Whenever I think about the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins E3 trailer, the lasting impression of the game isn’t the fact that it is a Final Fantasy game or even its admittedly cool combat. No, the only thing that comes to mind is how the protagonist just really wants to kill chaos. But after seeing the game’s release date announcement trailer, I can say I’m fully onboard with killing chaos too.
In a surprising turn of events, Team Ninja and Square Enix opted out on even having protagonist Jack Garland incessantly remind players he wants to kill chaos. Instead, the trailer gave players the lowdown on the action role playing game’s story and why Jack is so hard-pressed to kill chaos. (Psst, here’s a funny meme from the game’s second demo to tithe you over on meme content before I get into that sweet sweet lore!)
— Matt McMurderous (@MattMcMuscles) October 1, 2021
The game’s story revolves around elemental crystals that keep the world in balance. But darkness has arrived, chaos even, and is corrupting those crystals to cause natural disasters across the land. Luckily, there are four warriors of light who will come and liberate the world from darkness. Move over Greta Thunberg, Jack and his planeteers are here to save the day.
While the trailer resisted the urge to have Jack utter the word chaos, there was a hilarious moment where our bumbling heroes all grumble at each other before Jack exclaims “Wait!” because his crystal is ringing. Unintentional Final Fantasy humour is truly unparalleled.
The trailer was chock-full of all the borderline nonsensical dialogue and lore name drops that don’t hold any weight since people haven’t played the game yet. Still, I can’t deny the trailer was pretty fire. Trailer shots showed characters doing finishing moves on all sorts of fantasy creatures, turning them into geodes in the process. The trailer also did that cool thing where the music in the trailer is timed with the combat.
Just like a real life “How It Started vs How It’s Going” meme, this three and a half minute trailer not only was an improvement on divulging why Jack wants to kill chaos, but why players should be just as amped as he is to do it too. I’ve gone from ironically finding the game’s premise charming to unironically being on board with blonde Chris Redfield’s environmentalist mission. You know what that’s called? Growth.
The announcement trailer also said the second demo is coming soon and they meant it because its live on the PlayStation store right now. The second demo will have multiplayer features. The first demo was rendered unplayable for the first two days it was live because its data was corrupted. Luckily, Square Enix was able to fix the demo with a patch. Hopefully, the second demo won’t be corrupted by chaos as well.
Stranger of Paradise is slated to release on March 18th, 2022, on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and the Epic Games store.
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