Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin goes its own way
Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin looks like Square Enix’s biggest departure yet for the long-running Final Fantasy series. Though the name Final Fantasy has been synonymous with RPG for the last 35 years, Stranger of Paradise is an action game focused on challenging and fast-paced combat. With only two months to go before launch, The Verge spoke with its developers to talk about Stranger of Paradise and the unique place it occupies in the Final Fantasy family.
More than setting itself apart by being an action game, Stranger of Paradise looks and feels vastly different from its numbered siblings with its bloody aesthetic. Most Final Fantasy games entice by offering a bright world to explore with beautiful people to befriend. Stranger of Paradise, by contrast, lets you know right up front that your goal is to murder the shit out of everything that moves — a marked departure from Final Fantasy’s traditionally hopeful tone. Jin Fujiwara, a producer on Stranger of Paradise, understood that players might not be interested in such a violent game, especially in a world that’s experiencing its third straight year of a devastating pandemic.
“It is quite a challenge, taking this sort of dark tone for the overall story for sure,” Fujiwara told The Verge. “Though the initial glance definitely emphasizes the violence and the dark tone of the conflict, we do want to make sure that [players know] not all hope is lost.”
The Stranger of Paradise team knew getting Final Fantasy fans to buy in on a drastically different take on the series would be a hard sell. But they worked hard to create a game that pulled from the series’ rich 35-year history to make the foreign feel familiar. “The dungeons pay homage to some of the mainline
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