Headscratchers / Final Fantasy XV

• So we're told previously that Luna is present at Lucis to witness the treaty-signing, and gets caught up in the Imperial invasion; the news report of her "death" at the ending of Episode Duscae confirms that. But now we're told at the August 2015 update that Noctis sets out from Lucis to...meet up with Luna. Who's been established to be in Lucis. Am I missing something here?
  • He could have set out to meet her before the events of the invasion (where she would then come back to Lucis), or after everything went to hell. And on a more meta note, the game's still in transition to final results; we don't know what will end up as the final 'established', and actually stick, at least yet.
  • Turns out that Noct and Luna's wedding was supposed to take place at Altissia. Presumably Noct and co. went on ahead, while Luna stayed behind to witness the treaty-signing before meeting up with them later. Still doesn't explain how she managed to reach Altissia before Noct, though.
  • As per Kingsglaive, Noct was purposely sent away from the capital so that he wouldn't get caught up in whatever the Empire was planning. Luna ends up in the capital however due to the fact that the Empire brings her there.
  • Luna was escorted out to Altissa by Gentiana after talking to the Titan, Noctis was kept busy with the whole tomb raiding business.
• Meta (and very stupid): Is Sean Bean voicing Noct's dad for Kingsglaive only, or will that commitment extend into the game?
  • He'll be voicing Regis only for the movie; same goes for Lena Headey and Aaron Paul.
• What ability does General Glauca use for his Instant Armor? Does he use magic? Nanomachines? Cybernetic technology? Or something else?
  • Never addressed in the game, unfortunately.
  • Glauca might as well not exist in the game except in scenes from Kingsglaive added in the day one patch at release, but in the Zagnautus, the Empire's own HQ, random documents do mention that they've loosely recreated the magic of the Lucis line, and combined with their research into the Daemons, it's probable that Glauca was equipped with an advanced, personalized variant of Magitek.
• Where was Cor during the events of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV?
  • Likely assigned to watch over and meet up with Noct's group to make sure they got out of the capital safely.
  • Scene 7 from Prologue - Parting Ways reveals that Regis explicitly assigned Cor and the rest of the Crownsguard to external patrol for the signing ceremony, and relied only on the Kingsglaive for personal protection within the capital. Cor protests against this, but Clarus tells him quite firmly that his responsibility is to evacuate the citizenry should things go south.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation aside, what royal family just spreads their previous kings' tombs all over the country instead of burying them all in a crypt as other royals do (and as per logic)?
  • Keeping the power of the kings away to prevent misuse of their power, perhaps?
  • If the Old Wall is any indication, the previous rulers of Insomnia all seem to be warrior kings (and queens), so it could be that they died in battle and the site of their demise became their resting places.
  • Also if the photo of Regis with his own party of friends is any indication, it might be a running tradition that each king has their own tight knit group of friends and protectors and going on a pilgrimage to collect the spread out royal arms is a right of passage for new rulers. It's just extremely inconvenient during an actual crisis.
• Noctis isn't the only person who lost family. Gladio and Iris's dad Clarus also died in Insomnia, yet not once in the entire game do either of them bring this up. What gives?
  • Gladio does tell Noctis (during the Titan fight) to stop whining as if he's the only one with problems.
  • Plus the family is a lineage of bodyguards, it's not like they didn't expect their father to die in the war. Gladio even says during the Titan fight that he is proud of being from a family of guardians, and taking out his frustrations on Noctis seems to be his way of venting grief (I mean, he yells at him for complaining about a god induced headache and having to take back his kingdom from an empire, either he is easily pissed at complaints or he needs catharsis).
• Since Umbra allows you to travel into the past, why didn't Noctis even try to take the long way to the present and avert the tragedy at Altissia? Or Prompto's capture? Even if he couldn't change the prophecy, he could've at least tried to change some details.
  • It's revisiting the past, not traveling through it. Noctis didn't go back to the past to grind for levels, he's just reliving his adventures.
  • Something doesn't add up here. You can completely break causality by buying the cactuar from Altissia, then going back to before you left to give it to Talcott.
  • You can't take the boat to Altissia or speak to Camelia there. Umbra allows you to return to collect what you may have missed (mostly, the Armigers), but you cannot change the path of fate.
  • ^This. This isn't time travel that allows you to change any one thing, and suddenly the entire future is different; this is time travel that's literally just travel, and while small things might change and/or be affected, all major stuff like people's deaths, the paths people take/took, destruction, you name it... they still happen. They still have happened, or they still will happen, and Umbra's power doesn't go higher than that.
  • You're also thinking of this as a game. For all intents and purposes, the story assumes you've completed everything. A kind of Stable Time Loop. You were able to provide the Cactaur figure because you already bought it. You going back to that time to buy it is you already having done it.
• Was there any foreshadowing about Prompto secretly being a magitek trooper? At all?
  • He uses their tech with relative ease, there is a motel cutscene where he wants to explain to Noctis why he never talked to him in elementary school and he doesn't know much about Lucis.
  • The last two could be easily explained. Most of what they were talking about was royal business that a commoner wouldn't have any reason to know, and the anime showed he was shy because he was formerly fat. If you're talking about the air bike he drove in the Leviathan fight, this wouldn't be the first time a Final Fantasy character became an instant expert at driving something.
    • They're talking about how Prompto is the only other character that uses magitek weapons as well.
  • His last name is Latin for silver, the magitek troopers are silver as well.
  • In Chapter 13, during Noctis's first attempt to rescue Prompto, he gets to what he thinks is Prompto sitting in a chair unconscious, but it turns out it was an illusion made by Ardyn and the "person" in the chair was a Magitek trooper. Ardyn says something like "but imagine if it was real" or something (paraphrasing here; I don't remember the exact wording). Later on, another one of Ardyn's taunts to Noctis was about Prompto having a dark secret.
  • You could argue the demon that kidnapped him thinking he was her lost child back could count.
• Why is everyone saying that all the characters die at the end. The last we see of Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto is them about to hold off a hoard of daemons. Desperate, certainly, but not hopeless. There's every reason to believe that they survived long enough for Noctis to purge them.
  • Maybe they survived, but they are still shown standing near Noctis when he enters the beyond.
  • It doesn't seem to hard to view that as a "my friends are my power" thing a la Sora. It could've just been the beyond manifesting what was on his mind at the moment.
  • Their appearance there was just a visual representation of their bond with Noctis. Even if they had died, they wouldn't be there; Noctis and Ardyn have their final battle inside the Ring of the Lucii (hence why we see it activate when Noctis dies, and he 'warps' inside), a place reserved for deceased Lucian monarchs. It also can't be the afterlife, since Ardyn's entire beef with the Astrals was that they shut him out of there for being impure.
    • That's kind of a meaningless distinction, since Luna shows up and actually has a direct interaction with Ardyn in that scene and then disappears, and Noctis and Ardyn themselves are both clearly dead by the end. Everything about what's happening there is ambiguous, but Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis all appear in a place that only the dead and dying are clearly shown to have access to after Ardyn incapacitates them in the throne room, followed by a scene of the dawn rising over an empty campsite. It may not be explicitly stated, but the impression doesn't come from nowhere.
    • Luna is the Oracle; her powers are tied to that of the Lucian kings. It makes sense for her to be able to have some presence inside the Ring of the Lucii. Of course Noctis and Ardyn are dead, because that's where dead kings go. And Noct's gang are shown to be alive and well *after* Ardyn zaps them, so that was definitely temporary.
• So...whose name was Izunia?
  • Quoth Toru Osanai, director of Episode Ardyn: "Ardyn doesn't remember much about whose surname it is. By absorbing the memories of various people while accumulating vast knowledge, he gets confused and forgets details that relate to himself."
• By the Astrals, why didn't they use those anti daemon runes for anything bigger than camp grounds? Especially after the Starscourge. They should've been covering cities with the things.
  • It's not that simple, they need to raise the ground and a Caelum to activate them from the looks of it.
  • Actually, one of the radio dialogues says that it's the Oracle that is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the havens. After Luna's death, there is no one left to maintain the existing havens or create new ones.
• Are we supposed to believe that besides Noct, Luna and Ravus, there are no other living, legitimate dynasts of Houses Caelum and Fleuret?
  • After 10 years of darkness and Ardyn's vendetta yes. The cousins probably didn't fare well when the Empire bombed the families' capitals, Fleuret's kingdom is a refugee camp by the time Noctis arrives.
  • With the toll that kings of Caelum had to endure when they use their powers, I am not surprised that they have only have a enough strength and lifespan to have only child.
  • And as far as the Lucis Caelum line, from what little we know about Noct's mother, it was said she died when Noctis was an infant. So naturally, because King Regis didn't remarry, of course he'd be the only living heir to the royal line.
• Why is the flower book so small? Luna and Noctis couldn't have finished multiple ones, otherwise the sylleblossom wouldn't have been in the book he's using by the time Luna dies.
  • Maybe Gentiana gave them a book with infinite space?
• Why couldn't Ardyn tell that absorbing daemons was changing him? It seems implausible that daemon absorption's more visible side effects- Body Horror, for example- somehow only appeared after the Astrals rejected him, or that he didn't realize the effects were daemonic in nature. He absorbed a lot of daemons, so he must have realized that each one accelerated the changes within him- especially given the implication that daemons are transformed people. (Something Ardyn would know, given how many he healed from the Starscourge.) But his Start of Darkness was caused by the Astrals abandoning him for no (clear) reason, something he was totally surprised by. How is that possible? (Did Ifrit trick Ardyn into believing he was immune to the Starscourge?)
  • I think he knew what was happening, but expected things to work out anyway. He didn't seem to turn bad until after being rejected, so he probably thought Darkis Not Evil applied to him. Either that, or he expected the astrals to purify him.
  • Or he simply didn't care, we have his words that what he was doing it for the greater good but the Oracle and other Lucian kings can purge daemon and heal people without getting infected by the Starscourge so what if he succumbed out of carelessness or thirst for power? It's not like he isn't having the time of his life trolling everyone and being immortal.
  • Personally I think the Ardyn we see is a mass of demons that's taken on his form and personality. His anger at being rejected and wiped from the history books is the Starscourge twisting his memories and emotions, interpreting them in a dark and resentful way.
• How does the summoning weapons for his friends work? Because there was a few time where the group were separated from Noctis and they could summon their weapon just fine. Even at the end Gladio summon is huge sword when the daemon are closing in on them.
  • There're two explanations for this. Either Noctis' friends don't need to be in the immediate area to draw on his magic, or they carry physical weapons with them when they're outside the area. We do know his range is shorter than his father's but we don't know just how far.
• Where is the King Of Tenebrae? What happened to him?
  • Well Tenebrae is under imperial rule so they probably abolished kings and kept the prince and princess as symbolic. He probably died since no one can have two parents in those games.
  • There's also the fact that the position of Oracle is restricted only to women; presumably there are only Queens, not Kings, of Tenebrae.
• A decade without sunlight, yet plants hasn't gone the way of the dinosaur.
  • Plants can grow in moonlight, although obviously not as well as they can in sunlight. This could be an effect of the Starscourge, slowly killing all life on the planet except for daemons.
• Why did the First Secretary demand that Prompto, Ignis and Gladiolus help with Altissia's evacuation? How are three foreign teenagers going to be of any more help than the presumably hundreds of city guards she has under her command?
  • They aren't just some merry fellows who tagged with Noctis, two of them are highly trained fighters that can take down an army by themselves and Prompto has a gun. They can and did bring more support than her city guards.
  • From a Realpolitik standpoint, Noct is probably less likely to screw her over if his friends' lives are in the balance as well.
• According to the official FFXV Ultimania, Shiva awoke and was killed by Niflheim 11 years before the game's events...and also states that Gentiana took up residence in Tenebrae just after Luna was born (24 years before XV, and 13 years before Shiva awoke). Gentiana and Shiva are the same person. Plot Hole?
  • As far as I can tell Gentiana and Shiva aren't the same person, Shiva just possessed Gentiana after her body was killed.
  • Shiva's Me's a Crowd powers might extend beyond her summon attack for all we know. She could be the skyscaper-sized Astral and Gentiana at the same time.
  • Gentiana seems more than a possessed person, considering late in the game, the disguise melts away completely and Shiva appears, rather than appearing alongside the person that was Gentiana. Moreover, it's not clear exactly what 'death' is to these beings; Noctis took down Leviathan in Ch. 10, and yet not very long afterward, she shows up entirely-whole and helps kill some daemons hounding the train Noctis is on. Moreover, Shiva appears before Noctis and Ardyn, despite being some few-dozen feet away from her gigantic icy corpse.
• Ten years pass, and the most Noct has to show for it is his hair's a bit longer and he's got a very basic beard. Ten years and that's all? I can't go ten weeks without needing a trim and cut! Is somebody coming in and taking care of him or something?
  • Perhaps the magic did him that small favor, even as it aged him.
• Okay, so how is Prompto an MT? Yeah, he has a barcode and his weapons give away where he's from but he shows no signs of a MT-nothing daemon, no robotics, nothing. Which is odd since the process seems to really mess a person up. What gives?
  • Prompto is presumably a different kind of MT. Magitek Troopers are robots built in humanoid forms. Meanwhile I suppose Prompto is an Artificial Human with Designer Baby origins that uses daemons in a similar but different form. He has probably had some contact with the Niflheim Empire at some point, or his adoptive parents informed him, but he does have knowledge that he is an MT. He tries to tell Noctis at one point in the game, like a tour stop, but he never really spits it out and Noctis may think he's speaking about his obesity again. However, this does not affect his battle skills. Canonically (or Prompto is a traitor and a really good liar) Prompto had a crash course in weaponry and battle tactics just days before the journey started. He may have some natural inclination towards machinery, but he just seems to wield it better than Noctis because he's an A.I.
  • It's also possible that Prompto isn't an MT at all. According to the Ultimania books he was adopted by a Lucian family when he was about 1 year old. So it's possible that regardless of how he was born/created someone got him out of Nifleheim before any planned experiments and processes were completed on him.
    • Per Episode Prompto, you're absolutely right. Prompto was taken from the magitek facility as an infant.
• Why do The Six continue to refer to themselves as such? One can understand why humanity would do that since they don't really know a lot about the goings on in "the beyond," but Bahamut continues to use the designation even knowing that Ifrit is actively opposed to the other five. Why do they still include him in the count?
  • It may be the idea that they still keep him in the count in respect of his former role. Or maybe he was doomed to be a betrayer and everyone knew it but him? There's also the idea you can summon for than just the astrals (as evidence by carbuncle) and there was once a cult of Odin as evidenced by the in-game accessory Safety Bit, so there is the chance he was replaced.
• How and why did Ardyn create an illusory corpse of Nyx in the throne room? Ardyn never met him, and it's very unlikely that Noctis ever did either.
  • Noct did know Nyx, Nyx was his driver on at least one occasion, as thanks for Noct letting Drautos borrow his car while Noct used the Regalia. Ardyn probably tracked down Nyx while looking for what triggered the Old Wall, and decided to make a copy to scare Noct out of using the Ring.
  • Both Ardyn and Nyx were present at the pre-treaty-signing party in Kingsglaive; the former was creeping in on the conversation between the latter and Luna. Given how chummy Ardyn pretends to be towards people, it's likely that he did try to speak to Nyx during the event and at least got his name. The traitorous Glaives were in radio contact with the Empire during the final assault, and at least one of them must have mentioned that Nyx was ruining everything and Ardyn clearly put two and two together.
• Why do the Noctis and the gang wear Kingsglaive uniforms on their return to Insomnia? None of them were part of the group, nor had any connection to any of its members. There's no reason they should even *have* the uniforms in the first place, let alone wear them. If anything, the clothing that the four have on is already appropriate, since it marks them as members of the Crownsguard.
  • By ascending the throne of the kingdom, since his father, the old king, is dead, Noctis would technically become the next king. The Crownsguard would no longer exist as there would be no family of the king, only the king Noctis himself, and his Kingsglaive. The fact that the gang wear Kingsglaive outfits is pre-emptively symbolic of their trust in him: that he will take his rightful place and become the King of Light.
  • None of that makes any sense. The Crownsguard directly protected the royal family, a role that still existed so long as Noctis was alive. Gladio is even doing the exact same job as his father Clarus, who was also Crownsguard. The Kingsglaive were a specialized military force who used the King's magic during the war and died with the fall of Insomnia. Noctis' companions spend the entire game performing the Crownsguard role, so suddenly suiting up as Kingsglaive has no symbolic meaning. Also doesn't explain where they got the outfits, or why they mentioned wearing them before when they never had.
    • You answered your own question, there: the Crownsguard protects the royal family. In other words, they're there to protect Noctis as the prince. They wear the Kingsglaive uniforms because when Noctis formally takes his place as king, they're not his bodyguards, they're his soldiers and brothers-in-arms.
  • The short (if unsatisfying) answer: Rule of Cool. Noctis' outfit in particular seems to include a number of ceremonial nick-nacks, so maybe it was just a part of his royal wardrobe that he thought would be suitable for a kingly return, and everyone else dressed to match. Jury's still out on where they got the duds, though.
  • During the ten-year timeskip, Insomnia is either abandoned or evacuated, but the war is essentially over. There's no one left to bother fighting it anymore, all the people who were invested in the war are dead, turned into daemons, or have already gotten what they wanted out of it. Since the Chocobros were always intended to become the new Kingsglaive and Regis already knew he was going to bite it when he sent Noctis to get hitched, chances are he ordered the Kingslaive uniforms at the same time their Crownsguard fatigues were commissioned. It's just a headcanon on my end, but I figure Regis had them made especially fancy with the intention of Ignis, Prompto and Gladio wearing them to Noct and Luna's wedding if he died before it happened, the delivery just got waylaid in the wake of all the tragedy.
• Kingsglaive makes it clear that Ardyn was present in Insomnia both before and during its fall. So why bother driving all the way out to Galdin Quay just to engage Noctis and friends in a bit of banter and toss them a coin? They meet him on the eve of the attack; he shouldn't have even had time to be there.
  • As shown in his final boss fight and several times in the story, Ardyn has the ability to teleport. This may be a version of the Lucian kings teleporting ability honed over a millennia, or it may be something more akin to when the daemons appear suddenly that he gets from all the daemons in his body, but he can and does appear and disappear randomly. As to why he shows up at Galdin Quay, it's to introduce himself and give them a bit of money. Ardyn is VERY invested in making sure they start thier journey quickly.
• The Crystal is said to contain "the soul of the star." The Starscourge is so called because it is "the scourge of the star." In both of these references, the star is...Eos? How does that work? By what metric is Eos a star as opposed to a planet?
  • It's a direct translation from Japanese; both "star" and "planet" use the same word (星 hoshi).
• In Episode Ignis, before Ignis puts on the ring in the main route, he notes that he should be able to use the ring because a Glaive can use it, specifically Nyx in Kingsglaive, he should be able to as well. How did Ignis know what happened in Insomnia beyond "Regis is dead" and "Empire did it."
  • The only people who saw Nyx use the Ring were Lunafreya and Libertus. Since Luna dies without contacting anyone important, that leaves Libertus as being the only remaining witness. As evidenced by what he's up to in the Comrades DLC, he must have met up with some other surviving Glaives and Crownsguard like Cor Leonis and may have passed on the information among them after he escaped from Insomnia. Based on that, at this point, the most reasonable explanation is that Cor filled in the party sometime offscreen before they left on the boat for Accordo.
• Ravus is shown to be able to see through Ardyn's disguise in Episode Ignis, but is completely fooled in Chapter 13, Verse 2?
  • Maybe his head was rattled after he took that pretty long fall from Iedolas's throne room?
• How could Ardyn have been defeated in the Golden Ending of Episode Ignis when in the original timeline, it took Noct pulling a Heroic Sacrifice in order to destroy Ardyn's soul in the afterlife?
  • According to ''Final Fantasy XV: Original Works'', all that is said is that Ignis comes up with a "secret plan" which manages to subvert even the influence of the gods. No further elaboration, just iggy beinb a Badass Normal in a world of divine intervention and immortals.
• So we now know about "Safay Roth" the original antagonist of Versus XIII at some point, and the imperial general of Niflheim but what if we are wrong name wise, and his name is actualy Sapphirus, Latin for Sapphire. ( サファイア, Safaia, Romanized) Which still work with the "SAF" leftovers on the machine, and match the fact that most of the character in the game have latin names.
• So, it's said that Aera is the progenitor of the House of Nox Fleuret, right? So that means prior to her death when intervening between Ardyn and Somnus, she must have had a child, right? And with her dead and Ardyn imprisoned for two millennia, where was the child and who was raising it? And if Ardyn was the father, then would that not make Luna and Noct distant cousins?
  • Assuming this isn't just a little "Oops" from the writers, it's just as possible that with Aera (apparently) having no living children upon her death, the "ownership", so to speak, of the "main family" may have transferred to a sibling, cousin, or other close relative.
• Does a major city like Insomnia really not have a port of its own? Its geography as well as its importance as a city suggest that it should. If so, why would it make sense for Noctis and company to have to go to Galdin Quay to board a boat to Altissia. Perhaps the real reason is to get them out of the city because Regis knew that the Empire's attack was imminent, but if Noctis and company didn't know this, shouldn't they have suspected something when being sent on such an errand?