Final Fantasy 16 officially has more lore than any PS5 game can handle

A companion book for PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy XVI — Final Fantasy XVI Ultimania — has revealed even more lore exists beyond the RPG's dense backstory.

Lee Brady

Published 08 Sep 2023

As anyone who has collected even half of those Final Fantasy XVI trophies can tell you, the PS5 exclusive is absolutely riddled with world-building details and lore. By the end of my Final Fantasy 16 review, I found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer level of detail — yet, as it turns out, Square Enix could've gone a lot harder. After all, fans are still discovering fresh lore in the 700-plus pages of Final Fantasy XVI Ultimania.

New FFXVI book reveals character ages and more PS5 RPG lore

Flick through the entries of Final Fantasy XVI's Active Time Lore feature as much as you want — you'll only find some FFXVI details confirmed in the recently released Ultimania companion book. Actually, even if you did own a copy, odds are you wouldn't be able to glean much from it, as it's currently only available in Japanese.

Luckily for us stuck with only an understanding of the English language, we have reliable Final Fantasy translator Aitai Kimochi over on X divulging many of FFXVI Ultimania's silliest secrets. Now, before I share a few snippets of lore, I want to be entirely straight with you — there's a fair chance some of these were actually in the game. Try as I might, there was probably a little more to read in FFXVI than one man under embargo could possibly manage. So, all of this stuff is new to me, and mixed in that might be a few things new to you too.

Also, before we go any further, there will be Final Fantasy XVI spoilers ahead. I don't think they're really all that significant as far as spoilers go, and I'll certainly not be spoiling the actual events of the game, but admittedly a few names and details here are withheld purposefully from the player. If it really matters to you, play FFXVI for about 60 hours first, then come back to this article — don't worry, I'll wait.

Damn girl.

Anyway, what continues to surprise me most about the details of Ultimania is just how old many of the characters are! I mean, some of this is explained away by Ultima's creepy, skin-preserving power, but did you know Clive's terrible mother Anabelle Rosfield is 52 years old after the mid-game time skip? Or that Barnabas, Odin's dominant, is 70 years old? Sure, he's supposed to have the frozen appearance of a 42 year old, but man — either way, that did not come across to me at all.

This is almost certainly in the game too, but I did not realize Barnabas' right-hand man Sleipnir was actually Odin's horse made human. There are some neat details in Ultimania about Sleipnir and Barnabas running the Kingdom of Waloed for over 50 years together, and the fact that Waloed's banner is just both of their defining colors plus a horse in the middle.

We get confirmation here that Olivier, Clive's youngest half-brother, was turned 'akashic' at birth, and was not, as I presumed, some sort of Frankenstein baby that Anabelle and Ultima made together and passed off as Dion's brother. Look, FFXVI already has incest and stuff in it, alright? Don't start calling me a madman in the comments just because I presumed Anabelle was also crazy enough to sleep with the ghost of Mads Mikkelsen.

There's a cool detail here about Hugo Kupka awakening the power of Titan after leading a small division of soldiers to their death in his youth — a cool story that would certainly be neat to see if Square Enix is still taking suggestions for Final Fantasy XVI DLC plans. There's also just wildly unhelpful details — for example, did you know Jote, Joshua's attendant, is not that character's real name? Or that the girl who sells matches has "sibling(s)"? Who are these details for, Square Enix!?

There's apparently so much more to see.

Perhaps the most interesting thing revealed so far is that, according to writer and co-director Kazutoyo Maehiro, one ambiguous detail from the game's ending is surprisingly even more ambiguous than we may have first thought. Without spoiling anything too important, there's a book at the end accredited to Joshua Rosfield named "Final Fantasy," and according to Maehiro, it's entirely up to our interpretation whether that accreditation is accurate. Now it just feels like the developers are being actively unhelpful at this point.

There are a load more details out there, with hints like Cid knowing a lot more about the overall plot of the game than he lets on, but we'll call it there. Suffice it to say, there's a reason Final Fantasy XVI is on our best PS5 games list — it's just absolutely crammed full of this stuff, and it becomes very easy to get lost in. Have you discovered any interesting details about FFXVI on your journeys? Let us know down in the comments below!

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Marvel's Spider-Man 2), one eye on the past (PS Plus Premium, recent Sony news), and his secret third eye on the junk he really likes (Sonic Superstars, Final Fantasy XVI). Then he uses his big mouth to blurt out long-winded opinions about video games.