#NO GAME has wrecked me like xv wrecked me the first time i played it

[coldwake]

me: final fantasy xv is the comfort game, i love playing it the comfort game: made me cry so hard i physically ran out of water to cry

[smokeybrandreviews]

My Reunion

I shill hard for Final Fantasy. That series is riddled with masterpiece titles. Final Fantasy VI, IX, XII, XIV, XV, and XVI are some of my all-time favorite games, not to mention the pure quality of their spin-offs. Say what you will about Kingdom Hearts but those games revolutionized the entire JRPG industry, for better or worse, with their battle system and Final Fantasy Tactics is just pure brilliance. For me, however, Final Fantasy VII stands alone. This game is arguably my all-time favorite and I've been on that Compilation train since it set sail some two decades ago. I've been yearning for a remake since the original dropped so, when FFVIIR finally released, i was all over that thing. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't a remake but a reimagining. This wasn't the game i remember. This wasn't the title i wanted. I was glad to have it but all i actually wanted was the original game, with the original battle system, updated to modern specs. That's all. Then Square dropped news of Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis. That game was everything i wanted Remake to be and more. I needed it in my life immediately. Well, it finally released earlier this month and I've been neck deep into ever since. Let me say, this thing turned out to be much, much, better than i expected.

Mobile origins aside, Ever Crisis is a through-and-through Final Fantasy title. It plays like a proper RPG. It has that familiar turn based system that i missed so much but with a more kinetic, more fluid, presentation. It doesn't feel as stiff as the original title but, at the same time, plays almost exactly like it. The updated graphics and detail go a long way to feeding my excitement but why wouldn't it? Squenix has had almost thirty years to figure out how to improve this specific title since it's initial release, and they've been taking notes. Models, lighting, camera work, sound; They all pop on my phone. No exaggeration, Ever Crisis is the most gorgeous thing I've ever played on my mobile device and that's saying a lot because, i mean, this thing is a goddamn phone! For these cats to produce something so polished for my goddamn telephone is a borderline miracle. More than that, this sh*t is fun to play. If you're an RPG guy like me, the grind to max out everything is definitely there. I've been on this thing for for weeks and my three primary characters, my Wrecking Crew, have all leveled to forty-five of a fifty cap. Tifa, Cloud, and Zack are monstrously overpowered but that doesn't mean i left the rest of my squad in the dust. Every character on your roster gets a percentage of your experience. Obviously, the ones who do the fighting directly get the most but those in reserve also benefit. I think the lowest level characters i have at the moment are Barrett and Aerith, both of whom are sitting at a comfortable forty. That's enough to beat most of the initial story missions with ease but you know me; I'm about domination. I want all the power. I want all the strength. So i grind like a madman, doing everything in my power, to increase my power, and that's where the uniqueness of the mobile nature pops in.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is, for sure, a mobile title. You have a daily stamina count which restricts you from doing anything in excess outside of first run Story missions, but that's okay because the drops are both plentiful and generous. I have so many stamina boosts, it's absurd. When i run out, i just re-up to some absurd number and keep grinding out. You have designated Enhancement options ranging from pure experience, Weapon material, Synthesis material, and apparently Premium Quests which, when unlocked, go a LONG way to maxing out your characters through the Growth Trees. As long as you have Stamina, you can run at this stuff all day. Obviously, that's what the f*ck I've been doing. A lot of your more powerful Limit Breaks are located on this tree but it also boosts your stats. I cannot stress enough how much i enjoy the option of just being able to GO to a place and get what i need to power up my character. More games not bound to my phone or some ridiculous monetary system, should implement this sh*t. And that brings me to the borderline frustrating aspect of Ever Crisis; It's a goddamn mobile game.

I'm a vet of the Gacha game system. Been playing Fate/Brand Order and Azur Lane for years. I've dabbled in other titles and realize that some gachas are fair while others are horrifying. FGO is definitely the latter but EC is, for sure, the former. I don't know if it's because we're still within the launch window but i find the Banners in this game to be relatively reasonable. They don't cost an exorbitant amount of in-game currency (you actually get a ton of it as you make your way through the title) and i was able to cash out some strong, six star, weaponry early on. Like, i naturally rolled Cloud's strongest weapon three days in and have already leveled that bad boy up to fifty. The flip side is that it took forever to pop a five star anything for Lucia or Barrett. I'm talking this week, forever. Fortunately, it was Barrett's ultimate weapon, twice, and Luchia's penultimate so i'm good. Kind of. It sucks because there is a noticeable difference in the absence of that one star. Seriously, i do work with these gold weapons but the purple ones? It's rough, I'll just say that. Don't even bother with the blue stuff. It's all joke. All in all, the gacha, itself, is fair. I've never felt like i "needed" to pay for crystals but the option is there if you choose to do so. I have no idea how this is going to go after the game has been out for a while and the luster dims a bit but, as of right now, I'm good with the drop rate.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is the remake of FFVII i wanted in the first place. It plays like a proper RPG and is easily my favorite mobile game to date. The gacha isn't an asshole and progress is plentiful as long as you actually play the game. I don't see myself getting frustrated by all the mobile game-isms like battle power caps and the incessant grind because, so far, it's all relatively pleasurable. Progress hasn't fallen off a cliff like it does in Genshin Impact and it's not taxing my pockets like FGO. Before anything, this is a game you actually play and it is more than enjoyable, especially if you're an older fan like myself. I never feel like it's a situation where i just set it and forget it, though, that's kind of the goal. I want to max out my guys so the grind can just be automatic in preparation for the later levels. I've always been hesitant when it comes to mobile titles because most of them feel like cash grabs or shovelware. Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis does not. This feels like a worthy entry into the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and i cannot wait to see where Square Enix takes us next.

[smokeybrand]

My Reunion

I shill hard for Final Fantasy. That series is riddled with masterpiece titles. Final Fantasy VI, IX, XII, XIV, XV, and XVI are some of my all-time favorite games, not to mention the pure quality of their spin-offs. Say what you will about Kingdom Hearts but those games revolutionized the entire JRPG industry, for better or worse, with their battle system and Final Fantasy Tactics is just pure brilliance. For me, however, Final Fantasy VII stands alone. This game is arguably my all-time favorite and I've been on that Compilation train since it set sail some two decades ago. I've been yearning for a remake since the original dropped so, when FFVIIR finally released, i was all over that thing. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't a remake but a reimagining. This wasn't the game i remember. This wasn't the title i wanted. I was glad to have it but all i actually wanted was the original game, with the original battle system, updated to modern specs. That's all. Then Square dropped news of Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis. That game was everything i wanted Remake to be and more. I needed it in my life immediately. Well, it finally released earlier this month and I've been neck deep into ever since. Let me say, this thing turned out to be much, much, better than i expected.

Mobile origins aside, Ever Crisis is a through-and-through Final Fantasy title. It plays like a proper RPG. It has that familiar turn based system that i missed so much but with a more kinetic, more fluid, presentation. It doesn't feel as stiff as the original title but, at the same time, plays almost exactly like it. The updated graphics and detail go a long way to feeding my excitement but why wouldn't it? Squenix has had almost thirty years to figure out how to improve this specific title since it's initial release, and they've been taking notes. Models, lighting, camera work, sound; They all pop on my phone. No exaggeration, Ever Crisis is the most gorgeous thing I've ever played on my mobile device and that's saying a lot because, i mean, this thing is a goddamn phone! For these cats to produce something so polished for my goddamn telephone is a borderline miracle. More than that, this sh*t is fun to play. If you're an RPG guy like me, the grind to max out everything is definitely there. I've been on this thing for for weeks and my three primary characters, my Wrecking Crew, have all leveled to forty-five of a fifty cap. Tifa, Cloud, and Zack are monstrously overpowered but that doesn't mean i left the rest of my squad in the dust. Every character on your roster gets a percentage of your experience. Obviously, the ones who do the fighting directly get the most but those in reserve also benefit. I think the lowest level characters i have at the moment are Barrett and Aerith, both of whom are sitting at a comfortable forty. That's enough to beat most of the initial story missions with ease but you know me; I'm about domination. I want all the power. I want all the strength. So i grind like a madman, doing everything in my power, to increase my power, and that's where the uniqueness of the mobile nature pops in.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is, for sure, a mobile title. You have a daily stamina count which restricts you from doing anything in excess outside of first run Story missions, but that's okay because the drops are both plentiful and generous. I have so many stamina boosts, it's absurd. When i run out, i just re-up to some absurd number and keep grinding out. You have designated Enhancement options ranging from pure experience, Weapon material, Synthesis material, and apparently Premium Quests which, when unlocked, go a LONG way to maxing out your characters through the Growth Trees. As long as you have Stamina, you can run at this stuff all day. Obviously, that's what the f*ck I've been doing. A lot of your more powerful Limit Breaks are located on this tree but it also boosts your stats. I cannot stress enough how much i enjoy the option of just being able to GO to a place and get what i need to power up my character. More games not bound to my phone or some ridiculous monetary system, should implement this sh*t. And that brings me to the borderline frustrating aspect of Ever Crisis; It's a goddamn mobile game.

I'm a vet of the Gacha game system. Been playing Fate/Brand Order and Azur Lane for years. I've dabbled in other titles and realize that some gachas are fair while others are horrifying. FGO is definitely the latter but EC is, for sure, the former. I don't know if it's because we're still within the launch window but i find the Banners in this game to be relatively reasonable. They don't cost an exorbitant amount of in-game currency (you actually get a ton of it as you make your way through the title) and i was able to cash out some strong, six star, weaponry early on. Like, i naturally rolled Cloud's strongest weapon three days in and have already leveled that bad boy up to fifty. The flip side is that it took forever to pop a five star anything for Lucia or Barrett. I'm talking this week, forever. Fortunately, it was Barrett's ultimate weapon, twice, and Luchia's penultimate so i'm good. Kind of. It sucks because there is a noticeable difference in the absence of that one star. Seriously, i do work with these gold weapons but the purple ones? It's rough, I'll just say that. Don't even bother with the blue stuff. It's all joke. All in all, the gacha, itself, is fair. I've never felt like i "needed" to pay for crystals but the option is there if you choose to do so. I have no idea how this is going to go after the game has been out for a while and the luster dims a bit but, as of right now, I'm good with the drop rate.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis is the remake of FFVII i wanted in the first place. It plays like a proper RPG and is easily my favorite mobile game to date. The gacha isn't an asshole and progress is plentiful as long as you actually play the game. I don't see myself getting frustrated by all the mobile game-isms like battle power caps and the incessant grind because, so far, it's all relatively pleasurable. Progress hasn't fallen off a cliff like it does in Genshin Impact and it's not taxing my pockets like FGO. Before anything, this is a game you actually play and it is more than enjoyable, especially if you're an older fan like myself. I never feel like it's a situation where i just set it and forget it, though, that's kind of the goal. I want to max out my guys so the grind can just be automatic in preparation for the later levels. I've always been hesitant when it comes to mobile titles because most of them feel like cash grabs or shovelware. Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis does not. This feels like a worthy entry into the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and i cannot wait to see where Square Enix takes us next.

[chocoholicannanymous]

If the Spit Hits the Fan (Glee) Pt XVII

This is the penultimate part. The last one is written and drafted - I did finish while on vacation. Expect it for next weekend.

Follows pt I, pt II, pt III, pt IV, pt V, pt VI, pt VII, pt VIII, pt IX, pt X, pt XI, pt XII, pt XIII, pt XIV, pt XV and pt XVI.

It's as everything happens in May. Kurt feels as if he should be used to it by now, but this year is worse than any before. It's understandable, he guesses, what with it being his senior year, but understanding doesn't help. Some of the squares on his wall calendar has so many things on them they're barely legible, and there are days when he wants to just quit it all.

He can always work in his dad's garage for the rest of his life. Surely that's not the worst thing ever?

The only reason he's not a complete wreck when Nationals comes is the Warblers meeting held right after Regionals where David had used logic (how dare he) and suggested their approach to Nationals.

Kurt's first, immediate reaction is “we're never going to win with that” which he also says out loud, only to be met by “so what”.

“I don't say this lightly. I've been a Warbler for four years. It's been amazing to be surrounded by all of these talented people, and make music just because we like it, and that's why I've kept it up even with all the hints I've gotten that my 'future career' would be better served by me spending that time on learning another language or studying harder. After all, what use is singing and dancing for a lawyer?”

There's a bitterness in David's voice, and it's echoed in a number of murmurs around the room.

“This is the one thing I do for fun, that I do just for me, and some days the only thing that makes slogging through my mountain of homework bearable is knowing that once I'm done I can go enjoy Warblers. This year's group hold more talent of all my years here, which is why it hurts to say that I don't think we can win, no matter what setlist we go on with. We're simply not the kind of group that wins a contest like this.”

Which, probably true. The Warblers are good, yes, but they're an all boys a capella group performing in uniforms. They don't have the productions that teams who wins Nationals do. Doesn't mean that it hurts just as much to hear as it hurts to say.

“The truth is – and I'm sorry, I know we don't talk about him, but I have to – the truth is that we didn't even compete before Blaine.”

Kurt expects it to sting to hear his name. It does, but not much. He's moving past that.

“Blaine walked in here and wanted to compete so badly. He spent his first semester here trying to talk us into trying, even with all the reasons we had for not going so, and he got his way. That doesn't change the fact that this is only our second year competing, and we've surpassed all expectations by making it to Nationals.  To do so again and win, or even place in the top... I don't think we can do that, not even with all the talent in this room.”

No one likes hearing that, but no one's disagreeing either. They aren't going to win. That's just how it is.

“So why not do that we like? Why don't we pick songs we like and that showcases our strengths? Why don't we sing a song that will make you happy, Kurt? And if it knocks us down in the ranking to do so, who cares? I don't.”

To hear someone say that Kurt's happiness should matter more than placement – to hear David say it, after everything the year before – causes tears to well up in his eyes. To hear every single Warbler agree make those tears fall.

They'd walked out of that meeting stronger than they'd gone in, and Kurt lets himself gather strength from that memory for a few seconds before he steps forward and lets his voice soar.

“Something has changed within me, something is not the same / I'm through with playing by the rules, of someone else's game”

They finish eleventh. It's better than they'd dared to hope, with all the absolutely excellent teams competing. It the joy is tinged with a little bitterness? Who can blame them? Maybe, more than one of them wonders, a more conventional setlist could have placed them among the top ten. At the same time they're all aware that maybe it would have have placed them dead last. There's no way of telling, and no use speculating.

They did their best, enjoyed their performance and finished eleventh at Nationals. That's nothing to look down on. In fact...

“We did better than New Directions last year” Kurt says with a smirk.

They've beaten  his old team, his so-called friends, in every way possible and he allows himself to see that as a win.

Finn posts video of all their songs on his Facebook and is proud (and smug) enough to also post the “Defying Gravity” performance in the Glee group with a comment about how Kurt obviously could hit that note, tagging both Rachel and Mr Schue. It's petty, and Kurt should be big enough of a person to ask Finn to remove it, but no. If his brother wants to stand up for him Kurt isn't just going to let him, he's going to be grateful.

Feeling loved and protected is not something he's ever going to scoff at.

Nationals is followed by finals, the less said about the better, and then prom. Or well, “the Dalton Academy and Crawford County Day Joint Spring Formal”. Same thing right?

Wrong.

The spring formal is every thing junior prom wasn't. It's not really the fact that Sebastian asks Kurt properly to be his date for the formal, and compliments his outfit. It's not that even without decorations Dalton's auditorium is more grand than McKinley's gym. It's not even the grand dinner with lit candles, waiters and three courses before the dance or that there's a band that plays waltzes and foxtrot for the first two hours before the DJ is allowed to take over.

It's that even before they've entered the transformed dining hall Kurt spots half a dozen same-sex couples, a number that keeps going up during the evening. It's the fact that he gets to dance the whole evening, not in a group or with a girl, but with Sebastian and the occasional Warbler. Mostly it's Sebastian's arms he's in, and it's amazing.

It's so far from his junior prom and Blaine that it almost hurts.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No. Everything is... This year everything is perfect.”

Sebastian doesn't look entirely convinced, but decides to drop it and instead lean closer for a kiss.

The evening really is perfect.

The morning of his birthday Kurt walks into the dining hall alone only to be met with a table full of Warblers that stand up and sing for him as soon as he clears the door. There's one place left at the table, next to Sebastian, set with the kind of breakfast not even Dalton serves (fresh croissant, strawberries, a piece of brie and a one-person pot of tea) with a rainbow rose in a vase. Kurt sits down with a smile and leans over to kiss his boyfriend's cheek.

“So, rainbow roses are going to be our thing, is it? I love it.”

He spends the day with a smile on his lips, because his boyfriend took the time to do something special for him on his birthday and his friends have promised cake in the Warblers' room after dinner, and he feels loved.

“Cake” turns out to be cheesecake and presents, and more singing, and so much more smiling. Afterwards Sebastian walks him back to his room. There's no kissing though, which Kurt finds unacceptable.

“Isn't there some kind of rule that you get kisses on your birthday? I would have thought that was a part of the boyfriend experience, and to be honest I'm feeling very much unkissed.”

That nets him a crooked smile, but still no kisses. It's almost enough to worry him.

“You can have all the kisses you want, and not just on your birthday, you know that babe. However, there's something else I wanted you to have first.”

Sebastian pulls out a small package from him pocket and hands it over with a smile, which begins to fade when Kurt doesn't immediately take it. It's just, well.

“Another present? You shouldn't have.”

“Another? What do you mean?”

The truth is that Kurt fully expected breakfast and a rose to be the whole of Sebastian's congratulations, and he doesn't quite know how to take getting more than that. He doesn't really know how to explain it though, and definitely not in a way that won't start Sebastian on another rant about how Blaine was unworthy of Kurt's affection. Especially since it's not just about him.

Turns out he doesn't need to say anything – and apparently he's getting yet another present in the form of the absence of that rant.

“Breakfast was a treat. This is your actual present, which I hope you'll like at least as much as that.”

Sebastian looks a little worried as Kurt removes the paper and opens the small box inside (and if he's a little shaky to open a jewelry box from his boyfriend no one needs to know). It's a pair of gorgeous cufflinks with just the right balance between classy and unique and he absolutely loves them.

“These are amazing! They're too much, really, but they're so gorgeous that I'm going to pretend they're not. I love them!” I love you. But that's a bit too early to say, and so instead he leans forward and does his absolute best to communicate exactly that through kissing.

[rainbowdonkee]

With 2019 coming to an end, I wanted to make a list of my personal top 10 video games that came out this decade. I was 12 in 2010, and now being 21 video games have always been important to me! Many of the games that are the most dearest to me sadly came out before 2010 (HG/SS barely made the cut with the NA release). I tried to not make recent releases be part of my bias (FE3H lol), plus there were many games such as Bioshock 2, Fallout New Vegas, DA2, ACNL, and many more that I love but this list would have been too long! 

1. Dark Souls (2011)

2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

3. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver (NA 2010)

4. NieR Automata (2017)

5. Final Fantasy XV (2016)

6. Bloodborne (2015)

7. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (2017)

8. Astral Chain (2019)

9. Granblue Fantasy (2014)

10. Deemo (2013)

Dark Souls: Although I haven’t really completed the game personally, I’ve seen many playthroughs and videos about the story and characters. Hidetaka Miyazaki is absolutely awesome in creating those fantasy worlds and characters, everything that Dark Souls ended up influencing was pretty groundbreaking. And the OST is always enjoyable to hear again.

Breath of the Wild: This game took quite a long time for Nintendo to release, and when it finally came out on the final year of the WiiU and the birth of the Switch... it was pretty emotional. Also to realize that Iwata-san never made it to see the rise of Nintendo’s success after the failure of the WiiU gets me everytime, but I hope he sees all the smiles and joy BOTW has brought since its release. The game changed not only what is a LOTZ game but what is an open world, I’ve played it twice and each time I picked it up was a new experience.

Pokemon HG/SS: This game was released around Fall 2009 in Japan, but for NA it was out in March 2010. I still remember the anticipation for Spring Break to arrive in order to spend all my week playing it! I never had the chance to play the original Gold/Silver, so everything was new to me. My 12 year old mind almost exploded when I ended up finishing the Johto League only to find out we were ALSO traveling to Kanto!!! I was shook! This game is amazing, and I’ll forever wait for them to somehow add our Pokemons following us around, that mechanic was so cute! And of course the OST is golden, and I can always listen to it and be brought back to those days.

NieR Automata: I never played any of the past NieR games (although I was aware of their existence). The first trailer I ever watched had the “Become as Gods” song so I was hooked from the start! And learning that PlatinumGames and Square Enix both developed the game made me hyped for its release. I love everything about it, the characters, story, music, themes. By the time I finished the game, it had brought me into a journey of questioning so many heavy topics about life...I really wasn’t expecting that about a game. Not going to lie it may or may not have brought me a mini existential crisis but with a game made my Yoko Taro can’t be too surprised.

Final Fantasy XV: The game I so often heard fabled tales since as back as 2009 and the hype was just building up for this game! I remember going to the movie theater when they were having special screenings for the Kingsglaive movie (I dragged my friend, little brother, and mom lol). The game went through so much, many cuts and changes were made but I personally ended up liking what we got. Still super sad that many unreleased DLC’s were cut off, but the love I have for the characters and music will always stay.

Bloodborne: Hey another Miyazaki game, what can you say...the man just makes brilliant games. He took everything I love about gothic, victorian era, and Lovecraftian esque and made this extraordinary game. I’m here hoping that maybe this 2020 we can hear a slither of news of Bloodborne 2, the theme for this game is too good for them to leave it as only one game.

Fire Emblem Echoes SoV: After the train wreck that was Fates, I literally was not expecting for us to get another FE title so soon! Japan waited 2 years for Echoes but thanks to localization giving us Fates in 2016, we got SoV a year later. I never heard of Fire Emblem Gaiden, before this game I never played any of the Japan only FE games, so when news was coming out about this title I tried 100% to AVOID it. Why? Because this was the first time I could start a FE game without personally knowing anything about it, and when I first played it, right from the start it felt so different, it didn’t felt like a Fire Emblem game (which isn’t bad at all). With the new art direction it also felt like a whole new world, I love Hidari and I hope we get to see them more in future FE games. The game had a simple plot which I didn’t held it against them, I knew this was a remake, and personally I’m glad they didn’t added things like an Avatar or S-Supports. They stayed true to its original source, and SoV will stay as my personal favorite FE game. Also Heritors of Arcadia will be the best vocal theme we got in FE series.

Astral Chain: Oh snap another PlatinumGames IP? This developers are just too good! Astral Chain came out of nowhere although I’ve heard it was worked on for a long time, supposedly even before NieR Automata was developed. I really enjoyed the game very much, from all the 2019 games that came out it caught my eye and I went in with not too many expectations but I had a good time. The story took a crazy turn and I could see some similar themes as NieR Automata but it held its own ground to become unique. The fighting mechanics were so much fun to play and the music was also awesome! I wish more people talked about this game since it is Nintendo’s new IP. I hope we can get the twins for Smash Ultimate!

Granblue Fantasy: I first new anything about Cygames back in 2016 when I saw the OP for Rage of Bahamut. After Seeing the OP for season 2, seeing Azazel in all his glory I knew I had to watch the anime! Luckilly Rage of Bahamut season 2 was continuing in 2017 so I was able to catch up just in time for its final 10 episodes. I LOVE Azazel and Kaisar and of course ROB Lucifer! Then to my surprise I found out about GBF, and I was dumb and thought the app was unavailable in the west which is technically true since you need a Japanese account to download the app which has an ENG text option. So it wasn’t until 2018 that I downloaded the game and started my journey through the sky. This gacha game literally changed what is a gacha game to me, the developers listen to fans, the community is fun, and just everything about this franchise is so great. I’m not a hardcore player so I’m not too worry about grids, I’m here for the cute husbands. (Lancelot, Sandalphon, Albert, Grimnir I lov u).

Deemo: I love this game, one of the best app games I’ve ever had. Back in the day I used to play TapTap Revenge and that was my first taste of rhythm games, Deemo brought me back to those types of apps. Whenever I was anxious I could always play this game and pass the time while keeping my mind busy. Plus without Deemo I would have never known artist’s such as Mili. The game is on the Switch which I’m so happy because I was able to just get all the songs without flooding my tablets storage space.

[saanphoenix]

I gotta rant. I gotta get it out.

So, for those who don't have their head up Square Enix's ass--which is arguably a lot of people and good for them--the only information about this game that they've received has most likely been from fans first and non-contextualized journalist reviews second. As you can guess, this was the breeding ground for so much misinformation that it looks like a train wreck to someone who does have their head up Square Enix's ass. Aka me.

The developers have an interview where they say the game will be "episodic," with FFXIII being the blueprint. FFXIII was episodic in the sense that it is one whole story broken across three separate games. Each game was a full-length game. Dozens of hours of gameplay.

Reading this interview with the knowledge of how the original game was broken into three discs and the knowledge of how much memory is going to be required to merely upscale all of FFVII's locales, turn text boxes into actual dialogue, the soundtrack, the physics, the graphics... I came to the conclusion that breaking it up into parts--LIKE XIII--was 100% necessary. And that these episodes were going to be more like a TV mini-series' or Star Wars rather than a 30-minute TV show. And I wasn't the only one to come to this conclusion.

But! The term episodic, especially in the West, has become synonymous with telltale games. Where each part of one game is relatively short and you have to wait for new parts to be released as they're made.

So, when journalists and reactors put, "FFVII:R is going to be episodic," as the title of their article or video and they leave off the part about it being modeled after XIII's episodic nature...people assume they mean Square's doing something stupid, like making the entirety of FFVII a METRIC TON of 2-3 hour episodes that you're going to have to wait to play.

Fans freak out. They don't look into interviews. They don't have context. They assume the worst because XV was a thing. They unknowingly spread misinformation.

Cool.

And no matter how many times someone points out the FFXIII context, they are ignored in favor of bitching about Square Enix because FFXV was a thing.

Love it.

Flash forward to E3 2019. Where fans that don't have their head shoved up Square Enix's ass--must be nice--are finally told with words out of the producer's mouth that the first title in the series is a standalone game that is two discs worth of gameplay content--which is a lot of memory because locales and graphics and soundtrack and dialogue and physics and--

And my dumb ass thought, "Finally! Finally we can stop this bullshit about it being a telltale game's episode worth of content. What I thought they were doing, given context, was exactly what they were doing. I was right. Max was right. Final Fantasy Peasant was right. The misinformation can cease!"

...WRONG, apparently!

My gears have been grinded, my dudes! I can't handle it when someone is given a sheet of paper that says, "The sky is blue," and they stare at it, look up in revelation, and state, "I see now. The sky is green!"

No! Goddammit! Why are you like this?!

[bearpillowmonster]

FF7 Remake Review (Story/Finale)

No matter what I or anybody else says or what you see, you have to experience it to understand it, I mean it’s playing hardcore with the story it’s presenting, newbies are probably not going to get it yet and will probably have to wait until the next game to figure it out but that’s okay.

DEFINITE SPOILERS IN THIS PART!!

Playing Crisis Core before this was probably the best move I could’ve made to prepare for this, it helps gives reason as to why Cloud has all these PTSD/mental problems. I guess you could say “His head was in the clouds.” but I could see how it would turn off normies. He had future vision in this game as well (not in og), some fans may be driven off by that, but I feel like they’re purposely making it that way, I’ll talk about it towards the end.

I didn’t expect the whole “save the environment” storyline, the way it’s delivered isn’t bad though. Guess you could say that it’s “recyclable” Ha, get it?

The whole Corneo plot is just like the ‘Eye of the Beholder’ episode of American Dragon: Jake Long which is funny. Except for the hand massage thing...why IS that in there exactly? That’s super weird. In fact all of Wall Market is weird. Just take that scene out of context and it’s bait, heck, put it in context and it’s bait.

This game presents its style to you in the first ten minutes, it’s an action experience, I’ve heard it compared to Uncharted because of the set pieces but the gameplay is too different for me to compare. But is it hype? Yes.

(Random screenshot I took) Another complaint I hear is that “this is a borderline remake, almost not even a remake.” So a reboot? I mean it’s over 20 years later and there’s a lot in there from the original and new stuff, did you just want the same game? When you see a movie remake, do you want to see the same movie? I know people hold FF7 close to their heart like I do the Lion King and whenever something comes up to threaten to take that place, they don’t like it. I don’t like the Lion King remake BECAUSE it’s the same thing, it was never going to live up or be better so I was looking forward to the new content. But they didn’t say that in the promos did they? Well with FF7, they did, they said it would be multiple episodes which I assume another will follow it in a few years, they also said they would be changing stuff, so we knew what it was going to contain, just how it was going to contain it and how much. I consider this well worth 60$, (35 hours) it's not be everything from the original game but I’m sure that game was a lot easier to make back then, you can see the amount of work they put into it and maybe they're stretching it out but I’m considering this as definitive and final as it gets, I’m down for it. I think if you expected ‘different’ then you’ll like the direction it heads. Not all characters from the original are in there (yet) and a few in particular are just teased but there’s stuff in there from the og that maybe you wouldn’t expect to be in there anymore, I can appreciate their outlandishness and loyalty in that regard, no matter how weird it was but some of it is still kind of dumb despite that.

Ok! So what about the Tifa/Aerith/Barret thing?? Well...it’s just a scene in Chapter 14, it’s not even that grand for each of them, I like the idea of the Gold Saucer event in the original more. I, of course, liked the scene I got with Tifa but I was expecting something a little more pronounced, stressed over nothing, I had to look up what the difference was because I didn’t even know that was a “special” scene. 

Ending: 

I didn’t expect them to go against literal “Destiny”, even with the Whispers which I guess weren’t in the original, it makes me wonder about it even more. I don’t know what predicts who joins you at the end to fight Sephi but I see people getting Barret, makes me wish. Another thing I dislike about RPGs are gauntlets, sure they make you feel powerful but failing Sephiroth and then deciding to quit and coming back to have to beat big mama Harbringer again (which I knew I’d have to do, I just don’t like it) makes it annoying, I did just fine with my equipment with Harbringer but I didn’t know about it making me weak with Sephi so I had to go back and re-evaluate then start over. But that’s just the baby gamer in me talking. I didn’t mind fighting the first two stages of him, I actually got pretty good and fast at it but the 3rd and final stage is brutal, even with 3 party members because of his Octaslash KO.

I mean we know Aerith’s fate in FF7 OG, might as well not beat around the bush about it, how do you surprise an audience that already knows the biggest spoiler? So they’re tossing it up. Ever since this was announced and we got that “Aerith Lives” cameo in Wreck It Ralph, I’ve always had a theory that maybe this remake will change Aerith’s fate? I guess we’ll see. Some characters fates have already been changed, I mean the credits even say “This unknown journey will continue.” we really don’t know what will happen.

They’ve said that the original game’s ending was the “bad ending” that they allude to at the end of this game so I see them literally making alternate timelines to change it up through these Whispers. Now I don’t know what I would think if they start time travelling and hopping dimensions, this isn’t Avengers: Endgame...who am I kidding, this isn’t Kingdom Hearts! The way it is now is fine with me, just don’t make it too complicated is all. But to say that the ending makes the rest of the game not matter, seems kind of wrong, what’s passed has passed, if they start retconning stuff then I get it but right now, it’s just saying that the future isn’t set in stone, this is a different story, the next game may even go under a different name.

Is it my favorite FF game? Well I found myself playing it for hours at a time which is hard for me to do, something I wanted XV to do so desperately for me but didn’t. I mean I would start at around 6 at night and just play until I left like leaving off or when I take a shower at 8:30 (yeah I schedule that) but with this game, I would check the time and be like “Oh it’s 8, I’ll play for another half hour and wrap this up.” And it will end up being 10:00 at night before I realize “Oh, is it really that late??” I get that for most people, it happens, they can play all the time but not me and I won’t get into why I’m like that but I will say that a game has never made me get that invested. I’ll probably end up playing the original, I know so many people say that it’s a totally different experience and I believe it. So far it is my favorite though, even if I haven’t played any of the original ones yet.

This game isn’t without flaws, when I was seeing some of the other complaints such as “being killed is sometimes out of your hands” and "some enemies are just bullet sponges, there’s no strat.” and “it’s dumb that every battle resets your gauge for everything (limits, AP, etc)” and stuff like that, I fully agree, but again it’s the light you view it in.

Does it belong in my top 15? I played it at night (as I mentioned) but that’s more or less what I would think about the whole day until I played it again. YES!

(PART 1)

(PART 2)

[cosmiciaria]

World of Final Fantasy Review! (Spoiler free)

I know the game is pretty old by now. It was released in October, 2016, before Final Fantasy XV wrecked the fandom. I've always wanted to give it a shot, but the apparent light-hearted approach didn't suit me well – so I waited for a decent discount in PSN, and I finally managed to get it in my hands! Disclaimer: this is a review of the vanilla version of the game. Saw there's a big expansion adding quite a a lot of stuff, including gameplay mechanics, so… either way, the game is quite enjoyable as it is, I don't deem an expansion necessary in my case to make me like the game more.

So yes, this is a GUD game. Even GUDER than I'd thought it would be. Like REALLY. Real good.

I'm not explaining myself. You see, this game seems made for younger generations. It was the result of the 30th Square Enix Anniversary, and it's the cocktail boiling in the cauldron every Final Fantasy fan wanted to have. It's a crossover, it's the perfect fanfiction across all the universes we've learned to love and care in this franchise. It's a love letter to fans, and I want to stress this idea, because… this game is great, is awesome, is moving, but only if you're an FF fan.

I mean, you'll still enjoy it for what it is, but… there are a thousand nods and references to the previous FF games that you won't get if you at least are not familiar with their premises. I, for instance, haven't played many of the mainline FF, including I, II, V and XI. I knew about their characters and some of its most characteristic thingies (like Gilgamesh being from FFV), so I still could get some of the references, but it's not the same.

It's not the same, because, like I said, this game is a love letter to fans. And it shows.

But – wait, are those chibis? Is this a children's game? What are you talking about? I know it's hard to take chibis seriously, but hear me out – this game is more serious than it seems at first sight. I expected nothing but RPG tropes and I did get many of those, but DUDE (pun intended) did I had a great (TRAGIC) time with those twists and turns!

So we follow Lann, a fifteen year old ginger boy who goes to work at his usual café. He doesn't seem to notice the Pokémon – I mean, the Mirage on his head, a cute white little fox that seems to defy the laws of gravity by gripping to his hair. In the café, Lann meets Enna Kros, a mysterious woman who asks for a very sugary coffee. Minutes later, we meet our other protagonist, Reynn, Lann's twin sister, who crashes into the place to tell her brother that there's nobody anywhere. Lann is like, hey, there's this woman over here, but truth be told… the neighborhood is empty.

So this woman, Enna Kros, introduces herself and tells them that she's a goddess of some sort (her nature is, eh, well, never fully explained and that's fine). She reveals they are in a place called Nine Wood Hills, a land that looks like it's stuck in time and space. Lann and Reynn had forgotten what the hell they're doing there, or who their parents were, or anything, so Enna Kros gives them (or more like, reminds them of) the Prismariums: the ability to imprism Mirages, like the little fox I mentioned, and bend them to their will. The purpose, she says, is to catch as many Mirages as they can, across Grymoire, the world she's the goddess of, and collect memories about their past. Then the little fox is introduced as Tama, a very important Mirage that is going to accompany the twins for the rest of the journey.

Off they go to Grymoire, and this is where the crossover starts: here people are tiny (chibis) called Lilikins; Reynn and Lann remain normally proportioned (Jiants), but they can turn into Lilikins whenever they want. Jiants had disappeared from this world a hundred years prior, so the twins kind of attract everyone's attention. This only feeds the mystery that shrouds this pair.

Grymoire is full of towns, regions and dungeons. Across all these places, the twins will irremediably come across the chibis we all know and love: the FF characters. Their storylines are so well intertwined that you forget that they belong to an original game, for their personalities and backgrounds fit this story very well. We have a Bahamutian Federation who's conquering everything in its stride, except for a few kingdoms that still fight against it. The League of S, the resistance group, wants to recruit as many people as they can, and it's up to the twins to help this insurgence grow. But this is not everything: it seems that in the Federation there's a prophecy, a Crimson Prophecy, that foretells the arrival of two Jiants twins who are Mirage Keepers…

The story gets more and more complex, until it reaches a point where I couldn't believe my eyes. And this was a game for "children"! But I won't spoil it for you. Instead, let's talk about the gameplay first!

I said Pokémon earlier – It's the closest approximation and I'm not lying. If you wanna be the very best, you gotta catch 'em all. Mirages will appear as your ordinary enemies in dungeons, and every first time you encounter one, Enna Kros will give you a new prismarium to imprism them in it. But to do this, you first have to create a prismunity: a chance that leaves the Mirage vulnerable to the imprism. This prisminuty is quite easy to achieve in the early levels, but they get more and more difficult and specific to attain as you progress. Each Mirage has an ability tree to develop, in which you'll spend SP points, and most Mirages have also evolutions (is it Pokémon enough yet??) that you'll be unlocking once the requirements are met.

Catching Mirages is not everything, though. Mirages are actually useful: you can equip them. Since we don't have equipment or ability tree for the twins, the Mirages are our only source of power, so their stats and their abilities become our own when we fight. Each twin in Jiant form can 'stack' on their heads a Medium and Small size Mirage, and in Lilikin form, they can stack on a Large Mirage and still have one Small Mirage on their heads. The stack becomes your shield in battle, and at first it looks ridiculous, but once you understand how it works, you can create MAGIC out of its mechanics. Careful because the tower you form can topple and your Mirages can fall from your character's head in a quite funny animation.

Twins don't have ability trees, I said. Well, that's partially true. You see, in the ability trees of the Mirages, every now and then you can come across a Mirajewel: this is the equivalent of a skill card in the Persona franchise – meaning that you can equip that Mirajewel into Lann or Reynn as you please. The Mirajewel doesn't lock to just one character, you can switch it between the twins as you like. The slots for these Mirajewels take a while to unlock, though, and it's related to the twins's levels.

Battles are your good old friend turn base combat. And it's great. IT'S GREAT. Like really. They can STILL do this and it's still loved, I don't know why people say that turn base combat is outdated and old fashioned. It's pretty slow paced, but fear not, because there's an ACCELERATOR button that lets you fast forward battles. Isn't it convenient? In fact, everything in this game is so convenient it makes me wanna cry: you wanna leave the dungeon? No prob, just use this unlimited teleport stone; wanna change your Mirages for others? Never fear, you have a save point every half hour. You wanna fast travel to this place? Nine Wood Hills got it covered for you. You're not enjoying this minigame? You can skip it and still advance in the main story! You kinda not dig this new menu we created for this game? Try the old style FF menu and play like you did in the old FF titles!

Really. Everything is there for you, at your disposal. The option to choose how and when you play is available, and it's kind of heart-warming they did this. I just wish every new FF could work like this one, on terms of gameplay! This game is SO Final Fantasy that I wanna cry a river.

Alright! Too much gameplay. What about characters?

Lann and Reynn are just hilarious. Their interactions are natural and casual: they truly make us believe they're twin brother and sister who deeply care for each other. Each of them has their own quirks, like Lann being quite slow, always saying "dude!" and protecting his sister at all costs; and Reynn being determined, direct and fearless, but also hiding her nervousness behind blurting trivia into the void whenever things seem to get nasty. There's one particular funny scene in the game where Reynn is angry with a Cactuar and she wants to, basically, punch it to death, which she can't, because Cactuars have their agility skyrocketed to high heaven more or less, and her hysteria is so relatable that you want to get yourself inside the screen and pat her on the head.

On that note, voice actors for the main protagonists were a delight. I was kind of surprised to discover that the guy who voices Lann also voices Shiro from Voltron: I couldn't recognize my favorite gay spaceship leader anywhere in this upbeat character, but there were moments where Lann became serious and angry, and damn, did that Shirogane emerge! All the other FF characters that we know have their original actors returning –not only that, but also we hear some characters from the older FF games that had never ever had, in any other media, voices. I swear my control almost fell to the floor when I heard Vivi f*cking SPEAK.

The FF characters remain in their personalities and they're never out of character. They bring about a thousand references from their original games, that are not forced at all. The script is clever enough to blend these moments inside the main story in such a way that you never see them coming, and more than once I was at the verge of tears, specially with Tidus and Yuna who belong to, I may very well say it now, my favorite Final Fantasy game (Oh I never wrote a review for FFX, even though I played like six times). I won't tell you, just play the game and discover these scenes for yourself. They make the game ten times more loveable. There are also instances of 4th wall breaking so beware yourself for a good laughter. Read the Mirage's Manual, I fully recommend it.

The game has all the RPG tropes you can ask for: the mandatory ice, fire and water levels, the really really bad guy you can tell he's bad because of his demoniac appearance bad villain bad oh bad he's bad because reasons, treasure chests, chocobos, cactuars, tomberris, flans, malboro menaces and anything you can expect from an FF game. But this isn't a copycat of previous installments. Towards the second half the game shows its true colors and we're faced with an original story, with huge twists that left me open mouthed, and you forget about the first few hours of the game that seemed taken straight out of any other FF, because, you know it, honk's got real. (Oh, btw, Lann used 'honk' every time he should've used the f-word, it was so funny, once he says 'shut the honk up' I'm cryinggG)

On the music department, I just couldn't really get into it. There were some boss fights that caught my attention but that's all there is to it. Nine Wood Hills background music gets under your skin after a while of continually listening to it, and sometimes it plays during important sequences, so I guess it's the most memorable piece of music. On the other hand, we have remixes of all those FF's themes we liked so much that play during certain characters' arcs and they may bring more than one tear to players' eyes (I did NOT cry when Suteki Da Ne started playing I did NOT). Visuals are nice and all – you can tell it had less production than, let's say, FFXV, its contemporary companion in release dates, but damn, some places were vivid and realistic! And lighting and shadows were real enough! And who cares about an anime appearance or chibi characters when everything SHINES and the story is good either way!

This game made me for some reason ship Cloud with absolutely everyone? What the honk?

All in all, this is a Final Fantasy game in all its glory, and it shines bright in many aspects I believe it was done even better than most of the newest games in the mainline. I just wished it had a more 'independent' story, in the sense of what I first mentioned: that this is a game for fans, that the experience would be very different if you haven't played the majority of the FF titles (and even some spin offs!). Still, the main story holds up well and at the end of the day, the main characters are the twins, not Cloud or Squall.

I do have one or two tiny complaints: there are some FF titles vanished to oblivion in this vanilla version. Firion from FFII only appears in the expansion and Balthier from FFXII, although he is a free dlc, he's not part of the story and he doesn't even have a page in the people's compendium, his appearance being the only silent presence of that title in the game. Also there's something spoilerish I wasn't really fond of – I'm just gonna say, without revealing anything, that I don't like how certain character was handled. And no, I'm not speaking about the masked woman. Anyway, that's all I can complain about, actually.

I think credit must be given where credit is due. And this game is due a lot of credit. For its amazing gameplay, giving us a taste of what we've been asking for years, and for the good use of the Extrauniverse to weave this story for us. Interactions between characters are a delight because of how well written they are. And there's a lot of post game content so, here I go, the route to platinum!

If you enjoy FF, then you'll love this game.

[darkspellmaster]

Final Fantasy XV theories: Connections to the world of Final Fantasy VI –Part 1: The  Astrals and the Espers..

An early warning to readers, this is all theories and only hypothesizes based on strong guesses and a lot of research. I cannot at this time confirm that any of this is cannon and until we have all of the game including the four new episodes, not everything is cut and dry. I’m going to date this though so that I have a time line of information and I will be using information dug up by others who I will list in the credits. Please note, again this is just my theories, and I’m hoping for it all to make sense.

7/18/2018

Introduction:

So let me begin this by putting out that I’ve been a fan of the idea of FF XV way back when it was first brought to light as Verses. What’s interesting is that the new episodes are having those aspects coming into play here as well but we’ll get into that later on. So naturally, I wanted to dive into this world, and the lore of it. However, something kept nagging at me, like I’ve been to a place before but it’s been drastically changed. With that in mind, allow me to walk you through my thoughts and reasons as to why I honestly think that XV is the world of Gaia from VI, only more modern and changed over the centuries that happened between the fall of God Kefka and the rise of the Starscourge.

I know it sounds crazy, VI related to XV, how, given that there’s so many allusions to the others games, why would VI be the one that is the direct connection to XV? What reason would there be? Well from what I can gather there’s a few. First off, there’s the fact that both of the Directors for XV are fans of VI, and Tabata himself said that it is his favorite game. (We’ve seen him include illusions to VI in Type 0 even). Second is the fact that Nomura not only worked on the game, he directly affected several key characters and story elements in the creation of vi and it was his first major work for the company following some of his lesser work for V. Lastly, and I think this is sort of the most important factor. Final Fantasy XV’s finale (all episodes, etc. in regard to the game) will be out in the year that Final Fantasy VI celebrates it’s 25th anniversary. Final Fantasy VI came out in April of 1994, and in 2019, during the spring season, it will be 25 years old. The fact is, Square is not going to just ignore this, given it’s considered one of the best of the series, and outside of seven, has become a fan favorite and is now getting to be played more by people due to the SNES remake as the game is on that system.

With that said, I’d also like to add that there’s a similar theme between the two games. There is no lead in VI and while XV may have Noctis, as with Terra in VI, as the main over all character, the story, as with VI, follows the pattern of having all characters play a larger role and the band of Brothers each has a significant arc told through both the main story and their own episodes. On top of that you have the idea of love, duty, devotion and other themes connecting the two.

But what about a more physical and realistic connections? Well that’s what I want to explore in these different parts of this over all larger theory. I hope all of it makes sense as you read it and I hope I offer up enough explanation and details to show the reasoning behind each of my conclusions.

So without further adieu…let’s begin.

The Astrals and the Espers…

The reason I started this thought process was actually way back when I first got a glimpse of the Prophecy painting, and the image of the supposed Eos reminded me a lot of Terra from VI. This I believed was just an allusion, like the name  Niflheim was to VII. However, after seeing the female statue in the Pitioss dungeon, I began to suspect something different. You see the more I played the game the more I started to notice things that just didn’t sit right with me. For example the world map, and certain characters and locations that seemed very off in regard to the story that they were telling.

So what are the Astrals?

According to the lore of XV, they are gods that were created by the Goddess Eos to protect the Star.

“The Astrals are said to be physical manifestations of the star's power——in other words manifestations of the planet Eos itself. They were each "ordered" to protect Eos in their own way. Due to their immense power, they are worshiped by the people as deities. According to Shiva, mortals were created in the Astrals' image. They are intelligent immortal creatures who have their own agendas, speak a unique language only understood by those touched by their power,[1] and play an integral role in the Final Fantasy XV Universe. Usually indifferent to human affairs, Astrals' behavior cannot be interpreted because their thought patterns transcend the comprehension of mankind.[2] Some of the lore concerning the Astrals is written into the Cosmogony books found around the world.”

This is really important here because of where I’m going with this.

In addition to this we know that:

The Astrals  are depicted as Humanoid in the prophecy painting.

We also know that they do appear in human form, as we see with Shiva.

According to the Cosmogony book, all the Astrals save Bahamut are sleeping... now isn’t that convent.

Further more we know that the Astrals tend to stay out of the lives of human affairs.

They also seem to exist in two places the mortal realm and the Astral Realm.

They can forge covenants with humans to support them, as seen with Noct during the game.

And they put people through trials before they give their powers away, depending on the Astral involved.

They will come to the aid of the King if they want to.

Soul crystals appear around them when they are summoned and the summoning takes a lot out of the King.

Even if they are defeated in the mortal realm it doesn’t kill them.

So why did I list all this…Well if you look at the Espers from VI…there are way too many similarities.

“Espers were created as a result of humans coming into contact with magic and the Warring Triad during their war for dominance. The gods realized what they were doing was wrong and sealed themselves away in the forms of statues. They returned the espers their free will, and asked to be protected by them. A second war began between espers and humans seeking to use their powers, beginning the War of the Magi. At the height of the war the espers created a new realm where they escaped with the Warring Triad's statues.”

Again keep this in mind those two bolded areas. Sound familiar? Well they should because they are quiet similar in tone. Eos created the Astrals, the Espers were created by the Waring Triad, and it’s an interesting thing because, Eos’s design is connected to the Goddess of the Waring Triad. (We will be getting into that.)

So why were the Esper’s created in the first place for Final Fantasy VI. Well according to the Lore, the three deities (Goddess, the Fiend and the Demon ) all came down to Gaia and were having a big old battle (more on that later). This battle raged over the world of Gaia, and during this time, rather than fight themselves, they created Espers, beings of great powers that were gifted to them by the Gods. (Again…sound Familiar? It should.)

These Espers could do a number of things:

They can make themselves look human or inhuman

They can grow to huge sizes

They lived in their own world, one that they made called the Esper World which is a Realm of it’s own.

Espers have tremendous powers and abilities, enough to wreck a whole party of enemies if called upon.

They are summoned via crystals that contain their soul called Magicite

In order to receive said Magicite from the non-dead Espers one needs to be tested in some way.

An Esper can form a crystal like cocoon around it’s body for protection prior to becoming magicite.

Normally Espers want nothing to do with humans as they are not to be trusted.

They even sealed off their realm at one point to keep humans from attacking them.

When you summon them what appears to be crystal like balls appear around the summoner and they also take a lot out of your MP in game. (Again Sounds familiar doesn’t it.)

Espers can live in the mortal realm, and, more importantly, Espers can have children with humans.

Espers can live a very long time and are practically immortal, as far as we know.  

There’s a lot more there, but I’ll point out the bigger ones here. The reason why I made these to list is to show the connections here and there’s a hell of a lot.

Both the Astrals and the Espers have their own worlds that they can go between. Both have powers greater than that of a normal human. Both were worshiped as divine beings until things got screwed up (more on that in a minute), and both can be summoned via the draining of magic (and causing the summoner to feel like they just got hit by a truck in the process). On top of that, both would rather not deal with humans, both were tasked with protecting their gods.

Then there’s the fact that when both rampage it’s a mess for the humans. During VI at one point the Espers are freed from their seal and take off to destroy this one location where they believe the Emperor is…he’s not there…but they wreck the city anyway. Leviathan doesn’t care about harming others and wrecks half of Altissia because she’s a brat. Both cases show that the Astrals and Espers have huge amounts of power that can level cities if they want to.

So how does this connect VI and XV? Well, what if we’ve been looking at the Astrals wrong all this time. We’re assuming that they’re gods, that they’re being’s of power, and yet according to the book they were “ordered” to protect the Star. Again that sounds familiar, and it should, because that’s the same story that we’re told in VI about the Espers.

When the Espers were created they were to act as a force for the Gods, when the Triad put themselves to sleep, they specifically left the Espers around to protect the statues. This unfortunately after a long time lead to a situation where the humans became jealous of the Espers and their powers and lead to the War of the Magi (again coming to that). You see the Magi were people that could use magic that they learned from the Espers. (Again sounding familiar? You know kind of Like Solhiem.) This war lasted about a 1,000 years leaving devastation on Gaia, and causing the world to regress and the Espers to place the Triad high on a floating island (this will become important later!) and hide themselves away in their own realm. Meanwhile the Magi were attacked and killed by non-magic users and hid on a small island called Crescent Island. Thus the Espers protected the Triad and the humans went on to live normally in a world that had fallen into the dark ages for another 1,000 years.

By the end of Final Fantasy VI we see the Espers leave and return to their sealed world, locked off from humanity and once more causing magic to vanish from the world. The thing about the Espers is that we don’t know what happened to them after. Given that they could be summoned and that they were not dead when a majority of them were turned to Magicite (save for Muduin and we will get to him later), we can assume –given their powers et all, that they could reform themselves and rest.

Now how does this connect to XV?

The Astrals were supposed to have come from another realm, in this case coming from what the people in XV think of as the Afterlife. And yet, we only see images of Bahamut in that existence, floating there for Noctis when he’s in their world when he went into the crystal (again we’ll be touching on this). Given the fact that this place looks more like an in between or a connection between worlds, I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t what we think it is.

During another part of Final Fantasy VI, we see the character of Madeline fall into the Esper world. The weird thing is that she’s exhausted from this, and needs to rest up and be healed before she can even move again. She’s gifted a pendent (more on that later) which is there for protecting the Esper world, and keeps her safe. It could very well be, since we didn’t get to see how she fell into the realm, that she, like Noctis, had to travers through a very weird place that looked much like the water world we see. So if this is a gateway, much like the gateway in VI (again more on that later), it’s not hard to see the Espers, now called Astrals, traveling between the realms through that gated seal which was made to keep out the humans in the mortal realm. (We also see water play a part in the Phantom Train area of the VI story.)

So if we make the leap that the Astals are actually Espers, what is the connection there?

Well in XV we are introduced to 6 main Astrals:

Titan, the Archaean, steadfast as stone.

Ramuh, the Fulgurian, sharp as lightning.

Shiva, the Glacian, gentle as snow.

Leviathan, the Hydraean, relentless as tides.

Bahamut, the Draconian, unbending as iron.

Ifrit, the Infernian, fickle as fire.

Since time immemorial, they have watched over Eos.

—Cosmogony

Now these characters are actually important in VI because of the role that they play…

You see Ramuh was the character that actually helped Terra out of her Esper state (again more on that in another post) after she had entered it connecting with another crystallized Esper. Being a halfbreed –her father was an Esper –means that she can switch between human and Esper forms at will. Problem was that due to the schemes of the Empire she was unable to control her powers, and thus Ramuh sent out the Returners (her friends) to gather up the Espers and find her father to help her remember the truth about her life.

Ramuh, as with XV, shows kindness towards humans and even lives as one in a town of thieves called ZoZo.

Both Shiva and Ifrit are found together and actually fight you together in VI, and Ramuh knows Ifrit and is the reason he calms down and agrees to work with you.

Leviathan is also a Esper that you have to fight near a city on the water in VI.

And then there’s Titan, who, for better or worse, has the same sort of attacks that Golem, and every other version of him (save for a handful including vi that has him as a more robotic machine) has him looking like Titan.

But then there’s the painting that depicts more than the six we’re told about.

(I outlined the various characters in stone and the ones in the painting) 

In the painting showing the war of the Astrals, we see an image of Ifrit, but he’s not alone, and there’s more than just the six main Astrals there.

So in regard to the painting From the top Right we have:

A Strange set of hands on top hear the top of the tower that looks a lot like the arms of the Esper Phantom.

A wolf or dog like face that has an area for a stone and markings on it’s face. This dog  looks a lot like the Wolf like Esper in VI, as well as Fenrir the Esper from VI and very well could be connected to Umber and Pyrna.

Then you have a man that I’m still trying to find but his one eye seems to have a set of make-up that shows it running down his cheek.

Beside him is a creature’s face that has no nose but looks to be a bit designed after Zona Seeker the Esper, as you can see the ribcage below and the face looks very much like Zona Seeker from VI.

Midgardsormr is right below them very similar to the design done by Nomura for VI,

Next you have what looks like Ramuh with his robes, but the colors are not green, they look more purple in nature.

Continuing  down you see a red wing next to Shiva, that looks very much like a birds.

Next to the red wing is Shiva.

Before Shiva is a woman with a winged head dress that is sitting on something, with her hand up under her chin. The design is a lot like Nomura’s version of Siren from FFVII, and her updated form. Siren was one of the Espers as well.

Next to the woman in the headdress, is another woman who is looking away from the group facing Ifrit. She has her hair up and some sort of item cuffed around her ear, as well as a wing behind her. She looks a lot like the updated form of Seraph.

Beside the woman is Ifrit, holding a sword very different than what we see him with later (we will get back to that…)

Beside Ifrit there looks to be a Unicorn, with wings, which I want to talk about in more detail in the Ifrit section.  

Then you have below Unicorn, what could either be two or one creatures. The head looks more like that of a rabbit, but with a weird jawline. So either that’s some weird version of Carbuncle, or it’s Carbuncle and some other esper.

Below the weird head is Probably Lakshmi who is off to the side looking down, as the headdress matches the updated form of Lakshmi.  

Go down and past the body of Midgarsormr and you’ll see the form of a man with weird horns coming from what looks like smoke.

And Below this man is possibly Phoenix , or one of the other bird Espers, but it’s hard to tell if it’s one or two bodies due to the way the rocks are shaded.

Next to the weird smoke guy you have three strange insect looking creatures, that seem to have human and bug like designs.  

Then you see Titan

Below him you have Bahamut

And below Bahamut you have what looks like a woman with four wings. In VI there is a Pixie like Esper that has a similar shape but no name.

Beside her and by Shiva’s knee, we clearly see a man in a winged suit brandishing a sword and he looks a bit like an Odin except more bug like. Amano’s painting shows at least two forms of Odin like creatures and one guy that seems to have the same look as the man in the painting that’s floating on the bottom.

The only one I don’t see is Leviathan.

Also by the man that may or may not be Odin there is a weird looking shell like shape that’s clearly round with a hole like design in it indicating a body…could that be Bismarck?

What’s bugging me about this situation is that the Cosmogony book said that there are 24 messengers, and only six Astrals.

So I counted the number of beings on the stone tower, that totals to 11, and the beings that are around the painting, that’s 12, totaling in 23 beings shown in the Astral war painting. Just shy of the 24 messengers that you would need to have  for a set. My only thought is that maybe the dog being is two, so you would count that twice, thus making 12 and 12, and so 24.

If that’s the case…well…seems like the story that the humans are being told isn’t exactly the truth.

So Let’s jump over to the Messengers, and I want to bring them up because of how they’re presented. We’re told in the story that there are a total of 24 messengers, and it’s a static number meaning that they never change, and, given what Ardyn said, he’s met Shiva’s messenger before in the same face, meaning that Gentiana probably is the human form of Shiva. If this is the case then each of those 24 messengers are the human form of twenty four espers.

Which, if you count the number of Espers in Final Fantasy VI, and take out four specific ones: (Ragnarok can become a sword, Maduin is Terra’s father and unable to come back, Raiden is Odin’s upgrade, and Crusader is the “Esper” manifestation of the Warring Triad-which really doesn’t fit into the story proper and is a rare esper to collect in the game after defeating eight legendary dragons –kind of a side quest thing). That gives you a total of 24 Espers that you can collect in Final Fantasy VI. Which is the exact number of Messengers in Final Fantasy XV.

Keep in mind that every Esper was once human and can retain their human form due to what the Triad did to them, so they can weave in and out of the form if they so choose to. Astrals can show up as human’s via Messengers, which seems a bit of a sketchy since we know that, thanks to Ardyn’s one line, the Messengers don’t age. So why would the “Gods” need 24 of them, if there’s only six? It would make more sense if there were 24 Astrals and each was its own Messenger.

There’s more to this to in regard to the situation in game.

So when you go running around the world of XV, you’ll notice that there are a lot of monsters out there with names that seem weird, and to me they caught my attention since a good deal of them, especially the bosses, seem to be named after Espers of VI.

Phalaris looks exactly like Kirin from VI,

 down to it’s horns. While it has a different name, there’s no mistaking these two.

Bismarck, the whale god (and I have more to say about him) is also an Esper from VI.

Unicorn is on the painting (and more about that one too)

Catoblepas is one of the monster bosses in XV is also an Esper in VI. 

Lakshmi is the painting that’s possessed that you fight. Is also an Esper in VI. 

 (Also more on this in another theory)

Quetzalli is a monster boss that you again fight and looks a lot like his previous design, and is only in here and

Esper in VI.

Ragnarok is a sword, though another sword with a different name bears striking resemblance to the original one.

Midgardsomr is a monster and on the tower it looks like

 Nomura’s concept for the Esper.

Cactaur and Gigantur, both added 

Espers in the GBA version of VI are in here as bosses.

Bahamut, Levaithan, Carbuncle, Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, Gilgamesh, are all in the game in forms similar to the VI counterparts.

It seems to me, if I was Bahamut, and a good portion of the group sided with Ifrit over this war, I would find a way to either imprison them, or take them out of the equation, and making them into monsters would make the most sense as a means of hiding them from the humans as an option.

There’s more to this too and one weird thing that stood out to me that would make sense for the characters to be former Espers is the markings on Titan and Bismarck.

Let me explain, during the story of Final Fantasy VI, the Returners (our heroes) go around collecting Magicite –the remains of the Espers. During this game you get Golem via an auction house, and Bismarck from the MT Facility. This is important because Both Titan and Bismarck share the same markings that the other Astrals do not have. I looked, and double checked over all their bodies (the only one that I couldn’t really check was Shiva as it’s hard to find a picture where I can clearly see her skin), and Bismarck and Titan are the only two that have this.

So what does that mean?

Well in VI, you Get Bahamut by saving him from Doom Seeker (a kind of demonic being), Shiva and Ifrit, willingly give their Summons to you, Leviathan you fight and when you beat it you get them, Ramuh gives himself to you. None of these characters were held by anyone save Bahamut, and were only used by the heroic Returners. On the other hand Golem and Bismarck were both held by other groups, and it would make sense that they were then marked to show who they were owned by.

I do think there’s a connection between them, seeing as Bismarck is known as the Sea god. But more on him later.

I wanted to also talk about the fact that the Astrals and Messengers seem to have things in common with their Esper counterparts.

Let’s start with Ramuh.

Ramuh in Final Fantasy VI is human looking, with a long beard, green robes, and a staff with a red orb on it. After the War of the Magi (which seems to be a lot like the War of the Astrals) Ramuh decided to live in the human world (as did other Espers) and was eventually captured and taken to the MT Facilty where he escaped with three others. He later helped out Terra’s friends when they found her in Zozo where he was taking care of her. The Returners were given a trial by him, get into the MT Facility and free the other Espers, and then Terra could be helped by him.

Ramuh can speak through dreams, and he’s seen as very sage, empathic and wise. He feels the most for the humans and is willing to help them fight against the Gestahl empire. Oh and he throws out lighting and so forth.

Meanwhile you have Ramuh of the Astrals, who acts as a judge on Angelguard Island while it was a prison. He passes Judgement on those who have not repented for their crimes and will smite them for the more malicious actions. After the battle with the other Astrals at an unknown time he fell to sleep there and was woken by Luna. He tests Noct and co. by having them run a mission to find ruins and that are guarded by Griffians. He’s seen to be understanding of the plight of the prince.

One of the key factors in VI and may be the case in XV is that Ramuh knows Ifrit and Ifrit actually describes them as brothers from different elements. The one reason why the Returners are able to obtain Ifrit in the first place is that he and Shiva feel Ramuh residing with the Returners and halt their battle with them.

If this is the same Ramuh from VI, (and part of my theory regarding Nocts’ line is right), then it’s not hard to see why Ramuh probably gave him an easier task. Also it again shows that Ramuh is one of the kinder summons and points to the fact that, given Zozo was a hive of thieves and the like, Ramuh would have a keen sense of person knowledge about those that are being honest about repenting and those that would not. It would take someone who had lived among those that were seen as the lowest of the low to know if a person was indeed being honest about changing their ways and was sorry for their actions.

Titan is a weird one. So Titan in XV is this giant Rock person who has brown skin and white patterns on it’s body. He’s shown to be very loyal to Noctis, and can create tremors when he sleeps. When he calls to Noct he gives him headaches, and in order to beat him, you have to freeze him. Also there’s the crystals that are growing on his body.

Then you have Golem from VI. Now this is the interesting thing. Golem is a brown robot looking Esper in a human form. He will block any physical attack, the same way Titan came to block the attacks of the rampaging Leviathan, till his Hp is depleted equal to that of the person casting him. Normally Golem is shown to be made of Rocks and Titan to be made of Flesh, but here Titan is Rock in human form.

Now one may say, “But Titan isn’t Golem.” Well no and yes. See there’s one big thing that I have to point to. On top of Titan bearing a lot of resemble to Golem from other versions of FF, in Tabata’s own Type 0 you have Golem and Titan as one being. A rock machine that has Titan as one of it’s forms and Golem as another. This mean that the two are equated to one another within at least one other version of the Directors games and in his mind.

Also Titan’s actions in the game are a lot like Golem’s in VI. Titan is protecting people and taking the hit with the Meteorite. Meaning that like Golem’s Earth Wall and his block ability, Titan is losing HP and keeping the area of Lestallum safe. The same as Golem does in VI to it’s Summoner.

Leviathan is a special case…So in XV we meet Levithan when Luna wakes her from her slumber in the sea. She’s called the Tide mother and there are angel like depictions of her, which contradict her actual behavior. She’s looked upon with fear and respect by the people and shows up as a blue Sea Serpent with multi-appendages. She can appear as a liquid form and come out of any pool of water, and manifest as such. However she’s shown as a mermaid in the Prophecy painting, and she seems to think Humans should worship her. She’s also doesn’t think much of humans and wrecks the city, as I noted above during her trial with Noctis. However she seems to respect resolve, is seen as wise and knowledgeable and close to God.

Leviathan in Vi is said to be male, but “he” never says as much to the Returners. Rather the Returners are sent out on a quest in South Figaro after learning about Leviathan from another person in the city. They travel via boat to find it, and here as they are traveling to the location where Leviathan slumbers in an underwater cave, it attacks and you have to fight “him”.

Now two important things about Leviathan, first is the fact that as with it’s form in VI, this sea serepent lives under the water and is hidden. Another thing is the naming of this one as a She vs. the male he in VI, and that can be explained, given Levi’s personality, that most thought of it as male, and well who’s really going to look to see what gender a giant sea serpent is in the first place.

The second important thing is, I think Leviathan may have taken over the role of an Astral at the Behest of Bahamut.

 We know that there is a Monument to Leviathan, but there is a small problem with it. The monument is that of Bismarck, and we know that Bismarck exists in XV and is said to be a sea god that Noct has never heard of. Isn’t it sort of odd that both Bismarck and Titan bear the same markings, and that there’s a monument to Leviathan there but with a Bismarck Statue, and Bismarck has shown to be kinder towards humans. To me it seems like someone was trying to replace the whale with the Sea Serpent, and, if I may so humbly point out, that’s kind of what happened in VI where Bismarck was the main water Esper until Advance gave us Leviathan.

So small theory here, Leviathan may have shared this duty at one point with Bismarck then, if Bismarck sided with Ifrit over things, it’s not that hard to see her taking over as the water person. This is also shown in the painting that Leviathan seems to be connected to Bahamut, and the other three are on the opposite side of them.

Shiva, the winter goddess, is seen as the most compassionate of the six Astrals, or at least as far as the stories go. She used to dislike humans due to how short their lives were and them clinging to dreams and hopes. Ifrit and the compassion and benevolence warmed her to them. She’s seen as the smallest of the Astrals, and has a human sized form. She has pale blue skin, elf ears, icicle horns, purple eyes. Her Messenger “Gentiana” stays by Luna through her journey, and she seems to coexist in more than one body. (Again, as I stated above with the Espers, they can take on human or nonhuman forms and can move about via magic in general.

So she fell in love with Ifrit, and then lost faith in humanity after the Astral war, but Luna gets her to feel compassion again and she tends to refer to herself in the third person. She tends to like people who are modest and selfless and is willing to protect those she cares for even when she was “killed” by Niflheim. What’s interesting here is that she created a snowstorm with her body that screwed up part of the desert area of Niff.

Shiva in Final Fantasy VI seems to be very similar to this version of Shiva. She shares the same color palette and is seen as human size to the Returners. Her clothing is similar to the one Shiva wears in XV, except that it’s pink rather than blue or white. When the Returners find her she is with Ifrit as the two were captured together, and sent down below the facility to die in a hole by Kefka. What’s important here is that she’s the one that calms Ifrit down, again, and basically tells him to listen when she and he both sense Ramuh.

Shiva is the most like her Esper form in VI. It would make sense that she may be distrusting of humans after the situation with the Empire, but if Ifrit was willing to trust them, then she would have been too as they were close even in VI. And the same sort of thing happened in VI as XV in regard to Shiva trusting Ifrit and making the call to allow the Returners to use their powers to save the other Espers. The fact that they used these two in this way calling back to VI is just a bit more than coincidental.

Bahamut is considered the leader of the Astrals, and said to have given powers to the Oracle, and also is the one that gave the crystal to Somnus and mankind. (Although personally I think there’s more to it than what the book says.) He physically looks like a dragoon and also, more importantly, looks like the design that Nomura created for the Fiend from FFVI. Importantly enough he is large enough that Noctis can fit in the palm of his hand in the Astral world, and his armor very much resembles the winged Dragon form he has in various other titles (but the design seems to have been heavily inspired by VI’s design for him). He is supposed to be the holder of light and energy. During the war Bahumt killed Ifrit during their battle.

Here's the funny thing, he supposedly picked the King and the Oracle to stop the scourge. He also resides in the crystal, and was shown giving a crystal to Somnus (more on that later in another theory). He also supposedly gave the Ring of Lucii to Somnus as well. In his “messenger” form he looks like a man with black hair, wearing armor and dragon wings. Apparently, Bahamut resides inside the crystal, which really gives me pause, but more on that later. I should note he’s the only one that calls Ardyn a Usurper and even the voice that talks to Iggy doesn’t call Ardyn that at all. (So what is up with Bahamut and Ardyn then?)

Bahamut in VI plays an interesting role there. His armor in XV does call to mind his dragon form here, seeing as he’s a steal gray dragon, with a bronze chest, red eyes and blueish wings. He’s held onto by a being called the Death Gaze and the Returners have to fight it to free him. In VI he’s kind of chill save for when you use him and he devastates the field.

The weird thing about XV Bahamut is that a lot of his looks seem to call back to his VI design. The painting does especially when it comes to the dragon form. What’s also weird is that he clearly clawed the hell out of Ifrit, meaning that he fought him in his Dragon form, but why? Something about his story doesn’t add up. What’s interesting is that if this is the same Bahamut as VI, it would make some sense for him to be very much the heavy hitter against anyone that was causing issues due to what happened to him and being trapped by a monster.

Ifrit is another hard one to talk about. He’s smaller than several of the other Astrals, and very Human looking in XV. He still has his horns and can hold a person in his hand. He has long brown hair, orange eyes, and no eyebrows. Consequently, in the form that he does take, and the one that we fight against, he’s way more gaudy looking than what he appears in the illustrated art. He has a crown of red and white stones on his head, some sort of bangles attaching his two horns, bangles on his wrists and ankles. His demonic form has a vastly different sword than the one we see in the pictures as well. 

The one he’s fighting with us against is one blade, with yellow and purple scarves wrapped around the hilt and a green and blue necklace with what looks like square jade pieces or stones. That sword has some sort of engraved etching on it, and a vastly different hilt and pummel than the one we see him with in early depictions of his life.

The one that is earlier is a three bladed deal, with a simple grip and a big red jewel on the top of it. XV says that Ifrit gave mankind fire, and it’s implied that this is knowledge. He may have become king of Solheim but then something happened and he became angry and felt betrayed and said he was going to destroy all of Eos along with Solheim. The other astrals came and fought him, and Bahamut killed him an labeled him a betrayer. It’s believed that Ardyn woke him, but when you look at the depiction of him waking up, it’s clearly coming from the ground below him. It’s also believed that Ardyn corrupted him, and apparently in the Japanese version of the text his people didn’t rebel against him. What’s also interesting is that in a lot of ways he resembles Nomura’s design for the demon from VI.

For Ifrit in VI he looks like a green human with two large horns and purple hair. Again as noted with Shiva both were nearly killed and dumped down a hole, then fought the Returners who were trying to help them. During this time he senses Ramuh and stops, noting that he and Shiva were both taken as prisoners, drained and then dumped by the Empire. After hearing the Returners story, he agrees to help out, since Ramuh trusts them. He sees them as compassionate beings wanting to help others, which matches how XV’s Ifrit sees things.

That being said, I’d like to draw attention to Ifrit right now and his story…

Okay so, according to the lore, Ifrit was an Astral that loved humans, and he brought Fire down to the humans and became their King in Solheim. Shiva fell in love with him, but something happened and Ifrit felt betrayed by the humans and started a war:

“The war was started by the Astral of fire, Ifrit, who ruled over Solheim but was betrayed by his once-loyal subjects who began to spurn their benefactor and sought new heights of power. Ifrit sought to destroy Solheim as punishment for their betrayal and hubris, but as the Six are sworn to protect Eos from all harm, even from each other, the other five turned on Ifrit. In the German localization [1] and in Final Fantasy XV: Official Works [2], Ifrit is said to have wanted to destroy Eos itself along with humanity.”

So according to the book, Ifrit got mad because his subjects sought new heights of power. (Again sounds a lot like the Geshalt Empire in VI) but that’s not all. Se the thing is here, we’re not given a reason why they supposedly betrayed him or how. And again the war picture got me thinking.

Given what we know about Astrals right now, that they would rather not deal with humans, why would Ifrit, even with all his love for humanity, want to rule as a king? He’s a god, it doesn’t quiet fit into this story if you take a moment and think about it. Unless we don’t have the whole picture here.

So that really got me thinking. What would piss someone off so much as to feel betrayed by his own people? There are only a hand full of things that I can think of…

Either they were screwing around with him somehow…or…this maybe a case of a father going on a rampage.

Here me out…and I’ll get more into this in the Eos section.

During Final Fantasy VI there is a point where you go underground with Figaro Castle, during this moving around you’ll discover an Ancient Castle where the people are frozen and the King there is petrified along with his Queen.

 This King…is the Esper Odin. As you search out the castle you learn that a wizard came to the castle during the Magi war, and turned Odin and his bride to stone. 

At one point Celes Chere, one of VI’s main characters, discovers that the Queen was in love with Odin and this was taboo. Espers and humans are not supposed to mix, and certainly were not during the war. Once you fight Odin, you can turn him into Magicite and bring him to the Queen who will cry on him to upgrade him to Raiden.

Also in Final Fantasy VI you learn of Maduin, Terra’s father, who tried to save his daughter but was captured and later sacrificed himself to become magicite to help her out, after her mother was murdered by the Emperor.

Why did I bring up both stories? Because I have a theory on why that Unicorn is beside Ifirit in the painting.  

So to explain this we have to get to know what Unicorn is in the game and the best place to start is to understand a bit of the legend about them. A Unicorn is “a symbol of purity and grace”, and would only go to those that shared the same values or ideals. So why would it go to someone like Ifrit? Well we know that he loved Humanity and that he willingly gave Solhiem fire and knowledge, so assuming that that’s true, then if the Unicorn here is a lot like the one in legend, that means that it saw someone with the same ideas. In addition in the world of Final Fantasy, Unicorn is considered a light-element in other games, and in VI it has the distinction of being the healing Esper in the group, as all it teaches is White Magic.

Unlike Ifrit and Shiva in VI, Unicorn has no sex mentioned, so it could be either female or male. (Keep this in mind.)

What’s weird about the comment from Ifrit is that he, according to the German version, wants to destroy Eos along with humanity. But if Eos is the heart of the world, as per Bahamut and the others insisting, why would he want to do that? Why kill the planet? And why would someone like Unicorn ally themselves with Ifrit if that was how he felt?

There’s also one other thing about the image that’s bothering me and we have to look to the Rock of Ravatogh there is clearly the remains of Ifrit there, as per the lore of XV. There’s also a ridge sticking up, which a lot of people thought was Eos’s body. But that was shown to be not true, so far. So what’s the additional wing like structure…well, that could be the remains of Unicorn’s wing.

Hear me out, Unicorn has the same wings as the shape of the jutting out rock so this could be where they perished along with Ifrit rather than submit to the will of Bahamut.

There are three options here that keep fighting in my mind, and hopefully we will get more details in regard to the back story more of Ifrit and the War, but for now I only have what I have to go on.

See, we know the Shiva loved Ifrit, but we never got a confirmation that he loved her back. We saw the picture, but that was it. So that leaves us with a huge question of was the feelings she was giving him mutual? If not…well there adds a new layer to the story of Ifirt.

As I said above there are two stories that could be the case here for Ifrit’s feelings of betrayal by the humans.

Option 1: As with Odin Ifrit fell in love with a human and decided to rule Solheim in that form.

Option 2: Ifrit was in love with Unicorn, another Astral, and the two ruled as King and queen.

Option 3: Ifrit is just a jackass and his ego got inflated and he took over as king.

Honestly I’m thinking one or two is the real situation with this story. And both actually fit the situation with the story that we have seen thus far.

Option A: Unicorn is a loyal friend of Ifirt’s. As such they became rightly furious when they saw their friend betrayed and felt that they had to help him in his quest. This would mean that Unicorn was just a partner with Ifirt and had no connections to the situation with Eos. The thing is…I don’t think that’s the case here.

Option B: Ifrit fell in love with a Human woman, as with Maduin and Odin in the past. As such he took her as his queen in Solheim and the two spawned an heir. During this time it was discovered that the Astrals were not gods, and as such, due to Solheim unearthing possible records of the Gesthal Empire (more on that soon with Solheim) and learning how the Espers powers worked, their scientists either killed or wounded the Queen and captured Ifrit and his child. More than likely they began to experiment upon her to use the powers and Ifrit broke free to tear apart the labs, only to find his child either was dead or near death and thus, put her soul in the crystal or had her become a crystal like stone (More on that in the Eos Section). Thus he was aided by his friend Unicorn to wreck Solhiem and the others came to stop them, both being killed by Bahamut.

Option C: Same story as above with B only in this case Unicorn is the child’s mother and was willing to war against her own to punish those that killed her child. It would explain the female voice in the crystal that we hear with Ignis…

Option D: Unicorn is the Child, rather than the mother and was willing to fight with their father against Bahamut and the others for the people that may have killed it’s mother. Again if this is a female then it would explain the voice.

Oh but there’s more in Regard to Unicorn. In the main games Unicorn is a strong healer and uses it’s magic to teach various skills to cure and heal the party members, as well as having the Healing Horn option in VI. And Healing Horn, cures everything! It’s a get out of jail free sort of ticket if you’re screwed over in VI. To add to that, Unicorns are known for being able to cure plagues and other illnesses with it’s magic.

On top of all of that, because it also resembles a Pegasus, there’s more to the story. See Pegasus is known for being the horse in Greek myths that helped Perseus. But it’s also known for being the horse of Eos as well, and is connected to the stars as it’s part of the heavens. Yeah you heard right Pegasus is connected to Eos, the dawn.

So if Ifrit had a connection to Unicorn that could be the connection to Eos that we’ve been looking for. 

So we have a unicorn pegasus…who is either connected to Eos, could be Eos, or there’s more to that story…but moving on…

Four other important characters that are not Astrals but are key to this story.

Umbra and Pyrna. Both of these dogs are messengers. We’ve seen them in the book with wings, they can be wherever they need to be, and something that connects them to being Espers themselves, in the original concept these two were ninjas that could shape shift into their messenger dog form. We’ve seen art depicting Umbra with Noctis. These two are brother and sister and the idea of a dog connected to a ninja goes all the way back to VI and Shadow with his dog Interceptor. Both don’t age, both seem to have greater understanding of what’s going on, and I think that Pryna was trying to warn Iggy.

Bismarck. So we have a monument that is supposed to be dedicated to Leviathan, and yet it’s designed to look like Bismarck. Seems a bit odd that people are not equating the more gentle whale to Leviathan, rather than the angry sea serpent in this case. On top of that the monument allows you to make a wish by flying a piece of paper into it’s mouth. Given that the main attack of Bismarck is Sea Song and it has the ability to help your party by pretty much teaching them raise, it would make sense that the wishing aspect is connected to it.

But it does bring up the question of why Bismarck is there, given that Leviathan is supposed to be the ruler of the seas. Again, I suspect that, Bismarck may have been the patron before the war of the Astrals and Leviathan took over his job, removing him, much like Ardyn being removed, from most of history save for those in Accordo who recalled him and keep him in their memories there. It would explain why Noct wouldn’t know of him, and also may explain why there are these other creatures with the Esper names running around. Given Leviathan’s personality it’s not a stretch to see her doing this to a weaker Esper (or Astral). Prior to Leviathan showing up in VI, Bismarck was the ultimate water element, which again, it seems like the developers are hinting at the idea that Bismarck came first. There’s also the fact that both Bismarck and Titan have markings that the others do not, which is also something that stands out in this case.

Carbuncle. Now this one is very interesting. Carbuncle shows up as a totem that is next to Noctis’s bed when he was in a Coma. During the prelude story demo we got to see the creature in action, and he seems to be a healing and protecting creature, much like his VI counterpart. The fact is both version of Carbuncle have the same color hair, eyes and the red gem on it’s head. It can strangely appear in Battle or in photos in XV, and seems to be Noct’s guardian. In VI after Carbuncle is saved in the lab, when you use him, he uses a lot of protect and reflect spells. The fact that the creature look the same, down to the blue fire is an odd choice if they weren’t going to connect VI to XV.

Again this is all Hypnotical, but if I could hazard a guess here about what is up with the Astrals and Espers…

I would think that there’s a large possibility that the Astrals are restored Espers who returned to Eos from their realm to help out. Hear me out, I’m going to include some info that I’m going to cover in a later part, it might seem weird but it fits within the story that we got. (Warning spoilers for a 25 year old game and some spoilers for XV.)

So here’s the way my thoughts go. After the Returners and Terra defeated Kefka and turned the World of Ruin back to the light (more on that in another theory) the Espers (in their Magicite forms) returned to the world of the Espers, save for Maduin who used up the last of his magic to protect his daughter so he’s gone for good. The Esper Realm, sealed again, was cut off from the human world. Over time new Kingdoms sprung to life, and Ifrit and the others watched this happen through their own magic. Feeling that things had changed, Ifrit convinced several of the other Espers to return to the Human world and help them out, seeing as the world was now trying to rebuild after the hell that had happened in VI. Ifrit’s reasoning for breaking the seal and coming back was because of the fact that A. he saw how the humans were behaving and realized that there were good people out there like the Returners, and B. he recognized why Maduin, his friend, and Ramuh, his brother, saw humans as good.

The Espers came back but by this point in time they had become whispers and no one knew exactly what they were. Bahamut, being as he was, sort of took command, while Ifrit went and helped out a smaller growing kingdom named Solhiem, and gave them magic knowledge. Something happened during this time and that caused the Astral War to happen. (My own guess is that those in a position of some form of power or wanting power of their own realized that the Astrals were not gods but Espers and did something to someone that Ifrit cared about causing him to attack them, as the memory of the Gestahlian Empire probably was something that stuck with him.)

Bahamut killed him and possibly Unicorn (Either Eos or that Unicorn goes by another name) and the others fell to sleep, or were put to sleep, and the ones that sided with Ifrit may have been punished in some way, possibly becoming the boss creatures that we have to hunt down during the game. This of course is all speculation until we have more info on the Lore of the world.

But there’s more for the connections in this world…and next I want to talk about the Waring Triad, Eos, and the world of Gaia…

[concluded-illusions]

MMO AU Where everyone is part of the same guild and uh. Are. Friends.

Light and Firion are IRL friends who decided to create a guild.

Light and Firion are roommates in college. They were both pretty awkward but they found a common ground in gaming. Light almost murdered Firion once over Fantasy Mario Party. So they play games where they can work together instead of going to prison over party game murders. Light is a paladin, his username is just WarriorofLight1. Someone took WarriorofLight.

Firion used to garden in his free time, but he can’t really do that in a dorm, so. New hobby time. He likes farming sims. He has so many hours in Fantasy Stardew Valley. After the almost murder incident, he and Light tried out an MMO and started a guild. Firion is a hunter, his thing is WildRoseRebel.

Luneth was their first recuit. He plays most on weekends cause school because he is a 14 year old lad. He’s starting high school and is a stressed out bean. He and Arc try to get their homework done when they get home from school. But they are children. Who actually does their fucking homework when they’re supposed to. On Sundays, Firi and Light make sure that Luneth has done his homework. Little do they know it’s already 2AM for him, and he hasn’t. Luneth plays as a healer because someone has too, and his user doobly is RecklessTravels.

Cecil is also a college kid, but he got into a fancy college because his daddy is important. He plays because Kain plays. He accidentally joined a guild and got really sucked in. He played as a Dark Knight, but Rosa and Kain had an intervention with Cecil, which led to the deletion of the account. With a clearer mindset and not being so gosh dang addicted, he rejoins as a paladin, and plays the game but also takes care of himself. His username was DarkWaningMoon before he deleted, but now he is MoonlightWaxing. Kain is DragoonGuy45.

Okay so Bartz used to play a lot. He was really good. Then he took up traveling. So he rarely plays. He comes back occasionally to see his friends, and always likes to meet the people who have joined during his absence. He is team hot boy. A model. Not profesh. But fantasy instagram loves him. Bartz plays as a rogue, and always comes back with neat stories. His username is ChocoChocoChocoboy. He has an ongoing rivalry with rival guild, VoidBois55. And a romance with their Dragoon. It’s like romeo and juliet, but one of them has no idea what the fuck is going on and doesn’t even know there is a romance. Rip Gilg.

Terra is going to school to become a teacher for younger kids. She’s usually swamped with papers and work, but every so often she gets some time off and she’ll play. It helps her vent frustration from her evil clown professor, who is an asshole. While playing she sometimes passes out and her roomies Celes or Locke hop on, finish the raid for her and log out so she can sleep. She plays as a mage and her username is MoogleFluffer. As soon as she learns Luneth is 14, she becomes his mother. And later when Zidane joins and is 16, despite all his flirting, she insists on being his mother. She makes sure everyone in the guild is well taken care of. She is the team mom. She and Light are the Team Moms.

Cloud moved away from home to go to a good college but he didn’t get in. So he’s working on supporting himself. He’s an unhealthy boy. He works, and sleeps, forgets to eat. Tifa suggests Cloud do something with his free time so he decides to try out this game. He has no intentions to actually take the game seriously and he doubts that he will play after this. So he chooses a dumb name. Oops. He likes the game. He joins the guild and everyone is instantly mothering him. Especially Terra. Every time he gets on the guild checks up on his health. Makes sure he’s eaten. Next time his mom visits with Tifa, Cloud is a slightly healthier boy. He is still. Very. Very depressed. But new friends help. Cloud is a Warrior and his username is GAY420GAY. He rooms with Zack and Aerith. Aerith occasionally plays with him as his healer, her username is COOLRANCH. Good team.

Squall is out of commission for a while since he got suspended along with Seifer for slicing each other’s faces in half. So he’s bored. Has a lot of pent up rage and he can’t leave since he’s grounded. So. Games I guess. He plays a hunter. His username is Heart-of-a-Lion. Little does he know Seifer is playing too, and is ready to wreck Squall’s ass, and also beat him in game.

Zidane is skipping school to help out at home and work. The theater needs him. When he gets time off, and he doesn’t feel like girls tonight (this is a rarity) he decides to game. He joined a guild while the guild’s hot boy was actually on and they instantly became friends. So he gets numbers and tries to plan his free time around when his friend will be on. But he ends up really liking the group. So yay. Friendship. The school counselors are concerned though. Boy needs to start going to school more. He hits on everyone who’s playing as a lady character until they inform him that they are a dude behind the screen. Yeah, Cloud is the prettiest girl in the game, but he’s still a man. Sorry Zidane. There is only one girl, and she is your mother. Anyway, Zidane is a rogue and his username is GrandLethalTheif.

Tidus is a sport boy. The last thing he thought he would be into was a soul sucking video game. Yet here he was. Quitting a sport he didn’t want to be part of, but also to piss off his dad, and not really doing much. He works out, but with no sports practice, he doesn’t really know what to do after school. His GF lives far away and he can’t just hang with her. He decides to try out some games and well, he meets a friendly Frio who teaches him how to game and invites him to his guild. Firion and Tidus start a real friendship here. Slow burn YUTIFI okay, that’s my end goal with these guys. Anyway, Tidus plays a support mage, because he is a supportive boy. He pockets Firion. His username is WaywardDreamer.

Shantotto is a librarian. She’s older than the rest of the gang, and has been playing longer than the rest of the gang. She’s a veteran. And she chose their guild. Cosmos bless. And she kicks ass. When she plays the guild goes after huge raids and sometimes they win. She is a Warlock and her username is ReignofPaine.

Vaan plays this because his pirate mmo shut down. Firi understands, for his friend Leila also played the pirate mmo. Vaan meets Terra first, and then Luneth, and they teach him how to not suck. He is a Rogue and his username is Sky_PirateXII.

Lightning is currently going to college to study uhhhhhh. Security. Things. It’s 5AM, cut me some slack. Anyway, she needs an outlet to vent Snow related anger out of. So video games. She is a Hunter and her username is StrikesTwice.

Y'shtola. College. Is. Cat. Warlock. Uh. Fuck. Username. Is. Cultured_Conjurer. I’m sorry I know nothing about XIV.

But I know like. One things about XV.

Noctis starts playing games as a frail boy. He is no longer frail, but he still games. He is a warrior, and his username is NightLight. Onetime he offers to fly everyone in the guild out to his city’s con. Everyone thought he was joking. He was not.

Anyway.

They are all friends. And they play game. Yay game.

[paixen]

I was tagged by @strigops​ to list and rave about my 10 favorite characters. The only thing is, I’ve been so sheltered from media until I was about 17 years old that I don’t know if I can list 10 whole characters that stick out to me, so I’ll just write the number of characters that I can think of off the top of my head that I like. Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk.

1. Ignis Stupeo Scientia from Final Fantasy XV - the world does not deserve such a mans like Iggy. His selfless compassion was so central to his character that he sacrificed his sight, which he valued so much, to protect his prince/king and therefore his kingdom. (And based on the trailers for Episode Ignis, he had to go through so much more than just losing his sight. AAAAH I’M SO HYPED and also apprehensive!!!) He’s wise beyond his years, he’s ridiculously intelligent, he’s sophisticated, he’s passionate, he’s a great chocobro mom, he’s a good cook, he’s hilariously, unintentionally funny - but also sassy, he’s athletically lithe, and he’s photogenic to boot. He also values puns! He basically embodied everything I wanted to be as I was growing up. What I admire about him most is the fact that he doesn’t typically waste words, so his peers revere him with respect whenever he has something to say. Generally. *coughRECIPEHcough* I would protect this mans like he protects his prince ;-;

2. Peregrin Took from The Lord of the Rings series - This character was so much fun to read in the books and was a great to watch on screen. His character development from a careless, food loving, self serving, drugged up trickster to a slightly taller, more mature/compassionate food loving, drugged up lad with a good sense of humor was one that I admired a lot growing up. A lot of people commend Samwise or Frodo for being the most hardy and generally “good” Hobbits... but I like to think that Pippin deserves recognition there too. I prefer to measure a fictional character’s value by how much they better themselves rather than their general goodness. Pippin wasn’t an all around inherently “good” character at the start, but very much changed that by the end.

3. Uncle Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender - if you’ve seen this series I don’t think I have to do much explaining. If you haven’t, all you have to know is this wonderful wise old man is indeed a wise guy. In every sense of that phrase. And the unconditional love he has for his nephew. Just. Oh my GOD he’s such a sweet old man... who happens to be able to thoroughly wreck you physically via with his masterful firebending, and emotionally via his love for his family members. When he cries, you cry. No exceptions, you heathen.

4. Garnet from Steven Universe - her concept was just so cool to me when I first watched SU. She’s the most responsible gem mom I know, and she is made of (🎶 LO-O-O-O-OOOVE 🎶... ahem) 2 amazing gems, who both represent 2 predominant facets of my personality pretty darned well. She’s also SO unintentionally funny that it hurts sometimes, and also a professional roaster. I also have an appreciation for characters who fight with their fists. Just feels organic, y’know? Though I kinda wish the crewniverse would use her powers more consistently but I guess.... plot?

5. Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog - this one might be weird but it’s mostly based on nostalgia. My brother always wanted to play on our SEGA Genesis when we were kids, and literally played on it for 24 hours once because my mom was curious to see how long he’d last given the opportunity. After that my mom limited the amount of time he was allowed to play on it, and would tell him “you should give your sister a turn once in a while.” When I was a kid I was so afraid of every video game that we had that I’d start crying if he merely inserted a Cartridge. BUT the one game I wasn’t scared of and was slightly obsessed with was Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Knuckles, but only if I was playing as Tails with him as Sonic, since Tails technically never dies. And we played that game to completion almost daily because that was his loophole to be able to keep playing the SEGA. As long as I was playing, that counted as “giving his sister a turn.”

6. Sans from Undertale - if you know anything about me, you know that most of my terrible sense of humor is derived from puns, which Sans delivers very expertly. The amount of depth Toby Fox put into this character was really impressive. Sans tries to keep things lighthearted, despite some really heavy circumstances, which reminds of so many of my own friends and occasionally myself. Depending on the route you take, he’s either an immense support to your morale throughout the game, or a dude who makes you feel like the Ultimate Scum Of The Earth. HE KNOWS SO MUCH.

7. Bob the Tomato from Veggietales - this orb makes the greatest faces and  can be so sassy. Go watch Veggietales if you want an experience. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate it. It’s essentially a Christian questionably ironic shitpost show. Bob is 10/10 best vegetable I’ve ever met. I also used to have a Bob the Tomato plushie as a kid? Probably weird but hey, he was round and squishy.

 8. I also remember REALLY liking Willow Watersong from The Demon King series by Cinda Williams Chima when I read it, but it’s been SUCH a long time so I can’t really rave about her. I just remember her being super cool and mysteriously knowledgeable.

Imma tag @sir-isaiah, @moonraccoon-exe, @fanwright, @hawkpath-tail and @jimthefishboi to enthuse about your 10 favorite characters if it tickles your fancy!  ヽ(•‿•)ノ

[makikoigami]

[FIC] FINAL FANTASY XV - PROMPTIS WEEK DAY 7

Title: Abendsonne Day 7: Stay with me / AU Rating: PG Wordcount: 3,860 Spoilers: All of them! Warnings: Near Death Experiences  Disclaimer: I own nothing and I never played the game. Still, these guys happen to occupy my mind. Not my fault Summary: Noctis' first year after saving the world and the only thing he wants to do is to tell Prompto to stay by his side. Notes&Comments: Written for @promptisfanweek, It took me way too long to come up with something for this. Got some inspiration thanks to my wife, who said off-handedly that I could just continue writing old married Promptis, because everything where Noctis lives at the end is and AU and just. Asking someone to marry them is just the best way to ask them to stay with you. There's actually a lot of music inspiration in this, the title's English translation is "the sun at sunset" and figuratively speaking it's the time when the night welcomes the sun in its arms. Also, when I hear "Stay With Me" I always get Shakespears Sisters' "Stay" stuck in my head. It fits, too, as both Noctis' and Prompto's suffering through the Long Night.

This is written as a companion piece to days 4 and 6, and goes with my wife's entry for day 7.

Stay Shakespears Sister

If this world is wearing thin And you're thinking of escape I'll go anywhere with you Just wrap me up in chains But if you try to go alone Don't think I'll understand

Stay with me, stay with me

In the silence of your room In the darkness of your dreams You must only think of me There can be no in between When your pride is on the floor I'll make you beg for more

Stay with me, stay with me

You'd better hope and pray That you make it safe Back to your own world You'd better hope and pray That you'll wake one day in your own world 'Cause when you sleep at night They don't hear your cries in your own world Only time will tell if you can break the spell Back in your own world

Stay with me, stay with me Stay, stay with me Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay Stay with me

" ...Bring back what once was mine… What once was mine... "

He should be dead.

He had been disintegrated into atoms, just to be put together on another version of the throne where Luna had been waiting for him. He remembered thinking, 'Ah, so that's that... I'm dead now, reunited with Luna in the afterlife to live on as a ghost to wait until everyone we once knew eventually joins us. I can't wait to hear about the life they lived without me.'

Then there was pain and he cried out, even as Luna smiled at him as she seemed to disappear from his side. He looked at her bewildered, but she smiled where she stood, taking slow steps back as she mouthed, 'go back to your friends. They need you.' There was a man in Kingsglaive uniform standing behind her and the last thing he saw was how Luna leaned against him, her hand reaching out for his.

Then there was light and pain - so much pain! - and familiar voices, shouting, crying and... singing ?

It was hard to breathe, but Noctis slowly came back to, his eyes widening as he felt wet lips on his own. It took all of the strength that he had left to raise his hand from the sword, finding Prompto's cheek - so wet, so many tears - and whispering hoarsely, "Hey..."

He tried to smile, but that only managed to make Prompto cry harder. Suddenly, there were arms around his neck and he was pulled into a tight hug, even as he could feel another pair of hands working on his chest, Ignis' familiar voice giving gentle orders and then there was movement, more pain, a pressure released from his chest and he felt himself falling forward into Prompto's arms. He felt heavy then, his eyes closed and a second later, he had passed out from exhaustion, pain and blood loss.

Noctis Lucis Caelum, the King of Light, slept for a whole week, seven sunrises and seven sunsets that were celebrated by the people of Eos. He even slept through the eighth sunrise and looked like he was going to sleep through the next sunset just as well.

"You have to eat, you know?" A gentle voice said softly as he came back to, but they were obviously not talking to them.

"I'll eat later. Just leave it here, I... will eat it," Prompto's familiar voice said, although he sounded so old, so tired, so exhausted.

"Just... do it, okay? Not like the other day," Ignis said, taking a moment longer before he took his leave.

"...you should be eating," Noctis tried to say, but it came out like the screech of something dying. He made a face and tried to clear his throat before he tried again, just like he tried to open his eyes. He was trying a lot of these things, but none of them worked out. However, it seemed to be enough to bring the message across and he found himself hugged again, the scent of leather strong in his nose.

'Funny,' he thought, 'how that is the first thing I notice about Prompto. The heavy smell of leather of his uniform.'

"Hey," he tried again and this time, it was just a mild screech, but he got the word across. A sob wrecked Prompto's body, which then turned into a laugh as he buried his face in Noctis' shoulder.

"You're alive!" Prompto sobbed, his fingers finding the hair on the back of his head as he squeezed gently. Even Noctis could tell from the way the other was touching him, he was painfully aware of where Noctis was hurt, that he was avoiding his chest at all costs and when Prompto finally gave him space to breathe, he almost expected to see his father's sword in his chest.

But there was nothing. Just sunshine and a gentle breeze playing in the curtains hanging in front of the window behind Prompto.

"Where am I?" Noctis asked, not because he didn't know where he was, he was just curious where exactly he was. The last he remembered was a world at the brink of an apocalypse, no gentle breezes, no sunlight.

"The Citadel... Your old room? That's what Ignis said, although both he and Gladio weren't exactly sure. It was the room with the most comfy looking bed," Prompto explained, although he looked like was exploding with a thousand words on the tip of his tongue.

Noctis smiled faintly as he looked around, remembering almost nothing of this room. Then again, it had been destroyed quite thoroughly. The tapestries ripped from the walls, furniture broken from what looked like being thrown around, even though Ignis and Prompto had probably tried to tidy as much as he could. At least the bed felt familiar and he turned his head to the other side, his eyes widening as he recognized a few things.

"These... are the king's chambers," he said, feeling a pang of pain in his chest that had nothing to do with his physical injury.

"Well, yes and no. When we found this room the wall separating them had been torn down. So we... moved the bed a little more to the middle of the new room so that you could have a nicer view onto the city when you... you'd wake up," Prompto explained and nodded towards the large windows with even heavy looking curtains being drawn open.

He blinked to focus his gaze, and when he looked out he saw a city left in ruins and it hurt his heart.

"It's not much yet," Prompto said as if he had read Noctis' thoughts. "But trust me, people are working on making Insomnia the place they want it to be again. Same with Lestallum and everywhere else that has survived. It's... it's been only a week ever since the light returned, but I've never seen people so full of energy."

The blond's words managed to draw a weak smile from Noctis that died the moment the king turned back to look at him.

"...except for you," he noted and saw Prompto avert his gaze and worry his lip, on the left side, where Noctis remembered a scar from before the Long Night. He knew that Prompto sported more scars now, back from those ten years that Noctis had been in the crystal.

"...I'm not that important to life on Eos," Prompto said in weak protest.

Noctis lifted his hand that felt heavier than a ton, letting it come to rest on top of Prompto's on the side of the bed. "You are important to me," he said, just before he lost consciousness again, falling back asleep.

"And you are my reason to live," were the words that followed him into his dreams.

Noctis made a rather swift recovery, considering the severity of his injuries and the state of the world. Prompto stayed by his side all the time, held his hand, helped him learn how to walk again and did everything that Noctis could ever ask for. Sometimes, he felt like Ignis was secretly jealous of their new connection, but whenever he asked him, his advisor only shook his head and smiled enigmatically, saying that this was probably more for Prompto's sake than Noctis' alone.

They went on trips, travelled around the lands of Eos again, to visit those who survived the long night and made sure that everyone would get the help they needed. Noctis was stubborn about this. He wanted to make this right, he wanted the people to know that he would listen to them, that he cared more about them than himself.

Prompto, Ignis and Gladio thought it was weird, because he had sacrificed himself, but Noctis wanted to listen to all the stories. He said that after he had missed those ten years himself, he wanted to understand what it was like, that he needed to feel what it was like himself.

Prompto had declared himself his personal bodyguard, since he had accumulated the most combat experiences, since his skills as a gunman and sniper were the most useful to protect the king from any kinds of assassins. No one said that they knew he wanted to stay by Noctis' side because he didn't want to let him out of his sight, but everyone knew.

Noctis thought it was adorable, and he was most grateful for it. It allowed him to talk, it allowed him to observe his best friend and how much he had changed the last ten years.

From everyone he knew, Prompto had probably changed the most. He had grown wider, gained more muscle where Noctis had lost some of his own during the Long Night; and he wasn't fidgeting every two seconds anymore. He didn't wear his wristbands anymore, showed off his tattoo like it was just another part of his body. The last thing Noctis remembered was Prompto beating himself up over it, thinking he was the enemy when all that he had ever been was his own person. It made him happy, made him relax and then wonder if more clones like Prompto had survived. But everywhere they went, they found no one who was left from Nifelheim. It was scary, but to think that an entire people had been erased by the experiment of one madman and a mad immortal soul and what Prompto had told him was more or less an accident even before he had gone into the crystal...

Noctis didn't quite understand it, but it seemed like Prompto and Aranea had set free powers that the world were not able to handle and while they did their best to keep the damage to a minimum, no one knew what had really gotten out of that factory deep in Nifelheim. Thus, Prompto seemed to be the least surprised to learn that there wasn't much left of Nifelheim at all.

It also made him to be the last survivor, which kind of put him on the same level as Noctis, who was the last in the long line of the Lucis.

"Prom," he said as they lay in his bed one night, around a year after all magic had disappeared from Eos. They had held hands until that had turned into kisses, which had then turned into something else and now they were there, buck naked after Prompto had gone to find them a cloth to wipe them off before he snuggled right back against Noctis side.

"Mhm?" Prompto hummed, his voice heavy with sleep.

"I've been thinking," Noctis said and he half expected Prompto to shoot back 'that's a new one.' It might be because Noctis had done a whole lot of thinking in the past year that had served to turn the world into a better place.

"What is it?" Prompto asked instead, snuggled against Noctis shoulder, his arm draped over his chest to cover the big scar there.

"If... you're the last known survivor from Nifelheim," he started, earning himself a slight tightening of the hold around his middle. "If you're the last one from Nifelheim, that... automatically makes you the ruler, right?"

"There's no one to rule over though."

"Hm... doesn't matter, in this case. Just trying to say that... there's no better way to show Lucis' will to bring peace to Eos than our... friendship ," Noctis said, because that's what they were officially. Friends. Mostly because Noctis hadn't figured out a way to change that yet. But he had an idea.

"Friendship, yeah," Prompto snorted and Noctis could hear the pout.

He sighed, because he had chosen his words wrong. He was able to argue with people from all over the world, but when it came to Prompto, the one person in his life that he really wanted to matter to, he was as clumsy as a teenager still. While that was frustrating on the one hand, it was also something that kept him grounded, that kept him striving to be better. For Prompto.

"You know what I mean," Noctis sighed. "What I want to say is... for the sake of publicity and the public image of Nifelheim in the heads of the people... Would you be willing to share your origins with the world?"

There was a long moment of silence and Noctis already opened his mouth to tell Prompto that he didn't have to do that, that they would find another way, because he understood how much he was really asking from his lover.

"...I guess it's a good idea," Prompto sighed and Noctis shifted, turning around to look into his eyes.

"...you're really okay with that?" he asked, gently running his hand over his lover's cheek.

"For you... I am," Prompto confirmed as he leaned into the touch, violet blue eyes closing.

"I love you," Noctis whispered as he leaned in to seal those words with a kiss, meaning them in an entirely different context than the one that he was sure Prompto thought he did, but that didn't matter. He would tell him sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

~*~

With the reestablishment of radio and TV, Noctis saw himself in the focus of various cameras and faced with microphones many times a day. It was okay though, he wanted Eos to know that he was there, that we was speaking to all of them.

The day he revealed Prompto's origins to them, also marked the day that his father had died. The day that Nifelheim had attacked Insomnia. The day that almost all of them had lost their homes and most of them their hopes, just to wait until the long night started.

Noctis had prepared a long speech, intending to clear up all those misunderstandings, to end the rumors that were going around and to confirm a few others.

One was the real intent of Nifelheim's call for a peace treaty. Another was his engagement to Luna and what exactly had happened in Altissia. Among many others, one of the last topics was identity of those MT soldiers, how they had come to life and what had happened to Nifelheim during the long night.

Ultimately that would lead him to Prompto's origins and lastly, to what was most precious to him.

He stood behind the doors to the balcony on which he would hold his speech in a few moments. However, there was one thing that he needed to do before he stepped outside.

Prompto, in his self-assigned role as his bodyguard, eyed the crowd suspiciously through a nearby window as Noctis took his hand and pulled him back inside.

"Noct, I need to..." the blond started, just to stare wide-eyed at Noctis as the king sank to his knees. For a few seconds, his eyes flickered to Ignis and Gladio who stood on the other sides of the room, but they were grinning and nodding, as if they knew what was to come.

"Prom," Noctis started, the words almost getting caught in his throat.

'Come on,' he told himself, 'you didn't feel nervous about talking to a crowd of people as far as your eyes could see, this is much easier! It's just Prom!'

But it wasn't easy, because a lot of things could go wrong.

"Prompto Argentum, you know that I love you, right?" Noctis started again, because this was something formal, something important that deserved a full name use. "We've known each other for a long time and... through those years, you've become my most important friend. When... when I said that I'd made my peace, it was because I wanted to give you a world to live in and I... I didn't think that I, Noctis Lucis Caelum, was important. But you proved me wrong. 'A world without you wasn't worth living in,' that was something that you showed me over and over again. And yet you did, because you knew I'd come back," Noctis said, squeezing Prompto's hand as he inhaled shakily, trying to hold back the tears that Noctis could see so very clearly.

"And I, I didn't want to live in a world that was so cruel to you. I didn't want to rule over a kingdom that condemned people for where they came from or made them feel uncomfortable like you did when you found out where you came from. I've loved you, even back then, because you were you. You managed to make me smile when I felt the most down in my life and I... I couldn't imagine living without you. Yet, it was my fate to fight alone, to save this world all on my own. But you stayed by my side," Noctis said and he could see Prompto's eyes flicker back to Ignis and Gladio again.

Yes, these two had been with him as well, but Prompto had stayed with him even afterwards.

"And I want to stay by yours. So, I'm asking you to stay with me, forever, if you want to and if the Astrals allow us to. Prompto Argentum, do you want to marry me?"

Prompto sobbed and choked back a laugh. "Holy shit, man, my heart hurts from that speech! But did you really think that through? We're both the last in our line, we will not be able to create any offsprings and-"

"Yes, I've thought about that. I was destined to sacrifice myself back then, I was supposed to be the last in the long line of Lucis anyway and you... you were lucky to survive as well as the last in your line," Noctis rationalized, feeling his own nerves slowly getting the better of him. "So, I am quite aware what I'm asking of you. Will you... continue to be by my side?"

Prompto worried his lip, his hand cold in Noctis' hold. For a moment he looked conflicted until he huffed a breath and then looked up with a tear-stained smile. "I didn't plan anything else with my life other than to stay by your side... so yes. Yes, I want to marry you! I-if that's okay with the protocol and... you know."

"Prom, I'm making the protocol up as we go, and I say it's fine. Don't worry," Noctis said as he got up, hearing Gladio scoff behind him. Ignis shrugged, putting his hands up because he stopped caring about the protocol once Noctis had taken over.

The king finally got the small, velvet box out of his pocket. "I've got this for you as a token of my promise," he said to his fiance and opened the box, revealing a simple silver band with lines carved into it that made it look like a chocobo feather, yellow gemstones that might just be diamonds placed all around it. "I hope you like it..."

"You know you could have gotten me a plastic ring and I'd've been fine," Prompto laughed, carefully lifting the ring to look at it. "It's beautiful..." Prompto smiled as he handed the ring back to Noctis, offering his hand wordless for Noctis to put it on, which he did with a grin.

"It is," Noctis smiled, looking at the other's hand in his. "Looks even better on you."

"Nerd," Prompto laughed and leaned in for a small, awkward kiss. "I love you. More than anything in this world."

"I know," Noctis smiled as he looked up and leaned back in, returning Prompto's kiss with a gentle one on his own. "Come on... I want to tell the world."

"E-eh? Right now?"

"Yes, right now . After that speech we had planned anyway," Noctis grinned, stepping forward to go out on the balcony. He smiled at the cheering people, slipping his hand free of Prompto's hold to wave at them before he stepped forward and started his speech.

His voice was hoarse by the time he asked Prompto to stand by his side and he was exhausted. However, that didn't stop him from taking Prompto's hand and squeeze it reassuringly. His fiance looked nervous, but as Noctis smiled at him, he seemed to relax himself and let Noctis praise him. At least as long as he didn't have to get anywhere near the microphone and talk himself, but they had rehearsed even that part.

Once Noctis had vowed to work out a lasting peace treaty between all countries of Eos, he took Prompto's hand again, pulling him to his side.

"To ensure the stability of this treaty between Lucis and Nifelheim, between royalty and the common folk, I hereby announce that on the day before the coming year's Light Festival, a royal wedding will be held," Noctis said, feeling that his voice was close to failing him.

"I, Noctis Lucis Caelum, announce my engagement to one Prompto Argentum and am delighted to tell you that he accepted my request!"

There was a moment of stunned silence in the crowd and Noctis felt a bout of anxiety grow in the pit of his tummy. Then, he heard Gladio start clapping to his left behind him, Ignis joining in and when Gladio cheered, the people seemed to wake up from their silence and they started cheering for them.

"Man, I thought they'd hate it for a second there," Prompto gasped as he wiped a lone tear from his eye. He started waving when people started calling his name, his other hand tight in Noctis'.

"It wouldn't have mattered, I would have married you anyway," Noctis said, beaming down as he started to wave himself. "Let someone else become king, I just want to be with you."

"...Good thing we can have both," Prompto smiled, but it soon turned into a grin. "You've got a few promises to fulfill."

"And I will break down the borders. All of them. There will be peace and happiness for everyone, because that's all that matters. And you are my peace and happiness."

"Man, ever since you've become king, you've become all sappy and stubborn," Prompto laughed.

"I've always been sappy and stubborn. Never got the chance to show it though," Noctis grinned and then pulled on Prompto's arm to pulled his surprised fiance over into a kiss. The crowd cheered a little louder and he grinned at Prompto.

"I love you."

Notes: Thank you for reading all the way to here! I hope you had as much fun reading my stories for Promptis Fan Week 2017 as I had writing them!

(In case anyone was wondering about that first line, it's Prompto singing and it's a preview for another story (That Tangled Story) that I'm going to write soon.

[faygosmayhem]

Story time #1- Final Fantasy & Me

At the time of this writing, the people following this sad little blog will all know me from the Final Fantasy XV community. For my first story session, I’ve decided to recount my history with the series and touch on what each game meant to me in the order that I played them. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, and restrict it to only the main games in the series, but I can rant for hours.

Note: I utterly failed at keeping this brief, I should have known better than to even try. To keep myself from writing a full novel in one post I’ve decided to split the story into parts. Below is the intro and memories from 7,8 and 9.

                                                  Part One

A Fangirl In The Making:

I’ve been into video games since the age of about 5 when my dad would regularly challenge me to competitive rounds of Super Mario Bros 3 for the NES. In the beginning I stuck mostly to NES, Gameboy, and N64 until Christmas of 02′ when all my begging and pouting finally came through and I was gifted with a PlayStation 2 and enough cash to purchase one game of my choice.

Oh how my parents would come to regret this decision.

The game I bought two days later was Kingdom Hearts. I’ll save my thoughts on that series for another time, but hands down this game can be pinpointed as one that permanently changed my life. What part of it changed my life? The journal, of all things. Prior to KH, I had no idea the Final Fantasy series even existed so when I encountered the Kingdom Hearts versions of FF characters, I initially started internally complaining because they were all so interesting and the game did almost nothing with them.  

Then I went back about mid-way through the game and read every character entry in the journal, and was met with two obsession worthy revelations. One: All these characters were also in other games, as part of the same series no less, and two: you could make them dance by choosing to view their full models and rotating the joystick around in circles (I am very easily amused, and doing this actually spawned my first work of Fanfiction).

“So, you mean to tell me that this weird dude with gravity defying hair, one random- mostly useless-wing, and giant sword that must weigh about three times as much as he does when naked and soaking wet who won’t stop emo rambling about Darkness is in another game and I can find out more??? Sign me the fuck up!”

The Gateway Drug:

Immediately after finishing Kingdom Hearts, I took myself down to a local mall where my go-to all encompassing general entertainment store was located. While browsing the shelves for anything that caught my eye, I saw a ‘Greatest Hits’ copy of Final Fantasy VII innocently sitting there, waiting patiently for the right person to walk by so it could take them willingly down the elevator into fandom hell. I didn’t just ride that elevator, I dove headfirst down the shaft.

I shit you not, when I saw that game there I picked it up like a baby and fell to my knees, hugging it to my chest. The video games were located near the cashier counter at the front of the store, and one of the employees who had been eyeing me suspiciously since I walked in started laughing like crazy, jokingly asking if I was OK. I was still dazed and euphoric, and also completely oblivious to the fact that I was causing a bit of scene in the store. The front was plate glass, and everyone walking by also saw and a few people were starting to look concerned. Now a bit embarrassed, I sheepishly walked to the counter and set the game down. After causing a commotion I couldn’t just not buy that game now- as if I would’ve left without it anyway. The guy at the counter was still laughing as he served me. Our exchange went as follows:

“I take it you found what you were looking for”

“Dude, you have no idea”

“You won’t be disappointed. Just, a pro-tip, when you get to the part with the water and the snake, don’t waste too much time trying to fight it, get a Chocobo instead. Also, avoid the things that look like houses in sector 6, they’ll kick your ass.”

I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but I filed the information away, paid my 14.95 (Ah, 2003), and walked out of the store cradling the bag like someone was going to steal it from me. When I got home later I tacked the receipt on my wall to immortalize the day forever. I eventually ended up losing it (a story for another time) but I still remember the date. 05/26/03.

I loaded the game and was immediately in awe ( “It’s three discs? No wonder the case is so freaking huge!”). The opening cinematic had me from the first note of the theme, and I remember laughing SO HARD when Cloud flipped off the train and suddenly everyone was a Lego character. It took an embarrassing amount of time for me figure out how to advance the text because it was set to use the circle button for confirm instead of ‘x’, and even longer to figure out how to move because I didn’t realize you actually had to use the D-pad.

Control struggles aside, I was so enraptured by the game I didn’t stop playing that first night until the Sector 7 plate fell and yeah, those damn houses did kick my ass. When I finally got out of Midgar about two days later (I spent an excessive amount of time in the Shinra building and on the Motorcycle mini-game), I couldn’t believe that everything I just did was basically the game’s intro, and that there was still so much more to explore.

I have so many fond memories of VII that  it would be almost impossible to write them all down. Down the road it ended up pretty far from my favorite game in the series, but as the first it will always hold a special place.

You’re Hooked Now Honey, Strap In:

Between the mixed obsession of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy VII, video games quickly became one of the only things I talked about. I had thought I was obsessed before, but this took it to a whole new level of crazy. I started writing weird crack outtake reels from the games in the middle of classes, and would post little screen caps and fanart over literally everything I owned.

One day, I had out my handy outtake notebook during a bit of downtime in Honor Band (yeah, I’m a geek to the extreme), and one of my fellow trombonist’s decided it would be a jolly time to snatch the notebook out of my hands,run away with it and, start ripping the pages out and throwing them around the band room. Fortunately I had some pretty awesome friends, and they not only helped me to secure the notebook but also helped recover the missing pages. After class that day, a boy who played the trumpet shyly walked over to me and handed me back one of the pages that was still missing. He was obviously very nervous, and after handing the page back and accepting my very relieved and excited  ‘thanks dude!’ (I admit to not knowing his name at the time) he stood there awkwardly while I put away my instrument like he had something else to say but didn’t know how. I gave him a questioning look after noticing he hadn’t walked out yet and as I picked up my bag he followed after me into the hall. After a little while he finally fell into step beside me and asked, “so, you like Final Fantasy huh?” 

I don’t care how long I’ve known you, if you ask me about Final Fantasy you better be prepared to a.) Become my new best friend and b.) let me talk your ear off about for as long as you’re willing to sit and listen. I talked with my new friend until we had to part ways for different classes, and then later at lunch when he asked to join me and continue the conversation. I tell this story because a few months later, this same boy bought me a copy of Final Fantasy VIII and asked me to be his girlfriend. A damn diamond wouldn’t have worked better. 

Final Fantasy VIII was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Once again I was already hooked by the game’s opening, and the cinematic introductions of all the characters gave it an unexpected charm right from the start. That game eventually got very, very, veeeery, strange and I eventually stopped trying to make any sort of sense of the plot line and just sat back and enjoyed the ride. 

That is, until I got to the end of disk 3. I found myself horribly stuck on the battle with Adle where she has Rinoa captured. No matter how many times I tried it, I would get her down to the final phase and she would either Ultima wipe the party or Rinoa would die. I gave up on the game for a while, sick of the frustration, until I came across a Prima Strategy Guide for it while browsing a used bookstore. I normally refuse to touch any sort of guide book until after I’ve already been through the game once on my own, but I figured it wouldn’t be much harm since I was already more or less at what I thought was the end of the game (I was wrong). In flipping through the guide, I not only learned how to beat the boss, but discovered I had been playing the entire game using the combat system completely wrong. 

Somehow, I had managed to get that far in the game using only the Guardian Forces given to you at the start of the game and 2 others that you can encounter in the overworld and without stocking up on magic at all. To those familiar with VIII’s train-wreck of a combat system, you know that pairing GF’s and magic together directly effect a character’s stats- and no matter how leveled the characters are,if you don’t have the right combos of magic you have more or less no hope at most of the harder sections of the game. 

So, now I had the boss strategy, but still would have been unable to beat it because I didn’t have the magic required (the strategy was to cast Regen on Rinoa to ensure she stays alive). In the end I bought the guide, scrapped the file I had been playing on and started over from scratch,this time doing all the sidequests and such in the proper order. When I got to that boss again I wiped the floor with her, and was rewarded with the game getting even weirder. 

I still look back to the ending of FFVIII as one of my favorite ‘Ok WTF Just happened?!?!?!?!’ moments in media. Usually I piece together crazy stories pretty well, but even though I came to enjoy the game, I can’t say with any real confidence that I understand it at all. 

Forever Touched:

There was a pause in Final Fantasy games after I finished VIII at the start of ‘04. It wasn’t until almost a year later that I received IX as a Christmas gift. I had been passing on it because I was confused and unimpressed with the cover art, but now that I wasn’t the one paying for it I was willing to give it a chance. I held off starting until New Years, because my parents were letting me have a few friends over and I wanted to have the new experience surrounded for the first time with people just as obsessed with the series as I was. Even though it didn’t have a fancy opening, it wasn’t hard to fall in love with that game. I knew from the first few lines of dialog that my heart was gone, lost forever to endearing charm of that world and it’s characters. 

My friends and I were up all night with it. We had so much fun naming the characters and reading the text out loud ("Princess! It is I! The noble Betty!”).Then we all got so upset when Blank got petrified in the forest that we had to stop for the night. Right from the start, that game hit so hard in the feels. 

IX became not only my favorite game in the series, but my favorite game in general. There is so much emotion, charm, and soul in that game, and it touches on so many issues that hit so close to home that I tear up just thinking about it, Back in May of this year there was a mental health awareness speed run marathon fundraiser called RPG limit break  being held on Twitch.TV, and Final Fantasy IX was the closing game. I couldn’t think of any better way to spend about nine hours in the middle of the night than to re-live the best moments of my favorite game sitting on a couch with my best friend. 

Seeing everyone in the audience tearing up at crucial sections; the Black Mage Village, You Are Not Alone, the ending- made me feel less like an idiot for getting all emotional myself and my friend got to laugh at me freaking out over my favorite game cut-scene ever (The one where Alexander protects the city from Bahamut). When the game was over, the marathon had raised enough money for the runners to stand up and sing the ending theme of the game as a filled donation incentive. When the time came, not only the runners, but everyone in the room stood up to sing along. Melodies of Life, the ending theme, holds a very special place in my heart. Seeing all those people singing along, likely feeling similar things, turned me into a pathetic ball of mush. My friend laughed with me as I sang along with more tears than I think I’ve ever cried streaming down my face, and then I cried again when everyone went around saying their ‘thank yous’ to the people volunteering for the marathon and stood in lines to give each other hugs. 

It was one of the most touching moments of my life; and this game was at it’s center. 

Phew. Well I failed pretty hard at keeping that brief. Looks like this will end up as a series of sorts.  Tune in next time for adventures with Final Fantasy 6/3, X, X-2, and XII

[stephicness]

Hello! I wanted to ask: of all the games you've played, which game had a heartbreaking moment? Like it brought you to tears?

OKAY WHY YOU GOTTA MAKE ME RELIVE THE TRAUMA IN MY LIFE?

Nah, man, I kid, I kid. I’ll admit though, I get pretty flubbin’ emotional whenever I play video games. I remember once I was playing a game next to my dad on a mini TV, and I made a choice in an RPG that just had me bawling. He had to comfort me and reassure me that my choice was okay for an hour before I stopped crying.

But that’s not even one of the worst moments I’ve had! :D Let me list some of them for you! (Spoilers ahead, even though some of these games are old as dirt!)

Dragon Age – Legit, I’m just going to lay the game’s entire goddamn series here for you, because I have cried so much throughout it.

I cried when the Human Noble’s family was betrayed and killed at the beginning of Dragon Age: Origins.

I cried when I sacrificed my Warden in Dragon Age: Origins.

I cried when Leandra died in Dragon Age II.

When Anders blew up the chantry and I killed him.

When I sacrificed Hawke to the fade first playthrough of Inquisition.

Pretty much that entire game destroyed me, inside and out. I got invested in the game series when it first came out when I was in middle school/early high school, and it’s just been a roller coaster ride. Can’t wait for what life-ruining thing the next Dragon Age will have!

Mass Effect 3 – Can we just agree that Bioware has the nasty habit of destroying people’s lives with feels? Because after being a long-term fan of Mass Effect, like I was with Dragon Age, Mass Effect 3 just put me to ruins. Everyone dies, nobody is happy, and your soul was destroyed. Does this unit have a soul? NOT AFTER MASS EFFECT 3. It got to the point where I had to walk away from the game for a few hours and cry in the shower because Mordin died. And when I got the alternate scene where it was Captain Kirahe that Kai Leng killed instead of Thane, I screamed, cried, and screamed again.Bioware, stop destroying my feelings. I have very few feelings left as it is.

Final Fantasy VII – I think we can all agree that this game has its moments that just invoke heartbreak and sadness. But my favorite moment is… Not Aerith’s death. It was Zack’s death. Particularly when Crisis Core was created and we got to see the scene in full CGI glory, Zack’s death got me sobbing. And sobbing hard. It didn’t help either that as a GMV editor, I would have to see this scene often. Or edit with it, cut it, manipulate it. Oh god, it was terrible. And I still get sad thinking about it because that bean deserved better.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII – The Final Fantasy XIII franchise is one that gets bagged on by veteran FF fans because of how strangely developed it was, but I honestly found myself on a roller coaster particularly when the last game of the Lightning saga came out. The first game was kinda sad, but not as feelsy as Lightning Return was. Again, I get emotional when I play games, but I cried alot during Lightning Returns. I cried for Snow turning all Cieth on us, I cried for Caius and Yeul because the revelation of why the Chaos existed hit me HARD, I cried over Lightning and her despairing feeling of loneliness at the end of the game – I got really emotional, okay? Especially over Caius, because that asshole made me like him even more in Lightning Returns. I still get emotional thinking about it.

Final Fantasy X – OKAY LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS TEEDOUCHE BAG. Legit, the ending of Final Fantasy X destroyed me the first time I played it, destroyed me years after I played it, and destroys me even to this day. I remember one day during lunch in high school, I was talking about the game with my friends (whom most of which have beaten the game as well), and I just started sobbing. Not like single tear sobbing, but like full on wailing because SHE WHISTLED FOR THAT TEEDOUCHE AND HE NEVER CAME TO HER. God, after this tale of romance and devotion, they hit us with that, and I just got wrecked. I got wrecked so badly.

Final Fantasy XV – I feel like I don’t even need to explain that this game was heartbreaking all together. BUT I WILL ANYWAYS BECAUSE HOLY MOTHER OF DAMNATION. I mention this alot, but I followed this game from when it was first announced as part of the Fabula Nova Crysallis (whatever the hell they called it) project, so I was already pretty invested in XV when it was still called Versus XIII. I knew it was going to be a rough game with the trailers, and the emphasis on Noctis having to fight his way out of Insomnia during pre-development trailers. But when XV came out finally, and we played the road trip simulator for the first nine chapters, things went to hell so goddamn fast. I kid you not, by the time the game ended, I was so broken that I couldn’t even cry anymore. I was a soulless husk just with my hand over my mouth, wanting to sob, but I couldn’t because I had shed all of my tears when it revealed that Ravus was turned into a monster.My tears didn’t fall. They crashed around me. This game destroyed my goddamn life. I love it.

Final Fantasy Type-0 – Yet another Final Fantasy game, but this one is really underrated, I feel. The combat was hard to get used to, and some of the gameplay dynamics were strange compared to what we got used to with XIII and the games prior to it. But I kid you not, not even 15 minutes into the game – not even when you get to even so much look at the tutorial, I was sobbing my goddamn face off. Over a chocobo. A chocobo. And don’t get me started on that ending either. I had first seen the ending on its own as a cutscene when I was footage hunting, and I sobbed my face off because of how miserable that ending was. As to be expected from a Tabata game, but GOD. At least show a little bit of mercy, please!

Heavy Rain – Why yes, hello. Allow me to take a break from all of these Final Fantasy games to tell you about Heavy Rain. So this game is designed in a really cool way, kind of like an interactive visual novel, but alot more detail. You control your characters, and your choices influence the outcome of the story based on how much you explore the world and what dialogue you pick, etc. And this game was one that made me cry from not only sadness and heartbreak, but also from sheer anxiety playing it. It gets pretty graphic – one time to the point where one of the main characters, Ethan, has to server one of his fingers before the serial killer would allow him to progress to the next challenge to rescue his son again. I cried really hard because I felt so bad for my choice, and watching Ethan cut his finger off and then cauterize it closed was awful watching. And what was worse was than in my playthrough, I made so many bad choices that I found myself crying hard from how bad of an ending I got in the end. Rough stuff, man, but a great story if you haven’t played it yet!

[gintamajustaway]

What sort of video games do you play? :D

I prefer RPG!! Kingdom Hearts is the series that actually got me into playing games and I fell hard for that series. I got into it kind of late, but once I played the first one, I was hooked. Riku is one of my favorite characters of all time in video games and the whole series is largely an inspiration! 

I also play most of the Final Fantasy games! I have the VII remake preordered already and I’m so excited I can’t even tell you!! I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE WHAT THEY DO WITH IT, WHAT CHANGES THEY MAKE, AND WHO THE VOICE ACTORS ARE GOING TO BE!!!!! The story for X isn’t my favorite, but the grid system is awesome, so I’ve played that one more than once. I also have a special love for VIII, IX, and I recently beat XV, which totally wrecked me. I was not prepared for that one at all. Ouch. Anyway, of course I love VII, but then Crisis Core is one of my favorites because I love Zack Fair, he kind of ran away with my heart. Cloud and Sephiroth are also a couple favorites. As is Leon. Oh, jesus, I can’t forget Fran

I’m currently playing Breath of the Wild and loving it! Ocarina of Time used to be my favorite Legend of Zelda game, but now it just has to be Breath of the Wild. The game is incredible and the story is intensive and awesome. I have the 5 best horses in the game and there are so many fantastic side quests. I always have to do all the side quests before I tackle the storyline, so all these side quests are awesome for me!!! 

I’ve played other games like Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed. I have The Last Guardian on standby for when I finish Breath of the Wild, but it seems like the series games are the ones I fall the hardest for.

[darkarm66]

Breath of the Wild review

On the Wii U, I had The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess in their HD remastered forms....and barely touched. This is reoccurring issue with me and remasters, even with games I love. No matter how much I loved them the first time, there are some games I won't touch again and it was mainly due to the beginning stages. I dreaded going though Ordon Village again and knowing I'd have to put up with those tutorials again to get to the parts of Twilight Princess i did enjoy. So once Link wakes up Breath of the Wild, gets his clothes and Sheikah Slate and I got to run around with my meager abilities and items, I knew that this game was gonna be a classic. Yes, that's all it took. Now, there have been many many reviews that extolled the excellence of Breath of the Wild, much better written reviews when it came out, possibly on the verge of hyperbolic. So allow me to add to it. And yes, not only is this the best game of 2017, It very well could be one of the greatest of all time. While those reviews have mentioned Witcher 3, Skyrim, Arkham Asylum and other open world games as direct influences (Nintendo said as much as well), this game inspired feelings in me I haven't felt since Xenoblade Chronicles. And like Xenoblade Chronicles, Breath of the Wild succeeded due to not just the high amount of gameplay but also by eliminating a lot of wonky, reductive elements. 

There's no invisible barriers that prevents the player from going where they want to go, once you get off the Great Plateau after getting the runes in the Shrines, the player has everything the need to explore this amazing version of Hyrule. And the exploration was felt lacking in previous Zeldas. You knew that special icon or crack in the ground required the player to retrieve the item from a dungeon. Now, you just have to go there and a lot of it just jumps out at the player. This time around, Hyrule itself is a dungeon with so many puzzles that tempt to player to stop moving and just fiddle around for a bit. The world is littered with seemingly out of place shapes and it draws the player in a way that doesn't feel contrived or blatant. And even if a trail isn't apparent or there's no natural way to enter a place, the climbing mechanic breaks all of it. Climbing itself becomes its own minigame because its governed by a stamina wheel and the weather system, which does allow the player to be challenged by where they can climb but it doesn't allow the player to break the game by going everywhere. And speaking of challenge, get ready to eat humble pie with the simplest combat system but toughest enemies ever. 

This Hyrule wasn't afraid to hand the player its ass over and over. And the lack of tutorials and locked rooms that teach you to fight means you're not stuck in this one place until you get it right. If you die, you come back and try again or move onto somewhere else to do something that won't kill you. When I tried to put off the story as much as I possibly can, I ended up discovering Shrines (in a minute, not yet), Koroks, rupees, side quests, food. Until I became bored and started the Zora quest line, which delighted because I got to climb up a waterfall with ice blocks and led to the real menace of Hyrule: Lynels. This is when previous Zelda game would put you in this room and turn this into a boss battle to see if the player has gotten any good. Not this time, it didn't care that I didn't have enough hearts, or my shields were too weak, or my weapons were brittle. So I just turn around from the high point and glided to somewhere else instead. While players will have to fight to actually survive, Breath of the Wild let the experience teach the players.

And mainly, those Shrines is how you get experience points. The Shrines are dotted the map, some not even trying to hide, some taking maddening puzzle solving, others rewarding the player for figuring out all the clues. Not only is this how the game facilitates fast travel, it also scratches that dungeon crawling itch for a bit, but only by being a puzzle shrine or a combat shrine. It lacks the incredible intertwining of previous Zelda dungeons but the light content and brain stretching use of items makes up for it. Especially since the player is always rewarded with a great item. Unless its a weapon...

Okay, in the early goings, weapon durability can be a bummer. Weapons break too common and by the time you get used to one, its gone. That's not the worst part of it. The problem comes when good weapons do start becoming more readily available but not you're out of slots because you don't wanna waste your Royal Broadswords on some basic ass Bokoblins because you know a Lynel needs that work more. However, you deal with it because all the puzzle solving and wander lusting led to Korok seeds to expand the inventory, so now by the time you wanna start wrecking things, you're actually equipped to do so this time around.

I also believe that the durability allows the player to actually replay certain areas. While other games use powerful enemies as gates to keep the player away for a few hours, that doesn't feel like it this time around. The map allows players to actually keep tabs on where they may want to go but don't feel like dying to do so. Place that stamp down, go somewhere else and come back to it when the player truly feels ready. I remember Miyamoto talking about how they wanted Zelda games to be able to replay certain areas for a reason. And now they didn't have to force the player to do a bunch of fetch quests or pixel hunts to come back to an area they already beaten. This makes Hyrule feel more livelier this time around because no matter how much time you spent in one area, you can come back to it and discover something hiding under your nose this whole time but you couldn't see it just yet. Or it has a dope sword you really needed but didn't have room for.

But one thing to make room for: food! There was something so hypnotic about resource gathering and cooking, in a way that surpasses Final Fantasy XV's photo-realistic dishes. The abundance of materials, which not only kills the tedium that might have killed lesser games, allows players to actual feel free to consume and experiment with everything they've gathered. In the beginning, basic meals are cooked to give your health a chance withstand raiding an enemy camp. By the time you're in the 100 hour mark, players are hunting to create complex dishes that give them dope buffs to make a play session a more pleasant.

One pleasant thing this go around is the story. For all the flack Nintendo gets for its approach to stories, it only gets it because they're not telling it through the usual cinema envy of other games. This is a deconstruction of Link and being the chosen one. Link isn't just gonna be handed all the tools needed to succeed just because he was chosen. Same goes for Zelda, who seems heartbroken that she has to be the reincarnation of a goddess. And thanks to the Memories questline, you get to see those cutscenes but they aren't automatically triggered because you did a thing. You earn those previous moments beforehand that showed Link and Zelda not truly feeling going along with what destiny wants to do because it worked 100 years ago...which was probably Nintendo's feelings developing this game.

For years, Eiji Aonuma talked about breaking the conventions and in the gameplay and story, that feeling comes across well with Divine Beast Champions, especially who they just fall doing what they were told to do. This is truly about how Zelda's dev team felt about coming together to give the same results, only for it to fail before it even began and the task fell to new people to do what's necessary to defeat Ganon through new means. It's deeply personal and the emotion maturely understated. Link and Zelda develop as legit characters through their struggles and heartbreak and it gives the story an emotional richness not seen since Ocarina/Majora. Link (and the player) truly earns the right to be called a hero, not because he was chosen but because he endured and grew.

I haven't even mentioned how beautiful this game is. Forget your need for 6 billion polygons per sec to animate a face. The details astounding from up close and far away. Climb to the top of the mountain and you see a sprawling, diverse horizon to take your breath away or look down to see a forest or lake or camp to possibly sail down. None of it ever stops looking gorgeous. My favorite place in the game revolved around a Shrine that needed an Orb to unlock but the area you were in was completely dark. Seeing Link as a shadow, lighting torches to move around this area was utterly beautiful and proves that developers don't need to high end CGI cutscenes to make a visual impression that last forever. Speaking of lasting impressions, this is one of the best UI I've seen in a game. It conveys information and stats without completely cluttering the screen and taking away from the game world. Even when playing in handheld mode, you can stil take in a lot of visual treats of Hyrule.

And despite the impression that I'm ready to marry this game, this game isn't flawless. Weapon switch is a legit pain. Holding down one button to switch to a particular weapon isn't as intuitive as the other controls in the game. You're better off just pausing and switching items, which sorta breaks the immersion for the player. Also, as great as the Koroks and Korok puzzles are, did their have to be 900 of them. I'm all for trolling the player and subverting expectations for attempting 100% completion, but 900?!? That quickly veers between padding and repetitive. And the dragons can suck it. Only one item drop per appearance and god help you if you don’t want a scale. Again. Which leads to the upgrade system being underwhelming, due to its limited focus on armor and not weapons.

What makes me ignore these flaws: the game never forces you to do any thing mentioned before this (except the first four shrines and runes). You never have to find a Korok seed (but why the fuck wouldn't you?!?), you never have to expand your health and stamina, you don't need to cook a meal, get the Master Sword, ride a horse, shield surf, regulate your temperature, complete a shrine. The game is indifferent to your progress. But you will do any and all those things because Breath of the Wild is excellent at triggering your curiosity and intellect  and rewarding it, not rewarding your patience. Best of all, nearly everything you do fits into a mechanic the benefits the player, the quest aren't just a collection of repetitive checklists of escalating numbers nor is its badly tuned mechanics just thrown for the sake of variety. (Take that, open world games!)

This is not to say the previous Zeldas were awful. They didn't get tens and awards for nothing. You may even miss the linearity. They were great for what they are. Breath of the Wild is just better. Instead of telescoping design and handing you the fun stuff when you did the one thing it told you to do, it trusted the players this time around to make their own fun and build their own legend. Players will end up completing the same things but everyone will make their own path to completion. Breath of the Wild is worthy of the praise it has received and then some. It break ground by avoiding all the pot holes and wasted soil of previous Zeldas and open world games and brought  freshnesss that hasn't been felt in years. Truly a game that lives up to the word 'Legend'