Metaphor: Refantazio Palms-On Preview 2024

Eight years ago, Japanese director Katsura Hashino announced that he was building a new team within Atlus after working on the character line (and Katherine) for over a decade, saying he was looking to try something new. Want to do. At the end of the summer, his game was finally conceivable – Metaphor: Refantazio, an RPG that has a fair amount of similarities to character games, but has a character of its own.

In broad strokes, Metaphor keeps many of the common parts from Hashino’s earlier video games. Like its religious predecessors, Metaphor uses a turn-based command system built around exploiting enemies’ weaknesses. The main character, an outcast who uses closed necromancy, looks like the protagonist of Character 3 Reload with an admirable vocation in the short segment thanks to Shigenori Soejima’s art. Even much of the important terminology is similar, an impressive example being Tarukaja – a witchcraft that enhances attacks in character and now in metaphor (although Hashino denies any connection between the two).

Its pedigree and efficient manufacturing values ​​are enough to cause joy in some RPG circles, with some even calling it their most anticipated game of the moment. However, others in the wider gaming realm are slightly more at a loss for words, either because of the character’s similarity, because of the radical name, or both.

So what exactly is allegory: refantazio? And does it have a chance to step out of the character’s shadow and establish a fan base of its own? These are still questions worth exploring, although I didn’t come very close to making my own understanding of the metaphor when I demonstrated it at this past Summer Sports Fest of this date.

About the Identity of Metaphor, and Why There’s No Romance in It

First, the intro, which is undoubtedly a morsel. The metaphor section is fairly easy to understand – Hashino says he wants players to be able to relate the story to their own lives. In short, he wants it to be a metaphor. “We had all these different ideas. We couldn’t think of many good ones so we said, ‘Okay, just metaphors.’ this is easy.'”

For the second part, Hashino says, the team wanted to rethink the idea of ​​a fantasy world. Hence, refantazio. Okay, so it doesn’t fly off the tongue, but you can’t say it’s not memorable.

As far as the game goes, the demo I saw consisted of three separate sections – a story sequence, a dungeon crawling sequence, and a boss fight. The demo begins by setting up part of the world through Gallica, a fairy companion who brings a bit of an 80s D&D vibe to the metaphor.

In the sequence, Gallica tells the legend of a place that looks suspiciously like New York City, in which Gallica marvels at a world where there is no magic, no tribal conflict, and “glass towers that reach up to heaven.” Arriving.” It’s a story that shows that discrimination is a common theme through metaphor, with most of the primary cast battling some form of prejudice.

Speaking with IGN in a follow-up email, Hashino confirmed that Metaphor’s story is “closely related to the theme of changing the world for the better.”

“As we approached this project, we wanted to challenge ourselves to create something different from our previous works while taking advantage of Atlus’ extensive strengths and experience as an RPG maker. As we developed the game concept, we realized our interest in exploring the idea of ​​inner strength and how people overcome limitations. “Basically we wanted to figure out how we could become the best possible version of ourselves,” he said.

“To achieve this, we focused on how people perceive each other based on personality or personal interactions. This led us to think that biases or prejudices could form around judgments of these characteristics. We created a backdrop for this world around the idea that various characters in this world are exposed to some form of prejudice or bias in that regard.”

While the fictional world of Metaphor is different from ours in many ways, if we are able to express it well, we believe fans will be able to find various parallels between it and ours.

Ultimately, Hashino says, his primary purpose for the metaphor was to take the moment of the character’s modern environment away from the structure he knows best. This means the metaphor does an admirable job of characterizing it from time to time, which is especially detectable in dungeon crawling and boss fight sequences. It even has summons that look like a bundle of Persona’s monsters. Of course, there’s a fair amount of nuance to be present in these comparisons – among the optional things, a big part of the process is to place your characters in the front or back row, and overall the battles are much faster – but on the surface there are similarities. The sun is shining.

Arguably the most significant change can also be found in the third tier of the demo, which shows off boss battles as well as the way the story progresses. Where the last current character games are built around a symmetrical day-to-day school calendar, the metaphor is structured like a road trip where you have the freedom to go out as you wish (Hashino makes the comparison easily) where You won’t be able to watch the entirety of it in a single playthrough).

Gauntlet Runner, it will take a certain amount of time to surround a vacation spot on the group’s land, during which you will be able to collect your stats by studying books like “Pride and Persuasion” or doing laundry.

Notably, Metaphor has no romantic relationship to attach to, not like the characters, which Hashino cites as a reason for needing to stay away from making a “romance game”.

“We created (Persona) as an RPG story about teenagers. And teenagers, they date, they have romance. It’s part of the joy of being a young person exploring your limits. That’s why we included it in the game… because if we didn’t have it, it wouldn’t really feel authentic. For our new game…we didn’t want to include it because it didn’t feel as natural, if that makes any sense,” Hashino explains.

“The second thing I would like to say is that the focus of the main plot is that there is this character, the hero, who is trying to become the next king. And instead of focusing on her love life, we wanted to make sure we had this whole follower system. So we wanted people to focus on that.

The metaphor draws heavily from novels of the 80s and 90s

This approach is at the core of what distinguishes Metaphor from Hashino’s earlier paintings. I’ve often compared existing character games to the anime Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which features Japanese youth who play out high school drama through the show and fight demons at night. However, when I played Metaphor, the main show that came to mind was Air of Mystery Fight Dunbine – an early example of the isekai sub-genre involving a tender bike enthusiast who is forced to fight his way through a fictional world populated by giant robots. Is taken into the world. In the form of insects.

Hashino admits he is biased towards Dunbine, but attributes any influence to its significant popularity in the nineteen-eighties. More significant may be what Soejima calls the “fantasy boom” of the 1980s and ’90s, which spawned the likes of File of Lodoss Battle, Dragon Quest, and many other iconic titles.

Soejima says, “So I was living in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when there was this fantasy boom, and all the fantasy things that existed in that era and that had previously come from abroad, were part of my artistic DNA. Was a part of.” “After that, I read a lot of serious fantasy stuff, which came into me and got into this other base layer and also helped form my DNA. The very first fantasy I interacted with was (Dungeons and Dragons), way back in the day. Probably more than books, Wizardry may have really influenced me in the fantasy genre.

One way or another, the metaphor appears to be a captivating experiment for Hashino and corporate. Given a brand new canvas, the workforce sets out to leave their mark on the fantasy genre, taking inspiration from iconic influences and giving them a fresh twist with their signature excitement and grandeur. It feels at once normal and invigorating – an untapped way that also depends on their individual strengths, with an advanced art taste or even sharper combat equipment. Atlus, for its part, is treating this like the foundation of a brand new franchise, giving it a world foundation with a major holiday in October.

“When we were making this game, we thought, OK, we know people like the approach we’ve taken,” says Hashino, “so we can realize our vision without fear of people’s reaction.” “There is more confidence to do it, because we think people will like our game.”

We’ll be able to see for ourselves when Metafor: ReFantazio releases on October 11th for PlayStation 4, Xbox One X|S, and PC.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s information director as well as co-host of Nintendo Resonance Chat. Do you have any tips? Send him a DM at @the_katbot.