The worlds of Magic: The Gathering will be meeting in 2024, as a Final Fantasy x Magic: The Gathering crossover has been announced. It's unclear what form this crossover will take, as the previous Magic: The Gathering crossovers have been released in different ways. There are some Final Fantasy characters who need to appear in the crossover, due to their popularity and how well they would fit into the card game.
Magic: The Gathering has embraced crossovers over the past few years, with cards based on franchises like Fortnite, The Walking Dead, Warhammer 40k, and Street Fighter. There will also be Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings crossover sets in the future. These crossovers help bring attention to Magic: The Gathering, with fans of these franchises hopefully being drawn in to try the game for the first time, as seen with the recent Warhammer 40k Commander Decks.
The Final Fantasy crossover with Magic: The Gathering is going to be an interesting one. The franchise has tons of characters, monsters, locations, and spells that can be adapted for the card game, so there are many ways Wizards of the Coast can approach the crossover. There are some Final Fantasy characters that need to show up in the crossover, due to their iconic status with fans around the world and what they can bring to the table in of the game.
Cloud Strife & Sephiroth From Final Fantasy VII Are Almost Guaranteed To Appear
The safest bet regarding the Final Fantasy crossover with Magic: The Gathering is that Cloud Strife and Sephiroth will appear as cards. The thought of being able to put Cloud or Sephiroth against a Lord of the Rings MTG character card or the legendary warrior Drizzt Do'Urden from Dungeons & Dragons is the kind of appeal these crossover sets aspite to have. Cloud and Sephiroth are easily the most popular Final Fantasy hero and villain respectively, and the thought of them being cards in Magic: The Gathering will be too much of a draw to up.
Cloud and Sephiroth will almost certainly be Legendary Creature cards, and they could very easily be the faces of their own Commander Decks. It's possible that things could go the Dissidia route, with Cloud's deck containing Final Fantasy heroes and Sephiroth's deck containing villains. It's likely that the flavor words Legends of Baldur's Gate mechanic in MTG would also be used for these cards. Flavor words are named powers that exist purely to reference the source material, rather than being a keyword with a function in the game, such as Trample. The D&D cards referenced concepts like Wild Magic Surge and Bigby's Hand from the tabletop RPG. The Magic: The Gathering cards for Cloud and Sephiroth would likely feature flavor words based on their in-game moves, such as Braver, Omnislash, Hell's Gate, and Supernova.
The Scions Of The Seventh Dawn From Final Fantasy XIV Need A Commander Deck
FF14 is the most profitable entry in the series, with millions of active players around the world. The expansions are critical and commercial darlings, to the point where they are overshadowing the mainline entries and spin-off titles in popularity. The game was so big at one point that Square Enix stopped selling Final Fantasy 14, as the servers couldn't handle the player numbers. With all of that said, it's fair to suggest that FFXIV will be represented in the Magic: The Gathering crossover.
In FFXIV, each player makes their own character, who acts as the Warrior of Light in their story. This means FFXIV doesn't have a main character to be represented in Magic: The Gathering, barring the generic Midlander Hyur who appears in promotional materials. The group that would fit in well in Magic: The Gathering are the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, as they're incredibly popular characters who act as allies of the Warrior of Light throughout the story. The Scions could form the basis of their own FF14-themed Commander Deck, with all the cards featuring creatures and items from Eorzea.
Gilgamesh From Final Fantasy V Is Already A Planeswalker
The planeswalkers of Magic: The Gathering are beings with the ability to travel between the planes. The Final Fantasy franchise already has a character with this ability, albeit an accidental one. The Final Fantasy games have their own settings (save for the few direct sequels) and the recurring characters are different versions of the same concept, with the summon monsters being the best example. The exception to this is Gilgamesh from FF5, who is the same character each time.
Gilgamesh was a rival to Bartz, the protagonist of FF5, and a servant of the game's villain. In the end, Gilgamesh sacrifices himself to save Bartz and his allies, dragging a powerful enemy into the Rift and seemingly dying. Gilgamesh would later appear in FF8 and would go on to become the first recurring Final Fantasy character, as he appears in other games in search of legendary swords and often faces the protagonists in each story. His next appearance will be in Stranger of Paradise as a DLC boss. The fact that Gilgamesh travels the Final Fantasy multiverse means that he is a natural fit for a planeswalker in the Magic: The Gathering crossover, with abilities centered around searching for/playing Equipment cards.
Bahamut & The Other Summons Need Their Own Mechanic
The Final Fantasy series' iconic summon monsters are as famous as the protagonists and antagonists of each game. The summons are recurring creatures that are called on with the aid of magic, acting as some of the most powerful attacks in each game. Creatures like Bahamut, Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, Leviathan, and Odin have appeared in numerous Final Fantasy games, and they're all deserving of a spot in the Magic: The Gathering crossover.
The only question is how the Final Fantasy summon monsters will be implemented in Magic: The Gathering? In the Final Fantasy games, the summons are called upon by specific classes as items, such as Stranger of Paradise's summoner class or the red Materia in FF7. In Magic: The Gathering, players summon monsters to the field all the time, to the concept isn't unique. If the summon monsters from Final Fantasy are brought into Magic: The Gathering, then they could act as powerful Sorcery or Creature cards that require a summoner card (either a Creature or Artifact) to be on the field, in order to emulate how they work in the games.