As Persona devs dove into fantasy with Metaphor: ReFantazio, the JRPG's director got advice from Neon Genesis Evangelion's designer: "Don't let yourself be hemmed in"

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Neon Genesis Evangelion's Ikuto Yamashita (the guy who designs all those kickass mechs) apparently gave Persona's director the push he needed when pursuing a new fantasy world in Metaphor: ReFantazio.

Speaking to Polygon, Katsura Hashino, director and producer of the Persona series, touched on the team's early struggles when developing an all-new fantasy setting. Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei series brilliantly inject supernatural ongoings into our everyday modern worlds, but Hashino "didn't really know much about fantasy" and thus had to ask for some world-class help.

"I ended up meeting up with a bunch of different Japanese fantasy creators," Hashino says via a translator. "What I ended up learning from this is that what they thought about fantasy, and what people seem to like about fantasy, is that it's a very free medium where you can do anything that you want to do - it's not limited by the real world in any way."

One person who imparted such advice was iconic mech drawer Ikuto Yamashita, who apparently told Hashino, "Don't let yourself be hemmed in." Those words "really helped" the director take Metaphor down its own lane. 

While Metaphor's fantasy setting opens the door to, well, everything, Hashino explains that it's still pulling inspiration from real life. Metaphor: ReFantazio touches on racial tensions, the search for another ruler, and political elections, alongside the inevitable struggles to kill otherworldly beasts. So, Hashino modeled the various tribes on personality types.

One such tribe is inspired by older generations who impose their values on younger people, for example. Another "long-eared tribe of characters are based around the personality trait that, in Japanese, we call 'yujufudan,' which means indecisive." And that change was made to" diverge from the kind of standard flow of fantasy and make it our own take on the genre."

Metaphor: ReFantazio is coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, and PS5 on October 11. A free Prologue demo