Metaphor ReFantazio: When a video game helps you overcome your anxiety

Anxiety remains as a discourse and almost as another character in the story. Heroes, civilians and even villains suffer from it, whether due to the destinies that were entrusted to them or taken away from them, the uncertainty regarding the consequences of their actions and those of others, and their ability to face what will happen the next day.

Through conversations with inhabitants of Eucronia and even in combat, anxiety manifests itself not as a curse that falls on the protagonists, but as a state that paralyzes, but is natural, and with which one must learn to deal.

“We wanted a simple theme, because it was the first time we made a fantasy RPG game,” says Hashino. “Everyone suffers or has suffered from anxiety. It’s a basic human emotion… Anxiety to the point where it stops you. It keeps you in one place. “Happiness goes out of reach when anxiety becomes too much.”

For the artists at Atlus, one of the biggest inspirations when designing this fantasy world, Hashino reveals, was the work of the 15th century artist Jheronimous Bosch “Hieronymus Bosch”, famous for paintings such as “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, “The Death of a Miser” and several others that refer to saints and stories of the Christian religion.

This inspiration was guided with the desire to create a fantastic world from the imagination of someone from the contemporary world; They avoided falling into commonplaces such as elves and trolls, to allow themselves to imagine dazzling spaces that fulfilled the objective of inviting the player to take a step, to want to see more and take this journey towards the unknown, but wonderful.

One of the resources with which the heroes under your control can defeat enemies are “archetypes”, transformations that provide great special powers to attack and defend in combat; The important thing about archetypes is that they come from within the characters, they are not an external help given to them. That is to say that to face challenges, you do not use something magical that was given to you, but rather something powerful that is within you.

Hashino highlights that what makes games special compared to movies and anime series that can also tell similar stories, is that in these media they address another person’s story, but in video games, especially in role-playing games, you are the character, you are the one who lives it. “Creating that role is a challenge, and it’s something we don’t want to be forgotten.”

That possibility that video games offer is the reason, Hashino tells us, why he wants to continue developing more works like Persona or Metaphor; Although he would like to try other genres, he feels that there is still a lot of potential to explore in RPGs, and he does not omit that these productions are teamwork, a team vision and not that of a single person.