FFXV is such a hot mess (spoilers)

If everyone jumped off a cliff would you?
McDonald's is popular and tons of people eat it, does that make it good?
The majority of people voted for Trump, does that make him great?

Point is, just because there's a general consensus among the masses doesn't mean it's good, or right.
How ironic and petty
 
I 100% the game before it was "fixed". The first few acts are actually quite fun and engaging because the exploration feels good and the world looks really nice, but some design decisions are really stupid, like the copy/paste diners everywhere.

Shoehorning a 1950s aesthetic into a fantasy world was an awful decision. The npcs look ridiculous for the most part and don't even look like they belong in the world. The "cities" are pretty boring with little to no interesting side content. Forgettable characters and confusing story beats.

After the train section the game kind of just falls apart. The final act was OK though. My favourite part was entering a dungeon and falling through the level directly onto the dungeon boss.
 
I got taken out of the experience once not Hillary Clinton showed up and the protagonist had to kiss her ass for 5 minutes. It pissed me off because the writing was so bad there. She foolishly pretends that she has all the cards and Noct has to be her yes man during that entire exchange. As if she is not under occupation with her own ass on the line. You don't get to be cocky and make demands, woman.
 
I got taken out of the experience once not Hillary Clinton showed up and the protagonist had to kiss her ass for 5 minutes.
That was so weird. What was the point of it? They made the right and wrong answers so obvious, like, what happens if you give the wrong answers? Do you just do it again? If so, why even have this be a choice on the player's part? It doesn't affect the story lmao.
 
This is the only FF game I've played so I don't have the point of reference with the other games but it was a game that felt amazing at times and bad at others. I played the King's edition on PC and the graphics and atmosphere were top notch. There some really beautiful scenery. I like the relationship between the guys too and story after getting the full picture was good too but unfortunately wasn't entirely shown in the game. The combat seemed pretty tough to me. I don't know if I was doing something wrong or they increased the difficulty in the King's edition.
 
As a story and lore person, FF15's story-telling and lore-telling is really bad. So bad in fact that even I was so struggled. I'm saying this because I tried so hard to sponge every information. So so bad presentation and game pacing. You don't understand what is happening most of the time, you don't understand why are we doing what we are doing most of the time. It is all over the place.

Even though, I couldn't bring myself to give a review thumb down on Steam. Because I saw that FF15 team really wanted to bring something special to gamers. I think the "Trying to connect and hold everything with duct tape" metaphor really fits for FF15. I can appreciate the effort of the team but I cannot bring myself to acknowledge it as a good game.
 
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But FFXV does still do that. It's supposed to be an insular story only involving Noctis and his friends, but then the game backtracks on that premise to show us cutscenes from other characters across the world.

They showed scenes from the movie when their city was destroyed, but Noctis wasn't there when it happened, so why show those scenes? Why do we see Luna receiving the letters from Noctis? He wasn't there either.

It's like anything else with FFXV, they kept changing what they wanted to do with it.

It's all over the place.

From a storytelling perspective, it may be the most disjointed garbage out there.

I think the last bastion of hope was the mod tool, and fucking Square Enix squashed that and any chance of salvaging the game. That has to be in the top 5 biggest let downs in gaming for me.

People probably hate FFXV so much, because of all the wasted potential. At least that's how I feel. All flushed down the drain.
 
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It's all over the place.

From a storytelling perspective, it may be the most disjointed garbage out there.

I think the last bastion of hope was the mod tool, and fucking Square Enix squashed that and any chance of salvaging the game. That has to be in the top 5 biggest let downs in gaming for me.
but you know what happened. You get a glimpse of city being destroyed in your sleep and then get informed about it in the morning.
That's ok. I just wish the countrside was more war thorn then because it is barely affected. Where are the armies even if we believe they are all in flying ships.
But it's really nothing hard to follow. You are to marry luna for peace. you go out with your bros, home gets leveled, you continue the trip and things move on from there.
They could've dragged it out into 10 hours prologue with you being in insomnia etc etc which is what we all would've loved like it was shown in the trailers but they didn't.
They made it morning news. They must've had the reason for it.
In the end, it is what it is. This is not vs 13 but they said it's but it does holds to the beats of that original story written 10 years prior.

you are right. People hate it because of wasted potential but this is the story they planned all along. nothing else.
I was not aware of vs 13 trailers when XV came out. I thought it was for a different game lol.
 
Do you have a source for that? Because according to this and this, the book was the true ending they had planned for the game via canceled DLC after Tabata left. Not because fans were disappointed with the ending they got.
I still can't find the exact interview I'm thinking of, I think it was in one of the post-release videos they did which are hard to find. It might've been a panel at PAX East 2018, where they described the second wave of DLC as an "alternate grand finale". I'll have to see if I can find the video later. I have confirmation none of the DLC were cut content, though:
ICYMI Final Fantasy XV is Getting a Season Pass

The FFXV DLC is not content that has been cut from the main game just to sell to you later. This is really important because we want everyone who buys and plays the FFXV base game to know they are getting the full FFXV experience. The FFXV DLC will add new and unique experiences to the FFXV Universe with each piece of DLC designed to offer something brand new. So I'll say it again because it's important - the FFXV DLC is not content that has been cut from the main game!
Your own source, the Polygon interview supports this:
"Initially, [2017's DLC] Episode Ignis was supposed to be the finale," Tabata says. "The end of Final Fantasy 15. However, just because we planned it out that way doesn't mean that was the right way to do it.
"There's still this kind of connection between us and the users. So why not try and create something new based on that need? That's what we want to do with the next DLCs: create an active relationship with the users. We want to thoroughly secure the story in places where people think there are some pieces missing in the puzzle — we want to alleviate those issues.
"At the same time, we want to build something new with the users, create a different sort of possibility with the direction that the story of Final Fantasy 15 could head. That's something that's going to be new, and it's going to be pretty exciting to make. The next DLC will be a brand new story," he says. "Last year's DLC was already initially planned from the main game. [Episodes] Ignis, Gladiolus, and all that — that was Season One. This will kind of be like moving into a Season Two."
  1. They didn't originally plan any DLC past Episode Ignis (so there's no way Dawn of the Future was originally meant to be the true end).
  2. The extra DLC are a reaction to player response ("where people think there are some pieces missing in the puzzle").
  3. The writing is stuff that was not intended for the FFXV story ("a different sort of possibility with the direction that the story of Final Fantasy 15 could head").
This all supports that it's essentially retcon, although I think Tabata envisioned it as an alternate universe. So I guess in an alternate universe where all the major characters have different personalities and the circumstances of the Starscourge are different, it ends up as Dawn of the Future.
 
I played through it all years ago. I just remember at one point there were espers fighting in the Venice type city with like a whirpool tornado and qte. I was like the hell am I doing with my life. Awful. I laugh at people who spent more than the absolute minimum amount of time in that game. For me, that game really signified the fact that FF was dead anyway, but now SE continue to like rape it's dead corpse. I had hoped 16 would be a big step up. I played the demo and preferred the story and setting. I was quite interested until I played the second part of the demo which takes a later part of the game where you have more abilities and absolutely hated.
 
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