Final Fantasy XV Official Thread of HD Towns and Bromantic Adventures

[Rahxephon91]

edited

[Sho Nuff]

holy shit i hated chapter 13
and I think I hate chapter 14 more

when do i get my car back and can go fish with my friends

[Positive Touch]

only thing i'd say is that ignis's chapter spoils the game ending, and i think the start of ardyn's shows some stuff at the endgame too, so it miiiight be better to wait, tho you could always look up where the spoiler scenes play and just look away.

[Rahxephon91]

edited

[bluemax]

Yeah the Ignis DLC was a lot more enjoyable having already finished the base game twice. I didn't play the Ardyn DLC.

[Bebpo]

So I'm reading the FFXV cancelled DLC novelizations Dawn of a New Future. On the last one Episode Noctis now.

It's pretty interesting in that the plot at this point is like exactly what I thought it was going to be based on what's in the game itself and really seems like it was a time/budget issue and they bailed on the actual plot ending and through in that weird bad end route thing the game got.


So yeah, Bahamut is the actual antagonist.

The timeline/plotline that Ep Luna reveals is (with a bit inferred):

-Crystal came to Eos from outer space
-Formed its own defense system aka the main gods. Bahamut was outer space defense god to sit in the sky and orbit the planet and keep watch.
-The rest of the gods chilled on the planet surface
-Humanity happened and the stuff shown in the game where Ifrit gives them knowledge and fire and they grow arrogant and rebel
-The planet gods during this time grow attached to humans and take on their humanity, meanwhile Bahamut floats in orbit and has no attachment to anything
-Basically the novel makes it out that during the astral war of the gods Bahamut was cold & calculated and thought it was best to just wipe out humanity. At the peak of the astral war Bahamut fired off Teraflare but 4 of the other gods stopped it from destroying the planet. The gods then all took a chill.

-Humanity gets back out of the dark ages with the first Lucis Kingdom
-Around this time the Scourge parasite appears from space
-Bahamut, who is secretly pissed he didn't get to wipe out humanity, starts his 2,000 year plan while he's regaining his energy from the astral war by influencing the progression of humanity as the arbiter of fate. It's very likely he dodge his orbit defense duties and let the scourge land on the planet in the first place to get this chance.

-2,000 years later he guides Ardyn to plunge the world into the world of darkness. Bahamut's goal is to wipe out humans and when only demons are left to do TERRAFLARE and nuke all life on the planet to start over
-Ardyn says fuck you and just chills in Insomnia
-In Ep Luna alternate take, Bahamut brings Luna back to life telling her that Ardyn is too strong and Noctis can't beat him alone and she's been revived to help in.
-In actuality Luna, who is given the same ability Ardyn has to pull the scourge into her own body, is meant to absorb all of Ardyn's darkness and become Ardyn 2.0 and finish destroying humanity so Bahamut can terraflare wipe it.
-At the end of Ep Luna, Luna becomes aware of this all (including seeing Ardyn's past) and goes to Ardyn to ask for his help in stopping Bahamut's plan. Shiva/Gentiana said killing Bahamut would be almost impossible, but if they can stop his Terraflare he'll have to rest for thousands of years again before he gets that kind of energy again.

-Ep Noctis starts a little before going to Insomnia where Luna and Ardyn are. Will see where it goes.

But yeah, Bahamut was the villian! But they thought it was ok to just...cut that part and have it end how it ends -___-

[Bebpo]

Also:



This is Luna at the end of Ep Luna, balance of Light & Darkness, ready to go kill some gods like jrpgs should be in the finales.

In fact throughout the whole Ep Luna it's basically her learning to question her faith. She's on a road trip in the World of Darkness with the Nilheim Emperor's granddaughter who was saved by Aranea in her ep and raised during the 10 years timeskip as her badass merc daughter Sol. And Sol is constantly giving Luna shit about why she follows the gods, and what if the gods aren't good. Luna basically goes from sheltered person to getting out of her box by the end so when she finds out the truth about what's going on she's ready to rock and roll and slay some gods and save her hubby.

[thisismyusername]

If Bahamut is the villain, that's weird since the game basically just had him be a benevolent protector, even during Comrades.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, no. He seemed shady af in the main game. He basically strung everyone around as the god of fate. The S2 planned DLCs at least give him a solid backstory for why he's a pos. Basically being the detached space god he's cold & calculated and thinks he's literally above everyone else, so since humans are problematic he just thinks it's better to wipe them all out.

Anyhow, I finished Ep Noctics. It was pretty good and if the main game had the ending route from Ep Aranea -> Ep Luna -> Ep Noctis with Ep Ardyn's background story put in somewhere, I think there wouldn't be many complaints about FF15's story.

People would probably put the game overall closer to FFX imo

I'd recommend that anyone interested read Ep Noctis. The other eps help for context but that's the main one that counts.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

ending is Noctis with the help of the other five gods killing Bahamut in the physical realm while Ardyn at the same time becomes the True King and goes and kills Bahamut with the power of the kings of Lucis in the spirit realm.

Bahamut dying shatters the crystal and absorbs all the darkness, which kills the rest of the gods and the world moves on to rebuild in a normal godless world

[close]

There's some real good moments like

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Noct calling on the Lucis kings and giving the ring to Ardyn

[close]

[Bebpo]

[demi]

Glad they didnt bring this to realization, pretty eye rolling tbh

[Don Rumata]

Can't fix what is a fundamentally broken story, by adding more shit to it.

[thisismyusername]

Glad they didnt bring this to realization, pretty eye rolling tbh

That's fair, but consider the fact that XV was originally going to be 33% Y2K Matrix Edge/33% Devi May Cry/33% Roman Empire in Modern Tokyo/1% Final Fantasy, and that its director has been obsessed with what could've been for well over a decade at this point.

Sounds better than the broken back-half that rushed to try to finish something, failed: Planned to DLC finish it and never did mess of a game we got.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

FF12 still winning nearly twenty years later. How does Matsuno do it!?

[close]

@Bebs: Bahamut did not give me that impression at all in the story, but it might be because he only pops in right toward the end and at the end of Comrads before fucking off. He's never explained and never given a "oh he's a villian!" status. It's "Ifrit hates Humanity" and only NOW are they retconning that with this tie-in novel to "oh he was just corrupted, it's actually BAHAMUT that hates humanity lol!"

Really just shows how badly managed Versus 13/FF15 was/is.

[Bebpo]

Everything about this game is so weird and unrealized that it's almost surreal, thanks for sharing Bebpo.

Yeah, I mean this game was defintiely dev issues the game. Probably the result of having two different teams working on it.

I have a feeling that even if they had another 2 years of development + budget, they would've spent it on gameplay additions rather than tackle doing all this story stuff. Just seemed like a priorities issue and story was very low on their priorities of getting the game out finally.

Can't fix what is a fundamentally broken story, by adding more shit to it.

What's fundamentally broken about the story? Honestly, given all the stuff added by the DLCs, the story/plot seems fine for a jrpg/FF game. It has a beginning, middle and end. It has characters and development, a journey across a world map. Heroes & Villains, Romance & Bromance, Sacrifices, big epic moments, Like I said, taken as a whole I'd say the story is around the same quality as like FFX's story. It's the presentation in the game that's the issue, not the story itself imo.

[thisismyusername]

What's fundamentally broken about the story?

Honestly, given all the stuff added by the DLCs,

...Maybe an RPG shouldn't rely on 7-8 DLC packs to finish it's story? Maybe it shouldn't need to rewrite the ending after it's poorly received ("What if Noctis didn't die?") if they actually put some thought in instead of "Oh shit, we need to finish the story because the launch is coming up!" *rushes and cuts a lot of story scenes*

Maybe the story shouldn't also rely on a novella (which was DLC originally), a movie (which most folks probably won't ever watch), etc. tie-in merchandise to tell it's story and universe?

I liked Versus 13 but it really DOES have huge gaping story gaps that were never explained and this novella retconning things just makes it even more funny.

[Joe Molotov]

Noctis and his bros driving through Arizona and fighting monsters was the story.

[recursivelyenumerable]

Yeah, no. He seemed shady af in the main game. He basically strung everyone around as the god of fate. The S2 planned DLCs at least give him a solid backstory for why he's a pos. Basically being the detached space god he's cold & calculated and thinks he's literally above everyone else, so since humans are problematic he just thinks it's better to wipe them all out.

"NUKE them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

[Positive Touch]

didn't read the book spoilers because i want to pick it up sometime myself, but i never got the idea that bahamut felt out of place in the story? like a largely indifferent god isn't that uncommon in fantasy stories. he had a plan, some people had to die, and he didn't really care as long as it worked out in the end.

[Bebpo]

didn't read the book spoilers because i want to pick it up sometime myself, but i never got the idea that bahamut felt out of place in the story? like a largely indifferent god isn't that uncommon in fantasy stories. he had a plan, some people had to die, and he didn't really care as long as it worked out in the end.

In the main game he basically never appears and when he does appear when Noctis is in the crystal he just says "hi boi, go kill yourself, it is your FATE" and then during the Ifrit fight he shows up to help for a second and that's it (although in the patched version he also shows up with the other gods to take down the barrier guarding the citidal right before that).

All the other gods in the main game are presented at least a bit better with some type of humanistic emotions whether good, bad, angry. Titan is pissed, Lev is cranky, Shiva is helpful, Ramuh well he helps in summon attacks lol, Ifrit has issues but in his backstory in the Astral war he helps out humanity and is a central figure.

But Bahamut is just this Fate god who sits back and only appears to give his decrees that must be followed. You also never get him as a summon iirc. He helps out in that Ifrit fight but you can't summon him after. Plus he wears a mask and just seems pretty shady.

Really though, it was Ep Ardyn when they clearly pushed Bahamut as the antagonist role. Once Bahamut reveals to Ardyn that FATE is for Ardyn to go and destroy the world so Noctis can kill him, it gets into the realm of basically it's Bahamut's fault the entire world is plunged into the World of Darkness and the majority of humanity is killed off, all so his prophecy/revelation can come to light. While that brings up a whole philosophical argument of in a deterministic world is the one who can see the future evil, in simple jrpg terms, yes if you're a god letting the world be destroyed and doing nothing to stop it and being emotionally detached about it, you're the baddy and ya got to die.

[Bebpo]

Also, as I said when I beat the game. My issue is the ending is very un-jrpg-esque. Which could be fine as being a non-cliche and contrasting; but the problem is it's also non-satisfying.

Traditionally, as shown in almost every jrpg ever made, when fate is involved and it's leading somewhere bad, the characters rise up, break out of a set fate (sometimes/often killing a god in the process) and make their own non-determined future. It's generic, but it's the traditional satisfying good end jrpg ending. We just saw SE do that with

spoiler (click to show/hide)

FFVII Remake Pt.1 where they go and kill the fate god and change the restraints of the original FFVII storyline

[close]

FFXV ends on the MC just going along with fate and giving up essentially. THE END. Although Ep Noctis details Noctis' time in the crystal and what's on his mind heading towards Insomnia which actually helps the original ending work a little better.

spoiler for Ep Noctis

spoiler (click to show/hide)

During Ep Noctis, and his time in the crystal he sees the entire history of the world, including Ardyn's backstory and everything that's happened and he feels the weight of it. He scared to die, he doesn't want to kill himself and die and thinks it's bullshit and rigged, but he feels like everyone in history depended on him so he's forcing himself to go kill himself.

[close]

Honestly, it would be weird for an FF game, but I think FFXV would've worked best like Shadow Hearts 2 and other games that have a ending route and a true ending route. The game ending feels like the bad end/normal ending route, whereas the DLC S2 Eps feel like it's the true ending route that expands on things and shows the true villain and gives the best and most satisfying ending finale to the story.

I hated Ardyn in FF15. He was such a Kefka-esque psychopath sadistic villain. I never thought they could make me enjoy his character. But I really like what they did with him in the S2 DLCs. He's still an evil sadistic psychopath and stays in character that way until the end, but he gets a really badass satisfying ending in Ep Noctis which is much, much better than just a stupid matrix fight and then he gets vanquished without a word in a light tunnel.

[Rahxephon91]

Not sure I agree with that take away.

I didn’t see it as a simple shrug of accepting fate. I saw it as Noctis accepting his role as king. Noctis starts off as a pretty aloof person with really no real motivation of his own. Just doing what he is told, with no real understanding of what being King is. As the game goes on he “grows” into understanding his role as king and his fate. I mean that shot of his father sad and not looking on while Noct sacrifices himself is pretty "powerful". In that you see he is both proud and sad that Noctis is now able and had to shoulder the weight of being a king of Lucis. Which I feel plays with the whole boys turning into men road trip vibe the game had. I find the ending bittersweet which I usually like.

And I like Ardyn as also someone dealt a poor card and also playing his role in this as long as he gets some sort of revenge. The whole Bahument stuff I remember finding neat after playing through the Royal edition.

Maybe this stuff is remnants of this game being Versus XIII, XIII being the fight fate game.



I like the bones and ideas of XV. The story has the makings of a really good game. The DLC helps fill it in. But it’s not presented well. The DLC is cool, but not inserted in the main game. There’s a lack of cutscenes and just a general lack of a cohesive production  and storytelling.