Where do we go from here? Time ain’t nothing but time

In an ironic twist for a series best known for killing off a beloved character, we’re pretty sure Final Fantasy is going to still be around long after we’re gone. There’s just no stopping this series: it’s survived the potentially ruinous failure of a tie-in movie, and lived on after its creator moved on to pastures new. More recently, it has somehow stuck it out through the tortuous, decade-long development of Final Fantasy XV, and the near-total rebuild of the MMO Final Fantasy XIV. It is the videogame equivalent of the cockroach, if cockroaches were beautiful, and popular, and could summon Bahamut when things looked like going south.

Edge has been around a while too, and we’ve been reinvented several times in our near-quarter-century on shelves. But nothing in games changes quite so much as Final Fantasy. There have been 15 mainline games in 30 years, yet they are linked in name and genre only. After each title ships, the process begins anew, building a world, cast and story from scratch.

Yes, there have been mis-steps along the way; there have also been some stunning highs. But the real story of this esteemed series is the series itself, a body of work spanning seven generations of consoles that, ever since Hironobu Sakaguchi and a tiny team squeaked out the first Final Fantasy in under a year, has been all but guaranteed to fly off the shelves.

So when Square Enix approached us at the start of the year and asked how we might mark the 30th anniversary of Final Fantasy, we knew there was only one answer. We’d have to tell the full story, from the start to the present day, speaking to all the leading lights involved in its creation and evolution. We’d need world-beating access to people who would have to speak openly about their time working on a series which, for all its success, has known plenty of troubles.

To be honest, it’s not been easy. But as you’ll find out in one of the biggest features in Edge’s history, neither is making Final Fantasy. The story begins on p56.