Having a physical means to summon one's Persona, or at least a physical representation of one's goals by summoning their Persona, made the scene at the beginning of the Answer all the more poignant.
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Persona Community Thread |OT3| Your thread title sucks, Yukiko.
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Having a physical means to summon one's Persona, or at least a physical representation of one's goals by summoning their Persona, made the scene at the beginning of the Answer all the more poignant.
Yeah, but if everyone's an asshole... Man.
I do think the dynamic will be different though.
Yeah, but it'd be nice if they kept things grounded by having a nice distribution between "dark" and "light." You gotta keep that edge tempered somehow.
I liked card crushing a lot more as a visual flourish, anyways. Stuff like kicking your tarot or twirling about as you smash it with a fan is just more interesting to watch. I kinda liked how it reinforced each respective character's 'fighting style', as well, and that even if they weren't physically attacking their enemy, they were still kind of doing it by proxy through smashing their card.
I like them in that they're really stylistically connected with the game's central themes of facing the fear of death and remembering your mortality. It's one of those things where when you first see it, it's completely devoid of subtlety and it whacks you in the head with what feels like stylistic desperation, but over time you begin to understand the nuances of it. The game doesn't make a huge deal about it, paying it the appropriate amount of respect in the initial cutscene where the MC summons Orpheus. From there you understand its meaning, and it serves both its thematic and stylistic roles.
Sure, there'd always need to be redeeming qualities for the main cast or something that the player could relate to and not just come to despise them all over the course of the game.
buddha0991
Member
How would you guys if they brought Law, Neutral and Chaos aligned team mates to Persona, should they limit that to just SMT/Devil Summoner/Devil Survivor?
I think SMT needs to be SMT and Persona needs to be Persona.
I would be all for it if it meant an ability to actually influence the plot in some way. Maybe it's because I was brought into RPGs from games like Fallout, but I always like flexibility of the story in RPGs, even if that's considerably less of a thing in JRPGs.
Nope. Leave that stuff out of Persona, as well as negotiations and demons ('course I know the last two were there before P3).
Maybe I'd tolerate it if there was a kind of scale like that applied to each Social Link or relationship the character had ala Catherine. Wouldn't want it affecting the story, though.
Depends
SMTIV style? Nah.
SMTIII or Devil Survivor? I wouldn't mind it at all
It'd be cool if your party members had a stake in the plot
If nothing else, after thinking about the evokers from 3 and the shadow selves from 4, I do hope that the personal issues are more directly integrated into the story, on top of being broached with a bit more nuance.
It'd be fundamentally out of place within Persona. I think people have already made a big enough deal that Persona isn't actually under the franchise umbrella of SMT, and three moral orders just unnecessarily complicates (or rather, simplifies things) things, especially when we already have little divisions that the story organizes characters into, through Arcana. Plus, if we're going by SMT, there'll be a good chance that the Law and Chaos characters are going to be tremendous assholes in one way or another, with only Neutral appearing mostly sane and relatively likable (hello, Isabeau).
Man I'd actually love to see either those back in the Persona series. In a very refined form though, obviously.
I think you're going to be dealing with people facing their vices.
My dream is that contacts somehow make it back into Persona 5
-Completely optional
-Persona 2 style (teaming up characters together to do stuff)
-Filled to the brim with humor & jokes
buddha0991
Member
That doesn't apply here. It's not an SMT only thing anymore, in fact Persona is the only spinoff series still active that has NOT had it.
Agreed. I really would like that.
Do not agree.
Devil Survivor way is best because it produced Law and Chaos characters you could actually like and root for, ala Amane, Kaido, Naoya even.
Persona is not SMT, it is Megami Ibunroku, which, Devil Survivor is also under, and has the Law/Neutral/Chaos thing. Every game in every series is all a Megaten though, and like I said, Devil Survivor style produced Law/Neutral/Chaos characters that people actually like.
A tangent from what we're currently talking about, but there's a thing with Hashino/Soejima's stylistic choices where they often pull a huge thematic bait and switch. P3/4 and Catherine all portray one thing in their art and marketing materials that is ultimately trumped through the game's themes. They do wonders with contrasts. P3's marketing materials are littered with this seemingly "emo" look, from the main protagonist to the fact that all of the characters are shooting themselves in the head. It's totally aimed at getting that crowd interested. Then when you play the game, it's actually about taking life (and death) very seriously, and not treating it like it's something that should be wasted in a second. It's aimed that crowd, then sits them down and gives them a story about cherishing every moment you have in literally every aspect of the story and gameplay. Same goes for P4, where all of the promotional materials showed this poppy, bright, saccharine ideal, or at least as much as they could get away with without alienating the P3 audience. But in the actual game, it's a story about choosing to look past the superfluous and exaggerated.
I think Catherine is one of the best and most hilarious examples of this too: You have marketing materials that were seemingly so "raunchy" that at one point people thought Atlus was making a porn game. Sex appeal was littered all over the game's promotion. It's no doubt that this was, in part, a marketing technique to appeal to the sex driven masses, but even that had a bait and switch to it too. The game itself had pretty much zero sex, aside from a few bed scenes that were literally nothing. It took this sexually charged audience and gave them a story that was about the actual responsibilities of a relationship. It took all those people who engaged in "sexual fantasy" and turned their own obsession around on them.
I think Catherine is one of the best and most hilarious examples of this too: You have marketing materials that were seemingly so "raunchy" that at one point people thought Atlus was making a porn game. Sex appeal was littered all over the game's promotion. It's no doubt that this was, in part, a marketing technique to appeal to the sex driven masses, but even that had a bait and switch to it too. The game itself had pretty much zero sex, aside from a few bed scenes that were literally nothing. It took this sexually charged audience and gave them a story that was about the actual responsibilities of a relationship. It took all those people who engaged in "sexual fantasy" and turned their own obsession around on them.
I like the idea of what placing some emphasis on alignment could allow, as far as making each character have their own personal stake in the events of the game, some possibly only siding with you if it benefits their interests, but I do think it would oversimplify things. Even if they went SMT9-style and allowed for more potential alignments, I definitely think that alignments would be better off not being included.
buddha0991
Member
I love negotiation but this I can agree ACTUALLY IS an SMT thing, and should remain there by now. Devil Survivor also does well without it
cj_iwakura
Member
That's a very sharp outlook on it.
I do hope if our characters are still going to be confronting their personal issues, it'd be a little less, eh... 'stage play' about it, I guess? Conceptually, P4 (and by extension, P2) had a great idea going by literally facing your other self, but I don't think it could ever escape a kind of clumsiness in how those confrontations wound up playing out and resolving.
On the topic of demons and negotiations, I wouldn't miss either, but wouldn't recoil at either. I actually like the Shadows, at least, the idea of them. It's really cool how Persona represents the Jungian dynamic and Shadows contribute more to the vibe that Persona has been going for, I think, especially as of late. Demons add another supernatural layer to the story that I'm not convinced has to be there. I do think that Shadows really need to escape the confines of 'table with mask on it' and 'evil Hulk Hogan', though.
And while other games have Law/Order/Neutral, I'm just not seeing any reason why it has to be there at all. If it's about giving the side characters more personal stake in what's happening in the primary narrative, there's less obtuse ways of achieving that than integrating the whole three domain thing. I'm just struggling to see why it'd be worth the potential effort.
On the topic of demons and negotiations, I wouldn't miss either, but wouldn't recoil at either. I actually like the Shadows, at least, the idea of them. It's really cool how Persona represents the Jungian dynamic and Shadows contribute more to the vibe that Persona has been going for, I think, especially as of late. Demons add another supernatural layer to the story that I'm not convinced has to be there. I do think that Shadows really need to escape the confines of 'table with mask on it' and 'evil Hulk Hogan', though.
And while other games have Law/Order/Neutral, I'm just not seeing any reason why it has to be there at all. If it's about giving the side characters more personal stake in what's happening in the primary narrative, there's less obtuse ways of achieving that than integrating the whole three domain thing. I'm just struggling to see why it'd be worth the potential effort.
Nah I preferred Evokers. They were just really cool over all summoning like that. And yes it worked well especially with Masters of Tartarus.
Red The Hunter
Member
This I wouldn't mind, because it gets kinda boring looking at the same shadows over and over again, just with a different palette swap.
buddha0991
Member
you fight demons by day shadows by night enemy diversity out the ass maybe some days when the shit really hits the fan you fight a mix of shadows and demons
I feel it would take away focus from the narrative if they had branches like that. It would be a little problematic, especially in Persona.
It's a slim possibility at best, but there is a chance that they could ditch the calendar system.
I mean, the calendar system was clearly invented to play along with P3's emphasis on how you spend your time in relation to your inevitable death. It existed in P4 because they used the same engine, but you could also make the case that it fits the theme of a murder mystery. That being said, the calendar mechanic made a little less sense thematically with P4, despite it being just as satisfying to play.
However, now that P5 is being made as its own thing, separate from P3's engine and mechanics, I wonder if they'll ditch it for a different system that better reflects this new game's themes? I have no idea what that would entail, but it's definitely something that could happen.
I mean, the calendar system was clearly invented to play along with P3's emphasis on how you spend your time in relation to your inevitable death. It existed in P4 because they used the same engine, but you could also make the case that it fits the theme of a murder mystery. That being said, the calendar mechanic made a little less sense thematically with P4, despite it being just as satisfying to play.
However, now that P5 is being made as its own thing, separate from P3's engine and mechanics, I wonder if they'll ditch it for a different system that better reflects this new game's themes? I have no idea what that would entail, but it's definitely something that could happen.
Re: Stage play
The thing with P4 is that the all the awakenings were formulaic. It was just enter dungeon --> reach boss --> "YOU'RE NOT ME" --> boss battle --> "OK nvm you are me" --> Persona get. Rinse, repeat.
I don't think they could have handled it another way with how things are set up in P4 but in P5 I wouldn't mind seeing awakenings at random times. P3 was kinda like this, except often it would just be like Mitsuru and Akihiko saying they found someone who awakened rather than seeing anything for yourself. With P5's theme I think awakenings will be closer to P4 but they might still be able to shake things up with the structure. In the end though I bet all the awakenings will be the characters having an epiphany and then getting their Persona.
May not be a bad idea. They need some sort of story explanation to separate the demons and shadows though (who would still all be shadows though I guess).
The thing with P4 is that the all the awakenings were formulaic. It was just enter dungeon --> reach boss --> "YOU'RE NOT ME" --> boss battle --> "OK nvm you are me" --> Persona get. Rinse, repeat.
I don't think they could have handled it another way with how things are set up in P4 but in P5 I wouldn't mind seeing awakenings at random times. P3 was kinda like this, except often it would just be like Mitsuru and Akihiko saying they found someone who awakened rather than seeing anything for yourself. With P5's theme I think awakenings will be closer to P4 but they might still be able to shake things up with the structure. In the end though I bet all the awakenings will be the characters having an epiphany and then getting their Persona.
May not be a bad idea. They need some sort of story explanation to separate the demons and shadows though (who would still all be shadows though I guess).
Yeah, that's definitely what I'm hoping for. I love that 4 generally had a very narrow focus, which helped emphasize the characters of the people involved, as well as the place itself. Though, looking at how the shadows were handled, it definitely became more rote by the end.
And yeah, I definitely agree as far as the alignment system goes. I think it'd be super-interesting to have something like the infighting in FES, where former party members can become antagonists or even bosses, but not at the expense of delineating everyone into very clear-cut, stifling camps.
buddha0991
Member
I think we should have like 12/16 hours each day and each action takes up a certain number of hours
If they do somehow retain the calendar system, but they wanted to push for a bit more freedom rather than restriction in this particular system- I wonder what they can do to alter it? put it under hours?
Essentially, P3's "awakenings" were when people's Personas classed up. They all happened when that character faced death in a meaningful way. I think it's proof that you can pull off this concept in a non stage play fashion. P4 also does this through the social links.
I completely agree, and that's why I say it's a slim possibility. There's no denying that the calendar system lead to the series' relative popularity.
I think we all agree days and the time alotted/spent need to be expanded, but that's contingent on the inclusion of the calendar system.
A small activity certainly shouldn't take the morning/evening.
buddha0991
Member
I should not be able to drive to an entirely different city, buy outfits and come back within like 10 minutes, but turning the dial on a rusty prize machine takes a whole afternoon
Yep. We talked about it all the time before you came, Stark, but basically days need to be expanded and activities need to take varying amounts of time.
I would be fine with a game that takes place over six months, has longer days, and half as many S. Links (outside your 7-8 party members), but they're much more in depth.
Unequivocally, yes.
Nah, man. Play Fire Emblem for your waifu fix.
Totori is better.
buddha0991
Member
dont play the things moonlight likes play the things i like because they are superior
Oooookaaaaayyy but is Shin Megumi Tenny like Neptunia? Is there a kawaii girl with purple hair?
Persona seems to silly I mean why do they call the first one Persona 3? why not just persona!! XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXD
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