Hi all, just wanted to respond to some common stuff I get: First and foremost SMT V. Yes I got this completely wrong, as many commenters added everything in the game indicates that it is very law biased. Why I chose chaos? Just finished off Nocturne's segment and went a bit too heavy handed with the similarities and as law was the first ending I got I literally had a better memory of every single ending in the game I had after that. Also, the point of this video is to say that the alignment bias says something about the themes of the story, not that every game should have it. That's my fault I should have clarified. That's really all, hopefully this will tone down the many paragraphs you are writing lmao.
My issue with the Alignment bias is when they make the other endings awful just to make their favorite ending better like in Smt IV what I liked about the canon of vengeance route in SMT VV is that it shows the pros and cons of Law and Chaos and leave it up to the player to decide like in Devil summoners.
chaos alway going to be the bad ending because. A society that follows Chaos 100% will only end in degeneracy, and ultimately destruction becase removing all laws makes them idiots who live in shitholes.
There should always be a negative for the side that gets bias or positives that the favorite side doesn't have. Games like SMT4 have none of this unless you want to RP as the bad guy or the knight templar DeSu 2 does this wonderfully. There is neutral bias in a sense that Daichi's restorer ending has the most degree of finality, but it also has bad implications. Either Polaris forgets what happened and attacks again or the whole mess with the Triangulum happens, resulting in a disastrous 2nd cycle where only Yamato survives. And every other ending has a positive that Daichi's side doesn't have: Ronaldo's ending has an absolute peace which is confirmed to last forever since Niceaea cannot even function, the world is that safe. Yamato's ending has people no one would bet a cent on being able to show their talents, like that kid who is the leader of a group of adults and even a Yakuza guy since he has great strategy, and it has you, Yamato and your gang ruling above all else. And Alcor's ending creates a new world that might have different species, a different history and since there aren't administrators, no Triangulum or Er Rai to screw humans over. Even Apocalypse's evil ending has something over the peace ending: you become the new YHVH and the new world is clay in your hands, to mold as you see fit. Nanashi gets an objective win, nobody can challenge him anymore and who knows, the new world might be much better than the previous one. The peace ending is happy but who says that peace is everlasting?
You forgot to mention Daichi's "bad" ending where he liberates humanity from the admins. Leaving the world in shambles and permanently scarred with no guidance... but it also has humanity coming together and surviving with each other. Leaders step up and guide the weak, everyone becomes unified without worry of any outside interventions. Yamato, Alcor, and Ronaldo may be dead but the ideals they upheld ironically come together while the sad piano plays as humanity starts to rebuild.
Saying you like Vengeance chaos ending is fine but saying the game has a bias for it is just plain wrong. The protagonist is usually a complete blank slate, even in cutscenes and situations where he really shouldn't be. But he's very clearly enraged by Aogami's death, and seek revenge alongside Tsukuyomi. He even says "We can't let the Qadistu run free." After this point demon haunt dialogue changes, and the Nahobino's demons comment on how they notice how he's now on the warpath. He joins with Tao and fights along side her for a considerably large portion of the entire game, both of them seeking the goal of him claiming the throne. When he fights Beelzebub both of his dialog options imply this. He can either say his priority is to take down Tiamat or that he wants to claim the throne to recreate the world. Both of them make their way to the throne only to be stopped by Yoko at the very last minute. She says she is the will of the Qadistu and that they are right, contradicting earlier when she began to doubt her beliefs and showed how Tao helped her see that there are things in the world worth saving, but Lilith seemingly possessed her right afterwards by entering her body as a spirit and making her eyes glow red, oddly implying that her re-awakening somehow mind controlled her. In the Chaos ending, the protagonist betrays Tao at the very last minute, one step away from what was previously their shared goal seemingly after having to think it over and suddenly changing his mind. This is already very odd when you consider that this means he is intending to side with Tiamat, the being he and Tsukuyomi previously swore to get revenge against, "We can't let the Qadistu run free." In a story titled Vengeance, our vengeance seeking protagonist has given up their quest for revenge. Could you imagine if he spoke to Tsukuyomi in that scene where they are about to fuse for the first time and said "Actually, I want to protect the will of the Qadistu and allow Tiamat to destroy the world." I can't imagine Tsukuyomi not getting angry at that. The plot saves us from the awkwardness of creating a world where we will be worshiping the Goddess who killed Aogami by having Mastema create an excuse for us to fight Tiamat regardless. If Mastema didn't attack here, then this ending would be even more incredibly odd and unfitting, yet because this was the characters intentions up until Mastema acts, it still is. But this leads to Tsukuyomi sacrificing himself to save Yoko. I thought this was incredibly odd. The protagonist has built up a close relationship to Yoko, but Tsukuyomi absolutely hasn't. Tsukuyomi previously hinted in a quest that Tao's ascended form is what remains of his sister Amaterasu, which makes the same scene in the law route feel powerful. Previously he failed to save his brother and his subordinate, but now he can save his Sister and subordinate at the same time with one heroic act. In chaos Yoko even looks at him like she's confused why he's doing this. We can infer it's for the protagonist, but it's a rather weak connection compared to the same scene in Law. Despite being a chaos rep in creation, Tsukuyomi is incredibly protective of the Japanese people, who Yoko is responsible for assisting the mass murder of many of them. I really can't imagine this guy dying for her. If anything I think he would watch her die and then pat the protagonist on the shoulder saying something in memorium about her struggles or something. After this is said and done, Amitabha and Tao are disgusted with you, and insult you before leaving to a different universe anticlimactically. Which is quite odd because that was never alluded to be something that was possible before. Tao had just said she was going to stop you, but then she just disappears oddly from the entire scene and reappears just to run away instead of defending her ideals even though she just said she intends to? After this, Lucifer straight up tells you that this isn't what he wanted. The devs for some reason wanted to make this very clear, but he says "You seek a world FAR different from that which I envision" along side this, his best buddy Beelzebub has only cruel things to say about Tiamat. "She is a blight on this world and cannot be suffered to live." So even from a TDE perspective, the devs wanted to make it very clear that Yoko's route is not aligned with TDE. Not only that, but Lucifer does not say anything like this in either the vengeance Law ending or even the original creation law ending. He will completely approve of preserving either of those law endings from the mandala system before this one, it's singled out as the exception. But all of that aside, I do get the appeal of why you like the actual outcome of the ending. Yoko even says that all worlds that have existed will cease to exist along with the throne. But then this is immediately contradicted once you make a new game plus save file, and Mastema reveals to you that your save files are connected as alternate universes, meaning that Yoko is mistaken and her world continues to just be one option taken amongst a multiverse of many. At every turn the devs show how biased they are against this ending and in a way I can see why. The law ending is the perfect ending to the story that was set up in this route, just like bonds was in apocalypse. Even though I like Dagda's ending much better, I can see that it's not the intended option. In this route before the plot twist, Yoko is the reason why many people get hurt and killed at the hands of the Qadistu, she's even directly responsible for Miyazu's capture as Tsukuyomi says. Tao's desire to right the wrongs happening in this game is set up, as well as the struggles of all the other characters relating to her solution. Yoko is shown to not only have blood on her hands, but she gains a guilty conscious and regrets her actions, and sides with Tao before her opinions are literally changed back via magic. The protagonist is shown to want to get revenge on the Qadistu, and basically plays through a law route side by side with Tao up until the very last moment, where he changes his mind and wants to allow Tiamat to destroy the world. This heel turn is only shown through him saying "I'm glad you're okay" if you're neutral aligned. Which oddly implies that his reason for this is his personal affection or admiration for Yoko and it isn't explained further than that. Then you're forced to kill Tiamat and then get insulted by Tao and Goko, before Lucifer tells you he doesn't like your choice but will respect it. Then in new game plus they imply Yoko was mistaken about how much impact her decision even made. I got this ending first because of my alignment and I couldn't stand it honestly. I felt like I was watching my character just betray everything and everyone just for Yoko, who has even betrayed her own character development and reverted back to how she was when she first started the adventure. While Tao has learned and grown from the experience, Yoko has disregarded it completely. And Tsukuyomi, who quickly became the most interesting character in the game to me, just decided to sacrifice himself to her suddenly without a word. The scene only made sense to me when I realized how thematic it is when Tao is in her place. The law ending, even though I have problems with it, feels like the genuine coherent conclusion of the story that was set up. If this game only had one ending, then 100% it would be that one. I also feel like Tsukuyomi's sacrifice indicates that the law ending was written first, and the chaos route was written afterwards. But it's far more clear when there's Lucifer's disparaging comment confirming he genuinely supports both law endings before he would ever support this, which really just wrapped it all up with the stamp of "by the way, the devs don't like this ending but if you like it, enjoy." So honestly I just don't see how you could begin to say they were biased here. Honestly I think it might be the least dev-biased endings in the series, also up there with creation's chaos route, where the game straight up tells you that the protagonist is unhappy with this choice lmao.
Oh my goodness, that's... a lot. First off just wanted to thank you for taking time out of your day to be able to have this discussion. It's honestly really cool to see, honestly I think you have changed my mind on it. Though some of what you said did kinda strike me as odd, like Mastema explicitly saying the saves themselves were different worlds. I always read that in the context of the law ending or canon of creation route. Overall though, yeah makes sense for law to be biased in this situation. Vengeance and all that. I did say this is the least biased I could think of for the series and the fact we're having this discussion does kinda show that.
@@lavenderlexy Let me explain, there's a lot of confusion about how to access the Satan boss fight online. A rumor spread that you have to complete canon of creation, but I found out this isn't true. You only have to beat Lucifer and then create a reborn or newborn save file anywhere, it doesn't matter which slot. From then on even if you reload your old vengeance save data before the fight and talk to Mastema, the dialogue will activate saying he has seen an "other world" where you defeated Lucifer to destroy the mandala system. So he's not talking about your previous cycles, but rather another save data slot. For example if you beat vengeance chaos and made a new game plus save, and then later someone else started a new file on your system from scratch and played vengeance, then once they beat Samael Mastema would tell them about your playthrough in your save file despite the fact it's the first time this person has ever played.
The law Ending was completely scuffed in V because of a mechanical inferior Tao. When they buffed Tao and Sailor Sailor Tao and nerfed Idun, Ishtar, and Demeter the Law ending magically “doesn’t” suck. I think Yoko is a superior party mate, because Lilith and Sakuya are broken, Tao not feeling “bad” helped this a lot.
Yoko's ending seems to be the way to go if they want to continue making more games but with a twist on it. "this is the world the previous MC and the goddess created together beyond chaos and law".
Kinda wish you used the SMT games without alignment bias or an bias against to give, texture, to your argument. Like take Strange Journey. While Law and Chaos are fairly typical, Neutral is knocked down a couple pegs through it's enviromentalist horror backdrop, the Captain Jack arc, and having content parity with law and chaos. Could go into an unfounded monologue on the game being about one's descent into nihilism, with each ending representing a rejection or embracing of nihilism, but that's a fleeting series of thoughts at most for me.
That's fair, I focused mostly on what the biases meant more than what having a bias adds. Also, there's the issue that biases can be kinda hard to establish or disprove for some games. SMT 1 is a prime example, it was written expressly to not have an obvious bias but we all can agree neutral's probably the better outcome
The main thing going for the vengeance endings, and why I like them, is that it’s a different take on the law and chaos alignments from previous games (except maybe nocturne). To put it in perspective, Vengeance Tao would probably be Neutral in the traditional YHWH vs. Lucifer law and chaos (she wants change that benefits humanity without extreme measures), but is Law when compared to Yoko (with Yoko’s Painting analogy being a pretty good comparison as to how). Also Tao and Yoko are quite human before their unfortunate transformations into goddesses. They appreciate each other’s alternate perspectives and actually cause each other to change (Yoko encouraging Tao to enact the change she wants to see in the world, and Tao making Yoko hesitate in wiping the world clean since she does value some aspects of the old world now). Unfortunately their confrontation was inevitable since their ascension to gods stripped away a lot of their humanity, even if less so in the case for Tao compared to CoC thanks to her bond with Yoko. It’s also why I don’t mind they didn’t put in a neutral route: it wouldn’t really work in the case of CoV and would kind of cheapen it.
One of the best SMT comment sections of all time. I don't agree with a lot of takes on Yoko like her development being ignored, but I totally understand and appreciate reading other perspectives!
@@nyoon690 they fixed that specific issue in Apocalypse, where the beeping noises from selecting anything in the game was a lot easier to listen to. As for like a port or remake, I doubt they’re doing anything crazy any time soon, the 10th year anniversary was recent and they didn’t do much to celebrate it : (
Funnily enough I hear a lot of people trying to defend the anarchy ending in Apocalypse as the only good ending because of something about cosmic scale and breaking the cycle without realizing that Stephen explicitly tells you that should you take the throne and become the new God the Axiom and the goddess of Tokyo are going to be pulling in Messiahs from other universes to do what you just did. Anybody who does acknowledge that tries to spend some bullshit story about how Steven is actually evil due to him..... messing with everybody's memories so he can give you the Shesha radar without technically directly involving himself in your affairs
My opinion of VV's endings: First off, I believe that 2 facts are stated directly to the player. One to inform them in the ideology that they choose to follow, and the second to contextualize the decision after the fact. First, the current world is objectively flawed. There being only one God was simply created to oppress all other forms of life, and lengthen his rule for as long as possible. The second, which is described in the Satan post-game quest, is that the Mandala Cycle is broken in the universe, regardless of both endings. This is because the decision you make with your chosen Goddess does not involve use of the Throne afaik. However the Law decision is simply to keep the current world (while granted everybody's wishes in it), so that one still retains the fundamental issues consciously. In their final discussion, both Yoko and Tao do not dispute the fact that the world is simply wrong in this game. As for the difference in the ideologies, the core of this was previously told by Yoko (I think around the giant Mara? I don't remember). If a teacher was telling you how to paint a painting, but you noticed while painting that the instructions were wrong. Would you either fix it somehow (in its current state), or start over from scratch while not following the instructions. I don't think that there is an objectively right or wrong answer which is quite nice, since it creates an equal playing field. Here are my personal interpretations on the nature of each ending. I believe that both are formed due to an inherent love, not for the world, but for the products of it. Tao's inherent, unconditional love for these products is the reason why she wants to continue to hold onto them, no matter what the future holds. What the future holds will most certainly be bad in the long run by the way, even if everything that can be done is done within the her power, the foundation that she's working on is still broken, full stop. Realistically the demons vying for the throne have no reason to stop, so this cycle of competition which incites violence will continue. I believe this will lead to ruin, which is something that you are supposed to consciously accept. However, until that day comes, Tao wants to maximize the best aspects of the world, which I believe is represented through the fact that she grants everybody's wishes (presumably within reason of course). Contrary to what I've seen others day, I think Yoko also does love the products of The Horned God's world, with that love being developed over the course of the game. It's the direct core of her character arc, and why she rejects the Qadistu since they just want to completely erase the products of the world, but Yoko now has things that she treasures (through meeting our main cast). That is the entire reason why she decides to reject the Qadistu, while she was putting on a front to an extent, over time the walls broke apart and she started genuinely connecting with us, making it so a part of that front was a genuine attachment to her new loved ones. However I believe it is precisely because of this love that she wants to start from scratch, so that the products of the world that she treasures so much will have a proper environment to thrive in. No matter what ends up happening in the end, because of the fact that The Horned God's rules are not in place, the future will be objectively better than the past. Plus, based on the ending, Yoko and the protag are presumably there to watch over the creation of the universe anyway, so I'm sure that logically they would not let history repeat itself. A common criticism I see is that a powerful individual will simply instate a new oppressive system, but I think this completely ignores the obvious implication that Yoko and the protag, two supremely powerful beings that explicitly detest some things, will literally be there the entire time. I think that there is also something to be said about why the end result of the new universe in the Chaos ending isn't shown. There is a distinct divide between immediate and long-term results. The Law ending shows an immediate result, as while the far-off future is left ambiguous, that's a downside that you are (hopefully) conscious of during the game. The Chaos ending's whole idea is that the immediate result is ambiguous since the universe is still developing. However, as previously stated, the result in the long term is guaranteed to at least be better than the past on a fundamental level, so you simply have to believe. I think that aspect was also something players were meant to be conscious of during the ending of the game. This is quite the long response, but I hope it properly conveys my thoughts on the game. Shout out to anyone who actually read this entire thing.
my only problem with the alignments is that, they don't give law any good arguments or reason to pick it. I have even noticed that in some games (besides nocturne and smt 4a) there is a overall bias towards chaos and neutral.
That's because on a human scale there is not alot of reason to do what the Abrahamic god typically did. Flooding the world and killing basically everyone is basically a genocide, which no sane human should ever support in the modern day. He kills followers of baal just for following another religion. These are bad things by our modern society, so since most law routes are his will, they are the most extreme version. This is not a hate of the Abrahamic religions, god works in mysterious ways in all religions even my own Hinduism. And these religions have brought so much good as well as bad into the world. But when you take that god and make him an alignment choice of absolute law then you get that fascistic god almost unavoidably. I think vengeance's law ending works better because that god is not even in control of the law side, therefore they didn't have to stick to his way of creating law.
I mean the reasons for picking law is safety, you are guaranteed to be safe but you are not free. In some games like Devil Survivor law is really good because the game shows you how bad a chaos world will be and also says that God's control would only last until people change
@@pn2294this, I've always been a law/neutral supporter, my beliefs actually find reason in the arguments provided both by law and neutrality in these games. What's my profile? Agnostic, into esoterism with some buddhist beliefs, open to the idea of god but conflicted about the contradictions in christianism, I feel like most of humanity needs some handholding because you give them full freedom and boom, give an inch, they take a mile. Different profiles lean towards a certain alignment, however at least on my personal experience, the most common profile for the chaos enjoyers (at least among western smt players, no idea about eastern) is that of an atheist who hates any kind of authority and values total freedom (no matter the consquences) I've also seen some traits but they're not as common, mostly on the antisocial side such as a dislike for society or a desire to destroy everything and prove oneself as a warrior. The arguments are there but people simply won't find them valid if they don't align with their views, my younger self would've definitely found more comfort in the chaos ideology, hell, even I can still agree a little with the white in IV, nihilism being a curse if you think too much about certain things.
my issue with the bias is that im playing an RPG, i dont want to make a decision that i feel that is great for the role that im playing just to be punished with a bad ending
The bias to me just implies an alignment ending is meant to be canon over the others. Never thought of it being a bad thing. Or the opposite, the canon ending is the most tricky to achieve, like a challenge to get the "true" ending.
The big issue of Law is that its basically designed to be antagonistic. All the inspirations of SMT are counter-culture/ counter-culture adyacent stuff. There is almost no basis for a positive/protagonistic Law route. Like, take V. They picked the most straightfoward Law Good/ Chaos Bad conflict of mythology (Bull vs Snake is Sky Patriarch vs Water Monster, which mythologically is symbolism for "I don't want to die from natural disasters and I like having a roof over my head") and still choose to interpret it under a Barbara Walker lens. Trying SMT after playing some fantasy Western RPGs that let Lawful aligned deities have virtues and wins feels weird.
Yeah, it kinda sucks in the fact that SMT has always been described as a punk genre and having an alignment that will be a constant establishment in an anti-establishment culture
On SMTVV, I would argue that it is in fact Law-biased, very much for the reasons discussed in the preamble, even though I personally prefer the Chaos outcome. (Full spoilers ahead, so don't unfold if you've not played yet)
Much like Yoko's ending is "True Demon + hope of New creation", Tao's ending is built up with repeated arguments of "all that we've been through does in fact matter, and even though the world is remade it keeps moving forward". That argument is undercut by the very existence of CoC Chaos, to be sure, but Tao vs Yoko is ultimately a reflection of Reform vs Revolution, and Yoko's path is characterized quite often by others (and by some of the options that give points towards it) as one of despair. Now, I find that framing to be disingenuous, limiting the definition of hope to conform to reality as it is even when something new and potentially better is on the table, but that's my own political bias talking, not that of the authors. And indeed, even in her ending Yoko drops a line about destruction being the will of "all who have known suffering", something that is directly contradicted earlier by Sahori snapping out of her desire for revenge once it's Tao's hands holding the glass. Both Tao and Yoko are shown to be wrong, and one of them is set to do a whole lot of "irreversible damage" while Tao's world could be undone by the next holder of the Throne. Indeed, it's less Law vs Chaos than it is Neutral vs Chaos, and we know the overall series trend on that pairing. All of which only applies if we interpret Tao based on her prior dialogue and not on the text of the ending. Between Lucifer's presence in it and "all wishes are fulfilled and none denied", Tao's world is the same as P5R Maruki's, a place where your very dreams are stripped from you if God thinks they're unattainable, an absolute tyranny masked as a paradise. And if that paradise is torn from the cycle, then human freedom is gone forever.
Also, as a point of fact on SMT IV: the books spread by Lilith are not nefarious in and of themselves. Indeed, Isabeau partakes of the Literature and comes out completely fine. It's the repression under Mikado's regime that leaves people so miserable and unbalanced that the slightest hint of something better causes some of them to spontaneously spawn demons, something that Lilith counts on. The tighter Gabriel closes her fist, the more people slip through her fingers. It is political commentary on both the general issue of free speech and on how even essentially benign actions (because at the most factual level all the Black Samurai did was educate the population) could be used maliciously.
Narratively the chaos ending in SMT VV would've been far more compelling if Atlus substituted Tiamat with Marduk in the final battle. Given that Yoko/Qadistu's objective was to end the systemic oppression begun by the aforementioned horned god ( sustaining the Mandala system by ext), they could've easily had meta-being Mastema perform some reverse essence fusion of Tiamat and Aogami ( or some other contrivance) to summon Marduk. I get Mastema being able to control Tiamat towards acting in accordance with the greater will, but imo it was a missed opportunity to further differentiate the alignment paths. And I'm sorry, but the chaos route exclusive boss compared to what Law received leaves much to be desired 😅
This video flat out gets information wrong. SMTVV's satan bossfight dialogue equalizes the playing field by implying all the endings generally liberate the universes from the cycle of reincarnation due to using Lucifers powers which you get after defeating him. (The only exceptions being neutral which have implied caveats since neutral never lasting is its entire shtick, satan doesn't acknowledge this but there's a lot of conflating points that're weird to trudge through it's just what you get in SMTVVs writing). Its barely talked about but if this wasn't the case then lucifer literally has no reasoning or arc for doing what he does in the game. (Other than "muh yhvh bad!" But he's already dead before the game begins). Him hijacking the system for freedom of a certain kind literally is his arc in most games too, (think smt2 has it the strongest) so him not doing it again would be dumb. Really given the vagueness of chaos in SMTVV (tbf this is inherently part of chaos's writing when it's not about people stoning each other all the time, which both are unmarriable from the alignment for some reason). Their ontologically evil actions and on top of being an allegory for that world pandemic from a bit ago, Chaos is just objectively and subjectively bad on both fronts in SMTVV. Which is funny to think about given how the game was advertised as chaos aligned. Yet the chaos route doesnt even have a new alignment exclusive semifinal boss instead of what law gets. I mean I guess more power to you if you like human suffering at the price for prematurely breaking things you don't understand. But I think inarguably even a short lived moment of peace is better than eternal torture. People who think TDE and chaos doing its party magic trick where it unravels the universe spaghetti style are missing the trees for the field in a way that is inherently counter productive. Since chaos does that and has no game plan other than "oh I guess we're free to hate and opress as much as we want now." Tbf Nocturne lucifer wanted to start the war on heaven again which he presumably does do given V's writing. Albeit there's some iffy descreptancies between the statement in nocturne and lucifer quarreling with SMTV's original ideas, even if they are the same luci. Overall though I think the alignment bias is stupid, alignments are a tabletop RPG element that hasnt been able to do anything for quite a while other than people vouching that it's deep when it hasn't been for the last decade or so. Last time it ever was was in SJ and Nocturne with the latter attempting to break the mold heavily only for the rerelease to rewrite a bunch of stuff so that the game defeats its own point of "people are suffering, the vortex is a culmination of their suffering and worrying. Here's a bunch of people who have potential ideas to solve them, choose one or say no." And then TDE and a bunch of rewrites/added writings step in with a BIG no which is just a fancier less interesting version of the original demon ending. All to deliniate the original ideas of Nocturne. Ironically though I'm at least willing to admit that the new law route VV has saying "Yes, people should be able to live fulfilling lives under a system that caters to your needs" which is an incredibly basic message, is at least more interesting or compelling and deep than anything from IV/IVA (tbf IVA basically said the same thing on its light neutral route, but IVA's writing overall isn't good in terms of characters, which defeats that point kinda). But regardless if the writing for future games isn't going to keep this up though I don't see why they don't drop the pretense of them being deep at all and then play into the aspects of them being TRPG factions. I could go either way but sacrificing competent game design (i.e. your choices matter and are justified because YOU are the player making these decisions), for allusions to a message that a corporation is trying to get across instead, via bias that stunts the aforementioned gameplay systems at work for narrative is terrible. Just to humor the concept of "deep gripping messages or social commentary from Megaten!!" for a bit, if atlus really wanted to do truly deep writing then everything would just be about how law is great, good and inherently justified in everything it does given how it's the only one with enough of a moral backbone to it unlike neutral and chaos which bounce around a ton and in the case of the latter it's held ball and chain to ontologically evil actions as it's "the bad alignment trying to masquerade as good." Case and point, you can tear bad actors from good ideas but good actors who huddle around bad ideas can only be removed from the bad ideas. You can't exactly "fix" the bad idea lest it become something different. After all this bickering you can kinda realize how laughable tying attempts at deep messaging to a modified TRPG factions is yes? This is why nocturne tried to at least delinate from them and do something more interesting. With SMTVV's new endings sorta following suite given some context clues from them structure-wise. The summoning of Tiamat is like akin to summoning a demon who supports a "reason," the two new reps for the new plot bicker over how society should function and the ending eventually culminates with what should be done to improve society as a whole. The Qaditsu are allegorical to world pandemic and Mastema policies sent out to stop said virus. It's all very nocturne-lite with some things swapped around and done in different ways which is quite compelling I think Ironically I could bring up more caveats as to how some alignments are all on even playing fields in the first place, i.e. SMTIV's neutral has shades of japanese natsoc to it, which allows for it to be labeled as extreme as law and chaos propaganda. But the reality is even if the writers are trying to cover more bases so everything is on an even level, the negative reactions some of the writing has towards law and chaos from neutral drags the other two choices down despite their own strengths. Not to mention neutrals general lack of mainstay faction figures which makes it harder to pin down as anything other than the ideology of the fencesitter middleman is enough to get people thinking a certain way rather than what it actually is. Gosh I wrote a lot here, too much maybe! This topic is immensely broad and there's just too ways to tackle something so subjective! I'm not even sure if this makes cohesive sense or if it'll go through! I keep adding things! The thing I'm typing this out on is almost dead! I didn't watch the video! But, I do hope I got some of my points across. I think at the end of the day all the alignments do have cool things going on, but I don't really think that the writings for the games should favor one over the other in certain cases. I think at minimum neutral should always be dunked on and if chaos can't get its act together they should always be obscenely evil and unreasonable as they already are though. To be fair, my favorite game in the series is SMT2 which has a massive law bias, so I can at least see how that makes me biased too (I guess it's sorta good I like the alignment that's morally just in most cases I guess?) If you couldn't tell either, despite their revisionism into "bad endings" because "atlus said so" I really do like the concept of reasons from Nocturne. And would love to see more factions outside of the main three or see more shakeups on them for sure. Seeing classical mother earth ring of gaea chaos ideology with a law frame of structure from Shijima was really cool. As is seeing the angels return under the order of Baal due to YHVH not being present and possibly dead, according to some people who've gone through nocturnes original release script but really I haven't found enough evidence to support this still, which is unfortunate. I really do need to see this for myself already. Also, regarding bias a bit more though for at least a tiny positive for them, I do at least like how alignment bias can have a hand in worldbuilding. SMTII's Millennium Kingdom, Nocturnes Vortex World and SMTIV's firmament tokyo really do give great examples how the bias can be used for worldbuilding and background elements which is immensely enjoyable to look at and go through. So I think it works great for this, just not in writing and gameplay I guess. In a perfect world there'd be no writing bias for the alignments. However with me if we're gonna start talking about it and acting like it needs to be a thing or is somehow a good thing, it's law or bust ig lol.
I tried to throw in some grammar fixes and some more detailing on certain things now, I've realized I've used "delinate" wrongly which is a big messup on my part. Tried throwing in a little segment of VV's new writing for yuzuru and tsukuyomi puts the old chaos far above vengeance chaos at this point (with the glass ceiling broken by lucifer for the cycle of reincarnation, now the discussion is only for what's morally best as opposed to breaking the cycle after all), however I guess I've wrote too much now since the edit post functions keep spitting out errors. Whatever I'll save the final draft in a .txt file for later.
@@ils4844no creation chaos will 100% have history and mandala repeat itself and the universe will crumble on itself, vengeance chaos tries to directly address those core issues making w/o falling on the strong survives weak dies BS it a more desirable outcome imo
It's interesting how very often law endings all carry the ultimate "no one gets true will we live forever ruled without choice" and chaos often is reduced the "survival of the fittest" neutral usually leans towards restarting the cycle, letting you know what happened will happen again I usually prefer neutral endings, for example in SJ (my favorite) you are not only left aware that the Swartchzwelt will manifest again in the future, but you are also reminded that the efforts of humanity, of your peers, that sheer human willpower will manage to endure it again Bc in the end, that's just how life is, there will be bad moments but you will pull thru, by your own will and with your power
In IV's case, it never had any intention to present Law and Chaos as meaningful solutions. It beats you over the head countless times to make this point, and Apocalypse assumes that you get the picture. Rather Law and Chaos both politically represent two forms of extremism (western imperialism for Law and Japanese far-right nationalism for Chaos) and tell the story of how even well-meaning people like Walter and Jonathan can go so far down the rabbit hole that they justify genocide. And in coercing you down either path the game wanted you to feel the hopelessness of there being no other easy way. Chaos being more appealing to the game's target demographic makes sense when nationalistic pride is just more attractive as a way to push back against oppression by "foreign demons." IV's presentation of the Neutral route is a lofty but powerful call to look beyond the Overton window for a solution that truly benefits the people and not just establishments that have spent so much time convincing us that they are the only way to live in this world. Chaos, Law, as well as the Massacre ending of Apocalypse (which heavily suggests you become just as tyrannical and fearful of being dethroned as YHVH) also operate on the lie that they are permanent solutions in order to justify their extreme actions. Neutral does not operate on this conceit. Even if the cycle never ends we can still derive meaning from our time in the current cycle and pass on that torch of hope to the following generation. We can't always stop the next person from fucking it up and causing the next Infernal/Blasted Tokyo, and that's okay, because we accomplish more when we focus on leaving the world just a little less messed up than when we entered it.
The SMT 4 Law ending literally says that it's a world of eternal peace that lasts forever. It's outcome is undeniably good. Law in most games aims to achieve a more egalitarian society through extreme measures, but these extreme measures seem very hamfisted in a way to make what would be the" good" ending bad, which is why alignments being biased in this way is bad. I also don't see the Overton Window in the way you described. The game is telling you that the Neutral ending is better, and that ideas outside the Neutral paradigm (Law/Chaos) are not worth considering. That's what the Overton window is to me, why even bother having multiple endings atp. Law being based on American imperialism was a thing in SMT 1 but really it's used to highlight Law's "alienness" and how it draws on foreign philosophical concepts like Utilitarianism and Christian theology. As well as a bit of Mohism from China. I would say an example of alignment bias that kinda did work out would be SMT 2 with its Law route, which has probably the best story in the series, because it explores the inner Law alignment conflict of "Law for Law's sake" represented by YHVH and the Centre and "Law as a means to an end" represented by Zayin/Satan. This is great storytelling, but as a consequence the Neutral and Chaos routes are completely boring in comparison, so even then alignment bias can still be bad.
@@SilverHedgehog420SMT 4's law ending is not stated to be a world of eternal peace that lasts, its narrated by Johnathan and moreso is his sentiment and belief of the actions he took. It inevitably will become Blasted Tokyo (or I suppose Blasted Mikado); Its why you visit Blasted Tokyo at all, you actually see what becomes of their wishes after so much time. Law is not an undeniably good outcome, its also an awful outcome in the end. I do think Law still gets negative bias in the sense that Blasted Tokyo has little to no redeeming qualities while Infernal Tokyo, while hellish and rundown, STILL does possess freedom and general hope for someone to take charge and make things better
@goldenshadow963gaming Eternal peace is achieved in the Law ending since it was quite literally what the faction's goal was, and we're not shown anything to indicate that equality and peace weren't achieved at the end of the game. If Mikado's class hierarchy was still maintained, then the game would show us it was instead of saying otherwise, but it doesn't do it. Iirc, the angels even kill the Mikado monarchy since they support the caste system, which is why in NPC dialogue, they talk about how there are no Luxurors or Casualries. Blasted Tokyo is something separate since it's an alternate reality where Masakado never created the Firmament, so the circumstances are different. It was a world shown by the White who were trying to portray the futility of the cycle. In Blasted Tokyo, we see how Johnathan's Law is different when he himself disagrees with the demon (Pluto, if i remember) wiping everyone out. Blasted Tokyo can be seen as what happens when Law fails to achieve its goals, whereas in the actual Law ending, it succeeds.
@@SilverHedgehog420 Late to reply, apologies for that. I did go over my info and I will say my original understanding of Blasted Tokyo is wrong; However, your interpretation also isn't fully correct either. Blasted Tokyo isn't the world when Law fails, it's when Law succeeds. Blasted Tokyo came about from accepting God's Wrath which caused it to become barren, along with Pluto tormenting them. Blasted Tokyo is the product of the choices of one of Flynn's previous incarnations, as is Infernal Tokyo. As for the outcome of the law ending, Eternal peace is not guaranteed to have been achieved at all. Just because that was the goal of the faction does not mean that it's the outcome gained; Just as Walter wanted a world of freedom where anyone could make a name for themselves but failed to see that it would devolve into another hierarchy, this time just based on strength. While we're not shown anything that indicates equality and peace aren't achieved at the end of the game, we also aren't shown anything that indicates that they were. The idea that the goal is accomplished is coming purely from Johnathan's own last thoughts but that's unreliable as Johnathan has obvious bias. Speaking of Johnathan, his view on Law doesn't matter because it's not his will that will be imposed, only YHVH's will. Pluto exists because YHVH wanted to eradicate the survivors in Blasted Tokyo, and when Pluto is destroyed, YHVH sends Ancient of Days to finish the job. The only thing that could support Law being a good ending is that YHVH's goal SEEMINGLY comes to fruition; His goal being the overall gain a group of "Innocents" to make the perfect world with, THAT is his end goal. This honestly further muddies the waters on the Law ending being good because for Blasted Tokyo, Akira actually didn't go against the angels which lead to Tokyo becoming blasted as YHVH is trying to eradicate the survivors. "The Lord's Chosen" are just meant to be children selected by YHVH that he believes will follow his will to a T, but there is no guarantee that will occur. The final issue with the Law ending is really just cause of YHVH himself. Mind you, the ENTIRETY of SMT IV takes place because of him. He caused the demons to enter the world from the Yamato Perpetual Reactor and used it as justification for his wrath. The fact that he needed to take measures to justify his wrath (presumably to The Great Will) proves that he isn't stable and is open to manipulation and destruction if he decides he wants to change things on a whim for any reason. All of this indicates that, at best, the Law ending is neutral in terms of outcome. There will be a period of peace but it isn't a guaranteed world of eternal peace, just as Walter's world ideals don't guarantee true freedom.
@@goldenshadow963gaming Law did not succeed in Blasted Tokyo, you concede this point when you mention that YHVH was trying to eradicate the survivors who rebelled against him before he can populate the world with his chosen people. The world of Law in Blasted Tokyo can't come to fruition without that happening. And again, Blasted Tokyo is an alternate world where Masakado never became the firmament and hence Mikado never existed. The circumstances are different in both worlds, so using them as parallels doesn't work. Unlike in the Chaos ending, where we literally see Mikado in flames and Lucifer saying you will reign as a king, all we see of Mikado in the Law ending indicates nothing but a stable, peaceful society. It isn't even Johnathan's thoughts, its his narration of what actually happens in the future, so that point about an unreliable narrator doesn't really hold any water, especially since the actual part of the ending which says "Thus was a world created where all that is evil is ousted. The peace that the people know today shall last forever" isn't even said by Johnathan, but by the in-game text. A small point to bring up, also, is that it would be extremely strange for ATLUS to show us one thing (an ending where all evil is gone in an egalitarian, peaceful society) but mean something completely else, because that would be a rare moment where ATLUS doesn't show or tell what literally happens in an ending. There isn't any indication that Merkabah and the other angels are doing anything YHVH doesn't want either, since a theme in SMT 4 is the angels being robotic servants who can only follow his will, so Johnathan's world is compatible with whatever YHVH wants, and what YHVH wants is pretty consistently for people to worship him, which is what happens in the Law ending, where Mikado becomes a holy land.
What I don't like about alignment biases is the fact that they don't present it as a true ending, or give any context clues that it's the message the game is trying to go for. I don't like that they make all these alignments to give an illusion of choice, but clearly are pointing you in a certain direction. Spoiler alert, but for SMT 4, to even get the Neutral ending (the objectively best ending) you have to not only agree, and disagree here and there with both chaos and law, but you also have to make sure that your hidden "neutral" meter is fully neutral, which is seen on the map. To raise and decrease this neutral bar is essentially random, you have to make VERY SPECIFIC choices, and if you get a single thing wrong you will not be on the track to the neutral ending. But even after that, even after being on track to get the Neutral ending, you have to complete a series of side quests which are extremely long and tedious (the black card quest especially, where you have to spend hundreds of thousands of macca), and other oddly specific quests which you must complete. The game gives you 0 clues as to which quests to complete, and you literally have to search up a guide to be able to get it. Or, you could spend hours doing every quest you find, and just hoping that you completed all the quests the game WANTS you to complete. Also I hate it especially when they mistreat law (which is an alignment i actually like), and usually end up making it fully genocide / god's kingdom and not going further than that. Chaos is almost always "survival of the fittest" and neutral is most often presented to be the good choice. I understand it's a JRPG, and that they traditionally have bad / good endings, but the basic black and white structure of the endings which are not the "good ending" just comes across as a lazy way to make bad endings. It also just feels unsatisfying and like a waste of time, when you get an ending with an alignment that you agree with, and it objectively is an awful ending. Every alignment is imperfect, why does one alignment get all the positives and not a modicrum of cons? When other endings are just 1 good thing, and the rest is simply horrible. It's why I think people love the Devil Survivor games specifically, DeSu 1 especially really gets the alignment choices down, and provides good options for each of the endings. Some endings are more positive than others, but you can make a case that each and every ending is a good choice, and has its pros and cons. No ending is perfect, and while I believe there is an ending which is close to perfect (Amane's Law ending for example), it also still has its own cons and can go bad. I think that a implicit bias is not a bad thing to have, since having a clear message in a game is a great thing, but the other endings should not be diminished, give the player more choices.
smt1 is so explicit with its messaging, it’s crazy how people miss stuff like this and get annoyed when they see stuff like law/chaos being genocide in smt4
"I can't believe the game that keeps saying genocide is bad is biased towards the route where you don't commit genocide" is a hell of a take some people have about 4
@@bardwayer thats not exactly the take that i see. being biased to neutral, and law/chaos being genocide, are the same thing. l/c being genocide *is* the bias. people seem to think that this means the game’s message is that both law and order are bad and you have to be a centrist to be good. the thing they misunderstand is that the l/c endings don’t simply represent a lawful or chaotic outlook, it’s moreso that they represent an extremist example of only believing in law or only chaos, in all situations, without nuance. the neutral route often represents this nuance; the ability to make lawful or chaotic decisions based on the situation. no one is saying “why is the game against genocide?” (at least i haven’t seen anyone saying that). they’re asking “why do both law and chaos have to be represented by something like genocide which is obviously wrong?”. they’re still missing the point, of course, but there’s a clear distinction to be made (i should also note that i haven’t finished the video lol. but i can assume this is what it’s about) “light and darkness, law and chaos… the balance of this world is beginning to crumble away. if it tilts to either side, it will eventually fall apart. what do you intend to do about it?”
@@alpha_c. i think that the game accidentally makes your point clearer you can only get neutral by being slightly aligned towards law or chaos and then picking the opposite direction, you cannot stay a centrist
I find analyses like these incredibly fascinating, so I appreciate you making the video, but SMT having alignment bias like it does is only proof that alignment is a bad storytelling device. SMT VV is a prime example. Take Tao and Yoko's friendship, for instance: Both (but especially Yoko) showcased very clear and very nuanced development as characters as CoV went on, and it especially comes to a head when they and Kei go up against the Qadistu. Yoko reaches a crossroads, and even rejects the Qadistu entirely. It says a lot when a character that clearly presents themselves as the Canon's Chaos Rep manages to drift close to Neutral, and I have to praise CoV for that. Until, of course, the game entirely rejects that development and turns her back into the Chaos Rep, because they "need" a Chaos Rep. Because of course they do. It's an SMT game. Alignment like "Law" and "Chaos" locks characters into boxes that the game won't let them escape from, even after taking those same characters on journeys that make them question everything they've ever known, like Yoko. All of the interactions that she has with Tao and Kei, her reexamination of her own ideals, even her calling Yakumo a hypocrite; they literally don't matter. None of it matters, because SMT feels like it needs representatives for the player to point at and think are stupid or smart or indecisive, when in reality such characters would be just as indecisive as the protagonist in a situation like that. The CoV Endings each have their own merits and nuance to them, absolutely, but at the cost of robbing their representatives/characters of that same nuance that would have made them compelling in the long run. Yoko (and to a lesser extent Tao, but she actually retains most of her depth during CoV even after becoming a Panagia) is a huge victim of this. Characters in a game like this shouldn't just be mouthpieces for a given ideology; they should be allowed to be their own people. And it sucks. Sorry if this comment is out-of-turn or uncalled for, but I call myself My2Cents for a reason. I appreciate the effort you put into this video regardless.
Can't really agree, if Vengeance made both Tao and Yoko be in the same team with the protag to change the world it would be pretty much any other JRPG story, and there wouldn't be a single reason to not have a happy ending were all became friends in a better world, besides some generic bad ending. Characters do need to have strong characterization and having a character like Yoko go full in chaos makes sense with her whole story, it's mostly that for some reason Yoko was out of the story for the last third of the game and the story did little to explain her goddes and human personalities becoming one , and Tao didn't even had a strong stance against you to the point were she just lefts without a fight. Yoko would work pretty much the same kind of role as Maruki on P5R, a character we knew as a good and reasonable person fall into a extreme to chase an imposible dream. Devil Survivor it's a great example, if you are neutral a lot of characters can join you because your stance doesn't clash with theirs, but other can only be allies in their routes since what they want isn't posible in any other route, while also making new enemies because changing the world isn't something that everyone will agree to do in the same ideal way.
I get that but honestly I think Yoko's ideas still change throughout the story even after the alignment lock. I feel as if her ending went from destroying the cycle of creation out of spite to actually believing that there was hope in some form of creation. It does kinda suck seeing them stay as law and chaos reps especially right before the qadistu fight seeing as Yoko and Tao start almost switching beliefs with eachother through their bond. Idk tbh, it could go either way. There definitely was some character development but was it the one you want to see? Probably not. I was just waiting for them to kiss and get married for the ending but oh well. Don't ever apologise for giving your opinion! Unless it's rude or whatever. It's great to see people actually engaging with the topics I bring up! The whole alignment bias being a good thing in the video relates mostly to how that alignment being a better one can say something or give a message but as great as it can be it can still have the ability to lock characters in those boxes like you said. (Honestly SMT IV is a prime example, I love Jonathan and Walter but after you enter Tokyo it just feels like they're doing the motions of their respective alignments.)
@@lavenderlexy Mad respect to you for actually being willing to have a conversation like this. Not a lot of people (especially in some MegaTen circles) are willing to do that on a meaningful level. I don't think it's as much "her development doesn't exist anymore" as it is "her development doesn't matter/is ignored for the sake of turning her into a mouthpiece". I apologize if I didn't articulate that clearly. Bc we DO see a little bit of her development before the Tiamat fight, as she's clearly taken aback by Kei's and Tao's sudden reappearance after believing them to be dead, and if you do read her ending that way then it shines through in CoV Chaos. It _is_ there, and it's definitely the kind of development I wanted to see, BUT it lacks any sort of meaningful conclusion because Atlus still makes her throw out most of the same talking points of the stereotypical Chaos talking head. It's just... frustrating. And I want it to change. Also, side note, but very based of you for being a Panagia shipper. More of a KeiXTaoXYoko kinda guy myself, but still super valid.
SMT 4 does seem to parallel the original's story structure in many ways, beginning with law and chaos representatives that try to force a choice but end up replaced by your own teammates accepting their ideals in the end. Still want to see a SMT 1 remake though. Making all the endings equally morally valid would be a very difficult thing. In fact a lot of these demons and gods come from a time before humans developed modern 'morals', so who are we to apply our bias to their actions? I liked DeSu 2's because they built their alignments around less extreme philosophies of Meritocracy and Egalitarianism, and like with Isabeau in SMT 4 Daichi's Neutral alignment can be demeaned as merely someone too afraid to make a hard choice and is unable to commit to a solid course of action. What kind of new alignments would you like to see in a future SMT game?
SMTVV has one of the better endings in the series in my opinion. I've seen ppl complaining that there is no neutral ending, but I think that was intentional, since while one route is more chaos and the other is more law coded, they're still far removed from the usual law and chaos shenanigans. Both can be considered and they're not so absolute because the point of the game is how both heroires influence each other and they gradually become more nuanced. I'll just say that i've read some questionable takes regarding the story and specially yoko in this comment section. It seems that some ppl missed the point so hard that I don't even know what to say honestly.
While you admitted to not playing SMT2, (which ending is Law bias not Chaos btw which is why Aleph is Law aligned in the DLC of SMT4A) and SMT4 is indeed Neutral biased, a lot of the information in SMT4's section is wrong. Neutral!Flynn does not want to rid the world of all demons, his actions in that specific route are incapable of doing that anyways. Instead it was Law!Flynn and Merkabah that wanted that, to the point the angels leave after Lucifer is defeated and the Yamato Perpetual Reactor is destroyed (wiping out Tokyo) so humans can rule themselves as God (either YHVH or Great Will/Axiom commanded) As for SMTV given that the base game had the Law ending where the protagonist was the most happiest, everyone including Lucifer's follower's like Beezlebub are against Yoko, Yoko does not get anything unique for her route's final boss and every ending is cut off from the cycle regardless thanks to Lucifer, (seriously did you not pay attention to Satan?) I highly, highly, highly doubt the game is Chaos aligned. As for the whole Amala network thing I don't agree with Chaos, the White or Owlman, (Batman was right to punch out that nihilistic fool out) life is far more than JUST suffering and every time so far that a SMT world gets destroyed it isn't the agent of rebirth arbitrarily deciding that it's gone on too long, its some agent of Chaos like Hikawa from the cult of Gaea. Implying its more of fail safe. Lucifer at the very least discovers a way to separate from the network without killing everyone like in Nocturne but for Yoko and the Quadistu thats not good enough, because they want a world without sacrifice. Well guess what Yoko you just sacrificed EVERYONE.
Finally someone says it! These games are about choosing how to change the world. I think those are one of the most obvious games about involving politics. Of course these works are inspired by the real world, why shouldn't they? I also never understood why people expect all endings to be equal. In real life obviously not all choices are equal. Supportting or not supporting genocide is one such obvious example. I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect for all of them to be on the same every time. I mean, isn't that why having new games with completely new scenarios that offer new possibilities and outcomes stay exciting?
That sentiment runs into issues largely due to the fact that politics is full of misinformation and errant conflation. (Particularly in places like the us, uk, russia, most of south africa, etc) what ends up happening is that people conflate a real world political party with a dramatized idea in their head, and use media to reinforce said idea.
No. Its not exciting if there's one "right" ending lol. At least make the other endings interesting, they don't have to be morally right, since that's subjective.
From the games I played SMT V Vengeance could be the closest one to being law-leaning, especially since you spend pretty much most of the time in the 4 region with tao, while yoko is off and about doing some shady stuff and all.
Hi all, just wanted to respond to some common stuff I get:
First and foremost SMT V. Yes I got this completely wrong, as many commenters added everything in the game indicates that it is very law biased. Why I chose chaos? Just finished off Nocturne's segment and went a bit too heavy handed with the similarities and as law was the first ending I got I literally had a better memory of every single ending in the game I had after that. Also, the point of this video is to say that the alignment bias says something about the themes of the story, not that every game should have it. That's my fault I should have clarified. That's really all, hopefully this will tone down the many paragraphs you are writing lmao.
My issue with the Alignment bias is when they make the other endings awful just to make their favorite ending better like in Smt IV what I liked about the canon of vengeance route in SMT VV is that it shows the pros and cons of Law and Chaos and leave it up to the player to decide like in Devil summoners.
chaos alway going to be the bad ending because. A society that follows Chaos 100% will only end in degeneracy, and ultimately destruction becase removing all laws makes them idiots who live in shitholes.
There should always be a negative for the side that gets bias or positives that the favorite side doesn't have. Games like SMT4 have none of this unless you want to RP as the bad guy or the knight templar
DeSu 2 does this wonderfully. There is neutral bias in a sense that Daichi's restorer ending has the most degree of finality, but it also has bad implications. Either Polaris forgets what happened and attacks again or the whole mess with the Triangulum happens, resulting in a disastrous 2nd cycle where only Yamato survives. And every other ending has a positive that Daichi's side doesn't have: Ronaldo's ending has an absolute peace which is confirmed to last forever since Niceaea cannot even function, the world is that safe. Yamato's ending has people no one would bet a cent on being able to show their talents, like that kid who is the leader of a group of adults and even a Yakuza guy since he has great strategy, and it has you, Yamato and your gang ruling above all else. And Alcor's ending creates a new world that might have different species, a different history and since there aren't administrators, no Triangulum or Er Rai to screw humans over.
Even Apocalypse's evil ending has something over the peace ending: you become the new YHVH and the new world is clay in your hands, to mold as you see fit. Nanashi gets an objective win, nobody can challenge him anymore and who knows, the new world might be much better than the previous one. The peace ending is happy but who says that peace is everlasting?
Canonically there's nothing stopping the Anarchy ending from being a prequel to My Little Pony.
You forgot to mention Daichi's "bad" ending where he liberates humanity from the admins. Leaving the world in shambles and permanently scarred with no guidance... but it also has humanity coming together and surviving with each other. Leaders step up and guide the weak, everyone becomes unified without worry of any outside interventions. Yamato, Alcor, and Ronaldo may be dead but the ideals they upheld ironically come together while the sad piano plays as humanity starts to rebuild.
@@anglosaxiphone8246 Yamato & Ronaldo aren't dead in Daichi's "bad" ending.
@@AngelKnightZeo713 Been a few years. I forgot you can keep em alive. Thanks for the heads up.
Holy crap the response on this has been insane! I'm so fortunate to be here, thank you everyone so much.
If you think Thorman is bad, back when the Master first appeared in Doctor Who, his disguise name was Colonel Masters.
LMAO
Saying you like Vengeance chaos ending is fine but saying the game has a bias for it is just plain wrong. The protagonist is usually a complete blank slate, even in cutscenes and situations where he really shouldn't be. But he's very clearly enraged by Aogami's death, and seek revenge alongside Tsukuyomi. He even says "We can't let the Qadistu run free." After this point demon haunt dialogue changes, and the Nahobino's demons comment on how they notice how he's now on the warpath. He joins with Tao and fights along side her for a considerably large portion of the entire game, both of them seeking the goal of him claiming the throne. When he fights Beelzebub both of his dialog options imply this. He can either say his priority is to take down Tiamat or that he wants to claim the throne to recreate the world. Both of them make their way to the throne only to be stopped by Yoko at the very last minute. She says she is the will of the Qadistu and that they are right, contradicting earlier when she began to doubt her beliefs and showed how Tao helped her see that there are things in the world worth saving, but Lilith seemingly possessed her right afterwards by entering her body as a spirit and making her eyes glow red, oddly implying that her re-awakening somehow mind controlled her.
In the Chaos ending, the protagonist betrays Tao at the very last minute, one step away from what was previously their shared goal seemingly after having to think it over and suddenly changing his mind. This is already very odd when you consider that this means he is intending to side with Tiamat, the being he and Tsukuyomi previously swore to get revenge against, "We can't let the Qadistu run free." In a story titled Vengeance, our vengeance seeking protagonist has given up their quest for revenge. Could you imagine if he spoke to Tsukuyomi in that scene where they are about to fuse for the first time and said "Actually, I want to protect the will of the Qadistu and allow Tiamat to destroy the world." I can't imagine Tsukuyomi not getting angry at that.
The plot saves us from the awkwardness of creating a world where we will be worshiping the Goddess who killed Aogami by having Mastema create an excuse for us to fight Tiamat regardless. If Mastema didn't attack here, then this ending would be even more incredibly odd and unfitting, yet because this was the characters intentions up until Mastema acts, it still is.
But this leads to Tsukuyomi sacrificing himself to save Yoko. I thought this was incredibly odd. The protagonist has built up a close relationship to Yoko, but Tsukuyomi absolutely hasn't. Tsukuyomi previously hinted in a quest that Tao's ascended form is what remains of his sister Amaterasu, which makes the same scene in the law route feel powerful. Previously he failed to save his brother and his subordinate, but now he can save his Sister and subordinate at the same time with one heroic act. In chaos Yoko even looks at him like she's confused why he's doing this. We can infer it's for the protagonist, but it's a rather weak connection compared to the same scene in Law. Despite being a chaos rep in creation, Tsukuyomi is incredibly protective of the Japanese people, who Yoko is responsible for assisting the mass murder of many of them. I really can't imagine this guy dying for her. If anything I think he would watch her die and then pat the protagonist on the shoulder saying something in memorium about her struggles or something.
After this is said and done, Amitabha and Tao are disgusted with you, and insult you before leaving to a different universe anticlimactically. Which is quite odd because that was never alluded to be something that was possible before. Tao had just said she was going to stop you, but then she just disappears oddly from the entire scene and reappears just to run away instead of defending her ideals even though she just said she intends to?
After this, Lucifer straight up tells you that this isn't what he wanted. The devs for some reason wanted to make this very clear, but he says "You seek a world FAR different from that which I envision" along side this, his best buddy Beelzebub has only cruel things to say about Tiamat. "She is a blight on this world and cannot be suffered to live." So even from a TDE perspective, the devs wanted to make it very clear that Yoko's route is not aligned with TDE. Not only that, but Lucifer does not say anything like this in either the vengeance Law ending or even the original creation law ending. He will completely approve of preserving either of those law endings from the mandala system before this one, it's singled out as the exception.
But all of that aside, I do get the appeal of why you like the actual outcome of the ending. Yoko even says that all worlds that have existed will cease to exist along with the throne. But then this is immediately contradicted once you make a new game plus save file, and Mastema reveals to you that your save files are connected as alternate universes, meaning that Yoko is mistaken and her world continues to just be one option taken amongst a multiverse of many.
At every turn the devs show how biased they are against this ending and in a way I can see why. The law ending is the perfect ending to the story that was set up in this route, just like bonds was in apocalypse. Even though I like Dagda's ending much better, I can see that it's not the intended option.
In this route before the plot twist, Yoko is the reason why many people get hurt and killed at the hands of the Qadistu, she's even directly responsible for Miyazu's capture as Tsukuyomi says.
Tao's desire to right the wrongs happening in this game is set up, as well as the struggles of all the other characters relating to her solution.
Yoko is shown to not only have blood on her hands, but she gains a guilty conscious and regrets her actions, and sides with Tao before her opinions are literally changed back via magic.
The protagonist is shown to want to get revenge on the Qadistu, and basically plays through a law route side by side with Tao up until the very last moment, where he changes his mind and wants to allow Tiamat to destroy the world.
This heel turn is only shown through him saying "I'm glad you're okay" if you're neutral aligned. Which oddly implies that his reason for this is his personal affection or admiration for Yoko and it isn't explained further than that.
Then you're forced to kill Tiamat and then get insulted by Tao and Goko, before Lucifer tells you he doesn't like your choice but will respect it.
Then in new game plus they imply Yoko was mistaken about how much impact her decision even made.
I got this ending first because of my alignment and I couldn't stand it honestly. I felt like I was watching my character just betray everything and everyone just for Yoko, who has even betrayed her own character development and reverted back to how she was when she first started the adventure. While Tao has learned and grown from the experience, Yoko has disregarded it completely. And Tsukuyomi, who quickly became the most interesting character in the game to me, just decided to sacrifice himself to her suddenly without a word. The scene only made sense to me when I realized how thematic it is when Tao is in her place. The law ending, even though I have problems with it, feels like the genuine coherent conclusion of the story that was set up. If this game only had one ending, then 100% it would be that one. I also feel like Tsukuyomi's sacrifice indicates that the law ending was written first, and the chaos route was written afterwards. But it's far more clear when there's Lucifer's disparaging comment confirming he genuinely supports both law endings before he would ever support this, which really just wrapped it all up with the stamp of "by the way, the devs don't like this ending but if you like it, enjoy." So honestly I just don't see how you could begin to say they were biased here. Honestly I think it might be the least dev-biased endings in the series, also up there with creation's chaos route, where the game straight up tells you that the protagonist is unhappy with this choice lmao.
Oh my goodness, that's... a lot. First off just wanted to thank you for taking time out of your day to be able to have this discussion. It's honestly really cool to see, honestly I think you have changed my mind on it. Though some of what you said did kinda strike me as odd, like Mastema explicitly saying the saves themselves were different worlds. I always read that in the context of the law ending or canon of creation route. Overall though, yeah makes sense for law to be biased in this situation. Vengeance and all that. I did say this is the least biased I could think of for the series and the fact we're having this discussion does kinda show that.
@@lavenderlexy Let me explain, there's a lot of confusion about how to access the Satan boss fight online. A rumor spread that you have to complete canon of creation, but I found out this isn't true. You only have to beat Lucifer and then create a reborn or newborn save file anywhere, it doesn't matter which slot. From then on even if you reload your old vengeance save data before the fight and talk to Mastema, the dialogue will activate saying he has seen an "other world" where you defeated Lucifer to destroy the mandala system. So he's not talking about your previous cycles, but rather another save data slot. For example if you beat vengeance chaos and made a new game plus save, and then later someone else started a new file on your system from scratch and played vengeance, then once they beat Samael Mastema would tell them about your playthrough in your save file despite the fact it's the first time this person has ever played.
The law Ending was completely scuffed in V because of a mechanical inferior Tao. When they buffed Tao and Sailor Sailor Tao and nerfed Idun, Ishtar, and Demeter the Law ending magically “doesn’t” suck. I think Yoko is a superior party mate, because Lilith and Sakuya are broken, Tao not feeling “bad” helped this a lot.
@@mramisuzuki6962 This is about story and themes not stat point distributions
@@vanilla8956 I’m just saying a lot of story “ dislike” I’ve noticed is overly negative/criticsl because Tao wasn’t a good reward.
7:26 thorman reminds me of Lucifer's numerous alter egos that are just a funky spelling of it like Louisa Ferre
Yoko's ending seems to be the way to go if they want to continue making more games but with a twist on it. "this is the world the previous MC and the goddess created together beyond chaos and law".
Hey, that would be an interesting setup!
Kinda wish you used the SMT games without alignment bias or an bias against to give, texture, to your argument.
Like take Strange Journey. While Law and Chaos are fairly typical, Neutral is knocked down a couple pegs through it's enviromentalist horror backdrop, the Captain Jack arc, and having content parity with law and chaos. Could go into an unfounded monologue on the game being about one's descent into nihilism, with each ending representing a rejection or embracing of nihilism, but that's a fleeting series of thoughts at most for me.
That's fair, I focused mostly on what the biases meant more than what having a bias adds. Also, there's the issue that biases can be kinda hard to establish or disprove for some games. SMT 1 is a prime example, it was written expressly to not have an obvious bias but we all can agree neutral's probably the better outcome
The main thing going for the vengeance endings, and why I like them, is that it’s a different take on the law and chaos alignments from previous games (except maybe nocturne).
To put it in perspective, Vengeance Tao would probably be Neutral in the traditional YHWH vs. Lucifer law and chaos (she wants change that benefits humanity without extreme measures), but is Law when compared to Yoko (with Yoko’s Painting analogy being a pretty good comparison as to how).
Also Tao and Yoko are quite human before their unfortunate transformations into goddesses. They appreciate each other’s alternate perspectives and actually cause each other to change (Yoko encouraging Tao to enact the change she wants to see in the world, and Tao making Yoko hesitate in wiping the world clean since she does value some aspects of the old world now).
Unfortunately their confrontation was inevitable since their ascension to gods stripped away a lot of their humanity, even if less so in the case for Tao compared to CoC thanks to her bond with Yoko.
It’s also why I don’t mind they didn’t put in a neutral route: it wouldn’t really work in the case of CoV and would kind of cheapen it.
Genuinely amazing video man, keep up the great work, you have some really great thoughts on the megaten system that I never considered.
thank you so much, that's heartwarming!
One of the best SMT comment sections of all time. I don't agree with a lot of takes on Yoko like her development being ignored, but I totally understand and appreciate reading other perspectives!
Nice vid, but the beeping is way too loud/harsh...
thanks for the feedback. I'll be sure to tone it down!
Try to talk more clearly, but otherwise, nice video 👍
Just like SMT IV 😭
@@aquano1972 which is why we need a remake and finally rescue SMT IV from the 3DS
@@nyoon690 they fixed that specific issue in Apocalypse, where the beeping noises from selecting anything in the game was a lot easier to listen to.
As for like a port or remake, I doubt they’re doing anything crazy any time soon, the 10th year anniversary was recent and they didn’t do much to celebrate it : (
Funnily enough I hear a lot of people trying to defend the anarchy ending in Apocalypse as the only good ending because of something about cosmic scale and breaking the cycle without realizing that Stephen explicitly tells you that should you take the throne and become the new God the Axiom and the goddess of Tokyo are going to be pulling in Messiahs from other universes to do what you just did. Anybody who does acknowledge that tries to spend some bullshit story about how Steven is actually evil due to him..... messing with everybody's memories so he can give you the Shesha radar without technically directly involving himself in your affairs
My opinion of VV's endings:
First off, I believe that 2 facts are stated directly to the player. One to inform them in the ideology that they choose to follow, and the second to contextualize the decision after the fact. First, the current world is objectively flawed. There being only one God was simply created to oppress all other forms of life, and lengthen his rule for as long as possible.
The second, which is described in the Satan post-game quest, is that the Mandala Cycle is broken in the universe, regardless of both endings. This is because the decision you make with your chosen Goddess does not involve use of the Throne afaik. However the Law decision is simply to keep the current world (while granted everybody's wishes in it), so that one still retains the fundamental issues consciously. In their final discussion, both Yoko and Tao do not dispute the fact that the world is simply wrong in this game.
As for the difference in the ideologies, the core of this was previously told by Yoko (I think around the giant Mara? I don't remember). If a teacher was telling you how to paint a painting, but you noticed while painting that the instructions were wrong. Would you either fix it somehow (in its current state), or start over from scratch while not following the instructions. I don't think that there is an objectively right or wrong answer which is quite nice, since it creates an equal playing field.
Here are my personal interpretations on the nature of each ending. I believe that both are formed due to an inherent love, not for the world, but for the products of it. Tao's inherent, unconditional love for these products is the reason why she wants to continue to hold onto them, no matter what the future holds. What the future holds will most certainly be bad in the long run by the way, even if everything that can be done is done within the her power, the foundation that she's working on is still broken, full stop. Realistically the demons vying for the throne have no reason to stop, so this cycle of competition which incites violence will continue. I believe this will lead to ruin, which is something that you are supposed to consciously accept. However, until that day comes, Tao wants to maximize the best aspects of the world, which I believe is represented through the fact that she grants everybody's wishes (presumably within reason of course).
Contrary to what I've seen others day, I think Yoko also does love the products of The Horned God's world, with that love being developed over the course of the game. It's the direct core of her character arc, and why she rejects the Qadistu since they just want to completely erase the products of the world, but Yoko now has things that she treasures (through meeting our main cast). That is the entire reason why she decides to reject the Qadistu, while she was putting on a front to an extent, over time the walls broke apart and she started genuinely connecting with us, making it so a part of that front was a genuine attachment to her new loved ones. However I believe it is precisely because of this love that she wants to start from scratch, so that the products of the world that she treasures so much will have a proper environment to thrive in. No matter what ends up happening in the end, because of the fact that The Horned God's rules are not in place, the future will be objectively better than the past.
Plus, based on the ending, Yoko and the protag are presumably there to watch over the creation of the universe anyway, so I'm sure that logically they would not let history repeat itself. A common criticism I see is that a powerful individual will simply instate a new oppressive system, but I think this completely ignores the obvious implication that Yoko and the protag, two supremely powerful beings that explicitly detest some things, will literally be there the entire time. I think that there is also something to be said about why the end result of the new universe in the Chaos ending isn't shown. There is a distinct divide between immediate and long-term results. The Law ending shows an immediate result, as while the far-off future is left ambiguous, that's a downside that you are (hopefully) conscious of during the game. The Chaos ending's whole idea is that the immediate result is ambiguous since the universe is still developing. However, as previously stated, the result in the long term is guaranteed to at least be better than the past on a fundamental level, so you simply have to believe. I think that aspect was also something players were meant to be conscious of during the ending of the game.
This is quite the long response, but I hope it properly conveys my thoughts on the game. Shout out to anyone who actually read this entire thing.
Truman is one of my favorite former US Presidents. I must be Law aligned as f---!
my only problem with the alignments is that, they don't give law any good arguments or reason to pick it. I have even noticed that in some games (besides nocturne and smt 4a) there is a overall bias towards chaos and neutral.
That's because on a human scale there is not alot of reason to do what the Abrahamic god typically did. Flooding the world and killing basically everyone is basically a genocide, which no sane human should ever support in the modern day. He kills followers of baal just for following another religion. These are bad things by our modern society, so since most law routes are his will, they are the most extreme version.
This is not a hate of the Abrahamic religions, god works in mysterious ways in all religions even my own Hinduism. And these religions have brought so much good as well as bad into the world. But when you take that god and make him an alignment choice of absolute law then you get that fascistic god almost unavoidably.
I think vengeance's law ending works better because that god is not even in control of the law side, therefore they didn't have to stick to his way of creating law.
It’s not that they don’t have good arguments; it’s that their target audience doesn’t like the arguments.
I mean the reasons for picking law is safety, you are guaranteed to be safe but you are not free.
In some games like Devil Survivor law is really good because the game shows you how bad a chaos world will be and also says that God's control would only last until people change
bc chaos is always superior
@@pn2294this, I've always been a law/neutral supporter, my beliefs actually find reason in the arguments provided both by law and neutrality in these games. What's my profile? Agnostic, into esoterism with some buddhist beliefs, open to the idea of god but conflicted about the contradictions in christianism, I feel like most of humanity needs some handholding because you give them full freedom and boom, give an inch, they take a mile.
Different profiles lean towards a certain alignment, however at least on my personal experience, the most common profile for the chaos enjoyers (at least among western smt players, no idea about eastern) is that of an atheist who hates any kind of authority and values total freedom (no matter the consquences) I've also seen some traits but they're not as common, mostly on the antisocial side such as a dislike for society or a desire to destroy everything and prove oneself as a warrior.
The arguments are there but people simply won't find them valid if they don't align with their views, my younger self would've definitely found more comfort in the chaos ideology, hell, even I can still agree a little with the white in IV, nihilism being a curse if you think too much about certain things.
my issue with the bias is that im playing an RPG, i dont want to make a decision that i feel that is great for the role that im playing just to be punished with a bad ending
The bias to me just implies an alignment ending is meant to be canon over the others. Never thought of it being a bad thing. Or the opposite, the canon ending is the most tricky to achieve, like a challenge to get the "true" ending.
The big issue of Law is that its basically designed to be antagonistic.
All the inspirations of SMT are counter-culture/ counter-culture adyacent stuff. There is almost no basis for a positive/protagonistic Law route.
Like, take V. They picked the most straightfoward Law Good/ Chaos Bad conflict of mythology (Bull vs Snake is Sky Patriarch vs Water Monster, which mythologically is symbolism for "I don't want to die from natural disasters and I like having a roof over my head") and still choose to interpret it under a Barbara Walker lens.
Trying SMT after playing some fantasy Western RPGs that let Lawful aligned deities have virtues and wins feels weird.
Yeah, it kinda sucks in the fact that SMT has always been described as a punk genre and having an alignment that will be a constant establishment in an anti-establishment culture
On SMTVV, I would argue that it is in fact Law-biased, very much for the reasons discussed in the preamble, even though I personally prefer the Chaos outcome. (Full spoilers ahead, so don't unfold if you've not played yet)
Much like Yoko's ending is "True Demon + hope of New creation", Tao's ending is built up with repeated arguments of "all that we've been through does in fact matter, and even though the world is remade it keeps moving forward". That argument is undercut by the very existence of CoC Chaos, to be sure, but Tao vs Yoko is ultimately a reflection of Reform vs Revolution, and Yoko's path is characterized quite often by others (and by some of the options that give points towards it) as one of despair. Now, I find that framing to be disingenuous, limiting the definition of hope to conform to reality as it is even when something new and potentially better is on the table, but that's my own political bias talking, not that of the authors. And indeed, even in her ending Yoko drops a line about destruction being the will of "all who have known suffering", something that is directly contradicted earlier by Sahori snapping out of her desire for revenge once it's Tao's hands holding the glass. Both Tao and Yoko are shown to be wrong, and one of them is set to do a whole lot of "irreversible damage" while Tao's world could be undone by the next holder of the Throne. Indeed, it's less Law vs Chaos than it is Neutral vs Chaos, and we know the overall series trend on that pairing.
All of which only applies if we interpret Tao based on her prior dialogue and not on the text of the ending. Between Lucifer's presence in it and "all wishes are fulfilled and none denied", Tao's world is the same as P5R Maruki's, a place where your very dreams are stripped from you if God thinks they're unattainable, an absolute tyranny masked as a paradise. And if that paradise is torn from the cycle, then human freedom is gone forever.
Also, as a point of fact on SMT IV: the books spread by Lilith are not nefarious in and of themselves. Indeed, Isabeau partakes of the Literature and comes out completely fine. It's the repression under Mikado's regime that leaves people so miserable and unbalanced that the slightest hint of something better causes some of them to spontaneously spawn demons, something that Lilith counts on. The tighter Gabriel closes her fist, the more people slip through her fingers. It is political commentary on both the general issue of free speech and on how even essentially benign actions (because at the most factual level all the Black Samurai did was educate the population) could be used maliciously.
Narratively the chaos ending in SMT VV would've been far more compelling if Atlus substituted Tiamat with Marduk in the final battle. Given that Yoko/Qadistu's objective was to end the systemic oppression begun by the aforementioned horned god ( sustaining the Mandala system by ext), they could've easily had meta-being Mastema perform some reverse essence fusion of Tiamat and Aogami ( or some other contrivance) to summon Marduk. I get Mastema being able to control Tiamat towards acting in accordance with the greater will, but imo it was a missed opportunity to further differentiate the alignment paths. And I'm sorry, but the chaos route exclusive boss compared to what Law received leaves much to be desired 😅
This video flat out gets information wrong. SMTVV's satan bossfight dialogue equalizes the playing field by implying all the endings generally liberate the universes from the cycle of reincarnation due to using Lucifers powers which you get after defeating him. (The only exceptions being neutral which have implied caveats since neutral never lasting is its entire shtick, satan doesn't acknowledge this but there's a lot of conflating points that're weird to trudge through it's just what you get in SMTVVs writing). Its barely talked about but if this wasn't the case then lucifer literally has no reasoning or arc for doing what he does in the game. (Other than "muh yhvh bad!" But he's already dead before the game begins). Him hijacking the system for freedom of a certain kind literally is his arc in most games too, (think smt2 has it the strongest) so him not doing it again would be dumb.
Really given the vagueness of chaos in SMTVV (tbf this is inherently part of chaos's writing when it's not about people stoning each other all the time, which both are unmarriable from the alignment for some reason). Their ontologically evil actions and on top of being an allegory for that world pandemic from a bit ago, Chaos is just objectively and subjectively bad on both fronts in SMTVV. Which is funny to think about given how the game was advertised as chaos aligned. Yet the chaos route doesnt even have a new alignment exclusive semifinal boss instead of what law gets. I mean I guess more power to you if you like human suffering at the price for prematurely breaking things you don't understand. But I think inarguably even a short lived moment of peace is better than eternal torture. People who think TDE and chaos doing its party magic trick where it unravels the universe spaghetti style are missing the trees for the field in a way that is inherently counter productive. Since chaos does that and has no game plan other than "oh I guess we're free to hate and opress as much as we want now." Tbf Nocturne lucifer wanted to start the war on heaven again which he presumably does do given V's writing. Albeit there's some iffy descreptancies between the statement in nocturne and lucifer quarreling with SMTV's original ideas, even if they are the same luci.
Overall though I think the alignment bias is stupid, alignments are a tabletop RPG element that hasnt been able to do anything for quite a while other than people vouching that it's deep when it hasn't been for the last decade or so. Last time it ever was was in SJ and Nocturne with the latter attempting to break the mold heavily only for the rerelease to rewrite a bunch of stuff so that the game defeats its own point of "people are suffering, the vortex is a culmination of their suffering and worrying. Here's a bunch of people who have potential ideas to solve them, choose one or say no." And then TDE and a bunch of rewrites/added writings step in with a BIG no which is just a fancier less interesting version of the original demon ending. All to deliniate the original ideas of Nocturne. Ironically though I'm at least willing to admit that the new law route VV has saying "Yes, people should be able to live fulfilling lives under a system that caters to your needs" which is an incredibly basic message, is at least more interesting or compelling and deep than anything from IV/IVA (tbf IVA basically said the same thing on its light neutral route, but IVA's writing overall isn't good in terms of characters, which defeats that point kinda). But regardless if the writing for future games isn't going to keep this up though I don't see why they don't drop the pretense of them being deep at all and then play into the aspects of them being TRPG factions. I could go either way but sacrificing competent game design (i.e. your choices matter and are justified because YOU are the player making these decisions), for allusions to a message that a corporation is trying to get across instead, via bias that stunts the aforementioned gameplay systems at work for narrative is terrible. Just to humor the concept of "deep gripping messages or social commentary from Megaten!!" for a bit, if atlus really wanted to do truly deep writing then everything would just be about how law is great, good and inherently justified in everything it does given how it's the only one with enough of a moral backbone to it unlike neutral and chaos which bounce around a ton and in the case of the latter it's held ball and chain to ontologically evil actions as it's "the bad alignment trying to masquerade as good." Case and point, you can tear bad actors from good ideas but good actors who huddle around bad ideas can only be removed from the bad ideas. You can't exactly "fix" the bad idea lest it become something different.
After all this bickering you can kinda realize how laughable tying attempts at deep messaging to a modified TRPG factions is yes? This is why nocturne tried to at least delinate from them and do something more interesting. With SMTVV's new endings sorta following suite given some context clues from them structure-wise. The summoning of Tiamat is like akin to summoning a demon who supports a "reason," the two new reps for the new plot bicker over how society should function and the ending eventually culminates with what should be done to improve society as a whole. The Qaditsu are allegorical to world pandemic and Mastema policies sent out to stop said virus. It's all very nocturne-lite with some things swapped around and done in different ways which is quite compelling I think
Ironically I could bring up more caveats as to how some alignments are all on even playing fields in the first place, i.e. SMTIV's neutral has shades of japanese natsoc to it, which allows for it to be labeled as extreme as law and chaos propaganda. But the reality is even if the writers are trying to cover more bases so everything is on an even level, the negative reactions some of the writing has towards law and chaos from neutral drags the other two choices down despite their own strengths. Not to mention neutrals general lack of mainstay faction figures which makes it harder to pin down as anything other than the ideology of the fencesitter middleman is enough to get people thinking a certain way rather than what it actually is.
Gosh I wrote a lot here, too much maybe! This topic is immensely broad and there's just too ways to tackle something so subjective! I'm not even sure if this makes cohesive sense or if it'll go through! I keep adding things! The thing I'm typing this out on is almost dead! I didn't watch the video! But, I do hope I got some of my points across. I think at the end of the day all the alignments do have cool things going on, but I don't really think that the writings for the games should favor one over the other in certain cases. I think at minimum neutral should always be dunked on and if chaos can't get its act together they should always be obscenely evil and unreasonable as they already are though. To be fair, my favorite game in the series is SMT2 which has a massive law bias, so I can at least see how that makes me biased too (I guess it's sorta good I like the alignment that's morally just in most cases I guess?) If you couldn't tell either, despite their revisionism into "bad endings" because "atlus said so" I really do like the concept of reasons from Nocturne. And would love to see more factions outside of the main three or see more shakeups on them for sure. Seeing classical mother earth ring of gaea chaos ideology with a law frame of structure from Shijima was really cool. As is seeing the angels return under the order of Baal due to YHVH not being present and possibly dead, according to some people who've gone through nocturnes original release script but really I haven't found enough evidence to support this still, which is unfortunate. I really do need to see this for myself already.
Also, regarding bias a bit more though for at least a tiny positive for them, I do at least like how alignment bias can have a hand in worldbuilding. SMTII's Millennium Kingdom, Nocturnes Vortex World and SMTIV's firmament tokyo really do give great examples how the bias can be used for worldbuilding and background elements which is immensely enjoyable to look at and go through. So I think it works great for this, just not in writing and gameplay I guess. In a perfect world there'd be no writing bias for the alignments. However with me if we're gonna start talking about it and acting like it needs to be a thing or is somehow a good thing, it's law or bust ig lol.
I tried to throw in some grammar fixes and some more detailing on certain things now, I've realized I've used "delinate" wrongly which is a big messup on my part. Tried throwing in a little segment of VV's new writing for yuzuru and tsukuyomi puts the old chaos far above vengeance chaos at this point (with the glass ceiling broken by lucifer for the cycle of reincarnation, now the discussion is only for what's morally best as opposed to breaking the cycle after all), however I guess I've wrote too much now since the edit post functions keep spitting out errors. Whatever I'll save the final draft in a .txt file for later.
@@ils4844no creation chaos will 100% have history and mandala repeat itself and the universe will crumble on itself, vengeance chaos tries to directly address those core issues making w/o falling on the strong survives weak dies BS it a more desirable outcome imo
Vengeance endings are genuinely underrated
I think it's justpeople needing some time to digest them
It's interesting how very often law endings all carry the ultimate "no one gets true will we live forever ruled without choice" and chaos often is reduced the "survival of the fittest" neutral usually leans towards restarting the cycle, letting you know what happened will happen again
I usually prefer neutral endings, for example in SJ (my favorite) you are not only left aware that the Swartchzwelt will manifest again in the future, but you are also reminded that the efforts of humanity, of your peers, that sheer human willpower will manage to endure it again
Bc in the end, that's just how life is, there will be bad moments but you will pull thru, by your own will and with your power
In IV's case, it never had any intention to present Law and Chaos as meaningful solutions. It beats you over the head countless times to make this point, and Apocalypse assumes that you get the picture. Rather Law and Chaos both politically represent two forms of extremism (western imperialism for Law and Japanese far-right nationalism for Chaos) and tell the story of how even well-meaning people like Walter and Jonathan can go so far down the rabbit hole that they justify genocide. And in coercing you down either path the game wanted you to feel the hopelessness of there being no other easy way. Chaos being more appealing to the game's target demographic makes sense when nationalistic pride is just more attractive as a way to push back against oppression by "foreign demons." IV's presentation of the Neutral route is a lofty but powerful call to look beyond the Overton window for a solution that truly benefits the people and not just establishments that have spent so much time convincing us that they are the only way to live in this world. Chaos, Law, as well as the Massacre ending of Apocalypse (which heavily suggests you become just as tyrannical and fearful of being dethroned as YHVH) also operate on the lie that they are permanent solutions in order to justify their extreme actions. Neutral does not operate on this conceit. Even if the cycle never ends we can still derive meaning from our time in the current cycle and pass on that torch of hope to the following generation. We can't always stop the next person from fucking it up and causing the next Infernal/Blasted Tokyo, and that's okay, because we accomplish more when we focus on leaving the world just a little less messed up than when we entered it.
The SMT 4 Law ending literally says that it's a world of eternal peace that lasts forever. It's outcome is undeniably good. Law in most games aims to achieve a more egalitarian society through extreme measures, but these extreme measures seem very hamfisted in a way to make what would be the" good" ending bad, which is why alignments being biased in this way is bad.
I also don't see the Overton Window in the way you described. The game is telling you that the Neutral ending is better, and that ideas outside the Neutral paradigm (Law/Chaos) are not worth considering. That's what the Overton window is to me, why even bother having multiple endings atp.
Law being based on American imperialism was a thing in SMT 1 but really it's used to highlight Law's "alienness" and how it draws on foreign philosophical concepts like Utilitarianism and Christian theology. As well as a bit of Mohism from China.
I would say an example of alignment bias that kinda did work out would be SMT 2 with its Law route, which has probably the best story in the series, because it explores the inner Law alignment conflict of "Law for Law's sake" represented by YHVH and the Centre and "Law as a means to an end" represented by Zayin/Satan. This is great storytelling, but as a consequence the Neutral and Chaos routes are completely boring in comparison, so even then alignment bias can still be bad.
@@SilverHedgehog420SMT 4's law ending is not stated to be a world of eternal peace that lasts, its narrated by Johnathan and moreso is his sentiment and belief of the actions he took. It inevitably will become Blasted Tokyo (or I suppose Blasted Mikado); Its why you visit Blasted Tokyo at all, you actually see what becomes of their wishes after so much time. Law is not an undeniably good outcome, its also an awful outcome in the end. I do think Law still gets negative bias in the sense that Blasted Tokyo has little to no redeeming qualities while Infernal Tokyo, while hellish and rundown, STILL does possess freedom and general hope for someone to take charge and make things better
@goldenshadow963gaming Eternal peace is achieved in the Law ending since it was quite literally what the faction's goal was, and we're not shown anything to indicate that equality and peace weren't achieved at the end of the game. If Mikado's class hierarchy was still maintained, then the game would show us it was instead of saying otherwise, but it doesn't do it. Iirc, the angels even kill the Mikado monarchy since they support the caste system, which is why in NPC dialogue, they talk about how there are no Luxurors or Casualries.
Blasted Tokyo is something separate since it's an alternate reality where Masakado never created the Firmament, so the circumstances are different. It was a world shown by the White who were trying to portray the futility of the cycle. In Blasted Tokyo, we see how Johnathan's Law is different when he himself disagrees with the demon (Pluto, if i remember) wiping everyone out. Blasted Tokyo can be seen as what happens when Law fails to achieve its goals, whereas in the actual Law ending, it succeeds.
@@SilverHedgehog420 Late to reply, apologies for that. I did go over my info and I will say my original understanding of Blasted Tokyo is wrong; However, your interpretation also isn't fully correct either. Blasted Tokyo isn't the world when Law fails, it's when Law succeeds. Blasted Tokyo came about from accepting God's Wrath which caused it to become barren, along with Pluto tormenting them. Blasted Tokyo is the product of the choices of one of Flynn's previous incarnations, as is Infernal Tokyo.
As for the outcome of the law ending, Eternal peace is not guaranteed to have been achieved at all. Just because that was the goal of the faction does not mean that it's the outcome gained; Just as Walter wanted a world of freedom where anyone could make a name for themselves but failed to see that it would devolve into another hierarchy, this time just based on strength. While we're not shown anything that indicates equality and peace aren't achieved at the end of the game, we also aren't shown anything that indicates that they were. The idea that the goal is accomplished is coming purely from Johnathan's own last thoughts but that's unreliable as Johnathan has obvious bias.
Speaking of Johnathan, his view on Law doesn't matter because it's not his will that will be imposed, only YHVH's will. Pluto exists because YHVH wanted to eradicate the survivors in Blasted Tokyo, and when Pluto is destroyed, YHVH sends Ancient of Days to finish the job. The only thing that could support Law being a good ending is that YHVH's goal SEEMINGLY comes to fruition; His goal being the overall gain a group of "Innocents" to make the perfect world with, THAT is his end goal. This honestly further muddies the waters on the Law ending being good because for Blasted Tokyo, Akira actually didn't go against the angels which lead to Tokyo becoming blasted as YHVH is trying to eradicate the survivors. "The Lord's Chosen" are just meant to be children selected by YHVH that he believes will follow his will to a T, but there is no guarantee that will occur. The final issue with the Law ending is really just cause of YHVH himself. Mind you, the ENTIRETY of SMT IV takes place because of him. He caused the demons to enter the world from the Yamato Perpetual Reactor and used it as justification for his wrath. The fact that he needed to take measures to justify his wrath (presumably to The Great Will) proves that he isn't stable and is open to manipulation and destruction if he decides he wants to change things on a whim for any reason. All of this indicates that, at best, the Law ending is neutral in terms of outcome. There will be a period of peace but it isn't a guaranteed world of eternal peace, just as Walter's world ideals don't guarantee true freedom.
@@goldenshadow963gaming Law did not succeed in Blasted Tokyo, you concede this point when you mention that YHVH was trying to eradicate the survivors who rebelled against him before he can populate the world with his chosen people. The world of Law in Blasted Tokyo can't come to fruition without that happening. And again, Blasted Tokyo is an alternate world where Masakado never became the firmament and hence Mikado never existed. The circumstances are different in both worlds, so using them as parallels doesn't work.
Unlike in the Chaos ending, where we literally see Mikado in flames and Lucifer saying you will reign as a king, all we see of Mikado in the Law ending indicates nothing but a stable, peaceful society. It isn't even Johnathan's thoughts, its his narration of what actually happens in the future, so that point about an unreliable narrator doesn't really hold any water, especially since the actual part of the ending which says "Thus was a world created where all that is evil is ousted. The peace that the people know today shall last forever" isn't even said by Johnathan, but by the in-game text. A small point to bring up, also, is that it would be extremely strange for ATLUS to show us one thing (an ending where all evil is gone in an egalitarian, peaceful society) but mean something completely else, because that would be a rare moment where ATLUS doesn't show or tell what literally happens in an ending.
There isn't any indication that Merkabah and the other angels are doing anything YHVH doesn't want either, since a theme in SMT 4 is the angels being robotic servants who can only follow his will, so Johnathan's world is compatible with whatever YHVH wants, and what YHVH wants is pretty consistently for people to worship him, which is what happens in the Law ending, where Mikado becomes a holy land.
What I don't like about alignment biases is the fact that they don't present it as a true ending, or give any context clues that it's the message the game is trying to go for. I don't like that they make all these alignments to give an illusion of choice, but clearly are pointing you in a certain direction. Spoiler alert, but for SMT 4, to even get the Neutral ending (the objectively best ending) you have to not only agree, and disagree here and there with both chaos and law, but you also have to make sure that your hidden "neutral" meter is fully neutral, which is seen on the map. To raise and decrease this neutral bar is essentially random, you have to make VERY SPECIFIC choices, and if you get a single thing wrong you will not be on the track to the neutral ending.
But even after that, even after being on track to get the Neutral ending, you have to complete a series of side quests which are extremely long and tedious (the black card quest especially, where you have to spend hundreds of thousands of macca), and other oddly specific quests which you must complete. The game gives you 0 clues as to which quests to complete, and you literally have to search up a guide to be able to get it. Or, you could spend hours doing every quest you find, and just hoping that you completed all the quests the game WANTS you to complete.
Also I hate it especially when they mistreat law (which is an alignment i actually like), and usually end up making it fully genocide / god's kingdom and not going further than that. Chaos is almost always "survival of the fittest" and neutral is most often presented to be the good choice. I understand it's a JRPG, and that they traditionally have bad / good endings, but the basic black and white structure of the endings which are not the "good ending" just comes across as a lazy way to make bad endings. It also just feels unsatisfying and like a waste of time, when you get an ending with an alignment that you agree with, and it objectively is an awful ending. Every alignment is imperfect, why does one alignment get all the positives and not a modicrum of cons? When other endings are just 1 good thing, and the rest is simply horrible.
It's why I think people love the Devil Survivor games specifically, DeSu 1 especially really gets the alignment choices down, and provides good options for each of the endings. Some endings are more positive than others, but you can make a case that each and every ending is a good choice, and has its pros and cons. No ending is perfect, and while I believe there is an ending which is close to perfect (Amane's Law ending for example), it also still has its own cons and can go bad.
I think that a implicit bias is not a bad thing to have, since having a clear message in a game is a great thing, but the other endings should not be diminished, give the player more choices.
smt1 is so explicit with its messaging, it’s crazy how people miss stuff like this and get annoyed when they see stuff like law/chaos being genocide in smt4
"I can't believe the game that keeps saying genocide is bad is biased towards the route where you don't commit genocide" is a hell of a take some people have about 4
@@bardwayer thats not exactly the take that i see. being biased to neutral, and law/chaos being genocide, are the same thing. l/c being genocide *is* the bias. people seem to think that this means the game’s message is that both law and order are bad and you have to be a centrist to be good.
the thing they misunderstand is that the l/c endings don’t simply represent a lawful or chaotic outlook, it’s moreso that they represent an extremist example of only believing in law or only chaos, in all situations, without nuance. the neutral route often represents this nuance; the ability to make lawful or chaotic decisions based on the situation.
no one is saying “why is the game against genocide?” (at least i haven’t seen anyone saying that). they’re asking “why do both law and chaos have to be represented by something like genocide which is obviously wrong?”. they’re still missing the point, of course, but there’s a clear distinction to be made
(i should also note that i haven’t finished the video lol. but i can assume this is what it’s about)
“light and darkness, law and chaos…
the balance of this world is beginning to crumble away. if it tilts to either side, it will eventually fall apart. what do you intend to do about it?”
@@alpha_c. i think that the game accidentally makes your point clearer
you can only get neutral by being slightly aligned towards law or chaos and then picking the opposite direction, you cannot stay a centrist
I find analyses like these incredibly fascinating, so I appreciate you making the video, but SMT having alignment bias like it does is only proof that alignment is a bad storytelling device. SMT VV is a prime example.
Take Tao and Yoko's friendship, for instance: Both (but especially Yoko) showcased very clear and very nuanced development as characters as CoV went on, and it especially comes to a head when they and Kei go up against the Qadistu. Yoko reaches a crossroads, and even rejects the Qadistu entirely. It says a lot when a character that clearly presents themselves as the Canon's Chaos Rep manages to drift close to Neutral, and I have to praise CoV for that.
Until, of course, the game entirely rejects that development and turns her back into the Chaos Rep, because they "need" a Chaos Rep. Because of course they do. It's an SMT game.
Alignment like "Law" and "Chaos" locks characters into boxes that the game won't let them escape from, even after taking those same characters on journeys that make them question everything they've ever known, like Yoko. All of the interactions that she has with Tao and Kei, her reexamination of her own ideals, even her calling Yakumo a hypocrite; they literally don't matter. None of it matters, because SMT feels like it needs representatives for the player to point at and think are stupid or smart or indecisive, when in reality such characters would be just as indecisive as the protagonist in a situation like that. The CoV Endings each have their own merits and nuance to them, absolutely, but at the cost of robbing their representatives/characters of that same nuance that would have made them compelling in the long run. Yoko (and to a lesser extent Tao, but she actually retains most of her depth during CoV even after becoming a Panagia) is a huge victim of this. Characters in a game like this shouldn't just be mouthpieces for a given ideology; they should be allowed to be their own people. And it sucks.
Sorry if this comment is out-of-turn or uncalled for, but I call myself My2Cents for a reason. I appreciate the effort you put into this video regardless.
Can't really agree, if Vengeance made both Tao and Yoko be in the same team with the protag to change the world it would be pretty much any other JRPG story, and there wouldn't be a single reason to not have a happy ending were all became friends in a better world, besides some generic bad ending.
Characters do need to have strong characterization and having a character like Yoko go full in chaos makes sense with her whole story, it's mostly that for some reason Yoko was out of the story for the last third of the game and the story did little to explain her goddes and human personalities becoming one , and Tao didn't even had a strong stance against you to the point were she just lefts without a fight.
Yoko would work pretty much the same kind of role as Maruki on P5R, a character we knew as a good and reasonable person fall into a extreme to chase an imposible dream.
Devil Survivor it's a great example, if you are neutral a lot of characters can join you because your stance doesn't clash with theirs, but other can only be allies in their routes since what they want isn't posible in any other route, while also making new enemies because changing the world isn't something that everyone will agree to do in the same ideal way.
I get that but honestly I think Yoko's ideas still change throughout the story even after the alignment lock. I feel as if her ending went from destroying the cycle of creation out of spite to actually believing that there was hope in some form of creation. It does kinda suck seeing them stay as law and chaos reps especially right before the qadistu fight seeing as Yoko and Tao start almost switching beliefs with eachother through their bond. Idk tbh, it could go either way. There definitely was some character development but was it the one you want to see? Probably not. I was just waiting for them to kiss and get married for the ending but oh well. Don't ever apologise for giving your opinion! Unless it's rude or whatever. It's great to see people actually engaging with the topics I bring up! The whole alignment bias being a good thing in the video relates mostly to how that alignment being a better one can say something or give a message but as great as it can be it can still have the ability to lock characters in those boxes like you said. (Honestly SMT IV is a prime example, I love Jonathan and Walter but after you enter Tokyo it just feels like they're doing the motions of their respective alignments.)
@@lavenderlexy Mad respect to you for actually being willing to have a conversation like this. Not a lot of people (especially in some MegaTen circles) are willing to do that on a meaningful level.
I don't think it's as much "her development doesn't exist anymore" as it is "her development doesn't matter/is ignored for the sake of turning her into a mouthpiece". I apologize if I didn't articulate that clearly.
Bc we DO see a little bit of her development before the Tiamat fight, as she's clearly taken aback by Kei's and Tao's sudden reappearance after believing them to be dead, and if you do read her ending that way then it shines through in CoV Chaos. It _is_ there, and it's definitely the kind of development I wanted to see, BUT it lacks any sort of meaningful conclusion because Atlus still makes her throw out most of the same talking points of the stereotypical Chaos talking head. It's just... frustrating. And I want it to change.
Also, side note, but very based of you for being a Panagia shipper. More of a KeiXTaoXYoko kinda guy myself, but still super valid.
@@My2Cents.iF7934 This is true! I dont really mind it as much but yeah the possibilities do kinda make me sad
SMT 4 does seem to parallel the original's story structure in many ways, beginning with law and chaos representatives that try to force a choice but end up replaced by your own teammates accepting their ideals in the end. Still want to see a SMT 1 remake though.
Making all the endings equally morally valid would be a very difficult thing. In fact a lot of these demons and gods come from a time before humans developed modern 'morals', so who are we to apply our bias to their actions? I liked DeSu 2's because they built their alignments around less extreme philosophies of Meritocracy and Egalitarianism, and like with Isabeau in SMT 4 Daichi's Neutral alignment can be demeaned as merely someone too afraid to make a hard choice and is unable to commit to a solid course of action.
What kind of new alignments would you like to see in a future SMT game?
Goodness that's a lot of views!
SMTVV has one of the better endings in the series in my opinion. I've seen ppl complaining that there is no neutral ending, but I think that was intentional, since while one route is more chaos and the other is more law coded, they're still far removed from the usual law and chaos shenanigans. Both can be considered and they're not so absolute because the point of the game is how both heroires influence each other and they gradually become more nuanced.
I'll just say that i've read some questionable takes regarding the story and specially yoko in this comment section. It seems that some ppl missed the point so hard that I don't even know what to say honestly.
This is a very good video but please try to speak more slowly and more clearly, some of the things you say are barely legible
Couldn't agree more, I've certainly gotten better since but still something I struggle with. Thank you though!
While you admitted to not playing SMT2, (which ending is Law bias not Chaos btw which is why Aleph is Law aligned in the DLC of SMT4A) and SMT4 is indeed Neutral biased, a lot of the information in SMT4's section is wrong. Neutral!Flynn does not want to rid the world of all demons, his actions in that specific route are incapable of doing that anyways. Instead it was Law!Flynn and Merkabah that wanted that, to the point the angels leave after Lucifer is defeated and the Yamato Perpetual Reactor is destroyed (wiping out Tokyo) so humans can rule themselves as God (either YHVH or Great Will/Axiom commanded) As for SMTV given that the base game had the Law ending where the protagonist was the most happiest, everyone including Lucifer's follower's like Beezlebub are against Yoko, Yoko does not get anything unique for her route's final boss and every ending is cut off from the cycle regardless thanks to Lucifer, (seriously did you not pay attention to Satan?) I highly, highly, highly doubt the game is Chaos aligned.
As for the whole Amala network thing I don't agree with Chaos, the White or Owlman, (Batman was right to punch out that nihilistic fool out) life is far more than JUST suffering and every time so far that a SMT world gets destroyed it isn't the agent of rebirth arbitrarily deciding that it's gone on too long, its some agent of Chaos like Hikawa from the cult of Gaea. Implying its more of fail safe. Lucifer at the very least discovers a way to separate from the network without killing everyone like in Nocturne but for Yoko and the Quadistu thats not good enough, because they want a world without sacrifice. Well guess what Yoko you just sacrificed EVERYONE.
Finally someone says it! These games are about choosing how to change the world. I think those are one of the most obvious games about involving politics. Of course these works are inspired by the real world, why shouldn't they?
I also never understood why people expect all endings to be equal. In real life obviously not all choices are equal. Supportting or not supporting genocide is one such obvious example. I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect for all of them to be on the same every time. I mean, isn't that why having new games with completely new scenarios that offer new possibilities and outcomes stay exciting?
That sentiment runs into issues largely due to the fact that politics is full of misinformation and errant conflation. (Particularly in places like the us, uk, russia, most of south africa, etc) what ends up happening is that people conflate a real world political party with a dramatized idea in their head, and use media to reinforce said idea.
No. Its not exciting if there's one "right" ending lol. At least make the other endings interesting, they don't have to be morally right, since that's subjective.
So Law gets no bias, only hate?
From the games I played SMT V Vengeance could be the closest one to being law-leaning, especially since you spend pretty much most of the time in the 4 region with tao, while yoko is off and about doing some shady stuff and all.
I like the video, but I stopped watching because of the beeping. Try fixing that first the next video because it is hard to listen to.
Hey, I've tried toning it down with my last upload, thank you for the feedback