Shin Megami Tensei IV

What is Shin Megami Tensei? To understand, I think we have to understand the dungeon-crawler as a genre. It took me a little while to realize, but in Shin Megami Tensei, the entire world /is/ a dungeon.

Shin Megami Tensei IV is obscure. Not in the sense that it isn’t popular or widely available — it is, now, both of those things — but because it’s intentions, the “about” of it, are hard to grasp, difficult to fully articulate. This is because the game chooses to gesture towards meaning in places where it could instead breathe it fully into life. It is also because the text and the plot of the game is sometimes at odds with the tone and the aesthetic. The narrative sometimes (maybe often) underutilizes its drama in favor of something that is colder, more narrow, more technical, while being surrounded by the trappings of a more florid and vividly realized experience.

Having played it through twice now, I realize there are many ways it could be both more clear and dramatically more effective. In part, I think the story is meant to be not in the background per se, but not really the foreground — you, the character, and by extension, your interiority and motivations, are what matters (and when I say “you”, I mean you the player, though also “you” the character, Flynn, who exists as an avatar of the player. Certainly, stuff is happening and there are circumstances informing your missions, choices, etc, but this isn’t intended to be narrative-focused or story-driven the way other games in this genre are. Of course, this is also an excuse, a justification for why the game doesn’t always hit the way it should. There are many times I thought this could be more impactful if some thought had been given to the clarity, the urgency, and the stakes of the story (for example, the character Kaga is killed off far too early, supporting characters like Hikaru and Fujiwara are never given time or opportunity to do anything present in the story [it would be interesting if they briefly joined your party, for example], the samurai that gets taken hostage by Tayama is a no-name that the player has no attachment to, and the former members of the Counter-Demon Force aren’t really explicitly described or dramatized; if these circumstances had been more narratively refined and meaningful, the associated plot-points would have hit so much harder). In the end, the game is weirdly disconnected from a lot of the concrete plot stuff and, subsequently, from the impact of its drama.

On a “technical” level, I can understand why people complain about the game being frustrating; there are the things it clearly wants you to be frustrated /by/ and then overcome, but also things that are just annoying — the biggest being map navigation in the overworld. It is often difficult to know where to go next and even in a general sense what direction to go to get there. I wish that there was some kind of system highlighting the map-spot you should be making your way toward in order to advance the story (this could even be facilitated by a kind of “party chat” where the characters talk to each other, which is always fun). I think this is in part like I said, because the “whole world” is a dungeon, and the designer intends for you to be fighting for your life more or less all the time. Still, it’s frustrating to be wandering in circles and would be less frustrating to at least die on the way to something meaningful. To be honest, I also wish there was some kind of Earthbound-esque system where the random encounters with scrub enemies just got zapped away. So much time is spent getting into fights with nobodies. (I say this knowing there is a skill — estoma sword — that sort of does this. I wish it were easier to use, I guess).

The constant barrage of battles reinforces the dominant motif of the game design — the moody “horror” aesthetic, though not necessarily horror in the way most people define it. But, it is cynical and indifferent to the whims of the player in a way that makes them feel disempowered while also still placing them at the center of the action. It's of a piece with the other aesthetic choices. The invocation of mythological and religious figures is how people throughout history have approached the sublime, and to the extent that it is possible, explained it, and the same thing is happening in SMT IV, and that same vaguely mystical, hard-to-explain distance and alienation is also invoked by the cold indifference of the navigation as well as the technical and unforgiving combat.

SMT games are a sort of strange little morality play; the characters you meet represent different moral positions, different spaces on the social hierarchy, different concepts and ideas in the social / moral space. They are played against one another and against the will and choice of the player; they are sometimes allowed to carry their own worldview to a kind of conclusion so that we understand what the consequences of that extreme might be. In a way I can see why this is sometimes dramatically inert — it's not really about the human drama, it’s about making a point using straw men and proxies and examples. At its best, it functions in this sort of /It’s a Wonderful Life/ /Christmas Carol/ way. Sometimes it just feels like there are pieces moving around you while you kill monsters in a dungeon.

Because like I said — the whole world is a dungeon. It is mysterious and unforgiving, and every battle is a fight to the death. You are yourself. Surrounded though you might be by friends or enemies, fundamentally your motivations and your choices are your own. Where you arrive is up to you — or rather, to look at it differently, it is your fate, determined by the kind of person you are in your soul. /That/ is Shin Megami Tensei.

The plot of Shin Megami Tensei IV: The Yamato Perpetual Reactor is invented as either a military weapon used to summon demons into the world, or as some kind of advanced power source that connects to the demon world as an unforeseen consequence. This device is able to open a portal into the Expanse, also called in various other SMT products the Makai, the Netherworld, and the Demon World — a kind of higher plane of existence where conventional laws of physics do not apply. It is also, importantly, a dimension where demons, gods, and angels exist, brought into being through the interaction of collective human consciousness and emotion. When the Reactor is engaged, it allows the demons to flood into our world, which touches off several conflicts at once: 1) a struggle of humans against these creatures 2) a world war between human nations, based on how they choose to deal with these intruders, and 3) a battle between angels and demons, the forces born of and feeding off of law and chaos, in order to determine who will control the minds and souls of humanity, and thus the destiny of the universe itself.

Prior to (or possibly during) the creation of the reactor, the Japanese government implements the Counter-Demon Force, a specialized paramilitary organization that utilizes demon-summoning technology to battle the demons. This force is probably like the organizations depicted in other SMT games, with similar goals. The members of this group (which includes Fujiwara, Skins, Akira, Kyoharu, Kenji, and the original incarnation of Flynn) are modestly successful at combatting demons but ultimately fail to hold back the large-scale cataclysms that shape the world that Flynn experiences in the present tense of the game.

The demon-summoning program is a computer application that shrinks, systematizes, and digitizes the complex rituals needed for calling and controlling demons. Created (presumably) by Stephen, it becomes the key way that humans are able to combat demons and retain some degree of security for their own society. However, the program is leaked to the world, and suddenly becomes accessible to almost anyone, engendering a crisis of demon summoning that the CDF cannot thwart.

At some point, the nations of the world (specifically Country A, a likely reference to the United States, under the influence of Angels) decide to bring the demon threat to an end by using nuclear weapons in a scenario I suspect is largely similar to the “Tokyo Lockdown” of Devil Survivor. Flynn’s first incarnation, the youngest member of the Counter-Demon Force, wields various powerful demons; moments before the nuclear ICBM strike on Japan, he engages with Masakado (a strong Japanese demon) and uses him to protect the city by creating a dome called the Firmament that encompasses Tokyo and bears the detonations. Flynn’s incarnation “dies” doing so (or, he fuses with Masakado?) but his spirit reincarnates periodically into the new world above. Because of his natural connection to Masakado and whatever inherent strength of will makes him a strong demon-user, he becomes a “Messiah” — that is, like past SMT protagonists, he is the person that will choose the moral path that humanity, and ultimately the universe, will take.

Several other key characters (who are sadly little-explored in the narrative itself) also originate with the Counter-Demon force. Kenji is (original) Flynn’s friend who fights alongside him, as is Akira. Skins and Fujiwara are also CDF members who survive in underground Tokyo, which is why they are effective Hunters (according to the board rankings) and have a stronger understanding of what is going on than other people seem to.

One of God’s counter-moves during the Tokyo crisis, implemented via his four strongest angels, who act as proxies, is to assemble his chosen followers in a cocoon in Tokyo so that they can be protected from the ICBM strike. He moves the cocoon above the Firmament, where he intends for his chosen to carry on humanity with His plans as their guide. Akira, another CDF member who is very strong, climbs the Sky Tree in order to find his sister, who was among those chosen in the cocoon. Above, he encounters the four angels and apparently sides with them, using his demons (Minotaur, specifically) to seal Naraku and guard the only path between Tokyo and the country he then founds, which he calls Mikado. He becomes the first King, Aquila (or possibly, history is ret-conned by the various powers that be to depict him as such). It’s not clear how much of this was his choice; also, the Akira met in the course of the game is more mercurial, moved to contradict whatever the prevailing sentiment of his time is. So the assumption is that the main world that Flynn and his friends are from is actually the “neutral” world.

We pick up with present-tense Flynn as he comes of age and steps into the mantle of a demon-user once again, entering the struggle between law, chaos, and nihilism. Because of his inherent power of will, as well as his connection to Masakado and the soul of Tokyo, his is the choice that will tip the balance of power definitively in a specific direction (based on the desires of the player). After being inaugurated into the order of the Samurai, he becomes aware of the machinations of the Black Samurai, or, Lilith, a demon who is disrupting the complacent lawful order of surface world by introducing knowledge in the form of literature to the working class, and thus challenging the dominant ideology of Mikado. Lilith is a demon on the side of chaos, and wants to engender a sort of “might makes right” anarcho-libertarian society, where the strongest and most capable people would be enabled to shape the world as they see fit, without being held down or forced to conform to social norms or institutions they don’t like. She is able to egress upon Mikado’s socially conservative society with so much success, in part, because three of the four Archangels (God’s most powerful proxies in the human world) are captive under the dome, and Gabby (or, Gabriel, the last of them) does not yet have the power to rescue them.

The Black Samurai eventually pushes Flynn and his peer samurai into Tokyo beneath the firmament, where they are exposed to the excesses of the various factions and ideologies at play in the struggle for Tokyo and humanity’s soul. (I suspect Lilith’s use of the CDF armor is meant to suggest she, or at least her original human vessel prior to merging, was a member of the Counter-Demon Force as well). Eventually, after being pushed and pulled by these various forces, the delicate order that separated Tokyo from Mikado begins to collapse — the Ashura-kai (essentially the Yakuza) lose their ability to make peace with the demons because they can no longer produce the hideous “Reds”, the Ring of Gaea loses its leader, and the Eastern Kingdom grows too strong with the return of the other three Archangels — and the Samurai engage the Yamato Perpetual Reactor. Here, Flynn encounters the White.

Stephen (a scientist from another timeline, who appears throughout the series by transcending time and space) asserts that the chaos caused by the Yamato Perpetual Reactor is actually part of a larger struggle — between God, who is cold and indifferent to humanity, who wants humans to inhabit a stultifying, law-abiding existence, and “the White”, a kind of sentience born from collective human nihilism, engendered by humanity’s natural resentment at having to live under the whims and edicts of a cruel and uncaring God. The White wish to wipe out the universe and return everything to nothing, to essentially commit cosmic suicide, which they claim is the only meaningful way to resist and upend God’s plans. In order to do this they have selected Flynn as a catalyst, and the events of SMT IV are, in part, the process of attempting to teach him why they believe they are right. However, assuming one of the non-“bad ending” routes, Flynn arrives at a very different conclusion and rejects the desires of the White, ie the most nihilistic desires of humanity. The game depicts God, humans, demons, and the White in a kind of perpetual symbiotic connection — unclear which created or engendered the other, all of them born from the deeper nature and experience of life, namely misery, suffering, longing, wanting. Flynn (and the player) are given the option to choose — the fascistic and repressive law of God, the violence and cruelty of demons, the suicidal nihilism of the White, or a neutral path that rejects all of these in favor of the possibilities of human agency.

The term “neutral” feels I’ll-suited to what the choice actually entails. It is not some kind of centrism, not a watered-down, merged version of the two dominant ideologies. Instead, it suggests a kind of optimism, that Flynn comes to believe that humans can be better, and that through their striving they can find a way to make the world a better place too. Or, they should be allowed to die in their striving to do so. But to choose one of the other endings is to subordinate yourself to someone else’s ideology, to choose not who you think is right, but rather, who you’d like to be your master. The neutral path is the path that rejects such complacency. It allows humans the agency to master themselves.

While all of this is very interesting, its frustrating that so little of it is depicted or dramatized in a meaningful way; a lot of it has to be arrived at via inference, or dialogue that is cryptic and mealy-mouthed. One redemptive quality might be that much of the backstory is a play on events that have happened in other prior games, so in a way, the long-time player has “played” all of this before. It’s interesting in a meta way, but I still feel like it leaves so much unexplored.

Because so little of the above plot is dramatized, the player spends much of their time on their heels, wondering "why is this happening?" and "why did this person do that?" instead of enjoying the richness of the experience. Moreover, the lack of context and clarity means we have little sense of interiority -- we don't know people's motivations, because we don't understand what they want, what the stakes are, what is urgent to them. The lack of context might also contribute to the "moody" atmosphere, but in a way that is also a bit of an indictment. The game chooses to lean so hard on affectation and technical stuff like combat, rather than genuinely moving us with drama.

But similar to Nier Replicant, it doesn’t so much want to be “about” the plot — the plot is there to accommodate the moment, the “dungeon” that the player spends their time crawling. So I don’t know. Mixed feelings.

SMT is a dungeon crawler that wants you to reconsider what a “dungeon” really is — it could be a stone tower, a high school, a city, a whole world. It also wants to challenge the crawl, and the axes upon which you interact with that game world; namely, you can also socialize with your enemies under the right conditions, and regardless, everything you do is your choice, seen through your eyes, motivated by /your/ philosophies. However, herein is buried the seeds of its undoing. /This/ is why Persona ultimately usurps Shin Megami Tensei: by expanding and focusing upon the social interactions between people as a way of structuring the narrative, by providing interiority and motivation as a way of contextualizing the crawl, Persona gives life to the /drama/ of the dungeon crawl. At its very core Persona is /more/ Shin Megami Tensei than Shin Megami Tensei is, and it is more than it /could ever be/.