Oh, you KNOW it's either Freedom or True Demon. I would guffaw if it's True Demon and suspect they'll never give Law it's own ending.

Huh? No... no reason it can't be an alternate world.

>> The text after credits for the Freedom ending did suggest a sequel, true adversary and all.
 
Though I think the True Demon ending would be awesomely dandy for an SMT Strategy game.
 
"Alert: Muspelheim is under attack!"
 
"Metatron summoned. Fire Of Sinai charging."

Wasn't Nocturne kinda a deviation from the previous story of the first two titles?  I kind of wish its story would stand alone.  After all, the explanation for the universe as given by the mysterious woman in black could have been placed in the game to give future writers, etc, freedom in where they want to drive the series.  Obviously Hijiri acts as a thread to the previous games, but his transgression against god doesn't necessarily mean he is or isn't a character from the previous titles.  I'm sure there are many people who have pissed off God, and so perhaps Hijiri's fate, as an immortal observer of time, isn't unique. That said, and perhaps I've just become a bit too much of a Doctor Who fan, I think it would be interesting to play with the idea of a human who is forced to observe the rise and fall of different orders within Amala.  I don't know how demon collecting would play into it, but it would be a great thing to explore, since this idea of a cyclical multiverse has even allowed for players to find connections between as disparate titles as Persona and Digital Devil Saga.

No, it is implied that Hijiri in one of his past incarnations rebelled against the will of God, and as his punishment, his soul is more or less  immortal, forced to witness and record the history of the universe, blah blah blah.   So Hijiri in the incarnation you meet him has no idea about his former sins or his eternal punishment, and he ironically completes the task assigned to him by acting as a reporter--for the occult magazine and then after the conception by using the terminals to collect information about the Vortex World.
 
Once in the Vortex World, Hijiri more or less becomes a very elaborate Manikin.  Despite having a soul, he has the misfortune of being an immutable entity with mutable properties.  Death after all, is a privilege.

Yeah.  That's definitely for sure, but for players, such as myself, who have no direct experience with the preceding games, I think that there is the possibility that Hijiri could also be something else.  The connection to Aleph is kind of like an "Easter Egg," or a hair pin dropped by the game's writers as to not create a product that would not alienate its past consumer base.  It's not important that he is Aleph, so there's not enough information in SMT3 alone to fully support that Hijiri's true identity is Aleph.  Also, from what Ive read in previous discussions of this topic, I thought that the fate implied by Hijiri's existence is more or less only connected to Aleph if the player in the previous game chose a certain path?  It would certainly "canonize" the true SMT story if these things were set in stone, but I think that one of the points of providing an addendum to SMT3 with maniacs version is to open up the "universe of amala" and not constrict the series to a finite set of possibilities.  The very process through which the world dies and is rebirthed alludes to the possibility of anything and everything coexisting in a greater network of world's/God's lawful universe/etc.

When IS SMT4 going to come out? Geeze, I expected them to catch up with next gen and start the game cycle pattern over again (an SMT, a new series entry, a Devil Summoner, a Persona) But I guess the Persona quoted will be fulfilled first, huh? With 4 and all...