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...

Quote from Tallgeese on 01/20/08 at 22:40:19:

 
 
 What if in FREEDOM ending, it suggested something else, another force that "Walked The Path of Thorns" where the True Enemy is Lucifer. There are millions of mythologies filled with tales of martyrs and messiahs, all ol' Kaz has to do is make a trip to the library and pick from there

Not going to happen, but what if the true enemy was neither and either the player or something else?

Quote from Tallgeese on 03/30/08 at 08:43:48:

 
 Christophobic?... That where ya hate Christians or afraid of them. But anyway. Hey, any mention of Wiccan deities in any of the games

Quote from Angel Heart on 03/30/08 at 09:13:33:

 
Exactly. And SMT is full of the first one.
 

Well, that's true up until SMT2 and beyond, where it becomes increasingly obvious.
 
In SMT1 Law and Chaos were fairly balanced. In SMT2 on, Law has been 'the bad guys;, and Chaos and Neutral the 'good guys' against ebil ebil oppressing Gawd. And sad, pathetic 'rage against the machine' teenagers gobble it up like the sheep they are.

I really don't get Japan's ragging on Christianity considering that it seems Japan is pretty much embracing of it as a culture (according to an interview with Satoshi Kon on Paprika). Kon mentioned that becuase Shintoism accepts the belief that there are many gods, that the Christian God is relatively easy to incorporate into the synthesis religion Japan has (they love coming religions apparently, ever since Buddhism) and they actually incorporate Christianity int otheir lives as traditional wedding ceremonies. So it's sort of weird to see games like Xenogears and FF Tactics diss.

> . > And here I was thinking that whole world war 2 thing was a thing of the past...
 
But actually, if you think about it, Americans also typecast certain countries in villain roles (you know, ina ction movies and games) even if we're on good terms with them.  
 
 
It's not that we hate you, it's just that your country makes a good megolomaniac adversary  

Quote from Alizarin on 04/01/08 at 00:56:23:

 
We have a winner. And supposedly this BS is somehow 'mature' or some crap.
 
At least this series usually has nice gameplay, I wish they'd balance the games better in this regard though, both story and charcater wise.
 
Seriously, look at the Four Seraphs: Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael. If you pay any attention at all, ever since SMT1 they've been weaker and weaker.
 
SMT1: They're final, seperate, endgame bosses. Gabriel was pretty much the only boss invulnerable to the Sleep Bullet exploit I can recall.
 
SMT2: You fight Uriel and Raphael in one fight as midgame bosses. Michael is up next, and while his HP is huge... that's about it if I recall.
 
SMT3 on: All of the Seraphs from this point on are TERRIBLE as bosses. You fight Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel together, and they suck horribly. THE SERAPHS DO NOT HAVE OR JUST BARELY USE DEKAJA ON YOU. This includes METATRON. He just will not pop it off after a point, making him pathetically easy.
 
To drive the point home, the game says Metatron is stronger than Beelzebub. But check their technique list.
 
Beelzebub: Death Flies is the big news here. You MUST protect against Death OR YOU ARE DEAD, GUARANTEED. And if you block death you still choke on Megidolaon like damage. This skill is seriously, seriously broken. IT EVEN GETS WORSE in DDS WHEN HE GETS MAHAMAON AND HE WILL CHAIN IT.  
 
Metatron: Debilitate, Fire of Sinai, Maragidyne, Mahamaon. You block Mahamaon, whoops, he loses both turns. Fire of Sinai is dangerous if you consider he can Makakaja... until you realize when he starts casting Makakaja HE BASICALLY STOPS CASTING DEKAJA ON YOU. This renders his Makakajaing USELESS since he can just you can just buff yourself. He does not improve in DDS except maybe replacing his one hit physical attack with Revelation and gains Mind Charge. In fact he gets worse in comparison to bugboy up there since you don't have to burn two skill slots to prevent you being autokilled. In DDS, he still barely knows he can Dekaja so he sucks as a boss.  
 
He even has WAY WORSE IMMUNITIES as bugboy in DDS suddenly becomes almost Masakados-level immunity wise in DDS. (Immune to all but Phys, Fire, Almighty, Metatron just gets standard boss immunity); This despite the fact you have to do way more work to even get to Metatron... including FIVE annoying optional bosses that all have better immunities by leaps and bounds. He has bar none the worst optional boss immunities in the entire game, and is overall the easiest optional despite the fact he requires the third most work to get to.
 
It's like... what the fuck here. That's just insane.

The final boss should be a giant black penis.

Really? Where?
 
Argilla was a ditz. Same with Cielo, who barely got any story.
 
Serph used to be an evil fucker, turned into a nice mute. Not a good tradeoff.
 
Heat turned into a brash-ish good guy, turned into a brash guy in general because OMG Sera h8s him for going against her loverboy Evil Human Serph.
 
Angel was your standard Chaos spokeswoman... except mysteriously in DDS the 'God' wasn't really cursed and reviled by anyone despite being EVERY BIT AS MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE IF NOT DOWNRIGHT IDIOTIC FOR LISTENING TO A WHINY MENTAL PRETEEN. I guess that only happens when you're Judaic and awesome.
 
I only cncede the point to Gale and to a lesser extent Roland.

...Or you can be like me, IE rational, and lean towards the apathy side. That is, why the hell do I have to answer to a bunch of imbeciles hellbent on disliking an entire country for no real good reason? I'd much rather they looked in the mirror and realize that if they were in a similar position they would probably do very similar things. Speak for yourself about hanging heads low in shame, you're only validating the equally jingoistic views of crowds like Eurofags. I don't need to rationalize what the country I happen to live in does to foreign idiots, even if I do think we should've gone all SMT YHVH on Iraq by now.
 
I mean, there's hush hush about the Rape of Nanking in Japan, but do you see similar hush hush over Vietnam? No. What the hell here? That kind of thing is utter bullshit.
 
Any SMT game bashing America at any point in time would go over well with Megaten fans, because guess what? A large number of them are all "FUCK AMERIKKA, UP WITH GLORIOUS NIPPON WAN THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO BOMB HIROSHIMA OH POOR CHERRY BLOSSOM SPIRIT OF JAPAN" types to BEGIN WITH. Your point is wasted on that front since I'm barely being hyperbolic, which is distressing.
 
The Constitution always was a piece of paper, written by philosophers claiming that they held knowledge of certain fundamental truths. Shame is, these truths don't exist, and even if they do, they certainly aren't inalienable simply by virtue of the fact that for all practical purposes they can be taken away by a greater power.
 
The American Empire schitck is old and tired, not to mention shallow at this point while being lauded as 'mature' by people with helium in their heads instead of gray matter. Which is suppose fits how SMT plots are in general.

I question what gave you the right to decide which states have a legitimate claim to sovereignity and which don't, since that utterly defeats the point you were trying to make in your first paragraph. If you can think that something has a less legitimate claim, any greater power can turn around and make that very same claim, and since it's merely a difference of pure opinion... I also hope you aren't referring to Israel there, that bit is also ancient and tired.
 
It's unfortunate, but he who has the power and is willing to exert that power makes the rules. As much as I try to uphold a standard of justice, it is simply an unfortunate fact of life that Congress is unwilling to exercise its power for fear of political hardball. And that's Congress' own fault. Further, you misunderstand me. I don't want war, I want genocide of opposition since I have no reason to value human life that is not dear to me for one personal reason or another. If I had a choice between letting the cesspool called Iraq continue to exist and wiping it off the map... well, let's just say I have no particular attachment to the area. I would've been quite happy if it was announced forthwith that Iraq was about oil and it was actually about oil, then we'd have seen some sort of material benefit from it.
 
As I said, I don't particularly care what older Western nations think; as noted, they have their crimes, and I maintain that if they had the kind of power the United States does, they would be quite happy to act in a similar fashion, which I note you did not dispute. Let's face it, it's like war fever: it lasts until you hear of setbacks. That kind of thing happened to Napoleon.\, for excample. While he won, the French were happy. When he eventually lost... well, not so much. If he had kept winning the French would've been happy to conquer more. I guarantee that if the British Empire never had any setbacks for example, like the American Revolution, they would probably still be pretty imperialistic. It has nothing to do with maturity, it has all to do with simply not having the power and resources.
 
Concurrance on P3.

WALLS OF BULLSHIT

^ But wouldn't it make sense for angels not to be alligned with that sort of ideology considering it's pretty much anarachical, or did I just not read that correctly?
 
I thought the most unique of the reasons was Isamu's. Not Chaos, Law, or Neutral, but you pretty much become your own God. Doesn't mean it's the better of the reasons, but it's a neat idea to consider.

I think that its disgusting that you think it's appropriate to value one kind of human life over the other.  I never even said that I would want to see genocide, although you think that I must be passively implying it, which is fair I suppose, given the fact that I said I was using your same logic.  I did not however mean to imply that I thought it was ever appropriate to endorse genocide, rather that my disapproval for the state of Israel runs in a similar vein to your unanimous disapproval for what seems to be an extension of all Muslim nations in the Middle East.  That disapproval by the way, and only seeing Iran, Iraq, etc, simply as oil resources /anyone/ could tap, is completely disgusting and ignorant of the rich culture and heritage those nations hold that have heavily influenced the world today.  I would much rather have all the ancient contributions of the Middle East than Microsoft XP, buddy.  Whether or not you think that sharia, Islam's holy law that most Westerners misinterpret and find fault in, is a good way to live, it's completely pigheaded to think that the way that we live is the only correct way to live.  Obviously there are plenty of Muslim assholes who think that their life is the only right way to life, but that is really only a small portion of believers.  There are as many scary ass Christians in this nation, and if you stop to look at Western history, and say, look at all the blood shed that was experienced simply within wars between Christians over Christian issues, you can honestly see that Islam, which is about as old as Christianity was then, is undergoing the same ideological battles.  Europe did not progress for a long time thanks to its struggles with what chalks up to religious bullcrap, and I think that its only fair to think that Islam must undergo a certain series of revolutions before the cultures and nations of the Middle East "move forward."
 
If you need me to list examples of how Islam can and has proven to function in a way that is not self-crippling and a source of human oppression, I will do so.  It's really easy.  If anything your take on it is pretty much based on what, how our media has represented it?  How thoroughly biased authors have written about how Islam can never function successfully with democracy?  And hey, maybe that's true, but who's to say that democracy is what the universal form of government should be.  Let's escape McCarthyism please and realize that non-democratic forms of government aren't legitimate threats to democratic ones.
 
I am sure that there are plenty of places where I am a "hypocrit," but I actually think it's not important whether or not my sentiments are all in accord.  I really think that everyone in some way or another is a hypocrit--the human condition, in my opinion, is largely supported by the anxieties our hypocrisies induce.  I am not the one calling the shots, or the one making foreign policy to "placate Muslim nations."  I am a person in this world who can empathize freely with whatever cause I want.  Those decisions don't make me a deplorable human being in my opinion, and if you consider who I am as an individual, you might think its surprising that I'd even be defending a nation like Iran right now (why after all would a homosexual ever do that?  Maybe because I am multi-dimensional--who cares if the thinking isn't completely resolved).  I mean, it's completely nuts that their leader is calling for the end to Israel--as a REALITY--that is terrifying. My stance is that the nation in itself is a problem that never should've been created, endorsed by us, and given an unfair advantage to stake its claims to the Holy Wasteland.  Also, a united Muslim front is completely different from an Empire.  It would be a composition of many individual sovereign states that don't have allegiance to any one certain state (and don't treat Allah as an impirical binder, the Christian faith functioned similarly for a good portion of the common era). If anything a unification of Islamic states may be an opportunity to calm the Middle East or at the very least let it direct its ideological problems against itself while the rest of us move on.  
 
I already expressed the idea that the European nations relinquishing their territories was along the lines of a lack of will to fight, so you aren't introducing me to anything obvious I may have overlooked.  My point about Kosovo was perhaps part of the walls of bullshit Isao Kronos was talking about--it was extraneous.  I am pretty indifferent to its independence, but just wanted to note how its nationalism is causing anxiety in Europe.  
 
Basically Tallgeese, when it boils down to it, don't accuse me of being a "disgusting person."  I think a large percentage of what you have said can be taken as equally "disgusting," and bombastic.  I have no intentions of taking this to a personal level or assuming anything about your character ( and likewise intelligence ), so do me a favor, and do the same.  For all other discussions I have seen taking place on this board, I am fairly in accord with your opinions.  I don't need an over the top denunciation of my character because I have said something equal in caliber to your own comments thrown in my face.  

Then I'll let it drop, my apologies.  I misinterpreted your reaction to my comments.  At any rate, I have every intention of ending my tantrum; it's clearly unproductive, and I don't want to sour my relationships with anyone on this board.  Hopefully Tallgeese, our P3 haters "social link" isn't reversed or broken.
 
And out of completely unrelated interest, were you the member that either on the old or new boards disliked the fact that Persona 3 classified Lucifer as Star?  In a British Literature class I have been taking recently we were discussing, I think, how William Blake drew an allusion to the understanding of Lucifer as the brightest star.  It could've been someone else, but it immediately reminded me of the comments on this board.  I'll try to drag up the reference at any rate next time I see the point being discussed. I think for whoever it was that questioned that, this provides a cultural context that makes Atlus' classification of Lucifer under star appropriate.
 
To return this thread back to something of its namesake, should an SMT4 come out, how overt a connection do you think it will have to Nocturne?  Do you think that the connection will be solely game play based, or a sly continuation that opens room for interpretation of what developers intend as the true ending of Nocturne?  I mean, basically, will it be easter eggs (kind of like what we got in Nocturne as a successor to SMT 1 and 2) or will it be just like a game in a similar vein, etc?  Marketing wise, what do you think has the best chance of reaching development?

Yeah, I just saw that on the wiki page and was like wtf?  Lucifer has no business being in Judgment.  I think that maybe the star arcana shouldn't be seen solely as a pure bright guiding light--maybe it could also be associated with the arrogance of Lucifer.  It is unconventional in consideration of the traditional attributes associated with the Star arcana, like tranquility, calmness, purity, blah blah blah, but stars are like an ideological mirroring and division of light/God.  Even if Lucifer is fallen, I don't think he's necessarily one and the same with entities under the Devil arcana like Beelzebub, which are truly demonic at the core of their being.  In short, devil in my opinion is just a little bit of an understatement for Lucifer.  Beelzebub isn't a traitor, he does his job, Lucifer is.  Lucifer wasn't designed to torment or deviate mankind, and so his fall could be seen as much as a punishment as it is a change of what he is.   I mean, there are certainly many many aspects of the devil arcana that fit Lucifer though, and yeah, I wouldn't complain if he was classified as Devil... Your argument makes sense.  I think one other idea that could keep Lucifer in star though is the moral implications of his arrogance--this is kind of like a check and balance to the nature of the Star arcana--there is a darker side to it.  A star like Lucifer should never assume it is as light and equal as God.  His place in the arcana allows for the overall meaning of the arcana to take on more dimension.

True story.  
 
Oh well, the angels are always a disappointment.  Instead of kicking dark attributed things' asses, they just get mauled by them.  There is never an expression of the duality of the angelic figures--well.... there's an expression of half of their duality, the less conventional half, which often makes them something along the lines of the status quo angelic aristocratic dbags from heaven on high.... and that's stupid.  Or at least boring when its done every single time.
 
I would've liked to see Christ make light items materialize when he maxed out all his skills.  Look guys, I died for you, take this lulz.

I kinda hope it's true demon because the Neutral thing is getting kind of tired.

Quote from ariseishirou on 04/28/08 at 01:30:17:

 
I wouldn't mind if Law won the next one.

If they don't just break away with another story (which seems most likely these days), I'd put my money on neutral or true demon. Prolly true demon.
 
I'd prolly "like" to see Law get a foot in, but I doubt it would happen...
 
I felt kinda' ripped off my first play-through though, when I turned down everyone and didn't even get a final battle. =P That'll teach me to not want to kill my friends! I should have known better, really...

Quote from Tallgeese on 04/28/08 at 22:37:46:

 
But it's Lucifer, what do you expect? ;3 I liked the attention on the inhabitants of the undercity. On the flip side, Law was wtf, and Neutral was just kinda predictable.

You know, I'd rather the next game be like SMT 3, and just sorta stand on its own story-wise.