I'm going to be a Final Fantasy XV Rebel...

I'm going to play the DLC Episode Prompto before I play the main game.

When I first bought Final Fantasy XV, I got it on sale a few months ago, long after its release last year. I went all-in, and bought the package that included the season pass.

I played the first few hours of the game, and was fully captivated by its amazing graphics, its giant world to explore, and its surprisingly-fun action gameplay. It's easily the most radical departure for a mainline Final Fantasy game since the series began, and like Metal Gear Solid V before it, it feels like a traditional Japanese take on the modern and largely western-developed open world genre.

It is a game of complex systems, loot, and vast landscapes...and as a result it's a little bit daunting.

That's why, having just reinstalled it yesterday...I've decided to begin my journey near the story's end, with Episode Prompto.

"But wait!," purists will cry. "You won't know what's going on!"

I would counter that by saying that 1) I'm not really sensitive to spoilers at all. I value the journey just as much as the destination. 2)I feel like a sense of vague mystery is core to what I enjoy about Final Fantasy games. They are often light on plot but heavy on theme and metaphor, and they tend to not reveal their big cards till the very end. Most of the moments people remember from Final Fantasy games are either set pieces or revelations from their final chapters.

Plus, it'd just be really nice to actually finish a chunk of this massive game that's still slated to receive even more content. Episode Prompto is just a few hours long, and sometimes that's exactly the amount of content I need. I have no doubt that I'll finish it energized to finally tackle the main game I've been putting off for so long.

Plus plus, I love the weird idea of turning this action RPG into a third-person shooter. SquareEnix crafted an absurdly flexible engine for Final Fantasy XV, with some of the best visuals I've ever seen. That it can also incorporate shooter gameplay is kind of wild, to me.

So. I'm going to play a chapter near the end of a game before I play the rest of the game. Do you think I'm crazy? Have you done this before? It's liberating.

I promise.