Final Fantasy XV: What’s in a Name?
You never quite know what to expect when you play a game that has made it through a long development cycle. Final Fantasy XV is one such title, attempting to balance the establishment of a brand new setting and gameplay style for the massive franchise while also staying true to the elements we come to expect. Where it succeeds, it feels distinct, refreshing even, but when it falters, it feels weighed down by its expectations as the next story in the ever-popular Final Fantasy saga.
I don’t envy the team at Square Enix that had to pick up the remains of Final Fantasy Versus XIII and reassemble it into what we now know as Final Fantasy XV. It’s a gargantuan task and the final product has undoubtedly left some people disappointed as a result. There’s no right way to handle it, but to the team’s credit, I think Final Fantasy XV succeeds as an exciting blend of Japanese and Western-style RPGs. It reminded me of the best modern WRPGs, such as The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition, while also feeling very much like its own thing.
Unfortunately, the game is called Final Fantasy XV. I do believe it succeeds in some remarkable ways, but as a Final Fantasy game, it feels lacking. I don’t necessary consider that to be a terrible thing, mind you, but the game’s attempts at providing us with a coherent narrative fail remarkably. There are multiple reasons for this, so let’s break it down into its three key parts.
First is the world itself. While the land you explore throughout the game is beautiful and full of plenty to see and do, I felt little connection to the larger world as a whole. The game only did the bare minimum to explain Lucis, the crystal, Noctis’ royal lineage, and how this entire war between Niflheim, a neighboring nation, and Lucis even began. I felt left in the dark, just as the central characters are, until the very end. And when it finally makes sense why it all happened the way it did, it didn’t deepen my appreciation for the world, just the character that set it all in motion to begin with.
Oh, and before you tell me I should have watched Kingsglaive, maybe you should instead say, “Why didn’t the development team write a self-contained story instead of requiring players to experience an entirely separate, two hour long film in order to get the most out of the game?” I’m all for additional material that expand on a game’s story, but if it’s practically required viewing, then something has gone terribly wrong.
Previous Final Fantasy games have given us time to understand more than just the characters, so by the end of each mainline entry, we grow to appreciate the world they inhabit. Even if you don’t connect with the narrative of the game, you are given plenty of detail about its setting. FFXV only gave us a small piece of a much bigger puzzle, one that told us all we needed to know about the key players, but not about the board they were playing on.
This ties in directly with the second part, the story itself, which does little to help correct the problems previously stated. There were several scenes during the later stages of the game that seemed to have some emotional weight to them, or at least the game wanted me to believe they did, but I was only left confused. Much of the supporting cast has no motivation, or at least any that seemed apparent to me, thus making it hard for me to care about, or understand, their actions.
That isn’t entirely true of Ardyn, FFXV’s central villain, who reminded me of one of the greats: Kefka from Final Fantasy VI. He was smarmy, devious, and surprisingly fleshed out despite not being featured in the game as much as he should have been. Once I finally understood his motivation and how it tied into the main arc of the story, it gave me more to appreciate, even if didn’t fix most of my complaints with the muddled narrative.
The final piece of the puzzle is the main cast, which is what made the adventure worthwhile. Even if I didn’t learn much about their past throughout the course of my adventure, I adored those four characters and their relationship. They turned what may have been a fun, but otherwise mundane journey into one worth caring about. I loved heading out on the road, completing quests, exploring dungeons, and getting invested in the bond they had as friends. By the end of the game, I truly appreciated just how much I connected with the main four despite the disjointed central story that pushed them along.
There’s a reason I spent a long time exploring the open world and doing as much as I could before progressing the story. The majority of the game’s standout moments would not have succeeded if the main cast didn’t work as well as they did. At times, the adventure with Noctis’ and his friends seems at odds with the main themes, and that feeling of disconnect never quite goes away, even after the credits roll.
Once everything was laid out for the final chapter, I began to appreciate what the game was attempting to do, but it was too little too late. One particular post-credits cutscene did a fantastic job of saying very little, which in turn told you everything you needed to know about the central relationship in the game. Even if I still didn’t fully understand many aspects of the story, the journey of Prince Noctis and his three companions had reached its climax in a more personal way than I was expecting.
It made me realize that Final Fantasy XV is two games in one. It’s grand tale about two kingdoms at war while also being a personal little narrative about four friends on a road trip who are inevitably drawn into a conflict much bigger than themselves, thus putting their bond to the test. The first part feels very much like a Final Fantasy game, with characters trying to save the world from an evil destroying the world they know and love. The second, however, is a well-worn tale of friendship and the trials those friends must experience in order to preserve what is most important to them, featuring a main character who has to come to terms with his purpose in life. Two sides of the same coin, but they conflict with each other in ways that water down the overall experience.
Because this is a Final Fantasy game with a gigantic budget and fan expectations that were almost impossible to meet, I doubt we would have ever gotten the story I think this game deserved. I’m talking about the one we only see bits and pieces of, but is forcibly overshadowed by a lumbering mess of a narrative. When those elements of the “second” story shine, they highlight the game’s strengths and the reasons I love it. But when the game focuses on the bigger picture, giving us only small glimpses of a larger story and expects us to play along, it falls flat and does little to recover.
When I said earlier that this feels lacking as a Final Fantasy game, it’s mostly due to how incompetently it handles the story its trying to tell. But if it gave the best part of the story more room to breathe, it might have not only succeeded as a great role-playing game, but a standout title in a franchise that has become bloated in recent years.
Do Final Fantasy games have the best stories around? Not always, no, but they are often complete packages, ones that have a clear vision and don’t feel compromised. They allow you to explore a lived in world and give you plenty of reasons to come back for more. Final Fantasy XV does this too, successfully even, but only on a small scale. Once we zoom out to see the bigger picture, we also see just how much the expectations brought in by a name can harm something wonderful.
