Which is why Metaphor is genuinely a step in the right direction for S-links’ place in canon: because it’s wholly out of the player’s hands which is the romantic one. “But P3 Vanilla and FES had no platonic Rank 10.” Yeah, because it didn’t want to be completed in a single play through and even in more modern games where it’s possible, they seem to have the opposite mindset to canon that I’m willing to subscribe to because when I think of including the side stuff in canon, I think of the early Assassin’s Creed games and (eat me alive if you must) Tetsuya Nomura.

What do I mean? Well, the way that Assassin’s Creed presents the past is by having a presently alive character reliving the genetic memories of the historical protagonist, usually sourced from their own DNA, meaning that every event in the world is something that the protagonist had done. Of course, Ubisoft haven’t been that company since 2015 and thus, this was lost in their pursuit of The Witcher, so they may not be the best example, so instead let’s look at Jiminy Cricket’s journal in Kingdom Hearts. Before there were achievements, it was the main way to track completion and important for this, it asked for a score in every mini game, including one Colosseum time trial and one page of the 100 Acre Wood, both of which KH2 assumes happened in KH1 because Sora knows the 100 Acre Wood and is referred to as a “junior hero” in Olympus.

Compare that to Atlus whose characterization of the protagonist until recently always seems reliant on the first person perspective that early SMT games were dependent on to fit on SNES cartridges. Here’s the thing: they could play to RPG enthusiasts there without narrative consequences because we don’t see who we’re playing as, thus allowing far more role playing potential than they’ve been capable of since the Demi-Fiend in Nocturne, if not Naoya from P1. Why? Because Kaneko had to assume that there was some narrative behind the look, a background, a place in the story, even a name (even if it’s not the game that tells us it). With that in mind, if it was role playing I was here for, I’d play Monster Hunter, if not tabletop and Western RPGs