Just over a decade ago, I was in the middle of my first few semesters of college, amidst a relatively low point in my life. In this morass of melancholy and misguided pursuits, I was undertaking an introductory course in philosophy. My studies were scattered at best, and my grade was less than adequate. In the intervening years, I’ve grown as a person, and my interest in the subject has steadily increased in a complementary fashion.

Exploring both Eastern and Western schools of thought, I soon crossed paths into the realm of the psychological (yet another course undertaken contemporaneously). Along these lines, I found the works of Carl Jung, a one-time friend and colleague of the more widely known Sigmund Freud. Jung’s views on identity and the collective unconscious seemed to manifest in ways and places that I would not have expected before my intellectual forays.

So what exactly does this have to do with the rather divisive Final Fantasy XVI? Well, quite a lot, actually.

Since the first entry, there has been one theme that appears to manifest ad nauseam when breaking down the plot of each subsequent game. The theme du jour is the dichotomy of free will versus determinism.

Free will is a rather straightforward concept, but I will seek to sum it up nonetheless. Free will is the concept that each individual is the master of their own destiny. When you make a choice, you are forging your own path rather than following some divine or otherwise predestined path.

Determinism is the view that no matter what you “seem” to choose, your path has already been determined by factors outside of your control. This can manifest in several ways, depending on your lineage, the social status you are born into, or a path designated by some omnipotent being.

These views are rather popular among all forms of media and, in some cases, form the basis of widely known religions. What is The Matrix but a classic tale of free will versus determinism? Well, that and a trans-allegory, but that is another topic entirely.

Final Fantasy is yet another example of a franchise that takes these opposing concepts and crafts a tale that walks the line, often asking the player to make their own decision on whether true autonomy is real or if the story has already been written. We’re just unknowingly following a cosmic script.

Take the first entry: Featuring a closed loop of 2000 years, the Heroes of Light are seemingly pawns in a self-fulfilling prophecy/bootstrap paradox that sees them defeat evil, only for it to return to the past and create a “prophecy” that is then fulfilled. This causes the loop to continue with the characters defeating the evil, not necessarily out of free will, but to fulfill a prophecy that only exists because they already made the choice... simply because they were fulfilling a prophecy that only exists because...

As you can see, it was a bit of a cyclical existence in that early adventure. The franchise has gotten better at exploring these themes in later entries, such as Final Fantasy IX. Final Fantasy XVI explores the idea of human will and its ability to confront and overcome the forces that control our lives, questioning the extent to which deterministic factors limit our free will.

It goes without saying that a discussion of XVI’s plot will inevitably spoil the experience. So just in case you’ve not put that together,

The true villain of Final Fantasy XVI is the being known as Mads Mikkelson… I mean Ultima. Best described as an “alien” being from another world, Ultima is a member of a race of beings that are able to use a ubiquitous substance called ether to power their society and its magicks. Their overindulgence, however, is their downfall. Yet another theme repeated in the series. The race heads across the depths of space in search of a new world, arriving in the land we know as Valisthea.

Ultima’s body is in a less-than-stable state, necessitating a plan to restore not only himself but his entire race. Much like the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert’s Dune, Ultima creates a “Breeding Program” intended to create the ultimate vessel for his consciousness.

Humanity was created to serve as the seed for this eventual being, growing and changing over the many eons. To preserve what was left of his race, Ultima creates the “Mothercrystals,” crystalline structures that act as sieves to collect the ambient aether of the planet gradually to eventually restore his sundered self.

For a very long time, this plan was going rather smoothly, leading to its success. Yet there was one factor Ultima could not have anticipated: what some would call a uniquely “Human” attribute.

As humanity grew, free will began to manifest. Soon, the sole worship of Ultima as a deity faded, leading to the creation of a variety of competing faiths. Soon, the energy that had once been directed toward him was no longer as abundant. The Mothercrystals continued their collections, but the faith afforded to him was gone.

Though Humanity was now choosing to worship other “gods” as a whole, they were still subjected to the limitations imposed by Ultima and his plan. Some humans were born to use magic, which came with the ultimate consequence of turning to stone. Others played host to beings of immense power known as Eikons.

This is where Jung’s theories move from subtext to text. In Jungian psychology, the “Shadow” represents the unconscious aspect of the personality, which the conscious ego does not identify with itself. It is the “dark side”: not necessarily evil, but repressed, primal, and often chaotic. In Final Fantasy XVI, the Eikons are not just kaiju for the player to fight. They are the literal manifestations of these characters’ Shadows.

Take Benedikta Harman. She projects an air of cold, calculated control, yet her Eikon, Garuda, is the wind—volatile, hysterical, and prone to violent, raging storms. When Benedikta loses her grip on the situation, she becomes the storm she has been suppressing, allowing her insecurity and rage to consume her form.

Hugo Kupka presents himself as an immovable object, a man of political and physical stature. His Eikon, Titan, represents the ultimate defense, a mountain that cannot be moved. Yet, this form is a compensation for his fragile emotional state regarding Benedikta. The larger he becomes physically, the more he tries to armor himself against the vulnerability he refuses to acknowledge.

And then, of course, there is Dion Lesage. The paragon of knighthood and duty. His Shadow, represented by Bahamut, is the destructive consequence of blind loyalty. When he gives in to the Eikon, he literally nukes his own city. It is the perfect representation of how rigid adherence to “order” (the ego ideal) can result in absolute chaos (the shadow response) when the moral center collapses.

But the most potent example is Clive Rosfield. For thirteen years, Clive runs from the truth: that he is Ifrit. He projects the murder of his brother onto a “second Eikon of Fire,” refusing to accept that the monster is him. This is the classic refusal of the Shadow. The game’s most triumphant moment is not a boss fight, but an internal dialogue where Clive looks Ifrit in the face—looks his guilt, his rage, and his destructive capability in the face—and says, “I am the fire.”

In Jungian terms, this is Individuation. He integrates the Shadow. He stops projecting his demons onto the world and accepts them as part of his whole self. By accepting the monster within, he gains the power to save the world. It is a perfect, beautiful metaphor for self-actualization.

However, despite this masterful setup, the game stumbles significantly in the follow-through, specifically regarding its core message of free will and “walking one’s own path.”

We spend the first act watching Clive struggle to find his identity, culminating in that brilliant moment of acceptance with Ifrit. We expect, then, that Clive will now forge a path that is uniquely Clive’s.

Instead, he becomes Cid.

Upon Cid’s death, Clive takes up his cause and name. He spends the remainder of the game living out a dead man’s dream, executing a dead man’s plan, and answering to a dead man’s moniker. The narrative frames this as honoring a legacy, but thematically, it undercuts the entire concept of Individuation.

You cannot claim to have achieved “Free Will” and “Self-hood” if you immediately fill the void of your identity with someone else’s persona. Clive breaks free from the deterministic chains of Ultima (the abusive father figure) only to voluntarily shackle himself to the deterministic path of Cid (the benevolent father figure).

Is it truly free will if you are simply swapping a bad script for a good one? The game seems to think so, but I argue that by having Clive refuse to be “Clive” for the majority of the runtime, Final Fantasy XVI accidentally argues against its own thesis. It suggests that perhaps we are too terrified to truly walk our own path, and that even our greatest heroes are merely actors looking for a better director.

This, my friends, is where Final Fantasy XVI becomes controversial for me. I mean, I do consider the late addition of DLC that ultimately serves no purpose, and the exceedingly tedious sidequests to be a problem as well, but I digress.

So many fans and casual players focus too much on the ending of the game being a problem. I begin to wonder if audiences are so soft that they cannot bear to see their hero die. I wouldn’t call this a Pyrrhic victory, as humanity is freed from the shackles imposed by Ultima. Magic was a dangerous tool that, while useful, inevitably killed those who used it. The defeat of Ultima and the removal of magic is an out-and-out positive thing. The Bearer, those with magical ability, were literally branded as slaves. So yes, Clive's death is not the happiest, perfect ending, but it is a satisfying one.

It’s not all doom and gloom, either, as I stated before, humanity thrives and survives. The blight caused by the Mothercrystals has been reversed, and the world is healing. In her final scene, Jill is looking up to the sky, and a single tear falls. This is clearly the recognition that Clive is not coming back. Notably, she also holds her stomach. Yes, before you say it, the chances of getting pregnant after a single night together are unlikely, but considering that the DLC is thrown into the moments between the rise of the gigantic ship and the final battle, we can surely assume there is a not insignificant span of time in which conception could occur.

Ovulation out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the Epilogue. A young boy is playing a game with his siblings, using terms familiar to the player at this point. They’re spoken as if they’re make-believe terms. In one of the final shots, we see a book close, one entitled Final Fantasy, written by Joshua Rosfield. Do not misunderstand, this is not the man we saw die in Clive’s arms, but instead the child Jill had given birth to.

Is this confirmed? No, but it is heavily implied. The sweet conclusion to the bittersweet ending, where Jill’s child writes of the events we played, carrying on the legacy of our heroes by ensuring their tale is passed on. The world may no longer be filled with magic or fantastical beings; they’re now fiction. Now, they’re Fantasy.

The poetic nature of this setup is PERFECT, and how I choose to interpret the final part of this game. Certainly, I have some trouble swallowing the overall message they’re trying to push, after they seemingly reverse course, but everything they do up to that point is PEAK. The Epilogue is so good, and I find it to be a beautiful conclusion.

I love Final Fantasy XVI as a story, not so much a game, due to its side-quests, an issue that ironically exists in FFXIV, the other Mainline title created by the same studio. The lore is deep and enthralling, to the point that they released a physical Logos book for the setting. Check it out if you enjoy the action combat, but unless you’re ready for a slog of side-quests, focus on the main story as much as possible, and indulge in the first half’s magnificence. That Demo/ First Act is single-handedly one of my favorite video game introductions, next to Assassin’s Creed Unity.