For all the criticism Luna gets,she's actually has shown greater resolve and clearer goals than Noctis ever does during the entire game.
I feel like Noctis reluctantly goes along,where as Luna has fully internalized her goals ever since she was a child.
You could think of Luna as a shining moon in the night sky. Noctis welcomes that light but he doesn't emanate light from within.
He seemed tragically reluctant all the way through imo.
Yeah, there was a contrast there, I think, and it might have been deliberate.
Luna fully accepted her duty from the moment she was a child, Noctis had been running from it.
Leading up to Altissia, the loading screen even notes that Noctis cares alot more about reuniting with Luna than he does about Leviathan. And when she dies, he admits that "All i ever wanted was to save you".
Luna's death throws Noctis into a depression that sours the whole group, mainly because he's mourning over her death more than he's preparing himself for what's in front of them.
Luna's parting gift to Noctis was the Ring, which he avoided the fuck out of until he was basically
forced to put it on. Shortly after which, he's thrown into the crystal for 10 years and emerges as the true king.
And then he goes to fufill his duty, after which he immediately dies too.
Noctis' journey was to be more like Luna xD
Yep, I actually thought this could've been a great subversion as well but I just don't think they fleshed out the relationship as thoroughly enough. Like with Jared, an extra cutscene or two that actually added substance to these characters through in-game conventions would've done a simple but integral wonder iyam.
The characters' relationships in this game are uniquely multi-dimensional, despite the game not showing those dimensions so clearly sometimes (at least at first); Noctis and Luna being neither strict lovers nor purely platonic friends, Ardyn being more than self-righteous self-declared hero or thin two-faced villain, the entire brotherhood between the four mains being conveyed almost solely through inferential chemistry -- but with Luna and Noct in particular, the game just doesn't capitalize on it as effectively as it needed to in order bring the image into focus. But the image itself is so riveting.
Guess what I'm saying is I agree with the idea in theory and really like the set-up myself, just wish it was translated better in-game. I was very ambivalent about ch. 9, lol, and after watching Kingsglaive especially. But I dunno, maybe it's just a sour taste in my mouth which will fade in time. That was the primary story I was playing the entire game for after all (ie Noctis/Luna), for the most part, so a grieving Luna-fan in the process of recovery am I indeed. xP >_<
Yeah, I think the easiest way they could have made her death a guaranteed home-run is if they just gave her more time with the player. I feel like if this were FF6 or FF7, we would have maybe shifted between playing as Luna and Noctis up until chapter 9, when she get murdered.
But on the flip side, I think their method of making her loss more tragic by teasing what could have been, and what Noctis really wanted it to be, before having it suddenly ripped from you is also a good way of going about doing it. Luna got just enough screentime in XV for you to know who she was, and most importantly, who she was to Noctis.
But yeah I can see how it would rub people the wrong way.