Will Insomnia be explorable in FFXV?

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Storm

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Oct 26, 2013
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#1
Lucis will be conquered in the beginning and be partially destroyed, and Noctis and his friends will be travelling around the world to search for help.

my question is, when they'll retake Lucis? I have a fear that it'll only be in the final act, because we didn't had any confirmation that we would explore the city so far, Tabata only mentioned "combat" situations; one of the official forum users asked how much Altissia and Insomnia would be explorable, and the developer only talked about Altissia.

I think many fans are excited to explore this modern setting since Versus XIII days, but im afraid a city like that would be too ambitious even for a game of this scope, and that they'll give a excuse like "the city is under imperial control" for not being able to going there. What do you guys think?
 

LeonBlade

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#2
Well, we can see the city walls in the new trailer, I imagine that we will be going there at some point, who knows when. The thing is, we have a gigantic map, the city of Lucis, while it is big, is also only a small portion of a huge expansive world map.
 
Nov 17, 2014
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#4
I think it will be the case like that of FF9's Alexandria. We get to explore a normal and destroyed Insomnia. But what would take precedence? That is the question in mind. Thoughts?
 

RetroPS4

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#6
Long post incoming:

UNCOVERED: FINAL FANTASY XV Festival

Source URL: http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv254372856 (Only Timeshifted broadcasts can be watched at this point)
Names in all capitals are surnames.

MC: Susumu IMADACHI (from Elecomi)
Support MC: Yasuaki NASU (Development Manager, FFXV)
Guests: Tatsuhisa SUZUKI (Noctis)
Tetsuya KAKIHARA (Prompto)
Mamoru MIYANO (Ignis)
Kenta MIYAKE (Gladiolus)
Tomohiro HASEGAWA (Art Director, FFXV)
Ken’ichi SHIDA (Game Design Section Manager, FFXV)
  • The main voice actors auditioned for their roles at least 6 years ago.
  • Suzuki explained a little bit about Amano’s artwork, “Big Bang.” The wave seen at the beginning of the trailer is based on a Shinjuku neon panorama, and the artwork is based on Shinjuku (Lucis) as the setting. He also made a comment about the first place that “the four of us start our journey in,” which is Tochō (the Government Buildings area in Tokyo that acts as the model for the palace in Insomnia). I’m not sure if this is confirmation that the game begins in Insomnia, but we do know that Noctis and his friends head out to Altissia from Insomnia.
  • Hasegawa and Shida joined the show at around the halfway point; both have been involved with this project since the Versus era.
  • World of Wonder trailer: according to Hasegawa, all footage is in real-time (from the game display), and this trailer is meant to show different worlds that players will travel through during the course of playing the game. Players will be able walk around in these places and engage in battle.
  • The scenes in Brotherhood are exactly the same as those in the game. The anime is meant to help newcomers to the series understand what’s going on in the game, such as dialogue and battles.
This I think is pretty much confirmation there at least might be gameplay in Insomnia at the beginning of the game (also other interesting tidbits)!
 

DrBretto

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Mar 18, 2016
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#8
Here's what we do know:

-Insomnia is absolutely mind bogglingly massive.
-Every time they get asked about exploring the cities, they make sure to talk about how you can explore Altissia. They have danced around Insomnia every time, not confirming or denying anything.

My take:

It's too big to be fully explorable. It just is. It's one thing to make a buynch of buildings you can fly over or see in the backgrounds, it is quite another to build all those buildings and give people a reason to wander all around this massive city that's bigger than GTAV. By steering the conversation to Altissia and playing dumb anytime someone asks about Inomnia, they're telling me that you can't explore Insomnia for story related reasons they can't talk about, but are actively trying to push that question away rather than draw attention to it.

My prediction: Sure, you'll be able to go back to the hot spots, but you'll never be able to explore the whole thing. Before you reach a point where it would make sense that we'd be able to explore the whole thing, it will get destroyed, and the "real" game (or real motivation) will begin and the second half of the game will commence.
 

Storm

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#10
I'm ok with not exploring the entire city, but if they want the player to care about Noctis story, about retrieving the crystal and his home, they MUST make it explorable so we can have a connection with the place... or else it'll be like Lightning and co. saving Cocoon in FFXIII. I wasn't emotionally engaged because that world and people were unknown to me.
 
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LeonBlade

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#11
I believe the reason they haven't mentioned directly going to Insomnia is that it will likely be a big story point they don't want to spoil. They have plenty of assets that they likely will not want to just throw away, and they have teased various images from Insomnia as well. Surely they aren't just doing that for the sake of promotion.

Tabata did say we would be going back, so I imagine that the arc of taking back Insomnia is one of the many things that will be resolved before or with the main story arc of the Plague of Stars.

I'm not sure how much of it will be explorable, but it's likely that a fair amount of it will be explorable, as most of the buildings you won't be able to enter, likely towards the main center of the city towards the citadel is where things will open up. One thing you should note is that Noctis when talking to Cor what is likely inside the citadel. From what we heard from the Game Informer piece about Chapter 1 of the game, at the very end is when you talk with Cor, and likely from there you meet up with him, but who knows where they are, it does look like it's inside the citadel though.
 

Infest

Blitzball Champion
Sep 8, 2014
540
346
Germany
#12
Insomnia's part of the story is still pretty much shrouded in mystery.
- A while ago Tabata said that we'll be able to explore the city at some point in the story, but of course he didn't specify at what point and how open it will be for exploration.
- We know that the four guys start their journey from Insomnia but we won't actually be able to explore it in the beginning because the first chapter of the game starts with the car getting broken on a road outside of the city.
- There's also chapter 0 but that's only a boss fight (which may take place in Insomnia though)
- A little bit later the city gets attacked by Nilflheim but the guys are not in the city during the invasion. But here comes the tricky part: we know that they're not in the city during the invasion but as of now we also don't know if they're not trying to get back to the city after they hear the news. We have one scene where Noctis is at the citadelle leaning on the Regalia. Of course that's speculative atm but I'm pretty sure that this can't be from the beginning of the game. Reading from Noctis facial expressions (and how the scene is presented) it looks like some tragic events have already happened and especially in the last pic where he walks towards the camera he looks pretty angry.



- It's hard to put the scene into context because we just know so little about the story. That said the citadelle and the surroundings don't look much destroyed in that scene so...I could be wrong. The other question would be, how could he enter the city in the first place when the city is currently occupied by Nilflheim and the bridge to Insomnia is destroyed? So either this is in fact extremely early in the game or it's after he reclaimed the city ( which seems strange to show already).

- We also know from an artwork that Noctis is going fight in Insomnia at some point.


To the question how explorable the city will be, that's really hard to say atm. My guess is that its major function in the game will be a battlefield for some big fights but I also think that we can explore a good chunk of it at some point (maybe even the palace). But don't expect the whole city to be explorable because that's unrealistic to happen imo.
 
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RetroPS4

Chocobo Knight
Aug 10, 2015
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#13
Insomnia's part of the story is still pretty much shrouded in mystery.
- A while ago Tabata said that we'll be able to explore the city at some point in the story, but of course he didn't specify at what point and how open it will be for exploration.

- We also know from an artwork that Noctis is going fight in Insomnia at some point.


To the question how explorable the city will be, that's really hard to say atm. My guess is that its major function in the game will be a battlefield for some big fights but I also think that we can explore a good chunk of it at some point (maybe even the palace). But don't expect the whole city to be explorable because that's unrealistic to happen imo.
Good recap, and thank you for reposting this image! I think it was the only one from Gamescom that wasn't shared with the public initially, and I don't know if it did get shared. How did you find it, I've been looking for it the last couple days! Two things I find interesting about this.

1: Where they are is not the Citidel and at what we have seen of XV we only ever saw "gameplay" there.

2: Insomnia kind of seems intact, this also does not compute (unless this is not gameplay, but instead is a CG showing that we will get a glimpse of Insomnia being destroyed). It may be similar to the Regis with hand on Noctis's also shown at GC, and presented as art. But then we saw it fully animated in the Reclaim Your Throne trailer where it is clearly Visualworks CG from the game. I get that there are 4 figures shown though which would be Noct and his crew.... and that chocobo....how did that choco get up there?? Many questions this exciting artwork (screenshot?) brings up!
 

LeonBlade

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#14
But don't expect the whole city to be explorable because that's unrealistic to happen imo.
Honestly, with the city structured the way it is, I don't see why they couldn't make most of the city explorable given that a lot of the buildings will be occluded by one another making rendering these buildings no where near as taxing as rendering something like Tenebrae and Altissia. Take a look at the sculpt model of Eos:

You should note that "Huge Structure" is Insomnia, and note that Altissia in size is roughly the same size if not BIGGER than Insomnia. Considering you will be able to travel all throughout Altissia even riding through the waters on a Gondola, I don't see why Insomnia is any more ambitious than a region like this all things considered.
 

DrBretto

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Mar 18, 2016
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#15
Insomnia is a lot busier. More buildings, theoretically traffic, etc. Altissia seems to be mostly water.
 

Infest

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Sep 8, 2014
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#16
Honestly, with the city structured the way it is, I don't see why they couldn't make most of the city explorable given that a lot of the buildings will be occluded by one another making rendering these buildings no where near as taxing as rendering something like Tenebrae and Altissia.
I actually think they could build the whole city in the game, it's more that I find it difficult to implement Insomnia in it's actual size gameplay-wise. Of course it's massive but that's not the problem, the problem is how to present that size gameplay-wise in a fun way. There are a lot of Skyscrapers and samey looking buildings, especially if you're playing the Platinum Demo you have a (of course unpolished but) good look of its structure and that doesn't look all too fun to explore. Especially to fill a city like this with life and make it look like there's stuff going on is extremely difficult. I'd much rather see the team focus on a "small" ( I bet it's still going to be pretty big anyway) but meaningful part of the city instead of modelling that thing in its entirety.

Long story short, I'm all for quality over quantity and I think the XV team thinks the same in terms of Insomnia.

@RetroPS4 You can see the artwork here for example
 
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LeonBlade

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#17
I actually think they could build the whole city in the game, it's more that I find it difficult to implement Insomnia in it's actual size gameplay-wise. Of course it's massive but that's not the problem, the problem is how to present that size gameplay-wise in a fun way. There are a lot of Skyscrapers and samey looking buildings, especially if you're playing the Platinum Demo you have a (of course unpolished but) good look of its structure and that doesn't look all too fun to explore. Especially to fill a city like this with life and make it look like there's stuff going on is extremely difficult. I'd much rather see the team focus on a "small" ( I bet it's still going to be pretty big anyway) but meaningful part of the city instead of modelling that thing in its entirety.

Long story short, I'm all for quality over quantity and I think the XV team thinks the same in terms of Insomnia.
Of course, but Versus was going to let you explore the city streets as well and that looked exciting, I imagine they would section off certain areas for different reasons, and create something that's enjoyable to travel through.
 

RetroPS4

Chocobo Knight
Aug 10, 2015
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#18
I actually think they could build the whole city in the game, it's more that I find it difficult to implement Insomnia in it's actual size gameplay-wise. Of course it's massive but that's not the problem, the problem is how to present that size gameplay-wise in a fun way. There are a lot of Skyscrapers and samey looking buildings, especially if you're playing the Platinum Demo you have a (of course unpolished but) good look of its structure and that doesn't look all too fun to explore. Especially to fill a city like this with life and make it look like there's stuff going on is extremely difficult. I'd much rather see the team focus on a "small" ( I bet it's still going to be pretty big anyway) but meaningful part of the city instead of modelling that thing in its entirety.

Long story short, I'm all for quality over quantity and I think the XV team thinks the same in terms of Insomnia.

@RetroPS4 You can see the artwork here for example
Ah, you are right. Btw, what I meant is that that one wasn't in the initial ATR, this footage is of a different presentation at GC That I think, unless you were German, you probably would't have seen (hence, people that actually went to Gamescom thought it was pretty great for FFXV, versus those of us that just got the lackluster ATR, lol!). Do you know if there was any other event where Tabata actually discussed this particular art?
 

Infest

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Sep 8, 2014
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#19
Of course, but Versus was going to let you explore the city streets as well and that looked exciting, I imagine they would section off certain areas for different reasons, and create something that's enjoyable to travel through.
Maybe but fact is that we've only ever seen a linear corridor from Versus XIII's Insomnia.

@RetroPS4 Unfortunately that's the only event where this artwork was shown.
 

LeonBlade

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#20
Maybe but fact is that we've only ever seen a linear corridor from Versus XIII's Insomnia.
Yeah, very true, but I mean that's the thing, they could easily section off streets for construction or destruction from the attack and make the area a lot more controlled to make things more interesting. I think they could definitely do it, atmosphere alone can really make a place enjoyable to explore, so I think the team can work something out to make it worth exploring but we will only know when the game comes out. I agree though, it would be a challenge.