A Photographic Look Back at 32 Hours With 'Final Fantasy XV'

After a little over 32 hours, I've finished Final Fantasy XV. I'm probably not finished finished with the game; I still want to play this secret dungeon everyone's hyping. But I've seen the credits roll on Square Enix's long-in-development epic, and while my thoughts on the game are all over the place, it was a pilgrimage worth taking.

When I'm done with a game, I'm usually left with two things: my thoughts and notes. What's so cool about Final Fantasy XV, possibly the smartest feature in the whole game, is how it's constantly taking "photos" of your adventure. More often than not, just like real photographs, things are out of frame and look like garbage, but every so often, it captures a real moment.

Maybe you're already using capture tools to make your own screen shots, but that's not me. I just don't have the time or the eye for it. By having the game do it for me, and allowing me to be the curator of what stays and goes, I'm left with a scrapbook of my 32 hours with Final Fantasy XV.

This is the kind of image that sums up what Final Fantasy XV wanted to be. More explicitly than any Final Fantasy before it, Final Fantasy XV is about a specific journey. Four dudes, one quest. The developers tried to build on that with sprawling world, one that, in the beginning, feels limitless. That's partially because a Final Fantasy has never felt so freeing. Final Fantasy games have had "open worlds" before, in terms of massive maps that you can explore, but there's something different about the density and character here. If only the game wasn't filled with so many pointless side quests where you're fetching potatoes.

This looks cool enough to be an official screen shot for the game??

I played way too much SEGA Bass Fishing on Dreamcast, using the absurd (but awesome) fishing rod controller. I've got a soft spot for fishing mini-games, and though Final Fantasy XV's take is hardly complex, there's enough going on that I found it a relaxing diversion from the task at hand. Done right, an open world offers a chance to find the unexpected, and spending time reeling in fish for Ignis to cook after a tough hunt was often exactly what I was looking for.

Here's an instance where the game's photo mode captured a perfect moment. Final Fantasy XV's combat is fast—too fast, I found, to sometimes keep up with what was even going on—which means you're not likely to spend much time admiring when you've pulled off something cool.

I've had the same group of friends my whole life. Some have floated in and out, some arrived later than others. But Final Fantasy XV's core theme—hanging with people you've known for years, who'd always have your back—is one I could relate to. As teenagers, we'd sneak out after dark and get into trouble. My definition of "trouble" might be a little mundane—digging through the dumpsters of retail outlets to see what they threw away, ding dong ditching adults and laughing behind a tree—but hey, we felt like were cool as shit and no one could stop us.

I actually pulled off the road trip with your bros thing a few years back. When moving from San Francisco to Chicago, my wife flew home with our dog, while I rallied two friends to guide my car across the country. It only takes a few days, if you're hustling, but we wanted to enjoy it, so we spent an entire week driving back to the Midwest. At night, my friend who doesn't drink would take the wheel, while me and another buddy would swap beers and blast music. We'd keep going until our faithful driver felt tired, then look for the cheapest hotel possible. We're talking dirt cheap, as in one of the floors very clearly had a blood stain on it. In retrospect, we probably could have paid $20 more for something better.

Because Final Fantasy XV's photo mode is an algorithm, it's not perfect, which means most photos are abjectly awful. But this one, showing Ignis falling through the floor, gives me an opportunity to rant about the uselessness of your buddies in this game. You have precious little control over how they operate in battle, yet must constantly micro-manage to keep them alive. This would be fine if they were could take care of themselves but nope. Towards the end, when facing enemies who can take you out with a single blow, it was easier to let them die and fight enemies yourself, rather than deal with them. (I may or may not be specifically talking about you, Prompto.)

I don't have a good story about this one. It looks like the skeleton man is dancing.

One thing Final Fantasy XV does really well: It makes magic seem really cool and scary. When you cast a spell, it doesn't merely freeze the enemy in front of you—it transforms the whole world. In this case, the desert landscape becomes a wrathful blizzard, as the battle rages on. It feels like you're unleashing the wrath of the gods.

Here's a case where Prompto taking a shitty photo pays off. Anyone who's found themselves at a bar until closing time has a bunch of these on their phone. The blurry framing, people with their eyes closed—this reminds me of too many fun, if physically regrettable, days in college, that I wouldn't trade for the world.

Final Fantasy XV gets a lot of things wrong, but it's flawed ambition. Given how many games aren't even willing to go that far, I was willing to give it some slack. Even though I couldn't tell what was happening in the plot half the time, or why some villains were suddenly my friend, it had this going for it: It was memorable.

That's something.