Unused Content: Preliminary Findings

[VincentASM]

This is (another) glitched topic. Actual post is located below.

Edited June 29, 2017 by VincentASM

[VincentASM]

So I've talked a bit about Echoes's unused content here and there.

At last, now that the final DLC (that we know of) is out, I can finally post the article detailing the game's unused content I've been working on.

Ta-da!

Anyway, I don't think there's anything ground-breaking that hasn't already been discovered or discussed, but hopefully the article is a useful reference for some.

[Dandy Druid]

Thanks for the write up! It's really interesting to learn about this. I wonder what happened to the Lima and Liprica scene.

[Res]

Thank you! This is all super interesting. It's a pity there aren't higher resolutions of all the gorgeous artwork. And I love the gigantic sheep.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Thank you very much! 

I like the Mask/zombie versions of Alm and Celica's classes, plus the Spectral children and Villagers. The Spectrals could be used for a haunted/cursed battle (restless innocents rise from the grave, their wanting of vengeance has only summoned more of them, and their collective grudge towards the living makes them very strong). The Mask Celica and Alm could be used for a "face a twisted doppelganger of yourself" battle. Ike has a good looking normal sprite by the way.

Actually having some NPCs form a Mila's Faithful group would have been a nice touch of world building in gameplay. Alternatively they could've renamed Celica's Army the Mila Faithful after a certain point (say Act 3)- RD had no problem with changing group titles frequently, even with the same characters in command.

1 hour ago, Res said:

And I love the gigantic sheep.

And yet we don't have lamb chops as provisions! 

I think the sheep are so big because it makes them easily visible from a distance in first-person village mode. From a distance, the sheep don't appear overly large, it's only closer observation, which isn't possible without hacking, that breaks this illusion. It's a trick artists have been using for centuries- the Greek Partheon doesn't have a single straight exterior column because things curve in the human eye at a distance. 

[BrightBow]

I had the slight hope that the 0% drop rate for the Blessed Bow was a mistake from the forum staff. That's unfortunate.

I was wondering if there are traces of a cooking mechanic since so many provisions in the game seem to be more like ingredients as opposed to something that is meant to be eat raw, like garlic, raw meat and of course the ever popular bag of flour. But it seems like there is no such thing.

Edited June 30, 2017 by BrightBow

[r_n]

46 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

I had the slight hope that the 0% drop rate for the Blessed Bow was a mistake from the forum staff. That's unfortunate.

I was wondering if there are traces of a cooking mechanic since so many provisions in the game seem to be more like ingredients as opposed to something that is meant to be eat raw, like garlic, raw meat and of course the ever popular bag of flour. But it seems like there is no such thing.

I could see there being more "cooking" side quests. There's a couple in the game already, where you bring ingredients and get a (theoretically) better result out of it. And we know there was likely more quests planned.

[Jotari]

Oh wow so the villages are completely explorable. I really wish they kept it that way. The whole menu character interaction makes it feel extremely low budget to me. It's like something you get on sale on the Eshop for 2 euro. It's fine for something like Phoenix Wright but here I just question why so many people are lining up and posing like that just so I can talk to them. Even having characters with minimal movement or just standing a their own specific corner makes the world feel more real than having sprites pasted onto a background. If there were no dungeons then it probably wouldn't bother me either but the fact that control is given and taken away like that just feels limiting.

[VincentASM]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Oh wow so the villages are completely explorable. I really wish they kept it that way. The whole menu character interaction makes it feel extremely low budget to me. It's like something you get on sale on the Eshop for 2 euro. It's fine for something like Phoenix Wright but here I just question why so many people are lining up and posing like that just so I can talk to them. Even having characters with minimal movement or just standing a their own specific corner makes the world feel more real than having sprites pasted onto a background. If there were no dungeons then it probably wouldn't bother me either but the fact that control is given and taken away like that just feels limiting.

I'm curious if it's due to hardware. The devs had no issues coding 3D villages, but when messing around with dungeons, I found that you can't have more than 15 enemies on-screen and even with 15 enemies, there's horrendous slow-down.

Presumably if they had explorable 3D villages with say 5 villagers and 2-3 of your companions to talk to, the frame rate would be just as bad. Especially if there are a bunch of houses and animals as well. Ah well, we can always dream.

Or maybe FE Switch will be our salvation : P

[Jotari]

29 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

I'm curious if it's due to hardware. The devs had no issues coding 3D villages, but when messing around with dungeons, I found that you can't have more than 15 enemies on-screen and even with 15 enemies, there's horrendous slow-down.

Presumably if they had explorable 3D villages with say 5 villagers and 2-3 of your companions to talk to, the frame rate would be just as bad. Especially if there are a bunch of houses and animals as well. Ah well, we can always dream.

Or maybe FE Switch will be our salvation : P

That wouldn't explain why Mila Statues are done by menu. You're never going to have near that many people to talk to at a Mila Statue. It's already in the dungeon too. Maybe because it's purely menu based feature but then they keep the purely menu based Lion Head Rooms as fully explorable terrain. Even though most of them are right behind Mila Statue rooms.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Jotari

[r_n]

7 hours ago, VincentASM said:

I'm curious if it's due to hardware. The devs had no issues coding 3D villages, but when messing around with dungeons, I found that you can't have more than 15 enemies on-screen and even with 15 enemies, there's horrendous slow-down.

Presumably if they had explorable 3D villages with say 5 villagers and 2-3 of your companions to talk to, the frame rate would be just as bad. Especially if there are a bunch of houses and animals as well. Ah well, we can always dream.

Or maybe FE Switch will be our salvation : P

Also dungeon geometry is significantly simpler Lots of flat open areas, lots of hallways with minimal objects in them. They're dark so there's an excuse for low field of vision. The most complex, visually, dungeon I can think of is the SYlveon shrine since it has all those inexplicable bloody body bags in all of the cells. But they're bunch together, the camera keeps close, they're in separate cells and there's not a lot of detail in their speific areas.

 

 

 

 

As an aside, was there any big write up of Fates' cut content? In general, not just the touch stuff & bikinis axed for international releases. I've seen a few bits here and there but the tcrf article always seemed half done and the wiki information is scattered.

[Jotari]

Wait a second. Judah is 147. And his daughter is 25...Fair play to the guy.

[VincentASM]

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

That wouldn't explain why Mila Statues are done by menu. You're never going to have near that many people to talk to at a Mila Statue. It's already in the dungeon too. Maybe because it's purely menu based feature but then they keep the purely menu based Lion Head Rooms as fully explorable terrain. Even though most of them are right behind Mila Statue rooms.

Good point.

I have no idea except I guess they opted for ease of use--and I suppose that train of thought extended to the villages too.

Still, I always did find it jarring whenever you entered a menu segment in a dungeon. I would have loved even just an empty room with a save circle on the floor or something.

10 hours ago, r_n said:

As an aside, was there any big write up of Fates' cut content? In general, not just the touch stuff & bikinis axed for international releases. I've seen a few bits here and there but the tcrf article always seemed half done and the wiki information is scattered.

Very good question.

I think I ended up going on vacation and forgot to cover it properly.

When I have time, I'll have to take another look...

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

Good point.

I have no idea except I guess they opted for ease of use--and I suppose that train of thought extended to the villages too.

Still, I always did find it jarring whenever you entered a menu segment in a dungeon. I would have loved even just an empty room with a save circle on the floor or something.

Very good question.

I think I ended up going on vacation and forgot to cover it properly.

When I have time, I'll have to take another look...

It's even more jarring in some isolated sections of the final dungeon where they have menu scenes for cutscenes for some reason. Probably to include the save feature but on a reexplore it's really jarring to be running around and then suddenly pause because that's the random room Fernand died in or something. Thinking about it too I doubt it's resources that held them back. The 3DS could handle Majora's Mask which had multiple NPCs in an area at once that move around based on a schedule. It's not like the Fire Emblem engine is really all that resource intensive. Being turn based means there's a crap load of stuff you just don't have to do. I expect it came down more to limited time more than computing power.

[VincentASM]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's even more jarring in some isolated sections of the final dungeon where they have menu scenes for cutscenes for some reason. Probably to include the save feature but on a reexplore it's really jarring to be running around and then suddenly pause because that's the random room Fernand died in or something. Thinking about it too I doubt it's resources that held them back. The 3DS could handle Majora's Mask which had multiple NPCs in an area at once that move around based on a schedule. It's not like the Fire Emblem engine is really all that resource intensive. Being turn based means there's a crap load of stuff you just don't have to do. I expect it came down more to limited time more than computing power.

Want to know what's really funny?

Those isolated sections are actually from the main dungeon itself. They didn't even bother cutting out a piece of the dungeon, it literally loads the entire room/area if memory serves correctly.

For example, the bit where you talk to Python at the entrance of the Deliverance Hideout. If you could walk around, it's just the first explorable area of the dungeon XD

So yeah, resources may not be the only reason.

[BrightBow]

4 hours ago, VincentASM said:

For example, the bit where you talk to Python at the entrance of the Deliverance Hideout. If you could walk around, it's just the first explorable area of the dungeon XD

Wow, I can't believe I never noticed that. And here I wanted to ask you to explore that area and take a look into that one room to the right that you can see on the map.

Edited July 1, 2017 by BrightBow

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, VincentASM said:

Want to know what's really funny?

Those isolated sections are actually from the main dungeon itself. They didn't even bother cutting out a piece of the dungeon, it literally loads the entire room/area if memory serves correctly.

For example, the bit where you talk to Python at the entrance of the Deliverance Hideout. If you could walk around, it's just the first explorable area of the dungeon XD

So yeah, resources may not be the only reason.

Yeah, that's pretty obvious with the treasury and the final door to Duma which don't even have a transition point to disguise it. You just approach it and suddenly you're playing an Adventure Game.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Jotari

[DeathChaos25]

Some people have asked me this question, so I think making a post about this would be nice.

 

Some people are under assumption that Fernand's playable character quotes found in the base game are used because Fernand is playable in 2 of the 4 Maps from the Rise of the Deliverance DLC pack.

 

Wrong!

 

In the DLC, Fernand uses an ENTIRELY different voice set from the one in the base game.

 

Maybe one or 2 quotes are recycled, but the majority of them are different.

 

You can see this difference instantly when selecting Fernand.

Base Game Fernand's quote would be "I'll take them all on!"

DLC Voice Fernand's quote is "Who among you shall face me?"

 

And the differences just keep piling on.

 

I'll get to compiling DLC Fernand's voices sometime in the near Future to see how different they really are.