Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it is my birthday and welcome to Giant
BombCast Revengeance, Episode eight hundred and sixty one. I believe,
and the only way that I want to celebrate my
day of birth is taking a nap. But we got
a podcast, so I've decided to assemble the Oh god,
accidents happening on the podcast already. I decided to assemble
the best crew to destabilize governments and make myself believe
in myself. Joining me cocap this ship Turbo Shawn Sean McDowell.
Speaker 2: Happy birthday, jam Happy five years old. You can finally
rent a car.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you shut the hell a precious baby. I
looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a
couple of white hairs, and I'm like, oh my god,
I'm thirty three.
Speaker 2: I'm dying now, Sexy.
Speaker 1: Come on speaking about salt and pepper. He is the
pepper to my salt. Michael him, Hey, what a do baby?
Speaker 3: It's your motherfucking buy. I know all about being thirty
three because I once was, but I am no longer.
Speaker 1: So what it's Spoiler's dog show. Sorry, Uh, We've we've
got the youngest person in all of games media. That's right.
That's a bold declarative statement, and I'm going to keep
running with it. The years will go by and she
will stay young. Lex Luddie Yep, never gonna age. And
John just for the records in case I ever need
to get a job in America. I do not want
to destabilize any governments speaking about de stable governments. She's
destabilizing video game reviews all across the internet. Jessica Coggswell, Hi,
happy birthday. Jan Oh oh, you're muted in my head.
I'm sorry, that's on me. Everything's fine. Everything something.
Speaker 2: It was messed up.
Speaker 1: It was super messed up.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, I was talking about, you know, having
a horrible birthday and not a really good one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well well well I'm kidding. It's fine.
Speaker 4: It's fine if it makes you feel better. I have
so many like gray hair is coming in and I'm
thirty one. So that's my on screen confession to you
to make up for.
Speaker 3: Solidarity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Soliday solidarity right there. That that is an ally,
Ladies and gentlemens and thems at home. That that's right.
If someone tells you they're graying, you tell them you
have more even if you have if you are a
Mike Manatt, if you are a bald, if you are
a Mike Manatti, hf rikers, if you're one of the
ball when I can say that, I'm allowed to say
that because I'm friends with the bald, and at one
point I was bald. It's okay, folks were here to
talk about metaphor Revantasio Atlas's newest joint, perhaps maybe the
most tirelish and sensory overloading menu game of the year.
In three of these fine folks have reviewed this game
across the internet fairly, I believe, super duper high scores
across the board, sean real quick progress check. Where are
you right now?
Speaker 2: I am twenty five ish hours in. I was also
playing Echoes of Wisdom, trying to juggle those you know,
and a bunch of our stuff. Didn't have time to
get farther into this as I'd like, I'm hearing that's
somewhere around the one third to one quarter of the
way through this game. So praise to enter for an
Atlas RPG, I suppose, but yeah, really really enjoying it.
For for the everyone else who is on the podcast,
you'll know where I am if I say giant worms,
you know the area? Uh, Jan, I'm curious, how where
are you either have?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, that's right, but only with consent. God damn it.
I'm about now fifty ish hours in okay, and in
a normal video game, I would have completed it. And
now I'm doing new game plus because this is an
Atlas joint. Uh what what's the guestimation of my progress?
I don't want to spoil too much because it's much
further in the game.
Speaker 5: Where they said like, hey, don't talk about leaving this place. Yes, okay, okay, yeah,
so you'll probably about halfway.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, sick sick? Nice? Great? It was mostly my
marker because I remember, Jess, you had posted forty hours
in and then the game finally has its its hooks
into you. Sorry for blowing up close friends on stories.
I'm so sorry, And I was thinking like, okay, cool,
Am I done yet?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Everyone else I'm talking to, Am I done yet?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: All right? Sick lex? What did you clock in afterwards?
And what are your general feelings of metaphor?
Speaker 5: I'm like one of the five people who've got a
PlayStation code, and so the the in game timer says
one hundred and ten hours the or yeah, one hundred
and ten. My PlayStation time says like one hundred and thirteen.
I had a couple of real rough nights with that
there towards the end. I think the the weekend before
the embargo, I was on a show with you and
I was like, Hey, I'm about like sixty hours in.
Do you know how much longer is left? And you
were like, yeah, Jess said, that's like halfway. So I
had a real fun week which ended up with me
in Mike Minardi's Twitch chat at seven am my time
fighting the final boss, totally running out of items and
any like way to regenerate MP and just like three
hours against the same final boss. Talking to Mike MINARTI
not not a way you want to spend your day,
but I did. I did really love I did really
love the game. I think I'm the only person Michael
you were nine, right, Yeah?
Speaker 2: I gave it a nine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was nine point five. The the only downsides
that I have with it is like some very late
game mechanical balancing problems, and when it comes to the
game story, I actually think it's by far Atlas's best
thing that they've risien.
Speaker 1: Quite just what how many hours did you clock in afterwards?
End you gave it a ten? I want to say ten.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I ended up playing it for about seventy five
ish hours. I think that's what my official time was.
But I do also know that there were a couple
of times when I quit out of the game and
like went back and I lost probably an hour, So
I would say it's probably closer to some like in
the eighties. Okay, but okay, yeah, it's I I want
like ham on this game.
Speaker 1: It was why I had.
Speaker 4: I remember Bless messaged me on Instagram from kind of
Funny and he was like, it is so funny to
see that you are the only name who has cleared
so many of these dungeons because you are wild. Because
so if you hit like the little middle button, it
tells you like what everybody was doing, like what their
party comp was when they did certain dungeons. And when
there's only you know, however many codes in the wild,
you see a lot of fellow reviewers and stuff that
you know, and I guess, yeah, my I just looked
like a mad woman because mine was showing up on
all of these dungeons. Every time people went.
Speaker 5: In and I got whatever. I went into a dungeon.
I was like, am I am? I the same level.
Jess was like, will I be able to handle this?
Will be paid in the ass, so you just get
through it. And if your level was like lower than mine,
I was like, well, I have no fucking excuse. I
have to get through this.
Speaker 2: Uh quick. Aside, just what did you play on what platform?
Speaker 4: PlayStation five?
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense because on PC it was just
player codes for all the airnet connected stuf during the
review period, so I was like, oh, this must just
not be implemented yet. Okay, that must have been fun
to see, like friends, less people and stuff.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Michael, yo, you gave it a nine on itea
dot com. I did. Yeah, your your overall feelings from
your review on on Metaphor.
Speaker 3: I love Metaphor very dearly. I think that Damn I'm
blank and I was on I was on John Warren's
own VGBS yesterday talking about talking about this game, so
I'm like, Damn, what did I say? I love this
game a lot. I think it's a it's a clear
evolution of atlases like there, especially that team's bread and
Butter I guess, So you know, the social mechanics are refined,
the battle system borrows a lot from SMT, and the
archetype system, which we'll dig into deeper later, is a
very fascinating system and a great execution of a job system,
so you're not going through the same motions as you
do in an SMT. In persona combat plays like SMT,
and there's some real wild things that you can do
in combat. But at the end of the day, I
will there are things I take away from Metaphor that
that really affected me on a personal level. So Jess's
review really resonated with me because I think we came
at it from a similar angle, because of what it
has to say about our favorite pieces of fiction and
how they affect us and how they can affect the
real world. And I know that there's been I mean,
I mean there's people are sharing screen shot from the
game during the review period, and a lot of us
are talking about how it incorporates a lot of social
issues into its story, because this is about this is
one of the most like overtly political games. It's about
an election, for one, but also two. In the first hour,
they show you like, hey, listen, this place is fucked up.
There's mad racism, there's hell inequality, there's poor people everywhere,
and a bunch of people in power who are abusing
their power. And so it's like, Okay, this is what
we're getting into. You play as a character who is
you know, discriminated against wherever he goes, and that's kind
of like the base. Yeah, so that's like the basis
of the story. So to me, I'm kind of like
Atlas's stories have affected me in some very very personal ways,
of course, but they're kind of treading into different territory,
and I was a little hesitant.
Speaker 1: To be like or I was rather.
Speaker 3: Looking to see if they understood the material they were
working with, because like, I don't go, I'm not going
into metaphor for like, to confirm my political views or
to be taught something that I don't already know. Rather,
I'm going I went into this game looking for the
way they're incorporating these themes and if they can demonstrate
and an understanding of what they're working with to tell
a powerful story. And they very much did. You know,
there are a few things that held it back from
being a ten, but we'll probably get into that a
little bit later, but at the end of the day,
metaphor is it's an important game, I think, or at
least for me, it is.
Speaker 5: So Yeah, I think that that's a super important bit
of like background on the game that I talked about
when I was previewing the game, and I was super
hesitant of it because of Studio Zo's track records. Like
a lot of the Persona games for me, have really
resonant themes, but then like Fumble in the final act,
where you have like, you have a whole character in
Persona five whose like mom is a detective or sister
is a detective, and then her big revelation is like
I'm instead of like realizing, oh, the cops are corrupt
and this is bad, she's like, I'm going to become
a good cop. You have the stuff in Persona three
which is so bad that they basically had to like
completely rework the beach scene, and I found that with
the splithing of Studio Zero and kind of the younger
Persona team.
Speaker 1: I really really.
Speaker 5: Enjoyed Persona five Tactica that came out last year, and
I thought that game had like an incredible good game. Yeah,
that game has incredible politics and a really strong message,
and I was kind of like looking at this game
in previews of like, I don't know if they're able
to deal with the content that they're biting off here
or that they have the follow through for Ash, And
for the first thirty hours they kind of don't. There's
a lot of like general, hey, this is bad, but
it doesn't get into like why it's bad or explaining
what it thinks to the people who are who are
you know, causing this in Joe, and the game kind
of feels like it doesn't have teeth in a lot
of ways for the first quarter of the game maybe,
And then as you get further into it and they
really start to delve into the two major camps in
this election, because the game is all like running this
election and how similar the ideals are, but how vastly
important the differences are. Then you start to see like, oh,
Atlas really thought a lot about this, and it becomes
like a sociology and political like examination of what it
actually means to believe these different things, and it really
interrogates both sides and opinions, which I thought was really refreshing.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the battle system, and the battle system
is Michael. He said it borrows a lot from SMT yep,
and I.
Speaker 2: It basically is press turn as far as right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The thing I enjoy about it is that
it feels like for folks that haven't checked out SMT
in their or familiar with just your regular decular turn
based stuff or personas of the past, it feels like
persona Turbo just because you can just kind of like
there's there's like a certain cadence to it where you
can kind of just button through to everything. How did
y'all feel about the archetype system? And for persona heads
out there, these are basically your personas and being able
to share that amongst the party and kind of like
make up for deficits or like maybe make the most
terrible team comp.
Speaker 2: It is funny that you can like change anyone to
be anything you want, because I think there's a trade
off there. I think it makes the protagonists less interesting
because being the fool being able to switch between all
the personas that you collect over the course of a
persona game or you know, summoning demons a SMT. I'm
a little less familiar with that, so I won't be
talking about that series as much, but being able to
have all these different options and combined with the one
system of being able to just hit weakness after weakness
in persona game is very interesting, and so the protagonist
is a little less interesting. But being able to make
your allies basically whatever you want, they clearly excel in
a given path. Whatever they start as is what they
will be better at. But you can change your team
comp however you want. So maybe you just really like
a character and you want them to go in a
different past, so you basically give them a job like
traditional RPGs have done, like Final Fantasy has done, so
you can make them where you want, and that makes
them more interesting. I think it's a balancing act there
with the job system at least, and I think it
plays into the press turn as is presented in here,
because it does make it so that you can use
the same character in multiple turns. You can do some
interesting stuff with that that you're If you're kind of
like me and you are more familiar or only familiar
with Persona, it's gonna feel different. Not necessarily I would
say even better or worse, but it feels different in
a refreshing way, especially if you have been playing a
lot of persona games like I have been recently.
Speaker 1: Jess Michael. The further you get into the game, how
much more complicated does the combat get?
Speaker 4: It gets it gets hard. But I don't know that
it's any more complex, I guess, is my thought. I
don't know, like or do you disagree, I'm trying to.
Speaker 5: I think the two like drawbacks for the combat that
I had were when you are specing into these different archetypes,
which are really cool. They have preset requirements for you know,
Magic Seeker requires you to be a level ten Mage
and a level twenty Seeker, and each character eventually unlocks
their own unique sort of final class, and you have
to have pretty high requirements in different jobs basically, but
you don't know while playing the game which jobs those
are going to be. So towards the endgame, at a
situation where I unlocked, you know, all these different characters
final classes, but I've been specking them into the long
job class basically, so I just had to grind these
these sort of dungeons to level them up so that
I could unlock their final class. And that's like the
one mechanical thing that they don't fully explain to you that, well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like, what's one area. I think that there's
there's definitely room for improvement because this is the first
time that they've done this kind of system. I mean
Digital Devil Saga has there's a lot of similarity to
Digital Devil Saga, which I imagine like not as many
people played, but the I think it's a it's a
really interesting system and it's fun to mess around with
when you start specing certain characters into their jobs and
thinking about party synergy because now it's not like my
party is stuck to a certain number of elements or
like okay, like this character covers electricity and physical and
this character is more fire and healing. Anybody can can
do anything, and you can inherent skills from other jobs
that you that you've leveled up, so you can There's
a lot of flexibility, and I think that's important because
the tougher bosses in this game have either specific gimmicks
or they have no weaknesses, or they have they have
like barriers you need to they have hoops you need
to jump through in order to actually damage them. So
there are certain bosses that are there. They're more complex
than I've seen from other from other Atlas bosses, and
I think it puts less emphasis on like, oh, I
just need to have these certain elements covered. It becomes
less and less about like, oh, this enemy is a
weak to electricity. Everyone's gonna get their electricity spell and
we're just gonna hammer away for eight turns because I
can get an extra turn every time I hit that weakness.
There are a lot of bosses where you have to
think about debuffs and protecting your self and thinking steps ahead.
So and they give you a lot more tools. So
I think that the tool set that they give you
through the archetype system gives way to more complex strategies
because you have to do that if you're going to
beat a lot of the some of the end game bosses.
The game does get pretty hard if you if you
keep going out of like a steady pace without like
necessarily grinding or anything, the bosses will be challenging. And
I like that about this game that you know as
maybe they're trying to cast a wider net because they
are doing a new ip, but they've really kept the
level of challenging and almost up the complexity compared to
Shinmagami Tense, which you know a lot of us who
play SMT look at SMB like, oh no, that's the
hardcore RPG. That's what that's what the real motherfuckers play, right, babies.
Speaker 5: I talked to some people that were guiding this and
they were like, oh, yeah, if you put it up
to hard or put it down to easy, they don't.
Enemies don't get more or less health. They just are
more aware of your weakness and target it more frequently.
Speaker 3: And enemies are smarter too, they know they know what
you're against.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I just linked in chat. But this game can
kind of be bullshit in the way that SMT is
bullshit of Like I uploaded a clip to Twitter where
just four minutes of me not being able to move
because my entire party was charmed, and so whenever it
was all turned, we just attacked each other and then
we all died eventually.
Speaker 3: Right, Yep, that'll happen. I'm glad that. I'm glad that
they that Atlas did not forget its roots.
Speaker 4: So but yeah, yeah, no, I think you. I think
you are right. I guess when you said complex, I'm
thinking like almost confusing, because I feel like it does
a very good job of having these building blocks and
just kind of slowly like, Okay, now you know how
to do this, and so if you you know, I
don't know. There's a lot of synergy and a lot
of flexibility, and I think that it just works really beautifully.
I was obsessed with the archtypes. I can't talk archtype system.
The only thing that would have made it better is
like some Final Fantasy ten to two costume changes.
Speaker 1: Yes, I would have been a hop not okay. I
know the age range of people on a podcast when
someone will bring up Final Fantasy ten two and everyone's like, yeah,
that's the right demo, that's the right demo. We're going
for millennials, jail. Yeah, did you want to.
Speaker 2: Talk about the overworld part of the BATL system in
this segment?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's that's probably the best place to talk
to talk about.
Speaker 2: It's not I want to checko it, but yeah, I
did want to bring it up because it's one of
the things that I would say is actually a negative
for me. Is okay, So people who maybe haven't played
the demo, if you've just seen the trailers and stuff,
may have been confused, like I was about Okay, they're
doing some like action RPG hacken slash stuff on the overworld,
but then it transitions into turn based How does that work?
And so what happens is it's basically a consolidation of
things that Sona has done, especially in five, a combination
of being able to take out enemies that are weaker
than you, being able to ambush enemies to gain advantage
in battle. So turning all of that into one cohesive
system that they present as action RPG adjacent. What happens.
You know, use the phae vision I believe it's called Gallica.
Your little fairy will tell you if an enemy is weaker,
same level or a higher level than you, blue yellow, red,
And so if they're weaker than you, you walk up
to them and you know, press square basic attack, you
just kill them missingly, get some XP, move on with
your life. If they're at the same level or higher,
that's when it gets more complex because it turns into
a system where you need to lock onto the enemy,
break their like guard meter, and if you successfully do so,
you will basically ambush as you would in persona game.
You will gain advantage. And it's even stronger here because
the enemies will straight up have the stun effect on
them four up to two turns. My problem is maybe
just an expectation of mine. I'm a big character action
game kind of person, and by EXTENSI I love action RPGs,
and this feels like kind of a clunky implementation of that.
I know it's not they're not going for action rpg,
but it feels a little too in the middle for me.
It doesn't feel like action RPG, but also doesn't feel
menu driven, and so it's actually maybe it's a small
thing in the grand scheme of the game once you've
been playing for eighty two one hundred dollars, but it
just feels wonky to me to be exploring a dungeon
and kind of have to like press this attack with
a little a little bit of input delay. Sometimes the
character doesn't go quite where I want them to to,
like actually hit the enemy. Sometimes the camera gets stuck
on something when you're like locked onto an enemy and
it doesn't know what to do, and then you get ambush,
And like I think Michael was saying earlier, if you
get ambushed in this game, you're getting fucked up, yeas
beat Yeah, So that can be really annoying. But I
would say in the grand scheme of things now that I'm,
you know, more in the over twenty five hours in
it's not super intrusive, so it feels more like a nitpick.
But it was something that was really bugging me in
the early parts of game. I don't know how the
rest of you feel about that half ish of the combat.
Speaker 4: I love it because it totally allows you to I
don't just like cheese your way through certain things, like Okay,
so I went into one dungeon and there was minotaurs
everywhere and they were kicking my ass, and so I
switched to having my protagonist be a thief, which if
you're a thief, you have throwing daggers.
Speaker 3: So if you hide behind.
Speaker 4: Walls and just throw daggers at things, you can get
them to be ambush and then you can run into
battle and you can take them down way easier. So
like little things like that, or even if you know,
there's a part end game where I was just like
grinding up stuff so that could hit all of my
party's like final archetype, and I was just running around
an area with the throwing knives. I literally just would
switch to that just to solely have those, and I
was just running around just and just leveling up. It
was fantastic.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just unlocked Deef, so I'm maybe maybe I'll
like that a little bit more actually having an arranged option.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the arrange option is so fun.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, Sean, you just gotta just just do a
good old drive by in a fantasy.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean that's what I like about Persona five.
I think it was introducing Royal specifically where Joker just
like rushes through the dude and it's like a monochrome
you know screen where he just mess those people up
and just get the rewards. I like that a little
bit more than you know, just whacking them one my
scepter and getting like too cold.
Speaker 1: A major huge thing in a lot of Persona games
is your supporting cast on top of your main protagonist. Folks, friends,
how did we feel about the party and the subsequent
social bonds you wind up doing with the gang? Damn?
Speaker 5: It's probably the best artless characters have ever been, like
overall when it comes to consistency, because I don't think
there's a single one of those characters that you have
a link with that doesn't have like something that genuinely
affected me. I think the highlights are definitely Maria, heis May,
and and those characters come through as like some of
the best characters of the year in video games. And
they're like even Maria as like a kid character, which
are so usually just these very like dull and plain
and way too innocent, and but the shades that they
give to her as a character, and like the competency
and the fact that they don't talk down to her
in a lot of ways and makes that character incredible.
And heis May is like one of the most heartbreaking
side stories that.
Speaker 2: Precious Boy's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my rat my rat man.
Speaker 5: Who is he?
Speaker 1: What is he in the mouse?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, we see, yeah, we see he's a bat
mouse yeah, bat mouse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: The I mean, it's the case with any any persona
game with their social links or confidence, is that all
of them are supposed to be vessels for you to
kind of understand various aspects of the story it's trying
to tell. But more so than any other game because
you're not necessarily tied to like this Arkana system where
the it's like, well there's twenty cards in a tarot deck.
We got to have this many social links. So I
think stripping down away, stripping down or stripping away a
lot of the a lot of the tenets that are
tied to persona kind of gives them the freedom to
be more efficient. And you see this in how you
go about your your calendar days. But I think specifically
for the social links this or for the for the
bonds and followers, it lets them focus on fewer things,
go more in depth, and they're only up to rank
eight so each story, but you get feel a little
bit more purposeful, and then the.
Speaker 5: Time you visit them, you will level them up.
Speaker 1: You will level up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that's very important. It's not persona where
you need to have a specific persona equipped and that
you need to get You also don't even need to
get dialogue choices right to get more points with them,
because you yeah, you just get a currency as a
bonus if you say something that they like.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they strip away a lot of the a lot
of the things that are kind of that can be
frustrating and not even and like metaphor is a lot
more clear in communicating your progress, whether it's your social
stats or if it's your social standing with the characters.
So it kind of cuts out a lot of the
a lot of the fluff, a lot of the mystery.
So it's very straightforward. It's a lot more efficient, and
I think because of that, I finished all my bonds
like well before the final dungeon without a guy because
we're reviewing the game, so there's no guides out there,
and I think that speaks to how much more streamlined
this game is. But through that, you get to see
all the characters all the way through, and there's some
really really special ones obviously, like has May being a
party member. Of course you want to like see his
story all the way through in his social bond, but
like having that context for his tragic backstory and then
having him in your party, like you know, it all
feeds into that, and like that's the case with anybody
else but my precious war Boy. The first time I
cried in this game was on his Rank eight scene.
That's that's the first one that got okay and.
Speaker 5: Me and Jess we talked about this a little bit
before the game came out, but like the localization is
so fucking good for when you consider that this is
a game being developed in Japanese primarily, and then it's
being translated into English, and then they're working it into
like this old English at the same time. And then
it's the lines that they come out with, the fucking
bars that some of these characters have, like they go
so fucking hard, and I can't remember the Heisme one,
but it's it's I'll try to pull it up if
someone else wants to talk about it for a little bit.
But there's some quotes that are just incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that, oh no Osen says, I think
that the biggest change obviously. I mean I don't know
a lot of SMT. I've played a little bit, but
like between persona and metaphor is obviously you go away
from like this real world high school setting, and I
think that that just helps so much, which is weird
because I love Persona, like I genuinely like I love Persona,
but it's so refreshing to play this game where one
of your cam like Holgenberg very much implied to be
like probably late thirties, early forties, like she's significantly older
than the rest of the party, you know, And like
that's how it is with Heismee too, Like Hisme is
a father significantly older, and there's just a lot of
I don't know, just different age ranges, and it doesn't
feel like some of these social links are just there
to be like a romantic interest, which is funny because
I was totally like, I love romantic interest in games
like give me that boyer where like yeah, So whenever
I heard that there was no, you know, no Wai Fu's,
I was like, well, I don't I don't know like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know where you lock it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I was like, oh, I don't know, like
I kind of like that aspect, And then while I
was playing, it was like, holy shit, this is so
much better actually, because there's still like chemistry between the
main character and a couple of the other characters where
you're like, oh, like that could be a thing in
the future. But it doesn't feel like it's all consuming.
It doesn't feel like you're talking to like, okay, like
I love, I love what is Itfumi is? Is she
the chess player?
Speaker 2: Five?
Speaker 1: There? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So it's like it doesn't feel like you're just like
doing these stories because you're like, oh, this character is
kind of cute and kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I almost see you.
Speaker 4: Like it's it's just all so much more meaningful and
ties into the thematics and really, I mean like Brigita, right,
like gorgeous love her, love of my life. But also
it's not like you're going to her as like this
older romantic interest. You know, you're you're going to her
because she's she's going through a lot, you know, and
she's been through a lot, and god, just some of
the things that like, she she affected me so much
with some of the things that she would say. It
just about how life can make you very closed off
if you let it, and very jaded and kind of
seeing her try to pull herself out of.
Speaker 1: That was, Yeah, so good, she's there.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a lot of the bonds feel very natural,
and I think that's what makes them, makes the characters
stand out, especially if you're coming from this. You know,
we played like how many fucking persona games at this
at this point, So it's hard it's hard to be surprised, right,
But I was surprised by because again, like you're not
interacting with these characters, are like, oh, I want to
be their friend. It's like you're kind.
Speaker 2: Of you, You're they're they're treating they're teaching.
Speaker 3: You a lot about the world as you as they
walk through it with you, and so like Brigitta is.
Speaker 1: Kind of a parallel world.
Speaker 3: She like runs a weapons shop and she's like, if
I could have it my way, I wish this world
wouldn't have weapons, But this is the reality in which
we work with work in, and this is my trade.
So I'm kind of like stuck in. This is what
I have to do, and there's no real real escaping
and it explores that in a in a nuanced way, honestly,
And so I think that that is one way in
which this game kind of demonstrates like, oh, it's you know,
it does understand these complexities. And then I won't say
who the character is, but there's also one that focuses
on like religion as an institution versus faith, and I
think that's such a good vessel for exploring the Sanctish Church,
which kind of dominates the kingdom in which this game
exists in. And so you have this church, this institution
that is all powerful throughout the kingdom, but then you
have like the social bond where you kind of like
see it on the ground level and then kind of
see a lot of different like and like supporting characters.
Their faith is tested in some really interesting ways, and
the game is very smart about like saying it doesn't.
It's not about like, oh, it is religion bad, is
religion good? Or is having faith purposeful?
Speaker 1: Whatever?
Speaker 3: Like it doesn't. Those are very basic questions, and it doesn't.
It goes past that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it assumes that you have already made up your
mind on that. Like it's it's just examining it in
different situations and kind of more nuanced conversations.
Speaker 2: It's not even try hyde. It's it's making an analog
to Christianity, and like examining is you know, this being
a very dominant thing in the world, you know, is
this always? Yeah? No, no metaphors in this game at all.
Speaker 3: I think it's really funny this game is called metaphor because.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot on these things.
Speaker 5: Extremely I do think that a lot of that is
able to do that way better in this game because
of the structure of it, of having a main villain
who you know from the beginning and kind of instead
of the persona thing of it's almost like episodic in
a lot of ways. There are segments of this game
where you go to different areas and you spend time
in different areas, but there is a very clear overarching no,
this is the person who you're fucking with, and you
want to deal with them real badly because they fucking suck. Yeah,
having like the ominous government man who you never see
until the final ten hours. In like a lot of
Persona games, they just say, no, fucking this guy, this
guy sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah at the last moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I would say. That's what I was hoping
it would not do. I was like, man, if you
just end up fighting like God or something like, I
get it. But I was that I wouldn't do that
because like Lise is just like this little Griffith bitch
that I love.
Speaker 2: And I tell you from the opening cut scene before
you press start what your goal is. It's yea, I
love it.
Speaker 5: Yes, And like they wind up playing with it in
some cool ways too, because they do something which is
like it's fun that they there's a whole section where
you're like, oh, am I doing something else in this game,
like is the something else that's going on?
Speaker 3: And then they're like, nah, yeah, yeah, I guess since
we're talking about characters, I guess I didn't really, it
wasn't until like I really sat down for like a
day after finishing the game, when I really appreciated Luis
as a character, Like not that I like him in
terms of like, oh that's my guy. That is not
my guy at all, but I think because.
Speaker 2: Him in the next election, he's like he's kind of
a JoJo's villain. You know, he's got charisma where it's like, ah, right,
you're a good villain who I liked.
Speaker 3: Is a very good villain that I that is offered
levels of complexity that is saw all the way through
the game at various points, so it's he's it's a
very consistent villain. I think Atlas has kind of had
that problem in a way because I think like with
Persona five, it's like flavor of the day villain as
you go from one thing to another, which is good,
which I think works for that game. Persona three kind
of waits till the very end to like show its cards,
which works for that what that is, But for metaphor,
I think this is a very uh this is like
a great like this is a great execution that is
consistent that kind of drives You're like, this is a
villain who drives you throughout the entire game and your
relationship with that villain, like you never really know where
you stand, and that's such an interesting part, like oh,
what's the next happen? And you think this is gonna happen,
but then it kind of changes into this and so
it's it like it it compels me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And he's really good at like presenting his case
in a way that a lot of ORPG villains aren't,
where like even if the game is like no, he
is objectively fucking wrong and we dislike what he's saying.
He is very eloquent and like the performance is graceh
and he's just like you can tell yeah, yeah, you
look at him and you're like, oh no, this guy
is fucking captivating, Like I can see why people follow this.
Speaker 2: Guy right, very creous.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, like I would join that cult.
Speaker 2: I think all of this is because it's very important
to point out the main character is not you. Your
main character is a character who has existed in this
world and has their story that you are influencing, but
you are not them. And I don't know how it
exactly all this plays agether, so don't ruin it if
there's something there, but yes, you are technically someone in
this game, and the protagonist is someone else. And because
the protagonist has you know, we we obviously have things
like Joker in Persona five having the backstory that sets
up for everything, but otherwise fairly average, you know, teenage
kid and the MC in this game having the background
that they do. Simply having the race that they do
and the way that everything weaves into that and how
they are such an underdog in this story is what
allows all these things to happen because you are guiding them,
but they have their own voice, literally and figuratively. They
are voiced for like the first time is fantastic. It's
not just like you know, battle grunts and stuff. It's
nice to see the person who you are guiding interact
with all these other characters as if they are all
real people. Because that's when the Atlas has always been
really good, as like making these characters that feel real
and finally your main character feels real as well, which,
by the way, were on the topic, why did everybody
name the protagonist Jan Jan? Of course?
Speaker 4: Okay, I always name my Atlas protagonists the same thing,
which is hero with an I though I think.
Speaker 2: Your hero, Yeah, Hero protagonist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Les, it asks you for two names, Yes,
it does. Yeah, So I did lex and then Lexi,
which wound up that's funny.
Speaker 2: I know what Michael did, but I want to tell
the audience.
Speaker 3: Yeh, good old Charlie Took who lives on yet again.
Speaker 1: The Ultimate Time Traveler.
Speaker 2: I went with Cyrus because it sounds like a masculine
forum of iris and the main character has heterochromia, so
I thought that was loo at you. Sean also got
blue hair like Cyrus from Pokemon Diamond Pearl, so if.
Speaker 1: It the nerd uh folks friends were nearing the end
of our time here. But but I just want to
talk real quick about story in this game, and uh,
you know Persona games there, they all got their stories,
they all got their metaphors. But since this game is
called metaphor, do you think since you three have landed
or finished it, and Sean you're still in the process
along with me, does it stick the landing? Does does
it hit the metaphor? We've joked around that it's incredibly
on the nose, But like the messages that the game
has to tell it, does it land well? Has it
resonated with y'all? Is it affecting y'all? Have you found
yourself crying? Afterwards, we'll go around the room. Jess you first,
if if you are, you're ready.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: The answer I guess to everything is yes, it's so good.
I just I think that I grew up in my
favorite games or like Final Fancy seven and then Final
Fancy nine or like two of my all time favorite games,
and part of the reason for that is just how
deeply empathetic they are and how rooted they are, like
just the context I guess surrounding them and metaphor is
like that it reminded me in so many ways of
playing those games that I grew up playing, and like
just just like the way, like the storytelling, the way
that you have Like sorry to like draw this parallel,
but it's like, you know, I said that Luis is Griffith,
but he's also like a very seph Roth character, right,
Like it's a very like Cloud and seph Roth thing
where it's like each one of them has an idea
for how this place should be fixed, and they share
a lot of similarities, but the way, like the things
that happened to them completely altered, like what they think
they need to do in order to reach that utopia,
and so I don't know, it's just it's very compelling.
It brought me back to those games that raised me,
and in that sense, like it did have this really
big emotional impact on me in a way that a
game has it in a long time. Like my game
of the year last year was Balder's Gate three, right,
and that's a phenomenal game, and I loved every second
of playing it, But it's not something where I walk
away from it and I'm like, oh my gosh, I
want to be a better person, Whereas like I played
Metaphor and it just touches on so many things where
like I don't remember who I was texting, but I said,
it's like going to therapy where you hear your therapists
say something and you're like, yeah, like I know that
that's common sense, but if you hear it enough times,
and if you hear it delivered eloquently, there's just like
one of those times it just hits you and you're
like that is right, and like I know that inside,
but I needed to hear somebody else tell me that
because I felt alone or like I felt I don't know,
so and like That's how it was for me. Is
I just I was playing it and it would say
these things and sometimes it's cheesy, sometimes it's cliche, but
then it just it'll just pack a punch and you're like,
holy shit, Like I have become a jaded thirty year old.
And you know, I remember when I was idealistic, and
I remember how games moved me at one point, and like,
I like, this is what games can be and I
love that.
Speaker 5: X Yeah, I think I said it on Twitter, but
like this game has a real anger to it. You know,
it has it's not willing, it's very willing to say
like what it thinks of certain people, and like it
has contempt for people who have given up on, you know,
hope in a lot of ways. The line I pulled
up from Hayes May's side story, it isn't said by him,
it's said by another character, but it's I don't know
when it happened, but we stopped chasing hope. We've grown complacent,
cling to the idea that is wiser to accept hardship
than resistish and that like really fucked me up as
someone who is very happy to look on the bad
side of things or to be inactive and allow like
negative things to happen because it just seems like the
right thing to do. And this game, in a way
that like very few other games have ever done, kind
of motivates you and is a real direct dialogue with
the player, basically trying to get them to believe in something.
And it's aware that, like again, it's very aware that
it is in fact a metaphor. It's aware that like
this isn't like the real world, but that doesn't fucking
madam man, and that it can still have power outside
of ash, which I think is something really incredible that
they are that self aware with this.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's where you're at in the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just how it starts strong and it keeps going.
I think the Persona games have an issue with their starts,
Especially after playing Reload this year, I realized that Persona
three probably gets off to the quickest start overall. You know,
five starts very bombastic, but it kind of then has
a huge exposition dump and not a lot happening until
you get through the first dungeon and metaphor. You know,
if you play that demo, you you know you're playing
the intro area, like allot of the tutorial there, so
a lot of people probably already know this, but it
starts with just some heavy beats and it just kind
of doesn't slow down. You know, is a hero's journey,
so you will have some ebbing and flowing, but man,
the highs hit really high. It's just it's all so
well presented. The characters, like we already said, are incredible,
and so even though I'm pretty early on in the
grand scheme of things, I am loving the overall pacing
of everything. I love how they are presenting what they
want to say. They you know, they say it out loud,
they say, hey, we don't necessarily need to condemn something
straight out, but ask questions, you know, question is this good?
Is this okay? Is Like, like we mentioned with Luis,
even if someone's ideal is maybe on the right track,
it's about the approach and the fact that this game
is constantly asking these questions is what is stringing me
along so much. It's what's making me fall in love
with the plot of this game, because it is this
grand epic tale that again like having a main character
who is on this journey, not just to you know,
by a bunch of high school drama stuff and then
kill god. You know, as fun as silly as it is,
may sometimes too silly. No, this is a much more
grounded as ground as you can be in a fantasy
world story of rising up through the ranks and overcoming adversity,
and the way they go about it, I just think
is absolutely fantastic. I'm loving it so far.
Speaker 1: Oh my guy, Michael, him take us home. Throw some
knowledge of darts. Oh boy, the story here man that.
Speaker 3: It's hard to follow up on all those things because
all y'all are all right and cover various aspects, and
I think that speaks to how much you can take
away from from this game. And I think I share
similar sentiments as all y'all. But for me, it's there's
there's a meta narrative to this game, and it opens
with that, and for a long time you kind of
wonder where it's going, what it does with that. I
think that's one of the more interesting aspects about how
this game does storytelling and how it is speaking to
you in various ways directly to you as the player,
and that adds a layer, that adds an extra layer
that not I don't I don't know if I've ever
felt from a game before, because not only are you
going through this fantasy world that has has a lot
of parallels that are reflective of the worst parts of
our own world, giving you the power to fight at it,
giving you the context to understand it, and compelling you
in so many various ways as you reach the end.
So in that extra layer, I think they're able to
cut deeper than I had expected. And by the end
of this game, sat, I sat. I was playing as
Lucy's place. I sat in Lucy's couch and I sat
there and I cried for an hour. And I think
it has to do with man, it's really hard to
talk about without giving too much away, but the way
this game tells you that fiction can be powerful, that
the stories you grew up idolizing, the fictional characters you
grow up loving, like in a way a lot of
you know, I think a lot of people feel embarrassed
to say that, like, oh, this fictional character or this
game I played, or this this hero and the story
is that's my hero too, And it's like, well, don't
you idolize like someone in real life or whatever, And
like no, I think that there are a lot of
fictional characters who have made me who I am. And
it's really funny that this is coming from Atlas because
Atlas games have affected me in a very big way.
So for this game to reach out to me personally,
it feels like reaching out to the player personally to
tell them this story and to tell them that it
is okay to to embrace the fiction that like those
things that are core pillars to who you are, Like,
let that be power in your own life too, Like
it's these things and be moving as well. So there's uh,
like there there's a there's an extra level to this,
to this narrative, and I think it sprinkles that throughout,
like it shows you like when you ever, whenever you
visit academia and you like check on the book next
to next to more and then it kind of like
keeps minding. It's like, oh, you know this person named Michael,
you know they were they were they were once influenced
by like the stories of yours. Huh, I wonder what
that's about. And I think, uh, it's like a it's
a nice breadcrumb, it's a nice trail in addition to
everything else that you're playing. So it's uh, it's very
powerful in what it says about fiction. I say as
much in my review because I think that is like
the most important part is in addition to like the
political messages, in addition to all the friendships that you
make through the bonds and follower system and having your
having such a strong RPG party, There's more to it
than that, and I think that is one of the
things that put Metaphor above many of the other RPGs
that I love.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, folks, if that is not a ring endorsement
to perhaps explore the metaphor of Metaphor refantasio, I don't
know what the fuck will fantastic game. I realize I
haven't said much about the game, but I'm just absolutely
giddy top to bottom experience with the game, the whole wrapping,
the whole joint. I just love jumping into a battle
and it says peril, Oh, dudet it.
Speaker 2: This is ui porn. It's so good, like you thought
Persona five was good like this. Maybe doesn't have quite
the same style, but damn everything is moving, Everything has
a vibe to it, like which is I'm not just
saying that because it looks good. It's important in is
very important in a turn based RPG. Those menus that
you were looking at for one hundred dollars, they better
like damn good. And this game looks damn good. Yeah,
like the Oh the other day, Michael, you might remember
when you tweet that picture of Lucy's cat. Well, you know,
put the crossan emoji and I put the I put
the golden ratio in like sta. It's because I had
this game's you. I on the brain and I can't
get off my head.
Speaker 3: If you look, you see a lot of like sheepe shapeliness,
Lucy's cat curled up.
Speaker 2: On the corner.
Speaker 5: This game does a good cat.
Speaker 1: Oh, it does have a good cat. And folks, I
want you to see the loose Lucy's cat the golden
ratio within yourselves, and perhaps give a metaphor refantasio a shot. Jess,
thank you so much for giving us your time. Lex,
thank you so much for giving us your time. Sean thanks,
Uh we pay you to be here. Uh, Michael, him,
my boy, my lad, thank you so much for being good. Folks.
If you're listening watching live, stay tuned, because I I
I want nothing more for my birthday than to inflict
pain onto Lucy.
Speaker 2: Speaking Lucy, She's gonna get blighted right after.
Speaker 1: An emotional roller coaster. Folks, we start with the news,
we hit you, we roll straight through your heart with metaphor,
and then we're just gonna deep dive it, nose dive
into whatever the Blaked crew has planned for Lucy James,
thank you so much for tuning in to BombCast Revengeance.
We'll see you next week for another lovely episode. My
birthday wishes for you at home to have a fantastic day,
because y'all look grint fantastic. Keep recording. We're gonna clap
after this, you at home. Pull up time dot Com.
We're gonna clap two metaphors, social links. Oh maybe maybe
this goes up in like the Mount rushmore of like
DAPs or like handshakes and games with like the Bond. So, folks,
we'll see you next week. I love you, good ju