Racism. Classism. Poverty. Religious fundamentalism. Public executions. The opening hour of Metaphor ReFantazio has it all. It’s a statement of intent. According to producer Junichi Yoshizawa, this game is all about “anxiety.” The text within the game’s first 90 minutes wants to make that point outright. “Anxiety breeds the world’s cruelest monsters,” one text box reads. “Anxiety breeds divisions among tribes,” an early NPC explains. It says the quiet parts out loud, and there’s no room for subtext here.
But I love this hard-hitting narrative. It leaves nothing to interpretation. We live in a pretty tense world right now, with the US election coming up in November (just a few weeks after Metahphor officially launches), and political strife really tearing the world apart — just look at the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza.
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Some games don’t want you to think about that, but rather want you to consume mindlessly and uncritically, and the aptly named “metaphors” seem to be comparing our world to ours in every way. The big monster bosses you fight are called “humans,” for God’s sake. It reminds me of an old quote from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace: “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards.”
But why anxiety? Why is it the theme here? Well, that doesn’t change much, does it – past Persona games have focused on depression (Persona 3), pressure exerted by the media (Persona 4), and the stifling and erosion of individual freedoms in the modern world (Persona 5). Anxiety and our place in the political landscape feels like a natural progression, really.
“When developing this game, we thought about what causes conflict in the real world,” said Yuichiro Tanaka, Metaphor lead scenario planner at Atlus. “We concluded that it’s the anxiety in people’s heads and hearts that causes conflict. No one is perfect. People deal with anxiety differently, right? We created different tribes, and they deal with anxiety in different ways. They interact with anxiety in different ways. […] We are very proud of this idea and think it is very novel for the game.”
But the Atlus team’s focus on the myriad ways anxiety can wreak havoc on lives doesn’t mean the game is all doom and gloom. “When we talk about elections, there are some serious things involved, aspects of competition,” said Yuichiro Tanaka, lead scenario planner at Atlus, in a roundtable interview. “But we think that the idea of effort and power for a better future is a very powerful idea. We wanted to focus on that hope. Elections are a joy, and we wanted to portray the reality of politics, and how change can be made. We wanted to incorporate that into the game from very early in the concept phase.”
So, let’s recap. Why are elections such a big part of the game? In short, without spoiling too much, the world of Metaphor consists of eight tribes ruled by a dominant king. At the start of the game, the king has been killed, leaving a fairly long power vacuum at the center of the dubious peace that holds the world together. The protagonist, you, and a bunch of other would-be rulers, must win over the public and get votes to become the next king.
It’s genius from both a story and gameplay perspective. The main quest convinces the public that you’re a good guy who can be counted on to do things in their best interest, and the side quests impress them even further. Everything you do to help an NPC “keeps the numbers up” and wins you more votes. The world runs on a day-night cycle, and you only have so many hours in a day to do so many things – do you go out on a mission, or do you take on the mob? It takes the high school melodrama of Persona and turns it into a more adult setting. Good stuff.
Azusa Kido, Metaphor’s lead daily system planner, said: “We acknowledge that this game has many similarities with the Persona series. But one difference from Persona is that the protagonist of the series is a high school student in Japan. But this time, we chose a little boy living in an unknown world. We hope to make this character more relatable to you, and we considered this very thoroughly and carefully during the development process.”
In Persona, the protagonist is silent, usually an avatar from a specific time and place. In Metaphors, there are no silent protagonists, and there is no Japan. Your character is designed to be a blank canvas for you to project your ideas onto, with more choices to make – and according to hints from the development team, those choices will affect the narrative in some pretty significant ways.
But even though you can see parallels to the real world in this game, Atlus wants you to know that it’s not actually trying to evoke ideas about specific real-world issues.
“We didn’t have any political agenda or message when we made this game,” says producer Junichi Yoshizawa (which I found a little unconvincing). “We wanted to use politics as a tool to think about what elections would look like if magic was used, how people would react. It’s a tool, a theme. In separating the game from any particular message, we wanted people to be able to enjoy the fantasy setting without getting hung up on it.” [any effect].
“To reiterate, the release date being so close to the US election was really fortuitous. It really wasn’t our intention.”
Hmm. The jury is still out on this one, folks. Metaphor looks great, though. I think I’ll prefer it to both Persona 5 and Persona 4. I think I might even prefer it to (some of the) Shin Megami Tensei games. The story and setting have potential, and it seems like it’s learning from all of Atlus’ missteps and twists so far in order to give us something truly unique. The art style, music, and combat system all help solidify the foundations of a game that’s set to enter the curious and fascinating realm of JRPGs (if you still want to use that term) in 2024.
I’m excited. I think if enough people give it a chance it’ll be one of the best games of 2024. Anxiety be damned.
Metaphor: ReFantazio will be available on Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4/5, and Steam on October 11, 2024.
This article is based on gameplay and demonstrations of the game at a special preview event held in New York City, USA. SEGA provided iGamesNews with travel and lodging during the event.