The Unused Text Part 12: The Endgame!

Shademp

Shademp

420
gZxYOoP.png

Today, almost six years after Part 1 was published on the Lifestream, the final numbered installment of the Unused Text Series at last graces the web.


One can compare Part 12 with the defeating of the final boss: The ending credits may have rolled, but there are still many sidequests or even post-endgame content to be explored. The sidequests in regards to the Unused Text Series would be dissections of the Debug Rooms and some complementary appendices.

I can't promise that these "sidequest" articles will ever see the light of day. I have now reached an epic milestone and I am simply going to enjoy that fact, without the burden of any feelings of responsibility for the future of this series.

My gratitude towards hitoshura for doing the translations for Parts 11 & 12. Many thanks to everyone who has supported this series and helped it get this far.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
Many of you already know that if you change the camera angle for when Sephiroth is defeated in the lifestream, you see that he drops the Masamune and that his stance transitions to what we see in the subsequent FMV.

This hidden aspect of the final battle may be added to Part 12 (or some other article) someday. Preferably I will by then have figured out how to change the camera angle so that I can make recordings of my own.

YouTube used to have a video that showed the alternate angle in the proper battle background and with Sephiroth's face texture intact, but I can no longer find it. I think the video included the player using a Potion on Sephiroth and thus defeating him.
 
Channy

Channy

Bad Habit
AKA
Ruby Rose, Lucy
Something of note in that video, he's holding the Masamune with his right hand, but isn't he left handed?

(Actually also just noticed while watching the full video which is a weird compilation of versions of that fight? ...that he holds it in his right the whole time.)
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
The original game isn't consistent in regards to which hand Sephiroth primarily holds the Masamune with.

In the Nibelheim Reactor, Sephiroth holds the Masamune with his right hand. This is not a shift that happens because he is holding Jenova with his left hand, as Last Order and Crisis Core reverses the objects to match his primary hand for the Masamune. We also repeatedly see Sephiroth as right-handed whenever he is not holding Jenova in the Nibel reactor.

Sephiroth is also seemingly right-handed when he is in your party in the flashback and when you face him in the final battle.

Meanwhile, the FMVs with Sephiroth in the Nibelheim fire and later in the lifestream has him holding the Masamune in his left hand.


In short, the original game has Sephiroth as right-handed when you see him on the field and in battles, but as left-handed in the FMVs.

In all material after the original game Square has been consistent with Sephiroth's lefthandedness.
 
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Shademp

Shademp

420
Going ahead now and spoiling the existence of the video montage at the end of the article. :monster: Creating the video forced me to experiment with editing tools in Vegas Pro that I had previously never tried, so that was a rewarding experience. The slow-panning recordings of TLS were made using OBS Studio. At first I tried CamStudio for the recordings, but no matter the settings the framerate ended up too low. OBS Studio is definitely more complicated, but creates vastly superior results.


 
Superespresso

Superespresso

The big lad
This is so wonderful! Thank you for your hard work and contribution!

I wish I could find that alternate Sephiroth angle.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Shademp, I've seen the "alternate Bugenhagen scene" during one of my earliest playthroughs, but I'm not sure how. I'm absolutely positive it was that scene, because I remember being surprised at the "new" scene at the candle on a subsequent playthrough, and the fact that Bugenhagen appeared to have died when he didn't before. I remember thinking I'd done something wrong to trigger it. Either a bug or something messed with the PPV's or you can trigger it earlier, or something.

I mean, we're going back an order of about 17-20 years in my lifespan, so my memory of it being wrong is also possible. But I'm very very sure.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
Lex said:
I've seen the "alternate Bugenhagen scene" during one of my earliest playthroughs, but I'm not sure how.
Click to expand...
If you did see it, my money is on a bug making you bypass the game checks that lead to the normal version of the scene. I'd also be more confident in my assumption if you played the PC version when you watched that alternate Bugenhagen scene, because buggy PC port. :monster:

I have checked and compared the code of the relevant sections of the field, as viewed in Makou Reactor. There are no version differences between PC and PlayStation versions.

- Initial Checks: Play Music #0 or #1. Music #1 is the Great Warrior theme.
- Initial Checks Step Two: Should Bugenhagen death happen or not?
- Section associated with alternate Bugenhagen scene

Only those first two desktop dumps are important, because they show you the Plot Progression Value check ("GameMoment" in Makou Reactor) and the "is-Red-XIII-in-your-party" check. If anybody can find a loophole to make the alternate scene available, preferably without cheat devices, please let me know.

You'll see that the section associated with the dying Bugenhagen is not an NPC model, but it is simply a line/border on the map. By pressing the OK button you interact with the line and trigger the alternate scene. Not your typical NPC "talk-to" script, heh.


While your memory may be correct Lex, I have a story of false memory that I can't forget. See the "Those Who Take Care of Flowers" section in Part 3 of the UT series. You'll see that Aeris has two unused lines that can never trigger. They don't even have any text windows associated with them.

Yet...I vividly remember watching a scene of Aeris splitting from Cloud and uttering those lines. When I did research years ago, I was stunned to see that the scene could not possibly have happened in any version of the game. Despite my sensation of a vivid memory, it was nothing but a false memory that was probably created when I first read these unused text entries.


The case for your story being true Lex is definitely stronger though, since we know that the Bugenhagen scene is actually fully choreographed.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
It would have been on the Playstation version (PAL discs, not that that makes any difference) because the "alternate scene" is the one I'm sure I saw on my very first playthrough, whereas the actual scene happened on a subsequent playthrough (same discs etc).

There are two main things that make me think it's not a false memory that are both associated with noticing differences on a subsequent playthrough. The first difference I noted is that the other party members were not present when talking to Bugenhagen upstairs, and the second was what I perceived to be the "new" scene at the flame. I remember realising this at the time and racking my brain to go over what I could have done in the playthrough to kill Bugenhagen this time around lol.

A factor that could explain it: I used to use a cartridge-style cheat thing (
images
41KK-GBjEBL.jpg
) to watch FMV's. I don't know if I used this at all during my earliest playthroughs, but if I did it could potentially explain PPV's being messed with.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
CID: "Cloud's back was saying to me, "Don't interrupt, don't interrupt!"" - sex confirmation lmao
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
The morning after Lex told me about the NeoGAF thread I went ahead and made an update to the Honey Bee Inn article that I should have made five years ago: Re-correcting the kanji and including the story of how Asa found the logic to restore the faulty Japanese text of fields ONNA_1 and ONNA_6.

The section "The Garbled Honey Bee Inn Text" of Part 4 has been redone and now reads like this:

The Garbled Honey Bee Inn Text​

Japanese is written with three writing systems: kanji, katakana, and hiragana. These “alphabets” are stored within tables in the game’s code. While the location of each katakana and hiragana character in the game code remained the same throughout development, new kanji characters were evidentially inserted in the kanji table closer to FFVII’s completion, displacing the characters that formerly occupied their spot. This causes dialogue written at an earlier time in development to be displayed incorrectly. How did we go about to correct the messy kanji of the fields ONNA_1 and ONNA_6?

Initially, the process was mostly a mixture of guesswork and pattern recognition. There was a logical way to figure out some of the kanji, though. In the original Japanese release, the maps JUNBIN21 and WHITEBG1 also had faulty kanji. By comparing this with their corrected counterparts in the second Japanese release, FFVII:International, GlitterBerri could discern a partial “key” to correct the Japanese text of ONNA_1 and ONNA_6.

Then the process became more refined and had most of its guesswork removed when Qhimm member Asa stepped in. He observed that in Kazushige Nojima’s debug room, BLACKBG5, Nojima had left behind an older version of the Japanese font tables. This included an earlier version of the kanji table! By talking to Zangan in the Japanese versions of the debug room, you can read this lengthy table of symbols which occupies numerous pages of dialogue windows.

BLACKBG5_symbol-table_part-4.png

After extracting this older symbol table from the debug room and comparing it with the actual table used in the final game, Asa observed a pattern in the shift of Identification Numbers for the symbols… A pattern that matched how the kanji was displaced in ONNA_1, ONNA_6, JUNBIN21 and WHITEBG1.

With Asa’s logical approach, almost all guesswork was removed from the process of correcting the Japanese text. You can read Asa’s incredible work in this Geocities page.

Thus it was that even the unused nonsense text of the Honey Bee Inn became restored and could be properly translated. Quite an epic tale, isn’t it?
Click to expand...


I should technically have the ONNA_1 and ONNA_6 text retranslated, but for now I'm only bothering with awaiting translations to fill in the blanks where previously the kanji had not been deciphered at all.
 
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Shademp

Shademp

420
Lex said:
Shademp, how do you feel now that your new name is "dataminers"? XD
Click to expand...
Well, since becoming plural we feel less lonely. We are Shademp and we are dataminers.

I'm taking the moment to step down my ego though. I received a lot of essential help during this project and I stood on the modding software created by giants. Without their skill and knowledge, the Unused Text Series could not have existed. I am also thankful to the audience, and that thelifestream.net exists. I can't think of a better or even an equally proper site to host the content on.
 
Strangelove

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
Shademp said:
The morning after Lex told me about the NeoGAF thread I went ahead and made an update to the Honey Bee Inn article that I should have made five years ago: Re-correcting the kanji and including the story of how Asa found the logic to restore the faulty Japanese text of fields ONNA_1 and ONNA_6.

The section "The Garbled Honey Bee Inn Text" of Part 4 has been redone and now reads like this:

The Garbled Honey Bee Inn Text​

Japanese is written with three writing systems: kanji, katakana, and hiragana. These “alphabets” are stored within tables in the game’s code. While the location of each katakana and hiragana character in the game code remained the same throughout development, new kanji characters were evidentially inserted in the kanji table closer to FFVII’s completion, displacing the characters that formerly occupied their spot. This causes dialogue written at an earlier time in development to be displayed incorrectly. How did we go about to correct the messy kanji of the fields ONNA_1 and ONNA_6?

Initially, the process was mostly a mixture of guesswork and pattern recognition. There was a logical way to figure out some of the kanji, though. In the original Japanese release, the maps JUNBIN21 and WHITEBG1 also had faulty kanji. By comparing this with their corrected counterparts in the second Japanese release, FFVII:International, GlitterBerri could discern a partial “key” to correct the Japanese text of ONNA_1 and ONNA_6.

Then the process became more refined and had most of its guesswork removed when Qhimm member Asa stepped in. He observed that in Kazushige Nojima’s debug room, BLACKBG5, Nojima had left behind an older version of the Japanese font tables. This included an earlier version of the kanji table! By talking to Zangan in the Japanese versions of the debug room, you can read this lengthy table of symbols which occupies numerous pages of dialogue windows.

BLACKBG5_symbol-table_part-4.png

After extracting this older symbol table from the debug room and comparing it with the actual table used in the final game, Asa observed a pattern in the shift of Identification Numbers for the symbols… A pattern that matched how the kanji was displaced in ONNA_1, ONNA_6, JUNBIN21 and WHITEBG1.

With Asa’s logical approach, almost all guesswork was removed from the process of correcting the Japanese text. You can read Asa’s incredible work in this Geocities page.

Thus it was that even the unused nonsense text of the Honey Bee Inn became restored and could be properly translated. Quite an epic tale, isn’t it?
Click to expand...


I should technically have the ONNA_1 and ONNA_6 text retranslated, but for now I'm only bothering with awaiting translations to fill in the blanks where previously the kanji had not been deciphered at all.
Click to expand...
that screen shot looks like the kanji for various summons and limit breaks but minus any hiragana/katakana or repeated characters (i can see ifrit and ramuh and odin's and cloud and yuffie's limits at a glance/i don't remember the rest of the names now), but i don't know if that is relevant info or not :monster:
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
*Using this as the default thread for revisiting the article series*


Though I'm not happy to revisit the underwear topic, I have to share the comment I just received to my Waiting Room, Honey Bee Inn - FFVII Unlocked video.
Kieran Owens said:
It's a common joke in Japan for adult women to wear panties with a childish pattern. They're not Marlenes.
Click to expand...
It would certainly make more sense that the panty-stealer would be able to distinguish between child-size underwear and adult-size underwear.

Though at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if Toriyama intentionally wanted to make the true origins of the panties uncertain, since they are called "Mystery Panties" [入手先不明パンツ, lit. "Panties of Unknown Origin"]. This despite, from my impression, the NPC seemingly communicating that he believes these to be Tifa's panties.
「ひそひそ……
　（これさ、セブンスヘブンって
　TIFAちゃんのお店の裏の
　ものほしざおからしっけいしたものさ。
　正真しょうめいのほんものだぜ）」

Psst…
(Snitched these from the
clothesline out back of Tifa’s shop,
Seventh Heaven.
It’s the real thing.)
Click to expand...

The comment to my YouTube video is the first I hear that it's a joke that adult women would wear panties with a childish design. The interpretation seems valid, but I'd need further feedback on the topic before I change the commentary in the article to reflect Kieran Owen's viewpoint.

Edit: It is also possible that they are called 'Mystery Panties' because you don't know if you can trust the story by the red jacket NPC.
 
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