Final Fantasy 16 Has Major Spoilers For Those Fluent In Ancient Greek
We’re a month away from the release of Final Fantasy 16, and Square Enix has given The Gamer our first good look at actual gameplay courtesy of a media demo. Our own Meg Pelliccio said that Final Fantasy 16 was “simply brimming with history,” but she might not have known how right she was.
While her comment was aimed at all the wonderful callbacks FF16 has for past Final Fantasy titles, the game’s fanfare goes back much further. Speaking to Eurogamer, localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox revealed that FF16’s fanfare will feature lyrics for the very first time. And those lyrics will be sung by a choir in ancient Greek.
Related: Final Fantasy 16 Interview - Eikons Were Inspired By Yoshida-san Imagining Crushing Convention Goers
"[Composer Masayoshi] Soken came to me one day and he was like 'ok, we're gonna do this, I think it needs lyrics'," explained Fox. "The first thing I thought of is, if we're going to have lyrics, if it's going to be English, I thought it would sound kind of cheesy, especially if it's being played a lot. And then it could sound very gimmicky, and I didn't want it to sound gimmicky.
"But we don't want it to just become some nonsense language. So what can we do? I decided on Ancient Greek. And there's a reason behind this, but if I explain the reason it becomes a spoiler," he added. "Then we got the chorus to sing them. And the meaning actually has very deep meaning that pertains to pretty much the whole story and Clive's journey as well."
Fox wrote the lyrics in English before getting them translated to ancient Greek, but we won't have that translation anywhere in the game. Someone will need to record the fanfare lyrics and then present them to someone fluent in old languages to
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