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Official original designs and story details from Versus XIII/FFXV surface

That phone image alone is baffling. Did Tabata deliberately decide to make them communicate via dog? Why? For what reason? Is it more 'romantic'?

Why they gotta twist the knife?
 

Famassu

Member
Why did/still do care about Stella so much in the first place? We barely know shit about her.
Because she & Noctis seemed to have more of a relationship together (face to face, or at least talking via phones) beyond sending cards through a magic dog.

That phone image alone is baffling. Did Tabata deliberately decide to make them communicate via dog? Why? For what reason? Is it more 'romantic'?

Why they gotta twist the knife?
Some people do not understand how relationships work or how to build on-screen romantic relationships without some dumb BS or have weird concepts of romantic.
 

ZenTzen

Member
I like XV, but damn do i want to play this version, i wouldnt mind a trilogy, if the games were designed to be that way
 
DFxQAja.jpg

Ravus in white with a black arm

Gentiana in black with a white arm

Dat symbolism

They're like the good angel and the bad angel on Stella's shoulders
 
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Versus threads ;_;
 
I can't handle this stuff. Dammit.

Y'know, there still would have been just as much issues with the narrative but I still don't get why they changed Stella and her design to Luna. Would have saved a whole lot of Versus angst, it's not like we really knew what she was like.

The team members themselves couldn't change her because she was too different and they couldn't do it. I can understand them!
 

Joqu

Member
Y'know, there still would have been just as much issues with the narrative but I still don't get why they changed Stella and her design to Luna. Would have saved a whole lot of Versus angst, it's not like we really knew what she was like.

That fucking phone tho
 

Joqu

Member
ImThe team members themselves couldn't change her because she was too different and they couldn't do it. I can understand them!
Yeah... this still doesn't make much sense to me. Even if she turned out too different the players still wouldn't have known, and that's what's most important with a project with this kind of history if you ask me. Same with stuff like the Regis design. Oh well.
 
Wait a second, was Cindy part of XV since before the change of directors and team? I see her down there in one of the pics.

I thought she came later after the change.

Also, so much Stella!!!
 

extralite

Member
to be fair we know nothing about Stella. She could have been just like Lunafreya and from a pure design standpoint I dont think Stella or Lunafreya are that much different.

Stella could summon weapons, just like Noctis. She was a fighting heroine, which you are likely to find in DQ games (Alena, Jessica) and Nojima games outside of FF. In Nojima's Glory of Heracles games, the heroines usually use offense magic but they never have heal spells (the male characters do, like DQ heroes). Stella is also a name Nojima used in a previous game and for his company, Stellavista.

Luna on the other hand is a typical FF heroine, like Rena, Terra, Aerith or Yuna. I think her name (Lunafrena in Japanese) is combining moon (which is the meaning of Yuna's name) and Rena. She is like a shrine maiden, and heal centric.

When the game was renamed and the versus dropped, Noctis and the heroine ceased to be opponents (although they were still on opposing sides), so she was renamed from star to moon. The opponent concept is still in FFXV though, evident in the full logo after you clear the game. Noctis and Luna are like Yin and Yang, each containing a part of the other in their name. Noctis means night, his surname light (like from a heavenly body). Stella/Luna are light emitting heavenly bodies but the surname contains the word night.

----

Btw, Nomura was still directing for a whole year after the FFXV reveal. He was the one to show Cidny as well. No idea why Tabata should get "blamed" for her.

The Nomura game was a trilogy. They probably didn't do any significant planning for parts 2 and 3.

This is verrrrrry evident in how XV falls apart story-wise after Altissia.

I have to disagree. The story didn't really start until Altissia and beyond. It became much denser once the open world part was over. It was a bit light weight compared to earlier FFs and obviously rushed but I can definitely see the typical Nojima story in the second half.

Ardyn is like Nojima's interpretation of FF3's Xande (the other FF game that is based on Yin/Yang, light and dark balancing each other out) combined with his own take on Xande's gift, as evident in the Glory of Heracles games.
 

Slater

Banned
Hahaha the fucking phone.

Although it occurs to me that's literally the only thing in this that separates her from Luna.

Still no Rapier, which started a cult and we only saw once in 2008.

Tsk tsk
 
Stella could summon weapons, just like Noctis. She was a fighting heroine, which you are likely to find in DQ games (Alena, Jessica) and Nojima games outside of FF. In Nojima's Glory of Heracles games, the heroines usually use offense magic but they never have heal spells (the male characters do, like DQ heroes). Stella is also a name Nojima used in a previous game and for his company, Stellavista.
Nice fan fic of Stella. That one didn't even exist if we go by this concept art. She couldn't summon weapons aside from the very original concept and even her design kept changing along with her outfits.

The new Stella, the one that was never even a part of the original Noct vs. Stella cutscene, also had the same Gentiana. Ravus as a brother. Although her role appears to be more of a princess here instead of a summoner like Luna.
 

mortal

Gold Member
This the type of shit I've been dying to see for ages, but now it doesn't even matter. It's just a reminder for me of what could've been. It makes me slightly bitter, with how terrible revised version ended up being for me.

Roberto Ferrari concepts from what I can gather by the art style.
 
This the type of shit I've been dying to see for ages, but now it doesn't even matter. It's just a reminder for me of what could've been. It makes me slightly bitter, with how terrible revised version ended up being for me.

Roberto Ferrari concepts from what I can gather by the art style.


He already said that he did a storyboard for FFXV back in 2013 and it had 130 images in it. So I guess what we see here is from it.

By the way, for those who still don't understand the appeal of Stella, there's this post that pretty much sums it up :

A lot of the Final Fantasy main heroines have been primarily white magic users and have used a staff, or any other variants of a wand, as a weapon. As such, they tend to be physically weak and are used in gameplay (or in some cases in the narrative) simply to support the main male hero and his ambitions. A lot of these heroines tend to be very feminine in how they move, while physically more-abled female side-kicks tend to be butch, doting, or quiet (think Lightning, who is not a sidekick, Ashe, Freya). Peppy and feminine side-kicks tended to be a ditz as well (think Rikku, Selphie, and even Yuffie)

Stella stands out initially since while she uses magic (thanks to a near-death experience, similar to Noctis), her main weapon is a fleuret (sword, not a variant of a wand). Gameplay-wise, it would have been interesting to see how they represent fencing in-game (whether or not we get to control her, or simpy fight against her). Having a fencing weapon is also pretty loaded choice, as the sport was popularized by (male) aristocrats, so that MIGHT show Stella's aristocratic (and most likely, educated) background.

Despite that, the party scene shows that while she is diplomatic when it comes to addressing Noctis, she is still very feminine with her body language (which oddly, a lot of people take against her). So already, she betrays a lot of the peppy-but-ditzy or strong-but-butch archetypes Final Fantasy has for its female side-kicks. As a heroine, she also occupies a different narrative space as other FF heroines. She is always shown in white to contrast Noctis' black, and we know eventually that she and Noctis had to fight eventually. A heroine with a different and opposing goal with the hero would have been such an interesting and different concept to play around with (again, execution is another matter, but that is all moot at this point). IIRC, people initially thought she was one of the main villains in FFV13 when she was revealed during the closed mega theater trailers. People were shocked when Nomura revealed that she was supposed to be Versus' heroine.

So when people say that they are sad that the Stella vs Noctis scene was lost, they weren't sad simply because the scene cut was cool. It was so much more than that.

Again, that does not show that Stella is a strong character, but merely that she stands out and is conceptually different. I think that people who say that Stella is a strong character actually mean that she is just an intriguing concept of a character, and I thought it showed. People weren't just blindly believing Nomura when he said that "Stella would stand out," people already saw that. Compare this to Tabata, who initially said that Luna was a strong character and that we should believe him, when all we've seen (at that point) was Luna sitting down waiting for Noctis to come.

I'm not throwing Luna under the bus here. I think all Stella fans should be openminded to her character, but when subsequent appearances fail to impress (including a movie), it should be understood why Stella fans are upset. But with the game two months away, I can't wait to know more about Luna.

This post has gone on too long, lol. I might have veered offtopic, but I thought I just wanted to give my 2 cents on this whole Luna vs Stella thing.
 
By the way, for those who still don't understand the appeal of Stella, there's this post that pretty much sums it up :
....that quote you posted about Stella is a lot of reaching.

Sometimes I wish I was that enamored with a character. Any character.

Oh well I guess I shouldn't judge.
 

yunbuns

Member
By the way, for those who still don't understand the appeal of Stella, there's this post that pretty much sums it up :

I mean at the end of the day she isn't real and I honestly find it weird that after 10 years people haven't been able to let go of their over attachment to her.
 

Ydelnae

Member
Ardyn concept art and what seems to be a cutscene, it also shows the red blood moon which was nowhere to be found in the game.


Also, now related to the final product, the French voice cast just stated in an interview that they recorded a lot of scenes that were dropped when the script was rewritten last year.

https://youtu.be/zPcZ7UhCtao
 

Laplasakos

Member
Damn it's pretty rare for scenes for a Japanese game to be dropped even after the European voices have been recorded :/

Imagine the japanese voice actors that started recording for Versus in 2009-2010 and all the work that had been done until that point was deleted in 2013. BTW, speaking of voice acting, who was the actress that was voicing Stella in the E3 2013 trailer?
 
I'm not a big fan of Stella but the abysmal character that was Luna makes me wish Stella stayed. Just hope we have no ffxv-2 and can move on the next entry.
 
I'm glad that BotW kept the blood moon idea. I love the blood moon symbolism so I was sad to see it not present in the current FFXV.
 

theofficefan99

Junior Member
Ardyn concept art and what seems to be a cutscene, it also shows the red blood moon which was nowhere to be found in the game.



Also, now related to the final product, the French voice cast just stated in an interview that they recorded a lot of scenes that were dropped when the script was rewritten last year.

https://youtu.be/zPcZ7UhCtao

Why. The. Fuck. Would. You. Rewrite. The. Script. For. An. RPG. On. The. Year. Of. Its. Release.
 

Laplasakos

Member
Did Kagari not specifically state that Aranea was created to just be a boss fight? I thought for sure she did

I think it was Nomura

I doubt Kagari ever went into such details about the game and the only thing Nomura said about Aranea was that she isn't Stella and she was an enemy. I think i read pretty much every Nomura interview about Versus and nowhere he said that Aranea was just a boss fight.
 
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