FAQs

Q. Why the hell is Professor Oak in the hack? Were you high!?

A. First of all, yes probably, secondly and more important, back when this hack was first started, before it was 'RotDS', it was called 'Last Hope' and sucked far worse. Anyways, due to some heavy corruption I could not use the dialog editor at all, so I had to hex edit all text stuff. I changed the name of Cid into Oak because it was easy and doable. Then it just stuck, and eventually we did an Oak sprite and decided to keep it. I'm not a Pokemon lover by any stretch of the imagination, I gave up after the Red one on Gameboy -- I do however like the idea of an alternate reality Oak doing dark experiments. It seems to work imo, he is a professor of Pokemon in Pokemon, but a professor of espers in this hack. Works for me, I don't see what the big deal is...?

When I first played this (not that I finished yet-College is a pain) I was a little like "Wtf?" when I saw Oak in this. It would have made a LOT more sense if he was just kidnapped by the Empire, but it does look like he "enjoyed this thing a bit too much"- or maybe that was just me when I first read it. My memory is vague.

Q. Why are the characters so much like the vanilla ones still?

A. It's tough, without changing up the event structure more as a whole. I admit, Aurora is much like Terra still, I found that there wasn't a need to change it all that much personality-wise, since they both are still half-esper etc. and follow the same exact course of events lol. Obviously some characters required more of a makeover than others, like Locke to Cloud, Setzer to Otis... but for ones like Terra, Celes, Sabin, the new characters taking their spots just kinda fit the same way... They aren't carbon copies of the vanilla characters hopefully, but yes they could still use work to further differentiate. I'd say for the most part, the majority of them seem fresh and original.

I'm glad you realized this, I was gonna say it in the chat but I realized I would look very rude. It isn't in my heart to offend you in any way, but most of the characters verge in the carbon copy territory. Aurora is Terra, Serin is Edgar, Astral is Banon and Ronan is Sabin. Oboro is similar but otherwise fairly enough different from Shadow. Even though Arc's dialogue is obviously not Gau's, there are still instances of the kid jumping around buildings in Zozo, or in the weakened pose (all-fours to Gau, makes sense, weakened for Arc, not a lot of sense). One time where I found the similarities striking was at the start of the Opera scene, where the "I'm-serious-and-not-interested" Cloud cheerfuly talks with the Impresario and Tifa acts exactly like Celes did then. It probably looks better later in the game, but early game the similarities can be kinda distracting.
As I type this I realize you will hate me with all your heart. I'm annoying, I know. I can't help it. I guess I can tell you I'm enjoying this hack and it's helping me develop mine a lot (what I want/don't want in my hack, "if this can be done I guess I can do this too", etc).

Now because you asked for it

Q. Why does the Metal Gear protecting Glow City(?, the bad guys' HQ) not look like any Metal Gear machine in the Metal Gear series and instead looks like Crawler?
Q. How come Mr. Grimm shares the same look with Reaper? I actually thought he was fighting me for some reason.
Q. This one's actually me, lacking the sense of balance in games: Why did you remove level averaging, if Espers do not grant stat bonuses upon level up? I've just recruited Mog, and now I can't really use any of my other team members because their level is too low, and I'm not too fond of grinding ._.
Q. How can Finn stay toe-on-toe with GILGAMESH? ...I'm not a super fan of Adventure Time, but I'd say without Jake he couldn't stand Gilgy for too long lol
Q. How did Sephiroth let Kefka kill Aeris instead of him being the killer...lol
O. Why is Terra one of the early-game espers? I thought she was able to defeat the God of Magic. Woudln't it make sense if she was like, a late-game Esper or, lol, the replacement for Crusader?

I hope you don't take any offense on what I've said...