‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’ Creator Hopes New IP Will Join ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ And ‘Persona’ In Atlus RPG Pantheon: “I Would Like To Nurture It So That It Becomes A Signature Title That Represents Our Company”
In sharing his high but admittedly not out-of-reach hopes for the future, noted Atlus developer and Metaphor: ReFantazio creator Katsura Hashino has revealed that he is currently looking to “nurture” his newly launched RPG into one of the publisher’s flagship series, on par with Shin Megami Tensei and Persona.
Hashino, who in his thus far 30-year career with Atlus has served as the director and/or producer on such titles as Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga duology, the Trauma Center series, and the last mainline three Persona titles (as well as the later FES and Golden releases of Persona 3 and 4, respectively), shared his ambitions during a recent talk with former Capcom producer and current GPTRACK50 studio head Hiroyuki Kobayashi, itself hosted as part of the latter’s ongoing developer-on-developer interview series for Japanese video game news outlet Famitsu (as machine translated by DeepL).
Following a lengthy discussion centered on Hashino’s work that touched upon such topics as his approach to storytelling, the decision to animate a number of Metaphor: ReFantazio‘s cutscenes using traditional rather than CG animation, and his personal goal of being “responsible for managing the creative process until the very end”, the Atlus veteran was pressed by his Resident Evil 4, Killer 7, and Megaman 11-producing host as to his plans for “making Metaphor into a series”.
“I have many ideas, but it has only been five weeks since its release [at the time of the interview], so I have no concrete plans,” he asserted as his time with Kobayashi drew to a close. ” However, I do hope that it will happen. This project started out with the idea of creating a third JRPG series following Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, so I would like to nurture it so that it becomes a signature title that represents our company.”
Given both Hashino’s aforementioned track record and ReFantazio‘s near universally positive reception – while Atlus has yet to publicly detail the titles’ current sales numbers, they did previously confirm that it sold over one million copies in the 24 hours after its release – the odds are good that the fledgling Metaphor series will eventually establish itself as one of the publisher’s main franchises.
However, Hashino’s achieving of this goal, if he ever does, is still a long way off, as unfortunately for fans, the director provided no details as to either what potential plans he has for the series’ next outing or his exact vision as to what future entries will look.
Will subsequent Metaphor games continue to focus on twist-and-turn-filled political intrigue plots? Is there a possibility of jumping from a Medieval European setting to say, one inspired by World War 1, or one based in space? Could future games see new ways of handling the Archetype system?
Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: Whenever the next game is announced, it’s likely going to set the internet ablaze.
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