That's good, must have upgraded studios since the P3/P4 days
They were miles better.
The Arena ones were well drawn, but really, really static.
Are you saying that Catherine used an out of place vocal track?
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Persona Community Thread |OT3| Your thread title sucks, Yukiko.
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They were miles better.
The Arena ones were well drawn, but really, really static.
Are you saying that Catherine used an out of place vocal track?
Lord Scrambles
Member
Did the same studio do the cut-scenes Personas 3 and 4? For some reason they seem different to me. Persona 3's cutscenes were much better imo
sackboy2197
Member
Is the one I'm using as avatar made by Soejima or is it a fan-art?
I love it.
cj_iwakura
Member
I said no such thing. Catherine wasn't a remake of a classic title, it was a brand new project, and Yo was an awesome song.
Unbreakable Tie didn't fit Innocent Sin at all, especially not compared to Knights of the Holy Spear.
No. Persona 3's cutscenes were done by a studio so embarrassed by the low quality of them that they were credited under an alias.
A-1 Pictures and Studio Hibari did the cutscenes to Persona 4 vanilla.
...But he didn't mention Innocent Sin.
I wouldn't mind them. Go with whoever did the Catherine cutscenes.
cj_iwakura
Member
I was referring to Innocent Sin, and EPP having a much better opening than ISP.
I didn't know that :lol, pretty crazy. They definitely were not great.
I'm betting P5 will have a significantly larger budget than 3&4, so hopefully they can reach that quality.
Chet Rippo
Member
I think the portraits are more to help facilitate showing the emotions of the characters. They work well especially when scenes aren't voiced.
I think it's also partly the budget. Catherine will have had a much higher budget than P3 and P4.
I'd love them to bring 4C back. The scenes were really, really well done.
Yup. I hope they're still there, personally.
TurnipFritters
Member
I don't think it's just that, I think the choice of what scenes to animate matters as well.
buddha0991
Member
P5 will have dubstep
I hope the portraits are more in the style of P2&3, with more body language and poses. The ones in P4 are mostly really static.
I wouldn't disagree, but that choice is probably up to the team at large. All I'm really saying is that the vast improvement in production quality in the scenes themselves in Catherine is mainly down to the fact that 4C itself is a much more talented group of animators than the people responsible for P3 and 4. I mean, budget obviously has its' role too, but money can only cover for so much.
I believe it was stated that Persona 5 will use "life-sized" character models compared to the previous games to give players a better sense of the game's world and reality.
Catherine wasn't mentioned, but people interpreted that comment as meaning the game would possibly be similar to Catherine in how the camera is closer to the characters and how scenes are directed.
Whatever they go with will probably be good. Catherine conveyed character expression and emotion brilliantly, so if Persona 5 would be similar, no portraits would be just fine.
Yeah if you're using "life-sized" models, there wouldn't be much of a need for portraits if you can express it directly like Catherine.
I thought he just said that the models were less deformed compared to previous games. They could and likely will animate them for some scenes, but I'm sure they looked into using portraits, if only to help save on money.
I doubt it. Not even SMT4 had that, and all the cutscenes were all portraits. Still, I wouldn't mind them doing some visual tricks with the portraits to give them some sense of movement and animation. I figure they'll either do that, or just stick with the occasional blinking.
Speaking of the UI, I hope they redesign it a bit. It wasn't so bad in Golden, since the menus were so snappy, but not everything was super intuitive. At least they moved the quests out of the config menu though. I just hope for the day when one if the menus uses collage as its main aesthetic.
I LOVED the models in 5, but keep in mind that there weren't too many situations to animate. They're either occasionally showing up in investigation or during trial. You never even see their lower halves, either.
I don't think I've ever seen that. Do you know any games that do it?
sackboy2197
Member
Maybe they'll have portraits like in Virtue's Last Reward, they were pretty much 3D models but were used like normal portraits.
I don't find it creepy, but I sure hope P5 has a bigger budget than that.
I don't see how that wouldn't be extremely redundant unless the presentation of Persona 5 was that of a visual novel like Persona 3 Portable.
Immaculate
Banned
OH MY GOD PERSONA 3's TWIST
I CANT
I CANT
I've never even played Neptunia, and I figured they'd be a big culprit.
Still, I think I've found the ultimate compromise...
TurnipFritters
Member
Yeah, and what I'm saying is that you can't lay the success at the feet of the animation studio, because there are other factors at work. Like, in P4, there are only so many ways the animation studio can do "and then the character stand around looking at Teddie reveal himself/and then the characters stand around watching the final boss reveal itself/
and then the characters stand around watching the Real True Final Boss reveal itself
and then the characters stand around watching flowers bloom
SMT4 should not be used as a measuring device for what you will see in P5.
Everything I've heard about SMT4's budget makes me want to agree with this. For anything, really.
sackboy2197
Member
Yeah, I was talking about if they were going to use portraits again, instead of using static ones they could use something like that.
I still hope they'll go like in Catherine, it looks so good.
Btw, I found a pretty nice image of Nyarl, can I post it or should I just link it and say it's kinda spoiler?
TurnipFritters
Member
Look, all I'm saying is that a Persona spin-off on the 3DS has fully animated character models/enemy models/cut scenes using those models and SMT4 couldn't be sussed to make all the static drawings it uses for everything look like it belonged in the same game.
Poetic.Injustice
Member
SMT isn't really the cash cow franchise, now is it?
His point, you see it.
TurnipFritters
Member
TBH I don't mind the fact that it's all 2D art, what bothers me is that it relies on the 2D for everything and uses so many clashing styles. It's like, come on y'all, using a coherent style of all the art is like, the bare minimum I expect from a game.
It was bad enough with the Personas in P3 and P4, but they weren't like, the sole focus of the presentation, you know?
It was bad enough with the Personas in P3 and P4, but they weren't like, the sole focus of the presentation, you know?
You'll take your Kaneko-Kamen Rider Klusterfuck and like it!
In all seriousness it's kind of depressing that they couldn't be arsed to have Kaneko or Doi redraw them. SMT4 is one of those weird games where it's simultaneously wonderful and blatantly cheap at the same time.
So we're definitely going to get 15 branches of Persona, half of which will last only a small fraction of the lifetime of the franchise, until eventually a more popular spinoff will arise that will leave Persona to rot.
Am I doing this right?
You're totally right, especially since it seems like such a rush job in retrospect, 3DS or not, but I'm just saying that if they're shying away from those techniques to create visual intrigue in a game that basically only has that as its presentation crutch, they'll likely do the same with P5. Especially since they've traditionally used the models as the means of conveying gestures and movements, and used the portraits to ground things more.
Obviously they're different teams, but there's no way the people responsible for programming the portrait use wouldn't be communicating with each other to see what works and what doesn't. Either way, if they do use portraits, I really hope they learned their lesson to minimize the number art styles a single game should have.
But that's more of a budget, thing, no? Its certainly possible to do it at that quality, is the point I'm making. Hell, they could do 3D portraits instead of full on cutscenes and it would probably work if done to the level of AA5. Generally I think Catherine shows the team is very capable of doing it either way in 3D. Its just a matter of budget.
Red The Hunter
Member
I think in terms of the demon designs along with how they played in SMTIV, the issues it had now that I think about it is quanity over quality. I know that they wanted to have a lot demons in game just to show that you can summopn a wide variety of demons, but that dosen't mean having that many demons in game makes it good. I think it would been better if they chosen around half that amount in terms of summonable demons. And we would of have had more coherent artstyle. Let's hope they don't do that again.
And never do this either.
And never do this either.
Man is that thing creepy.
Honestly, I think they just needed more art direction. I don't know if the project had a proper art director or not, but they really needed someone to restrain the artists and force them to work within a specific style (I think the DoubleFine Adventure documentary brought my attention to his particular issue). Quantity vs quality definitely plays a part in it though, yeah, and there's a lot of clashing when you've got the old Kaneko designs mixed with stuff like the Archangels which, while pretty cool (if way too busy), look like they're out of a completely different game.
I like that guy though! Creepy is good!
buddha0991
Member
YASO MAGATSUHI!
SweetTeddie
Member
The character portraits in P3/P4 gave them a low budget RPG vibe (which I guess they were). I'd prefer them to do dialogue the way Catherine did it.
Red The Hunter
Member
I'll agree with you on this, I think that needed someone like Doi or Kaneko to kind of give them some guidence in terms of design, because I think they pretty much had free reign in terms of demon design, and it kind of shows with how some of them looked. Because I remember watching an episode of Power Rangers Samurai and noticing one of the villians looking kind of similar to Asmodeus. And found out later that they the same designer on there for both projects. Though wether or not they were done by the same person, I don;t know. Werid coincidence I guess.Honestly, I think they just needed more art direction. I don't know if the project had a proper art director or not, but they really needed someone to restrain the artists and force them to work within a specific style (I think the DoubleFine Adventure documentary brought my attention to his particular issue). Quantity vs quality definitely plays a part in it though, yeah, and there's a lot of clashing when you've got the old Kaneko designs mixed with stuff like the Archangels which, while pretty cool (if way too busy), look like they're out of a completely different game.
I like that guy though! Creepy is good!
I don't hate that demon, it's more with creepy animation that he had. It looked so surreal with how he moved that it creeped me out compared to the other demons.
True, and in an ideal world, every 3D game would have the same amount of charm and fidelity. I'm just saying that whoever animated the models for 5 is masterclass, but they had the benefit of having a game that thrives in its limited scope. There's really no "world," to speak of - just a set of loosely-connected backdrops that you can only sometimes explore.
Persona really benefits from having a limited set of places to roam around, too, but I guess my worry is the difference between a play and a convincing amusement park. Ace Attorney revels in the theatrical, and it doesn't really need much to suck you into its narrative, since it's all narrative. Even if you just hammer the square button to skip around in Persona, though, there's a lot more required to stitch together a believable world, and its characters would be a huge part of it.
You're totally right about it all being a matter of budget, but that's almost always the determining factor. When you need to make the models in HD and scale things appropriately in a game likely without a fixed perspective and with many other things sapping away from the cash, some things just gotta give. Also, this is Atlus we're talking about here. They aren't really known for having high budget productions.
Did all that make sense? I'm kinda falling asleep, so I'm just worried that I'm not all that coherent right now.
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