Who Gets the Road Trip? Care, Labor, and the Limits of Brotherhood in Final Fantasy XV

I am developing a chapter titled “Who Gets the Road Trip? Care, Labor, and the Limits of Brotherhood in Final Fantasy XV.” The project examines how the game presents care, friendship, and gender through its main characters. Players spend hours watching Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto cook, travel, fight, grieve, and support one another, making their brotherhood feel personal and lived-in. Women such as Lunafreya, Cindy, Gentiana, and Aranea also perform essential work, but their contributions are often brief, sacrificial, or outside the player’s control. Using feminist close analysis, I ask whether the game truly challenges masculinity when its men receive more time, attention, and authority than its women. I argue that Final Fantasy XV expands what male heroes can do and feel without fully challenging the gender hierarchy supporting their journey: its men receive the shared time needed to build a visible brotherhood, while its women are denied the same opportunity to develop a visible sisterhood.