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Weapon Triangles? Instant Death Spells?


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I'm wondering just how they will handle the mechanics from their respective franchises.

SMT is a turn-heavy game, making use of weaknesses to acquire more turns to deal more damage and prepare for the enemy turns. It also has 2 types of instant death spells, light and darkness (are those going to be high level tomes? lol)

FE focuses on the tried and true rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle, along with some type advantages here and there. I'd imagine the magic triangle will probably return, mostly to fit in with the spells from SMT.

My biggest question is still how it's going to play, and what mechanics are going to be kept, mixed, or dropped.

Thoughts?

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If this game has Fire Emblem's perma-death I really hope they don't put in the SMT instant death spells, as that would make the game overly frustrating even for FE and SMT standards.

If it doesn't have perma-death then I'm fine with instant death spells.

Edited by Zelos
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I'm wondering just how they will handle the mechanics from their respective franchises.

SMT is a turn-heavy game, making use of weaknesses to acquire more turns to deal more damage and prepare for the enemy turns. It also has 2 types of instant death spells, light and darkness (are those going to be high level tomes? lol)

FE focuses on the tried and true rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle, along with some type advantages here and there. I'd imagine the magic triangle will probably return, mostly to fit in with the spells from SMT.

My biggest question is still how it's going to play, and what mechanics are going to be kept, mixed, or dropped.

Thoughts?

Press turn from nocturne and DDS is about weakness exploiting

the other ones are more traditional turn based games.

Raidou games are real time fights.

if hama and mudo don't appear, i'm gonna be disappointed.

anyway, if your MC dies in a Megaten, its game over, same as if your lord dies. I don't see any reason to remove them.

Plus, in DDS at least, Humans naturally null hama

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But if casual mode was included, how would you explain Instant Death spells not killing someone? "Oh, that Hamoan spell that got me? Yeah, it only mostly killed me, and mostly dead means partially alive." Well, since it's an RPG, there could be buyable revival items, so whatever.

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Uhhh the exact same way they explain it in SMT? I was saying instant death probably shouldn't be in the game though, because permanent death should be. Having both just sounds incredibly unfun.

Edited by Momo
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I would imagine they would have the Hama and Mudo spells take a percentage of your health or something.

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Yeah, Hama's effect usually vary between taking a percentage of your health and instant-death. I imagine that Hama's effect would be taking the percentage and Mudo can be instant death.

So... Hel, Basically ?

reduces Hp to 1. if HP is one do 1 damage.

And they would have crappy accuracy actually less than 30, probably.

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It will be an RTS. FE and SMT characters will level on a growth system. Monsters will upgrade and improve multiple times (many-step promotion tier) more on the basis of playstyle.

---

EDIT: I haven't decided how exactly it will work yet, but units from different series will have "semi-nonconsolidated" stats. That is, FE units will have stats that interact differently with certain kinds of mechanics than SMT units. A way of thinking about it might be that both FE and SMT will have stats that affect resistance to magic, but FE's magic res will operate differently on damage to magic (or damage to certain kinds of magic, which will be accessible to both "franchise units") than SMT's magic res.

---

Weapon triangle will be maintained somewhat, but more loosely. Instant death spells will be based on expulsion/banish rather than permanent removal. Banish abilities won't be used on plot-critical units (i.e., must be fielded for the sake of the game) or they will be immune to them.

Edited by Mouse
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  • 1 month later...

I suppose at this point in time, it could go either way with how little information has been released.

It could be a tactics-styled game, or a turn-based, random encounter battle system. Personally though, it seems a bit more plausible to lean to the latter? With implementations of the weapon triangle system to utilize weaknesses. And if they're kind enough, maybe a stage or two which is tactic-styled haha.

A game that utilizes random encounters tends to use it heavily though. And in cases like those, a character getting KO'd or two is pretty common so implementing perma-death in situations like those feels a little bit too punishing, given the volume of battles you'll end up going through. Maybe implement perma-death in certain scenarios only? Oh! And support conversations for kicks! xD

Edited by pinkbubblegum
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It could be a tactics-styled game, or a turn-based, random encounter battle system. Personally though, it seems a bit more plausible to lean to the latter? With implementations of the weapon triangle system to utilize weaknesses. And if they're kind enough, maybe a stage or two which is tactic-styled haha.

If they go with a random encounter Shin Megami Tensei-like movement and battle system, what would be the point of the FE side? We'd fight and summon random past Fire Emblem characters as Einhejar rather than doing that with mythological demons? They could do that, I guess, but I'm not sure it'd really appeal to anyone. It'd be losing all the gravitas of SMT's mythological approach and replacing it with... FE fanservice... in a gameplay style completely different from any Fire Emblem? It seems like the worst possible route they could take. Even having demons AND FE Einhejar seems kind of pointless. I think this game pretty much has to have a tactical strategy-like battle system in order to work as a crossover.

Now beyond that, I'm not sure. The weapon triangle would be kind of odd here if demons are units, so it'd likely be dropped. I think incorporating demon fusion and promotion mechanics could be interesting, even if it ends up allowing as much abuse as Awakening's class change system, but I'm not sure they'd go with the idea of fusing demons and FE characters... I also wonder how the SMT human side is going to be handled. They were pretty much all silent protagonists before, and some haven't even received widely accepted official names. I wonder if the cameos in the teaser will end up mostly irrelevant and we'll see yet another new character, or just one of the old ones, representing the SMT side...

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If they go with a random encounter Shin Megami Tensei-like movement and battle system, what would be the point of the FE side? We'd fight and summon random past Fire Emblem characters as Einhejar rather than doing that with mythological demons? They could do that, I guess, but I'm not sure it'd really appeal to anyone. It'd be losing all the gravitas of SMT's mythological approach and replacing it with... FE fanservice... in a gameplay style completely different from any Fire Emblem? It seems like the worst possible route they could take. Even having demons AND FE Einhejar seems kind of pointless. I think this game pretty much has to have a tactical strategy-like battle system in order to work as a crossover.

That's if they were pitting FE vs. SMT though, which doesn't necessarily have to happen...? They could have the two franchises co-operating with one another rather than against each other in a vs. situation against a common evil. Which normally happens more often in RPG crossovers as opposed to fighting game crossovers.

Edit: Whoops, I misunderstood your statement. It depends wholly on the setting of the crossover game though. Why does FE have to be reserved to taking a backseat role? Why couldn't they be, let's say, summoned into the SMT-verse by some uh, alternate dimension portal machine thing (haha, I don't know!) and plop into the game as physical characters? They don't need to be left as summons or anything lame like that.

It could also work the other way around, where a bad guy in FE attempts another dragon ritual and instead opens a portal from SMT-verse, flooding the world with demons+SMT MCs.

To be honest though, I'm looking at this more on a developer's perspective. It would be less work on their side, in my opinion, if they opted for the turn based battle system route rather than tactics since you could just do a whole lot of rinse-repeat with the battle system, making it easier to focus on other aspects of the game.

Edited by pinkbubblegum
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Why does FE have to be reserved to taking a backseat role? Why couldn't they be, let's say, summoned into the SMT-verse by some uh, alternate dimension portal machine thing (haha, I don't know!) and plop into the game as physical characters? They don't need to be left as summons or anything lame like that.

It could also work the other way around, where a bad guy in FE attempts another dragon ritual and instead opens a portal from SMT-verse, flooding the world with demons+SMT MCs.

Parties in standard RPGs don't tend to be big though. We wouldn't be playing with an usual FE army, just some heroes by themselves. SMT itself specifically usually has very small human parties, with the last main game only having one playable non-demon character. Also, FE characters are separated by ages and possibly worlds, so they'd need to be "summoned" together somehow anyway, even if the main setting if based on FE. Even just one character per FE game would mean at least 10, and that's not even getting into the SMT side. It just seems unlikely to me that we'd be seeing an actual large cast in a RPG.

I mentioned the Einhejar because they could basically work like SMT's demons - appear as random encounters, have negotiation dialogue based on their personality, have a large selection that can be stored and chosen by the player at will. The only thing they'd be lacking would be the fusion system. That seems to be the most likely route they'd take if this does end up being a standard RPG, since it'd allow a big selection of playable FE characters in a RPG-style game not dealing with armies, and would give them a lot of presence throughout. It'd also allow FE characters to pop up as random encounters. If they were going with SMT's battle system, then it wouldn't make sense to keep SMT's monsters as the main grunts, otherwise FE's presence would end up pretty minimal. However, fighting against generic nameless FE classes as random encounters would be pretty pointless too and there wouldn't even be much space for variation compared to the usual monsters.

To be honest though, I'm looking at this more on a developer's perspective. It would be less work on their side, in my opinion, if they opted for the turn based battle system route rather than tactics since you could just do a whole lot of rinse-repeat with the battle system, making it easier to focus on other aspects of the game.

I don't think any are inherently easier. Tactics means they could mostly focus on the battlefield for the graphical side, without needing to build complete locations in 3d, like cities or villages, after all. A RPG means building large locations, npcs to interact and such (if they don't go with SMT3's and Strange Journey's weird interdimensional dungeon settings, which doesn't seem to be the case considering that one shot of a city in the teaser, the only actual new image there).

Edited by NeonZ
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Parties in standard RPGs don't tend to be big though. We wouldn't be playing with an usual FE army, just some heroes by themselves. SMT itself specifically usually has very small human parties, with the last main game only having one playable non-demon character. [...] Even just one character per FE game would mean at least 10, and that's not even getting into the SMT side.

Getting one character per FE game's quite ambitious though... Most likely they'll just pick a few key, well-known characters and leave it at that; and if the game does well enough, add more characters in the sequel since it'd be easy to recycle assets already made. I wouldn't be surprised if the main cast for the game is less than 10. With that number being divided amongst FE and SMT already.

Mentioning Nocturne to back up how little SMT relies on human character's a bit extreme though...? Nocturne's a bit of a special case. The other SMT games usually have standard-ish human party count.

I mentioned the Einhejar because they could basically work like SMT's demons - appear as random encounters, have negotiation dialogue based on their personality, have a large selection that can be stored and chosen by the player at will. The only thing they'd be lacking would be the fusion system. That seems to be the most likely route they'd take if this does end up being a standard RPG, since it'd allow a big selection of playable FE characters in a RPG-style game not dealing with armies, and would give them a lot of presence throughout. It'd also allow FE characters to pop up as random encounters. If they were going with SMT's battle system, then it wouldn't make sense to keep SMT's monsters as the main grunts, otherwise FE's presence would end up pretty minimal.

Hmm. Your point in this being that if they were to do the crossover game in the standard SMT RPG style, in order for Fire Emblem to have more presence, they'd have to adapt the Einherjar as summons and enemies right? Else, FE gets overshadowed in equality by SMT due to the sheer number of SMT references the game will contain...?

Weeeell, I'm not too sure about that though. This is all speculation, but really, it depends on how they pull it off.

In my opinion, even though they adapt the mechanics and setting of one game, as long as the characters from the other all get their fair share of dialogue it's enough for me to feel like it's a good enough crossover. And I'm pretty sure they won't limit the addition of FE to just characters and dialogues anyway. So what if they don't make it tactics? Is the be all and end all of Fire Emblem its battle system? I'd think not. Fire Emblem has so much more to offer than that.

I don't think you should look at them adapting the SMT system as a move to overshadow Fire Emblem though (IF this was even going to be the case! Haha) The story could be more Fire Emblem focused, with the Fire Emblem relic being the source of all this conflict. Or why not include the dragons and tie it in with the conflict of Law-Neutral-Chaos that SMT constantly circulates on?

Or this could all be moot, and the game could opt to take place in a setting completely unrelated to both games (Like what LaytonXAce Attorney did) ;;;

I don't think any are inherently easier. Tactics means they could mostly focus on the battlefield for the graphical side, without needing to build complete locations in 3d, like cities or villages, after all. A RPG means building large locations, npcs to interact and such (if they don't go with SMT3's and Strange Journey's weird interdimensional dungeon settings, which doesn't seem to be the case considering that one shot of a city in the teaser, the only actual new image there).

Haha, that's true. In the end, it's all quite relative on how they plan to implement the game. Fire Emblem's recent conversion to 3D for their character animation shows that 3D is more time and work efficient in that regard. And because Fire Emblem isn't a game that relies too much on map changes, having sprited tile sets for their battlefield that are easily reusable, it's easier to do graphics in that regard.

But you might be underestimating the convenience of 3D though. As long as they don't have to model anything grand like castles and forts, 3D's still quite convenient. All the more of it'll take place in something post-apocalyptic where there wouldn't be too many other things you'd have to model like incidental NPCs and what have you.

Edit: I like how we're like, listing the possible ways this game could go haha. I'm stating how it would be if it were more SMT, and you're giving examples if it were more FE focused xD

Edited by pinkbubblegum
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Mentioning Nocturne to back up how little SMT relies on human character's a bit extreme though...? Nocturne's a bit of a special case. The other SMT games usually have standard-ish human party count.

I actually assumed he was talking about Strange Journey, the last entry in mainline SMT (though it was unnumbered), what with only controlling Space Marine and all. Nocturne was single human only too, now that you mention it (no Dante doesn't count). It's not until you go all the way back to I and II that you had multiple humans, although truthfully most of them were really more like guest characters, and the party mainstays were really just the 1 hero, 1 heroine. (I'm leaving out any discussion of ...if because I am unfamiliar with it.)

Edited by Balcerzak
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Yes, I was thinking about the mainline SMT games when I said that.

Getting one character per FE game's quite ambitious though... Most likely they'll just pick a few key, well-known characters and leave it at that; and if the game does well enough, add more characters in the sequel since it'd be easy to recycle assets already made. I wouldn't be surprised if the main cast for the game is less than 10. With that number being divided amongst FE and SMT already.

Yet another reason a standard RPG style game would be a mistake. FE games are known for large casts, so the crossover featuring multiple heroes would somehow feature... less characters?

In my opinion, even though they adapt the mechanics and setting of one game, as long as the characters from the other all get their fair share of dialogue it's enough for me to feel like it's a good enough crossover. And I'm pretty sure they won't limit the addition of FE to just characters and dialogues anyway. So what if they don't make it tactics? Is the be all and end all of Fire Emblem its battle system? I'd think not. Fire Emblem has so much more to offer than that.

I think most of Fire Emblem characteristic aspects are gameplay based. The series does reuse some fantasy elements like dragon knights and pegasus knights throughout, but outside of the bondaries of FE's gameplay they'd pretty much seem like generic fantasy. Fire Emblem's battle style lacking presence in this crossover pretty much would mean that it wouldn't feel like Fire Emblem. The moment you make the battles flow like in SMT, most of FE's gameplay mechanics and party structure would be completely incompatible with the game, or just pointless even if implemented. On the other hand, many of SMT's most important features, like demon negotiation and fusion, the law-neutral-chaos axis, debuffs being powerful and working even against bosses and its general mythology could work just fine in a tactics game, the SMT battle system wouldn't be necessary for it.

As far as the setting goes, although Fire Emblem does have some recurring elements, I think the identity that they carry to the series in general is weaker than SMT's actual recurring mythology, which always gets expanded upon even in alternate universe games. Things like Pegasus Knights and Generals, outside of FE's gameplay, would pretty much be generic fantasy, rather than specific Fire Emblem elements. Even considering returning characters, I don't think people are dying to play as Marth, Ike or Chrom through... a different menu based gameplay system. It just seems like a pointless idea.

The story could be more Fire Emblem focused, with the Fire Emblem relic being the source of all this conflict. Or why not include the dragons and tie it in with the conflict of Law-Neutral-Chaos that SMT constantly circulates on?

Would that even matter though? I think that attempting to give focus to Fire Emblem only through the story, with npcs being characters from past games popping up somehow, would be a big mistake. The cast of the various Fire Emblems is always renovated, the concept of the Fire Emblem itself is often changed. Naga is likely the recurring figure with biggest presence in Fire Emblem's various entries, and she's still completely irrelevant to many games, like the Tellius ones. The story really doesn't do much to unify the series. Awakening is the first attempt to do it, and even there they were mostly limited to DLC and references. Would Fire Emblem fans really play what would be basically an SMT with some Fire Emblem guests? It just seems like really pointless. I don't think it'd benefit the game at all. I don't think FE fans are looking for that, and I don't think SMT fans are looking for a bunch of (to them) random fantasy characters being thrown into what would otherwise be a standard SMT game either.

Making it a tactical game would allow an actual mix of elements of both sides, rather than heavily favoring one side over the other.

Or this could all be moot, and the game could opt to take place in a setting completely unrelated to both games (Like what LaytonXAce Attorney did) ;;;

But it features a blend of the gameplay of both. It doesn't throw away Layton's puzzles or Ace Attorney's court battles. What you're proposing here would eliminate most gameplay influences from the FE side, leaving only token references (like maybe promotion items to power up the FE characters at some point?) and story appearances. Really, I think the "Fire Emblem setting" would be mostly irrelevant in making this game feel like an FE, or being attractive to most FE fans. It needs to have signficant gameplay influences from the franchise.

Edited by NeonZ
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Yet another reason a standard RPG style game would be a mistake. FE games are known for large casts, so the crossover featuring multiple heroes would somehow feature... less characters?

Yes, yes. I know. It's not in Fire Emblem tradition, but is a smaller cast really such a bad thing? Less characters would allow more focus on writing for each of those individual characters; focus that's usually reserved for 5 or so units in Fire Emblem standard. And I... Well, I actually kind of want that ;;

The only time units that are not the main cast shine are in their respective introduction chapters. After that, they usually fade until you decide to check out their supports, after which they die down again. The support system of Fire Emblem's one of the things I really like about it, so more in-depth supports would cater to my preferences.

I think most of Fire Emblem characteristic aspects are gameplay based. The series does reuse some fantasy elements like dragon knights and pegasus knights throughout, but outside of the bondaries of FE's gameplay they'd pretty much seem like generic fantasy. Fire Emblem's battle style lacking presence in this crossover pretty much would mean that it wouldn't feel like Fire Emblem. The moment you make the battles flow like in SMT, most of FE's gameplay mechanics and party structure would be completely incompatible with the game, or just pointless even if implemented.

I disagree though with this adamant idea that Fire Emblem gameplay is impossible to incorporate in usual turn based combat. When you deconstruct the battle system of Fire Emblem, it is at its core, turn based as well. The only difference is that all ally turns happen before enemy turns, which isn't such a hard to implement thing if they go for a SMT system route. Unit placement matters? Wild Arms 4 utilized a Hex System in its battles wherein it sort of mashed-up grids and standard turn based battles (There must be a proper term for this haha) so why can't they do something similar? (To be honest though, I wasn't too fond of WA4's battle system ;; This is just to provide an example that adapting the gameplay of SMT wouldn't necessarily mean the end of Fire Emblem's influence)

I think the most pivotal part of FE gameplay is the weapon triangle though. Which I don't find as implausible to implement in SMT as you seem to think it is.

But if I'm to understand your point, it's more of how specialized units (such as winged units and the like) end up losing their main gameplay purpose due to the game not being in grid format? Thus rendering their specialties useless?

I can't really say anything about this, because well... It's sort of inevitable. The only way that that might not be the case is if they do something similar to Suikoden 3's war scenarios which honestly feels a bit too far-fetched. The only distinction one Fire Emblem class would have from the other would probably be in stat growth and skills probably, unless the development team manages to think of a creative new system which still preserves the purpose and usefulness of specialized units. Which I trust they will be able to pull off if they wanted, actually.

As far as the setting goes, although Fire Emblem does have some recurring elements, I think the identity that they carry to the series in general is weaker than SMT's actual recurring mythology, which always gets expanded upon even in alternate universe games. Things like Pegasus Knights and Generals, outside of FE's gameplay, would pretty much be generic fantasy, rather than specific Fire Emblem elements. Even considering returning characters, I don't think people are dying to play as Marth, Ike or Chrom through... a different menu based gameplay system. It just seems like a pointless idea.

But... why not? Isn't this the point of crossovers in the first place? Being able to experience a game that you like in a different way? (From a game dev PoV, it would be to introduce one series to the fans of the other I guess) And if it so happened that you liked both games, ever the more better. I can't say I agree with your view on how "generic fantasy" Fire Emblem would appear outside of a Fire Emblem setting though. If you didn't play a Fire Emblem game granted, that would be true, but what fan wouldn't be able to identify classes associated with Fire Emblem? And that is what crossovers usually cater to. Existing fans of a series.

To be perfectly honest, regardless of what system this game chooses to adapt; be it FE's tactics, SMT's turn based battles or... some other battle system they'll make up to tie the two together, I'll still look forward to this game equally as much haha. I'm simply not willing to completely discredit the possibility of a SMT turn based battle system that manages to fit in Fire Emblem just yet.

'Cause I'm persistent like that #yol-- *thrown into a volcano*

Edited by pinkbubblegum
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Yes, yes. I know. It's not in Fire Emblem tradition, but is a smaller cast really such a bad thing? Less characters would allow more focus on writing for each of those individual characters; focus that's usually reserved for 5 or so units in Fire Emblem standard. And I... Well, I actually kind of want that ;;

Is a crossover game really the place to give more focus to some characters than they ever had before though? That idea is kind of odd... Besides, a small line up would end up being unfair to the FE side. SMT, one way or another, certainly will keep the whole demon summoning aspect here, so, if you limit the FE cast to a few lords, equivalent to the number of human SMT representatives, you'll have a much bigger presence of SMT side when you add demon summoning/collecting to the mix.

I disagree though with this adamant idea that Fire Emblem gameplay is impossible to incorporate in usual turn based combat. When you deconstruct the battle system of Fire Emblem, it is at its core, turn based as well.

It could be incorporated, but I don't think it'd result in anything worthy if the whole positioning aspect is removed. Say, bows/wind magic being good against fliers, sword breakers and rapiers that do extra damage against armored units. They can keep elements like that, but in a menu based combat, without movement, it'd basically play out just like elemental weakness, especially since you'd have freedom to attack any of the enemies with any of your active characters. The weapon triangle also likely will be nearly worthless in this game, doesn't matter what route they take with it, RPG or SRPG, considering how it'd be mostly unusable for the SMT side.

Wild Arms 4 utilized a Hex System in its battles wherein it sort of mashed-up grids and standard turn based battles (There must be a proper term for this haha) so why can't they do something similar?

Because we're talking about mainline SMT? You don't even need to go that far. The SMT spin off Devil Survivor had a mix of grid movement and standard SMT combat mixed together - grid movement like in a SRPG, but attack phases changed to a SMT-like system, with each unit in combat being composed by a small party with a summoner and two demons. I guess something like that could be tweaked and at least allow the Fire Emblem units to still have different movement, and also maybe more characters than in a standard RPG - maybe the FE characters could have two other human units as support, rather than two demons - like a pseudo triple pair up. But, still, that's not the default SMT battle system, and my point here is that that thedefault system of the mainline SMT games would do no favors to the FE side.

But... why not? Isn't this the point of crossovers in the first place? Being able to experience a game that you like in a different way?

Although that's true, I could see that working better with , say, a Fire Emblem Musou, where you'd see a radically different take on the setting, thanks to real time combat. However, keeping the same concept, turn based combat, but changing the system to something that would do no favors to most of FE's unique mechanics seems just like a mistake to me.

Edited by NeonZ
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