The wait for Final Fantasy 16 will be a difficult one, as release is likely a few years away. Fortunately, Square Enix has provided a surprisingly telling trailer and a great deal of ancillary information about the game’s worlds and its characters. In this, there seems to be an apparent time skip that happens in Final Fantasy 16, as evidenced by the presence of young and older versions of the game’s apparent protagonist, Clive Rosfield.
Set in the magical, medieval world of Valisthea, Final Fantasy 16 marks a return to the series’ traditional staples such as feudal kingdoms built around powerful crystals. In this game, the crystals are referred to as mothercrystals and stave away an unknown force of darkness referred to as Blight. Additionally, these feudal kingdoms—or realms as Square Enix refers to them—possess people known as Dominants who harbor Eikons—powerful spirits who will be familiar to any franchise fan as the series’ iconic summoned creatures.
The leading man, Clive, is the older brother and sworn protector of Joshua, the Dominant of the realm of Rosaria. In the trailer, there’s two versions of Clive. In most of the footage, he appears as a handsome teenage warrior, cut from the same cloth as Cloud, Squall, Tidus, Noctis, and countless other JRPG heroes. But before this young, idol-like swordsman, the trailer opens with an older version of the character sporting a facial tattoo, staring into a fire with a brooding expression.
Joshua, as a Dominant, houses the power of the fire Eikon, Phoenix. And as Joshua’s brother, Clive can tap into some of that power, as demonstrated by clips where he conjures flaming wings to attack, dash, and ascend into the air. But a twist appears to be in order. Late in the trailer, a traumatized, blood-soaked Joshua erupts into flames, and assume the form of Final Fantasy‘s premiere fire summon, Ifrit. Another unnamed character looks on in horror and exclaims “A second Eikon of fire…But that’s impossible!” The trailer concludes with the older Clive staring into the camera, vowing, “I’ll kill you. If it’s the last thing I do.”
The key question here, is “Who does Clive vow to kill?” and a crucial clue may appear in the game’s artful logo. The series’ logo, illustrated by the series’ signature illustrator, Yoshitaka Amano, features Phoenix facing-off against Ifrit. Given that matchup between Eikons, it seems possible that Clive pulls an about-face and sets out to destroy the younger brother he once vowed to protect. Is it possible that Joshua razes the kingdom of Rosaria when he loses control of Ifrit? Even in the face of brotherly love, that would provide a powerful motivation for revenge.
Another key clue is Final Fantasy 16‘s apparent tagline, “We have been ruled by the legacy of the crystals for long enough.” Clive may be on a quest to destroy the system of Dominants and mothercrystals to free his younger brother from the burden of housing his Eikon, or perhaps, Eikons. That would leave the identity of his sworn target a mystery. But again, given the game’s tagline, which appears to be directly at odds with the setting and the epic battle scene at the beginning of the trailer between Shiva and Titan, it seems probable that Clive is on a quest to defeat other Dominants at the very least.
It could be that Joshua was taken by another country, someone Clive trusted in his youth, but all in all, there’s ton of possibilities. That’s because the Final Fantasy 16 trailer is deceptively portraying a simplistic, medieval world with just enough information for it to be interpreted in a myriad of ways.
The fact that the trailer opens with the older Clive before jumping back to his younger self does not seem like an accident. Reading between the lines, it seems possible that Final Fantasy 16 will jump back and forth between two time periods, telling the story out of order, in such a way that each installment in a given era informs the other. It may be effectively that Final Fantasy is borrowing a page from Pulp Fiction‘s playbook. The concept is inherently promising, and while other Final Fantasy games have played with time-skips before, they have been plot beats rather than the structural fulcrum of the game’s narrative. But what are the mechanical implications of such an approach?
Is it possible that Clive’s actions in the past will influence his sections in the game’s apparent present? Final Fantasy is one of relatively few JRPG franchises that is not known for having a great plurality of endings, but maybe Final Fantasy 16 will buck the trend. An innovative “choices matter” system would allow the game to tell a story unlike anything else the franchise has seen to date, which is an extremely promising prospect. For example, decisions in the past may determine a FF16 character’s “job” in the present, and there are good reasons to suspect that may be the case.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, Squaresoft (later Square Enix) was the uncontested king of JRPGs, but times are changing. The Persona series is seeing a drastic spike in popularity in the wake of Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal, and Scramble. Even though the series’ have drastically different combat systems, relying on the same old narrative formula is the surest way Final Fantasy could stagnate. But actions in the past echoing in the future would add an entire new dimension of replay value and storytelling potential.
This is especially true of a game that appears to be returning to its roots. While Final Fantasy‘s crystal motif is both iconic and timeless, Square Enix needs to present those ideas in a fresh way to keep the story from feeling like a rehash or nostalgia trip. Playing with the format of a story, especially its structure, is a classic way to deconstruct narrative conventions. Bouncing between two time periods and providing the player with a plurality of options rather than a single, fated course of events would be a brilliant way to modernize the concepts that made the Final Fantasy series a hit to begin with, while adding a new level of scrutiny to the series’ own world building. And that’s if the time manipulation that seems to take place in the trailer isn’t an interesting deception for something else.
Final Fantasy 16 is in-development for the PlayStation 5. A release date has yet to be announced.
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