Racism, classism, poverty, religious fundamentalism. Public executions. The opening hour of Metaphor ReFantazio has it all. And it’s a statement of intent. This game is all about ‘anxiety’, per producer Junichi Yoshizawa. In-game text within the first 90 minutes wants to drive this home, thoroughly. “Anxiety breeds the world’s cruelest monsters”, reads one text box. “Anxiety breeds dissent among the tribes”, explains an early NPC. It’s saying the quiet bits out loud, there’s no room for subtext here.
But I quite like this sledgehammer approach to storytelling. It’s leaving no room for interpretation. We live in a pretty fraught world at the moment, with a major US election coming up in November (just weeks after Metahphor finally launches), and with political strife quite literally tearing the world apart – just look at the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza.
Where some games don’t want you to think about this, and would rather have you blindly and uncritically consume, the aptly-named Metaphor seems to be drawing comparisons to our world left, right, and center. The big monster bosses you fight are called ‘Humans’ for Christ’s Sake. It makes me think of the old ‘I know writers that use subtext and they’re all cowards’ meme from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
But why anxiety? Why is that the theme here? Well, it’s not that much of a departure, is it – past Persona titles have focused on depression (Persona 3), pressure exerted by the media (Persona 4), and the suffocation and erosion of personal freedoms in the modern world (Persona 5). Anxiety and our place in a political landscape feels like a natural progression, really.
“We thought about what brings about clashes in the real world when developing this game,” says Yuichiro Tanaka, Atlus’ lead scenario planner for Metaphor. “And our conclusion? It’s anxieties in people’s minds and hearts that cause conflict. Nobody is perfect. The different ways people face anxiety are very different, right? We created different tribes with different approaches to how they deal with anxiety. Who interact with it in different ways. […] We’re proud of this idea and think it’s very original to this game.”
But just because the Atlus team is focussing on the myriad ways that anxiety can play havoc in your life doesn’t mean the game is all doom and gloom. “When we’re talking about elections, there is that aspect of something severe, of rivalry,” says Atlus’ lead scenario planner, Yuichiro Tanaka, during a roundtable interview. “But we see this aspect of putting effort and power into making a better future a very strong idea. We want to focus on this hope. There’s a festivity to an election, and we wanted to depict the realness of politics, and how change is made. We wanted to include this in the game from a very early conceptual stage.”
So, let’s rewind. Why is an election such a major part of the game? To put it simple, and without spoiling too much, Metaphor’s world consists of eight tribes, governed by a ruling king. At the beginning of the game, the king is killed, leaving a pretty chronic power vacuum in the center of the dubious peace holding the world together. Enter you, protagonist, and a slew of other would-be rulers, who must win over the public and secure votes to be the next king.
From a story and gameplay point-of-view, it’s quite genius. Main quests will convince the public that you’re a Good Egg that can be counted on to do things in their interests, and side quests will beat that drum harder. Everything you do to help the NPCs will ‘make number go up’, and secure you more votes. The world operates on a day/night cycle, and you only have time to do so many things a day – will you go out questing, or deal with the riffraff? It takes the high school melodrama of Persona and translates it to a more adult setting. Good stuff.
“We acknowledge that there are a lot of similarities to the Persona games,” says Azusa Kido, lead daily system planner on Metaphor. “But an element that is different from Persona is that the protagonist is a high school student in Japan in that series. But, this time, we have chosen a young boy in an unknown world. We wanted to make this character someone that you could resonate with more, something that we were very thorough and detailed on during development.”
In Persona, your protagonist is silent, and usually an avatar that’s from an intentionally specific place and time. Here, in Metaphor, there’s no silent protagonist and there’s no Japan. Your character is designed as a blank canvas for you to project upon, and you have more choices to make – choices that will affect the narrative in pretty significant ways, per the hints from the development team.
But, even if you can see parallels to the real world in this game, Atlus wants you to know it’s really not trying to summon ideas about specific real-world issues.
“We have no political agenda or message in making this game,” says Junichi Yoshizawa, producer (somewhat unconvincingly, I think). “We wanted to use politics as a tool, to think about what an election would look like with magic and how people would react. It’s a tool, it’s a motif. In separating the game from any specific message, we hope that people can enjoy the fantasy setting without [any effect].
“To reiterate, this really is incidental that the release date is close to the US election. That really was not our intention.”
Hmm. The jury’s out on that one, lads. Still, Metaphor looks great. I think I’m going to prefer it to Persona 5 and Persona 4. I think I might even prefer it to (some of) the Shin Megami Tensei games. The story and setting has such potential, and it seems to be learning from all the missteps and meanderings of the Atlus’ oeuvre to date in order to serve something genuinely unique to our gawking mouths. The art style, the music, and the battle system all help to solidify the foundation of a game that is pushing into curious and intriguing territory for JRPG (if you still want to use that word) in 2024.
Color me excited. I think this will be one of the best games of 2024, if enough people give it a chance. Anxiety be damned.
Metaphor: ReFantazio launches October 11, 2024 for Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4/5 and Steam.
This piece was written based on gameplay and presentations given during a special preview event for the game in New York, USA. Travel and accommodation for VG247 was provided by Sega for the duration of the event.
