"Easy to work with": ATLUS shares insight into Shin Megami Tensei V's development process using Unreal Engine 4

The latest main entry in the iconic Megami Tensei universe is the first installment to use Unreal Engine (Image via SEGA)
The latest main entry in the iconic Megami Tensei universe is the first installment to use Unreal Engine (Image via SEGA)

Japanese developer ATLUS is renowned for Shin Megami Tensei V, the acclaimed Nintendo Switch JRPG. It utilized one of the most popular engines, Unreal Engine 4, for the 2021 game.

Modern advancements in commercial-use game engine technology have made the development process easier than ever before for studios today.

Speaking in an Unreal Engine Spotlight developer interview, ATLUS' developers delved into how Unreal Engine 4 has made things easier for the team than ever before.


Unreal Engine 4 streamlined a lot of work on Shin Megami Tensei V

1) The world

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Lead Field Designer Kohei Onishi was in charge of molding the various landscapes for the game. To quote:

"Our theme for this game was to depict the expanse of the demon world from the Megami Tensei series on an epic field using Unreal Engine 4."

The sandbox reas of the game feature big open spaces to explore. These often feature ruins and other remnants from the past, like a post-apocalyptic civilization.

The Pivot Painter feature of the engine allowed the developers to create foliage and even abtract objects throughout the landscape. The Bump Offset feature, meanwhile, allowed them to add further detail to assets like the ground to add depth to the overall surface.


2) The artwork

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Lead Modeling Designer Takumi Yoshihara addressed the art design element of Shin Megami Tensei V.

"Our approach was to maintain the dark atmosphere of the Shin Megami Tensei series while adding new 3D depictions of hand-drawn illustrations."

In a nutshell, the developers combine a celshaded approach with photorealistic elements. This is not uncommon in Unreal Engine 4 games as seen with titles such as Borderlands 3. The engine is known not just for its lighting but also its materials system, allowing relevant models to be "painted" for the appropriate look.

These can range from rougher materials (like tree barks) to shiny metallic ones (like armor). Something like Nahobino's blue chest-piece is a great example. In many cases, like the demons themselves, the team had to employ custom materials to reach the desired results.


3) The immersion

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Lead Event Designer Katsuhito Hora highlighted the importance of cinematics this time around.

"One of our goals for Megami Tensei V was to create cinematic cutscenes, and I think that Sequencer was an indispensable tool for accomplishing that goal."

The Sequencer is an editor specifically used to tailor cutscenes to drive cinematic flair. The ease of use with regards to parameters like camera and lighting was picked as working in the team's favor for on-the-fly adjustments. They could also tweak the models in the scene and make changes in a single take.


4) The fundamentals

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Lastly, Lead Programmer Yoshiki Oyamada praised the Blueprints scripting system of the engine:

"I should say that we threw out all of our gameplay scripts from Shin Megami Tensei IV and replaced them with Blueprints."

Unreal Engine 4's Blueprint is, in a nutshell, visual scripting. It allows developers to use a graphical, node-based method to create gameplay systems - rather than traditional programming languages.

Oyamada further added that since they migrated to a brand new development environment, they ditched the custom technology of Shin Megami Tensei IV (for Nintendo 3DS).

Despite that, the easy-to-use-and-understand Blueprints system ended up being more flexible and powerful than their own scripts created for the 3DS title (which were unusable for Shin Megami Tensei V in the first place).


What about performance?

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The interview spotlight covered the visual makeup of the game, though it would have been interesting if the team had addressed the performance and optimization side of things too.

As per Digital Foundry's analysis of the game, the title pushes the Nintendo Switch fairly hard. The cutscenes, for example, offer some of the most jaw-dropping visuals on the portable.

The great implementation of highly detailed character models, great post-processing work and depth of field effectx in the background are a visual treat - but comes at the cost of frame rates.

On top of that, Shin Megami Tensei V still fails to reach the target frame rate of 30 FPS even in tame scenarios where nothing demanding is going on — which suggests something odd is going on in the background.


What is Shin Megami Tensei V about?

As an ordinary high school student, players are transported to a the dimension of the Da'at. The protagonist finds himself in a war between demons and angels.

Saved by the mysterious deity Aogami, both fuse together to become a being called the Nahobino. It follows in the footsteps of the previous entries. The world is larger than ever before, however, there are still several dungeons to explore and monsters to fight.

Battles are turn-based and players must masterfully utilize their skills and elmental knowledge to take down foes. The series is known for its challenging difficulty and Shin Megami Tensei V continues that tradition. Even minor mistakes can lead to the entire party being wiped out.

Players can also recruit new demons across various folklores and mythologies via the Demon Negotiation system. They can also fuse demons together to create a more powerful variant with the Demon Fusion system.

Shin Megami Tensei V launched worldwide on November 12, 2021. It is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch hybrid console.