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Climbing the Colossus
Gamasutra has a great piece with the highlights of a Q&A held with the creators of Shadows of the Colossus. The piece offers insight into the games's creation and design from Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido. From the article: "Speaking about the industry in general, Ueda lamented, 'If you look right now the industry, it's full of sequels. Which is fine, I play a lot of sequels, because they're fun, but I don't think we can leave it like that. If that's all there is, I'm afraid the market will start to diminish. We need new games that we can challenge ourselves to.' As far as recent examples of game designs Ueda has enjoyed, he had a few kind words for Valve's Half-Life 2. 'It's a such a natural setting, and the puzzles are incorporated in that natural setting, and the players don't get lost. And that's something we put a lot of effort into for Ico, so I understand what went into that.'"
They aren't in the same world, super- or otherwise. Several of the FF games end apocalyptically, and would render the later storylines impossible. Final Fantasy VI, for example, ends in a dying world with little hope for the future and magic has been completely destroyed. Final Fantasy VII, however, opens in a mostly thriving world where magic is so commonplace that it's an industrial product. 8, 9, and 10 all have magic too, for that matter, despite both 6 and 7 ending in magicless worlds. There's only a couple actual sequels in the Final Fantasy series - FFX2 and one game that was actually in the Secret of Mana series, just with the Final Fantasy name tacked on.