That's some well-worded advocacy. I definitely have no issue with meticulously exploring an open world game--actually, my typical approach to such games is usually to max out every available side-quest and objective (no matter how many hundred of them there are, spread out throughout the world) before doing the next available main story quest, a remnant of my completionist tendencies from back when I was a more voracious gamer. By the same token, I absolutely know what you mean when you reference the tedium/padding that this can sometimes engender in a game; I can see how that kind of formula could be particularly in tension with a Final Fantasy game and it's traditional focus on the trials of the main cast. Though at the same time, arguably square was always a bit ahead of the curve in this regard, having the original iterations on open worlds filled with NPCs with something to say. In any event, it's good to hear that they've threaded the needle pretty well on those elements and that the world feels cohesive and that the small interactions feel relevant and not like filler.
In a similar vein, I ended up liking FFXII quite a bit, but it also was a departure from the traditional formula; that story is enjoyable, but you have to give up very early on expecting it to play out like a typical Final Fantasy game: the focus is on the world and the toll of the war, not upon the principle cast. Those protagonists are all likeable enough (Balthier and Fran in particular are charming as all get-out), but other than Ash, they aren't given the typical FF sob-fest backstories and you just kind of root for them because they are good people trying to do the right thing, not because you are particularly emotionally invested in what they've been through; again, it's more that the world around them feels sincere and lived-in and you feel like the stakes are very high for their success. It sounds though as if FFXV made an attempt to fuse the best of both approaches together, with some success, by your description.
I've heard about the multi-media aspect of the story and its incredibly confusing to me that they chose to tell the story in that way without really adequately preparing their audience, but anyway, I'll follow your proscribed approach to the material. I have to say, and maybe it sounds a bit nitpicky, but I'm a little put off by the boy band aspect of the playable characters: having strong female leads since pretty much as soon as the stories in the franchise began to get nuanced (FFIV) was always a big selling point for me. I understand that Noctis and his three friends are meant to be a unit of exceptionally close friends, forged into a family by circumstance, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that this sausage fest is in service to a greater narrative end, but I know there's going to be moments driving around in that car where I'm going to be saying "Good lord, please throw anyone into their path right now who is not another twenty-something bro--this is like Final Fantasy meets Entourage!".
I do think I'll enjoy the combat system from what I've seen, and the CGI. I'm a big fan of martial arts epics and any kind of art that explores the human body in motion, including in film making. One of my favourite young artists of recent decades was Monty Oum, who tragically died quite young a few years back. As an animator, Monty found a way to combine elements of traditional wuxia and Hong Kong action fair with the kind of fantasy/sci-fi action that he had observed in anime and (most centrally, I think) the in-game and cutscene animations from his contemporaries working in the games industry--there are particularly obvious influences in his work from franchises like
Final Fantasy, Dead or Alive and yes, especially Soulcalibur. He just had a natural gift for telling a story through fight sequences that had natural rythym and flow, that kept the heart pumping and the mind and soul engaged.
Other than the Avatar:The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra team and a few select works of animation out of Japan, I don't think anyone has yet caught up to him for creating visual poetry in motion with a fight sequence in animation. Virtually every fight scene that Marvel Studios has produced feels flat to me, because its obviously trying to reproduce the same kind of feeling and flair, but has never captured the same level of style and ingenuity. I don't know how much of that is that it requires a unique genius and how much it is their focusing too much on the adolescent power fantasies those characters represent, but it just feels clumsy by comparison. Monty ended up at Rooster Teeth where injected action sequences into Red vs. Blue for the first time, before spearheading the first couple seasons of his own show that many will be familiar with, RWBY, before his unexpected death. Anyway, the point of this diatribe/sidetrack within a sidetrack, is that there is something decidedly Monty Oum-ish about FFXV's approach to action, particularly in its trailers and what I've seen of the cut-scenes; Noctis would have looked quite at home in Dead Fantasy, had it continued beyond where Monty left it. That alone is reason to give FFXV a try, I suppose.
Anyway, thanks for the info--I'll give the game a crack as soon as I can find time for such an undertaking (presently looking to be 2025, but we'll see!) [/SPOLIER]
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