Anxiety Is the Ultimate Monster, Says Metaphor: ReFantazio Director

There's a degree of corniness calling the big bad monsters "humans" in the upcoming video game Metaphor:ReFantazio.

With that level of on-the-nose classification, what else is left for the player to interpret? Well, it turns out the game's director Katsura Hashino isn't addressing the brutality of man at all -- rather, the brutality of self. 

"In current, modern human society, anxiety has sort of come to unusual proportions," Hashino told CNET. For Hashino, the real monster is anxiety, which can stop people from progressing or moving forward in life. It's this general apprehension or internal panic that influenced "the idea of humans as the concept for the monsters in the game," Hashino said. 

Metaphor: ReFantazio, being released on Oct. 11 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series and PC, comes from Japan's Studio Zero, led by Hashino. He previously ran Atlus' P-Studio, known for the Persona series of character-driven RPGs and Catherine. Hashino's last game, 2016's Persona 5, was lauded by critics and fans for its deep mechanics, memorable worlds, fleshed-out characters and catchy music. It maintains a 98% on OpenCritic and landed multiple best RPG awards. 

The Persona 5 series as a whole, including its four spin-off titles, have sold a combined 10 million units worldwide, a major accomplishment for a deeply culturally Japanese 100-plus-hour title. Hashino left P-Studio after Persona 5 to lead a Metaphor: ReFantazio at Studio Zero, a freshly formed department within Atlus.

Given Persona 5's critical and commercial success, fans have high expectations for Metaphor, even as trailers and early previews have made it clear that Hashino's new game will be a bit different than his prior games. Those that have sunk hundreds of hours into past Persona titles may want to prepare themselves for a different flavor to nosh into. 

In Metaphor's case, the flavors are bread, porridge and sandworm guts as it takes place in a fantastical medieval-ish setting. Knights and swords are juxtaposed with fashion styles from London's Swinging Sixties. It's a weird world featuring unnatural hair colors and flamboyant mesh shirts. It's also a world that's deeply racist and discriminatory with an omnipresent church preaching its exacting gospel. 

I've had the opportunity to play the first few hours of the game before its launch later this month, so I've seen first-hand the parallels and differences between Metaphor and Persona.

There's some contradiction in Hashino's explanation of parallels to modern society in Metaphor. He dismisses the notion that Metaphor is a critique of Japan or any other country but concedes that fantasy is an effective allegorical tool. 

"I was reading a Japanese fantasy genre researcher and they had a theory that explored the idea of why people want to move to a fantasy world," Hashino said. "And it's because we believe that the world that we're in right now doesn't always have to be the way it is, it can change, and we can see other futures."

Mixed messaging aside, Hashino did emphasize that the various races in Metaphor aren't meant to mirror races here in the real world. Rather, he's using different tribes in the game as allegories to different personality archetypes, some of which have direct terms in Japanese. Examples include "rogai," which refer to elderly people who try to force their viewpoints on younger generations and "ishikitakai," which are those who try to impose their intelligence over others. 

Some of Japan's biggest auteur game developers are famous for their unrestrained and singular visions. Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding), Goichi "Suda51" Suda (Killer7, No More Heroes) and Yoko Taro (NieR)give their titles a quality of unbound imagination and fanciful wonder. That same attitude toward style and vision can also require players to fully submit to their world's rules. Those that easily succumb to facepalm embarrassment, like trying not to scoff at the bikini-adorned assassin Quiet from Metal Gear Solid V who breathes through her skin, can be turned off by immersion-breaking characters. 

In other cases, 2B from NieR Automata, a powerful sword-wielding Android who runs around an apocalyptic Earth in a revealing maid outfit, can coalesce a vocal fan group that loves her design and praises Taro for being so unapologetic in his pervy vision. It's ultimately risky giving directors this much control as it's hard to tell how well players will buy these characters and themes or whether their strange alchemy collapses into a mess of a game. 

Catherina in Metaphor: ReFantazio

In my roughly 20 hours into Metaphor, there's certainly a bit of wackiness in the clash of worlds that requires a little handwaving, like a floating sword you can ride like Marty's hoverboard from Back to the Future. It can feel that reverse storytelling is in play at times, where the designs and functions of characters are thought up first with the story being molded around it afterward. Players have to look past some of Studio Zero's strangeness and follow Hashino's thematic breadcrumbs fully, or else the game will fall flat. These types of games ask a lot from fans but reward those that stick through with memorable experiences.

"You could just read it kind of on the shallow visuals and say 'it's cool,' and that's fine," Hashino said. "But if you wanted to read into it and kind of see anxiety themes in it, that would also be welcome."