This is a very poor design decision for an RPG, though. The story is so threadbare and disjointed in XV that some of the stuff in 'optional' interactions should actually *not* be optional, but rather delivered d so the average player can understand what the hell's going on. As it stands many people will miss these details that explain some of the plot mysteries or ambiguities and disengage from the experience entirely. I know I certainly did.
I think that's your problem. I really can't agree that it's a poor design decision to reward the player for paying attention and exploring.
I'll totally agree, as I already said, that the game needed more cutscenes in the mandatory path, but I'm completely against making some of the optional stuff mandatory and calling it a day. Either add more stuff for the main quest and don't touch the optional stuff, or don't do anything.
EDIT: I also feel strongly about one having to actually understand how the story is being told in order to say it's done in a bad way. You don't have to like it, but if you don't even know how the story is being told, I don't think you're qualified to judge the storytelling as a whole.
It's like people saying Bloodborne doesn't have a story just because they weren't able to follow. I actually have a friend going through his first playthrough of Bloodborne right now, all I told him was "read item descriptions and pay attention, same as Dark Souls", and every time he comes to talk to me about the lore, he's mostly coming to the same conclusions as I did. Because it's there and it's solid, but people will miss it and blame the game.
Similarly, I'm still stunned they thought it was a reasonable idea to put major plot details and character info/development in a film and anime series that only a tiny percentage of buyers will actually watch. The story needs to drive the player to engage with and complete a story-focused experience like an RPG, and as such everything you need to understand and feel involved with the story *should be in the actual game*. It's not rocket science, they've done it in other FFs. Even FF13 did it better, though they made the same mistake of putting important story/lore info in optional log entries rather than involving the player in it directly.
I won't disagree with you here. Even if they did it in the laziest way possible. The anime is free, for example, so they're not really losing anything by including them as is into the game. Even if just as an unlockable, like, you reach a certain point and get a pop up saying you can watch Brotherhood Episode X from the Title Screen. It's already something.
I won't agree that it HAD to be there as part of the game, though. I don't think anyone, even back in the Nomura days, ever expected to see things like fat Prompto starting a died and exercising to get closer to the prince, who in turn never felt differently about him. It's just a touching little moment that really feels more like it's adding on top of that world instead of taking from the game to make an anime.
The movie, though? Yeah, for sure.
Pro tip, S-E: optional content in an open-world game should contain extra flavour and background info which is *also* optional, not anything essential to following the story or immersing yourself in the game world! Linear games can get away with putting essential stuff in logs, etc., but those bits should be on the critical path through the game and players should be clear that they're important and should be read/heard/viewed (see System Shock 2, Doom 3, etc.).
I really like their open world design here, and I'm not a big fan of open world games, so I definitely disagree, and I'm glad they went the route they did.
Another game that won't give you all the information in the form of a mandatory cutscene but people have zero issues with, on the contrary, they absolutely love that world and story, is Nier.
I'm not trying to compare them in quality, but I've even seen people
with Nier avatars complaining that they need to read some short item descriptions and stuff like that to better understand the story, saying it's bad storytelling.
Maybe it's my memory, but I don't recall the Gestalt project and its connection to Drakengard being spoonfed to me at all. And I love it.
The worst was Tabata deliberately grabbing for the Versus crowd with that Jump Festa 2015 trailer with all that old invasion footage.
A lot of the early parts of the game seem to be reworked, if you rewatch the TGS 2014 and Jump Festa 2015 trailers, so I'm assuming they did have the original scenes as part of the game at some point, before deciding to remove all of it and make Kingsglaive instead.
Noctis as part of the invasion was already long gone by then, but it was probably featured in the game in the form of CGI cutscenes reusing stuff from Versus.
Then Nozue had his brilliant idea of making a separate movie with it >_>
Thanks, Nozue and Square-Enix.
EDIT: And Tabata, of course. It definitely had his blessing.
Hhhnnnnggg, Noctis and Cor taking revenge on Drautos would have been amazing!
But now impossible to insert in the game. I would be satisfyied if they made Verstael recovering Glauca's body and armour and turning it into some sort of Magitek zombie and let it fight with Noct in Gralea.
Damn, that would be amazing! I was really hoping Glauca would be a boss fight in the final game. Even if there was no meaningful story setup. Loqi didn't either other than "we know general Loqi was seen at this base multiple times" as foreshadowing for the fight, and it's fine. No one really cared.
I really really wish we could fight Glauca. It would be one hell of a fight.