#devil summoner soul hackers

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A Japanese trailer for 'Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers' on the SEGA Saturn. Source: Flash SEGA Saturn Vol. 22 Demo Disc. Support us on Patreon

[duckpasta-kamonabe]

"It's soul hackin' time!" - Nemissa from soul hackers

(comms result)

[yurashimadepot]

That was a nice write-up. But I'm going to defend Ishida a bit since I'm in the mood of talking a bit about Soul Hackers.

The wording and use of the general "technology" term certainly doesn't make him look very bright (although we can't be sure how much we can blame him or the translator since translating, specially from japanese to english, always require some degree of interpretation), but we should focus on the fact he's making a direct comparison to the first Soul Hackers.

That game was released on 1997, and while the internet had been a thing for a while that was when it was starting to get marketed to the general public. As opposed to the marketing then, the story would take a cynical and pessimistic stance on this new technology, the usual scifi cautionary tale, that with people using the internet as a escapism mechanism or the VR Park tree that grows with the wishes of the users getting corrupted by the darkness in the heart of humanity.

What I understand Ishida is saying is that now that the internet is a fixed part of our lives they couldn't just use the same type of story as it would look anachronistic, which is why Soul Hackers 2 is not about computers or "traditional hackers". Note that I don't necessary agree with this idea since I believe you can absolulety make a cautionary tale of a current technology, specially when the first game pretty much nailed everything about it. Maybe since we'd be talking about the present instead of looking into the future he thought it'd be harder to the story to not sound like "old man scared of new thing"? Who knows.

In any case, I don't think Ishida is as disconnected from reality as the interview might imply; even though Soul Hackers 2 isn't about that, there's still some social commentary in the game dialogue that makes it clear the creators are not that naive regarding technology.

(Keep in mind this got released in 2022, before the current AI boom, when generative AI was still in diapers)

Thoughts on Kaneko's departure, the current state of Megaten and etcetera

When scrolling through jpn Twitter, I got reminded of a certain Atlus survey from years ago. For those unfamiliar, Atlus surveys often wonder about how receptive people would be regarding derivative content (spinoffs, remakes etc) of several titles you could think of. Among those that would turn out real were Soul Hackers and obviously the Personas.

[Left: Nocturne, both SMTIV games and Digital Devil Saga as part of the selectable options for a "full remake title" in an Atlus survey from 2020. Right: Shigeo Komori's comment on the future of the franchise in 2022]

The good: the current staff (still) cares enough to attempt to shine a new spotlight on old entries even if some would be deemed less profitable for the current fanbase's standards. The hmm: with Kaneko gone and cementing that "the old days won't return", the shoes become large for newcomers to fit in. Even if one has soul behind the job, the current industry prioritizing long developments and less risky directions makes it tough for them to create even one third of what the original staff was able to do in the same amount of time. On top of it, seeing this huge list of "potential works to get rehashed" almost in a Disney remake vein isn't particularly exciting. SMTIVA was only 4 years old in that goddamn screenshot and you already are throwing the possibility of a remake? Hello?

Non-Persona stuff is so far in-between nowadays that it's hard to write a conclusive piece regarding how far the current staff can go without relying on already established works.

Well... we can comment on the mixed reaction on popular illustrator Shirow Miwa being hired for a "sequel" of Soul Hackers.

The main point of concern here: with one-time artists and non-centralized direction, it becomes harder to achieve a worldbuilding where the worlds of different games smoothly connect together like they did back in the golden era of Megaten.

Recurring characters like Lucifer or Tamaki felt appropriately part of the universe even across different games they were at due to Kaneko's design philosophy of sticking closely to real-life fashion aside having a character's personality and background closely define how they would look staying consistent in the entries he contributed to.

On the other hand, Shirow Miwa was specifically told he should just design on his own instead of working around Kaneko's style that molded the franchise to this day. The feeling that long-time Devil Summoner fans didn't like it due to aesthetic clash was on the air thus contributing on the motives for why the game couldn't grab a significant part of potential buyers.

Before going too deep on this, let's not get the wrong idea: non-staff illustrators being collaborators aren't at all new for Megaten titles. Yasuomi Umetsu for SMT Nine, Suzuhito Yasuda for the Devil Survivor duology, toi8 for Tokyo Mirage, Tatsuro Iwamoto for Dx2, the list goes on. But behind those entries, there's noticeably a lack of commitment prevalent in those decisions. Most are treated as self-contained worlds separated from the world of games Kaneko worked as the main designer, thus they're treated as their own thing instead of another part of the puzzle hence considered "safer to experiment".

Anyone can understand the amount of expectation that such a bold numbered title like Soul Hackers 2, in a subseries well-known for hit after hit like the Devil Summoner series carries above these, however.

Specially when one-time collabs have been shown to carry the risk of underperforming considerably.

[SMT Nine and Tokyo Mirage had the excuse of being in flopped consoles but how lenient can you be to Soul Hackers 2?]

Another recent example of mixed reactions (albeit to a minor degree) were the SMTIV-exclusive demons drawn by Tokusatsu media-related artists Keita Amemiya, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Kyouma Aki: most didn't reappear even for the SMTIV sequel and the few ones that leaped had to be redrawn by Doi, the actual staff artist that took over the role of main character & demon designer thus the face of the current mainline.

[Doi-designed demons such as Chironnupu or Mermaid are the sole examples of SMTIV reps carrying over to other games]

The thing is, SMTIV was the fastest-selling mainline game (even compared to big ones like Nocturne or SMTV) while Apocalypse sold enough to beat Strange Journey's sales. Did it sell well because of the collabs or despite them? Either way, they seem to have decided to stick with style consistency over quantity.

Doi worked under Kaneko for several years before being given the opportunity to produce original designs for the games thus the picture of a recurring staff artist that is deeply involved in how the franchise shaped itself and is well-acquainted with elements that both old and new fans want earns more trust and familiarity compared to one-time contributors.

[It's also important to acknowledge that Doi isn't the only artist retouching art for current Megaten around: Akira Odagaki was the one behind the remake of Strange Journey, with Doi only providing Alex and the exclusive demon additions]

While Kaneko's resigning was understandably a shock for many fans, one cannot argue against his desires towards a career path of more freedom, considering the unstable state that many creatives go through in the game industry, veterans and greenhorns alike:

Is Kaneko a misunderstood genius that Atlus was extremely foolish to let go? Or is he out of touch and will be another Keiji Inafune/Yuji Naka case? Only time will tell. But both things can be true

As a sidenote, Kaneko's interest in shady business practices feels similarly disconnected from reality as something Ishida said in the Soul Hackers 2 interview:

[Nevermind doxxing, bots taking over or drones killing innocent people, guys. Technology turned out to be completely harmless]

What else do we have left?

When talking of style consistency and thought-provoking worldbuilding ties to other titles, mainline SMT as of now stays as the one thing I have been interested on even when under a different team.

SMT5 went through the shortcoming of being another unfinished debut release requiring an inhanced version to truly shine its full potential (which is unfortunate for day1 fans but then again, Nocturne was fully guilty of this for three times).

Kaneko is irreplaceable. But I also enjoy Doi's contributions (alongside Yamai's and Kozuka's) and given the appropriate time and budget, I believe in the potential that the staff responsible for the latest SMTs has in building ground on their own, even regarding new ways of twisting expectations of long-time players and extending the world of SMT to bigger horizons instead of plain soft resets in the continuity.

And at the end of the day, other members of the original staff exist beyond Kaneko and are amazingly receptive to keeping on celebrating the franchise such as Tsukasa Masuko (that recently released a new soundtrack arrangement for Megami Tensei 1&2 funded by Kickstarter) or of course, original franchise creator Aya Nishitani himself that often deepdives into Megaten worldbuilding concepts and theories to the franchise on his Twitter account, even going as far as translating for free the last book of the Megami Tensei novel trilogy for the enjoyment of English-speaking fans.

[fetusmonkey]

cosplay memorial, vol. 1 (1998)

[noahes]

Call upon your demons to solve supernatural mysteries..

[clarin-volseed]

初期は持ち運べるサイズのコンピューターで悪魔召喚!?　っていう近未来感が強かったと思うのですが、ネットやスマホが普及した現在だと浪漫寄りの存在になってるのが面白いですな～ トンチキサマナー大集合なソウルハッカーズが一番好きだった思い出…

[megaten-and-other-polls]

Megaten Funny Little Guy Tournament: Round 1 Match 7

[mimis9thcircle]

01010011 01101111 01110101 01101100 00100000 01001000 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000

[tkinoiitalian]

Nemissa

[randomkposts]

I know for the most part the SMT games are set in diffrent universes.

Save for SMT 1- Persona- and Devil summoners, which are all connected by If. Which makes for an absoloutly wild history.

Still, do you ever think about what would happen if the universes were plotswapped?

Say Cains (Devil Survivor) plans are absoloutly irreversibly destroyed because the Amaricans messed up and angered HIM badly enough that the Atma virus was unleased? Now everyone is turning into demons, and canibalism is going on, and the plans are throughly ruined as an originally key player was eaten.

Or Algon Soft make a bargin with Nyarlathotep instead of, or as well as harvesting souls for Manitou. Lets see what the Crawling Chaos does with digital settings, if he can already make rumors come to reality, what horrors will he unleash with the internet.

Adding persona 3's Shadows into any game that has demons running about just makes the whole thing suck more. By day there are Demon battles, and by night there are shadow battles. Although that could make for some intresting party ballance, having both a day shift for fighting Demons, and the characters you didn't use in the day having a night shift to battle the Shadows

[dijeh]

The Hresvelgr of Justice…? Maybe (+ Soul Hackers no Subete profile)

I randomly stumbled upon this 15th century illumination of Dante’s Divine Comedy the other day and it looked oddly familiar… Now, I’m not sure Kaneko has seen this, so it might as well be me reaching, but he obviously knows Dante’s work and it’s quite possible he might have seen this in a magazine or something… maybe. The resemblance is uncanny though, so take it as you will.

+  Hresvelgr profile in Soul Hackers no Subete

[linlinsenpai]

Been getting into Soul Hackers and I adore Victor’s design.

[wombocombo4x3]

Soul Hackers 2: A Flawed Masterpiece Jaffinator2166

[kplays]

Rei Reiho! And through her we learn something about Kyouji Kuzunoha (the body snatching ghost)

To get Rei in this quiz, you answer your gender as male, and the quickest way to get her is to believe in God, but not talking with demons or magic. You also spend a moderate amount on hobbies, and have few friends. Having few friends is the definite answer needed to unlock Rei Reiho.

Another way to get there is do not believe in God, be chill with people who are late, when asked about instinct you take your time, academic over athletic, which will then ask you about animals. Say yes get the hobbies question, and moderate will again get you the key question about friends.

Some people may have multiple key questions. Or possibly it's not fully investigated.

The guide was on the board at gamefaqs, and never did post for the girl answers. I made one sort of, but as it was made at stupid in the night/morning, it's not as nice as the chart by Master_Shotgun. I'll link it.

I'll talk more later and show Kyouji for now.

The game never calls him Kyouji, but

-(and if you want to avoid spoilers for a 27 year old game that has yet to be translated into by fan or official means, this is hopefully adequate warning and will be continued after the picture.)

- he is a body jumping ghost. And is also a Kuzunoha with an inherited name from his predecessor. So it's not like we ever know his original name. He shows up in four bodies throughout the series that I can think of off the top of his head. His own, Takeshi, this one called Sukeroku, and Detective Todoroki from P2. It would have been cool if he kept showing up for a hot second in games.

As the protagonist from the first game is in Kyouji's original body, and going around being a Devil Summoner, he is also Kyouji Kuzunoha as Kyouji the body snatching ghost is dead. It's hard to say if there is a one Steve limit in effect here.

If you want to learn more about Devil Summoner original game, check out the Let's Play Archive for it by PeaceDiner, or the video made by Marsh for his playthrough

[noahes]

Devil Summoners! Assemble.

[thebluerequiem]

Hitomi and the Protagonist (I called him Adam Sandler) are extremely cute together. I like that the Megaten Protagonists actually get bitches. It's lovely.