Just How Much Content Should Be Added For the Game to Feel Complete?

[Jubileus]

To this day, i'll never understand how some people expected Insomnia to be fully explorable, despite main story circumstances preventing that even during the era of Versus XIII (much less Nifilheim).

Thought wanting an explorable take of it, i'm fine with.

I don't understand either tbh.

Like you said, even back then Insomnia was a war zone and not a place we could explore peacefully at our leisure.

It's an interesting looking city for sure, but it doesn't fit into the main narrative like you mentioned.

The only route is making Insomnia explorable as extra content, not a part of the main narrative before the end game.

Adding it into the main narrative would lessen the impact of the player arriving in Insomnia for the first time after 10 years.

 

[Nova]

No Nomura said FFXV was to have multiple direct sequels

Yes i know. I'm referring to your assuration of the possibility of them doing a trilogy remake either way, i mentioned the 4chan leak due to it being the only "source" of Versus XV's rumoured inception.

 

[Hey Everyone]

As fun as that would be, I think the movie was self contained enough in that it doesn't need a game based on it.

Imo the time and resources would be better spent improving the base game and the upcoming DLC.

It's a fun idea though. Perhaps they can add in diamond weapon in the base game?

I do recall them saying they're gonna add in more monsters and hunts.

Idk I think Square might want to milk FFXV a bit more by creating games out of it idkI think a Kingslaive game would also tell a better story than the movie tbh being able to have it over a 40 hour game instead of a 2 hour movie granted this will be after the game patches and PC Version

 

[Hey Everyone]

Yes i know. I'm referring to your assuration of the possibility of them doing a trilogy remake either way, i mentioned the 4chan leak due to it being the only "source" of Versus XV's rumoured inception.

I don't really have any assurance of a trilogy, to me that's the only way a Versus XV would make sense in making milking three games out of it for 60 dollars as opposed to having two versions of a game. To me if they just made Final Fantasy XV Versus XIII edition I would facepalm so hard, my hand would be engraved in my face.

 

[Jubileus]

Idk I think Square might want to milk FFXV a bit more by creating games out of it idkI think a Kingslaive game would also tell a better story than the movie tbh being able to have it over a 40 hour game instead of a 2 hour movie granted this will be after the game patches and PC Version

Square milking FFXV is a real possibility, sure. That depends on reception of the DLC episodes and sales figures.

A game for Kingsglaive? Hmm well if it's a new story on the Glaives and not a retelling of the film in a game format it'd be ok.

The events in the movie wouldn't translate well into a game. The only playable part would be the last 3/4 of the film.

To get back on track with the thread topic, adding in diamond weapon and possibly ultros would be a fun idea though. That's about all from Kingsglaive that should be transferred over into game format but that's just my opinion of course.

 

[Hey Everyone]

Square milking FFXV is a real possibility, sure. That depends on reception of the DLC episodes and sales figures.

A game for Kingsglaive? Hmm well if it's a new story on the Glaives and not a retelling of the film in a game format it'd be ok.

The events in the movie wouldn't translate well into a game. The only playable part would be the last 3/4 of the film.

To get back on track with the thread topic, adding in diamond weapon and possibly ultros would be a fun idea though. That's about all from Kingsglaive that should be transferred over into game format but that's just my opinion of course.

To be really honest when I first heard about the Versus XV rumor especially from 4chan I thought it was BS(the rumor included the Kingslaive game BTW), but when you think about it Crystal tools(Which was another engine Square had troubles with hell it's the reason Luminous happened in the first place they tried to make FF Versus XIII with Crystal tools and it couldn't do it and possibly ps3 limitations) they got 5 games out of it FFXIII, XIII-2, LR:FFXIII, Dragon Quest, and FFXIV 1.0, I don't see them just putting the world of FFXV down and moving forward to FFXVI especially if they reach that 10 million units which is looking pretty likely at this point I mean 5 million sales is it including download sales, hell Tabata said he wants to recreate the game for PC, making a superior version of FFXV for it.
Also considering what they do to their more successful FF games they give them sequels, FFX very successful got a sequel, and might even get a FFX-3, FFXIII regardless of what you think of it got 2 sequels, honestly even if FFXV got 8 million lifetime sales, I could see Square not only trying to get a prequel out(Kingslaive game), but they may even try to make Versus XV sorta like how FF Type-0 was a pocket dimension alternate universe to FFXIII, possibly the same thing could happen with a Versus XV, but instead it has more connections to the FNC like fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cie'th, maybe has Stella instead of Luna(don't really care tbh), and Versus XV could be the epic that Nomura wanted to create this (probably) trilogy of games(using sets assets from FFXV) starring the Chocobros possibly after a Kingslaive game?(Don't know how that would work because if they would want to make it more like Versus then Luna's going to be gone from the story and Stella would return(granted I'm not too sure if they will use Stella at this point in time), and they will probably have to change it to a new story). Hell even the Versus XV world in KH3 seems plausible, but only as DLC, not as a main world in the game that wouldn't happen, but considering KH3 is releasing on platforms that have an install base more use to DLC, I could see it happening I mean hell we have Sora in World of Final Fantasy as DLC, so it's not impossible.

 

[Lulcielid]

Other demands consist of making Tenebrae and Insomnia explorable, which is more difficult to add in since I can't see how they can be added into the main scenario without having to rewrite some stuff around.

Through Noctis dreams that act as flashbacks perhaps?

As in Noctis can dream that he's reliving a pleasant memory of a scenario that involves the bros and can offer deeper insight into their past life in Lucis sounds alright? Doesn't interfere with the main scenario this way.

This reminds me of how FF6 deal with a certain character backstory:

Spoiler

Shadow. You get his backstory by staying in an inn with him in your party and he'll randomly have dreams explaining some of his history.

FFXV could do something similar, have Noctis dreamy flashbacks though how many of them would he have?, in which chapter would you trigger them? and how you would distribute them among all chapters?

 

[Ikkin]

One of the very reasons I am greatly looking forward to the upcoming festival DLC.

Same here.

Good point.

The DLC could probably go more in depth since the setting isn't filled with despair, darkness, and haste like in the game when the gang arrive at Tenebrae.

I'd wager such a DLC would be filled with lore and backstory since Luna had to teach Noctis quite a bit.

I'm ok with this.

Exactly.

The only real issue would be figuring out what the actual gameplay would be, especially since Noct would be in a wheelchair the entire time (he was injured when he got to Tenebrae, and he was still in the wheelchair when Niflheim attacked). I'm thinking it'd be easiest to go with puzzle gameplay of some kind -- maybe go full Ico and have the player control Luna trying to create an accessible path for Noct or something? And if there needs to be a boss fight, maybe they could repurpose the "Calligo attacks Luna" scene to be an initial attempt on Noct's life before the full Tenebrae invasion -- Luna could try to hide him and get shoved around for being uncooperative, Noct could disobey her command to stay hidden and cry out for her, and Regis could show up to drive Calligo off in an actual boss battle.

I loved the tour missions. It would be great if they could add in more.

Huh I never thought about adding in more tours as a way to delve into the guys backstory until now lol.

They seemed like the most logical way to implement that sort of thing to me. Heck, maybe even throw in a couple of Noct-driven tours, like an in-game version of the Marilith fight.

Insomnia is less important to the main story until the very end, I agree.

The thirst and demand for it is real though lol. I'm talking "gimme a lake in the Sahara desert" kinda thirst here lol. Hence why I wrote some ideas on what the team can do if they decide to go down that route

Fair enough. XD

I can see the WoR being a part of the co-op DLC though. It would be a great setting for it imo.

I agree.

How presumptuous of me. My apologies

Not a problem. Happens all the time online. XD

 

[Lulcielid]

The only real issue would be figuring out what the actual gameplay would be, especially since Noct would be in a wheelchair the entire time (he was injured when he got to Tenebrae, and he was still in the wheelchair when Niflheim attacked). I'm thinking it'd be easiest to go with puzzle gameplay of some kind -- maybe go full Ico and have the player control Luna trying to create an accessible path for Noct or something? And if there needs to be a boss fight, maybe they could repurpose the "Calligo attacks Luna" scene to be an initial attempt on Noct's life before the full Tenebrae invasion -- Luna could try to hide him and get shoved around for being uncooperative, Noct could disobey her command to stay hidden and cry out for her, and Regis could show up to drive Calligo off in an actual boss battle.

I was thinking something like you controlling wheelchaired Noctis but have him giving indications/orders/help to move Noctis around or do other stuff (something akin to how The Last Guardian handles the boy and Trico)

 

[Jubileus]

This reminds me of how FF6 deal with a certain character backstory:

Spoiler

Shadow. You get his backstory by staying in an inn with him in your party and he'll randomly have dreams explaining some of his history.

FFXV could do something similar, have Noctis dreamy flashbacks though how many of them would he have?, in which chapter would you trigger them? and how you would distribute them among all chapters?

Haven't played 6 yet but that does sound like a very interesting storytelling method.

Great questions in regards to how many, and when, the dreams could take place.

I'd wager that some could take place randomly while staying at a motel? These would be extra background info and not necessarily story related.

Others, where it is relevant to the mood of what's happening in the game and is tied into the main narrative in some way.

For example right after Ignis goes blind and you camp at the site in the Malboro dungeon, Noctis goes to sleep at camp and he dreams of him sneaking out the Palace late one night with a reluctant Ignis accompanying him out of duty.

Ignis could then go on about how he always loved looking up at the stars and it would be an activity he would enjoy for the rest of his life, as well as watching the sun rise every morning.

Noctis wakes up and it is present day again, and he sees nothing but a blind Ignis before him.

It's a small moment, but a very powerful one.

That's just one example. I could come up with quite a few more thinking back on what I remember from playing the game.

 

[Jubileus]

Thinking about it some more, dreams and tours are a fantastic way to add in extra scenes into the game.

Noctis can dream about Regis saving him from Marilith, taking care of him, and encouraging him as a child, where he then wakes up in the present day and looks at the Carbuncle charm sadly, after the fall of Insomnia of course.

Gladio teaching him to be strong and independent during a training session and never to let his guard down, even when Gladio isn't around right after he leaves the group at Cape Caem.

Luna and Noctis playing as children and talking about their "destinies" some more after receiving Ramuh's blessing.

Small moments but I do believe they strengthen the character's appeal and development for players.

 

[ScienceNonfiction]

This is some of the stuff I'd want to see ideally (NOT saying these are realistic):

• More stuff between waking up 10 years later and going off to the finale. Probably something structured more like the second half of the game than the first half (ie: not fully open). You should definitely have to go find your buddies. Talcott tells you that Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto haven't stuck together for the past 10 years and that they mainly work on their own, yet there they are all together. I guess it's cause Talcott called them, but it makes more sense and would be more fun to have to reunite the gang for one final battle and would allow for more character development for your 4 guys and a bit for the minor characters as well. Heck, it would give us a chance to see all the other characters post-timeskip!
• While I'm talking about that section of the game, I have to say I sure would've liked it if they let you walk into Insomnia over the bridge. The first Final Fantasy game starts with crossing a bridge, and this one, which contains a ton of references to past FF games, should end with crossing one. Not really a big deal obviously, just something I would've enjoyed.
• And I guess while I'm talking about the final area, I need to mention how much I wish there were more to it. The city portion is fine I guess, but I totally thought Ardyn was gonna take them to some wacked-out parallel dimension at some point, in FF tradition. But nope. Also thought that there'd be, y'know, a proper final fight against Ardyn with him transformed into a huge, grotesque monster thing, also in FF tradition. But nope.
• More actual cutscenes since I love cutscenes and there was too much of that "people stand in place while you move the camera around" nonsense.
• There are a bunch of other story things that could be better, but I'll just list the ones that come to mind. A proper rivalry with Ravus would be nice. That means fighting him at least once before he gets all demon-ified.
• Would also really like to fight Aranea more than once, just cause her battle was super fun.
  
• Oh yeah, there should be at least something more to Tenebrae than just seeing it burn off in the distance.
• More backstory stuff for Ardyn and just the world in general, though that much is nearly a given. Also would've liked more flashbacks with Noctis and Luna, Luna and Ravus, Noctis and Regis.
• I'll add more if I think of more, lol.

Anyway, I agree a lot with the op of another thread here, which I'll link to in a second, which altered certain sections of the game to flesh it out more. I also agree that Kingsglaive and Brotherhood were a mistake, even though I enjoyed them. Putting that stuff into separate media turned what could've potentially been one of the best intros to an FF game into the #1 worst intro in any FF, no contest. What that post describes reminds me of Dragon Quest V where you start off as a little kid and go on all these fun adventures and then all of a sudden things take a bad turn and the story really kicks in and just sucker punches you and incites this huge journey. People who have played it will know what I'm talking about.

stealth edit: added link

 

[BladeRunner]

To this day, i'll never understand how some people expected Insomnia to be fully explorable, despite main story circumstances preventing that even during the era of Versus XIII (much less Nifilheim).

This comes off as a big strawman. Like, who exactly even said this? People just expected Insomnia to be playable, like it was supposed to be in the original opening. No one expected GTA style open world city.

 

[Nova]

This comes off as a big strawman.

I don't think you know exactly what defines a strawman.

Like, who exactly even said this? People just expected Insomnia to be playable, like it was supposed to be in the original opening.

I've seen more than plenty of users across other forums complaining about the lack of an explorable Insomnia, there were even people asking questions if it would be an explorable town at all during E3 2016 prior to release which was answered in one of the top picked 16 questions. You'd have to be ignorant to not notice.

No one expected GTA style open world city.

Missing the point of my post by a staggering amount.

 

[BladeRunner]

To this day, i'll never understand how some people expected Insomnia to be fully explorable,

I've seen more than plenty of users in other forums complaining about the lack of an explorable Insomnia, even asking questions about if it could be explorable at all during E3 2016 prior to release which was answered in one of the top picked questions.

You know "explorable" and "fully explorable" have very different implications. When people say they want an explorable Insomnia, they don't mean the whole city. They want some part of the city to be playable like it was shown in the old trailers. You're conflating the two in order to make it sound like people wanted something unreasonable.

 

[Bazztek]

You know "explorable" and "fully explorable" have very different implications. When people say they want an explorable Insomnia, they don't mean the whole city. They want some part of the city to be playable like it was shown in the old trailers. You're conflating the two in order to make it sound like people wanted something unreasonable.

Some parts of it are playable no matter how big or small though, but people were saying they wanted it to be an actual city location that we would explore and not just as a linear battlefield as it was shown in the Versus XIII 2011 trailer or how it was in chapter 14.

 

[Ikkin]

I was thinking something like you controlling wheelchaired Noctis but have him giving indications/orders/help to move Noctis around or do other stuff (something akin to how The Last Guardian handles the boy and Trico)

The Last Guardian might involve soliciting the help of an AI partner, but it's still a puzzle platformer at heart. The ability of the boy to scout ahead and remove obstacles for Trico is critical to that game's core gameplay loop.

Reasonably speaking, Noct as of Tenebrae visit can't jump. He might be able to take a few steps on his own power or move his wheelchair to hold down a switch, but he's never going to be in a position to find solutions that Luna can't see when they're together. Maybe he can use the King's magic to clear a path through overgrown vegetation, but that just makes him a less physically capable Yorda. While it'd be possible to split the two up and craft mechanics that require the player to switch between them, there are so many more gameplay options (jumping, climbing, pushing things, shimmying along ledges...) in playing as Luna that not having her playable would feel like wasted potential.

Not to mention, most of the announced DLCs involve playing as characters other than Noct, so it makes a lot of sense to have the player control Luna.

And I guess while I'm talking about the final area, I need to mention how much I wish there were more to it. The city portion is fine I guess, but I totally thought Ardyn was gonna take them to some wacked-out parallel dimension at some point, in FF tradition. But nope. Also thought that there'd be, y'know, a proper final fight against Ardyn with him transformed into a huge, grotesque monster thing, also in FF tradition. But nope.

What exactly would this have added to the story the game was trying to tell? Obviously, absorbing tons of daemons could plausibly result in Ardyn transforming into a giant demonic monstrosity, but actually having him do so would throw out any semblance of human drama to no real end. There's a lot more emotional resonance in fighting a bitter and twisted human being to the death than in slaying a monster, especially since the game went out of its way to guarantee that Noct had never killed another human being before.

 

[Nova]

You know "explorable" and "fully explorable" have very different implications.

Which is ironic you're saying this, considering that....

When people say they want an explorable Insomnia, they don't mean the whole city. They want some part of the city to be playable like it was shown in the old trailers.

....you're using the original invasion event as an argument to affirm what people wanted being different from my assertion of their want, which doesn't work here in this case. The Insomnia Invasion is a setpiece event, a hypothetical fully explorable town (which is where i'm getting at) is different, and is very much a popular wish/request. No question.

I am well aware of the desire & preference for the original invasion over what we got, that is not what i'm arguing about, however.

The issue i'm referring to is where an explorable Insomnia would fit into the basic scenario, which practically began with the party event right before the invasion, given that you have a protagonist on the run amdist an army attacking his kingdom early in the game, giving you very little room to explore anything. That implies that such a scenario possibly wasn't much an idea from the start.

You're conflating the two in order to make it sound like people wanted something unreasonable.

Read my comments within this post. I don't think you're understanding where i'm getting at all.

 

[ScienceNonfiction]

What exactly would this have added to the story the game was trying to tell? Obviously, absorbing tons of daemons could plausibly result in Ardyn transforming into a giant demonic monstrosity, but actually having him do so would throw out any semblance of human drama to no real end. There's a lot more emotional resonance in fighting a bitter and twisted human being to the death than in slaying a monster, especially since the game went out of its way to guarantee that Noct had never killed another human being before.

Uh, it adds a fun factor that's just not there in the actual final battle? The 1-on-1 fight is cool, but it's sorta disappointing that that's all there is. I definitely wouldn't want that portion out, but when it's just that it's like "Huh? That's it?" Plus, just having a monster transformation doesn't mean he's not human anymore.

 

[Lulcielid]

Plus, just having a monster transformation doesn't mean he's not human anymore.

True but I think it makes him less relatable/hard to feel something for him.
For example do you feel some emotion if this thing were to be shoot with a gun? Do you feel some emotion if this thing were to be shoot with a gun?