Final Fantasy 16 takes place over a long period of time, from main character Clive’s childhood to well into his adult life. Through those years, he experiences a lifetime’s worth of pain before getting close to middle age. But how old is Clive exactly at the different stages of his journey in Final Fantasy 16 (FF16), and how much time passes in all with his age? We’ll answer that here.
Explaining How Old Clive Is in Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) Has Three Age Answers
The campaign of Final Fantasy 16 takes place over 18 years, and while there is a brief portion of the opening where Clive is an adult, we learn his backstory from when he was a teenager: age 15, to be precise. He’s then essentially enslaved for the next 13 years in the imperial army, making him age 28 for the first core part of the main story.
You’ll play a good portion of the story with Clive at that age until a pivotal moment about 12 or 15 hours in that causes another time skip. Following this event (which the game will warn you is coming in uncertain terms), five more years will pass, making Clive age 33. (Check out how many chapters are in FF16 if you’re curious to know how far in the game you are total.)
It might be hard to see that Clive ages much beyond looking a little more haggard and tired, especially because he’s hung up on old traumas, but that, to me, makes it believable. Here’s a man who’s never had any way to properly find closure for almost anything in his life, and the one thing he does accept is one of the reasons for all of his problems. The story of Final Fantasy 16 is thus not just about saving the world (as every FF is) but also about saving Clive and those he cares about from literal decades of suffering.
Don’t worry — there’s plenty of world-saving to be had, but like the great Final Fantasy stories of old, the real victories are entirely personal. I have opinions about some of the gameplay design of 16, but its characters’ stories hearken back to some of the best in the series, bar none.
But to summarize, to answer how old Clive is in Final Fantasy 16, he is age 15, 28, and 33 depending on what part of the FF16 story you are at.
