Final Fantasy VII Project

[RandMuadDib]

lol Tifa

[Cheetah]

You might be right Rand haha.

I'm also putting the Writer tryout information in the first post as well.

[The Damned]

(*realizes he'll probably have to read over the script for both FFVI and FFT, if only because he never played the WotL version*)

Hunh. Wonder how quickly I can get through that. Probably in a day.

Anyway, I've three or four questions off the top of my head. They're all clarification-related:

1. When it comes to the keeping the length of the sample script roughly the same, are we including "stage direction" here? Or just dialogue? I realize that things beyond just normal movement would include having to make them via sprites and that, ideally, we should limit that to minimize the strain on Twin, so we shouldn't go overboard even if not part of the "limit". However, I figured I would ask given how, to me at least, facing positions and walk movements are important in some issues.

2. When it comes to how Materia are going to be represented, I'm guessing we're going with the original five colors and their marble size from the original game, correct? I ask this because they're represented differently in Advent Children, Crisis Core and the other FFVII spin-offs, where they're larger in size and the colors are either more broken up (Crisis Core) or relatively unimportant (Advent Children).

3. Related to the above, I suppose we should just assume that the concept of Materia was already explained to Mustadio's father before that scene or that, perhaps, he was even already aware of Materia from the four Materia you find in-game as artifacts? I imagine it would save lines if we avoided the arguably lengthy explanation necessary for them, but a throwaway line might (eventually) be needed given how those artifact materia are extremely rare knowledge in Ivalice.


I think that's it since everything else I would now ask relates to things that will eventually come up later and, as such, is something that can either wait or will eventually be revealed.

[Cheetah]

1) Limiting the length is in regards to the amount of dialog, either by adding more back in forth or the dialog itself being long. Feel free to add as much stage direction as you would like as long as you aren't requesting over the top stuff. Also note that the event editor may have a large role in this aspect as well.
2) We will likely use the Zodiac stone graphics to represent the materia, maybe shrink them a little, but they will be larger than marbles. This is more to make them visible than to stick to any specific canon.
3) Interesting point. I would recommend having Besrudio comment about the power of materia very briefly, to indicate that Cid or Barret have previously explained it to him. Also to jog the memory of the player. One of the events following this one actually explains the role Materia will play in the FFT game. So brief is the key in this scene.

Good questions and good luck.

[RandMuadDib]

I was under the impression that you could only get the black and white materia as treasures in FFT? Which are the other 2?

[Eternal]

Red and Blue.

[Durbs]

Ack, if I wasn't helping Elric with his patch I'd be writing this in a second. I'd like to contribute, though. If there are some minor writing projects you have for me I'll do them.

[Cheetah]

You can always produce some test samples of script form this scene if you like. Get people thinking about ways to approach these characters. I have always wonder if it would be a better writing process to have different people write the dialog for specific characters.

[The Damned]

(Gods, I fail at everything.)

So, since I apparently can neither read nor remember things correctly and am lazy & slow, I both thought the deadline was the 14th instead of the 12th and missed my own self-imposed deadline. Clearly, I am an amazing human being.

Anyway, I literally just finished a script that I don't feel is nearly as good as it could be, but then I remembered there's some other things I need to have done by today (or tomorrow) that I have to start doing, so any further delay would be pointless. At the very least, there might be some usable ideas here since I just realized a couple of things that seemed "off" about the current scenario. Namely both Barret and Cid just leaving Besrudio, with his bum leg and all, behind defenseless against anything that might come through while they both go look for the others; I figured it applied even if we're not taking this super seriously or whatever:

spoiler: Without Further Ado

*scene opens with Besrudio, Barrett and Cid obviously already being in the process of discussing something*
Besrudio: "...And I had thought it an orrery after Mustadio pointed out the similarities despite its atypical design. However, it never made a single movement until he, Ramza and the others returned with the auracite of Cancer. And then, well, this whole affair started."
Barret: "Awright. This 'warping device' as ya called it seems to have brought more than just Cloud here. One minute I remember us being near Mideel to look for Cloud and Tifa after the Lifestream acted up and they fell in. The next minute...I was at the edge of this here town gettin' funny looks until you bumped inta me an' figured I knew Cloud. Ain't nothing I remember in between that."
Cid: "Yeah? I can only imagine why. So you're telling me that in all this time, all ya managed to do was wonder aimlessly, get your hand held by Besrudio here and still ya didn't manage to learn how to fix this damn thing? Figures."
Barret: "Yo!"
*steps closer to Cid, who keeps talking*
Besrudio: "Uh...."
Cid: "Meanwhile, I appeared in that Lionel castle town a distance away. You're just damn lucky I made my way in this direction after hearing about what type of town Goug is, especially since I had to fight my way across that @%$&!%# swamp by myself. Lucky I had this materia and spear on me still. I could have gone to that Warjilis place instead and ya would have been @%$&^#."
*Barret steps even closer to Cid until he's practically in his face or ear*
Barret: "Yo, Cid! Shu'up! For all I know, ya could have been here before me or even Cloud got here! And I ain't exactly heard ya say you remember anything either!"
Cid: "Maybe so, dude. But that doesn't change the fact that I fixed the machine while you didn't despite being near it longer. Honestly, what would ya have done if I hadn't arrived at all? Cried like a woman as you waited for something to happen? Even if it meant you were stuck here forever?"
Besrudio: "Um...."
Barret: "Awright! That does it--!"
*just then, machine begins to activate*
Besrudio: "Ahem...gentlemen, you will want to step back."
*Barret and Cid step back as Besrudio does as well; a green materia appears at the duo's feet; Cid kneels down to pick it up*
Cid: "It's a Destruct materia from Mideel."
*returns to a standing position*
Barret: "How can ya be sure it's from Mideel?"
Cid: "Because, dude, we were nowhere near Fort Condor and Cloud's always hung onto the one Sephiroth threw at him in Nibelheim. This one looks brand new, so it can't be his."
Besrudio: "...Sorry to interrupt, but I take it the machine's modifications were successful?"
Cid: "Yeah. It seems like everything should turn up in this here room now or, at least, Goug. That's still a vast improvement from being spread all over the damn continent like you believe may have happened. We'll have to hope nothing ended up in the water, except for maybe Cait Sith."
Barret: "Temple of Ancients aside, ain't that the truth."
Besrudio: "...Indeed. I'm still unsure as to why that happened or why there is such delay, but I will try my best to assess why it is. I expect now that you know it works, you will both depart to look for the rest of your friends? My last correspondence with my son, Mustadio, said that he and Ramza were still in search of Ramza's younger sister, Alma, and that Cloud was still with them and still hadn't recovered his memories. However, it didn't mention a very specific location given that they were going from Zaland to Dorter at the time it was sent. Both those cities are much farther north of here."
Cid: "Well, up north's as good a place to start as any. However, Barret here will have to go alone for a while."
Barret: "Wait, what? Hold up! What exactly are ya trying to put, Cid?!"
Cid: "I know you're worried, but calm down, damn it."
*turns to Barret and gives him the Destruct materia*
Cid: "And take this with you. I need to stay here for a bit to make sure this damn thing works like how I want it to and to make sure nothing dangerous comes through here and does in our new friend here, this whole town or our only way of getting back to our home dimension. None of us want some @%$&!%# silver-haired pretty boy to show up and wreck this place too."
Barret: "...All right. Ya sure you can handle him alone if it comes to that?"
Cid: "I'm pretty sure I can take the bastard, but let me worry about that. With that settled, I'll try to catch up as soon as possible, but this machine takes priority for now. Besides, you can handle yourself. You still have any materia on you?"
Barret: "Besides what ya just gave me? I ain't got much, unfortunately. I've a Cure materia, a Fire materia and a few other things, but they're mostly some healing stuff I've been using ever since, ya know, Aerith died."
Cid: "I see. Damn. That isn't much, but it should at least help you put down those $#!@$ in the swamp. Most of the things there are undead from what I saw and your gun-arm should be able to handle anything else."
Barret: "Right. Better be going then."
*Barret turns to leave and makes it as far as the door before Besrudio quickly turns his attention away from the machine, having remembered something*
Besrudio: "Ah! Mr. Wallace, I almost forgot!"
Barret: "Huh? What're ya talking about?"
Besrudio: "Last night I heard a rather interesting rumor while at the tavern that seems to have traveled all the way down from Gariland in the north. It involved a notorious group of monks from even further north called the Grog 11. Apparently there was some altercation at a bar in Gariland where they were all summarily defeated by a lone maiden whom no one seems to know the identity of. Given their notorious strength and that whole groups have been unable to defeat them, the fact a lone person of mysterious origin could defeat them so soundly seems like it might be related to your case if it turns out to be true."
Barret: "Is that right? Did they give a description or a name?"
Besrudio: "Sadly no, I'm afraid. The only consistent descriptions beyond her sex seem to be that she had fairly dark hair and moved with great celerity."
Barret: "Sounds like Tifa then."
Cid: "Or it could be Yuffie. Still, you should go check it out. Maybe go check out Grog itself too."
Barret: "Awright. Anything else?
Besrudio: "Not that I remember, no."
Barret: "Be seeing ya then."
*Barret exits; Besrudio turns back to the machine and then to Cid*
Besrudio: "Mr. Highwind, was it?"
Cid: "Yeah, but call me Cid, dude."
Besrudio: "Very well. Cid, as much as appreciate the sentiment and forethought of your protection, I must admit that I feel rather badly for impeding your quest. Much like the affair concerning Bart Company, I again feel like a liability. Perhaps if you could tell me how to use this materia you and Mr. Wallace spoke of...."
Cid: "I'm not sure you want to be using that stuff and I was going to have to stick around for a bit to make sure the machine worked, but if you really want to know, then fine. Materia is...."
*scene fades to black as it ends*

I figured I'd leave it off there so you could either do a Materia--should we capitalize every instance of that?--tutorial right after or have that occur in battle with Barret at Zigolis yet still have it so that Besrudio ultimately knows what he's dealing with. Speaking of Materia, I picked Destruct because it (apparently) is the only (green) materia besides Gravity that can be bought in Mideel and only one other place; Gravity is only sold in Costa Del Sol in Discs 2 & 3, but that obviously would necessitate getting rid of that Nilbelheim reference.

Outside of that, Barret and Cid probably come off as more antagonistic to each other than in the game, but considering the situation, I figure it's at least stressful on Barret, especially since he's known Cloud the longest after Tifa. Feel free to change that though...if you use it at all.

Better late than never might not apply in this case, so I would like to at least think that other people got entries in on time even if my "late" script is the first one to posted in this thread.

[Cheetah]

No need to worry about the due date, it is was a very loose timeline and we are happy to have your draft as well as any others that come along.

I will provide a longer response to your post when I have more time, but after my initial read through I am quite pleased. I feel you are capturing the dialect differences very well. You have also brought up some interesting points that we haven't considered before. I look forward to continuing to review and refine this draft with you.

[RandMuadDib]

my only concern is that i don't recall Cid ever calling people "Dude" Other than that pretty good.

[The Damned]

(I swear to death, if I fall asleep mid-day again, I am going to murder thousands.)

I see. Well that's good, especially since I didn't get finished re-reading either script in full like I had wanted to due to...issues.

my only concern is that i don't recall Cid ever calling people "Dude" Other than that pretty good.

Oh, the same here. However, I was reading the game script for Final Fantasy VII earlier I as typed and noticed that he does it at least once (for a grand total of once), so I probably overused it. However, I just couldn't think of a better (read: shorter) word at time that's just as casual and I didn't want to make my version of the script even longer than I already felt it was going to be.

I'll more than happily cut it out because I've never ever liked that word. But you guys know me by now: I hardly like anything.

[Cheetah]

Okay Damned, this is going to be a lot of changes, but once again I generally like what you have done and there is a lot of good stuff in here. Let it be known that there is going to be a lot of content changes just because you don't have all the knowledge of what is happening next in the story that I do. To avoid going line by line, I'm going to just start with some general feedback and see how you encorporate it (asuming you are still willing to).
1) Cid and Barret leave together. They are running under the assumption that nothing but materia and their teammates is going to come through that warping device. Besrudio's workshop will function as a home base that the team will return to regularly and Besrudio should end with some type of comment that they should check in every once in a while for new supplies. This entails a lot of changes.
2) The materia that warps in is a generic magic materia. For now just say it is lightening/bolt or something, we might change it to something different later to fit following scenes and needs.
3) I feel like you are characterizing Barret really well. He is coming off as a bit of a hot head nicely, more a man of action than thought.
4) Cid unfortunately is coming off as a overconfident angsty teenager. Remove all "dude"s, is a start but it is more than that. He sounds like he is showing off, instead it should be criticizing others. They can look similar, but he should have the occassional degrading comment towards others and no talking himself up. He is older, self-confident, and ornery. I like confrontation between Cid and Barret, but Cid's character seem off.
5) Less is more. Fit the same amount of info in less text by illuding to information instead of saying it straight out. Don't have them say it is Tifa, just make it clear that Cid and Barret have a good idea who it is. Besrudio in general needs to be less explainative, though he will retain a fair bit.
6) I love the comment about Cait Sith and Barret's response.
 
Hopefully this will give you ideas. I would love to see another draft of this by you and see what you can do with this feedback.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

(Gods, I fail at everything.)

So, since I apparently can neither read nor remember things correctly and am lazy & slow, I both thought the deadline was the 14th instead of the 12th and missed my own self-imposed deadline. Clearly, I am an amazing human being.

Anyway, I literally just finished a script that I don't feel is nearly as good as it could be, but then I remembered there's some other things I need to have done by today (or tomorrow) that I have to start doing, so any further delay would be pointless. At the very least, there might be some usable ideas here since I just realized a couple of things that seemed "off" about the current scenario. Namely both Barret and Cid just leaving Besrudio, with his bum leg and all, behind defenseless against anything that might come through while they both go look for the others; I figured it applied even if we're not taking this super seriously or whatever:

spoiler: Without Further Ado

*scene opens with Besrudio, Barrett and Cid obviously already being in the process of discussing something*
Besrudio: "...And I had thought it an orrery after Mustadio pointed out the similarities despite its atypical design. However, it never made a single movement until he, Ramza and the others returned with the auracite of Cancer. And then, well, this whole affair started."
Barret: "Awright. This 'warping device' as ya called it seems to have brought more than just Cloud here. One minute I remember us being near Mideel to look for Cloud and Tifa after the Lifestream acted up and they fell in. The next minute...I was at the edge of this here town gettin' funny looks until you bumped inta me an' figured I knew Cloud. Ain't nothing I remember in between that."
Cid: "Yeah? I can only imagine why. So you're telling me that in all this time, all ya managed to do was wonder aimlessly, get your hand held by Besrudio here and still ya didn't manage to learn how to fix this damn thing? Figures."
Barret: "Yo!"
*steps closer to Cid, who keeps talking*
Besrudio: "Uh...."
Cid: "Meanwhile, I appeared in that Lionel castle town a distance away. You're just damn lucky I made my way in this direction after hearing about what type of town Goug is, especially since I had to fight my way across that @%$&!%# swamp by myself. Lucky I had this materia and spear on me still. I could have gone to that Warjilis place instead and ya would have been @%$&^#."
*Barret steps even closer to Cid until he's practically in his face or ear*
Barret: "Yo, Cid! Shu'up! For all I know, ya could have been here before me or even Cloud got here! And I ain't exactly heard ya say you remember anything either!"
Cid: "Maybe so, dude. But that doesn't change the fact that I fixed the machine while you didn't despite being near it longer. Honestly, what would ya have done if I hadn't arrived at all? Cried like a woman as you waited for something to happen? Even if it meant you were stuck here forever?"
Besrudio: "Um...."
Barret: "Awright! That does it--!"
*just then, machine begins to activate*
Besrudio: "Ahem...gentlemen, you will want to step back."
*Barret and Cid step back as Besrudio does as well; a green materia appears at the duo's feet; Cid kneels down to pick it up*
Cid: "It's a Destruct materia from Mideel."
*returns to a standing position*
Barret: "How can ya be sure it's from Mideel?"
Cid: "Because, dude, we were nowhere near Fort Condor and Cloud's always hung onto the one Sephiroth threw at him in Nibelheim. This one looks brand new, so it can't be his."
Besrudio: "...Sorry to interrupt, but I take it the machine's modifications were successful?"
Cid: "Yeah. It seems like everything should turn up in this here room now or, at least, Goug. That's still a vast improvement from being spread all over the damn continent like you believe may have happened. We'll have to hope nothing ended up in the water, except for maybe Cait Sith."
Barret: "Temple of Ancients aside, ain't that the truth."
Besrudio: "...Indeed. I'm still unsure as to why that happened or why there is such delay, but I will try my best to assess why it is. I expect now that you know it works, you will both depart to look for the rest of your friends? My last correspondence with my son, Mustadio, said that he and Ramza were still in search of Ramza's younger sister, Alma, and that Cloud was still with them and still hadn't recovered his memories. However, it didn't mention a very specific location given that they were going from Zaland to Dorter at the time it was sent. Both those cities are much farther north of here."
Cid: "Well, up north's as good a place to start as any. However, Barret here will have to go alone for a while."
Barret: "Wait, what? Hold up! What exactly are ya trying to put, Cid?!"
Cid: "I know you're worried, but calm down, damn it."
*turns to Barret and gives him the Destruct materia*
Cid: "And take this with you. I need to stay here for a bit to make sure this damn thing works like how I want it to and to make sure nothing dangerous comes through here and does in our new friend here, this whole town or our only way of getting back to our home dimension. None of us want some @%$&!%# silver-haired pretty boy to show up and wreck this place too."
Barret: "...All right. Ya sure you can handle him alone if it comes to that?"
Cid: "I'm pretty sure I can take the bastard, but let me worry about that. With that settled, I'll try to catch up as soon as possible, but this machine takes priority for now. Besides, you can handle yourself. You still have any materia on you?"
Barret: "Besides what ya just gave me? I ain't got much, unfortunately. I've a Cure materia, a Fire materia and a few other things, but they're mostly some healing stuff I've been using ever since, ya know, Aerith died."
Cid: "I see. Damn. That isn't much, but it should at least help you put down those $#!@$ in the swamp. Most of the things there are undead from what I saw and your gun-arm should be able to handle anything else."
Barret: "Right. Better be going then."
*Barret turns to leave and makes it as far as the door before Besrudio quickly turns his attention away from the machine, having remembered something*
Besrudio: "Ah! Mr. Wallace, I almost forgot!"
Barret: "Huh? What're ya talking about?"
Besrudio: "Last night I heard a rather interesting rumor while at the tavern that seems to have traveled all the way down from Gariland in the north. It involved a notorious group of monks from even further north called the Grog 11. Apparently there was some altercation at a bar in Gariland where they were all summarily defeated by a lone maiden whom no one seems to know the identity of. Given their notorious strength and that whole groups have been unable to defeat them, the fact a lone person of mysterious origin could defeat them so soundly seems like it might be related to your case if it turns out to be true."
Barret: "Is that right? Did they give a description or a name?"
Besrudio: "Sadly no, I'm afraid. The only consistent descriptions beyond her sex seem to be that she had fairly dark hair and moved with great celerity."
Barret: "Sounds like Tifa then."
Cid: "Or it could be Yuffie. Still, you should go check it out. Maybe go check out Grog itself too."
Barret: "Awright. Anything else?
Besrudio: "Not that I remember, no."
Barret: "Be seeing ya then."
*Barret exits; Besrudio turns back to the machine and then to Cid*
Besrudio: "Mr. Highwind, was it?"
Cid: "Yeah, but call me Cid, dude."
Besrudio: "Very well. Cid, as much as appreciate the sentiment and forethought of your protection, I must admit that I feel rather badly for impeding your quest. Much like the affair concerning Bart Company, I again feel like a liability. Perhaps if you could tell me how to use this materia you and Mr. Wallace spoke of...."
Cid: "I'm not sure you want to be using that stuff and I was going to have to stick around for a bit to make sure the machine worked, but if you really want to know, then fine. Materia is...."
*scene fades to black as it ends*

I figured I'd leave it off there so you could either do a Materia--should we capitalize every instance of that?--tutorial right after or have that occur in battle with Barret at Zigolis yet still have it so that Besrudio ultimately knows what he's dealing with. Speaking of Materia, I picked Destruct because it (apparently) is the only (green) materia besides Gravity that can be bought in Mideel and only one other place; Gravity is only sold in Costa Del Sol in Discs 2 & 3, but that obviously would necessitate getting rid of that Nilbelheim reference.

Outside of that, Barret and Cid probably come off as more antagonistic to each other than in the game, but considering the situation, I figure it's at least stressful on Barret, especially since he's known Cloud the longest after Tifa. Feel free to change that though...if you use it at all.

Better late than never might not apply in this case, so I would like to at least think that other people got entries in on time even if my "late" script is the first one to posted in this thread.

Waaaay too much talking in that script.  You can cut 90% of that and still come away with a good scene.  Some pointers:
*Characters never say what they feel.  Instead, you can divine their emotional state through their gestures, stance, and mannerisms.
*Try to start a scene as late as you can get away with.  Why?  Because you hook the reader by withholding information, or through action.  So the first scene must begin with some sort of action.
**Think about how FFT starts.  You get into the action pretty quick, right?  Not many explanations given, not until the first battle is over.  Now compare that to how FFTA starts - with at least 35 minutes of dialog, scenes to watch, and hand-holding battles to deal with.  Save yourself a lot of time event editing and keep it short.
*It's fucking hard to write dialog in a character's unique voice, so I try to avoid it by cutting as much dialog as I can.  Focus on what they do in reaction to other people's words and actions.  Does Barret shake his head?  At what point does Cid create a pause in the conversation by lighting up?  Who doesn't care that he smokes, and who coughs and waves the smoke away?

EDIT

Also, what exactly is the point of this story/hack/whatever?  What is the emotional draw here?  Does everyone just want to find Cloud and get home?  Does this take place after FFT, with Ramza and the party missing (including Cloud?), and then Besrodio screws around with the teleporter and in comes Barret, gun-arm blazing?  Let's give Barret something to shoot...

Opening scene - Goug Slums

Besrodio appears.  He walks forward and stops just before an intersection.  He pauses and looks both ways, then hurries away and disappears off-screen.

A thief appears from behind a chimney, on top of a building.  He turns his head and whistles.

Next scene - Besrodio's machine shop

Besrodio rushes inside, closes the door and locks it behind him.  He leans up against the door, sighs, and pulls an orb out of his pocket.  The orb gleams green.

Someone bangs on the door.  "Open up, heretic!"  // you should probably cut this dialog, but keep the action - the door knock and besrodio's reaction

Besrodio looks around quickly, runs and trips down the stairs.  The orb flies out of his pocket and rolls across the floor.

The door bursts open, and a crossbow quarrel flies in after it and sticks to the opposite wall.  Three mercenaries enter, carefully clearing the room.

****
I'm running out of time right now, so I'll summarize.
****

mercenaries announce all clear, the church leader enters (or perhaps one of delita's goons?  Or is delita dead now?)  Two mercenaries haul besrodio upright, the third picks up the orb and hands it to the church leader (church leader is basically a lieutenant in the church, a new heretic hunter seeking promotion).  Church leader makes a remark to besrodio.  church leader walks around the shop, hands behind back, lecturing besrodio (note: this is how you explain the backstory).  one mercenary follows behind him, at the ready.  church leader pauses before a new contraption, and tells the mercenary, "Destroy it."  The mercenary kicks it.  Sparks fly, church leader and mercenary duck.  A bolt of energy kills the mercenary and knocks church leader on his ass.  The orb rolls out of church leader's hand and towards the machine.  More sparks, more SFX.  Besrodio knocks on of the surprised mercanries holding him away, and grabs the materia orb.  church leader shouts "STOP HIM!"  One of the mercanries shoots besrodio with a crossbow, and he falls down on his back, but just manages to place the orb in the contraption.

SFX - Barret enters scene.

Barret cusses, says something barretish, the church leader sayls something along the lines of "kill/capture the abomination", before fleeing out a door.  After he leaves, several more mercanaries come in after him.

KOed
1 mercanry
besrodio

battle begin
barret vs at least 3 mercanaries, more like 5 or 6.

[Cheetah]

Generally good suggestions Pickle and your scene was quite intriguing and dramatic. It is just way too much story though. We are trying to minimize the story as much as possible in this patch and focus on providing a basic premiss for fun and interesting gameplay scenarios and mechanics.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

It is just way too much story though.

Not really.  It's less story than the original scene, and it will go by much faster.  It shouldn't take more than two or three minutes to go through the entire scene I just went through, five at the most.  And it's all action, so it'll seem to pass faster than reading an unending wall of text and trying to comprehend the back-and-forth of personalities.  So, it'll be easier on the player, but it'll likely be much harder for whoever has to code events and create event sprites.

EDIT
You're right, from the POV of the modders, but I just wanted to clarify since I'm that nerdy.
/EDIT

We are trying to minimize the story as much as possible in this patch

Again - why the wall of text in the original scene?  Or are you worried about traveling all around Ivalice and finding all the characters?  FF6 World of Ruin is a good example of world traveling and recruitment that doesn't take a lot of time.

and focus on providing a basic premise for fun and interesting gameplay scenarios and mechanics.

What kind of scenarios?  What mechanics?  There's nothing wrong with walking from town to town, searching for Materia, dealing with spatial-temporal disturbances (and all the monsters and treasures that come with them), and finding allies and enemies along the way.  Getting unique scenarios out of it is up to your own imagination.

EDIT
The two paragraphs above shouldn't be construed as criticisms.  They're just questions I think you should be asking yourself as you make this patch.
/EDIT

[3lric]

Everything about this project sounds amazing, can't wait to see it. 

[The Damned]

(Kind disappointed no one else has posted a script by now besides Pickle Girl Fanboy and I.)

Damn. That took longer than I thought.

My apologies for disappearing again. I saw your valid criticism before I left, Cheetah and Pickle Girl Fanboy. I just had something to make sure that I had taken care on top of Embargo's weapons list bitching at me. However, I got the former thing done yesterday and the latter done this morning.

As such, I should be able to type up a better script than that first draft by tomorrow (since it's not like I'm going anywhere this weekend, like always).

Now if you'll excuse me, I must directly respond to the PGF's comments that I meant to reply to as soon as I saw them. I'll try to be concise here; we know how tends to work out.

Waaaay too much talking in that script.  You can cut 90% of that and still come away with a good scene.

Oh, I concur. You know how long-winded I am, though. Also, as I've told Raven (when he tells me similar things), I'm find with typing up a storm only to force myself to cut things. It is a first draft after all.

Some pointers:
*Characters never say what they feel.  Instead, you can divine their emotional state through their gestures, stance, and mannerisms.

I'm aware of that: showing is almost always better than telling.

The problem in this instance, though, is that were working with sprites that are custom-made and singular portraits that can't change with emotion. If we had voiceovers like in the PSP version, then I would gladly cut down on the "telling" a lot more, but we do not, unfortunately. So I don't to have to describe unnecessary motions--kneeling is basically using Critical status in the event--even if it can/would shorten a scene because I don't want to put unnecessary burden on Twin or other spriters. If I could do sprites myself, then I'd be a lot more comfortable.

If you've any suggestions, though, as with Cheetah I'm all ears.

*Try to start a scene as late as you can get away with.  Why?  Because you hook the reader by withholding information, or through action.  So the first scene must begin with some sort of action.

I also aware of this, though I suppose I could have begun it later. I am admittedly rather bad at that, though that's perhaps because I'm not a fan of seemingly mindless action and I'm pretty content with people just talking to set-up mystery. As I've constantly said, I'm rather boring person.

(I'll try not to make Embargo's dialogue eye-gouging bad and/or long in most places. I promise.[/cross fingers])

**Think about how FFT starts.  You get into the action pretty quick, right?  Not many explanations given, not until the first battle is over.  Now compare that to how FFTA starts - with at least 35 minutes of dialog, scenes to watch, and hand-holding battles to deal with.  Save yourself a lot of time event editing and keep it short.

Haha, true. However, FFT arguably has even longer beginning because I know at least one person has said that the way Chapter 1 is set after the Prologue is kinda nonsensical since, as a flashback, it's a really detailed explanation.

*It's fucking hard to write dialog in a character's unique voice, so I try to avoid it by cutting as much dialog as I can.  Focus on what they do in reaction to other people's words and actions.  Does Barret shake his head?  At what point does Cid create a pause in the conversation by lighting up?  Who doesn't care that he smokes, and who coughs and waves the smoke away?

Again, sprite limitations or else I gladly would. Still, so noted and I understand that, obviously, considering I made Cid come off as surfer after years of not playing FFVII despite remembering that he was a gruff old engineer. Heh.

I'll comment on your script when I put up my revised one tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice/suggestions/criticisms. It's nice to see at least someone who said they were initially interested is still interested.

[Cheetah]

Good to see you back Damned. Don't worry, there is still working happening behind the scenes. We are in the process of testing out the first draft of the materia gameplay system by Pokey. I'm looking forward to your next draft.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

@The Damned: So it's more about technical and temporal limitations.  I can get behind that.