i did know vaguely about the movie! but i assumed it was more bonus-content than actually-necessary-to-grok-the-story content, lol oops, clearly they decided to design it that way. thanks for nothing square enix >___>;;

lol: re: that explanation for money woes. it still seems like you should be able to take like, some royal jewels, and pawn them for $$$, but given that explanation, i'm guessing the writers were like "we want them to be kinda broke, we need some sort of reason for them to be broke, turns out it is hard to rationalize royalty being broke soooo let's just come up with a hand-wavy explanation and hope no one squints at it too hard" :P

yeah i think noctis is trying to be on the down-low, though there's something kinda adorably naive about that—he's constantly running into randos who are like "OH YOU'RE THE PRINCE" and at this point i'm just assuming it's like, idk, Taylor Swift trying to go about town incognito, good effort but ultimately some goddamn fan is going to recognize you :P