The Depths And Emptiness Of Shin Megami Tensei III

Individualism, in both art and in life has its benefits and detriments. The risk involved with the self in human society, what that entails, how we express it, and how we apply it to larger ideas is scary, but freeing, isolating, but certain. Artistically there is as great of a risk, for how it may be perceived in a commercial space, if one is even given the chance to be individualistic with their art or if marketers, corporate leaders, will allow us to without skewing our vision towards something it is not meant to look like, be like, or feel like.

Shin Megami Tensei III, directed by Katsura Hashino and developed by Japanese game geniuses Atlus, is a beautifully strange and defiantly different kind of video game. It can be said for the series as a whole but SMT3 specifically takes that to an atypical level that feels wholly individual. In it’s delivery of narrative, in it’s world, in the characters that remain and attempt to make sense of the new world that has been thrust upon them, knowing they need not get used to it’s conventions, for it’s rebirth and reformation is just around the corner. And you, the high school student turned demi-fiend at the center of it all.

It started with a feeling like any other day. Taking the train to meet up with your friends along the way to visit your teacher in the hospital, but it certainly doesn’t FEEL like any other day. The colors of the sky a faded and dusty gray, the people along the way, lethargic and resigned. The ominous mood is brought to a fever pitch as people speak of a confrontation of two cults and we arrive at the hospital drenched in an apocalyptic green with no one to be found. As we make our way deeper into the hospital we are saved by our teacher from a dark and malevolent shadow. Who takes us to the rooftop to show us the Conception with the resulting chaos of the Vortex World, our new home. A closed sphere of sand and destruction that will remain until the dawn of the next creation. Infused with the power of the magatama from Lucifer himself, the protagonist is infused with the powers of a demon, but the heart of a human with the power to reshape the world in his image.

Setting off into the desert aftermath of the Conception shows the strength of Shin Megami Tensei III and its art direction immediately. What a barren beauty we lay eyes on, even in the destruction of the only world we knew. The patterns in the sand, the tides of dark energy seeping out across the land. And this quality extends to specific locations, though not all are admittedly created equal as you find yourself running through a little too many personality-devoid tunnels and regular buildings than you’d like. The majority of spaces are given a remarkable amount of depth and history. The unchanged spaces of Ginza and Shibuya shopping centers with their stark colors, fountains, untouched storefronts, devoid of life but for a few spirits and demons does an excellent job of contextualizing the before and after of the Conception. And by contrast the new temples and landmarks erected by the powers of this new world are dazzling, haunting, and exceptional spaces to merely exist in and gawk at. Composer Shoji Meguro, a regular collaborator with Katsura Hashino who would go on to shape the sound of the Persona series of which Shin Megami Tensei spun off into, gives these spaces a sense of foreboding mystery full of power no human could ever hope to understand.

The battle system is familiar for anyone who enjoys Atlus RPGs. Gather demons through mid-battle negotiations and fuse those demons with others to create more powerful incarnations. Each demon has a set of strengths, weaknesses and abilities that can be passed down to demons in future fusions. If you have ever played a Shin Megami Tensei or Persona game before you will quickly be able to pick it up. But what the battle system does with it’s ever-present protagonist that switches things up both mechanically and thematically and works in congruence with the game’s tone, themes, and message.

Throughout the game by defeating optional bosses and progressing through the story you are given new magatamas which when infused can give you different kinds of skills to have your protagonist learn while also giving them passive buffs and debuffs, as well as changing affinities to certain elemental attacks. But the skills you are afforded are often unwieldy and imprecise, by yourself you would not be able to traverse this world with safety and certainty, but with demons and their skills honed correctly, traversing the Vortex World becomes an easier proposition. The demons designed immaculately by renowned artist Kazuma Kaneko. 

Where Shin Megami Tensei III slips is in its narrative and characters. It is less with its writing itself and more with the amount of time between important narrative beats or even any kind of meaningful character interactions. There is an intentional emptiness to the game-feel of SMT3. From the environments to the music to the sound design, all done in favor of creating the feeling of space. Enclosed in a sandy sphere, looking up only to see another part of the world within it, the warring factions of the Assembly Of Nihilo and The Mantra, jockeying to gain to power to recreate the world and the manikin, the docile, physically inferior bipedal beings made of sand along with the Conception. A punching bag for the stronger to subjugate and torment. The sense of place is strong and the Vortex World feels dynamic and lived in. 

It is in the emptiness that the game does an excellent job does establishing that it loses meaningful connections to the people and life inhabiting it. Your friends from the beginning, for example, are key players in this world, eventually given their own reasons for wanting to change the world in their own image, coming to oppose you in the process. However we are given too little not only after the Conception, but before as to how those reasons came about. Assumption is weak material for connection. And we don’t see enough of them throughout the game and when we do, we don’t hear enough from them to make a difference.

The written narrative itself is also too absent to leave an impression. Thematically it is a deep work with many strong ideas and when it’s given a chance to explore those ideas it does provoke thoughts of the player. In that dynamism of world it compromises the feeling of connection to the story that we would need to feel a greater sense of investment in it. Too many important events occur through hearsay without our input and balancing those relative to narrative importance was a place that definitely could have used work.

Shin Megami Tensei III is a game that inspires many an interpretation. Through its key elements it begins to take shape as a criticism of the idea that any one human or living being, through the strength of their convictions, can create the ideal, or at the very least a better world than the status quo. That the inherent selfish characteristics of an individual doesn’t take into account enough variables for all core needs of each person to be satisfied, disregarding our own flaws to exert our raw, uncompromising vision of the world onto anyone and everyone. As our teacher in the game brilliantly puts it: “How can I expect to shape the world when I can’t even shape my own life?” These are big, sweeping decisions that require the input from all different kinds of people with all different kinds of reasons. We are stronger and smarter together than we are apart.