FNGC Reviews: Metaphor Refantazio (ft. Dave Jackson & Sam Heaney)

[00:00:00] What's up everyone? Nick here. The Friday Night Gamecast is a Patreon supported show and I would like to take a moment to thank all the folks who have helped keep us going as a podcast. Once again, thank you so much to LadyBlake, Plox, Y.A. Pierberg, Dave Jackson, The Intergalactic Pinecone, Fabulous Brianna, Chris Ware, Eric Guess, Rick Firestone, Chris of a Novel Console, David C., JD, Claneys, and Diamond. Will and I both greatly appreciate your support and we really couldn't do this without your help. It means the world to us that you've been able to

[00:00:30] provide us with as much support as you had to keep us going for this long. This is the second to last episode of season three of the Friday Night Gamecast, so we hope you enjoy this and get hyped because the next episode to drop is going to be our game of the year 2024. But without further ado, we present to you our review of Metaphor Refantazio.

[00:02:02] Welcome back everyone. You're joining us for another FNGC Review where we look at one game and take a deep dive into all its moving parts. This week, we are welcoming two guests onto the show today. We have one returning cast member. He's the host of Tales from the Backlog and a consummate pick-crossed 3D sicko. Welcome back, Dave Jackson. Dave, how you doing? I'm doing great, Nick. Thank you so much for the invite back and looking forward to this one.

[00:02:27] Absolutely. And then our second co-host that we have joining us today is a brand new cast member to the Friday Night Gamecast. He is a podcaster, an actor, and a guide writer for IGN UK. And he's also the co-host for Save the Game Media, No Limits PlayStation exclusive podcast. Welcome, Sam Haney. Sam, how are you? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Nick. It's a pleasure to be here. We've been talking about getting me on for a while. And here we are with Dave, no less. What a treat.

[00:02:54] Yeah. Looking forward to it. And I want to say, you know, we talked about Chance of Cinar. That's not off the table. We're going to talk about that soon. It's in my back pocket. There you are. We got to do that soon. But today, we are going to be talking about Metaphor Re-Fantasio, the latest of the Atlus RPGs that have dropped in 2024. Just some quick billing notes for you. This was developed by Studio Zero, which is a publisher or developer studio underneath Atlus. Of course, this was Atlus Sega production.

[00:03:22] It was directed at the helm by Katsura Hashino. He's of Persona acclaim. He's done all of the major Persona mainline entries, as well as the lead composer for this title is Shoji Meguro, additionally of the Persona mainline entries. They kind of had all of the A-listers show up for this title here. This released multi-platform on October 11th, 2024. And when it dropped, it dropped to almost universal acclaim.

[00:03:47] I don't really need to list any of the Metacritic ratings because I think everybody knows that this was received very well critically up front. But I wanted to jump in and just right off the bat, let everybody know about what is Metaphor Re-Fantasio. So, this is a RPG set in the United Kingdom of Uchronia, a medieval fantasy world. Metaphor begins with the assassination of Uchronia's former king, Hythlodius V.

[00:04:13] Years prior to this, a botched assassination attempt on the crown prince left him cursed in perpetual slumber, leading to a power vacuum in the kingdom. Our story follows the protagonist, whose name is Will, an orphaned boy of the Elda tribe and the prince's childhood friend, who gets caught up in a tournament held to decide the throne's next successor. Alongside our trusty fairy friend, Galica, the protagonist journeys across Uchronia to rally support from the people

[00:04:39] and find a way to release the prince from his curse so he can claim the throne once more. That is Metaphor Re-Fantasio. That was a whole lot. I just threw a lot at the audience. I just threw a lot at the both of you, although you guys have played this extensively. I wanted to kind of just ask really quickly, how many hours did you put into this, Dave? Yeah, this was 79 hours for me. I played on Steam and probably about half and half between PC and Steam Deck. It runs great on Steam Deck.

[00:05:09] Okay, cool. And Sam, how about yourself? So I played exclusively on PS5. My clock says 84 hours. I feel it probably is pretty much in line with Dave, so probably closer to 80 around that ballpark. Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with me, gentlemen. Something went wrong. Something went wrong. So, okay, my official PlayCroc, I played this on PC primarily.

[00:05:36] I played the demo originally when it dropped on PS5, and I was like, oh, yeah. And then I looked at the achievements, and I was like, eh. And then I was thinking about potentially maybe modding this game, which I absolutely did not do. But I did play it on Steam. The official PlayCroc is 175 hours. A significant bulk of those 175 hours is left with just the screen on and just like the music playing in the background while I'm doing chores or washing dishes. So I'm estimating that my closer playtime is to 150 hours.

[00:06:07] I did grind a lot in this game. I feel like that can make up the bulk of those additional maybe 20 to 30 hours discrepancy between the two of you. How did you feel, though, in terms of the playtime? Is this pretty typical in terms of the RPGs that you like? It's on the longer side for sure. But within Persona and Studio Zero's output, this is average too short. I mean, compared to Persona 5, this is downright breezy.

[00:06:36] Like, Persona 5 is 120 hours easy. 120 hours just like mainline golden pathing, not even doing extra stuff? Yeah, I think so. So, like this, I mean, 80 hours is nothing to sniff at. But compared to Persona 5, which was the only one I played before this, it's like I hit 80 and I was like, okay, it's not bad, all things considered. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Sam? Like, I know that we've both, like, enjoyed playing a lot of longer RPGs in the past.

[00:07:04] Did you feel like this playtime was a burden or was it pretty much accurate for what you would expect from a Persona, a Studio Zero Atlas game? I think I'm pretty much in line with Dave. I would say, this is always a weird question that I get posed with. I feel like my IGN work kind of skews my perception on game length. Interesting. Simply because I'm having to replay sections more often than Nard and, you know, cycle through things over and over again, take things very methodically and slow.

[00:07:35] But I think for the most part, this actually did feel pretty breezy in comparison. I have a few problems with pacing, which we'll get into, but overall, I feel like it wrapped up far quicker than other Persona games have. Yeah. Yeah. I felt like the ending of this game kind of was like a whirlwind. It's interesting because, you know, we're going to get into our top level thoughts here, but pacing, absolutely an issue.

[00:08:01] But when I think about, like, my playtime specifically, of course, the clock on my end was, you know, drawn out by the fact it was like, I, in my mind, am looking at this as strictly a JRPG. I need to grind, I need to overlevel because I don't want to hit that wall that inevitably comes when you hit to, like, you know, the 50% mark and they throw a crazy boss at you.

[00:08:21] I kind of want, my effort to grind and then breeze through the game backfired on me because then you had to do a little bit more because of the scaling and how, like, they threw the different enemies at you. I'm also a slow reader and that's something that I think is, like, significant for people who are thinking about jumping into this game or kind of considering is that, like, if you're a fast reader, I don't think that's going to be a problem for you. I also have, like, I have eye issues. I have, like, really increased eye pressure.

[00:08:50] My optometrist just told me this. I wonder what that's about, you know, maybe just, like, staring at screens and playing video games all the time. Definitely couldn't be the case. Yeah, I definitely took this slow and steady. There was one section that I had to replay because I accidentally loaded a save that set me back two hours. So I lost a couple hours here and there, which was, I threw a controller. I'm not going to lie. I was upset about that situation because you never know.

[00:09:17] You have to do so much in the menus and mechanically and arranging the pieces that you're like, oh, what did I do? Anyway, long story short, it's a relatively long game but shorter than most Persona games. I still have Persona 3 Reload in the pocket. I kind of got maybe a quarter, in my mind, a quarter away through that game. I'm sure it's probably just, you know, 10% of what's actually in the entire game. So looking forward to finishing that.

[00:09:44] However, I wanted to start off the top and ask, you know, Dave, you had mentioned Persona 5. You had mentioned, you know, kind of your comparison thoughts. What is your history with Persona and Shin Megami Tensei? And then, you know, what are your top level metaphor thoughts? Yeah, for sure. So I played Persona 5 when I first got a PS4. And it was like right after the Royal version dropped. So that was in 2021 or 2020, something like that. I don't remember.

[00:10:13] But before that, I'd never heard of Persona or Shin Megami Tensei. Not a single nothing at all. And I never had a PlayStation before that. So that probably plays into it. So, I mean, those, they might have been on things that I owned, but they weren't on my radar at all. So I loved Persona 5. And then I, you know, I didn't go back and play Persona 4. I bought it, but I didn't play it right away.

[00:10:39] And then so when this got announced, I started, I was like, okay, I will, I will not start Persona 3 or Persona 4 because this thing's coming out. And it looks like just a wild version of this same type of game. So Metaphor was a like day one buy for me. A hundred percent was my most anticipated game from last year. And I'm actually playing Persona 4 Golden right now. So I finished Metaphor and went straight into Persona 4 Golden.

[00:11:07] So when we talk about, you know, the game itself, I think it's pretty interesting to compare Persona 4, especially because there's a huge difference between those two games. And in the, like the chronology of the studio, it's actually not that, you know, it's not that many games removed from Metaphor. So it's kind of interesting there. But that's my short history. Started with Persona 5, played Metaphor on day one. And now I'm kind of going back a little bit more. Awesome. Awesome.

[00:11:36] And Sam, how about your Persona Shimgami Tensei history? It's strange. I'm far more of a sort of Final Fantasy-esque guy traditionally. But I think, when was it? It would have been at the launch of PS5. Persona 5 was one of the games included in the PlayStation Plus game collection thing they did. And having been on PS4 religiously, I had played practically everything else. So I thought, oh, I'll give it a go.

[00:12:06] It's, you know, among the greats. And I'd heard good things from afar. And dived in, played through it, bounced off it a few times, to be fair. The first few hours, I thought, a little slow. But then I gave it another go. And, yeah, truly loved it. And since then, I haven't dabbled in Shimgami Tensei yet. Okay. But in terms of Persona, I, like you, have gone maybe halfway, a little over halfway through Persona 3 Reload.

[00:12:37] And what would have been a year or two ago, I probably got around the same amount into Persona 4 Golden. And then something else came up or an IGN project came in and I had to stop. And one of those things that just fell by the wayside. But after metaphor, I think I am eager to return to those and wrap those up. Yeah. I can only say the same.

[00:13:01] You know, my experience really mirrors what you said, Sam, is I started Persona 5 and bounced off really quickly. And it wasn't because I didn't like it. I did. I agree with you 100%. And this might be a common theme. I didn't feel this way when I started Persona 3 in terms of how slow it was at the beginning. I felt like Persona 3 got you into the mix and got you kind of interested in the characters and progressing the story in a pretty evenly paced way.

[00:13:27] But 110% Persona 5 was very, very similar to that extent where you're like, okay, they kind of were just like asking you to click through a lot of text to figure out, you know, what a dungeon is, how to interact with people at school, how to engage in the social links. And I was like confused. I know the formula now. So I'm really excited to go back. And since I only put like maybe three hours into Persona 5, eventually, you know, when I finish Persona 3 Reload to go back to Royale and finish that experience there. But yeah.

[00:13:56] And also, I'm excited to maybe check out Shin Megami Tensei Vengeance that just released earlier last year. I mean, this studio's level of output has kind of been insane. But because I am not to bury the lead, I loved Metaphor so much and I love my time with it so much. And was seriously enjoying Persona 3 Reload before I put that down as well. I was like, I'm kind of just going to stack my backlog with the Atlas games at this point.

[00:14:22] Yeah, I've been more and more interested in checking out Shin Megami Tensei because I actually, I really like the combat in Metaphor. I'm sure we'll talk about it. But like that was probably one of my favorite things about the game is the combat system. And so to know that the Shin Megami Tensei series is kind of like, you know, we're dampening, we're lessening the social aspects of these games. Yeah. Maybe even the storytelling a little bit.

[00:14:50] And we're just going to make this like a combat sickos RPG. I'm really into stuff like that. So the Shin Megami Tensei series has been calling me, but it's like, it's the same with Metaphor and any Persona game that you haven't played. You look at those and it's like, oh, that's a 90 hour game. So I have to, I mean, I have to dedicate time, like capital T time to this in order to like dig into it. Because I'm not a person that will just sample games. I start a game and I finish like 90% of the games that I start.

[00:15:20] So it's a commitment to play anything, basically anything that Atlas makes in this greater Shin Megami Tensei series. Yeah. 110% of commitment. And I'll tell you this, this game for me was, it was like, I felt so free when I finally rolled credits at the end. Until the two hour epilogue after the credits that were unskippable, by the way. Yeah.

[00:15:42] But I was, it was, I felt very similar at the end of this game to the way, like it just like the feeling of release and just like euphoria. I got when I finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Yeah. And, you know, and to the effect is that the ending of Rebirth was so, so bombastic and so kind of just like liberating and interesting and kind of mysterious.

[00:16:05] And this game in metaphor wasn't as like, you know, take out that mystery part, but just like the ending was kind of what you would expect from that hero's journey quest. And they wrapped it up in a way that kind of I expected, kind of I wouldn't. And I heard somebody else tell me that, you know, Atlas really does love to do their victory laps at the end. And, and that was, that was really, really interesting to hear. But, you know, for me, I loved metaphor. I think that it's a really hefty game.

[00:16:32] Of course, you know, that's the biggest disclaimer I can give listeners going into the game is that, you know, if you have time and you're not playing anything else right now, sure. Give it a shot if you're interested. But other than that, like you have to really be serious if you, if this is something that you actually want to complete, but it is 110% a recommendation from me, from the narrative perspective, from the way that they handled the themes, from the intense combat. Like I love the turn-based combat.

[00:16:57] And again, we'll get a lot deeper into, you know, how that worked, but it was just, this is, I think this is an incredible game. And I think it's one of the best of last year. Yeah, for me, I, just to give some top level thoughts, I'm a little bit less enthusiastic about the way the big story themes were explored. I thought a lot of them were kind of half-baked. Some of them were like, you know, explored to a level that I thought was really interesting.

[00:17:25] And I liked how much they went into it. And then others they brought up and like, didn't really explore to a level that felt satisfactory to me, which is weird to say for a game that took 80 hours. It's like they had the time to do it, but I was a little let down by some of that. But from a gameplay perspective, like I said, it's really interesting going back to Persona 4 right after finishing this game.

[00:17:50] And just seeing like how they have mastered the structure of this kind of game, like the social aspect, the dungeon crawling, the combat, all of this is like they're hitting a thousand now on those things. So now they have the time to throw in all these cool little flourishes along the way. And so it's really kind of unfortunate for Persona 4 that I went straight back to that because then I'm like, I'm missing all of it.

[00:18:17] It's like, you know, it's just a little bare bones in comparison. But I really loved like playing this, like the everything involved with like how they handle social links, dungeon crawling. The dungeons are like way more interesting. I really enjoyed the combat system. I really enjoyed choosing how to spend my time. All of those things were like really cool.

[00:18:41] So despite any like, you know, things that I felt a little bit unsatisfied by the story, I was like overall really, really happy with this game. It was in my, you know, top games from last year. Easily above other, I think like of the three big AAA RPGs that I played last year, FF7, Yakuza, and then this one. This one was the one that placed the highest. That's awesome.

[00:19:08] I can't believe you had the time to play all three of those games last year. I am so jealous because I wanted to play Infinite Wealth so badly. But yeah, that's really awesome. But Sam, where did you add? Where did this land for you overall? Yeah. So we, not to plug it, but we did a top five or an individual top fives over at Save the Game Media. And it didn't make my top five, but it would have certainly been an honorable mention.

[00:19:34] And I think that's mainly just down to the fact that as much as I admire and enjoy playing these games, I don't know that they're always entirely for me necessarily. I see. And that's just primarily based on sort of the games I grew up on and natural, you know, preferences, that kind of thing. But to speak to the game's quality, I think that this has roped me in far more than any Persona has.

[00:20:00] As much as I enjoyed Persona 5, the only one I finished, I think that metaphor, I have no idea if they're intending on continuing this as an IP. But even just as a standalone experience, I think that the world that they create, the characters they present. I'm with Dave in the sense that I feel that there are moments where it verges on wide as an ocean and shallow as a puddle. Yeah. In terms of its commentary and the things that it touches on.

[00:20:27] But I think that they toe the line just enough so that none of it feels too supplementary. It steers more into the world building side of things for me rather than half baked. But I can totally understand how somebody might fall on the other side of that fence. So, yeah, it's hard to recommend for me as well. And this is coming from someone who doesn't play tons of these types of games. I think it's that good. Awesome.

[00:20:55] Yeah, I'm really curious as to, you know, kind of digging into all of those ideas a little bit more. But let's go ahead and take a quick music break because I'm going to plug a ton of music from this incredible soundtrack into the episode here. And then when we come back, we're going to jump into a lot of the functional elements in the gameplay of Metaphor Re Fantasio.

[00:21:57] So, one of the things that I wanted to talk about in jumping into the functionality of this game. Of course, for listeners, keep in mind we're going to be talking about, you know, our top level thoughts, the mechanics of this game up front. And then we're going to try our best to keep as many spoilers, you know, or just kind of like anything related to the story as limited as we can. And then save major spoilers for the final spoiler break at the end. I'm copying Dave. He's the goat at this. I'm terrible at this. I'm going to include spoiler stuff.

[00:22:25] So, this is the thing that we're going to try to do today. But again, if you're very sensitive to spoilers, this is an incredibly narrative heavy game. So, you know, feel free to go ahead and jump out now and come back whenever you've finished or whenever you've played enough of it and hear our top level thoughts. But for the rest of you, please join us. And then we're going to go ahead and jump into our discussion. And I wanted to talk about or start this discussion off by talking about like the visual design, the visual elements of Metaphor Re Fantasio.

[00:22:52] And I think one of the most, I think it's one of the most interesting things and the thing that brought me in. When I first saw this game kind of released, it didn't really show very well when PlayStation or I don't even remember where it was first displayed. If it was a Kili event, Summer Games Fest, or if it was like a PlayStation event. Regardless, when it first dropped, I was like, oh, it's interesting. It's another Persona Atlas game. I confused it with Shin Megami Tensei Vengeance. I really didn't know there was a difference between the two of them at first.

[00:23:20] But whenever it dropped and the demo came out and the demo was free to play, everybody was ranting. And I was raving about this game and I jumped in and it literally just like that first chapter in the just the stunning art kind of is what pulled me in. I was like, I have to play more of this game. I'm a huge fan of fantasy.

[00:23:39] And I think that the way that they incorporated a lot of the fantasy visual elements into like this, this kind of this, this portrait, this painting, you know, of a game. I think it's one of the things that like really, really pulled me in and be like, this is different for me. And I don't mind. I really don't mind like the school simulators. I think those can be really fun. You know, it's fine to put myself. I'm not at that point in my life anymore.

[00:24:05] So, of course, I understand when a lot of people kind of critique it because they say that, you know, the high school life isn't really relatable. And I think that's very fair. But I think that that goes to an extra level that, you know, this game is, you know, following mostly adults, people that are in their young adult or later adult years. And it's got, you know, relatively major adult themes that it does explore. But I think that's heavily represented in the artistic design here. Yeah, it's just like the aesthetics really was significant.

[00:24:34] One of the remarkable things about metaphor that I thought was different from Persona was that they expanded their color palette. I think Persona really heavily relies, you know, you think of three, four, and then five. Three is, of course, blue. I really don't know what four is, if that's yellow or not. Yeah, yellow. Okay. And then five, of course, with the red and the black. You know, it kind of, it's very iconic. I think it's very monolithic the way they do that. But they have this very rich color palette, expanded color palette that they used in metaphor.

[00:25:04] And I thought that it was incredible. And also just like the general character design. And I have a quick note here about the veteran character artist from the Studio Zero, Shigenori Soejima. And he kind of was responsible for creating a lot of the character designs for the main characters as well as the enemies. The listeners can't see it because this is not a video podcast. Otherwise, I would put it on there.

[00:25:26] But yeah, we, so Ejima was inspired by the 14th century Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch for his work, specifically from the Garden of Earthly Delights. And it's really like one for one in the way that he pulled it in and like incorporated that into the game. There are these enemies in metaphor called humans. And the humans kind of are these large, horrific monsters that run across and decimate the land.

[00:25:55] They're capable of wiping out entire populations of people, leveling cities. But, you know, I have for Dave and Sam, just kind of a comparison picture here in between Bosch's paintings, as well as the like some of the character artwork for the humans here. And it's like it's one for one. I was curious, did you did either of you kind of catch on to that? Or what did you think about that design overall? Yeah, I did catch it.

[00:26:20] It's, you know, I wasn't like intimately familiar with the Garden of Earthly Delights before playing this. But, you know, it was brought up in all the media and conversation around metaphors. So I checked it out. I looked more into that painting because it's an interesting painting. It's a trifold painting. So there's three segments. Yeah, triptych. And it's supposedly representing heaven, earth, and hell on the different panels.

[00:26:46] And then the one, the part of it where these monster designs come from is the one that correlates to hell in the painting. So that kind of like, you know, looking that up very early in my playthrough. And for anyone who's listening and thinking about playing it, maybe like keep that tucked in the back of your head as you're thinking about like what's going on in this world here. It's not a big spoiler to say, but that is really interesting.

[00:27:09] And like, I think that Persona Games and Shin Megami Tensei have always had like fantastic monster designs. And they were always like based on, you know, things from mythology and different cultures and, you know, religion and stuff like that. And so pulling from, you know, art and like some of this like very cool and fucked up art like Hieronymus Bosch here.

[00:27:33] It's just like a really awesome design and very in line with like what obviously what this character artist has done in the past. And I'm like you, Nick, like when I saw the trailer, it was like literally seeing the trailer. And I think they even showed some of like the menus and UI in the trailer. Which is so weird. Yeah, but it's only literally only this series. I would look at a trailer and be like that menu looks so cool. I can't wait to play this game. But that's what I thought when I saw that trailer.

[00:28:02] I was like, oh, this is that's right. The Persona 5 menus were super cool too. Like it's the only studio where I'm like, man, they do menus so cool. It's the only one. It's insane. Yeah. But that was like that was part of the draw for me too. Like just seeing this insane stylish art direction translated into like a different form. Yeah.

[00:28:25] Yeah, I think in terms of the art design generally, it's very European in comparison to I think some of even just other Atlus games. But other JRPGs in general. I mean, I suppose you could say it's not classed as a JRPG. But like Final Fantasy 16 was also very European. Yeah. Recently. And as a Brit, you know, got to love that. I love a little bit of European representation.

[00:28:55] It feels very British specifically at times. I think it's. And looking at the monster designs, again, the listeners can't see it. But I, there was a weird feeling of deja vu when I saw it. And I couldn't quite pin down why I felt like I'd seen it before. And I certainly have seen these paintings before. But I would never have correlated the two.

[00:29:23] But that kind of, in a weird way, lent another layer to the otherworldly creepiness of the humans. Because I felt like I'd seen it before. And it's almost like that thing where you can half recall a dream or a nightmare. And you see something that you can't quite explain. And you just don't quite know why your brain is picturing this thing. Yeah. I think it's incredibly effective across the board. For the monsters especially.

[00:29:51] It's like this studio and From Software are the two studios where I get into a fight. And I look at what I'm fighting. I'm like, what is that thing? Look at that thing. And it's just so cool to see. Yeah, it's incredible. It's even by the end of the introductory sequence when you actually face your first human. And it serves as the combat tutorial. Or at least the turn-based combat tutorial. You get a little bit before that whenever you, you know, there's a small egg that you fight.

[00:30:20] But then you fight like the big boss that, you know, represents itself as a human. And it's just, it's really interesting. It's dreadful. I loved your characterization there, Sam, about kind of that nostalgic feeling. I had those same notes on my end as well. It's like, I feel like I've been here before. And that even, you know, supersedes just the enemy design. It's even more just like the environmental design as well.

[00:30:46] I loved, you know, of course, you know, those European accents and just the idea of traveling those cities. Whether you're in Grand Trad or you're in Brilehaven. It's every kind of setting has this air of familiarity. Which is like, I personally think that's really hard to pull off. Um, because I've played several games immediately before this and I don't get those, those feelings. I don't get those emotions transcended as well or as effective, um, as I think that they were

[00:31:16] able to accomplish here. So really, really big cute kudos to them. I think it's, this is one of the major accomplishments of the game's presentation overall. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Putting you in this kind of like fantasy world, but it's not fantasy as, as we might think of it in, you know, like Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy, but it's very clearly not, you know, our world. It's not, it's like the halfway point between like persona, except, you know, it's more of

[00:31:43] like medieval or older type of look to like the cities and stuff like that. But it's not, you know, people living in straw huts or anything like that either, like stone castles. Like these are modern ish cities we'll say, but it's, it's not our world. And it's not like the fantasy when I, when I would say, Hey, picture a fantasy world, picture the people and races that live there. Uh, you know, it's not that it's not elves and dwarves and, you know, stuff like that either.

[00:32:13] It's, it's unique. They really went out of their way to kind of make so much of like the gameplay and of, you know, the presentation overall unique. And it's like, Hey, and that's one of the most interesting things about metaphors that yes, it incorporates and it pulls from so many different artistic styles, whether that's in real world or just, you know, from different gameplay systems of their history. Right. But it is so wholly unique at its core. And I think that it's more approachable. Um, it's interesting.

[00:32:41] I was reading developer notes and I think Hushino, who was the lead director for this game, uh, was tasked with creating a new IP for the studio zero under Atlas to be like, okay, we don't want to create another mainline persona game, but we want to create something that people can come into and be new fans of that will inspire them to try and reach out and grab some of our other properties. And I think that was an accomplishment. I think they, they did it here for the most part.

[00:33:07] It is interesting though, because I keep hearing this theme from other, you know, critics and reviewers and stuff is that a lot of people just don't attach to fantasy or high fantasy. I feel like this does squarely fall until we get into the weirder elements of the narrative. This does squarely fall into the realm of high fantasy. Oh yeah. But I, but I loved your comment there, Dave, about like, yeah, this is not, this is not your isekai, right? Like you don't have, you know, you're not the traveler from the other world and coming

[00:33:33] and, you know, trying to, you know, overlevel yourself to defend your, you know, your companions. But this is a, it is unique and it's one of the things I loved about it. And to add onto that, Nick, I think something else that metaphor deserves a lot of praise for talking just even about artistic design, but just game design on the whole is that you have this, you know, meticulously designed world that they've crafted full of lore and various settlements.

[00:34:03] And all of it is again, you know, very European, very grounded, very believable with characters within it act realistically. And then you have these presentationally horrific or miraculous things, you know, a floating castle in the sky with a face on it or these human monsters. And they're so fantastical. And then they lean into that high fantasy that you talk about, but the fact that you have the juxtaposition of that grounded reality of the world that they've set these miraculous

[00:34:31] things in, you never really question it. It's, it's all taken very seriously. There's never really any, I mean, when you're first presented with a human or you see the face in the sky, you have a split second as a, as a, as a player where you think, you know, what the hell is this? But yeah, the, they never linger on it. It's just that it's an accepted part of the reality that they live in. And I think that they, they flow those things together so well that by the end of the journey,

[00:34:59] you kind of look back and you think, Christ, a lot happened there where I just, I was just, I bought it, you know, I bought in almost immediately. And that's very impressive. Yeah. I think it's a direct result of, because of what you said, they took this story, they took this narrative seriously. I think they made big swings, whether or not that landed for everybody, whether or not they fully kind of resolved a lot of the narrative threads that they started or explored the themes

[00:35:26] to the extent that kind of made it feel like they understood the themes. I feel as though that they, they figured out how to couch the narrative in a way that was going to present very seriously to the audience, but not, they're not like leaning on a point, right? They're not overly kind of bearing down on their throats. And of course, the most recent episode that we did, Dragon Age Veilguard, I liked Veilguard for a lot of things that they tried. Overall, I didn't really think it was a great game, right? Like, I didn't think like they nailed a lot of the points here.

[00:35:56] And I think one of the principal elements is that there was, there was a lot of maturity in the writing of a lot of different aspects of metaphoric Fantasio. And that separates it from a lot of the elements that I experienced in Veilguard and a lot of the ways that they tried to convey the characters. And I think that's one of the most successful points. It's, I think it's the characters that really do sell the story. Those were the highlight moments of emotion and the things that made it kind of more grounded and based

[00:36:23] in reality was the fact that everything kind of was like, these were people. These, I respected every single character as a person. I didn't treat Heismay as this like bunny rabbit thing. He wasn't like, he wasn't kind of a clown as you would expect a character like that to be. I liked Galaga and I expected Galaga to be the same level as the cat character from Persona 5. I don't remember their name. Morgana?

[00:36:48] Morgana. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say one of the things that they, they really succeed at that, that Sam touched on is that they sell this world to you really well and they sell the people in it. So like whatever's capable, whatever's possible in this world, whether it's the type of magic that regular people can use, whether it's using the igniters or like the type of magic that your characters are capable of without it, but then all the

[00:37:14] way up to like the King's magic that's, you know, controlling and setting the rules and guidelines for this, this election that's going on. All of that is believable. They sell all that stuff to you really well. So you do see like a wild range of possibility within the world, but none of it ever feels like that, you know, that's too much or something like that. So that's great. And then, you know, part of selling you the world is, is the characters that

[00:37:41] you experience the world through. Now I was a little bit less satisfied with the characters. I, I do, I do think Galaga is great and playing Persona 4 right now, Teddy is really fucking annoying. I hate Teddy so much. Morgana, I was like fine with, but I didn't love Morgana. Uh, Galaga is a big step up for that kind of like sidekick navigator guide type character. You know,

[00:38:08] the one that's in the battles talking to you as you're fighting, like that stuff, all these games have one of those. I think Galaga is the best one that I've experienced. Um, the other characters, like they, it's a range, but so like the basic setup is that this is a world with social inequality, racism, things like that based on the different tribes throughout the world. Um, different tribes are treated differently, different tribes like, and dislike other tribes, stuff like that. My,

[00:38:37] my thing with this, these characters that you get is that with like one exception, all of the characters that you get are like the perfect ideal version of that tribe where like, you don't get people that have, um, big character flaws where they're like, there's one character that's like racist against another character that I forget who it is. I think it's like Heismay. Heismay doesn't trust someone or someone doesn't trust Heismay because Heismay gets along with Basilio. Yeah.

[00:39:06] I think that's it. Right. Those are the two other than that. It's like you have these tribes set up and it's like, you know, this, this tribe thinks that they're better than everybody, but the one that joins your party, they're perfect. They don't think that they're better than anybody. Like I, I kind of was disappointed that most of the people in your party are like the boy scout perfect version, like

[00:39:28] most tolerant good boy version of, you know, this tribe, uh, while some of them do exhibit the strengths and weaknesses of their tribes in interesting ways, like, um, uh, what's her name? Yufa. Yufa is a good example of that and her naivety and stuff like that. Overall, it's like, I, I like Stroll. I like Hulkenberg. I like a lot of the characters like hanging out, good party members, stuff

[00:39:56] like that. But their role in the story was a little bit of a letdown to me because your protagonist character is also the single most tolerant person in the entire world. And then you gather the like six other most tolerant people in the entire world for your party. It was like, you know, in a game that's about, well, one of the things that it tries to set up is this, you know, story about social

[00:40:21] inequality and social justice and trying to, you know, put everybody on equal footing throughout the land and stuff like that. And your characters are already there. Like there's not much work to be done within your characters and they don't, they're not representatives of the, their own tribes. Like they're not going to go back and teach their people how to be more tolerant. You just have the most perfect people in your party. So like, I like them as a general party. I like the group. I like them as

[00:40:50] individual characters a lot, but I was kind of let down when like the first half of this game and part of it is that it's, it's like kind of just the first half of this game. That's about this. And like, you, you seem to just pick up the most noble version of that tribe for your party. Like every time. Yeah, I see what you're saying there. Like, and that's something that is interesting. And I, I was wondering about this because I was wondering if it was because of my play style,

[00:41:20] because I either always spoke to stroll or I always spoke to Hulkenberg in order to increase my royal virtues. Like I, those were the things that I wanted to do as my playthrough because I was trying to min max my playthrough. I was wondering why it felt like none of the other characters were talking to each other, that I was just the protagonist steering the ship and everybody was kind of along for the ride. There were occasional moments where it did happen. Like, you know, cluing in that, you know, uh, that, uh, Heismate doesn't necessarily care for Basilio or they have

[00:41:49] like a begrudging friendship, kind of like a Legolas Gimli styled, uh, relationship, you know, towards the end, of course. Uh, but you know, something that was interesting, you know, I remember Persona 3 Reload, there was constantly moments where Yukari and Junpei were at each other's throats and nagging each other. And I think that if I'm, I mean, of course I haven't finished any Persona game, so please feel free to step in. But like, I imagine that a lot of those characters

[00:42:14] by the end, they have their own social links. They have their own quest, um, quest progression systems, but I imagine they also have character growth over the course of time. And you're right, a lot of these characters are perfect. I mean, is, is, is that true? I mean, is that true that like over the course of time in Persona games that a lot of the characters change throughout? I don't remember enough of Persona 5's, like, characters' individual stories to comment there.

[00:42:42] Persona 4, I'm about halfway through and I can say that those, some of those characters do have, like, very glaring character flaws. You know, like, they're, it's interesting when we talk about Persona, because you're playing as teenagers. So a lot of, like, the, the flaws that I see in Persona 4's characters, like, you know, they're, they're teenagers. Like, teenagers are shitty sometimes. And then, so it kind of feels, it feels good to have flaws. Now, some of the conversations that

[00:43:10] they get into and, like, interpersonal issues that they have feel not great to see play out and have those represented in fiction, I don't want to say too much, but. Like, like, problematic or? You know, there are conversations to be had about whether character interactions are problematic or not, or whether it's just a depiction of a character that has problematic character traits, which, you know, there's a difference between problematic writing and problem, like, characters

[00:43:39] that are just shitty, you know? The thing in metaphor is that nobody's shitty. Everybody's nice to everybody, with the exception of, yeah, well, the, the exception of the enemies, but with the exception of Heismay and, you know, Basilio not really getting along. And, like, people in the outside world don't trust Heismay because of his race. But every single one of your characters is, like, no, Heismay's, Heismay's great. I love Heismay. Like, they would get to that point naturally,

[00:44:05] I think, through going through the story together. But everybody comes into your party, for the most part, just open and willing to learn and willing to be super tolerant. And, like, the rest of the world is not like that at all. So it's kind of like a clash of, like, why, why do I have this party of these perfect, you know, perfect characters? I don't really want that. I don't need that. That is interesting, especially considering the fact that these characters prior towards meeting the

[00:44:35] protagonist have had years to have feelings or opinions without being introduced to the idea of the book. So listeners, like, one of the core ideas about the protagonist, right, is that he, he read a novel. He found a novel. It's not really, you don't, it's not really understood or explained why, but he has a novel in his hand always, and it's always with him. And whenever he has a free time,

[00:45:01] he's always thumbing through the pages of this novel. And one of the core themes that we are going to talk about later in terms of, you know, how effective it was, was the idea of, you know, the utopia. Hashino said that utopia was the, like, one kind of, like, keyword that you could apply towards metaphor and kind of the idea that explores what does it mean to be a utopia? What does it mean to live within one and be a member of a society in a utopia? And I think that it explores, you know, obviously Thomas More's utopia book.

[00:45:30] The book Utopia from the real world. Yeah. Yeah. And More is the character who's essentially like, I'm assuming that the guy in the velvet room is Satan. I don't really know, but he's basically like the guy in the velvet room who's always talking to the protagonist and letting him understand, you know, letting you understand your different archetypes and try to study the archetypes and increase your, you know, your power for combat systems and everything. Yeah. But yeah. And so the idea is, is that this, the character,

[00:46:00] the main character protagonist is trying to change the world and build the world and the idea of this utopic society, which is literally our world. So this book Utopia is describing our present world. And it's, it talks about, you know, this is the civilization of people, multicultural societies. There, there, there aren't, there aren't multiple, like, I guess, like races of beings. There's just

[00:46:25] one race. And then everybody amongst that race kind of lives in the society and agrees upon set standards of social equality. And the idea is that the protagonist wants to build that world. Yeah. They talk about that kind of at the, they dovetail it at the end there. Um, and we can dig in a little bit later on, you know, what was good or bad about that. But I think that something that was interesting at the very least is that the idea is that, you know, of course I said at the beginning

[00:46:51] during the story set up, the protagonist is engaging in this race. The course of this game takes place during an election, the, the race and, or the tournament, which is what the, the Holy Church of Eukromia, I can't remember if there was a different name for the church or not. Um, but they essentially create this tournament and said that this person who gains the most support from the followers and inspires the populace will succeed the throne. This is also a directive because once

[00:47:17] the King was assassinated, he became like, uh, like, you know, Dave and Sam described earlier, uh, the castle that's in the main town grand trad rose into the air and his face was superimposed upon the rock. And you just see this giant face glaring down at the people that said, you know, okay, uh, we're going to, we're going to engage in democracy now after, you know, how many years of aristocracy I'm assuming. Uh, and, and so whoever wins the support of the people is going to be the

[00:47:46] new King. That's it. It's interesting. You say that because they never say it's going to be a democracy. It's a, I think it's a thing that, um, I think a lot of people finish metaphor and are disappointed in the direction that the story took because they saw the word election and they connect the dots to it's going to be democracy afterward when they never say that they always say it's a new King. We're make, we're electing a new King. Yeah. And whether the King wants to institute democracy,

[00:48:16] that's up to them. But like for right now we're electing, we're, we're choosing a new King. Um, but back to the book and like, Sam, I would like to hear your thoughts too. Um, so like Nick said, the protagonist takes this book around when you meet new characters, when they first join your party, you always show the book to them. And it's like, you know, uh, they always say like, can I look at the book and they open it up and it's like, Oh, look at this chapter. They're talking about how

[00:48:41] there's religious freedom in, in this utopian society. And then, then it like causes you the characters to be like, okay, I'm on board with your plan. And like, to me, that's a little childish to just be like, has nobody been dreaming about this before they read this book? Like, has nobody been oppressed by the church or oppressed by, uh, you know, racism or something like that. And, and thought like, it would be nice to live in a world where this doesn't exist. Cause that's

[00:49:09] the feeling I got when these characters read this book where it suddenly dawns on them that like, Oh, there's another way. And like, I don't know if it's because like things were so shitty before that they like, couldn't think about something like that. But like, to me that conceit of the book, I like the ideas that are like big spoilers that I won't talk about right now concerning utopia and

[00:49:33] the, the plan. But the idea that reading a couple of pages from this book just changes these characters lives. And then they join your party and they're like perfect soldiers, perfect people from then on. It's like, I don't know, man, it's a little childish to me. Yeah. I think, I think to sort of all encompass the characters and then this, this idea of utopia via the novel, it's, I would agree. It was the one section that sort of gave

[00:50:03] me a little bit of narrative dissonance in the sense that I imagine what they were aiming to do was to paint the idea that the protagonist is such an altruistic, um, you know, well, well-intentioned person, uh, that they strive to, your party strives to be the best version of themselves around you. Um, because they all have, you know, their side stories where they're dealing with one

[00:50:30] thing or another and highlight some kind of flaw. But, um, Dave's point is absolutely correct that they are really the, the shining beacons at the top of each of their respective tribes. Um, and I feel that that is in a narrative that is trying to convey this idea of coming together at a point of disconnection and anger. I feel like, yes, the party coming together and being unite on a

[00:50:57] united front is the correct message, but it's strange that you're by default at that point with every single member you bring in. I feel that there is something interesting. Maybe this, this could be a pretty pessimistic take on the game, um, that I don't think is the intention, but it could be a read that you, you walk away with is that, you know, the, the game tackles a lot of things, including

[00:51:21] religion. You know, we've talked about the church. I feel that there is maybe something there where, you know, Dave, you say they, they read a couple of pages of the book and they're immediately this, this best version of themselves and they want to do all that they can to help the protagonist. Is there something there on the idea of, of radicalization perhaps in terms of reading what is

[00:51:46] in, in this world probably viewed as some kind of retrospectively sacred text, um, that is shaping the world and portraying this idea of an ideal society and how people should act. It's very, it gave me vibes of, you know, 10 commandments and the Bible and, or any, any religious texts for that matter. Um, and I feel that there is something there maybe where again,

[00:52:15] probably not intentionally, um, I look for the darker, uh, more pessimistic takes more often than not. But I think that there is maybe something there where even though the protagonist is very clearly by the end of the game, the right person to back, um, of all of the, the runners, I, I do think that maybe there is some commentary that you could extract on the idea of blind faith because you like the thing that you see or you like the thing that you hear enough that

[00:52:44] you decide to believe it. Um, and that can be viewed in a very positive light as well. You know, that is a aspirational thing if you choose to view it that way. But I think it is also a slippery slope that, you know, we, as people in the real world and people in the world of metaphor and Ukrainian should probably be careful to, to not fall off of that tight rope. Yeah. I really liked that idea of radicalization through the text, right? You, you see that I,

[00:53:14] that theme repeated so many different times. There are so many different characters in this story that have been radicalized because they cannot see a better way. And to your point, Dave, something that I have been thinking about for a while now is, is, you know, you're saying all of a sudden they, they read this book and they're like, I agree with you for, you know, from a, from a formatting perspective and a pacing perspective, I feel like they just kind of needed to keep the story, you know, moving along kind of at breakneck pace for whatever reason. But I feel like, you know, to,

[00:53:43] to your point, a lot of people in America don't realize that we're not really in a functional democracy anymore. Right. Like, I feel like everybody believes that we are. And I would, if I were to explain, you know, try and try and, you know, impose my thoughts upon the writers for this game, it's that, you know, everybody lives in this aristocracy. Everybody does live in this world where, you know, where it's just, you know, constant prejudice and bias and oppression and

[00:54:11] subjugation is, is just, it is everywhere. It is inescapable. Right. So at what point, and of course, you know, we realize major story things about the civilization and what happened to the societies that are, or why those societies are present in the modern day. But like, I think that's one of the reasons why they're like, oh, this is an interesting idea. I'm willing to follow you. And I think it's also, you know, the charisma or the assumed charisma. I thought, you know, we talk about like the main

[00:54:39] character. The main character is like not a strong character. I think the voice actor did his good job. He's super boring. He's super boring. It's, it's lead by example, because you are the most perfect boy. That's, that's what it is. And it's, it's interesting too, because, uh, you know, this is a world full of racial inequality and your character is from the most hated race, which is why your message

[00:55:04] of like, you know, we can make a utopia is not followed by the main, by the people. One of the reasons why is purely because you're from this race that they don't like, uh, for, for a lot of the cases, but it's not an issue for anyone who's thinking about joining your party. And like, fair enough, like it's not an issue for literally everyone in the world, but you are the, you're on

[00:55:27] the bottom rung, uh, we'll say your, your character's race. So, uh, it's just, it's interesting when we think about why people join up with your character, it's not because of their charisma. It's just because they are literally the most perfect person in the world. Yeah. And the fact that they're of a different race that has been subjugated, right? Like, so they, so I feel like they all share a

[00:55:54] certain level of, I have been, I've been discriminated against. Therefore we have this shared, this shared grounding point, right? Like you, you understand the struggles that I've been through with the exception of stroll, because I would imagine the clamar are the dominant, uh, race in this world. I don't know. I don't think that, I don't think that everybody else has been oppressed. Everyone else definitely has stuff going on like personal failures in their past or

[00:56:20] oppression in some cases. Uh, some of them do, but like stroll and Hulkenberg, like, I don't think that that's part of their story really. No, no. Okay. Let's go ahead and jump in to some more of the gameplay. Yeah. When we talk about metaphoric Fantasio. So I wanted to first, I, I kind of have some of these sections, sections jumbled up. I, something that I has really been kind of nagging at me that I really wanted to just vent on this show and talk to you

[00:56:48] both about your thoughts on this is the calendar system. Okay. Get it out. I, okay. So I don't think that it's bad and I was going back and forth, but I just, I, I don't like deadlines. I don't operate under deadlines in my real life very well. And so when you put, give me a deadline in a video game, I'm like, ah, but I want to do all these other things. Why are you giving me the deadlines? And I think that, um, you know, at the end of the day, it's kind of just

[00:57:12] made it add a lot more unnecessary stress when I feel like this game, because of the linearity that's in this game, because of a lot of it is accept quest, do quest, turn quest in. This could have been more of a chapter, like chapter by chapter. Okay. Here's the moments where you can accept these things. And the game doesn't really give you the structure, um, to do the things. I think from a JRPG perspective, it's living up to the legacy of the Shin Megami Tensei and the Persona

[00:57:40] franchise, right? So it's carrying forward. It's a format, it's a system that players are familiar with, but I just like, I felt like I was struggling and I realized that this is a me problem. I need to get good. Um, but I know I misallocated my time. I know I didn't, I didn't streamline the efficiency. I never knew who to talk to, whether or not I needed to increase my bond rank with someone or go and increase my like, uh, social link, what they call in this game, Royal virtues. Um, you know,

[00:58:08] if somebody who should be a King should have these values, these virtues, these traits as King should have. Um, so yeah, that's something that I just like, I really struggled with. And I was curious what you thought. Did you, did you not mind it? Was this what you expected? Um, I think I, I would probably agree with you, but for different reasons, I think, you know, as you say, it's a staple particularly of, of Persona games. I think I appreciate the calendar

[00:58:36] system here on a conceptual, um, and sort of design level, um, or should I say narrative? Because of course it kind of makes sense that there's a looming election. So, you know, counting down the days, it does sort of ramp up the tension even artificially, but I think in practice for me, I don't know that it landed. Um, not necessarily for the idea of, you know, stressing about deadlines, as you said,

[00:59:03] Nick or anything, but I felt like you say that the turning in of the quest and doing a quest and doing a thing, and then you see the clock loading screen and then you do one thing and then you see the clock loading screen. I felt it, it is present in other Atlas games, but I felt it slowed the pace for me more than I felt in other titles. Yeah. Um, and I also kind of realized, and again, this might be

[00:59:29] down to streamlining the way that we do it, or, or I might've missed some stuff, I will admit, but I realized probably about halfway through the game that I wasn't really sensing that, that fear from the clock, uh, the days ticking by anymore. Um, cause I, I'm sure I know that you technically do miss stuff. You can't do every single quest that you get, but I'd, I'd have

[00:59:53] appreciated the calendar a bit more if there were like definitive big milestone things that I either would have to miss because I chose something else, or there were moments in the story where I had to choose between doing this or that. Um, I felt that I'm pretty sure I'm sure I missed some quests here and there, smaller ones, but I managed to clear every object, every objective, main objective,

[01:00:20] of course, I managed to max out every virtue, max out every relationship, um, and do every single quest that I came across that had a deadline. Yeah. I managed to do all of that with time to spare. And therefore I kind of felt like some of the imminency and dread of that impending next big story beat date, um, kind of diminished for me. Um, but that is entirely subjective, of course.

[01:00:47] Um, I don't know what Dave's experience was, but I felt that it didn't ruin the game for me by any stretch, but I felt like it kind of became a superfluous mini annoyance by the end. Yeah. For me, I did get the feeling that I had to be wise with my choices of how to spend my time. Uh, I did not max everything. I did run out of time on, uh, maxing out some character bonds.

[01:01:14] I did all the side quests, including the optional, like super mega boss stuff at the end of the game. I did all that stuff. Um, but I did it like with literally one day left to spare before the final point of no return. And I missed, there were probably three characters that I didn't max the, um, uh, I didn't max their bonds. I did not max my Royal virtues because I didn't always use my time in

[01:01:41] the most efficiently, uh, efficient way possible. So like, I do think that it's cool in this game. Um, and like, there's, there's, there's strengths to both sides. I can see both sides of this argument where like in the older persona games, you really can't do everything. You can't max everybody's bonds, even if you min max your time. And I like that. I like, there's the, you know, you choose to hang out with this person. There's a cost of something else you could have done,

[01:02:08] but I still got that in metaphor because I obviously I didn't max everything. Like I was being fairly efficient, but I didn't get there. So I did get that effect. What I liked about this is it introduced more ways for you to spend your time, including like, so you're going to go on this side quest. It's no longer a matter of, well, let me hop into mementos for one evening

[01:02:37] and go do a side quest. Now it's a road trip and they introduce stuff that can complicate your road trips. Like maybe it takes multiple days to get there. Maybe the weather is going to be terrible when I get there. So the monsters are going to be harder. So like I need to plan around the weather right now may not be the best time to go on that side quest. Maybe leaving two days later is better. So now I need to do something different today and tomorrow. Like I really liked planning that stuff.

[01:03:03] And like, there's one part, you know, in a late region where I planned like, like a nine day road trip that scooped up like four side quests and like a bunch of other stuff that I had. And like, I was so happy planning that out and executing it. And like, you know, like the weather lines up perfectly. Today's the day we're going. And then we go and boom, boom, boom, boom, knock out all these side quests. It was like 10 hours of gameplay to do all this stuff.

[01:03:30] I love that so much. I loved the fact that it made me like really plan and like commit to, I'm going to spend 10 days of this calendar doing this big road trip plan that I have. And if it gets messed up halfway through, then I either have to live with it or I have to reload a save and redo some of that stuff. Like I love the fact that they introduced all these complications

[01:03:56] in there. And I like, I like the calendar system here because I feel like they gave you better information here than in persona where you go to hang out with someone in persona and they're like, you're, you're not ready to advance your social link. Do you want to hang out with them? And I'd be like, well, no, not really, but you have to, you have to hang out with them to get more points with them. Is it going to be next time I hang out when we advance the rank who fucking knows in

[01:04:25] metaphor? You go hang out one time. It raises the rank one time. It's all very predictable and it helps you plan. And that planning aspect works for me so much better in metaphor than it has in the two persona games I've played, because I feel like I have the information to make the plan that I want, how I want to spend my time, like the best in persona. I'm just kind of like, eh, today I'll do this. Let me look at what's available. All right, I'll do that. And in metaphor, like I was planning days,

[01:04:55] weeks in advance for what I wanted to do. It's a wonder I didn't spend like more time in the menus looking at that calendar, just being like, all right, there's this on this day. And then there's a sale on this day. So I'm going to make sure I'm back in town. Yeah, exactly. So like the calendar really worked for me. Okay. I really appreciate that. And I think to my effect too, is that part of this game I was looking at, I was, I was kind of looking at it like, ah, I really want to,

[01:05:21] my biggest failure is I get halfway through games and then decide that I want to get the platinum or I want to get a hundred percent achievements. Not this one. You can't do it. You just can't do it. Not definitely not this one. One thing, you know, to, to counteract exactly, you know, my own complaints about the calendar system is that, uh, for players, if you're jumping in there and you're confused about what to do, they offer a really, you know, user-friendly function where, when you are in the overworld, you can press the select button. I don't know what it is on the

[01:05:48] keyboard bindings, but you press the select button on your controller. Um, and it will show you like, uh, when you're connected to, you know, online services, the percentage of what everybody chose to do. Did, did someone travel to a dungeon? Did someone spend time with a, uh, with a, with a companion or did they increase a Royal virtue? You know, what did they do? And you can kind of see wherever you're at in a story where most people ended up allocating their time. And sometimes it's like a 50, 50 split, you know, you can kind of figure out and feel out what you want to do.

[01:06:18] And once you have a feel of like that rhythm, um, it can help you. I agree with you, Dave, like, you know, definitely there were times where I was like, Oh, okay, this is cool. And I'm, and I, and I realized that I went on a trip and then I skipped picking up a quest before I went on that trip. And I had, and I like burned days. I like wasted days and I had to go back, pick up a quest from an NPC and then go back to that same route. So it's like, you know, it's, it's a lot of the, it is, it's, you know, you just trial a little bit of guesswork here and there. And then the game

[01:06:48] does a pretty decent job of tutorializing and like telling you where you like need to go and do stuff. And, um, yeah, Sam to, to your point too, as a, you know, I increased all my Royal virtues. I increased all my bond ranks and I did like, uh, the fact that everything was pretty straightforward in linear. It was like, okay, this, this person, one thing that it gave the met one thing that metaphor does not tell you, uh, super upfront or well is that you have to increase certain Royal

[01:07:16] virtues prior towards progressing the bond ranks. So like, for example, Maria, she's this little girl that you meet in the main town, grand trad. She's like one of the first people and she's a super valuable companion because every companion that you have or every follower, they call it followers in the game. Every follower you have is tied to an archetype that you're able to use. And whenever you do a, uh, a bond rank, whenever you talk to your followers, uh, it gives you, you know, obviously

[01:07:44] it increases the power or the capacity to modify that archetype as well as it gives you like certain passives. Like for example, Maria's passive is really popular one to be the first to upgrade because it's allows you to cook, um, without losing time in the, uh, gauntlet runner. And so it's, it's interesting how they have these systems that are folded in upon themselves. I just think that a lot of the times, like the Royal virtues, I didn't really care about. I think it was cool

[01:08:11] because it's like, it gave you a reason to talk to NPCs and understand contextual elements of what's going on in, you know, uh, uh, in like grand trad or what's going on in, uh, the Mustari area that they have. Uh, I can't remember some of the names of the towns, but yeah, it's, it kind of, it gives you a little bit of an understanding of like what's happening in your environment, which is neat when you're going to do that. But it just, other than just to grind those Royal virtues in order to max

[01:08:39] out all your bond ranks, I didn't really, it just didn't hit for me. It didn't really care that much about it besides the one where you can go bungee jumping in that one town. That was fun. I like that.

[01:08:50] Yeah. I'm not sorry. I'm also learning in real time that I'm a, I must just be a bit of a gung

[01:09:33] ho madman because I, I certainly paid attention to the weather, but I, I think almost every single that's what I did and ventured out anyway. Um, so that, that, that probably altered my play style of my experience a little bit. It is like generally fine, but like one of the things to kind of talk about dungeon crawling a little bit, like one of the things that they do to make sure

[01:09:58] or to like try to limit how much dungeon crawling you can do is, uh, to limit your, your magic points, whatever they're called in this game. I forget already, but yeah. So to, to limit that to make sure that you can't just like be in the dungeon forever and to limit the restorative items that will help you regain that. And so if the combat's harder, then I'm going to use more of those points and I'm going to be able to do less of, you know, a dungeon. And I like,

[01:10:27] if I'm on that nine day road trip that I want to knock that dungeon out in one go, I don't want to spend another night here and come back tomorrow. So like just checking the weather forecast and lining that up. Like I, I have become kind of like a planning sicko in RPGs like this. Like I want to make a plan before starting something. And I want that plan to matter whether it's like what gear I

[01:10:53] put on my characters or, you know, in this case, what day I go to a dungeon, uh, what, you know, route I take through the world to like scoop up these quests. As I go, I want my decisions to matter in as many ways as possible. And I, I feel like, like this really, really like tickled that tickled that scratch that itch. I was going to say tickled that itch. That's not how tickling or itches

[01:11:18] work. Uh, um, and then like when you have like the big main story dungeons that are like these big, they're supposed to be big multi-day affairs, uh, where you're going to run out of, you're probably going to run out of magic before you can do them all in one day. It, I liked trying to push as far as I can. It feels like, you know, I think like the persona persona five,

[01:11:43] like would kick you out of the dungeon for story stuff. A lot of times. Um, whereas persona four, I've done them all in one go. And it's, it's interesting to have them like go back to, cause this Shin Megami Tensei. And then like, they have like another spinoff series. That's like real dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawlers. Like this feels like going back to their roots where like plan to go into the dungeon, make sure you're well-equipped, get as far as you can come back out, rest, then try

[01:12:12] again the next day. And I really liked that. And so it set up this thing where it felt great to get through a story dungeon in one go, because it was a struggle for me to do that. And I could have backed out, but like I pushed on, I get to one more save room or maybe I get to finish the entire thing in one go. It feels awesome because it's the result of the planning and like execution of a

[01:12:37] strategy to get through a dungeon in one go that I thought about as I was going through it, as opposed to just like, you know, you get through the dungeon in one go, because that's what you do in RPGs nowadays. Like think about a dungeon in most games, like you don't need to come out to rest outside of a dungeon in, you know, a final fantasy or something like that. You just go in, you just do it and then it's over. And metaphor made, you know, you have these big story dungeons,

[01:13:05] there's supposed to be these big epic, you know, affairs, big quests. And it kind of felt that way. So like whether it took me two days because it was really big or I planned poorly, or if I was able to knock it out in one day, both of those felt good to me from a like, you know, RPG dungeon crawling perspective, we'll say. I completely agree with you when it comes to the dungeon crawling, it comes to

[01:13:31] like min maxing the way that you approach that dungeon, whether or not it's arranging your archetype lineages in a way that's advantageous to the types of enemies that are in there or scheduling the days that you're going to do it or thinking about, okay, I have these number of weeks or these number of days to address this dungeon. And then the rest of time is free time that I can spend on companions. Dude. And I love how NPCs in town, if you take the time, will give you information about

[01:13:59] the dungeon, the one, you know, the informant NPC, like if you pay for the information, you can learn something about the dungeon and then that will help you plan your party with the best archetype makeups. And then that's going to help you go further in the dungeon in one day, as opposed to just like struggling through wasting magic on stuff that's not super helpful. Like, I love that. I love like, it's a simple thing to go talk to that NPC and pay a little bit for information, but then like

[01:14:27] the, everything matters. It feels like every decision that you make, as far as prep goes, it feels like it all matters. And that's what I want from an RPG like this. Not that's not even talking about combat yet. Yeah. I have, I have a question. Um, did, did either of you guys use the, the mage archetype at all on the protagonist? Yes. Yes. A lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I was

[01:14:53] just thinking like maybe I, again, I don't know whether it's luck or it could, it could, I can't remember what difficulty I had it set on actually, to be honest. Um, not the lowest one, that's for sure. Um, but the, the, whichever archetype you assign to the protagonist, it gets a, a specific special passive bonus. Right. And the mage archetype will let you naturally regenerate MP every time you

[01:15:21] defeat an enemy, um, outside of the, the turn based. Um, so in, if, you know, if you're exploring a dungeon, you're able to unaware, take out an enemy in one hit, you'll naturally restore MP. I, so I, I, I outside of maybe one, I think I did clear every single dungeon within a day. So that also probably lent into my previous comment about managing to do basically everything.

[01:15:48] Yeah. Um, yeah. So, but I certainly strategized a lot with my other party members, but I basically kept mage on my protagonist for as long as I possibly could. You just reminded me too. Um, I use the mage on the protagonist a lot in like boss fights or in certain dungeons, but I didn't use it all the time because you have that like out of turn-based kind of action combat to try and like get the drop on an enemy or to, you know, knock them out. If you're

[01:16:17] much higher level, you just kill them in one hit. It's great. Uh, but the mage's attack on the, like outside of turn-based combat is dog shit. It's so, it's awful to use. And so a lot of times I would not use the mage. I would use the seeker or something that had a sword or the, um, whatever the faker, uh, whatever that trickster, whatever those things are called that have throwing knives.

[01:16:42] Like I would use those because those attacks were so much better on the, like in the dungeons themselves. So like that mage ability is great to recover MP, but actually like doing that combat, I found myself getting like ambushed in combat a lot because that AOE attack is terrible. Like there's a trade-off to it. Yeah, exactly. It's so interesting that you say that Dave, because I actually love the mage archetype in the overall combat. I freaking loved it. I loved it.

[01:17:10] And okay. So here's the thing though, I, because I chose to grind because I chose to be like, all right, I want to optimize my character. I want to be exactly, as you said, much higher level than the enemies in the dungeons and be able to one hit kill embrace through the dungeons until I get to the final boss. You know, I, the, there are in specific parts of the dungeons in very specific dungeons. This doesn't happen in all of them, but then some of them they have, uh, essentially they're like, like magic crystals that birth monsters that you can fight in a dungeon. And they, I think,

[01:17:40] they're very purposefully and tactically tactically put there by the developers to give people like me who want to have the option to, you know, try and do easy mode, um, to grind and be able to prepare themselves for like all of the trials that are ahead. Um, and the thing about exactly as you said, you know, you raise your staff up as the mage, it does the AOE attack. I kind of figured out the geometry of the game or the iframes in order to just get in their faces and then just raise

[01:18:08] that up and it got strong enough to the point where I just was able to wipe out everybody. But it was mainly, it was whenever I was grinding, it was either using the mage, but as soon as I unlocked the merchant archetype from Brigitte, I just used the merchant whenever I was trying to do that, whenever I was trying to overlevel. And the reason for that is, is because not only does it increase item pickup rates for potentially rare items for enemies, it gives you like, like

[01:18:35] exponentially more money, um, in the game, you know, whenever you do kill an enemy like that. And so I, at a certain point I had like 2 million, 3 million bucks, whatever they call them in this world. And so I was just, whenever I'd get to an armor shop or an item shop, I just click, click, click, click and buy everything and run down the list. And I know that's like cheesy. I get it. I get it. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a bro of reproach in that front, but I did like doing that. I did like using those two archetypes to that extent, but the mage one. Yeah. I I'm really

[01:19:04] frustrated though, Sam, because I did not realize that that was the passive effect of using that archetype on the protagonist. I, I don't know where you see that or where in the menu systems that it's like eligible, like visible, um, because it's not an inherited trait or an inherited skill, I think is what they call it. And I, and I, and I, I'm trying to remember where you could see that in the UI, but I mean, that's amazing. So huge call out to the people out there who want to do that.

[01:19:29] Yeah. I think, I think from memory, it's really subtle because obviously you can assign any archetype to any, any member of your party. Yeah. But I think in the, the list of skills on the right hand side of the UI, if you happen to assign the archetype to the protagonist, there is just an additional skill at the top that pops up without any fanfare or anything. It's just on the list of skills. Interesting. Okay. Which is, is strange. I mean, I guess like eventually you're

[01:19:59] probably figure it out, but it seems like something you'd want to highlight unless we, we both miss something, which is possible. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Uh, something that I was curious about in terms of the way that the dungeons were designed. I, I will say that like, there were a couple of dungeons in this game that I thought, when I think about level design, when I think about progressing through the game and ramping difficulty or making it harder, the only thing that made dungeons hard for me personally was the fact

[01:20:27] that they were super stingy with MP. You had to like, be very careful about your MP management, or you had to learn the cooking system and learn how to acquire the items that you needed in order to cook a lot of the recipes that would generate 100 or 200 MP. Because a lot of the times when you pick up chests in the game or you'd pick up items in the overworld, they would be like 20 MP, maybe 50 MP. If you're lucky until you fight like crazy optional bosses and they give you like arcane's

[01:20:55] dragon's blood or something like that. Um, but I was curious, I've heard a lot of people mentioned that like these dungeons are very PS3 coded. Did either of you feel that way? I'm choosing to interpret PS3 coded the way that I interpret it. Um, which is to say these dungeons and their level design is not very interesting. It is a very old school, um, similar to persona

[01:21:21] fives dungeons. Like they, they visually can look cool. Like, you know, going up, you know, inside the Royal palace and stuff like that, like visually some of them can look really cool, but like the layout of them is with the exception of like one that's sticking out in my head, the layout of them is not really that interesting. They're kind of just like linear sprints through, um, you might find some shortcuts here and there, but like level design wise,

[01:21:49] they're not very inspiring. That said I'm playing persona four golden right now. And those dungeons are, they could not be more boring. So really? Okay. Yeah. So like, I think those are proc gen. So like having levels that were at least, you know, made by a person to be like, this is what our level is. Here's how the shortcuts work and stuff like that. I can appreciate that because it's at least

[01:22:15] it's not just like proc gen hallways, you know? Yeah. I think that personally, yeah, I completely agree with you. I would have, I would have hated the dungeons if they were procedurally generated, but my favorites, my personal favorites, just to recall out was obviously the castle aqueduct or the castle aqueduct area in Martira. Um, when you're doing like that initial part of the story where you figure out who hides may actually is, um, as well as like being in, this is a little bit of a spoiler,

[01:22:43] but being inside of the human that swallows the party and during Bon or Barden's companion quest, his getting to the anus. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, you gotta, yeah, you gotta get out the other side, right? When you have a quest objective that says get to the anus. Yeah. I didn't, I don't even remember. That's what they did there. That's incredible. I love it. I love it so much. That's how, you know, people are having fun making the video game. Exactly. Exactly.

[01:23:13] Yeah. Um, but yeah, so those were two. And then the other big call out is, you know, uh, just the, the dragon's temple. I mean, kudos to them. I think the dragon's temple was like the achievement and it's, you know, it's really cool. It's in the center of the map, the map design, the overall like map world. I, I had a section in our last show when we were talking about, I really, really hated the veil guards map. I loved the map in this game, being able to, and the idea is that when you need to

[01:23:40] figure out what to do or where to go, you get in your, this vehicle called the gauntlet runner with your party. And it kind of does this, it's this very steampunk vibe that they give you. It's basically this creature. It's like the skeleton grafted with these mechanical parts, um, that, you know, kind of move in a mechanical way and it's all, you know, powered by steam, that sort of thing. Uh, but you know, you sit down at the table and it has this, like this magnifying glass

[01:24:06] that juts out from the side and then you open up the map, uh, and expands the world. It was really cool. I really liked that. Um, just that just nice little visual element touch goes back to like the overall aesthetic of this game. Um, I feel like now is a good time to jump in and talk about the archetype systems in the combat as a whole, the turn-based combat. Uh, I agree with you a hundred percent, Dave, this is by far and away I think the strongest part of this game. Um, it was the most fun

[01:24:33] for me. Um, and I think it gave me an, again, like there are a lot of similarities between this game in final fantasy seven, uh, rebirth and remake as well, because it's like engaging in the turn-based combat was like an active puzzle solving element to figure out what is this actual enemy week two? What do I have in my loadout? Um, it took me forever to realize that you can swap out party members if you brought in the wrong archetypes, which I think is really, really handy to do.

[01:25:00] It requires forethought and exactly as you said, planning to make sure that you didn't double up any archetypes on any of your characters, which, you know, of course, you know, I ran into a couple of times, but I felt like it was really, really fun. And I, I, I think that the archetypes are just really cool. I mean, it's a, it's a divergence from the persona system. And I think again, this is a very easy call out, but the fact that you have the customization options that leads really heavily

[01:25:26] into the RPG area of this game is the fact that you can apply any archetype to any character. You know, these characters have, you know, uh, stats that have already been built into their profiles that, you know, of course, Hulkenberg is really strong with endurance. Heismay is really strong with agility, but that doesn't mean that you can't throw like a, you know, Heismay into a healer category or Hulkenberg into like a trickster, which is, I think really, really helpful towards the end of the game. Um, Sam, what did you think of these archetypes? Like where did, did you have any

[01:25:56] favorites that you kept returning to for whatever reason? Um, I, I certainly had some, some dependables. Um, and to be fair, I'm not really the sort of min max guy traditionally. Um, or if I do, it's by happenstance as opposed to intentional. Um, I often stumble upon sort of what, what in other genres people might call meta builds. Um, but I, I, I typically found, cause I can't remember,

[01:26:24] please correct me. I I'm not certain if in the persona games, it's been a while since I played them, you can, um, arrange the order in which your party members attack as well by select, by selecting them in specific orders on the party slot. Yeah. Um, so I, I had, let's see, I, I made a note. Um, so traditionally the, the four that I rolled with more often than not

[01:26:51] throughout the entirety of the game is obviously the protagonist. Um, I had stroll, uh, Heisenberg, uh, Heismay. Yeah. And then I would switch between, um, Eufer and, um, Juna. Um, and I think with the protagonist, I stayed on the mate, as I said, the mage tree as much as possible.

[01:27:17] Yeah. Got up to warlock as quickly as I could stroll. I, this might be a contentious thing. I'm not sure. Cause he seems more like a sword guy, but I, I had him on the gunner tree. Interesting. Yeah. Um, and then the Heisenberg, I kept her on the night tree. I felt like that was thematically correct for her. Um, and also just very powerful abilities in general. Heismay, I also kept on the thief tree because I found the, um, assassinate abilities were pretty potent

[01:27:45] if used correctly. Um, and then I traditionally use Juna and Eufer as sort of more healers. Um, I can't remember, I didn't make a note of which tree that they were in. I think I just kept them where they were. Yeah. Um, so I didn't experiment too much if I'm being honest. Uh, but I think I unlocked pretty much everything cause I maxed out all of the bonds. So I had access to every archetype,

[01:28:12] but I didn't dabble too much cause I found a flow that worked in combat more often than not. Nick, you talked about how much you, uh, you grinded some, uh, some characters here in this game. I grinded archetypes at the very end of the game. I grinded, I, I maxed most archetypes with most characters by the end of the game. There's a part late in the game where grinding is like super easy and they just give you the most powerful enemies, but you're so strong that it doesn't matter.

[01:28:42] Like you can just take them out on the overworld type thing. So, uh, the, the cool part is that if you max an archetype with a character, it gives you a permanent stat boost. So I just kept switching them as I was grinding up, like the final things I wanted to use for the final bosses. I was just gaining permanent stat boosts in other categories as well. Um, I use the protagonist as the seeker most of the time. Um, but I did use them as a mage sometimes too, depending on the situation.

[01:29:13] And then I kept the characters in their kind of like stock trees, we'll say lineages of archetypes. Uh, so stroll was, I didn't use stroll a whole lot. So I guess I'll just stop talking about him. Um, Hulkenberg stayed a night. Um, Heismay stayed as like the ninja type character. Uh, because one of the things I liked about this, this combat system is that the persona combat systems have

[01:29:41] always been about exploiting weaknesses to deny turns to the enemies, whether that's knocking them down or getting critical hits or something like that. And this game, this game has that too, but also it makes it so that if you have like a great defensive ability that can also take turns away from the abilities. If you can repel or block their magic, or if you can dodge their attacks,

[01:30:07] that's super helpful. So I had Hulkenberg as like the traditional tank, but Heismay ended up being like an insane dodge tank at the end. Oh yeah. And that, that just like wrecked everything that really hard enemies wanted to do. Cause Heismay just dodged everything and took away all their turns. So that was awesome. Yeah, exactly. Because as you get later onto this game, a lot of the enemies use soul cry, which gives them like four, sometimes even like, you know, eight more turn counters that,

[01:30:35] you know, the small turn counters that absorb in a single action, but still like the fact that the enemies have that many turns in some of the later game bosses hit super duper hard. They're really hard. Yeah. So exactly. I mean, I love the fact that you said that because I definitely use Heismay to that capacity, just maxed out his agility 110% and then added certain skills onto him, uh, you know, or, or included like a repel buff or whatever the case may be.

[01:31:01] But yeah, exactly. If he dodges one thing, they lose basically all of their turn counters, which is, which is incredible. So this was, this was something that I, I loved about this game. And it's something that like, you can't take for granted in RPGs like this, where even some of my favorite RPGs, um, like some of my favorite final fantasies and stuff like that, uh, your

[01:31:25] combat strategy can get pretty rote and boring by the end of the game in a lot of these games like this. And like thinking about, you know, Xenoblade Chronicles and stuff like that, like the combat, I am just very bored by that combat system. Once you figure it out, you figure it out and it's no longer really new stuff at you. Yeah. It's no longer really a thing. And in metaphor, they, cause it's such a long game, but they do such a good job of, of not necessarily introducing new

[01:31:54] mechanics. Although that does happen as you level up your ranks with your, your companions, but they change what your strategy has to be to succeed. So for like the first half of the game, you can get through with just the, this enemy's weak to fire fire attacks. And then like later on, elemental weaknesses are really, they're, they're less common and especially in the hardest enemies in the game. So then you need to start relying on buffs and debuffs. And I love an RPG like this,

[01:32:24] a turn-based RPG, especially that emphasizes buffs and debuffs. Like every RPG likes this gives me those skills, but not every RPG makes them meaningful and metaphor does. Um, yeah. Status effects also can be super meaningful if you're able to get them. It's one of my, one of my criticisms of the combat system. One of my few criticisms is that in most of the fights where you would want to use a status

[01:32:52] effect, you can't. And that's been consistent through every Atlas RPG I've ever played. Like you can't apply hex to an enemy. Right. I mean like even against like a regular enemy, but like a regular enemy, I don't necessarily need to use hex, but like if I'm fighting the final boss, I would love to use a status effect, you know, thinking about some of my other favorite turn-based RPG systems, like darkest dungeon is a really hard game and they let you use statuses on every single

[01:33:20] enemy in the entire game. It makes all that stuff meaningful. And in this game, they're like, you get an enemy that can, or an attack that can cause fear. But in my head, I'm like, I'll never be able to use that in a fight where I want to use it. So I'm never taking that attack with me. You know, you can inherit the skills between archetypes. I'm never taking a status skill with me because it's never going to be useful. Other than that, I loved how the combat system increases

[01:33:47] in complexity and like my combat strategy at hour 40 versus my combat strategy in the final boss is like I'm playing two different games almost. And I love that. I loved it so much. Yeah. Yeah. I will say that it's really interesting in terms of the way that you approach it. I did find, you know, using Stroll and Hulkenberg, you know, at the beginning, I mean, that's the character.

[01:34:13] That's the cast that you have up front. Those are the two, you know, first main followers that joined the protagonist. And I felt like they were really good. And I definitely grinded them up in their, you know, knight and warrior skill tree respectively. And I felt like they were both really, really effective. I found Stroll was really effective when he was in that general category and learning like some of those like ice moves that apply the permanent weakness or apply a one-time weakness. Those moves are really, really effective and awesome. And I found that,

[01:34:42] I found that in this game. Yeah, it was definitely for me personally in the way that I strategize in the way that I approached a lot of the combat systems, especially the harder bosses, like the super boss before the end boss, right? Like is that turn counter management was my goal. Yeah. And I feel like the Hulkenberg, Juna, Yuffa, you know, is it wrong to pick up girls in the dungeon cast, you know, was the one that was the one that got me through almost everything that I needed to,

[01:35:09] because you have Hulkenberg, which is like just the traditional tank, but then, you know, putting, putting her into the dark, dark mage, you know, elite category for her, her knight or dark, yeah, dark knight elite category for her archetype lineage. And then Juna with the summoner able to access every single elemental weakness that you could want. And then, uh, or no, yeah, it was, it was, it was Yuffa, who was the summoner, then Juna, who was the mask dancer. And I felt like the mask dancer was incredible

[01:35:37] because, you know, you have what, you know, of course with your character, you get a ultra archetype, you get what they call a heroic embodiment, uh, towards the end of the game. And that opens up a lot. And by this point, I think, I think that Atlas expected the character or the player to grind through multiple different, uh, skill trees, multiple different archetypes, um, as the protagonist and be able to have access to different abilities and different passives by the, by the time you're at the end of the game. But then at the same time you have

[01:36:06] that. And then a lot of like the power. And so it turned out for me, it turned to that the protagonist and Yuffa were my main damage dealers. And then I had, uh, Juna as a like debuffer or, or a weakness, you know, a status effect, you know, a person who would apply that to them. And I guess you, you're in a party of four, um, and of course, yeah. And then Hulkenberg also has a lot of like protective, like, uh, abilities where you could buff your, your characters, um, which was really strong, really, really strong.

[01:37:32] So I wanted to take a quick moment in this episode to talk about how incredible the music was here. Um, obviously led, uh, as I indicated earlier by Shoji Meguro and Atlas sound team. Um, I, I don't, I see the thing is, is that I wanted to talk about this, but I don't have much to say because of the fact that this music is so incredibly good. I think it's one of the things that exactly like the presentation that we discussed off the top. It's one of the things that just

[01:37:59] embodies metaphor. The entire day I was thinking about recording this podcast and I had like the theme song playing in the back of my mind. I can, I can hear the melody of, you know, what it's like to, to walk around in grand trad as the protagonist. Uh, it's just, it's, it's great. They include a lot of fantasy motifs, uh, with waltzes and minuets. And then of course they have the bombastic sweeping orchestral arrangements, um, that constantly kind of like help me engage with the combat or

[01:38:26] push through the story or get to my next objective, which is something that I don't think is really, I would imagine it's indicative of Persona games, uh, especially because Persona 3 soundtrack is insanely good. Uh, but you know, this one, it just, because there wasn't as much, uh, vocal work in there. It's, it's, it's wholly unique. Um, and of course everybody knows the advantage battle song with the chanting Buddhist monk and how iconic that was. That was at the Tokyo game show. Um, yeah, that was, this, it was one of my favorite parts of this game.

[01:38:56] Totally. I think it reminds me a lot. Um, and I'm trying not to be contentious when I say this, uh, it reminds me a lot of both final fantasy seven rebirth and final fantasy 16. Really? In the sense that in the sense that I think in terms of when people are looking at the games in their entirety, um, both in the moment and retrospectively, people can have qualms with

[01:39:23] rebirth saying it's bloated or this or that. And, you know, people can look at final fantasy 16 and say, well, you know, is it really a JRPG? Is it an RPG at all? And does it do this well or this well? But I think one of the undeniable things about both of those games is that this, the, the score is just spectacular. Um, and I think that's much the same here where people can have gripes with elements of gameplay or game design or whatever with the metaphor, that's fine. But I think

[01:39:53] objectively the music is just like you said, just phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. Megaro deserves to be in the same conversation with the Uematsu's and other, you know, Mitsuda and other famous composers in video games. Like I can't think of anything that I've ever seen that his name on that. I haven't been like blown away by the soundtrack. And like, this is, this is incredible. One of the things that I think this soundtrack's great at

[01:40:21] is we talked earlier about how this is like kind of a unique take on a fantasy world. It's a new type of fantasy. That's not, you know, it's not like the Lord, the Lord of the Rings sword and sorcery type fantasy. It's different, but it's not like, you know, modern low urban fantasy. It's, it's something new and the music is new too. Like you've never heard a soundtrack like this before in a video game.

[01:40:46] And I think that that like really helps because it sounds like a fantasy soundtrack, but not one that you've heard before. It doesn't sound like the final fantasy 16 soundtrack, for example, to, to give one that we've talked about before. I think using the monk chanting in the, in so many of the songs it's in the battle song, but it's also in the main menu theme song, like using that really sets a tone that you're in for something different with this music can do so much to,

[01:41:16] to set the tone for a game and metaphors music, like with the stuff that's kind of new and unique really does that. And then like with that more traditional stuff, there's a lot that sounds like there's a word for this. I cannot remember it for the life of me, but there's a word that means like relating to the church. And that's the vibe I get from this music. It sounds very,

[01:41:41] it either sounds very regal or very church-like. And there's parts to that where there's like a lot of horns blaring, or you'll have like choirs and stuff like that. Or you, you know, you have the, the theme that plays in academia that gives this kind of like curious type of feel to it. Like, I just really love the soundtrack and it's so different from the persona soundtracks and the persona soundtracks are different from each other. And then you get into this and you're like,

[01:42:11] man, this guy. And like, I think Meguro did the soundtrack for Catherine, which also has a wildly good soundtrack. Like, I don't know. It's just so good at setting the tone. And then like within that, just doing a bunch of really cool stuff where you can tell like, like Meguro got like the, you know, the outline of like what this world is, what this story is about. And he's like, I can do some weird stuff here. And it really shines through.

[01:42:39] It's so good. Yeah. I just, I love that idea of it's, it's regal. They incorporate like Eastern European elements. Like I hear Tchaikovsky and a lot of like the orchestral arrangements. It's, it's very, very well done. Yeah. And, and yeah, it's, it's like archaic at the same time and approachable. Like, like for example, like the Buddhist monk, like he sounds like he has a call and response, you know, um, I full formation format to his, to his like rhythm, the way that he's

[01:43:09] chanting. It's just so good. And so intense, it gets me hyped up. It makes me want to go to war. I said this before. Like, yeah. Nick, when you, when you were in Japan, did you go to like temples and hear the chanting like this? Cause as soon as that started, I was like, oh, this reminds me of East Asian like temples and like the monks. And then later when they were like, this is actually, they got someone from one of those temples to do this. I was like, yeah, of course, of course they did. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. No, when I was in Nara, it's it,

[01:43:39] the, I've heard a lot of things like this and it is very, it is this methodical, um, you know, a lot of the times when they talk about these monks there, this is a way of meditation, the way that they do the rhythm, the way that they vocalize, um, the words or, or the, the, the things that they say whenever they are, uh, chanting. And it's, it, that, that is another thing that, that brings into it, you know, something that is super interesting about, you know, what, uh,

[01:44:04] Sam was saying earlier about how kind of like, there's this dumb dogmatic, uh, radicalized nature of different factions with this in society. And then, and there are so many different moments throughout, uh, the score that that's relating to the story moments that are just like, it is, it is incorporative, um, at its core and it's, it's really good. And also like beyond those moments, the sweeter, like more touching emotional moments when you're having like a really like sad one-to-one,

[01:44:34] like I cried multiple times during my play through this game, like particularly when talking to Heismay about, you know, his, his story. And that's not something that we'll spoil now, but just like he has a really, really tragic backstory. Stroll, um, I think was a really strong character and really excellently voice acted. Um, and I, I, I, I, whether or not you like him as, as a character, so, or how he fits into the overall story, I felt like everyone individually had really

[01:45:00] incredibly good motivations. Um, and, and that's like something that is, is hard to pull off and something that I, in a lot of different games that I've played last year was like missing even in Final Fantasy seven as rebirth. And how, however much I lauded that game for how adaptive the score was whenever you were in between moments or how they picked out individual songs, you know, the bow, wow, wow song, when you're with Barrett chasing down the dog, like the way that those were

[01:45:27] unique. Um, there were still moments in Final Fantasy seven where it was like the emotion of the score didn't meet the impact or the weight of the writing that was happening. And I felt this like dissonance. I did not feel that in metaphor the entire time here. I was, it was, uh, I didn't feel any moments where I was like out of, out of the game because the score just didn't match the emotions. I'm not sure that I agree with you about rebirth, but that's another podcast, but it's a completely

[01:45:54] to, you mentioned voice acting. Just want to shout out. Like, I think the voice acting is pretty great across the board. I played an English, English voice acting for this same. Um, we haven't talked about Luis at all. Who's like the main antagonist. I think the voice acting for Luis is like fantastic. He's really good. Uh, or they're really good at like playing this, this cocky shore of himself

[01:46:20] villain and like not a villain that's like hiding their intentions or anything like that. They're very open about everything, but they're very sure of themselves. And the voice acting for Luis in particular Hulkenberg Heismay, of course, another strong voice acting performance. Um, just really love that too, across the board. Yeah. I, I wanted to save an entire section for Luis to have his dedicated moment in the spoiler section because by, by far and away he is in my opinion, the best

[01:46:50] character in this game. And I think the most realized character. Um, and yeah, so it was just like when we talk about all of those performances at its core, like it's just, they, they knocked it out of the park and shout out, shout out to a shout out to nurse too, because I, I just, I love a good old man in a video game and he just, he gave me everything I could have wanted. Yep. Okay. Let's

[01:47:14] go ahead and jump in to the spoiler wall for our story here in metaphor. Re-Fantasio. I wanted to thank everybody who's made it with us this far. Um, and thank you for jumping in and listening to this episode. This has been an FNGC review of metaphor and you know, we're beyond this point. We're going to go ahead and talk about the major themes, narrative highlights and spoilers. So if that's something that you're not ready to listen to or to absorb, uh, quite yet, feel free to jump out and

[01:47:40] join us later when you have finished the game. But for everyone else, I want to go ahead and jump into this section. Now for you, for you guys, you'll see that it's, it's not as a fleshed out or as, uh, incorporated as I wanted to in the notes here. Um, but I did the, the purpose for that is that I wanted to kind of just talk about our highlights. This is an 80 hour game for folks like you guys who play really efficiently and you're, you're good with your time. Unlike myself. Um,

[01:48:10] so, and, and so there's, there's a lot, a lot to do here. Um, and I think that there are moments that rise above the rest throughout this game. So I wanted to like give you both the opportunity to talk about like what you feel like were your favorite narrative parts that sold you on this game and really like locked you in to say, wow, metaphor, this is, this is a great experience. Sam, how about you, how would you take it away for us?

[01:48:32] Sure. Um, I know we kind of made a joke about it earlier. Uh, but I, I do truly feel that some, something clicked for me, uh, when you're swallowed by the human. Um, because I feel like as we talked about, you know, right at the beginning, talking about the art design and everything being very grounded and taken very seriously, I felt like there are certainly moments of levity throughout

[01:48:57] the story, mainly provided by characters like, you know, Maria, but I felt like that was the, there was, it was the first glimpse that I saw of, yes, everything is still serious. They're in a dire situation, but the game and the characters are still managing to have a little bit of fun. You know, as Dave said, the, the specific objective that you're, you're detailed and then, you know,

[01:49:25] coincidentally following on almost immediately after that encounter, you meet Heismay. Um, and I think that that one, two punch really solidified for me relatively early on, I guess, that this was going to be something that resonated with me far more than, uh, as I said, with previous Persona games where I enjoyed them, but didn't really vibe with them. Um, I felt that that,

[01:49:54] that moment for some reason struck a chord with me where I felt that the balancing act that they were executing was being done near flawlessly. Um, and it was something that I wasn't expecting. And I think that that's the key thing where everything that the game had presented up to that point was this pretty gritty take, you know, very violent, gory at times. Yeah. And yet, you know, here we are having this sort of jovial moment in a moment of quite dire peril. Um,

[01:50:22] so I think that that's one that immediately jumps to mind for me. That's a really big, like first big moment after you're out on the adventure, I think like, so the game starts as you're in the city and all the stuff goes down with the King and with Luis and with Grias getting killed and all of that. But then you head out on your adventure and like one of the first like big adventure type things that happens is going on that quest to catch Heismay getting

[01:50:50] swallowed by the human and all of that stuff. So like that one, two punch of like the dungeon to get out of the human and then to like do the dungeon to find Heismay and then that whole thing. Like, I think that that really sells the adventure that you're on, um, after you first leave for sure. Yeah. I, I would say that, yeah, that, that was the moment of the game. And it's interesting that it took us that long for me to be like, okay, I'm locked in. I feel like the, yeah, the, you know,

[01:51:20] the, the, the beginning of this game, I was like, okay, this is interesting. This is good. I wasn't a hundred percent sure I was going to, this was going to resonate with me. You have this through line with Grias, um, who is the father of Maria who of course gets snuffed out and killed. Um, his character is kind of like the vehicle that they use to give you the mechanics of how this election is going to use, you know, work out. Like if someone is going to be at the top, I can, I guess I'm assuming there's like the top three or four candidates, um, of the race.

[01:51:50] Of this, uh, tournament, this election. Uh, if you're one of those, you are protected by the King's magic and no assassination attempt against you will succeed. Grias gets killed as a consequence of that because the first, you know, of course the first objective by the team is to kill Luis Gilbert, who at that point they think is the, uh, person who created the curse to put on the prince. Yeah. But like that scene where Grias goes to assassinate Luis and you see the power of

[01:52:16] the King's magic. That was when I locked in for the first time. For sure. Seeing the face in the sky. Seeing the face in the sky and then seeing that there is real magic that is like binding the contestants to the rules of the election, the tournament. We will say that was what locked me in the first time was seeing that. And I love like some people, um, I think it was Matt Storm. So shout out to Matt. They texted me when they started this game and they were like, I love Grias,

[01:52:46] but Grias is too old for a JRPG party. He's dying soon. And then, then like a couple of days later, they texted me again. They were like, yep, I knew it. So, but like that moment where Grias gets trapped in the golden chains and gets killed. I was like, Oh, like there are real stakes in this game here. Like this is real. They have to follow these rules. This is super unique. Like that was what got me at

[01:53:09] the beginning. And to, and to Sam's point about the gritty, gory, like actual violent nature of this world. I know that persona has a tendency to handle a lot of adult themes. Like I know that there's like themes of abuse, like some of the school children suffer at the hands of like teachers. And there's a lot of like gritty real world ideas that they tackle in those persona games. But I feel like when they do tackle these things about, you know, racial, racial, uh, prejudice and

[01:53:39] subjugation of the masses and, uh, landowners exploiting the labor force, like they result in things that are like really, really violent. Um, and, uh, and you see it kind of like one for one. Like the first time I was wandering around, I think, uh, it wasn't grand trad because you don't see it at first when you're in grand trad, but I, it's the second main town that you get to. I think it's, uh, Mer, uh, I said,

[01:54:04] Mer, the first time I saw a dead body, I was like, what the fuck? This is, this is different, right? Like you don't see stuff like that. And it's like a dead body that's got a cloth over and it's like, you could see the magla that's like black festering in the ground. And I'm like, this is some heavy shit. Like I am dealing with significant fallout and it's, it creates this sense of, um, like you said, Dave, you know, real consequences in a real world. And it's what,

[01:54:32] what kind of like grounded me and got me based in there. And for me, it was the quest with the Sancturus, like obviously getting Heismay and getting to that point. But the moment when you realize that you have to tackle the human and it's the reveal of the human baby who's haunting the castle, who they have been sacrificing children. I don't know if it's exclusively children, but people in the town and children too, in order to, I guess, like offer a sacrifice to appease this

[01:54:59] thing. Um, seeing that the fact that this human was someone that you assume Luis, uh, turned into a human or maybe just turned into a human through the sake of pure like anxiety. That's a function of this world that, uh, anxiety leads to magla and then an overwhelming amount of magla leads to people becoming humans. I feel like I'm getting those mechanics, right? But realizing that the

[01:55:25] Sancturus of Martira is sacrificing her own people because she just sees her kid and then realizing that there is a humanist aspect to behind the motivations of almost everything that bad people are doing in this game. It's something that I kind of really, really liked because it, it not only it created the sense of like realism in the world, but it also humanized bad people. And I feel like humanizing bad

[01:55:52] people can be taken the wrong way. Sometimes I feel like it did an extent where you're like, okay, you are a bad person, but you are a real person. And I think that that was really effective way to kind of drive home the point that something that's get explorers repeatedly. And it's something that is kind of cheesy and hokey, but something that the main character says over and over again is that I just want to help everybody. I want to help anybody that needs help. And I think that that

[01:56:18] was, that was a moment when this game clicked for me, when the narrative and the ideas that they were trying to explore with this game, it clicked for me, whether or not it was a little naive. I'll say from that. So like that point with like the big baby demon monster, like that was like more of a shock value thing for me. Like obviously like you have the, you have like the parent who has this

[01:56:46] monster that they're caring for, but they see it as their kid. Like obviously there's something there too. Um, so like I enjoyed that section as like a, you know, a very fucked up monster to be dealing with. And then also like this human motivation behind why it's there and why it's thriving and why it's eating all these people. For me, one of the big moments when we talk about villains

[01:57:10] who have, um, human motivations will say the biggest successful moment, the biggest highlight of the story to me was in this, after a period, I think the pacing takes a big dip, like two separate times in this story where like, I would go like 20 hours with being like, can we, can we pick this

[01:57:35] up? Like, can something happen here? Um, and so like the opera house part where you go to assassinate Luis, this is when I knew that Luis was a great villain because I was like scared shitless during that mission being like, yeah, Luis is dangerous. Like this is not going to go well. Like I was nervous during that. And like, this is a video game. Why am I nervous about watching characters take part in something? It'd be the same way if you're watching, you know, a movie and they're

[01:58:04] going to go take on the villain, but the villain's really dangerous. If you're invested in the story and the characters and you believe that the villain is dangerous and you, you're bought in to that level, then those moments can really go really well. And so I thought that opera house part was really great because that was the moment where I re like, I fully realized how well they had sold Luis as a

[01:58:28] villain. And then like what actually happens in there is a little bit like a little bit like deus ex machina, you know, like, Oh, it was a fake thing. And there's like three fake outs in 10 minutes, you know, like the way it played out was not super interesting at the end of that part, but going through the assassination attempt, I was 100% bought in. And I thought that was

[01:58:55] arguably the best story sequence of the game. Yeah, I, I think I agree with you there. I actually have a note, um, about the sequence that's leading up to the point where you're infiltrating. There's it's the main quest, you know, infiltrate the Chadrius, which is Luis's, uh, gauntlet runner, which has the capacity to fly. Right. Um, and it's this moment where it's right before you get actually to that main chapter. And you as the party realize, of course, like you need to get

[01:59:24] close to Luis in order to figure out how to kill him because he is this guy, uh, they already established that he has military prowess. He rose to the ranks very quickly. He's a mage. That's like second to none. He knows how to use most different like types of magic in the world. Like, and he is surrounded not only that, but by incredibly powerful, you know, uh, followers, whether at this

[01:59:47] point it's, um, it's, uh, you foot or Juna as well as Basilio and Fidelio. And, and so there's a moment where the main character in the parties approach Luis and stroll tells the protagonist specifically, he says, you need to be careful about how you respond to inquisitive questions from Luis because you need to not, you can't let him know what our real motivations are and you get to the conversation. And then the main character has three options to choose from. And I said, my goal is

[02:00:16] to help you. When Luis is kind of questioning, like, what do you want? Like, what do you want from me? Because you, you've already like, you've demolished like one of his followers, gauntlet runners. And he, he kind of sees something promising in you. Um, and I chose, my goal is to help you as a way of like deceiving him into thinking that I'm a sycophant that I want to follow in his, uh, you know, his footsteps. I want to, you know, ride his cape to the top. And I think that this serves not only to

[02:00:42] couch you as like, okay, like literally in the narrative format, I'm going to be an asset to the antagonist, but it also reinforces that same goal. That thing that the protagonist keeps saying over and over again, like the idea is that I want to help you. And it kind of, it reinforces that the attack, the protagonist is staying true to his word, but it is also interesting because I don't know what those other outcomes would have been or how the story would have progressed. Had I not convinced him

[02:01:09] that, uh, that I was really, I was on his side that I'm here to like follow in his footsteps. Um, and it's just like, yeah, it's like the Luis is such a disillusioned menace that you really like were scared about what you were going to say, like not saying the right thing to him. It's like, it's moments like these, but I think it's incredibly strong character writing. And it's something that stands out from stuff that I've already experienced in persona three reload of like, yeah, you know, you go to the different places, you talk to the people, you do the things you go,

[02:01:39] to the burger place and you try to get the lucky burger, whatever the case may be, but you're just keeping the story moving forward. Whereas this, I feel like it's so distinctive because I put 80 hours into Dragon Age, the Veil Guard and not one time did I give a freak about what Elgernon Gillanane thought about me. I just knew I was going to kill them at the end of that game. Right? Yeah. They, they sell, um, they sell drama and they sell stakes and they sell potential

[02:02:06] consequences really well, specifically with Luis. And it's interesting to me, like when you think about Luis as a character and what he wants and why he wants it, it's not very unique. It's a pretty well-trodden path that Luis is on as a villain. He was wronged as a child. His tribe was wronged as a child. And so he wants to destroy the world and remake it in his image, remake it the way that

[02:02:34] he wants. And that is not new. None of that is new as far as villain and character writing goes. But in the meantime, every time you sit and have a conversation with him or when that mission, when you're trying to assassinate him, they really sell the stakes. They sell how dangerous he is. They sell how, how smart, honestly, because he sees through like all your plans, but he doesn't care

[02:02:59] because he's also very capable. And I just love the, you know, the voice acting performance where he's very rarely, um, upset, but he's always cool and calm and in control of the situation, which makes him feel even more dangerous. He's not a cackling maniac of a villain, which can be done well. But I just think that the way that they did all this stuff in the meantime, despite him,

[02:03:26] like if you write his story out on paper, I don't actually think it's that interesting, but the moment to moment with Luis is always really good. Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's because it's nuanced. It's because his writing is nuanced, right? Because every time he does have a conversation with the protagonist, he always throws the question back at him because I think from the jump, he already gets, you know, until he is a hundred, you know, at the beginning, you kind of like are, he's up in the air. It's like, are you going to help me or not? But then when he

[02:03:53] realizes, oh yeah, you guys are just out to compete with me. Um, he always throws the question back in the protagonist's face. So what are you going to do? I have my plan. What is your plan? And then he has like a realistic conversation with the protagonist. What do you think is going to be the end goal of what happens? His ideas is that the same thing that happened to your father is the same thing that's going to happen to you because naivete doesn't actually make this world stronger. It doesn't make the people in this world better, which I think is a super valid argument and a

[02:04:23] really interesting thing to have the antagonist have valid points against the idealism or the naivety of, of, of an uninteresting protagonist at that. Yeah. And it's not just that, right? But there, there is the angle that, that Louis spins that he is in some ways, whether he's,

[02:04:45] he's deluded or not doing what he intends to do for somewhat altruistic reasons, you know, it's incredibly misguided and horrific his plans, but much in the same way of like a Thanos or something, right? Where you can follow the train of logic that he's applying and you can see that, yes, if through a skewed lens, what you're saying is an ideal situation, but the end result and the

[02:05:13] means in which you have to go about doing things to achieve that end aren't worth the cost. Yeah. But you can see, like you said, you can see that it started in a place where things would make sense and it, what it might have once been a noble quest that he was on. Yeah. And, and that's, that's something that I kind of wanted to ask you both is that, you know, he, it's something that you realize at the very end, like you don't understand his backstory

[02:05:43] literally until the cut scene before the final battle with him. And it's the idea is like, yeah, he was, he's, he, I was there when the elder village was burned down by Sancter Forden. He was, I saw the flames and I saw the wall and he's, it's like the last thing he says before he transforms into the demon and kind of fully commits into the path that he's chosen is that, you know, I had dreams once too, but, and I think that that's implied that he gave up on them.

[02:06:13] Yeah. It's a perfect analog with, um, the King Hythlodius who also is more, um, they both were idealists at one point. They both had dreams and it, it went down different paths for both of them. Luis's was like the angry path where he just turned into like, you know, burn it all down basically. And the King just kind of like got worn down by how, how hard it is, honestly,

[02:06:42] like how hard it is to be an idealist, even an idealist who's in power. They both started out that way and then they went down these different paths. And that's one of the big themes that I think this game actually does a great job with is idealism. And so like you, you play almost every RPG you play to save the world. And then like, so you're going to save the world. Then what happens

[02:07:07] when you're done? And like the King shows you like one of the outcomes, one of the more likely outcomes where like you go into office, basically you take power with great intentions, but unless you're a dictator, you can't just do everything that you want to the fullest extent that you want it. You have to kind of play the game and the game grinds you down. And like, so then your character

[02:07:33] is taking on this idealistic pursuit of the throne and you're going to try and make the world a better place. So you're going to take on the same quest that the King took on. Is it going to be better this time? Who knows? I mean, maybe cause like the church is less powerful this time at the end of the game and the church really fucked it up for the King. So like there is hope in that way, but I think that this is one of the best things that the game like comments on is idealism. And

[02:07:59] like, think about the real world. You have politicians who spend their early years as politicians, like doing local government stuff and then moving up with these great intentions for how they want to help change the country. And I'm speaking specifically American here, like the American system of government. Um, but like politicians across the world, they, they come into their,

[02:08:25] maybe their final highest position of power and then just get ground down by the system. And they're not actually able to do anything to help in a lot of cases. And that's what happened to the King here. And that's, you know, what your character is going to have to deal with. And Luis like started with the same ideas of like, I want to make this world a better place for people like me who are oppressed, but then he went like completely off the rails and down the villain's

[02:08:52] path we'll say. But I think it's really interesting how the game actually shows you someone who tried this before in the King with noble intentions and failed because the system couldn't support them in their intentions. It's really interesting that you say that too, because I interpreted the King's failure as his, he gave up because the overwhelming loss, right?

[02:09:17] Like he gave up partly because of his son for sure, but like he gave up on his idealistic pursuits because they didn't work. Like he kept trying and they kept not sticking. And then he lost his son and like all, what hope he had left was just drained. I think after that, I agree. Cause he lost his wife and his son in short succession. Yeah.

[02:09:40] So we're to understand that Hythlodius who became more is trapped in this realm, right? And the imagine, and we imagine that more is in the, in the velvet room in the, in the archetype world, uh, that he's locked in and he, his memories are locked away because he is Hythlodius. You as the character, I mean, he's got plot armor, right? He's not supposed to know who he is until, you know,

[02:10:03] he knows who he is. Uh, and at the end of the game, you're in the final battle with Luis and you, uh, if I, if I'm not mistaken, this is how that happens. So you, you're in the final battle and you, or it's, it's not the final battle. It's the battle before the final battle. Cause there are like four final battles in this game. One of my issues, but like, yeah, you, it's right, right before that you basically get killed. You, you, you almost get slaughtered by,

[02:10:31] by Luis cause he's just so powerful. Right. And he, this is the point, you know, where he has the royal scepter and you're bleeding out and you reach and more basically transports you to the world. And he gives the main character a choice. He's like, I want you to stay here with me. I want you to stay here. And, and I couldn't tell, and this is something that I wanted to ask both of you, how you interpreted it, because I couldn't tell what more his motivation was at this point.

[02:10:55] Did he want to like actually take the protagonist and go into, you know, this pseudo real world or stay in this utopia? Or was it just, he wanted to protect him from dying and he knew that this magic was a way to do that? So you're going to have to go on a little bit of a ride with me, but I promise I, I think it will make sense. Okay. So this is going a little bit metaphorical,

[02:11:24] shall we say? Um, I viewed it in a similar way. Have you, have either of you seen Black Panther? Yeah. Yeah. So the ancestral plane, right? Where the, the ancestors, um, who have passed on, the, the rulers who have passed all congregate there. And it is a place where you ascend to once

[02:11:45] your, your job is done. I viewed it in a similar fashion to that, where whether it's, you know, a higher plane or not, whether it's real or not, um, more has, has taken himself there because that is what he, you know, pictured and idealized about. And, uh, he's trying to draw his son there, you know,

[02:12:13] his son has, has passed and all he wants is to be reunited with his son. And he like in life kind of viewed everything as a lost cause and therefore said, well, it's better to recluse away into this, you know, idealized space that we've created for ourselves. Um, and bringing it back down to the, the, the rest of the game prior to, um, the protagonist ripping out his heart and bleeding out.

[02:12:42] Um, the, the place that you go to is called academia. And I think that it's my read. Um, so I, I could be wrong. It's probably subjective at the end of the day anyway, but the way I read it was that more who is, you know, high thodious, he, like Dave said, kind of tried and failed and then came to a logical conclusion that it was never going

[02:13:11] to work. And Luis is kind of at the beginning of that journey, but made the logical conclusion before trying and therefore tried to oversteer, overcorrect, counteract the logical conclusion that he assumed would take place and overwrite it so that it could never occur in the first place. So he wins by doing that. I think this is stretching it a little bit, but I like it.

[02:13:39] Academia being the place that it's called, it's filled with all these books, all of this history, all of this knowledge. I viewed it as a place that more recluded to, um, that was applying known logic and logical conclusions and all the information that history has taught us that tells us that the idea of a utopia is for whatever reason, unattainable, unachievable because of this

[02:14:06] reason, this reason, this reason. Um, you know, the, the, the library in academia is filled with information about all the archetypes, all these different types of people, all these different things. And I don't know. I think that there's an idea that academia is a place where more recluded to where he felt safe because he could apply logic that would explain his giving up.

[02:14:31] Um, and every time that you choose to leave academia and return to the, the real world in Ukraine, so to speak, it is the protagonist's reluctance to give in to those logical conclusions, to the ideas and the failed attempts in the past. It's in spite of that, I am still going to go out and try to achieve this seemingly unattainable thing, even if I fail because it's better to try.

[02:14:59] Um, so it's the idea of striving for something as opposed to relying on things that already exist

[02:15:07] that tells you that you can't do it. So why bother? Yeah. That's one of the big takeaways at

[02:16:29] the end is that more believes, and I think it's not hard to agree that utopia is impossible. Utopia, the definition of utopia that we accept, that is not a thing that's ever going to happen. Does that mean you should never stop working towards that to get as close as you possibly can? No. And the protagonist at the end decides that that's how you have to proceed. And so I think

[02:16:56] with this like pocket dimension, it's kind of like Sam was saying, it's like, it's, it's the same thing that Persona 5 Royal talked about where it's like, and I'll try not to spoil that too much, but it's like Persona 5 Royal deals with mind palaces and stuff like that. And it sets up both games, set up this situation where it's like, you can live in a perfect illusion or you can live in

[02:17:25] the real world as imperfect as it is. And it's trying to set that up as a dilemma. Would you rather live in an illusion that is a utopia or live in the real world and suffer basically suffer as you strive to make progress? Or if you don't, you'll just suffer like, you know, everybody just does

[02:17:48] throughout their daily life. And I think that's what more is, is like a last ditch effort to, I think that the King was so, the King who became more was so ground down by the failures that it's an attempt to save you, his son from the same failures. And it's like, well, you know,

[02:18:15] you could just live in this perfect utopia. It might not be quote real, but your experiences here could be real. You may have that nagging thing that says like, this is not real. What's going on in the real world. Um, so it's trying to set that dilemma up. I think that more and the King at that point in the story, this is like one of the climaxes is so defeated by the idea of being an idealist and trying

[02:18:43] to change the world for the better. They're so defeated by their failures that they've just given up and they're going to go. They're happy to go live in this fantasy world basically, which is Shinjuku or Shibuya crossing in that cut scene. Um, but like they, they're ready to give up and go live in the illusion because that's maybe they can feel like they lived in a place that is what they were

[02:19:11] striving toward instead of like, basically, you know, the King can look down on the land of Uchronia and just see his failures across the land. And instead of living with that, going to go live in the illusion. Yeah. That's what I, that's what I saw. Okay. That's, that's really interesting because for me, it becomes kind of like a weird, like the idea of the world is an Ouroboros, right? It's a, it's a snake that's continuously

[02:19:39] eating itself because, uh, you know, for listeners, the story, the, the narrative moment, something that you realize when you go into the dragon temple during Yufa's quest is that the races were born of an ancient civilization. And then you go on prior towards the final chapter and you actually find the Eldar tribe, the biggest reveal. Well, the biggest, but just, I mean, it is probably technically the biggest, but the biggest spoiler in this game

[02:20:03] is that the protagonist is not a person. He is a manifestation of the Prince, right? And it's, and I thought that that was, I thought it was really poignant. I thought it was really emotionally touching for me to realize that the Prince kind of has this idea and it's the moment right before he gets, you know, assassinated. And eventually assassination ultimately works because you find out that he wasted away years ago. He hasn't been alive for quite some time, even before you make it to

[02:20:31] the elder job. I could be wrong about that, but I feel like the, the, the, the priestess says, yes, he, he died quite some time ago, but we've preserved his body. But it wasn't until you came here that you were able to, that I guess the, the Magla or the power erupted and you were able to merge and ultimately become the Prince once more. But the protagonist- It explains why the Prince is so like perfect as a person too, because he's not a real person. He's a manifestation of desires basically.

[02:20:59] Yeah. And that's, and I find that super interesting because it's the ideas that, you know, Moore slash Hythelius wants the protagonist, wants the, the Prince to avoid the failures that he fell into. But then the Prince in his same turn is so committed. It's so dogmatically committed to his own idealism, to pursuing the, the, the work that is involved with democracy.

[02:21:25] And again, to your point, Dave, this, this isn't really democracy. It is a pseudo aristocracy. I feel like there was this, this moment with Barden at the end of his companion rank where he says, there are other people like me across the land, you know, that we could be used as representatives of the people and come to the Capitol in order for us to govern us. And I guess he, he's couching himself as a Senator, that sort of thing. But it's so that they're alluding to it. I don't know if that's like actually fulfilled because you've seen the final cut scene, the Prince is the King,

[02:21:55] and he's, you know, you're masquerading as a real person or just a normal person during daytime, which I don't know how you can mistake him. But I, I find like this, this juxtaposition of we, we haven't learned from our mistakes. The world hasn't learned from its mistakes. The world that exists from metaphor is a result of the apocalypse of the fallout of our real world. And all of these

[02:22:20] races are in, in the humans themselves are born from the apocalyptic fallout in the negative energy in the Magla that was released during that ancient war from our civilization during the present day. Right. And I find it really interesting or the fact that like, it just seems for me, like, I, I just wonder like, what's the point? Like, is there any, is there any way that we could overcome this?

[02:22:46] Yes. I think, uh, Nick, you ready to go, Sam, you ready to go on a trip through union psychology with me? Let's do it. I love the self. So I, I, the persona games really deal with the rejection of, um, the shadow and the problems that can like arise from that. I'm playing persona four and it's just like, it's like, it's like Jung 101 in persona four right now. So this is like, it was positive. I

[02:23:15] watched a video by Max Duratt, who's like fantastic with this type of stuff that kind of put this on the radar, but the disaster from the, the previous people, the people in the old world that then became the elder, um, the disaster came from a way. They came up with a way to ease the anxieties and pain of life without going through that process of like, you know, forming the complete self as,

[02:23:44] as Jung would talk about. Right. And that's what caused the disaster. That's what caused the cataclysm. The Magla went out of control and stuff like that because the Magla is born from that anxiety. That's another theme of the game is anxiety. Um, so then now we're in this new world and people maybe with the guidance of our, our new King who has been through the journey,

[02:24:09] like the journey of connecting back with his other half, the Prince that was cursed is like the self, his self become becoming complete. Actualized. Right. So then now he's better prepared, possibly to lead this change, this like march toward progress than the previous King was. And also, like we said, the church is weakened significantly and they were a big impediment in, um, the King's

[02:24:37] plans. So they might be in a better place now to work towards it. Like is utopia, like it is in the book possible still? No, probably not, but they might be in a better place to make progress. And that's like a really rough walkthrough. Like, like as with persona games, Carl Jung is like all over this

[02:25:01] story and the archetypes and all of that stuff. Yeah. But like, I think that where the old humans failed, the new humans, the, the, the Elda and all the other tribes are now in a better position to succeed after like kind of with your leadership because you figured it out and you have fewer impediments in your way. So you can be a better leader than the old King was, even though the King had the same

[02:25:30] intentions that you do, I think. Yeah. That's really interesting. And I think, so that kind of like the idea of governance, the idea of choosing that banner to grab the scepter and choose to lead this country towards progress kind of leans on another thing. And I love what you said about anxiety. Um, I think it's pretty much on its nose to that extent that all of the negative emotions and the things that the horrible things that result in this world are a consequence of our anxieties

[02:26:00] overwhelming us. Um, but something that I think was really interesting and I'm curious to see if either of you felt was explored to an acceptable extent is the idea or the power of collective action that we, it's something that is constantly reaffirmed, um, whenever you're with your party, whenever you are tackling situations is that these ideas that we as a people are divided as long as we

[02:26:25] choose to be divided amongst ourselves. Right. And the purpose of the story or the purpose of, you know, the goal of what the, you know, prince or what the protagonist is doing is to garner the support of the people. But without the support of the people, he couldn't accomplish anything. It was only after you finally defeated Luis with the support of the people. And even they even go through that process in the final temple is that, you know, the things that are stopping you are the

[02:26:50] fact that there's dissidence among the people as to whether or not you are the right person to lead this. Um, I feel like it was, I feel like it was pretty well, pretty well accomplished. I felt like it was relatively powerful, but I just, I don't know. I, I, I struggle to think that somebody who's going to play this game that is not as well read as, as the both of you would be able to kind of

[02:27:16] take away the fact that, that even though that it's, you know, the power of friendship and that we're able to pull together to make the change together. I just don't know if that's something that, um, is one of the prevailing arguments that really landed for me personally, uh, in terms of whether or not they, they succeeded in saying like, this is the way to do it. I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily expect metaphor to be the guide to tell you, okay,

[02:27:42] this is how you participate in collective action. But I thought it was interesting that they, they tried to do this, but it just wasn't, it wasn't something that they focused on. I didn't get a real thing, a real focus on collective action from metaphor, because at the end of the day, it is nine people saving the world, not a, not an uprising of the people. One of the things that happens at the very end is that most of the people support Luis

[02:28:11] because he represents kind of like an easier path toward, you know, someone that they can throw their support behind and, you know, they had smear campaigns against your character and all that shit too. But like the, the thing that, the thing that I thought was very well explored back to that theme of anxiety is that Luis is feeding off of the anxiety of the people during an election cycle,

[02:28:38] which as we've had in the last couple of elections here in the United States, that seems to be the thing that gives Trump power. And you can, you know, I don't know how you feel about getting this like specific about political things in your show, Nick. So feel free to cut a hundred and 10%. Let's do it. Let's go for it. The, the campaigns that Trump has run in the last, uh, three elections, I suppose have been all about

[02:29:05] getting people riled up in like feeding their anxieties and then saying, I'm the one who can fix these things that are making you anxious. And in the game that's put into this story by the people's anxieties becoming Magla, which Luis then feeds on to become more powerful. So causing unrest within the people to make them anxious, to then feed off of their anxiety, to get power for yourself,

[02:29:31] felt extremely well explored in this as somebody who, you know, obviously this game is not made by Americans. They're probably, they're not making this specifically about the American government, right? This is all over the world. It's just so close to home, especially. It's just very close to home for us here. And then, so like, you know, Sam, I wonder how you feel about this too, but your, your home country and political situations and stuff too, and whether this

[02:29:58] thing hit as closely as it did for me, but it felt like laser targeted at me as someone who's like seen this play out in the last three elections and just been like, this is the strategy. This like Luis feels like Trump to me in a lot of ways. Yeah. That's a really interesting, well-made point. I think, you know, speaking as a Brit,

[02:30:24] we have our own political issues, that's for sure. But I think that even just, again, this game isn't about the American elections and system as of late, but as a, I think the point I'm making is that metaphor, as you very succinctly said, makes a very good case for the anxiety of both the people

[02:30:48] within a system that are being subjugated or affected by somebody vying for power. And also people outside of that system that are spectating and feeling powerless, helpless, that they can't do anything. Um, and I think that that both of both perspectives feed in where, you know, going back

[02:31:13] to your collective action point, Nick, I think that there is something that I don't know how well it's executed necessarily, but then as in the, as in the real world, collective action is a relatively simplistic concept, but to manifest it is incredibly difficult because there are seemingly infinite

[02:31:38] avenues and most of them have several thousand hurdles. Um, and I think that that as a, whether you are in a system or outside of it and thinking, what can I do to help? And it's like, well, I'm one person, an individual, what can I actively meaningfully contribute? Um, it's a, it's a mindset that a lot of people fall into. Um, and I don't think that metaphor necessarily highlights that super well.

[02:32:07] It's obviously emblematic in terms of a lot of the civilians, particularly in Grand Trad sort of just understandably jumping on the bandwagon, um, of whatever Louis says. But I think, I think that there is something potent to the idea that for example, um, I won't wax lyrical about it

[02:32:34] and I certainly won't spoil anything, but another game that is close to this, um, in terms of some themes that it tackles is, uh, a thousand times resist, which came out last year. And that is also talking a lot in a different context about, I guess, collective action and the idea that doing something and trying is better than nothing and resisting in the face of an overwhelming,

[02:33:00] almost, you know, dictatorial, dictatorial power. Um, however the, however great the odds, it's better to do something because then they, I'll steal a quote from the game, which won't spoil anything. Um, but he said that a character in 1000 times resist says, uh, that no matter how this pans out and I'm paraphrasing slightly, no matter how this pans out, they can never say that

[02:33:27] we didn't try. It's in the history books now. Um, they will know that we spoke up and that we had something to say and that we did something. Um, and I think that again, metaphor could execute that better, but it is there more. So I would say within the party that is trying to actively change things than the wider world of Ukraine as a whole. Yeah. Everyone should play a thousand

[02:33:52] times resist by the way, that game's incredible. Um, yeah, uh, it's, it's, it's a good point. Like, and that's the lesson at the end that your protagonist comes to, which is like, we have to try. It's just 1000 times resist. It's kind of looking back on trying rather than looking forward to trying. And also in a metaphor, metaphor shows that the general metaphor shows you the general population going along

[02:34:19] with the thing that can, they think can ease their anxieties. They're not the, the general population is not trying there along for the ride with Luis. They're bought in with Luis and your party. You are the small minority that are going to try. It just so happens that metaphor is a lot more fantastical and a party of nine can take down the, or however many is in your party can take down

[02:34:49] Luis in combat, you know, like something that's not really mapped onto the real world very well. Um, but it's a good, it's a good like comparison between two games that approach the same three thing through like very different, uh, lenses. And, and to tack onto that too, I mean, thinking about Luis and his ultimate failure and the fact that he did fail, uh, it's because of the fact he consumed

[02:35:15] himself in the end, right? He eliminated most of his military force because he felt like he didn't need them because he was at the point of, you know, the pinnacle of power, right? He was consuming the anxiety of the people across the land. And then when he realized when, you know, you debuffed him enough and you were able to knock down his HP enough and you realize that he was at the losing end of the power that the Prince was wielding, um, towards the end. And then he chose to make that

[02:35:43] sacrifice to leave his humanity the same way Zorba did. I thought Zorba was a really interesting character. I love the fact that this is a side note. I love the fact that they had this twink with the most like rough Scottish accent in the game. Like it was, it was such an, I loved it. It's just very ironic. It didn't match at all. But you know, my point about, you know, Luis and this idea of, you know, he gave up once and then he gave up again, right? When he realized that he was, he was frustrated. And of course he, he turns into God, right? At the end, you know, he did, they do the

[02:36:13] thing that they always do in JRPGs where you're fighting something that's, you know, uh, otherworldly because his power is so overwhelming and he creates this like astral plane that you have to enter in to fight him. But, um, and I did say something earlier in this episode about how the naivete and like the commitment of the protagonists, uh, the, the enduring commitment of the protagonist towards

[02:36:38] the idealistic future towards attempting to try for a utopia or to at least try for a better society. I think I might've said it was corny. I don't think that's corny. I think that committing to that at the end and, and staying with that thought as the through line is, is a really powerful statement because I feel like I consume a lot of like melancholic media, a lot of darker media more often than not. A lot of these games that we play are relatively dark. And I will give this credit

[02:37:05] to metaphor is that where commitment towards it. So I think that they want you to play metaphor, get through the story and come out with two conclusions. Uh, one of them is not really unique. Well, you know, the thing that's like, it's going to be really difficult. It might actually be impossible, but you have to try, you have to try to make the world a better place. And like, there's a lot of stuff that talks about that. The interesting like compliment to that is the thing

[02:37:33] at the very end when they like, they tie in the book. That's like the showing that our world is utopia to them. Right. And they, they make it a point. They say it in text at the very end, like in case someone didn't get it, that they're saying that like somebody else might look at our

[02:37:58] world, the world that we think is fucked and might think that that's utopia to them. And look at how far we've come from that place. It's like a, it's like a message straight from the, the developers. Like it's not a character telling you this or anything like that. It's like, it's like you're closing a storybook and that's the last page, a note from the author in the epilogue, it telling you

[02:38:23] like, look how far we've come. Someone else would look at our world and say, I want to be like that. And I w I wonder how this landed for the both of you. Cause I read this and I was like, I don't know, like, I don't know if I can look at the state of the world and feel pride. Like, obviously it's

[02:38:47] correct to say, look back at our world 50, 60 years ago, and you can see progress a hundred percent. You can see social progress and a lot of, especially for a lot of like, um, you know, friends, groups of, um, minorities or people who've been oppressed through the ages, like things are better than they used to be. But the game really wants you to feel proud of how far we've come. And I kind of

[02:39:16] looked at that and I was like, I don't know, like I get what you're saying, but I can't look around and smile at the world around me the way they want me to really, I, that really didn't hit for me. I think the way they wanted it to. Yeah. Um, I mean, that's, I'm not going to speak for Sam, but I certainly can't. I can't. I, I, I I'm also an impatient person. Like I want our world to be better than it is. And I think that's something that's true of, you know, all of the characters in

[02:39:42] the story, right? They are, they're seeking to make that change. Um, in that I think change is possible in this fantasy, right? But I just don't think that it is interesting that you say, you know, Deadpool looks at the camera and says, Hey, we actually are living it up pretty nicely. Aren't we? Um, I, I, I think that is interesting, but I, I just, I can't, I can't attach to it

[02:40:07] because I'm too much of a realist about where we are in the world today and seeing actively, you know, in our political, you know, systems, us taking back steps towards, you know, more fascism, something that we've seen in the playbook over and over again, people history, we're, we're finding that history is repeating itself. And that's something that I'm seeing in this game, that history is repeating itself in a way that it doesn't necessarily like the ending of this game is

[02:40:33] very hopeful, but it doesn't necessarily leave me to believe like the Prince and the party is going to change everything about that society, right? To change the, turn the world on its head. And they did say, they admitted that the progress would be slow. It will be hard and they would get something wrong, but that the commitment is the important thing. But yeah, it's, it's interesting because that, that note, as you say it towards the end, you know, this is, you know, this is a good world.

[02:41:00] I, I think there's good parts to take away from where we are today, not to get too philosophical, uh, or real world based in it, but yeah, I just, I, I can't attach to that idealism personally. I think it's like, if you're fighting the fight or if you're wallowing in, you know, the state of how things are, and if you think that everything's terrible, I think that both sides of that can lose track of progress through the years. So I think there is merit to what they're saying to like,

[02:41:29] say, Hey, if you take a step back, you can see that things are better than they used to be. Even if it's been really hard to get to this point. And even if we're backsliding, things have improved. I just like, I can't fully get on board with that message. I don't know, Sam, what do you think about this end here? Yeah. I mean, it's, you can get real deep here, can't you? Um, it's one of the, it's one of those

[02:41:55] things where, you know, if you do take a objective look at history, human history, we are by far the best off humanity has ever been right now. Yeah. But there is all of these caveats and small little things that aggravate either us on an entire social level or a personal level, um, that get in the way. And, and, you know, to relate it back to metaphor cause that anxiety, right? That doubt, that sort of

[02:42:24] fud that people get hung up on more often than not, which is a completely human natural instinct. Um, it's the idea of, yeah, on an objective level, the world itself as an entity might be great, but what has it done for me lately? Um, and I think that that is perfectly understandable with where things are. I guess the, the, the game is trying to take an extremely glass half full glass, three

[02:42:53] quarters full of like you guys. Yeah. It's all, it might look all real bad now, but you know, you've got to, it doesn't matter, you know, you push on and that's easier said than done. Um, and I, again, I don't think I can subscribe to it because again, on an individual level, you naturally retreat

[02:43:16] to the idea of, well, I'm one person. I can affect all of that much. Um, but you know, using voices, using our voices in, in ways that we feel is, um, constructive and helpful is, is good. Um, but beyond that, I think, you know, unless you're in the right circles, it is a very difficult thing

[02:43:39] to manifest change on some seismic level that will make things better. Um, that's just not the way our world works. Um, but again, maybe the metaphor, maybe studio zero are like, yeah, but wouldn't it be nice if it was the way that it works? It would be nice. I think that's probably just the, the optimistic message they're trying to put out, even if it is ultimately relatively futile.

[02:44:08] Yeah. I think they, they want to, they really want to hit you with that optimism at the end on both fronts, the optimism that like trying is worth it and the optimism that also look how far we've come. It's interesting to think of our vision of utopia now, which is like, you know, the, the perfect society where there's, there's no racism, there's no class inequality there. Everything's,

[02:44:36] everything's perfect, right? It's utopia contrast that I did that a little bit of research on the actual book utopia and the society that's described in the book of utopia, which Thomas Moore wrote. And so if you want to talk about how far we've come, look at the difference between utopia then and utopia now, and it's, it's one person's view of a utopian society back then, but in the book utopia,

[02:45:06] first of all, it's communism, it's a communistic society and everyone gets two slaves. So like, you know, it's, it's utopia, but also they had some work to do on, you know, how they treat people even in the perfect world back then. And then you contrast that with, um, you know, how we would view utopia and our version of an ideal society. Cause I think Thomas Moore wrote that while under

[02:45:31] the oppression of, um, while people were living under the oppression of the Catholic church back when that was like, you know, ruling stuff more. Yeah. So like, it's interesting to see like however many this, I think it was 1700s or something like that. However many hundreds of years later, our view of utopia has shifted and the goal then, if you're going to work towards it, the goal has shifted and what you can accomplish has shifted too. And so that lines up with what the, the creators

[02:46:00] have put here at the end to say, look how far we've come. Our vision of the ideal society is way better than the old vision of an ideal society where slavery still existed. And like, you know, so I can buy in a little bit with the final message here, just not as much as I think they want me to. I, I, I can't sit back and just be like, yeah, you know what? We have come a long way guys. Come in here. Let's, let's hug this out. Yeah.

[02:46:27] It's great. Yeah. And I think, I think a trapping that the game and media in general doesn't really escape is the idea that we as humans need to pin our hopes and our aspirations on some kind of other savior. Yeah. That we are sort of de facto handing off the responsibility of change onto somebody else that for one reason or another was, you know, destined to do this. Um, you know, it, it's understandable

[02:46:55] that it's a hero's journey and he does, you know, the Prince does technically at least from an optics perspective rise from nothing, but it is interesting that the journey, even though it's a, it's a positive message and it's about bringing people together rather than driving division. Yeah. It does ultimately fall on somebody who is of Royal blood. That is the one that is given the

[02:47:22] opportunity to make all the change. Yeah. I feel like there may be a version of this game. Um, and this would fundamentally change the game on, on a very deep level, but I feel like there is some kind of possibility and maybe the message of, you know, striving towards a utopia in the real world might've connected a little bit better or sat a little bit more naturally if the protagonist didn't

[02:47:51] end up as King. Yeah. Um, not obviously not Louise, but like just somebody else, not, not sanctifyx fordun or anybody from the church, but just somebody unexpected where the, the Prince acknowledged that, yes, I am striving for these great things, but we need to send a message to the people, to the average person that, you know, it doesn't have to be somebody like me that has this gift

[02:48:20] bestowed upon them from birth to rise to the throne and make institute these changes. It can just be somebody who is like-minded like me. If you have the drive, you can institute that change. I think that making a switch like that, as much as it would be a strange note to end a game on, maybe I think the message would have been more potent. I think the message would have still worked. It's, it's kind

[02:48:45] of like a consequence. I think of what kind of game this is because if you weren't playing as a singular hero protagonist with a small group of friends, then this would be a different kind of game. This would be like a, it would be like a 4X game or something like that. So that within the confines of the type of game, I don't think that collective action really could be explored without the Prince

[02:49:12] and you and your party ceding power to the people, which is like kind of what happens at the end, but not really like you're still the King. You didn't institute democracy for what we know. Um, so it is just kind of like an unfortunate thing. Like they made this kind of game and this kind of game can only dig so deep into this particular story without undercutting your hero.

[02:49:39] Yeah. Yeah. It's funny to that extent too, because you have the ending of the game and then you have the epilogue and the epilogue is the, the hero, the, the King fucking off with the rest of the party to go explore the rest of the land. He's not, he's not forming a Senator, a Senate or a Republic. He's not getting, you know, representatives of the people together. He's going to be like, Oh, I just want to hang out. I just want to, I'm going to do my own thing. Uh, which is

[02:50:05] delegating power to people around to kind of like take care of things in their home. So, I mean, I guess that's what the monarchy used to do, right? Like, you know, the, the King didn't have offices in every place or whatever. Like the King had officials to take care of Kingly business in places where the King wouldn't, you know, didn't need to go themselves. But, um, I don't know.

[02:50:29] It's, it's just like, if they wanted to say that the power is actually in the hands of the people and inspire a kind of like collective action type thing they could have, but that's not really the direction it went in besides the people giving you the support to overcome those obstacles in the final dungeon. Yeah. Yeah. I really liked that idea. You know, and again, for me, I feel like

[02:50:56] one of the biggest takeaways is, is that God damn, you know, the comparison, if only Trump was as hot as Louise Gia Byrne, right? You know, I mean, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, like, I mean, who's to say what would happen, right? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Of course, dear listeners. Um, but I do want to kind of, uh, tail off that conversation. You both, I thank you so much for digging that into me because I feel like there's a lot of stuff that is thrown at you and presented

[02:51:24] at you. And I've had a good amount of time to, you know, chew on some of these ideas and the themes, but it's been really, really great talking with you and be able to flesh this out, uh, on the show here today. I want to now take the chance to transition into final thoughts of the show. And I wanted to take a different note, right? Like final thoughts of the game. You know, usually we start off with the thoughts about how we felt about it. And then we, you know, just end on, you know, reaffirming that, but I want to switch it up this time. And I want to say, what are our final thoughts of the

[02:51:51] game to the extent of how would you convince others to play this game? Think about Will. Okay. He's out there, he's playing his Marvel rivals. We find him at PAX, we strap him to a chair with duct tape. How do we convince him to play a game? The protagonist is named after him the same name. So what else do we need to say? Exactly. You know, case closed. Yeah. Um, I'll go ahead and just say that for the extent here, I really think that metaphor again, you know, if you like

[02:52:20] JRPGs, you like JRPGs at the end of the day, and you're going to enjoy this game. And if you like Persona games, you are absolutely going to love this game. And I feel like as a person who hasn't dabbled into Persona as extensively as either, uh, Sam or Dave, I really do think this is probably the best interpretation of the Persona franchise or the Persona likes that they have out there. Um, I love the characters. I love the setting. Uh, this was a game that felt like it was made for me,

[02:52:49] um, that I really enjoyed playing. I wouldn't have put as much time into it as I wouldn't have finished this game at 4am if I didn't love it as much as I did. Um, and so I think that in order to think about playing this game, of course, time is an aspect. This is a big commitment. Dave said that earlier. Uh, but again, I think that the ride is worth, it's worth it. It's worth the journey. And I think that, uh, if you want to feel every single emotion going through this game, this is a

[02:53:15] game that's going to feed that to you in droves. Um, and that's something that is really, really well said. And it's the reason why I think this is up there on the list for most people, uh, last year in 2024. And I'll just leave it at that. Sam, how about yourself? Um, well, I'll echo all of your sentiments, of course. Um, I think just on a, on a general

[02:53:38] level, if people want to experience a really fleshed out world and go on a sort of globe trotting adventure through this world with a memorable cast of characters, um, and have some, you know, really cool turn-based combat, which isn't for everyone. Um, but I think that the, the, the, the flashiness of the UI that we talked about a little bit earlier and the

[02:54:08] designs of all the archetypes and everything, you can really get in there and experiment. I think that generally if, if you're into globe drawing adventures, you'll probably have a great time with this, um, as a, as a blanket statement. And then I think it's emblematic in the conversation that we've just had, um, for the past three hours. But I think that metaphor as with many of the games that in recent years have resonated with me, um, the most,

[02:54:38] whether it is something that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable or challenges a worldview or a perspective or an opinion that I've long held. Um, if you like media that challenges you in general, um, I think that metaphor presents an extremely compelling, um, difficult, complex, multi-layered

[02:55:02] narrative, um, that isn't black and white. Um, and I know that people find discomfort and anxiety in the gray, but I think that that is often where you find the most personal growth if you allow, uh, media to change you. Um, and I think that you should with metaphor. Yeah. I think you both are spot on with a lot of that. Like there's two parts to this, uh, for me.

[02:55:31] So the game aspect of metaphor, the calendar system, the dungeon crawling, the social links, all of that stuff is by now, uh, a well-established and like in a lot of cases, well-liked style of game. And I think that metaphor is the best implementation of that type of game that I've ever played. And that includes the persona games that I've played. I just think that this is a studio

[02:55:59] that has figured out the, the bones of the kind of game. And now they're free to throw in flourishes that they just didn't have the, maybe the knowledge or the confidence or just the experience to put in before. And now they're, there's throwing that stuff in. And I think that it's like very, very good on that. And then as far as the story goes, as Sam said, it's a story that will challenge you in some

[02:56:24] ways, and it will present a lot of thematic content that a lot of games do not go into. And even if some of those are not fully explored, maybe if they are like touched on brought up, but not made a focal point for characters to deal with, or the story to really like focus in on the beauty

[02:56:47] of it is that the conversation doesn't stop. Once you finish the game, a lot of those are really well explored. And we've talked about a lot of those here in the spoiler section here, but even if you think that the game stopped halfway on something, that doesn't mean that your involvement with that thematic material has to stop there too. You can talk with a friend about it. You can listen to

[02:57:11] podcasts, you can watch YouTube videos, you can do whatever you want to do to continue the conversation. And I wanted to say this earlier, and I forgot because I have a lot of thoughts about the game, but one of my takeaways from metaphor is that metaphor is not often the best way to experience the themes that metaphor brings up, but that's not necessarily like a huge criticism of

[02:57:36] it because you can continue that yourself. You can think about it and how it relates to your real experiences like we've done here. And I think that like any time that art in general can provoke that kind of conversation or that kind of reflection, that's awesome. That's like, it's not the only reason why you would consume an art piece of art or play a video game, but it's certainly one of the like

[02:58:00] ideal outcomes, especially one that's trying to tell a story with very real parallels to your own experience. So I really like it. Even if there's a lot of stuff along the way that I think is like not great, half baked, something like that. I still really like this game. And it's one that I always thought would be kind of more interesting to podcast about and talk about the story than it actually

[02:58:25] was to consume the story in the game itself, which like half criticism there, I suppose. For an 80 hour game to not fully explore its themes, I feel like it probably could have, but here we are having the conversation and we have the enrichment from the conversation that the game provoked. So there we go. So also the protagonist is named Will. And if you're

[02:58:52] listening to Friday Night Gamecast, you like people named Will. So there's, I mean, I gave like the long winded pitch and then the icing on the cake right there at the end. Exactly. It's perfect. You brought us home. But folks, that is going to be it for tonight. I want to give a big thank you to all of our listeners. If you've enjoyed our content and you want to support us further, please feel free to leave us a rating review on your platform of choice. Whether that's Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Good Pods, we always love hearing from the community.

[02:59:20] I want to take this moment to give the both of you a chance to plug your shows. If you want to talk about what's coming up, feel free to do that. Dave, I know you post schedules. What do you have coming up for the rest of January slash February on Tales from the Backlog? Ooh, January and February. So Tales from the Backlog, every week's a different game in depth, kind of like the same format we did here today. And often the same length as we've

[02:59:47] gone here today. I do long podcasts. So January, we just had an episode about Pathologic 2 come out. And I say we, it's me. I'm the only host on the show with a different guest, every single episode, different guests. So Pathologic 2 just came out. Nine Souls is coming next week. And then I forget. But February is going to have, let's see here, February. Tacoma, the Plucky Squire,

[03:00:17] Ace Combat 5. And then I'm going to try my best to get a Citizen Sleeper 2 podcast in February. Hell yeah. That's something to look forward to. I got my review codes for that as well. I'm going to be sure to start again very shortly. So I'm really excited. Also, Nick and Will have been on Tales from the Backlog several times. Most recently, we did a big episode about Control that was a lot of fun. So if you like that game, go check that episode out. Definitely go check that out. Thank you so much, Dave. This has been a blast. Yeah, thank you, Nick.

[03:00:47] Yeah. Sam, could you let the listeners know? Because I don't know if a lot of the folks, we have a shared audience. So if you could let us know what is No Limits all about, and how Taylor and Brianna are doing, and what do y'all have coming up for the show now? Sure. Yeah, so No Limits is a PlayStation-specific podcast where we talk about PlayStation and Sony's side of the industry, part of a wider media channel, Save the Game Media, where we have an

[03:01:16] Xbox podcast. Nintendo podcast will be fully in swing this year, as you can imagine. We have various other supplementary content, which you can go and check out at your leisure. Taylor and Brianna are my co-hosts there, and we don't have too much sort of pre-planned. We sort of are flying by our coattails more often than not, and just picking up the news as it comes. There's been some pretty hefty

[03:01:44] news for PlayStation as of late, and a number of cancelled projects. That's not too great. But yeah, there's some good games coming this year. Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yote, we're all looking forward to. Hopefully we hear some about Wolverine, so we'll be talking about that in the weeks and months to come. And generally for Save the Game Media, we have our Fantasy Critic draft for 2025, which will be going live in the coming days. So that's exciting. Always a fun one to draft those

[03:02:14] lists. And just generally for me, outside of Save the Game Media, I'll just say that 2025 is a stacked year for video games. So I'll be doing a lot of coverage over on IGN. So not a self-plug, but I will say that if you do ever, listeners happen to use an IGN guide for a big game coming out this year, more often than not, I will probably have worked on it. And if you do see my name listed in

[03:02:41] the contributors, just send me a DM or something and thank me because it's often a thankless job. And it's nice to see that my work has helped some people. So that's me. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sam. And yeah, listeners, please, if you're seeing any of his work online, feel free to send him a message and let him know because it's hard work grinding in games media, as we all know. But thank you both for joining us. With that, I'm just going to let

[03:03:10] everybody know, please keep gaming, take it easy, and we're going to see you next Friday night.