Dion was such well written character, I loved him too.

losing my younger brother a 2nd time that i swore to protect, hit really really hard

He tried so hard to get so far.....

he didn't seek acceptance, just forgiveness :(

Tried ??!! Dion was a good man all along. He just became vengeful after losing somebody precious. So all he did, he was regretful so much so that even at the point when he is about to die, he asked for forgiveness for his actions as their prince and as their protector.

I feel you my guy Tatally.

Give Persona 3 & 4 a bash for sad vibes.

in mine all 3 survive and live happily ever after cause that’s what they deserve 😭🫣

Joshua is beyond dead. No chance he lived. Clive... maybe

@@GooseGumlizzardClive used phoenix down

@@lil_od4204 Clive couldn’t revive Joshua. Even Joshua himself said Phoenix can’t bring the dead back. So Clive and maybe Dion both survived. I believe Dion could have been saved by Leviathan somehow before the magic disappeared from the world.

​@@UnspecializedUserClive had the full power of Ultima though... enough to make a whole new world. Thats just not the same thing

He was charging up and absorbing all the other ultimas

You haven't paid attention, right? Dude was absobing other Ultimas.

this is how i look at it, and it’s definitely helped me process the ending a lot better☺️ i truly don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to interpret the ending. it’s all up to the player. thanks for watching! 💗

thank you for watching! 💗

the whole thing destroyed me more than ffX

Nah

Yep, all the evidence in the game points to that direction. As an extra, in the side quest between Clive and Jill where he takes her to see the daisies, Jill tell Clive that "I realized, that no matter how terrible the night... dawn would always come. That you... that you would always come... for me." I always thought this dialogue was reflected at the end of the game where it pans to the sun rising, characterizing dawn. Unfortunately, The Phoenix cannot revive the dead, and only Clive can narrarate the story titled "Final Fantasy". I think all the evidence points in the direction of Clive taking on his beloved brother's name as the author of the book in the end.

Yeah, everythig is pointing to Clive being alive. - Clive has consistently taken other names. Wyvern, Cid, and now "Joshua" - Harpocrates implores Clive to write his adventures down once all of this is over - Joshua is a Chronicler, and just like Clive takes up Cid's name to honor him writing this incredible epic using his brother's name ensures Joshua is remembered for all time. - Clive destroyed magick, including the curse. We see his left hand turn to stone, but he's right handed. If magick faded completely before the curse took hold he'd only lose that one hand. - The book is named "Final Fantasy", which is born from that final exchange Clive has with Ultima. - The book has Cid's logo on it. It is blatantly created by someone that had a deep respect for Cid and Joshua. - As other folks noted: Jill prayed for Metia to bring Clive back to her if he were to be lost. It never shined before because it didn't need to, Clive was never in mortal danger prior to that. This is why people keep saying to complete the final sidequests.

@@RicochetForce It's still up to interpretation. We won't be getting any after story dlc

I don’t understand why people think Clive is alive. Clive clearly used the power of the Phoenix to revive his little brother Joshua who he swore to protect and then died on the beach. Joshua was the scholar of the two and he came back and wrote the book in honor of his big brother’s memory memory.

yeeees really hoping to fit ff15 and ff9 into my schedule this year!

​@@alanamisakoVODsyess 15 pleaseeee

XV is great (Royal Edition)

Clive is the only one that would know the 'Final Fantasy' reference.

Yup, extremely strong hints in fact. Those final quests basically spoil the actual ending.

Is that so? Then all I want is a nice DLC of Clive coming back and giving Jill a big hug.

Which quests? I'd like to play then and see lol

@@acidz713 The massive barrage of ending quests, those quests.

Not really though? What specifically are you reffering to? Is it Clive making a promise? Because that just lends itself to more tragedy come the ending. People break promises sometimes... Is it Clive getting the pen? Because that can go SO many different ways. Idk about you all, but when Harpocrates gave Clive the pen, it didn't seem like Clive was all that interested. He liked READING heroic tales, but did we ever get any sort of inclination he'd like to write? Nope. Meanwhile, Joshua is the one compared to Moss the Chronicler. The guy who's mentioned in practically the first line of the game and also in the trophy you get upon completing the game. Clive's narration is just a literary device. He's our POV afterall. Help me understand this too... Why would Clive hand over the name of Cid to Gav, if he knew he would be back? In Gav's sidequest Clive says that "when the time comes..." Gav will get his stuff. What TIME do you think they're reffering to? The time when Clive becomes 65 yo and retires? Lol. So then he takes the name of his deceased brother to write a book about... himself? Are we actually saying Clive, the guy who became famous under someone else's name, would have enough of an ego to write a story starring HIMSELF as the cool, handsome, main character? Does that seem in character at all? Honestly? Please tell me if I'm missing something with these last sidequests, because after playing the game twice it just doesn't seem like they're "spoiling" anything. Rather they're setting the audience up for tragedy. So then lets look at the ending cutscenes and how they make no sense and lose ALL their weight if Clive is fine... Why would we have that scene of Clive on the beach, if he just got up and walked his ass back home? People keep saying "only his arm became stone" but the implication is SO clear here. He dies guys. He used up everything he had reviving Joshua and returning the magic to the earth, and now he's dying having seen his ambitions through and doing his duty as a Shield of Rosaria. He's alone on some beach, powerless and out of options. It supposed to be sad. "Not even the power of the Phoenix can bring someone back from the dead" you may be saying, but Clive has the power of Ultima here. But not JUST the power of Ultima, the power gathered from all the mother crystals since their inception. We're even told the mother crystals continued sapping aether long after they had completed there job, meaning Clive had EVEN MORE than was necessary to create A NEW WORLD. You think he couldn't patch up a hole and bring someone back from the brink? Its not like we had Tarja there to pronouce Joshua dead earlier... If Clive got there in time, Joshua may have still been barely alive. We simply don't know those details though. Then there's the final cutscene, pre-credits, where Jill and everyone else break down crying upon Jill realizing he's dead. Why bother with this scene AT ALL if Clive is fine? It requires so much mental gymnastics for it to work here. So Jill had to forget what the star she's been praying to her whole life symbolizes, and completely jump the gun on assuming Clive died, just so the audience could be fooled? Then at the very end where Jill's expression changes people insist that there is simply no way this would occur unless she were to have seen Clive come over the horizon by boat at that very moment. This completely ignores the whole bit she says before departing for Origin that "no matter how dark the night, the sun will always rise" or something to that effect. Now, she does say that Clive will always come back directly afterwards, but its after a brief pause. Its wishful thinking. She's unbelievably (and understandably) anxious about this last mission. The sun does always rise, but that doesn't mean Clive will always return. The two are mutually exclusive (this should be obvious). Again, this just lends itself to making the ending more tragic. She's just seeing the sun rise and remembering her own words. Even though Clive is gone, the sky has been cleared and the sun rises. Theres hope again. But if you INSIST that she literary sees somebody arriving by boat, then why couldn't it be Joshua instead? At least he received magical treatment for his ills, unlike Clive. All in all, I think taking the ending at face value is not only correct, but the most narratively satisfying. Its very sad for Jill not getting to be with Clive in the new, magic-less world, but its a sad game. At least they got to say they loved each other before he left.

Even then, they purposefully reinforce that fact multiple times, and considering the emphasis on theme of the finality of choice and death, I don’t think this is a world where the dead can be brought back. Imo it seems a bit antithetical to the core ideas of the game, and judging Clive’s reaction, I think he tried to do it but failed.

This is incorrect. The Phoenix's power cannot be brought back to Life. In the entire game there is 0 indication of anyone ever being resurrected. Even Ultima with his insane power could not resurrect his species. That's why he needed an immense amount of aether and a vessel to case RAISE, a massive resurrection spell. Clive had 2 choices: Cast Raise and resurrect his brother or destroy the source of the world's misery (magick) Clive opted instead to destroy the source of the world's misery, a true hero.

@@RicochetForceNo, Clive’s comment about “Ultima’s power was too much for this vessel” after reviving Joshua is about the fact that he felt his body was about to succumb to the magic as what usually happens to bearers. Ultima’s power combined with the power of all the Eikons absorbed by Clive was in fact enough to resurrect Joshua which otherwise would’ve been impossible for a “normal” dominant.

I think you are ignoring or disregarding that Clive was an incomplete vessel to use Raise. The spell Clive used on Joshua looked no different to when Joshua healed Clive and Tyler in the prologue. If Joshua was revived, Clive didn't seem to be that concerned to check if Joshua actually was alive, right before he nuked the place.

@@OskarXCI Yeah, the look on Clive's face as he saw Joshua was still dead says it all. It just steeled his resolve to get rid of the entire source of the problem: Magick.

This is Canon I don't care what anyone else says

The only person in the game compared to Moss the Chronicler is Joshua though... Also, why would Clive, the guy who became famous under someone else's name, write a book with himself as the main character? All the narration means is that we see the story from Clive's perspective, and when he dies the story ends. This idea that "he promised so he HAS to come back" is also SUPER silly. Sometimes you can't keep all your promises, especially when theres so much weighing on your shoulders. Its all part of the tragedy of the ending.

@@TuskyBaby you can't narrate an ending if you're dead but ya it's intentionally misleading

@@Kenny4AG I'm sorry, but you probably need to see more movies/shows or something, because having a dead character do a bit of narration at the end is not unheard-of in the slightest...

@@TuskyBaby please name a few without having to google it

Or Clive survived, wrote the book under his brother's name to give him honour. In the end the story is from Clive perspective. So, how would Joshua knew what happend?

@@Martin-lm8xp Joshua can get the missing parts if the story from Jill, Gav, and everyone from the hideaway. It just makes more sense thematically for Clive to save his brother. The story in the book can also just be from Joshua s perspective.

​@@Martin-lm8xpno it way to basic for that to happen, Joshua definitely survives, people always think that Clive wrote the book when that not true, Clive is dead and that's that

Exactly. It's clever how they made it so Clive was unconscious when Joshua was explaining the Phoenix has no resurrection magic abilities. It heals flesh, but it cannot call back the dead. So of course Clive didn't know this and tried it, but despite the flesh being healed Joshua was still gone. So yeah, I think Clive just took up his brother's name to honor him. If there's DLC I wouldn't be surprised if Clive washed up on one of the unseen larger continents away from Valisthea.

If that is the case then what the hell is the point of the ending scenes? Just to manipulate us into cying our eyes out thinking he's dead? Because you cannot convince me that with the music and choreography, framing, etc that the devs aren't saying Clive dies.

Why adopt the name Joshua then when he hardly knows the guy? This doesn't make sense

@@ziontea7045 upon reflecting to it I found more thing about that Joshua thing on the book. There multiple reason why they use that - To show to the player that the story DID happen, and was not a fairy tale like the maam said to her kid in the outro. - To pay respect to Joshua and having his name and legacy write down in history. Gav did not know too much about Joshua but they still went on missions together, and Gav know how much Clive cared about him. So he could have guessed that Clive would have put Joshua Name on it since that would have act as a mémento for Joshua but also Clive always put other before himself. He like to stay/help from the shadow and give light to his friend. - Harpocrates knew that Joshua ancient history knowledge was top tier and wanted to take him as his successor, recognized him as a fellow historian. Meaning he could have advise Gav to make Joshua the author of the book, making it so that like his master Mors, Joshua would also have his own history book. My last 2 point are complete interpretation I could be wrong, but it still make perfect sense. My first point is straight fact tho.

FF15 will be a real disappointment after the high quality of 16. If she wants a counterbalance to the dark mood in 16, then 9 would be a much better option.

@@Faarrest 15 is better than 9

@@GooseGumlizzard Said pretty much noone ever.

@@Faarrest 15 is a very messy game but the experience of playing through it can be fun and the ending is absolutely beautiful tbh

@@GooseGumlizzard hell no 😂

Thanks, i personally believe that he survived but I do agree that its intended to be ambiguous. I just find people who say "he is definitely dead and you are just coping" equally annoying, as if the hints were not there or just made up by fans. The only correct answer is "We don't know for sure".

It's giving me flashbacks to over ten years ago when Mass Effect fans had to pull the "indoctrination theory" out of their collective behinds to manage what was, admittedly, a horribly written ending by Bioware.

personally i find streaming story games so much more fun and memorable than playing on my own because i get to share the experience with other people☺️ but i understand where you’re coming from! i actually asked people to pause from sending chats with their theories because i was too overwhelmed about the ending and wanted to sit and think about it for a bit. overall, i whole heartedly believe i got the full experience and am very happy i was able to share my playthrough with other people

They didn't change XV's ending with DLC. Regardless there's nothing wrong with XVI's ending. It's actual kinda similar to VII.

The alternate ending DLC for XV was cancelled. They released the cancelled DLC stories in a book instead.

They already said there won't be dlc to continue the story. Yoshi-p said he would like to make a cid dlc

The curse is the result of using magick. Clive flat out said he was destroying MAGICK. The only thing that was fully turned to stone was his left hand. If magick disappeared from the world before he completely turned, he'd still be alive. Just with one stone hand to be amputated.

But since magic was gone there was no eikon power left , so maybe Jill cannot feel it ? I hope Yoshi P will confirm the outcome of the ending bu releasing Dlc , this is so annoying for everyone.

The curse stopped at his hand. The curse can't progress anymore when all magic was removed from the world.

If you think Clive is dead then you haven’t played a FF game or Japanese game before. The scene with Jill and Torgal is anything but pointless, even the lyrics of the song explains the outcome that when the night is darkest and the pain the greatest, she will look the sky and see a new tomorrow and with it Clive will return, as he always has. Why else would her mood change completely from being heartbroken and demolished to giving of a sigh of relief and then smile at the sight of the sunset? The colour of Clive’s hair and brows says nothing about him turning to stone, but is just the moonlight as it doesn’t look the same when you see him sideways as the camera moves away. And also you can’t just ignore how the game starts with Clive narrating a story just like it was written in a book. Most FF games that had a narrator like that used a separate voice for it, so why is it Clive who narrates the intro this way and also narrates the ending? And why have a side quest that basically says he will eventually write the story of his adventures when his job is done? And who else than him would dedicate that story to Joshua? It is just impossible to have so many independent hints on him surviving without concluding that’s the take away that the writers wants people who completed the game 100% to come away with.

@@fredrikaarrestad1571 Yeah, the lyrics version of My Star blatantly spells out that Clive's going to return to Jill.

Them both dying is another possibility but I wouldnt agree with the other theories being mere coping. There are hints in the game that support either theory and I have no doubt that they were placed intentionally. I believe they wanted the ending to be ambiguous, even after considering all the hints. As for the book, it could have been written by someone else entirely in Joshua's name, it could have been written by Clive in his name or it could have been written by Joshua and then maybe been finished by someone else (including Clive). The fact that Clive is narrating the story and especially the last line he is saying before the credits "and thus did our journey end", makes me believe that Clive wrote or at least finished the book but maybe im reading too much into it.

@@alexielknightyou’re right I’m being a bit sweeping with the coping statement, I can certainly see some hints which may lead people down another path but I don’t agree with them. You have a good point about the book, we know Joshua has written most of the content before the final battle anyway so anyone could’ve finished it and it would deserve Joshua’s name on it. I guess for me, thinking either of them survived leaves a lot of unanswered questions and the need for dlc, but them dying and the closing scene ties the story together perfectly as a compete story, which lets not forget, they said it was on release

@thejohnwutotally agree, I was sad for days after, but have come to accept it, as I see how powerful the message of fighting and dying for the world they wanted is, them surviving would cheapen the ending imo and let’s face it we wouldn’t still be talking about it if it was a happy ending. It hurts but I applaud them for making me hurt if you know what I mean

Joshua definitely died, I mean he was dying pretty much the whole game there was no chance he was making it to the end. Clive dying was pretty abrupt, I actually dont like that they killed him especially since they already killed off the protagonist in 15. Clive should have survived.

Phoenix cannot resurrect people. Ultima's power cannot resurrect people. The whole plot was about Ultima creating a being that could handle casting Raise so they could resurrect their species and world. Clive instead opted to eliminate all magick from the world.

If Joshua was revived, Clive didn't seem that concerned about Joshua's body. Shouldn't he make sure Joshua wakes up before he nukes the place?

you cant be saying it’s copium that Clive survived then claim joshua is alive which is even more cope lmao. raise was meant for ultimas race which didn’t work then resulted in not working for clive either. that’s why he looked disappointed and nuked the place anyway bcos he knows joshua is dead. it’s that simple lmao

@@MNM2INChow can you say that “raise” didn’t work for Ultima’s race whenever he didn’t even get to cast it? Lol he had to “empty the vessel” aka Clive before he could wield all of that power along with his and be able to cast it.

Fair point

Agreed. To further your point, I think Jill initially mistook her inability to sense Clive’s Eikon (magic) as his passing, then realized the goal he was working to achieve had been realized when dawn finally broke.

​@@MrChaotictheory21he's dead keep coping

10, 12, 15 all have happy endings, just not fairy tale endings. Even the 13 trilogy ends happily, in a Never Ending Story kind of way.

12 has a happy ending. 15 is definitely not a happy ending.