Oh, the Chaos! New Final Fantasy game’s trailer sparks internet meme

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-06-15 18:01 (JST)
Translated by. Braden Noyes

On June 14, 2021, Square Enix announced STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN. With a team of veteran developers, the game is an ambitious one that is going to re-explore the origins of the Final Fantasy franchise. However, rather than discussing the game’s action aspects and story setting, fans have instead decided to focus on one particular word that seems to be emphasized in the preview trailer.

STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN is an action RPG currently under development by Square Enix and Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja. The project has a number of big names involved including Tetsuya Nomura as the creative producer and Kazushige Nojima in charge of the story.

Many of the staff previously involved in Square Enix’s Dissidia Final Fantasy series are working on the project as well. The team also consists of development directors Hiroya Usuda and Nobumichi Kumabe from Koei Tecmo Games, both of whom have worked on collaboration titles with other companies in the past.

The game’s trailer begins with the main character, Jack, and his friends standing in front of the gates to Chaos Temple, ready to fight their way inside and defeat Chaos. Within the first few seconds of the short opening sequence, the name Chaos can be heard twice, and the frequency at which Chaos’s name is thrown about over the course of the video has already become an internet meme.

As you can see by watching the video, the name Chaos is used more than a few times. We actually counted, and in the two and a half minutes of this trailer, Chaos’s name is used a total of 11 times in the original Japanese version. The English version, due to slight changes in the translation, only says Chaos nine times, but that still seems a bit overkill. Chaos isn’t exactly a word you hear used in everyday conversation all that often, and that applies to both Japanese and English. This makes the fact it is said so often that much more obvious.

Jack’s obsession with defeating Chaos seems to be turning into a source of amusement among some fans. This can even be seen in the comment sections of some social media posts relating to this new Final Fantasy game such as this Reddit thread, where a large number of users repeatedly use the word chaos in one form or another.

There have been a number of posts on Twitter as well, including an edited version of the trailer which speeds up by 50% every time someone says Chaos, a collage parodying the scene from the trailer where Jack approaches Garland, and a number of jokes in which Jack blames Chaos for anything and everything. Media website Kotaku even posted an article written entirely with the word chaos.

The lines from the trailer are certainly making their internet rounds. Indeed, the act has already earned a name. Within hours of STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN and its main character, Jack, becoming the latest internet meme, it was added to the website Know Your Meme under the term Chaosposting.

While it’s true that Chaos’s name seems to be used a disproportionate number of times for such a short trailer, it’s hard to believe the developers did so by accident.

This latest addition to the franchise is directly related to the game that kicked off the entire Final Fantasy series. In the first game, known simply as Final Fantasy, the player must defeat the Four Fiends and Chaos in order to save the world. This new game seems to stick with the original story, with Jack and his group entering Chaos Temple to defeat their arch enemy, Garland (aka Chaos). When you have a big baddie named Chaos waiting for the heroes in a place called the Chaos Temple, it’s not exactly easy to avoid using the name.

It’s important to note that Chaos also played an important role in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series. When you take into account the developers’ background working on those games, it’s understandable they would emphasize Chaos’s role in this game as well.

On the other hand, the main character’s repeated use of Chaos’s name feels a little out of place due in part to the clothing he’s wearing. When the trailer first begins, we see Jack dressed in what seems to be a lightweight t-shirt wielding an oversized sword. This is made even more odd due to the sharp contrast of his two companions standing at his sides, both of whom are wearing proper armor.

While we do see Jack donning armor in later fight scenes, his incredibly basic attire has been on the receiving end of a few jokes, with some comparing it to the Warriors of Light from the original game and others referring to his outfit as “starter gear” or “free-to-play armor.”

Combining the views for both the Japanese and English versions, the trailer for STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN has been seen more than half a million times already, so it’s clearly receiving its fair share of attention. The only question that remains is how many uses of the name Chaos they can manage to squeeze into the next official trailer. Perhaps we’ll even get an answer as to why Jack is wearing a t-shirt.

STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN is scheduled to release some time in 2022 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.