Metaphor: ReFantazio and the Power of Fantasy

I knew Metaphor would be one of my favorite games of the year. I hadn't considered that it might be one of the greatest JRPGs I had ever played.

Atlus knows how to make them. The Persona developer has taken to heart From Software's winning philosophy: there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when the car is cruising. In the first dozen or so hours of playing Metaphor, I couldn't help but compare it to Elden Ring—not that the games are anything alike, but because I could see Persona and SMT in Metaphor the way I could see Dark Souls in Elden Ring.

By building upon the past, Atlus has crafted a strong future. Studio Zero has buffed the "Mega Ten" design history to a mirror sheen.

But Metaphor is more than another entertaining turn-based role-playing game from the genius minds behind Persona and SMT. It joins a collective of games whose narratives pursue a noble meaning. Full of material ideas about race, class, and society that are all too necessary in our tumultuous times, Metaphor is an experience that stays with you long past the credits.

The power of the proletariat

RPGs have long been obsessed with monarchy, class, and revolution. Final Fantasy XV dedicated the bulk of its narrative to royal ascension, and more recent titles like Triangle Strategy center their stories around real-world parallels to slavery and oppression.

Metaphor defines its purposes with verve, and in the vein of titles like Disco Elysium or Kentucky Route Zero makes it clear to the audience that the core of its story is a material lesson.

Heismay, our bat-like "eugief" party member, says: "You cannot pretend at diversity without acknowledging individual differences. Some will be judged as strong, while others marked as weak. Equal competition doesn't mean equal footing. Their very aims of freedom and balance could spell doom for the striving weak."

Our current political discourse, especially in America, has been marked by the differences between equality and equity. Equality means very little when there is no unified starting line for a populace separated by race, birth, and income. You can provide every person with a foot-tall box to see over the fence, but that means little when height differentials will continue to obscure the sights.

Characters in Metaphor are more than mouthpieces for politics and philosophy. The game integrates characters and races into a world that feels fully realized, one in which the struggles of the common folk are accurately reflected by their woes and hardships.

"I just can't fathom dyin' to earn a living!" says Catherina, our Robin Hood-esque rival turned comrade. "And the fat cats are all too happy when the paripus take 'em up on it!"

Metaphor takes great care to describe a society whose struggles are defined by their racial traits and identities. As with our real world, the illusion of this struggle is mounted by those in power to disguise the truth: it's the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, as it always has been.

"You should know better than most," says Catherina, hand on her hip. "Those who can act gotta take action. If they don't, nothin' in this bloody world's gonna change. It'll stay as rotten as it is!"

Pretty words and prejudice

"But if everyone's free to do what they want, they'll work out their own reasons to be prejudiced."

Fidelio

One of the core elements of Metaphor's narrative is the strange book clutched by the protagonist (I named mine "Hiero" after both hero and Hieronymous Bosch). When the character Fidelio first reads this book, he's nearly irate at the ludicrousness of the world described, a place that's free of oppression, racial strife, and inequality. He counters with the most obvious critique: a place of infinite freedom opens the gates for fascism, where power will eventually become the tool used against the weak.

Metaphor is rife with plot twists and surprising moments, though perhaps none is as simultaneously shocking and expected as the truth of the world. When our party reaches the gates of the once-lost sanctum, the Old Hermitess paints for us a bleak reality: "In every age, the cause and effect are the same. People learn fear, become slaves to their anxiety, suffer, and thus the power of magic is born."

The great truth is that the people's collective anxiety and fear give rise to the power of magic, which is the power of change. In the same way, the populace must clash to elect proper leaders, their anxiety in an ever-changing world creates the very magic that splits them apart.

"Magic is a natural process, and anxiety is its invaluable, irreducible fuel."

While magic is necessary to defend the weak from the grotesque Human monstrosities, they are both borne from the same unconscious anxiety. A populace afraid of the future, who must live together in uncertain times, births the same fears, frustrations, and pains. And in doing so, they open themselves up to the advantageous cruelties of kings and tyrants eager to fill the gulfs in a disparaging proletariat.

Demagogues and demons

Demagogues are leaders of passion. American society, especially American politics, is needlessly complex and rooted in a system designed to confuse and disorient the working class that spends its time worrying over groceries and medical bills rather than who will be their next representative.

It is the very purpose of the demagogue to sidestep political issues and speak to the lowest common denominator: fears and desires. By definition, a demagogue appeals to desires, prejudices, and worries in place of making rational arguments, wielding a knife-like charisma that can cut through bureaucracy and exploit ordinary people. They ensure their place in history by creating calculated arguments that lean on modern pressures and anxieties experienced across race, class, and worldview.

"The more anxious the people grow, the more they choose blind fanaticism over confronting their fears. This was no fault of yours. Simply their nature."

Louis

The American journalist and essayist H. L. Mencken is one of many throughout history who had his thumb on the pulse of the American people. As a culture critic, Mencken was one of the most influential voices of the 1920s, and one hundred years later his words are sharp, resonant, and frustrating.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

In Metaphor, society is ruled by a monarchy, but with an unusual twist: after the death of the current monarch, a political contest decides the next ruler. Even though a King rules the land, the people get to cast their votes in a magical system dictated by the populace. On the surface, this is a free and fair system—whoever earns the heart of the people earns the seat and the scepter.

Metaphor does address the issue of populism and why "giving the people what they want" isn't necessarily the correct answer in politics and government. As Mencken states in the above quote, the "heart's desire" of the people is, uniformly, to be ruled by a moron.

In his book Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt, Umberto Eco identified the features of fascism and how this overused cult issue has telltale signs among a population. A cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, disagreement as treason, fear of difference, shifting the rhetorical focus of a common enemy, selective populism, and contempt for the weak all fall under the umbrella of fascism's signs.

Louis, the political archrival and enemy of both protagonist and party in Metaphor, is philosophically and materially obsessed with power. His contempt for the weak is a defining trait centered on a traumatic past that blinds him to any path but one where the mighty rule. He is a demagogue by definition, a despot who moves the heart of the people with charisma, speeches, and an appeal to the systemic weaknesses that exist throughout the disjointed society.

"That has been the country's crime for too long. Those in power exact the price of their greed from the people, then preach that such pain is a natural trial to be overcome."

Louis

By appealing to the shared fear of the proletariat, Louis can manipulate their weakness by driving them towards a single charismatic voice, overlapping the spheres of populism and fascism as he centers himself into the position of an autocrat.

Louis, to that end, presents himself as an enemy of injustice and a firm believer in equality, even if his actions would directly impact the most vulnerable. These necessary sacrifices would be remembered in his ideal world, but in lieu of an actual democracy, as an autocrat, he would demand the deaths of his enemies.

"An entire tribe does not become so derided to the point of genocide by authority figures alone, but by the vice of society in which that ignorance is born."

Louis

Louis' solipsistic intolerance of intolerance creates a vacuum in which only power can decide society's fate, governing the ignoble populace who have become lambs. While he might hate the divisions between race and class as much as the protagonist and party do, his course of action is enormously flawed.

Oh, power of kings

While the technology in Metaphor is a fantastical blend of dieselpunk and futurism, as with many magical settings it inevitably falls back on the conservatism of sorcery. Cities do not have televisions, but each King's Rock shows the running of popular candidates striving to become king, and the townsfolk regularly hear new information from criers and hold their heated debates. The protagonist seeks society's consciousness through noble actions, while Louis holds the reins of power through his commanding military might and noble presence.

For much of Metaphor's runtime, I remained unconvinced that the game could stick the landing of its policies by steering unflinchingly into a tale of monarchy. As mentioned, previous games like Final Fantasy XV failed narratively because their structure demanded the ludicrousness of birthright, entirely negating the agency of the populace or the meaning of free will or fate.

"You refuse to believe in dreams. That's why you can't believe in anything that's gradual, complicated, and slow to change."

Gallica

For some time, we have been a society afflicted with the pursuit of instant gratification. This is compounded in Metaphor by a society whose pain points are built on inherent distrust between races, creating a class system in which the meager must contend for scraps while the ruling class breaks bread in golden towers.

Our real world has doomed itself because we no longer build generational bridges. Never mind the distrust between races and classes, families are now split down the middle because of political beliefs that seriously endanger the most vulnerable among us.

"...it’s difficult not to think of current “television dictators,” in which politicians exercise a selective populism instigated by xenophobia, and in which the same political class is chosen from an elite of charismatic and photogenic people. This is presented without any preparation in critical thinking nor in the art of governance. Fortunately, the rise of any new form of totalitarian power has always arrived accompanied by renewed forms of resistance, and in which difference and collaboration predominate (in place of indifference and collaboration-ism). We hope there’s time to learn from the past so as not to repeat its mistakes in the future."

Umberto Eco: A Practical List for Identifying Fascists

Metaphor's power of kings, in all its celestial glory, belongs to a longstanding contextual tradition in which monarchs wield the power of gods to cull a scattered populace. Christian and Zoroastrian traditions metaphorically and directly call God a "king" dedicated to fighting evil, controlling history, and ultimately fashioning a paradise.

Where the protagonist (canonically, Will) differs from the archetypical ascension via birthright is through the influence of his comrades. Metaphor structures the "Power of Friendship" stereotype differently, instead regularly showcasing the clash of purpose, ideals, and political stances.

There but for the grace of my comrades, go I

Role-playing games live and die by their supporting cast. One of the consistent illusions (and misunderstandings) of the genre is that the audience cares primarily about the protagonist's course. While this might be true in some situations and for some people, this solipsistic agenda is a grave error when viewing a game's narrative in totality.

Fiction's contemporary trend has sloped toward the importance of the self. The importance of the group is waylaid by the necessity of the individual, with plots sacrificing perspective for a narrower lens. Final Fantasy X, nearly twenty-five years old, contains a tongue-in-cheek criticism of this error. While Tidus triumphantly proclaims that "this is my story," it's ultimately Yuna's pilgrimage, supported by a robust cast of friends and comrades dedicated to the cause.

Metaphor's cast represents the game's structure and adherence to a cornucopia of lived experience and social/political perspectives. The protagonist, Will, exists as a bystander to the story in the vein of your average Persona hero, but instead of remaining silent he interjects his own experience and reflects the truths and morals of the world around him.

"I am glad to see more optimism in the world. Still, it will take more than that to effect true change."

Will (Protagonist)

While JRPGs often have similar plots and cover similar stereotypes, they differ in delivery. Metaphor doesn't believe in a temporary return to the status quo but remits a narrative bent around real, radical change in an anxious society. The plot doesn't adhere to its political trappings either, acknowledging how often people vote with their fears and emotions. Anxiety, trauma, and a growing communal apprehension over the future lead to a conservative populace that wants to reinforce the familiar, and even when aspersions are cast over the efficacy and reality of the young prince, Louis' populism can only stoke existing fears, a thin and temporary solution to systemic issues.

Heismey and Strohl are spurred onward by traumatic losses, and their desire for change is radicalized by violence. Hulkenberg and Eupha are motivated by duty, while Junah and Basilio must contend with a reality shattered by inconvenient truths and nefarious betrayals. Our characters know pain. Each one fantasizes about a world in which they can live without political strife, bureaucratic destruction, and violence against class and race.

Dreaming of a better world

As I continue to write this, the world changes around me. A few mornings ago, a healthcare insurance CEO was gunned down in the streets of New York City. While some folks express sadness at a seemingly senseless loss of life, celebrations erupted across social media. While I cannot condone violence here, it's not difficult to see why so many view this CEO's death as an act of vigilante justice: health insurance companies throughout the nation chronically deny claims, throttle resources, and make lives for the ill and disabled a living nightmare.

We are not immune to the political leanings of the world. Global changes spark actions that fan the flames of revolution and consequence. What does it say about a nation when it's the shared fantasy of millions that a CEO be gunned down in the street? It's not a rot at the heart of society, but a desperation for things to be better. The fantasy of action wins out over inaction, and the downtrodden fly banners of justice and change.

Role-playing games like Metaphor are built on the concept of violence as change. They allow us to safely inhabit a fantasy world where our words are not the sole resource to set the future's course. Again, I am not here to condone violence but to widen the bounds of fantasy alongside this tremendous game. Our party's final contest is not one of wills but of sordid combat against Louis and his dark ambitions. When great injustice rears its head, heroes meet it with decisive action.

In South Korea, the president faces impeachment calls after a martial law attempt. In Georgia, social fury forces crowds into the street. In Palestine, genocide continues unabate. Our world is consistently split by political unrest, and if history is set to repeat itself (as it does), 2025 will be a year of mass protests and state violence once Trump takes office. Fantasy by itself does nothing, but it is this yearning for change that becomes a driving force for explosive, living revolutions. Metaphor came along exactly when we needed it, in a year in-between years when the tinder box is ripe for a flame.

The tribulations and upheavals in Metaphor can be adhered to any number of issues that plague our times. It's in the name of the game itself, metaphor, that this fantasy lives in, and without completely spoiling the end of the game, it breaks the fourth wall just enough to remind us that the barrier between fiction and reality is thinner and muddier than we wish to believe. Games like Disco Elysium, Metaphor, and even Xenosaga instilled in me a belief that a single human thought can change the world, and each one of us is just a step away from being a revolutionary, even when it feels like the oppressive heavens are crashing down around us.

We may not have the Power of Kings, but we have each other.