#ichablogging ffxvg

[icharchivist]

Another one of ff15 details that is built really in the gameplay that, once you played the full game once, ends up really hurting: Prompto’s reaction when you accidentally attack him through the game.

If, like me, you end up constantly drawing your swords at the wrong time, or not be careful about whenever your companions are nearby while you’re playing, you get various level of comments from them about how, in short “hey, don’t hurt me”

But Prompto in particular has a heartbreaking line where he first goes, a bit heated “HEY, WATCH OUT” and then adds, with his voice breaking a little, “I’m one of the good guys, remember?”

His english voice actor does a fantastic job in this voice break that suddenly hints at deeper insecurities that you can easily brush off when you don’t have the whole deal of the game in mind.

But with the whole context of the game, it’s genuinely heartbreaking. Especially when this line happens when you are fighting Magitek troopers.

With the knowledge that Prompto is a clone, who would have became a Magitek Trooper himself if he hadn’t been sneaked out of the lab as a baby, the knowledge he always had this deep fear inside of him that Noctis would hate him if he knew he came from the inside of the Empire and was originally created as a weapon... And the knowledge that a part of him feared it so much he almost expected it, so when Ardyn caused an illusion to have Noctis attack Prompto, for him, it was his fears realized, it was Noctis hating him for good and attacking him was a reflection on that. His DLC even goes deeper into showing “Noctis attacking him because he considers him a bad guy” is Prompto’s deepest rooted fear.

So, everytime as a player you accidentally hurt Prompto during a battle, especially during battles against Magitek, with the amazing line read, it really feels in that moment that Prompto is panicking. This fear is showing up, no matter how accidental it is. Perhaps he wonders if Noctis is suddenly seeing right through him, seeing the truth, and freaks out for a second, until Noctis reassures him it was just an accident. 

Idk it’s such a nice detail which is really just, a small thing that is put in the gameplay, that probably can be missed out on if you *checks notes* plays well, but thankfully i suck enough at video games that i get to make myself sad over this random line. 

I’m trying so hard to do this playthrough as a “camping simulator” ignoring the main quest, but moments like this make it impossible. The horrors that are going to happen haunt the narrative and the gameplay at every step you keep taking. There is no escape nor denial. Just dread and stubbornly seeing through and holding on to the happiness you can still find despite it all.

This playthrough is going great!

[icharchivist]

Though i should mention that like, ff15 does such a good job at setting up what is going to hurt you later that it’s incredible coming back to the start of the game and see just how much they planned on hurting you.

Spending time in Galdin Quay genuinely breaks my heart now because all i’m thinking about is the state we find it in when Noctis comes back near the end of the game. The place is so full of life and joy and pretty things, it’s where you feed cats and joke with the cook and fish for the first time, it feels like such a positive place. And when you come back the first time and see how it changed, it’s horrifying.  And then you come back to the start and it’s this beautiful place again and all i’m feeling personally is just this dread. I’m walking and having fun and once in a while suddenly it’s like a picture of the devastated version of the place flashes into my mind and i shudder and shiver and coming back to the actual game feels out of place. 

There’s other things that jumps out in the same vein, mainly, lots of things about Ignis and his sight and therefore, future lack of. There’s so many jokes about how he has a sharp eye to analyze situation and drive and it’s just impossible to ignore just how ironical the whole set up is.

Yesterday Prompto was joking about wanting to forever eat Ignis’s food and how once he was married Noctis will have to learn how to eat food from someone else than Ignis, and joking about how Ignis’s food is sure steps ahead canned food, and all those light hearted banter just makes me shudder thinking about the very specific scene of the first camping after Ignis loses his sight where you have to eat canned beans in complete silence, all of them realizing that Ignis can no longer do all of that. 

And i remember how when i first reached this scene, i was genuinely unwell, because like... it’s such a way to show you how everything that happens to the characters affect the gameplay. The gameplay isn’t just something to get through to play the game: it’s used to tell a story.

Basically you’d lose a lot to ff15 if you only watch a cutscene movie on youtube or something, because compiling just the important plot scenes will tell you want you need to know, yeah, but it won’t show you the visceral ways in which it is changing everything for the protagonists. How the sacrifices they go through are also sacrifice you, as the player, will also have to make.  Everytime the bros lose something, we lose it too. And it’s extremely effective on an immersion level.

I’m trying so hard to ignore the main plot and focus on having fun with the boys, but everytime there is something, just in the GAMEPLAY that suddenly make me flash to the horrors of the future and the bittersweetness of replaying the game is taking me fully.

I think ff15 is really an effective game when you actually play it and definitely try to just have fun with the charas, and totally give in on the stuff they like to have fun with: often cooking with Ignis, often fishing with Noctis, all this sort of things. Because all of these are really set up so that if you were diligent with doing them in game, they show you the emotional impact little things can have.

But yeah, it really makes replaying it hard, even by trying so hard to ignore everything that happens once at Altissia. Every good memories we make are so heavily tied to how it’s going to come crashing down, that as much as you want to love the present knowing you will lose it, it’s just. it’s just always looming that this is what you’re going to lose. And it makes everything more precious and more dreadful at the same time.

god this game.

[icharchivist]

i’ve downed 5 more hours into the game in one sitting and i’m only stopping because i’m feeling dizzy and need rest, else i would have kept going.

so, 11 hours into the game right now and, plotwise, i’m at... Golden Quay. I’ve met Ardyn, i did the cat sidequest, i did Dino’s first main plot quest, i’m supposed to get on the boat now on which Noctis is supposed to learn about his father’s death.

And i’m going to ignore that and go back fishing!

on my first playthrough i avoided fishing a lot because i couldn’t get the hang of it until the end, so now i’m using what i know a little. It’s a bit easier and i already leveled Noctis’s fishing to level 3, near the level up to 4!

I’ve finished all the sidequests in this whole area so basically i’m stuck unless i progress in the story.

.... UNLESS i’m fishing! So next time i’ll probably fish a lot.

but man so like, that’s 11 hours i’ve done just into the prologue of the game. 

at least let’s give credit where credit is due, you can still do a lot in ff15 while ignoring the main story! right!

but also i made myself emotional thinking about how, that’s the intended experience after all isn’t it.

if you just rush through the main story, don’t take the time to get those characters to rest up and have fun and everything... you would focus so much on their duty, toward the gods and the narrative, that you would forbid them to live, won’t you?

The fact i was barely fishing when i played the first time ended up making me feel sad because i felt like i was barring Noctis of his greatest pleasure in life, the thing that makes him more excited than anything else, just to have him rush to his fate.  Now i’m going at it with the mindset of, i want Noctis to go to his fate as fullfilled as possible with this narrative. I want him to have fished the biggest fish of all the lakes and seas this world has to offer. I want him to be able to look back and know he didn’t live just for this awful fate to play out like the gods intended, but that despite it, he had fun, he took his time, he enjoyed his friends, he had a life worth living that the gods had no control on.

And that’s all that matters to me in this playthrough.

I wanted to go in a bit detached like “i’m going to ignore everything after Altissia even happens” but now i’m feeling so spiteful “i’m going to do everything to make Noctis happy because if i don’t go out of my way to do so the game won’t do it for me”. 

That’s the morality of this playthrough

good night

[icharchivist]

also this whole bit made me go bonkers, that Prompto just took the blame and expected Noctis must have had a good reason for throwing him off the train and Aranea making it clear to him that not only it wasn’t Noctis’s intention but that Noctis is so miserable without Prompto???? im a mess im a mess im a mess-

[icharchivist]

I WAS CRYING SO HARD AND IT TURNED INTO A FUCKING HYSTERICAL LAUGH BECAUSE

OUT OF ALL FUCKING THINGS

[icharchivist]

*reads about the starscrouge*

My ff7centric brain: so it’s like geostigma Me: can we not bring it back to ff7 please My ff7centric brain: Imagine Sephiroth managed to fuck over the entiere worlds generation after himself, that’d be fucked up or what Me: cool story, still not bringing ff7 into it. My ff7centric brain: if ff15 is set centuries after ff7 that’d be fucked up or what?? Like imagine Sephiroth really having done that and fucked the whole world? Me: cool, still not bringing ff7 into it. My ff7centric brain: but it means he would have won and be right when he said “I will never... be a memory”!!! Me: My ff7centric brain: Me: holy shit what if starscrouge is an evolution on geostigma-

[icharchivist]

I legit only saw the picture bc then I had to leave again but if there were any other scenes I'd like to tell you that I Cannot Take Any More Damage

BRO YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE SCENE WITH THE BROS ONE LAST TIME. THEIR LAST SCENES. BRO.

WE GET SHATTERED IN MILLION PIECES TOGETHER IN THIS HOUSE!! 

[icharchivist]

hi im icha and i cant fucking drive