I've decided to go straight ahead and spotted the ending of the game on youtube before it was taken down again to avoid more spoilers for the full walkthrough, and here's what I discovered.
After spending ten years in the Spirital Realm since it was his destiny to become the True King to save the world and then sacrifice his life, he returns and fufills this role and then dies, reuighting with Lunafreya who died earlier as well. Turns out the feeling that I've felt for ages was right.
Read if you want to risk it. At least Tabata was right about it being emotional. Cried my eyes out.
I don't know why people would spoil themselves on the ending, but not on the whole game, but I guess that's just me.
Honestly, I've been playing for 7 hours straight and have accomplished nothing plotwise.
I have, however, had multiple run ins with Dualhorns that are 20 levels higher while looking for a lost Hunter (cause everytime I drive out there, I hear him calling for help and I am starting to suspect that it is an assassination attempt against Noctis), and ran into a level 38 Bandersnatch because the food gathering spot there is a fucking trap of death and I don't know why I went there cause when you look at your surroundings, you'd think "huh. a food spot in the middle of a lower area that once I drop down into, there's no way for me to back out of unless I take the long way out. Looks like a trap but oH WELL BETTER DROP DOWN ANYWAY YOU ONLY YOLO ONCE OH MY GOD THAT THING IS LEVEL 38 AND I AM ONLY LEVEL 3 ABORT MISSION oh nevermind I am dead and so is everybody else."
All this, and this is right around the very first rest spot of the game.
It may be too early to tell, but it seems some fan theories are hogwash :p. Anyways, unrelated:
Okay... Luna's death happened far earlier than I expected. The playthrough I'm watching is only 4-5 hours into the game. She has only appeared in a handful of short cut scenes. Barely got to connect to her character, so doesn't come across remotely as tragic as Aerith's death. I am actually wondering if she is even permanently dead. :p.
Alright, I'm about 2 hours into the game, haven't really accomplished shite plot-wise; just been piddling around trying to explore and get the hang of it. SE definitely wasn't kidding when they talked about the beginning of the game being open world.
A few thoughts, before I get back to the playthrough:
I'm not sure what to think about the combat system yet. I'm wondering if I want to switch to easy mode, because overall it just seems very chaotic. There's too much happening on screen in some of these fights.
Also, I concur with Yop's thoughts in the other thread: when it was time to push that damn car I almost ate my controller in rage trying to figure it the fuck out. And then OH! there's some tiny ass writing on the right side of the screen telling me to push THIS button. Yay for old people eyes. Fuck.
And honestly, I barely pay attention to character's stats at the bottom of the screen. I get not wanting to obscure this wonderful AC-esque action but shit, I've almost died a few times because those widdle boxes are barely noticeable.
Other than, nothing really major to complain about, just minor nitpicks. Good game so far.
This game is short >.>. At least the story seems to be. I thought Luna's death was near the beginning, but apparently it was about half way through! >.>. I'm going to assume there is a lot of sidequests and grinding. The playthrough I watched was clearly just story, but not a lot of story-mission gameplay was skipped. I wonder if the same can be said of other FF games, they certainly never seemed as short though. Interesting logo change at the end though.
The sidequests and grinding better be worth it, because as it stands from what I've seen, I'd put this game worse than I'd rate FFX and FFVIII (my least favourite games of the franchise).
R2 to push the car was unexpected...but once it didn't work...why didn't you just start trying each button? lol. That's what I did, mystery solved in a couple seconds.
Cor's pretty cool. And I'm glad to see guest party members are at least a thing that can happen. And I like that they come with their own special moves under the L1 menu.
So far I'm doing pretty good with the combat. It's easy to accidently use all your MP warping around, but otherwise it's going well. It's definitely more fluid than the demos, and getting link moves to work is pretty satisfying. I've messed around with just about all the weapon types as well as magic (except for the super special ones).
They're not messing around with the "don't travel at night" stuff. A level 34 Coeurl wrecked my shit.
That dungeon was super creepy. And there were a couple passageways, and a downstairs, that I didn't even explore yet. Definitely an anti-FF13, this game.
What else...the car customization is fun. The characters aren't amazing or anything (yet), but I actually like them a little more than I was expecting to. The clips from Kingsglaive fit nicely, and that cutscene at the beginning of Chapter 3 was nice and ominous (but didn't Luna's brother get killed by the ring in Kingsglaive? I'm probably gonna have to watch it again).
This game is short >.>. At least the story seems to be. I thought Luna's death was near the beginning, but apparently it was about half way through! >.>. I'm going to assume there is a lot of sidequests and grinding. The playthrough I watched was clearly just story, but not a lot of story-mission gameplay was skipped. I wonder if the same can be said of other FF games, they certainly never seemed as short though. Interesting logo change at the end though.
Yeah, the story is super short. I'm baffled. And confused/surprised by how irrelevant Iedolas Aldercapt and Ravus ended up being (they make Luna's presence seem huge by comparison).
Not that the story that's here is bad; it's just nothing special.
I guess this really is an FF that has to be played/experienced to really appreciate the story. I'd read elsewhere that a lot of the memorable character moments come during exploration, and that appears to be true.
I guess this really is an FF that has to be played/experienced to really appreciate the story. I'd read elsewhere that a lot of the memorable character moments come during exploration, and that appears to be true.
I played it for myself and yet still, to be quite frank, nothing and no one in the game is memorable to me barring the moments where I found all of them intensely annoying.
I really cannot get over how useless a character Luna was. Viserys Targaryen and the emperor received even worse treatment, but Luna especially stood out to me because Tabata was chatting all that about how Stella was too "weak" a character, and was replaced by Luna in part because they felt that they'd created a much more powerful figure. I mean...sis....why the lies. Homegirl could not have been more one dimensional and archetypal. No personality whatsoever and amounted to little more than a plot device to be refrigerated. Like....yo...even miss Thunder Fairfax from FFXIII was more nuanced and developed, and that is just wild to me considering she was explicitly written as a Cloud Squall clone.
And in a similar vein, I can't even comprehend how anyone is supposed to invest in the "love story" when their interaction comprises of little more than some flashbacks of how they were friendly as children. From what I got, they hadn't seen each other in years and had never really been acquainted in their adult lives.
It's really neither here or there, though, I suppose, since most media can't produce a convincing love story to save its soul to begin with. It's just that in general it feels like the game tries to cash in on all these emotional attachments that it never actually earned. I mean it does this in everything from the writing to the direction. I spent most of the time rolling my eyes.
In fact, I've finished the game and I honestly cannot tell if I'm just stupid or you have to immerse yourself in supplementary materials, because I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to the plot/world-building. I feel like whatever happened on the screen just bounced off my retinas and all the sound passed through one ear and out the other. The last hour or so of the game was just me saying "What???" repeatedly.
Also homie's dad is the Barbara Holland of Final Fantasy. I'm actually shoquéd.
I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it technically exited the Fabula Nova Crystallis after it became a main numbered game. Certainly everything I thought I knew about it was completely irrelevant.
Por ejemplo..."eyes that see the light of expired souls"? Scrapped. Never mentioned at all. Which makes sense, because as far as I can tell, there is no Etro and the in-game mythos and pantheon is completely different.
...Which is something of a problem, because they do not explain any of it. At all. I actually feel as if I contracted amnesia, because I cannot explain why basic plot events happened or the in-game narrative beats, yet I finished the game a few hours ago. And I seriously cannot tell if I somehow missed it all, or if I'm just an even bigger dumbass than I thought.
They leave so they can go have Noctis marry Luna in Altissia(?) , where Hillary Clinton ends up sheltering her, but then Regis gets murked and the country is occupied by old man Emporium Mushroomcap or whatever his name is, and his flamboyant dressed cabinet. So I was under the impression that I was gathering strength to give the Nilfgaardians Niflheim the boot. But then it turns out there was some ancient prophecy I was trying to fulfil because I was the chicken-headed Chosen One? And that was a whole halfway through the game I was a wrong as hell. Meanwhile, I was going, "But what is an astral, exactly???What?? Stars what??? Power who?? What is the crystal?? What does it do though?? Wait, why???"
As it turns out, all the crystal does is wait patiently as the plot token that pulls Noctis into the same hyperbolic time chamber that they stuffed Link in for seven years.
Also he has to die, because it was prophesied. Everyone knew but me. Luna is slowly being kilt for whatever reason. Zootopia ain't even really do anything when he rolled up and (hilariously) Red Wedding'd her.
And then the last part of the game was just full on confusion for me. Virus what??? Mutations??? Alien influenza?? Apparently the fire is fading and Noctis has to link the First Flame before light is extinguished completely.
It was just the most minimal TPP-style narrative I've ever seen in an FF game, down even to the movie-esque title cards. These kind of story-telling shortcuts are even present in the basic events of the plot....take for example how you roll up to the final dungeon and Viserys is already lying there just dead as fuck on the floor. Or worse--and I'm not entirely convinced I didn't somehow sleep through something--when you are knocked out for a few days (in-game) and Ignacio shows up and goes, "I'm blind now."
Like...what? What was the point? And why wouldn't you show something so important when it would realistically be a major turning point in tone and characterisation (never mind Gladiator's second scar or the fact that the protagonist's father is murdered and no one reacts)? No, I don't feel sorry for his ass. For all I know, he splashed cooking oil in his own eye when trying to fry plantains.
It just feel like the game emphasised trivial things (and did a lot of telling rather than showing) whilst simultaneously skimping on elements far more relevant--even to the detriment of basic story-telling. The plot feels incidental to the characters/relationships, and that is...not good, because this is not an Elder Scrolls game, and the relationships aren't convincing or interesting to me in the first place.
I understand that this is probably in large part because I did not interact with the supplementary media at all, but I don't feel like I should have to access additional materials just to make sense of a game's main scenario.
I'm not the best person to ask, since I blasted through the plot and just in general games can have the shittiest gameplay of all time and I'll still like it if the story or atmosphere or cast or tone is good.
I will say that they've really improved the combat system since Duscae. It mostly feels nice and responsive, although it can be chaotic and did fatigue me on occasion because I'm old and it was too much shit happening on the screen. It did feel a bit easy, though. But the last FF I played was XIII, so I don't know if I'm the most qualified to make the comparison.
The summon sequences and the atmosphere of some locales really did impress me. And it might have been my imagination, but the game seemed to do a lot of shout-outs and callbacks to plot events of previous entries (besides just the soundtracks).
But....
I really just cannot get over how shallow and underdeveloped everything and everyone is. The more I think about it, the more incredulous I get. Zootopia's voice acting was so cringe and scenery chew that it jogged back around to being charismatic and impressive, but even the VA couldn't save him from the fact the character is nonsense (and with poorly explained origin, motives, and plot involvement).
The characters in general don't really have an arc. Which is fine, because characters don't always have to be dynamic in a narrative, but it doesn't feel appropriate here. FF has always had somewhat cartoonish characters who fit into semi-rigid archetypes, but the charm is that the plots have always been equally convoluted and flamboyant. Here, they (mostly) successfully created a cast that is more "realistic" (ie, they aren't as archetypal), but then the characters don't realistically react to their situations. Noctis' father is murdered and his people are under siege, but he and his friends continue cracking the same canned jokes and behaving in the same way as if nothing of consequence had happened (those cutscenes in the 2014 TGS trailers? didn't get nunnadat). Much of the script is either extremely corny or on the nose or both (Naruto coming to me to tell and not show me how he's really complex and insecure made me want to slap him and be like, son....my father just died), and the weird rapid-fire, nonstop way it's directed leaves no time for introspection or quiet drama scenes. There is no "ma," to use Miyazaki's explanation. Everything is happening so much....all the time. If something "sad" happens, bombastic sad strings are playing in the background. The game simultaneously takes itself too seriously and not seriously enough. The result is that the characters just feel extremely one-note and static, no matter what they do (assuming they're not one of the ones randomly killed off-screen).
And then the plot itself--like the basic sequence of events--is just wild stupit for no reason. First you have a fastball special of unexplored cataclysmic incidents that don't really amount to anything characterisation (and later story)-wise. Then nothing. Luna is stuffed into the refrigerator after five minutes of screentime. Then another long stretch of nothing before God pulls you into the Rainbow Road dimension and dumps a bunch of exposition on you at the very end. As in, the literal textbook/dictionary definition of deus ex machina. It's nearly ME3 levels of what the hell.
Like on the real, nothing happens the entire game. There's no exposition...at all. Plot is happening without story. FF games (and basic narrative structure in general ) are usually pretty linear in that the characters gain new information about the conflict as they journey and react to that information as appropriate until equipped to face their final conflict and head towards resolution.
I might just be dumb, but ion't what d hell happened here. The game was trying to resolve the story while simultaneously providing critical exposition up until the last moments.
I am legit unsure of the exact ramifications/meaning of the things I saw and heard.
Professional hater though I am, I really don't want to be the negative ngozi. But the longer I reflect, the more obvious it becomes that the game has an identity crisis because it's just a pastiche of whatever was left after much was sheared away on the cutting room floor.
This wouldn't have happened if they hadn't cut Stella, I'm just saying.
until square does right by its female characters it will never know peace. My curse shall lay upon them twenty times twenty generations
Well.. gotta say I'm disappointed. Game was 90% side quests, there seems to be no story whatsoever, and you get a miserable ending. Short too. If I didn't need to do side quests and sleep to level up, you could finish this game in a couple of hours. It's like MGS5. As a game it's good, but as an MGS game it's shit. Never summoned titan once. Summoned the other couple once (which is a challenge in itself). Seemed to be lacking in those beautiful CGI cutscenes and ripped something off virtually every final fantasy going. (Cid C'ieth, ff7 fighting monsters on train.. at one point I thought I was in one of the Midgar reactors..) It's not tidus getting blown up by a blitzball stupid, but as a story I feel like they took a shit on 10 years of expectations..
First off, I thought the Kingsglaive movie was sort of a disappointment. I saw a battle, I saw cool cars, I got lost, I sort of understood the plot, and I saw a huge battle - the end. Anyways, I've been watching a lot of XV Twitch broadcasts and the game looks beautiful. I don't really like how the male characters interact with each other, it seems awkward to me :/. Also, are there any party members or NPCs that aren't caucasian? I don't mind, just wondering! I don't have the game yet, but I'm thinking about purchasing it soon because I love the combat system, and it will be a great addition to my collection.
If you mean darker-skinned characters, then no, there are no party members. There are brown NPCs (though it's not like it's an abundance), and then there's minor character, Weskham, who's unambiguously a black man. That being said, ion't think anyone in the main four looks explicitly white, barring maybe Naruto post-redesign. Noctis definitely doesn't, and Regis didn't either, back when he was Yakuza and XV/Versus looked like a mob revenge musical. But most FF characters do not and have never looked white to me, so I guess that's down to that old debate of how different audiences interpret character design choices.
At any rate, I'm still waiting for a black female FF protagonist/cast member who is not, like...an animal. I realise that this is probably notrealistic.gif, but one can dream. Not that it would do anything for Square's writing one way or another.
...I know I'm fake, tho, because I'm always chatting shit about how FFXIII was terrible, but also me if Doughnut Farron had been black:
lol)
