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Final Fantasy XV's main story is completely unacceptable and shouldn't be hand-waved *spoilers*
- Thread starter pleaseinsertdisctwo
- Start date
The story itself is not that bad, but the problem with FFXV is how clumsily they are being told. Heck before the patch you are expected to fill in the gaps of what is probably very important background info for the story by reading random magazines, hahah.
And don't get me started on Jared.
And don't get me started on Jared.
Politics can be about people, they just have to be people I care about. I cared a lot about Ramza, Delita, Ovelia and Agrias. I cared a lot about Sydney and Ashley. I didn't care at all about Vaan and co., which is why ffxii failed me. It depends on how it's executed. (The game did make me care about Ashe and Basch in the opening, but then I had to go play as anime Alladin and his plucky sidekick killing rats and doing fetch quests.)
What else would someone who spends their days writing paragraphs on a turd as XV be?
What does this even mean?
VIII has one of the most toned down artstyles in the series and the only character with belts is Squall. His belts are placed appropriately unlike Kingdom Hearts where they are unnecessarily added to designs.
Like VIII's story or not, the execution was on par with any other Final Fantasy game in that it gave you all the needed information and development to make a satisfying conclusion. Something XV failed at when originally released(I enjoyed XV but it's story was handled poorly) and had to fix with patches.
Also why do characters wearing belts and zippers = bad story? X had probably the most loud design choices yet the story is pretty universally liked
I also was disappointed from the development of the story. It could have been something great with Nomura still as Director and more time, but that's only my opinion. Believe me when I say I still had a little hope till release for a good story.
That sidequest is just a fetch quest getting a bunch of logs, first 10 logs then 20 logs then 30 logs then 50 logs, the pitioss sidequest or any of the optional dungeons sidequests are better than that.
And XV is much better than 7, 8, 9, 10 imo.
Nomura only designed the face/hair/body build of Noctis, Ignis, Gladio, Prompto and Cor. Roen designed their outfits.
Kinda sad that the 15 cast is like a gathering of Amarants. Nothing to them unless they patched it or fixed it with the DLC.
But even if they did it would be like Bioware selling loyalty mission of their side characters through DLC.
Maybe the next FF can surpass 15 by only having 2 important characters and still absolutely failing at delivering an arc for them. Honestly FF15 has probably about as many characters of any significance as the recent GoW but we're in a time now where a GoW game executes with more competence on character arcs than a friggin FF game.
But even if they did it would be like Bioware selling loyalty mission of their side characters through DLC.
Maybe the next FF can surpass 15 by only having 2 important characters and still absolutely failing at delivering an arc for them. Honestly FF15 has probably about as many characters of any significance as the recent GoW but we're in a time now where a GoW game executes with more competence on character arcs than a friggin FF game.
That's not true at all, even remotely. The party in XV are developed moreso than any other FF party is with a far better display of their dynamic and teamwork through everything they do in the game, across their animations, banter, story dialog, camp events, gameplay and link attacks and teamwork in combat, the story events themselves.
GoW also is a game thats a sequel to a game series about a single character, and GoW fully takes into account the events of the previous GoW games with the latest one which is why Kratos's portrayal actually works so well.
The banter is truly B tier inconsequential, it also repeats way too often. Isn't it so affecting to hear the same banter nonappropriate lines repeat after Prompto's moment?
Bioware did this shit already and way better in 2010. That FF15 managed to learn nothing from all those games within the timespan up to its release is pretty mind boggling.
I truly wish I could just enjoy the mindless and empty flash. But nah I actually need for my characters to grow, evolve, have personalities in my RPGs.
If there was a gamer dictionary somewhere I'd put FF15 as the antonym of substance.
Bioware did this shit already and way better in 2010. That FF15 managed to learn nothing from all those games within the timespan up to its release is pretty mind boggling.
I truly wish I could just enjoy the mindless and empty flash. But nah I actually need for my characters to grow, evolve, have personalities in my RPGs.
If there was a gamer dictionary somewhere I'd put FF15 as the antonym of substance.
The characters do grow, evolve, have strong personalities and a great dynamic that you very clearly see develop over the course of the game, and the banter all feeds back into their strong dynamic which is why they work so well as a party. If repeated dialog is seriously your gripe then you should just stop playing video games altogether. Bioware didn't come close to making the characters feel as lively as the XV party is as seen through everything they do in the game through animations and combat to their story dialog and banter, to all the unique dialog they have in dungeons or in quests, to how they act and grow as a result of story progression.
It's actually really funny thinking about all the games that are nowadays eclipsing the shoddy story work in FF15. I don't play call of duty but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that one of those games has better character work and a more coherent core narrative than 15. For all the deserved criticism Cage games get at least there is something there to criticize. Meanwhile there is only the absence of things to lament in 15, the things that should/could have been.
You're not even trying anymore, and I question whether you even really played XV at this point.
I've been trying as much as you have? I played the game but only the launch version.
I will even give it another try when the Complete completest royal edition comes out and is dirt bargin bin cheap in 2020 and hope for the best. But I think it's fair to judge it on the launch experience I had.
I will even give it another try when the Complete completest royal edition comes out and is dirt bargin bin cheap in 2020 and hope for the best. But I think it's fair to judge it on the launch experience I had.
Sounds like you closed your eyes on every cutscene and muted the audio and disabled subtitles if that's seriously the impression you got from XV, even at launch.
All you're doing is bringing up a bunch of irrelevant random games and making blanket statements about them somehow being better without actually arguing anything concrete, or based on any facts regarding the game.
I don't know man I feel a lot of people share similar opinions so it seems to me that I'm not completely offbase given how many people have shared similar experiences independently of each other. Is it really realistic that we all played it with closed eyes and audio muted? I feel like you're being very uncharitable and disingenuous in your love for the game with that argument. But it's ok if that's what it takes for you to feel the validation I can take it :). But don't expect me to agree with your baseless accusations.
I legit laughed when the game was all sad and melancholy over him, lol.
What a terrible misfire, what were they thinking.
You don't need to be making passive aggressive remarks when people question your reasoning in your "criticism" for valid reasons. You literally tried to say that the cast in XV have no personality or character growth which is, yes, objectively wrong.
I'm as passive aggressive you've been? Which to be clear I don't think I've been at all?
I just kinda tend to mirror the way people respond to me. So if people make baseless accusations of how I don't deserve to have an opinion cause it's opposite to theirs and how I maybe even didn't play the game, well *shrug*.
I dunno about objectively wrong. Objectively speaking your main party didn't have any proper character arcs which is supposedly why they did the episodes.
I think comparing it to them selling bioware style loyalty missions is pretty fair. Or maybe not maybe the episodes are actually just fluff content that don't add anything meaningful to the game and thus leave it with the same problems then of course it would be wrong of me to say that they're selling bioware loyalty missions that are meant to expand on characters meaningfully.
I just kinda tend to mirror the way people respond to me. So if people make baseless accusations of how I don't deserve to have an opinion cause it's opposite to theirs and how I maybe even didn't play the game, well *shrug*.
I dunno about objectively wrong. Objectively speaking your main party didn't have any proper character arcs which is supposedly why they did the episodes.
I think comparing it to them selling bioware style loyalty missions is pretty fair. Or maybe not maybe the episodes are actually just fluff content that don't add anything meaningful to the game and thus leave it with the same problems then of course it would be wrong of me to say that they're selling bioware loyalty missions that are meant to expand on characters meaningfully.
I think the actual story they told in FFXV would be better served by being set inside a Call of Duty game, or specifically something with a tighter linear focus. Noctis and the boys are constantly on the run, staying one step ahead of the Empire, making a last minute desperate play to save the world, crossing paths with these insane viceroys.
One of the big problems with the storytelling is that FFXV's biggest strength, it's satisfying open world gameplay loop, does not really work with the fugitive high stakes we're on the run, gotta keeping moving, gotta keep hidden story.
Maybe they should have broken out the Royal Arms into things Noctis needed to find, so he and the guys needed to travel from town to town helping people out and adventuring until they got enough clues to start pulling it all together and advancing the main story. Kind of like how Bayek's hunt for the Templars goes in AC Origins, or Geralt's search for Ciri goes in the Witcher. Doing that you can drip feed more about the state of the world and its major players as you go, but more about your main characters as they're piecing it all together and interacting with people. I dunno, that seems like a better way to do an open world game to me.
I also had a straight up laughing out loud moment when I realized that Ignis was basically blind after the incident.
I still can't believe they let something like that happen off camera. I might have missed something as I was already losing interest in the game,
but it honestly took me a second to piece together what had happened during that entire scene.
Now you're just putting words in my mouth and making things up that no one ever said.
I'm not saying you can't have your opinion, anyone can, I'm calling out your reasoning because what you're saying does not ring true about what the game actually does as a whole. Every one of the main party had a character arc and growth, they all have clearly defined personalites too, I've even explained this to officefan99 in my post earlier. The DLC are all self contained sidestories that expand on the characters that all already had character development during the course of the game. Like I said earlier, this pertains exactly to your reasoning regarding the characters being midunderstood.
Oh so you didn't implicitly argue me not having played the game here then? My bad sorry I misunderstood and put words in your mouth.
As for them having no depth or any kind of meaningful personality it's cause they don't really grow and change. They all kinda serve noctis for the heck of it. I certainly never saw any motivation in them that made any sense whatsoever nor did I see Noctis displaying something that would inspire such loyalty. Neither did the game show me anything about where the affection between Luna and Noctis stems from. It's basically all no show. But I guess some players are really good at filling voids? Maybe that's the issue. Or I have to watch kingsglaive and the anime.
I dunno about calling characters so estranged from what actual people seem to be like as layered. I just honestly feel the writers didn't think too much about it and kinda made the things happen as they needed them to happen for the main story and wrote everything else around it. It just feels very messy poorly thought out. It's as if they had to repurpose what was originally intended that's the feel I get.
Also sounds like the DLC is fluff. Too bad I was really hoping it was gonna fix problems in the main game.
That's disappointing maybe the next batch of DLC is better but that doesn't bode well.
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I questioned whether you really played it or not because you were making blatant falsehoods regarding the game, like you literally saying there was no character growth and they have no personality, as if that is somehow fact when it isn't at all.
I explained to you multiple times how they do have clear personalities and character growth and how they have a great dynamic because of how well they are portrayed, but you kept bringing up other random games for some petty baseless comparison, and you've blatantly ignored any of the examples I've brought up by you just trying to handwave them, even now you're still denying it despite that post above I made explaining how they very clearly do have clearly defined personalites, character arcs, growth and a well defined party dynamic.
The movie has nothing to do with the main story or party in XV, and the anime is just purely extra backstory stuff about them, none of those are required to see that they have a well defined dynamic in the game with clear personalities, character growth and so on.
People constantly defending this game with nothing but thin praise ('they have excellent character growth!') and no argument within game to prove it remind me of that time I thought BvS was great even in its theatrical form.
Imagine if this wasn't a Final Fantasy game but instead some third party game released randomly, none of you would care as much.
Imagine if this wasn't a Final Fantasy game but instead some third party game released randomly, none of you would care as much.
It's the worst single-player FF story ever told in my opinion.
Big events happening off-screen only added to the confusion as well. I enjoyed the gameplay at times and found the dungeons challenging but even that does not make up for the mess that was offered to us at launch.
Big events happening off-screen only added to the confusion as well. I enjoyed the gameplay at times and found the dungeons challenging but even that does not make up for the mess that was offered to us at launch.
Except I gave specific examples from within the game of their character development and growth, of their strong dynamic and well established personalities. Which I explained in my post here.
Hell if it wasn't a FF game it probably would have been received better if anything because no expectations would have ever been placed upon it.
I would agree with this with the exception of 1-3. But that's like saying it's the worst Ben and jerry's Flavour. It's still excellent.
It pains my heart everytime I'm reminded of how great FFXV could have been. Brilliant world concept...botched by staggering bad execution. No one behave logically in the game, even the unimportant NPCs. Looking at how everyone behaves and acts, you could never get a sense of how the world is at war or that humanity is threatened by extinction.
Type-0 had the exact same problems when it comes to storytelling execution. If Tabata isn't the issue, then the entire story team needs to be fired.
Type-0 had the exact same problems when it comes to storytelling execution. If Tabata isn't the issue, then the entire story team needs to be fired.
I'm not a neutral party since I worked on it, but I would be very curious as to your experience of the story in Infinite Warfare, and the characters of Nora Salter, Ethan, etc. I think it holds up very well, especially compared to something like FF15.
I dunno man. There are some terrible Ben and Jerry's flavors.
This is actually a decent comparison, and FWIW I valued Salt and Ethan's relationship very highly. Ethan in particular was an incredibly written character, up there with the FF15 Bros despite not getting as much screen time in terms of hours.
When Ethan died, it meant something.
It's not even just down to the writing. The entirely structure of the game and the devices used for storytelling are just a complete and utter mess.
The game director is ultimately at fault, in my opinion, since creative direction is really what is supposed to bring all the elements of the game together.
The guys at SE haven't been able to tell a coherent story since FFVII, which tells me they need to be kept away from FF full stop and let some of the younger talent at the studio have a go.
I enjoyed FFXV's lore and story only in retrospect; when I looked up a guide because I couldn't for the life of me figure out the final revelations.
Some scenes were just baffling, like OP said: the scenes before and after the Titan fight, Jared (I didn't remember who the hell he was supposed to be) and Prompto's revelation.
I also missed a lot of the bro-banter, because every time they'd start talking while on the field, an imperial cruiser showed up and it was rudely interrupted, never to return again.
It's really sad, as I enjoyed the game for what it was. Just like I enjoyed FF Type-0, which had some of the same problems. Tabata shouldn't be story director.
Some scenes were just baffling, like OP said: the scenes before and after the Titan fight, Jared (I didn't remember who the hell he was supposed to be) and Prompto's revelation.
I also missed a lot of the bro-banter, because every time they'd start talking while on the field, an imperial cruiser showed up and it was rudely interrupted, never to return again.
It's really sad, as I enjoyed the game for what it was. Just like I enjoyed FF Type-0, which had some of the same problems. Tabata shouldn't be story director.
I'm a bit of a fanboy when it comes to COD: Infinite Warfare, but that fucking game is one of my favourite FPS campaigns not only of this gen but of all time.
Everything from the story to the characters, to the pacing and scenario design was just top tier. It reminded me of a game version of a good Warhammer 40K story. It was just fucking EPIC in every way.
Huge kudos to you and the team.
The first half of the game basically rips out all the necessary expose, world/character building and throws it into a poorly directed CGI movie (and even then it doesn't feel like enough). The second half of the game is just a terrible attempt at trying to weave together a climactic narrative finish.
The game world, story and the characters themselves were a massive waste and a missed opportunity. It's a big shame the project never released in a finish state from VersusXIII and to XV.
The game world, story and the characters themselves were a massive waste and a missed opportunity. It's a big shame the project never released in a finish state from VersusXIII and to XV.
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The problem is that for a lot of it you had to read codexes to get a firm grasp on it but then there are things like Sazh' arc in the OG game and Caius in XIII-2.
The game should have been so much better. We were told a 50hr main story game and got maybe half that. The story was cut short and should have been executed so much better and the characters should have gotten better justice for their roles.