Final Fantasy's “Fabula Nova Crystallis” was announced exactly 20 years ago

Final Fantasy XII was out in Japan. It was on its way to the rest of the world. Square Enix's Final Fantasy output had slowed down a bit during the PlayStation 2 era, but it was still on track for the same three-main-content-on-one-console output that had characterized the franchise from its Nintendo roots onward.

8 May 2006. E3. Huge event. Everyone got in touch. Square unveiled its next plan, and it was a big one. Fabula Nova Crystallis would be a multiplayer project united by myth, yet separated by actors, stories, even the worlds themselves. It was an overarching ambition, something that would be brilliantly diverse, but come together in important ways.

Final Fantasy XIII would lead the charge. Final Fantasy Versus XIIII would come in darker, more tragic. Final Fantasy Agito XIIII would bring Fabula Nova Crystallis with us all on the go. It was the beginning of a new age. What can go wrong?

The long shadow of the crystal

Of course, with hindsight, we know how it all turned out. Final Fantasy XIII launched three years later to a divisive reception that continued to characterize JRPG fandom's general reaction to the Final Fantasy name for quite a few years. Final Fantasy Versus XIII was MIA, year after year, at a time when AAA games didn't do it tends to take damn near forever to release. As for Agito, it did eventually launch – eight years later – but was largely superseded by Final Fantasy Type-0, a PlayStation Portable game that ran with many of its original concepts.

Agito didn't take off too well, and Awakening, its successor, was only launched in China, Australasia, and finally North America. Type-0 had a teaser for some kind of Type-1 deal when it was re-released in HD on PS4 in 2015, but it never materialized. Final Fantasy XIII spawned two direct sequels despite its split, each selling significantly fewer copies than the last. And Versus XIII, once perceived as the crown jewel of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project thanks to its immaculately moody reveal trailer, was rebranded as Final Fantasy XV in 2013 and finally released in late 2016.

FFXV has long been the subject of oh so many “what if” stories; an epic three-game scope for the Versus concept was cut down to a one-game deal with more emphasis on its open world at the cost of a cohesive story of any decent length. The result is a mishmash, a beautifully uneven, utterly unsalvageable experience that's still probably at least a little more beloved than FFXIII. It sold over ten million copies, got a ton of post-launch DLC (with even more on the way before it was unceremoniously cancelled), got a Royal Edition re-release, and… in its final form, it's a deeply flawed gem, a JRPG covered in bandages that never quite reaches the heights it aimed for, but at least it's been fun.

Fabula Nova Crystallis, suffice it to say, was no slam dunk. The Crystal Tools development engine that plagued FFXIII continued to rise in 2010, with the initial release of the unrelated MMO, Final Fantasy XIV. That game was shut down and then relaunched as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Against all odds, this resulted in the creation of one of the world's most successful long-running MMORPGs of all time.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), Final Fantasy XVI (2023) and especially Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024) have found their fair share of fans; The ongoing FFVII remake trilogy is particularly popular, with Rebirth winning a slew of awards and considered by many to be an all-time slam dunk. One that unfortunately hasn't sold as hotly as many of the series' predecessors – a fact that may in part be due to the disappointments of the FNC era. (But hey, at least sales have increased over time.)

Final Fantasy has never quite regained its glory after today's development disasters, but at least it has, little by little, found its forgotten prestige.