Vorark
Erudite
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2017
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Couldn't find a general Atlus or SMT thread, hence this thread.
An enlightened soul did a thorough research about the past and present state of Atlus and its recent decline in quality output. Explains much about the Persona milking, mediocre SMT entries, Kaneko's disappearance, IPs being left in the dust. Quality reading material, imo.
Source: https://www.talking-time.net/showpost.php?s=8f1fa8a6022550f3d375685d1681a965&p=2428711&postcount=1
An enlightened soul did a thorough research about the past and present state of Atlus and its recent decline in quality output. Explains much about the Persona milking, mediocre SMT entries, Kaneko's disappearance, IPs being left in the dust. Quality reading material, imo.
Source: https://www.talking-time.net/showpost.php?s=8f1fa8a6022550f3d375685d1681a965&p=2428711&postcount=1
Atlus has had a lot of upheavals in the past decade due to internal corporate politics and whatnot. Being dissolved into Index Corporation in late 2010 and the reorganization of internal development teams changed them a lot (and was the start of their move into pushing microtransactions and otaku-bait skeeviness into their games). Index Corporation went bankrupt in 2013 while neck-deep in scandals, and was subsequently bought up by Sega, who then took the game development division that was formerly Atlus and recreated it as its own entity again. But let's dive deeper into the shuffle of people that was going on before and during all of this.
*Disclaimer: This is not going to be super comprehensive, and some information may be missing. I'm aiming to focus on certain individuals relevant to recent conversations.
Who we once knew as Atlus
To really understand who Atlus was, we need to look at the actual people responsible for making it what it was.
Cozy Okada - One of the original founders of Atlus in 1986, as well as one of the creators of the Megami Tensei franchise. He directed and produced many of the games for the franchise, up through 2003's original version of Shin Megami Tensei (III): Nocturne. He departed after Nocturne due to supposed burnout and disappointment with the weak reception of its release (he would then go on to form Gaia and take a number of Atlus veterans with him, like Atlus' main composer Tsukasa Masuko). His final credited role with Atlus was as an executive producer on the first Digital Devil Saga.
Tadashi Satomi - The primary writer behind the early Persona games, as well as the Digital Devil Saga duology (in collaboration with writer Yu Godai, who created the concept for said duology). He departed Atlus after Digital Devil Saga 2, joining Okada and his fellow ex-Atlus veterans at Gaia.
Kaneko Kazuma - Alongside being one of the founders of Atlus and the Megami Tensei series art/character design director, he was the primary creative behind the original Nocturne. After Okada's departure, Kaneko took the reigns as the general creative influence for much of the Megami Tensei franchise going forward. Notably, though, is that he had no known active involvement in the creation of Persona 3 and 4. Kaneko's last major work was the original Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, which was essentially the final breath from the Atlus that we once knew.
One major player that rarely gets acknowledged is Shōgo Isogai, who played a key role in nearly every Megami Tensei game and is notably credited as scenario writer for Nocturne, the Trauma Center games, the first Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha game, and Strange Journey. His writing presence became much smaller after those projects (and notably so after Index Corp came into the picture), becoming a scenario adviser on Devil Survivor and then acting as a planner for puzzle stages in Catherine and confidants in Persona 5.
Another important name that gets little attention is Azusa Kido, one of the few female creative leads in Atlus. Her work is credited as far back as Maken X for the Dreamcast in 1999, and she was both the game director and scenario writer for Persona 3 Portable (writing the entirety of the female protagonist story). Her contributions after Index Corp took over dropped to general planner roles in various features for later games. She had some part in writing the scenario for Persona 5, but it is unknown how much of her contributions actually made it into the game due to known production issues alongside the game also having TEN other writers on it.
And then we had other major staff like Makoto Kitano, who was a chief designer in a number of the Megami Tensei games, but left after the Raidou games and ended up joining Compile Heart, of all places, to direct a number of things. One of those games being, uh, Monster Monpiece. He worked on the Windows version, but this gif still applies.
Basically, a lot of Atlus creatives left or effectively vanished into the company.
The "New" Atlus
A lot of these names are people who've been with Atlus for a while, but only recently came to prominence with the paradigm shift that occurred some time around Persona 4, though there are hints of it seen in Persona 3.
Katsura Hashino - A man who has worn many hats, he has been director and producer on various titles, with his directorial debut being Maken X. While credited as the director of Nocturne, he was mainly in charge of developing gameplay mechanics like the Press Turn battle system. He was the creative lead behind Persona 3 and 4, and their success put him in a position to take more creative control of future productions at Atlus (like Catherine). With that came new names that would appear among the games' credits, like scenario writer Akira Kawasaki, whose contributions were entirely to Persona 4 and its related games. Persona 4, in particular, was such a lucrative and marketable game that it convinced the execs at Index Corporation go all in on it when they took over Atlus. Atlus' original R&D 1 development team was divided up and P Studio was created just for Hashino to continue putting out more of his profitable visions.
Kazuyuki Yamai - Another Atlus employee whose work goes back to Maken X, he was was responsible for directing both the Maniax and Maniax Chronicle edition of Nocturne, and also directed the Raidou Kuzunoha games (which were produced by Kaneko). When Index Corporation divided up Atlus R&D 1, Yamai was given Team Maniax (formed of the staff who worked with him on the expanded versions of Nocturne) to produce future titles in the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series.
Both Hashino and Yamai would be responsible for shaping the future of their respective series. Following that, we would gradually see the disappearance of other IPs like Trauma Center, the Dept. Heaven games from Sting, Growlanser (whose development team at Atlus, Career Soft, was dissolved in 2013), and many other smaller projects that Atlus liked to experiment on (i.e. Snowboard Kids, Power Instinct) as presumably more of the company's budget went into building a multimedia monster around contemporary Persona and other similar products.
*Note: Etrian Odyssey managed to survive so far because one of its creative leads, Shigeo Komori (whose work goes as far back as Princess Crown in 1997), was and is still around to direct and lead development of the games on presumably a shoestring budget.
Basically, Index Corporation had completely converged nearly all of Atlus' development staff around the visions of Hashino and Yamai.
This meant that Hashino and Yamai would be fully capable of injecting their particular worldviews into the games that would make up the face of today's Atlus, for better or worse. Hashino's works have been well known to include overt misogyny and discrimination against LGBTQ, with multiple instances of depicted gay and trans panic in Persona 3-5 and Catherine. Yamai's works exhibit xenophobia and extremist Japanese nationalism, with Shin Megami Tensei IV's endorsement of ethnic cleansing against Chinese people. Both have worked with writer Shinji Yamamoto, who was the lead scenario writer on both Persona 5 and SMT IV (with Yamamoto's other notable work being on Devil Survivor 2, where an entire arc is dedicated to peeping on the female characters while they are undressed and undergoing medical examinations). Both of those games notably also include significant writing contributions from Hashino and Yamai, respectively. And in the case of Hashino, he has revealed in various interviews that he does hold a number of those beliefs that he injects into the games (like his belief that a female protagonist for his recent games is unnatural and "not worth it"). Plus, now we have an upcoming remake of Catherine that features a new childlike character that is being depicted as both romanceable and possibly also trans for the sake of another transphobic scenario.
This is the Atlus that we have today.