate what you've done to the script I'm sure I'd enjoy this sub-forum's company. Happy hacking and hack-playing.

Ex-modder, on 11 March 2017 - 11:54 PM, said:

Honestly, it looked like your original post was flame baiting. So it's not really worth responding to in the same manner with which you posted. It's hard to take you seriously. Typically someone with genuine criticism actually offers more examples than the deliberate 4th wall breaking of the Beginner's School, which is the only place it does this because it has to teach you things anyway. I don't know how far you've gotten in your couple hours of playing but I suspect it's probably not far. Yeah there's pop culture references, but most of them occur in unimportant scenes.

Plenty of people have come to offer their grief with the script. I've given my piece about some of it as well. It's a lot less common to see someone actually offer an opinion that's valid and worth listening to though. Yours included.

Ex-modder, on 11 March 2017 - 11:54 PM, said:

Where you going for a backhanded compliment there, or am I misinterpreting you in some way?

Kaffe Myers, on 12 March 2017 - 02:34 AM, said:

Nah, that's what it was.

I'll be honest, the original script is as bland as dirt. The English script on the other hand? I think it's pretty good outside of the technical limitations. With all of the gameplay changes, I can appreciate all of the character abilities now instead of looking at FF6 as some kind of nerfed Final Fantasy 5 where you can't mix and match the abilities to your own choosing.

I personally like the dialogue changes on the account that it livens up the game a bit from the original script. It gives it a distinct flair that makes the mod its own thing.

Truth be told, the dialogue nor the story for FF6 isn't really consistent even within its own realms. I mean, the beginning of the game has Terra fall down a collapsing mountain and pass out, a young man goes to rescue her, and when he does, he realizes that he's out manned and out gunned. What's his solution? Well nothing, he's just really lucky here. Suddenly these magical fairies known as moogles come to help him! Do they join you and assist the returners? Well one of them does, but only after an old man uses astral projection to talk to one of them before turning into a rock. Like seriously, WTF are you smoking if you think that FF6 has a consistent story or dialogue? Haha.

Ex-modder, on 11 March 2017 - 11:54 PM, said:

Part of me *really* wants to recommend ROTDS right now, just to see how that goes down.

What probably made the encounter rate feel higher is the fact that random encounters take a bit longer to fight now. Could also just be your memory failing you.

As far as what we did right... from one modder to another, we followed the golden rule: make the game that *you* want to play. Stay true to your own vision and others will follow. That's the way art works.

Lockirby2, on 12 March 2017 - 06:49 AM, said:

Dammit, Lockirby, get out of my head >.>

BTB, on 12 March 2017 - 06:59 AM, said:

I was having the same thought, and that is only based on what others have told me.

I do actually kind of agree with you. I'm not a fan of some of the references and swearing (mostly Setzer threatening to fuck people with rakes and Relm calling everyone cunts), but I'm willing to look past it for the gameplay. Also, your tone really didn't have to be so aggressive.

To be honest, the script hasn't received major alterations since... what? The Celes edgy meltdown? There were also Bishop's (?) changes to make Cyan speak better faux-shakespearian. But since this community has been the major push for improvements, and since pretty much everyone here is used to the script by now, it makes sense that the only aspect that keeps being refined is the gameplay.

That said, I've tried not to skip the dialogue with repeated playthroughs and I ... kinda concur that the writing isn't very good, or rather hasn't kept up with the quality of everything else.
The changes to the script that add to a character's characterization are good. Explanations, tutorials, and any "new text" that doesn't replace anything existing is good... but most everything else isn't. A lot of it is unnecessary replacement in that quoting 8-bit theater in this day and age isn't really more funny/interesting that making your own humor or leaving it as is. There are 6500 words in the UnlockMe dedicated to explaining the references. For a 20k~25k words script, that should be a dead-ringer that it went way overboard.

Not that I honestly expect a change to the script at this point. But I'd like it if it were to happen, for sure. It would certainly do a lot for the... reputation of this mod. This isn't the only person I've seen mention this mod as a good balance mod marred by a butchered script. It's not even that the core script is bad, it's that the attempts at humor and culture-savvyness are clumsy and heavy-handed enough that they eclipse the rest. To the average player I imagine all the actual script improvement will be misremembered as being part of the original translations, and the ... less admirable stuff will be seen as your doing. It's all about the consistency.

Whether or not the Japanese script was filled with cringy pop-culture references, or had Ultros be a rapey octopus towards little girls (because did you know about tentacles and schoolgirls, internet friend??) doesn't really matter. When you're sharing with a western audience, the constant referencing looks unprofessional, and making creepy characters just makes you look creepy instead. (Kinda like what happened with the immature swearing thing, remember?)

Bonus:

Miacis, on 12 March 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

It doesn't really matter if you agree or not with what is said in the above post -- this is a much better example of how to criticize something that is part of someone else's work.

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My issue though is that coming from someone that thought FF6's plot was lackluster in the first place, I'm not seeing these changes as terrible or story ruining or anything. You can say "the references aren't funny," but really, that's a mileage may vary sort of thing. I mean the original game pretty much starts with a reference:



Sure this was botched in the original FF6 localization/translation, but nonetheless, it's still there. And it's a pop-culture reference too that will only become more obscure as newer generations come to play the game. You can argue that there doesn't need to be that many, but these things almost feel like the level 5 GBA remakes in that regard where some of the dialogue become stranger IE, in the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI, there's this little nugget:

"I hear that some fanatical members of the Cult of Kefka insist on spelling Kefka's name with Cs instead of Ks." THAT is more obscure than any reference made in BNW, as that specifically calls out a small portion of the fanbase and more specifically, the modders that insisted that the true name was "Cefka" instead of "Kefka." Unless you're into modding and crazy fanatical people that whine about the original localization of FF6, you'd never know this.

I think the real issue is that people are coming back and realizing that FF6's plot isn't nearly as magical as they remember it being. And the initial reaction is to blame the altered dialogue rather than realize that FF6's script was bland and drab in the first place with golden spots that were more so from Woosley than anything else.

And while I'd agree that I find New Threat funnier, that might be because I like the style of humor used in NT more. Like Cloud shaking his fist at the screen when you pick up a "Sense" materia where it used to be a "W-Item." That's great.