[FF8PC - Steam] Succession Mod (v.1.0)

[Percival]

Just a quick question in regards to compatibility with ragnarok:

You mention several times to install ragnarok and then overwrite with your "field.fs files"

would this be ONLY field.fs, or all three of field.fs, field.fi, and field.fl that would be needed for the overwrite?

Yes, sorry. That can be confusing when using these files for the first time. Whenever someone refers to the field, the main, the menu, the battle, or any other files, they always mean all three. I should be more specific.

[Percival]

I haven't read all the comments earlier so I apologize if this has been asked before, I didn't want to spoil myself on anything, but I was curious if this was a straight up retranslation that's accurate to the original Japanese script or the original translation rewritten with your own flavor to it?

  It is DEFINITELY rewritten with my own flavor. But I went out of my way to maintain the original sound and characterization of each of the main characters. All of the characters have a greater degree of depth and maturity than the original, but they still maintain their original identity. As I mentioned in the description, the greatest deviations were with Headmaster Cid and Seifer. Rinoa has also received a lot of attention, but that is primarily in terms of adding to her backstory and motivation, not her personality.

  I do not speak Japanese, but I had originally attempted to use a number of 'more accurate' versions of the script for reference and inspiration. But everything I found was so strikingly similar to the original that I gave up on that very quickly.
  The version we received was remarkably faithful as a translation. I would only argue that it was fairly poor as a localization.

  And also, despite what you may have heard, the great Ted Woolsey did not actually appear to me in a vision, providing me with his own immaculate localization. That was a joke.

[Percival]

Real life is probably busy for them atm.
But i still have hope that this will continue to be updated eventually in the future! lol

  I love this mod, and I always appreciate the support from all of you, but yes, lots of real life, unfortunately. Also I have largely moved on to my next writing project, and I am trying to devote my free time to that.
  Also, my CPU finally died, and I lost most of the next update I was planning on posting. It wasn't large, mainly small typo fixes. And I lost my small progress on the Remaster. Not the end of the world, but still sad.

[Venturer]

  It is DEFINITELY rewritten with my own flavor. But I went out of my way to maintain the original sound and characterization of each of the main characters. All of the characters have a greater degree of depth and maturity than the original, but they still maintain their original identity. As I mentioned in the description, the greatest deviations were with Headmaster Cid and Seifer. Rinoa has also received a lot of attention, but that is primarily in terms of adding to her backstory and motivation, not her personality.

  I do not speak Japanese, but I had originally attempted to use a number of 'more accurate' versions of the script for reference and inspiration. But everything I found was so strikingly similar to the original that I gave up on that very quickly.
  The version we received was remarkably faithful as a translation. I would only argue that it was fairly poor as a localization.

  And also, despite what you may have heard, the great Ted Woolsey did not actually appear to me in a vision, providing me with his own immaculate localization. That was a joke.

Ah that makes sense, to be honest I got the sense of that as well when I began translating some of the text with DeepL, it didn't to me that it needed much improving as I played on. I hope you get a lot of eyes on this mod, I could only imagine all the work you've put into this, and I'm also glad there's dedicated people that have worked to make FF8 improved since it's releases on Steam. Hope your future endeavors work out for you.

[AbsoLootAaron]

  I love this mod, and I always appreciate the support from all of you, but yes, lots of real life, unfortunately. Also I have largely moved on to my next writing project, and I am trying to devote my free time to that.
  Also, my CPU finally died, and I lost most of the next update I was planning on posting. It wasn't large, mainly small typo fixes. And I lost my small progress on the Remaster. Not the end of the world, but still sad.

Noooooo, sad times indeed.
Well... I still have some hope left! I won't give up on you just yet. lol

[Percival]

*NEW VERSION 1.07 UPDATE*

  Hello, everyone!

  At long last I finally have a meaningful update. It’s nothing large, so don’t get too excited. I had recently received some quality feedback from someone who just finished the mod. It was about the scene in the Ragnarok conference room immediately after the team returns from space.

  I never quite felt like that scene captured what I had originally wanted, and I never thought the original had captured what the writers were hoping for, either. I am specifically talking about the dynamic between Squall and Quistis. Without going into too much detail, I changed my whole approach to the scene, and I rewrote almost the entire thing. I think it flows much more smoothly, now. It also makes more sense in light of how Squall and Quistis should be feeling at the time, as well as taking into account the changes I made with regard to Rinoa.

  Whenever any of you get around to playing through it, let me know what you think!

[gunner_1207]

ooooh you beauty , i shall take a gander thank you

[DiscoCokkroach]

Hey, Percival. I'm planning on using this mod the next time I play FF8 (which is very soon), but how do I use it in conjunction with your Martial Law gameplay mod? They seem to replace the same three files in the lang-en folder, so I don't know how to use both at once.

EDIT: While I'm still curious about how to use both mods simultaneously, I'm going to move forward and play Succession by its lonesome. I've read several comments in this thread about how good it is and really want to see what the fuss is all about! I also think I would prefer the vanilla gameplay balance since it's been a while since I've played FF8.

[Percival]

  Hey, DiscoCokkroach!  The files should not be the same. The Succession files are the 3 Field files, and the Martial Law files are the 3 Main files. And the 3 different files for each should be: FS, FL, and FI.

  While I would highly recommend trying out Martial Law, or even Ragnarok, I also totally understand wanting the vanilla experience. I tend to be the same with the graphics. I love all the visual mods, but I still end up going back to the vanilla look.

  I'm confident that you'll enjoy Succession, and feel free to let us all know what you think when you're done!

[Goth]

I hope this will see a version for the remastered too, because I'm one who wouldn't mind even big changes to the story. Anything which makes the game fresh is welcome, and it sounds like a ton of effort went into this project.

[Castilho]

Hello Percival,

I was looking for mods for the remastered edition I had purchased earlier this year when I stumbled upon your mod. Safe to say I ended up grabbing the older steam version just so I could play it and the remastered edition will be collecting dust for some time

My story aside, I just finished a whole playthrough and I wanted to summarize it while quoting someone else's opinion, who wrote "I never once felt it was better than the original story". My thoughts on it however are these: Never once did I feel like your mod was in any way inferior to the original work and I actually like it better. And make no mistake, I love FF8. I always used to say the best FFs were always the even ones before 9 came out.

I really like the overarching plot, removing amnesia and adding more war oriented elements to the story. Backstory regarding Hyne was well done as well and I really liked it.
However, what I liked most was how better some characters were, such as the obvious Cid, Seifer, Quistis and even NORG (Like, NORG's claim is making sense? If there was choice there I might have sided with him lol). Also, lack of nonsense decisions/motives, such as Quistis'

Spoiler: show

reasoning for abandoning her post and going back so she could make sure Rinoa wouldn't try to escape and not just apologizing.

Only negative thing I can really think of is that the whole game screams "I need more content" now, since everything is more interesting. Most characters, such as Quistis, could really use more screen time, though I am sure it goes beyond the scope to add new events and scenes. I really wonder what you could do with all needed resources.

All in all, I just wanted to thank you for the amazing experience. Congratulations on the incredible mod.

Edit: Grammar

[Percival]

Hey, Castilho!

  Thank you so much for your feedback. I'm sincerely humbled by the positive response.

  I worked really hard to produce a story that both ardent fans and ardent critics would appreciate, since I often find myself in both camps. While I acknowledge it isn't perfect, on the whole I'm very satisfied with the general standard of quality I was able to maintain. And I'm very excited to see that you don't disagree. This mod may not be for everyone, but it does manage to fill a niche for some fans (including myself and now you) who always saw the potential for a richer story that was never quite realized within the bounds of the original.

However, what I liked most was how better some characters were, such as the obvious Cid, Seifer, Quistis and even NORG (Like, NORG's claim is making sense? If there was choice there I might have sided with him lol).

Spoiler: show

  For NORG in particular, I followed my general policy for all villains. We don't need to believe what they think, but we do need to accept that THEY believe it. The bad guys need to have a logical reasoning we can follow. This was actually pretty fun, because it allowed me to indulge in some of the most scathing criticisms out there for the plot in the first disc, and then frame them as NORG’s reason why Cid was incompetent and needed to be removed. It’s the only way I could think of within the given time to make NORG compelling in any meaningful way.

  I did something similar, to a lesser degree, with the pacifist mayor and his wife in FH. Their perspective gave me an opportunity to voice the concerns of many fans who see Cid’s treatment of the Garden students as bordering on highly abusive. (After all, he did raise an army of child soldiers, knowingly exposing them to magical entities that, while raising their combat potential, also produced severe adverse mental effects. And he did this entirely to serve his own goals, all while making exceptional personal profits.) And, while I like indulging in these alternative perspectives, I did my best to challenge both of these possible interpretations of Cid with my own revisions of the actual plot, as well as Cid's own words accounting for his actions.

Only negative thing I can really think of is that the whole game screams "I need more content" now, since everything is more interesting. Most characters, such as Quistis, could really use more screen time, though I am sure it goes beyond the scope to add new events and scenes. I really wonder what you could do with all needed resources.

Spoiler: show

  With regard to more content, I understand the sentiment. While it is technically possible to add extra scenes (and possibly even far more) I decided early on that it was not realistic in terms of time investment. It would require a solid understanding of the syntax of the coding language, and a lot of testing to determine the practical limits of what the game could handle. And from my experience the results quickly became a little unstable. I did make about half a dozen small edits to the code, mainly music changes, but much more than that may have been to open Pandora’s box. And besides, as you said, I thought it was far more within the spirit of my mod to focus on revising what already existed, rather than begin creating something new from scratch.

  Also, I admit to having a bias toward Quistis as a character, to an extent that rivals Rinoa, and that has helped lead to the extra attention I devoted to her whenever possible. This can result in a certain amount of dissatisfaction when left with a lack of any meaningful resolution to her arc. I would like to apologize for this, but my bias won't allow me to confess that I did anything wrong, only that I lacked the means to complete something that I had at first done right.

  Thanks again, Castilho, for your post. It’s always deeply encouraging to hear that my labor of love has been enjoyed by others as much as it was a joy to create!

[Castilho]

Hi Percival,

Thanks for taking the time to reply to me.

I might have said "negative thing" but what I really meant is that the whole mod is just so great to me there's always that lingering feeling of "I want more", which is something I personally feel whenever there's a game I end up loving.

While it is heartbreaking to read you lacked the means to fully materialize your vision of the Succession mod, you sure did/are doing a great job with it and I am positive I am going to go back to it on my next playthrough of FF8.

Again, thank you so much for the mod!

[agnitriers1]

..I just finished a whole playthrough and I wanted to summarize it while quoting someone else's opinion, who wrote "I never once felt it was better than the original story". My thoughts on it however are these: Never once did I feel like your mod was in any way inferior to the original work and I actually like it better...

I created this account, to echo what Castilho wrote above - I have been absolutely blown away, by the quality of this mod!
I have played through the entire story, 4 or 5 times now, with a combination of Succession, Martial Law and Ragnarok - and I can't imagine doing a playthrough without Succession.
While I wholeheartedly approve of some of the bigger changes to the script, the attention to detail and 'smaller' dialogue changes are what really makes it shine, for me.

@Percival - please do consider posting a paypal, buymeacoffee, patreon or similar service, to accept donations for this fantastic effort 

[harkren]

Hi there

I finished playing the game want to say it was great, script was way superior to vanilla. My only complaint was the dialogue between Squall/Rinoa during battle of gardens right after he rescues her from the cliff - that whole sequence quality felt a bit weaker than the rest of the game

I took the liberty of writing down every typo I could spot in the game, let me know if any questions:

"'Guest' he has seniority" - From Quistis when gathering in the garden for the dollet mission.
"'You're' actions" - From Cid when reprimanding Seifer post-dollet mission
"'I' looks like his throat was injured" - Kiros, right before they jump off that cliff
"Sorceress" instead of "The Sorceress" - possible grammatical error? I skimmed this one so may not have read it properly - Quistis during the team's discussion of Seifer's 'execution' in G Garden
"When seifer was questioning me, he 'geve' away some info on his next plan" - Squall, just after the party escape D prison and gets out vehicles
"If I can find a way access" instead of "If I can find a way to access" - Selphie, during missile base infiltration when at the control panel.
"We may have already 'be' too late" - I think I may have skimmed past this one so it may be fine. Squall to Cid when warning about missiles
"it's not like she wanted to be that way, 'right?Who'" needs to be space between ? and Who. Rinoa to Squall during optional convo at FH after the missle party reunites with rest of the party
"I'm never gonna 'to' waste" Rinoa to Squall during the FH date (after she pushes him down onto the dish)
"But why try to 'extended' that" Squall thinking, during convo amongst the party at Trabia in basketball area
"'You're' last 'help me'?" Chocoboy right at the end of the sidequest - this might actually be vanilla text and a typo in the original. Not really sure but going to mention anyway
"The courage? What 'are talking' about?" Squall thinking - convo between him and Rinoa during battle of gardens right after Squall rescues Rinoa from the cliff
"And 'you're' friend ain't gonnna" - Director during the Laguna flashback film scene
"'Your' right, Zell" - Edea to Zell whilst the party is travelling to Esthar
"even though it wasn't quite 'the the'" Rinoa to Squall at the orphanage-field screen
"Yes, of course!  'A' least" Rinoa at the orphanage - I think this might be an optional convo with Edea, but can't exactly remember. Might be one of the mandatory ones.
"When you guys 'are little' older" Timber bartender

[Percival]

@Percival - please do consider posting a paypal, buymeacoffee, patreon or similar service, to accept donations for this fantastic effort 

Thank you so much for the praise! It was a labor of love, but I'm truly considerate of the desire to support my work.

It's on my list of things to do, right along with the Remastered version...

[Percival]

Hey, harkren!

Thank you so much for finding all those corrections. Some of them were already found for the last update, and I’ve fixed the rest for the next version I upload.

Just so you know, I haven’t alter most of the optional dialogue, including the Chocoboy, the Shumi village, and most of the NPCs in places other than Balamb Garden. I did my best to focus on the main story, and I didn't go out of my way to correct typos or grammatical oddities for incidental dialogue in the original script.

Also, I think I agree with you about that scene with Squall and Rinoa. It was a VERY difficult scene to write, given its original structure and all of the various things I was trying to accomplish at once. While I do find it to be minimally functional for what I needed, it definitely doesn’t pack the emotional punch that I had originally envisioned. There are a number of scenes that I still feel that way about.

If I’m able to revise that scene into something I like better, I’ll be sure to highlight it as its own update in the future.

Thanks again, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Lunarian]

Hello! Long-time lover of FFVIII here, playing this mod for the first time. So far I've reached the Comms Tower at Dollet and I have written down my thoughts... of which I have a lot I was wondering, Percival, if you would be interested in reading my comments and observations? I plan to keep a Google Doc updated as I go through the game. You can request access to read that here if you like.

To summarise a few of the main things so far:

• I like how Quistis explains that GFs are unique to Balamb Garden, and I'm curious to see if there is an explanation for the origin and development of GFs later down the line.
• This game is infamous for bombarding the player with tutorials at the beginning. I like how you've lampshaded that by having Quistis apologise for overexplaining things that Squall already knows.
• It's great to see hints that Squall, Seifer and Zell already know each other without exposition dumps.
• The new orders for SeeD candidates are interesting. I love the conflict between staying in the city and pursuing soldiers up the mountain. It's fun to see Squall mentally wrestling about the correct way to interpret orders.
• Having characters talk about disturbing wildlife on the mountain is great because it emphasises that the tower has been left alone for a long time and explains Elvoret's sudden appearance.
• I'm very curious about this ocean surveyance business! I wonder if it has something to do with the Crystal Pillar.
• Every character is written really well. Their personalities are distinct and their dialogue is consistent.

Overall, fantastic job so far. FFVIII is on my brain all the time, so it's really exciting to experience it in a fresh new way.

[AbsoLootAaron]

Yeah, I'm also fine with sending support your way Percival, if you ever decide to improve upon Succession in the future again!
This is the best story mod available. I can definitely see the potential. lol

[eXistenZe]

Still no remaster compatibility plans?

[rakuanu]

Still no remaster compatibility plans?

I'd rather they worked on Ragnarok + Succession compatibility. It's unfortunate that two of the biggest FF8 mods aren't fully compatible with each other.

[Percival]

@rakuanu

  I agree! Unfortunately, I can't think of any way of making that happen unless both of us worked on the same mutual file. Otherwise one of us would be stuck with a specific outdated version of the other's work.

[Percival]

@Lunarian Hey, Lunarian!

Thank you so much for all of the feedback. I appreciate the time you took to type up the google doc, and I’ve already made any appropriate corrections to the script. I also have a few points of clarification, if you are interested to know my point of view on some of the creative decisions I had made.

•   Writing: Seifer says that “Squall doesn’t protect damsels”. The use of ‘damsel’ threw me off – odd word choice for a ‘cool’ teenager, though maybe we’ll find out why later.

Spoiler: show

Seifer still has a ‘romantic dream’, he just doesn’t speak about it so plainly. His entire motivation to be a war hero and his desire to overthrow Galbadia is tied up with his self-perception, that is, his notion of himself as a White Knight. My goal was to retain this motif as the subtext for his character but never state it explicitly. The use of the antiquated term ‘damsel’ is the closest Seifer gets to overtly admitting what he sees as the difference between Squall and himself.

It is also a direct reference to an event that will be explained much later. The player isn’t supposed to fully understand Seifer’s problem with Squall or the context of that statement at this point.

•   Writing: When Quistis says “You’ll dance with just anybody as long as they ask?!”, the punctuation was shocking. The combination of a question mark and exclamation mark makes her tone sound very tense, as if she’s really angry with him. This seems incongruous with Quistis’s personality and with how she talks to him before and after.

Spoiler: show

Your impression is correct. In that statement, Quistis is absolutely being incongruent with her usual behavior. This is a brief lapse in her typical calm and charisma affectation. She’s clearly in a heightened emotional state, and as a result, she’s pushing boundaries. Squall calls her out on it, and she immediately recovers her composure. It’s the same tone for the vanilla script as it is as mine, even though the original lacks the exclamation point.

And it is in keeping with her character animations. I took great pains throughout the game to match all of the dialogue (or as much as I could) to the sentiment portrayed by the accompanying animations. This was generally a very good thing, because it forced me to follow the original emotional direction of each scene, keeping it more faithful than if I tried to change the animations to match the new dialogue. In the vanilla, Quistis is visibly upset that Squall danced with Rinoa but doesn’t seem to have any interest in speaking with Quistis. So I imagine that she is raising her voice, possibly even to the extent that Squall might wonder if someone else can hear them.

Maybe using an exclamation point was too much, but I wanted to make sure that the player didn’t continue reading that line with the same inflection as everything else she has said up until this point. I would rather the player assume that she sounds too exasperated rather than not exasperated enough.

I admit that it's very hard as a writer to convey exactly what I intend through dialogue without any voice acting, facial animations, or narrative descriptions, especially when the models are just standing there. What I would really like is two different exclamation points: one that is severe and one that is more moderate. In this instance I would have used the more moderate one. As it is, I think it needs something more than just the question mark.

•   Writing: “Things will likely be changing pretty rapidly soon after tonight.” is quite an awkward sentence. So many adverbials in one short sentence.

Spoiler: show

Do you mean that you find the sentence hard to follow or merely hard to diagram? I got to admit, this sentence sounds perfectly fine to me. You could even call it efficient. I speak like this on a regular basis. (Is this why I don’t have any friends…?)

One thing to remember is that while I was writing this, I was almost never thinking about grammar. Unlike most writing, this game is almost entirely dialogue. When writing dialogue, I never hold myself to the same grammatical standards as while writing narration. (This includes the use of commas, and especially for FF8, ellipses and dramatic pauses.) So, my primary concern was always to make each character sound as natural as possible with regard to their own unique voice. In dialogue, things like grammatical accuracy and complexity of sentence structure only exist to reflect how intelligent or sophisticated that person happens to be. And Quistis is easily one of the most intelligent and sophisticated characters in the game.

Though, now that you mention it, I am starting to think that I should add a superfluous comma at the end of 'rapidly'. It is a supporting adverbial phrase, but it might prevent someone from thinking that 'rapidly' is supposed to modify 'soon'. Also, I imagine a brief, natural pause before 'soon after tonight', and the last phrase would be said in a slightly more wistful tone. I'm curious how you would change this sentence without losing any of its meaning.

•   Writing: You could just say “lead”.

Spoiler: show

I had originally spelled ‘backlead’ with a hyphen, but the hyphen look a little odd, so I deleted it. I decided against using two separate words to retain its sense as a single concept, hopefully reducing any confusion for anyone who was unfamiliar with what it was.  I have since added the hyphen again, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. My goal was always to draw attention away from the idea that Squall 'couldn't dance' and toward the idea that they just weren't dancing well together, largely because Squall initially didn't want to.

I was a little concerned about using a term that might not be known to anyone who is not a dancer, but I felt that simply saying something like ‘lead’ was not nearly accurate enough. Leading can be understood in purely military terms, and it is usually considered a good thing. Back-leading is almost universally a bad thing, and it is a far more intimate faux pas. By using this term, Squall is accusing Rinoa of bad etiquette (while at the same time deflecting away any blame for poor performance on his part). Of course, this implies that Squall is well-educated enough to actually have a notion of what proper etiquette on the dance floor is. It also may imply either that Rinoa is not as well-educated, or that she is too presumptuous to care. In this way it helps to establish the dichotomy between their characters. Squall is rigid and duty-bound. Rinoa is wild and free.

More importantly, interpreting the dance within this context helps to frame the entire trajectory of their relationship. Rinoa begins by being impulsive and charismatic, but also clumsy and rude. Once it’s clear that things aren’t working, Squall begins to take initiative, accepts responsibility for the situation, and asserts his own leadership. Rinoa responds favorably to this, begins to follow his lead, and before you know it, sparks fly.

Though I am not convinced that the original writers did this intentionally, the vanilla story throughout disc 1 comes really close to following that same structure precisely, especially during the missions in Timber. By only changing a few key lines it’s possible to interpret the dance scene as a(n admittedly simplistic) foreshadow for their entire relationship.

Unfortunately, some of that nuance is lost if you only presume that Squall was criticizing her for trying to step up and lead him somewhere he didn't want to go. (And even more so if anyone thinks that Squall didn’t know how to dance at all, and he magically learned how in the course of one song due to Rinoa's incredible power of love and friendship.)

Please, excuse me if this was unnecessarily long. I spent years rewriting this story, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. And admittedly, not all of them made it into the final product to the extent that I would have liked.

[Lilith]

Would it be cringe if I wanted to do up a version of the Succession text file with all of Squall's pronouns changed to she or they?

[Percival]

Probably.

It would be a tedious process to find and replace every instance throughout the entire game. The effect would likely not be worth the effort. Also, this game was made in the '90s, and the vanilla Squall very clearly identifies as a male and uses he/him.

If you've read the description of this mod, you should know that my main goal was to retain as many elements of the original as possible, even as I made every change. Squall is one of the most well-defined characters in the FF series, making FF8 much less of a roleplaying experience and much more of a standard story. I didn't go out of my way to change anything about his character or his identity unnecessarily. I also didn't attempt to self-insert any aspects of my own identity onto Squall in order to make him better reflect my own experience. I simply wanted to develop and reinforce what I considered to be the most well-written aspects of Squall's character that were already present.

The game does allow you to rename Squall and Rinoa whatever you want, however. It’s probably the best role-playing option in the game, and I recommend utilizing that function to its full extent.