Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

[Lulcielid]

[JP Physical Chart] 'Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins' sold 46,849 physical copies on its launch week

Famitsu sales 3/14/22 – 3/20/22

Software Sales

1. [PS4] Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin – 28,944 / NEW
2. [NSW] Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 23,067 / 2,177,459
3- [PS4] Elden Ring – 19,487 / 293,628
4. [PS5] Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin – 17,905 / NEW
5. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 16,078 / 4,499,542

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507002978242379778

 

[Makoeyes987]

Those are pretty standard numbers for a non-Switch title, tbh. Expectation seemingly comes more from the fact it's "FF" versus the reality that physical sales aren't always going to explode, especially when a spinoff. Especially when a spinoff of just the first FF game. It's 2022 and physical sales don't always make up the bulk of sales, especially when it's not a main line title. Not even close to the likes of Crisis Core, or Dissidia.

The fact it overtook Pokemon, Elden Ring and Mario Kart is pretty impressive. I'd be curious to see what international sales are.

Laughing maniacally over the fact Dirge of Cerberus is the 5th best selling FF spin off game in history. YES... HAHAHAHA... YES.

 

[Cthulhu]

This is comparing first week sales; Elden Ring and Pokemon have been out for a month or longer, and Mario Kart has been out for five years. Elden Ring sold 12 million copies in the first few weeks, a lot of which were probably pre-orders. TL;DR it hasn't overtaken anything.

That image does show that the FF spinoffs are a lot more popular in JP than they are in the west; wouldn't have thought Tiktoks was that popular. I never finished Tiktoks either <_<

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well obviously SoP didn't overtake their total sales, I merely meant the game managed to get more sales for the week.

Obviously those other games have sold more and been out longer because they're blockbuster tent-pole releases, however those games are still wildly relevant and popular even now; Mario Kart 8 just got several new DLC tracks which extended it's life too. Given that SoP is the newest side game to come out and generate interest, it's a positive that it didn't get overshadowed by huge blockbuster titles already popular and currently released. If it didn't, that would be a failure. This reeks of S-E trying to say Neo The World Ends With You or Guardians of the Galaxy somehow failed to meet expectations despite turning healthy profits because they didn't generate record shattering profits akin to FFVII-R or something.

This is just a "win more" discussion at this point. Not every title is going to be capable of shattering record after record, and frankly we should normalize having measured expectations of growth/profit in the game industry. All this is are metrics being scrutinized for the sake of it. This isn't "failure." It's pointing out it's sales don't match the sales of past titles that were released in entirely different contexts, decades and sales landscapes (Sony's decreased market share, Switch ascendancy, higher digital sales, etc), which is just stating the obvious.

Like, trying to compare friggin' FFXII Revenant Wings on the DS from 2007 to a PS4/PS5 game in Japan in 2022 is ridiculously dumb and acontextual. The ubiquity of the Nintendo DS along with the utter domination the DS carried in the early 2000s is nowhere near equivalent to the PS5, nevermind Sony's continual slide in market presence in Japan in the first place. The field was far less crowded and the cycle for supremacy slower. It was a far more forgiving gaming landscape for a silly little handheld title spinoff, XII RW would be mutilated if it were released today.

Nevermind spinoff titles never reached the levels of sales main line FF games had anyways. Just seems weird to try to compare titles in such unserious ways.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Oh shit, I'm 1 of 17905 physical JP PS5 copies.

And you've all probably heard this before, but "being on a handheld" means a lot for JP game sales, as does "being on the PC" for the west.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Browsing through the script book while playing the game, and I can tell the intro to the game was modified / changed.

Spoiler

Actual game intro:

1. Jack and the gang fight Tiamat (Neon is not shown)
2. Fade to black
3. Tutorial in Station 19
4. Jack and the boys meet up outside of Cornelia
5. There's a black narration screen that tells you "Jack and the boys went to kill monsters to prove how cool they are"
6. Guys shown returning to Cornelia on a boat

Here's how the script version of this went:

1. Station 19 tutorial
   1. The storyboard also shows that Jack would have glanced at his iPod thing and it would've shown the album cover of My Way
   2. Before he leaves Station 19, Jack was supposed to say, "I'm gonna defeat Chaos", which is why the first word in the JP script was Chaos lol
2. Jack meets the guys outside of Cornelia (their short and to the point dialogue is the same)
3. Cut to Jack, Ash, Jed and Neon (the script points out she is there, but didn't have voiced lines in this part) fighting Tiamat
4. Script suggests this fight vs Tiamat was a failed attempt at breaking the cycle, and from hereon out is their next visit to Cornelia, also identifying this as the 19th "event" (I think for the sake of clarity, these should probably be called "Loops" or even "Cycles" [since the Garland job you get is called Cyclic Warrior], but the game script calls them like... incidents, events, "happenings", etc), and also notes the events of FF1 are the 20th "event"
5. Guys shown returning to Cornelia on a boat

I forget where, but I recall reading a post where someone was talking about how the story progressed early on in the game where it just shows the guys meeting, then cuts to a black text screen, and the person thought this added to the "intentional comedy" of the game. Reading over the script, I suppose this explains why and how this happened, lol. They must have changed the intro around fairly late in development if there was no time or urgency to create a more coherent cutscene and instead just using the black screens w/narration text.

 

[Wol]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1504665846714671108

Chad.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Fucking badass. I love it

You ain't KNOCKIN' DOWN JACK!

Spoiler: Spoilers for SoP ending

I'd love a picture of Jack Garland in Eorza beating the shit out of some Garlean Imperial Soldiers, Doom style, screaming WHERE ARE THE WARRIORS OF LIGHT!?!?!

 

[Makoeyes987]

And the game has been platinum'd.

This has been a fun as hell experience. Can't wait to see what the DLC entails but overall this has all the makings of a cult classic that's just so authentic to itself and encompasses Final Fantasy in the best of ways.

I remember thinking how much I'd have preferred another Dissidia after NT instead of this, but I can now say with 100% certainty that this was the better play. A fresh and inventive take on the first FF game was something I'd never thought I would want but it was the best choice after all.

The story shows that Nojima and Nomura still got it. They are still able to deliver a powerful punch even in a short, straightforward narrative where you end up caring about the characters far more than you expected to. Also I don't know if this was mentioned already but hell yeah to older JRPG protagonists for a change as well

 

[Odysseus]

You know, I watched Dunkey's video on the game, and at the very end he's like "who wrote this" and proceeded to show Nomura's "concept, creative producer, character design" credit and he's like "okay that makes sense", and all I can wonder at this point is whether Nojima is lucky or cursed that Nomura will always, invariably take the blame for everything.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Also I don't know if this was mentioned already but hell yeah to older JRPG protagonists for a change as well

From the script book, everyone's canon ages:

Jack: 32
Ash: 28
Jed: 26
Neon: 18
Sophia: 37
Astos: N/A
Bikke: 40
Sarah: 19
Mia: 12
King 56
Queen: 43
Lagone: 46

I can no longer hate on Nomura, knowing that he's willing to draw lady RPG characters who are older than 20 and even have realistic aging features like her laugh lines.

 

[Makoeyes987]

That's fucking awesome.

 

[Tetsujin]

Holy shit at the Series S version. That looks like a PS2 upscale lmao

 

[Umatbru]

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/stranger-of-paradise-final-fantasy-origin-zero-punctuation/

"Incomphrensible" not only defines this game, but the entire franchise as a whole. Why do you even like these contraptions?

 

[Wol]

https://www.siliconera.com/nomura-e...or-stranger-of-paradise-final-fantasy-origin/

It sounded perfect in the trailer as well.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Large image spam time:

When I saw that trailer, I was half-amused and half-delirious - it DID seem to fit pretty well in the trailer, but also - what made them choose it? Wasn't really sure if it was something that had been decided pretty early on (which turned out to be the case), or someone had picked it go with the trailer. Hearing that it was important to Nomura and part of the creative process all along makes sense.

The storyboard very specifically shows the album cover drawn on his music player:

Spoiler

The specifics about it being My Way is also written into the script, and now I've got this mental image of Nojima chilling at home w/his guinea pig, then Nomura bursts through the door, going on about how "it has to be My Way" and Nojima slowly nodding his head so Nomura goes away.

Spoiler

 

[Makoeyes987]

The Fool's Missives and Lufenia Reports make the clear implication that the Lufenians have been observing multiple "dimensions" so, I find it very fascinating how they ran with that, lolol regarding... Jack's technology.

If I may ask, what are the storyboards for the scenes with Jack in the ending? Is there anything interesting there? Any other details about the Lufenians?

 

[ph14basicbitch]

The story boards for the ending don't really show anything new - the text on the right of them is the dialogue for the scene.

During the script for the ending, it mentions that jack's threat to lufenia ("don't touch Cornelia again you chucklefucks!") is supposed to be an allusion to ff1 about chaos trying to destroy lufenia, and that since Jack became chaos and obtained power, the ability to "recreate the dimension (aka reincarnation)" has been taken away [from the lufenians].

The "aka reincarnation" bit stood out to me. I think it paints the conflict between between Jack and the lufenians as eastern vs western religious ideology. Maybe that's why they wanted paradise in the title.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

The book of CHAOS has arrived today. In the section about the Lufenian reports, there's some meta text about the collaborator.

"The collaborator who sowed the seeds of the Stranger Plan has been advising the Lufenians, demanding energy from them in return. The identity of this collaborator is unknown, but they most certainly don't care about human dignity. Hm, gee - wasn't there a Final Fantasy spinoff with a being that dwelled in the cracks between dimensions, desiring energy produced by conflict...?"

I've never played Dissidia, but I'm just going to assume it's a reference to that.

 

[Makoeyes987]

It's 1,000,000,000% Shinryu LMAO

I'm glad they've all but confirmed it. A nicely hidden mystery that's not completely impenetrable or out of left field.

Thanks so much for sharing that. Can't wait to see what other goodies are in there!

 

[ph14basicbitch]

I gave a half-efforted read through the interview / Q+A parts. The big standout answer to me was when they explained that Station 19 (and thus also, SoP taking place on the 19th cycle) was because there had been 19 releases of FF1 (in Japan). A-ha.

There are also things like maps for the zones, where chests are, what abilities that equipment can be rolled with, etc, but I think the meat is in the story stuff and the Q+A parts woven through the book. Will try to just type some of that up when I'm not busy dying to Thordan Ultimate.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Someone on Reddit has been translating stuff already! https://sopffo.blogspot.com/

 

[Makoeyes987]

Wow, this site is incredible. They went through so much effort in uncovering these details and translating them. Love this game, the commentary is spot on.

 

[Lulcielid]

 

[Lulcielid]

Sadly they fixed it.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1542411688158367744