Shin Megami Tensei Series

If it's an option, go E-Shop. It's usually much cheaper there.

I remember Apocalypse explaining all the relevant details about the setting early on, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. That said, if you have access to the Eshop, SMT 4 should be a lot cheaper on there.

Ninja'd.

Edited by Moth13 on Aug 18th 2019 at 12:31:57 PM

Well, we'll see. I probably shouldn't boot up another SMT so soon after finishing Strange Journey.

Does anyone here have a saved copy of the Lucifer self demonstrating page? I wanna read it out of curiosity.

Another thought on utopia and SMT's portrayal of it... did you know that, in the Bible, it's stated that Happiness Is Mandatory in Heaven... and this is treated as a good thing? It's obviously a feature of SMT Law as well, though it's portrayed very negatively there, as the trope is, of course, almost universally seen in the modern day.

I have to say I'm pretty interested in how that shift in thought happened, over the centuries.

Is that the right trope for that ? Like, you mean people are forced to pretend they're happy even though they're not but still have free will ? Or you mean Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul ? Cause I can't process the first case but I could probably see where the second is coming.

Edited by Yumil on Sep 1st 2019 at 2:14:01 PM

Oh, right, it's the latter.

How do I word that one without sounding bitterly communist apologist/SMT law Apologist... ?

I think people overall ended up valuing the notion of freedom a lot more over the years ? Like, freedom didn't meant nearly much back in the roman day ? Some free men had a shitty life, but slaves actually had laws ensuring for their basic wellfare under the roman empire if memory serves. I'm not gonna say freedom wasn't a desirable thing, but it wasn't this taken-for-granted attitude we have nowadays towards it ? So losing freedom of thought for eternal happiness wasn't exactly a bad deal ?

And besides, I'm pretty sure the point of the heaven shown in the bible was not that heaven controls you into being happy, just that living in heaven is so awesome for a number of factors you end up perpetually happy, no exceptions attached. Of course the two notions end up similar, but what drives us to see this negatively is that we perceive it as an attack on free will.

I'm really weirded out by the fact that I'm the one saying that since I usually lean a lot more over the Chaos side with shades of "Steven armstrong had a good point, still", but that's the kind of thing that makes me question how much we value freedom over happiness as a whole and how healthy that is. because when you come down to deciding whether freedom or happiness is more important, advocating for freedom is essentially advocating for the capacity to make the objectively wrong choice, hurt other people, and get hurt yourself in return. It's getting me to ponder that it's an essentially very capitalistic, and by extension right-wing opinion.

I feel like people would want to handwave that by drawing a distinction between real happiness and fake happiness but I also feel it's a very arbitrary, unfounded distinction because when you get down to it really just is your brain releasing chemicals when prompted to ?

Like I personally hold the belief that you actively need to experience suffering if you want to realize what happiness feels like, but I also feel that's not the reasoning most people use for rejecting the idea of being made perpetually happy. So the fact society as a whole freaks out over the idea that you just be made happy actually feels somewhat more unpleasant than the opposite.

Or maybe I just have a weird fascination with the philosophical questions raised by the Happiness in Mind Control trope and the direct proximity of the two debates fucks with me.

Edited by Yumil on Sep 1st 2019 at 5:41:12 PM

Agreed, i find law endings to be fascinating in that regard.

Of the Megaten games I've played the only one with the traditional alignment system was Strange Journey, where I got the Chaos ending, and in that one "freedom" involves a world where everyone descends into mindless gibbering anarchy while demons fly around eating people.

Jiminez even puts it that "those who are meant to die, will die."

Strange journey is not exactly a classical representation of chaos and law though. As other people put it in this very thread, sometimes chaos and laws are presented as equally valid choices, but in strange journye the vanilla endings are very heavily weighted in favor of neutral cause the game showcases the alignements at their worst.

the redux came out and went the other way for the alignement endings, making chaos a word actually based on freedom in opposition to being based on strength, and zelenin went from turning everyone into mindless slaves in essentially pulling wolrdwide p5 heart stealing, making the ideals a lot more defendable.

Edited by Yumil on Sep 1st 2019 at 6:42:08 PM

I'll have to replay Strange Journey sometime to see what the Neutral ending is about, but I found Chaos very compelling for those exact reasons. It's an extremist and permanent solution to the defilement of the Earth caused by humanity as you side with the Old Gods and bring them to power once more.

It's not traditionally happy, I guess, but I also blew up the entire Multiverse in Nocturne so I could get Pierce so what I value in a story very clearly isn't a happy ending :V

As someone who thinks society needs to provide for its weakest I will never be Chaos.

You realize that freedom to choose also means the freedom to protect the weak right? Nothing would stop anyone from forming their own governing body or making a civil society.

And as someone who believes that the individual comes before the group and hates the idea/trope that The Complainer Is Always Wrong I will never be Law.

Hell, in SMT IV, it can be suggested that Flynn becoming king of Mikado in the Chaos ending will mean stopping man and demon from killing each other as Lucifer suggests. Even in SMT 2, the Chaos ending entails helping the Mutants live on the surface.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 1st 2019 at 10:07:28 AM

I've never really known how to deal with the alignements for that reason. I certainly approve of society helping the weak, and I simultaneously agree that the leaders should be chosen on competence first and foremost, and I don't really understand what's schizophrenic about it.

Like i get that meritocracy can become social darwinism but it always seemed to me as being pointlessly narrow about the definition of competent. Most competent for a post isn't the one with the biggest raw skill in that domain, but the one that can do the best at the job while simulatenously having a positive impact on his coworkers and promote a healthy job environment because that would actually be the optimal choice by a landslide.

thing with alignments is it depends on how far they go. In practice, Law's not so bad, people creating a society dedicated to happiness sounds great. But how far would you go to make that society?

Would you kill to do it? Sacrifice innocents, if it means the number is less than the potential future generations that have yet to be born?

Archangels are ruthless in their mission to creating harmony and ending the suffering of humans. They'll depopulate cities, cause the end of civilization, tip the scales and destroy whole universes inn their goal. And is their ideal of peace everyone else's? Or are they simply killing and brainwashing anyone that disagrees with them.

Lucifer is either a heroic rebel with the survival of mankind his goal, or a genocidal maniac willing to destroy entire universes to create the perfect general for his forces to war with YHVH.

Considering that YHVH has been trying to stamp out free will, entire universes getting destroyed by Lucifer's would-be perfect general the Demi-Fiend seems like a Mercy Kill / I Die Free scenario in comparison.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on Sep 1st 2019 at 10:59:32 AM

I think Strange Journey's interpretation of Lucifer is cool. Just an observer in the grand play who doesn't even reveal that they're Lucifer unless you follow the Chaos route where they're not an active player.

"Humans, born of God's madness, are mine. I have no love for them, but neither will I abandon them." Such a cool line.

The idea of a "Mercy Kill" in any circumstance other than those too complex to be tied to a silly video game discussion is profoundly creepy.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 1st 2019 at 2:09:50 PM

In that situation, what would you do? I would end everything rather than let him win, but that's only my opinion and my choice.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on Sep 1st 2019 at 11:29:17 AM

You're talking about the eradication of thinking breathing human beings across entire universes. It's not something to boil down to a choice.

I didn't like Strange Journey Lucifer, felt way too passive. I prefer it when he's more active and has saving people as his goal but utterly ruthless about it, like in 2 and iv.

IV Lucy ends up worse once it's revealed they're a puppet in the grand scheme. Also Redux adds a bit of them.

Edited by Cross on Sep 1st 2019 at 4:21:13 AM