Final Fantasy XV

strangederby wrote:

I still feel burned by the decision to release this game with the story unfinished. Story is the main reason I want to play RPGs. Missing bits of story being patched in? Great except IVE ALREADY PLAYED THE GAME. Because it was released. Do you think we will ever reach a point when the majority of games don't go on sale until they are ready?

FFXV is an easy target because of it's well documented delays and all the changes made to it's core design during production (not to mention the dodgy DLC they're putting out). But I wouldn't say that it's glaring plot holes, questionable UI, and missing content are the norm. There's plenty of things that could have been done to make Zelda: BOTW a better game than what we got (any dungeons and more than 4 monster types, to name two), yet most reviewers still give it a 9.5 or higher because they judge the final product, not what "could have been".

Most released games get well past the Minimum Viable Product stage (which is where I think FFXV launched), but if you look hard enough you'll always find where a bit of extra polish could go. Blizzard spends ten years making games "until they're done", and yet still put ten more years of patches and touchups out for them.

I agree that FFXV could have benefited from six more months in the oven. So could any game. It's hard to feel cheated though, when I dropped over a hundred hours in just Chapter 3 alone. That was the game I wanted to play, and I got to play it, and enjoyed it. The rest was just ... there.

It's possible I may have missed things in that case. For example where in the game does it tell you who Ardyn really is or what his motivation is for doing any of the things he does.

strangederby wrote:

It's possible I may have missed things in that case. For example where in the game does it tell you who Ardyn really is or what his motivation is for doing any of the things he does.

While there's a few info dumps during Mission 13 (Redemption), I believe most of that is in his monologue before and during the last fight.

Here is my question. I've already engaged with the backstory -- watched the movies and anime. I missed the prologue game. I read the play.

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it? Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it? Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be? Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

jamos5 wrote:

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it?

Yes.

jamos5 wrote:

Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it?

Yes.

jamos5 wrote:

Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be?

Also, Yes.

jamos5 wrote:

Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

Yes.

For best results, never get on the boat.

Alz wrote:

For best results, never get on the boat.

Welp that's my problem. Thanks for clarifying

jamos5 wrote:

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it? Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it? Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be? Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

My response, and I don't know if it is more or less helpful than Alz (or just redundant and verbose): I think that, culturally, the Japanese just have a different idea of what makes a story satisfying than we do in the west. I think that lore and a consistent universe are more importance to us, whilst they frequently enjoy a certain stylishness and melodrama with a sensible plot often acting only as a vehicle in service to it.

I think it came together for me when I realized that these were often written by first designing the characters that would be in it, then they wrote a story that would explain why all the characters they want are doing the things they want the characters to do.

Given that... there is plot to unearth, and you can mostly make sense of it, but it requires digging and inference (it's just not important enough to them to bore an audience by clearly explaining what's happening) and there are still going to be some plot-serving poor character decisions and "because MAGIC that's why" explanations in there.

I imagine that a lot of Japanese people think that some of our games feel like textbooks full of muddy, washed-out pictures.

I believe that the plot we got in XV was an afterthought - "lets make a cool world first, and then glue it all together!" Except they made and remade that game a few times, before realizing they actually had to ship a product. So much of it is still piecemeal that I'm impressed they got anything out at all.

I've played quite a few JPRPGs (I sat through the 80-hour anime called Xenogears - now there's a convoluted, near-impenetrable JRPG story), and while their stories can be a bit mysterious and winky-winky-nudge-nudge at times, one thing they're usually not is Bad. The storytelling bits in XV are ... not good.

There are lots of areas you can tell that were bolt-ons. The control differences between the car, the chocobo, and the characters is one glaring one. The huge, empty areas that were made but never filled in. The open world vs linear story sections just screams patchjob.

You can get the gist of what's going on with the plot from the Wikia or if you really want a deep dive, there's a ton of YouTube "Story Explained" videos like This

I'm afraid that the actual final product will never be a finished game. They gave us what they had at the time, and at this point the rest will be all DLC.

Honestly the biggest issue is less that there's lore to dig into and that the game is literally incomplete. You can find a bunch of this info, and it will help understanding what's going on, but in the end the game does a sh*tty job of explaining it because half the game is not there.

ccesarano wrote:

Honestly the biggest issue is less that there's lore to dig into and that the game is literally incomplete. You can find a bunch of this info, and it will help understanding what's going on, but in the end the game does a sh*tty job of explaining it because half the game is not there.

Okay, so that sounds like you end up with a bunch of inference and head cannon. Which is fine... I just wonder if this game merits that level of involvement. Destiny and Dark Souls obviously are very popular examples of that, but I haven't heard nearly as much chatter about FFXV on that level.

beeporama wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it? Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it? Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be? Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

My response, and I don't know if it is more or less helpful than Alz (or just redundant and verbose): I think that, culturally, the Japanese just have a different idea of what makes a story satisfying than we do in the west. I think that lore and a consistent universe are more importance to us, whilst they frequently enjoy a certain stylishness and melodrama with a sensible plot often acting only as a vehicle in service to it.

I think it came together for me when I realized that these were often written by first designing the characters that would be in it, then they wrote a story that would explain why all the characters they want are doing the things they want the characters to do.

Given that... there is plot to unearth, and you can mostly make sense of it, but it requires digging and inference (it's just not important enough to them to bore an audience by clearly explaining what's happening) and there are still going to be some plot-serving poor character decisions and "because MAGIC that's why" explanations in there.

I imagine that a lot of Japanese people think that some of our games feel like textbooks full of muddy, washed-out pictures.

Great post. Can't help but think of this:

IMAGE(https://68.media.tumblr.com/b08d11119e3226f5f26b1b65d25c845f/tumblr_nee238H5OM1qzk6rio1_500.png)

jamos5 wrote:

Okay, so that sounds like you end up with a bunch of inference and head cannon. Which is fine... I just wonder if this game merits that level of involvement. Destiny and Dark Souls obviously are very popular examples of that, but I haven't heard nearly as much chatter about FFXV on that level.

Mostly - but beware the theorycrafting bottomless pit that surrounds the Pitioss Ruins.

Alz wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

Okay, so that sounds like you end up with a bunch of inference and head cannon. Which is fine... I just wonder if this game merits that level of involvement. Destiny and Dark Souls obviously are very popular examples of that, but I haven't heard nearly as much chatter about FFXV on that level.

Mostly - but beware the theorycrafting bottomless pit that surrounds the five hours of my life.

FTFM

garion333 wrote:
beeporama wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it? Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it? Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be? Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

My response, and I don't know if it is more or less helpful than Alz (or just redundant and verbose): I think that, culturally, the Japanese just have a different idea of what makes a story satisfying than we do in the west. I think that lore and a consistent universe are more importance to us, whilst they frequently enjoy a certain stylishness and melodrama with a sensible plot often acting only as a vehicle in service to it.

I think it came together for me when I realized that these were often written by first designing the characters that would be in it, then they wrote a story that would explain why all the characters they want are doing the things they want the characters to do.

Given that... there is plot to unearth, and you can mostly make sense of it, but it requires digging and inference (it's just not important enough to them to bore an audience by clearly explaining what's happening) and there are still going to be some plot-serving poor character decisions and "because MAGIC that's why" explanations in there.

I imagine that a lot of Japanese people think that some of our games feel like textbooks full of muddy, washed-out pictures.

Great post. Can't help but think of this:

IMAGE(https://68.media.tumblr.com/b08d11119e3226f5f26b1b65d25c845f/tumblr_nee238H5OM1qzk6rio1_500.png)

Except Totoro has a lot of those things...

Vector wrote:
garion333 wrote:
beeporama wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

The game's story still makes no sense to me. Things just kind of... happen. Like why the gods show up, or the big water fight, or any of the side characters.

My question is, for those of you who have been able to make sense of it... is it really worth digging in until you get it? Is it like Dark Souls, or Destiny, where the deeper you go it, the more you get out of it? Or is it really just an unfiltered babbling mess like it appears to be? Should I just be content with the cool visuals and settings?

My response, and I don't know if it is more or less helpful than Alz (or just redundant and verbose): I think that, culturally, the Japanese just have a different idea of what makes a story satisfying than we do in the west. I think that lore and a consistent universe are more importance to us, whilst they frequently enjoy a certain stylishness and melodrama with a sensible plot often acting only as a vehicle in service to it.

I think it came together for me when I realized that these were often written by first designing the characters that would be in it, then they wrote a story that would explain why all the characters they want are doing the things they want the characters to do.

Given that... there is plot to unearth, and you can mostly make sense of it, but it requires digging and inference (it's just not important enough to them to bore an audience by clearly explaining what's happening) and there are still going to be some plot-serving poor character decisions and "because MAGIC that's why" explanations in there.

I imagine that a lot of Japanese people think that some of our games feel like textbooks full of muddy, washed-out pictures.

Great post. Can't help but think of this:

IMAGE(https://68.media.tumblr.com/b08d11119e3226f5f26b1b65d25c845f/tumblr_nee238H5OM1qzk6rio1_500.png)

Except Totoro has a lot of those things... :P

Yeah. Maybe I'm not 'getting' the joke but the majority of those are inacurate.

This is hard for me to weigh in on, because I am the person who digs around for all this stuff ( but you won't find me around that Pitioss link either, though - wow). Please bear with me as I think out loud.

When I started this post I wrote up a bunch of stuff (like where in game they tell you why the gods are showing up and the fact that they tell you Ardyn's job title and connection to the Empire the second time you meet him and he gives you a ride; you don't find out he's the main evil bastard until much later). But in the end I feel like that's not actually helping so I deleted it. It doesn't actually serve the main point.

As is mentioned above, the details are there. You do have to dig for some of them, and stitch them together. You have to pay attention when people talk, and talk to everyone. You have to catch those random "Greeting" conversation prompts that show up as you're running through (there were three different ones on three separate occasions in the middle of Lestallum alone, one of which makes your road to the Titan easier). You have to feel up every street and every stone on it. And if you miss some and start speculating you can end off way way into toolie-ville. There are multiple paths to the same information, and if you get them out of order it can take some doing to straighten it out.

And even if you do all that, you can still end up in weird places. For a while there, I thought Vyv (the fat guy with the magazine in Lestallum) was Libertus from Kingsglaive in disguise. There's no info anywhere other than some vague things said in the conversations after his last and second to last photo missions, though, so I have to assume at this point it's just a design thing. Humans are pattern-making machines, and you have to be careful how many dots you connect and how frail the reeds you use to do it with are.

But that's how FF (and most all jRPG's for that matter) work. To me, finding all the "story pieces" are just as much of a main quest as finding the gallbladders of 20 camel spiders so you can make a Potion of Horripliating or something. It would not dawn on me to go into any jRPG on any other terms.

If anything, FFXV is sort of "easy mode" for that. There are no movie and serial anime episodes out there explaining FFX and all Yu Yeavon's shennanigans, for example. They drop you in with zero explanations. Then you gather up your posse and work yourself all along Spira aiming for one bad guy, only to be told that the entire premise of the world for the last thousand years was wrong and you need to go do this other crazy thing; complete change of game and pace because they let you believe you're done right up until that last moment when actually you're only about a third of the way in.

They have worlds like Ivalice, with several games feeding into that one world's problems (FFXII, Tactics, and Vagrant Story) with no explanations anywhere to be found. And the turgid mess of FFXIII and all it's incarnations and the only way to know what's doing is to read all those gorram log pieces as you find them.

The supporting materials idea isn't new. If you watch Advent Children you do get some hints on FF7 and it makes playing Dirge of Cerebrus make a metric butt-tonne more sense. It's not like it really helps in some cases. There are not enough light novels and manga and movies in the world to make the bunchteen Kingdom Hearts games make sense without a LOT of grinding Radiant Garden.

And it's not just Final Fantasy. Blue Dragon, Lost Oddysey, Magna Carta: Tears of Blood, Rogue Galaxy, Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Wild Arms, Breath of Fire, Xenoblade Chronicles.... All brought to you by other companies. And I could keep going. It's the whole genre.

Japanese sensibilities are different than ours. The story structure, level of detail they like, and the lengths they'll go to get it are very different. There's a reason they list blood types and favorite foods for the Persona characters, even though they make absolutely no difference whatsoever in the game. So knowing useless things like Ignis' favorite coffee roast or that Prompto's birthday is October 25th is right up their alley. At least in this game not all the detail is useless; knowing Prompto likes bean dishes is at least helpful in the game (if you cook a character's favorite food at camp, they'll fill their technique bar faster for the next day).

And they will often make design decisions that make no sense you can see if you just walk in, but make perfect sense if you approach the game from that quintessential jRPG standpoint. You might ask why there are two of the strongest 2-handed swords in the game, Iron Duke, just sitting behind random rocks out in the desert not far from the start of your NewGame+. The answer is not that they're just strewing things around or made a mistake. They assume you're either going to grind the landscape like you're using it's bones to bake your bread, or that you're following a walkthru from some else who did. It's baked into their design heuristics. But if you're used to just to running through the levels murderizing with only one eye glancing around occasionally for ammo, you won't find it and the game suffers for it.

There are whole treatise out there about the differences between eastern and western RPG design -- Lost Odyssey and Dragon Age make a good pair to compare and contrast. I'm not trying to write another one here. I don't want to say anything about how anyone has chosen to enjoy this game (or not enjoy it at all). But it is what it says on the tin. If you bought it looking for anything else, I don't know what to tell you.

"momgamer wrote:

If anything, FFXV is sort of "easy mode" for that. There are no movie and serial anime episodes out there explaining FFX and all Yu Yeavon's shennanigans, for example. They drop you in with zero explanations. Then you gather up your posse and work yourself all along Spira aiming for one bad guy, only to be told that the entire premise of the world for the last thousand years was wrong and you need to go do this other crazy thing; complete change of game and pace because they let you believe you're done right up until that last moment when actually you're only about a third of the way in.

The difference with this example is that FFX is structured around the "fish out of water" archetype of Tidus, who by very nature of his position is explained things about the world regularly (and thus so is the player). FFXV doesn't have that. Many of the other examples you listed utilize this technique to some extent, making sure that the player definitely encounters at minimum enough explicit information about the world to get their bearings and appreciate the broad strokes of the story fully if not the nuances.

I like FFXV a lot and I agree with you regarding Japanese sensibilities in RPG storytelling, but I do feel in the case of FFXV the game just wasn't done yet.

Thanks for the thorough and insightful post momgamer. Even though I haven't been able to figure out the story, I can at least tell there are shreds of story bits all over the place. Mostly I was just curious to know if the story merits the deeper digging -- and it sounds like it does.

That said, even though you've listed out many examples of other JRPGs that also inherit this disparate form of storytelling, I still feel like Final Fantasy XV is more impenetrable than most. For one, there is just so much going on. It seems like the kingdom has multiple layers of lore and hierarchy that I am blissfully unaware of until it jumps out front and center into the plot. After being bombarded with this 5 or 7 times I've kind of lost my footing -- and now I'm just wandering through desperate for any kind of concrete foundation.

I feel like I would have really been happy with a datalog like they had in XIII, because I was often lost in that story too, but at least there you were uncovering it as you go along. With FFXV, I'm too scared to look up anything online out of fear for being spoiled on some future event, so instead I just wander around hoping that I'll figure it out. So maybe what I'll do is finish this game as quick as possible, and then start over with NG+ but this time look up all the story bits as I go along.

Still, it baffles me that the same studio that produced the indecipherable stories of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts once came from simplistic storytelling like in Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI. For whatever reason, I feel like those games nailed western storytelling sensibilities perfectly, with engaging characters and well-telegraphed motivations and plot developments. So at some point the Japanese were capable of producing such stories, but for whatever reason they've lost it in the modern era.

jamos5 wrote:
Alz wrote:

For best results, never get on the boat.

Welp that's my problem. Thanks for clarifying

Yup. Preordered the game, still haven't gotten on the boat.

sometimesdee wrote:
jamos5 wrote:
Alz wrote:

For best results, never get on the boat.

Welp that's my problem. Thanks for clarifying

Yup. Preordered the game, still haven't gotten on the boat.

Same.
One day I will get back into this and finish the game...
But that day is not today.

I'm in the middle of my third playthrough; I wanted to see what NewGame++ looked like. Has anyone else gotten the Regalia Type F?

momgamer wrote:

I'm in the middle of my third playthrough; I wanted to see what NewGame++ looked like. Has anyone else gotten the Regalia Type F?

I had one for a few brief minutes, then I crashed into a mountain and game over'd.

I think it was easier to land on the aircraft carrier in the NES version of Top Gun.

Alz wrote:
momgamer wrote:

I'm in the middle of my third playthrough; I wanted to see what NewGame++ looked like. Has anyone else gotten the Regalia Type F?

I had one for a few brief minutes, then I crashed into a mountain and game over'd.

I think it was easier to land on the aircraft carrier in the NES version of Top Gun.

The animation when you crash is very jarring. The car and its occupants freeze near the ground and then the image moves back and forth for too long and with a buzzing noise. Then the game over screen. So so weird.

That's good to know. I haven't tried to get it off the ground yet. I'm just enjoying driving the Batmobile around.

Wait a minute. The Regalia can fly?

sometimesdee wrote:

Wait a minute. The Regalia can fly?

"Fly" is one thing you could call it...

ccesarano wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

Wait a minute. The Regalia can fly?

"Fly" is one thing you could call it...

Fall with style?

Falling and missing the ground? I hear that's the key.

momgamer wrote:

I'm in the middle of my third playthrough; I wanted to see what NewGame++ looked like. Has anyone else gotten the Regalia Type F?

I got it, but I have not started a proper New Game+ yet. Kind of reluctant to give up all my cool toys, especially all the crap like paint jobs that I grinded like crazy for. If I get the Afrosword, does it carry over, do you know?

sometimesdee wrote:

Wait a minute. The Regalia can fly?

You need to finish the game to get access to all the appropriate quest items, but yes. (Don't need to New Game+, but after finishing the story, it plops you back at the final save point as per usual for JRPG "post-game" content.) The slower speed and slight difficulty (there seem to be invisible walls over certain parts of the map that run all the way into the sky) means that it is more novelty than practical, since fast travel is so cheap. Still, the characters actually react the first time you do it, and it is pretty cool.

There is also a small segment of the map that is only accessible by flying (and sticking a slightly difficult landing), with a really weird monster-free bonus dungeon that is all insanely difficult platforming and puzzles. (You can Google Pitioss Ruins for details.)

IMAGE(http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ff15_1706102.jpg)

I love this stupid game.

(Off-road Regalia and Episode Prompto coming later this month)

beeporama wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

Wait a minute. The Regalia can fly?

You need to finish the game to get access to all the appropriate quest items, but yes.

Really? I think I've got 2 of the 3 necessary items and I haven't finished the game yet. Is one of them only available post-credits?