And so we finally arrive at the centerpiece of this Final Fantasy XV retrospective; and yes there is an actual video game we’re going to be covering. We’ve set the stage with Kingsglaive and Brotherhood, so it’s time for our main act to begin. This is Final Fantasy XV!
Introduction & Pre-Production
Now here we go… XV wasn’t always going to be the 15th numbered entry since it actually started life as the ill-fated Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a would-be spin off designed for PlayStation 3. The project was set to be developed by Tetsuya Nomura with early concepts dated around 2006. It was going to initially fit in with the Fabula Nova Crystallis saga, which would have seen it connected to the likes of Final Fantasy Type-0 and Final Fantasy XIII as they shared the same mythos and world despite being positioned at different points in time. Nomura was set to direct, design, and write the project. As you can guess, the game suffered a troubled and prolonged development cycle.
Talks of rebranding the project into the next numbered entry in the series came about as early as 2007. The decision to do so was finalized after the internal unveiling of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This was also when the game’s engine was changed from the Square Enix proprietary engine Crystal Tools was retired in favor of the new Luminous engine, which would then serve as Square’s new proprietary engine for a time.
At the time of the rebranding amongst the shift to then next gen consoles in 2012, the staff described Versus’ state of completion at 20-25%, claiming that the project had never truly come together. As development progressed Square initially brought in Hajime Tabata in a supporting role to Nomura. Tabata had helmed a number of Final Fantasy projects at this point such as Crisis Core and Type-0. Eventually, Nomura was pulled off the project to focus on the development of Kingdom Hearts 3, a game that also had a lengthy development cycle, a game we will surely have an extended conversation about at a later date. Tabata at this point became project director for the now rebranded Final Fantasy XV.
Tabata only wanted to develop a single game as opposed to several, like the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy or Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, given that the project’s total development time, including the Versus rebrand, was over five years. Square Enix imposed numerous limitations on Tabata and the development team, insisting that the game had to be launched in 2016. To offset the crunched development, several pieces of lore for the game were retrofitted as supplementary materials to flesh out the saga, like was seen in Kingsglaive and Brotherhood.
When the project was rebranded, it received a new development team with work on the project effectively starting over. However, Tabata worked with Nomura until as late as 2013 to ensure the project remained as close as possible to the original vision. Many references to the Fabula Nova mythos were reduced in favor of establishing the game’s new aesthetic, with the marketing and branding tied into this to promote XV as “a fantasy based on reality.”
Shinji Hashimoto was the game’s producer, serving as the Final Fantasy brand manager for over a decade and also co-created Kingdom Hearts. XV was written by Saori Itamuro, Akiko Ishibashi, and Takumi Nishida. The art direction was initially overseen by Nomura but shifted to include Roberto Ferrari, Yusuke Naora, and Isamu Kamikokuryo. And the score was composed by the one and only Yoko Shimomura. The game was initially released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 29, 2016. The Windows Edition and Royal Edition were released on March 6, 2018.
Synopsis & Writing
Our story begins with a familiar scene before us for those of you who read my piece on Kingsglaive… Decades of fighting between the technologically advanced Niflheim empire and the Magical kingdom of Lucis are promised to come to an end through Crown Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum marrying Lady Lunafreya of the imperial province of Tenebrae. However, those who have watched either Kingsglaive or Brotherhood know that this was a feint by the empire in order to capture the capital of Lucis, Insomnia. The story begins when Prince Noctis and his retinue of bodyguards and childhood friends initially leave Insomnia to escort the prince to his supposed wedding. What begins as a simple road trip with his brothers turns into a quest to save not only their conquered kingdom, but the entire world as well.
XV’s opening greatly benefits from the expanded material of both Brotherhood and Kingsglaive, allowing it to delve into what the focus of this story is. The game deals with many themes across its runtime, but the most important themes are brotherhood and the fulfillment of your duty. XV is rather unique as up to this point, many of the games in the series had built up the main cast and party during the first act. But XV stands apart by having the relationship between Noctis and his friends pre-established. The party is assembled from the moment the game starts, which allows for time to flesh out those relationships and what the guys mean to each other.
The story is comprised of 14 chapters with the strongest parts covered in Chapters 1-8. Chapters 9-14 provide something very different and are potentially polarizing, but more on that when we hit the gameplay section. Without those first eight chapters I don’t think the latter half of this game would work. The relationship between Noctis, Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto is the heart and soul of this game. I’ve had this game described to me as above all else a road trip with your brothers and all that this entails, and I couldn’t think of a better description.
Naturally, given the crunched development of XV the game that launched in November 2016 is a very different beast from what you’ll find in the Royal Edition. At launch several key scenes were missing, leading to certain characters being absent and plotlines being absolved off-screen. However, Tabata and the team continued to work on the game post launch in order to bring the story closer to what they had envisioned. This included producing DLC add ons that fleshed out previously unseen gaps in the story. Five DLC story add ons were produced for XV, including the multiplayer expansion Comrades, Episode Ardyn, focusing on our primary antagonist and a piece of content we will have an extended conversation about NEXT week.
The remaining three bonus episodes were focused on each member of Noctis’ entourage, Episode Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto respectively. All of which are set during the events of XV, filling gaps in the story we weren’t privy to before. These episodes were paid content but were bundled in the season pass and part of the base experience of Royal Edition, along with more than two years of free updates, adding story and gameplay content. Given that all the episodes were set during the events of the main game they feel like extensions of the story that reinforce the narrative themes and motifs in the main game, which is similar to what we saw in the likes of Brotherhood and to a lesser extent, Kingsglaive.
I also have some praise for the world of Eos. We were introduced to this setting in Kingsglaive but XV fleshes out this setting tremendously. The tag line for the game was “a fantasy based on reality.” We see this in the overall aesthetic of the game, as well as the enemy design, and even the product placement. Tabata went out of his way to ask real-life companies to allow their products to be placed in the game to make it feel like an authentic, breathing world. When Noctis and the boys camp out they have Coleman brand tents, Gladio is a big fan of actual Cup Noodles, and the list goes on.
The story benefits greatly from the supplementary material that flesh out the world and characters. But what sells me about this game the most are the interactions between Noctis and his friends. They comment on just about everything you can do in the game. This reveals so much about them as characters that I could spend an entire article just talking about how they interact with the world. The storytelling in this game feels the most relatable to me in the series and gives us what may be one of the more interesting antagonists in Ardyn Izunia. But I’ll save my full analysis of him until we talk about his episode as well as Dawn of the Future.
Gameplay
XV has quite a lot to unpack with its gameplay, so let us start with how it was at launch and then talk through the updates. Noctis and friends will function as your party and viewpoint characters. At launch you could only control Noctis in battle and you would think this is rather limiting from a gameplay perspective until you realize that the crown prince can equip over seven different types of weapons, which all have their unique uses and place in the gameplay sandbox. Once the DLC episodes were released Tabata and team patched in the ability to play as Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto during combat, each bringing their own unique style of fighting to the table. This means that once you unlock the ability to change characters you have so many options in the heat of the fight. If there is an actual complaint with character switching it’s that the Chocobros haven’t had their damage tables altered for main game use, and as a result can destroy the challenge pretty easily.
Combat is but one part of the XV experience. Since this game dabbles in open world exploration, it is easily the biggest world explored in a Final Fantasy game at the time of release. And that is even if we exclude the areas that only offer limited access, where players don’t get to fully explore. Each of the Chocobros have their special area of expertise unrelated to combat, and instead their exploration.
Noctis loves to fish and is the group’s resident angler. Gladio, being the shield of the king is a survival expert and will randomly find items outside of battle. Ignis, beyond being the group tactician, is the group’s culinary expert who can cook various meals at camp to provide several stat buffs aid in both combat and exploration. And lastly, Prompto the photographer will snap pictures of just about anything and is responsible for cataloging the gang’s road trip photos. And that photo mechanic may be the winner for best story implementation of a game mechanic in the entire series as it is used in a way that puts many other games to shame.
Now, it’s time for actual complaints with XV’s combat: you have very little in terms of invincibility frames upon being hit, so if you get mobbed by a group of enemies it is very easy to get stunlocked by said mob. Additionally, I despise fighting large enemies such as the iron giant, Behemoths or Zu, as when you lock onto a foe it locks onto the center of mass for said enemy and oftentimes the camera is very confused on what to focus on. Visual clarity is very important in video games, so I like being able to see what I’m doing because reading enemy attack patterns is critical in any game. Lastly, this is a personal taste thing but I’m not a fan of how players can use as many items as they want during battle. If you have the curatives you can just brute force your way through an enemy’s damage without learning their patterns. So, I think this game would have benefitted from a Kingdom Hearts style of item management where you can only use so many of an item in a given fight.
As far as actual complaints towards XV’s core gameplay, I have very few. That being said the game received a number of quality-of-life updates to improve the user experience, bringing in such things as being able to change the time of day at campsites, as well as the ability to take on more than one hunting side quest at a time when the game only allowed one active hunt quest at launch.
Presentation & Score
The score was composed by the one and only Yoko Shimomura who graduated from the Osaka College of music. If you’ve played a Square developed game in the last 30 years you have likely heard her work before. She is mostly known for her musical contributions to Kingdom Hearts, 3rd Birthday, the Mario and Luigi Series, Legend of Mana, and Xenoblade Chronicles. She also worked on Kingsglaive in addition to being the lead composer for XV. Her work on XV is awe inspiring and remains one of my favorite scores in the franchise. XV also had guest composers for each of the DLC episodes, which further diversified the music portfolio of the game.
Now XV’s entire art direction was based around the tag line “a fantasy based on reality” with the emphasis being that the world was very similar to our own, but with some fantastical elements filtered in such as magic and as you know, casual nightly daemonic invasions. To that end XV committed very much to that aesthetic and that included semi-realistic animations for just about everything in the game. Treasure chests were abandoned in favor of glowing points of interest since you won’t find random treasure chests off the interstate I’m guessing.
The art direction gave the developers a lot of excuses to do things differently as the characters emote very well and have a great range of expression. This also extends to enemy design with some truly visually unnerving renditions of classic Final Fantasy beasts. The first time I saw Deadeye the Behemoth I was genuinely in awe of the beast, daemons sprout from the ground like something out of a nightmare, and dungeons have no problem assailing you with jump scares.
XV also is chock full of great performances: Noctis and the Chocobros are well acted and serve to dispel some misconceptions you may have had about them. You think Noctis is going to be hyper serious based on his design and certain promotional materials, but he is a big goofball who loves to fish and hates his veggies. Darin de Paul as Ardyn remains my favorite performance in the game and one that I never grew tired of even after completing the game and the accompanying expansions.
Conclusion
XV is likely one of the first games that occurs to you when thinking about games with troubled developments and you definitely aren’t wrong. But underneath that troubled development cycle is a beautiful game in both its narrative and mechanics, one that was built to the brim with passion. It has earned a spot in both my collection as well as my heart as being one my favorite games in the series. The game, despite its problems, also became one of the best selling games in the franchise, so it clearly resonated with people, selling over five million copies in the first 24 hours of release. I strongly recommend Final Fantasy XV as not only a strong RPG, but as a great character driven story. Walk tall my friends! Special thanks to OmgFloofy for collaborating on this article!
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