Executive Producer Naoto Hiraoka was present at the event to share more about the anticipated Atlus RPG.

The Philippine GameDev Expo continued its showcase of games from local to international on their second iteration and everyone was in for a treat when they invited Sega to grace the stage and to build up the excitement, Mr. Naoto Hiraoka graced the stage to introduce their upcoming RPG, Metaphor: ReFantazio to the fans. Hiraoka is a crucial piece with the Atlus games as he has been the Executive Producer for the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games for the past 12 years and as a production and general manager in his early years, let’s not forget he was the CEO of Atlus America from 2012 to 2018 and currently is the brand owner of Atlus.

Hiraoka-san shared some details about Metaphor: ReFantazio, including the game’s setting, the main character, and the overview of the gameplay. It’s a completely all-new IP that will be handled by Studio Zero; a subsidiary of Atlus that handled games like the Catherine series. Metaphor: ReFantazio is pushing more on the basics in RPGs, featuring a turn-based combat system and a deep-yet-familiar Archetype system that is like a character job class system.

You know Sega is serious about introducing a whole new game title not based on any existing IP as Hiraoka presented the big names that are involved in the development of Metaphor: ReFantazio. Katsura Hashino will be the director for the game who is also known for his work with the Persona games, aside from Hashino, some of the key members of the Persona games will be joining him, namely Shigenori Soejima for character design and Shoji Meguro as the game composer, so there are some distinct styles from Persona games being visible in Metaphor and from what we saw with the trailers and even during our game demo test, it works well. There are other key members brought in for the development, including Koda Kazuma to handle concept art who is known for handling the artwork for the NieR and Fire Emblem games (and for a nifty trivia, Koda did the artwork for Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 5.1 that features the NieR: Automata collaboration raid) and several concept arts were being shown during the presentation. Ikuto Yamashita is the mechanical designer and you can see his style being visible with the Gauntlet Runners in the game, fans of mecha shows will vouch for Ikuto’s reputation as he is known for the mechanical designs in Neon Genesis Evangelion both the TV and Rebuild movie versions. Lastly, Yuji Himukai will collaborate on the Archetype designs, he is known for his character design works in the Etrian Odyssey series and contributed to other titles such as Fire Emblem: Heroes and Fate/Grand Order.

Hiraoka-san also shared a video message from Katsura Hashino to greet all the Pinoy gamers in PGDX, Hashino-san assures everyone that the dev team is doing their best to make the game fun to play.

It’s a rare moment to see some of the big console developers making an appearance here in the Philippines whether it’s a special launch event or at a gaming convention, and Sega is no stranger to the local gamers here that continues to support the community. They’ve done several events and themed activities that bring the fans together to celebrate a new game launch, and 2024 shows that Sega isn’t slowing down in giving us awesome games with a couple more arriving later this year, especially with Metaphor: ReFantazio.