I thought I was done writing about Shin Megami Tensei IV, but I suppose one is never done when it involves a game this good. Just yesterday, I found myself in the mood to take a break from DmC Devil May Cry and A Link Between Worlds, and decided to return to Shin Megami Tensei IV instead.
The last time I was playing Shin Megami Tensei IV, I stopped because the final portion of the game requires you to complete number of sidequests in order to proceed any further. One of these quests required that you find a certain kind of demon in Shinjuku... five of them, actually. The catch was that in order for any of them to show up on your map, you’d need to come across the first one so that your Navigation AI, Burroughs, could identify it and then track down the rest.
Needless to see, as with any quest of this sort, I spent a couple of hours wandering around Shinjuku without anything to show for it, and eventually, put the game down and moved on. I’d played through most of Shin Megami Tensei IV without a FAQ, and I didn’t really want to start using one now. I figured I’d take a break and come back to it later.
Last night, when I resumed my game, I was reminded that there was also another reason I didn’t keep playing SMTIV—it was because I didn’t want the game to end.
Despite the bleak setting and how desolate the game’s world can be, I don’t want to stop living in the world of Shin Megami Tensei IV, and I think it’s because the game gives you a purpose. In the story, you play the role of a character that’s one of many in a war to try and save Japan from utter destruction at the hands of a demon invasion. In this fashion, Shin Megami Tensei IV gives you a purpose. It gives you a role to fulfil.
This isn’t a simple “save the world from destruction”-type affair either, but rather, a chance to help shape society, since there are so many different ideologies at play, and you get to pick which path suits you best. Do you fight tooth and nail against the demons at every step, cutting everyone that stands in your way down, all in the interest of returning Tokyo to safety? You take this path at the risk of sacrificing compassion in the name of cold, calculated judgment. Or do you consider the demons a force that you must learn to live and cooperate with, since they outnumber human beings and don’t seem to be interested in leaving any time soon? In this latter scenario, you risk losing your humanity, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
Or do you take the third path? One where you straddle the line between the two, but you don’t quite know what you’re doing or if it’s going to lead to any good? Shin Megami Tensei is a game that’s full of choices, and the ones that you make along the way will determine which of three paths you’ll end up on. As a result, it feels like a more personal experience than most Japanese RPGs. It feels like the story of your rise amidst a cold, desolate world with little hope for salvation.
Before you became a Samurai, you had no purpose. Now, you’re a man on a mission, and you don’t know if you can ever go back to being one of the idle masses and simply “enjoy life” as so many other people seem content to do. (Not that SMTIV’s post-apocalyptic world lets anyone simply “enjoy life” as it were.) This idea of having a purpose in life is one that I personally admire and can relate to. In real life, I’m a bit of a workaholic—partly because I’ve always been very drive and passionate about the things I love, and partly because... well, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have work, as unfortunate as that sounds.
There's also the fact that when you're so driven and so obsessed with your mission, you tend to miss out on the smaller pleasures in life. And so, when you do get to experience them, you value them more than the average person does. Sitting around a table with friends and enjoying a cup of coffee. Taking a walk together. Staying up late and talking into the night. Wearing a bunny helmet. You have to imagine that the characters in Shin Megami Tensei IV feel the same way. These aren't things they get to experience often, and so, when they do, they have a greater appreciation for them.
So, thank you, Shin Megami Tensei IV, for existing, and for being there for people like me, who feel that everyone needs a purpose in life. And thanks for making me feel like I’m not the only person in the world that feels this way, because I often look at other people around me and wonder how they could possibly be happy, being as idle and goalless as they are. I sincerely hope we see more games like you from Atlus in the not-too-distant future, because no one else does it quite the same way.
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