Let's play Stand Guard v4.0

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One note before we begin. This is a call forward...

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To a certain other steampunk-themed Final Fantasy.

So, let's get started!

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!!!

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:D

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Right.

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He's doing the minutes from from their previous meetings.

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Locke gets to talk more than anyone else because he's the one doing all the freaking work.

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See there, Locke's talking. Even if he is stating the blindingly obvious...

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A lot of this is kind of boring, but I just wanted you to know that I didn't ignore it.

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Macias is probably sleeping.

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Locke: But Edgar, that'd be stealing!
Edgar: D:<

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Brainstorming stuff...

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I bet the scrap of paper was the page from the strategy guide that tells you how to get the Genji Glove and still see this scene.

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I'm starting to think that this scene is here to reiterate everything that's happening in the plot up to this point, just in case you're losing track of it...

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...So this line kind of came from that.

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Straight from Metal Gear Solid.

NEXT TIME:

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UNMARKED. SPOILERS. AHEAD.

Well...let's get started!

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Most of the dialogue here is unchanged from Woolsey, but I thought this could use an update.

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I wanted to do something to get the player's attention with this because it's kind of important. So I right-justified it down an imaginary line near the middle of the text box.

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Just yer average everyday raft ride down the Lethe River.

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From Back to the Future I and II.

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This guy just loves to run his mouth. He looks a little bit like the Cheshire Cat, too, which is kind of disturbing.

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You'll notice it's the correct Porky Pig quote here.

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Thought this came across nicely.

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Ultros: The original leg-toucher.

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As you all know, Macias isn't gonna take that trout, salmon, or perch while he's rafting on the Lethe River, and he gets separated from them.

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No kidding!

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(Foreshadowing)

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I thought Edgar's terseness here was appropriate, considering he warned Macias not to go off half cocked, and this is what happened.

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I think this is all straight Woolsey, but it didn't need editing, really.

NEXT TIME: Who will it be? You will decide*.

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*I will decide

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If you've ever played a full Rages game of Final Fantasy VI, you'd know that to get the most Rages on this trip to the Veldt, you would do Macias' Scenario last. But as I have heard it said, smurf the Veldt.

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I'm doing Macias' Scenario first.

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Here we go...this all didn't require much touching up.

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Who can spot the Final Fantasy Tactics reference here?

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As I said, smurf the Veldt, but I will stop to pick up Stray Cat because who wouldn't?

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This is now spoken by Macias. I saw no reason why not.

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They're given names here, but then, afterward, I stop using them, because it just seemed subtler that way.

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I felt it was important to get this out of the way as quickly as possible, and if I'd kept the nametags in it would've become unmanageable.

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Another example of Kefka being fun to write for. "Stay alert" is from Metal Gear Solid.

Stay tuned...

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Fate: sealed!

If you've played this game in any of its considerable incarnations you know how this all goes down.

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They attack, and then...

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^_^

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Up until this point in the game, there've been no armored Fighter-type characters in the game, what people call a "tank."

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Interesting note: the phrase "Let's go" appears in Final Fantasy (in general) an awful lot. Naturally, somebody's always going somewhere.

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Now doesn't this sound better than "FILL YOUR HANDS, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

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As you can see here, I decided to use Iaido #2, Sky. It's always been my favorite for the wicked damage it does. Also, there's a chance of getting a Phoenix Down here in the original game, but this has been removed.

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Poor bastards never knew what hit em.

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When we get back to Macias and Kage, we find that they've switched places. Is this a bug? I would tend to think so. I wonder if there's a fix for it.

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Ah, the chest in the tent.

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:D

NEXT TIME:

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I always wondered why they built the Imperial Base on the only tiny patch of desert in all of Doma. Doesn't that seem weird?

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I guess if this were Final Fantasy I, Leo would be the main character.

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The full quote is "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." It means "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." Also, I edited this so that we now know this to be the guy who deserts after the poisoning of Doma, is beaten within an inch of his life, and spends the rest of the WoB in a bed in Mobliz. You can get a Cat Bell from him if you send his girlfriend in Maranda stuff.

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SUCKER

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Worst command decision ever.

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This is a paraphrasal of The Princess Bride.

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Kefka has some great lines in this scene.

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SUCKER

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He's just this walking mass of vitriol and venom...I love it!

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Macias ain't gon take this sh** no mo

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Kefka's famous joke is funny not because it's a good joke, but because it's so bad that you laugh AT him for being such a pathetic joke teller.

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This is a quote from Nick Danger: Third Eye by The Firesign Theater.

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I'll give you three guesses what that's a call forward to.

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Not looking good...

NEXT TIME:

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UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD, yearr

So, Kefka poisons the water.

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Since the game now has a dash button feature, even if you couldn't afford the Wingboots (they're 30,000 gil), you can still make Cayene run like hell here.

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We've got to protect our phoney baloney jobs!!

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This all went largely unedited.

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The King of Doma doesn't have many lines, but his death can be interpreted as symbology for the passing away of the feudal system as the industrial revolution took hold.

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Anyway, if you thought the King's death was depressing...

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;_;

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One of the only times in the game I saw fit to use caps lock.

NEXT TIME:

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So Cayene has gotten himself into a bit of a scrape, going all Kill Bill on the Imperials.

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Neighborly guy that he is, Macias offers him a helping hand.

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What's this? The game has again decided that Kage should be first in line. I really wish there was some kind of fix for this.

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Macias' full name is given.

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:eek:

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It's worth noting that Macias is able to throw Cayene, a fully armored Samurai, up this high in the air.

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This was a line that I missed the first few times I played through Final Fantasy III.

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Dammit, Macias, I'm a Samurai, not a Magitek Armor Pilot!

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"I caaan't stooop" is from Tommy Boy. "Here comes the meat wagon BEEOOEEEOO"

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I recommend Thunder Beam, but you can certainly get through it with Tek Laser if you want.

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This tightened up pretty good.

NEXT TIME:

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Would you believe I was in the middle of a battle swirl when this screenshot was taken? One step into the place and ZOOT ZOOT

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I wanted to say something quick...the finished version is now up at both romhacking.net and fantasyanime.

Off we go!

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This has to be one of the best place names the series has ever produced.

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I want you personally to know what I went through to get this shot. It takes a while for Kage to get bored and leave. Not that I am leaving him behind, I just wanted you to know what he says. :D

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Fair enough.

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Don't like where this is going.

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This always reminds me of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Doctor has a green candle that turns into a ghost that ravishes her and there's this old, really camp Scotsman telling her "Dunna light that candle!"

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Yeah, wat up?

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When he recounts this story to Edgar and the others later, this is the point where they're going to call bulltrout and ask him if he really just got drunk. Cayene'll back him up though.

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Straight Woolsey, there.

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:D

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I know how he feels. It took me forever just to get Final Fantasy III US Multi Editor to even run.

NEXT TIME

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UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD, matey

First thing I do is buy potions, cuz my HP is getting low.

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Now that's done.

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All the Ghosts keep saying is "No escape...!" in this version.

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You get the idea.

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F*ers are fast, too. "Simon Phoenix, you have been fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

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You know how it goes, they jump across the train car rooftops. Why does every video game from this period feature some kind of stage on a train, or its roof?

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But, of course...

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They don't get away that easily.

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Yadda yadda throwin' switches, that's not what you're here to see.

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Mmmmmm...spectral barbecue

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Why do dead people need to eat?

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Macias just ran out of give a smurf.

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If only eating like that had that effect in real life.

So guess what time it is?

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?!

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Yep.

NEXT TIME

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So, Macias, being the living manifestation of awesome, does what any living manifestation of awesome would do and laughs in this guy's dumb face.

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Told.

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Right!

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This whole episode of the game (The Phantom Train) would be kind of morbid if it weren't for this scene. How does this guy even get on the train, and then appear later, very much alive? What's the point of this? Was it really just a way to waste the player's time? I wonder if anyone's ever gotten pissed off at this event afterwards, because you get next to nothing for it.

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Is this guy Locke in disguise or something? Cuz he grabs the treasure...

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...And runs like hell. (shrug)

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Finally!

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Sounds simple enough.

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Bing bang BIPPITY BAP

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:confused:

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Well, mister, yer cruisin' for a bruisin'! Have a Meteodrive!

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I could just use a phoenix down on him of course, but the day I can't beat the Phantom Train fair and square is the day I'd better hang up my SNES replica controller forever.


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VICTOLY

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I didn't want to give a first-time player any warning of what was coming, like other versions of this line do.

So he lets them off, of course, and...

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Narshe's theme plays here. It's one of the first instances of music being reused in the context of the story.

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:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

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...

NEXT TIME:

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So, remember when I said I had a hell of a time trying to get Kage to leave before? Well, I had a sneaking suspicion right about now, so...

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...I emptied his equipment.

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And sure enough, the Force seems to be strong with me because he did leave.

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I think this line is meant to explain the fact that you fight Imperial Troops on the Veldt.

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I wanted to make Cayene seem distracted here, for obvious reasons.

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I'm going to assume those of us who decided to call the DM crazy at this point eventually wised up and jumped.

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HOW BOUT A CANNONBALL

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Macias: "So then we jumped into the waterfall, and we were attacked by Piranhas!"
Edgar & Everyone Else: "BULL SH*&"

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If Rizopas ever gets off El Nino you're kind of screwed, so it's important to take him out quickly.

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I'm going to assume for the sake of brevity that people know how to get Gau into the party. You go to Mobliz and buy Dried Meat, then give it to him instead of smacking him around.

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Sir Sir!

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Note that Gau never introduces himself in any other version of the script. Now he does.

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I thought Gau got too loquacious for his character here in Woolsey's version, so I "Gau'd" it up a little.

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I think I fell asleep playing once while the line "Can anything be THAT shiny?" was on the screen.

GO NEXT STAGE!

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UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD

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Is it just supposed to be comically unlikely that Gau would guess that's who Locke was, or is this supposed to indicate Gau being smarter than Macias, or that Locke is somehow famous? I don't even...sigh...forget it.

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PICTURED (CW from top): Cayene, Macias, Gau, rock

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:D

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Anyway, about Gau. I skipped the Tutorial because if you're like me and have played this game a zillion times, what you really need to know is that you start with just this one rage, and it's really all you need, if you are an experienced player of Final Fantasy VI.

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All the same, I stopped to get Stray Cat earlier, and I'm picking it up now.

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Note that Gau's returning speech has been trimmed to one line. For those of you who like to grind Rages, this will make the Veldt just a tad less tedious.

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I like to stock up on Green Berets before leaving the Veldt. I get enough for everyone at the Battle of Narshe.

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This didn't need a lot of touching up.

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F*ing pointless

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If it were, I wonder who would win the death match that would have resulted.

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Little bastard.

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That's how we roll in the Veldt.

NEXT TIME:

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So they find the diving helmet, which Gau stole from Mobliz before the game started.

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Pretty straightforward stuff here.

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This is Macias' line in the Woolsey, but I thought it was more "in character" for Cayene to distrust technology.

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People have complained that Macias says a cuss now and again. I used to be married, and my father in law was a fifth degree black belt. Man cussed like a sailor, and in fact was also a sailor at one time.

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Nothing new to see in the Serpent Trench, really. With this Green Beret I now have seven, enough for everyone.

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Pretty obvious Legend of Zelda reference, but I couldn't resist.

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?!

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:D

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If you've never had a titty hug, drinking establishments are the places where they usually happen.

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This last line is straight out of Slattery.

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Good times!

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Because I'm an OCD FFVI player, I'm going to remove their equipment now.

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And Macias' Scenario comes to a close.

NEXT TIME: Who will it be?

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UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD

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This is a lot of malarky, because it is actually the easiest of the three.

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Drama.

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(facepalm)

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Anyway, it's time to remove their equipment.

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Notice Arvis is now named, and Banan in fact uses his first name.

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"...Well, they're kind of being assholes."

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Somebody on some forum somewhere was making a big deal out of this being mistranslated by Woolsey, so I changed it entirely.

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Tina: Please stop staring at me... :eep:

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Ominous note from Sky Render, always liked it.

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This is what I've been hoarding equipment for.

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Here's my setup.

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I won't lie; this took a couple of state reloads before I was able to take him down.

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Notice, now it's whiskey.

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:D

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Ha ha!

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D'OH!

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A friend of mine actually got stuck here because he didn't understand that he was supposed to select the correct password, he thought the three passwords were all one password. ...I never have quite got how that was possible for him to have thought.

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Time to get rescuin'!

NEXT TIME

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UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD

Those who have only ever played the GBA version may find this content inappropriate.

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Oh, and those who dislike Japanese as a language may also have issues.

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I'm not saying that it's right to hit women, but I am saying that Imperial Soldiers aren't right. (And either way, we go right to her getting bitten by dogs and attacked with swords in a minute anyway...)

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This one was a bit tricky to put together.

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Her name is spelled Attachment 41073 in the Japanese rom. These three symbols represent the sounds "Se" "Ri" and "Su," or Celise (the letter u is often silent at the end of a word in Japanese).

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It's pretty brutal. The sound effect isn't pleasant either.

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There are some pricks in the Imperial army besides Kefka, it seems.

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I couldn't remember if it was "for days" or "four days." That's the one that made it in.

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"Aye aye...Admiral Butthead."

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:love:

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This is the exact quote from Star Wars.

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Celise is one of the first morbidly depressed video game characters.

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This is the basic idea behind her character that Nintendo was trying to dance around with the censorship. Celise has a death wish.

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Of course, Locke's not having that trout on a dull day.

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Another instance of "Let's go."

NEXT TIME

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