#original game canon for p3: PROTAG SHOULD BE MAKING BONDS

[auncyen]

on the one hand, I don't really care for "Akechi was the intended velvet room guest" theory because 1) this is a game where people like to talk exposition and no one says anything like that 2) the velvet room is about getting power from relationships. Akechi is bad at relationships. "hell yeah this is our champion" seems weird to me 3) p5's plot and yaldabaoth's plan literally hinges at akechi stirring shit up. while the PT empathize with Akechi I think that's more "hey, all of us have been socially isolated and hit a point where we either DID make bad decisions or were ready to make bad decisions that would have alienated us even further" and not "any one of us could have literally been the black mask" because Akechi was also fairly unique in his emotionally complicated relationship to Shido, who was both manipulative and in a strong position to influence others. Most of the cast has a relationship to someone manipulative, yes, but not with that much influence. Or it's just not emotionally complicated. (I think the best replacement for Shido in that sense would be Okumura, making Haru the "Black Mask" candidate, but she's concerned enough about morals that it seems difficult to see her doing mental shutdowns. although she could probably go for psychotic breakdowns on anyone she believed corrupt--seeing it as exposing their wickedness to the world and, more selfishly, pleasing her father and proving herself too useful to marry off to some partner who'd need an explanation for why she literally disappears off the grid for hours on end.)

on the other hand, since Yaldabaoth's plan hinges on Akechi, Akechi being the Velvet Room's intended guest would mean Igor looked at Mementos forming and was like, maybe we should get ahead of the game for once. maybe we should head this off before it becomes a problem. let's find someone who's been hurt by the system and would work to show others that they can fight back and reform it. So I do like the idea of the Velvet Room being proactive and accidentally agitating Yaldabaoth into attacking.

...I'm still just not sure Akechi would be the guest choice but you know, they could have been planning to do some tutoring on the bonds bit.

[landoftheway]

Thoughts on Persona 5

Gonna be giving a bunch of my thoughts on Persona 5 and how it stacks up compared to the other Persona games. TL;DR: 

P2EP > P5 > P2IS > P4 > P3 > P1

Persona 5 couples what are easily the best mechanics in the series with a story that rivals the other best entries both in terms of narrative quality and thematic approach. It falls just short of Eternal Punishment in terms of its story quality, but that’s only because that game has some of the best story elements and themes of any game in the MegaTen franchise.

Spoiler-y thoughts below the cut  - DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE BEATEN THE GAME

I won’t bother going over much of the gameplay aspects because they largely speak for themselves, but there are a few things worth noting because of their story significance:

Demon/Shadow negotiation is handled really well. There’s just enough variability in answers for it to still be risky without it edging into absurdity, and it’s appropriate for it to be brought back due to shadows basically being equivalent to demons; more on that later.

Confidants providing their own gameplay bonuses outside of unlocking stronger Personas is both a great way to incentivize players to complete them and fits with the initial reasoning for bonding with them specifically for their usefulness to the Phantom Thieves rather than purely as friends.

Now onto a few story elements I wanted to go over:

Like I mentioned before, shadows are presented as equivalent to demons, which actually makes perfect sense given the setting they appear in. The Metaverse is basically just a part of the Expanse/Demon World/Makai that’s brushing up against the real world, and thus the beings that live within it would naturally be demons themselves. They only become shadows because the presence of Palaces causes any demons within them to fall under the will of the Palace’s ruler, turning them into the humanoid forms we see until they become ready for serious battle. Upon being reminded of their origins as demons, they can then be integrated as personas by Joker because personas themselves naturally take the form of demons (due to those forms existing as strongly-resonating archetypes in the Collective Unconsciousness) and because Joker’s Wild Card ability naturally lets them use multiple personas. It’s basically the same method that the persona users of P1 and P2 were able to obtain new personas, except that the recruitment ability is limited to Joker because the other users obtained their powers entirely on their own rather than having their power granted by a connection to the Velvet Room.

I absolutely love the presentation of the characters as vigilantes whose ethics are at least somewhat questionable rather than straight-up good guys, particularly because of how it fits with a common concept that’s been discussed since P3. Namely, the question of whether the protags of 3, 4, and 5 only forge bonds with people because of the power they gain from those bonds as opposed to genuinely caring about said people. While it’s fairly obvious that the canonical interpretations of all the protags are of them as good people who do genuinely value their friends, what I like about P5′s approach is that it humanizes Joker by presenting their initial motivations for getting close to others as selfish, only for them to shift to selfless as those bonds progress. This makes him stand out as less of a perfect hero that the player is meant to project onto and more as a defined character within their own story, which I much prefer to the former.

The concept of the Wild Card as a villain was really cool. While I wish Goro could have actively switched between Robin Hood and Loki during his fight, it was still cool to have that concept turned on the player. Additionally, I like the idea of Loki being Goro’s true persona and Robin Hood manifesting from his bond with Joker. He quite clearly had Loki before joining the Thieves since he needed that to cause the psychotic breaks, but his only true emotional bond with others was with Joker (starting in June when the Justice arcana first manifests with Joker) and thus he could only manifest one additional persona.

While there’s been a lot of jokes about how Shido is basically a Japanese version of Armstrong from MGR, there’s actually an interesting thematic note to that comparison. Armstrong was basically an embodiment of popular American concepts of individualism and freedom, only taken to such ludicrous extremes that he became a villain. Shido is in many ways equivalent in what he represents: a extension of the popular Japanese concepts of society harmony and strong leadership taken to extremes. Though it should be noted that Armstrong was genuine in his desire to save his country (even if it meant destroying it first) while Shido only truly cared about saving himself and those who were useful to him, it could be argued that this desire was the foundation of how he planned to shape the country into what he genuinely thought was good (however fucked up that notion of his clearly was). I have no idea if these parallels in terms of themes or appearance were intentional on the part of Atlus, but it’s still an interesting comparison.

Yaldabaoth is a particularly interesting villain because he’s not a true god or demon like Nyx or Izanami. Instead, he’s more or less the reverse of what the shadows in P5 are: a concept tied to a Palace that’s adopted the form of a god’s archetype from within the Collective Unconsciousness. Specifically, the existence of the Metaverse as a realm distinct from both reality and the common planes of the Expanse led to the physical manifestation of people’s desires, the strongest of which (at least within Tokyo) was the desire for societal order and peace. That led to the formation of the Holy Grail as a treasure and Mementos as the collective Palace of the people of Tokyo. Over time, that treasure gained enough power from people’s faith that it was able to develop its own ego, which led to it becoming similar to a traditional MegaTen god: an abstract concept that is able to manifest as a specific entity and with enough power develop its own ego and personality. Thus, the Holy Grail (already being inherently connected with the Collective Unconsciousness) was able to choose an identity for itself based upon popular deities that personified order; Yaldabaoth was one such candidate, though it presumably could have also taken the form of any other supreme god of order. It’s formation is actually not all that different from YHVH’s in mainline SMT: mankind’s desire for order led to the formation of a deity that would bring just that, but by its very nature it can only recognize order itself as good. I’m still curious as to whether or not some part of Yaldabaoth was preserved within the Axiom due to its inherent connection to YHVH (which is particularly evident given that it is able to call upon the four Archangels to serve it), which would in turn mean that YHVH could have internalized that part. If nothing else, it’s an interesting thought that could lead to some cool fanfiction.

As an aside, I don’t really have much to say about the underlying themes of Chaos and Order in this game other than how they cater super hard to me being a huge Chaos dork. While they’re not quite as abstract as I would prefer, that’s mostly because they’re looking at the more practical societal implications of those concepts (most particularly in regards to Japanese society), which is perfectly understandable given the Persona series’ focus on individuals rather than ideas. What I will say is that this particular bias towards Chaos is fairly justified in this case given the nature of the society in question and the aspects of that society the game is criticizing, though that obviously means that the applicability of those themes to other societies will vary as opposed to the more universal themes of the mainline SMT games.