I'm not a superstitious person, but the great Nvidia leak of 2021 is steadily turning me into one. And Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, a long-awaited remaster of one of the best Final Fantasy games and one of the best strategy RPGs, is the latest leak-turned-reality to give me pause.
Way back in September 2021, Nvidia confirmed that a massive list of games dug out of the GeForce Now app was real, but it called the listings "both released and/or speculative" as a bit of a smokescreen. No surprise there.
The list, as PC Gamer documented, sounded ridiculous. A made-up wishlist of PC ports that will surely never happen. And when you cast a net that wide, from former PlayStation exclusives to XCOM 3 to a new Metro, you're bound to catch something. But I'll be damned if it doesn't keep coming true.
Before Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, it was Tactics Ogre: Reborn. It was Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers. It was Kingdom Hearts 4, sort of. Now, fully cognizant that some, if not most, of this could be sheer coincidence born of the games industry's predictable release patterns, I'm wondering once again if it might one day be Final Fantasy 9.
A purported Final Fantasy 9 remake raised more eyebrows than most games mentioned in the Nvidia leak. Years later, it sometimes feels like fans and conspiracy theorists are still just betting that we can all collectively manifest it if we cope hard enough.
We don't have any hard evidence of a Final Fantasy 9 remake existing in any form, either as a project in active development, even pre-production, or simply as an idea on a whiteboard somewhere in the Square Enix offices. Rumors have swirled for years, as rumors do. If Square Enix so much as farts on the ninth day of any month, fans will record it for the archives.
The Nvidia leak is arguably the most convincing snippet there is, and for all my copium it's frankly not that convincing. Tons of those leaked games have not magically materialized and almost certainly never will. But Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, an idea that seemed far-fetched just days ago, makes the what if that much harder to resist.
For a brief and shining moment, Bravely Default's Nintendo Switch 2 remaster looked a little like Final Fantasy 9. (I'm also very excited about this remaster.) A comforting mirage in the desert that fans have, admittedly, partly built for themselves. Final Fantasy 14 and 16 boss Yoshi-P knows fans want a Final Fantasy 9 remake, but doubts it would work as a single title, and frankly, would rather revisit Final Fantasy 3 himself. (A fair choice!)
A Final Fantasy 9 remake does feel inevitable in some ways. I'd expect Square Enix to do the whole dang series at some point, if only because the remasters and remakes sell well enough to warrant it. And it is fun to relive these games, and it's good to see them become more accessible on modern platforms, particularly with the treatment given to The Ivalice Chronicles, which includes a near shot-for-shot port of the base game alongside an enhanced version. I probably would've told you in 2021 that FF9R would eventually, likely happen. This week, Nvidia and Square Enix have just teamed up to make me dream all over again.
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