WhenFinal Fantasy XVlaunched back in November of 2016, I don’t think anybody expected the storyline to continue for as long as it has. Nevertheless, nearly thirteen years afterFinal Fantasy Versus XIII(the image you see above) was announced, then canceled, then reannounced asFinal Fantasy XV —the tale of Noctis Lucis Calem is finally coming to a close with the launch of the last piece ofFinal Fantasy XVDLC,Episode Ardyn,on March 26.
Keeping in line with thepromotional materialforFinal Fantasy XV,Square Enix has released a short 15-minute prologue anime for the upcoming DLC story that you can check out below. If you played the vanilla version ofFinal Fantasy XV,Ardyn felt like a pretty bland villain overall but with this DLC and anime prologue, his character has been given a ton of depth.
In case you haven’t playedXV,I’m about to go into spoiler territory. So here we go — Ardyn is actually revealed to be Ardyn Lucis Caelum, a member of Noctis' royal bloodline who becomes immortal after being infected by the Starscourge, the plague that allows daemons to roam the world. Ardyn seeks revenge upon the royal family after his brother Somnus Lucis Caelum challenges him for the throne and ultimately strikes him and his wife down. Once Noctis (the ‘True King’) is born, Ardyn completely seeks to destroy him. The anime prologue gives more insight into how exactly Ardyn’s descent into madness began, and it’s quite tragic, to say the least. I’m certainly very curious to see howEpisode Ardynplays out.
SinceFinal Fantasy XVlaunched in 2016, it has received a slew of improvements as well as additionalstoryandmultiplayerDLC that fleshes out the storyline even further. While it’s not my preferred way to experience a narrative, it’s cool that Square Enix didn’t totally abandon the game considering it had a very rocky development.
It’s interesting to look back on the saga ofFinal Fantasy XV.We got aCGI film, ananime series, a retro-inspireddownloadable title, endless crossovers (Final Fantasy XIV,Tekken 7,Forza Horizon 3), and even a mobile version of the game on theNintendo Switch. There were also some shortcomings as the game’s director, Hajime Tabata,left Square Enixjust a few months ago. Additionally, more DLC content was planned with specific episodes focusing on Noctis, Lunafreya, and Aranea, but it was canceled following the announcement of Tabata-san’s departure.
Final Fantasy XVis available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you’d like to play all of the previously released content you can check out theRoyal Editionof the game.
