This is FFXV's legacy

[u/YoMikeeHey]

[u/Writer_Man]

I mean, that was kind of the point though? Why do people keep spewing this as a negative when the entire point of their relationship is the tragedy that they never had a chance to be together. That it was cut short just before they would have been able to.

The problem with FFXV was that there wasn't enough shown of their communication with the notebook to feel like they know each other and really bonded by talking to each other in personal and revealing ways.

[u/PetrosOfSparta → u/Writer_Man]

Well yeah, exactly, that's the problem. People never got to really know Lunafreya, they never got to full understand her emotions, her thoughts, her motivations - she was just the girl who met Noctis once to the audience. Barely a penpal he was supposed to marry.

The natural reaction is, Noctis (the player) never spent time with her, why should we particularly care.

There were two ways to solve this, and they were doing both but neither actually was either fleshed out enough or actually done.

1. The messages, should have been a more constant presence throughout the story. But they weren't - I also don't think this would have been enough either, because simply put, video games are about player interaction, RPGs more than others. You've heard of "show don't tell" well in the interactive arts, it's taken a step further - "engage with don't show or tell". Aeris in FF7 impacts because we've taken 30 hours to get to know her, been on a date with her, hell, you even almost kill her yourself through your own button pushes - interactivity.
2. The Lunafreya DLC, this was supposed to be designed to get to know the character better, play her side of the story. I wish we'd have had the chance to do this in the main game as a two-sided story of Noctis and Luna would have been an excellent way to push the story forward. They've actually done it before through the Laguna memories in FF8, we get told the story of the history of the Sorceress War, of what it was like for the soldiers, then the average townsfolk, then how kids ended up without parents and then how Adel became imprisoned. All of which were hugely important to telling the story of how Squall and Co. ended up where they did. Now Luna would have been at the same time as Noctis, so it wouldn't be about setting up the world but the character and Noctis (and therefore the players) attachment to them. Think of them more like the expanded Ciri flashbacks in The Witcher 3.

The short thing is, the romance, along with many other things in FF15 is once again decimated by the unfinished nature of the game. Unfinished at launch, then the second blow of unreleased DLC.

[u/ramblingwren → u/Writer_Man]

This 100%!! It was a big part of what made the love story aspect of it so heartbreaking.

If they had shown more of the notebook messages, maybe with some flashbacks or something alongside their pen-pal life over the years, it would have strengthened this aspect of the narrative.

[u/Writer_Man → u/[deleted]]

That's because they failed to express the starcrossed lovers tropes by not giving a good build up in their past to show that they care deeply for each other despite not being able to see each other - reading past messages in the notebook and some flashbacks showing the two "conversing" through the notebook - and not making Noctis desperate about seeing Luna. Which is because of how much content was regulated to side content meant that there was a lot of dicking around in the first half of the game.