Prompto Argentum

a character from a game

Prompto Argentum is a character of Noctis's gang in Final Fantasy XV. He's a childhood friend of Noctis and wields firearms. Although not directly playable, he is in Noctis's party.

Prompto takes photos with his smartphone, and for a certain reason, wants to save pictures of him and his friends while on the road trip. The player can upload these pictures to social media. It has been said the system was not just "thrown in", but will connect to the party's actions and the story.

Appearance
Prompto is a young man of average height and a slender build. He has blue eyes, light freckles and short, unruly blond hair. He wears two bands on his right arm, black gloves, a black shirt with a white pattern, and a sleeveless black vest with a dark red flannel shirt attached underneath. He wears dark pants with a faint leopard print, which is also present on his gloves. He wears black boots with red soles that are lined with white fur. Prompto's black open vest has various tags. The one below the collar reads: "It's a beautiful day now watch some bastard fuck it up." The middle one on the side resembles the logo. The back of Prompto's waistcoat reads "DEADORALIVE." Like all party members, Prompto has skull motifs to his outfit. The buttons on his jacket have skulls, he has a belt buckle in the shape of a skull, and another skull on the tag on his trousers.

Personality
Prompto maintains a playful attitude towards Noctis. In the 1st Production Premier trailer, he acknowledges Noctis's strength, but warns Noctis's body has yet to adjust to his newfound powers. He is the group's youngest member.

He is described as a skirt-chasing mood maker with a chip on his shoulder from a different social status compared to his other friends, and thus feels inferior but wishes to be useful.

Story
Prompto accompanies Noctis on their road trip across the land toward Altissia to meet with Noctis's fiancée, Luna. They pass through the Duscae region where Prompto accidentally crashes the party's car, the Regalia. They have the mechanic Cindy repair it at the local Coernix Station, but need to make some quick money to pay for it. They discover there is a bounty of 25,000 gil on a rampaging behemoth, and Prompto helps the others fell it by shooting at a tank of petrol to stun it. If Noctis summons Ramuh to fell the behemoth Prompto marvels at its power, saying he now knows why the legends speak of Archaeans so highly.

During their time at Duscae Prompto asks Noctis to go pick up mushrooms as he's heard they are a local delicacy. While picking up mushrooms at the lake's edge the two are accosted by a catoblepas, and Prompto gets his foot stuck in the mud. Noctis and Prompto make a hair-thin escape, but Prompto loses the mushrooms. Later on the gang can marvel at a meteor shower, and when Prompto wants to document it the camera topples over before the picture can be taken.

Cindy repairs the Regalia and deflects Prompto's attempts at flirting when they go collect it. While the party drives on Prompto marvels at its astral shard, asking if it is on fire, and the giant Adamantoise they spot from the side of the road.

Gameplay
Prompto uses a variety of firearms, including handguns and shotguns. He can co-opt moves with Noctis, such as by pushing him away from the harm's way, and shoot enemies from either a range or from close-up. One of his Physical Abilities is Bulletbind, which he can use to freeze his enemies.

He has the least HP of the party. In the Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae demo he has a skill that inflicts Stop on enemies, and can set up and join in on Cross Chain attacks.

Creation and development
Prompto's design went through an overhaul during development since he was first unveiled for Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which ended up being reworked into Final Fantasy XV. His hair was straightened, spiked up, and changed golden blond from its curly dirty blond inceptions, and his facial features were modified as well to give him a more rugged, masculine look.

It was originally envisioned all party members would be playable with Prompto able to manually aim firearms that could be used to target enemy weak points. However, the battle system was later changed to make only Noctis directly playable.

Director Hajime Tabata has explained that black has historically been treated as a special color in the kingdom of Lucis. Thus the attire of the royal family, and those in occupations closely tied to it, wear black.

A Final Fantasy XV animator, Toyama, shared some details on how Prompto was animated via official social media. Using motion capture, the animators film their own movements either in special mo-cap suits or in what the characters actually wear in the game. The recorded data is polished by adjusting the poses and movements, adding finger animations, etc. before the the animations can be implemented. The animators check how the character movements flow in-game together with the clothes, which are controlled via cloth simulator. Aside from animations, a variety of things need also to be checked, such as SFX and VFX.

Etymology
Thus, Prompto's name may have been an incorrect attempt to translate "quicksilver" into Latin.

Trivia

 * During the party's time in the cave in Duscae in Episode Duscae demo, Prompto says "Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?" This refers to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the titular character utters the same quote when he ends up in a tomb full of snakes.