Shining Force - Character Epilogues

In the original ending, Max and Adam seem ready to live a peaceful life in some unknown place, at least for a while. This contradicts Final Conflict slightly, as Adam claims that they saw something escape after the battle with Dark Dragon, and chased after it. Still, that's a pretty typical bump for stories that did not expect to get a sequel and then do. It's also easy to go around it if you assume they weren't sure or lost track of what they were chasing along the way, and only found out Mishaela's plans after some years of peace.

The rest of their appearances are pretty consistent. At the start of Final Conflict, they are at Hassan, having formed a new group to go after the devils.

In Shining Force II, a NPC in Hassan is a descendant of people who came from Rune looking for Max. They didn't find him there, and part of the group went to Grans Island next. The NPC sounds unsure, but believes Max might have gone there as well. This lines up with Final Conflict, where he did stay in Hassan and then went to Grans, being defeated by the devils there. No mention is made about people looking for him in that game though, and he leaves very shortly after defeating Darksol, so it's likely that no one reached him in time. At the same time, he does suggest heading to "his brother's place" in that ending, and that's likely in Rune, so who knows really.

To add to the confusion, in the JP version of Shining Force Gaiden/CD, Ken looks shocked to see Nick, believing him to be Max at first. That implies to me he hasn't seen Max in a long time, but it isn't elaborated upon. The way Max departs so fast in Final Conflict does imply he's the wanderer kind of guy who does not stick around, at least. So it's not hard to believe he didn't come back to Guardiana.

Now to connect some dots the games don't touch upon. At the start of the first game, Max has amnesia, and has been so for an year, after being defeated by Darksol in Metapha and split up from Cain and the robots. At the same time, Cain was captured and controlled by Darksol. This is just a quick recap of things the english localization didn't tell you.

My actual speculation comes now. Final Conflict introduces Ian as Cain's son and also sent by his father to defeated Darksol based on a prophecy from 20 years prior. It would make little sense for Cain to have plotted any of this while possessed, which is why I assume this game takes place no more than 19 years after the first one. But more on topic of this page, while we have no info on Max and Cain's lives before the games, they were at least in contact enough to face their destiny together in Metapha, and also have some fair respect for each other. Which means is very unlikely that Cain would hide a son from him. Yet Max doesn't recognize anything about Ian, which makes me think he never recovered his memories even after many years.

Of course, another explanation is that Ian was just too young last time they saw each other for Max to recognize him, but you'd think Max would say something in that case. I find this less likely, at least.

Sigh. This one I'm mad about. In the Epilogue Interview, Mae is said to have become the next captain of the knights in Guardiana, which makes perfect sense since she's the daughter of the old one and one of the most proeminent characters in the game. The ending also mentions as a leader of the kingdom's restoration.

...And yet in Shining Force CD she's nowhere to be seen other than the intro, with Ken being the captain. There's a sad implication here that something might have happened to her during this time, but without even a mention it just feels like she went overlooked.

Meanwhile, Ken doesn't do much in SFCD, but we do get to know he had a son, Apis. Every manual and guide refers to Apis as 長男, a word that means "eldest son" but can apply to an only son as well, so it's up in the air if Ken had more children as well.