One of the most confusing things about video games is that they often tell stories that are clearly intended as allegories of the real world rather than escapist fantasies, but nevertheless often designated as such by the companies that produce them. After four hours of play Metaphor: ReFantaziothe upcoming fantasy RPG from the minds behind the persona franchiseI enjoyed playing the turn-based combat, watching how it incorporates action into its overworld to ease the grind, and seeing how it evolves from the long history of Shin Megami Tensei while adding its own twists. But we already knew some of this, and Ethan Gach covered this side of things in detail when he saw the game at the Summer Game Fest. I wanted to get a feel for what this new fantasy RPG from Atlus was actually about. What impressed me most was how openly it not only addresses election anxiety and the various social problems that arise when people jockey for power, but also comments on the pointless notion that the fantasy genre is escapism… but Atlus wants to make sure you know that the team has “no political agenda.”
Metaphor: ReFantazio follows a young man and his fairy Gallica as they navigate the fantasy world of the United Kingdom of Euchronia. But despite its otherworldly nature, Atlus explicitly that this fantasy world should “mirror” the real world. Our hero is drawn into world politics after the previous king is murdered and the prince is cursed, leading the protagonist to rescue his dear friend while the rest of the world fights for political power. The ensuing election brings political unrest to the surface as you travel across the world, with metaphor and delves into his own versions of classism, racism and all other -isms.
metaphorThe hero of is part of the Elda tribe, one of the eight tribes found throughout the United Kingdom of Euchronia. The Elda are considered “tainted” by the remaining seven tribes and ostracized by everyone else. They are seen as heretics against the teachings of the Church and have become so rare in this world that some people don’t even believe in their existence. There are systemic and cultural barriers that make it difficult for your character to navigate the world. Exploring a world already in the midst of political upheaval as a marginalized person allows you to experience the decay firsthand. This is all well-worn territory, even in previous works by this team like Persona5but the portrayal of these ideas in the game really impressed me as it portrays the fantasy genre as escapism.
The main character of metaphor has a book that tells of a “fantasy world” that sounds very similar to ours. It describes a modern metropolis, a completely uniform world in which everyone is equal and can live freely as they want. But we know that the real world does not work like that, but projects an idealized version, a fantasy, if you will, of reality. I am curious to see whether metaphor examines this separation, and in the four hours I played the game has made several allusions to the fact that the real world seems to exist in this game. You give your hero a name and also yourself as a separate entity that guides him through his journey. The safe house of Akademia, where you learn new truths about the world and expand your party’s jobs, has books that reference your name. My theory is metaphor leads to a major metatextual twist involving his fantasy world and his idealized vision of our world. That a fantasy world with so many problems similar to those we experience in the real world would imagine mundane city skylines as its own form of escapism is a fascinating framework, especially when fantasy worlds filled with impossible things are often used as an excuse by malicious actors to pretend that works set in them should be considered entirely separate from our own, and not subject to any kind of real-world scrutiny.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is clearly based on real conflicts, but Atlus says it has “no political agenda”
After my practical test, I sat down for a group question and answer session with a group of Atlus developers and other press representatives. We asked about quest structures, combat design, Relationship buildingand many other topics. But when it came to discussing the overtly political story, the conversation was in stark contrast to the game we had been playing for several hours.
metaphor Producer Junichi Yoshizawa explained through a translator that the election story allowed the team to “portray people who put a lot of effort and energy into creating a better future.”
“We really wanted to focus on the power that it potentially brings to make the world a better place,” Yoshizawa said. “And because it’s, you know, sometimes a struggle, it’s obviously also a celebration when you’re trying to make the world a better place. So we wanted to bring that power to the forefront without ignoring it, but by facing it head on, it represents that realness within the state. We believe it has the power to create change. So that was an element that we wanted to include from a very early conceptual stage.”
Elections are one of the many tools that citizens can use to try to bring about change in society. metaphor does not shy away from the image of the common people rising up against corruption to make the United Kingdom of Euchronia a better place. When Strohl, one of your party members, persona– like Archetype, he gathers a group of people around his cause by literally ripping his heart out and screaming into a microphone. metaphor is not exactly subtle about his ideology. But Yoshizawa immediately followed up his answer with the following:
“Of course, we’re not pursuing a political agenda with this, nor a message that we want to spread,” Yoshizawa said. “It’s more of a tool, if you will, that we wanted to use to tell the story that we want to tell in this fantasy world. If there was a choice, how would people react, how would they think, what would they do to improve their future? So we essentially took that concept as a tool and a motif to bring our story to the forefront. So we hope that, detached from that kind of political agenda or message, people can really enjoy that choice perspective and that tool in this fantasy story setting.”
To put it mildly, Atlus seemed to be wary of Americans assuming this was a direct response to the spiteful presidential election we are currently experiencing in 2024. Before any of us had a chance to play the game, Atlus played a video of metaphor Director Katsura Hashino introduced the game and made it clear that its release during an election cycle was just a coincidence. I believe that metaphor isn’t a reaction to any particular election. I’d even imagine there wasn’t a specific triggering incident that inspired this, just a long history of persecution, classism, and election anxiety that has plagued our world for centuries. But Atlus has at least acknowledged that the tribes are intended as fantasy stand-ins for how different cultures deal with political and identity-based anxieties.
“Nobody is perfect, so there are different ways people deal with fear when faced with it,” said Yoshizawa. “With that idea in mind, we decided to separate these tribes from the actual races we see in real life by creating different tribes with (…) different emotional states or the way they feel or deal with fear. So we removed all of those existing racial notions and created these new tribes in this game based on that. So we believe this is a very original concept for this game and something we are proud of.”
That’s the thing, Atlus can say that Metaphor: ReFantazio has no political agenda, but this is not a story that comes out of nowhere from a team imagining a worst-case scenario. Just because it is not about a specific political campaign or candidate does not mean that it does not make a statement about the world we live in. The belief that the world should can be made better than it is now is an inherently political view that goes beyond a fantasy setting. The attempts to distance itself from reality, even though it so clearly reflects current global, societal unrest, are not surprising in the current landscape of the video game industry. No company that wants to sell millions of copies of its game is going to say outright, “This game is about rebelling against corrupt systems, and those exist in our world.”
But saying your game says something about the world doesn’t automatically mean you’re talking about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Saying that these are all just hypotheticals when the game clearly exposes the fantasy genre’s notion of idealized escapism undermining the world the team built to explore class, political machinations, and exclusion – it was jarring to hear Atlus representatives’ attempts to distance themselves from them. metaphor‘s fascinating foundations of anything that could be read as controversial. I mean, the game is literally called “Metaphor.” Sometimes you just have to let the art speak for itself, and the excellent four hours I played metaphor I even drowned out the sugar-coated answers of someone who wanted to sell me something.
