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How Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin takes Final Fantasy back to its beginnings

Garland​

Well, the cat’s out of the bag by now – protagonist Jack is destined to become the sinister figure known as Garland.

In the original Final Fantasy, Garland was the main antagonist – a powerful dark knight who threatened to plunge the land of Cornelia into chaos. He’s a beloved (and iconic!) villain, but outside of some brief dialogue we’re never told all that much about him.

Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin will directly address that and reveal how this once brave hero was brought so low. But why focus on the villain?









Crossing the Northern Bridge

Early in the original Final Fantasy, the Warriors of Light cross the northern bridge of Cornelia. It’s a cutscene that fans remember dearly – it marks the first steps towards adventure… and in many ways signals the beginning of the series as a whole.
Stranger of Paradise recreates this iconic opening – as Jack and his companions cross the bridge and their epic journey begins.









Pravoka and Pirates

After crossing the northern bridge, the Warriors of Light reach the town of Pravoka. In the original Final Fantasy, this town has a bit of a pirate problem – and these are more “crunch your bones and take your booty” pirates than your “yo-ho-ho” types. They’re led by Captain Bikke, and it’s up to the heroes to teach him the errors of his ways.


Left: Bikke as he appears in Final Fantasy I, and Right: as he appears in Strange of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin.
Both Pravoka and Bikke make a return in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, though you may see a few changes from the original…
The battle with Bikke and his gang of pirates, as it appears in Final Fantasy I.






The Royal Family

Captain Bikke’s not the only Final Fantasy I character to make an appearance in the new game. The King of Cornelia and Princess Sarah also return – much more detailed and fleshed-out than in the original.


Left: King of Cornelia, as he appears in Final Fantasy I, and Right: as he appears in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin



Left: Princess Sarah, as she appears in Final Fantasy I, and Right: as she appears in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin
That’s not all – there are also new members of the Royal Family for fans to meet, including Queen Jayne and Princess Mia.



Queen Jayne (left) and Princess Mia (right) as they appear in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin.




As you might expect, designing the Royal Family was difficult as we had to create 3D versions of these characters from scratch. After gathering what information we could, we’d inject our own Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin lore into it, but it was definitely a challenge to flesh out the overall concept.
As we were aiming for a mature Final Fantasy game, we didn’t feel we could go full-on fantasy. Furthermore, I personally wanted to ensure that I had a justification and explanation for every element of these characters. Even as an alternate retelling, we need the characters to be designed in such a way as nothing seems strange or unbelievable.
For example, Sarah is more like her mother, while Mia takes after her father in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin. In addition, we also faced a challenge in how much we could diminish the fantasy tones – as we envisioned this story taking place in the real world, in a future not so far from now, we tried to make the characters’ head-to-body ratio closer to modern humans, and also made other elements such as skin texture and wrinkles very detailed for a more realistic finish.
As well as photo-realistic details, we wanted to bring out the “super-technology” feel and dark gothic tones, so we took inspiration from such design styles as gothic Lolita and punk. Additionally, since white is the base color for Cornelia Castle, we told designer Roberto Ferrari that we wanted to incorporate it into the Royal Family’s costumes too.
– Nobuhiro Goto, Art Director, Square Enix

Tiamat – The Fiend of Wind

The multi-headed Tiamat is one of the Four Fiends in the original Final Fantasy and acts as a terrifying foe for the Warriors of Light. The Fiend of Wind also appears in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin… and trust us when we say it’s even more imposing.


Left: Tiamat as he appears in Final Fantasy I, and Right: as he appears in Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin.








A Life-long Love Affair

As you can tell, the developers have an enormous amount of love for the original Final Fantasy, and that passion comes through in all the details of Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin.







Many thanks to all the developers who joined us to celebrate two very special games. Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin will release on March 18, 2022 and is available to
pre-order now.



Anyone who pre-orders the Digital Standard or Digital Deluxe Editions of Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Originvia the PlayStation Store will receive 72-hour early access to the full game, an original PS4™ theme, the Braveheart weapon and Lustrous Shield and, as an early-purchase bonus, the Rebellion weapon.
 
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Gaelyon

Gold Member
It's very ugly. I mean the artistic design of the characters and their attire are awful, it's so goofy and old school but not in a good way.

Beyond that playing the future bad guy is not a bad idea, and maybe the gameplay will be good, but for what i can see it's not engaging. For me at last.
 
I'm so glad there's a major game coming out that's not this shit-tier whedon dialogue with quips and sarcasm and irony poisoning that most AAA games have. That's what so good about JRPGs, they take themselves seriously and are heartfelt in their stories.

None of this "HMMMMMMM CHECK PLEASE?" dialogue straight out of How I Met Your Mother where you swear you can hear a laugh track in the background when you should be FEELING anything other than cringe or shame at seeing what a failed cinematography grad from UC Berkley shat out. Give me edgy shit that takes itself too seriously because I'd take that every day over cringe millenial Rick and Morty DSA tankie dialogue.



Except Kingdom Hearts. That game took it too far lol.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Meh, FF hasn't been epic since XII (and that one was far from perfect too, regardless of edition). They should remaster Crystal Bearers with good controls, they totally fucked it on Wii, they had the floaty cursor a la Metroid Prime but it did not also turn the camera, they mapped it to the d-pad 🤦‍♂️


That game kinda tried to be BOTW, before BOTW, with the sandbox style areas and experimenting you could do with your powers and it paired that with awesome Skies of Arcadia-esque grand adventure vibes.
 
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Fbh

Member
I finally figured it out. Everyone in this game looks like if you went into the character creator in Soul Calibur and just hit randomize.
this game will either be surprised or very bad.
The gameplay will probably be solid, everything else will probably suck.
Though they are smartly going into the "so bad it's funny" direction.
 

ManaByte

Member
Well, the cat’s out of the bag by now – protagonist Jack is destined to become the sinister figure known as Garland.
200.gif
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
Meh, FF hasn't been epic since XII (and that one was far from perfect too, regardless of edition). They should remaster Crystal Bearers with good controls, they totally fucked it on Wii, they had the floaty cursor a la Metroid Prime but it did not also turn the camera, they mapped it to the d-pad 🤦‍♂️


That game kinda tried to be BOTW, before BOTW, with the sandbox style areas and experimenting you could do with your powers and it paired that with awesome Skies of Arcadia-esque grand adventure vibes.


I have to disagree with you there. Even with my distaste for XIII Trilogy and parts of XV, both were still epic with some highly memorable and tense moments. Then there is XIV which continues to be the best the series has had in terms of writing and escalation. Endwalker is a love letter to FF4 and 9 in particular. Out of any of the "newer" Final Fantasy games, I highly suggest you take a look at that one.

OT: I am hyped for this game. It will have its issues, its cheesy as all hell from the demos, but I am fascinated by it all. Probably going to be a major guilty pleasure of mine.
 
My hypothesis about Jack becoming Garland is that it will have to do about Jack trying to replace the "real Garland"' in a time traveling plot to ensure the continuity of certain events that happen after the princess's abduction or some shit like that.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Applaud the huge effort put into that OP.
Interesting stuff for sure.
However, the demo was not fun and the character design really bothers me with this one.
 

Javthusiast

Banned
The ugly visuals and character designs paired with Souls gameplay that never clicked with me makes me have zero interest in this game.
 

ManaByte

Member
My hypothesis about Jack becoming Garland is that it will have to do about Jack trying to replace the "real Garland"' in a time traveling plot to ensure the continuity of certain events that happen after the princess's abduction or some shit like that.

Their time machine lands on the real Garland and kills him in the opening scene of the game. OOPS.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Princess Sarah’s sister is in Final Fantasy (Pixel Remaster at least). So she’s not a totally new character.
 
Nope , FF1 and this game will never have anything to do with eachother to me . FF1 had amazing designs by amano..not this edgelord shit.
 

Perfo

Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Graphics and art direction are really the opposite you expect from a title called Final Fantasy and definitely don't live up to expectations. BUT the team here also knows how to make a good action game, which is also something you usually don't expect coming from Square, bar few exceptions. Which in turns might mean that we get a freaking cool gameplay based game with an horrible look and story sticked to it. It could be worse I guess.
 

anthony2690

Banned
I ended up preordering this game, seeing it has a job class system that looks genuinely fun to play around with.

And according to the Xbox store co op 2/3 players.

I assume this is going to be ni oh final fantasy edition? Always wanted to play the ni oh games.
 
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Chukhopops

Member
I can’t tell if this game is going to be a masterpiece or The Quiet Man level of embarrassment.

Not gonna do a full price gamble on it though.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The performance issues on the early builds are just really odd. I've put hundreds of hours into the Nioh games and they look and run solidly even on PS4, including situations where there are 3 "party" characters active on screen. VFX aside, it looks exactly like Nioh 2.

For instance, the character creator in 2 particularly is one of the best I've ever seen and produces results easily on par with the cast of SoP, so I'm actually mystified by how rough the demos were on PS5.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Going by the demo the game will be a fun hack n slash but will probably lose at any attempt at a story line which is sad for big fans of FF1
 
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