‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’, ‘Persona’ Series Director And Character Designer On Their Approach To Game Creation: “No Matter How Cool The Exterior Design Is, If The Contents Are Ordinary, It Won’t Sell”
In the opinion of Metaphor: ReFantazio director Katsura Hashino and character designer Shigenori Soejima, while graphics are a significant element of any given video game, they mean nothing if its underlying story and gameplay fail to deliver.
Hashino and Soejima, who players may also recognize as having provided their respective talents to the Persona series (the former joining with Persona 3 and the latter with its first entry Revelations: Persona), offered this insight into their creative philosophies during a recent interview given to the Japanese women’s magazine An An (an odd choice of venue no doubt, but hey).
Amidst a larger reflection on their lengthy careers with Persona studio Atlus, the pair were eventually asked by their host if they could speak to what, in their opinion, they considered to be “Atlus’ aesthetic”.
In turn, as machine translated via DeepL, Soejima opined, “As for the pictures, we had a senior character designer. He is a person who draws very unusual and unique things, including characters, and I think one of the things he wants is for people to have ‘irreplaceable goodness’.”
“Someone once said to me, ‘I want to make a title that makes me feel cool for choosing this work,’ he added. “I want people to feel that kind of spirit in the work I am in charge of.”
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The question next presented to him, Hashino asserted, “I think there are things that are ‘cool‘ and things that are ‘cool’, but in the case of the former, in the end, they are not cool.”
“If it’s just something superficial that was brought over from somewhere, it’s generally called ‘cool,’ said the game director. “So, whether it’s a design, story, setting, or whatever, I dig into the theme, take the time to research philosophy and mythology, and put in even a little essence. It’s necessary to give it depth, and there are people who feel that ‘this game feels like it’s been thought about a certain phenomenon more than other works’.”
“I said earlier that when I played Shin Megami Tensei, I ‘felt like I was being tested’, but I think that in order to make players feel that it’s not just a time killer, but that “I feel like I have to play it properly”, I think that’s how far we have to go,” he continued. “Aside from the cool look, the seriousness of doing it properly is also Atlus-like.”
Jumping off of his partner’s thoughts, Soejima then interjected, “But I think the coolness of the look comes from that seriousness. It’s the same as how no matter how cool the exterior design is, if the contents are ordinary, it won’t sell. From the perspective of a designer, the result is a cool look, as a result of trying to match the contents.”
Agreeing, Hashino further posited, “I’m not saying that’s bad or wrong, but I think that things that are predictable and unsurprising aren’t very interesting. They lack humanity. I think that things that are made by humans, that have the psychological distortions and twists that come with them, are more interesting.”
Met with the observation from their host that the characters in Atlus games “often seem very realistic”, Soejima recalled, “When I joined the company, I saw the character designs of the works I had worked on before, and I thought they were all unusual characters that you don’t see in other companies’ products. But when you look closely, you can see that they have been cut out to be ‘people like this’. It’s interesting. I try not to make everyone fictional.”
Closing out this particular topic of the interview, Hashino ultimately noted, “When I set up the characters in the scenario, I sometimes use strange people from my past or teachers I didn’t like, including their catchphrases. It’s a modern fantasy drama, but I create characters that have a sense of realism so that they don’t end up like, ‘There’s no such person’. My seniors often recommended live-action movies to me, so I watched them.”
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