Golden's was pretty bad and Persona 5's is just too abstract and bizarre (The characters are... skating? What the heck does that have to do with Persona 5?).
FES's opening has a funky song but the actual video is pretty blah. Actually, Persona 3's original opening is pretty bad too.
I think the Persona opening that sets up the game to follow the best is still Persona 4's original opening. Golden's was pretty bad and Persona 5's is just too abstract and bizarre (The characters are... skating? What the heck does that have to do with Persona 5?). Persona 4's hits all the important points of what the game is about, is a good showcase of the characters, and visually sells the game's motifs very well.
EDIT: I totally beat the Matador at like level 17 in Nocturne. Only took me like five tries.
It's a visual metaphor for the whole freedom theme.
Still not finished with P5 but I'm already feeling post game depression in advance lol. I hope they have another team hard at work on P6 (the main staff at least moved on to that fantasy game right?) so it'd be ready for late this gen rather than another huge gap. They have the HD monsters ready after all.
SMT IV-3:Navarre Returns
They get together some extremely questionable outfits for Asahi and Toki and head out on stage. War and strife is forgotten as literally all of Tokyo sings along. It's at that moment that these scantily clad teenagers realize that Navarre was never really missing, he was just in their hearts all along. THE END.
Still not finished with P5 but I'm already feeling post game depression in advance lol. I hope they have another team hard at work on P6 (the main staff at least moved on to that fantasy game right?) so it'd be ready for late this gen rather than another huge gap. They have the HD monsters ready after all.
There have been only 2 other instances where I've been extremely hyped for a game
Brawl (One of the worst experiences ever)
Kid Icarus (One of the best experiences)
Persona 5 (Preeetty good)
It's only a matter of time until I find another game to live for, lol
I'm the opposite
P3's original opening is arthouse nonsense. P3FES's recycling of footage legitimately gives me feels. The build up at the beginning is ace, and the successive clips of P3MC doing daily life stuff gives me chills every time I see it. The new anime cutscenes are totally misplaced though, lol
Also, Maria is just Mara with a blond wig.That sounds good and all, but I think I'll wait for SMT IV-3: Navarre Returns The Silver, where they add in more slice of life scenes and a new character by the name of Maria, who becomes the party's best friend and at the end of the game we find out she was Tokyo's Goddess all along and Nanashi's predestined lover. Asahi is somehow okay with this.
Also, Maria is just Mara with a blond wig.
I love the song and animation for P5's opening the most, but the way they focused so much on the first few characters is weird. I'd say it's still my favourite opening though
I legit expected there to be, like, a second opening that unlocked after you got to a certain point in the game. In retrospect, I wish they hadn't revealed any of the other party members after the first five before the game was released, and hadn't included them in the opening/title screen.
Okay so I just made it to the end of 11/20 and the game is acting like it explained everything so well but I got a question... Something just isn't making sense to me. Either explain it without spoiling or just tell me to finish the game to find out...
Just when the hell did Joker get a cognitive fake?! The only time a cognitive double was ever mentioned earlier was Kamoshida's bizarre version of Ann. Thats it! So when did all this congitive fake stuff come from? Joker never had a double to begin with! Am I missing something or is this a plothole?
Haru's dad had a cognitive version of her fiancee, too, remember?
Hell, all people you see in the Metaverse are cognitive versions of other people in some form. Sae's Palace is full of cognitive people gambling, remember? In this case, she just happened to have a cognitive Joker in the interrogation room, because her real-world cognition is that there is an investigation room, and Joker should be in it.
Okay so I just made it to the end of 11/20 and the game is acting like it explained everything so well but I got a question... Something just isn't making sense to me. Either explain it without spoiling or just tell me to finish the game to find out...
Just when the hell did Joker get a cognitive fake?! The only time a cognitive double was ever mentioned earlier was Kamoshida's bizarre version of Ann. Thats it! So when did all this congitive fake stuff come from? Joker never had a double to begin with! Am I missing something or is this a plothole?
Sae had never been in that room until she interrogated Joker, so her entire perception of the room is that Joker is inside it. So in the metaverse, her version of that room has Joker inside. The cognitions come up a lot in the game, actually:
Ann in Kamoshida's palace, Madarame's former students as paintings, the bank's walking ATMs, Futaba's mother, and Haru's fiance.
...but yes, it's kind of a stretch in that there's no way the characters should have been able to come up with a plan like that.
Lmao I am terrible at grasping stuff...
But when didreal Sae capture Joker? Or was that entire thing Palace stuff aka not real?
I'm struggling with splitting who is exactly who... ;_;
Lmao I am terrible at grasping stuff...
But when didreal Sae capture Joker? Or was that entire thing Palace stuff aka not real?
I'm struggling with splitting who is exactly who... ;_;
I legit expected there to be, like, a second opening that unlocked after you got to a certain point in the game. In retrospect, I wish they hadn't revealed any of the other party members after the first five before the game was released, and hadn't included them in the opening/title screen.
I feel P5 depression just because I'm still playing and have no one to talk about it with, haha. (most everyone here has finished it, and the OT is a spoiler death zone)
Tbf you're not missing much. Discussion in the OT (every time I go there, at least) has devolved into complaining about dungeons or how long the game is. Maybe things are better in the spoiler thread, I dunno.
THIS is the kind of emotional reaction I want Joker to unleash on the traitor. I want him to drop the cool and calm guy thing and just bring back the pure anger and frustration he had when he activated Arsene.
WTF why are we having AoT spoilers here?!
That ain't how these games work, bud.
Oh yeah, that too.
WTF why are we having AoT spoilers here?!
The "Curse" element being something completely different in Persona 5 and Nocturne is throwing me for a loop.
EDIT: Babysitting a doofus who loses his cool at several points in the game would have made P5 unbearable. We already got Ryuji to overreact, spending over a hundred hours with an obnoxious character instead of a silent one would have driven me up the wall. I think P5 has the right idea for the protagonist.
Do I need PS plus to use the touchpad button that shows what everyone online did that day? It's not working for me.
Persona is a game about making choices--nearly every in game day's activity is down to what choice the player chooses to make. The more you define the protagonist's character the more you have to consider "is this in character for the protagonist to do?" which I think is fundamentally at odds with the game design. Joker is poorly defined enough that literally any decision you make throughout the game is in character for him (save the ones that lead to bad endings, of course). I think Joker is at a good medium for what the series is--he shows enough character through his animations and expressions that he matches the game's established theme and plays off of it with his minimal backstory, but ephemeral enough that everything you the player chooses to do is in character.
Tbh I think you should just go ahead and remove those Attack on Titan gif/references. It's not all that necessary and it's way too easy for someone unsuspecting to click on it.
I agree that he's good at letting you expressing yourself and matching the game's themes, but there are 3 distinct issues with Joker that made it clear to me that the typical silent protagonist format was detrimental to the overall experience.
1) Scenes are incredibly dense in Persona 5. They tend to run much longer than they did in 3 or 4, which makes Joker's general silence stick out more than his predecessors. Instances where he should absolutely be talkingare jarring, and his general lack of contributions to the many, many discussion heavy scenes plot scenes were pretty blatant. He's supposed to be the leader of the Phantom Thieves... why do I feel so disconnected and inept when compared to my peers? It's different from Persona 4, where you still felt like a leader and in control, due to scenes being far more brief/simple.such as when Morgana runs away
2) There is no choice. Dialogue prompts in the main story are exceedingly linear (moreso than they've ever been). When a character asks you a question in P5 the following prompt is the most pointless fucking thing ever, since you're presented with 3 variants of "Yes." It's different from how it was done in P4; when Yu was asked a question, you could A) Say the right thing, B) Say the wrong thing C) make some dumb joke. Sure, the end result is irrelevant to the grand scheme of things, but Yu was so good at letting the player consistently express themselves, while Joker is pretty much the same guy. P4 even had stat-locked dialogue prompts that could lead to numerous situations, while P5 outright removes them (barring like one instance?).
3) Yu's characterization in P4 is vague and ambiguous. Joker completely crosses that line. He's quiet in the real world and a flamboyant showoff in the metaverse. There's pretty much no room for interpretation here. In P3/P4, the protagonist's personality is kept vague, and characters rarely call out their relative silence. In Persona 5, well...
Ultimately, you can have a defined protagonist exist in a game about making choices. Catherine did it. Cold Steel does it. RPGs have literally been doing it forever with sidequests, and P5 even conveniently gives Joker a reason for wanting to spend time with people (incentive). In the end, Joker comes across as a character who wants to speak, but can't. Literally. Listen to some of his cut dialogue.
I get the feeling a lot of those cut clips would've been used if Morgana wasn't always cutting in with "OOOOH!! Do you want to do X??"
Yet another problem with a mute character, since that mandates someone else speaking for you, even if it's to you the player.
Oh dear, this hurts my head...
I would argue your first two points, PK, are more issues with the game itself and less with the actual character--P5 stumbles on its own theme more than a couple times, and I think its increased discussion linearity is in direct opposition to its theme of freedom--you, the player, should have more say in what goes on. And in these cases, having the character act more on his own would harm that even further.
On your third point I disagree that there's a strong characterization to Joker at all and there is absolutely plenty of room for interpretation. I'd say the only definite about him (other than being selflessly heroic as all Persona main characters are) is that he has two faces, just as you say, but they're absolutely not strongly defined faces. I think a lot of it is reading into some pretty basic animations, the same direction that P3's typical "lonely emo kid" interpretation comes from. I didn't see it as actual characterization but simply a reflection of the game's two gameplay faces.
Basically, I saw Joker not as a character but as a simple extension of the game itself, the one that you, the player, have the connection with. And I'm okay with that--speaking protagonists in RPGs tend to be far and away the dullest members of their casts specifically to allow player control to make the most sense, and I'd take a non-character over a dull (or worse, annoying) player character any day, especially in one as long as Persona.
But that's just my viewpoint on the matter.