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Persona Community Thread |OT4| The Golden Number

I

InsaneElite

Member
New page, new Personas.
iTYMbnSIhcckQ.jpg
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D

Dantis

Member
PhantomGaming said:
Interesting. Ishaan's thoughts on P4 and P3 pretty much the same as mine.
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i.e. Wrong?

I kid, but I disagree with a lot of what they're saying. When they talk about how they liked P3 more because you were the saviour and this was your purpose and blah blah I was thinking "Nope nope nope nope nope.".

I like the smaller scale of P4 a lot more. I think in a game like this, you should be saving the people close to you, not the world at large.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Inorigo said:
I can't stand articles like that. If you want to do an editorial, do one. If you have that much to say between two people, put it in a podcast. I don't read doctored up Gchat logs.
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You must hate transcripts of interview sessions.
 
S

Squire

Banned
XiaNaphryz said:
You must hate transcripts of interview sessions.
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No, I like interviews because that's what they are. Two writers sending each other long IMs is not an interview transcript and not very interesting.

Edit: I read about half of that. Tone is awful. So condescending.
 
S

Squire

Banned
I actually don't disagree with the claims about HS. That was my experience and I'm pretty upfront about that.

But I don't think that goes for everyone or even the majority of the audience. Nothing I've seen suggests so and I don't think that's Atlus aim with the series. Not for P3, 4, or 5.

And again: Holy shit, that tone.
 
S

Soriku

Junior Member
I think that SMTIV is an excellent game, but I don’t think that it will be discovered. Those who are still enthusiastic about JRPGs in 2013 are largely enthusiastic about 2013 JRPGs. Which SMTIV is not.
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First of all SMT IV is the best selling SMT game (at least out of Nocturne, SJ, and IV, and excluding EU numbers since IV hasn't released there yet) so this is wrong.

I mean, that stuff gets me and I didn’t suffer the worst of high school by a long shot. I didn’t enjoy it, but there are others who had it worse. I imagine that for people who had worse experiences at that age, or didn’t make it out into college and are in a dead end job or unemployed or heaven knows what else that the Persona illusion is absolutely intoxicating. So reading today that Persona 5 is written for people who are discontent with their lives… I mean, no shit? That’s kind of the audience, isn’t it?
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Persona always features people discontent with their lives but the core plot themselves (at least in P3/P4) don't really focus on that or liberating people. It's mainly in the Social Links. P5 is directly incorporating those aspects in the main plot, though it sounds the approach is a little different.

There’s no doubt that Persona preys on the dissatisfaction people have/had with their lives. I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily. I had a rough time in high school, too, for a variety of different reasons, and that aspect of Persona 3 and Persona 4 hooked me as well. Persona 4 in particular gave me some much-needed perspective on how people can be different in frightening ways, but that they aren’t necessarily bad people.

So yeah, I love both P3 and P4. That said, I do like P4 significantly less than 3, and this is because the wish-fulfilment aspect of 4 went a little too far for me, and the main plot suffered for it. Persona 3 felt more… grand. It felt like you were finding your purpose in life. Like you were finding what you were meant for, and carrying out your role as a savior—as someone that was truly capable of being able to bring out the good in people, and also help save the world.
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Going by this, how does P3 not have wish-fulfillment? At the end of the game
you basically become Jesus, on top of how awesome everyone thought you were to begin with.
. In P4, you're awesome, but in the end you're relatively normal compared to P3's MC.

In and that sense Persona 3 was still very much a “Shin Megami Tensei” game. Meanwhile, Persona 4 felt like Scooby Doo-meets-Tales-meets Japanese light novels. And there is definitely a place for that. It had that slice-of-life feel that the Japanese are so good at pulling off; it had the whole “power of friendship” thing going for it; it had the high school setting that’s just so easy to get into when done right. But the problem for me was, it just felt so small and insignificant in scope compared to P3. There was no real story. Nothing really at stake, outside of some outlandish murder mystery, which turned out to have the most ridiculous solution ever. (Throwing people into TVs to kill them? Really?) It was a bunch of kids playing detective.
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P3 still had "power of friendship". Whenever people mention that about the Persona games they are usually talking about the end of the game where
you use the power of your SLinks/bonds to deal the final blow to the last boss
. Well that's in P3 too, so I don't get it.

The fact that the scope was smaller in P4 makes it less JRPG-ish. You're in high school; saving the world isn't really priority #1. You still do that in P4, but it's a bigger focus in P3. Actually I thought P3's story was somewhat typical for a JRPG, because of the whole
"experiment went wrong"
thing which is found in several JRPGs and
the god who wants to bring about the end of the world
at the end. P4's I thought was more original overall.

Saying nothing was at stake in P4 was dumb and untrue. Two people were found dead and your classmates were disappearing one by one. If this kept on long enough, how many people would've ended up dead? Things get even more dire towards the end.

The whole "Throwing people into TVs to kill them? Really?" comment is just stupid too. It's a fictional game, it's a cool concept, why are you questioning it? I don't see how that's any more dumb than in P3 with the Dark Hour, how your school transformed into a massive labyrinth, and how normal people turned into coffins during that time. They're both cool concepts and questioning the realism is just laughable.

So yeah… I’m not sure what to think of Persona 5. Is it going to be more of that? Is it going to be more of an illusionary wish-fulfilment affair, where the game tells you, “Hey, look—this alternate life is pretty great, isn’t it?! You can have that, too!” Because if that’s the case, I might just opt out this time. Real life isn’t like that and we all know it. And the problem is, Persona has this way of being unbelievably convincing, so when you leave the game, your head is stuck inside that world for hours.
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Outside of the ending in P3 where
the MC dies
you can arguably say that his high school life is more awesome than any real person's and isn't very realistic either. I don't understand how you can bash P4 for being unrealistic but not do the same with P3. These games aren't supposed to be overly realistic to begin with and there's no problem with that. I like when the games show realism through characters, rather than the core plot, and both P3 and P4 do that.

I would’ve found Persona 4 just fine, had it actually been a proper murder mystery. Persona is the perfect kind of game to explore a murder investigation with anyway. But ultimately, the whole premise was so ridiculous, I felt as though the plot served no purpose at all. It was just an excuse to have these characters hang out together and help flesh out their personalities.
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Just because you can't suspend your disbelief that something like a TV world exists in a fictional game doesn't mean the plot served no purpose.

When I first saw the desk with chains promotional art I got real excited about the possibility of the game being set in a juvenile detention center. That’s a good Persona setting. Lots of messed up kids stuck together going through some variation of rehabilitation, be it education or learning work skills. The prison setting gives an excuse for limited environments. Most of the characters (even the protagonist!) actually might be guilty of something, which has a ton of interesting potential. Plus there’s lots of rich image symbolism in a prison, and that development team is super good with their visual metaphors. I thought that it would be a throwback to the darker tone of Persona 3 (which I also prefer) and maybe even go farther.

But then I realized that characters that are guilty of crimes don’t sell merchandise like adorable waifus, and girls in detention centers don’t wear the uniforms with short skirts. So that’s pretty much it for that possibility. There’s a whole lot of market for schoolgirl outfits these days, less so for orange jumpsuits.
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This is just lol. They would never set a Persona game in a detention center either way; the games are supposed to be set in high school. It's not a matter of just selling merchandise. If they wanted to make a game like that, they'd make a new IP.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Inorigo said:
But I don't think that goes for everyone or even the majority of the audience.
Click to expand...

I dunno about the majority, but I seem to recall a bunch of sentiments mirroring that over the years, going back to the original P3 and P4 threads on GAF when the game launched. I don't think it would be that uncommon.
 
S

Squire

Banned
XiaNaphryz said:
I dunno about the majority, but I seem to recall a bunch of sentiments mirroring that over the years, going back to the original P3 and P4 threads on GAF when the game launched. I don't think it would be that uncommon.
Click to expand...

Sure, I don't think it would be uncommon either, but they're acting like it's the main thing that draws people to the series and that's Atlus ' intent, which I don't think is true at all.

Hell, my reasons for buying the game were it was JRPG, I heard it was pretty good, and Vita had basically nothing else out that November. None of what they mention was in the conversation until after I got and played the game. Now that, I could see being the case for quite a few people.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Inorigo said:
Sure, I don't think it would be uncommon either, but they're acting like it's the main thing that draws people to the series and that's Atlus ' intent, which I don't think is true at all.
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That's not how I interpreted the article at all. I think they're saying the high school life sim part of it was a strong part of what resonated with many new players and got them to spread the word - I do believe the games benefited from a lot of good word-of-mouth. I don't think it was necessarily what initially or primarily drew people to the games, but I do believe it was a big part of why many enjoyed and fell in love with it and stuck with it.

I just don't see the big deal with the article, content wise or tone wise. It doesn't come off as a very authoritative type of tone piece to me. Maybe you're projecting a bit?
 
S

Squire

Banned
XiaNaphryz said:
That's not how I interpreted the article at all. I think they're saying the high school life sim part of it was a strong part of what resonated with many new players and got them to spread the word - I do believe the games benefited from a lot of good word-of-mouth. I don't think it was necessarily what initially or primarily drew people to the games, but I do believe it was a big part of why many enjoyed and fell in love with it and stuck with it.

I just don't see the big deal with the article, content wise or tone wise. It doesn't come off as a very authoritative type of tone piece to me. Maybe you're projecting a bit?
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I really don't think so. You state your position well and some of their raw points I agree with, but it just sounds very condescending and obnoxious to me, coming from them.

cj_iwakura said:
The execution of that was on a whole other level. Ha ha, Rise was in this too!
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It ties together really well, I think. And yeah, I caught Laura in there. Very nice.
 
L

Lord Scrambles

Member
Inorigo said:
I actually don't disagree with the claims about HS. That was my experience and I'm pretty upfront about that.

But I don't think that goes for everyone or even the majority of the audience. Nothing I've seen suggests so and I don't think that's Atlus aim with the series. Not for P3, 4, or 5.

And again: Holy shit, that tone.
Click to expand...

You're right. I played the game in high school, and it wasn't because it was a bad time in my life or anything, in fact the reason P4 stuck with me so much is because how similar the interactions were to my regular life.

Sure there is a portion of the appeal that is wish fulfillment, but the same goes for basically all gaming, be it SMT, Mass Effect, or even competitive things like Street Fighter or Starcraft, part of the appeal of ANY game is that it gives you a chance to do something you can't in real life, saying that wish-fulfillment is something that is unique to a single game, or even a single genre is basically just grasping at straws for an argument.

Basically, what I got out of that article is that Persona isn't for cynics :/

Edit:
cj_iwakura said:
Just finished Bioshock Infinite.


WHAAAAA
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Ah I remember my first time.
 
R

Red The Hunter

Member
Lord Scrambles said:
You're right. I played the game in high school, and it wasn't because it was a bad time in my life or anything, in fact the reason P4 stuck with me so much is because how similar the interactions were to my regular life.

Sure there is a portion of the appeal that is wish fulfillment, but the same goes for basically all gaming, be it SMT, Mass Effect, or even competitive things like Street Fighter or Starcraft, part of the appeal of ANY game is that it gives you a chance to do something you can't in real life, saying that wish-fulfillment is something that is unique to a single game, or even a single genre is basically just grasping at straws for an argument.

Basically, what I got out of that article is that Persona isn't for cynics :/
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The Reason why I liked the Persona series was rather the Characters themselves and the stories they told rather than wish fulfillment TBH, yeah there is a lot of games that go into some level of wish fulfillment, but are never really the central focus. It's everything else other than that people attach towards.
 
L

Lord Scrambles

Member
Green Mamba said:
So do Japanese schools not have cafeterias? What's up with that.
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I don't know about Japan, but in Latin America (or Guatemala at least) they don't. You either bring you're own lunch, or you wait to get home. So its entirely possible that they have the same set-up in other countries as well.
 
L

Lunar15

Member
I think it's a little pretentious to call out one game for being a form of wish fulfillment when that's what most games are, in some way or another.

I think what he means is that the setting is less bleak than in P3, which is a very very common complaint. I appreciate the differences in tone between the two games, and I love the darker atmosphere than P3, but I also don't get why there's such an obsession over "dark" things. I just appreciate strong themes, whether they're "dark" or "light". The obsession is strange to me.

P4's tone is more consistent to me. I feel like they were going for the tone of nostalgia, and they consistently hit it all the way up to the end. This is particularly impressive because I didn't grow up in japan. It's more through the colors, the music, and just having characters that talked like normal people and had normal problems that evoked a lot of really nostalgic feelings. They totally nailed it.

P3's themes are about dealing with death, which while resonant, aren't quite as immediately relatable to myself. I've often felt that P4 was the game the team wanted to make coming down from P2, but they were still connected to the expectations of the darker tone that was expected out of Atlus titles. It's not that P3's themes are worse than P4, in fact there's a ton of things I prefer in P3 to P4. It's just that the vision is so consistently clear with P4, where in P3 I think they were still figuring out what they wanted to do with this new tonal direction.
 
H

hipsterpants

Member
I'm only a fourth of the way through the article but I can kind of get where they're coming from with the "wish-fulfillment" kind of idea. Being Yu would be amazing, being Makoto would be awful.

Also I just got out my copy of P4 which I'll start next week and wow I forgot how great the boxart is for this game.

edit: Ended up being further along that I thought. I do kind of agree with the bottom part of the article, in that it would be interesting to have to protagonist fail completely at something. Maybe the person is just too far gone to save, or the cheating scenario as mentioned, etc. I don't really know how they would fit it into the game mechanics however, so I suppose something like that won't happen.
 
P

Phantasmal Repose

Member
Lunar15 said:
I think it's a little pretentious to call out one game for being a form of wish fulfillment when that's what most games are, in some way or another.

I think what he means is that the setting is less bleak than in P3, which, isn't a shocker. We've heard that time and time again. I appreciate the differences in tone between the two games, and I love the darker atmosphere than P3, but I also don't get why there's such an obsession over "dark" things. I just appreciate strong themes, whether they're "dark" or "light". The obsession is strange to me.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't really call it pretentious. It's true that almost all games have wish-fulfillment, however I find that Persona 3 and 4 have a lot more wish-fulfillment. The obsession over dark rather than light could be because the idea that everything in your life is bad is more believable to people than everything being good. It could also be that people are very cynical.
 
S

Squire

Banned
Lunar15 said:
I think it's a little pretentious to call out one game for being a form of wish fulfillment when that's what most games are, in some way or another.

I think what he means is that the setting is less bleak than in P3, which is a very very common complaint. I appreciate the differences in tone between the two games, and I love the darker atmosphere than P3, but I also don't get why there's such an obsession over "dark" things. I just appreciate strong themes, whether they're "dark" or "light". The obsession is strange to me.

P4's tone is more consistent to me. I feel like they were going for the tone of nostalgia, and they consistently hit it all the way up to the end. This is particularly impressive because I didn't grow up in japan. It's more through the colors, the music, and just having characters that talked like normal people and had normal problems that evoked a lot of really nostalgic feelings. They totally nailed it.

P3's themes are about dealing with death, which while resonant, aren't quite as immediately relatable to myself. I've often felt that P4 was the game the team wanted to make coming down from P2, but they were still connected to the expectations of the darker tone that was expected out of Atlus titles. It's not that P3's themes are worse than P4, in fact there's a ton of things I prefer in P3 to P4. It's just that the vision is so consistently clear with P4, where in P3 I think they were still figuring out what they wanted to do with this new tonal direction.
Click to expand...

Nailed it. I completely agree. Especially you take on dark/light. I like a lot of dark stuff myself (I'm replaying LA Noire right now, for instance), but not because it's dark.
 
R

Red The Hunter

Member
Lunar15 said:
I think it's a little pretentious to call out one game for being a form of wish fulfillment when that's what most games are, in some way or another.

I think what he means is that the setting is less bleak than in P3, which, isn't a shocker. We've heard that time and time again. I appreciate the differences in tone between the two games, and I love the darker atmosphere than P3, but I also don't get why there's such an obsession over "dark" things. I just appreciate strong themes, whether they're "dark" or "light". The obsession is strange to me.
Click to expand...

I think it comes from when your an adult, you want everything having to be dark and edgy since light and happy means that it's childish and not serious, Which some people see as the only way that good stories are told I'll be blunt about this, dark and edgy doesn't equal good. For there have been many works that have tried to be dark and edgy, and have pretty much fallen flat on their face, because it doesn't feel so real and comes off more as immature than mature and adult. Often I think works that incorporate both to some degree actually are lot better in the long run, though you fail at if you don't execute it correctly. Since not everything is dark and depressing, and on the flip side not everything Light and Happy. But if you incorporate both sides of the coin. You'll come out with more interesting and fulfilling game, story, TV show, and movie in the end.
 
H

hipsterpants

Member
I think P4 is more of a wish-fulfillment type of game because of its ability to evoke nostalgia. Like wow, I wish my high-school life had been that awesome. Obviously I'll never be a space marine or a magical knight or whatever but I did go through high school, and I can only wish my experience would have been that great. Not necessarily saying its a bad thing, the relatability is why its so popular. Being the P3MC on the other hand would be terrible and nobody would honestly want to be that guy.

Considering that P5 is all supposed to be about personal issues and breaking bonds, it would be pretty cool if the MC had his own issues to resolve as well before he would truly help other people. Makoto can be seen as being a bit manipulative while Yu is just an all around great guy, wonder what kind of person the P5 MC will be like.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
crush said:
Makoto can be seen as being a bit manipulative while Yu is just an all around great guy, wonder what kind of person the P5 MC will be like.
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He'll actually be the real villain and you'll get the choice to either save the world or take it over.
 
D

Dantis

Member
Sophia said:
Yeah what is wrong with you? You haven't drawn DA MAN before? Junpei pity the fool like you that doesn't draw him!
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I realised because I started drawing him and realised I had no idea where to go with it. :p

This is questionable-quality sketch number 7. The one I drew earlier is one you'll appreciate, I think. :p
 
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