Metaphor: ReFantasia it’s not a horror game – it’s a fantasy RPG with a story that gets better over time, and a combat system that’s sophisticated and satisfying. But whenever I encounter “people”, monsters who look nothing like any human I have ever seen in my life, I feel like Metaphor belongs to both species.
The first vast dungeon you enter Metaphor it starts with a bang. Soldiers who charge ahead of you in battle are almost immediately slaughtered by a massive, airborne creature with multiple humanoid arms and legs, a skull-like face with wings and horns extending outward, and a torso wrapped in a red egg-like shell.
“Here it is,” your recent companion Strohl says quietly. “It’s… human.”
This is not the only type of person Metaphor: ReFantasia. In this dungeon you encounter other smaller humans, who are lumbering, bipedal creatures whose torsos are encased in massive white eggshells. And it’s not just about this one dungeon. All cities in Metaphor they are regularly terrorized by these people and no one knows why. And somehow each person looks weirder than the last.
The egg becomes the subject of human designs, as it is the design for one of the more striking early human boss fights. Here is the official artwork for the egg monster in question:
I don’t know what I expected when I broke into this monster’s eggshell, but it wasn’t a bunch of armored soldier frogs sitting around a wooden table. I’m about 35 hours into the game, and so far the presence of these monsters – and why everyone calls them “humans” – has yet to be explained. They just Look Yes. It’s terrifying, but also impressive.
I complimented this game on its originality in monster design to my friends, but they immediately pointed out that these monsters were very clearly inspired by the works of the 16th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. Specifically his painting The garden of earthly delights seems to have a huge influence on this game and its terrifying people.
The original Bosch painting is massive and almost 4 meters wide; it is threefold, with the Garden of Eden depicted in the left-hand panel, the human world in the center, and Hell on the right. This far right panel shows inspiration from the egg-shaped monster and many other strange-looking creatures that seem to fit Bosch’s concept of hell.
I may not yet know what the fiction is about with these monsters, but at least now I know where these designs came from, and it was fun to find similarities between the various people in this game and the designs depicted in Bosch’s book paintings. So if you play too MetaphorTurns out you had a secret art history lesson.
