Quicksay: Choice of Canon (Patreon)

If you’re not a fan of Shin Megami Tensei or Persona then the habits of their publisher, Atlus, might be unfamiliar to you. When it comes to these two series, it’s become common practice to release an updated version of each game after some time. This dates at least as far back as SMT III which released in the west after being updated but has two versions in Japan. Known in Japan as Maniax, the second version of SMT III added new boss fights in the form of the now-iconic fiends, a huge new dungeon and the infamous Dante from the Devil May Cry series. Atlus have since continued this pattern with many games: SMT Strange Journey, Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5, Catherine and, most recently, SMT V.

Back when games necessarily came on discs, these tweaked versions had to be sold as standalone experiences. Console games have had their own expansion pack style releases before (see Metal Gear Solid VR Missions which requires the original game disc in order to play) but for lengthy JRPGs where the new versions make sweeping changes across the whole game, it’s hard to see how this would’ve been feasible. Nowadays, with online distribution, it’s more complicated of course. While I think there’s an valid argument for Atlus to provide an upgrade path - especially for those who purchased digitally in the first place - I can’t honestly say their re-release strategy upsets me too much, largely because they seem to be doing something nobody else is even trying. Although I only play DLC expansions if I find a game sufficiently compelling (or get it later as part of some complete edition) I’ve played through a fair few by now and my opinion on them remains much the same as it was ten years ago: while the content of a DLC itself can often be worthwhile it’s usually poorly integrated with the rest of the experience. Bloodborne and The Old Hunters are both good but piling all those new weapons into a relatively small portion of the world always rubbed me the wrong way. The Champion’s Ballad has some of Breath of the Wild’s best shrines but it’s locked behind quite a lot of story progress which is something the rest of the game seemed conscious to avoid. Maybe developers are making the right choice here since too many changes to the base game could ruin what players enjoyed about it to begin with. It’s an understandable reason for caution but it does cause the end result to feel disjointed which is a problem of its own.

The changes in Atlus re-releases are not always warmly received. Although I think the good usually outweighs the bad, I found Catherine: Full Body to be worse than the original for a few reasons. Put simply, Catherine had a very strong premise of a man caught between two women but Full Body turns this clean dichotomy into a messy trichotomy with the introduction of Qatherine, whose scenes are unfortunately infused with a cloying comedic energy, evoking the worst kind of anime brainrot that the original deftly avoided. Of course there are some upsides to the new release and a lot more to say besides but ultimately I’m glad the original got ported to PC.

For a more successful example I’d point to Persona 5 Royal which has some downsides (Take Over is vastly inferior to Last Surprise as a battle theme by my reckoning) but Maruki would be sorely missed if I ever replayed the original version. These re-releases have been dubbed the “New Girl” version by some since they usually introduce a new female character but Maruki (a male school counselor introduced in Persona 5 Royal) outshone them all. Obviously I won’t spoil the story here but part of what makes Maruki so effective is his inclusion throughout the whole game. He first appears quite early on and pops up at regular intervals like many other NPCs. If you played this version first you might be surprised that he was added later, in fact I had that very experience with SMT III, even now it’s a little strange for me to imagine that game without the fiends or the amala labyrinth. At their best, these additions integrate so seamlessly into the experience that they become vital to it, enhancing the game overall. 

Basically, the Atlus re-releases solve one of my biggest issues with DLC. Perhaps it’s just a matter of framing but this approach probably makes the developers more comfortable with such sweeping changes. They can always say “Just play the original” if they mess up, which must be reassuring to them and that reassurance leads to more creative freedom. Probably helps that they’re not trying to maintain two different versions of the game at that point either. Obviously I don’t like paying for the same game in-full twice (I might hold off on buying Metaphor ReFantasio later this year for that very reason) but I actually wish more developers would consider this way of integrating new content, especially if they could make it better value for early adopters.

Anyway, right now the newest new girl is Yoko of SMT V: Vengeance which is the game I really want to talk about because Atlus may have finally struck gold with their unique approach to expansions. Vengeance is an expanded re-release, similar to the others but this time, the biggest additions are optional. At the very beginning of the story, players are brought to a place where Yoko’s soul is housed and offered the choice to take her hand. Doing so essentially brings her into existence, leading the story down the “Canon of Vengeance” route where events play out differently. Leaving her alone leads to the “Canon of Creation” story which was present in the original release. (This has the bonus of preserving the game mostly intact for other platforms aside from the Switch.) When choosing the Vengeance route, the differences start out very subtle, in fact it’s about an hour or two before anything really changes at all and a good while more before substantial divergences occur. Gradually though, the story begins to spiral off in a slightly different direction than before, one with a bit more NPC interaction which was a shortcoming I suppose the team wanted to address. Without getting into spoilers, I wish the game had gone even further in differentiating the two major routes but I found it very satisfying to see how things slowly changed due to the consequences of a single choice at the start. In this sense Vengeance is also well integrated with the original game. It doesn’t feel like pulling the “new content” ripcord in the same way as some DLCs, it’s just a very consequential decision which unfolds patiently from there.

As a reminder, these quicksays are written without much preparation and as an aside, I don’t have the best memory. With that said, I have to ask, has this ever been done before? My gut tells me this is a stupid question but as I think about it, I can’t bring to mind any concrete examples. Instead of crafting a sequel to SMT V, the team went back to the start of the game and made a different route which happens based on a single choice. The new stuff definitely has enough effort put in to merit the title of a “sequel” but it’s not a sequel, prequel, midquel or anything else with a common term. If I had to put a word to it, it would be an “altquel”. Surely this idea is the basis of much fanfiction and there are definitely games with consequential decisions placed near the beginning but has a developer themselves ever revisited a game to craft such an extensive alternate story like this? I can’t recall any examples. Maybe one of the Command & Conquer expansions or something.

This is just a guess but I imagine the literary community still sees choose-your-own-adventure stories as childish, unserious works. Perhaps I’m wrong or perhaps that mood will change over time but it’s not a prevalent attitude to canon in the gaming community. We’re all acclimated to the idea that a game’s “canon” is fluid since it depends on our choices, even in games without heavy narratives. As such I don’t really care that the Canon of Creation and Canon of Vengeance can’t coexist with each other, it was fun to see things play out differently and that’s enough for me. I suspect the same is true for many players who don’t necessarily need narrative progress beyond some chronological endpoint, an alternate path suits us just as well. 

Having played Venegance I find myself suddenly fascinated by this idea of developers revisiting games to show us an different version, even better if it’s framed as an in-game choice which the player makes. As I outlined in a prior quicksay, we’ll likely hit a point where games will no longer advance technologically so developers could theoretically support them for much longer. That might be when the “altquel” really starts to shine because it seems like a natural fit for the medium, more natural than a traditional sequel when you think about it. Game sequels typically ignore all that inconvenient interactivity and pick a single set of canon choices as the basis for the next game, with an altquel there’s no need to confront that problem. If nothing else, I’ll now be daydreaming about how other games might get the Vengeance treatment, the possibilities really are endless.