Major spoilers for Stranger of Paradise ahead, I guess.
Jack Garland is an angry man. Stranger of Paradise is a game about an angry man. That's what they told us we were going to get, and that's what we got.
And all the stuff you see is real, it's in the game - so much of the anger we are exposed to early on is goofy, it's superficial, it's almost parody. Jack Garland knows he has to kill Chaos. It's something he knows without understanding it - in his own words, he needs it in a way that is not a hope, or a dream - it is a hunger. It is instinctual.
And what is Chaos? Chaos is the mechanism by which the Lufenians control the world - it is a power that arises by drawing energy out of negative emotion - the Lufenians engineer it with catastrophes, then harvest it with fake heroes, Strangers from their inhuman Paradise. Humanity's anger has been stolen from them, made part of a system of control for the benefit of those who look down on them, who make callous decisions for 'their own good' that rack up an endless body count dismissed because the Lufenians can always 'fix' it later while that stolen power props up their Elysian kingdom.
He does not remember it, but Jack Garland has watched them take the people he loves away from him hundreds of times over. He has been the weapon in the hand of the Lufenians that maintains this system.
Jack Garland's real anger has been stolen from him. He relearns it as we watch. He suffers, again. He tramples the bodies of those he loves, again, unknowing. When he is allowed his own, honest anger again, the anger at injustice and stolen love, it is so much stronger than the fake anger he was given.
He makes Chaos his own, and drives the Lufenians from Cornelia, giving up Paradise for a world that belongs to real people.
Stranger of Paradise ends in the way they admitted it would. Jack Garland becomes Garland. By extension, he becomes Chaos. He and his friends become the villains - they do this so that the people they love can live in a world that is gentle enough for its own heroes, instead of having manufactured heroes forced upon it.
By implication, they do this as an acceptance of their own death. Their victory can only come in the world that is not for them, that destroys them.
Except.
That's not how Final Fantasy ends.
At the end of Final Fantasy, Garland returns to a Cornelia that no longer needs him to make that choice. He comes home to the people who love him.
Atma fell in love with this game beyond belief. Final Fantasy was the very first game she ever asked for money to buy - she was a child and it had a cool sword on the cover.
Stranger of Paradise loves Final Fantasy. Every stage is a reference to a previous game. Every step of the journey is a reference to the long road that brought us here. The world is made up of every journey we have been on until now.
Jack Garland's anger let him survive, but the thing that saves him is love. It's someone, all those years ago, buying their very first game because it had a sword on the cover and choosing to love it with all their heart.
Our world is not gentle enough for heroes. But I'm glad that she found a world that was.
