Metaphor: ReFantazio director Katsura Hashino recently said he has no interest in games that don't offer a “glimpse of the humanity behind [them]”, even if they are very polished experiences. For Hashino, something with heart and a creative vision, even if it's a very rough draft, is far more valuable than a game that feels like it was created by executives in a boardroom.
Before Metaphor, Hashino directed Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5. He left the series he had become most closely associated with to pursue a new creative challenge, even though the easier option would have been to just make another Persona. I have a lot of respect for Hashino's words, and they resonated with me as someone who values vision above almost everything else in a game.
When you try to please everyone, you please no one
I'd bet a lot of people feel the same way, whether they realize it or not. We're starting to see the consequences of the lack of innovation with the faltering fortunes of Ubisoft, which hasn't really changed its third-person open-world RPG formula in years. Star Wars Outlaws feels like a game built around mechanics, rather than something that started as an idea and grew into something bigger. Is Kay Vess a smuggler because it enables exploration of multiple worlds and justifies the game's stealth mechanics? There's no way of knowing what Ubisoft's creative process is – the studio may well have been creatively excited by the idea of switching up from the standard Jedi formula. But when you play Outlaws, you get the feeling that the game has been designed from the top down, rather than growing out of something organic. You just can't shake the feeling that Outlaws was created to try and appeal to everyone. The best stories often start with a single sentence or idea, not market research.
Obviously, it is often just good business to repeat something that has already succeeded once. If you follow a formula for success, the project itself is less risky. Even Hashino's metaphor has Persona's DNA all over it. It's perfectly fine for a developer to explore ideas in a genre they have significant experience with. But anything that might be considered derivative about Metaphor is secondary to the story the game tells and the themes it explores. From the first minute you can feel what Metaphor is trying to do and that cohesion is what draws you in and makes you want to keep playing.
Reach For The Stars
Consider, however, Starfield. Presumably, Bethesda had a dream to make a spacefaring RPG, and the studio always talks about how it's such a technological marvel. But what was the dream? To generate planets with realistic lighting, or to evoke the sense of curiosity and exploration that exists in every human being?
From the outside, Starfield appears to be a game shaped around Bethesda's technical prowess, rather than an experience that seeks to elicit specific emotions from the player. The main draw of a game like this should be exploration, and yet exploration in Starfield is one of the most mundane things you can do in a video game. Starfield's universe shouldn't feel any less interesting to explore than Mass Effect, a game released in 2007 that was made within far more limited technical constraints.
Why is Mass Effect so interesting in comparison? Because Casey Hudson and BioWare constructed the game around a core idea: what would happen if humanity were suddenly thrown into a universe-spanning society where they were no longer the dominant political species? It plays on the social dynamics and politics of every human society and inflates it into a science fiction series with accompanying stories, characters and plots. It's a love letter to the sci-fi environments the writers liked growing up, rather than a vague attempt to “wow” gamers with cutting-edge technology.
A common theme among indie games that have become huge successes is that the creators never expected the success they received, often creating the games for themselves and niche audiences. Gareth Damian Martin of Citizen Sleeper has spoken about how the game was created to represent their complicated sense of identity and the precarious nature of the gaming economy. Billy Basso says Animal Well was inspired by how you feel about your home as a child; even when you think you know everything about it, there are always more secrets to discover. LocalThunk has said that Balatro was a one-off project, not something that was ever meant to be a big shot at success.
The point is – you can't always reverse engineer your way to a win. Just because something worked once doesn't mean it will continue to work. Managers should always foster the creativity of people and leverage their experience to balance their ideas with the reality of game development. This is how these relationships become symbiotic, rather than parasitic and requiring creativity. We see a plethora of remakes and sequels and while they often work, players will eventually tire of the constant rehash of the same stories. Publishers must be willing to invest in new ideas if they want long-term success, and that starts with supporting creative.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a brand new fantasy RPG from the director of Persona 5, Katsura Hashino. In it, you have to fight for the throne of a kingdom and save the world in the process.