Part 6: Why am I here...?

Sort of a slow update, sorry. Consider this a Terra + Locke Airship Glitch clean-up episode.

We’re going to start revisiting areas at this point, and unless noted otherwise are going to go from where we were supposed to go next (Castle Figaro) to the last place it was possible to go to while glitching the game (the Locke/Banon/Sabin scenarios) in linear fashion. First, we head to Castle Figaro.


We’re immediately greeted with the guard yelling at us. You know the drill; script wasn’t activated because we never came here, we’re activating the script that’s supposed to occur when we first come here.


As expected, Edgar is still there. By talking to him we can reactive the script,


I brought 4 characters, so talking to him crashes the script. Because you’re not supposed to have Setzer here, just like how in the past we weren’t supposed to have Terra, when the character splits up during scripted events they’re not scripted to move. They’ll just stand there. Since this Edgar is an NPC version, he’s not programmed in scripts to move through objects as a fail-safe. In this screen, it’s frozen because Edgar is trying to move down but Setzer is in his way. This is a game freeze, gotta restart.

I could screw around here, but this scene actually has a use, so I’ll leave this script dormant for now and leave it alone.





Next up is South Figaro.


The only interesting thing here is that Shadow is still sitting around. You don’t get the opportunity to name him because he’s already forcefully named from Thamasa. He’ll just repeat this line over and over.
For those curious, Celes isn’t down in the cellar and the scripts aren’t even there.




Mt. Kolts (the mountain with Vargas) is next. My party is Kuku (Sabin), Kumama (Edgar), Terra and Locke.


This is the only reason to come here.


The script proceeds as normal. You can sort of see Kuku behind Vargas due to him not being scripted.


Kuku was forced out of my party. He’ll be back!




Now Edgar is supposed to be blown off along with Terra and Locke, but battles are the major point where scripts don’t work correctly. It seems to pick and choose when, since as you can see Kuku was animated for this but Kumama wasn’t. It seems to be “when the characters are in your party followed by an animation, the script breaks. When the characters are animated followed by joining your party, the script works”.

More than likely, characters use their field sprites when entering the battle (which are coded like character_3) while in battle they use their battle-sprites, which aren't scripted in the same fashion. They designate Edgar, Celes, Sabin, etc to move around the field. They aren't there, script breaks. They never seem to freeze the game though.


Vargas decides to cast Condemned on Kumama. This breaks the fight, after Kumama dies he’ll still just punch Kuku into oblivion.

More importantly, look at Kuku’s moves.


While naming a character and having him joining the party are often congruent, Sabin is one of the few characters where that doesn’t happen. You name him in Castle Figaro, but you acquire him in Mt. Koltlz. Naming a character forces the game to exchange the sprites and portrait, having the character joining the party exchanges the stats and ability to equip stuff.


Another interesting thing of note is that if you punch Vargas hard enough he’ll just die. No need for Blitzes.


Fully equipable, able to use Blitzes and Magic…..

Wait.

I have an idea.








Returner’s Cave.


I’m not going to bore you with ten screenshots of this sequence. Everyone here knows how it goes, and bringing the standard 4 party members works without issue.


And without the standard 4 party members, it doesn’t work without issue!


The only sequence that’s broken. Just like the Vargas fight, Kuku and Kumama aren’t scripted to move from the battle-screen. They’ll just stand there, but the script doesn’t break.


And we’re at this screen, ‘The Most Important Screen In The Game’. It’s kind of boring here. Locke’s scenario


Locke’s scenario is broken. The Cider guy, for some reason, won’t accept our Cider even though we can steal it. I would guess it’s because we removed the guards in Vector, which changes his script to say this as if you’ve already given him the Cider.


Luckily, we can escape through the Guard over here.


Hi Kutan!




I’d show Banon’s scenario but it’s literally exactly the same. So I won’t.




Let’s do Sabin.


The first thing we see is the house where we recruit Shadow for the first time.



We could recruit him, but I skipped him for now and went to the Imperial Base.


Cyan gets named as soon as we enter and watch a scene. So now he’s not Kupek, and is now Cyan. One less useless Moogle.


He’s forced into the party here so he’s also fully functional.


Here’s the unfortunate part. After chasing Kefka off and he poisons Castle Doma, we are forced to watch a scene with the soldiers dying and collapsing.


Unfortunately after the Camera pans, it’s waiting for the soldiers to collapse. But they aren’t there. There’s some trigger between Zozo and the end of the game that forces the soldiers to disappear. I would imagine it’s when we get the airship. The game here is basically frozen and we have to restart.

This is really important. Sabin’s scenario is 100% broken when using glitches. There is no way this will come back later.

That’s all there is for Scenarios. Since they aren’t completable I’m going to turn back the clock to us directly outside the Returner Cave.


And instead, I’m going to head for the house we skipped with Shadow! Woopie! I bring only Kuku (Sabin) along.


Shadow’s still here. The script to remove him never occurred (it’s after the Imperial Base/acquiring Cyan)


Hell yeah I’d like to!


And with that, welcome to Shadow on the Airship in the World of Balance. He’s fully functional, he won’t run away on you unless you return to the Phantom Forrest, and you can take him wherever you want. It’s not as special as the Ghosts, but it’s still interesting. He even has his own space on the WoB airship.



Hahahahaha what




Next, stopping at the Imperial Base again, this time with a full party.


I'm taking a party of Kutan, Setzer, Locke, and Terra, but really any party that excludes Kupek and Kuku will work for what I'm showing off.




If you want, you're forced to name Cyan and then force him into your party. You're free to leave after, and Kupek will be Cyan in both stats and name. It's useful if you want a useless Moogle and exchange him for the most useless party member.


In the fight with the General, you'll notice Cyan isn't in the fight. The character roster is full despite him being forced into our party, so he doesn't appear.


After the fight, you'll notice our party now doesn't have Locke, and has been replaced with Kuku/Sabin. This is because the game is scripted to remove Cyan from the party and add Sabin. The game still adds Sabin, just to a party of 4.


But in battle, Locke appears.

The reason why is that we actually have a party of 5. There's obviously no slot in your party to hold the 5th member, but he's still there. The bottom party member in the menu is always excluded in place of the 5th dormant character. This generally doesn't lead to many glitches, however it can be really annoying unless you go back to your airship.


By rearranging the bottom-slot to the top slot,


The game will drop whatever character you moved to the bottom slot. The menu will still appear as it was when you rearranged it once (Kuku -> Kutan -> Terra -> Setzer), but the battle sprites will include the top 3 characters and the character that was initially not on the menu. There is no way to get Locke back in the party menu, and there's no way to get Locke out of the 4th slot.


In the battle with Kefka, he just doesn't appear. He's supposed to be added to the party and then removed, but the game can't support more than 4 characters on the battlefield at the same time. So he never shows up and the characters celebrate.


The script proceeds normally, but at this point you're locked into seeing the soldiers fall off the building (which can't happen) so it's another game lockup. Restart!





Something I want to show before I finish up the World of Balance is that Gau is forever unobtainable. Gau’s script will come up, but the game is attempting to throw him into the battlefield. Because we never loaded his sprite (aka named him) he just won’t appear. We’re fighting an enemy but there’s no sprite to select.


Those familiar with the Sketch Glitch knows what happens here. If you attempt to run away, often 1 person will run, but the rest are stuck. The only way out of here is to use a Smoke Bomb or use auto-targeting moves.


Luckily I have Setzer and his Slots.

RIP Gau.





With that, everything worth showing off in the World of Balance has been shown off (From Terra and Locke’s starting point, anyways). So let’s go ahead and go to the World of Ruin.


First thing you’ll notice is a duplicate Shadow. Let’s try adding him to the party, shall we?


Uh. We disappeared. What happens here is the game adds character_10 (or whatever) to your party, which is Shadow. Since we already have character_10 in our party, it won’t make a duplicate. It just forces character_10 who is in the lead to another player slot. The game gets confused, and now the leader of the party is, well, no one. There’s a famous glitch that allows you to have nobody in your party in Narshe and this is effectively the same thing. It’s trying to read a sprite that isn’t there – the sprite of ~emptiness~


By opening and closing our menu, we’re forced upwards into nowhere. The game just doesn’t care. This is a lock-up.


By switching our lead to Locke this avoids this. The only side-effect of bringing Shadow here is that when he’s forced to leave our Party we’ll only have 2 characters (this causes nothing interesting), and he still has Interceptor, who will come help in battle occasionally.



Let’s just go ahead and blow up the world, get this over with.