Shin Megami Tensei 5's Incompetent Critique of the Law Route

Boil the art of debate down long enough to get to its rudimentary basics, and you find 2 elementary strategies that are employed when trying to persuade an audience: talking up your own side of the issue, and discrediting the opposing viewpoint.  Because we’re a contrary and, let’s face it, oftentimes stupid species, it can often be the case that convincing someone that your side is right is not nearly as effective and reliable as simply convincing them that the other sides are wrong.  If you want an example, look no further than the United States’ presidential elections, which have, for the entirety of my lifetime and far before even that, had their outcomes determined less by citizens voting for a candidate whom they believe in than by citizens voting against a candidate whom they despise.  If we ever as a collective nation decided to vote solely based on which political asshole we most believe in rather than which one we think has the best chance of beating the political asshole we hate, this 2-party nightmare we’ve been locked into for most of a century would be dispelled lickity-split, and we’d all be better off for it.  But because we’re easier to manipulate with enmity than with unity, that’s unlikely to happen.

The Shin Megami Tensei series has naturally made use of both basic sides of debate when its advocates for Law, Chaos, and Neutrality make their arguments to a game’s protagonist.  Even though Shin Megami Tensei 5 is reluctant to perform even the most minimal narrative labors expected of it, the game nonetheless does manage to halfheartedly go through a few motions of its philosophical emissaries making their cases for their faction and against the others.  And it’s on this point that we see not only that SMT5 is, as I have accused, barely written at all, but also that what stunted scraps of storytelling it does possess are often, as I have also previously accused,  poorly written, too.  Because Shin Megami Tensei 5’s Chaos advocates’ criticism of the side of Law is completely and clearly incompetent.

Atsuta, the flat, emotionless, shallow, pea-brained dipshit that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Chaos Hero, makes the claim that Dazai, the hapless helpless hopeless goon that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Law Hero, only believes that the world needs God Almighty because Dazai has stopped thinking for himself.  And under normal circumstances, this is the easy slam-dunk go-to criticism that the Shin Megami Tensei series is fond of leveling against its Law faction.  While I would argue strenuously that it’s a grossly oversimplified misrepresentation of 1 of the major motivations for choosing to side with Law in SMT, it’s at the same time quite impossible to argue in most of the titles that there’s not at least some merit to this accusation.  Many of the major Law figures in the series are basically hard-coded to follow God’s will, and the Heroes who partner with them are frequently doing so in large part out of a trust in and reliance on The Big Man to know what’s best for all.  Hell, I can’t even deny that my personal favor for Law over Chaos in SMT may be at least in some small part influenced by Christian concepts impacted upon me during formative years in my childhood.  There’s a fun and intelligent debate to be had about the line between mindless obedience and healthy and laudable faith as they apply to a character’s and one’s own choice to side with God and His Law, and I myself certainly see it as much closer to an admirable and reasoned display of faith than dull subservience...but it’s still a vulnerable chink in SMT Law’s armor.  Atsuta and his patron may completely lack the inclination and the logical capacity to actually explain why their version of Chaos is a good idea (or even makes any sense at all), but they at least can levy the golden standard personal attack against their ideological opponents.

Except that this time, it’s not accurate.  In fact, the claim that Dazai only advocates for Law because he’s stopped thinking for himself is blatantly incorrect to the point of exposing just how incompetently, stupidly ignorant the game’s writers were of their own damn work.  Because Dazai is literally the only character in the game who we actually SEE contemplate, in even the smallest regard, the world’s situation and what path must be taken forward!

Oh, sure, there’s a little bit here and there in Dazai’s dialogue over SMT5’s course that tells the audience that he’d rather be a follower to a leader better equipped to make decisions than to have to give input on future actions.  There’s even a conversation he has with the protagonist in which he hallucinates that Koshimizu ever asks his subordinates for their opinions on his orders, something which never happens nor is even hinted to be consistent to Koshimizu’s personality and leadership style, and Dazai laments that he’d rather not have to be a part of such a discussion when he doesn’t feel personally qualified to be.  The preference for following instead of leading is definitely shown to be there in Dazai.

But the fact of the matter is that of Atsuta, Dazai, and that shortsighted laughable clown Yakumo--not to mention the Nahobino himself--Dazai is the ONLY faction representative in Shin Megami Tensei 5 to actually be seen weighing his options, stressing out about what needs to be done for the world, and taking the steps to come to the conclusion that his faction is the best course to follow.  Yakumo will haughtily deign to briefly outline why he believes in his cause, and his partner Nuwa will later neatly deliver the brusque, inadequate little sob story of how Yakumo became such a violently sanctimonious prick, but he’s long since determined his stance on the world by the time of the game’s events.  Atsuta, meanwhile, doesn’t do the audience even that small service, instead just going along with Koshimizu’s Chaos plan without questioning it or himself even once.  But Dazai we see express concern about the future of Tokyo and the world, debate with himself what to do to bring the order he thinks the world needs back now that it’s confirmed that God is dead, and persuade Abdiel to defy the letter of God’s law (which dictated that there would be no more Nahobinos) in order preserve its spirit, talking her into becoming a fallen angel to accomplish God’s will in ways she could not as the champion who outlived Him.  It may still be rushed and it may still be laughably over the top and the origin of Dazai’s boner for YHWH may still be a mystery, but at the very least we do SEE Dazai actually think about the cause he’s going to champion before committing to it, he can explain (albeit simplistically) in his own words why he believes in his cause instead of just parroting Daddy Koshimizu’s propaganda, and he can point to his experience with a practical example of the Chaos faction’s goal as evidence of why it won’t work.

And not for nothing, but the way Dazai goes about pursuing his goal of restoring God’s order is not something you could call thoughtless.  Sure, most of the time, pulling for Law in SMT does just boil down to “Do what the angel says and shut the fuck up,” not exactly a course of action that necessitates an inventive mind.  But after thinking about his position, Dazai does enough creative thinking to conclude that God’s function and value can still be restored by replacing Him with an equal rather than getting stuck on the fact that He was killed, and then is innovative enough to conceive and propose a plan to Abdiel to get her to join him in this pursuit, and argue for that plan well enough that the archangel of God’s will embraces the need to betray God’s law as the only way to serve it.  The mere idea of a fallen angel being the only one who can do right by God’s memory is by itself a clear case of thinking outside the box, for that matter.  Wouldn’t the act of defying God’s expressly stated command for the sake of restoring God’s big picture be the very opposite of what Dazai would do if he weren’t thinking for himself?

And it’s Atsuta who has the gall to make this claim.  Atsuta, the eternal lapdog of Koshimizu, who never gives the slightest indication that he possesses the basic human capacity to think critically about his actions or the orders he’s given.  Atsuta, the guy who’s the exact same character at the end of the game as he is at its beginning, blandly defined by the trait of a dogged determination to protect Tokyo and an equally unrelenting determination not to consider for himself how that goal should manifest.  He’s accusing someone else of choosing thoughtless obedience.

I’m not even really all that annoyed with Atsuta, honestly.  He just isn’t even human enough to warrant it; the guy’s closer to an inanimate object than he is a facsimile of a person.  I might as well get upset with a napkin.  But I certainly can get frustrated with the creators of the game for this blatant, blindingly-obviously boneheaded criticism of Dazai.  The “you don’t think for yourself” criticism is, as I mentioned, the go-to for the Chaos crowd in SMT, and because Atlus simply couldn’t find it in itself to actually do its job, it just grabbed the fall-back and didn’t consider the matter any further than that.  A single, passing glance at the script for SMT5 would have been enough to realize, for the writers--if there really were any--that the scenario they had in their gross sloth created was the exact opposite of one in which that criticism would have been applicable, but they just couldn’t be bothered to give even that glance.  It’s not like there was all that much there to have to reread!  I’ve seen more verbose manifestos on the back of some cereal boxes than certain entire chapters of this game’s script can boast.  It’s like Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a parody of itself--its authors threw out a pre-made criticism that used to mean something in the series, they did it reflexively and without a thought, and it turned out to be a condemnation of that very action.

Octopath Traveler 1's Language

Well, I may be back to boycotting SquareEnix, and even more enthusiastically than the first time for that matter, but if someone goes and buys 1 of their games and gifts it to me, then the damage is already done and I may as well let myself enjoy the game.  If that’s possible, that is--this is SquareEnix we’re talking about, there’s like a 5% chance of anything they publish being even remotely close to passable.  But Octopath Traveler seems to be that rare roll of a Natural 20, and I’m thankful that the money spent on this generous gift to me was at least in support of an actually good game.

Anyway, enough of my excuses for owning a modern SquareEnix title and my grumpy reticence to give the company its extremely rare due accolades.  On with the rant.



A few years ago, I made a rant about how much I enjoyed Bravely Default’s elegant and smooth use of older, uncommon language.  Well, I figure it’s only fair that I also point out and applaud Octopath Traveler 1 for doing the same, particularly since it might actually be even better than Bravely Default at it!

Octopath Traveler 1 (and probably its sequel, but I’ve only played the first) is a game whose translators clearly delighted in the elaborate and elegant past of the English language.  As with Bravely Default before it, OT1 liberally employs a slew of interesting, extravagant language more at home with centuries’ past than with our own modern age of communication, to the end of better selling its medieval-to-Elizabethan-era settings.  And it’s quite successful at doing so--the skilled, natural way that Octopath Traveler 1 employs its grasp of the old, ornate side of English merges perfectly with its artistic style to draw the player into the olden-style towns and villages.  Additionally, again much the same as Bravely Default, OT1 approaches this linguistic task fully with its modern audience in mind.  It’s not like reading Shakespeare, which requires from a present-day reader some development of reading technique that can decipher the bard’s elaborate but daunting prose and poetry into modern meaning.  It flows easily for a modern reader/listener and the meaning of characters’ words is always clear enough from context, at least as far as I can tell.

Now, the fun thing about Octopath Traveler 1 is that it also goes an extra mile in a couple of ways that I don’t remember Bravely Default doing (although, in fairness, it’s been a few years since I played the only real Final Fantasy game that SquareEnix has allowed to be made in 2 decades).  The first is that OT1 uses a wider social net for its older English terms.  Yeah, you’ve got plenty of characters using the higher-brow language and phrases, your “augurs” “naifs” and “mollycoddles” and verb versions of “warrant” and the like, as seen in BD...but Octopath Traveler 1 also has no qualms whatever about slumming it a bit when the common man is speaking, either.  It’s just as comfortable bandying the cruder vernacular of the peasantry around as it is with the fancy stuff.  And I’m a simple man--I see a game that can casually, authentically throw “summat” around, and it gets my approval.

It’s even got archaic profanity in it!  I let out a squawk of delight when I saw the villain of Olberic’s story exclaim “God’s teeth!” in frustration at Olberic’s unrelenting nobility.  There’s also a “‘swounds” or 2 to be found, too.  Honestly, it’s a damn shame we didn’t have translators this knowledgeable and talented working at Squaresoft back in the 90s, because there’s no way Nintendo’s famously enthusiastic censors of the era would have been able to keep up.

And the other avenue in which Octopath Traveler 1 ups the game from the high standard Bravely Default set is with its regional dialects.  Not satisfied just with showing off their well-earned degrees in English Linguistic History with uniform speech patterns, the writers/translators of OT1 also vary the manner in which characters and NPCs speak by region and town.  Olberic, Cyrus, H’aanit, and Primrose, for example, all clearly have their own distinctive speech patterns, as do the regions of their origins, which stand out as different iterations of older English just as clearly as modern-day accents distinguish themselves as separate versions of the same contemporary language.  I love H’aanit’s heavy Chaucerian olde English especially; the woman is speaking it more thickly and constantly than Frog, Cyan, and Dynaheir all rolled into one.*  I mean, okay, granted, her dialect is, when I look it up, apparently not 100% correct/accurate/consistent, but it’s certainly still pretty solid all the same, and more than convincing and consistent enough for most players to enjoy and find interesting and appealing.  And these regional accents are even appropriately selected for immersion’s sake in some cases--the most noticeably dense dialect of old English is that of H’aanit’s village, and that tracks, because they’re the 1 community of the bunch that’s the most isolated from the rest of Orsterra’s population, so it makes sense that their speech patterns would remain the most unchanged by contact with other communities.

It’s a minor virtue, but Octopath Traveler 1’s skill and creativity in employing earlier terms and conventions of the English language is the kind of characteristic that adds flavor to an RPG, flavor that makes it stand out amongst its peers and develops a distinctive personality for it.  Octopath Traveler 1’s writers and/or translators deserve recognition for their work just as Bravely Default 1’s did, more even, because it elegantly takes what BD did even further.  Well done, Acquire Corp!













* And unlike those 3, the culture of her origins actually also speaks the way she does.  I mean, okay, I think we never actually saw where Baldur’s Gate 1’s Dynaheir came from, and you can maybe pass Chrono Trigger’s Frog off as having intentionally adopted a different manner of speaking to further hide his identity as Glenn (or explain it away as a peculiar side effect of Magus’s curse)...but what the hell was the deal with Final Fantasy 6’s Cyan, at the very least?  “Mr. Thou” indeed.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Stray Thoughts

I'm back, as promised!  Did you miss me?

...You know, a little white lie every now and then to make someone feel better doesn't cost you anything.  Just saying.



My Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous rants have thus far been pretty spoiler-heavy, but I’m happy to say that today’s you can probably read regardless of familiarity with the game.  In fact, as a stand-in for a recommendation rant for the game, I wrote it as much for those unfamiliar with the game as those who are.



Hey, remember when I did a collection of mini-rants for Tales of Vesperia?  I was thinking I might do it again today for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.  Except that whereas last time my stray thoughts were mostly evincing vices because Tales of Vesperia is vexing and vaguely vile, today’s viewpoints are applauding various virtues I vowed to voice my approval of while playing this very diverting videogame.  

Normally with a Kickstarter RPG, I’d just make a rant outright recommending and applauding it (if it’s good, of course; I certainly haven’t made such a rant for every Indie title I’ve helped crowdfund).  I did so for the first Pathfinder game, after all.  But therein lies much of the problem: while very much its own entity, a LOT of the virtues that give Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous its great quality and individual personality are ones I already enthused about in my rant recommending Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  Rather than make a whole new major rant for the successor and have to grasp at straws the whole time to re-describe many of the same characteristics that make it so good, we’re just gonna shine a spotlight on a few of the noteworthy bits and pieces of PWotR’s enjoyability, and cover the rest with the following blanket statement: The signature elements that made Pathfinder: Kingmaker great are by and large still present in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

On with the thoughts!



- After Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s mistake in making the only romance option for a gay male protagonist one which would end in the death of another party member--a matter I criticized in what has turned out, for reasons I couldn’t possibly guess at, to be my most-read rant of all time--I greatly appreciate the fact that Owlcat Games were quite careful this time around to make sure that there’s an appropriate number and variety of romantic partners for players who want to play heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual protagonists of either gender.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has 2 romanceable dudes for male protagonists, 2 dudes for female protagonists, 3 girls for guys, 3 girls for girls, and even 1 girl for players who are fucking psychopaths.  While things are still a little imbalanced in favor of players who want a female romantic partner, the fact is that Owlcat Games put in the work to ensure that each of the major sexualities has multiple viable romantic options to pursue, and I applaud them for recognizing where they went wrong in the previous game and striving to correct that misstep.  Good work, guys, and thanks.


- I was very pleased throughout the game with the dedication to involving the party members in conversations.  It’s not just the generous quality and quantity of the major characters’ dialogue as they pitch in with their own reactions and thoughts, either.  What also stood out to me as I played the game was that the writers were dedicated to making sure that even the less prominent companions of the party were included as individuals worthy of having a say.  Finnean the living weapon, for example, may only rarely have something to opine on, but it’s a pleasant reminder of him each time it does happen, and the fact that he’s valued enough as a member of the team to take part in conversations is laudable.  I mean, not every speaking spear and chatty chakram can is meant to be a Boyfriend Dungeon love interest, but still, minor talking weapon sidekicks are usually a speak-only-when-spoken-to deal.  Likewise, even though there’s every chance that he won’t ever be in the party, the writers made sure that Trever has stuff to say in reaction to the events and conversations that unfold before him, and even though it’s substantially less likely that they’ll both be in the party together, there’s a decent chunk of dialogue for Trever and Sosiel both interacting with one another in these circumstances, too.

And it’s just plain awesome that a TON of reactionary dialogue was put in for Aivu--considering that she’s a minor companion locked into only 1 route of the game, you wouldn’t think the writers would go to too many lengths for her involvement, but they actually just go all in.  Aivu is pretty much the most entertaining character in the game and I love her to pieces, so Owlcat Games making sure to involve her as much as--hell, sometimes more than--the rest of the main characters is an awesome blessing.  They even went as far as to create a few extra lines for her here and there that play if, at the end of 1 particular sidequest, you adopted the dragon messiah and she decided on the spot to be his big sister.  Just...very cool that no team member ever seems to be forgotten, taken for granted, or have less effort spent on their presence.


- Speaking of party conversations, how fun is it that when you set up camp on the date that you’ve set to be the protagonist’s birthday, your companions actually express birthday wishes to the Commander?  And they all can do it; even Grandpa Drill Sergeant Regill has genuinely positive sentiments to share on the special day, because Regill is secretly a goddamn bro.


- You know, when Baphomet shows up in the game, he has the bearing, the voice work, the profile art, just the general presence of a terrifying, arcane force of malevolence beyond the ken of we mortals, just as a demon lord should.  It’s honestly impressive that, after 4 chapters of being a demon-mashing superhero, the game could still manage to put just a bit of the fear of (anti) God in me with him.

...and then Nenio completely fucking dismantles this imposing lord of terrors and machinations with a single, innocent, hilariously demeaning scientific inquiry.  Just wrecks the man’s intimidation without even trying.  It’s glorious.  There are a lot of players who don’t like Nenio, and I don’t for the life of me get why.  She may mostly be a 1-joke pony, but that joke never seems to get old for me,* especially not when the sheer magnitude of its humor completely reverses the dynamic of personal power to make a godly villain the fool.


- It’s not all completely positive with this game, though.  They got a new tune for the character creation screen this time around.  And I mean, it’s fine enough...but if I’m gonna incarcerate myself for close to 2 fucking hours as I meticulously craft, re-craft, crash my computer, then re-re-craft a protagonist in this damn creation system because I’m a perfectionist madman, then I need something I LOVE to be playing the whole time, y’know?


- I like how smooth an advancement the Crusade minigame is of the Kingdom Management mechanics of Pathfinder: Kingmaker.  I mean...I can’t deny that I think I had a little more fun in PK with it, but the way the developer manages to adapt the originally sedentary system of kingdom-building into a system for advancing and managing a tactical military campaign is pretty impressive.  And although I greatly enjoyed running the Fifth Crusade, I nonetheless give kudos, as I did for the previous game, to the developer for the fact that there’s an option to skip the whole thing if you just don’t like this minigame.  Good Shelyn in Nirvana, do I EVER wish more RPGs afforded their players this courtesy.

...Although I do have to acknowledge that achieving the secret, True Ending of the game DOES require you to engage a little bit with the Crusade system, in order to research a couple of projects over the game’s course and attain certain necessary knowledge.  So it’s not quite as optional and hands-free as PK’s Kingdom Management was.  Still, it’s a very small amount of necessary involvement, and once you’ve done that research I assume you can just turn the Crusade system off again, so I still give full credit to Owlcat Games for being considerate.


- Can I just say that it’s very neat and refreshing, during an exchange within Sosiel’s character quest, to hear Regill actually give the side of Good real, genuine respect?  I mean, the man is a Lawful Evil soldier through and through from minute 1 of meeting him, and he makes no secret about disapproving of, even usually scorning, the impulses and instincts of those aligned with Good.  Yet instead of arrogantly viewing the side of Good as unworthy opposition, Regill will rebuke Sosiel, when the distraught latter expresses frustration and fear that he perceives Good seems not to be strong enough to overcome Evil without becoming Evil, thusly: “Don’t bring your metaphysics into this.  Stop blaming your own incompetence on cosmic forces.  The side of good isn’t weak, it’s you.”  I mean, yeah, he’s being harsh to poor Sosiel, but I still can’t help but be struck by a hell of a respect for an advocate of Evil who’s rational enough to recognize that the side of Good is, indeed, not weak at all--and who refuses to betray this valuable rationality just for the sake of trying to taunt and falsely confirm the doubts of a servant of Good on the matter.


- Thank you, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, for giving players on the Trickster path the option to get intimate with a real, actual poop monster.  This was just what my favorite genre was missing.


- I appreciate that Wrath of the Righteous generally lets itself be its own epic and only lightly references Pathfinder: Kingmaker.**  Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I was grinning pretty hard during the little cameo sidequest wherein PK’s Jubilost shows up to meet the Commander face to face and get a handle on who she/he is.  Juby was 1 of my favorite characters in the previous game, and the revelation that he’s secretly the Doctor Who of Pathfinder had me fanboying it up.


- While on the subject of homages to previous games, it’s neat how PWotR gives homage to many of the elements from previous isometric Dungeons and Dragons titles.  Arushalae was no doubt inspired to some degree by Planescape: Torment’s Fall-from-Grace, and Wenduag’s romance with the protagonist gives some definite Baldur’s Gate 2 Viconia vibes to me.  Then you’ve got Crynukh, who brings back fond memories of Neverwinter Nights 1’s Deekin, and of course, it seems fairly obvious that the paladin Irabeth is an homage to NN1’s Aribeth.  Irabeth even seems like she’s meant to be a case of PWotR’s theme of ascending beyond one’s natural limitations in this regard--Irabeth manages (in most playthroughs) to avoid losing her beloved and falling to the path of evil, overcoming the destiny that her semi-namesake implies will be her own.  That’s probably just me overthinking the matter, though.  Again.

But at any rate, through these and several more likely homages, we’re shown that just as Pathfinder is the successor to the heart and spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, so too does Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous wish to be the successor to the heart and spirit of the classic D+D games of the past.  Cool!


- While one’s alignment and choices made a difference very often to the events of Pathfinder: Kingmaker, it’s extremely impressive just how far that can go in Wrath of the Righteous.  As you’d expect, quests, endings, and the fates of various characters and communities hinge on how a player goes about progressing through the game, but the story as a whole can often look very different depending on what Mythic path you’ve chosen.  There’s enough variation between some of the paths that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous can almost feel like a different game.  As someone who was, many years ago, a bit disappointed at the fact that the variations between Paragon and Renegade in the events of Mass Effect 1 and 2 did not radically change the succeeding sequence of events in ME2 and 3, I appreciate it when an RPG really goes the distance with this idea and constructs substantially different narratives depending on how its player’s choices diverge key points.  You don’t come across games that do this very often (and in fairness, it’s not hard to see why not, as it basically involves writing and coding almost multiple whole games), but I think it’s fair to add Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous to the the likes of The Witcher 2 and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume on this matter.


- I fucking love Aivu.  If you only play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous once, play it as an Azata.  It’s fun and thematically solid all the way through, but most importantly, Aivu.

BE FOREVER, AIVU!



These stray thoughts rants are kind of fun, and easier than my typical huge-honkin’-blocks-of-text-type rants.  And best of all, they can be critical OR congratulatory!  Although I’m fairly certain I know which way they’re going to trend towards if I continue them.  I’m already formulating 1 for Shin Megami Tensei 5, so rest assured, we’re gonna be back to Predominantly Grumpy Arpy soon enough.  In the meantime, though, Wrath of the Righteous is pretty great, and I recommend it as heartily as I did its predecessor Kingmaker.  Peace out, Pathfinders!












* And really, she DOES have some unexpected depth as a character if you can stick it out through her character quest.  It’s actually quite cool.


** Granted, the Storyteller is a pretty significant character in both games, but I’d actually argue that his far greater relevance to PWotR retroactively makes him a character of THIS game that Kingmaker just happened to also use.