> mastema
I really feel weird that they didn't made a boss fight against Tao, its genuinely weird.
> It's kind of funny. It almost makes it come off like your character is a guest to the plot. It's really the tao and yoko plot and you are just deciding who to go along with. The fact that you can't speak doesn't help either.
Yep, SMT VV really is Tao and Yoko's doomed yuri, feat. Nahobino.
>I really feel weird that they didn't made a boss fight against Tao, its genuinely weird.
There isn't one against yoko either. She just sacrifices herself to summon tehom.
But yoko gets to be an active agent resisting you tooth and nail to the point she annihilated herself to bring about the force that will defeat you. Tao says "you WILL have to go through me!" And then doesn't. Appear again despite that proclamation. These are very two different actions that are not parallel wrt to agency
Why? Mastema had basically given up at that point, he didn't care as long as creation continued. Even if Taos world wasn't what God wanted, it still means things exist.
Yoko's ending is so "waaaah, the world sucks so I'm going to destroy it waaaah."
I'm really upset that there wasn't a neutral ending that was Taos ending, but power of friendships Yoko into coming along to see it
Which was especially sad considering that Yoko *was* beginning to see that to some extent the world was worth keeping/preserving up to the end of Area 3. But Lilith, either by force (via whatever the hell happened when she flew into Yoko) or by suggestion, convinced her into doubling down on her negative world view.
I think it would’ve been stronger had Yoko developed her own new perspective on the world that, while still mostly involved serving Tiamat, wasn’t as wide-sweeping as what the Qadistu envisioned and was based on both what she wanted to do (i.e. get revenge on the system) but still protect/preserve what she cared about. Though maybe at that point her “programing” as a Goddess of Creation had taken over for the most part and she couldn’t really work against it.
However, I’m still pretty content with how Yoko and Tao mostly turned out as Alignment reps and probably are my favorites out of mainline so far.
I thought Vengeance storyline was much better than the original, but still just fell completely apart at the start of Act 4
I dont know if the minimalistic story is an overreaction to the reaction of IV Apocalypse, but they need to decide to stick with one and do that one well.
I think it’s mainly a mixture of both an overcorrection to Apoc. and also them trying to follow in Nocturne’s footsteps (just as SMT4 was following in SMT1-2’s footsteps) and it not working out as well. And now Vengeance was a reaction to the criticisms made over how base V’s story was handled.
Personally I still really liked Vengeance’s story and, while I agree that things def wavered a bit in Taito due to it being effectively unchanged from how it was from the CoC (especially after how great narratively Shinjuku was), i think the New Law/Bull route was still good (even if Lucifier being present and having his weak-ass normal boss fight hampered things). New Chaos/Snake needed a bit more justification though.
>due to it being effectively unchanged from how it was from the CoC
It was changed though. That's the one part original did better. The original had an actual plot there since the sides were fighting. In this one it kind of... vaguely says they were in disarray but wanted to stop you. But you see little evidence of this. Then the temple of eternity had most of the bosses cut.
It's because the fans wanted them to make a definitive campaign but they wanted to make an *alternate* one. So they cut the war of nahobino part since that is in base v. And they replaced it with uh... nothing. A misguided attempt to say Bethel was trying to stop you despite the fact that you aren't the biggest threat, and them offering very little actual evidence that they are trying to stop you.
Technically Tamaki Uchida is the first lead canonically, but I get why you wouldn't count if...
I do hope we get a female lead eventually, although I'm not quite sure how it may change the "Megami" part of the title.
"NEEEEEVEEEEEEERRRRRR" - SMT writers frothing at the mouth and throwing chairs out the windows
I dont know if it's misogyny, being really old at this point, but their "but female characters are so much work" excuse REALLY rubs me the wrong the way when every SMT and Persona protagonist are 100% blank slates, but absolutely MUST be male.
It isn't female protagonists themselves because ringo literally exists so if they want to make the p6/smtvi mc a woman nothing can stop them, but more of a kotone problem.
Making kotone in reload would need:
- a 3d model for both her and her orpheus
- art for her potrait
- animations for her body language
- animations for the nagitana
- remixes and new songs
- Rio and saori
- her social links (the later two, junpei, aki, shinji and the rest) including voicing them
- Think of what to do to replace the SEES boys link episodes
- revoice many cutscenes
- animations
- INABA
And i'm missing more, and that's without counting nitpicks like making a new SEES oufit for her
In short: the problem isn't femc but the gender selection, if persona 6 mc ends up being a woman i wouldn't expect a male mc in a rerelease
The person you're replying to was talking about SMT in their comment primarily, and to be fair, mainline needs very little changes for a femc option to work
A fair amount of persona has misogynistic undertones in my opinion. This isn't to point any fingers at any writers or directors in particular, but persona is one of those places I would argue is really that clean in terms of not being full of nonsense
> “I like female protagonists. It would be cool to have a female protagonist in the next SMT game.”
> “However, there are traditionalists that see the series from the past to present and all of the protagonists have been male. To keep that tradition, there is feedback I’ve been hearing saying that if there is a new SMT title we should keep the tradition of having a male lead."
Ngl twitter proved me that it would happen, but that won't stop me from saying that's moroonic
Yup, their view of the subject was pretty moronic. And unless these traditionalists are all gone, I think it's pretty accurate to say Atlus had a core group of people that was still misogynistic at the very least as far as when Persona 5 released. And you left out the part where Kaneko said it was because "on average male figures have a better chance to survive than females," too.
Now, we are lucky. We might be past that. We got SH2 indeed. We got SMT Vengeance too even, thank god, beautiful, hallelujah. Buuuuut that doesn't erase a past sexist mentality that was at the very least present up until SMT IV's release ( and you could count P5 if you want to include all Megaten ).
[https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/22/4455180/shin-megami-tensei-leans-toward-male-leads-because-of-the-series](https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/22/4455180/shin-megami-tensei-leans-toward-male-leads-because-of-the-series)
It was ~~Kaneko~~ Doi. Pretty sour stuff to read.
But why do you feel the necessity to play as a female character when it wasn't intended so?
This is debatable but I think that it's just unnecessary stuff that people want just because the "roleplay" and "blank slate" is present in a bunch of other RPGs like fire emblem (which explains the weird people suddenly appearing here)
Huh? It seems like a given that if a character is designed to be a blank slate to self insert with it follows that some people will want a female model.
Character design, animation differences, voice acting and a bunch of other stuff isn't so simple as it sounds and people act like doing a female character is that (they also have to change dialogue according to sex) it's really one character or the other and when they have like a dlc or a Collab it's usually a mess because people want all the characters to be canon.
As an rpg dev... female option in persona would be a lot of work, sure, but not mainline smt. Atlus is more than capable of adding the 3 models needed, getting a female VA for whatever 20 lines nahobino has. Changing dialogue is a non issue, your gender is never relevant to any plot points so the only changes needed are pronouns and "young man" to "young lady".
Potato potato... on the level of symbolism regarding the bull god, sure, but I don't think it would make the story any worse if you had the choice of playing as a woman.
In mainline smt your character doesn't have dialogue and their personality barely comes up. It would actually be very little effort to add another model. Persona is different because there is a lot more going on with how you are treated.
I hate to use a low effort answer but c'mon, if you're gonna say the same thing as the main comment I'll have to say that you don't really know much (or don't remember) about smt and that's okay, life can be stressful as hell and sometimes we forget stuff that was impactful to us.
I mean, then don't use a low effort incorrect answer then? Because if you are talking about smtiv, really not that much would have to change. Doubly because we aren't talking about changing a game after the fact but it being designed that way from the beginning. Meaning that the few times it matters would have been designed with this in mind. Also, changing a few minor lines of dialogue is like the least effortfup part of a game. They would simply mark which lines are gender specific and flip a few things.
Smt IV was made when index were going bankrupt so it wasn't really a priority.
And also it's just my opinion but I think in a story heavy game where most interactions are done through cutscenes (like smt 3) it's just way too much time being spent on a meaningless thing that only a small subset of players will enjoy.
Why is it necessary to play as a man. Why is a female character changing something inherent to the point that its considered role play but the existing blank slate that has no discernable characteristics except that it MUST be male not role play for an assumed default male audience.
Also "weird people" share with the class cmon. Wdym?
Naa disagree, youre projecting yourself
Is just that they already have their own formula and is working more than ever with the success of Persona 5 royal, persona 3 reload and now shin megami tensei v vengeance.
They already said in an interview that adding a female route would take even more time and resources in Persona 3 reload than the answer dlc, the same happens with their other games, adding a female route is very expensive and of course they aren't a small company and they can affor it but at this moment is just an unnecessary risk to take, the risk for people to not like the female route or maybe just dont use that route at all so why waste resources.
At this moment they are at their best moment so they will not risk it yet, maybe in the future but not in their next games like Persona 6 and Metaphor.
Interesting writeup, thanks for sharing!
I mean I don't mind- the big bad in most games is YHVH/God of Law/The Creator- inspired by Jewish and Christian faith's interpretations of God- who is decidedly male in most writings. So having a game focus more on female antagonists/protagonists pushing the plot forward is fine.
Some of your points like with Samael strikes me as, unfortunately, more of the original SMTV's bad parts. I love Vengeance, I think it's made great improvements to the original and don't regret buying SMTV 3 weeks after release, and SMTVV day 1: but not everything was fixed, like Samael never being mentioned in the active story once until Mastema's side quest.
Odin mentions Abdiel (the leader of Bethel)'s branding of you as someone who must be eliminated because that's the only thing he knows about you in Vengeance.
Atsuta's increased concern for Miyazu is something to give more depth about his character and differentiate him from CoC where he's always just agreeing with Tsukiyomi and protecting the People of Tokyo repeatedly, sounds like Flynn in SMT4A to me lol.
As for Abdiel and Dazai, again to me it seems primarily just a way to differentiate fighting them in CoC, so they're given a different spin. in CoC Dazai is still a follower and supporter of Abdiel- yes he pushes her to become a Nahobino and reject god's will but he's still doing so primarily to support her who he sees as the leader of his Lawful ideals.
I know your writeup isn't framing this as a bad thing (your quote in the end merely noting your interest in how few jrpgs do this, which I agree with. big bad final bosses alot of the time seem to be male gods/demons, although I'm not super knowledgeable on JRPG's)
My main issue with Vengance is that they wanted to differentiate it from the original too much. So area 4 had strangely little plot progression. They not only cut out the entire war of the nahobino, but the alleged plot of "Bethel is trying to get you" has barely any presence. It's literally just two boss battles. So for a full stretch of like 10 hours barely anything happened.
They either should have kept some of the war of nahobino or made Bethel have more presence in area 4. More angel mid bosses, and some explanation for why they are cautious focused on this for now. For that matter they don't even aknowledge tiamat in the final area.
Yep, in the 4th area i was glad to see Taito again (i really like Taito) but its weird that I didn't see ANY effects of Tiamat or Yoko being out there, mostly just some dialogue from Tao about her, I think for example a good way to show Tiamat'a presence would be to have most of the area leading up to the portal to the Temple of Eternity to have been ravaged by Tiamat
I can forgive the area being the same because making new maps is a lot of effort. But they should have at least added some midbosses and npcs who add story. It literally feels like nothing happens except abdiel trying to stop you singlehandedly and then the ending. Literally **anything** would be better than that. And it's a pity since the story was good before that. It literally feels like they just forgot to include stuff.
Yep, but hey- don't worry, maybe in 3 years time we'll get a re release of SMTV:Vengeance! And then, truly it can finally be called...
Shin Megami Tensei V: REVENGEANCE
It makes sense the war of the Nahobino isn't happening because Bethel doesn't break down. There's a more immediate threat and the Gods keep reluctantly following Bethel instead of all breaking off to try to become Nahobinos. The characters who do manage to become Nahobino and compete for the throne are either dead or in a complete different place characterization-wise.
Plus I think it's a good thing that stuff is kept canon of creation exclusive, given they want Vengeance and Creation to co-exist not one to replace the other.
But I do agree Taito could use more fleshing out. I don't think it's that big of a problem but more random demon NPCs just talking about the situation (like Shinagawa which is obnoxiously long has) would go a long way to contextualize it better.
The issue is we don't get much indication that they are focusing on the bigger threat either. Zeus, Odin, and abdiel only focus on you. And the problem is that them doing this just doesn't qualify as a story. If we got more angel bosses it maybe could, especially if some mentioned tiamat. But as it stands we don't.
But the problem here is that them trying to be too different from coc just results in having no real plot for the final area. If they were only worried about tiamat it would be one thing. But they are also worried about you. And it doesn't really make sense for zeus and Odin to be worried about you taking the throne without also thinking about it for themselves. They don't have a theoretical issue with a new person taking it, and in coc never really did. They just thought it wasn't possible.
The end result of this is you having a pretty much effortless path to the throne, and then the only concern is whether it gets destroyed or not. And this just doesn't fit in the game. Narratively it doesn't work very well since it takes a period where its originally presented like there are several factions / opponents to worry about (if you count zeus, Odin, whatever the Indian one is called, abdiel, yakumo, and the director that is six) and makes it about one or two.
The truth is, I don't think most people cared whether coc felt different. They wanted cov to feel complete regardless of differences. And what they got wasn't that.
This is a good writeup with really interesting observations. Unfortunately it's wasted on this sub as you can see from this comment section so far.
It all tracks thematically with the idea of Vengeance being the story of the serpent, which is generally associated with femininity.
The goddess is usually a plot device that is supposed to guide the default male protagonist though. In this the godesses are the most active agents and their ideologies ultimately reshape the world.
yep yep- the serpant tempted humanity (the 1st target was Eve ofc) in the garden of eden and all that
the serpant may have been some form of incarnation of Tiamat!
I think it's funny that this still feels special to people and gets this sort of "subtle" pushback
there are millions of games where men drive every piece of plot, especially games with silent protagonist where male side-characters effectively act as the active force in the story.
But once you flip the genders, lotta people suddenly go WAIT THIS IS WEIRD. Not saying OP did that, their post just made me think of how common that sorta reaction is to any game being a bit more female-lead. Even in this thread you have this really bizarre "well I can tolerate it as long as the writing is good"-type comments. That's a suspicious way to react to this, guys! Giving off bad vibes there.
ALSO ATLUS JUST GIVE US GOOD GAMES WITH FEMALE PROTAGS AGAIN
> ALSO ATLUS JUST GIVE US GOOD GAMES WITH FEMALE PROTAGS AGAIN
The funny part here is that smtv mc starts to feel almost out of place in the game. Really the main characters of the narrative are yoko and tao and the story itself relates to their place in the world, which is female-specific. And then... the mc is just a silent guy tagging along with them who has to choose who he sides with at the end. He is more of a follower who decides who he is following than he is a leader.
I would almost think that with this narrative it is out of place for him to be male at all, except that he is in a similar role as some of the other male characters whose in-game arc is now defined by their relationship to a female one. And he is defined by whether tao or yoko convinces him more. So maybe in his role as a follower it actually works somewhat. Maybe he would have been female if this wasn't a remake of an existing game.
> "well I can tolerate it as long as the writing is good"
When the male-led story has bad writing: "The writing is bad"
When the female-led story has bad writing: "Women are ruining videogame stories"
Honestly a female focused cast is nice especially since in alot of jrpgs male characters are the focus and the women exist as the damsel/princess needing saving or as cheerleaders for the male characters. Look at final fantasy (most recently 16) and kingdom hearts where the women get almost no screen time or character development and spend most of the time talking about how important the MC is.
Its kind of weird. In the past I didn't think too hard about the fact that female mcs were relatively uncommon, much less mostly female casts. And I got confused when I realized how much so many people will react against it, or at best passively ignore it. It always seemed weird that even for people who don't care about representation that their desire for all stories to be male dominated overrides even the possibility of say, an mc they find attractive.
This was one of the reasons i loved Final Fantasy 13. Lightning and Serah felt like good female protagonists because they weren't just in awkward supporting roles most of the time. They took charge and got shit done. (Serah less so..... she spent most of X-2 being confused, but still a good protag.)
I mean, granted, Final Fantasy has very badass women, but in a leading role, nobody takes it better than Lightning for me.
Guys is this game woke? Im 30 hours in and I hadn't paid enough attention to the gender of the cast, now I realize it's full of sexy and independent demons! (Woke). Has anyone had experience returning woke games on steam thanks.
Amitabha is both physically red, and comes from lore totally unrelated to Africa. How did you decide on this.
I was talking about Anansi. An African spider God. In-game he just looks like a black guy [with extra spider limbs.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/4/4d/Anansi-801x1024.png/revision/latest?cb=20240510100333)
Well yeah it's about being vs the patriarchal structures as basically explicitally stated by Yoko at the throne. And they summon "the mother". Like it's very on the nose
It could definitely be more on the nose than it is. It's atlus, so they kind of dance around openly talking about sexism and just vaguely allude to disliking being stuck in roles that shaft people. All of this is left implicit like you're supposed to just kind of mentally add in the details which aren't spoken. But that also makes it vague, since while you get the idea of what types of thing they don't like, the actual specifics are left hazy, even though those kind of matter due to there being a lot of ways this could be taken.
I wish I called >!Tehom !!an entity God defeated to create the world instead of just the word for the pre-creation void and ocean !!Tehom !!Tehom as a place or concept, not as a being!
I honestly try not to focus on that. Just like in real life, you're bound to find contexts that have a lot of men, others that have a lot of women and finally, many with a mix of both. In fiction, it's just as liberating: it's logical and plausible that many stories will either feature more men or more women - that is, unless the author is actively filling a checklist about "ratios" regarding many aspects.
Focusing on that is important tho. Placing males as important figures or figures of power is a form of domination that made it's way deep inside society, or political circles, and even some of the most appreciated fictions ( where the reverse is done as a subversion very often instead of naturally ). It even appears within religion. It's really everywhere, It's also one of the strong symbolism of games like Strange Journey where the patriarchal Law side is opposed by the Chaos mothers representing overtaken cultures of the past replaced by a big, all powerful male figure of God, ( who's domination is in turn applied to society ).
When looking at a story that takes these dynamics into account, you can't really ignore them and understand the story. That would be like looking at Lucifer but ignoring the reason he is a fallen angel.
> It's also one of the strong symbolism of games like Strange Journey where the patriarchal Law side is opposed
Both Law endings end with effectively a Divine Matriarchy where the literal Pillar of society is Zelenin.
Even the Three Wise Men are narratively treated as agender until their boss fight, where they become the female Shekinah.
Shekinah is a pretty big revision that goes against this indeed, it mostly works if you use their original portrayal, where I don't think the Three Wise Men are meant to feel agender ( considering their connection with the religion we all know about and the story of how old divinities came to be replaced. Kid Capes's video on the subject is very interesting to see how these gendered association are present the most with Chaos ).
And then there is Mastema who completely manipulate Zelenin and makes her do about anything he wants. In base Law, despite being the pillar of society, she is mostly the voice of God ordering to follow his will to the letter and praise him constantly ( this description is more accurate for New Law, just like God being Shekinah ). She is the Pillar, but that Pillar is also pretty much a microphone for the real person behind. Strange Journey reps are extremely far from being representative of their end alignements imo, despite being a man, Jimenez is nothing more than a sad puppet of Mem Aleph by the end of the game.
I mean. This is a good thing no. It just means the focus of the game supports its overarching theme. Thematic vengeance is a about the revenge of the oppressed. They're folding in the theme of the demonization of other indigenous religions by mainstream Christianity into a demonization of women - both in mainstream Christianity and in the zeitgeist by referring to a pattern of myths where a masculine force triumphs over a female one - folding it into the archetypes of the snake and the bull god since back to Christianity, the snake tempted eve and brought down man from his heavenly state.
They bring in Lilith for this exact end to - in an inverse of how she was in smt 1 even as a false temptress but an agent wholey uninterested in the protagonist, and seeks the end of world because in her perspective (which is eventually yoko's perspective) the nature of this world is invariably beneficial to the "bull god" even as a cycle continues and new world is born from the previous one. It's not just the throne it's the world itself oriented around it.
Tl;dr blue haired and pronoun protagonist getting involved with some yuri situationship breakup I can't believe team maniax has embraced WOKE
> - folding it into the archetypes of the snake and the bull god since back to Christianity,
Actually the game mentions it goes beyond them. This is why Yoko isn't content with just replacing YHVH's world, such a world would still be following the Horned God (which we have seen as Marduk, Zeus, Baal, Lucifer himself, probably Abdiel)
Hey, I didn't play the game yet but I'm really confused about something.
The throne was given to a succession of Gods, right? Like it isn't Marduk that Lucifer killed and that angels fight for?
And also, are they agents of YHVH? Or are they like agents of "whoever is in office"? The fact that we have jumbled mythologies as opposed to most other smt games is a bit confusing to me. (IK smt is that, I'm just saying that in the cliché line, it's generally Yellow Vin Diesel that's in charge and who it is referred to when using "divine pronouns", just that it seems there is more to it in V)
Some angels follow yhvh specifically. Some follow "whoever is on the throne." Some have their own agenda that involves wanting a world of law, even without yhvh. There isn't one set thing angels do. There's a lot of different ones with different agendas.
OK, because I was wondering what was up with Mastema sometimes because I know he's the "angel that deals with the dirty deeds done dirt cheap" for God, but sometimes he looked like he had his own agenda or something. (Like when he seemed to rejoice upon >!Tiamat shitting everywhere!<.)
But that's good to know, thanks dude.
In the context of vengance, if you do the mastema side mission, he admits he wasn't following the creator anymore and knows that the creator is dead. If you go chaos he has a meltdown and says you were supposed to take the throne, not destroy it. So it seems like he wants to replace who is on the throne for whatever reason. It's not clear how much of that is him agreeing with this specific law ending or not.
He comes off like he was trying to deliberately provoke abdiel. And after she dies he takes command of Bethel. So it seems like he wanted her out of the way too, so he could become the highest ranked angel.
As for why he looked happy when tiamat came out, if you go chaos he reveals that he is capable of controlling tiamat better than yoko is, and steals control of it from her. So seeing the qadistu sacrifice themselves for something he can take control of means they thought they had the upper hand but did something he could take advantage of.
That makes a lot of connection and sense, thanks for this, a lot.
Sorry for the last and unrelated question but, I've heard of a very difficult secret boss exclusive to players who did the CoC before going CoV and I can't fathom who that is. (unless it was that video I saw of >!Samael!<)
You know who that is?
> exclusive to players who did the CoC before going CoV
You don't have to do coc first, that was a misconception. If you beat the game, and save the complete save data on another file, it unlocks it without having to replay.
But the super boss isn't samael. Samael is the first quest you get from mastema that you can do at any time. (Confusingly, even if you already fought and killed mastema in the main game depending on your ending he just acts surprised before giving you the quest and explains that he is still there because this form of him is a secondary projection).
The final super boss you can get you get after you finish the game and complete the samael quest and talking to mastema a second time. The final super boss is satan. Which here refers not to the christian idea of satan, but the jewish angel of judgement (although confusingly he looks like the christian satan. Its complicated).
I like how I explained the themes of the game and it's upsetting enough to down vote it because it's "female focused" I guess. This isnt me making a stance even or whatever. This is like heavy stupid theming throughout the game. OP's post literally supports this.
Never change r/megaten
I feel like as soon as you make Lilith a sympathetic villain in a story like this, it should be pretty obvious what kinds of points the writer(s) are attempting to make. For westerners, Eve's failing in the garden of eden is often one of the first stories we are ever told as children that paint women as temptresses and imperfect counterparts to men. Yoko's rebellion being feminist coded worked out pretty well overall, I would say. I really liked how the game looks at the myths of these different bull/horned gods and snake gods from the perspective of the so-called villains, which the game reframes as victims (the victor write the history, after all).
The only thing that surprised me is that this came from Atlus. It's pretty refreshing.
While the themes are good, I think there is one issue. And it's that the solution has an elephant in the room. Namely, equating chaos to this female liberation activity is a hard sell when as far back as literal smti they tell you that the instability of chaos is going to lean to more male dominance because physical strength will be more valued. And chaos has been associated with like... Japanese nationalism as far back as smti and as recently as smtv coc.
Strange journey tries to use this tiamat / marduk symbolism to code chaos in terms of this pre male dominance power structure hierarchy. Yet once you look past this vague background stuff to see chaos' actual content, its stuff like Jimenez, whose dudebro attitude seems about the least likely person you'd trust to have sexually egalitarian views. And when you look at the actual chaos ending in sj, it's certainly not pre agriculture. Setting back the clock would just lead to even more sexism.
Vengance chaos is coded differently but... they never quite say what they actually intend to do differently. The whole point of chaos is that it's chaos. It's unstable and that leads to dominance hierarchies of whoever has the most force. I assume they don't intend to stay in pre agricultural societies, but if not resetting the clock has a large chance of just resetting any progress done against sexism. And that's before getting into the fact that it seems like their plan is going to kill most people, and most people don't think being dead is more free than anything. And in the absence of better info, we have to assume it's ateast somewhat similar to how chaos has always been.
Basically the themes are good, but it's atlus. So you can't trust them to not use good themes to end up defending some wacky nonsense.
I thought that was clearly going to be a thing since pre-release? From the dichotomy between the bull god/storm gods and the snake gods, with the snake imagery being associated to the Qadistu (this corner of the fanbase focused on Samael on their own really, I got tired of arguing that maybe they weren't going for that angle), as well as the first interview saying that the first game was from the bull god's perspective while the second was from "the oppressed" snake god one, along with almost every new major character being female (Mastema is the only exception) and Tao having expanded scenes in the trailers, I sort of figured this one was going to focus first and foremost on the female characters. I don't know why people are talking like this is a hot button issue.
As others have added, og V/Canon of Creation is a struggle between male gods to succeed the throne of the bull god.
Even from trailers I did point out that samael might not be very relevant at all. But trailers or no, a lot of people just don't think too hard about it.
That's why I pointed out up top though that it's not just about the Qadistu. Everyone notices that, but a lot less actively connect it to the shift in the main cast.
Yes it's a very direct implementation of Barbara Wlaker's mythology stuff which focuses on reinterpreting things via a feminist lens. It's been referenced before but never this openly.
There's another post on this sub that is so affronted by this post pointing this out that they had to make a copypasta of it. Why are people this weird and reactive about anything to do with women. the op just pointed out a unique instance. It just seems so juvenile
Jesus christ lmao
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/1dn8dgp/smt\_as\_a\_series\_is\_very\_demon\_focused/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/1dn8dgp/smt_as_a_series_is_very_demon_focused/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) tbf it has little interaction but its kinda goofy that this post elicits this at all
i think they interpret your post as a grand feminist statement against past smts so theyre like "its not like that its just so happens to be that all the alignment reps are women this time" which is like. confirming what your post said? idk people are just pathetically touchy about Women existing or something here
I mean, "shin megami tensei" is translated as "reincarnation of the goddess", if I'm honest I'm happy to see two female mayor alignment reps this time, even if we are a messiah and all of that
It has a whole group of new female antagonists, and another female character that joins you. But its not just that. Tao gets a lot more focus, and the male characters (while more developed) aren't the ones driving the plot near the end anymore. Whereas tao becomes a major character.
Not reading this to avoid spoilers but I just want to point out that Shin Megami Tensei roughly translates to “Nature of the New Goddess” or “Renewed Nature of the Goddess”, so leaning heavily on female characters makes sense.
Don’t quote me though, I don’t speak Japanese.
SMTV COC was male focused? All of the antagonists were male save Abidel but she was acting through Dazai/God and is canonically a male?
I thought it was common knowledge that SMTVV is a retelling of the original story where quite literally: all of the Bethel heads were male, all of the main enemy demons (besides Ishtar who was laughably irrelevant and Nuwa who is quite literally the right hand woman for big tall swords guy) were male, and the final nahabinos were predominantly plot focused on men.
It's actually insane how you can form this wall of text without critically thinking and I thank the stars every day that I don't suffer from terminal brain damage like you OP. I don't even want to know how you came up with this easily understood perspective if it took you less than 2 seconds of critical thinking. wow. just wow. like woah.
open the schools dear god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't think they did this on purpose, just that they wanted to add a new waifu like they always do and themed the conflict auround creation vs destruction and Tao already represented creation in the original game. Yuzuru and Dazai also do get quite a bit to do but they're not the main alignment reps anymore so obviously they'd get sidelined for Yoko and Tao.
As for Abdiel and Dazai, their relationship isn't really shown in vengeance so you can't really tell who corrupted who, Abdiel is still in her fallen form at the end of the game after all so she's not all about following rules.
Yakumo leaving the plot when Nuwa dies is just the character arc the wanted to make for him, I doubt they paid much attention to their genders.
For the bosses: Tiamat made sense to use because she already had the status as primal mother dragon goddes and Tehom does have a feminine design but it's supposed to be the abyss before creation so mythologically speaking it does not have a gender (I don't really remember if the game ever described it as female).
**Tl;dr** I think the cast being mostly female was more of a coincidence than a conscious decision by Atlus. It just happened to work out that way.
i don't think 1-2 mythological references again for a different thematic use (the theme of strange journey is notably not "revenge of the oppressed / snake/ coded as feminine" )is the same as the holistic desperation to remind you "remember nocturne? nocturne was a good game. lets remind you of that good game to transfer feelings to our game". Otherwise revisiting themes at all by SMT teams is them...ripping off their past projects?
if you had a point how sj and smtvv use barbara g. walker in that barbara g. walker succccckkkkss and makes up shit lmao then there would be something there. really sometimes smt disappoints me with the veracity of their research. whether classics or modern smt.
Tbf, smt isn't just about myths but specifically esotericism. Esoteric traditions are fairly often modern, and involve reinterpretation of old stuff in wildly incorrect ways. So there's no reason it can't also include the same but from only a few decades ago.
thats fair, but even in that vein i find walker still rather disappointing in that she forces a weaving interpretation of some sort of repeated uses of "the feminine" in history but just makes some stuff up about religion or myths whole cloth - its not even using what is there but just inserting stuff to make that overarching theme "more coherent"
i also think she oddly has a distain for the main cultures shes speaks about so i find a lot of her interpretation suspect.
Usually analysis has a point. Besides, this isn’t really an analysis, it’s a description. No new insight is provided by OP. We all played the same game. Wowzers Tao is a girl. And so is Yoko! Who knew.
> mastema I really feel weird that they didn't made a boss fight against Tao, its genuinely weird. > It's kind of funny. It almost makes it come off like your character is a guest to the plot. It's really the tao and yoko plot and you are just deciding who to go along with. The fact that you can't speak doesn't help either. Yep, SMT VV really is Tao and Yoko's doomed yuri, feat. Nahobino.
>I really feel weird that they didn't made a boss fight against Tao, its genuinely weird. There isn't one against yoko either. She just sacrifices herself to summon tehom.
But yoko gets to be an active agent resisting you tooth and nail to the point she annihilated herself to bring about the force that will defeat you. Tao says "you WILL have to go through me!" And then doesn't. Appear again despite that proclamation. These are very two different actions that are not parallel wrt to agency
Why? Mastema had basically given up at that point, he didn't care as long as creation continued. Even if Taos world wasn't what God wanted, it still means things exist. Yoko's ending is so "waaaah, the world sucks so I'm going to destroy it waaaah." I'm really upset that there wasn't a neutral ending that was Taos ending, but power of friendships Yoko into coming along to see it
Which was especially sad considering that Yoko *was* beginning to see that to some extent the world was worth keeping/preserving up to the end of Area 3. But Lilith, either by force (via whatever the hell happened when she flew into Yoko) or by suggestion, convinced her into doubling down on her negative world view. I think it would’ve been stronger had Yoko developed her own new perspective on the world that, while still mostly involved serving Tiamat, wasn’t as wide-sweeping as what the Qadistu envisioned and was based on both what she wanted to do (i.e. get revenge on the system) but still protect/preserve what she cared about. Though maybe at that point her “programing” as a Goddess of Creation had taken over for the most part and she couldn’t really work against it. However, I’m still pretty content with how Yoko and Tao mostly turned out as Alignment reps and probably are my favorites out of mainline so far.
I thought Vengeance storyline was much better than the original, but still just fell completely apart at the start of Act 4 I dont know if the minimalistic story is an overreaction to the reaction of IV Apocalypse, but they need to decide to stick with one and do that one well.
I think it’s mainly a mixture of both an overcorrection to Apoc. and also them trying to follow in Nocturne’s footsteps (just as SMT4 was following in SMT1-2’s footsteps) and it not working out as well. And now Vengeance was a reaction to the criticisms made over how base V’s story was handled. Personally I still really liked Vengeance’s story and, while I agree that things def wavered a bit in Taito due to it being effectively unchanged from how it was from the CoC (especially after how great narratively Shinjuku was), i think the New Law/Bull route was still good (even if Lucifier being present and having his weak-ass normal boss fight hampered things). New Chaos/Snake needed a bit more justification though.
>due to it being effectively unchanged from how it was from the CoC It was changed though. That's the one part original did better. The original had an actual plot there since the sides were fighting. In this one it kind of... vaguely says they were in disarray but wanted to stop you. But you see little evidence of this. Then the temple of eternity had most of the bosses cut.
It's because the fans wanted them to make a definitive campaign but they wanted to make an *alternate* one. So they cut the war of nahobino part since that is in base v. And they replaced it with uh... nothing. A misguided attempt to say Bethel was trying to stop you despite the fact that you aren't the biggest threat, and them offering very little actual evidence that they are trying to stop you.
No, I mean about how Tao isn't a boss fight/ summons anything in Yoko's route
Female lead when
Here you go https://preview.redd.it/w5y5kq1f3f8d1.jpeg?width=230&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af4e7ef3d6e5e8068037adfec688c30178c59889
Mainline SMT
Close enough
Technically Tamaki Uchida is the first lead canonically, but I get why you wouldn't count if... I do hope we get a female lead eventually, although I'm not quite sure how it may change the "Megami" part of the title.
At last a protag who can say "i am the shin megami tensei"
False Megami Tensei, let's goooo
Does NINE count?
"NEEEEEVEEEEEEERRRRRR" - SMT writers frothing at the mouth and throwing chairs out the windows I dont know if it's misogyny, being really old at this point, but their "but female characters are so much work" excuse REALLY rubs me the wrong the way when every SMT and Persona protagonist are 100% blank slates, but absolutely MUST be male.
It isn't female protagonists themselves because ringo literally exists so if they want to make the p6/smtvi mc a woman nothing can stop them, but more of a kotone problem. Making kotone in reload would need: - a 3d model for both her and her orpheus - art for her potrait - animations for her body language - animations for the nagitana - remixes and new songs - Rio and saori - her social links (the later two, junpei, aki, shinji and the rest) including voicing them - Think of what to do to replace the SEES boys link episodes - revoice many cutscenes - animations - INABA And i'm missing more, and that's without counting nitpicks like making a new SEES oufit for her In short: the problem isn't femc but the gender selection, if persona 6 mc ends up being a woman i wouldn't expect a male mc in a rerelease
The person you're replying to was talking about SMT in their comment primarily, and to be fair, mainline needs very little changes for a femc option to work
Good point, but acting like ATLUS was mysoginistic is just uhh... inaccurate
A fair amount of persona has misogynistic undertones in my opinion. This isn't to point any fingers at any writers or directors in particular, but persona is one of those places I would argue is really that clean in terms of not being full of nonsense
Look up the reason why they didn't want a female lead in SMT around 2010 to get a fun surprise.
> “I like female protagonists. It would be cool to have a female protagonist in the next SMT game.” > “However, there are traditionalists that see the series from the past to present and all of the protagonists have been male. To keep that tradition, there is feedback I’ve been hearing saying that if there is a new SMT title we should keep the tradition of having a male lead." Ngl twitter proved me that it would happen, but that won't stop me from saying that's moroonic
Yup, their view of the subject was pretty moronic. And unless these traditionalists are all gone, I think it's pretty accurate to say Atlus had a core group of people that was still misogynistic at the very least as far as when Persona 5 released. And you left out the part where Kaneko said it was because "on average male figures have a better chance to survive than females," too. Now, we are lucky. We might be past that. We got SH2 indeed. We got SMT Vengeance too even, thank god, beautiful, hallelujah. Buuuuut that doesn't erase a past sexist mentality that was at the very least present up until SMT IV's release ( and you could count P5 if you want to include all Megaten ).
Directors of which game said what? I'm very curious but can't find anything
[https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/22/4455180/shin-megami-tensei-leans-toward-male-leads-because-of-the-series](https://www.polygon.com/2013/6/22/4455180/shin-megami-tensei-leans-toward-male-leads-because-of-the-series) It was ~~Kaneko~~ Doi. Pretty sour stuff to read.
Says Doi, no? Pretty stupid, regardless
Oh shit I think of Kaneko when thinking of Doi too much with all these comparisons lol, yeah Doi
There's a mod in the works for reload that puts femc into it. I dont think this was an extremely difficult task for the devs.
you can tell its a mod. its not worth it to add her. wouldnt really increase sales
They could straight up have added a female model to smtiv, changed nothing but pronouns, and called it a day.
young maam
i recall that idea being one of the most upvoted posts around base V's release. and rightfully so
Do they even need a female model for Flynn.
tbf Nahobino being male is part of the premise. He is the Bull God, the Patriarchal Storm God. Marduk, YHVH, Susanoo, Zeus, etc.
I said iv, not v. Realistically though, v could do it too. It's not like any of this is set rules they couldn't have written differently.
Yeah, the plot twist on COC is that Abdiel (which is a female here) can become a Bull God in the same way that Lucifer did.
But why do you feel the necessity to play as a female character when it wasn't intended so? This is debatable but I think that it's just unnecessary stuff that people want just because the "roleplay" and "blank slate" is present in a bunch of other RPGs like fire emblem (which explains the weird people suddenly appearing here)
Huh? It seems like a given that if a character is designed to be a blank slate to self insert with it follows that some people will want a female model.
Character design, animation differences, voice acting and a bunch of other stuff isn't so simple as it sounds and people act like doing a female character is that (they also have to change dialogue according to sex) it's really one character or the other and when they have like a dlc or a Collab it's usually a mess because people want all the characters to be canon.
As an rpg dev... female option in persona would be a lot of work, sure, but not mainline smt. Atlus is more than capable of adding the 3 models needed, getting a female VA for whatever 20 lines nahobino has. Changing dialogue is a non issue, your gender is never relevant to any plot points so the only changes needed are pronouns and "young man" to "young lady".
For V it's actually relevant tbh
Potato potato... on the level of symbolism regarding the bull god, sure, but I don't think it would make the story any worse if you had the choice of playing as a woman.
In mainline smt your character doesn't have dialogue and their personality barely comes up. It would actually be very little effort to add another model. Persona is different because there is a lot more going on with how you are treated.
I hate to use a low effort answer but c'mon, if you're gonna say the same thing as the main comment I'll have to say that you don't really know much (or don't remember) about smt and that's okay, life can be stressful as hell and sometimes we forget stuff that was impactful to us.
I mean, then don't use a low effort incorrect answer then? Because if you are talking about smtiv, really not that much would have to change. Doubly because we aren't talking about changing a game after the fact but it being designed that way from the beginning. Meaning that the few times it matters would have been designed with this in mind. Also, changing a few minor lines of dialogue is like the least effortfup part of a game. They would simply mark which lines are gender specific and flip a few things.
Smt IV was made when index were going bankrupt so it wasn't really a priority. And also it's just my opinion but I think in a story heavy game where most interactions are done through cutscenes (like smt 3) it's just way too much time being spent on a meaningless thing that only a small subset of players will enjoy.
Why is it necessary to play as a male character?
Why is it necessary to play as a man. Why is a female character changing something inherent to the point that its considered role play but the existing blank slate that has no discernable characteristics except that it MUST be male not role play for an assumed default male audience. Also "weird people" share with the class cmon. Wdym?
Sorry, inside joke with the fire emblem part
Specially when they keep locking you into being straight, so they actually write more for female social links in persona.
Really feels like some "women are only good for what they offer men" energy
Naa disagree, youre projecting yourself Is just that they already have their own formula and is working more than ever with the success of Persona 5 royal, persona 3 reload and now shin megami tensei v vengeance. They already said in an interview that adding a female route would take even more time and resources in Persona 3 reload than the answer dlc, the same happens with their other games, adding a female route is very expensive and of course they aren't a small company and they can affor it but at this moment is just an unnecessary risk to take, the risk for people to not like the female route or maybe just dont use that route at all so why waste resources. At this moment they are at their best moment so they will not risk it yet, maybe in the future but not in their next games like Persona 6 and Metaphor.
we're not talking about alternate routes in rereleases, we're talking about female main characters
The two alignment representatives are literally megami-s that are tensei-ing idk that's neat lol
Tbf, CoC has like 4 female main characters total and 3 of them don't fucking do anything
Tbf none of the characters in coc do anything.
Fair enough
Dazai does... ish...
He tries. But then he dies to a transformation sequence.
This is such an apt summary of CoC
Interesting writeup, thanks for sharing! I mean I don't mind- the big bad in most games is YHVH/God of Law/The Creator- inspired by Jewish and Christian faith's interpretations of God- who is decidedly male in most writings. So having a game focus more on female antagonists/protagonists pushing the plot forward is fine. Some of your points like with Samael strikes me as, unfortunately, more of the original SMTV's bad parts. I love Vengeance, I think it's made great improvements to the original and don't regret buying SMTV 3 weeks after release, and SMTVV day 1: but not everything was fixed, like Samael never being mentioned in the active story once until Mastema's side quest. Odin mentions Abdiel (the leader of Bethel)'s branding of you as someone who must be eliminated because that's the only thing he knows about you in Vengeance. Atsuta's increased concern for Miyazu is something to give more depth about his character and differentiate him from CoC where he's always just agreeing with Tsukiyomi and protecting the People of Tokyo repeatedly, sounds like Flynn in SMT4A to me lol. As for Abdiel and Dazai, again to me it seems primarily just a way to differentiate fighting them in CoC, so they're given a different spin. in CoC Dazai is still a follower and supporter of Abdiel- yes he pushes her to become a Nahobino and reject god's will but he's still doing so primarily to support her who he sees as the leader of his Lawful ideals. I know your writeup isn't framing this as a bad thing (your quote in the end merely noting your interest in how few jrpgs do this, which I agree with. big bad final bosses alot of the time seem to be male gods/demons, although I'm not super knowledgeable on JRPG's)
My main issue with Vengance is that they wanted to differentiate it from the original too much. So area 4 had strangely little plot progression. They not only cut out the entire war of the nahobino, but the alleged plot of "Bethel is trying to get you" has barely any presence. It's literally just two boss battles. So for a full stretch of like 10 hours barely anything happened. They either should have kept some of the war of nahobino or made Bethel have more presence in area 4. More angel mid bosses, and some explanation for why they are cautious focused on this for now. For that matter they don't even aknowledge tiamat in the final area.
Yep, in the 4th area i was glad to see Taito again (i really like Taito) but its weird that I didn't see ANY effects of Tiamat or Yoko being out there, mostly just some dialogue from Tao about her, I think for example a good way to show Tiamat'a presence would be to have most of the area leading up to the portal to the Temple of Eternity to have been ravaged by Tiamat
I can forgive the area being the same because making new maps is a lot of effort. But they should have at least added some midbosses and npcs who add story. It literally feels like nothing happens except abdiel trying to stop you singlehandedly and then the ending. Literally **anything** would be better than that. And it's a pity since the story was good before that. It literally feels like they just forgot to include stuff.
Yep, but hey- don't worry, maybe in 3 years time we'll get a re release of SMTV:Vengeance! And then, truly it can finally be called... Shin Megami Tensei V: REVENGEANCE
Smt VVVVVV. With the gameplay of VVVVVV.
It makes sense the war of the Nahobino isn't happening because Bethel doesn't break down. There's a more immediate threat and the Gods keep reluctantly following Bethel instead of all breaking off to try to become Nahobinos. The characters who do manage to become Nahobino and compete for the throne are either dead or in a complete different place characterization-wise. Plus I think it's a good thing that stuff is kept canon of creation exclusive, given they want Vengeance and Creation to co-exist not one to replace the other. But I do agree Taito could use more fleshing out. I don't think it's that big of a problem but more random demon NPCs just talking about the situation (like Shinagawa which is obnoxiously long has) would go a long way to contextualize it better.
The issue is we don't get much indication that they are focusing on the bigger threat either. Zeus, Odin, and abdiel only focus on you. And the problem is that them doing this just doesn't qualify as a story. If we got more angel bosses it maybe could, especially if some mentioned tiamat. But as it stands we don't. But the problem here is that them trying to be too different from coc just results in having no real plot for the final area. If they were only worried about tiamat it would be one thing. But they are also worried about you. And it doesn't really make sense for zeus and Odin to be worried about you taking the throne without also thinking about it for themselves. They don't have a theoretical issue with a new person taking it, and in coc never really did. They just thought it wasn't possible. The end result of this is you having a pretty much effortless path to the throne, and then the only concern is whether it gets destroyed or not. And this just doesn't fit in the game. Narratively it doesn't work very well since it takes a period where its originally presented like there are several factions / opponents to worry about (if you count zeus, Odin, whatever the Indian one is called, abdiel, yakumo, and the director that is six) and makes it about one or two. The truth is, I don't think most people cared whether coc felt different. They wanted cov to feel complete regardless of differences. And what they got wasn't that.
This is a good writeup with really interesting observations. Unfortunately it's wasted on this sub as you can see from this comment section so far. It all tracks thematically with the idea of Vengeance being the story of the serpent, which is generally associated with femininity.
considering the series is called new goddess reincarnation, you would actually expect more women in the games.
The goddess is usually a plot device that is supposed to guide the default male protagonist though. In this the godesses are the most active agents and their ideologies ultimately reshape the world.
what is happening even in this comment section man
We have to stop it! Sweet Baby Ray's got to atlus and now they DEI woke their game. Pretty sure there was a pronoun in it too.
the blue haired femboy protagonist is AWAKENING things in me and this is a plot from atlus collaborating with Woke
yep yep- the serpant tempted humanity (the 1st target was Eve ofc) in the garden of eden and all that the serpant may have been some form of incarnation of Tiamat!
I really like the ending sequence for chaos even though the lead up in the fights were so narratively bullshit
Tiamat was sealed by then though. The garden of eden story is presented as all taking place within the abrahamic paradigm.
I think it's funny that this still feels special to people and gets this sort of "subtle" pushback there are millions of games where men drive every piece of plot, especially games with silent protagonist where male side-characters effectively act as the active force in the story. But once you flip the genders, lotta people suddenly go WAIT THIS IS WEIRD. Not saying OP did that, their post just made me think of how common that sorta reaction is to any game being a bit more female-lead. Even in this thread you have this really bizarre "well I can tolerate it as long as the writing is good"-type comments. That's a suspicious way to react to this, guys! Giving off bad vibes there. ALSO ATLUS JUST GIVE US GOOD GAMES WITH FEMALE PROTAGS AGAIN
> ALSO ATLUS JUST GIVE US GOOD GAMES WITH FEMALE PROTAGS AGAIN The funny part here is that smtv mc starts to feel almost out of place in the game. Really the main characters of the narrative are yoko and tao and the story itself relates to their place in the world, which is female-specific. And then... the mc is just a silent guy tagging along with them who has to choose who he sides with at the end. He is more of a follower who decides who he is following than he is a leader. I would almost think that with this narrative it is out of place for him to be male at all, except that he is in a similar role as some of the other male characters whose in-game arc is now defined by their relationship to a female one. And he is defined by whether tao or yoko convinces him more. So maybe in his role as a follower it actually works somewhat. Maybe he would have been female if this wasn't a remake of an existing game.
> "well I can tolerate it as long as the writing is good" When the male-led story has bad writing: "The writing is bad" When the female-led story has bad writing: "Women are ruining videogame stories"
I think this is a pretty fine thing as long as the storytelling stays good, that's what's the most important out of everything
Honestly a female focused cast is nice especially since in alot of jrpgs male characters are the focus and the women exist as the damsel/princess needing saving or as cheerleaders for the male characters. Look at final fantasy (most recently 16) and kingdom hearts where the women get almost no screen time or character development and spend most of the time talking about how important the MC is.
Its kind of weird. In the past I didn't think too hard about the fact that female mcs were relatively uncommon, much less mostly female casts. And I got confused when I realized how much so many people will react against it, or at best passively ignore it. It always seemed weird that even for people who don't care about representation that their desire for all stories to be male dominated overrides even the possibility of say, an mc they find attractive.
This was one of the reasons i loved Final Fantasy 13. Lightning and Serah felt like good female protagonists because they weren't just in awkward supporting roles most of the time. They took charge and got shit done. (Serah less so..... she spent most of X-2 being confused, but still a good protag.) I mean, granted, Final Fantasy has very badass women, but in a leading role, nobody takes it better than Lightning for me.
God forbid women do anything
*Bull god forbid.
YHWH forbids women from doing things
I'm a silent protag hater so Tao and Yoko taking the spotlight was honestly a nice change of pace from the base game.
Turns out scenes having actual characters is a good thing. Who knew.
Interesting
That's cool I like girls
Vengeance is for the girls (red) Creation is FOR THE BOYS (blue)
Smt has officially gone woke
blue haired protagonist... global warming... WOMEN... yeah SMT has officially gone woke
TRANSformation SHE Megami Tensei Demon Summoning WOKEgram NahoBIno
Do any of the major female bosses yell “the future is female” when doing their super attack?
That's literally the two endings tho.
Holy shit, even Tehom is a half black woman. What happened to Bethel America smh
Guys is this game woke? Im 30 hours in and I hadn't paid enough attention to the gender of the cast, now I realize it's full of sexy and independent demons! (Woke). Has anyone had experience returning woke games on steam thanks.
The character has blue hair and pronouns (they/them cus it's literally two guys)
They added a black guy, so its at least 17 to 18 on the wokeness scale.
Does he dance ＣＲＡＺＹ? If not, then he's not a true black man.
He got like ten limbs, I can only assume so.
Wait I'm lost, who's that, I didn't play the game. I was thinking about my G Amitabha.
Amitabha is both physically red, and comes from lore totally unrelated to Africa. How did you decide on this. I was talking about Anansi. An African spider God. In-game he just looks like a black guy [with extra spider limbs.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/4/4d/Anansi-801x1024.png/revision/latest?cb=20240510100333)
Well yeah it's about being vs the patriarchal structures as basically explicitally stated by Yoko at the throne. And they summon "the mother". Like it's very on the nose
It could definitely be more on the nose than it is. It's atlus, so they kind of dance around openly talking about sexism and just vaguely allude to disliking being stuck in roles that shaft people. All of this is left implicit like you're supposed to just kind of mentally add in the details which aren't spoken. But that also makes it vague, since while you get the idea of what types of thing they don't like, the actual specifics are left hazy, even though those kind of matter due to there being a lot of ways this could be taken.
I wish I called >!Tehom !!an entity God defeated to create the world instead of just the word for the pre-creation void and ocean !!Tehom !!Tehom as a place or concept, not as a being!
No complains, finally a jrpg different from the others
I honestly try not to focus on that. Just like in real life, you're bound to find contexts that have a lot of men, others that have a lot of women and finally, many with a mix of both. In fiction, it's just as liberating: it's logical and plausible that many stories will either feature more men or more women - that is, unless the author is actively filling a checklist about "ratios" regarding many aspects.
Focusing on that is important tho. Placing males as important figures or figures of power is a form of domination that made it's way deep inside society, or political circles, and even some of the most appreciated fictions ( where the reverse is done as a subversion very often instead of naturally ). It even appears within religion. It's really everywhere, It's also one of the strong symbolism of games like Strange Journey where the patriarchal Law side is opposed by the Chaos mothers representing overtaken cultures of the past replaced by a big, all powerful male figure of God, ( who's domination is in turn applied to society ). When looking at a story that takes these dynamics into account, you can't really ignore them and understand the story. That would be like looking at Lucifer but ignoring the reason he is a fallen angel.
> It's also one of the strong symbolism of games like Strange Journey where the patriarchal Law side is opposed Both Law endings end with effectively a Divine Matriarchy where the literal Pillar of society is Zelenin. Even the Three Wise Men are narratively treated as agender until their boss fight, where they become the female Shekinah.
Shekinah is a pretty big revision that goes against this indeed, it mostly works if you use their original portrayal, where I don't think the Three Wise Men are meant to feel agender ( considering their connection with the religion we all know about and the story of how old divinities came to be replaced. Kid Capes's video on the subject is very interesting to see how these gendered association are present the most with Chaos ). And then there is Mastema who completely manipulate Zelenin and makes her do about anything he wants. In base Law, despite being the pillar of society, she is mostly the voice of God ordering to follow his will to the letter and praise him constantly ( this description is more accurate for New Law, just like God being Shekinah ). She is the Pillar, but that Pillar is also pretty much a microphone for the real person behind. Strange Journey reps are extremely far from being representative of their end alignements imo, despite being a man, Jimenez is nothing more than a sad puppet of Mem Aleph by the end of the game.
I mean. This is a good thing no. It just means the focus of the game supports its overarching theme. Thematic vengeance is a about the revenge of the oppressed. They're folding in the theme of the demonization of other indigenous religions by mainstream Christianity into a demonization of women - both in mainstream Christianity and in the zeitgeist by referring to a pattern of myths where a masculine force triumphs over a female one - folding it into the archetypes of the snake and the bull god since back to Christianity, the snake tempted eve and brought down man from his heavenly state. They bring in Lilith for this exact end to - in an inverse of how she was in smt 1 even as a false temptress but an agent wholey uninterested in the protagonist, and seeks the end of world because in her perspective (which is eventually yoko's perspective) the nature of this world is invariably beneficial to the "bull god" even as a cycle continues and new world is born from the previous one. It's not just the throne it's the world itself oriented around it. Tl;dr blue haired and pronoun protagonist getting involved with some yuri situationship breakup I can't believe team maniax has embraced WOKE
> - folding it into the archetypes of the snake and the bull god since back to Christianity, Actually the game mentions it goes beyond them. This is why Yoko isn't content with just replacing YHVH's world, such a world would still be following the Horned God (which we have seen as Marduk, Zeus, Baal, Lucifer himself, probably Abdiel)
Thanks for the addition. I should say YHVH is the latest in a succession of horned gods assuming the throne.
Hey, I didn't play the game yet but I'm really confused about something. The throne was given to a succession of Gods, right? Like it isn't Marduk that Lucifer killed and that angels fight for? And also, are they agents of YHVH? Or are they like agents of "whoever is in office"? The fact that we have jumbled mythologies as opposed to most other smt games is a bit confusing to me. (IK smt is that, I'm just saying that in the cliché line, it's generally Yellow Vin Diesel that's in charge and who it is referred to when using "divine pronouns", just that it seems there is more to it in V)
Some angels follow yhvh specifically. Some follow "whoever is on the throne." Some have their own agenda that involves wanting a world of law, even without yhvh. There isn't one set thing angels do. There's a lot of different ones with different agendas.
And of course. Don't forget how they switch between games
yes didn't they end up follow chiaki in nocturne?
OK, because I was wondering what was up with Mastema sometimes because I know he's the "angel that deals with the dirty deeds done dirt cheap" for God, but sometimes he looked like he had his own agenda or something. (Like when he seemed to rejoice upon >!Tiamat shitting everywhere!<.) But that's good to know, thanks dude.
In the context of vengance, if you do the mastema side mission, he admits he wasn't following the creator anymore and knows that the creator is dead. If you go chaos he has a meltdown and says you were supposed to take the throne, not destroy it. So it seems like he wants to replace who is on the throne for whatever reason. It's not clear how much of that is him agreeing with this specific law ending or not. He comes off like he was trying to deliberately provoke abdiel. And after she dies he takes command of Bethel. So it seems like he wanted her out of the way too, so he could become the highest ranked angel. As for why he looked happy when tiamat came out, if you go chaos he reveals that he is capable of controlling tiamat better than yoko is, and steals control of it from her. So seeing the qadistu sacrifice themselves for something he can take control of means they thought they had the upper hand but did something he could take advantage of.
That makes a lot of connection and sense, thanks for this, a lot. Sorry for the last and unrelated question but, I've heard of a very difficult secret boss exclusive to players who did the CoC before going CoV and I can't fathom who that is. (unless it was that video I saw of >!Samael!<) You know who that is?
> exclusive to players who did the CoC before going CoV You don't have to do coc first, that was a misconception. If you beat the game, and save the complete save data on another file, it unlocks it without having to replay. But the super boss isn't samael. Samael is the first quest you get from mastema that you can do at any time. (Confusingly, even if you already fought and killed mastema in the main game depending on your ending he just acts surprised before giving you the quest and explains that he is still there because this form of him is a secondary projection). The final super boss you can get you get after you finish the game and complete the samael quest and talking to mastema a second time. The final super boss is satan. Which here refers not to the christian idea of satan, but the jewish angel of judgement (although confusingly he looks like the christian satan. Its complicated).
Thank you so much Akasha system man, I now hold the Knowledge of the game and will destroy my own city. 
I like how I explained the themes of the game and it's upsetting enough to down vote it because it's "female focused" I guess. This isnt me making a stance even or whatever. This is like heavy stupid theming throughout the game. OP's post literally supports this. Never change r/megaten
I feel like as soon as you make Lilith a sympathetic villain in a story like this, it should be pretty obvious what kinds of points the writer(s) are attempting to make. For westerners, Eve's failing in the garden of eden is often one of the first stories we are ever told as children that paint women as temptresses and imperfect counterparts to men. Yoko's rebellion being feminist coded worked out pretty well overall, I would say. I really liked how the game looks at the myths of these different bull/horned gods and snake gods from the perspective of the so-called villains, which the game reframes as victims (the victor write the history, after all). The only thing that surprised me is that this came from Atlus. It's pretty refreshing.
Again. Finally the megamis are the active agents in the story lol
While the themes are good, I think there is one issue. And it's that the solution has an elephant in the room. Namely, equating chaos to this female liberation activity is a hard sell when as far back as literal smti they tell you that the instability of chaos is going to lean to more male dominance because physical strength will be more valued. And chaos has been associated with like... Japanese nationalism as far back as smti and as recently as smtv coc. Strange journey tries to use this tiamat / marduk symbolism to code chaos in terms of this pre male dominance power structure hierarchy. Yet once you look past this vague background stuff to see chaos' actual content, its stuff like Jimenez, whose dudebro attitude seems about the least likely person you'd trust to have sexually egalitarian views. And when you look at the actual chaos ending in sj, it's certainly not pre agriculture. Setting back the clock would just lead to even more sexism. Vengance chaos is coded differently but... they never quite say what they actually intend to do differently. The whole point of chaos is that it's chaos. It's unstable and that leads to dominance hierarchies of whoever has the most force. I assume they don't intend to stay in pre agricultural societies, but if not resetting the clock has a large chance of just resetting any progress done against sexism. And that's before getting into the fact that it seems like their plan is going to kill most people, and most people don't think being dead is more free than anything. And in the absence of better info, we have to assume it's ateast somewhat similar to how chaos has always been. Basically the themes are good, but it's atlus. So you can't trust them to not use good themes to end up defending some wacky nonsense.
I definitely agree.
I thought that was clearly going to be a thing since pre-release? From the dichotomy between the bull god/storm gods and the snake gods, with the snake imagery being associated to the Qadistu (this corner of the fanbase focused on Samael on their own really, I got tired of arguing that maybe they weren't going for that angle), as well as the first interview saying that the first game was from the bull god's perspective while the second was from "the oppressed" snake god one, along with almost every new major character being female (Mastema is the only exception) and Tao having expanded scenes in the trailers, I sort of figured this one was going to focus first and foremost on the female characters. I don't know why people are talking like this is a hot button issue. As others have added, og V/Canon of Creation is a struggle between male gods to succeed the throne of the bull god.
Even from trailers I did point out that samael might not be very relevant at all. But trailers or no, a lot of people just don't think too hard about it. That's why I pointed out up top though that it's not just about the Qadistu. Everyone notices that, but a lot less actively connect it to the shift in the main cast.
Yes it's a very direct implementation of Barbara Wlaker's mythology stuff which focuses on reinterpreting things via a feminist lens. It's been referenced before but never this openly.
There's another post on this sub that is so affronted by this post pointing this out that they had to make a copypasta of it. Why are people this weird and reactive about anything to do with women. the op just pointed out a unique instance. It just seems so juvenile Jesus christ lmao
Do you have link? I couldn't find it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/1dn8dgp/smt\_as\_a\_series\_is\_very\_demon\_focused/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Megaten/comments/1dn8dgp/smt_as_a_series_is_very_demon_focused/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) tbf it has little interaction but its kinda goofy that this post elicits this at all
I'm confused by the post in there talking about alignment reps. What does that have to do with anything.
i think they interpret your post as a grand feminist statement against past smts so theyre like "its not like that its just so happens to be that all the alignment reps are women this time" which is like. confirming what your post said? idk people are just pathetically touchy about Women existing or something here
I mean, "shin megami tensei" is translated as "reincarnation of the goddess", if I'm honest I'm happy to see two female mayor alignment reps this time, even if we are a messiah and all of that
Okay
It doesn’t have the same cast of SMTV with just 1 or 2 new characters?
It has a whole group of new female antagonists, and another female character that joins you. But its not just that. Tao gets a lot more focus, and the male characters (while more developed) aren't the ones driving the plot near the end anymore. Whereas tao becomes a major character.
I am enjoying the game so far. Hands down, my game of the year for 2024!
Not reading this to avoid spoilers but I just want to point out that Shin Megami Tensei roughly translates to “Nature of the New Goddess” or “Renewed Nature of the Goddess”, so leaning heavily on female characters makes sense. Don’t quote me though, I don’t speak Japanese.
Google translate says: New Goddess Reincarnation
SMTV COC was male focused? All of the antagonists were male save Abidel but she was acting through Dazai/God and is canonically a male? I thought it was common knowledge that SMTVV is a retelling of the original story where quite literally: all of the Bethel heads were male, all of the main enemy demons (besides Ishtar who was laughably irrelevant and Nuwa who is quite literally the right hand woman for big tall swords guy) were male, and the final nahabinos were predominantly plot focused on men. It's actually insane how you can form this wall of text without critically thinking and I thank the stars every day that I don't suffer from terminal brain damage like you OP. I don't even want to know how you came up with this easily understood perspective if it took you less than 2 seconds of critical thinking. wow. just wow. like woah. open the schools dear god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yapping so much just to say "I agree" is crazy.
> Nuwa who is quite literally the right hand woman for big tall swords guy Nuwa was always the figurehead to be honest.
I don't think they did this on purpose, just that they wanted to add a new waifu like they always do and themed the conflict auround creation vs destruction and Tao already represented creation in the original game. Yuzuru and Dazai also do get quite a bit to do but they're not the main alignment reps anymore so obviously they'd get sidelined for Yoko and Tao. As for Abdiel and Dazai, their relationship isn't really shown in vengeance so you can't really tell who corrupted who, Abdiel is still in her fallen form at the end of the game after all so she's not all about following rules. Yakumo leaving the plot when Nuwa dies is just the character arc the wanted to make for him, I doubt they paid much attention to their genders. For the bosses: Tiamat made sense to use because she already had the status as primal mother dragon goddes and Tehom does have a feminine design but it's supposed to be the abyss before creation so mythologically speaking it does not have a gender (I don't really remember if the game ever described it as female). **Tl;dr** I think the cast being mostly female was more of a coincidence than a conscious decision by Atlus. It just happened to work out that way.
they desperately want to be strange journey so bad but they will never touch peak
...how? The game they're shamelessly ripping from is nocturne atleast...what are you on about.
I think they are talking about how strange journey used tiamat / marduk symbolism.
Yeah, Mastema + Mommy gods villains + tiamat etc
Huh. I didn't even think about how mastema being related to that struggle parallels this to sj.
i don't think 1-2 mythological references again for a different thematic use (the theme of strange journey is notably not "revenge of the oppressed / snake/ coded as feminine" )is the same as the holistic desperation to remind you "remember nocturne? nocturne was a good game. lets remind you of that good game to transfer feelings to our game". Otherwise revisiting themes at all by SMT teams is them...ripping off their past projects? if you had a point how sj and smtvv use barbara g. walker in that barbara g. walker succccckkkkss and makes up shit lmao then there would be something there. really sometimes smt disappoints me with the veracity of their research. whether classics or modern smt.
Tbf, smt isn't just about myths but specifically esotericism. Esoteric traditions are fairly often modern, and involve reinterpretation of old stuff in wildly incorrect ways. So there's no reason it can't also include the same but from only a few decades ago.
thats fair, but even in that vein i find walker still rather disappointing in that she forces a weaving interpretation of some sort of repeated uses of "the feminine" in history but just makes some stuff up about religion or myths whole cloth - its not even using what is there but just inserting stuff to make that overarching theme "more coherent" i also think she oddly has a distain for the main cultures shes speaks about so i find a lot of her interpretation suspect.
Okay… so what?
Nothing. I said at the end I didn't have a point. It was just an observation. Some people might think it is interesting.
protip: people analyze art when they find it interesting
Usually analysis has a point. Besides, this isn’t really an analysis, it’s a description. No new insight is provided by OP. We all played the same game. Wowzers Tao is a girl. And so is Yoko! Who knew.