Racism, classism, poverty, religious fundamentalism. Public executions. The opening hour of Metaphor ReFantazio has it all. And it’s a statement of intent. This game is all about ‘anxiety’, per producer Junichi Yoshizawa. In-game text within the first 90 minutes wants to drive this home, thoroughly. “Anxiety breeds the world’s cruelest monsters”, reads one text box. “Anxiety breeds dissent among the tribes”, explains an early NPC. It’s saying the quiet bits out loud, there’s no room for subtext here.
But I quite like this sledgehammer approach to storytelling. It’s leaving no room for interpretation. We live in a pretty fraught world at the moment, with a major US election coming up in November (just weeks after Metahphor finally launches), and with political strife quite literally tearing the world apart – just look at the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza.
Where some games don’t want you to think about this, and would rather have you blindly and uncritically consume, the aptly-named Metaphor seems to be drawing comparisons to our world left, right, and center. The big monster bosses you fight are called ‘Humans’ for Christ’s Sake. It makes me think of the old ‘I know writers that use subtext and they’re all cowards’ meme from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
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