Shin Megami Tensei 5's Chaos Route's Inferiority

The last time I talked about Shin Megami Tensei 5, I ranted about its greatest weakness, the fact that it’s just too damned light on its story to adequately function.  The game feels empty, with its plot rushed through, its characters narratively starved, its story beats too few and far between, and its ideas, concepts, and themes sparsely explored, if at all.  Atlus foolishly chose to exaggerate its traditional light touch with SMT’s writing into a nearly hands-off approach, and as a result, the game doesn’t manage to say what it wants to, has no emotional or philosophical grasp on its audience, and at many points is outright incapable of even connecting its plot elements.  If we were to liken an adequately, functionally voluminous story to, say, your average power plant, then Shin Megami Tensei 5’s narrative is the HELIOS One power plant when you first find it in Fallout: New Vegas--still technically functioning, but so neglected and mishandled by the drug-addled moron in charge that it’s running at 1% efficiency on a good day.

But beyond its major, glaring overall fault, Shin Megami Tensei 5 is also a bad RPG for its story’s significant components.  It’s not just that all the parts of the game’s plot engine were assembled together without care--those parts themselves are frequently of poor grade.  And I think the most painfully obvious example of this is just how ineptly executed the game’s Chaos route is.

First, and mainly, SMT5’s Chaos route is represented by the 2 least interesting, least developed, least expressive, least forthcoming characters in the entire game--and considering which game we’re talking about, that’s saying something.  Both Atsuta the Chaos Hero and his patron Director Koshimizu are austere, terse boards of wood defined by a single, completely static, largely undeveloped personality trait.  With Koshimizu, it’s a desire to restore Japan’s gods to their place as the nation’s protectors and caretakers, while Atsuta’s 1 guiding trait is a wholly undefined desire to protect Tokyo.

And that’s it.  That’s all there is to either of them.  Do you want an understanding of why Director Dumbass is pulling so hard for his version of Chaos?  Too fucking bad for you.  Do you want some background as to why Atsuta feels so strongly about protecting Tokyo no matter what?  Too fucking bad for you.*  Do you want a more rational, detailed explanation from Koshimizu as to how bickering pantheon factions (not all the Japanese deities particularly like each other, as the game itself notes) are going to be the best way to keep Tokyo safe?  Too fucking bad for you.  Do you want to see a scene, a conversation, a couple lines of dialogue, a single sentence of monologue, anything from Atsuta showing him thinking about the issue of the world’s future and coming to the conclusion that Koshimizu’s Chaos philosophy is in the best interests of Tokyo?
TOO
FUCKING
BAD
FOR
YOU

But hey, if you’re here to watch 2 guys make declarative statements in monotone, end the story as exactly the same people they started it without having grown in any way, and stare severely at each other while occasionally gritting their teeth in austere determination, then man has Atlus ever got the game for you.

Contrast this to Daizo and Abdiel, the Law Hero and his patron.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, the story of Daizo’s journey from fumbling, indecisive twat to laughably over-the-top sneering teleporting Scott Farkus is rushed, as awkward as he himself is, and falls apart under even light rational scrutiny--but his story is THERE, at least.  You actually SEE a couple of scenes in which Daizo is distraught over what to do about the state of the world, you actually HEAR him give a couple simple reasons for why God’s order is necessary, and you can TELL how he comes to his conclusion for what must be done in order to preserve Law, and why.  It’s rushed, it’s a line of logic that’s almost juvenile in its simplicity, it’s laughably over-the-top as Dazai flips his switch from Mewling Coward to Shonen Anime Badass, and damned if I can figure out why the hell he's so fucking hot for God’s order nor why he thinks that order's so damned necessary to keep humanity safe, but the game’s at least going through some motions of showing how and why Dazai takes on the Law Hero mantle.

That’s sure as hell a lot more than you can say for Atsuta, who starts the story fixated on Tokyo’s security and does not once change or question a single thing about that desire or how it’s to be achieved.  Dazai’s out walking in circles as he vocally works through the problem of the world’s future and reasons his way to the conclusion that he must corrupt the highest authority of God’s law to the point that she can break that law as the only means to preserve it--meanwhile Director Dipshit tells Atsuta that a squabbling menagerie of lesser deities is a good idea solely because they have home turf advantage, and Atsuta just unquestioningly snaps to attention like an army recruit caricature and that’s the end of it.

The monumental gap in quality between Abdiel as a character and Koshimizu is much the same.  Abdiel has an actual character arc(angel); she’s the herald of a dead god who’s stuck between a fanatical devotion to His decrees and the fact that those decrees restrict her to the point that she cannot successfully champion them, and it’s only when she allows a mortal to corrupt her into a fallen angel that she can work outside of God’s law freely enough to effectively fight for its cause.  I wouldn’t call it a great story--I wouldn’t even say it’s done well enough to be a good story--but an angel willingly becoming a monster and pariah because the only way to serve the will of God’s law is to defy its letter...it’s at least interesting in its concept.  You actually get to see the fall of Abdiel and understand why it’s a thing of glory for her and her cause rather than disgrace, and you understand how and why she got there as a character.

And by contrast, Koshimizu has...nothing.  No character arc.  No motivation or personality trait but that which is so superficial that it’s fully and completely expressed by a simple declarative statement or 2.  No explanation of how and why he came to his conclusion as to the best path for the world’s future.  We have an angel willingly fall to darkness out of necessity in order to be the champion of God’s light after His death in 1 corner, and in the other, we have a guy whose most impassioned appeals sound like an internal email statement from Corporate.

Jesus Christ, I can’t believe that we’ve got characters so static and boring in this game that they make Walter and Joshua in Shin Megami Tensei 4-1 look exciting and engaging by comparison.  Even their inadequate cases of character development can be more demonstrably charted than Atsuta’s.

Second huge, huge flaw with the Chaos route in Shin Megami Tensei 5?  It doesn’t even make sense for Atsuta or Koshimizu to believe in it.  These individuals may both have underdeveloped, forlorn, malnourished farces of character, but even the inadequate scraps of personality present in both Director Doofus and his mindless goon SHOULD stand in direct opposition to the world that Chaos is shooting for.  This isn’t just a case where these major characters are lacking narrative attention--they also suck because what’s there (and what’s missing) is poorly made.

First of all, Atsuta.  Atsuta’s whole thing, his ONLY thing, is that he wants to protect Tokyo and its people, including his sickly sister.  After Sahori is killed in the (long, tiresome, drawn-out) incident with Lahmu, Atsuta’s reaction is to express his regrets that he couldn’t save her, saying that the whole reason he got the demon summoning program was to prevent something like that from happening.  Atsuta wants to protect those who can’t protect themselves, to protect the weak from evil demons and from bullies alike.  And, uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the concept of the strong defending the weak 1 of the most important core tenets of the LAW side of Shin Megami Tensei?  Traditionally, Chaos in SMT means a cutthroat world where the strong thrive by taking from and subjugating the weak.  Even if, admittedly, the SMT5 Chaos route is somewhat different from the typical direction of the series, there’s no denying that Atsuta’s driving focus of defending the defenseless is definitely the behavior of a champion of Law.  Hell, SMT5 even had a sidequest early in the game in which the goddess Apsaras, established to be the representative of Law in that matter, was doing just that for various lesser demons--protecting them from the harsh world around them because they couldn’t do so themselves.  No damn wonder Atlus didn’t have Atsuta even faintly question anything Koshimizu tells him; the moment you even questioningly glance at the idea that Atsuta would be the proponent of Chaos, the idea crumbles to bits faster than consumer trust in Bethesda did on November 14, 2018.

And speaking of the incident with Sahori and Lahmu, Atsuta has witnessed through this event the ways in which the helpless are mistreated and trampled by gods who want something from them.  Yet we’re somehow supposed to buy that this supposed stalwart defender of the meek thinks, even after seeing how things went with Lahmu, that his best move to protect Tokyo is to create a world in which entire pantheons of these smaller deities are running amok with no higher force to keep them in check?

Frankly, the Chaos route doesn’t even seem all that logical for its patron saint Koshimizu to believe in, either.  I mean, this guy is adamantly convinced that the best thing for Tokyo’s welfare is to put it in the care of a gaggle of local gods, theoretically working together to benefit the city.  Yet...shouldn't every part of Koshimizu’s experience in the last 20 years tell him that this is false?  Because since the initial holy war in which his brethren were killed, Director Diddledick has been a 1-man show running Tokyo as both its civil and military leader.  He’s said to basically be single-handedly keeping the city functioning even while also personally directing its security efforts and coordinating with Abdiel and the other Bethel alliance leaders.  For 2 decades, Koshimizu has been calling every shot in Tokyo, unquestioned by anyone else in the city, surrounded only by underlings, never peers.  And he’s been doing a fine enough job of it; things in Tokyo have run smoothly enough that no one’s even aware of the true nature of the devastated world beyond their borders.  Koshimizu can’t possibly fail to see the benefits of the single, infallible leader structure of the Law side of things, as he’s been that leader to Tokyo for longer than most of the major characters of this game have even been alive.  Maybe if we’d seen some indication that he’s tired or hates the burden of being the sole leader who can keep the city safe and functioning, then his eagerness to have a world where he’s only 1 of many who oversee the city would make sense, but, well, as previously mentioned, the guy gets absolutely 0 in way of character development.  So all we’ve got is an absolute leader who has actively maintained the absolute nature of his leadership for decades to demonstrable success taking up arms against the philosophy that supports absolute leadership.  It’s dumb.

And you know, not for nothing, but the narrative itself doesn’t exactly make a great argument for Chaos.  I mean, as I mentioned, Chapter 2 of the game basically shows us that when other gods are allowed to pursue their own goals, human beings are the collateral damage that comes with that--or helpless commodities to be acquired.  Dazai’s take-away from seeing the dissolution of the Bethel alliance is a crude one that doesn’t bother accounting for mitigating circumstances, but his criticism of Chaos born from that scene isn’t entirely wrong--the only example the game has shown us of a group of deities working together to protect their human charges is one which, immediately after being introduced to the audience, dissolved because there was no longer a higher power to keep them from pursuing purely selfish aims (and in Odin’s case, that aim involves, like Lahmu, human beings being helpless victims of his pursuit for power).  The closest thing you might get to a positive spin on Chaos’s world is the sidequest where Khonsu is trying to make Miyazu a demigoddess or whatever so she won’t die from her illness, but while well-intentioned, even that’s not really a positive example of the whole “lesser gods watching out for humanity” thing, because he’s ignoring her own wishes in the matter and basically has to be beaten near to death before he even thinks about respecting her autonomy as regards her own actual life.

By contrast, you get positive examples of Law in the game.  For all its failings, Bethel has managed to tenaciously endure a war against the demons for 20 years in which all of its highest generals and even God Himself were eliminated early on.  God at least did Tokyo and its people a solid by using a miracle to save it from annihilation before He kicked it.  The source of the protagonist’s victories in the game is invariably attributed to the fact that he’s a Nahobino, rather than the fact that he also commands a bunch of demons to fight alongside him--putting the emphasis of success on an all-powerful leader alone, rather than on a joint effort of several individuals working together.  The only continuously functional and positive community we see is that of the Fairies, and they’re a monarchy, a decidedly Law-styled system of government.  Even Koshimizu himself, if you judge him by his accomplishments and his role in Tokyo’s stability, is, as I mentioned before, an icon of Law’s idea of a single, infallible leader protecting and watching over the many.  

Similarly, there’s positive data for choosing the Neutral path(s).  The world’s terrible state is undeniably a result of the interference of gods, angels, and demons, and the majority of crimes and tragedies that occur over SMT5’s course are the fault of demons.  If you can get past what a tiresome unlikable self-important arrogant douchebag piece of shit Yakumo is--admittedly quite a challenge; the guy’s like a less emotive Albel Nox--then there’s plenty of evidence in the game for why Neutral’s goal of getting all these demons to fuck the hell off once and for all is a viable path.

But Chaos just doesn’t have anything in the game itself that significantly supports it.  There’s plenty of examples of Law’s failings in SMT5, to be sure, and even the Neutral route has some major glaring flaws at its conclusion (to be discussed in a future rant about SMT5’s endings), but there’s at least some cause, narratively, to support ideals for each, which the player can point to for rationale in choosing either Law or Neutral.  The same can’t be said of Chaos; the idea of a joint pantheon of lower gods being the ones protecting and guiding humanity has only negative associations within the game’s events and characters.

It’s frustrating.  Admittedly, of the standard Shin Megami Tensei philosophical doctrines, Chaos is the one I usually buy into the very least, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate and want it to be a reasonably equal, viable competitor to Law and Neutral.  Yet in Shin Megami Tensei 5, Chaos is easily and transparently the option with the least attention or consideration given by the writers, championed by characters that are each a poor fit for it, whose rationale and association with it are utterly unexplored, and who possess all the depth and charisma of a sheet of plywood, as well as the route that the game’s own direction and events uniformly contradict and condemn.  And this really isn’t even the end of the story of how the Chaos faction of Shin Megami Tensei 5 sucks; it’s just that the remaining reasons are related to broad enough topics that they’re gonna be a part of additional rants forthcoming.  No part of Shin Megami Tensei 5 is good by any stretch of the imagination, but some parts are definitely worse than others, and the Chaos route is easily 1 of its weakest areas.













* Technically there’s some very softly understated implication that it’s tied to Atsuta’s fixation on protecting his ill sister Miyazu, but considering how little he interacts with her--and most of those interactions occur offscreen, to boot--and how her being his motivation quickly stops being brought up, and that the entire little sidequest arc about her poor health never once involves Atsuta for even a single line of dialogue, it’s pretty fucking safe to say that she is effectively irrelevant to his character.