Aspect Analysis: Dagda - Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

Originally I was going to do another Retro Review of SMT IV: Apocalypse, but considering the similarities to SMT IV, I would by and large just be retreading a lot of the same things I said there. Enough is going on in the game to separate it from its predecessor, but it is still similar enough a full review would start to feel repetitive. So instead I decided to talk in a bit more detail about something that made the game more enjoyable to me than the first, that being Dagda. Spoilers ahead.

Dadga is one of the series most fascinating Demons to me, at least his portrayal in this game. There is a clear hatred brewing beneath the surface the entire time Dagda is there, and he doesn't seem to have any intent on masking it. While he mostly speaks entirely to Nanashi in his mind, he does occasionally show himself whenever you confront The Divine Powers or Inana.

He is a very cunning and manipulative demon, but everyone seems to be aware of this. He does a wonderful job at arranging a situation that people are forced to follow along with his plans, regardless of how everyone views his intentions. He is a strangely honest manipulator in this regard, and the whole time there is an open-air of hostility that just seems to grow more and more as time goes on.

It's especially at a high whenever talks with Inana, who you find to be his mother. Even if he cares about her, there seems to be a distinct disgust with her for her views on the world. Where I start to get intrigued is here, and the idea that both Dagda and Inana seem to view humanity the same. He does seem to believe that Humanity has potential when not shackled by the guile of the gods and demons of the world, so on that hand, it makes sense why he wants to world where there exist no gods or demons. But the disdain for how his mother handles things doesn't seem justified, and honestly, there is always a sense of hatred in the way he acts that seems to run far deeper than that.

The growing hatred finally comes out during one of the last conversations with his mother, and you learn where the disdain he shows came from. The demons and gods of this universe were originally aspects of the universe themselves. When YHVH took charge of the universe, he gave them bodies and stripped them of their original nature. “Have you forgotten what it is like to be the wind sweeping across the plains? Have you forgotten what it is like to be the rain?” That line right there, while I think it's a little off as I am remembering it off the top of my head, and everything starts to sink in. Without a complete rehaul of the laws of the very universe, he can never return to his actual form. All this hatred and anger is some of the most justified I have ever seen in a game, and despite the game's insistence that the bonds between people are strong, it's hard not to find his goals justified. I honestly found it hard to not choose to side with him comes to the end of the game because I did find myself caring about the guy, despite how much his decisions were guided by anger.

It is really hard for a game to get the player to be willing to get behind someone so full of hate and anger. Dagda is not, for the most part, someone who acts like someone worthy to follow or who is justified in his actions. But as you start to learn the actual nature of gods and demons in this world, you start to realize how Dagda may be justified in the actions he had taken.

Let me describe it like this. He isn't a human who is going to live a limited life, he is a god. He is eternal. As mentioned, his very nature has been stripped from him, and he has to live with this every waking moment of his life, potentially an eternity. He has suffered this longer than anyone one of us has been alive, or will ever be alive for.

SMT IV has problems as a game, including two of the worst dungeons Atlus has ever designed with Twisted Tokyo and the final dungeon. In a lot of ways, I don't think its themes were handled as well as IV's either, but Dagda is such a fantastic character it's a huge game-changer for me. Whereas with IV both Law and Chaos Routes are the worst options, Apocalypse makes a case where the eradication of the current world for one where there exists no gods nor demons, and they do this entirely through the hatred and anger of Dagda.