Part 15: Shiny777's attempts to explain this game, including a helpful relationship chart! Just like my FE4 shipping chart!

What? There was no delay. This was posted like a day after the last update. Totally. Anyway, where were we? Oh, right.





Time to start Not!Hector's story.



Pictured: Not Marquess Thria



Pictured: Not Eliwood



Pictured: THE GHOST OF UTHER AAAAAAA

No but really, you were never intended to do Hector/Iodem's story. So it's broken as fuck. How broken?



About this broken. No find/replace at all.



Hey, kids! Want a fun game you can play at home? Get a pencil, some paper, and try to map out how the fuck Elibe works in Ostian Princess's universe.



'Unlike Enemok. He's *two* of him.'



You can tell he's different because his class was changed from 'Lord' to 'Traveler.'



Pay no attention to the fact that his description is the same.



Yes, uses swords.



Mmhm.



The soldiers here are called 'Fang Unit,' which for once isn't a plothole introduced by Ostian Princess. These dudes are called 'Black Fang' in vanilla FE7 even though Hector doesn't know that's their name yet. I guess since you have to beat the game to unlock Hector's story, there's no reason to keep the lid on that.



Anyway, this map is literally exactly the same as the normal map, minus Not!Hector's name and the inexplicably 'Fang Unit' thing. The only logic I can think of is that the Black Fang were sometimes called just the Fang for short - 'The Fang's judgement will be swift' and all that. I guess Fang Unit makes sense in that context, since they're a Unit of the Fang. Vaguely. Very vague sense.



Since this map has nothing new to offer, I'll take this chance to discuss the things the hack did that I like and didn't like



Hahaha just kidding this hack is fucking terrible.



Still, I think it does illustrate one thing pretty well - romhacking is *hard*.



Iodem nearly dies here. I have no idea how he didn't, and I was so certain he'd die that I stopped screenshotting. But then he didn't die.



See? Anyway, think about it - all our good man Mig wanted to do was find/replace, and change some portraits and classes. And he still managed to fuck that up massively.



Part of that can be attributed to sheer incompetence, but it still goes a long way to showcasing just how difficult and time consuming a task making a halfway decent hack is.



There have been some great hacks shown in this thread. Not a one without flaws, but some of them approached near professional quality. I don't think those people, nor their work, deserve to be look down on as 'just' a hack.



People poured months and years of their lives into hacking a game they loved, so that other people who loved the game could enjoy it. I think there's something admirable about that.



I've always liked Wire's color scheme.



Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is, I've seen a lot of posts to the effect of 'this is pretty good for a hack' or 'I can excuse this because it's a hack' or 'Well, it's not that great, but it's a hack...'



I can't speak for the creators, but to me, that comes across almost kind of demeaning. They're amateurs working within the confines of an engine that isn't necessarily easy to work with, bending it in ways it wasn't meant to bend, but they're still working hard to make something enjoyable.



I think they deserve some respect for that, you know?



Besides, when you let yourself excuse flaws because it's 'just a hack...'



You introduce a fucking timeloop.



Look familiar, folks? I'll let this sink in.



Let it all sink in.



We're back at Chapter 7x. Let me just repeat that. WE'VE TRAVELED BACKWARDS IN TIME. This is not a case of bad editing or me reusing screenshots. Chapter 12 of Hector's story mode is chapter 7x.



Shown: A lot of people who will not be appearing.



So, yeah. This is Chapter 7x. The same plot events, the same layout, the same enemies, everything. The only difference is...


You have Iodem and Matthew, and nobody else. Enemok is here because he joins in this chapter.



So, we have to play through 7x with three units. And Ninian still being suicidal.



Fortunately, there's an easy solution to that. Come into Iodem's big studly arms, Ninian.



And then Enemok can solo the rest of the map while Matthew and Iodem play poker or something.



Now, you might be wondering, what happens when you beat this map?



Also I liked about Enemok soloing.



Really lied. Hey, Hector's broken as fuck, might as well use him. He's still carrying Ninian around, too.



Anyway, just keep that question in mind as we go through this map.



One thing I don't think I pointed out is Mig did a good job recreating Murdock's palette from FE6. Unless that's something you could just copy/paste between the two games, I'm not sure.



The Wolf Beil's broken as hell, due to its high MT. Since effectiveness triples MT, it's a lot better than the Rapier - the fact that it has WTA against lances instead of WTD helps.



And with this wonderful line, we're ushered into the great unknown.



Because...



We're trapped in a fucking timeloop.



Sports Almanacs, Hacking Steiner, whatever fucking joke you wanna make, that's FEDDOP. That's how it ends.



You go through the last chapters of Lilian's story with Enemok, Iodem, Matthew, and Diego when he joins. Since Iodem's classed as your lord, he can seize for you.



And what happens when you clear the last map?



The same fucking thing as before. And then you have a clear file with which you can start Enemok's story - the NPC fest - or Iodem's story - the timeloop.

There is no way out of this. We are trapped eternally in a void of our own making. It's almost poetic.



This has been FEDDOP. I apologize for the delays in getting the last few updates, and I'd like to think I made at least a few people laugh with this.

If any of you have any intentions of making a hack - and I know some of you do - take this hack as an example of what happens when you let yourself get lazy. And if you don't intend to hack, well... take it as general advice.

And always remember -