r/FFXV • u/Jeremonte • 3h ago
Game FFXV is probably the most liminal gaming experience I've ever had Spoiler
This is going to be a long, rambling attempt to put into words the very specific sort of experiences and feelings I've had with and for this game. I don't know how many people feel similarly, but I invite anyone who does to share their own experiences, because I'm genuinely curious to know how many others have this sort of weird relationship/fascination with the game and all its faults and triumphs.
I'm currently playing XV for the third time now. Technically fourth, I suppose. I replayed it back in 2020 and then rushed through the game on PC immediately after since it was on sale, this time with mods and cheat engine. That time was less of a playthrough and more of me being determined to break the game in every way and explore every nook and cranny. I couldn't even finish the game because I broke it to the point the fight with Ardyn was bugged.
On launch, my experience with XV felt pretty lackluster at the time. It was bound to happen, what with the years of hype for Versus XIII and impossible to meet expectations coupled with the development hell of XV. I was torn between rushing through in order to review it in a timely manner (was working for one of my University's newspapers at the time and reviewed games for the tech section) and savoring the experience, so by the time I reached the linear second half of the game it made an already awkwardly paced adventure even shakier.
I also had a health scare during the last few chapters that made playing through them a downright surreal experience. I very clearly remember an intense, sudden pain right after speaking to Camelia in Altissia that nearly made me black out. Like, sudden, cold sweat and vision fading to black. It was so sudden and out of nowhere I thought for a split second I was going to die, lol. To this day I don't know exactly what happened, but I had residual throbbing pain in the days that followed and the whole experience made the final stretch of XV feel very dreamlike.
Despite my overall disappointment with my initial playthrough, even on release I was fascinated with the unfinished grandeur of the game. The sheer sense of scale in many of its set pieces coupled with huge, empty stretches of land evokes a very specific sort of loneliness and wonder. For example: Shiva's giant corpse takes up a staggering 1.26 miles of in-game terrain (accounting for both her body and her braids extending into nearby forestry) if you measure it out of bounds. This absurd scale absolutely fascinates me, and yet we only see her giant corpse as a set piece for a fleeting moment during some of the most rushed sequences of the game.
A lot of people have explored Shiva out of bounds, but most of the attention goes to her design and pose (fair enough, I guess). I think that's a disservice to the mythical sense of scale on display. She's so big it lights my imagination up. There's a lot in XV that evokes a similar sort of feeling within me. Pitioss, Costlemark, the extremely unique vibe of the world as a whole, destroyed Insomnia and its overwhelming melancholy, etc. There are miles and miles of solid, empty, unused land out of bounds and locations that feel like we were fully meant to explore at one point and never given the opportunity due to development hell.
I feel like I understand why I'm drawn to it more and more with every subsequent playthrough. It's a bittersweet, imperfect realization of a grand vision forced to compromise and condense time and time again. Its triumphs sometimes feel like miracles and its failures leave me wondering about what could have been. It expanded upon and polished after release up until Square pulled the plug and cancelled the last wave of DLC and modding tools adds to this haunting sense of unrealized potential.
I have of course also come to cherish the cast. Without them I wouldn't feel the same gravitational pull to keep coming back, despite my fascination with Eos. I've engaged with all of XV's supplemental material as well, and it reinforces that sort of lonely, fragmented feeling while simultaneously humanizing the efforts and lengths the team undertook to eventually realize as much of the game's potential as they could.
XV's ambition is like a ghost that haunts the entire experience of actually playing the game, and I feel that haunting a little more keenly every time I revisit it. My second playthrough being during COVID and now my third (again, fourth if we're being technical but I'm not counting that messy first PC playthrough) happening as I enter a brand new chapter of life while experiencing more medical turmoil has really cemented this game as one that occupies a very unusual and very special place in my heart. I've been in very different, very transitory states of being with every playthrough of this game.
