Entire Twilight Princess Script Available Online

1up notes, briefly, an enormous present for any dedicated Zelda fan that hasn't been able to work through Twilight Princess yet. The extremely cogent 'Mgoblue201' has uploaded a massive text file to GameFAQs, with the entire script of the game available to read. The author means business: he has jotted down every line of dialogue in the game, including the ones where you as a player try to do something nonsensical, or when you do something out of the ordinary. Mgoblue also offers a good deal of interstitial text to connect the various scenes. Here is some of his work from the very first scene of the game: "FADO: Hey hey, where are you goin' without Epona? Hurry on up an' bring her with you, bud. [Link rushes through the shadowy coat of the forest, which parts ways to let in the path to the springs, where he finds Ilia bathing Epona in the eerie glow of the twilight]" At the end of the document he looks at some of the apparent inconsistencies between the Zelda games, and attempts to make sense of the fractured 'Hero of Time' timeline. If you want to find out how the game ends, or don't understand something you breezed past, Mgoblue has you covered.

DMCA Anyone?

[NJVil]

How long until someone invokes the DMCA to shut this horrible infringement down? Any guesses?

Re:

[Breakfast Pants]

YouTube faces the same thing. Each somewhat professional looking clip that I ever seen on there that happens not to be owned by someone else, inevitably has lifted music.

Re:

[Dark Kenshin]

Around the same time all game walkthroughs, FAQs, forums, etc. get shut down.

Actually...

[Xenographic]

I've always loved the silly (and sometimes crazy) copyright notices that come with FAQs. How many people even read this crap? :]

(Some "junk characters" were stripped to appease the lameness filter.)

/\ i. Legal
/ \
/ \
/______\ This FAQ was fully written by me and submitted to Gamefaqs.com
/ \ / \ under my jurisdiction. Therefore it abides by feder

Re:

[DeathPooky]

Well, this is just plain old copyright infringement, not copyright circumvention, so I'm guessing no time soon. I'm guessing Nintendo won't sue, but I have no problem recognizing a script for a video game (or for that matter a movie) being under control of the original author.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

The DMCA is also used for making webhosts take down alledgedly infringing material without needing to involve any courts.

Re:

[dsparil]

Considering people having been doing this for at least eight years without issue, never.

Re:

[AEton]

Probably a very long time. This document's been online since Jan. 25 -- I read a bit of it weeks ago -- and Slashdot's attention shouldn't do much.

i'm curious

[President_Camacho]

The author means business: he has jotted down every line of dialogue in the game, including the ones where you as a player try to do something nonsensical

So what does it say about writing down all the dialogue in the game?

As a homage to our now-gone friend...

[Spy der Mann]

So what does it say about writing down all the dialogue in the game?

I just tried it. A mysterious metallic character appears in front of Link, and says:

Hello, there! It looks like you're trying to write down the entire dialogue! Would you like to know more about...

* copyright infringement,
* videogame addiction,
* psychiatric help?

Netcraft confirms it:

[numbski]

Clippy is dead.

No, really. He's dead. Honest [nyud.net].

How about.

[Frogbert]

I realise there is probably a good technical reason why this isn't possible but wouldn't it be a bit easier to download a rip of the game and extract all the text? I know it wouldn't give context but it would greatly reduce typing.

Re:

[mrbobjoe]

fyi: in_cube [hcs64.com] for playing the streamed audio

Re:

[Wagoo]

$ wget "http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/wii/file/zelda_tp_ script.txt"
<snip>
02:14:01 (157.27 KB/s) - `zelda_tp_script.txt' saved [500106/500106]

They are?

Re:

[hahafaha]

Or, you can do that. Though, I am confused, why does that work. They are trying to block by referral link. Does wget not send that?

Re:

[_xeno_]

How can it? What do you want it to send, the command line? :) It doesn't know where the URL came from, there's no way it can generate a referrer without being told what it is.

You can tell it to send a referrer (via "--referer" - the misspelling comes from the HTTP spec) on the command line. You can set any number of headers, actually, using the "--header" argument. All around it's a very powerful utility.

Re:

[jlarocco]

Or, you can do that. Though, I am confused, why does that work. They are trying to block by referral link. Does wget not send that?

When you navigate directly to a URL, in a browser or with wget, there is no referrer. And even if there was, it's unimportant because most web browsers let you turn off that "feature".

Re:

[arodland]

Probably the decision not to block on null Referer was made not out of consideration for users with oddball browsers and privacy-protecting proxies (really, most site operators will still screw you without thinking about it) -- but to make sure that people can bookmark the guides from their site and get back to them. Browsers don't remember a "previous page" along with a bookmark, so they send no referer, same as for an entered URL.

Re:

[Incoherent07]

In the case of GameFAQs, it's almost certainly the former. After all, if you go straight to the guide, you don't see any ads. If you go to the Twilight Princess game page, you see exactly one, but hey, that's more than zero. That's why they block non-null referrers which aren't within the site; I assume somewhere down the line null referrers were allowed due to such a concern.

This has been the stated policy for years, too, even before the CNET deal. This was pitched to the author community as "hey, tell

Re:

[kisrael]

(even if the boards are festering cesspools).
FWIW, when you want specific advice on a specific game, I don't know of a better place to go...
plus, more older games have a bit of community going on there than anywhere else I've seen.

You do get a lot of stupid msgboard-games played, but still.

Re:

[master0ne]

you might want to check your copy.... Not Found The requested URL /console/wii/file/zelda_tp_ script.txt was not found on this server. is where that wget points to (you put a space between tp_[space]script.txt, if you enter the right url, even without page refers turned on, it still prohibits me from accessing the file directly, it looks like its set up to only allow access if you were refered from a spefic or domain...

Re:

[KDR_11k]

That space is added by Slashdot's comment code that prevents a line from containing a "word" (well, long string without whitespaces) that breaks the table layout.

Re:Block

[UbuntuDupe]

Or ... you could just go to the Zelda:TP page [gamefaqs.com] and click on the "Game Script" link under "In-Depth FAQs".

(Do not interpret this post to mean I regularly visit gamefaqs.com)

Re:Block

[Vaevictis666]

The proper thing to do, from Gamefaqs' point of view, is to link to the game page itself [gamefaqs.com] and inform people they want the "Game Script" under in-depth faqs.

Re:

[Bieeanda]

GameFAQs has done that as a matter of course, for a very long time now. It isn't a conspiracy to keep people from finding the script.

Re:

[hahafaha]

I never suggested that it was a conspiracy. I only meant that the link from the post suggested that we could directly access the script, which turned out to not be the case.

As many other people pointed out, this could easily be avoided by using, for example, wget.

Forget Zelda

[subl33t]

Where's the script to Final Fantasy VII? I still don't know wtf happened.

Re:

[Rydia]

Unfortunately, I don't think the script will help you with that.

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

Here you go. FF7 script [gamefaqs.com]

That's easy!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main character Cloud is insane due to radiation exposure, being a SOLDIER and other crap, his girlfriend Aeris is an alien from a tribe that exists to heal the planet due to their Gaia hypothesis magical materia and that's why she has the white materia with Holy. So Aeris gets stabbed by Sephiroth the psycho with the Jehovah, err, Jenovah cells (and any allusion to Revelation is strictly coincidental), and uses the black materia with Meteo err, Meteor now that we can have 6 characters for spell names.

Re:

[MasterGwaha]

hey that was a pretty good explanation!

Re:

[FishWithAHammer]

Guy with mommy issues tries to destroy the world. Film at 1997.

What, does he want a job as a game tester?

[Animats]

That's the sort of grunt work game testers do, forcing every possible case in the game.

Video Games Need Page Numbers

[LionKimbro]

If you want to critique a video game story, or describe what it's saying about the world, or argue some point about the story, you need to reference the source materials.

But the game isn't easily browsable. You can't (yet) tell a video game, "Take me to page 274, I need to see what Cecil [wikipedia.org] said right there."

It makes citations [yahoo.com] a real problem, too.

Michigan?

[magicchex]

This makes me sad to be a Michigan [mgoblue.com] student. :(

Re:

[Gertlex]

Nah. Makes me wonder if this crazy man is in my dorm. I certainly see a few that look like they'd be the type here. :D

Re:

[magicchex]

How'd ya guys do against the Gators again? Refresh my memory.

And what are the total historical win-loss numbers?

Infocom Zelda

[spezz]

So if you had the time and inclination, you could cobble together a choose your own adventure version of Zelda, right? You have the dialog trees and narrative progression already. If you combined it with a googlemapsy version of Hyrule, you could have a web 2.0, ajax enabled monstrosity, right there at your fingertips.

Re:

[Arguendo]

I think it's safe to say this guy has the time and inclination.

Why not just read the disk?

[Myria]

It's much easier to simply read the disk then write a program to extract the data. Since Wii mod chips are coming, at least some people can read them.

Swallowed a thesaurus?

[Happosai]

Crickey, has this guy run his comments through a digital thesaurus or something? I read the first few introductory paragraphs, and they contain the most inappropriate words and turns of phrase...doesn't really make me want to read the rest of the doc (I've completed LoZ:TP anyway).

[Happosai]

Re:

[Leffe]

His first language is probably English.

can't post without subject

[SuchiRu]

nothing to see here move along, seriously what is with these completely useless articles on slashdot of late. this has been up on gamefaqs for HOW long now? come on, i expect more sometimes. i'm going back to 4chan, better and faster news

Easy to reproduce...

[Cloud K]

Some person: "Blah blah blah blah"
Link: ......
Another person: "Blah de blah de blah blah"
Link: (gestures)
Some person: "So you must blah de blah blah"
Link: (nods)
Another person: "What do you think about xyz?"
Link: (shrugs)

etc

Mgoblue201

[hansamurai]

Wow, I actually know that guy. Through internet frienship only of course, but I've known him since about 2000. That is really weird, I think I'm going to have to go harass him tonight when I get home from work.

Game Script

[Mgoblue201]

To answer the question on everybody's mind, it took me, on average, between an hour or two a day. But I did not simply supplement that with my internet time. Instead of scouting slashdot or checking out zany youtube videos or keeping up my facebook or myspace, none of which I actually do, I worked on the script. Yes, I do have time for college and sports and 24 and Boston Legal and, believe it or not, other people. No, I am not a mouth breather who has memorized Pi to the 300th digit and gets his kicks out

Great for English speakers in Japan

[Takichi]

I was holding off buying a Wii here in Japan because I wouldn't be able to understand the story and dialog. With the English dialog written out, it seems I have a workaround. I wish games had foreign subtitles like on DVDs.