Final Fantasy Ad Infinitum

One thing that I hear non-gamers joke about constantly is the name “Final Fantasy”. They always laugh and think themselves very clever as they declare “Final Fantasy what? Guess it wasn’t the final one! Bwa ha!” And then they chortle more and eat ham or something.

But in the end, as clearly as they don’t get it, it does beg the interesting question: just how far are those crazy Square Enix kids going to milk this franchise? Surely, there’s got to be a point where you say “enough is enough”. Not so, according to producer Shinji Hashimoto.

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Shinji declared:

The term ‘Final’ in the title doesn’t mean ‘last,’ but the teams behind it see it as a term for ‘ultimate,’ and as long as there are creators that are wanting to make Final Fantasy games, we will probably keep going.

As obvious as it may seem to some that they’re going to keep going, I always figured they’d at least say to themselves around, oh, I don’t know, FF XXX that maybe they should re-name their series or something. Personally, I’ve always been of the opinion that they should split and go two directions, one that leans science fiction (FF VII, VIII, X, etc) and one that leans more to traditional fantasy (IX, IX, IX, IX).

What do you guys think?

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I write about samurai girls and space marines. Writer for Smooth Few Films. Rooster Teeth Freelancer. Author of Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Fan Guide, out NOW!

4 thoughts on “Final Fantasy Ad Infinitum”

  1. BLASPHEMY!

    BLASS FOR YOU!

    BLASS FOR EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM…

    But seriously, no I don’t agree with that. Some FF’s like VI (Greatest Game Ever) are a mixture of both.

    I would like to see an old school 2-d FF one more time, a la New Super Mario Bros.

    Renaming the series would not work, as the brand name might get muddled.

    And the reason it was named Final Fantasy in the first place was b/c the company was going out of business and it was the FINAL game they were going to release and it was a FANTASY hence…Final Fantasy.

    Of course, the game ended up saving the company due to its success, so YAY!

  2. Haha, yeah. I mean, I see what you’re saying about the property getting muddled, but when you’ve got things named X-2, etc, I think there’s already some muddling there.

    I mean, you couldn’t call it Final Fantasy: Squall the Leper, or whatever else you wanted to start calling them, instead of FFXXVIII?

  3. That could work, Castlevania does that sort of thing now, with Rondo of Blood, Aria of Sorrow and Techno of Terror…er..

    Plus, in a concession to my nerdom, I love saying to Markelle: FINAL FANTASY THIRTEEN!

  4. I know someone who did that joke about the “final” fantasy thing, he laughed @ it… I laughed @ him. XD

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