Prompto Argentum

Prompto is Noctis' friend from high school who takes photos and wants to save pictures of their road trip. Prompto is the most playful of the four, being upbeat, and easily becomes smitten with women, particularly Cindy. Prompto suffers from an inferiority complex next to Noctis, Ignis and Gladiolus, due to his lack of nobility, and his lack of confidence. He has a lot of respect for them as friends, exchanging banter with them, often being the most talkative. Prompto is good with machines, and makes use of them as weapons.

Appearance

Prompto is a young man of average height and a slender build, whose visage gives off the impression of a youthful punk. He has blue eyes, light freckles and short, unruly blond hair, which he at a point insists "does not look like a chocobo butt." 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. 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 mess it up." (The original message was "watch some bastard fuck it up," but it was changed for the final game, although in the Windows Edition it still says this when playing in the highest settings.) The middle one on the side resembles the Harley-Davidson Motor Company logo. The back of Prompto's waistcoat reads "DEADORALIVE." Like all main 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.

As a child, Prompto was overweight and wore glasses and a two-tone tan T-shirt with a matching wristband.

In his casual outfit, he wears a burgundy sleeveless shirt with a vest over it, and gray trousers that have this message inside a circle: "ROUTE 17 Mencemoor" (the same design he had a child), and text "Cauthess, DO NOT ENTER". It is the same trousers that the Hunters wear. His boots are brown and he wears a gray canvas belt. The Windows Edition adds details for this outfit, revealing his wrist tattoos on his left hand, covered by gloves in his other attires: a star and a stylized barbed wire. The tattoos only show when the quality is set to "Highest" or better.

At 30 years old Prompto has grown a goatee, looks more muscular, and wears the Kingsglaive uniform.

In Episode Prompto, he wears winter gear: a black knitted hat, a black winter coat and trousers lined with white fur. He wears winter boots and gear to which attach the firearms he finds. The attire is similar in design to what Biggs and Wedge wear, implying it is of imperial origin.

Prompto has a barcode on his wrist that he keeps concealed with a wristband. It is a mark of him being born as a clone for Niflheim's magitek infantry. The barcode is visible while wearing the Kingsglaive attire with no jacket.

Though a clone of Verstael Besithia, Prompto is unique from him. According to the developers, Prompto's cells have been diversified, and thus he wouldn't grow up to look just like Verstael; e.g. his hair wouldn't recede the same way Verstael's does.

Personality

My whole life, all I ever wanted was friends. But no one ever wanted me back. So when I finally found people who did want me, I did everything I could to make them stay. And ever since then, I've lived my life in fear: That one day, they'd find out who I really was...and they wouldn't want me anymore.

—Prompto in Episode Prompto

Prompto maintains a playful attitude. 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. He makes pop culture references throughout the adventure, mimicking old song lyrics and lines from previous Final Fantasy games, and at times breaks the fourth wall by inferring their quest is like that of in an RPG. Not having been raised among nobility like Noctis, Ignis and Gladiolus, Prompto feels out of place in formal situations.

Prompto's upbeat personality makes him easy to engage in conversations with and makes him the life of Noctis's group, but he has a short attention span. When driving the Regalia in the post-credit scene of Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, Prompto loses focus on the road and afterward, he is not seen driving again.

He is not a combat-hardened warrior, but has a knack for cheering people up and keeping things light-hearted. This stems from having had a sad and lonely childhood, and his outward mannerisms conceal a deep thinker. He never had friends before meeting Noctis, at least not real ones. He tries to better himself to feel worthy of being acquainted with the crown prince, but lives his life with an imposter syndrome, always trying to please others, thinking if they discovered the truth, everyone would abandon him.

Prompto enjoys photography.

The developers put a lot of thought into his animations because of this duality, making him always moving and being more reactive than the other group members, exaggerating and overreacting. Prompto is good with machines, and tuned into technology and the latest trends. Prompto claims to being both claustrophobic (fear of narrow spaces) and acrophobic (fear of heights). He hates bugs, frequently commenting on it whenever the party defeats bug-like enemies. He complains a lot, especially about nature, but his loyalty to his friends is absolute.

Prompto has an affinity toward animals, although he claims to not be into wildlife and to be "more of a pet guy". He is excited to visit the chocobo ranch at Duscae, and once helped Pryna, one of Lunafreya Nox Fleuret's dogs. Photography has been a lifelong hobby for him and he dreams of becoming a professional one day. Fitting of his preference for guns and cameras, Noctis notes Prompto is a technophile.

Prompto's personality remained mostly unchanged during the ten years Noctis was away, even though physically, he matured to the point of being independent from his friends when hunting daemons, causing Noctis to note that he doesn't "seem as jumpy as before."

Ray Chase, Noctis's English voice actor, has commented in Prompto's design thusly:

If you think about other characters that would be Prompto's archetype—so say like, a Zell or a Yuffie, the plucky comic relief—you sort of get to see them feel sad or something like that, some broad stroke, but never in the level of preciseness where Prompto does; where you see, no, this is a real flesh and blood person who's trying to make the best of a crazy situation, and who has feelings of impostor syndrome that a lot of young people can relate to. It's something intimate that you rarely, maybe never, see in video games. Maybe Western video games, but certainly not Japanese video games; I've never seen anything like that before.