SMT V's Much-'Aligned' Narrative Dyslexia
And why it's law bias... isn't quite the high praise you might think it is.
FULL SPOILER WARNING FOR SMT V (I have herp derp…)
Oh Atlus… how this game could have been so much more… but a good chunk of us have already said that by this point.
I suppose if I’m going to be grateful for one thing, is that I could do with writing more articles like this on experiences recent in memory. So when I came out of a full 65-70+ hour playthrough, rolling my eyes like the head of a Warburtons bakery, I knew what I had to do.
I want to front-load this by saying that when I go to criticise this game and it’s story, I’m not going to compare it to other MegaTen/Persona games. Putting aside the fact that said comparisons to the likes of Persona 5 and more have been meme’d to death as much as ‘the Dark Souls’ of this kind of literary criticism, I find parallels to material within the same franchise to be ultimately reductive, because it banks viability of a narrative not on it’s own merits, but on what is expected from same said series (not that you can’t have expectations for a series fundamental bar to clear, but that should come from more than one franchise as a frame of reference). The only time I would make an exception for this is the Xeno series of JRPGs, but your mileage will vary on whether or not Gears/Saga/Blade carry the same narrative blood, or if Tetsuya Takahashi is trying to refine the same ideas over the years with new coats of paint (because if I took a shot for every time Consul N was compared to Kevin Winnicott, I’d be sparkin’ dead!).
Oh, and even if I *did* want to compare same-series, I’m not far enough into Nocturne, Strange Journey or IV to adjudicate on the veracity of comparisons that others have made when it comes to V’s approach to narrative (and game design in general). I have completed IV Apocalypse before, but my memory of that game is hazy at the best of times (not that I don’t remember enjoying it). As a corollary to all of the above, I’m also not going to give some cop-out answer about how the writers who were requested for interview lied about ‘the modern times’ and ‘nukes’ and whatnot as an initial pitch for a plot beat. This is a game about biblical Angels, Demons from Hell, and that beyond alleged mortal comprehension, I don’t think a few city-level nukes are going to matter so long as the VS community isn’t jacking itself off all the way to the bank (Not that it’s going to stop them in a series as bloated as MegaTen).
Anyway, with all that waffle out of the way, let’s get onto why SMT V’s narrative is… pretty damn shoddy.
The Moral Alignment’s Discredit-by-Association - how we got here:
I think the best way to go about this is to start with Abdiel, the Archangel you find yourself working for as part of Bethel (the prototypical law-aligned organisation in this series). Despite what I’m about to say about Chaos and True/False Neutral later on, I want to make this clear upfront: This woman does not speak for me (neither does Dazai, but we’ll get to him).
It’s clear early on that Abdiel is your typical ‘ends justify the means’ biblical authoritarian, with what can generously be construed as a ‘twist’ in her denialism over the defeat of her god at the hands of Lucifer.
Although, to be fair… who wants to actually check that? Because…
Isn’t Kagutsuchi supposed to be dead?
And before you ask, I know they bring up the Nahobino having precluded the condemnation at the summit later, but anyway…
I’d say I take exception to how shameless Abdiel is, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure that was the point. What I do take issue with is how her own double standards rub up against the attempts to make her shameless. Not to mention how the ‘fallen angel’ getup is a result of Lucifer intervening within the law faction’s internal logic, which in the end just makes Abdiel look like even more of an idiot.
As mentioned earlier, Dazai becomes her compatriot, but other than the abrupt face-turn he goes through in Taito, he’s basically that one dorky archetype who is loaned power and doesn’t give it back. I wouldn’t go there, either.
As another Law representative, we also have Tao, who ends up ‘dead’ at the hands of Lahmu, comes back Face Nemesis style as ‘the goddess of creation’, and with the exception of some ideological oddities with the route split (that like a lot of things in this article, we’ll get back to), she does a whole lot of nothing. Although, if it’s any kind of consolation prize, I suppose it’s more appealing that she does nothing wrong (even if it’s nothing at all) compared to some of the others I’ll be naming the names of here.
Before I go after those names, however, I think it’s worth mentioning how there are occasions where SMT V’s narrative rubs up against the idea that there should be reforms to the game’s alignments, rather than reforms to the world that it’s based in, hence my use of the term ‘discredit-by-association’ (although you can ask The Daily Beagle for more on that).
This is why I find it so infuriating when this game’s story pre-packages proxies come the end game in the Empyrean, and just assumes that you agree with any of these characters whole cloth, a point I will refute for reasons of misunderstood morality (once again) covered later.
The aforementioned Bethel Summit also had other factions residing within it, but with the exception of Khonsu and maybe Shiva, the game basically does nothing with them. I’ve seen people turn around and call Khonsu based and… Uh… no? Let’s summarise his quest chain real quick: he gets his ass whopped by you in Odaiba, nicks the Winged Sun from Amon, misinterprets Miyazu Atsuta as terminally ill because of the story that Isis (…the demon woman, not the Taliban) tells the player, as Khonsu offers her [Miyazu] power (despite the assertion that Khonsu didn’t want to be a Nahobino?), gets his ass kicked AGAIN… and to get the True Neutral ending, you’re not even allowed to kill him? Lame…
Getting back on track: Yuzuru Atsuta and Khoshimizu (known colloquially as Tsukuyomi) are meant as our resident Chaos representatives (Khoshimizu himself even being Japan’s sitting president within this world, apparently), with the plan of bringing about the ‘myriad gods’ and having everyone hail as they wish… a plan that is completely asinine if you think about it for two seconds. Because riddle me this: If Nahobino is so far beyond god (allegedly being a god in it’s ‘purest sense’), then why would one of the factions vying for Nahobino want to create a world that actively competes with itself? What, did Khoshimizu pay dividends to John Bolton or something? You’re just painting a huge target on your back.
And then there’s Yakumo and Nuwa, the so-called ‘Neutral’ path reps. And I can only assume that Nuwa has some kind of Stockholm syndrome, because Yakumo is… an asshole, to put it lightly. His methodology is the usual ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality (which I do sympathise with to some extent), but the writers manage to give him such a snotty attitude, that it’s hard to take the train conductor in a Duscur flesh suit seriously (hysterically enough, Yakumo’s English VA is actually Dedue’s).
These are obviously very stripped down summaries of the ‘Neutral’ and ‘Chaos’ alignments in this game, and until the route split in the Temple of Eternity, the game does about as much as that with them (as many others have pointed out in recent months). Which brings us to…
Endgame in the Empyrean - the Mandala Mix-up:
I guess I could explain this in the order that I decided to play these endings in (and yes, I did beat Shiva on my playthrough of the game). I wanted to get the ‘hard’ bit out of the way first (True Neutral Lucifer isn’t actually ‘hard’ per se, more of a Gimmick fight where you’re banking on not getting cheesed by Tentarafoo in the final leg of the fight, and everything else just melts him because this game expects you to have beaten Shiva to get to him on the TNR), and then go backwards. That’s when I saw how Tao reacts to your decisions, leading to the namesake of this article.
On either of the Neutral routes (either throne destroyed or TNE), Tao turns around and says ‘because you don’t want creation, I cannot help you’, prompting her to disappear until you defeat Tsukuyomi and go to make the choice… and that’s where the problems start.
See, what’s funny here is that if you choose ‘Neutral’, Tao sees you in contravention of the universe in need of rebuilding, but if you choose Law OR Chaos, she sticks with you (for some reason, Chaos is interpreted as ‘creation’ to these writers, despite Tao being a Law character, and formerly beholden to Abdiel). You heard that right: Literal demonic and godly destruction is A-Okay to Tao, but anything happens to that throne? That’s where she crosses the line… unless you finalise your decision to destroy said throne, in which case she promptly rolls over and leaves.
Same happens with Goko (the red-skinned Buddhist guy you met from time to time), who quite literally turns around in the end and says that he doesn’t give a s*[YHVH noise]*t who sits on the Throne of Creation… and yet takes exception to what is done with the Throne?
I mean, a part of me thinks that destroying the throne is ‘good’ if you feel like spiting these characters, but that’s just it: both Neutral endings basically turn around and say ‘hey, every god, demon, tom, dick and harry is going to be this unreasonable, and therefore you should be too!’, even though this is in spite of the fact that this can still happen *after* Nuwa reveals to you that the destruction of the Throne wasn’t her and Yakumo’s final plan. That’s right (again)! Nuwa just pulled a ‘I was back on the beach the whole time’ by witnessing the death of her effective Husband at the hands of Dazai and Abdiel, asks you one rhetorical question about ‘the world you would go so far to create’, and then promptly sods off, never to be seen again unless you actually bother to destroy the throne, in which case they’re seen in a sort of flashback form as an ‘endorsement’ of doing their stated job (same happens with Dazai/Abdiel at the end of the Law route, and Yuzuru/Koshimizu at the end of the Chaos route).
And this is where we get to ol’ loony uncle Lucifer’s involvement in all this:
During all of the fights with Lucifer, he tells you last minute about the ‘Mandala system’ (which because of what little is said about it, I can only assume is a euphemism for the heat death of the universe), and how consuming his knowledge that was obtained from God would be the only way to end him (at least on TNE, idk how this would work on other routes because you had other plans in contravention of that desire). So basically, on three of the four endings, you’re giving literal Satan what he wanted, the same three endings that Tao (again, a law rep) is meant to help you gain the throne on… except, Psyche! The Mandala system isn’t even gone because apparently the heat death of the universe is the one thing that Nahobino on the throne can’t regulate. No explanation is proffered as to why, it’s just ‘it can’t, because f**k you’. Remember: TNE mentions the erasure of both ‘gods and demons’, which includes Lucifer, the one entity you’d think would scale to Mandala.
Even putting aside *any* of this, and generously assuming that the TNE is the one route where Lucifer holds to his word… does this just mean that we became Shiva’s bitch instead of his?
Shame, too. Shiva’s is actually a decent sport (and a fun fight, at that).
EDITORS NOTE: Shiva is actually implicated as one of the gods in the Chaos route ending, and yet he’s one of the prerequisites to the TNE… as if we needed more proof that the writers don’t know what ‘Neutral’ and ‘Chaos’ is.
Anyway, this article has been long enough, and I need to wrap this up. I hope I’ve made players realise how back-to-front SMT V’s narrative is (among other things, but this wasn’t a full game review, I assure you), and how law becomes the default ‘best’ option, not by addressing it’s own baggage (such as the assumption that you crave biblical subjugation, or that picking law means that you endorse fallen Abdiel, one tainted by Lucifer), but by muddying the waters of the other three endings. There was a reason I posted this meme in SMT Discord Chats:
