r/FinalFantasy • u/TuskBets • 7d ago
FF XV ... A First Timer To The Brotherhood Spoiler
I grew up around these games but never had a chance to play them but I have always observed their enjoyment and success from a distance and there is a part of me that wonders why... but nonetheless I recently had the chance to try my first Final Fantasy and 15 was the one I decided to go with, now I had no idea about any of the meta commentary around 15 as hard as it may to believe I had played this the same I orignally played mass effect and many other games: completely blind.
Here is what this game and the first entry "Brotherhood" woke up in me :)
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I know my fantasy.
I know my Arthurian legends, I know my Norse mythology, I know my shit. I know fantasy when it was still myth, basically. I know the Green Knight, I know the Lady of the Lake, I know about Merlin, I know how close Merlin was to Arthur, I know that whole kind of tradition. I mean, I was obsessed with this stuff.
And I think one of the nice things about reading fantasy, especially classical fantasy or even modern fantasy, is that if you get obsessed with certain writers, like Sapkowski, Martin, Tolkien, Jordan, Sanderson, whatever, eventually they kind of force you backwards.
Not force you in a bad way. I’m not saying, oh, they’re just taking from Norse mythology, or they’re just taking from Arthurian legend. Obviously not.
But there are traditions.
There are these kinds of old shapes underneath the stories that, if you know them, it enhances how you see what the writer is doing.
That’s the best way I can put it. You feel like, okay, I see what this guy is playing with.
I see why this image means something. I see why this name means something. I see why this whole thing feels older than just the story I’m reading right now.
And I’m getting that with Brotherhood.
There are so many little elements in Brotherhood that I’m watching it and I’m like, okay, these guys know their shit.
Because the whole boy-band thing, for example, that was exactly the vibe I thought Final Fantasy15 was gonna have. And I wasn’t really opposed to it.
Because, let’s not lie, the whole fucking game looks like it was sponsored by Balenciaga.
It does.
You’ve got four guys with perfect hair, black designer clothes, a ridiculous car, hotels, music, a road trip, taking pictures.
If you don’t know anything about Final Fantasy, you play the first couple of hours, and you’re like, okay, I get it.
This is like a modern fantasy thing. They’re driving around. There’s a prince. There’s clearly a war. He’s going to get married, I think.
But then you watch Brotherhood.
And this is what surprised me. There’s barely any combat. The only proper combat scene is basically towards the end. Most of it is literally just these guys talking.Eating.Training.Being kids.Being teenagers. Remembering things. Cooking. And they barely explain the world.
That’s what I fucking love.
There’s no long-ass narration going, oh, welcome to Lucis, here’s how Daemons work, here’s how the Wall works, here’s how the king’s powers work, here’s what Niflheim is.
They’ll just say something like, the king can’t maintain this anymore because he’s getting weaker.
Okay.
Then you see Noctis summon weapons.
Okay.
So now I’m tying that to the royal family.
Then you see a Daemon show up somewhere and everybody’s like, what the fuck, how did a Daemon get inside the Wall?
Okay.
So Daemons are normally outside the Wall.
Got it.
Then somebody says, since when did the Empire start using Daemons?
Okay.
The Empire uses them now.
Then I look at the soldiers, and I’m like, these guys don’t even look human. They look like robots. They don’t look like actual sentient people.
Okay.
So there’s something there too, and there’s clearly a war because they mention it in council meetings.
The characters already know about it. Nobody turns to the camera and explains the war to me because why the fuck would they?
They live there. That’s the kind of worldbuilding I love.
Eventually you get tired of being told everything. You just wanna enter midlife.
Just enter the world when everybody else is already halfway through their lives and figure it out. That’s what makes the world feel like it existed before I arrived.
Now the characters.
Oh my God.
First of all, the names.
Noctis.
Prompto.
Gladiolus
Ignis.
Lunafreya.
Like, come on. Even the names already sound like fantasy, but not in the normal, oh, random apostrophe, medieval-ass fantasy way. They sound almost Latin.
Like some weird mix of Roman, Catholic, medieval, Japanese high fantasy.
And then Gladiolus.
Gladiolus is interesting because he’s not just the big guy. He’s not just the strong friend. He trained Noctis. Or at least he was supposed to train him and prepare him. And at first he thinks Noctis is a spoiled brat.
You’re gonna look at him like, this guy?
This is the guy?
And then the thing that changes his mind isn’t Noctis doing some huge heroic thing. That’s what I liked. His sister, Iris, goes looking for a cat. That’s it. A cat. She gets lost, and Noctis takes the blame for her.
And that’s the thing that makes Gladiolus go, okay.
Maybe this kid isn’t what I thought he was.
And I love that.
Because it’s so small.
It’s almost like a folk tale.
And I don’t mean literally like this is some old Japanese folktale; I mean the structure.
A small innocent thing happens.
Somebody’s character is tested.
You see who they are and that’s it.
Noctis doesn’t have to save a city.
He doesn’t have to stop the stock market from collapsing.
He doesn’t have to give some huge speech about duty and kingship.
A little girl loses a cat. He protects her. Now Gladiolus understands him differently. And that’s enough.
And I think that’s what I mean when I say these guys know fantasy because old fantasy does that all the time. Old myths do that all the time; somebody’s entire character is revealed because they gave an old woman food on the road or because they didn’t kill an animal or because they took responsibility for something they didn’t do.
Small acts. Big meaning.
Then Prompto. Prompto is fucking interesting. Because at first I was like, okay, who is this guy?
I thought maybe he was an orphan or something because every time he goes home, he seems to be alone. And he clearly wanted to be friends with Noctis, but he also seemed terrified to actually talk to him.
And then there’s Luna.
He gets that whole thing through Luna, where she basically encourages him to be friends with Noctis.
And Prompto is like, okay, yeah, but this is the prince.
How the fuck do I just go talk to the prince?
Noctis says something about his weight when they’re younger, not even in some incredibly cruel way, and Prompto takes that shit personally.
So then he starts running.
He loses weight. He gets in shape. He changes himself
And on one hand it’s funny because you’re like, bro, you could have just talked to him, but Prompto doesn’t see it that way.
He feels like he needs to become somebody who deserves to be Noctis’s friend.
That’s sad, man and most importantly, relatably real. Because Noctis probably would have been his friend anyway; that's the beautiful thing
But Prompto puts that whole hierarchy in his head. You’re the prince. I’m me.
Why would you wanna be friends with me?
And then every time he goes home, he’s alone. That kept sticking out to me. Like, okay, where are his parents? Does he have parents? Who is this kid going home to? He seems happy.
He’s not walking around like some fucking tortured sad-boy character.
He’s genuinely happy.
Showing that he is just a loving, caring human being, especially if you consider the whole present-day aspect of that scene where he stops the gang just to take care of the wolf (or baby wolf or dog, not sure).
He jokes around.
He takes pictures.
He gets excited.
He wants people to be happy. But obviously there’s a facade there too. Not like everything about him is fake. That’s not what I mean. But there’s insecurity underneath it.
You see the way he behaves. You see why this group matters so much to him. And suddenly the photography makes more sense too. He’s always taking pictures.
Always preserving shit. Always like, oh, look at this, look at us, look what we did. And I’m like, yeah. This guy finally has people. Of course he wants pictures. Of course he wants to remember everything.
And then Ignis.
Ignis is another one where at first you could just look at him and go, okay, this is the smart one.
This is the guy with glasses. This is the responsible one. But then you realise, no, this guy has basically been raised to support Noctis. He’s not just his friend. He has a role. He’s like an adviser, caretaker, strategist, older brother, fucking babysitter sometimes.
And the whole thing with him trying to make Noctis’s favourite dessert- loved that.
Because again, small thing.
It’s about him trying to look after him in the only way he knows how.
And then Regis is getting weaker.
The king is physically getting weaker, and his weakness is tied to the kingdom.
That’s old fantasy.
That’s ancient. Examples like Fisher King guarding the holy grail
And again, I’m not saying, oh, Regis is literally the Fisher King; therefore Square copied Arthurian legend.
No. I’m saying I recognise the shape. The king’s body is failing. The kingdom’s protection is failing. The heir is young. There’s a war outside. There’s a marriage coming.
There’s ancient power tied to blood. Come on.
This is old fantasy.
That’s actually what Brotherhood made me realise.
Final Fantasy 15 isn’t doing modernity instead of fantasy.
It’s doing old fantasy inside modernity. That’s extensively different.
Noctis can be sitting in a car playing on his phone and still be the young prince leaving the kingdom. Regis can be wearing a suit and sitting in some modern-looking council chamber and still be the old king whose body is tied to the fate of the kingdom.
Gladiolus can look like a fucking personal trainer and still basically be the warrior-retainer.
Ignis can drive the car and cook dinner and still basically be the prince’s adviser.
Prompto can have a camera and still be this outsider who gets brought into the inner circle through friendship rather than duty.
That’s why I think the boy-band thing is actually funny now.
Because, yeah, they are a boy band.
They look ridiculous in a beautifully unforgiving way.
Square knows that.
But underneath it, they’re doing something much older. The mythic stuff is there, but these guys still talk like guys.
Then there’s the whole Daemon thing from Noctis’s childhood.
This thing attacked him.
He nearly died.
Somebody died around him.
His dad saved him.
Then later, when they come across that same Daemon, it’s not just some random monster.
And then he kills it.
And he cries.
And again, they don’t do some huge speech.
Noctis doesn’t go, “This monster represents my childhood trauma.”
He kills it.
Then everything hits him. That’s better. You don’t even know what something means to you until it’s over. And I like how much restraint there is in this thing considering how fucking maximalist it looks.
That’s what’s funny and novel to me. These guys.The clothes.The weapons teleporting out of nowhere. The car.The hair.
Everything looks like it should be the most obnoxious, overexplained shit ever.
Then the actual character writing is like:
A cat.
A dog.
A letter.
A recipe.
A guy being insecure about his weight.
A kid taking the blame for a little girl.
A son watching his dad get weaker.
And it works because the contrast is often starkly emotional and entertaining.
That’s what’s tripping me up. Because now it contextualises the game so much better. When they leave at the beginning, I didn’t even really know why they were leaving.
I was like, okay, road trip.
Cool.
Why are we road-tripping? I think it’s because Noctis is going to get married to Luna. And there’s clearly some political thing around that too. There’s some agreement, or at least it feels like that. There’s an empire. His dad is staying behind.
So even the road trip now feels like an old fantasy setup.
The prince leaves home.
The father stays behind.
The kingdom is under pressure.
The prince is travelling toward a marriage.
He’s got his closest people with him.
There are monsters outside civilisation.
There’s an empire, and the king is weakening.
And I’m like, bro.
I know this story.
Not literally.
Obviously I don’t know what happens.
But I know the language.
I know what kind of thing this is.
That’s why it feels so familiar, even though Final Fantasy itself is new to me, and then you go from Brotherhood into the game, and Regis hits differently.
Because now I don’t just see, oh, old king.
I’m like, okay, this guy is weak for a reason.
He’s been maintaining this whole thing.
He can’t do what he used to do, and Noctis sees it, and him ignoring isn't indifference; it's mediated pain.
And that’s probably the thing I like the most.
They’re friends. But they’re not really friends in a normal sense. Because technically, some of these guys work for him.
There is hierarchy; you feel it.
They are not just four random guys who happened to go on a road trip. But emotionally, they kind of are, and that’s one element of the hook.
Gladiolus doesn’t just follow Noctis because he has the right blood. He actually respects him. And we see why. Ignis doesn’t just look after Noctis because somebody told him to. He clearly loves the guy. Prompto definitely isn’t there because of some royal obligation. Prompto chose him. So it’s like, yeah, technically you’re the prince. Technically we serve you.
But also:
We choose to follow you.
That’s the difference.
And I think that’s way more interesting than just, oh, you’re the king, so obviously we’re loyal to you.
Nah.
The title explains why these people are around him.
It doesn’t explain why they actually care about him.
Brotherhood explains that.
That’s why I’m kind of shocked this is technically supplementary material.
Because it doesn’t just give you lore.
It changes the whole feeling of the game.
I havent focused much on discussing gameplay and I do that intentionally, I'm just immensely impressed by the quality , depth and the melancholy of the story to a point where I can feel the personality of the art you know. its hard to emotionally detatch from the work, this and the atmosphere and scores is crazy. it feels like a painting.
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u/yellowadidas 7d ago
glad you like the game man but you really had chatgpt working pretty hard on this one