Final Fantasy XV out-of-bounds glitches offer a glimpse at new and unused areas

Final Fantasy XV is a pretty good game - so good, in fact, that thousands of you voted it your readers' choice RPG of the year for 2016, but in places it's also weird and, yes, a little disappointing. It bears the scars of its at once lengthy and rushed development, and one place is in its uneven story and seemingly a wealth of cut content. We touched on all this somewhat in our review.

As players go deep into exploring and breaking the world of FF15, we might be getting a glimpse at just how much changed. By using glitches to get out of bounds from where the game intends you to be it's posisble to see large areas unused in the final game.

Some of these areas look more placeholdery, but others appear surprisingly detailed and feature-complete. One has to wonder - were these areas, some of which are surprisingly detailed, ever meant for use in the game? Will we revisit them in DLC? Here's a brief look at what's been discovered. 

Be aware that the videos and text below contain spoiler material in that it shows off areas of the game from its last few chapters. Spoilers below Stella (who also isn't in the game). Scroll beyond her at your own risk:

Glitched NPCs and near-finished areas of Altissia

You of course visit Altissia in the main game, but one thing that's interesting about it is that there's an enormous map of the city with only a slice of it explorable. Some out-of-bounds shenanigans allows Noctis to swim (only otherwise seen in the Leviathan battle) and by swimming you can reach an entirely new area of the city.

What's interesting about this area is that it seems very close to complete, with collision and minimal glitches. There's even a crowd of glitched NPCs and extra geography like stalls and stands out there. This YouTube video shows off the glitch, plus how to do it:

In addition to this, while it isn't an out-of-bounds glitch it's worth pointing out that Altissa is attached to the rest of FF15's open-world Lucis, and you can actually travel there without even taking the boat with Cid if you're so inclined... it just takes a long time to swim there.

One interesting touch about this is if you arrive in Altissa this way you can summon Chocobos there... or indeed take a guest party member who otherwise never visits there such as Iris with you. See the video below, from YouTuber user SavagedBeast, to see what that looks like:

Exploring far more of the nation of Niflheim

Most of FF15 takes place in the nation of Lucis - the entire open-world segment of the game and the post-game content all takes place in its large open world segment, and that open world is comprised of a good chunk of the nation of Lucis, Noctis' home country.

The back half of the game sees you travel to the enemy country of Niflheim, but you spend your time there on a train, moving from one relatively enclosed area to another on a mostly enclosed path. However, hidden away beyond these areas is more to explore - and interestingly, several areas separated by train rides and load screens are actually sewn together as if at one point they were going to be an open world affair.

Some of this matches up to leaks from a user on 4Chan who claimed to be from the development team. As well as a number of spot-on comments about other matters, the user suggested you weren't supposed to end up on the on-rails train journey quite so soon, with one cut segment post-Altissa featuring Noctis and Cor Leonis alone driving to a new destination.

The below video from YouTube user Fotm Hero demonstrates this, using an out-of-bounds glitch to explore Cartanica, Eusciello, Pagla and Tenebrae. These are locations you visit or see out of a train window, but aren't otherwise explorable. Some parts are interestingly complete, and it's worth nothing parts of these zones are where Prompto is separated from the party - perhaps his DLC will take place here.

Exploring Angelgard, the 'Prison Island', in full

Your attention is drawn to Angelgard off to the distance of Lucis early on in the game as you travel the open world - it has an impressive, irregular shape to it. That's foreshadowing to a point, as that is where Noctis later wakes up after sleeping inside the crystal for 10 years.

What's interesting is that by using a Chocobo and some more out-of-bounds glitching you can actually swim over to Angelgard. The island is quite incomplete as far as we can tell, though one thing that is interesting is that the tomb where Noctis wakes up is fully-featured and strongly resembles the other royal tombs. More interesting, it's surrounded by gigantic swords that look distinctly Bahamut-ish, and while the tomb's innards are seen in a cutscene, the outside the swords is not.

See a bit of that for yourself below, thanks to YouTube user Keytotruth.

Unshackled in the World of Ruin - and with your party

After Noctis leaves Angelgard after waking up in the events mentioned above, he finds himself in the 'World of Ruin' - a destroyed world that takes its name from FF6 (which incidentally is the favourite FF of FF15 director Hajime Tabata). The World of Ruin is in the game, of course, but here it's a little different.

In-game you run through it in passing, but here you can explore fully with your party. There's a little more to the world of ruin than shown briefly in the game, and camp sites are intact for use. It's strange how little of it you see in-game, and even though the world of ruin is limited even with this glitch to one chunk of the open world, it does feel like a natural place to set the co-operative 4-player online multiplayer DLC. Time will tell.

YouTube person SavagedBeast is back with another video demonstrating this - check it out: