Really? We're going with "My Way," huh?

Apologies to anyone who doesn't care about video games, but I'm going to have to talk about the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin trailer that came out yester-huh? Yeah, I know, it's an absurd title, but hang on, it gets weirder and I have to discuss this with somebody.

From the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler schools
of "just throw some words out there and call it a title."

What's to explain? Cornelia
finally got an Old Navy.

The game is a prequel to the first Final Fantasy game which was set in a quasi-medival world, but threw in some robots and flying city towards the end. Stranger then, is evidently the back story of Garland, a knight you fight early on who--and spoiler for game from 1987--turns out to be Chaos, the big bad of the end of the game. Stranger's first trailer elicited some head scratching from fans for putting Garland in a henley, and having him repeat over and over again how much he wants to kill Chaos. 

FFXV was about a magic teleporting
prince taking a road trip with his
buddies. Also, there are dinosaurs.

But then, Final Fantasy has always been weird. It's usually compared to the Dragon Quest series, which ran more or less parallel with it and has a similar audience. Dragon Quest was the traditional JRPG. It's always set in a sword and sorcery fantasy world and uses turn-based battle systems. Final Fantasy on the other hand tended to be more experimental. It started making use of similar fantasy settings, but then went through steam punk, cyberpunk, and then full on sci-fi with Final Fantasy XIII. 

Astos looks...sad? Is there something going
on between them? Because I would ship
them. Wait, am I using that correctly?

But back to SoP:FFO (acronym!). The new trailer starts off JRPG-ish enough, with some stilted exposition and scenes of Garland and other heroes battling monsters from the first game. But then about half way through Frank Sinatra's My Way starts playing and Jack--which I guess is Garland's first name now--is checking his phone and fist bumping Astos the Dark Elf. It's bananas. Not bad, mind you, just bananas. I mean, really it's kind of weird that in a game about wizards and krakens I'm getting hung up on the protagonist's iPhone. 

I guess it's a tonal thing. It would be a little like Gandalf doing a Tik Tock challenge with Shelob. It would be a little like that, again, Final Fantasy has always been pretty kooky. But hey, most of the time, the kooky works. And then other times things like this happen:

"You know what this scene of large scale death and destruction
really needs? A stuffed cat despairing at the carnage."

-Final Fantasy's developers