Can Metaphor: ReFantazio change the world? Maybe a little

Game maker Yoko Taro, best known for his game Nier: Automata and his commitment to wearing a mask in public, recently shared high praise for Katsura Hashino, producer and director of the Persona series. “Hashino really knows his stuff,” Taro said. “He believes games are essential to making the world a better place.”

Hashino’s new game, Metaphor: ReFantazioseems to embody that philosophy about the medium, perhaps even more so than his previous work. Metaphor is a fantasy story about tribalism and racial tensions, about deposing a power-hungry leader and about winning elections. Personal growth and strengthening interpersonal bonds are at the core of both the game’s story and gameplay mechanics.

“Yoko may have exaggerated a bit, but in my opinion games are a different kind of medium than movies and anime,” Hashino said through a translator in a recent interview with Polygon. “Players become the protagonists themselves. In this way, they are a way for the player to gain experience for their own life. And because experiences change people’s lives, for better or worse, they are a factor in how society itself is shaped. Even though the games we make are only a small part of that, it is what we think about when we make games.”

Hashino said in a video call that players may need self-motivation to change or overcome their fears. “I want games I make to be able to push people to go beyond those (restrictions),” he said.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a foray into traditional fantasy, a contrast to the modern, supernatural worlds of the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games that Hashino and his team worked on in the past. Hashino said the impetus to pursue a fantasy game came down to his team’s wishes. They all wanted to make a fantasy game, he said.

“I started asking them, ‘Why do you like fantasy?’ And no one had a really clear answer,” Hashino explained. “Everyone was a little vague. So I became very curious about this idea of ​​fantasy and what makes it so attractive and attractive to people.

Hashino himself didn’t have a good answer to that question either.

“I didn’t really know much about fantasy, but I ended up meeting a bunch of different Japanese fantasy creators,” he explained. “What I learned from this is that what they thought about fantasy, and what people seem to like about fantasy, is that it’s a very free medium where you can do anything you want to do – it’s not limited by the real world. in any way.

“One of the people I talked to about this was (Ikuto) Yamashita (the designer of Neon Genesis Evangelion), and he said: ‘Don’t be hemmed in.’ That really helped me make the decision Metaphor in our own direction.”

Even without the constraints of the real world, Hashino said Metaphor team has drawn inspiration from it. The journey of the protagonist and his allies was modeled after a road trip and inspired by “how modern people enjoy vacations.” And although Hashino emphasizes that “Metaphor is not the real world”, but the different tribes in the game Are inspired by the people of our world.

“We decided it would be really interesting to break down different tribes by personality type,” he explained, “to deviate from the kind of standard flow of fantasy and make it our own take on the genre.”

Hashino said that the personality traits that define the tribes of Metaphor are based on modern Japanese society. One tribe is based on older Japanese who “try to impose their values ​​on young people and get them to follow in their footsteps.”

“Then there is a group of people who have difficulty expressing their opinions and expressing their emotions and thoughts. In Japanese we call them ‘muttsuri’. We formed a tribe around them,” Hashino said. “The characters with the long ears are based on the personality trait we call ‘yujufudan’ in Japanese, which means indecisiveness. Actually a group of people who do not actually have an opinion of their own, but are very quick to (agree with someone else’s opinion).”

Hashino said that the Metaphor The team didn’t strictly follow the templates of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games when determining the direction of their new title. Instead, they worked to realize the ideas of their original fantasy concept. “We did not look at our previous matches and calculate: Okay, this is what we want to keep, this is what we want to get out” he said. That meant eliminating or changing some well-known mechanics that wouldn’t work in the world of Metaphor – including romance, which plays no role in the game’s story.

“We need to make games where protagonists make connections with people along their journey,” he said. “They can’t do it alone; they need support. That hasn’t changed throughout our games, but the difference between Metaphor and Persona is that in Persona you play as teenagers – love and romance are part of that experience.

Hashino added: “For Metaphorit wasn’t really intended to be more grown-up or grown-up, but the goal the character is trying to achieve is grander and more epic. There isn’t really time for love. If you want to be sovereign, you can’t go on dates. Instead of having these loving relationships, you instead have people who are going to support you as a leader, (and) through their support you unlock these heroic qualities in you. That fuels the combat system and everything else.

“But maybe in the end it’s a little more mature than our previous games.”

Metaphor: ReFantazio will be released on October 11 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series