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Have You Played… Final Fantasy XV?Final Fantasy roadtrip
Final Fantasy roadtrip
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Square Enix
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Square Enix
When I think back to the launch ofFinal Fantasy XVback in 2016, I still can’t quite believe that Square Enix managed to get away with it all. Everyone might be kicking off now about separating theFinal Fantasy VII Remakeinto multiple who-knows-how-many parts, but at least we know (hopefully) that they’re all going to be actual games. If you wanted to understand what the heck was going on inFinal Fantasy XV, you had to watch a 110 minute CG movie called Kingsglaive first, then a five-part anime series called Brotherhood.
There was also an entirely separate (albeit promotional) game detailing the life and fun adventure times of the main character’s dad called A King’s Tale, and a real-life version of thein-gameminigame, Justice Monsters Five. You didn’t need to play the last two to understand the story, but man alive, what a mad old set of affairs, eh? And that’s before we get to the wholeDLC debacle.
It’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t fly now, but I still kind of admire them for doing it all the same. Apparently, the director Hajime Tabata said he created the “Final Fantasy XV Universe” to avoid what happened withFinal Fantasy XIII, where the story ended up getting split over multiple games. Personally, I would probably have preferred a Final Fantasy XV-2, so to speak, if only because it might have meant the game’s ending actually got finished properly rather than being one giant corridor. I mean, yes, they definitely succeeded in not making it like Final Fantasy XIII. If anything, it was the exact opposite - all lovely and open world at the start, and then two thirds of the way through it puts the blinkers on in a desperate race toward the finishing line.
And yet, for all its immense flaws, I still kinda love it. It has issues, sure, but whatFinal Fantasygamedoesn’t? (The answer isFinal Fantasy VIII, of course, which we all know deep down is thebest Final Fantasy gameof all time). I love the fact, for instance, that this is ultimately a game about a stag party that gets wildly out of hand. Noctis, you see, is on a quest to get married. His childhood love (and now sagely oracle) Lunafreya is waiting for him in the Venetian-inspired town of Altissia across the sea, and their wedding (if you watched the film) is going to be the one thing that unites the world in peace.
Sure, it’s a bonkers game when you sit back and take it all in at once, but there’s just something about it that still makes me smile even now. It’s a game of brilliant vignettes if nothing else. It may not make for a particularly coherent whole, but as that old saying goes, “It’s the journey, not the destination, that truly counts.”
