I’ve been waiting for this game for what seems like forever now. Originally, it was titled Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and it’s been so long since I heard anything about it that I feared the project had been cancelled. At first I thought that this might take place in the same universe as XIII, back on Pulse, before civilization got wiped out. XV is based on the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology, but I’m not entirely sure if it takes place in a different world or not.
Fabula Nova Crystallis, which means “the new tale of crystal” in Latin, is a certain kind Final Fantasy game similar to Ivalice Alliance and Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. XIII was the first game to follow this mythology, and there have been a couple other games thus far that also use it. Much like other Final Fantasy games, none of the games following this mythology have to take place in the same world. They are only connected to each other vaguely by using crystals for different tasks, like leveling up and learning spells.
Our main protagonist this time around is Noctis. He lives in the city-like country of Lucis, which is a technologically advanced nation surround by a bunch of medieval ones. Currently, there is a war over crystals, the last of which are in Noctis. Eventually, the country of Niflheim invades Lucis for the crystals, and there’s our plot.
So far, from what I can tell from this trailer and articles I’ve read, the cast for this game seems to be mostly male, which oddly enough doesn’t really bother me. Final Fantasy does a lot of great work with characters—normally, it’s better with male characters than female ones, but it does really well overall. Additionally, we’ve already had one Final Fantasy game with an all-female party, even if that game is not very good. So I don’t really mind that this game seems to have an all-male playable party. What I do mind is that XV potentially takes place in a world where women won’t have that many important roles. Most of the other countries in-game are based on medieval societies, so I can understand if this world is dominated by the patriarchy.
Unfortunately, that’s not really an excuse to not have female non-playable characters, at least. Regardless of whether or not women are in power, they still make up around half the population, and they still have their own wants and interests. I think I saw all of one female character in that trailer, among a myriad of male characters. There is one female character that I know of, Stella, and I am worried that her purpose in the game will be “love interest who furthers Noctis’s storyline”. I just hope she’s not the only female character of note.
The battle system seems similar to the battle system in Kingdom Hearts. It’s not the kind of battle system I prefer, but I still have a lot of fun with it, so XV looks like it’ll be great. Now I just have to save up for a PS4 when it comes out.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 