#and it still depleted a good part of my savings along with the deposit

[ricoka]

YouTube can be fun but sometimes it also makes you want to throw your tv out the window

[ezrasarm]

Come Back To Me In Waking Dream

[ Day 5 | Angstaggedon Masterlist ]

Pairing: Ezra x Reader

Word count: 2.4K

Summary: Torn apart by the forces of the universe, Ezra becomes a ghost of himself.

Warnings: ANGST, hints at depressive episodes and thoughts of death, more angst. This is not an uplifting story.

Credits: A huuuuuge thank you to @din-damn-djarin​​ and @chaotic-noceur​​ for beta reading and letting me use them as a human squash court for me to bounce my ideas off of! The title is inspired by a piece of poetry written by David Keenan that preludes his song “Full Stop” and I thought it fit just right.

A/N: Not to toot my own horn or anything but... I hope y’all brought tissues.

As with any line of work, the longer you’re in it, the smaller the world- or in this case, the universe- seems to become. You and Ezra had made a number of first encounters through your years working the aurelac business. It wasn’t glamorous by any means, no matter what the precious gem associated with it might suggest. The work was rough and often fruitless. But, on those rare occasions that you managed to find a sizeable deposit in those tangles of rhizomatic roots- provided you had the skill to extract them, one, without killing yourself, and two, without damaging the delicate bounty in the process- you could make quite the pretty penny off of it. And you could make it fast. It was part of what made the industry so cutthroat in the first place. It was also entirely the reason that making lasting relationships, business or otherwise, was nearly impossible for you.

Both Ezra and yourself had gotten into prospecting and harvesting aurelac even before the rush. It seemed like your timelines were interlinked. You couldn’t stop running into one another if you tried. You could recall quite vividly the first time you saw him. His rich smooth voice and exuberant charm were not things that detracted attention from him. So he was hard to miss in the small, dingy convenience store on the freighter back from the Bakhroma system. When you finally acquaintanced yourselves with one another quite sometime later, he insisted he had seen you around here and there long before that. You argued that he must have been mistaken because you couldn’t possibly have failed to notice him and that peculiar blonde patch in his hair. And that even if you did, you would have heard him coming even sooner. “That,” he said, “is not necessarily true.” But none the less you managed to crack him up. He’s had a soft spot for you ever since.

You had gotten to know each other pretty well through the many drinks you shared when you found yourselves on the same planet and the odd job you would work together in between. You now knew him well enough that if you were feeling bold you might venture to call him a friend. Perhaps even admit that at times you thought you could be a little more than that. Although you would never have the nerve to say it to his face.

Then he disappeared. One moment he was on The Pug scanning the boards, the next he was gone. Funnily enough, the job he managed to scrounge up was one you had been eyeing yourself. You got pulled away on a contract with an old client of yours to do some appraisals and he set off for this prospecting mission of his. He said it would take a week tops and that he had something he wanted to tell you when he got back. Then you never saw him again.

You see, Ezra had just been working up the courage to tell you how he felt. He swore the next time he saw you would be the day he told you he loved you. That you were the star of his dreams when he slept and the object of his reveries when he woke. That practically every moment of every day he spent away from you he was thinking about where you were or what you were up to. None of this stopped when his pod crash-landed on Bakhroma Green.

He just needed one more job to save up to take you out on Kamrea, your temporary home when you could afford to live there. He had this grand plan to woo you with a nice meal and a necklace made from a small aurelac crystal he had harvested on one of the first jobs you had worked together. He knew how hard you pushed yourself. You never gave yourself a break. He thought it would be nice to treat you to more than just a drink in a bar for once.

It was supposed to be a simple job. Prospect potential dig sites, maybe even harvest a little while he was at it, then get the hell out of there. But none of that happened. Instead, he got stranded on that godforsaken rock. It was years before anyone came to his rescue. He lost his arm somewhere along the way. A rogue thrower shot from a skittish young sater. He was normally quite conscious of staying out of their territory but with the seasons changing, foraging for food brought him out of his comfort zone. The resulting infection cost him his dominant hand.

But his physical injury was hardly the worst of his ailments on his extended visit to the Bakhroma moon. He was quite positive he was going insane hauled up in the damaged drop pod that only served as a reminder he wouldn’t be leaving the forest moon any time soon. As he quickly came to find, he and prolonged periods of time without human contact were not a good combination. While saters and other prospectors may have passed through every now and again, he often had enough trouble bargaining with them for his life, let alone a ride off the dumb rock. They never stuck around long and they certainly weren’t talkative. His mental health took a nosedive quite early on. He took to talking to himself, writing to keep his mind busy. At his worst, he could recall experiencing fits of hysteria and even hallucinations. He had the delirious diary entries to prove it.

It was around the time he lost his arm that he began to lose hope too. The longer he was stranded there, the more doubt that there would be any way out at all began to creep into his mind. There were some nights where the thought of seeing you again, brushing that rebellious strand of hair out of your face and pulling you into a long-awaited kiss, was the only thing that kept him going. He could still see your face. The upward quirk to your lip and the light graze of your hand against his as you passed him by in the hall on his way out. You were in some big rush as you always were. You assured him you would see him later. All he could think of was how wrong that assumption was now. He never could have imagined that would be the last time he saw you. And now here he was projecting phantom memories on the blank ceiling of the pod, cursing himself for not telling you what he should have the moment he knew. He refused to let himself die without letting you know how he felt. Maybe he would be able to rest easier if you knew.

For the first couple cycles you worried yourself sick. The risk associated with your field of work was not lost on you. He wouldn’t just leave you like that- he couldn’t. You wouldn’t let him. But years had passed. It soon came time for you to confront the acceptance of one of two realities: either he was dead, or he had abandoned you. The thought confused you. He wasn’t yours to be abandoned by and yet the resentment that came with it stung you just the same. You couldn’t tell which hurt you more but you knew you couldn’t sit around waiting for a dead man. And if he was alive, you refused to spend another second pining over a man who would up and leave you without so much as a goodbye. So you swallowed your yearning, the nag in your heart that clung to the hope he would still come back for you, and you moved on.

When Ezra got off the Green he hardly recognized himself anymore. His hair had grown shaggy despite his attempts to keep it under control, there were patches of grey in his dishevelled beard, his face had thinned, and those were just the physical changes. It was one of the last sling-backs before they killed the Central-BG line for good. A Kaslo Porting team, dropped to scavenge for old scraps and parts they could mark up and sell second hand, stumbled upon his pod. He was deathly frail when they found him. With his food supply having long since been depleted he had almost poisoned himself by mistaking a species of berry for its edible cousin in his desperation. If they hadn’t found him sooner, the doctors on board the freighter couldn’t see how he would have survived. He wound up hospitalized for weeks.

After all that time with just one thought on his mind, he knew he had to find you. Upon being discharged he searched high and low for you. He felt foolish checking all your old haunts. It had been so long. But he didn’t know where else to begin. He checked with mutual friends and old employers. They all seemed too surprised by being in the presence of a ghost to give him a straight answer.

He went to just about every place he could think of, asking your name as though it carried the same weight to everyone else as it did to him. He was sure he had searched every last corner of the galaxy. When he kept coming up empty he began to doubt whether you yourself were alive. It seemed like he was the only who knew who you were. It was like you didn’t exist. It was like you never had existed. He went so far as to question if he had made you up. If you were merely some fucked up defence mechanism manufactured by his brain to keep him hopeful. To keep him from giving up so long ago as he had been tempted to do. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop looking. That would be admitting something to himself that he would never be ready to. His head would perk up if through the chatter of crowded spaces he would hear a laugh similar to your own carry across the room. He would lose his place in conversations when he would see a flash of hair not unlike your own out of his peripheral vision.

Then one day he found himself back on The Pug, scanning the boards the exact same way he had been the first time he laid eyes on you. He wasn’t actively looking for you. No more than he always was. But sure enough there you were. Your arms crossed over your chest and your gaze tilted upward to read the job postings that flashed by not unlike flight numbers in an airport. You had matured a little. You wore your hair differently now. Shorter than he remembered but he liked it just the same. Your posture had changed too. You looked calmer, more confident and at ease as you watched the boards. Not tense and nervous as you used to be when you lived paycheck to paycheck, desperate for every opportunity you could leap at. Life had treated you well, he remarked to himself. As it should have. You looked just as beautiful as you were in that faded photograph of the two of you he carried everywhere with him. The same one he studied every night as he tried to fall asleep on those lonely nights on the Green.

He felt his heart leap in his chest when you turned in his direction, a graceful smile across your face and your arms outstretched. He felt the adrenaline kick in, like a jolt of electricity through his entire body. He realized then that he hadn’t moved since he had laid eyes on you, too startled by the long anticipated discovery to function. A hysterical grin had stretched across his face. He couldn’t believe he had finally found you. That you were there standing right in front of him after all he had been through trying to get back to you. He was just about to step towards you. To shout your name, take you in his arms and do what he should’ve done long before. That’s when a young tike, hardly three years old came darting past him, tripping over her own feet as she bumbled towards you at top speed.

Then it dawned on him. That smile? Those open arms? They weren’t for him.

You crouched and swept the child up in your arms, peppering her face with kisses as she giggled back at you. It was now that he could see the resemblance. The twinkle in the young girl’s eye and the way she threw her head back when she laughed were not foreign to him. A man he didn’t recognize came trotting after her, scooping her up from your embrace before leaning down and pressing a kiss to your lips.

It finally occurred to him why no one had recognized your name.

You looked happy. The smile on your face made his heart swell as he watched you from a distance. He only wished that he was the cause of it. The realization struck him that he could never be that for you. A husband. A father to your child. Even if he wanted to, years of breathing in toxic particles does things to a man. Now he was too late anyway. He had never wished so strongly that he hadn’t taken that job, that he hadn’t boarded that pod and set off to Bakhroma Green. Tears stung his eyes as he choked back the confession welling in the back of his throat. He couldn’t do that to you now. You deserved better than the trauma of a phantom walking back into your life after all this time. And stood there, every semblance of hope he had harboured since your fingertips slid off his own in that hallway shattered around his feet, he considered something. He should’ve let himself die on that rock. It would have been a more merciful death than the one he had just experienced as he watched the very dream that kept him alive all that time fall apart in front of him.

[ Angstageddon Masterlist | Ezra’s Arm Masterlist ]

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[laureviewer]

Final Fantasy XV: A Review

Having never played a Final Fantasy game before, it was interesting starting up the game to read: “A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers.” With the franchise’s first game released in 1987, I was interested in picking it up so late in its lengthy history, and in all honesty the fact that the Japanese video game developer Square Enix developed the game was a large part of the reason I picked it up, as I’ve admired their beautiful graphics and vastly superior character realism ever since Life is Strange and their take over of the Tomb Raider franchise. And I’m so glad I did: it was phenomenal.

Characters

The strength of the game lies in the incredible bond that is established over the course of the game between the four main protagonists. You are Noctis Lucis Caelum (‘Noct’), a Lucian Prince and heir apparent to the Lucian throne, who must travel across the realm to reunite with and marry your childhood friend Lady Lunafreya, the Oracle, to forge an alliance between Lucis and Niflhiem of Eos.

On your journey to Altissia, you are accompanied by your three closest friends who never leave your side. Gladiolus (‘Gladio’) is your lifelong friend and bodyguard who has sworn to protect the kind at all costs, the typical tough guy quick to anger but who can be surprisingly sweet; this is particularly apparent when they are around his little sister, Iris, and to Ignis, particularly in the later game (I will explain this later – massive spoiler). He calls Ignis ‘Iggy’ most of the time, which is a really cute nickname to come from such a tough man and to give to someone as respectable as Ignis.

Ignis is the brains of the group who looks after his friends, driving the Regalia and cooking them nutritious meals, having looked after a young Noct in their childhood. He is also now Noct’s Royal Advisor, which makes sense once I realised that but during the game I just thought Noct was referring questions back to Ignis merely because he was the smartest rather than someone actually employed to help in such a way. I particularly like the exchange between Ignis and Gladio at regular intervals when you discover a new ingredient:

“That’s it!” “What’s up, Iggy?” “I’ve come up with a new recipe.” (pronounced “recipehh”) “I can taste test for ya.”

Very sweet.

Lastly, Prompto is the hilarious jokester of the group, always trying to make light of a situation and have a good time. He is also quite insecure, and so quite a few times he asks Noct pretty heartbreaking questions like “Were you worried about me?” and talks about having no friends in his childhood. At all times like this I made sure to support him, where the conversation options meant that the moody Noct could have brushed him off or been downright mean to him. Considering Prompto is his only school friend, a commoner rather than one of his royal entourage, I think their relationship is particularly special.

In fact, the whole of FFXV is incredibly sentimental, mostly driven through the banter of the four boys throughout the game, even when just exploring the open world, as if they are going on a road trip with their best friends rather than undertaking life threatening missions to save the world. This includes sitting around the campfire together every night where you can see them chatting and hanging out by the firelight, and little optional cutscenes and quests where Gladio asks Noct to train with him, Ignis wants him to help prepare breakfast, or when Prompto needs a bit of a boost to feel needed in their little group. Every moment of FFVX takes a moment to the 4 friends’ personalities. I feel like I know so much about these boys and care about them all. I am more familiar with them and empathise with them more than I think I ever have with any other video game characters, and this is because every time they travel together, be that in a side quest or a road trip, little things come out about their lives and you can really tell how much they rely on and protect each other. This is amplified with Prompto’s photography skills, which allows him to take around 10 photos that can be viewed every time you rest at camp or in lodgings, allowing you to capture the most epic moments in their journey and which became more and more valuable to me the further into the story I got and the more attached I got to the characters. This deep friendship made the ending, for me, so much more heartbreaking (spoilers later on when I chat about the ending).

Saying all this, the characters outside of the immediate friendship group don’t get as much of a look in at all – even Lunafreya, the Oracle and Noct’s bride to be, or Iris, Gladio’s sister, or Aldyn, another crucial character (spoilers – see below!). Other than the fact that they spent time together as children, I feel like I know nothing about Luna’s backstory – I don’t know why she and Noct were separated, how she became the Oracle, or literally anything about her other than she loves Noct (though even this is debatable!) and that she can talk to the gods. And that’s by the end of the game! Watching Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV helped with this, but really I shouldn’t need to watch a film in order to understand the plot of a separate game, even if it is in the same franchise. In regards to Aldyn, I had to actually look up his backstory to know the motivations behind his actions, and all I know about Iris is that she is fond of Noct and has a good relationship with her brother. There’s also a crucial (apparently) character called Cor Leonis, who is the King’s Lord Commander and helps you along the way, but I had completely forgotten about him halfway through the game and was confused when he returns just before you board the boat to Altissia. I really appreciate that the bromance of the four comes before the romance between Noct and Luna – a welcome change from most storylines where the love story takes precedence – but even so, I feel like more cutscenes are needed to properly explain the background of all of these characters in order to get a more in-depth story throughout.

Combat

Many other RPGs, and really all types of games, have loosely related characters to stand by the side of the protagonist, but are never really developed as much as the main character; you feel like the protagonist could hold his or her own if these support characters went off for a bit. But there are several times in the story where one or more of the characters have to go on their own missions or are separated from the rest of the group, and I really felt that I wasn’t as powerful or supported than when the whole gang were together. All four are crucial to the story, and all four bring their own necessary aspects to a battle. Ignis can heal, Gladio is strong with a load of HP to stay alive long enough to help bring down those particularly difficult enemies, and Prompto can shoot accurately from any range and it only depletes one section of the tech bar, giving Noct time to get out of a tough spot at frequent points in the battle.

In fact, having your allies with you means that you can perform other Link Strikes as well as character techniques in battle, all of which will bring your Finesse score up at the end of each encounter. These are performed by having a member of your party near you, either by parrying or by attacking an enemy from behind, called a Blindside Link Attack.  These are really useful, as not only can it get you out of being completely overwhelmed by a bunch of creatures using your buddy to outmanoeuvre them, but they are also more powerful than your standard moves, meaning that you are more likely to get out of the fray unscathed.

While many believe that the combat is quite simple, as attacking and blocking are as simple as holding down buttons, Noct’s own abilities make battle a lot more exciting. He can warp (teleport), either to high-up vantage points to get out of the immediate battle and restore MP (Magic Points), to improve speed and agility in the battlefield, or to Warp-Strike enemies, which increases damage done (more so the further you are from the enemy) and uses MP. The weapons are great, and Noct can have 4 equipped at any one time for easy weapon changes. It’s great that you can give powerful weapons to your team, and they fight and change their moves and weapons very intelligently, and seem like they’re often your equals in battle with their abilities to take down enemies and bring each other back from the brink of death.

However, the Royal Arms, or Armiger Weapons, which Noct collects through quests and various locations throughout Eos, while powerful are a real hindrance in my opinion. They’re a cool addition as Noct has to seek out ancient tombs of past kings from his lineage to collect them, but they drain your HP steadily and so should be handled with care. Personally, I don’t use them as I have found that other weapons are just as powerful, and the reduced HP is annoying, especially when fighting the tougher beasts that can take you down in one hit.  

Spells are also well worth having in one of your weapon slots. While they seem limited as: you can only cast in the realms of Fire, Ice and Thunder; there is a cool down, limiting the amount of times you can use your spells; and in order to craft the spells in Elemancy you need to find elemental deposits or take down specific enemies to absorb the energy to use. However, they are definitely worth it as they can do mass amounts of damage to several opponents, and you can also mix and match the spells when you craft them to be a mixture of two or of all three, and you can add items to give extra perks such as allowing the user to heal or to poison the target. The only issue with the spells are that, when you cast them, chances are your buddies will also be in range. While this put them out of action for five seconds or so whilst they twitch on the ground from electrocution or shiver after being blasted by your Blizzard attack, they still seem to hold their own and get back into the fray in a jiffy. In order to avoid this completely, try to get Ignis to Regroup and heal everyone so that they are out of the way when you then cast a spell afterwards.

The weapons and spells are used in conjunction with an interesting feature I’ve never seen before, which they dub ‘Wait Mode’. When an enemy has spotted you, as long as you have Wait Mode on, the game freezes and the Wait Timer starts to go down, where you can focus on one enemy and learn what their weaknesses are. For bigger monsters this can take quite a long time, but it’s worth the payoff of knowing what spells or types of weapon are effective or weak against particular enemies – for the more powerful ones, having an effective weapon really cuts down the time you are spent fighting the enemy, especially as the really big enemies take ages to take down with or without an advantage. This makes some of the weapons’ secondary effects, such as Thunder or Fire damage, particularly hard to navigate, as a creature with a weakness to greatswords but an advantage against fire would have a neutral weakness to the weapon, which means you might have to change your Blade of Brennaere to something else. I only had one problem with Wait Mode, and only had to turn it off once in my play through of the game – I had to warp up to a specific ladder in a dungeon and make sure to stay up there until the battle had ended, as the warp spots only appear in combat (a poor design choice, IMO). The problem was, staying stationary to make sure I didn’t fall off the scaffolding meant that Wait Mode kept cropping up and pausing the combat as I wasn’t actively fighting the daemons present. It was a rare moment, but brought up a couple of issues particularly with warping – without warping to this ladder in combat, there was no way I could get to this spot without allowing the daemons to respawn by leaving the dungeon and calling the enemies back with my whistle.

Lastly, I found that items were invaluable in battle, especially as you can encounter some very high level creatures very early on (I had to run away from a Level 54 Midgardsormr when I was below level 20!), or even some that are a lower level than you but can still take out with one hit. I always made sure I had Hi-Potions, which restore your HP, Elixirs, which restore not only your MP and HP but also allowed you to regain your Max HP, which could deplete and not return until after the dungeon or encounter had finished, and Phoenix Downs, which restore you to life with full health once knocked out of the battle. This depletion of Max HP was very annoying, and I still don’t know why it goes down in some battles and not others, so if anyone could shed light on this that would be amazing.

The Experience

As with most Square Enix games I’ve played, the scenery and animation is absolutely stunning. The people are beautiful – as a heterosexual girl, I found all of the boys gorgeous, as well as many of the secondary characters, especially as they’re anime and thus naturally good-looking – and, as I’ve said before, I’ve found that Square Enix have always done the most realistic character animations. I also didn’t mind driving around in the Regalia on lengthy trips, even though others complained that this essentially created unnecessarily long loading screens as you don’t need any skill to drive the car. The horizon and the beautiful sunsets and the incredible beasts and stretches of countryside to explore made me want to go on the long drives (although after a while, the fast travel did become useful when I wanted to get somewhere quickly).

This brings me onto travel: in general, this is quite tricky at the beginning as it is dangerous at night, and I had to make sure I knew I was near a campsite (haven) or outpost so that I wasn’t caught out in the middle of the night by daemons ready to attack you. After night falls, Ignis refuses to drive, and even if Noct takes over, quite often you are pulled over by a level 30 Iron Giant or the like in the middle of the road, creaking out of the floor, and so when you’re first starting out the only option is to take to foot and go in the other direction. Not helpful if you want to get anywhere at all, as even off road daemons are likely to find you. After you reach level 30, Ignis is willing to drive, but the dangers still stand.

Furthermore, once you reach the Chocobo outpost, you get an adorable bird creature, sort of like a fluffy ostrich, which you can rent by the day and ride over the rough terrain that doesn’t allow your Regalia to encroach. They’re great (and adorable), as they’re much faster than travelling by foot, and after levelling it up a bit, it starts to have increased stamina, higher jumping capabilities, and even learns techniques to use in battle, such as giving the team a stat boost or kicking a monster in the face for you. You can also race them for medals against the three other boys, and it’s adorable at camp when Noct sleeps on his Chocobo in front of the fire. However, you have to make sure that your Chocobo rental period lasts if you’re planning to go out into the open world far away from roads and your Regalia. It is so frustrating to embark on a quest and then have to run across the never ending plains, Noct’s stamina running out every 10 seconds unless you hit the L3 at just the right time. Be prepared.

The music is also brilliant, and aims to (and succeeds at!) really affecting you emotionally. You can tell that the soundtrack is trying to make something exciting, scary, action-packed, or devastating when necessary, and the music gets particularly exciting when you fight a creature that is particularly big, powerful, and downright epic. This most often occurs in the ‘boss’ battles in dungeons, but I was also recently fighting a giant buffalo-like creature called a Kujata, for example, and the epic music came into play, which really makes it feel like you’re defeating something special. Although, it was funny in Gladio’s random sidequest where he wants the perfect cup of noodles, and so you have to fight a giant lobster for its meat – such epic music seemed a bit out of place in such an unimportant sidequest (though I’m sure Gladio would disagree) but I found it amusing.  

When you stay at havens, you get to sample Ignis’ very appetising-looking meals, the recipes of which he makes out of gathering ingredients and putting them together to make something delicious, or by viewing or trying food other cooks have made. These are great, as they give various boosts to Noct and his friends for their adventures the next day, and can often make a difference between spending hours fighting foes and using up your whole stock of potions and elixirs, and defeating them easier with increased attack, HP, magic, resistance to poison, or a whole other manner of effects that come from eating that delicious grilled trout that Noct caught the other day.

There are a lot of similarities with another game that I have reviewed in the past: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This mostly comes from both games being an open-world RPG of course, and the fact that I loved Skyrim was always going to be an important step into also loving FFXV, but honestly I loved this game even more than Skyrim due to the sentimentality and the characters, despite the rushed linearity of the story after chapter 8. I agree with critics that it finished far too quickly, but the storyline was so epic, so heartbreaking, that I loved it… more about that later (spoilers below). Another factor that both games share was their technique levelling system. While Skyrim simply calls theirs Skills and Perks, FFXV calls it Ascendance, which I feel is fitting for the game as the whole journey centres around Noct ascending to his rightful place as King. By gaining AP points from resting at camp, travelling for long periods of time, having successful conversations, and by defeating enemies, you can use these points to improve certain skills, such as Techniques, Combat, Exploration, Teamwork, and Recovery, which affect all four of the boys. While this is useful depending on how you want to play the game, giving you a sense of autonomy, it can also be stressful if you aren’t sure which skills would be best to improve and thus how to use your points wisely.

Creatures

I’ve already talked about the adorable Chocobos which you can rent to ride around the landscape, but there are hundreds of other creatures that roam the world in the wild, which are all fascinating and beautifully designed. All across the world you have a different assortment of creatures of various levels, from cat-like creatures, to rhinos, to giraffe-deer hybrids, to creatures you can barely describe, such as the giant Catoblepas, which tower above you in a lovely lake near Alstor Slough and sport pig-like faces and giant necks like diplodocuses.

You can explore the world engaging these ‘enemies’ as you please, or go to tipsters (normally these are the ones also willing to give you food at restaurants, cafes etc) to get Bounty Hunts. These are a variety of levels which can range from the lowest to level 110 (being level 64 currently, I haven’t tried these yet!) and require you to seek out certain creatures and kill them for whatever reason, and to get a reward in return. They are similar to a side quest, but are also classified by rank. Noct starts at rank 1, and the more bounties he undertakes, the more he can undertake – you cannot do a certain bounty hunt by the tipster at Hammerhead until you are rank 4, for example. These are fun, and allow you to find creatures all over Lucis that you may have overlooked, to explore some of the areas you may have also missed, and also results in opening up some creatures to combat that wouldn’t have engaged you before (such as the Catoblepas).

The other creatures that roam Eos can also be fought in Bounty Hunts, but only come out at night. These are daemons – the creatures of the dark that Noct and his friends must defeat in order to save the realm and keep the light in the world. As you go through the game, the nights get longer as the daemons get more powerful, and they are particularly active in dungeons (where, annoyingly, you cannot save!). They are particularly annoying creatures, and some are very powerful, knocking you out with one hit.  

There are also the MTs – Magitek Troopers – and soldiers that fight for the Imperials. The Imperials are Niflhiem’s army that seek to take over Lucis and the whole realm of Eos. They follow you around in giant airships and try to attack you throughout the game, which can get really annoying if you’re trying to do some sidequests and they keep getting in the way. Thankfully, you can simply sprint as fast as you can away and normally you can get away from them, but they’re also useful to get EXP out of, and aren’t too tough to take down, until you get further into the game that is and level 45 assassins and MA-Xs (big robots) come to destroy you.

  The Storyline (WARNING: spoilers ahead!)

Now to what I really wanted to talk about: the storyline, and in particular, the ending.

I spent a lot of time in the first few chapters doing the sidequests, as that’s what I like doing in an open world game – I hate leaving quests, and so I took my sweet time, exploring and having a great time around Eos. But as the game progresses, things start going down. And I really mean down!

The characters become more developed, for a start. What began as a journey for four closer-than-close friends (that’s not an innuendo…but very well could be with how close they are!) starts to sour, particularly after the massive battle with the Leviathan, and the death of Lunafreya.

After this point, Noct becomes even more moody and angsty than normal (quite understandable really, considering his father and beloved had both died recently) but Gladio isn’t having that, telling Noct to stop moping around and to take his place as King to restore the light to the world. I thought this was quite harsh from Gladio, but of course, this is the stereotypical ‘tough guy’ way of dealing with pain – get angry, and get even. This was where I first started to really get emotionally invested in the game, when the threads that keep this lovely quartet together begin to unravel. Especially when you learn another reason why Gladio’s so pissed off with Noct – for caring more about himself than caring Ignis, who was blinded during the fight with the Leviathan. All of this, as well as Prompto being more subdued from then on, trying half-heartedly to raise all of their spirits with jokes but failing miserably, is so sad. Blind Ignis actually turns out to be very annoying, as there’s one bit where you can choose to leave Ignis behind when you go into the mine at Tenebrae (which I didn’t do) and Gladio makes you walk at a really slow pace to wait for Ignis. Fine, that makes sense, but it was really frustrating in game.

And who had killed Luna, to start all of this angst and infighting off? We had seen Ardyn throughout the game, as a weird shady character on the side of the Imperials but, strangely, seemingly dedicated to helping Noct out. For example, he saves the boys from one of the massive gods, Titan, and only shows his true colours when he kills Noct’s beloved. I did like the uncertainty of who the main antagonist was, although others who had actually seen the trailer beforehand said it was obvious as he was in the trailer acting like the primarily antagonist anyway. He really did play the part brilliantly, with his powers allowing him to taunt Noct in his head and to use a rift in time to cause Prompto and Ardyn to swap forms, tricking Noct into throwing Prompto off the train they are riding across Eos. This was very clever, as I didn’t see it coming – and again, threw me into greater despair at the fate of all of the boys, particularly as Prompto is the delicate one always vying for Noct’s affections and approval. It really made me want to kill Ardyn, and so along with the unnecessary death of Luna, Square Enix really succeeded in creating an effective and hateful baddie.

In regards to the linearity of the storyline, it was certainly rushed after chapter 8, but to me that made sense. People are starting to die (most importantly, the Oracle Lunafreya) and the nights are getting longer, with the daemons becoming more powerful. Ardyn is starting to show his true colours, and the gods are beginning to intervene in human affairs, at the pleas of Noct and Lunafreya. With all of these exciting and action-packed events, and with time running out to save the world, it’s not surprising that the story progresses quite rapidly. However, it is a shame you don’t get to see beautiful-looking cities such as Altissia for very long, and some not at all, in the case of Tenebrae. Some extra side quests and just some more willingness to put time into the game would have made this a whole lot better, given us some more character development in the case of Luna in Altissia, and allowed us to truly appreciate the incredible design – for Altissia truly is stunning, with canals where you can take boats across the city and stunning architecture to admire.

Furthermore, you can use Umbra, the dog that Luna and Noct have been using to communicate in a little book he takes back and forth between the two, to go back to past Lucis and complete some of the sidequests. However, at this point in time I was so into the story and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the events by going back in time. It felt insincere doing so, going back just to kill a few beasts or run a few errands, when so much was at stake. Besides, I’d already spent hours upon hours doing more side quests than I really should have been, levelling up quite fast, and so it would have been unwise to gain more experience lest the main story quests turn out to be too easy. While I was slightly disappointed the game’s chapters flicked through faster and faster as I wanted the game to last forever, in a way that made it exciting. The climax was coming, and I was racing towards it, hopefully getting rid of the darkness quickly to restore the former might of Lucis.

But then chapter 14 hits, and ten years have suddenly past and Noct has been in some sort of stasis being absorbed by the crystal for all this time, after being told by Bahamut that he must die in order for the darkness to be destroyed for good. He left his friends to a world overrun with daemons, millions have died and there is a perpetual darkness, leaving all to head to Hammerhead or Lestalium for refuge. This really shook me up in the game, more so than anything else. Knowing that the boys had such an intense friendship throughout the game, and then Noct had left them for so long without a trace, broke my heart. I have always hated stories that include lost time, like people being in comas or getting amnesia, and this is exactly what has happened here. Noct travels back by sea to Goldin Quay, and here he finds that everywhere is abandoned. It was a sickly feeling having to go through the restaurant and beach, one of the earliest points in the game, and finding that it was overrun with (incredibly difficult!) monsters, with everyone dead or seeking refuge elsewhere. While obviously this was very effective as it affected me so deeply, I think it would have been better to draw this bit out more and to have Noct have to go to all the corners of Lucis in order to reunite his friends who had decided to fight daemons all over the realm – ten years is a very long time, and they could have been anywhere, doing anything when Noct just happens to return. As it happens, they are around Hammerhead together, and while they don’t always fight together, they are still close. To be honest, this was better than having them grow apart, as I would have found it very sad if they had fallen out or had forgotten each other in that time. Still, it made me really look back on the more innocent times in FFXV before chapter 8 with sadness and nostalgia, as so much has gone wrong with the boys, making me grow up emotionally with them. [NB: how can a game of all things affect me so much, you ask? I’m not sure, as it’s never happened to me before, but having put over 60 hours of my life into this story it’s safe to say I grew attached!]

So after reuniting, Noct, Gladio, Ignis and Prompto prepare to confront Ardyn in Insomnia, the Crown City, where he has taken over. This is where you really appreciate the photos that Prompto has been taken throughout the game. They were becoming more lovely and sentimental anyway, as I was becoming more attached to the characters, but it is particularly appreciated when Noct chooses a particular photo to take into the final battle with him. I’m sure I’m not the only one who took in the first group photo of the boys with me, when they had fixed the Regalia right at the start. The game really makes you want to take in a photo that means something to you, and it’s lovely that a game can make you that sentimental. I’ve read some funny accounts of others who took in pictures of Chocobos or even Cup Noodles in with them, which is hilarious, especially as Luna and Noct (at the end, when they are presumably happy together in the afterlife) have the photo with them, and so having them staring lovingly at a picture of Cup Noodles is brilliant!

The final battle was somewhat easy, I think, if quite interesting as Ardyn can use your warping ability and the Armiger, as he is of the royal Lucian bloodline from years before. Honestly, this isn’t what I remember from the end game. It’s the flashback to the boys’ final night together, where they make camp and eat together just like old times. This was very emotional. Noct can barely get the words out, and after what seems like an age, eventually gets out: “You guys are the best”. I felt complete and utter devastation at this ending. Actually, I can’t believe how empty I felt when the game had finally finished. It was like I didn’t know what to do with myself, as the character I had been playing with for 60+ hours had just died, and so he couldn’t even see the world he had saved recover. In fact, we don’t even get to see the aftermath of his actions, of Lucis being restored and of the light returning, other than a sunrise. I suppose this is poetic, as Noct obviously doesn’t get to see this either as he is dead, and so the gamer shouldn’t be able to either, but it still would have been great to see the few characters that did survive and how they recover after 10 years of perpetual darkness and the horrors they have seen.

What was really disappointing was the lack of backstory and explanation of the lore throughout. Some have said that it was ‘subtly explained’ in the game, but I just got confused. What are Ardyn’s motivations for his evil actions? Why does Noct need 10 years and then wakes up in a prison? What was the backstory behind Prompto being an MT? I ended up having to look all of this up, and while it’s very interesting, it would have been good to have some cutscene flashbacks, to satisfy my curiosity – particularly in Ardyn’s case, as it would have been good to know that he was betrayed by the king thousands of years ago in order to be essentially a container for the darkness and then thrown aside, causing him to want to take out the Lucis royal bloodline in revenge. I think that’s what it all boils down to – I wanted more from this game, to make a more rounded story.

The ending was also incredibly confusing. There seems to be two viable interpretations, the first being that Gladio, Ignis and Prompto die fending off the massive army of daemons just before Noct goes to confront Ardyn in the final battle, and thus are there in the afterlife to help Noct destroy Ardyn once and for all. I choose not to believe this ending, for two reasons: firstly, that they are with Noct just before he calls on the past kings to kill him to take on Ardyn in the afterlife, and so why would they have been there, unless Noct was just imagining them there?; and secondly, I don’t want everyone to die, dammit! The other interpretation is that, when Noct parts with them, they simply live on, knowing that their friend has made the ultimate sacrifice, and that their appearance in Noct’s afterlife is simply an ethereal representation. Considering how close Noct is to all three of them, this makes sense, and dulls the emotional blow somewhat, despite Noct having to sacrifice himself. I wish they’d made it clearer – and I’d like to know what happens to the boys, if only to get closure.

If Final Fantasy XV really is a final fantasy for fans and first timers, then it definitely has become my fantasy, but not necessarily my final one. They are doing a remake of Final Fantasy VII, apparently the most loved of all the games, and so I know I’ll be one of the ones buying that as soon as it comes out. I’ve since watched the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, which explains some of what happened to Noct’s father and how Luna got to Altissia (but has barely any of Noct and his friends in it, sadly), and I’m very eager to watch the anime Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV to indulge in more.

It’s an incredible game, despite its flaws, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[wallythayer]

The Art of Enough

Do you sometimes snack mindlessly on mediocre food? Buy clothes that don’t really fit? Binge-watch TV shows when you really need sleep?

You’re not alone. Our culture has become almost fanatically centered on consumption of all types, and it’s affecting our health, happiness, and well-being.

“The average person now consumes twice as much as 50 years ago,” notes Annie Leonard, whose 2007 documentary, The Story of Stuff, tracked the cycle of commodities from production to disposal. In our grandparents’ day, she says, “stewardship and resourcefulness and thrift were valued.”

Our propensity for consumption began after World War II, Leonard explains, when the United States ramped up its production of consumer goods to rebuild the economy. Along the way, new advertising strategies tied emotion to consumption, promising happiness with certain products and emptiness without them. This soap will make your skin glow! This coffee will make your spouse love you! This lawnmower will make your neighbors jealous!

To say the approach was successful is an understatement.

“We are like fish, and consumption is our water,” says Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. “We don’t even realize how much it surrounds us and becomes a part of us. We’re swimming in the idea that if you have more, then you can be happy.”

If that were true, the United States — which has 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes 30 percent of its resources, and creates 30 percent of its waste — would be the happiest place on Earth. But according to the 2016 World Happiness Report, it’s ranked 13th, well behind the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Canada, and others. And our overall happiness has declined steadily over the last decade.

This leads to what happiness researchers refer to as the hedonic treadmill — a cycle that begins with a purchase and postconsumption buzz, followed by a disappointing crash, which is then chased by a search for another buzz.

“At a basic level, we’re all just looking to be happy,” says Michelle Gielan, author of Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change. “But at a certain point, many people start to notice that any pleasure from what they consume just doesn’t last. That’s because it doesn’t enrich us in ways that really count.”

This cycle trains our minds to be in a perpetual state of craving. “Consumption . . . often comes from a feeling that you lack something,” says Gielan. “If your brain is focused on what you don’t have, then you’ll be unhappy.”

The false promise of satisfaction present in so many advertising messages can trap us in a cycle of endless pursuit, convinced that if this product or that experience doesn’t do it, we must just need one more.

Habits of consumption don’t just affect our happiness; they’re also tough on the planet. Our discarded stuff all ends up somewhere, whether that’s clogging a waterway, overstuffing a landfill, or polluting a landscape.

The average U.S. household generates more than 20 pounds of hazardous waste a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This waste is harmful all along the disposal chain — for the sanitation workers who handle it and for the places where it’s ultimately deposited.

And “ordinary” waste is equally hazardous; it just takes a little longer to do damage. More than 60 million plastic water bottles end up in municipal landfills every day. These dumping grounds are the second-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States and contribute to the overall warming of the planet.

The massive floating islands of trash in the Pacific Ocean, often referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are composed almost entirely of post-consumer plastic and have been described as twice the size of Texas.

It doesn’t have to be this way. “We just cannot sustain an endless pursuit of more,” says McKeown. “That hurts our hearts as much as it hurts the planet. But the positive news is that we can turn this around.”

Reduce, Reuse, Rejoice

Breaking the cycle of overconsumption is not always easy, but it’s entirely possible — and it gets easier as you go along. These strategies can help you consume less and get more pleasure from the items you do choose to include in your life.

1.  Understand that the energy you save may be your own. 

Purchasing fewer products breaks the environmentally damaging chain of buy-use-dispose-repeat. It can also make us feel considerably more energized, suggests Joshua Becker, author of The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own.

“When you ask people what they want most in life, rarely would someone answer, ‘I want to accumulate as much as possible.’ Because that’s not what feels important,” he says. We want strong relationships, we want to make a difference, we want to love ourselves. Most of all, we want the time, energy, focus, and passion for whatever we choose to pursue.

“What if we could have all those things as a result of consuming less?” Becker asks. “Wouldn’t that be mind blowing? Because it can actually work that way.”

The more we accumulate, he says, the more mental energy we expend to take care of it. When you begin to accept that what you have is enough and start to let go of some of that consumption — including shopping, social media, overeating, anything that involves “input” mode — it can be exhilarating.

“People think it’s a sacrifice to consume less,” Becker adds, “when actually it feels like freedom.”

Try This:

• Open a stuffed junk drawer and notice how it makes you feel. Now, open a nearly empty drawer. Without judgment, feel the difference between the two.

• Pick one item in your home at random. Ask yourself, Does this bring me joy? Does this serve a purpose? Or even, Do I really need this? If not, consider donating or recycling it. Repeat the technique for two objects tomorrow, three the next day, and so on.

2. Let go mindfully.

People often assume that scaling back their possessions means chucking everything but a backpack and some underwear. (And, hey, do you really need underwear?) But it’s really about understanding what each item you own means to you, says Ryan Nicodemus, cocreator of Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things and TheMinimalists.com.

When Nicodemus decided to downsize his belongings, he and a friend packed up his entire apartment as if he were moving out. During the following days, he unpacked only what he needed. After three weeks, about 80 percent of his stuff was still boxed up. So he pulled out a few seasonal items, like his winter coat, and a few extra dishes, then donated the rest.

“I admit, that’s a bit extreme,” he says, with a laugh. “But what about packing up your clothes and noticing what you take out?”

Knowing what’s important to you is just as crucial as understanding what to discard, Nicodemus notes. And clothes, in particular, can be a fantastic starting point.

Make your scale-down efforts into a game, he suggests. He cites a campaign called Project 333, which challenges people to dress with 33 or fewer items for three months. “Doing something like that gets you into the mindset of using less,” he says. “Plus, it’s just a fun challenge.”

Try This:

• Pack all of one kind of clothing item in a box — sweaters, shoes, etc. — and for the next month, take out only what you need. After 30 days, consider donating what’s left over.

• Put a week’s worth of clothes in a suitcase, as if you’re going on a trip. Then wear only what you’ve packed for those seven days. See how it feels to work with a smaller wardrobe.

3. Live within your means.

Nicodemus decided to change his consumption patterns because he wanted more control over his life while working 80-hour weeks at his six-figure corporate job. Over two years, he focused on buying less, spending less, cutting his bills, and paying off his debt.

Then, without notice, he lost his job. As the HR rep went over the details of the downsizing, he remembers thinking, This is the best thing that could have happened to me.

Nicodemus had become so adept at living cheaply that when this drastic transition occurred, he knew he could cover his necessities and still have a future filled with possibilities.

He realized that, thanks to his new lifestyle, he’d “be able to avoid finding another job that takes most of my time and opt instead for a mission I enjoy. I’ll have more time for the people I love, which has been a huge struggle for me ever since I started my corporate climb.”

Try This:

• Make nonspending into a game. How many days can you go without buying clothes, nonessential trinkets, or little “rewards” for yourself? When you do buy something, start over the next day and see if you can beat your record.

• After your next grocery trip, see how long you can go without buying food again. You’ll be surprised how creative you can be with leftovers. Plus, it trains you to use what you have and reduce food waste.

4. Go for quality.

Sustainability expert Robert Shapiro suggests a useful phrase to help guide your spending behavior: selective materialism. By focusing on high-quality, durable, long-lasting products, you might hit the top of your affordability range. But consider the return on investment.

Paying more for a well-made item means you can use it for years — sometimes decades. You’ll be able to shop less often and replace fewer goods, keeping more out of the waste stream.

For example, “fast” or cheap fashion has a higher cost than you may realize. Consider the low wages and hazardous working conditions garment workers face, and the environmental impact pesticides have on fabric crops. “The environmental impact of cycling through so much clothing is astounding,” Nicodemus says. “We’re now at the point where a pound of rice and beans costs more than a pound of clothing. We pay for it in resource depletion.”

And not all quality goods are expensive. “My table is made from an old door that I found, and it will never leave my house, because I love it,” Shapiro says. “That’s really the key: Own only what you absolutely love and what you want to live with for a long time.”

Think of your possessions as a collection with a certain, stable size, Shapiro adds. So when you get something new, something else gets donated or recycled.

Shopping this way can help create a sharp distinction between need and want that will serve you in multiple ways.

“We are taught to want what’s new, but when you begin to deprogram yourself from that, some amazing things can happen,” he says. “You start to feel satisfied with what you have, and you bring in only what you really love. When you extend that to all aspects of your life, it feels liberating.”

Try This:

• Before you walk into a store, make a list, or stop and ask yourself exactly what you’re going to buy. Then make a beeline for those items and head to the cashier. This will keep you focused on your intentions, and it honors your resolve.

• Look around one room in your home. If you were to suffer a natural disaster and lose everything you see, what would you miss? Would you feel relieved if certain items were lost? What is so durable that it could survive a flood? Let that information be your guide to future choices.

5. Cultivate contentment.

Whether you’re consuming food, drink, media, live entertainment, or the sights and sounds of recreational shopping, stay present. Take a moment to consider whether you’re actually “full.” Notice if you’re consuming out of habit or boredom.

Many of us are used to sailing past our satiety point. We numb out and eat the rest of what’s on the plate or watch a lackluster TV show. But cultivating presence can help, Gielan says. That means developing an understanding of what truly brings us pleasure, and knowing how to savor what we’re doing, eating, or watching in the moment.

“Research has indicated that about 90 percent of our happiness comes from how we process the world, which means how you look at your circumstances,” she says. “Only 10 percent is external, which means the stuff you consume in some way. The way you think about what you have really matters. In fact, it’s everything. It can lead to happiness or unhappiness, depending on how you’re looking at it.”

Try This:

• Whatever object you see first when you glance away from reading this, keep looking at it for 30 seconds. Try to view it as if you’ve never seen it before. Notice the detail, the color, the shape. This meditation technique trains your brain to focus on one thing at a time — and appreciate what you’re seeing.

• Track the moments of your day in a journal: what you eat, read, work on, drink, even daydream about. Just jot down a couple of short sentences about each. Then read them a few days later. You might be surprised to find how many moments you don’t recall because you were operating on autopilot.

Making the Connection

Annie Leonard believes that the best way to stop climate change is by inviting your neighbor over for tea.

The more connected you become, the more likely you’ll feel comfortable sharing rather than buying. You’ll be able to ask to borrow an onion from your neighbor instead of driving to the store for one, or you’ll pitch in with a few people on your block to buy a single lawnmower to share.

“When you forge strong connections, you come up with strategies,” says Shana DeClercq, community engagement manager at The Story of Stuff Project. “Making a change is really all about multiplying your personal power by the power of your friends and neighbors.”

Curbing your consumption doesn’t have to be a grim task. In fact, it can be joyful.

When you learn to engage fully with the people, possessions, and experiences that already surround you, and use your skills and creativity to make the most of them, you just might recognize that what you have is simply enough.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/the-art-of-enough/