We need to talk about the ‘humans’ in Metaphor: ReFantazio

Metaphor: ReFantazio is not a horror game — it’s a fantasy RPG with a story that keeps getting better as it goes along and a combat system that’s complex and satisfying. But whenever I run into the “humans,” monsters whose visual design look nothing like any human I’ve ever seen in my life, I feel like Metaphor belongs in both genres.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for some of the enemy designs in Metaphor: ReFantazio.]

The first major dungeon you enter in Metaphor starts with a bang. The soldiers who charge ahead of you in battle get murdered almost instantly by a massive, floating creature with multiple humanoid arms and legs, a skull-like face with wings and horns jutting outwards, and a torso wrapped in a red egg-like shell.

“There it is,” says your new companion Strohl in a low voice. “That’s a… human.”

This is not the only type of human in Metaphor: ReFantazio. Over the course of this dungeon, you meet other smaller humans that are lumbering, two-legged creatures whose torsos are encased in massive white eggshells. And it’s not just this one dungeon. All of the towns and cities in Metaphor are being regularly terrorized by these humans, and no one knows why. And somehow, every human looks more bizarre than the last.

The egg thing becomes a bit of a theme for the human designs, as it’s the design for one of the more striking early human boss fights. Here’s some official art for the egg monster in question:

I don’t know what I expected when I cracked into this monster’s eggshell, but it wasn’t a bunch of armored frog soldiers sitting around a wooden table. I’m about 35 hours into the game, and thus far, the presence of these monsters — and the reason why everyone calls them “humans” — has yet to be explained. They just look like this. It’s terrifying to behold, and also, pretty impressive.

I was complimenting this game for its originality in monster design to my colleagues, only to have them immediately point out to me that these monsters are very clearly inspired by the works of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch from the 1500s. Specifically his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights appears to have been a huge influence on this game and its super-creepy humans.

Bosch’s original painting is massive, almost 13 feet wide; it’s a trifold, with the Garden of Eden depicted on the left-hand panel, the human world in the center, and hell on the right. That far-right panel is where the egg monster’s inspiration is depicted, along with lots of other bizarre-looking beings that seem quite suited for Bosch’s conception of hell.

I may not know what the in-fiction deal is with these monsters just yet, but at least now I know where these designs originated, and it’s been fun to try to find similarities between the various humans in this game and the designs depicted in Bosch’s paintings. So if you’re also playing Metaphor, turns out you’ve been getting a secret art history lesson.