I've been playing Metaphor Re:Fantazio, a game from Atlus
that came out very recently. I wouldn't have had any way of
accessing it due to its Denuvo and exorbitant price for a
third world country if it weren't for the fact that, thanks
to the fact that the demo didn't have Denuvo, it works as a
key to the full game, allowing its piracy.
I've only been playing the game for a few hours, but in its
introductory missions of the first 10 hours of the game it
talks about very interesting things that I think deserve a
serious analysis on their own.
I've been a big Atlus fan for years, Shin Megami Tensei 4
is probably my favorite RPG so far and also, I enjoy the
Persona games. All their games are wonderful in story and
mechanics. But they all more or less went in the same way.
SMT is you alone against the world, a chosen one who makes
pacts with demons to impose his strength on everything that
crosses his path and in the end, to be able to shape the
world from your personal ideals and see the consequences of
this. In the case of Persona it varies a little more, you
and a group of friends are in a secret society and save the
world from the shadows. But Metaphor, goes in a completely
different direction.
Metaphor uses mechanics from both SMT (the combat system is
copied from the mainline) and Persona (SocialLinks, persona
like system) but the real diferences are in the story.
Metaphor shoots for a very different place: A person who by
individual will exercises his power by force conquering,
killing is not a Hero, is a dissident. And a person without
followers isnt a Hero either, just someone to be forgotten.
This contrasts not only with what all the other Atlus games
say, but the RPG in general, is there a tyrant? Our missios
is to kill him and free the kingdom from his domain. But
why does he have so many soldiers at his disposal? How did
he become a tyrant in the first place? Could it be that
this person actually get his position of power by popular
demand, has his followers and in some twisted way, became
their Hero? Does killing the leader really erase his ideals
in the minds of his followers?
Metaphor takes us to a world full of racism, anxiety, full
of people left to their own devices, looking for something
to believe in, with no guarantees of anything, everything
is decided when you are born. It's easy to get whatever you
want by brute force and there is no law for the excluded.
However, everyone dreams of a different world.
I don't doubt this game is based on the cultural changes
that is currently in the world, how everything is hostile,
how racism is resurfacing and how people are starting to
lose rights and feel isolated, feeling the anxiety of being
on their own without help from anyone.
In the game there is a fantasy book, but what fantasy can
someone have in a world of fantastic races and magic? Yes,
a world where everyone is the same species, where there is
no magic, where there is democracy, where there is law that
helps the weak, it is our world, their fantasies, they see
it as a utopia.
In Re:Fantazio, we know who the villain is from the first
moment, we know all the atrocities he committed, how he is
a person who doesn't deserve to have God's forgiveness, but
nevertheless he won the support of a large part of the
people because in his figure they see someone strong who
can perhaps get them out of their misery, since no one else
tries and in ignorance, they believe that this new figure
can save them. In one of the first missions our group plots
an assassination attempt against this person and is foiled.
At first it feels unfair because the assassination attempt
is with good intentions and for a noble cause, but they
were not the correct means.
It doesn't seem at all far-fetched for me that this game
began to emerge in the mind of its creators after the first
-minister was assassinated in a public event in Japan a few
years ago. That assassin will never be a hero.
In these times when we begin to lose sight of everything we
have and fight to achieve, Re:Fantazio tries to remind us,
not to lose it, to fight for our utopia, to unite among
ourselves, alone we are nobody, we are only dissidents in
solitude and anxiety, but together with an ideal, looking
for allies, doing good, being remembered, we can become
heroes and change the world.
