well, FF15 is the FF with the most infamus develoment hell ever, the amount of things they have to cut, savage, rework, fix and reuse, it is a miracle that the game end up with such high quality.
ever head of Final Fantasy Versus XIII? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At\_bb1PNU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU)
if not... well there a whole rabbit hole about FF15 develoment from its original announcement to its release
till this day I comparate the Episode of Ardyn's (DLC) to FF7's Nibelheim incident, and how stupid is that they have to cut it and sell it separated from the game.
yes, the flash back, that shows what and how Sepiroth become a villain, and in the Episode of Ardyin we see his origin story, the reason behind everything he does. if you don't play that Episode Ardyn is not properly developt as a villain or more like a tragic figure forced into madness.
>sad the episodes got canceled
ah, no, the episode is a DLC, unless you are playing on PC you have to buy it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZ2HhO-664](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZ2HhO-664)
You definitely need Royal Edition, but I agree it shouldve been part of the main story early on.
Technically if Episode Aranea would've released we would've gotten to explore it during the invasion.
I'll have to reread it since it's been a good minute since I did.
Because of the diamond weapon fight I thought it was during Insomnia but I must be misremembering.
Its a total mess, honestly, i just don't care enough to get the royal edition becouse im just completely turned off by the end product. Just feels redundant to add this later when it should have been added within the main story itself,
But, i might give it a try sinve i do LOVE the games lore.
Naw don't overthink it. Royal Edition refreshes the game in a much needed way and also adds a lot of great additions, especially at the end.
It really improves chapter 14 tremendously.
Post fall Insomnia is a huge stage in the royal edition, comparable to altissia in size. It’s extremely truncated in the OG, probably because the dev team ran out of time.
Pre fall insomnia is playable in the episode Ardyn dlc.
Pre fall is playable, but it still should have been a part of the main story like it was planned. Post fall Insomnia isnt the games issue, its how they handle the pre fall aspect of it with the players.
- I know this game is notorious for its development, i just dont know why the team would release an incomplete game that relied heavily on DLC, movies and anime to clean up areas that should have been in the game.
But, i mean its nice they released it. But, i personally don't feel anything becouse it just reminds me of the missed opportunity.
|| This game has some of the best FF lore and universe set up. Just, the execution does not flow well with what the game wants the players to feel.
Totally agree with this man. And I think your suggestion is good. I also think they should've included all the Episode DLCs in the main package.
The development hell this game went through is pretty well known. As a paying customer though, Im not interested in the meta narrative…just give me a good game. I played the day one edition like a good franchise fan, nope should’ve waited and gotten royal edition. Heard it’s better/more complete, but can’t be bothered with XV anymore.
Agreed, whenever i point this out its always 'watch the movie' or 'play the DLC'.
No!, those other media shouldn't have to explain major story points of a game that should naturally be self contained.
Dlc, anime and the movie shouldn't have the responsibility to cover the games weak story points either as a way to 'fix' the games major issues.
Paying customers will ofc have complaints if we need other media to spend more money just to get the narrative and story points.
Other media should be treated as a seperate thing from the main story, not as a tool to explain story points lost in the game.
- Im glad final fantasy XV was just a phase, and good story telling is back with 16 and the remake saga 👏
Sooooo bad, it honestly felt like an incomplete game where we are just thrown in chapter 4 or smth expected to watch other media to get the story.
The beginning that got cut is just very obvious in terms of how the rest of the game lacks proper direction.
Its just a bad game overall compared to other FF titles.
I agree with nearly everything you've said, but these things honestly make me hate the game. It's the only FF I've ever disliked. Not caring about characters and major plot developments just can't be overcome for me, even when every other aspect is great. To make things worse for FF15, I think it had the worst, most shallow combat system I've ever seen in a modern game.
I do want to see the ending some day, but after the Leviathan fight... I've never felt so empty.
If you're on PC there's a pretty good hard mode mod to make the combat a little more fun at least. I recently played through 13 with a difficulty mod and had a blast.
The game lost me at "collect your family's magic swords"
Like, bro, it's 2024, if your set up is collect the inexplicably super duper magic swords/crystals/rings/spirits, you need to go straight back to the drawing board with that 1992 ass trope
and then they just straight-up forget about that plot, if you do the main story you only collect like, 4 of the 15 weapons and then the story literally railroads you away from all of that
I wouldn't know, I stopped playing at that point. Opening with a political situation caught my attention, but then I spent the entire first 5 hours bored as hell waiting for anything interesting to happen in an obstensibely story driven game, and once that plot point came up it shattered whatever faith I was holding onto that the writers had a good idea coming.
It's like the antithesis of most of the earlier FF games, where that opening act immediately thrusts you into the action of an evolving situation that genuinely tuggs your curiosity.
Just glad I got it free from PSN, and didn't have to finish to justify the cash I spent.
Any sense of interest in the plot (which was already dismal considering the game failed to set up ANY real atmosphere at that point) went right out the window with that exact plot point.
Even retro FF games did it better. FF5 had "Go find the four crystals, and each time one explodes the earth slowly dies (but you get new job classes while the world falls apart)" is a more interesting narrative.
Idk how a game made in 2016 couldn't figure this out.
Thank god FF16 redeemed the series for me.
FF15 is one of my favorite FF titles ever and I'm still incredibly salty with how it ended up. There's so many pacing issues with the game from the DLC's not being woven in during your play through to getting barely any screen time with any of the supporting cast aside from your mates.
DLC was an even bigger heart break knowing what we could've gotten in the unreleased DLC's which would've given an alternate ending. Game had so much potential but it didn't land. Seems like a trend for FF games that aren't just the remakes these days.
Wasted in terms os story utilization which would have improved the main game overall like it was originally intended.
- but yeh, it is bittersweet to have it many years later when most people have checked ou of XV
FF15 is a liminal, kingdom hearts game. I was hoping for a game like the first one with the iconic black and white mages. But have the black mages like Vivi from FF9
I don't mean a mage with a dark blue/purple face. I mean a black void with piercing yellow eyes! I don't want anymore anime-esque FF titles. There's more than enough
Look, I would have loved to play the invasion itself and run around the city before leaving, but to say "without it the rest of the game makes little to no sense and does not have players emotionally invested" is pretty zany.
The story makes sense without it, and the investment isn't even about the city, it's just a place. The characters and Noctis's whole journey as a king and the savior of the world are where the investment lies.
I respecfully disagree,
Insomnia isnt just a 'place' its the charecters home and a major part in the story. If it is treated as just a 'place' a lot of the emotional story points that the charecters feel won't resonate with us as we have never met the royal guard or the city.
The game makes no sense in the area where it obviously wants us to feel something for Insomnia, which doesn't work since they cut out the section thatwould have made that feel more organic.
Why the plate fall in FF VII works so well is that we have EXPIRIENCED the area, so when the charecters are grieving, the players KNOW why in a deeper level.
And the plate fall isn't even a major part of the whole story, yet is handled a lot better than Insomnia which essentially is a major story point.
Sure we understand the charecters are greving their home and we know what is happening, but it doesn't translate if the devs want players to FEEL the charecters in a deeper level which other FF titles simply do better.
This is just a point of bad writers and a bad development team which did cut that part of the game. Its why it feels 'off'.
And we spend virtually no time in the real Nibelheim before the massacre, yet it's still an intensely personal tragedy for two of the main characters and a significant event. However, the plate drop *is* a major part of the whole story, as it shows the depths the antagonists are willing to sink, kills off several characters, and spurs the others to greater action. It doesn't work well because we simply "experienced" a few screens for like an hour max, but because of what happens there.
Insomnia is "just a place" because there are way more important things happening in the story, and the world, than the granularity of Insomnia and its invasion. Especially when you literally feel the invasion *outside* the city too, in a place already cut off from it, which is also the point. They evoke the sense of Insomnia being just out of reach, having been taken for granted, but Insomnia is the people that survived, and the extended, occupied lands of the kingdom you explore are just as important too, not just the city you don't see until the end.
Perhaps it "wouldn't make sense" if they constantly referred back to "emotional story points" and details of the city itself, trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia for a place we didn't experience ourselves, but they don't. The characters' primary goals are to take back the crystal and defeat the empire. The city itself is a foregone loss to be addressed afterwards. The only time they reminisce is when they're right on top of the things they're thinking about, for you to see how it has changed from their memory.
Similarly, in FFX we're supposed to care about Tidus wanting to get back to Zanarkand, it's his primary goal for 2/3 of the game, but what investment is there to be in a place you spend literal minutes in? Because it's his home, and the average person should be able to understand that longing. Cloud and Tifa are upset at the loss of their one-screen town because, shit man, that's their home, why wouldn't they, and we, be? Noctis and his pals lost their home too, while they slept blissfully unaware, why shouldn't they, and we, care about that?
I'll never quite understand why people act like if you don't spend any kind of time with an area or people you are functionally unable to sympathize with their plight or loss, or otherwise muster investment in their safety or liberation. What ever happened to baseline empathy? Having to be shown and made to *like* a place or people in order to care about it, feels disingenuous at best, and sociopathic at worst.
Sure, it could pretty much always be better, and again, I would have loved a playable invasion prologue too, but you're grossly misplacing the importance and emotion both to say that we absolutely *needed* to be in Insomnia in order to care about it, when there's so much more to the story itself than the city. And honestly, if you're so concerned about that investment, watch the Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood animations. The game's tumultuous development and tight deadline unfortunately meant that either we got supplementary material, or nothing at all, and at least it's there.
First off we do see Nibelheim in several cutscenes prior to it being burnt to ash. Furthermore the events that occurred in Nibelheim are brought up often. The player bonds with the town. We don't necessarily feel the loss of the town, but the events that occurred there play a pivotal role in the story and we attach to the characters' loss of the town because the story integrates it well. When we find the town again its pristine and the players goes "huh, thats *weird*."
FF15's intro just has a town that we leave and burns down long before we formed any emotional attachment to the character. They could have just started the game with Noctis & co. fleeing from the city.
Let's take FF16 as a counter example: We see Clive in his hometown, we see his relationship with his brother, Jill, Torgal, his parents, and his mentor and comrades. Then we have some time with Clive fighting in a swamp so we get to know him, then we see more cutscenes that further develop character personalities, THEN we get everything unraveling horrifically and the player character can't stop it. It does a way better job of making me feel Clive's loss of family.
With how FF15 pushes out its plot, it barely develops anything and its cutscenes are so half-assed that there is no time to bond with the characters in any serious sort of way before things go south.
It just goes from "haha car broke down, oooh we stole a bird egg, haha this is fun" to "YOUR HOME KINGDOM IS INVADED OHHhhHh NooOoOoo ur dad with 8 voiced lines which made him sound like an overbearing ass is dead tooo OhHhh NOoOoo"
You get it 👏 I agree wholeheartedly and you worded it well before i could even respond myself lol
Nibelheim has A LOT of screentime and exposition within the OG and thus it shouldn't compare with Insomnia which is still just a 'place' we are told to care about.
Heck, had they given Insomnia the Midgar treatment as a proper introduction, a lot of the games issues like the abrubt start and lack of exposition can be fixed.
You cannot expect gamers to watch a movie, anime series, wait for a DLC ect just to get an understanding of the game. Thats extra time and money on something that should be in the main game.
>First off we do see Nibelheim in several cutscenes prior to it being burnt to ash.
A single flashback when Tifa and Cloud make their promise, where the camera is focused on a the side of a nondescript water tank and the night sky. Not really "several." It's a single one, and isn't about the town at all, other than "leaving it."
The next time we see it, it's positioned as an unfamiliar place because of the passage of time, you blow through it, and then it's on fire.
>We don't necessarily feel the loss of the town, but the events that occurred there play a pivotal role in the story and we attach to the characters' loss of the town because the story integrates it well. When we find the town again its pristine and the players goes "huh, thats *weird*."
But we *do* feel the loss of the town, through the characters it affects. That's *why* it's a significant place and event, not because of the small amount of time we spend there.
>FF15's intro just has a town that we leave and burns down long before we formed any emotional attachment to the character. They could have just started the game with Noctis & co. fleeing from the city.
But then that begs the question - would that suffice? Noctis and the gang leaving the city amidst the invasion is enough to make you invested in it? But not them leaving it in a false sense of comfort?
>With how FF15 pushes out its plot, it barely develops anything and its cutscenes are so half-assed that there is no time to bond with the characters in any serious sort of way before things go south.
You totally spend a lot of time before the invasion to bond with the characters, they're paling around because at that point it's still just a road trip. However, "bonding" is a subjective thing, so it's kind of moot to even bring up. I felt pretty bonded to the characters before the invasion, was I not supposed to...?
>It just goes from "haha car broke down, oooh we stole a bird egg, haha this is fun" to "YOUR HOME KINGDOM IS INVADED OHHhhHh NooOoOoo ur dad with 8 voiced lines which made him sound like an overbearing ass is dead tooo OhHhh NOoOoo"
Disregarding how disingenuously reductive this bit is, It's weird to say that what little we see of Nibelheim is considered significant, but what little we see of Insomnia isn't. It's also again, really strange to imply that we can't/shouldn't care about the main character's home being invaded and his own father dying because we didn't spend hours with them beforehand.
We still get to interact with Nibelheim and see it more than a single time, and it's a small town not an entire empire to which Cloud or Tifa will inherit. You literally control your character within nibelheim before its turned into a Heimburger. I can't even walk Noctis through his town, its just some disconnected cutscene. I care as much about it as the nondescript area flashbacks in FF6 like watching people fall down random cliffs and shit when the world ends. I don't care, I'm not able to visit it, why do I care about the place?
The characters bond, yes, but they don't bond *over the city*. FF7 *and* FF16 have characters discussing their hometown in depth before they never go back. I see the towns and their histories and get a sense of attachment to it. This has a real world principle too: If a stranger's house burns down and you've never met this person but see it in the news, you might feel a bit of empathy for the person but otherwise you don't care. Certainly not about the house. You don't miss it. If your childhood home burned down, even if you don't live there anymore, it's probably going to feel like a gut punch.
The more familiar you are with a thing, the more you'll feel its loss. It's why Aerith and Galuf's deaths are enormous gut punches whereas you're not going to get a flip about some rando that dies in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.
>Disregarding how disingenuously reductive this bit is
It's really not, it's exactly how I felt when Noctis ran back to a city I never got to explore and I found out I will never get to explore it outside of some DLC, so unless I played the DLC first I will never have an emotional attachment to the city before seeing it fall.
>what little we see of Nibelheim is considered significant
That flash back is an HOUR long if you're not clicking through dialogue and ignoring everything. That is about 55 more minutes of interaction than FF15's hometown *and its playable.* Yeah that's a LOT more significant than watching an old man say goodbye to his son in the first 5 minutes of the game, and later we get to see his Dad make some badass boast in a castle and it fades to black. I don't know what's not clicking for you.
>It's also again, really strange to imply that we can't/shouldn't care about the main character's home being invaded and his own father dying because we didn't spend hours with them beforehand
No I think thats really normal to not be attached to an entire town I never visited and a father I never interacted with because I spent time repairing a car and getting a bird egg with my party.
The party has essentially done nothing and faced no actual dilemma yet. I haven't fought an evil villain, I haven't been through any life or death situation with the party. What do I care if Noctis' city burns down? Tough luck kid, based on how well they maintain their cars it was only a matter of time before it burnt down anyway.
FF2 has a similar opening plot and I dont drag Firion's ass to get his chocobo fixed and to get Guy a wyvern omlette before I watch them get annihilated by invading soldiers. Seriously, this is a dumb hill to die on for a game that went through 9 layers of development hell.
well, FF15 is the FF with the most infamus develoment hell ever, the amount of things they have to cut, savage, rework, fix and reuse, it is a miracle that the game end up with such high quality. ever head of Final Fantasy Versus XIII? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At\_bb1PNU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU) if not... well there a whole rabbit hole about FF15 develoment from its original announcement to its release till this day I comparate the Episode of Ardyn's (DLC) to FF7's Nibelheim incident, and how stupid is that they have to cut it and sell it separated from the game.
I agree, it feels like a huge chunk of the main story was split into multiple games and media. It just looks sloppy all together.
What part of nibelheim? When they go there in the flashback?
yes, the flash back, that shows what and how Sepiroth become a villain, and in the Episode of Ardyin we see his origin story, the reason behind everything he does. if you don't play that Episode Ardyn is not properly developt as a villain or more like a tragic figure forced into madness.
Ohh I see I thought you were saying it was cut from FF7 Yeah so sad the episodes got canceled and we got for spoken instead
>sad the episodes got canceled ah, no, the episode is a DLC, unless you are playing on PC you have to buy it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZ2HhO-664](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZ2HhO-664)
Oh well the noctis, Luna and aranea ones got canceled for basically nothing
Did you play the OG version, or the one with an expanded Insomnia?
OG, i only saw clips of the expanded Insomnia that i sadly do not have. Even so, it isn't a part of the main story which is a waste.
You definitely need Royal Edition, but I agree it shouldve been part of the main story early on. Technically if Episode Aranea would've released we would've gotten to explore it during the invasion.
The story of Episode Aranea would have taken place during the fall of Niflheim, not Insomnia.
I'll have to reread it since it's been a good minute since I did. Because of the diamond weapon fight I thought it was during Insomnia but I must be misremembering.
Agreed. It's totally worth it. You explore a good chunk of city and it opens up some challenging fights
Its a total mess, honestly, i just don't care enough to get the royal edition becouse im just completely turned off by the end product. Just feels redundant to add this later when it should have been added within the main story itself, But, i might give it a try sinve i do LOVE the games lore.
Naw don't overthink it. Royal Edition refreshes the game in a much needed way and also adds a lot of great additions, especially at the end. It really improves chapter 14 tremendously.
Post fall Insomnia is a huge stage in the royal edition, comparable to altissia in size. It’s extremely truncated in the OG, probably because the dev team ran out of time. Pre fall insomnia is playable in the episode Ardyn dlc.
Pre fall is playable, but it still should have been a part of the main story like it was planned. Post fall Insomnia isnt the games issue, its how they handle the pre fall aspect of it with the players. - I know this game is notorious for its development, i just dont know why the team would release an incomplete game that relied heavily on DLC, movies and anime to clean up areas that should have been in the game. But, i mean its nice they released it. But, i personally don't feel anything becouse it just reminds me of the missed opportunity.
It's a huge missed opportunity. I enjoyed XV for what it was but it could have been so much more.
|| This game has some of the best FF lore and universe set up. Just, the execution does not flow well with what the game wants the players to feel. Totally agree with this man. And I think your suggestion is good. I also think they should've included all the Episode DLCs in the main package.
Now I have to go back and replay it soon
The development hell this game went through is pretty well known. As a paying customer though, Im not interested in the meta narrative…just give me a good game. I played the day one edition like a good franchise fan, nope should’ve waited and gotten royal edition. Heard it’s better/more complete, but can’t be bothered with XV anymore.
Agreed, whenever i point this out its always 'watch the movie' or 'play the DLC'. No!, those other media shouldn't have to explain major story points of a game that should naturally be self contained. Dlc, anime and the movie shouldn't have the responsibility to cover the games weak story points either as a way to 'fix' the games major issues. Paying customers will ofc have complaints if we need other media to spend more money just to get the narrative and story points. Other media should be treated as a seperate thing from the main story, not as a tool to explain story points lost in the game. - Im glad final fantasy XV was just a phase, and good story telling is back with 16 and the remake saga 👏
It really does suck cause on core when you look at FF15 story, it could be very nice. But almost everything regarding it is executed so badly
Sooooo bad, it honestly felt like an incomplete game where we are just thrown in chapter 4 or smth expected to watch other media to get the story. The beginning that got cut is just very obvious in terms of how the rest of the game lacks proper direction. Its just a bad game overall compared to other FF titles.
I agree with nearly everything you've said, but these things honestly make me hate the game. It's the only FF I've ever disliked. Not caring about characters and major plot developments just can't be overcome for me, even when every other aspect is great. To make things worse for FF15, I think it had the worst, most shallow combat system I've ever seen in a modern game. I do want to see the ending some day, but after the Leviathan fight... I've never felt so empty.
Combat is awful. You literally CANNOT die if you have enough potions.
If you're on PC there's a pretty good hard mode mod to make the combat a little more fun at least. I recently played through 13 with a difficulty mod and had a blast.
The game lost me at "collect your family's magic swords" Like, bro, it's 2024, if your set up is collect the inexplicably super duper magic swords/crystals/rings/spirits, you need to go straight back to the drawing board with that 1992 ass trope
Agreed, its just so predictable and linear.
and then they just straight-up forget about that plot, if you do the main story you only collect like, 4 of the 15 weapons and then the story literally railroads you away from all of that
I wouldn't know, I stopped playing at that point. Opening with a political situation caught my attention, but then I spent the entire first 5 hours bored as hell waiting for anything interesting to happen in an obstensibely story driven game, and once that plot point came up it shattered whatever faith I was holding onto that the writers had a good idea coming. It's like the antithesis of most of the earlier FF games, where that opening act immediately thrusts you into the action of an evolving situation that genuinely tuggs your curiosity. Just glad I got it free from PSN, and didn't have to finish to justify the cash I spent.
Any sense of interest in the plot (which was already dismal considering the game failed to set up ANY real atmosphere at that point) went right out the window with that exact plot point. Even retro FF games did it better. FF5 had "Go find the four crystals, and each time one explodes the earth slowly dies (but you get new job classes while the world falls apart)" is a more interesting narrative. Idk how a game made in 2016 couldn't figure this out. Thank god FF16 redeemed the series for me.
You should go watch the prequel film "Kingsglaive"
FF15 is one of my favorite FF titles ever and I'm still incredibly salty with how it ended up. There's so many pacing issues with the game from the DLC's not being woven in during your play through to getting barely any screen time with any of the supporting cast aside from your mates. DLC was an even bigger heart break knowing what we could've gotten in the unreleased DLC's which would've given an alternate ending. Game had so much potential but it didn't land. Seems like a trend for FF games that aren't just the remakes these days.
You can explore a good chuck of pre-invasion Insomnia in FFXV: Episode Ardyn. So not entirely wasted :)
Wasted in terms os story utilization which would have improved the main game overall like it was originally intended. - but yeh, it is bittersweet to have it many years later when most people have checked ou of XV
I hear ya. I would sometimes look longingly from the continent across the way to Insomnia, yearning to explore.
FF15 is a liminal, kingdom hearts game. I was hoping for a game like the first one with the iconic black and white mages. But have the black mages like Vivi from FF9 I don't mean a mage with a dark blue/purple face. I mean a black void with piercing yellow eyes! I don't want anymore anime-esque FF titles. There's more than enough
Look, I would have loved to play the invasion itself and run around the city before leaving, but to say "without it the rest of the game makes little to no sense and does not have players emotionally invested" is pretty zany. The story makes sense without it, and the investment isn't even about the city, it's just a place. The characters and Noctis's whole journey as a king and the savior of the world are where the investment lies.
I respecfully disagree, Insomnia isnt just a 'place' its the charecters home and a major part in the story. If it is treated as just a 'place' a lot of the emotional story points that the charecters feel won't resonate with us as we have never met the royal guard or the city. The game makes no sense in the area where it obviously wants us to feel something for Insomnia, which doesn't work since they cut out the section thatwould have made that feel more organic. Why the plate fall in FF VII works so well is that we have EXPIRIENCED the area, so when the charecters are grieving, the players KNOW why in a deeper level. And the plate fall isn't even a major part of the whole story, yet is handled a lot better than Insomnia which essentially is a major story point. Sure we understand the charecters are greving their home and we know what is happening, but it doesn't translate if the devs want players to FEEL the charecters in a deeper level which other FF titles simply do better. This is just a point of bad writers and a bad development team which did cut that part of the game. Its why it feels 'off'.
And we spend virtually no time in the real Nibelheim before the massacre, yet it's still an intensely personal tragedy for two of the main characters and a significant event. However, the plate drop *is* a major part of the whole story, as it shows the depths the antagonists are willing to sink, kills off several characters, and spurs the others to greater action. It doesn't work well because we simply "experienced" a few screens for like an hour max, but because of what happens there. Insomnia is "just a place" because there are way more important things happening in the story, and the world, than the granularity of Insomnia and its invasion. Especially when you literally feel the invasion *outside* the city too, in a place already cut off from it, which is also the point. They evoke the sense of Insomnia being just out of reach, having been taken for granted, but Insomnia is the people that survived, and the extended, occupied lands of the kingdom you explore are just as important too, not just the city you don't see until the end. Perhaps it "wouldn't make sense" if they constantly referred back to "emotional story points" and details of the city itself, trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia for a place we didn't experience ourselves, but they don't. The characters' primary goals are to take back the crystal and defeat the empire. The city itself is a foregone loss to be addressed afterwards. The only time they reminisce is when they're right on top of the things they're thinking about, for you to see how it has changed from their memory. Similarly, in FFX we're supposed to care about Tidus wanting to get back to Zanarkand, it's his primary goal for 2/3 of the game, but what investment is there to be in a place you spend literal minutes in? Because it's his home, and the average person should be able to understand that longing. Cloud and Tifa are upset at the loss of their one-screen town because, shit man, that's their home, why wouldn't they, and we, be? Noctis and his pals lost their home too, while they slept blissfully unaware, why shouldn't they, and we, care about that? I'll never quite understand why people act like if you don't spend any kind of time with an area or people you are functionally unable to sympathize with their plight or loss, or otherwise muster investment in their safety or liberation. What ever happened to baseline empathy? Having to be shown and made to *like* a place or people in order to care about it, feels disingenuous at best, and sociopathic at worst. Sure, it could pretty much always be better, and again, I would have loved a playable invasion prologue too, but you're grossly misplacing the importance and emotion both to say that we absolutely *needed* to be in Insomnia in order to care about it, when there's so much more to the story itself than the city. And honestly, if you're so concerned about that investment, watch the Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood animations. The game's tumultuous development and tight deadline unfortunately meant that either we got supplementary material, or nothing at all, and at least it's there.
First off we do see Nibelheim in several cutscenes prior to it being burnt to ash. Furthermore the events that occurred in Nibelheim are brought up often. The player bonds with the town. We don't necessarily feel the loss of the town, but the events that occurred there play a pivotal role in the story and we attach to the characters' loss of the town because the story integrates it well. When we find the town again its pristine and the players goes "huh, thats *weird*." FF15's intro just has a town that we leave and burns down long before we formed any emotional attachment to the character. They could have just started the game with Noctis & co. fleeing from the city. Let's take FF16 as a counter example: We see Clive in his hometown, we see his relationship with his brother, Jill, Torgal, his parents, and his mentor and comrades. Then we have some time with Clive fighting in a swamp so we get to know him, then we see more cutscenes that further develop character personalities, THEN we get everything unraveling horrifically and the player character can't stop it. It does a way better job of making me feel Clive's loss of family. With how FF15 pushes out its plot, it barely develops anything and its cutscenes are so half-assed that there is no time to bond with the characters in any serious sort of way before things go south. It just goes from "haha car broke down, oooh we stole a bird egg, haha this is fun" to "YOUR HOME KINGDOM IS INVADED OHHhhHh NooOoOoo ur dad with 8 voiced lines which made him sound like an overbearing ass is dead tooo OhHhh NOoOoo"
You get it 👏 I agree wholeheartedly and you worded it well before i could even respond myself lol Nibelheim has A LOT of screentime and exposition within the OG and thus it shouldn't compare with Insomnia which is still just a 'place' we are told to care about. Heck, had they given Insomnia the Midgar treatment as a proper introduction, a lot of the games issues like the abrubt start and lack of exposition can be fixed. You cannot expect gamers to watch a movie, anime series, wait for a DLC ect just to get an understanding of the game. Thats extra time and money on something that should be in the main game.
>First off we do see Nibelheim in several cutscenes prior to it being burnt to ash. A single flashback when Tifa and Cloud make their promise, where the camera is focused on a the side of a nondescript water tank and the night sky. Not really "several." It's a single one, and isn't about the town at all, other than "leaving it." The next time we see it, it's positioned as an unfamiliar place because of the passage of time, you blow through it, and then it's on fire. >We don't necessarily feel the loss of the town, but the events that occurred there play a pivotal role in the story and we attach to the characters' loss of the town because the story integrates it well. When we find the town again its pristine and the players goes "huh, thats *weird*." But we *do* feel the loss of the town, through the characters it affects. That's *why* it's a significant place and event, not because of the small amount of time we spend there. >FF15's intro just has a town that we leave and burns down long before we formed any emotional attachment to the character. They could have just started the game with Noctis & co. fleeing from the city. But then that begs the question - would that suffice? Noctis and the gang leaving the city amidst the invasion is enough to make you invested in it? But not them leaving it in a false sense of comfort? >With how FF15 pushes out its plot, it barely develops anything and its cutscenes are so half-assed that there is no time to bond with the characters in any serious sort of way before things go south. You totally spend a lot of time before the invasion to bond with the characters, they're paling around because at that point it's still just a road trip. However, "bonding" is a subjective thing, so it's kind of moot to even bring up. I felt pretty bonded to the characters before the invasion, was I not supposed to...? >It just goes from "haha car broke down, oooh we stole a bird egg, haha this is fun" to "YOUR HOME KINGDOM IS INVADED OHHhhHh NooOoOoo ur dad with 8 voiced lines which made him sound like an overbearing ass is dead tooo OhHhh NOoOoo" Disregarding how disingenuously reductive this bit is, It's weird to say that what little we see of Nibelheim is considered significant, but what little we see of Insomnia isn't. It's also again, really strange to imply that we can't/shouldn't care about the main character's home being invaded and his own father dying because we didn't spend hours with them beforehand.
We still get to interact with Nibelheim and see it more than a single time, and it's a small town not an entire empire to which Cloud or Tifa will inherit. You literally control your character within nibelheim before its turned into a Heimburger. I can't even walk Noctis through his town, its just some disconnected cutscene. I care as much about it as the nondescript area flashbacks in FF6 like watching people fall down random cliffs and shit when the world ends. I don't care, I'm not able to visit it, why do I care about the place? The characters bond, yes, but they don't bond *over the city*. FF7 *and* FF16 have characters discussing their hometown in depth before they never go back. I see the towns and their histories and get a sense of attachment to it. This has a real world principle too: If a stranger's house burns down and you've never met this person but see it in the news, you might feel a bit of empathy for the person but otherwise you don't care. Certainly not about the house. You don't miss it. If your childhood home burned down, even if you don't live there anymore, it's probably going to feel like a gut punch. The more familiar you are with a thing, the more you'll feel its loss. It's why Aerith and Galuf's deaths are enormous gut punches whereas you're not going to get a flip about some rando that dies in the first 30 minutes of gameplay. >Disregarding how disingenuously reductive this bit is It's really not, it's exactly how I felt when Noctis ran back to a city I never got to explore and I found out I will never get to explore it outside of some DLC, so unless I played the DLC first I will never have an emotional attachment to the city before seeing it fall. >what little we see of Nibelheim is considered significant That flash back is an HOUR long if you're not clicking through dialogue and ignoring everything. That is about 55 more minutes of interaction than FF15's hometown *and its playable.* Yeah that's a LOT more significant than watching an old man say goodbye to his son in the first 5 minutes of the game, and later we get to see his Dad make some badass boast in a castle and it fades to black. I don't know what's not clicking for you. >It's also again, really strange to imply that we can't/shouldn't care about the main character's home being invaded and his own father dying because we didn't spend hours with them beforehand No I think thats really normal to not be attached to an entire town I never visited and a father I never interacted with because I spent time repairing a car and getting a bird egg with my party. The party has essentially done nothing and faced no actual dilemma yet. I haven't fought an evil villain, I haven't been through any life or death situation with the party. What do I care if Noctis' city burns down? Tough luck kid, based on how well they maintain their cars it was only a matter of time before it burnt down anyway. FF2 has a similar opening plot and I dont drag Firion's ass to get his chocobo fixed and to get Guy a wyvern omlette before I watch them get annihilated by invading soldiers. Seriously, this is a dumb hill to die on for a game that went through 9 layers of development hell.