Q&AK

Mastering the squire, rumors, and mute characters

As many, many, many, many, many people have informed me, in chapter 4, if you had previously mastered Ramza's squire ability, you'll no longer have the "Mastered!" message, and instead will receive the opportunity to learn two more abilities. The trickier one to get, Ultima, must be cast on Ramza while he is a squire by either Celia or Lede. Of course, the tricky part is making sure he survives the attack, or else he won't learn it. I goofed because in my game, where I checked if Ramza had mastered squire, I checked on a game that was only in chapter 3. Thanks to all of you who wrote in, and as always, send those questions to andrewk@rpgamer.com.

Q:Will Final Fantasy IX be the "final" Final Fantasy, or will the series continues on? And rumors that concern Square having a 64DD development kit, is it true?

AK: There's no word on that at the moment. Square has said VIII and IX will be released on Sony systems, but no word on anything past that. The rumors regarding Square having an 64DD development kit are just that, rumors. The most popular rumor is that they're using it to develop Seiken Denetsu 4 for it, but again, those are just rumors.

Q: ...How come in one of the endings when Lucca and Marle look at all the men in the game Crono talks? It's like all of a sudden Crono stood up for his rights. It's just weird, Andrew, just plain weird! I can't take it anymore! WHY WHY WHY! WHY DOES HE HAVE TO TALK! EXCEPT FOR ONE MINOR DETAIL THE CRONO NOT TALKING THING WAS FLAWLESS. Thanks, anyway.
-zebracow

AK: That was in the Programmer's Ending, which is just a goofy, off the wall thing tossed in for fun. I wouldn't let it worry you.

Q:There is a time where he _DEFINATLY_ says something. the first visit to 600AD when you meet up with Lucca, she asks what happened to marle..
then says "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE DISSAPEARED" to crono.
Obviously, Crono told the story.

AK: Yes, yes, very true. That supports the theory that Crono's not having text dialogue in the game is just so that could assume the player's personality.

Q: 1) Which other RPG's are you going to be covering at this site?
2) Is it just me, or does Rudy from "Wild Arms" seem to exhibit (especially in the latter portion of the game) what could be termed a very acute "Chrono Syndrome?" Is he a mute, or what??
3) This question page seems to get updated much more than the rest of the site. Is that, in part, due to silly, roundabout, distracting questions such as this one?? Just wondering.

AK: 1) We've got a pretty long list of games we'd like to cover, but can only add so many at a time. We're currently researching: Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest (Mike), Suikoden (Brian), Phantasy Star ( Andrew Seidman), and Breath of Fire (me, AK!). If you have any good stuff on those games, send them to the webmaster in parentheses!
2) Yeah, he does. Rudy probably isn't mute, just doesn't participate in on screen dialogue.
3) I tried to make this a daily section, something for you guys to read and enjoy when there's nothing else added. It does slow me down a little bit, but doesn't affect the rate the other guys update. And I still try to put this on the backburner if there's something more pressing going on.

Q: I was reading your Q & AK thing, and someone seem to have a problem with number 42.. In Japan, this number is regarded as a bad luck number (like 13) because 42 can be alternately read as "shi nin," which means dead person. Just a useless bit of infomation.
-Hiko

AK: Thanks for that morbid tidbit Hiko! That sure adds another dimension to the number, doesn't it?

Q: How come when you transport something by car, it's called a shipment... and when you transport something by ship, it's called cargo?
Just question.
Roto Densetsu

AK: Cargo comes from the Spanish word "cargar," which means to carry. It's unrelated to automobiles. In the olden days, a shipment WAS sent via ship, not via truck or car. You could have a shipment of cargo sent via boat, and be correct in word usage. (Source of word definitions: New Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language).

Q:in your Q&AK section, I noticed tons and tons of typoes and bad sentence structure, were you in a hurry to write those answers? did your keyboard break or something like mine? were you typing with your eyes closed and both hands tied behind your back? I dunno why I'm writing about that, just think that it's funny to see so many typoes. I laugh in the face of danger or something like that.

AK: Man, you're really dogging on me here! Anyway, I'm known around the Internet for my above average typing speed yet depressingly low typing accuracy. I should run a spell checker on this thing before I upload it, but I'm often in a hurry to get to bed or do something else, so I forget. As far as sentence structure goes, I just write in a casual, easygoing way in this section, not worrying at all about run-on sentences and proper comma placement much as I'm doing in this particular sentence. In more formal stories on RPGamer, I'll usually try to pay closer attention to grammar and stuff.

Go back