If Final, why 16 of them? might be a good dad joke but for those not familiar with Square Enix's premier game series, it could be confusing. After all, we are now up to 16 in numbered titles with many, many games in the series. There have been sequels with awkward titles (Final Fantasy XIII-2, anyone?) and a general sense, especially for longtime gamers, that it's kind of unbelievable that we're up to the sixteenth numbered entry in the series.
With such high numbers, conversations have come up back at Square Enix HQ. After all, some newcomers to the series might wonder if they have to play through all previous 15 games in order to get the full gist of the story. (PSA: you don't. Each new numbered entry tells a completely new story, just in case there's anyone wondering.) But in a recent interview with GQ, Final Fantasy producer Naoki Yoshida broached the subject after being prompted. "A lot of players are going to come in and they're going to look at it like a comic book where you have to read from the beginning to know what's going on now," Yoshi-P told GQ.
Yoshida said that it was hard for the marketing team since every numbered title launch they have to ensure players understand that they don't have to play the rest of them. When asked if they'd ever just ditch the numbers entirely, with reference to the God of War reboot since that series abandoned numbers, Yoshida said that it had actually been discussed at Square Enix, with the producer talking about it with the higher-ups at the company.
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"Maybe it's about time we removed the numbers from the title," Yoshida confessed, before mentioning Final Fantasy 14. While 14 is a numbered entry, fans will know that it is in fact different from the rest of the games since it is an MMO, but the producer brought up a scenario with a player thinking why they would need to play 14 if 16 is coming out.
"Whether Final Fantasy 17 or Final Fantasy 18 should have a number or not – that's going to be on whoever has to develop the game and whoever's in charge of the branding, so that's their problem, not ours!" he continued.
It would certainly be a change although longtime fans may miss the number from the end of the title, which, as you may recall, is stylished since it uses Roman numerals (i.e. X or XVI) rather than the Arabic numbers most of us use every day. But it's not too long now before Final Fantasy players can get their hands on Clive and Eikons as Final Fantasy 16 launches on PlayStation 5 on June 22.