I’ve been thinking a lot about Metaphor: ReFantazio lately. Partly because it explores themes that demand that kind of off-screen attention, but also because it stuck. It’s the kind of experience that I’d charitably describe as languid. Metaphor delights in taking its time, and that doesn’t mesh with how I typically enjoy stories because I’m an incredibly impatient person.
In some regards, that aforementioned impatience actually works to my benefit. For example, there was no short supply of books that I read last year where I finished the last 100 pages in a single sitting. Once I reached the chapter where it was clear that I was approaching the climax, I’d barrel through to the end entirely because I had to know what would happen next.
Honestly, I’d hazard a guess that many of the folks reading this article have done the same thing. It can be really challenging to resist the pull of a great story.
I think the issue here for me is that I always have this expectation that I’ll be able to do that – to move as quickly as I please. I’m in the driver’s seat while reading after all, so I have some degree of control over the pace of the story.
In theory, the same is true while I’m playing a video game. That is, until control is wrested away from me. The frequency, and length of these interruptions depends on the game, but I’ve always found that Role-Playing titles are the worst offenders. In many cases, these games have complex narrative structures, and the developers want the player to have ample time to digest and react to each of the story’s major revelations.
While I can appreciate why this more deliberate pacing is being used, I still dislike it immensely. Mostly because I have difficulty staying invested in the story, and end up dropping the game from boredom. In the past, I might have exclusively criticized, and blamed the game for this boredom. However, I’m increasingly becoming of the opinion that it’s a failure for both of us. The game has failed to retain my attention, and I have failed to open myself up to the game’s cadence for delivering story beats.
Regardless, I have attempted to make a greater effort to meet RPGs on their level over the past several years. For example, I did not particularly enjoy the first 8 hours that I played Disco Elysium because I felt like the game wasn’t going anywhere. However, I powered through those rough opening hours, and was rewarded with one of the most compelling video games that I’ve ever played.
Not every RPG is like Disco Elysium in that regard: some RPGs are a lot more willing to meet you in the middle. And I think that specifically – having a willingness to help onboard players who normally struggle to get into RPGs – is part of why Metaphor managed to stick.
How Does Metaphor: ReFantazio Work?
Before I can really delve into why Metaphor worked for me, I first need to explain a bunch of the game’s systems. I’ll do my best to make this interesting even though I think the systems are a little flat without narrative context, and I don’t want to provide much narrative context for spoiler reasons.
Either way, there’s 2 different axes for developing your character in Metaphor: physically, and emotionally. If you’ve played almost any other RPG then you’ll be familiar with the former. This is the act of killing creatures to gain experience, so you can level-up. Through doing this, you develop your character’s stats which further improve their ability at combat. So far, so standard.
Where Metaphor tries to differentiate itself is that aforementioned emotional growth of your player character. This is represented through what the game calls Royal Virtues. These are 5 different stats that aren’t related to combat, nor can you improve them through combat. Instead, you’ll need to spend time on a variety of different experiences to help your character grow emotionally.
Just like real life! Yay!
Sarcasm aside, I actually really like this system of growing the character emotionally. The more traditional Role-Playing aspects of Metaphor, like developing a highly customized character build, are really toned down. As such, developing your character emotionally helps to fill that void. I found myself routinely trying to plan ahead, and prioritize which Virtues I thought were most important. This opened up a lot of additional opportunities for me later down the line, which further reinforced how important it felt to make sure I was continuing to invest in my character’s Royal Virtues.
This emotional character growth also ties into specific sidequests. Several of the characters that you’ll meet along your journey, known as followers, have their own special sidequests that help to develop them more as characters. You’re also rewarded for completing these side stories with additional in-game benefits like new classes, shopping discounts, and more experience points from combat. There’s a catch though: you can’t actually finish most of these quests unless you’ve leveled up your Royal Virtues. That provides a huge incentive for players to actually spend time developing their character outside of combat, if they weren’t already motivated to do so.
I think that what I’ve already discussed would be enough to keep most players hooked into Metaphor. However, I’m not totally certain that it’d work for me. That’s where Metaphor pulls out it’s final trick, which is the lynch pin for this whole aspect of the game: time management.
It Wouldn’t Matter Without Deadlines
You all know that I love my timers. I think most games are aided by including some sort of system that forces the player to make decisions. It is so easy to be indecisive in video games, and simply do everything. I’ve fallen into that trap numerous times in the past, and it has ruined so many games for me.
However, that sort of indecision isn’t possible in Metaphor. You’re always given a deadline for when the main plot is going to continue moving forward. This gives you a limited number of in-game days to do whatever you deem the most pressing. That restricted my ability to do everything, and thus helped me to actually make decisions about what activities I thought were most interesting, or rewarding for spending my limited time
Do I spend some time leveling up my physical attributes by visiting a dungeon? What about seeing the next part of someone’s side story, and unlocking a new class to level-up? Or maybe it’s more important to invest in my Royal Virtues, so that I don’t get locked out of future quests.
HMM…
And you know what the crazy thing is? There’s not really a wrong answer to the question of how you should spend your time. I already kind of highlighted this when talking about how Royal Virtues affect your ability to develop your relationship with your followers, but a lot of Metaphor’s systems feed into one another. That means that many of the actions that you take will help to open up new opportunities for you. In this way, it almost feels like you’re always making the right decision because every decision moves the game forward in some capacity.
That feeling that you’re always doing something right is further reinforced by how rewards, and future opportunities feel relevant to your current actions. For example, as you befriend Brigitta, a renowned merchant in the country’s capital city, you’re rewarded with a discount while shopping. It’s not clear if Brigitta put in a good word for you through her trading network, or threatened the other shop owners, but the results are the same: you spend time with Brigitta the merchant, and she helps you with your shopping.
The fact that you’re limited by how much time you have to invest in any of this also makes each decision feel important. You’re not just spending your time helping Fabienne with cooking, or Strohl with repairing his village and his guilty conscience, or Bardon with accidentally turning Martira into a fascist paradise. You’re choosing to spend time with these characters over spending time with others. That framing makes a world of difference, and was a significant factor in keeping me anchored to Metaphor between the large story beats.
It Takes Two to Tango
None of what I’ve already discussed would have mattered though if I hadn’t been willing to meet Metaphor on its level. It’s already done a lot to extend an olive branch in friendship to me. Where’s my contribution? What am I doing to meet Metaphor in the middle?
To answer that, I first need to explain how I typically play games.
Normally, I play 2 games at a time. 1 is my primary game, which I spend the bulk of my gaming time with. This lets me really focus on the game, and complete it in a timely fashion. The other is a secondary game that I’ll play when I need a break, or just want to play something a bit more casual. Typically, my secondary title is a roguelike, or fighting game as I find both genres easy to enjoy in bite-sized chunks.
Metaphor was an obvious candidate for a primary game slot, but I decided to do something different while playing it. I made it my secondary game. This meant that instead of gorging myself to death on it, I’ve been playing Metaphor piecemeal, slowly working through chunks of the game at a time. Heck, some days I don’t even play it.
But you know what? That’s actually kind of worked for me.
Anytime I start to get annoyed at how slowly things are progressing in Metaphor, I simply go play something else. Hell, I’m writing this after having not touched the game for 3 days. And the next time I pick it up, I’ll probably only do 2 or 3 in-game days worth of activities. That, or I’ll tackle the next major dungeon for the main plot. Either way, I’ll continue to make some bite-sized progress towards finishing Metaphor.
It may sound strange, but playing such a deliberately slow game at an equally slow pace has…I dunno…unified the chakras or something. It’s allowing me to enjoy the game how it feels like it was designed to be played, instead of wishing that it would hurry up, and finish.
Based on how I’m playing it, conventional wisdom would dictate that I don’t find Metaphor that engaging. That may be true, but where does that leave fighting games? I mention this because this is exactly how I play those, and I love fighting games. I wouldn’t go to a pub once a week to play fighters in-person, or spend hours playing them online if I didn’t.
However, I’ll typically get completely burned out of a particular fighting game if I play it too much. That’s the whole reason why I play fighters as my secondary game – it allows me to enjoy them in bite-sized chunks. This gives my brain, and body time to improve at them, and ultimately leads to me enjoying them far more. When examined from that perspective, it really doesn’t seem that odd that I’d enjoy a massive game with a complex story like Metaphor by taking my time with it.
Either way, I’m glad Metaphor: ReFantazio finally convinced me to slow down, and smell the roses. It’s certainly given me a lot to think about.
Did you enjoy what you read? Consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee over on Ko-fi.
Frostilyte Writes 