Persona's composer is making a Metal Gear Solid-inspired RPG with a side order of "Great Reset" conspiracy

rockpapershotgun.com:

Persona and Shin Megami Tensei composer Shoji Meguro is making a turn-based sci-fi RPG about private military companies gunning through the ashes of a nuclear war. He's working with Ilya Kuvshinov, the illustrator who created character designs for Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045, and Lotus Juice, a rapper who has contributed sick beats to any number of Personae. So if nothing else Guns Undarkness is probably going to look and sound quite fancy.

But how does it play? Meguro has made his name as a musician: I have no idea how well that expertise translates to designing combat systems. It's something to think about while you watch and listen to the below trailer for the game's first demo, out on 24th February.

Published by Kodansha, Guns Undarkness is set in 2045 and is a story about a social divide and, oh hey woah! They are certainly invoking some... rich material with this one. As summarised on Steam, the game takes place following a near-future period "of abeyance that allowed technology to flourish, but deepened the social divide between the rich and the poor, the Haves and the Have Nots". Please tell me those aren't the literal faction names.

Apparently, a bunch of "primitivist" poor people got together to pull off a "Great Reset" in the shape of a worldwide nuclear war. Now, it's up to your rookie soldier "to discover the truth behind love in a world wracked by devastation and whether humanity is capable of being revolutionized."

For context, the "Great Reset" in reality was an initiative launched by the World Economic Forum to kindle economic growth (or at least, further enrich the plutocrats) following the Covid 19 pandemic lockdowns. It's also the name of a bunch of conspiracy theories which hold that corporations are trying to brainwash people with vaccines so as to destroy the very concept of property. So there is... ample topicality to unpack here, given some pretty delicate writing, and the Steam page blurb is anything but. It cites Metal Gear Solid as