Final Fantasy XV

To be brief, Final Fantasy XV is a great game. Not without its flaws, of course, but it's a video game that deserves to be in the running for the best of the storied franchise's history. (Here I'll give some impressions, but I'm writing this without restraint on spoilers. It's likely a better read after having played. Oh, I will say, though, that you should play the game until you get to the point where you're supposed to get on the ferry to go to Altissia. Then start the movie Kingsglaive. It fits perfectly into the story at that point.)

Then again, as I've said before, the Final Fantasy franchise is huge, with nearly 100 entries to date. So the fact that this is a "good" Final Fantasy game means that it's unusual to be so good. While I would argue that it's not as good as Final Fantasy VII (and some would through VI in there, too, which I concede because of popularity, not personal experience), it returns to a lot of tried-and-true formulas and expectations. This causes a strange effect of being on one hand familiar and exciting, and tired and underwhelming.

Pros

Though I'm not fully versed in the story of how FFXV came to pass, I know that it's been in development for about 10 years. For video games, that's an eternity--heck, for almost any creative piece, that's a ridiculous amount of time. Nevertheless, there's a lot of polish on this game--and in this game. That is, almost everything is dazzling and shiny. Square Enix has made it a point of pride to have eye-popping visuals--pressing the limits of the console's technology--pretty much since the beginning. 

This is a good encapsulation of what I'm talking about.

I've been playing, off and on, since FFVII, so I've experienced about half of what's pictured above. These games have always had a really strong art design and aesthetic, even if it can lend to the bizarre at certain points.

There's definitely a "grab-any-random-article-and-wear-it" chic going on here. 

Even if the choice was not what I would have done, I can't fault the commitment to the concept. So the fact that FFXV is a gorgeous game is of no surprise. It runs quickly (once it's all loaded, that is) and is a massive world that you get to road trip in with your friends. And that, surprisingly, is a lot more fun than it sounds.

When I first started playing, I realized that I had to take the game on its own merits, pace, and context. Yes, Noctis (the main character and the one you have exclusive control over in the game) is on his way to marry a girl that he's been betrothed to--one of those princely duties that princes have to worry about--in order to help secure peace in his time. But between now and the nuptials, there's a beautiful convertible car to drive around, stunning locations, and gourmet meals to enjoy. Because of the pacing setup, I spent a large chunk of time--probably over twenty hours--playing in the road trip side of the ocean. After I had leveled up my characters to the point that I felt confident moving forward in the plot, I shifted gears and headed across the ocean for my wedding.

The story takes over at that point, and all the freedom that I enjoyed disappeared. The story progressively takes control, eventually ending in a climactic battle against the primary villain. Though there are some areas where I could diverge and explore other areas of the world, the open-ended feeling was gone. 

Thematically, this coincides with the pending marriage and all that would entail. Unfortunately, Lunafreya dies in order to help save the world, so with the light and hope of my fiance snuffed out, the world spirals into chaos and despair. Though I still have my bros with me throughout the entire adventure, there's a real sense of Noctis' disengagement after losing his engagement. I find this a great way of making the story--which is large, sweeping, and firmly rooted in the epic tradition--feel tight and intimate, too. 

There are endless diversions--so many, in fact, that I have to play the game again to get even half of them--and though you could, I suppose, eventually do all of the side quests and tiny upgrades, I felt pretty content with what I did. As is always the case in these style of games, the possibility of losing story threads increases the longer that you're goofing off in the enormous sandbox they've provided, so I decided to progress through the story a little faster as a result. I didn't want to forget what I was doing or why, which gave the game a more cohesive experience for me.

Before I forget, I want to say the summons in this game and absolutely beyond comprehension. Stunning and fun.

Additionally, before I dove into the game, Gayle and I watched the anime series that introduces the characters more fully, as well as the full-length CGI movie, Kingsglaive, to give us a larger sense of the story. These extras are simply that, so they aren't required to enjoy the game, but I felt more connected to everyone as I went along because I did take the extra time.

And that's the crux of this game. The ending falls flat if you don't spend time with these boys. Each character has his preferred skill (fishing, cooking, photography, or wilderness skills), and each uses a different weapon that Noctis can use as well--meaning that everyone feels unique, yet a part of your play style, whatever that ends up being. In a lot of ways, though it can feel like Noctis is dithering by not immediately heading deeper into the story, the time spent driving through the wastelands of Final Fantasy XV are the very essence of the experience. It's like the movie Stand By Me, the song of which bookends the game: The destination is important only insofar as it's what propels the characters. The story's texture and weight comes from the investment of time with the characters. This game is not a pick-up-and-play-for-ten-minutes type of game...at least, not consistently. The more time you spend riding chocobos and smashing monsters, the more you end up caring about these black-garbed fellows, and the more time you spend with them at a single time, the stronger that sentiment is.

Cons

The downside to this type of storytelling is the distraction that I mentioned earlier. The entire world is riding on Noctis' shoulders, but he's perfectly content to take half a day to hunt down green beans for a stranger in a city, or sampling distinctly Japanese food in a very Americana diner. My brother said that he was easily twenty levels higher than needed to beat the game by the time he got to the end, simply because he'd spent so much time exploring, chatting, and questing. This can loosen the impact of the dire, end-of-the-world issues that the game is grappling with. It also makes the would-be relationship between Noctis and Lunafreya weaker, since, through the actions of the player, he doesn't seem inclined to hurry himself along to his wedding. 

Additionally, though the film and anime give a sense of the politics of the world, nothing really affects Noctis. He doesn't expect any sort of deference from his crew, despite being the heir (and, later, the king outright). He thinks fondly, but not longingly about Luna, and his overall sense is that of being on his "gap year" between teenagedom and being a married king. When large-scale oppression begins to impinge on the way I wanted to play the game, I found myself irritated by the encroaching Empire, but they never felt like an existential threat. I pretty much smashed their robots when they got in the way, and otherwise didn't worry about them. This ends up making the story feel somewhat shoehorned in, which is a shame because the long-form video game story is what Final Fantasy games have always been about.

I have to also say that, as far as "casting" choices, I was disappointed at first to realize that my part was always going to be four dude-bros out doing dude-bro things (one even having a tanktop muscle shirt). This stopped bothering me later on as I started to realize that I was looking at a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants but with guys--some stories are about how members of the same gender bond, give and receive love, and consider their relationships to each other. Those stories are important, just like those that celebrate diversity and help us see the beautiful colors of the world. So the feminist in me was mollified once I understood the story. 

They're all so white, though. I don't need a "token black character" (like in FFXIII and VII), but I would love to see a diverse cast. They could have been an entire panoply of different races and it would have made the world seem richer than having only four white guys who literally run the world driving around in their car that's named after being a monarch. I'm not so insecure with my identity that I feel like every person has to look and think like me for me to "connect" to the characters. In fact, I like being pushed out of that standard setting. 

I also found myself getting needlessly frustrated with the way the battle system worked. I enjoyed its mix between "random" encounters, and the loss of turn-based fighting didn't bother me, but the camera genuinely struggled to keep the action straight. I felt like my strategies never worked quite right, and the comparative lack of various weapons and clothes made almost every "action" sequence endlessly similar. 

There's a lot of grief for the Chapter 13 sequence of the story, which is lengthy and heading down paths first sketched by the early Resident Evil series, and I felt like the tonal shift here was, perhaps, more abrupt than I was expecting. The darkness of the world that they're losing filters into the protracted sequence in Chapter 13, which, again, is a great reflection between gameplay and story line, but had too little to foreshadow it. That, I think, made it less pleasant--and the fact that it went on and on for so long was also a frustration.

Before I forget, the saving (or lack thereof) system in the dungeons is archaic, stupid, and needs to go away. Far, far away.

Last gripe? The fact that they "Aerith'd" Luna. Gayle called it hours before it happened. And, to be honest, I'm really sick of the sacrificial woman trope. She gives up her life, dreams and aspirations because she was supposed to serve the chosen one. She served the exact same feature as Aerith did in Final Fantasy VII, even to the point of providing help to Noctis in the afterlife that concludes the game. While the final shot gives the impression that, wherever they ended up, Noctis and Luna were together, there's too much ambiguity in that ending to be certain of any interpretation. Much like the weakness of FFVII's ending, Final Fantasy XV struggled to give the type of fully satisfying closure and conclusion that I was hoping for. Indeed, the most emotional moment (and superbly animated) was when Noctis spoke to his friends around the campfire, just before the final confrontation. With the Lunafreya/Noctis pairing at the very end, I was simply left confused.

The End

I really enjoyed the game. While not without its issues, I feel like this is the strongest entry into the series since FFX (a controversial claim, I know). Square Enix's ambition grows with every release, and while there are some misfires (looking at you, XII), they generally are steps forward. And failure to fully stick the landing notwithstanding, I felt that it was a worthwhile experience and one that ought to be formative for another generation of players, much like FFVII was for me. 

I'm hopeful to see what else they do in the future with these fantasies.