Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Producer Calls It an ‘Alternate Retelling’

A number of people from Square Enix, Koei Tecmo, and Team Ninja took to the PlayStation Blog to discuss the development of Strange of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, its use of Garland as a hero, and other details. In so doing, a number of details about this take came up. In particular, Producer Jin Fujiwara referred to it as “as an ‘alternate retelling’ of Final Fantasy I.” Fujiwara followed that up with, “It’s probably easiest to think of it as taking place in a parallel universe that sits alongside that original game.”

Here’s Fujiwara’s full statement on the title and its focus on Jack Garland.

Many villains appear in the early Final Fantasy titles, but their backstories weren’t depicted that often.

I believe a good antagonist should have a clear reason as to why they became a villain in the first place, so I felt digging deeper into that aspect of Garland would be interesting.

In Final Fantasy I, you see him from the start of the game as a knight who has embraced the darkness, but the story never elaborates on why he went down that path. We thought we could expand upon the lore of the original game through Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Originby portraying one possibility as to why Garland ended up as he does.

We see the story of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin as an “alternate retelling” of Final Fantasy I. It’s probably easiest to think of it as taking place in a parallel universe that sits alongside that original game.

Director Nobumichi Kumabe also detailed Garland’s destructive nature in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.

Since Jack’s path to becoming Garland serves as the foundation to the story, we decided to take his destructive impulse – which we don’t see in other Final Fantasy protagonists – as a core concept and translated it into various action elements.

The first that we laid out as a concept was “Soul Burst.” We originally considered a more gory presentation, but we ended up going with a crystallization visual, to combine that exhilarating presentation with Final Fantasy-esque beauty.

Additionally, Garland in the Dissidia series has an ability called “Soul of Chaos”, which makes him stronger as he keeps on fighting.

This comes after Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi discussed Final Fantasy and Garland.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin will come to the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC via Epic Games Store on March 18, 2022. People who pre-order a digital copy will get early access on March 15, 2022.