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Did you understand FFXV story?

"I hate that this Final Fantasy game has fantasy and worldbuilding in it."

Seriously. XIII asked you to remember, like, 4 terms, and two of them were nearly the same, and they get beaten into your skull over the initial hours of the story.
It's not even like they're incredibly alien, abstract concepts, either.
Fal'cie are physical gods. L'cie are their often involuntary thralls. Cie'th are "damned" L'cie who've failed their Focus, that being a quest given to them by their Fal'Cie master.
Boom. Done. It's SUPER fucking straightforward, honestly. It's just pretty standard fantasy tropes and concepts with a new set of titles applied.

How is it any different from any other series having a fictional language, or naming fictional races?
Is it because the terms you have to remember aren't English? I don't remember people complaining about, say, X or XII throwing terms around and expecting you to remember them, but they generally stuck to English or Latin-rooted terms.
Hell, XII throws archaic English around without apology and just expects you to keep up and use context clues, and it's considered one of the greatest localization jobs ever. (And rightfully so!)

XIII may have had a lot of issues with character motivations shifting seemingly arbitrarily (
"You'll never make us kill Orphan! ...Everybody kill Orphan!"
) and sometimes failing to adequately present context, but a tiny handful of vocabulary terms you have to remember is NOT a failing of the game's storytelling.

It's such a "bitching for the sake of bitching" argument and I can only assume that the people I hear it from don't have the attention span for a large RPG, anyway.

The problem with XIII wasn't it's lore. It was the fact that the game just ASSUMES you give a fuck. The game basically throws you into its universe as if you're already familiar with it, and makes no attempt to adequately fill you in because it's trying its hardest to rush you into the juicy parts.

"Okay im a L'Fal who just got marked by a Pulse L'see on Cocoon and PsiCom is trying to send us back to Pulse (wherever that is) too because now i'm a L'see too but i wasn't a few minutes ago? Well i fell onto Pulse and my sister has fused with the crystal lake, but no time to cry because we need some Focus so we don't turn into L'Seeth and wow, Shiva Bikes, k sure why not"

"I'm flailing my arms through the forest singing about Hope but he isn't even here right now"

*READS DATALOG FOR AN HOUR*

"Wait a sec, i'm still on Cocoon? I thought we fell onto Pulse already? How did the Pulse Fal'Cie get on Cocoon? Why do they hate Pulse so much? Okay now i'm on Pulse, but literally everyone is fuckin dead, there is not a single living soul down here, why do they even care about Pulse L'Cie if everyone is dead?"

"so they want me to kill them, so that everyone will die, and then they'll get what they want, but we're not going to follow their orders, because we choose our own fate, so lets go kill them, so that they'll die, and then...everyone else will die, and....then....uhh"
 
It's actually a very straightforward story, it's just that it's also extremely sparse and many of the most interesting events take place decidedly off-screen.

This. It's not really complicated, it just omits things it doesn't consider to be important anymore. Like that one general guy.

It's so straight forward, I'm often confused at how people could interpret the ending as different events.
 
The problem with XIII wasn't it's lore. It was the fact that the game just ASSUMES you give a fuck. The game basically throws you into its universe as if you're already familiar with it, and makes no attempt to adequately fill you in because it's trying its hardest to rush you into the juicy parts.

"Okay im a L'Fal who just got marked by a Pulse L'see on Cocoon and PsiCom is trying to send us back to Pulse (wherever that is) too because now i'm a L'see too but i wasn't a few minutes ago? Well i fell onto Pulse and my sister has fused with the crystal lake, but no time to cry because we need some Focus so we don't turn into L'Seeth and wow, Shiva Bikes, k sure why not"

"I'm flailing my arms through the forest singing about Hope but he isn't even here right now"

*READS DATALOG FOR AN HOUR*

"Wait a sec, i'm still on Cocoon? I thought we fell onto Pulse already? How did the Pulse Fal'Cie get on Cocoon? Why do they hate Pulse so much? Okay now i'm on Pulse, but literally everyone is fuckin dead, there is not a single living soul down here, why do they even care about Pulse L'Cie if everyone is dead?"

"so they want me to kill them, so that everyone will die, and then they'll get what they want, but we're not going to follow their orders, because we choose our own fate, so lets go kill them, so that they'll die, and then...everyone else will die, and....then....uhh"

While I have to admit I had to play the game twice to get everything the whole point of the story was very easy to understand: Main Cast have to destroy their homeworld or they will die. The whole story is about them struggling with that.

Yeah...they messed up with the sudden namedropping of Fal'Cie, L'cie, Cie'th, Cocoon and Plusle in like 5 minutes..
 
I found the story pretty simple and straightforward, didn't know this much people would be confused about it. This ain't FFVIII.
 
The specifics eluded me. It was very unclear why you were doing various things at various points. You need Royal Arms, but also you're suddenly trying to find the gods. Then the ring does stuff too?

The lesson of the story seems to be that fighting fate is pointless, so you should just stay exactly in your lane even if it will lead to your death. This is a weird contrast to every other FF game.
 
A suicide mission that had many plot holes.

Honestly, kinda this? Thinking about it further it was straightforward since at least I felt like I understood the overall plot, but I think what diluted the storytelling so much was the amount of side elements introduced that amassed to nowhere and ended up becoming big craters to the overarching plot. Not to the point where you couldn't connect the pieces together, but still noticeably enough to be confused from time to time. I hope I wasn't the only one confused as to who youmightnotknowwho was when they were all freaking out about him being killed.

Like what happens from start to finish, especially towards the end, well, you know the most important things to not feel totally lost and understand the gist of the journey, but sometimes I was confused why the Chocobros doing thing X wounded up in them doing thing Y, at least in the open world part.

The second half also suffered from plot element overload or whatever you wanna call it, but not to the same glaring extent. Sometimes I couldn't understand why they're going to X and sometimes I didn't understand as to why they were freaking out about stopping at Y, but at least there was somewhat of exposition on it afterwards to fill the holes and the ending at least is straightforward enough.
 
The problem with XIII wasn't it's lore. It was the fact that the game just ASSUMES you give a fuck. The game basically throws you into its universe as if you're already familiar with it, and makes no attempt to adequately fill you in because it's trying its hardest to rush you into the juicy parts.

"Okay im a L'Fal who just got marked by a Pulse L'see on Cocoon and PsiCom is trying to send us back to Pulse (wherever that is) too because now i'm a L'see too but i wasn't a few minutes ago? Well i fell onto Pulse and my sister has fused with the crystal lake, but no time to cry because we need some Focus so we don't turn into L'Seeth and wow, Shiva Bikes, k sure why not"

"I'm flailing my arms through the forest singing about Hope but he isn't even here right now"

*READS DATALOG FOR AN HOUR*

"Wait a sec, i'm still on Cocoon? I thought we fell onto Pulse already? How did the Pulse Fal'Cie get on Cocoon? Why do they hate Pulse so much? Okay now i'm on Pulse, but literally everyone is fuckin dead, there is not a single living soul down here, why do they even care about Pulse L'Cie if everyone is dead?"

"so they want me to kill them, so that everyone will die, and then they'll get what they want, but we're not going to follow their orders, because we choose our own fate, so lets go kill them, so that they'll die, and then...everyone else will die, and....then....uhh"

...Almost everything you describe is plot events that I followed along with just fine the first time playing the game, watching it unfold and not even touching the Datalog.
A couple of your examples even wildly misrepresent what actually happens and combine events that happen hours apart from each other in-game.

I mean, seriously. How could you not know what Pulse is?
They beat you over the head in the opening hours with what Pulse "is."
People are being sent there on trains, so it's obviously a physical location... I mean, just use context clues, man.

If someone doesn't have a grasp on most of the game's vocabulary by the time they leave the Hanging Edge, that's on them as a player, their attention span and willingness to absorb information.
And that's not even counting uncommon-but-still-English words like "Vestige." If someone's idea of "bad writing" is "using a word above a 10th grade reading level," the game doesn't have to deign to you.
You know what you do when you're reading a book and hit a word you've never seen? You look it up or wait for it to be elaborated upon.

This growing idea that plots have to be simple and spoon-fed to the point of being some kind of flavorless narrative protein sludge is troubling.
People used to rise to meet "difficult" media, now they whine that it's "condescending" to them.

XIII has many issues but people massively overstate and misrepresent some of them and it's baffling.
It's like people feel intrinsically inadequate and personally offended if they can't follow the plot.
 
Yeah, so let's send a dog to traverse a sea so we can write in notebooks! Sorry, i'm not buying it.

I mean we used pigeons to send messages so this isn't too crazy.

Anyway it's a magical being presenting itself as a dog, it uses its magic to get the message to the recipient. I don't know what else to tell you man.
 
I understood the story.. but they did not explain Ardyn at all. I found out who he really was on Gaf after finishing the story. Which is mind boggling because as good as the 4 main characters were, Ardyn could have been the showstopper if they had actually given a shit. If they had fleshed out the storytelling and explained it in the game it would have been really interesting.

FFXV was my first FF game. I liked FFXV but I dont consider myself a fan, thanks to the super depressing ending, half-assed storytelling and cutscenes
 
I don't think I understood it completely (probably didn't pay much attention or care).

As far as I had in my head you are on the way to marry this girl you have a magic connection with (to protect the city) then the city is invaded and the girl dies. You look for a crystal or something and it sends you forward in time for some reason. Then you kill yourself so you and the girl can kill the bad guy together and then you are alive again(?) and finally get married(?)
 
Why did people seem to assume that Izunia was Noctis' original family name or something? I think Ardyn actually mentions that it's just something he picked up at some point and it doesn't have any special meaning.
 
I posted what i thought the story/ending was in the FFXV spoiler topic and around 80~% was correct, still, the little things like Ardyn's complete back story, Ifrit's background etc, those were completely lost on me.

The game was overly confusing.
 
Why did people seem to assume that Izunia was Noctis' original family name or something? I think Ardyn actually mentions that it's just something he picked up at some point and it doesn't have any special meaning.

It's probably because Noctis was busy recreating the sounds of childbirth while Ardyn was poorly explaining this.
 
I don't think I understood it completely (probably didn't pay much attention or care).

As far as I had in my head you are on the way to marry this girl you have a magic connection with (to protect the city) then the city is invaded and the girl dies. You look for a crystal or something and it sends you forward in time for some reason. Then you kill yourself so you and the girl can kill the bad guy together and then you are alive again(?) and finally get married(?)


This is funny and sad at the same time.
 
I did, but Kingsglaive feels like it should've been packaged with every copy. I finished the game before watching it, but wish that I'd been able to see it first. It added so much to the foundation of the game that to strip it out was a total Capcom.
 
The ending was super confusing. What was Ardyn's ultimate goal? Apparently revenge, but what did it entail exactly? With the way things went, It actually felt like he won in the end. Like he meant for the world to become messed up and then restored again, with Noctis dying in the process. But I'm not sure what was even the point of that.

And then there was Ifrit who was supposedly the creator of that plague thing in the first place. Maybe Ardyn's goal was to power up Noctis enough so that he could deal with Ifrit, liberating him (and the world) in the process?

I posted what i thought the story/ending was in the FFXV spoiler topic and around 80~% was correct, still, the little things like Ardyn's complete back story, Ifrit's background etc, those were completely lost on me.

The game was overly confusing.

Could you link some of the relevant posts here if that's not too much trouble?
 
The ending was super confusing. What was Ardyn's ultimate goal? Apparently revenge, but what did it entail exactly? With the way things went, It actually felt like he won in the end. Like he meant for the world to become messed up and then restored again, with Noctis dying in the process. But I'm not sure what was even the point of that.

And then there was Ifrit who was supposedly the creator of that plague thing in the first place. Maybe Ardyn's goal was to power up Noctis enough so that he could deal with Ifrit, liberating him (and the world) in the process?



Could you link some of the relevant posts here if that's not too much trouble?


Have you watched the video I posted?
 
"I hate that this Final Fantasy game has fantasy and worldbuilding in it."

Seriously. XIII asked you to remember, like, 4 terms, and two of them were nearly the same, and they get beaten into your skull over the initial hours of the story.
It's not even like they're incredibly alien, abstract concepts, either.
Fal'cie are physical gods. L'cie are their often involuntary thralls. Cie'th are "damned" L'cie who've failed their Focus, that being a quest given to them by their Fal'Cie master.
Boom. Done. It's SUPER fucking straightforward, honestly. It's just pretty standard fantasy tropes and concepts with a new set of titles applied.

How is it any different from any other series having a fictional language, or naming fictional races?
Is it because the terms you have to remember aren't English? I don't remember people complaining about, say, X or XII throwing terms around and expecting you to remember them, but they generally stuck to English or Latin-rooted terms.
Hell, XII throws archaic English around without apology and just expects you to keep up and use context clues, and it's considered one of the greatest localization jobs ever. (And rightfully so!)

XIII may have had a lot of issues with character motivations shifting seemingly arbitrarily (
"You'll never make us kill Orphan! ...Everybody kill Orphan!"
) and sometimes failing to adequately present context, but a tiny handful of vocabulary terms you have to remember is NOT a failing of the game's storytelling.

It's such a "bitching for the sake of bitching" argument and I can only assume that the people I hear it from don't have the attention span for a large RPG, anyway.

This post deserves an award 🙌🏽 THANK you for dragging GAF, and rightfully so!

To think that the majority of the posters here are college graduates, yet they can't pay attention for two seconds to understand the difference between Fal'Cie and L'Cie...smh.
 
The story made sense it was just really really REALLY poorly told. It was also at extreme odds with the style of the game being made.

Imagine if , just for a minute - the meaty part of the game (the open world chunk) was the entire game. Now imagine a story was written in service of that instead of shoehorning some of the plot of Versus XIII in there.

You're simply a prince out on a big adventure to prove to your father you're ready to be king , along the way you meet up with a large assortment of friends and foes. Imagine an overall lighter tone to the whole affair that never dips its toes in the bleak 11th hour plot twists present in the current game. Imagine if the Adamantoise or something similar was the actual final boss - you know that excellent moment where all of Nocts pals come together to team up and tackled a singular giant threat ? What if instead of a final dungeon you've gotta run through an epilogue sequence that involves Noctis getting hitched ?

Man... what could have been.

I think FFXV might at least have a tolerable overall story line once all of the DLC is out and they can fill in the gaps a little smoother but ... no matter what , the second you leave for Altissia the entire mood changes. You literally leave a competent fun game and go into a shittier FFXIII (outside of the mine/marlboro dungeon that makes up the bulk of chapter 10).
 
I understood the general story they attempted to tell, but not the finer details such as Ardyn and Ravus. I had to go to the spoiler thread on GAF. I totally missed Ardyn's grand reveal because of terrible sound mixing. I actually could not hear him. However, the main problem with FFXV is this. They thought they could make these beautiful cinematic moments without any development at all. As if they could skip dialog and character development, and it would be fine. Forget the build up, here's the climax! Such arrogance. You get this dream sequence between Noct and Luna after she dies, and it's very beautiful. What do you get leading up to it? A dog passing a book around and all Noct says is "lol see u in Altissia." I get this very sad scene on the surface, but as I search through my memories of the game to attempt to feel anything for Noct and Luna, that's all I have. It fell completely flat. That's only one example of the whole story. FFXV didn't deserve it's ending.
 
I understood the general story they attempted to tell, but not the finer details such as Ardyn and Ravus. I had to go to the spoiler thread on GAF. I totally missed Ardyn's grand reveal because of terrible sound mixing. I actually could not hear him. However, the main problem with FFXV is this. They thought they could make these beautiful cinematic moments without any development at all. As if they could skip dialog and character development, and it would be fine. Forget the build up, here's the climax! Such arrogance. You get this dream sequence between Noct and Luna after she dies, and it's very beautiful. What do you get leading up to it? A dog passing a book around and all Noct says is "lol see u in Altissia." I get this very sad scene on the surface, but as I search through my memories of the game to attempt to feel anything for Noct and Luna, that's all I have. It fell completely flat. That's only one example of the whole story. FFXV didn't deserve it's ending.

Pretty much sums it up for me as well.
 
I didn't understand the gods and the king needing to be sacrificed stuff towards the end. But I was able to follow the political stuff fine. I also watched the movie though

Like they can't just kill ardyn. Noctis spirit has to fight him?
 
I understood it more or less.
I just didn't like the pacing of it.
The story was glued to an open world structure so it just didn't flow from one event to the next. It was too spaced out in the beginning and way too crammed towards the end.
 
I don't think I understood it completely (probably didn't pay much attention or care).

As far as I had in my head you are on the way to marry this girl you have a magic connection with (to protect the city) then the city is invaded and the girl dies. You look for a crystal or something and it sends you forward in time for some reason. Then you kill yourself so you and the girl can kill the bad guy together and then you are alive again(?) and finally get married(?)

That about sums up my understanding of the story.

I guess there's supposedly something deeper to the story, but just so poorly explained. Shit just started happening one after another, after Luna's death with much of the events happening in the background. And it expected you to just go along with it.

I don't know what to say but that the story was presented pretty poorly. It didn't help that playing enough jrpgs made it so that I could tell from a mile away Luna was going to die and that Ardyn would be the last boss.
 
More or less, and by the end, I felt pretty good (or bad LOL) about how everything played out. I didn't really care too much about the story in the macro sense, and was more interested in the relationship between you and your friends, which I thought the game did a good job of developing. More so if you watched Brotherhood, especially in Prompto's case.
 
Damn my feelings on the game are somewhat conflicted. I loved the setpieces/action sequences the game had (Iris joining the bros for an adventure, Noct, Prompto, Ignis, and Aranea exploring the temple, the Train fight and warping between MT Carriers to take them down, riding the rocket bike with Prompto over Altissia to get to Leviathan, Noct and Cor attacking the Nifleheim stronghold) the game had fantastic moments but the overall story just isn't very good.

The thing is though, when I think back to the game, I remember these sequences and hold the game up higher in my head than it probably deserves.
 
One Word
IZUNA

explain
Izuna is Ardyn twin brother and the jealous king that deemed him unworthy.
Did you play the secret dungeon Pittos? There they hint at Ardyn back story also did you know that Eos the Goddess of Dawn is Ardyn and Izuna mother and did you know that Ifrit loves Eos and he is actually a good guy and thats the reason he was helping Ardyn.

I bet most people here saying they understood the story didn't even know about what I said above and that just small part of the hidden story of the game.
 
Izuna is Ardyn twin brother and the jealous king that deemed him unworthy.
Did you play the secret dungeon Pittos? There they hint at Ardyn back story also did you know that Eos the Goddess of Dawn is Ardyn and Izuna mother and did you know that Ifrit loves Eos and he is actually a good guy and thats the reason he was helping Ardyn.

I bet most people here saying they understood the story didn't even know about what I said above and that just small part of the hidden story of the game.
Where did you get all this
 
Come on.

You're the prince travelling to an arranged marriage, which is actually an excuse for you to be out of your city, because the mean guys are going to destroy it all and steal the crystal. You find out that, and then set out to a journey to kill the bad guy behind it. You get stronger, absorb the power from the crystal, avenge everyone and reclaim your throne as the king. And, well, die.

The core premise is really simple, but told unevenly through the game. There are a lot of other details/lore that should make the narrative deeper, but unfortunately, most of them are either A) available through other medias related to the game or B) briefly explained through dialogues or loading screens
 
It's actually a very straightforward story, it's just that it's also extremely sparse and many of the most interesting events take place decidedly off-screen.

This. And doesn't Ardin have like a huge villian monologue explaining why?

I did watch Kingsglaive first, so I had a pretty good grasp on what was going on and I also thought it ws pretty straightforward, except Aldercapt being undercooked made the conclusion to his arc really strange. Haven't seen the added content though.
 
Where did you get all this
From playing the game for over 300 hrs exploring every bit in the game and watching YouTube videos explaining the backstory almost everyone missed.

I give yoy this for example, the rock Ravatogh is actually the gaint body of both Ifrit and Eos, see the picture:
6wl91kzb5uzz.jpg

As I said Ifrit loves Eos, he send two meteorites to free her from her prison. He rode one meteorite and the other was cought by the Titan.

Edit: Ifrit body we fought is not his real one the Gods are huge see Bahamut, Titan, Shiva etc however to communicate with Humans they send messengers like Gintiana or black hair dude in the cosmology book as Bahamut messenger and Ifrit we fought is actually his messenger body that he took over after Eos died to take revenge ob the gods
 
The specifics eluded me. It was very unclear why you were doing various things at various points. You need Royal Arms, but also you're suddenly trying to find the gods. Then the ring does stuff too?

The lesson of the story seems to be that fighting fate is pointless, so you should just stay exactly in your lane even if it will lead to your death. This is a weird contrast to every other FF game.

I also thought that was odd when I beat the game (about excepting fate rather than fighting it). It is rather odd for a FF game, maybe it has to do with the versus XIII concept originally since XIII is all about fate.
 
Izuna is Ardyn twin brother and the jealous king that deemed him unworthy.
Did you play the secret dungeon Pittos? There they hint at Ardyn back story also did you know that Eos the Goddess of Dawn is Ardyn and Izuna mother and did you know that Ifrit loves Eos and he is actually a good guy and thats the reason he was helping Ardyn.

I bet most people here saying they understood the story didn't even know about what I said above and that just small part of the hidden story of the game.

Ah yes...the Pitioss theory. It reminds me of the Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination theory. A lot of data that together makes sense but we have no way to figure out if it's real or just players wanting to believe the ending wasn't shit.
 
I consumed 0 pre-realease material for XV save for a few trailers when it was still Versus.


I got the broad strokes of the story but i didn't pay attention enough to get the finer details of the mythology.

Much like XIII, the world and the characters plights were undedevelopped and thus I simply didn't care enough to go the extra mile (the vast majority of the "epic" setpieces also fell completely falt for me).

At the very least they didn't just dump the final boss with zero fanfare in front of you. So, that was an improvement at least. Though again, it was keenly felt that at least 50% of the story development was just missing. From small moments of characterisation to plot development.


The FF team should drop the idea of these stories about warring gods if they are this incapable of telling the mythology behind it.
 
From playing the game for over 300 hrs exploring every bit in the game and watching YouTube videos explaining the backstory almost everyone missed.

I give yoy this for example, the rock Ravatogh is actually the gaint body of both Ifrit and Eos, see the picture:


As I said Ifrit loves Eos, he send two meteorites to free her from her prison. He rode one meteorite and the other was cought by the Titan.

Edit: Ifrit body we fought is not his real one the Gods are huge see Bahamut, Titan, Shiva etc however to communicate with Humans they send messengers like Gintiana or black hair dude in the cosmology book as Bahamut messenger and Ifrit we fought is actually his messenger body that he took over after Eos died to take revenge ob the gods

I guess its like the souls games with a lot of hidden lore but a bad and poorly executed story. Well the souls games basically don't have a story. If you have to watch youtube videos to understand the story of an book, game, or any other media then they probably haven't done a good job of telling the story.
 
I mean like the very first time you played it, no internet , no forums , no nothing.

I'll leave this link to those who were lost like me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpEY3vVUAtY

Anyhow- I thought it would be fun some of you post what you thought the story was about.

Like I understood pretty much everything except why Ardin was the villain
which is honestly the main point of the story ^_^;, I simply ended up thinking that he was a demon from long ^_^ that hated the crystal and anyone trying to stop the darkness and stuff.

Also, I have not asked but if demons used to be humans and Ignis goes around cooking demons isn't that cannibalism?

Daemons aren't Beasts..

Did YOU understand FFXV?

Also i'm probably the only person who understood the game. I went into the spoiler thread after I finished it and all of them are weird and think:
last scene/endings spoiler:
People in gaf's spoiler thread seem to think noctis and luna are dead in the ending scene when its obvious noctis "gives up his life" of the roadtrip with the boys and goes back to fix everything from the start with his canon timepowers
 
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