Refantazio’s beautiful menus are a lot of work

Metaphor: ReFantazio is perhaps one of the most stylish looking games ever made, even more so Person 5the incredibly flashy Atlus RPG that came before it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the menus that play a major role in establishing the visual identity of these games are very difficult to create.

Long time ago Persona series director Katsura Hashino was recently asked Through The edge about Metaphor: ReFantazio‘s brain-melting user interface, which builds on menu systems that have only become more vibrant and vibrant each new Persona sequel and spin-off. While the Persona-esque fantasy game out this week has the advantage of building on the previous work the team has done for the series, making creating those menus still a very involved process.

“In general, the way most game developers create the user interface is very simple,” says Hashino. “We try to do that too: we try to keep things simple, practical and usable. But perhaps the reason we have achieved both (functionality and beauty) is that we have unique designs that we create for each menu. This is actually very annoying to do.”

Hashino said that each of the game’s menus runs separate programs, presumably to help keep the interface snappy and the action moving. “Whether it’s the store menu or the main menu, when you open them, it runs a completely separate program and uses a separate design to create it,” he explained. “It takes a lot of time.”

Perhaps that’s why so few other games take the user interface from merely elegant and functional to a spectacle in itself. Flashy menus can also bring new problems, such as being very difficult to read. Apparently that was a problem with Person 5 until the team did a lot of iteration and refinement on the angular black, red, and white text boxes. At least in my opinion it was totally worth it.

Metaphor: ReFantazio will be released on October 11 on PlayStation, Xbox and PC and is already receiving positive reviews, including from Kotaku‘s own Kenneth Shepard. “Metaphor takes the foundation of Atlus’ beloved life sim RPGs and manages to do and say almost everything it sets out to do more eloquently than the games it builds on,” he wrote. “It’s not as flawless as the Utopia in (a prominent in-game novel), but it’s a relief to get a game from Atlus that I can recommend without the same caveats I normally have to attach Persona games, which gives me hope for the company’s future projects, both inside and outside this new, rich world it has created.”