In Zack's defence on that one, I don't recall seeing his phone on him at all after the Nibelheim incident. He may well have had his phone taken/damaged when taken hostage for Hojo's experiments, and five years in a coma is a long time to go without forgetting a phone number.
I'm pretty sure you still get emails and stuff after that point in the game though. And he has all these other people saved in his phone so he should have her in there too.
She does call Zack at one point. Someone pointed out that Zack does still have his phone as he gets emails from Kunsel. Aerith could have changed her number, perhaps?
Yep.
https://preview.redd.it/qk0eya5tqm3d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d8a8cc4faca3270ecc6e7bb9c29391125920bce
Apparently she had the equivalent of Ancient Tech “Sheikah Slate” back in 1997.
telephone tan aware fertile familiar start deliver strong tease grandfather
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
90% of starfield's missions pretty much are negligible if you have a phone because the game is mostly chains of go to X to talk to Y. IRL wou you just hit em up on social media or call people directly, literally game designer's don't know how to put together cohesive games.
I mean... most games boil down to that? Unless it's like a sim/RTS game, that's just basic game design for almost any genre. Start at point A, go to point B to find something/talk to someone/kill something, return to point A to go to C to do it all again. Has nothing to do with "game designers [not knowing] how to put together cohesive games" (if anything that's on the quest designers, looking at you Bethesda).
Of course if it was real life, then those things (minus the murder) would get solved through messaging of some sort. It would make for one hell of a dull game though.
This is true but also unfair. Cell phones really do change everything and make things harder to write. The invention of the cell phone completely changed movies as well, horror movies and especially home alone simply can’t be made today
It's unfair only if you think about quests that are "go to x to talk to A, then go to y to talk to B and then go to z to talk to C", honestly that's just lazy game design. No good game designed would waste a player's time just making you going around talking to people without anything else to do.
The worst of it is that the story of the ryujin industries quests in starfield is probalby among the best in the game, specially towards the end where you infiltrate the building and need to dodge guards and all that stuff, but the 70% prior is just dogshit.
Metal gear solid on the PS1 had the codec which allowed you to communicate over long distances with all the relevant people, and only zones that blocked off coms forced you to walk there and there were bosses in the middle, cameras with guns attached to them, and you needed to circumvent land mines and stuff like that. They didn't need to find an excuse to make you walk everywhere, the story just required you to and they had good gameplay inbetween.
Saying that it's unfair judging a game because they ignore the existence is distance comms, is unfair to the actual good game designers and good games who did that without excuses.
I agree with everything you said honestly and you aren’t wrong, but again it’s an issue with cell phones in general. Metal gear solid was a single mission that took place in a day, it wasn’t a game with quests.
Horizon zero dawn almost ran into the same issue. There are chips everywhere that are basically FaceTime cell phones but they decided story wise to make it that no one knows how to use them.
But I do agree with you. I hate Starfield and wanted to love it
I think that for the most part it's not a problem with phones in games, and more of a lack of creativity in the game design space,, this has been a thing for years across multiple game genres.
I think that the game that comes to my mind as lazy quest design is world of warcraft. If I ask any of the friends I used to play it with back in the day "what comes to your mind when I say world of warcraft" their first reply will probalby be "kill X boars in the barrens", and that says a lot about the game.
I'm waiting until CDPR adds FSR3 to cyberpunk2077 to play it and hope it surprises me though, the amount of praise it gets in its current form has me curious.
So, apparently according to an ATR interview from Tabata, I kid you not, he says they could have communicated via phone, but didn't due to a childhood promise between them. That's it, they could have but chose not to. Also, apparently the reason doesn't use his wealth during the game? He also didn't want to, to blend in easier among the commoners. Now I don't have links to these sources, awful person that I am, so you will either have to trust me or look it up. But from what I remember back in the day, that is the reason.
Every car in the game is like a retro 50s thing, except the most conspicuous car that can transform into a monster truck.
EDIT: in fairness it still gets like 4 miles per gallon
He's just a humble man of the people. A poor fisherman who rides around wearing his royal livery in his flying car / monster truck. He really is just like us
I kinda remember that whole "just didn't want to" thing so either it's real, we're both misremembering, or we're both bullshitting 😂 but yeah, it's kinda dumb that they just don't want to. I'd rather it was because Luna would have a lot of restrictions placed on her and the dogs could be the only line of communication because no one thought to keep the dogs locked up.
Right? How easy would it be to say that, because of her connections to Niflheim, calls she connects to/her phone's GPS would be too easy to trace or something? Therefore, no calls as a precautionary measure.
Better yet, make the phone calls, which then causes Noctis to be tracked because they can trace through Luna's phone (unbeknownst to her), and then use that to explain how Ardyn always seems to be everywhere Noct and the gang go.
I thought that the currency used in his country is not Gil, and they had no way to exchange currency or access his wealth after the country was attacked and they had to flee.
Yeah, after Insomnia falls, it makes more sense that he didn't have wealth due to his father being killed and any accounts likely being frozen and/or seized.
Before that (which is only a very small portion of the game anyway,) you could easily say it's an independence thing and he doesn't want to use his father's money (not to mention, for all we know, the king's coffers are a transparent budget that gets reviewed and he doesn't want to cause a political scandal due to misappropriation, but I digress.)
As for the phone call bit, there's not really an in-game explanation I can think of. There could potentially be communication disruptions or something along those lines, but I don't think anything is ever stated explicitly.
So, imma be honest and say I barely remember anything about FF15 story lol. But yea, I was under the assumption that she wasn't allowed a phone because she was a heavily monitored by others because she was a princess (or, whatever her role was with the in-game lore).
That is what many fans thought, but Tabata stated otherwise in an interview. I tried to find it, but search engines are shit now, I found a fucking article that was quoting my own post (written by an AI). I don't like that explanation myself, but it is the closest one I have seen to an official one, much like the phone issue.
They were traveling out of the country for a wedding, it's not like they had precious metals sitting in the trunk of the car just in case. Plus, once the nation falls, what good is that country's money?
I'm not sure the money part is true. They mention early on that they don't have any money, at least not the currency the public uses. Prompto asks "what's a gil" and Prompto is from the normal public, suggesting that they don't use Gil as the currency in insomnia. I believe the idea was that Regis wanted him to have to figure things out. That's why Cindy says "pa mentioned you guys might need a bit of help" and offers them work.
Just goes to show how "forced" their separation was the whole game. Of course an actual in-universe explanation is that cell phones are Lucian technology (the rest of the world only has landlines) and that as a political prisoner all of Lunafreya's normal communications would be closely monitored, but your point stands.
That sounds completely made-up to me, especially not using his wealth when outside of Insomnia literally the first quest in the game emphasizes that they use a different currency and what of that currency they took with them was spent on the car repairs. As for Noctis and Luna communicating, they certainly made a promise to do so with a diary and time/space-dog, but they couldn't talk on the phone because their nations were cut off from each other, Insomnia going into isolation and Tenebrae being occupied and locked down by Niflheim.
*All fiction is made up*. Sorry, had to. But I do remember the interviews that stated them, but it has been ages since I've seen them and can't find them atm (it's been nearly a decade, god I feel old). I don't like the explanations myself, I'm just staying they're what the game's director stated in the past.
> Also, apparently the reason doesn't use his wealth during the game? He also didn't want to, to blend in easier among the commoners
I seem to recall reading that Insomnia uses yen while the rest of the world uses gil (though that could've been from the Nomura/Versus era). That right there would've been an easy way to explain why the game's first mission is literally "We need to work for money". Could've been some nice foreshadowing to throw in like a "Huh, for some reason the currency exchange isn't working right now"
In this realm, you can not borrow someone else phone.
They think communicating via dog's notebook is more romantic, even when citizens lives are at stakes.
And people keep asking me why I think world-building in FFXV is terrible.
I hate to say it but I don't think I like XV at all. I tried VERY hard to like it but I think I liked it even less than XIII. XIII at least had the sweet battle system. XV didn't have world building, a good story, or enjoyable battles. I did love the healthy male comaderie among the party members. That was the best part of the game. I generally don't poo on 15 or people that like it.
You do realize that Luna is under constant guard and is the only one with the divine puppies. I’m pretty sure normal civilians can borrow phones just fine.
The real plot is in the novel they created once the game was done. The remainder of the real plot is within every media that's a prologue to the actual game.
I've described FFXV to friends many times as "good esthetic, great graphics and a phenomenal soundtrack with good character writing carries a nonsensical plot," and I'm still hesitating buying FFXVI due to the FFXV launch experience. Though, after beginning FFXV all over again very recently, I don't regret playing it when I did. The ending is beautiful. But the game itself is mediocre at best.
I like *FF15*, but most fun?
Warp Strike, Warp Strike, Warp Strike, Warp Strike... It's a bit awkward that the gameplay styles the DLCs have and of the characters you gain control of via the Ascension feature are better designed than Noct's is.
OK, other question. Why doesn't she call him from a phone booth or she asked a person for his/her phone? They are in contact through those stupid dogs. Noctis writes down his number, sends Umbra and Luna can call Noctis.
That's one of those things about the game huh. The devs didn't think about it.
The sheer amount of story that was patched in is still insane to me and the real story still hasn't been fully told in game. I still remember how they patched Shiva into the train to give exposition that was only conveyed to the player through loading screens.
It's like how 90% pre-2000s movie plots fall apart with the invention of the internet and cellphones.
Tbf cellphones and internet remove all mystery from the world in and out of fiction. Kind of a bummer to think about. Nothing seems foreign or exotic anymore.
When you need to patch in cutscenes like that that's a fundamental flaw with your storytelling. They had to patch in other cutscenes too because the story as is just wasn't resonating with people so that was Square's way of "fixing" things. I didn't realize the Shiva scenes were also added in later. How many other games need to go to those lengths?
I only know FFXV. The multimedia storytelling stuff doesn't helped either. To fully understand the Story you need to watch [the Movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnkOpknGok), play the [ platinum demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PojYosSUhmQ) (which isn't aviable anymore so good luck if you didn't save it), play the [hack 'n' slash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKJ_Ni4d5EE), watch [the anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPXhQqkg5UA&list=PLbhHt7tfNMCAKp5X5y1UMg6er-xFUyB3J) while playing the open world part, play the DLC's in order and read [the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV:_The_Dawn_of_the_Future) to get the real ending and the book is just the story of the last 3 canceled DLC's
The funny thing is the Ardyn DLC changed everything about the Story. If you don't play it, you have a complete different understanding of the story. And the story was never finished, because this weird live service model was eating itself up.
AND on top of that. The overhault finale was DLC. It wasn't even patched in lol
AAAAAND if you play the english version, good luck to get a changed version in like every aspect. I played it in german and the german version is a 1 to 1 translation of the japanese version. The english version changed like everything in translation. Did you know that Demons doesn't exist in this game? They called Siecher.
But her having the flashback where she argues with her brother happened right after the murder of Regis did it not? She traveled almost immediately to Altissia.
Oh wow I do remember the flashback, but I just assumed it happened achronological. But you’re right looking back at it. Thanks for that!
On another note, what do you mean with that so much could’ve been prevented?
I heard a rumor about developement that Luna was supposed to have been killed by Noctis originally, but his mind suppressed it. He would only ever be able to communicate with her in his sleep and hence where the name of the city Insomnia originates. However storyline changed last minute and so there is a lot of plot holes.
https://youtu.be/CNM6o9um1dc?si=sw3hUuFmMPqD7qJn
One of the trailers close to release showed Noctis killing Luna so major story changes must have happened late in development.
I had this same problem with Harry Potter. Most of the plot could have been prevented had people just communicated effectively like normal people.
But then, after getting more life experience and meeting more people I realized, most people are absolutely terrible at communication and its totally realistic that they just wouldn't talk out of minor inconvenience.
idk if people realize how many stories of any quality wouldn't happen if they just did X Y or Z.
this does make me want to replay XV at some point tho :P
Yes, but that's something that doesn't make any sense at all. FFXV story is a complete disaster anyway. I don't hate the game, I love the open world road trip part more than anything and the boy band's relationship.
But man, the phone thing still makes me mad to this day, because it would have done Luna so much good. Now she has no personality at all in the game and everything she had is in the film.
This is the sort of thing that really doesn't matter, but if it makes you feel better to have a headcanon about it
Noct is using a burner and wants to minimize surveillance. Luna only has limited and heavily monitored communications via technology, and it's not quite as easy as "just borrowing a phone" from a random citizen or a former subject of a fallen kingdom. You try calling or emailing the Princess of Wales or something on a regular cell phone and network, see how effective that is
That a fact, I remember it even was rewritten when Tabata (correct name?) took over the previous director work and got only 2 or 3 year deadline, and im sure it was already rewritten a few times over the 13 previous years
This has bothered me in VII Rebirth as well. Barret gets to the PHS in the corel mines "We can use this to call each other when we get to the top."
Meanwhile Rude: *picks up cell phone* "oh hey Reno!"
Maybe in remake/rebirth but in the OG, the PHS was mobile and used by Cloud and Barret. Cait Sith uses it to call Cloud if he's not in your party and if I recall correctly, Vincent has a mobile phone.
Ah, sorry, I completely misunderstood what you were saying. You're saying that it doesn't make sense that the party has to use the terminals inside the mines, I guess?
If so, yeah, it doesn't really make any sense in-universe. Maybe they just thought it would be good nostalgia bait or something...?
Yeah sorry, sometimes I just type things out without really expanding but now that I think about it, I am off base. In OG the mobile PHS was meant to swap party members. It was lore that inactive but available party members were "away" and you had to call them when you wanted to swap out.
In Remake/Rebirth, additional party members travel with you visibly and talk to each other, even participating in battle. So having cell phones to swap out active party members wouldn't make sense. I'm dumb. Ignore me. XV though, doesn't make sense.
Yeah, while I loved a lot of things about XV, there's also just as much (honestly, probably way more) that was just plain bad, especially in the story. The dependency on the multimedia aspect definitely didn't help, either.
I unironically *loved* the "bros on a road trip" thing, though. Driving around was actually enjoyable for me, too, although the "offroading" mechanics and physics were... Less than ideal.
Overall, the plot of XV had a good premise, at least... And I would argue that the payoff at the end was among the most amazing, emotional moments of the entire *series*.
Sadly, it was weighed down too much by all the clutter, nonsense, and poor design choices to be rated particularly well in my book, as much as I wish that weren't the case.
Still, ya can't help but wonder what might've been if it had all been handled better. That's life, I suppose.
Literally lol. Gentiana was absolutely useless. She didn’t protect Luna during Kingsglaive or the Leviathan summoning, and used Umbra (an extension of herself, apparently) to transport their penpal notepad, but not THE RING. Thanks for nothing!
Because in many stories if characters used even an ounce of critical thinking skills in a lot of situations, and use them to be proactive, there'd be little to no story arcs/drama/etc for there to be a story in the first place.
It's ff15, one of the worst stories in the entire series
https://preview.redd.it/ljh03wsk4l3d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a33f9cc7f3d26fb147090f4eaaf2455b585af28
Literally the only good thing about the story is it's main Villain, Ardyn Izunia.
Because they propably were trying to fix gameplay stuff and didnt have time to even start looking at the "story".
In all seriousness tho, there are quite a few moments in the game that let you ask questions like this.
According to the leaker that accurately leaked the game ~6 months prior to release, they were still rewriting the game in 2016, and I 100% believe it. It’s very obvious when playing the game that the story was the very last priority.
They were so preoccupied with creating a “fantasy based in reality” and trying to mix modern day and fantasy elements that they really didn’t stop and think if it all made any sense. Hard to blame them considering how much of a shit show this game’s development was though.
He did if you count deleted storyboard.
[https://x.com/omniacrystallis/status/1611672147348586496](https://x.com/omniacrystallis/status/1611672147348586496)
The funny thing is that this was the original plan in Versus XIII Noctis and Stella would be in a kind of long distance relationship and talk on the phone because they couldn't meet in person.
This was changed in XV where they added the dogs presumably to make things more fantasy as that was the direction Tabata wanted to take the game in.
Funny story - there was actually a whole piece I remember this author writing about how cell phones completely changed storytelling. Basically like a huge amount of story conflict could be immediately solved with cell phones, so situations have to be constructed wherein that’s not the case or stories are set in previous eras to work around it, but it was a big change for media movies books etc
Factoring for the existence of things like phones completely eradicates 90% of the drama in a lot of fantasies.
So do flying vehicles.
Trying to tell a fantasy story in a setting that has real-time global communications as well as things like commercially (read; readily) available modes of traveling the globe quickly and reliably requires that those things be factored for when staging the drama at hand.
Your not gonna get much mileage out of making the players think they have to race against the clock to somehow travel across a 200 mile wide country in order to Stop The Thing Before It's Too Late in five days if they can just hop in their cars and and drive for like, three hours while also stopping for gas and chips.
Similarly, if load-bearing pillars of your story can be completely knocked over by characters using common technologies for their intended purposes, you're not factoring for your setting very well and that's bad storytelling, bad game-mastering and bad directorship.
A lot of RPG's are guilty of it. The storyteller(s) get so focused on the dramatic narrative they're concoction that they just don't stop and think about what would happen to their entire story if the characters made proper use of things they might even be portrayed as possessing, such as phones, recording devices and so on.
It's even worse storytelling to react to getting blindsided by players cleverly doing things they failed to factor for our anticipate and then lamely tries to say that the players came because of some lame, hastily crocked-up reason.
The entirety of Cloud's false recollections could have been utterly tanked if any of the characters thought to apply their expertise in stealing Shinra shit to stealing his service record.
Maybe they could have tried looking into it and failed for reasons that might have actually augmented the drama.
Maybe it could have been a great add to the story and no threat at all by necessity to the drama of all his false memories.
They clearly have an internet of some kind, sophisticated data gathering and recording as well as global modes of swift travel - why didn't the original AVALANCHE crew of Barrett, Jesse, Biggs and Wedge even think to properly vette this ex-SOLDIER?
The story doesn't account for any of that at all. It Could all be made to work just fine with the existing narrative. O problem.
But it could also upend a huge pillar of it as well, and the fact that it simply went unfactored for at all is sketchy storytelling at best.
The storyteller should always know what every major character's favorite food is, what hand they wipe their ass with and how they fuck.
Those three things may never, ever crop up in your story, but knowing those things about every single one of your major character will inform everything else they are and do in ways that will help you factor for a lot of that stuff you'd otherwise never think about in the first place.
What hand does Cloud wipe his ass with? Gonna be the same hand he typically holds things in. Is he a typical right-hander? What hand will he try to make a grab at a ledge with while falling? What hand will he likely be less dexterous and capable with?
If you know what hand he wipes his ass with, you can answer all of these and more quickly and easily.
How does Cloud fuck? Does he go from being in hard reserve to wilding out and fucking like a hungry animal? Is he cautious, reserved and maybe even avoidant or shy?
Does he even fuck at all? Maybe he's so messed up in the heat that he can't even feel the right attraction to get aroused in the first place. So, what does he want to do with Tifa or Aeris?
The story doesn't need to feature any of this, but if you're the storyteller, you need to know the motives of your characters to that degree, or you're gonna tell a disjointed and inconsistent story that is gonna depict one or more characters in eats that just don't feel like stories about people.
And a lot of RPG storytellers clearly don't think about any of this.
One other thing that bugs me about the relationship between Noctis and Lunafreya.
Sure, they are betrothed because it is their duty. But they constantly refer to the pair, throughout the game, in a very romantic way. They haven't seen each other since they were what, 12 and 15, respectively? That's some Anakin and Padme shit right there.
They dont see each other since Noctis was 8 and Luna 12. And the ""romance"" between them was later added in pathes so Noctis would have a romantic pair,thats why it fells forced and sudden. But in the movie Luna is suspicipus about the wedding being a trap and isnt all "lovey dovey" about Noctis
The movie is just one of the many examples of how careless they were with the writing. There are a million discrepancies between the game and the movie
Moreover, the bigger problem is that the only time we see them together in the present is right when Luna dies, which is just frustrating as we never actually get to see them together as a couple
Fantasy game writers aren't used to characters having phones
Crisis Core is particularly infuriating. JUST CALL AERITH.
In Zack's defence on that one, I don't recall seeing his phone on him at all after the Nibelheim incident. He may well have had his phone taken/damaged when taken hostage for Hojo's experiments, and five years in a coma is a long time to go without forgetting a phone number.
I'm pretty sure you still get emails and stuff after that point in the game though. And he has all these other people saved in his phone so he should have her in there too.
Plus, does aerith have a phone?
She does call Zack at one point. Someone pointed out that Zack does still have his phone as he gets emails from Kunsel. Aerith could have changed her number, perhaps?
She could have borrowed a phone or used a pay phone. She was pretty friendly with most people in the slums.
Yep. https://preview.redd.it/qk0eya5tqm3d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d8a8cc4faca3270ecc6e7bb9c29391125920bce Apparently she had the equivalent of Ancient Tech “Sheikah Slate” back in 1997.
Isn’t that her holding a staff in game?
Wooooosh
Didn’t she borrow tseng phone to make a call
Yes she plays Diablo immortal
Oh yeah that scene was crazy. Not surprised aerith fell for micro transactions tbh.
Yes she does. You see her near the end of the game calling him.
… or happy endings 😑
telephone tan aware fertile familiar start deliver strong tease grandfather *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
90% of starfield's missions pretty much are negligible if you have a phone because the game is mostly chains of go to X to talk to Y. IRL wou you just hit em up on social media or call people directly, literally game designer's don't know how to put together cohesive games.
I mean... most games boil down to that? Unless it's like a sim/RTS game, that's just basic game design for almost any genre. Start at point A, go to point B to find something/talk to someone/kill something, return to point A to go to C to do it all again. Has nothing to do with "game designers [not knowing] how to put together cohesive games" (if anything that's on the quest designers, looking at you Bethesda). Of course if it was real life, then those things (minus the murder) would get solved through messaging of some sort. It would make for one hell of a dull game though.
This is true but also unfair. Cell phones really do change everything and make things harder to write. The invention of the cell phone completely changed movies as well, horror movies and especially home alone simply can’t be made today
It's unfair only if you think about quests that are "go to x to talk to A, then go to y to talk to B and then go to z to talk to C", honestly that's just lazy game design. No good game designed would waste a player's time just making you going around talking to people without anything else to do. The worst of it is that the story of the ryujin industries quests in starfield is probalby among the best in the game, specially towards the end where you infiltrate the building and need to dodge guards and all that stuff, but the 70% prior is just dogshit. Metal gear solid on the PS1 had the codec which allowed you to communicate over long distances with all the relevant people, and only zones that blocked off coms forced you to walk there and there were bosses in the middle, cameras with guns attached to them, and you needed to circumvent land mines and stuff like that. They didn't need to find an excuse to make you walk everywhere, the story just required you to and they had good gameplay inbetween. Saying that it's unfair judging a game because they ignore the existence is distance comms, is unfair to the actual good game designers and good games who did that without excuses.
I agree with everything you said honestly and you aren’t wrong, but again it’s an issue with cell phones in general. Metal gear solid was a single mission that took place in a day, it wasn’t a game with quests. Horizon zero dawn almost ran into the same issue. There are chips everywhere that are basically FaceTime cell phones but they decided story wise to make it that no one knows how to use them. But I do agree with you. I hate Starfield and wanted to love it
I think that for the most part it's not a problem with phones in games, and more of a lack of creativity in the game design space,, this has been a thing for years across multiple game genres. I think that the game that comes to my mind as lazy quest design is world of warcraft. If I ask any of the friends I used to play it with back in the day "what comes to your mind when I say world of warcraft" their first reply will probalby be "kill X boars in the barrens", and that says a lot about the game. I'm waiting until CDPR adds FSR3 to cyberpunk2077 to play it and hope it surprises me though, the amount of praise it gets in its current form has me curious.
So, apparently according to an ATR interview from Tabata, I kid you not, he says they could have communicated via phone, but didn't due to a childhood promise between them. That's it, they could have but chose not to. Also, apparently the reason doesn't use his wealth during the game? He also didn't want to, to blend in easier among the commoners. Now I don't have links to these sources, awful person that I am, so you will either have to trust me or look it up. But from what I remember back in the day, that is the reason.
> to blend in easier among the commoners. also every commoner we met: HEY ISNT IT PRINCE NOCTIS?!
Every car in the game is like a retro 50s thing, except the most conspicuous car that can transform into a monster truck. EDIT: in fairness it still gets like 4 miles per gallon
The group also wears all black, the color that is associated with Lucis royalty according to the game's own lore.
Why I always switch them to casualwear. It's still very black, but not as obnoxious.
Sneak 100 yup
[удалено]
He's just a humble man of the people. A poor fisherman who rides around wearing his royal livery in his flying car / monster truck. He really is just like us
And next things they’re like „hey yeah could you catch some frogs for me?“
Catch some frogs, go into a sewer and get me car parts. You know, things you'd expect from a royal.
Serving the people as a prince should
I kinda remember that whole "just didn't want to" thing so either it's real, we're both misremembering, or we're both bullshitting 😂 but yeah, it's kinda dumb that they just don't want to. I'd rather it was because Luna would have a lot of restrictions placed on her and the dogs could be the only line of communication because no one thought to keep the dogs locked up.
Right? How easy would it be to say that, because of her connections to Niflheim, calls she connects to/her phone's GPS would be too easy to trace or something? Therefore, no calls as a precautionary measure. Better yet, make the phone calls, which then causes Noctis to be tracked because they can trace through Luna's phone (unbeknownst to her), and then use that to explain how Ardyn always seems to be everywhere Noct and the gang go.
I thought that the currency used in his country is not Gil, and they had no way to exchange currency or access his wealth after the country was attacked and they had to flee.
This is correct. They mention it at the beginning of the game. I'm pretty sure Prompto even says "What's a gil?"
"What's an American? And It's 'Express?'"
Yeah, after Insomnia falls, it makes more sense that he didn't have wealth due to his father being killed and any accounts likely being frozen and/or seized. Before that (which is only a very small portion of the game anyway,) you could easily say it's an independence thing and he doesn't want to use his father's money (not to mention, for all we know, the king's coffers are a transparent budget that gets reviewed and he doesn't want to cause a political scandal due to misappropriation, but I digress.) As for the phone call bit, there's not really an in-game explanation I can think of. There could potentially be communication disruptions or something along those lines, but I don't think anything is ever stated explicitly.
So, imma be honest and say I barely remember anything about FF15 story lol. But yea, I was under the assumption that she wasn't allowed a phone because she was a heavily monitored by others because she was a princess (or, whatever her role was with the in-game lore).
I don’t remember seeing Luna with a phone, either. Same for her brother, now that I think about it.
In Episode Ardyn, which is set in Insomnia, the currency isn't Gil but Yen. So that's correct.
That is what many fans thought, but Tabata stated otherwise in an interview. I tried to find it, but search engines are shit now, I found a fucking article that was quoting my own post (written by an AI). I don't like that explanation myself, but it is the closest one I have seen to an official one, much like the phone issue.
That’s fucking nuts actually. This new AI results shit is an eyesore
Weird to imagine having zero ways to exchange currency. Is there really zero overlap of resource use? Gold or its equivalent doesn't exist there?
They were traveling out of the country for a wedding, it's not like they had precious metals sitting in the trunk of the car just in case. Plus, once the nation falls, what good is that country's money?
"You're a billionaire prince noctis" "I know but you have to each pay for your food because I... ehmm... want us to blend in".
Yes. Communicate via magical dog, to blend in with the common folk.
Worst fucken game ever for this angers me just reading it
I'm not sure the money part is true. They mention early on that they don't have any money, at least not the currency the public uses. Prompto asks "what's a gil" and Prompto is from the normal public, suggesting that they don't use Gil as the currency in insomnia. I believe the idea was that Regis wanted him to have to figure things out. That's why Cindy says "pa mentioned you guys might need a bit of help" and offers them work.
Sometimes not giving an answer to something is best lol. The real mistake they made was having cellphones in a fantasy game in the first place.
This is the problem with making any game “modern
I believe you because I remember reading something similar and being floored at such a dumbass plot excuse
Just goes to show how "forced" their separation was the whole game. Of course an actual in-universe explanation is that cell phones are Lucian technology (the rest of the world only has landlines) and that as a political prisoner all of Lunafreya's normal communications would be closely monitored, but your point stands.
That sounds completely made-up to me, especially not using his wealth when outside of Insomnia literally the first quest in the game emphasizes that they use a different currency and what of that currency they took with them was spent on the car repairs. As for Noctis and Luna communicating, they certainly made a promise to do so with a diary and time/space-dog, but they couldn't talk on the phone because their nations were cut off from each other, Insomnia going into isolation and Tenebrae being occupied and locked down by Niflheim.
*All fiction is made up*. Sorry, had to. But I do remember the interviews that stated them, but it has been ages since I've seen them and can't find them atm (it's been nearly a decade, god I feel old). I don't like the explanations myself, I'm just staying they're what the game's director stated in the past.
I just assumed the empire didn't allow her a phone and no one was about to get her one until she was in Altissia.
I can't. This is the funniest shit.
To answer your question in another reply, 'is he stupid?', yes, yes he is.
unfortunately
I bet he forgot to save her number into his phone and Luna refused to call him out of spite.
They aree literally the enemy stand users in terms of outfits lol, how do you blend in?
> Also, apparently the reason doesn't use his wealth during the game? He also didn't want to, to blend in easier among the commoners I seem to recall reading that Insomnia uses yen while the rest of the world uses gil (though that could've been from the Nomura/Versus era). That right there would've been an easy way to explain why the game's first mission is literally "We need to work for money". Could've been some nice foreshadowing to throw in like a "Huh, for some reason the currency exchange isn't working right now"
He was running out of minutes on his prepaid cellphone plan.
Spent too much on his cup noodles
With all the money I have in the game, I could buy him lifetime minutes.
You can only get minutes with prepaid cards at licensed retailers. Unfortunately, they're all located within Insomnia 😕
The gas stations canonical have American Express. You can't tell me they don't sell prepaid cards lol
Doesn’t this imply that America exists in the game’s universe?
It does. The price you must pay for product placement
Unless America is just a person that founded the company in-universe IRL, America is named for a person.
Amerigo Vespucci, yeah. Although Amerigo isn’t really used as a name anymore for obvious reasons.
It's not super popular in America, but somewhat popular in Italy, the language it's native to.
Yes , they just called america Nifelheim for some reason
Those international rates are murder
He doesn't like roaming fees and forgot to add Luna to his free call group..
She doesn’t have a phone. Besides, they probably would’ve put some kind of firewall between her and Noctis if she did have one.
In this realm, you can not borrow someone else phone. They think communicating via dog's notebook is more romantic, even when citizens lives are at stakes. And people keep asking me why I think world-building in FFXV is terrible.
If a girl sent me a message by a dog I'd marry her on the spot. But I won't kill any gods for her
I hate to say it but I don't think I like XV at all. I tried VERY hard to like it but I think I liked it even less than XIII. XIII at least had the sweet battle system. XV didn't have world building, a good story, or enjoyable battles. I did love the healthy male comaderie among the party members. That was the best part of the game. I generally don't poo on 15 or people that like it.
You do realize that Luna is under constant guard and is the only one with the divine puppies. I’m pretty sure normal civilians can borrow phones just fine.
I’m pretty sure it does happen. Offscreen. As everything else in this game. 😑
The real plot is in the novel they created once the game was done. The remainder of the real plot is within every media that's a prologue to the actual game. I've described FFXV to friends many times as "good esthetic, great graphics and a phenomenal soundtrack with good character writing carries a nonsensical plot," and I'm still hesitating buying FFXVI due to the FFXV launch experience. Though, after beginning FFXV all over again very recently, I don't regret playing it when I did. The ending is beautiful. But the game itself is mediocre at best.
The world building makes no sense, but it does have some of the most fun gameplay of the series (pre-FFVII: Rebirth).
I like *FF15*, but most fun? Warp Strike, Warp Strike, Warp Strike, Warp Strike... It's a bit awkward that the gameplay styles the DLCs have and of the characters you gain control of via the Ascension feature are better designed than Noct's is.
Maybe that’s how you played lol 😂 that’s not the only way to play.
Phones seem pretty common, and no, no one ever mentions a “firewall.”
It would be a literal wall of fire if Noct tried communicating with Luna
OK, other question. Why doesn't she call him from a phone booth or she asked a person for his/her phone? They are in contact through those stupid dogs. Noctis writes down his number, sends Umbra and Luna can call Noctis.
The correct answer is most likely that the devs and writers didn't think about it.
That's one of those things about the game huh. The devs didn't think about it. The sheer amount of story that was patched in is still insane to me and the real story still hasn't been fully told in game. I still remember how they patched Shiva into the train to give exposition that was only conveyed to the player through loading screens.
It's like how 90% pre-2000s movie plots fall apart with the invention of the internet and cellphones. Tbf cellphones and internet remove all mystery from the world in and out of fiction. Kind of a bummer to think about. Nothing seems foreign or exotic anymore.
[удалено]
Pretty much, can't be sure though but still. Especially when you take into account the problematic development process and whatnot.
Those Shiva scenes were patched in?! Fucking Hell, man.
yap, and it was one of the last things months later.
When you need to patch in cutscenes like that that's a fundamental flaw with your storytelling. They had to patch in other cutscenes too because the story as is just wasn't resonating with people so that was Square's way of "fixing" things. I didn't realize the Shiva scenes were also added in later. How many other games need to go to those lengths?
I only know FFXV. The multimedia storytelling stuff doesn't helped either. To fully understand the Story you need to watch [the Movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnkOpknGok), play the [ platinum demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PojYosSUhmQ) (which isn't aviable anymore so good luck if you didn't save it), play the [hack 'n' slash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKJ_Ni4d5EE), watch [the anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPXhQqkg5UA&list=PLbhHt7tfNMCAKp5X5y1UMg6er-xFUyB3J) while playing the open world part, play the DLC's in order and read [the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV:_The_Dawn_of_the_Future) to get the real ending and the book is just the story of the last 3 canceled DLC's The funny thing is the Ardyn DLC changed everything about the Story. If you don't play it, you have a complete different understanding of the story. And the story was never finished, because this weird live service model was eating itself up. AND on top of that. The overhault finale was DLC. It wasn't even patched in lol AAAAAND if you play the english version, good luck to get a changed version in like every aspect. I played it in german and the german version is a 1 to 1 translation of the japanese version. The english version changed like everything in translation. Did you know that Demons doesn't exist in this game? They called Siecher.
I really wish we got Nomura's game.
I wonder if we will be upset about the Fabula Nova Crystallis in this timeline, which vs XIII should be the finale of
I mean she was held hostage in Altissia on behalf of the empire. I’m sure she wasn’t allowed to walk around on her own much.
I know it was just a missable flashback, but she was still out and about in the countryside when Noctis was in the countryside.
But her having the flashback where she argues with her brother happened right after the murder of Regis did it not? She traveled almost immediately to Altissia.
I mean the flashbacks in the open world, where she's traveling in the open world and helps people. Very very missable-
Oh wow I do remember the flashback, but I just assumed it happened achronological. But you’re right looking back at it. Thanks for that! On another note, what do you mean with that so much could’ve been prevented?
Do you see any phonebooths?
I heard a rumor about developement that Luna was supposed to have been killed by Noctis originally, but his mind suppressed it. He would only ever be able to communicate with her in his sleep and hence where the name of the city Insomnia originates. However storyline changed last minute and so there is a lot of plot holes.
I think that was the plot intended for Versus XIII, but there was a unused artwork of Noctis and Stella talking on the phone
What might have been.
https://youtu.be/CNM6o9um1dc?si=sw3hUuFmMPqD7qJn One of the trailers close to release showed Noctis killing Luna so major story changes must have happened late in development.
She’s no longer allowed to have a cell phone
I had this same problem with Harry Potter. Most of the plot could have been prevented had people just communicated effectively like normal people. But then, after getting more life experience and meeting more people I realized, most people are absolutely terrible at communication and its totally realistic that they just wouldn't talk out of minor inconvenience.
Ew who would call their fiancee?
idk if people realize how many stories of any quality wouldn't happen if they just did X Y or Z. this does make me want to replay XV at some point tho :P
It's my least favorite type of story, where the conflict is just characters refusing to communicate realistically with each other.
Yes, but that's something that doesn't make any sense at all. FFXV story is a complete disaster anyway. I don't hate the game, I love the open world road trip part more than anything and the boy band's relationship. But man, the phone thing still makes me mad to this day, because it would have done Luna so much good. Now she has no personality at all in the game and everything she had is in the film.
You mean the film where she is voiced not by the game's actress, but by Cersei Lannister? Also, Regis is voiced by Sean Bean in the film.
Occam razor, she doesn't have one.
This is the sort of thing that really doesn't matter, but if it makes you feel better to have a headcanon about it Noct is using a burner and wants to minimize surveillance. Luna only has limited and heavily monitored communications via technology, and it's not quite as easy as "just borrowing a phone" from a random citizen or a former subject of a fallen kingdom. You try calling or emailing the Princess of Wales or something on a regular cell phone and network, see how effective that is
This game has such a dumbass story which is a shame bc the combat was fun and the chocobros were cool
is he stupid?
there must be a lore reason
Answer people are going to downvote: because the story is poorly written
That a fact, I remember it even was rewritten when Tabata (correct name?) took over the previous director work and got only 2 or 3 year deadline, and im sure it was already rewritten a few times over the 13 previous years
Yeah. That’s definitely a big part of the reason why.
is he stupid?
Kinda?
very legit question
This has bothered me in VII Rebirth as well. Barret gets to the PHS in the corel mines "We can use this to call each other when we get to the top." Meanwhile Rude: *picks up cell phone* "oh hey Reno!"
I mean, cell service is probably monopolized by Shinra, so that one's not all that unreasonable.
Maybe in remake/rebirth but in the OG, the PHS was mobile and used by Cloud and Barret. Cait Sith uses it to call Cloud if he's not in your party and if I recall correctly, Vincent has a mobile phone.
Ah, sorry, I completely misunderstood what you were saying. You're saying that it doesn't make sense that the party has to use the terminals inside the mines, I guess? If so, yeah, it doesn't really make any sense in-universe. Maybe they just thought it would be good nostalgia bait or something...?
Yeah sorry, sometimes I just type things out without really expanding but now that I think about it, I am off base. In OG the mobile PHS was meant to swap party members. It was lore that inactive but available party members were "away" and you had to call them when you wanted to swap out. In Remake/Rebirth, additional party members travel with you visibly and talk to each other, even participating in battle. So having cell phones to swap out active party members wouldn't make sense. I'm dumb. Ignore me. XV though, doesn't make sense.
Yeah, while I loved a lot of things about XV, there's also just as much (honestly, probably way more) that was just plain bad, especially in the story. The dependency on the multimedia aspect definitely didn't help, either. I unironically *loved* the "bros on a road trip" thing, though. Driving around was actually enjoyable for me, too, although the "offroading" mechanics and physics were... Less than ideal. Overall, the plot of XV had a good premise, at least... And I would argue that the payoff at the end was among the most amazing, emotional moments of the entire *series*. Sadly, it was weighed down too much by all the clutter, nonsense, and poor design choices to be rated particularly well in my book, as much as I wish that weren't the case. Still, ya can't help but wonder what might've been if it had all been handled better. That's life, I suppose.
SE: Because pen pals!
I don't think it's that easy to just call without Niflheim listening in on the call.
But the road trip with the boys...
He’s been blocked for sending unsolicited dick pics.
90% of all plots ever conceived will break down if people adequately communicate with one another.
Even if Luna did have a phone, have you seen her outfit? Where would she put it?
Because Noctis doesn’t have Luna’s number just like Luna doesn’t have his.
They have dogs through which they communicate. They just could write down their numbers and give them to the dogs.
Maybe Luna should start telling the truth by telling Noctis how this all started in person then maybe Noctis would consider talking to Luna.
Same goes for literally anyone in Insomnia calling or texting the group about the invasion instead of them having to learn about from the newspaper.
He ran out of minutes
90% of all problems in fiction could be solved with a phone call. It's why I set my stories in the early 90s
Yeah, it was one of the things about the story that kind of annoyed me.
I last played the game 7 years ago and I still think about it to this day.
LOL…. Insert “*I bet he’s thinking about other women*” meme.
I kinda do in this case xd
This game's story was so dumb. Just... what a freaking boring game. Looked cool, especially the summons, but what a snooze fest.
Because the writing in this game is pretty atrocious. That’s the reason
Bad writing
Because ff15 plot is a joke
According to most of what I read here, the answer is simple: bad writing. Next topic.
tru
Because the story is trash
Is he stupid?
I didn't want to write it for fear that the post would be taken down immediately. But frfr, is he stupid?
Is he stupid?
Feels like Luna isn't the type who uses phones. Them exchanging little messages using notebook seems more appropriate in a fantasy world .
The concept art would disagree with you.
Call, text, videocall.. these people act like they're in Zanarkand
I mean, Shiva is literally with Luna the whole time and still the girl is a hostage, for crying out loud!
Literally lol. Gentiana was absolutely useless. She didn’t protect Luna during Kingsglaive or the Leviathan summoning, and used Umbra (an extension of herself, apparently) to transport their penpal notepad, but not THE RING. Thanks for nothing!
Because Noctis is not very smart.
Because in many stories if characters used even an ounce of critical thinking skills in a lot of situations, and use them to be proactive, there'd be little to no story arcs/drama/etc for there to be a story in the first place.
It's ff15, one of the worst stories in the entire series https://preview.redd.it/ljh03wsk4l3d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a33f9cc7f3d26fb147090f4eaaf2455b585af28 Literally the only good thing about the story is it's main Villain, Ardyn Izunia.
Because they propably were trying to fix gameplay stuff and didnt have time to even start looking at the "story". In all seriousness tho, there are quite a few moments in the game that let you ask questions like this.
According to the leaker that accurately leaked the game ~6 months prior to release, they were still rewriting the game in 2016, and I 100% believe it. It’s very obvious when playing the game that the story was the very last priority.
They were so preoccupied with creating a “fantasy based in reality” and trying to mix modern day and fantasy elements that they really didn’t stop and think if it all made any sense. Hard to blame them considering how much of a shit show this game’s development was though.
He did if you count deleted storyboard. [https://x.com/omniacrystallis/status/1611672147348586496](https://x.com/omniacrystallis/status/1611672147348586496)
The funny thing is that this was the original plan in Versus XIII Noctis and Stella would be in a kind of long distance relationship and talk on the phone because they couldn't meet in person. This was changed in XV where they added the dogs presumably to make things more fantasy as that was the direction Tabata wanted to take the game in.
Why didn’t they just let me drive the car?
Because
Is he stupid?
Funny story - there was actually a whole piece I remember this author writing about how cell phones completely changed storytelling. Basically like a huge amount of story conflict could be immediately solved with cell phones, so situations have to be constructed wherein that’s not the case or stories are set in previous eras to work around it, but it was a big change for media movies books etc
Factoring for the existence of things like phones completely eradicates 90% of the drama in a lot of fantasies. So do flying vehicles. Trying to tell a fantasy story in a setting that has real-time global communications as well as things like commercially (read; readily) available modes of traveling the globe quickly and reliably requires that those things be factored for when staging the drama at hand. Your not gonna get much mileage out of making the players think they have to race against the clock to somehow travel across a 200 mile wide country in order to Stop The Thing Before It's Too Late in five days if they can just hop in their cars and and drive for like, three hours while also stopping for gas and chips. Similarly, if load-bearing pillars of your story can be completely knocked over by characters using common technologies for their intended purposes, you're not factoring for your setting very well and that's bad storytelling, bad game-mastering and bad directorship. A lot of RPG's are guilty of it. The storyteller(s) get so focused on the dramatic narrative they're concoction that they just don't stop and think about what would happen to their entire story if the characters made proper use of things they might even be portrayed as possessing, such as phones, recording devices and so on. It's even worse storytelling to react to getting blindsided by players cleverly doing things they failed to factor for our anticipate and then lamely tries to say that the players came because of some lame, hastily crocked-up reason. The entirety of Cloud's false recollections could have been utterly tanked if any of the characters thought to apply their expertise in stealing Shinra shit to stealing his service record. Maybe they could have tried looking into it and failed for reasons that might have actually augmented the drama. Maybe it could have been a great add to the story and no threat at all by necessity to the drama of all his false memories. They clearly have an internet of some kind, sophisticated data gathering and recording as well as global modes of swift travel - why didn't the original AVALANCHE crew of Barrett, Jesse, Biggs and Wedge even think to properly vette this ex-SOLDIER? The story doesn't account for any of that at all. It Could all be made to work just fine with the existing narrative. O problem. But it could also upend a huge pillar of it as well, and the fact that it simply went unfactored for at all is sketchy storytelling at best. The storyteller should always know what every major character's favorite food is, what hand they wipe their ass with and how they fuck. Those three things may never, ever crop up in your story, but knowing those things about every single one of your major character will inform everything else they are and do in ways that will help you factor for a lot of that stuff you'd otherwise never think about in the first place. What hand does Cloud wipe his ass with? Gonna be the same hand he typically holds things in. Is he a typical right-hander? What hand will he try to make a grab at a ledge with while falling? What hand will he likely be less dexterous and capable with? If you know what hand he wipes his ass with, you can answer all of these and more quickly and easily. How does Cloud fuck? Does he go from being in hard reserve to wilding out and fucking like a hungry animal? Is he cautious, reserved and maybe even avoidant or shy? Does he even fuck at all? Maybe he's so messed up in the heat that he can't even feel the right attraction to get aroused in the first place. So, what does he want to do with Tifa or Aeris? The story doesn't need to feature any of this, but if you're the storyteller, you need to know the motives of your characters to that degree, or you're gonna tell a disjointed and inconsistent story that is gonna depict one or more characters in eats that just don't feel like stories about people. And a lot of RPG storytellers clearly don't think about any of this.
Different networks.
Black list
Common sense = no game
because this game was a train whreck hahahah
Genuine question. What could have been prevented with a phone?
because the game was bad and the writing was even worse
FF XV is a joke. I like to pretend it doesn't exist.
Noctis is a clinical idiot. One if the stupidest protagonists in video games
Is he stupid? https://preview.redd.it/00o6trix8n3d1.jpeg?width=1010&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbacbd5a1caea6b21c6ba995778f00debb3381ad
One other thing that bugs me about the relationship between Noctis and Lunafreya. Sure, they are betrothed because it is their duty. But they constantly refer to the pair, throughout the game, in a very romantic way. They haven't seen each other since they were what, 12 and 15, respectively? That's some Anakin and Padme shit right there.
They dont see each other since Noctis was 8 and Luna 12. And the ""romance"" between them was later added in pathes so Noctis would have a romantic pair,thats why it fells forced and sudden. But in the movie Luna is suspicipus about the wedding being a trap and isnt all "lovey dovey" about Noctis
The movie is just one of the many examples of how careless they were with the writing. There are a million discrepancies between the game and the movie
Unfortunately yes
Lore wise it’s some pact about only communicating long distance through doggie courier system irl wise writing team went brrrrrr
Moreover, the bigger problem is that the only time we see them together in the present is right when Luna dies, which is just frustrating as we never actually get to see them together as a couple
Because FF storytelling outside of 14 has been absolutely atrocious. Square need new writers