Part 11: Totally Not A Buildup Update

Hey, remember this screen? The one I said would be really, really important about 2 months ago? Time to finally show it off. We're going to start by selecting Banon's scenario and proceeding as normal, making an exception to save after the raft sequence.





The reason why is that we’re going to break him out of his Narshe Prision and carry him on a wonderful world of airship exploration/exploitation. While taking Banon out of his natural habitat might seem like an obvious thing to do with the airship, it’s not as exciting as you’d think. But there’s a method to the madness.





You know the drill by now. Save the game here, go to the Floating Continent without saving, jump off, fly around, go back onto the Floating Continent, die.




So, airship glitch with Banon. What can we do with this? Well, really not all that much. The airship will still disappear on landing because we don't have Setzer, so really all we can do is land at Zozo.





If you forgot, it's one of the only places you can land and be able to complete the game if you do the airship glitch at this point. It’s limiting, but it serves it's purpose.




Oh, before I forget. As a side-note, the programmers forgot to make sprites for Banon on a Chocobo, so he looks all funky. Note that you can do this without the airship glitch as well, as there’s a forest directly below Figaro Castle. It’s a simple, harmless oversight, but it really speaks to how sloppily this game was playtested.





Continuing to Zozo, there's no script to add or remove characters for quite some time. Because of this, you can keep Banon through the party switch of Zozo and through most of World of Balance. However, most of it is pretty uninteresting with him.

The Opera House with Banon is one of the few areas worth mentioning, and it's pretty much exactly the same as bringing Terra here.




And by “worth mentioning” I of course mean “Banon explodes”





Like mentioned before, playing the game with Banon is boring, and is very stable. But right after this sequence is the whole purpose of this update: The Maduin Flashback.





Just like when we brought Terra here before, Terra stays the on-screen character due to the script to remove her not being present. And because she's the on-screen character, something happens in the flashback that I previously didn't mention...





We get a time paradox, and Terra enters a lesbian relationship with her own mother to create herself.
Science!


The rest of the scene continues as normal, but what makes this scene so special? (Aside from breaking human biology over its knee?)




The first thing we’re encountered with after the sequence is that our lineup has changed. Banon doesn’t appear to be the screen at all, and some characters are facing up, obviously with broken scripting. These are all symptoms of the “more than 4 characters” bug.




And in case it wasn’t obvious enough, whenever we enter a new room a character is left behind due to a scripting error – a sure sign our party lineup is glitched. The most significant thing here is that Banon is gone. While the scripting is there to remove all characters that are supposed to be present (Banon and Terra are not supposed to be), then add them back at the end of the sequence, Banon shouldn’t be included in that lineup. But he’s gone.

Wonder why that is.


Next Time: We find out why that is