Fans who were expecting to see the DLC trailer for Bahamut to Stranger of Paradise as a new boss fight, along with the Warrior of Light from FF1.
Stranger of Paradise is an action RPG that retells the story of FF1, while also introducing elements from the later games in the series, as it's meant to be one of the games that is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Final Fantasy series as a whole. The game follows Jack Garland, a member of the self-proclaimed Warriors of Light, whose only mission in life is to destroy Chaos. Jack's obsession with destroying Chaos in the original trailer quickly reached memetic status, to the point where the discourse surrounding the game was dominated by images of Jack shouting about Chaos. The final version of Stranger of Paradise lived up to the memes, with Jack shouting about Chaos every chance he could get.
The official Square Enix YouTube s released a trailer for Trials of the Dragon King, which will be the first of three planned DLC updates for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. The trailer worked fine on YouTube, but the page for Stranger of Paradise on the official Square Enix website had a different link. It was initially noticed by s on the ResetEra forums that the direct trailer link on the Square Enix website would actually go to "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley, an internet prank that's been going for years.
The Trials of the Dragon King DLC trailer for Stranger of Paradise is now up on all platforms. The rickroll link was up for several hours before Square Enix finally replaced it with the actual trailer link. It's unlikely that most fans saw the Rick Astley video, as most people who have been exposed to the trailer via YouTube, rather than directly visiting the Stranger of the Paradise website. It's possible that this is some kind of digital marketing ploy on the part of Square Enix, as Rick Astley is marginally more interesting than the Warrior of Light.
Surprisingly, this isn't the first unofficial Rick Astley and Square Enix crossover. It has been said that "Robo's Theme" from Chrono Trigger was plagiarized from "Never Gonna Give You Up" - with TikTokers noticing these retro game soundtrack similarities last year - though the composer has repeatedly stated that they had never heard the Rick Astley song before, which was similar to a situation that happened with the band Powerman 5000 and FF14. It's starting to feel like Square Enix is the one that cannot give Rick Astley up at this point.
The Trials of the Dragon King expansion for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin will be available on July 20, 2022.
Source: ResetEra
