NCIS (Windows)

NCIS
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai Publisher: Ubisoft Platform: Windows Released in US: November 1, 2011 Released in EU: 2011 This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material.

NCIS is yet another generic licensed adventure game with hilariously lifeless off-model (and off-sounding) characters.

Unused Video Files

To do: Second time CBS has copyright claimed these videos. Ideally we should support a separate video host, like Internet Archive or host the videos ourselves if bandwidth permits.

There are two unused DVD trailers in the game's data, located in the VIDEO folder: NCIS_S8_NowAvailable.bik is for the series' Season 8 DVD set. This is accessible in the console versions of the game from the main menu, but the PC version is missing that option.

NCIS_Paramount.bik, on the other hand, is a trailer for the Season 7 DVD set with a timecode overlaid on top of the video. The file is also in an interlaced video format.

Test Map

Some leftover test files are located in the plot folder. They're named TEST_CONVERSATION_ENGINE.DNA, TEST_CON_02_ENGINE.DNA, TEST_FACEFX_ENGINE.DNA, Test_FaceFx_Logic_engine.DNA and Test_Logic_engine.DNA. Additional files for a test map can be found in the plot\TestMaps\LD\GuTao\NPCBehaviorTestMap folder. GuTao refers to Tao Gu, who was employed at Ubisoft Shanghai during production of the game. It is currently unknown if it's possible to load these files within the game itself.

Unused Text

The plot\text_database.xml file contains all of the game's text in all five supported languages. There are portions of text that appear to have been used by the test screens mentioned earlier in this article. Some examples can be seen below:

<Text>
	<ID ID="149"/>
	<English English="[Test] chemicalmatch.1_Title"/>
	<French French="[Test] chemicalmatch.1_Title"/>
	<Italian Italian="[Test] chemicalmatch.1_Title"/>
	<German German="[Test] chemicalmatch.1_Title"/>
	<Spanish Spanish="[Test] chemicalmatch.1_Title"/>
</Text>

<Text>
	<ID ID="151"/>
	<English English="[Test] hacking_Title"/>
	<French French="[Test] hacking_Title"/>
	<Italian Italian="[Test] hacking_Title"/>
	<German German="[Test] hacking_Title"/>
	<Spanish Spanish="[Test] hacking_Title"/>
</Text>

There are also sections of text that were cut from the game and replaced with generic blank entries:

<Text>
	<ID ID="82"/>
	<English English="[PH] No More Used"/>
	<French French="[PH] No More Used"/>
	<Italian Italian="[PH] No More Used"/>
	<German German="[PH] No More Used"/>
	<Spanish Spanish="[PH] No More Used"/>
</Text>