Final Fantasy 15 – Chronological Order of End-Game Cutscenes

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Spoilers below, obviously.

There are a couple of cutscenes that play after the final battle in FFXV. The first occurs in between the first and second sets of credits, and shows:

Noctis and his companions sitting around a campfire in the dark, wearing their 'regal' outfits, and chatting. Noctis gets all emotional and tells his friends how great he thinks they all are.

Where is this meant to fit in the chronology of the story? Specifically, is it showing what occurred on the way to the final fight, or something that happened afterwards? And if the canonical explanation is that it happened afterwards, then:

Is there any explanation for Noct not being dead anymore?

And along similar lines, there's a second cutscene that occurs after the second batch of credits, showing:

Dawn breaks across the land, the darkness finally banished. We see an empty throneroom, with the photo that you selected before starting the final battle resting on the throne. Noctis and Lunafreya both appear and embrace, and the air gets all sparkly.

This one obviously occurs chronologically after the final battle is concluded. However it's not really clear if:

Noct and Luna are being depicted as being reunited in spirit (the story seems to include some concept of a 'land of the dead' type existence) or in the real-world? If it's meant to be the latter, is there any explanation for Noct and Luna both not being dead anymore?

And speaking of people being dead:

Were those corpses Ardyn had in chains when Noct first enters the throne-room meant to be real, or just an illusory dig at Noct? I assume it was the latter given the way they suddenly vanish into nothing.

Best Answer

The first cutscene you mentioned

where Noctis and his companions are gathered around the campfire takes place prior to the final battle, as they realize that would likely be their last time together.

The second cutscene you mentioned happens after the final battle, as you've said.

Neither Noctis nor Luna are returned to the land of the living. They are both still dead and are, as you've put, reunited in spirit.

As for the corpses in the throne room,

these were also illusions by Ardyn in order to continue messing with Noctis' head.

From this article, it actually appears that

not only are Noctis and Luna dead, but so are Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto.