I like that you get some time with him.
Also I hated the extra verse one I know it's non cannon but still.
Well I think thus is one of the coolest dlcs I have seen in a game.
Anyways I loved it.
The extra verse opened up such an annoying can of worms, and just really wasn't worth it. A tidbit of extra lore and an extension of the same boss fight in a different location, and then an ending that demands far more elaboration than it's given. Then, they decided to put effort into doing another alternate storyline like the extra verse, instead of building up the main canon.
Yeah the dlcs while they provide a lot of extra depth are also super messy. Just recently replayed the game and Ardyn’s dlc, and I feel the characterization is a little bit strange at times. Why exactly did Ardyn turn evil and why was Somnus so comically evil in such a short span of time lol.
I feel much more time is needed to fully flesh every character’s motivations. The dlc mostly gives us the general idea of what happened and it’s sorta up to you to imagine further details.
Personally, the only way for me to fit every additional piece of content into the main story is mostly to just imagine the characters themselves to be unreliable narrators lol.
How I took Episode Ardyn was that the events between him, Somnus, and Aera as his interpretation of what happened, but not what actually happened. The beginning of it tells you repeatedly that all the people Ardyn absorbed warped his memories, and continue to do so as he absorbs more people, and I feel they wouldn’t harp so much on it if it didn’t mean anything.
Ardyn’s memories of what happened also directly contradict one of the statues in the ruins of insomnia that say that Aera didn’t die and ruled with Somnus. Ardyn’s DLC is pretty fascinating because of this. We’re literally playing from the pov of a man with a ruined mind. Like people can say the contradictions were an accident of different teams, but them telling you explicitly in the beginning that his mind isn’t right seems pretty on purpose to me.
If you look at it like that, Somnus and Aera’s characterizations make perfect sense. The Somnus he remembers literally isn’t who he was. Aera helps Bahamut keep him in line because he doesn’t actually properly remember the version that sided with his brother, or refuses to. It made me like the dlc quite a lot.
That's how the novel (Dawn of the Future) portrayed it as well, that Ardyn's mind became more and more fragmented and ruined. Somnus trapped him in one place for 1000 years? 2000 years? so all he did was live inside his mind and reviewing those traumatic events, trying to process everything that happened, and in the end, hung on all the resentment and disillusion about life. Interestingly enough, in the beginning, he had some sympathy and perspective of his brother, and even seemed to be coming to terms with Aera's death, but it all bled away the longer he "lived."
The original three episodes are fine, they all fit perfectly fine into the game. It's the second round that started with Ardyn's when things went south. They totally changed Ardyn's motivations and even major elements of his origins that are the source of aspects of his character. Plus they screw up the timeline of events and just don't take into account other things that happen in the main game. It is sadly par for the course when it comes to the Dawn of the Future content, because it sought to change a lot to make its own ending work, instead of working within the main canon we already had.
I basically didn't like anything they did with Episode Ardyn, even getting to explore Insomnia felt like a let down. Ah cool, I get to run around an empty city, fighting the same handful of enemies, to the worst song on repeat. Wahoo thanks guys for finally letting me "explore Insomnia." I would have rather had an alternate chapter 1 that puts us in the city for the invasion, or at least an Episode Ardyn covering when Shiva attacked the empire for subjugating Ifrit.
For all intents and purposes, I just literally don't count anything past Royal Edition's release to be canon. I guess there's also this idea of "soft canon," where like, some of the info we get about the world in Episode Ardyn is easy to consider as canon because unlike other aspects, it doesn't contradict anything else.
I mean, Ignis was shown to be very capable. If he wasn’t disabled then it’d be safe to assume that he would take charge as the King’s advisor and right-hand man, see the strategic value in maintaining a relationship with Ravus (especially since Ravus, in this scenario, helped the chocobros reach and rescue him), and somehow figure out a way to defeat the weakened Ardyn without having to sacrifice Noctis to do it.
Taking his sight was a very heavy price, it turns out.
Ignis and Ravus were great in that DLC. I highly enjoyed it.
All I ever wanted was Ignis being able to see, and Ravus living. ðŸ˜
The extra verse opened up such an annoying can of worms, and just really wasn't worth it. A tidbit of extra lore and an extension of the same boss fight in a different location, and then an ending that demands far more elaboration than it's given. Then, they decided to put effort into doing another alternate storyline like the extra verse, instead of building up the main canon.
Great DLC though. Poor Iggy.
Yeah the dlcs while they provide a lot of extra depth are also super messy. Just recently replayed the game and Ardyn’s dlc, and I feel the characterization is a little bit strange at times. Why exactly did Ardyn turn evil and why was Somnus so comically evil in such a short span of time lol.
I feel much more time is needed to fully flesh every character’s motivations. The dlc mostly gives us the general idea of what happened and it’s sorta up to you to imagine further details.
Personally, the only way for me to fit every additional piece of content into the main story is mostly to just imagine the characters themselves to be unreliable narrators lol.
How I took Episode Ardyn was that the events between him, Somnus, and Aera as his interpretation of what happened, but not what actually happened. The beginning of it tells you repeatedly that all the people Ardyn absorbed warped his memories, and continue to do so as he absorbs more people, and I feel they wouldn’t harp so much on it if it didn’t mean anything.
Ardyn’s memories of what happened also directly contradict one of the statues in the ruins of insomnia that say that Aera didn’t die and ruled with Somnus. Ardyn’s DLC is pretty fascinating because of this. We’re literally playing from the pov of a man with a ruined mind. Like people can say the contradictions were an accident of different teams, but them telling you explicitly in the beginning that his mind isn’t right seems pretty on purpose to me.
If you look at it like that, Somnus and Aera’s characterizations make perfect sense. The Somnus he remembers literally isn’t who he was. Aera helps Bahamut keep him in line because he doesn’t actually properly remember the version that sided with his brother, or refuses to. It made me like the dlc quite a lot.
That's how the novel (Dawn of the Future) portrayed it as well, that Ardyn's mind became more and more fragmented and ruined. Somnus trapped him in one place for 1000 years? 2000 years? so all he did was live inside his mind and reviewing those traumatic events, trying to process everything that happened, and in the end, hung on all the resentment and disillusion about life. Interestingly enough, in the beginning, he had some sympathy and perspective of his brother, and even seemed to be coming to terms with Aera's death, but it all bled away the longer he "lived."
The original three episodes are fine, they all fit perfectly fine into the game. It's the second round that started with Ardyn's when things went south. They totally changed Ardyn's motivations and even major elements of his origins that are the source of aspects of his character. Plus they screw up the timeline of events and just don't take into account other things that happen in the main game. It is sadly par for the course when it comes to the Dawn of the Future content, because it sought to change a lot to make its own ending work, instead of working within the main canon we already had.
I basically didn't like anything they did with Episode Ardyn, even getting to explore Insomnia felt like a let down. Ah cool, I get to run around an empty city, fighting the same handful of enemies, to the worst song on repeat. Wahoo thanks guys for finally letting me "explore Insomnia." I would have rather had an alternate chapter 1 that puts us in the city for the invasion, or at least an Episode Ardyn covering when Shiva attacked the empire for subjugating Ifrit.
For all intents and purposes, I just literally don't count anything past Royal Edition's release to be canon. I guess there's also this idea of "soft canon," where like, some of the info we get about the world in Episode Ardyn is easy to consider as canon because unlike other aspects, it doesn't contradict anything else.
Read the book lol
I mean, Ignis was shown to be very capable. If he wasn’t disabled then it’d be safe to assume that he would take charge as the King’s advisor and right-hand man, see the strategic value in maintaining a relationship with Ravus (especially since Ravus, in this scenario, helped the chocobros reach and rescue him), and somehow figure out a way to defeat the weakened Ardyn without having to sacrifice Noctis to do it.
Taking his sight was a very heavy price, it turns out.
It really was a great one.
Honestly liked both scenarios.
I love this game and have played it several times and love the ignis story
But for some reason this playthrough on my PC I literally forgot about his DLC until I finished Promto's DLC.Â
I was trying to play them as they appeared in the story. Sorry Iggy!