Back in 2022, Square Enix released Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, a Final Fantasy game developed by Ninja Theory that went back in time to explain a version of the origins of the knight Garland and his four Fiends. Tetsuya Nomura recently said on a Square Enix livestream that a sequel was (translated by noisypixel) possible…but it depended on the game’s popularity.
Stranger of Paradise immediately won a lot of notoriety for the sheer amount of edginess and grit of its protagonist, Jack Garland, whose gruff, obsessive mutterings of CHAOS were immediately turned into memes, much to Square Enix’s annoyance.
The game won a good bit of praise when it fully released, mainly for its gameplay, while the story was heavily criticized. But all the same, it was still enough of a success to not only get DLC, but also, as Nomura said, a chance at a sequel, should it prove to be popular enough.
Even so, it’s definitely not a confirmation, and with most of the Final Fantasy fandom’s reactions to the game being mockery of the story and Jack and his party, it’s not likely one will materialize. At least, not based on the story, though that story has been deepened through the release of its DLC, expanding on the conflict between Jack, his friends, and the Lufenians.
The three DLCs added other major forces from Final Fantasy canon, including the Dragon King Bahamut, the summon Gilgamesh, and even the Emperor from Final Fantasy 2, which played even more into the alternate timelines and worlds that the story of Stranger of Paradise hinges on.
With all of these new story missions to go through, along with added jobs and more, there’s at least plenty of content for players to go through before any Stranger of Paradise sequel might be considered. Since Nomura said that the only way a sequel would come is if there’s enough fan demand for it, the onus is on players who enjoyed the game to actually drum up enough support for another.
