The rhythm of playing a gigantic, choice-based game in the modern era is one of quiet tedium. You reach a branching path or a place where there’s a risk of missing out on Optimal Content, and like clockwork, you grab your phone and pull up a guide for that specific moment. Big video game sites, once devoted mainly to news and reviews, are now optimized for this. And while there’s no shame in seeking out the odd tip or trick, it’s hard to fully lose yourself in an experience when you’re constantly abandoning Big Screen for Small, Horrible Screen. Metaphor: Refantazio proposes a better way.
Metaphor, basically a new Persona in fantasy pajamas, is the kind of game I’d normally be checking guides for every several seconds. Like its high school-centric siblings, it operates on a calendar system that sees you split your time each in-game day between various activities like dungeon delving, hanging out with friends/followers, and boosting various “virtues” (which aid you in unlocking new characters and activities). Major events and quests often come with attached time limits as the game’s world continues to move around you. Just as there are optimal paths through each Persona game – which allow you to maximize bonds with party members and other characters, seeing their stories play out in full – I’m sure there’s a “correct” way to play Metaphor. Conversely, I imagine there are cool things I can miss, a thought that terrifies me.
However, I’m determined to avoid spending half my time with Metaphor consulting Polygon or whoever (no offense, y’all), and on top of that, I’m currently playing a review copy ahead of the game’s official release, so I literally can’t. Typically this limitation would fill me with dread, but Metaphor has proven shockingly accommodating. It’s clear that Studio Zero recognized how many people play its games and built in-game systems accordingly.
While Gallica, your fairy companion, can be helpful on this front by gently nudging you in the direction of specific side activities if you ask her to, the real game changer for me is “Travellers’ Voices,” an online feature that shows you what other players have done each new day that you reach. You need only press a button, and boom, you have the sum totality of other players’ lived experiences at your fingertips (which in my case means other people with review copies for now).
Smartly, Metaphor doesn’t collate this data into a prescriptive set of instructions. Instead, the game divides other players’ journeys up into four basic categories – “spent time with supporters,” “spent time in town,” spent time in a labyrinth,” and one I still haven’t unlocked yet – each accompanied by the percentage of players who performed that activity on a given day. Details beyond that are often vague; for example, “took in the scenery” or “talked with an activist” if you’re in town.
In other words, you’ve still got to do the legwork. You don’t know exactly what you’re in for, unlike with a guide. This system even extends to battle. If you want, you can view a selection of the class/character/level builds players used to tackle various challenges and switch your party accordingly.
I appreciate how organic it all feels. Yellow paint this ain’t. Instead, you’re stumbling through a dark cave by following the echoes of those who came before, of entities who are at least somewhat acknowledged by the game’s fiction. And they could be wrong! 30-50 percent of people are often wrong about a lot of things! But FOMO is a social phenomenon just as much as it’s born of what you’re actually missing out on. There is comfort, however slight, in knowing that other people also went to the awkward housewarming instead of the wild rager.
More importantly, it dispels the illusion that there’s a “right” and “wrong” way to play a game like Metaphor. There are just many different ways, and not everyone is optimizing and having a “better” experience than you. That’s to say nothing of the fact that regret is a powerful and interesting emotion, one games rarely encourage us to sit with in favor of fulfilling our fantasies at every turn. Greater awareness that people aren’t all playing the same way hopefully means more discussion of those regrets.
Similar systems, I gather, were present in Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reloaded, which makes me substantially more interested in playing those games as well. The last Persona I played was the base version of Persona 5, and I fell off it precisely because I started to feel less like I was exploring a mysterious occult world and more like I was trying to organize my convoluted IRL social calendar (which I keep in the Notes app on my phone, because I’m a freak). Already, there’s less of a nagging weight on my shoulders when I’m playing Metaphor. Maybe that will change as I become more invested in the world and characters – and websites start to publish guides – but for now I’m just… playing the game. It’s freeing. What’s the point of FOMO, after all, if it takes away your ability to be present in a moment? You were so worried about getting there that you forgot to enjoy it.
