Metaphor: ReFantazio Interview Discusses Character Designs

After the Metaphor: ReFantazio Japanese stream, Atlus shared a developer interview that went over its concepts and characters. The presentation featured Director Katsura Hashino, Character Designer Shigenori Soejima, and Composer Shoji Meguro. In particular, Soejima spent quite a bit of time talking about the designs for the people we’ll meet in the game.

Here’s what Soejima had to say about the Metaphor: ReFantazio protagonist and other characters.

With this protagonist, there was a feeling of wanting to depict somebody we haven’t been able to in our past games, because of their modern settings. Overall, we wanted an androgynous and heroic protagonist — someone who looks like they’re about to change the world — with a design that emphasizes their firm, resolute gaze.

Another important character is Gallica, a fairy who accompanies the protagonist. Although she’s classically fantastical in many ways — and that was her core concept during development too — in terms of actual character design, we actually gave her a more modern aesthetic. Once we figured out how Gallica looks, it actually informed how all the other characters should look and feel, too. Although we still had to do a lot of exploring, Gallica certainly gave us that initial creative momentum to smoothly continue the design process for all the other characters.

Here’s the full interview:

In case you missed it, here’s the Japanese Metaphor: ReFantazio stream. It featured English subtitles.

Metaphor: ReFantazio will come to the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC in 2024.