Before the release of the Final Fantasy XIV expansion, Shadowbringers, game director Naoki Yoshida joked that George R.R. Martin needed to finish his A Song of Ice and Fire books before he’d consider a Game of Thrones collaboration with the MMORPG. Four years later and with Winds of Winter nowhere in sight, it would seem Yoshida has simply decided to do things himself.It is perhaps passé to immediately label any kind of dark medieval fantasy aesthetic as being like Game of Thrones, perhaps in the same way gaming audiences are just as quick to label that aesthetic as akin to Dark Souls. But Final Fantasy XVI, the latest in the venerable Japanese roleplaying game saga, seems to embrace that comparison wholeheartedly, and with a certain level of intent that sets itself apart from the prior, well, fantasies of the franchise.Final Fantasy has of course done classic fantasy stylings in the past—from its initial releases leaning toward classic western archetypes of warriors and mages battling goblins and dragons, up to Yoshida’s other Final Fantasy project, the aforementioned MMO, XIV. The aesthetic is still the most prominent even as the franchise has almost as lengthily juked and jived between the steampunk of VI, the sci-fi techno fantasy of VII, VIII, and XIII, and everything in between. Final Fantasy is of course no stranger to dark storytelling either, thrusting its heroes into dreadful conflicts against awful villains, and forcing some of those heroes and their allies into paying the ultimate price in their journeys. So what makes XVI’s return to both of those wells feel both uniquely different and yet also clearly in the footsteps of Game of Thrones’ influence? The prologue demo for the game released this week paints a picture of a Final Fantasy that is fascinated not just with the surface level aesthetic of Thrones’ particular idea of Eurocentric fantasy, but with the sorts of political and familial intrigues that made Game of Thrones the smash hit it was with mainstream audiences. XVI begins with the perspective of Clive Rosfield, the older princeling of the ruling family of a small principality called Rosaria. In a world where powerful nation-states have risen up around giant, magical crystals and their gods, the Eikons, Rosaria is a region that worships the classic Final Fantasy summon Phoenix, the deity of life and fire incarnate. A “First Shield,” essentially a bodyguard, for his younger brother Joshua—the avatar of the Phoenix—Clive finds his life upended when political machinations and betrayals violently usurp his father’s rule, leading to a night of carnage before impending war that sees both his brother and father slain, his home usurped by his treacherous mother, and Clive put into military servitude at the hands of a formerly allied nation. All this human drama brings XVI’s world down to the ground level in ways prior entries have by matching it with grim levels of gore and casually foul language that feel like they’re distinctly aping Game of Thrones’ own initial approach—when the series was lauded as somehow being fantasy for people who don’t like fantasy, even with ice zombies and dragons from the get-go. It feels like a distinct differentiation from Final Fantasy’s past titles—themselves no stranger to mature storytelling or dark themes, of course—in so much that the darkest moments of those games were often either implied or presented in a more abstract manner, whether by technical limitations or stylistic choice.Meanwhile here in the present, the fucks fly aplenty in XVI’s dialogue—no need for a fantastical substitute—and as often as the blood does, and this kind of base primal darkness is shored up by the slow and steady worldbuilding the game presents to you in the political connections across its characters and regions. Is Final Fantasy XVI setting itself up to be a nuanced, mature story of politics, nations in conflict, and familial drama? Yes. Is it also a game where a kid who’s around 10 years old watches his father’s head get abruptly sliced off, becomes drenched in his father’s head’s blood, and then just kind of stares at that severed head? Also yes. It’s a little much at times, especially when said child them traumatically explodes into a giant firebird avatar and starts indiscriminately incinerating everything around him.But that clash between the high fantasy of Final Fantasy and this far more grim aesthetic context is crafting something with a lot of potential, even in the small glimpse we’ve had of XVI so far. In going for this Thrones-esque vibe Final Fantasy XVI isn’t embarrassed of its classical fantasy elements, if anything it feels all the more emboldened: a Chocobo is still a chocobo, those classically faceted crystals are still a source for the series’ traditional elemental magics. The summon creatures that have been a staple of the franchise for generations remain as they always have been—the very beginning of the demo, for example, flashes forward to a later period of Clive’s life where he witnesses a massive battle between two warring nations give way to a ginormous kaiju-esque fight between Final Fantasy legends Shiva and Titan, and it’s as heightened and ridiculous as such a thing should be.So far Final Fantasy XVI might feel, for all the cursing and bloodlust of its prologues, like it wants to chase the cultural cache of what Game of Thrones did for contemporary fantasy—but it doesn’t forget that it’s still also a Final Fantasy game, with an emphasis on the fantasy. We’ll see how it nails that balance when Clive’s journey continues in the full game’s release on June 22, but for now, it’s shaping up to have a lot of interesting promise. Want more io9 news? 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