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Scotty

Podcast Review of BNW

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Hey, guys.  

I didn't realize InsaneDifficulty sank; I haven't been keeping up with the latest.

Anyway, I found a podcast review of the mod.  It's pretty unfavorable.  The host says he's read the readme and he's made it at least past the FC, so I can't just pin his experience on ignorance.  Still, his complaints really focus around counter-attacks, so I think he must have missed part of that lesson about certain abilities triggering counters from certain enemies.

http://classicgamingpodcast.com/episode/82-parappa-the-rapper-final-fantasy-vi-brave-new-world-majoras-mask/

The BNW part starts at 43:40.  

 

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Yeah, I actually watched him stream BNW. His complaints are pretty standard from what we tend to get from the Twitch community.

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I’ve seen a few bad reviews but they’re usually from early versions. The translation got a lot of complaints back when Celes was angsty and Relm even more foul mouthed.  Also, there were problems with people feeling like they were required to LLG the world of balance; all of that has been resolved with the esper bank. 

 

I don’t find a lot of recent reviews of the latest versions. More often it’s just let’s plays and gameplay clips Watching a 90m video of someone running around Figaro doesn’t give a very considered and complete view of the player’s experiences and opinions with the whole mod. 

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Most common criticisms are aimed toward the script (which is purely objective), the difficulty (which tends to go hand in hand with people who refuse to try any tactic other than direct damage), and the durability of end-game bosses (perfectly valid, and something we respond to with each new version on a case-by-base basis).

One thing of note is that I keep track of all of the feedback I get, but I also consider the source. Brave New World is rather unique in that it has a very wide audience for a ROMhack, so I'm getting feedback from everyone from hardcore vets (like the people who hang out around here) to total scrubs (what you tend to see on Twitch). I always consider the source of feedback, because otherwise I'm just going to end up with a complete mess.

Edited by BTB

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I was suspicious that the "it's too difficult" people were those type of people. Script & endgame boss HP are legit concerns, yeah. Though the Warring Triad has been taken care of recently. IIRC, it's mostly just Hidon now who has too much HP?

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8 hours ago, thzfunnymzn said:

I was suspicious that the "it's too difficult" people were those type of people. Script & endgame boss HP are legit concerns, yeah. Though the Warring Triad has been taken care of recently. IIRC, it's mostly just Hidon now who has too much HP?

The script might have been a legit concern a while ago, but I think the handful of people complaining about it now are just looking for things to be upset about. As it is now the script is both very faithful to the original dialogue and significantly better writing than the original translation (sorry Woolsey).

Good to hear about Hidon though, that fight did get a little silly.

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It's also thematically appropriate, since it favors a magical approach to taking him down. That said, it's also fitting that Strago is very ill-equipped to taking it down on his own (since Hidon absorbs his most powerful magic), and Relm is one of the best support characters to have in that fight.

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On 10/14/2017 at 4:18 AM, Xujhan said:

The script might have been a legit concern a while ago, but I think the handful of people complaining about it now are just looking for things to be upset about.

I love BNW. The script changes are still bad. "People are just looking for something to be upset about" is such a cop-out.

On 10/14/2017 at 4:18 AM, Xujhan said:

As it is now the script is both very faithful to the original dialogue

Not even close.

On 10/14/2017 at 4:18 AM, Xujhan said:

and significantly better writing than the original translation (sorry Woolsey).

Not even close.

 

Anyways, I watched the guy from the podcast stream BNW a bit. He was the kind of guy who completely ignores everything the game tries to teach you, doesn't understand or appreciate the strategy elements the mod tries to introduce, and then just complains about everything because they can't steamroll the game by holding the A button. It was difficult to watch. I went back to see if he finished it, but I guess he deleted all of his BNW videos for some reason.

Edited by Reiker

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3 hours ago, Reiker said:

I love BNW. The script changes are still bad. "People are just looking for something to be upset about" is such a cop-out.

I love BNW. The script changes are mostly good. Scripts are really subjective and such. That being said, I do agree that people cop-out on script complaints while dismissing (sometimes rightfully so) the rest of the complaints.

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On 10/14/2017 at 10:18 AM, Xujhan said:

As it is now the script is both very faithful to the original dialogue

7 hours ago, Reiker said:

Not even close.

On 10/14/2017 at 10:18 AM, Xujhan said:

As it is now the script is both very faithful to the original dialogue

7 hours ago, Reiker said:

Not even close.

 

This is why discussions regarding the script is entirely fruitless. It just ends up being "My opinion is better than yours", which is entirely pointless.

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Pretty much.

The original Woolsey script was an abomination of overbearing censorship and bland writing, but it's difficult to change something with such a strong nostalgia factor behind it and have everyone on board. I don't want to say I tend to outright dismiss unfocused script complaints, but... I tend to outright dismiss unfocused script complaints. There's no pleasing everybody when it comes to something like that.

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2 hours ago, Kaffe Myers said:

This is why discussions regarding the script is entirely fruitless. It just ends up being "My opinion is better than yours", which is entirely pointless.

I gave some objective criticisms of the script back when this board was Insane Difficulty and the response I received was kinda nasty, which is why I avoid going in depth on it here, but I did feel a need to respond to Xujhan's insinuation that anyone who has concerns with the script changes is just some clueless complainer.

1 hour ago, Synchysi said:

The original Woolsey script was an abomination of overbearing censorship and bland writing, but it's difficult to change something with such a strong nostalgia factor behind it and have everyone on board. I don't want to say I tend to outright dismiss unfocused script complaints, but... I tend to outright dismiss unfocused script complaints. There's no pleasing everybody when it comes to something like that.

Okay yes, of course whether you like it or not is subjective. But if 7 out of every 10 people dislike it, then it's objectively a bad change. There's a lot of opinions out there of Woolsey's work with FFVI, but in my experience it's primarily favorable. This was mostly evident when Final Fantasy 6 Advance came out in 2007 and there was a lot of outcry when the new translation changed classic lines, such as "son of a submariner" to "son of a sandworm." It also introduced a lot of out of place joke lines that referenced current events like "Weapons of Magitech Destruction." BNW goes a lot further into the realm of fanfiction than that. Woolsey's effort wasn't perfect, but after playing so many retranslations and fan translations of this game I have a lot of appreciation for his work.

Now, the 7 out of 10 thing was a made up figure for an example, and it's impossible to tell how many people like the script changes vs. the ones who don't like it. Once you travel outside of this forum however, the #1 complaints against BNW is definitely the script changes. You can look at the most recent discussion of the mod on Reddit for an example:

In the build I played, there were some significant changes in characterization and dialogue that made many of the characters unlikable and was actually counter to their characterization in other translations. From what I've seen they don't have a translator so their claim of making it closer to the original Japanese is suspect as they are working off of second hand information at best, and pure speculation at worst. Beyond that there is far too much low brow humour for my taste, multiple fart, sex, and masturbation jokes that are really aiming for the lowest common denominator. Actually, from what I know about the Japanese text, this is probably the least accurate.

There are also some dialogue changes that say they are there to build on the story, but I find it pretty juvenile as many of the changes amount to stale jokes and dead memes or gratuitous swearing and attempts at being "edgy". I actually cannot stress enough how bad the attempts at humour are, I'm talking constant references to other games, masturbation jokes, and out of place fart jokes. They may have dialed it back a bit in this latest update, but when I played it about half the characters came off as sociopaths frequently threatening to kill people and rejoicing when they got to fight, Sabin got it particularly bad. What I'm saying here is, unless the script has been completely overhauled in every way, it is a poor version of the SNES script with attempts to make it funny and edgy that fail on every front.

Anyways, this is all kinda moot now that BTB has said he's willing to release a vanilla script version of the mod once someone does... whatever one has to do to make that happen. I do feel a little bad complaining about the script without making any sort of effort to help the reversion, but to be honest I have absolutely no idea how to even start doing something like that.

As I've said before, the script is the main thing holding me back from recommending this mod as the definitive version of FFVI so I'm looking forward to a vanilla version of the mod, if that ever happens.

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43 minutes ago, Reiker said:

Anyways, this is all kinda moot now that BTB has said he's willing to release a vanilla script version of the mod once someone does... whatever one has to do to make that happen. I do feel a little bad complaining about the script without making any sort of effort to help the reversion, but to be honest I have absolutely no idea how to even start doing something like that.

Just ask me for the source dialogue, and I'll gladly provide it. All you'd have to do is go through every line and change it as you see fit while making sure to keep the final product just as large or smaller than the source, since the dialogue bank is currently full.

As it stands, the only "serious" translation effort that has been ongoing for awhile now is Fantome Ghost translating it into Spanish.

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I mean... even if we'd left the script largely untouched (which wasn't really possible), there would be people complaining about it. In my eyes, it had to change because Woolsey's script is crap. No character has a personality, and the only unique voices Woolsey seemed capable of invoking were based on Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe or Hulkspeak (as also seen in his shoddy work on Chrono Trigger). He also completely changed Setzer's motivations for no known reason, and there are probably a few other issues I'm unable to think of right now.

That stuff the Reddit poster is complaining about may be the exact things some other player really enjoys. I'm not trying to discourage people from voicing complaints about the script. We've made several modifications to it over the years based on player feedback. But blanket complaints like the ones in that Reddit post are among the most useless criticisms we get because they're purely subjective and give no suggestions for improvement beyond I DON'T LIKE THIS CHANGE IT.

I think people give aggressive responses to script criticisms because they're so ubiquitous and they're often accompanied by an air of superiority about the complainer. I'm not saying this was the case in your post because I honestly can't remember it - posts criticizing the script all tend to run together for me.

That's not to say I think our script is perfect. There are several parts of the BNW script I don't particularly like either (the Hit-Girl characterization of Relm, for instance). But some people may like what I dislike - improving the script in any objective way is not really possible.

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50 minutes ago, Synchysi said:

I mean... even if we'd left the script largely untouched (which wasn't really possible), there would be people complaining about it.

I'm curious why it wasn't possible to keep the original script. All I can think of is for space reasons, but I would think that the BNW script is actually larger than the original. I could be wrong there I guess.

Also I don't get the second part of what you're saying. Why would people complain about the untouched vanilla translation in a mod? That doesn't make any sense to me.

 

1 hour ago, Synchysi said:

In my eyes, it had to change because Woolsey's script is crap. No character has a personality, and the only unique voices Woolsey seemed capable of invoking were based on Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe

You've gotta admit at least that this is a very unpopular opinion. FFVI isn't exactly an obscure game with few fans. A lot of people love the game, and they love the script and the characters, which is what leads them to seek out a mod like BNW in the first place. For such a large cast of main characters I think Woolsey actually did a pretty good job of making everyone unique. I think you're missing the point with some of this stuff, like Cyan's Old English. It's just used to show that Cyan is a bit of an outsider, he comes from a place with an ancient culture. It's not literally meant to be Old English (which would be unreadable anyways).

 

1 hour ago, Synchysi said:

But blanket complaints like the ones in that Reddit post are among the most useless criticisms we get because they're purely subjective and give no suggestions for improvement beyond I DON'T LIKE THIS CHANGE IT.

Neither of those comments were "blanket complaints." They addressed exactly what they didn't like about the script.

Sadly I just see this as an inability to accept criticism. There's an excuse no matter what the criticism is. Either they're a complainer, or "they're just looking for something to be upset about," or their complaints are useless... for some unexplained reason?

The script/character changes just don't make much sense for the game. I don't understand why Sabin is some weird hillbilly/redneck stereotype. Edgar does all kinds of very clever stuff in the game, he's a genius mechanic, but then BNW has all of these scenes where the joke is that he's a complete moron. Setzer is an older dude who's traveled the world but has the dialogue of an edgy teenager. This isn't just the opinion of some professional whiner, the script really does come off as bad amateur fanfiction.

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1 hour ago, Reiker said:

I'm curious why it wasn't possible to keep the original script. All I can think of is for space reasons, but I would think that the BNW script is actually larger than the original. I could be wrong there I guess.

Also I don't get the second part of what you're saying. Why would people complain about the untouched vanilla translation in a mod? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Simply for the beginner's school. The dialogue there was so expanded that things from other parts of the script were cut by necessity. We couldn't just take the original script, replace the beginner's school dialogue with our own, and call it a day. There are likely other reasons that BTB may have more insight on, but the beginner's school is a significant offender.

I may be in the minority, but I know I'm not the only one that dislikes Woolsey's script. And it's irrelevant anyway, as the script was impossible to keep in tact.

1 hour ago, Reiker said:

You've gotta admit at least that this is a very unpopular opinion. FFVI isn't exactly an obscure game with few fans. A lot of people love the game, and they love the script and the characters, which is what leads them to seek out a mod like BNW in the first place. For such a large cast of main characters I think Woolsey actually did a pretty good job of making everyone unique. I think you're missing the point with some of this stuff, like Cyan's Old English. It's just used to show that Cyan is a bit of an outsider, he comes from a place with an ancient culture. It's not literally meant to be Old English (which would be unreadable anyways).

I've not done the research to know how popular or unpopular my opinion is, but I have no doubt nostalgia blinds a lot of people from the failings of Woolsey's work. And some people just like it at face value for some reason. Both are perfectly valid reasons for disagreeing with me.

For Cyan in particular, it wasn't just the butchered old English (I can understand that, as our own early attempts at correcting his speech were still rather butchered), but the inconsistency of it. Same with Gau's Hulkspeak. If you're going to give a character a voice, stick with it throughout the entire script. Don't flip it off and on like a light switch.

1 hour ago, Reiker said:

Neither of those comments were "blanket complaints." They addressed exactly what they didn't like about the script.

Sadly I just see this as an inability to accept criticism. There's an excuse no matter what the criticism is. Either they're a complainer, or "they're just looking for something to be upset about," or their complaints are useless... for some unexplained reason?

The script/character changes just don't make much sense for the game. I don't understand why Sabin is some weird hillbilly/redneck stereotype. Edgar does all kinds of very clever stuff in the game, he's a genius mechanic, but then BNW has all of these scenes where the joke is that he's a complete moron. Setzer is an older dude who's traveled the world but has the dialogue of an edgy teenager. This isn't just the opinion of some professional whiner, the script really does come off as bad amateur fanfiction.

His complaints boiled down to calling the script juvenile, whether it's dated memes, toilet humor, or gratuitous swearing. All valid criticisms, and for the sake of criticism, it's fine to stop there. It still doesn't help us improve the game at all, so it's hardly worth responding to. Likewise, how many people actually enjoy those exact things he's complaining about?

If you think this is a failure to accept criticism, I invite you to read over the change logs from version 1.0.0 to now, and see just how many dozens, if not hundreds, of changes we've made to the game since then based on player feedback and criticisms. In fact, we've already drastically overhauled the script once and introduced a clean script based on player complaints. Why are we now all of a sudden unable to accept criticism?

Edited by Synchysi
This thread has begun to embody exactly what Kaffe was talking about.

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I might as well chime in, saying that I don't dislike the script changes. (Partly b/c, at this point, I've played BNW so much that I forgot the original script >_> ). It's hardly perfect, but aside from the meme jokes & Relm's foul mouth, I just don't see the validity of the complaints beyond "nostalgia." No version of FFVI is going to be winning any award for fantastic writing, nor is FFVI a game I would recommend to non-gamers as an example of a video game with a good story.

BNW, Woolsey, FFVIadvance, japanese fan translations, I've seen multiple translations. They all get the same basic point across. There's little tidbits here & there, possibly some stylistic differences, but at the end of the day, there's nothing really objectively better about one translation over the other. BNW is not a bad translation; you want to see bad stories, go actually look on fanfiction.net. Since BNW is not a bad translation, any complaints about the script simply are subjective. Mostly boiling down to either the player being nostalgic for Woolsey, or being a japanophile who wants a hyper-literal translation of the japanese script.

Perhaps I'm too old school for this new generation, but to me, a game is a game. You play games, you don't read them. Yes, there are games whose stories I really enjoy (Chrono Trigger, Majora's Mask), but they are also games that I really enjoy. Meanwhile, a game like FFIX, even though I'm somewhat fond of the story, is not a game I would replay, because as a game, it wasn't enjoyable. BNW's story is fine, and it's a very enjoyable game. Why complain about the script?

Also, gonna have to back up Synchysi on listening to complaints. BTB & Synchysi most certainly accept feedback & criticism. The fat changelog & constant discussion should be a clue to that.

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The reviewer didn't even mention the script. :kappa:

He did have one reasonable (but not exactly new or unique) point about the dragons being largely elemental gear checks, though I'm not sure that's the point he was trying to make.

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12 hours ago, Reiker said:

I'm curious why it wasn't possible to keep the original script.

 

There's really two questions here. One is "why *couldn't* we keep the original script. The other is why *should* we?

The answer to the first is actually more or less limited to the Beginner's School and things that BNW adds that didn't exist in the original, i.e. what happens if you try to enter Kefka's Tower without the key.

The answer to the *second* question is much more far-reaching. The original game did an exceptionally poor job of explaining the logistics of the early game (why does Sabin spend most of his scenario traveling in the opposite direction of his intended destination?) and telling you where to go next in the World of Ruin (the treasure map quest is a *very* notable offender here). Further, the World of Ruin was loaded with "unassigned" lines since it had no way of predicting who would be in your party, which Brave New World changed by rewriting those scenes to have the character being recruited do all of the talking. As Synchysi noted, Woolsey's characters were very bland since he really could only write at three speeds, and it really showed with characters like Cyan, who inexplicably lost his accent a third of the way through the game and just started speaking like a normal - albeit very bland - character. Fans of his work will remember a select few lines - all of which are retained in Brave New World - but really can't tell you why the *rest* of the script is in any way engaging.

Of course, people who bitch about our script for the most part aren't seeing any of the above changes and complaining about them. They take issue with the parts where our personality bleeds into the script to try and give it some character, and their resentment towards *those* changes manifests as anger towards any changes being made whatsoever. Retaining the entire vanilla script is, even from an objective standpoint, stupid. Things should be changed to match what the game is now and corrected wherever possible (and yes, I consider Cyan losing his fucking accent to be an error). Again, the issue is that people see the *subjective* changes and largely overreact by saying that any changes to the script whatsoever are unnecessary rather than giving constructive feedback about what specific changes they didn't care for and offering better alternatives ("change it back to how it was in vanilla" does not count as an alternative for the purposes of this diatribe).

Edited by BTB

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12 hours ago, Reiker said:

The script/character changes just don't make much sense for the game. I don't understand why Sabin is some weird hillbilly/redneck stereotype. Edgar does all kinds of very clever stuff in the game, he's a genius mechanic, but then BNW has all of these scenes where the joke is that he's a complete moron. Setzer is an older dude who's traveled the world but has the dialogue of an edgy teenager. This isn't just the opinion of some professional whiner, the script really does come off as bad amateur fanfiction.

And to answer these really quick...

Sabin is a wholesale copy of Rei from Breath of Fire 3. If you're at all familiar with the game, it's pretty easy to compare Rei to vanilla Sabin and see some striking similarities in their outlook on life. So, I just went ahead and matched them up.

I'm... guessing that the scenes you're talking about with Edgar are the ones where Setzer is being kind of a dick to him? And it would stand to reason that Setzer would really be the only character in the game who would have no reverence for royalty and be a complete jerk to the guy.

Setzer, as I mention in the Unlockme, is a very different character in the Japanese and American versions. The only character trait common to the both of them is that he's kind of a dick, so I took that one and dialed it up a few notches. It wasn't particularly difficult to write for a chronically depressed person like Setzer being a chronically depressed person myself (at the time, anyway). Mog may be my direct mouthpiece in Brave New World, but Setzer is my spirit animal (and Sabin is my homeslice).

Edited by BTB

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18 hours ago, Reiker said:

You can look at the most recent discussion of the mod on Reddit for an example:

Other people have already pointed out most of the things that I would have said, so I'll just add in one more point: the posts you're citing aren't particularly recent, and the people who wrote them were themselves citing older versions of the script. What are BTB and Synchysi supposed to do with complaints that are both unfocused and outdated? Of course it shouldn't be impossible to give useful criticism of the script (eg. I think that lines ABC aren't very good, this is why, here are a couple ideas of what they could be changed to) but I can't recall the last time someone actually tried to do that.

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10 hours ago, BTB said:

Sabin is a wholesale copy of Rei from Breath of Fire 3. If you're at all familiar with the game, it's pretty easy to compare Rei to vanilla Sabin and see some striking similarities in their outlook on life.

I...don't really see it?

To be honest the only problems I have with the script right now are Sabin and Relm, which get lines referencing a characterization they didn't really earn, and replacing memetic lines with fourth wall jokes.

Edited by Valenhil

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On 10/16/2017 at 9:03 AM, Reiker said:

er.

Okay yes, of course whether you like it or not is subjective. But if 7 out of every 10 people dislike it, then it's objectively a bad change. There's a lot of opinions out there of Woolsey's work with FFVI, but in my experience it's primarily favorable. This was mostly evident when Final Fantasy 6 Advance came out in 2007 and there was a lot of outcry when the new translation changed classic lines, such as "son of a submariner" to "son of a sandworm." It also introduced a lot of out of place joke lines that referenced current events like "Weapons of Magitech Destruction." BNW goes a lot further into the realm of fanfiction than that. Woolsey's effort wasn't perfect, but after playing so many retranslations and fan translations of this game I have a lot of appreciation for his work.

 

No, that is not how objectivity works. You don't just get a majority of subjective opinions and suddenly the poll magically changes the content from subjective to objective. You're wrong about that (regardless if everyone on the board dis/agrees with me) and try looking at a definition of the word "objective." What you're talking about is a majority of people's opinions (in your made up poll) favor the Woolsey translation. Although going by your thinking, if most users on insanedifficulty came down on you before that would mean they were objectivity right after you being wrong, right?

I actually liked the earlier heavily cursing versions of BNW, since this is a game primarily about war and genocide caused by a mutated psychopath. For example, you have a protagonist who at one point, possibly, tries to kill herself. Many could argue she was justifiable since everyone else on that island thought the entire world was destroyed besides the small island they lived on. That situation is among multiple other dark scenarios (another protagonist joins a malicious cult of the god that helped "kill" his only other blood relative) throughout the game. This game did have rays of hope/light sprinkled throughout the game, but most of what happened was dark and depressing.

Regardless of my opinions on the matter, Woolsey did the same types of things that you accuse the script changers of doing. What's a submariner in the context of this game? A sailor on a submarine, an underhanded baseball pitcher, or Namor? The closest thing we have to a submarine in this game is a diving helmet. People travel the seas in this game by the current, ship, or wooden raft not submarine. There was just no writer preceding Woolsey. Classic lines also doesn't mean unchangeable gold. You get the same understanding of the story and closer to the script without the censorship from the 90s. Also, does someone like Kefka, who is a nihilist and later a destructive god, really seem like someone to talk like that? Hell no.

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