Everything FFXV Datamining Related

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Storm

Warrior of Light
Oct 26, 2013
3,351
6,012
32
Switzerland
Ah, so Ardyn revealed to be a Caelum only at Chapter 15 in the old ver.

I'm glad he doesn't come to the camp just to give you maps, he appears enough already and more of those encounters would only cheapen his presence.

Noctis collecting moonlight in the Crystal was something I wish that remained.
 
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Ikkin

Warrior of Light
Oct 30, 2016
1,099
1,705
It certainly seems like the concept for Episode Ignis that existed when the Season Pass was first announced was completely different from what we eventually got -- based on some early comments about Episode Ignis being strategic, I'm wondering if the initial plan might have been to do a pseudo-RTS or SRPG where you use the three bros (and maybe some Altissian units) to evacuate as many civilians as possible without many major surprises in the story.

I am so much happier with the version that actually released. XD
 

Bazztek

Keyblade Master
May 26, 2014
719
1,890
It certainly seems like the concept for Episode Ignis that existed when the Season Pass was first announced was completely different from what we eventually got -- based on some early comments about Episode Ignis being strategic, I'm wondering if the initial plan might have been to do a pseudo-RTS or SRPG where you use the three bros (and maybe some Altissian units) to evacuate as many civilians as possible without many major surprises in the story.

I am so much happier with the version that actually released. XD
It also sounds like the starting point was going to be Ignis and the groups perspective from when Luna awoke leviathan, rather than starting after Noct had already fought Leviathan and Titan being summoned then punching the ground causing a tidal wave. They did also mention that originally they were gonna have Ravus be the end boss for Ep Ignis but they added the part with him fighting Ardyn after the Ravus boss after that.

Based on that script there it also doesn't seem like Aranea would have actually appeared in Ep Ignis, rather it sounds like she would've only been on the comms in voice form like how Camelia and Wheskam are in the final one too.
 

FeniX_TX_

Stiltzkin's Apprentice
Jul 15, 2018
8
28
Is impressive how there's still so much interest and work being done datamining this game, I believe there was no more substantial datamining done to FFVIIR beyond the demo. I finished that game, loved it for the most part, but I still check here every once in a while. I wonder if FFXV hadn't changed so much during development, if it retained more of it's early ideas, if it was a Nomura game, if it felt more "complete", would there be the same amount of interest still going on? I feel that with the scope it had, it was never gonna be a perfect game, specially with Square's current time/work management, but man does it get your imagination going thinking what "it could have been".
 

Vallen

Forest Owl
Mar 4, 2018
372
797
29
I am so split on this game. Normally I lean more towards the vanilla concepts from the inception of this project over the final game we got, but each time I read through the sheer volumes of cut content it becomes clear that the XV we got was neither Nomura's vision nor the full XV vision under the new leadership. The game was changed from it's original roots, but they still had a very good story planned with a large scale of world building. If this version of XV released I am sure more people would have been fine with this updated story, because it still would have been rich and interesting.

I also see comments that the scale of some battles from earlier trailers do not represent a final product, which I disagree with, because both KH3 and FF7R did ultimately include 99% of the battles/areas/set pieces from early trailers of both games that were also not real gameplay. Nomura seems good at incorporating the things he shows in trailers without cutting stuff.

Reading all this is actually kinda heartbreaking. The scenes with Jared, Luna and Ravus were really necessary, I don't get why they decided to cut them (who am I kidding, I know exactly why - because they made the decision to do everything from Noctis's POV, which they didn't even keep to in the end).
These scenes and dialogues would really enrich the story and make it far less random and all-over-the-place. And it's even worse to realize that they had a chance to add all these scenes in the Royal Edition since they were revisioning the entire game, but decided to focus on stuff like the boat cruising instead. What a shame.
And that's the main problem, even if the game was rushed to release, the 2-years of DLCs was so poorly managed. Instead of so much side media, crossovers, mobile games and more shallow mechanics added to the game - they should have instead focused on adding more core game context and expanding scenes/areas/dialogues to enhance the story.

Once again, these extra dialogues would have added gravitas and a better context of the stakes at play.

Its just a shame, it seems like every scene we got was digested and instead of them refilling with something else they left them as it is, half-baked scenes that led to half-baked rushed story exposition and presentation.

A shame.
A shame indeed. Their focus on the 'open world' and too many mechanics trying to mimic Western RPGs ultimately came at the price of the story. I don't understand why they pushed the main narrative to the side when they had so much of it complete. With some minor edits a lot of giant pieces of lore and contextualized dialogue could have been used to expand so many scenes.
 

Storm

Warrior of Light
Oct 26, 2013
3,351
6,012
32
Switzerland
Yeah but neither KH3 nor FFVIIR had anything close in terms of scale and complexity compared to the envisioned Leviathan setpiece... there's a reason it was target render in the first place.

Actually, despite some of the junkiness, FFXV offers more ambitious fights than FFVIIR because of the aerial combat + high quantity of giant enemies, and that's all in an open world setting.
 
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Likes: Lord_Ham_Mork

Ikkin

Warrior of Light
Oct 30, 2016
1,099
1,705
Yeah but neither KH3 nor FFVIIR had anything close in terms of scale and complexity compared to the envisioned Leviathan setpiece... there's a reason it was target render in the first place.

Actually, despite some of the junkiness, FFXV offers more ambitious fights than FFVIIR because of the aerial combat + high quantity of giant enemies, and that's all in an open world setting.
KHIII has some pretty crazy setpieces, to be fair... though practically nothing comes close to the scale and complexity of the 2013 target Leviathan setpiece. (R&C Rift Apart probably has the best claim on it, and that's a PS5 game. XD )

FFVIIR is the least ambitious of the three by a fair bit, I'd argue. It has a lot of incredibly animated real-time cutscenes, but not a lot of proper setpieces.