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FFXV story/spoiler discussion thread.

Kuja9001

Ooooh Salty!
AKA
roxas9001, Krat0s9001, DarkSlayerZero
My understanding was that
the Old Wall was destroyed at the end of "Kingsglaive."

They were literally statues though and there is plenty of rubble to make more I guess.

Also due to my previous comparison I made this.

tumblr_ohhvb96bb51rd83duo1_540.png
 

Tashasaurous

Tash for Short
AKA
Sailor Moon, Mini Moon, Hotaru, Cardcaptor Sakura, Meilin, Xion, Kairi, Aqua, Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, Elena, Misty, May, Dawn, Casey, Fiona, Ellie
Yeah, now that you guys mentioned it, after watching the main storyline, the game itself just screamed Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII(and Crisis Core), Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII(XIII-2 and Lightning Returns) all mixed in together with some oddness of Kingdom Hearts with an ending that sparked it well.

I mean, there were several references through the game. For example, the main bad guy Ardy or whatever his name is, is super mind-crazy and killed the female protagonist Luna who tried to help Noctis to save the world, just like how Sephiroth killed Aerith who tried to use her powers and relayed on Cloud to save the world but not really as dramatic as Aerith's death, but still upsetting for Noctis as Aerith's death was to Cloud.

The bad guy also plots revenge by risking the world into eternal darkness, similiar to how Xehanort and Hojo were willing to destroy the Realm of Light and the World to prove their theories.

The setting of the world is similiar to Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy.

After Noctis is sucked into the Crystal, the world is plunged into chaos and darkness for a decade until he returns, similiar to how Kefka put the world into ruin and then the main protagonists return a year later.

Having accepted his fate, Noctis sacrifices himself and allows himself to die in the end since he is the main protagonist, like how Tidus eventually accepted his disappearence/death in the end of Final Fantasy X and dies almost dramatically like Zack in the ending of Crisis Core, both emotional.

Finally, the world is restored back to Light similiar to both Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII, except that Noctis and Lunafreya get their happy ending in the Afterlife, the fates of their friends remain unknown in the Realm of the Living.

Didn't see any evidence of Etro, though.
 

Wolf_

Pro Adventurer
There'd have to be a story for an explanation to be given. From what I can tell, if you take away all of the side quests, the story can be explained in a few sentences.

Drive to see Luna, but stop on the way to see Gladio's sister for no real reason other than to let her aggressively flirt with you... fail spectacularly in your mission to get married to a woman you haven't seen in twelve years, whilst blinding one of your friends... have a little group diva strop while still finding the all powerful summons that provide no use to you for the entire game (and throwing your school mate off a train)... go live in a crystal for 10 years, dooming the world to darkness for a decade, before returning with no explanation to kill the campest man on the face of the earth, knowing that when you succeeded, you'd die a virgin...
 
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Random Nobody

local roach
Thinking about it some more, I really don't think the chancellor was originally going to be the main antagonist. Or if he was, the emperor
was supposed to be less irrelevant.

Did anyone even see
Versatile Verstael
at all? Because I don't remember having done. And it seems they merged his character with the main antagonist.

Just in general, there are a lot of plot and thematic elements that are clearly legacies of Versus and ideas from early XV development that are now dangling non sequiturs because vital context has been removed. Weird discrepancies aside (like the fact that it was Altissia that was attacked as late as Jump Festa 2015), the Lucians being death/reaper worshippers and practisers of ancestor veneration lends a lot more weight to the villain's
immortality, his rejection by the Lucii (I'm still not completely clear about this), and the myriad of senseless, pointless deaths that had no impact or narrative importance at all.

It's also very much in line with the "light of the dead," near death experiences, Shakespearean tragedy, and the emphasis on darkness, violence, blood, and moral ambiguity as presented in Versus (think how they purposely contrasted Niflheim's white to Lucis' Balenciaga black suits back in the day).

But all that was cut, and who knows what else.
Cor looked like he was once more involved, for example.

And definitely the subplot where one of them is kidnapped was cut, or at least mostly was.
He might even have originally been an agent provacateur, because the "revelation"/"dark" secret as presented not only was an extremely laughable joke, but also did not make much sense. It would certainly explain why his older designs had a much more sinister edge to them.

In any case, really feel they should've cut it all and started from scratch if it would have made things more coherent.

I liked the game a lot more when I thought it was going to be a yakuza/Vatican fight simulator.

ETA: For reference,

Cg6S66EWMAILWRs.jpg
Cg6S6syWYAARBO3.jpg
tumblr_mo91h9Roxu1ruoqiuo1_500.png
latest
vX4SLOv.jpg

Of course predicating the theory on redesigns alone more or less amounts to baseless speculation, but it's pretty clear all the aborted subplots led somewhere at one point. I really get the feeling that the FFVII-style hallucinatory headaches and that one
very strange train sequence and the Psycho Mantis-ass mind games once had more to them (because they certainly lacked any sort of explanation). All I could think around that bit was, "Oh, so I guess this is how they're gonna handle Cloud mollywhopping the fuck out of Aerith."
 
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Carlie

CltrAltDelicious
AKA
Chloe Frazer
That has got to be one of the worst quests I've ever done in any video game. The losing your magic gimmick was interesting for about 10 minutes but then it goes on for 3 fucking hours. There's an annoying 7-stage keycard puzzle to solve, and Ardyn is constantly making fun of Noctis over the PA system.

The fucking robots on the floor that jump you, that should've been done like 3 times and that's it but no, it happened throughout the whole dungeon. Like I can fucking see them, I know they're going to do it but I can't do anything about it. And that fucking daemon that kept attacking me in hallways but then disappearing when I got its health bar to 50%, just to show up again with a full health bar. That whole fucking chapter can die in a fire and spend the rest of eternity stuck in a room with Trump.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Hm, I seem to be at chapter 8 already, seems to be going quick now. I dun want to progress through the story that quick :/.

Also IDGI.
The fuck is up with the empire? On the one hand they're like raah raah we is gonna invade your city and bork ur shit and drop paratroopers on your ass whenever. On the other it's like "Oh hey I'm the high chancellor, I'll just give you a ride in a dropship and help you a lot", or "Hey I'm an elite dragoon solider chick, we just had a boss fight remember? Oh let me just help you through this dungeon and forget all about that shall we"

What the fuck even

That last dungeon I went through (late chapter 7 I think) was... ugly as fuck too, tbf. Drab and boring straight walls. Empty corridors for the most part. I'm not impressed with the graphics. It looks and feels like a game from 10+ years ago sometimes.
 

Lex

Administrator
I'm just kind of making my way through the posts since I completed the game and howling at Random Nobody's posts XD. For the record I called Ravus Viserys too, completely independently of anyone else XD. Carlie and I have been calling him that since the game came out last week!

Sadly calling him Viserys gives Luna too much credit, since she is literally just a walking shell of nothingness (which is so sad, because she could have been a Khaleesi if they gave a shit).
 

Lex

Administrator
OK so for the most part I agree with the criticisms with whole-hearted humour but still came out loving the experience? I realise that's super strange, but yeah it's true that most of the enjoyable character moments come from randomly wandering around. Given how big the world is I'm quite surprised at how much the game manages to keep it from getting stale just by having the characters react to things.

If there's one thing they got right in this game, it's banter between the characters/ the characters feeling "real" with respect to their interactions with each other.

Prompto is 100% the best thing to come out of this game, no contest. Ardyn is also excellent. Oh and Aranea. But we don't see nearly enough of her.
 

Lex

Administrator
Flying the Regalia is incredible. They should never have locked this off to endgame.
 

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
So, now that more of you are finishing up the story, I has a question:

Prompto being one of the MTs. Does this feel as random to you guys as it does to me as someone who has only watched a couple of playthroughs? Is there any foreshadowing of this I've missed (I can kind of see the vaguest bits of it in that prologue audio drama thing, but that could have as easily just been that his parents were distant and shitty rather than ... well, not real), does it make sense in the larger scheme of the story, and does it feel like as big a deal as we're supposed to think it is?
 

Lex

Administrator
^
The only thing I encountered that could be considered {slight} foreshadowing is his scene with Noct at the Motel, but that's just fairly typical "I feel inferior" stuff.
 

Carlie

CltrAltDelicious
AKA
Chloe Frazer
I finished the game, my thoughts on the game are what Random Nobody has said. Which is hilariously spooky because I've been saying the same things to Lex all week.

So, now that more of you are finishing up the story, I has a question:

Prompto being one of the MTs. Does this feel as random to you guys as it does to me as someone who has only watched a couple of playthroughs? Is there any foreshadowing of this I've missed (I can kind of see the vaguest bits of it in that prologue audio drama thing, but that could have as easily just been that his parents were distant and shitty rather than ... well, not real), does it make sense in the larger scheme of the story, and does it feel like as big a deal as we're supposed to think it is?

It came out fucking nowhere, unless you want to count he's good with technology as foreshadowing. Half of everything in that game came out of fucking nowhere, "the nights are getting longer and daemons are taking over everything" since when was that a thing?
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
*stops FFXIV grinding to read thread*

So it pretty much plays like an MMO (side content is more important then Main Story) without being an MMO?

Then again, this has been a trend in single-player games for a while...

*goes back to FFXIV grindfest*
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
The voice of eternal positivity has arrived~

Beat it today after about 60 hours of overall game time. I actually genuinely like the way that the game itself showed the story almost 100% exclusively from Noctis' point of view, which is why a bunch of the plot and other things seem more obtuse and are more fully developed through supplementary stuff (Brotherhood, Omen, Kingsglaive), and a lot of the chapters seem to be specifically designed to have particular emotional theming for Noctis' journey first and foremost.


Overall, my only complaint about the game are the two boss fights with full armiger flying combat sections because they are just press R1+∆ to win, and feel like they shouldn't do that.

I can full tl;dr it all tomorrow at some point if anyone's interested.




X :neo:
 

Pixel

The Pixie King
Was Luna ill before she died? Also, didn't Ravus die in Kingsglaive? The story really does seem cobbled together at times. Lots of waisted oportunities.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Was Luna ill before she died? Also, didn't Ravus die in Kingsglaive? The story really does seem cobbled together at times. Lots of waisted oportunities.

Ravus lost his arm in Kingsglaive, which is why he has a Magitek prosthetic. Also, carrying the Ring of the Lucii is what's draining her, LotR One Ring style.




X :neo:
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
So, one of the biggest things is that the storyline is VERY specific to Noctis’ journey, but there is a SHITTON of stuff going on in the world beyond the scope of journey that is incredibly interesting, but vastly less overtly detailed. This makes a lot of the minor characters' developments seem cut short, because we don’t have a direct view to any of them and only find out about them in bits and pieces.


Thematically, we start off with Noctis and the bros off on a road trip to Altissia to get married to Luna as a part of the treaty with Niflheim. Those are the barest details that are important to Noctis’ story at this stage – especially because their trip gets cuts short by the attack on Insomnia and it shifts the focus of their journey.

What this leaves out is the content of Kingsglaive (since no one in your party is present in the city to see it). Kingsglaive gives insight into the overall history of strife between Lucis and the Empire, the Refugees in Insomnia and the general uncomfortability of the treaty. It also gives some hints about Ardyn’s role within the Empire and his slightly different sentiments to that of the Emperor, not to mention King Regis’s killer (who we see at the start of the game) is slain. That’s because – while it’s important, Noctis’ entire motivation comes from a point of not knowing Ardyn at this point, and also being strongly motivated solely by the attack on Insomnia and the loss of his Father – not necessarily the want for revenge against his specific killer – again because of how he learns of the information and that that story concludes on its own.

Another things that Kingsglaive provides early insight into is a big chunk of information into Ravus & Luna’s relationship, the differences in their view of King Regis and Lucis in general, as well as a look at the inherent danger and power of the Ring of the Lucii. It shows the background of Ravus attempting to use the Ring of the Lucii and it burning through his arm in the process (hence his Magitek arm in the game), as well as how he moved up in the Empire because of feeling abandoned the Tenebrae 12 years ago when Regis & Noctis’ presence resulting in the Empire attacking and causing the death of his own parents. But again – our PARTY’S only context for him is his sudden introduction as the Imperial commander. If you read the information by his corpse, you learn that eventually he meets up with Luna and expresses his concerns to his sister that Noctis won’t be capable of controlling the power of the Ring & the Crystal, HOWEVER he’s prepared to use his position as the Imperial Commander to follow Noctis if he is able to. Again – while it’s an interesting story, it’s something that our party is unaware of, and ultimately gets cut short even before they learn there was a possibility of it occurring.

To get to that, we see a painfully small amount of Luna’s journey, and it’s more difficult to understand what she’s doing because so much of it happens out of the view of our characters. We know from Kingsglaive that Luna escapes from Insomnia (while reported dead to our party) and she’s carrying the One Ring with her while continuing to heal those around her. She also journeys to commune with the various Astrals to have them join with Noctis before the Empire is able to kill them in an attempt to stop him from becoming the King of Light. Then she gets mortally wounded by Ardyn so that she dies before really getting to spend time with Noctis. It isn’t until the trip on the train where we see Noctis carrying the Ring of the Lucii himself and not wearing it that we retroactively get a sense of the difficulty of that task alone, not to mention everything else she was doing. Plus, the party doesn’t know until it’s too late is that Ardyn’s covertly working against the Empire, because he wants to kill Noctis AS the King of Light, and needs various things to happen. Ultimately he kills Luna because she represents something that would give Noctis an out and a way to establish power without confronting Ardyn and continuing to play along in his game where he systematically gives support to Noctis and pulls it away as a way to build him into the Kingly adversary that he wants to take down to officially claim the throne as his own for good.

It’s mostly that last part that really gets into why the perspective of the story is so heavily centered in on Noctis’ limited point of view. It’s the burden of his task that’s muting many of the specifics of things around him, but that’s ALSO what makes the idea of the game as the journey with your brothers wandering the world is THE central theme. That’s why there’s so much of the game crafted around them having real, natural conversation and really enjoying the time just wandering around together and enjoying the various things in the world, because that’s the last thing that Noctis has, and it’s the one and only thing that no one can take from him as he loses EVERYTHING ELSE that he tries to protect. That’s why as soon as you hit Altissia you get put on a linear path and systematically pulled apart from all the things that felt familiar and close to you. It starts with Jared getting killed by the Empire during your absence that really shakes him out of his “vacation” mindset, then Gladio goes to do something and gets injured, Luna getting killed for helping you, Ignis loses his vision in holding off the Empire, Prompto almost gets killed at your own hand, and you don’t get to see the bigger moments of ANY of that. You start to realize that despite your camaraderie, they have to deal with things outside of or related to your destiny that you can’t help with. That really hits its peak when you choose to leave them to reach the Crystal and save them… and inadvertently leave them all behind for 10 years in a land of utter darkness.

Noctis’ story as the prophesied King of Light is inherently one of tragedy of self-sacrifice where he has to go from the pained, emotional brooding prince and become the self-confident & stand-up King of Light such that he has to earn his own deceased father’s trust when binding the power of the Old Wall, because since Regis is the last king, it’s his blow that kills his own son – who he sacrificed everything to protect and put on that journey.

That’s why you get the montage of the moments of them together in the credits, along with the four of them in their last Camp together, (as well as the classic Final Fantasy afterlife moment of Luna & Noctis together with the one picture you took from Prompto).


Aaaaaand that's why the game was awesome BECAUSE of the way that the story’s delivered, even though there is a lot that’s obscure and comes across as being under-developed due to how the story’s told.

Ultimately, seeing more things from the other characters’ PoVs (Luna, Aranea, Gladio, Ignis, Prompto, Ravus, etc). as DLC to fill out the rest of the background apart from the primary story would be awesome, since, they wouldn’t make sense as sidequests for the main party to do for the aforementioned reasons.


Also, I think I'm gonna write a big spoilery tl;dr about this game and how it relates to things in FFVII:R insofar as the way it's designed & certain things are done, and how the Remake will likely be similar, as well as different. EDIT: I did.




X :neo:
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
Limited POV is one of the things written works still do much, much better then visual mediums (movies, video games) do. It's possible to have a bunch of different POVs in one work and make it obvious who knows things vs. who doesn't becasue often times it's obvious who's POV parts of the story is being told from.

With visual mediums, the POV isn't from any of the characters, but from an outside observer. So if the POV is supposed to be different, there has to be a visual way to indicate who's POV it's from which isn't that easy to do. Changing mediums for different POVs does work though.

I kinda get the idea from this thread that if FFXV were a novel, it would only be one book with a different POV for each chapter.
 
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