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some guy leaked FFXV's story six months ago | up: newer 4chan stuff as of Dec 9th

Scrawnton

Member
XV's plot isn't bad at all, but its storytelling is absolutely horrendous.
Yeah the story telling is horrendous. I think of it in terms of a concept album where they tell you set pieces of stories and you get the overall idea by the end. Yea the game had issues and gaps in the story, but I love what it became overall. It has some of the worst storytelling in a modern FF game, but I think it had one of the best stories (conceptually as well as what was presented) overall.
 

bigol

Member
Killing Stella early on in the game doesn't stop her from being important after her death. Even Luna gets at least one scene after her death. Luna's death was also the least problematic thing about her character.

At least Luna
even if she has few cutscenes, is ingame and alive until much later,in Altissia.
 

Setsu00

Member
At least Luna
even if she has few cutscenes, is ingame and alive until much later,in Altissia.

How does that make for a fair comparison anyway? Luna got a movie, some scenes in an anime and a game while we still know almost nothing about Stella.

Kagari previously compaired Stella with Tidus (assuming that the leak is true) who is also dead for the entirety of his game and Tidus was a much better character than Luna.
 

Ishida

Banned
How does that make for a fair comparison anyway? Luna got a movie, some scenes in an anime and a game while we still know almost nothing about Stella

Tell that same thing to the usual Stella fanboys who for years claimed that Stella was going to be better than Luna because reasons.
 
I guess after these leaks people should really stop blaming things on Tabata, it's pretty clear the man did an impossible job trying to make a good game that could satisfy the customers and SE management out of that developement mess. It's not his (or the dev team, or Nomura's) fault if the game feels rushed, clearly there was more developed than what we saw, it just got cut for time/budget reasons.
The only thing we can blame him for is having chosen a bad cutscene director and for not going through with all these Luna's cutscene, always go with your vision no matter how controversial it will turn out.

I don't agree at all. FFXV is rife with bad management of priorities. If you have limited time and resources, focus on making the main path gameplay and story work before you put resources into modeling food in excruciating detail or developing post game dungeons.

The sheer idea of the game is crazy- SE took 4 years to get an open world Final Fantasy done with PS2 production values and another 4 years to do an ultra linear FF game on PS3 production values. 3 Years for open world on current hardware with a really poor toolset is insane. They should have adjusted scope accordingly.
 

bigol

Member
Tell that same thing to the usual Stella fanboys who for years claimed that Stella was going to be better than Luna because reasons.

Stella fanboys believe she was going to be better because she "looks" strong and determined in that trailer when she is facing Noctis.
 
Don't worry Versus fans, my amazing novelization of the original vision will be sure to satisfy you.

Please be excited.

Now In Development
 
Idk about some of you guys but reading 4chan, for me, is confusing as fuck and hard to follow.

So here are all his responses. You don't have the question being asked for context but you can get the idea of what was asked based on how he is responding:




-----------------

The game had to be released before this year ended period. It was a contract thing and that was set in stone before development with the new director started. That's why the last months of working in the game were painful (and I could not imagine how July-October were for my mates).


Sort of. Last year the game story got rewritten because fans kept asking to play as Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto so they had to insert playable chapters for those characters into the narrative, but since we didn't have time to work on them, the decision to release them as downloads were made from the get go.

I know that there are some game levels, scenes and options that were cut because we couldn't finish them in time. I don't know if they will be released as downloads, but I hope they will.

I think the overall feeling towards how the game turned out is "we could have done more". The team literally ran out of time. There were such cool concepts and stuff that were left unfinished because we knew that they weren't going to make the release date. However, the team is pretty happy to have worked on the game and they didn't feel like they wasted their time. Now I'm sure they will continue to work on the game and improve it to match their vision.

The game IS unfinished. The game was delayed because the team felt like it would get destroyed by critics if released in the state it was in July and it was a last minute decision to delay it.

Most of the development time centered around the Lucis area. The later parts of the game were also supposed to have (smaller) areas for the characters to explore, but they weren't finished.

One of the main characters was called Ringo a lot by some people in the team. Guess who is it?

On the FF part. It kind of was mandatory to play the classic FF while working on this game, so I grew love for them. They are neat and I wish I had played some of them earlier.


Some of it, yeah I'm sure they can release it later as downloads or repurpose the assets. But I fear that some levels are not going to be released since they wouldn't fit with the rewritten story.

I have to agree that the game was too ambitious for the development time available to work on it.


I don't think that type of material gets to leak, but who knows?

don't know the whole story about Versus XIII but I heard teammates talk about some details and I also asked about some stuff, so if you want to know something maybe I can answer it.

In my opinion, the only problem with the development process is that we didn't have time and sometimes we spent development time creating stuff that wasn't part of the actual game just for promotional material. I understand that it needs to be done for the PR team, tho. Overall, I think the game turned out to be okay and I'm pretty proud to have worked on it.

I didn't get fired, my contract didn't get renewed.

I didn't solve any problem per se, but the porting to console system process got on my nerves.

They respect the game and I haven't heard anything bad about the game other than it disappointed the fans and that some of the design choices were very questionable.

At the end of the game, you say? I think it was supposed to be left open for interpretation. If I recall correctly, they weren't suppose to have any death scene or anything so I assume they are alive.

I'm at a negotiation process right now again with a former employer.

What Izunia? If you mean the Izunia from a thousand years ago, that is Noctis' ancestor.

No but we used material (assets, concept arts, etc) to work on the game.


Sorry for answering late dudes, the thread is moving fast.

As I said, the focus of most of the development time ended up being the Lucis area so the later parts of the game had a lot of cut content that wasn't ready. However, as far as I know, the fact that the empire is completely in chaos once you get to it never changed.

They are about the party members and they introduce new mechanics built around them. But work on them barely started before I left.

In regards to the Solheim region, we never worked on it. It wasn't cut, so I guess it didn't fit the story the game was trying to tell.

Talking about the Leviathan level, I remember the level design being a bit different last year and it had to be sort of redesigned because it didn't run well and the engine was having problems.

I'm probably wrong about this since I'm not that familiar to plot terms and stuff from the 13 universe but I think more than one crystal existed in the game and that each crystal had a family which acted as bodyguards. Noctis was part of the Lucis family and the heroine was part of the other family. And the game had a lot to do with death so Noctis was continously using the weapons of dead family members.

When I was told that a certain level (snowy area with Shiva statue) was going to get deleted anyway after working on it for weeks nonstop and then having to work on a bootleg version for that level.

The team had to keep a lot of things from the past projects because the former director shared details about them. I assume Ravus was one of those things that had to be kept because details about him were previously announced.

However, I have to say that the story had to be partly rewritten last year (after the movie had entered full production) so that's why that character might have inconsistencies between the game and film.

I don't know about that but I would buy the game now and then buy the download content instead of waiting.

I heard that the team had to change and delete certain scenes about her because they portrayed her in a way that would have been criticized nowadays. And like what happened with everything else, it seems like her role in the story wasn't able to get fixed before release.


Good thing you ask that because I remember stories about the people in charge of the team wanting to change the designs of the main protagonists and a bunch of contractual problems surfacing or something like that. To sum up: the decision to have the characters designed this way was made a long time ago and they had to use those designs for a large part of the game.

Actually, some members expected harshed results because there wasn't enough confidence that his vision for the game was shared by everyone. As far as I know, the game is succeeding expectations.

There were references to the heroine having been abused by other characters, some scenes would have featured Luna crying because of her health and there were also mentions of her goal in life being meeting the male protagonist's expectations/objectives, which the team considered that were going to be problematic since the game had been carrying a bad reputation because of the way they portrayed female characters.

The game centered about death, ghosts and hallucination/dreams. Noctis killed the female protagonist before the game started but he didn't remember. Ardyn was Noctis ancestor and he was responsible of the crystals disappearing over time (the only one left was Lucis crystal). Regis died in front of Noctis because his bodyguards betrayed him. The protagonists had to leave the capital because their nation lost the war.

The game didn't focus on summons that much (they still existed) and instead there were actual gods which didn't appear physically. One of the gods was the main antagonist of the first FF game. Each nation was inspired by a different capital of the world. The empire was using ghosts as weapons. Ravus wanted to kill Noctis for having killed her sister. The game ended in another dimension which was supposed to be their version of the after-life.

It's hard to remember every detail.


As far as I know, the next game from the team is not planned to use this engine.

\Yeah, that part of the game remained over time.

I liked him and he's an excellent professional. He gets job done at very difficult circustamnces. The engine didn't adapt well to consoles and had limitations. I'm proud to have worked on the game but I think the company should have given it more development time. I don't know about FF16. There were a lot of designs and concepts scrapped, some of them by Ferrari, yeah.

There wasn't any character model for that outfit so I don't know.

There was concepts for a city that looked like old London with british bridges and architecture, I don't know about the rest.

The artwork used for the Gralea capital in the game was taken straight out of the Versus project, so I guess it remained the same. The throne room however was different and the Emperor sat there waiting for


The end part of the game was supposed to be bigger. I know for a fact that dark world Lestallum was finished. Old Iris was also featured in some scenes. Cindy too (and I also recall them not wanting to change the Cindy design even though it was problematic because her older design implied character development).

There was supposed to be a small dungeon in Tenebrae which also got cut. If I recall correctly, the invasion didn't begin until the protagonists entered the city.

I haven't heard anything about the former director, but the project needed to change directors because the company needed a mainline game to be shipped in 2016 which appealed to mainstream trends and they trusted Tabata to do it.


If you mean why is that chapter inspired by survival horror elements, the team thought it was going to be a good change of pace that would build momentum. Seems like the level failed to deliver and annoyed players, which I understand.

I don't know, the only DLC episodes planned when I left were playable levels for the three friends.

I don't know, but it will happen. Give it a year or two?

The game has had barely 3 years of actual development time.


As far as I know, the game started as one single game, then the story got expanded more and the former director wanted to divide it into parts, but then it was condensed again as one single game by the new team.

I don't think any of my mates read the original script. If you mean the 2015 script for FF15, then yeah, most of us know what changed in the story and world design.

That stuff was cut but they will have to rewrite and re voice those scenes since I assume they are not entirely compatible narrative wise with what the final game showed.

I think one of the concepts behind the multiplayer was a scoring system based on exploring dungeons or killing enemies with multiple people.

Well, the first stop after Altissia had an (smaller) open world area and you could drive the car alone.
There was a level leading up to when you encounter the Shiva statue.
The dark world section of the game featured more enviroments, you encountered each party member in different locations and you could explore part of Lestallum.
The final boss (which was another Ardyn form) got cut early this year.
The Tenebrae invasion happened after the protagonist entered the city and you got to explore a very small section of the city and Luna's chamber.
Scenes that featured Luna got cut because they were considered to be problematic.
Cor got written out of the last half of the story since it made no sense for him to show up (he was Noctis companion during the small open area after Altissia).

I don't know about this Versus XV thing but I highly doubt it's true. The only games being developed around FF15 are for mobile last time I heard, so it might be one of them, but like I said, I highly doubt it.

I don't think they will make the world of ruin levels that were unfinished explorable unless there is more story dlc planned. I doubt they will release the Luna scenes since the response would not be good, but the deleted scenes about the empire might get released.

Like I said, Luna was featured in more scenes but they got cut. The original Leviathan fight combined interiors and exteriors and many enemies on screen, Luna also appeared.
Like I said earlier, the final form for Ardyn was cut early this year. I haven't heard anything from the strategy guide but it might not have updated information about the story.

Guys, I got to go! I spent some minutes trying to answer to all of you, I might come back at a later time. I hope you had a great time with the game and those who didn't like it at least understand that people tried their best for year to deliver a good product.

Until next time!
 
Stella fanboys believe she was going to be better because she "looks" strong and determined in that trailer when she is facing Noctis.

A character being "strong" doesn't mean nothing bad ever happens to them. I'm sure Nomura and co. would have found a way to screw it up, but her sharing the same fate as Luna on paper doesn't prove that she couldn't have been a stronger written character. It is sort of funny that after all the drama, we would have mostly seen a Fight Club version of her for most of the Versus XIII series, therefore making her less of her own character and more Noctis' projection of her, but hands down I would prefer to see their attempt at that than watch Luna's story again.

Keep in mind that from the sounds of it, we wouldn't have known (certainly, anyway) that she was actually dead for quite a long time. That one demo cutscene we have of Noctis and Stella/imaginary Stella? talking in front of that Death statute is like... more screen time than Luna has in the entirety of XV.
 
Stella may be supposedly dead in the game, but she will never die in the hearts of the fans and in the threads of NeoGAF. Ever. Like never ever. Wherever Luna goes, Stella will follow.

Anyways, it's too bad we don't have our own personal employee at Square-Enix who can confirm all of this. Talking about Versus here.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Yeah the story telling is horrendous. I think of it in terms of a concept album where they tell you set pieces of stories and you get the overall idea by the end. Yea the game had issues and gaps in the story, but I love what it became overall. It has some of the worst storytelling in a modern FF game, but I think it had one of the best stories (conceptually as well as what was presented) overall.
That's a good analogy. I agree with this. Good story, horrible storytelling.
 

lt519

Member
Shame they had to finish it this year. If they kept their current vision (somehow didn't scope creep) and had another year to flesh out content for the second half of the game, it would have been great. The missing open worlds and cut content was so glaringly obvious it actively hurt my enjoyment of the second half of the game.
 

Gbraga

Member
I don't think the storytelling is horrible, it just needed a few more cutscenes in the main questline.

The environmental storytelling, optional dialogues, scenes and miniquests, in-game dialogue between the main party, radio shows, cosmogony book that tells you a little chapter on each location you find it, I think all of these are excellent. The world of Eos is very rich and I love how they handled the lore delivery in a natural way.

Of course, needing more cutscenes for the main story is a pretty major issue, I'm not saying it as if it's nothing, but to call all of the game's storytelling "horrible", I'd have to for whatever reason ignore everything that isn't a cutscene.
 
Shame to hear about all the cut content if it's true. Not giving much thought to the ff13versus plot because it was only rough plot details so god know how it would have turned out. Really think they shouldn't have revealed as ff15 until they made more progress but at the same time it had been going on for so long. Shame we only get noctis and crew for one game but at least we can move on to new malinline ff games that don't have the development hell this had. Honestly think they should have had Regis last a few chapters. Would have been great to see the peaceful life noctis had with his dad before it all goes bad.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
If the rumours are true, and they turned the project around in < 3years (which seems convincing to me) they should be able to get a lot done over the 12 months of the DLC cycle.

I'd assume they'd adopt the Souls' model of big patches containing both global additions/changes and paywalled-off key features.
 

Setsu00

Member
I don't think the storytelling is horrible, it just needed a few more cutscenes in the main questline.

The environmental storytelling, optional dialogues, scenes and miniquests, in-game dialogue between the main party, radio shows, cosmogony book that tells you a little chapter on each location you find it, I think all of these are excellent. The world of Eos is very rich and I love how they handled the lore delivery in a natural way.

Of course, needing more cutscenes for the main story is a pretty major issue, I'm not saying it as if it's nothing, but to call all of the game's storytelling "horrible", I'd have to for whatever reason ignore everything that isn't a cutscene.

I'd argue that your storytelling is pretty damn horrible if you have a strategy guide that reveals a major point about one character that is never brought up within the game. Or you know, Prompto being a Magitek warrior. That was mentioned once and then completely glossed over. Or the fact that the game wants you to feel sorry for Luna, but you never get to really meet her so even her death scene falls flat to a certain extent.

Also: JARED.
 

Skilletor

Member
I'd argue that your storytelling is pretty damn horrible if you have a strategy guide that reveals a major point about one character that is never brought up within the game. Or you know, Prompto being a Magitek warrior. That was mentioned once and then completely glossed over. Or the fact that the game wants you to feel sorry for Luna, but you never get to really meet her so even her death scene falls flat to a certain extent.

Also: JARED.

What plot point does the guide bring up?
 

Mifec

Member
Whoever here said that XV noctis isn't an anime trope, tropy as fuck in general, I want you to know that I'm here to laugh at you. Like really hard.
If added content allows us to play "important" characters.. they better be fleshed out or I will cry fowl. I put important in quotes because NOBODY in game but Noctis and the bros seem important to me.
Regis dead, Luna dead, Aranea left the army and that's all. Nice sass though. Iris? She's a daemon slayer 10 years later and we see none of that, not even Gladio comments. Gentiana? lol
I won't lie.... an
Aranea
dlc can work but it was super ambiguous how she
left the army without getting her throat slit.

She left because no one was there to stop her,
Ardyn didn't care.
 

Setsu00

Member
What plot point does the guide bring up?

Verstael (the guy from the empire with a grand total of one scene) is Prompto's biological father.

I swear I've seen the name "Jared" posted several times here today. Who is Jared? I don't remember this guy in FFXV/

He's the butler of the Amicitia family and dies by the hands of some Niflheim guy. The game paints it as a huge tragedy, but you don't even get to know him.
 

zeromcd73

Member
He's the butler of the Amicitia family and dies by the hands of some Niflheim guy. The game paints it as a huge tragedy, but you don't even get to know him.

Oh, that guy. Yeah that was weird. Everyone super sad and I feel nothing since I talked to him liked twice for a minute each.
 

Zoe

Member
God dammit, why did they have to screw it all up :(

That was the Duscae stinger where the radio announces the deaths of Luna and Noctis over an image (just art) of a battered Luna walking away from a war-torn landscape (presumably Insomnia).

That, of course, isn't in the game. In any form. And this demo was from March 2015 lmao.

Wait, what? I just played through the beginning of chapter 2, and that scene is basically in there.
She shows the ring to Gentiana.
 

Ran rp

Member
Whoa wait what? Are you serious? I'm going to check my guide. How did I miss that? Better question, why was this not a point in the game???

eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL2Rpc2NvcmQuc3RvcmFnZS5nb29nbGVhcGlzLmNvbS9hdHRhY2htZW50cy8yMjQzMjExOTcyMjYwNjU5MjEvMjUyMjMzNjMyNzMzNzI0NjgyL0lNR181NzU5LkpQRyJ9.YeQ1MvYqd4oaagmToyC8_w99RSo
 

yunbuns

Member
Does this mean we're going to get
Aerith visions
in the VIIRemake? Sephiroth did try to make Cloud kill her at first. :p
 

Zoe

Member
Sort of. Last year the game story got rewritten because fans kept asking to play as Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto so they had to insert playable chapters for those characters into the narrative, but since we didn't have time to work on them, the decision to release them as downloads were made from the get go.

I hate this shit. They need to stop letting the fans disrupt the development.
 

Setsu00

Member
PSY&#12539;S;226302882 said:

This image is hillarious on multiple levels. Verstael being Prompto's father is obviously a huge part of it, but Weskham being white and Clarus being called Crailas and having his E3 2013 design adds another dimension to it. And for some reason Luna's mother isn't shown, even if her face was shown in Kingsglaive.
 
PSY&#12539;S;226302882 said:
Hahahahahaha....haha...sigh...

I skimmed through it cause I didn't want to damage the pages (don't judge me!) but the thing that had caught my attention was Gladio's dad. He has his old design. That was super confusing.

Maybe a future patch haha.
 

Philippo

Member
So, out of all of this:

-Gladio, Ignis and Prompto's time skip adventure
-World of Ruin Lestallum
-Actually showing us what happened to Ravus and his motivations
-Shiva's dungeon
-Explorable Tenebrae and daemon invasion
-Old Iris and Cindy
-More Luna screentime

What do you guys think has the higher chances of being released as either DLC, announced patches or even future updates?

I honestly hope for all of it, but given the game's developement we can't hope for things anymore.
 
What do you guys think has the higher chances of being released as either DLC, announced patches or even future updates?

I honestly hope for all of it, but given the game's developement we can't hope for things anymore.
We just need A Realm Reborn for Final Fantasy XV.

Call it: Final Fantasy XV: A Noctis Reborn.
 
What did happen to verstael. The emperor was the demon that chases you through chapter 13 but can't remember fighting verstael at all. More surprised that gladio dad was killed alongside Regis yet I can't remember gladio even reacting to that fact.
 

Kyoufu

Member
This is what happens when you listen to fans for better or worse.

I always knew their whole "A fantasy based on feedback" approach was the wrong way to go about it. Feedback is good but not when you compromise your own creative vision to please a small group of nerds for silly reasons.
 

Ran rp

Member
This image is hillarious on multiple levels. Verstael being Prompto's father is obviously a huge part of it, but Weskham being white and Clarus being called Crailas and having his E3 2013 design adds another dimension to it. And for some reason Luna's mother isn't shown, even if her face was shown in Kingsglaive.

Would be funny if they used what's probably an old Drautos render for Cor.

cf8ebf431a6f5744e443c8f9a3473588.gif


Edit: The similarity really is crazy. I wonder if they were related at some point.
 
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