It’s easy to be cynical about Marvel Studios releases these days. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, after all, has felt adrift since Avengers: Endgame brought an 11-year saga to its glorious, bittersweet end. Apart from a handful of gems, the recent movie offerings from Marvel Studios have ranged from forgettable to outright awful, with fans forced to keep up with the absurd number of characters and storylines through multiple films and Disney+ TV shows.

On the surface Thunderbolts*, directed by indie filmmaker Jake Schreier, seems destined to fall into such obscurity with its ensemble of characters, including Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, and Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, coming from at least four separate Marvel projects, each of varying levels of quality.

Cynically, you could also say that the collection of characters are arbitrarily connected at best — feeling more like they were thrown together after screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo were given the handful of characters that were still left in the Marvel toybox, and told to make something out of that. And yet, despite everything it’s got going against it, Thunderbolts* is, surprisingly, really good.

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Music helps bring video games to life, and few series have proven that more than the Persona games. Shoji Meguro, the composer behind the beloved RPG franchise, has widely experimented with an array of styles, from acid jazz to bubblegum pop. For Atlus’ latest game, though, Meguro had to embrace a completely different style – something that harnessed the grand, almost legendary feeling of a high fantasy epic.

Metaphor: ReFantazio was one of 2024’s defining games, and its soundtrack accordingly received a lot of attention. In particular, players couldn’t get enough of the game’s ear worm of a battle theme, an infectious tune with a methodical, almost rap-like chanting.

“For the battle theme, I was tasked by the development team to create something commanding and eccentric. With that in mind, I started doing my research and I came across a monk by the name of Keisuke Honryo,” Meguro tells Inverse, “The chanting itself is in an original language with inspirations of Esperanto. One of the greatest challenges of the song is being able to sustain a fast rhythm while reading, and Keisuke executed it beautifully.”

Six months after the release of Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus is partnering with iam8bit to turn the game’s soundtrack into a stunning vinyl set. Each disc of the set is meant to represent one of the party members of Metaphor – with brand new cover art to boot.

To celebrate the release of the Metaphor’s vinyl, Inverse had an exclusive interview with Meguro, digging into the creation of the soundtrack for Atlus’ fantasy epic.