To the king, it's the only workable option in the long term, as he's losing his power to old age. What he and his company find a good deal less palatable, though, is word that Regis is preparing to accept an offer of peace from Niflheim. Being chewed out and reassigned for Disobeying Direct Orders is just part of the price you pay for such things. When Niflheim is staging one of its attacks, raining fire down on him and his buddies, Nyx risks life, limb, and neck to run back for his buddy Libertus. Most of the action centers around Nyx Ulric, one of the Kingsglaive, a stolid, in-the-trenches type whose loyalty to his friends comes first. It's made clear early on that the Kingsglaive are not benefactors of any charity on the part of King Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII - they're expendables whose powers come from the king, and can be revoked at a moment's notice. Said crystal powers the force-field that protects the city-kingdom of Lucis from attacks by the airships of the Niflheim empire, and the royal family is itself protected by the Kingsglaive, an elite unit of fighters drawn from immigrants who live beyond the city's limits. Kingsglaive gives us a world where the texture of daily life is more or less like our own - most of the action takes place in a city that's reminiscent of modern Manhattan or Tokyo - but a monarchy holds sway over all, one that has great magic at its command courtesy of a giant crystal. Much of the Final Fantasy franchise freely mixes magic and technology, or has some manner of the latter derived from the former. The power on the throne that protects a kingdom. But my eyes were sure wide open the whole time. I cared about what was going on, although not as much as I would have liked to. My ignorance of FFXV (and most of the Final Fantasy franchise generally) is all but total, making me a good test case for that last question. And from a storytelling/worldbuilding POV, I'm always curious about the way these kinds of prequel/prelude stories operate - how well they stand on their own two feet, or whether or not a non-fan will end up caring. The gearhead nerd side of me is fascinated by the technology involved to produce something this eye-filling. Projects like this, I admit, always fascinate me, and from multiple angles. But there's at least an attempt here to tell a thoughtful story, and to populate it with people who have at least marginally more motivation than your average end boss. For that reason alone some are likely to dismiss it out of hand as either a two-hour cutscene or a two-hour game trailer. This feature film, as many already know, is intended mainly to introduce us to the world of the forthcoming Final Fantasy XV game. If the most damning thing I can say about Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is that some of its dialogue and screenwriting are on the weak side, that's far better than what I was expecting to say about it.
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