I'm liking the passionate discussion we've got going on here, but I really wish some ppl would try to be optimistic because if there's little to no need for something, no demand rather, it's unlikely to ever happen. Anyway, I hope we can come to a compromise on this Insomnia Prologue thing and that it reaches the right eyes in time...
Anyway, on to the topic of funding and whatnot... forgive me for being presumptuous again but I think whoever took over for Tabata s*** themselves earlier this year when they saw the turn out at TGS. One would assume after taking over control he/she cancelled the DLC's assuming 2 yrs later most ppl had moved on, and that there wasn't any interest... and than FFXV has the biggest turnout haha. I still remember how shocked & apologetic they were, and when I think about it now retrospectively they probably already new the DLC's were cancelled, or at the very least knew they were going to be and I'd like to imagine the whole situation inspired the powers that be to give the dev team a bit more budget. However, I'd like to think that seeing with tangible proof that there's still a lot of interest from fans for this game that they want to give us something more than just Episode Ardyn, and I think an Insomnia prologue based off of Parting Ways would be perfect. Linear or not.
Where there's a will there's a way, for example: Picture this, we start up the Insomnia prologue DLC and we're greeted by a nice 2-3 minute, beautiful cutscene showing off Insomnia. The large buildings, the markets, the citizens, the animals, the citadel, etc. Immediately following that final shot showing off the citadel we transition inside where we're presented with Noctis & Regis. Cue some dialogue about how Regis wants to see how well Gladio has trained Noct, and a new & improved tutorial begins. Once the game feels you've found your bearings your bearings the "real" battle begins (with Regis at level 5 or something for balances sake) and once you finish Noct heads to bed, kicks up his feet and goes to sleep - during which he has a dream about him and his father from when he was younger. Cutscenes could work here, as for what it could be hmm maybe the "we have to eat the food or they'll send the cook away" scene from the versus days, and/or something based off of the dawn trailers where we actually get to hear some of Regis Inner Monologue (yes, I know it's Noct's dream but, it's through our perspective)... Now, once the cutscene(s) has finished a transition could pop up telling us "weeks later" or, months later if that would make you happy, then cue the Parting Ways inspired prologue without having to change it's canon but still giving us a training battle against Regis & finally rewarding Noctis father with some much needed character development in game.
Who said they're not going to add those other characters? They may have been waiting to finish Aranea's play style so they could release a patch that let us play all the guest party members at the same time. Lets hope that they had finished it and that's something they're working on, or at the very least (and it would be a shame), lets hope that they at least at the movesets for Cor & Iris which are available in Comrades. Something else that I think would be awesome is a way to have them join your party again during non-story related free-roaming, for balancing reasons they should be given a proper health bar so that they're not immortal anymore and it would require a few new voice lines for them but it certainly wouldn't sabotage the budget.
