It’s that time of year where I barricade myself in my room and replay Final Fantasy XV, the 2016 finale to the dubiously-connected Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy series and my own personal contender for best game of all time (this part is a lie). This year, I have an occasion to do so: among people with money, time, and a PlayStation 4, Final Fantasy VII Remake has been the talk of the town, and with it, I noticed quite a few folks casting more than a few aspersions at FFXV.
At first, I was defensive. Then, I got curious. A lot of really good critics all saying the game was ass? Is this just something to be chalked up to personal taste or was there something I missed during my first few playthroughs? What is it about Final Fantasy XV that makes it so polarizing?
Well, I’m now 15 hours into a thorough playthrough. Here are my observations.
Cindy’s character design sucks
I forgot to mention that I’ve also dipped my toes into Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: FFXIII recently. Those games are wild, absolutely suffering from the Nomura Character Design Curse. Everything is simultaneously too skimpy and too obfuscatingly full of belts, zippers and other ephemera that is not and has never been on clothes in such numbers. By comparison: Noctis and his retinue – and pretty much everyone else in the game – dress relatively conservatively. Everyone of course still looks silly and anime as hell, but like… Parasyte: the Maxim anime, not Kill la Kill anime.
Cindy, on the other hand, looks like she was supposed to be in one of the FFXIII titles. And her character design, specifically, is played up for sex appeal in a way basically none of the other characters have been thus far in my run. Like, I want to be clear: it is what it is, the developers knew what they were doing with Cindy in terms of how she’s filmed in-game, her movement programming, etc. And like, the audience gets it as well. I found it a little jarring at first, but as time went on, I noticed some other nonsense that recontextualizes her whole reason for being in the game.
The writing in this game is extremely hostile towards women
Early on, this isn’t super noticeable. You’re mostly concerned with this small chunk of the world where there aren’t that many other characters to interact with, and mostly you’re just toodling around in this idyllic setting. But once you’ve moved past the first two chapters, you start to pick up on a theme. I first noticed it as I pulled into Lestallum and overheard a man talking to his buds about his wife’s promotion at work.
See, in Lestallum, it isn’t men who do the breadwinning, it’s women! Isn’t this just so weird! Isn’t this just so ooooout of controoool?
It’s uh, it’s definitely something. Like, it seems as though it’s an arrangement that has worked well for the town, so uh, what’s the deal, actually? Why are we meant to be called to notice this in these terms? As we’re walking through Lestallum with Iris after meeting up, I started noticing Noctis would fall into these weird, uncharacteristic modes of speech. Like, up until now, he’s mostly responded to his friends with varying levels of interest. Sometimes he’s sounded tired, but never dismissive or disdainful that he had to be there with his friends. When he’s on the tour with Iris, though, these start seeping into his speech. Irritated “uh-huhs” and “mmms” abound. Even when you, the player, make the choice to be interested in what Iris is talking about, the best Noct can do is express a pained noise of general agreement.
Is doing this thing with Iris, Gladio’s sister and someone he definitely knows, somehow a burden on the Crown Prince? She’s not being especially burdensome through all this, though the game does make a subtle “women be shoppin” jab at one point. Like, Noctis up until this point in the game has been an emotionally complex and sensitive character, but in this moment he’s every stereotypical put-upon dad/brother/boyfriend/husband/etc. who has to go shopping with his daughter/sister/girlfriend/wife/etc. as though it were the end of days or something.
For everything this game gets right, so right about the relationships it prioritizes, it manages to fucking dunk on itself otherwise.
I haven’t met a woman character yet that has acted in the same sense as Noctis and the gang have been allowed to act. The closest we’ve gotten so far is Cindy, who we talked about above.
Look, this might sound really harsh. Especially since I was so down to defend the game initially. But you can’t help seeing what you can’t help seeing.
Noctis’s relationships with his friends are special, but tainted by power
Everything about Noctis, Gladio, Prompto and Ignis is good, in terms of their relationship with each other, and at least on the surface. They’re friends. They goof around. They have each other’s backs. Sometimes they bicker, accidentally step on each other’s toes, and make an ill-timed joke, sure, but their relationship is one of the true positives of this game’s narrative.
And yet. *Puts on Foucault hat*
Noctis is a prince. He’s the crown prince, in fact. Every relationship he has is tainted by this in a way. A wall is formed between him and anyone he meets aside from his own blood family, who are in a sense his only equals or betters. Now the game goes to extraordinary lengths to show us how normal he is, how absolutely normal his relationships are, with jokes and banter and heart-to-hearts at dawn or sundown, depending on the locale. Sure, he might be a little out-of-touch, but that’s just because he’s city-folk. Noctis’s relationship to power necessarily alienates him from his subjects and retainers, regardless.
I can’t get this one interaction out of my mind: Noctis and Prompto are sitting on the roof of the Old Lestallum Motel. Prompto is uncharacteristically glum, and Noctis, a good friend, asks him what’s up. Turns out, Prompto has been feeling intense anxiety about his place in Noctis’s retinue. He’s the only common-born* member of the party, the only civilian, the only person who hasn’t been training for decades to wait on Noct’s every needs or defend him to the death. He received some cursory firearms training from the Crownsguard, but he’s way in over his head and he’s feeling like a third wheel. As you choose to comfort him, Noctis asks Prompto, “was there anything else you needed?”
*(Prompto turns out to not be just a common-born civilian, according to his DLC episode)
The way that scene plays out kind of just fucks me up every time I think about it. Like, it’s a conversation you might see between a boss and an employee. For all the jokes and banter, the teamwork, the warm conversations and good meals around a campfire, the machinery of power is always looming.
So… is there anything good in this game?
Absolutely. Driving is good, you can listen to the Final Fantasy VII original soundtrack if you want. Also good: You can hug a chocobo, which is just… so fucking good. All of Prompto’s good photos are so sweet, except when he’s lowkey perving on Cindy, which is… fuck, it’s any time he’s in her vicinity, jesus christ. Ignis’s meals are always, ALWAYS good, as are every instance in which food is involved. You can feed a cat in an early side mission and I love that.
Uh, let’s see… everything is so pretty and reminds me of various places I’ve been and haven’t been. Like, Hammerhead is the Mojave Desert north of LA don’t try to fucking argue it’s not. My headcanon is that Guy Fieri is in this game world (I mean, fuck, Vivienne Westwood is, so why not), and he does a version of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives here too.
This isn’t really a great foundation for recommending that people play a game. I get fully why people don’t enjoy this. There are a lot of really awkward or downright hostile small moments that mar everything else.
That said, I also understand really loving the game. Compared to past titles, it’s a simplistic tale with lots of tiny, uncomplicated moving parts. You don’t have to concern yourself with different factions of fal’Cie or l’Cie, which god you’re aligned with, time travel, or saving certain key souls for Bhunivelze. You just gotta go on a road trip to save your kingdom from an evil kinda-relativ- HEY WAIT
IS FFXV JUST THE LION KING?
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