Cozy Okada Lecture at Tokyo University on Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei’s Early Development History and Creative Philosophy

Despite being one of the pillars behind some of Atlus’ most iconic and important games across multiple generations, Cozy Okada isn’t particularly known for being all that much of a public figure. You’d get an interview here and there while he was working at Atlus, but since leaving the company and going on to do his own thing, he, not unlike many of his contemporaries, has gone on to be a bit of a hermit that’s only occasionally seen in the Japanese media. It’s a really common trend among old guard Japanese developers in general for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that on the rare occasions when Okada does show up in the limelight, especially to discuss his old work, it’s often wise to sit up and listen to what he has to say.

Cue this old Famitsu article from 2008 that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been translated by anyone else. As part of a school festival at Tokyo University, one of Japan’s famous Ivy League schools, Okada held a lecture where he discussed the development history and creative philosophies of the first few Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei games that he worked on. While unfortunately it’s merely a summary and not a transcription of the whole thing, there’s still plenty of insight into the creative mentality of Atlus in its early days that makes it well worth diving into.

And diving into we shall with my translation! Hit the read more link to read the article in full in English. Just make sure to read all the way towards the bottom, as there’s a surprising photo and caption some older fans in particular might be interested in checking out!

-Pepsiman

Cozy Okada Discusses Secrets of Megami Tensei’s Birth at Tokyo University’s May Festival

Okada: “I wanted to share my take on the value of ‘good and evil’ with players.”

May 25, 2008

Tokyo University held its annual May Festival on its main Hongo campus for two days from May 24-25. Featuring a wide variety of events and research exhibitions, on the first day of the festivities, Cozy Okada, longtime producer of the Megami Tensei series for Atlus prior to his current work at Gaia, held a lecture titled “Secret Stories of Megami Tensei’s Birth,” discussing the series of events that took place during its development, as well as its fundamental philosophical tone and outlook.

The lecture was organized by Tokyo University’s Shinto and Shinto Shrine Research Association, one of the school’s clubs. The audience consisted of a diverse range of people from students to workers, a true testament to the popularity that the Megami Tensei series has come to achieve.

The Megami Tensei series begin life as a series of games that were spun out of the franchising efforts for Aya Nishitani’s novel Digital Devil Story. The first game, Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei was released in 1987, with a follow-up subsequently arriving in 1990. Both of these initial games were originally published for the NES by Namco [Bandai Namco Games today] before eventually switching to Atlus, at which point the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series sprung forth, as well as myriad other spinoffs, ultimately attracting renown not just within Japan, but on a global scale. Until his departure from Atlus in 2003 to found Gaia, Okada had been a part of the series since the very beginning, participating as a director and ultimately being involved in most every game to come out of the series during his tenure. Suffice it to say, few people know the Megami Tensei series as well as he does.

“I never thought I’d be able to do a lecture here at Tokyo University. The structure and layout of the campus is so complex and labyrinthine, like what you find in 3D dungeon crawlers,” Okada jokingly stated in his introduction.

Okada began his lecture by first discussing how the original Megami Tensei game came about. Chief among his concerns when developing the game was how he and his team would adapt the novel’s storyline within the confines of a game. One of the most impactful things to him about the original novel was its distinct lack of the usual pretensions about things such as the protagonist being intrinsically heroic, stating that he wanted to include as many of those elements from the original story as possible in the game. Space limitations for NES cartridges, however, made such an ideal infeasible. In his mind, though, even if the development team had all of the space in the world to work with, Okada explained, “Games are a highly interactive medium that are dependent upon player intervention within the proceedings for anything to progress. Recreating the whole novel part and parcel wouldn’t have necessarily made that story fun to actually experience within the confines of a game.”

Chief among such concerns from a practical perspective was the fact that even though the original novel served as a basis for Megami Tensei, game planning and design ultimately had to come first, with systems like demon recruitment and fusing being planned for inclusion on some level from the very start. Balancing those needs in making a fun, interesting game without sacrificing the core appeal of the original novel’s story was an issue Okada and his team took seriously, cherry-picking elements that worked as they went about development.

In retrospect, though, Okada didn’t have the kindest words for that first installment, laughingly contending, “All we had left after everything was said and done were lots and lots of long, winding dungeons!” Nevertheless, the unique gameplay systems Megami Tensei employed coupled with its morally ambiguous storyline resonated with players and made it a bona fide hit. “It sold pretty well, which gave us more breathing room, so starting with the second game, we decided to just write our own story instead,” Okada elaborated with another laugh. It was at that point that Megami Tensei diverged from the source material and forged its own path towards becoming an RPG franchise in its own right.

With respect to why demons based on contemporary motifs like Yakuza and Bodyconian are regular fixtures in the games, Okada remarked that those elements were designed to be “a reflection of people’s individual obsessions that preoccupy them.”



While gameplay systems like the previously-mentioned demon recruitment and fusing are iconic and representative of the Megami Tensei series as a whole, many of the games’ settings in terms of both location and time period are also inseparable aspects in the minds of many players. Chief among them is Shin Megami Tensei’s, which begins with players jumping into the shoes of a normal kid in Tokyo asked by his mother to go out and buy coffee beans. It’s a quiet beginning compared to many other games of its genre because of how normal and true to life it feels, which is what makes it feel so distinctive even today. Though the specifics of the setting can vary from game to game, many of them start out in Tokyo or somewhere in the near future, often both. The reason for that, according to Okada, is that “Tokyo is the rare city in the world that constantly goes through the cycle of destruction and resurrection again and again. From the Meijin Restoration in 1868 to the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 to the firebombings in World War II, Tokyo’s political and economic structures have constantly been made to change and adapt to its current circumstances.” In his mind, such dynamic traits make Tokyo as a setting not entirely dissimilar to the fantasy and medieval worlds that constitute many RPGs to this day.

Another important element that’s part of Megami Tensei’s geneology is the series’ branching storylines and multiple endings, which have been a mainstay of the series since its early days. Though the series’ branching points have often revolved around the conflicting dichotomy between Law and Chaos, on this point, Okada asked the audience, “Is complete law and order all that ideal and correct, while chaos is always something to be abhorred?” In a related point, he also touched upon the significance of demons in the games, saying “’Demon’ is a word that people came up with that has negative connotations, but what did they really do to deserve such a bad rap? [The Japanese word for demon, akuma (悪魔 in kanji), literally means "bad devil,” or, to be even broader, a bad moral influence, though in contemporary times, it’s almost always used to refer to demons and other such perceptibly bad mythical and fictional creatures.] Knowing that, I wanted to share my take on the value of 'good and evil’ with players.“

A full audience sat before Okada as he gave his lecture. Not only did his talk touch upon games, it also delved into religious topics, as well, making it thoroughly academic in its own right.



Given that both gods and demons alike from throughout world religions appear in Megami Tensei games as enemies, Okada saw firsthand the long road it took to getting the series to grow and reach out to overseas audiences, where religious topics are often more culturally sensitive than they are in Japan. Despite such challenges, the franchise has ultimately attained success and gained a foothold in foreign markets, starting with efforts in the Persona series’ localization to rename a handful of culturally sensitive demons. Indeed, though Okada has long since departed Atlus, he still gets questions from foreign media asking whether he’ll ever make another game like Megami Tensei again. The fact that the games have made such an impact despite few overt considerations being made for markets outside of Japan during their development may well indicate that Okada’s insistence on making them thoughtful, interesting experiences as games first and foremost in tandem with their debates about human morality may make them more universally appreciable than what was once believed.

At the end of the lecture, Okada succinctly summarized his game design philosophy. "Is this game something that can be enjoyable to the people playing it and is it distinct from what’s already out there? If your ideas can pass those two tests,” Okada answered, “that’s when you know you’ve got your hands on something truly original.”

Towards the end of his talk, Okada invited Digital Devil Story author and Shinto and Shinto Shrine Research Association alumni Aya Nishitani to come up and join the discussion. Among the things they talked about was the origin of Shin Megami Tensei: if… as a spinoff, with Okada explaining that it was made after feeling that he had hit his limit making Shin Megami Tensei games with a more macro-oriented approach to creating game worlds, making if’s world comparatively more micro in scope.

Gaia’s Official Site [now defunct]

Tokyo University Shinto and Shinto Shrine Research Association Club Blog

(Source: famitsu.com)