azarias

I started writing up my FFXV gaming update while I was in the open world first half, which was enjoyable in parts and aggravating in others (worldbuilding, gameplay, plot, inexplicable advertising placement by Cup Noodles etc etc) and not entirely working for me and then I hit the end of chapter 9/start of chapter 10/Episode Ignis and now I’m totally on-board, omg. I can always rely on a Final Fantasy game to rip my heart out D: but this time I also feel really bad about how I’ve/Noctis has (unavoidably!) contributed to this whole mess. I finished chapter 10 feeling awful, played chapter 11 and things got WORSE but then it was getting super late and I had work, so I have to wait to see if it can achieve even greater heights of excellence/depths of suffering etc.

Anyway. FFXV starts off as four guys on a road trip combined with the obligatory FF war, destruction, crystal magic, melodramatic villains with questionable fashion senses etc, and it has my favourite type of FF setting, which is cars, phones, trains and contemporary life smushed up right against magic and swords. This allows for such neat bits of worldbuilding as the potions, antidotes, elixirs etc that the characters use being canonically energy drinks and other gas station snacks that Noct, the protagonist, has enchanted with his special regal magic, magic which also allows him and his friends to stash/retrieve weapons in the Armiger and execute various feats in battle. Plotwise, there’s a brief flash forward to what is obviously a climatic battle and then you’re playing as Noctis, the prince and heir to the kingdom of Lucis, sent out from the city with his friends in the official royal car (the Regalia) to meet Noctis’ politically promised bride, Lunafreya, in Altissia (FF Venice) as part of a deal with the attacking evil empire. And you’ve barely started exploring when the empire attacks, taking Insomnia and killing King Regis along with many other friends/relatives of the characters - there’s this moment where Ignis comes into the hotel room the following morning, holding the newspaper, which is super moving despite the tiny but aggravating fact that all these characters have phones and yet this is the first they’ve heard of it.

The next 6 chapters or so are open-world with occasional and not entirely coherent plot. Insomnia has fallen, the countryside is full of imperial troops, and yet the other towns and outposts we visit seem almost completely unconcerned by this. Intermittently the crown marshal, Cor, shows up to provide Noctis with back up or some useful information and then disappears again - to do what? We don’t go back into Insomnia at all, Noctis keeps flinging himself into danger despite now being technically the king (yes, he has to collect the royal arms, but really. There’s a bit where the guys are asked to clear out demons from a power plant and immediately shove Noctis into the only PPE available where I did start to wonder if they were trying to kill him), every night demons attack everything that’s not illuminated, and sidequests proliferate to an excessive extent (including a crossover quest with FFXIV that was fun and a crossover with something called Terra Wars that did not work for me at all). In addition not only does no-one wear seatbelts in the car but occasionally Noct hops up and sits on the back when the top is down, omg. Technically we are collecting the royal arms and making covenants with the Astrals (six elemental gods) while the empire is killing the Astrals but there is a definite lack of momentum.

(I suspect readers will be wondering about all the names. They are very Latin. The four main characters are Noctis Lucis Caelum (prince, likes sleeping, hates vegetables, obsessed with fishing), Ignis Scientiae (prince’s advisor, glasses and impeccable tailoring, uptight and prone to terrible puns, cooks for everyone), Gladiolus Amicitia (prince’s shield/bodyguard, big, tattooed, and confident, reads historical fiction in the car, nicknamed Gladdy by his younger sister Iris and Gladio by everyone else, which I find endearing), and Prompto Argentum (prince’s best friend, blond, freckled and scrawny, photographs everything, has possibly the most angsty backstory of the four that I only know because I have read relevant fan fiction). And I do love that the crown city is Insomnia.)

The game was in development hell for a long time and went through a lot to make it out - (quote from relevant article) - “At some point during 2012, Tetsuya Nomura saw the movie Les Miserables and toyed with the idea of turning Versus XIII [working title at that time] into a musical.”, and so key events take place in DLC, not all of which were ultimately released. I’m playing the ones we do have in chronological order, so when Gladio disappears for a bit and comes back with a new scar I could pick up Episode Gladiolus and find out what happened (also a lot fun to play, I always enjoy fighting Gilgamesh). There are videos and animes as well, which I haven’t yet watched, and it’s a shame it didn’t all make it to release.

The gameplay took me a while and again bits of it are great! Noct can warp, that is teleport, but only to a thrown weapon, and then he can phase through enemy attacks. Warp striking is fantastic and so much fun, but phasing just doesn’t quite work for me and Noct is usually at least 50% potions & elixirs by the time I get through boss battles (although I’ve now unlocked the ability to fight as Gladiolus and that is helping a lot). You build up tech points that you can use to get your allies to do things, produce the royal arms from your Armiger for massive attacks, or even get a summon - there are hidden rules as to which ones show up but I am pretty sure I usually get the one who shows up after you nearly kill most of the characters. It is very hard to die completely and when I did it in a dungeon it took me back to the entrance before we’d gone in and I had to do everything again, so that is probably just as well.

There is a lot of banter. Much of it is great, some of it does not age well with repetition (do I need a panicked Prompto going “There in a jiffy!” yet again? No) , and then because demons attack at night, we either need to camp (this involves Ignis cooking from whatever recipe he’s managed to devise from game events or collect the relevant ingredients for) or stay in a motel/hotel etc, the latter of which means you can multiply XP gains but miss out on the buffs from food, and in both you get these little clips of the guys hanging out, playing cards, gaming etc, and occasionally unlock cut-scenes. Ignis levels up his cooking skills by cooking, Gladio does exploration, Prompto takes photographs (you go through them everytime you sleep and decide which to keep), and Noct fishes in what started off as an aggravating mini game almost more annoying than the Stardew Valley fishing mini game until I worked out I’d actually picked up a bunch of better rods and reels, and now it is at least better but if Gladio tells me one more time to turn the rod towards the fish when I am ALREADY DOING THAT I am going to shove him into the relevant body of water. But. With all this banter and togetherness, it is impossible not to fall for the characters at least a little bit.

Anyway. Eventually, I made it to Altissia, and after the usual bit of side questing around the streets and dining in quaint canal-side cafes (along with wondering why the only access to the city appears to be through canals that are precisely one-ship wide), I picked up the main story specific quest to ask the local head of government (under the empire) for permission to speak to Leviathan, one of the Astrals, and then everything totally fell apart. One of the things I’ve loved about FF games as far back as FFIII is how they can get you to revisit a place that was a thriving community and show you it in ruins, and now Noct is running through the wreckage of Altissia, all those quaint little cafes now rubble and flames, on his way to meet Leviathan, which might seem like his last hope - but it all goes horribly, devastatingly wrong.

When Noct ends up back with the others, Ignis is grievously injured and blind, Gladio is furious at Noct’s failures, and Prompto is trying but it’s all so awful. There’s a mission Ignis insists on going on (you can, as Noct, tell him no, but he’ll still come, and frankly I didn’t have the heart) and it’s an abandoned mineshaft, so the ground is uneven, there’s water everywhere, and Ignis is slow and keeps falling over (Prompto always helps him up), plus the computer won’t always get him to follow you - and if Noct moves too far ahead, Gladio verbally attacks him (“don’t you think you’ve hurt Iggy enough already?” was a particularly painful comment). I thought things might pick up when we got back to the train but then there was an absolutely gut wrenching interaction between Noct and Prompto, that ends with Prompto leaving, not voluntarily, the party to an uncertain fate .

It wouldn’t all work nearly so well (or upset me nearly as much) if I hadn’t spent so much time with these characters already, and so the bagginess of the open world sections, where I’ve spent hours tracking down bounty hunts or harvesting carrots or taking photos, suddenly become a feature rather than a bug. I do still wish the first half had a bit more tension or at least a sense of creeping doom, but I’ve just realised on hearing Gladio and Ignis talking on the train that while I thought I was misremembering the time the sun rises/sets (important for avoiding demons), the days have in fact been getting shorter as the Astrals die, and now I kind of want to go back and see when that happens. BUT FIRST. I have to find out what happens next.