Shin Megami Tensei
The stories of the core "Shin Megami Tensei" titles frequently include fighting against a tyrannical God. The method of story-telling in the series can involve traditional use of cutscenes and spoken dialogue ("Persona", "Digital Devil Saga"), or a text-based minimalist approach that places emphasis on atmosphere ("Nocturne"). A tradition within the core "Shin Megami Tensei" series is to focus on a single playable character as opposed to a group. Alongside other recurring characters is Lucifer, the fallen angel who stands against God and is portrayed in multiple forms to represent his omnipotence. Since "Megami Tensei II", the series has used a morality-based decision system, where the player's actions affect the outcome of the story. In "Megami Tensei II", the alignments were first defined as "Law" (the forces of God) and "Chaos" (the army of Lucifer). In future games, an additional "Neutral" route was included where the player could reject both sides. Selected games have been thematically or otherwise linked to a particular alignment. "Shin Megami Tensei II", due to events prior to the story, focuses on the "Law" alignment. For "Nocturne", all the characters were roughly aligned with "Chaos", which was done both to bring variety to the series and allow the development team more creative freedom. "Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse" is restricted to a "Neutral" alignment while still having multiple endings. The three-tiered alignment was used in "Strange Journey", and continued into "Shin Megami Tensei IV".