"Let's Concentrate on the Task at Hand": Arthur, the Stoic SMT AI Life Hack
(Shoot out to Takehito Koyasu-san, whose voice is just *chef's kiss*)
My commitment to being a “keeper” of physical items has been growing dimmer by the day (just as planned after I came to admit I may not be the fittest man for the job) but I was still surprised to finally fire my self-Xmas gift, the boxed copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (3DS), and realise I haven’t got another game in real-life form since. A nice one for sure, but it was even more surprising to be finding it a bit harsh getting back to my favourite SMT ever; not for the original content itself–“harsh” is the name of the game and I love it more so for that–but because it looks like I’ve been spoiled by later instalments’ quality-of-life shenanigans.
Some of those are of logistic nature: more modern “cathedrals of shadows'' (places for fusing demons), for instance, have better discoverability/predictability features and I’m not particularly a fan of digging wikis/tables (or my own notes) after long fusion trees anymore. At times the journey gets unnecessarily bumpier due to (un)balancing issues too, like sailing through long stretches of play while being prevented from fusing new demons for some uncircumventable level ceiling mechanics. But one unexpected bit of coat is making the game interesting again for me, even in new ways: voice acting.
I love Strange Journey because it manages to make the “attack and dethrone god” JRPG trope work under some more… Western? In a sense? “Sci-fi logic”, so to speak. Not that such logic doesn’t exist from a Eastern standpoint, of course (Motoko Kusanagi is flying-kicking the back of my mind right now); what I’m trying to say is, as for myself–a Halley-80’s NASA-stan nerdy child–engaging some demonic invasion in a researcher’s shoes–as opposed to a 13yo college kid, which is the regular Eastern run-of-the-mill choice under such grave circumstances–makes up for a far more compelling (and believable as a bonus) setting to interact with. That said, Takehito Koyasu’s voice acting for Arthur–the HAL-like AI glueing everything together in Strange Journey–is so spot-on that, besides elevating those already-great lines, its influence permeates every aspect of the game and makes the entire experience greater than the sum of its parts.
Actually we could go as far as saying the game would eventually fall into pieces sooner or later with no Arthur around. Pulling such a Ridley Scott-ey/Alien-ish atmosphere when the characters are interacting with angels and demons would be pretty much unfeasible without Arthur holding the suspension of disbelief lens over our POV entirely on some inhuman–technologically (not metaphysically), in this case “literally”–pragmatic stoicness.
The game begins with a group of scientists setting off to investigate a spacetime anomaly in Antarctica, and as the plot slowly but steadily spirals down into mystic obscurantism (the crew cracking out alongside it) Arthur acts as a sanity anchor for those under his watch–at the same time making every silly human around (the out-of-4th-wall player included) look like a stranded ant from A Bug’s Life. The way he strips down every problem, no matter how outlandish, into action (“Is it weird? Investigate.” “Do we lack tools? Develop.” “Is it menacing? Eliminate.” “Does it concern us? Ignore.”) is baffling–and it keeps working wonders on me even after I finally put my 3DS down for the unavoidable recharging session.
My last post here was about having a rough time with a jawbone issue and how it led me to crack a score WR in The King of Dragons (ever since I nailed yet another one, DuckTales–Freud would gladly take notes on how I’ve been spending a terribly big amount of time in the virtual non-shoes of a happy old duck pogo-ing around BTW), and as the issue persists–just as much as dishes, cat poop and other regular day-to-day stuff around–I feel somewhat lucky for stumbling on this 「SUBARASHI!」 encounter right now; also, it’s been strangely comforting to oblige every time the gentle dictator’s voice echoes inside my head: “Let’s concentrate on the task at hand”.