And I've just had a proper crash again, this time not on purpose.
I was trying to land near Galdin Quay, and I reckon not decelerating here was a key issue, haha. It looked like it was going well, but I was too fast and just about hit the lower section of the overarching tunnel nearest Galdin Quay. Ignis let out a roar, car's on fire, but they're on the ground and looking fairly alive - I don't expect no fancy Regalia to go GTA on me
I can totally accept my purposeful crash earlier. Car flying off into the distance after smashing into a mountain, on fire. No shame.
The second time trying to land at Galdin Quay, this time landing more slowly, I just about made it. They landed heavily, crashing against a wall; the car went on its side but didn't flip over or anything. Car's in bits, but they made it.
I loved how CH. 14 began - holy feck did that grab my attention. Persistent night-time, daemons everywhere, just Noctis and Umbra. But I knew once I hit the road I was going to get picked up by someone. I was so ready to take on this new dark world, hoping to talk to others like Cid, Cindy, Iris, Aranea and how they've gotten by during those 10 years. And I was so ready to journey all the way back to Hammerhead on foot - I really, really was.
Those of you attempting Pitioss for the first time: Please save upon completing and exiting the dungeon, or at least have Cidney haul the car back to Hammerhead for you if you aren't going to save.
I can't tell you how many people I've seen raging at the gods because they didn't think to do either of these things, then hopped in the Regalia Type-F and immediately crashed it. Don't be one of those people. This frustration is very easily avoided.
Those of you attempting Pitioss for the first time: Please save upon completing and exiting the dungeon, or at least have Cidney haul the car back to Hammerhead for you if you aren't going to save.
I can't tell you how many people I've seen raging at the gods because they didn't think to do either of these things, then hopped in the Regalia Type-F and immediately crashed it. Don't be one of those people. This frustration is very easily avoided.
Dude. I cannot even FATHOM going through the several hours of Pitioss and not IMMEDIATELY being compelled to save upon exiting that dungeon. Like... how can that even be a thing that people do? (Additionally, I'm now curious if there's an auto-save anywhere upon entrance/exit of that dungeon).
...one week before I'm due to meet Noctis, Regis and Libertus' voice actors at KupoCon.
Really enjoying it so far. I like that each of the four main characters have their own individual personalities, quirks and such. I also watched Kingsglaive this afternoon and quite enjoyed that, too.
I also kind of had shivers down my spine hearing Florence singing Stand By Me.
I loved how CH. 14 began - holy feck did that grab my attention. Persistent night-time, daemons everywhere, just Noctis and Umbra. But I knew once I hit the road I was going to get picked up by someone. I was so ready to take on this new dark world, hoping to talk to others like Cid, Cindy, Iris, Aranea and how they've gotten by during those 10 years. And I was so ready to journey all the way back to Hammerhead on foot - I really, really was.
I can't stress how much I looove chapter 14 as well. Being all alone in this dark world, I loved it. Proper sad/eerie/dark feelings as I wandered the area, seeing all the people there who obviously turned into daemons, and the eternal night, Umbra at my side, daemons in the countryside, etc. I loved it.
And I agree, I was full-on ready to walk to Hammerhead. I hoped I was going to be able to. I was surprised to explore the hillside of Gauldin Quey and started thinking "Holy crap they're really making you walk all the way to Hammerhead, this is awesome".
Well, the truck ride was still fun, and hearing some news, but I wanted more dark world exploration, I really did.
Also I've summoned Titan several times. It's pretty cool; he might be my favorite version of Titan ever, was never really a big fan of him in the other games.
Those of you attempting Pitioss for the first time: Please save upon completing and exiting the dungeon, or at least have Cidney haul the car back to Hammerhead for you if you aren't going to save.
I dunno, man, crashing the Regalia doesn't seem like it'll get old anytime soon for me, and it's going to take an awful lot to get me to not feel satisfied
Okay, so the dungeon was a nuisance, but I didn't struggle as much with the platforming as I did trying to get many of the items and solving the puzzles within - that is, having to repeat it wouldn't be as bad - but, it's all good, it's over, and I don't want to revisit. That being said, the music changing twice after landing in unusual areas was a nice touch (From Unsettling Aura to What Lies Within after landing in the 2D view room, then to Disquiet after landing in that room with the moving skull head mechanism)
The other day I discovered the Regalia has a horn you can beep by pressing triangle - this I discovered by accident after I leaned on triangle and afterwards hit a few other buttons to establish what I had just done.
This (I feel for now, at least) is my favourite track:
I got close enough to see them before I left to go see a movie with the missus (which starts shortly). Looking forward to Hyuj Snek Battelz as soon as I get back home.
Also, flew around the borders of the map as far as I could and cleared out a bunch of the fog of war everywhere I could get to, and then Chocobo'd around the Vesperpool since you're not allowed to fly there. Much more satisfied with the main map now.
That was suitably enjoyable! Maybe I'll go back and do it a couple more times and see if I can get any good pictures. Speaking of which, I oughta toss all my newer ones online again...
Also, I'm glad that this hunt lasts until 4/26, since it'll give a bigger window folks to do that and also get into the Gladio DLC.
Also, while it is a really minor thing, I've started spending time just wandering all around the world anywhere I can get to and just checking little bits of scenery and such, since that's one of the things that I really REALLY enjoyed when I started out the game and just finding little pockets of monsters and such, but hadn't done nearly as much of in the second two areas of the map since it was mostly running around by car and less on foot meandering.
I happened upon a small little patch of white flowers – which I've found in a few other little places, but there were 3 tiny butterflies fluttering around it that departed as soon as I got close, and I've never seen them before or on any other patch of those flowers I've found afterwards. Seeing little things like that are just super enjoyable to me. I grabbed a little video clip of it that I might toss online if I'm bored, along with a couple other little random segments I found interesting / amusing.
This is without the several additional "RPG of the Year" Awards it received, which would technically make the award count higher when combining the two.
In comparison, FFXII only had 2 GOTY awards in it's respective year, while FFXIII had absolutely none.
Intriguing official FFXV Universe timeline image shown at this year's Game Developers Conference:
The most intriguing part here to me is that both the "Omen" trailer (expected) and some aspect of "10 years later" (unexpected) falls under "Alternate Reality." Which part? The post-credits scene perhaps?
Also, it looks like the "Dawn" trailer and "Episode Duscae" are canon after all, which is nice.
I can finally respond with an update to this -- and unfortunately, this particular presentation is locked away behind a $495 pay wall at GDC Vault. Out of the four FFXV-related presentations ("'Final Fantasy': A Challenger Once Again"; "Bringing Fantasy to Life in 'Final Fantasy XV'"; "Epic AND Interactive Music in 'Final Fantasy XV'"; "Prompto's Facebook: How a Buddy-AI Auto-Snapshots Your Adventure"), only one of them isn't available for free from the vault, and it's the one we need ("Bringing Fantasy to Life," presented by Localization Director and Lead Writer Dan Inoue).
[EDIT: In case there's any doubt about which presentation the slide is from, as there has been confusion afoot in Internet Land, a series of tweets (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20) from @AlfheimWanderer during the "Bringing Fantasy to Life" presentation on February 28 included the photo of the slide while the other FFXV presentations followed on March 1, 2 and 3.]
I contacted the GDC Vault salesperson to find out if I could purchase access to just the one presentation, or even just the slides from it, rather than paying almost $500 for access to everything in their archives. They said "This is a request I receive quite often. Unfortunately, GDC Vault does not provide any way to access just one content item" -- because GDC Vault hates money or something, I guess.
What we do know about the presentation, though (from the GDC 2017 schedule), is this:
Once upon a time, fantasy stories were evergreen, locked in the timeless safety of their tropes, their canon immune to real-time promotional developments and pre-release companion projects. This talk will discuss how "a fantasy based on reality" came to reside in the real world, and what rules were made and broken to maintain a cohesive, coherent narrative amid swathes of information. Come learn how the fantasy came to life.
Takeaway
This session offers techniques for bringing realism into a fantasy world, insight into the challenges of maintaining a cohesive narrative across companion projects and promotions, and strategies for turning the universe to your advantage, all with a unique AAA JRPG spin.
For Dan Inoue, a lead writer and localization director at Square-Enix, transmedia storytelling on the blockbuster scale of Final Fantasy XV posed almost insurmountable set of challenges.
At a talk delivered at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this afternoon, Inoue explained the difficult process of managing Final Fantasy XV’s story across a film, animated TV series as well as the game itself.
A year prior to Final Fantasy XV’s worldwide launch in November 2016, Square Enix began broadcasting an animated TV series titled Brotherhood, set within the game world. Then, in July 2016, the motion picture film Kingsglaive launched in cinemas, telling another synchronous part of the game’s story, albeit from a different set of character perspectives.
Having three separate teams from film, animation and game can result in continuity concerns, as well as issues around tonality and style, Inoue said. “The question very quickly becomes: How does this all fit together?” he said. “These were threads of a simultaneous narrative across multiple media. The challenge for us was how to tell integrated but cohesive narratives.”
Final Fantasy XV was unique in the long-running Japanese role-playing game series, in that key elements of its storyline were told not within the game, but in these supplementary, or complementary projects. It was also one of the only games in the series to heavily introduce product placement.
“The specter of commercialism looms in the game,” Inoue said. “Imports from beyond the fourth wall are difficult to explain in canon, but they do make the game more relatable.” At least, he quipped, “that’s what I tell myself to get to sleep at night.”
Inoue conceded that, at some point, maintaining continuity between the various forms of media proved an impossible task. Instead, the team focused on “contiguity” -- a term he described in this context as meaning the “maintaining suspension of disbelief at the edges of the various products.”
“The game’s tale needs to stand alone,” said Inoue, "so you write for the uninitiated audience.” The problem with this, he said, is that you risk patronizing those players who have kept up with the story exposition presented in the other forms of media. Knowing how much to show and tell at each point becomes a major challenge.
For Inoue, maintaining contiguity even reached beyond the boundaries of the game, film and TV series into the product descriptions on figurine boxes, as well as early trailers. “Each of these elements fit into a timeline and needs to be cohesive,” he said.
Based on these details, I'm going to conclude we can safely say that what is on that slide is legitimately considered to be the official canon for FFXV.
For a lot more about the presentation that isn't immediately relevant to the topic of the slide with the official timeline, this DualShockers article is highly informative (though, despite the claim at the end of the article, they do not have photos of every slide that was in the presentation).
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While on the subject of FFXV at this year's GDC, by the way, and that particular presentation, we do have these nice little charts -- courtesy of Dan Inoue himself, via his Twitter -- that tell us how the Chocobros feel about each other, and how these feelings influence their incidental conversations.
I still really hope that at SOME point, we get to see a version of Barrier in the game, like they used all over the place in Kingsglaive. (New Ring Magic Pl0x, FGJ?)
Very interesting. Tabata has always shown a refreshing amount of self-awareness. I also didn't know Prompto's photography was specifically a reaction to the demo feedback.
- I really, really was.
