The story of Final Fantasy XV is a tricky one to unpick. There’s the story about how it took ten years to actually come out, transforming from a Final Fantasy XIII spin-off into the boyband roadtrip-stag-do adventure we know today. There’s also the story of what happened after it came out, where a large chunk of its third act was almost completely rewritten and streamlined after people started complaining about how linear it had suddenly become after spending hours and hours on the glorious open road.
Then there’s the story of the game itself, which, at this point, has been spread across so many different forms of media, including a film, four anime episodes, four bits of DLC, a mobile spin-off and a multiplayer expansion (with even more to come, no less), that only three people in the entire universe actually understand it and would be able to recite it to you from start to finish.
But the story of four lads saving their home from an invading imperial army isn’t really what Final Fantasy XV is about. In fact, it’s arguably the least memorable thing about it. That might sound blasphemous for a JRPG, where the story is traditionally one of the most important parts of a game, but every conservation I’ve had about Final Fantasy XV over the last sixteen months always boils down to one of three things: food, photos and friendship. And it’s those that make it one of the best and most interesting goddamn JRPGs of the last decade.