"Here's a flower bouquet with horse's legs" sounds funny on paper, but watching it stagger around on the battlefield is another matter.ĭespite their wildly-differing appearances, the Others share one goal in common: Attack humans and consume their brains. Some resemble the nightmarish scribblings of a fevered toddler. Some are covered with twisted masks and armor made of otherworldly substances. They're hostile life forms that are an extremely unsettling mishmash of recognizable and alien elements. The Others are the enemies Yuito and his comrades fight against as members of the OSF. To be fair, I guess a flower bouquet with human legs would give anyone pause. Iizuka and Anabuki say much of the game's story involves the inexperienced Yuito discovering "more about the world" while he feels "strong emotions such as anger and sadness throughout the story." Scarlet Nexus is more or less a shonen "coming of age" story, but it's the aforementioned "Other" that give me pause. Scarlet Nexus's action revolves around Yuito Sumeragi, a fresh recruit in the Others Suppression Force (OSF). (Side note: If a JRPG hero's threads don't make me stop and wonder, "How long does it take them to unbuckle for a pee," they ain't a JRPG hero.)
It's just coincidence that this flashy, stylish action-RPG reflects our current reality-even if said reality lacks Scarlet Nexus's extremely JRPG heroes and their extremely JRPG combat outfits.
Obviously, Bandai Namco started working on Scarlet Nexus before COVID-19 started creeping its way through 2020. Our current struggle to maintain normality through the pandemic makes Scarlet Nexus's premise weirdly identifiable. Scarlet Nexus presents a world where the bond between soldiers is the only thing that lets citizens lead a relatively normal life even as indescribable monsters try to kill them. In Scarlet Nexus, that connectivity is taken to physical extremes-and again, it's out of necessity. The internet sustains us the COVID-19 pandemic that's forced most of us indoors is proof of the vital role the internet plays in acquiring food, necessities, and even education. "But even when we connect our brains, are we really not alone? In a society where everyone's brains are forcibly connected, what is real loneliness? Although this is not the theme of the game, the player will be encountering these questions."ĭespite all the problems the internet causes us, it's not easy to flip a switch and disconnect. "We always say that a person is lonely when they're on their own," says Scarlet Nexus art director Kouta Ochiai.
Our personal lives and data pour onto the internet in a torrent, but many of us feel as isolated as we've ever been. He and the game's director, Kenji Anabuki, explain how the RPG explores loneliness in a hyper-connected world-something that echoes our own modern problems. "'Nexus' means 'connection,'" says Scarlet Nexus producer Keita Iizuka in a preview video distributed by Bandai Namco. While it's extremely common for a JRPG to examine the relationship between characters, Scarlet Nexus focuses on literal bonds that tie people's brains together and let civilization achieve new heights. Scarlet Nexus from Bandai Namco is an action-RPG about the bonds between companions. See more articles like this in our Starting Screen archive. Starting Screen is our weekly column featuring news, commentary, and music to help you get over your case of the Mondays.
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