Disclaimer: The following dialogue was severely edited to make it easier to read in a blog post. Some, or most elements we discussed have been moved around to make the commentary flow better, while observations made after the fact were inserted along with dialogue fabricated to support it as part of the conversation. Other comments were removed entirely for the sake of brevity. With that said the spirit of the conversation was kept as close as possible to its original cadence.
Now I'm going to admit I don't know everything about video games, and one of the best ways to learn is to play games and analyse them critically. Having another perspective makes the analysis all the richer so I brought in my old friend Joe to tackle breaking down Persona 3: FES to see what they did right and what they could have done better. Me and Joe will be providing tag team commentary as we play through, learning what we can from a close examination of the game play and narrative.
Joe: My commentary will be in italics from now here on out, because italics are cool.
Right, let's get this game rolling.
Okay, this pre-game anime music video intro cinematic is pretty visually dynamic, although the upbeat lyrics contrast strongly with the grim phantoms of madness and symbolic suicide.
Maybe that's the point, a bit of J-Pop sugar to help the medicine go down?
Yeah, I'm starting to think the upbeat tempo and flashes of the characters having fun is to balance out the really heavy emotions were going to start exploring. There are some pretty strong psychological reading just from what we're seeing in this opening animated intro.
The title screen is white on bright blue, it's good to see that just because we're dealing with some dark themes doesn't mean everything has to be dark in the literal sense of the word.
Press any button to start.
Do they really mean that, I wonder? I mean I'm kind of swamped for options. I don't know if it's just sticking on this controller or what but I don't think it took my right shoulder button input.
Try all the non-standard buttons.
The "Analog" button doesn't do anything, that's a button and I know I pressed it. Alright enough messing around, the musical intro reset itself while we were being dense, the good news is you can skip it. While we're establishing a Save File, do you have any thoughts so far Joe?
A bit too early to make any serious calls, but I'm digging the art style. Everybody is tall and thin with a lot of sharp lines, the distinct characters we saw in the music intro had strong silhouettes where you could tell who was who just by their basic shape. Now that we're in the opening cinematic, it's carrying over with the environments too, that open air mall had a plastic, sterilized consumerist feel to it, while the train here goes from well lit and safe, to dark and scary with the light change from entering the tunnel, very well designed.
Going back to the open air mall for a second, the first thing we saw when the cut scene began was the protagonist passing by one of those LED video billboards, advertising some kind of soft drink featuring a woman in a bikini, then they smash cut right to one of the female leads frightened out of her mind fumbling to kill herself with a gun. Well, that's what it looks like, from the musical opening sequence we saw the characters summoning weird monsters by shooting themselves in the head, so I assume that's whats really going on here.
So what's your point? What's the bikini lady got to do with anything?
I think it's an intentional comparison, the commercial image of the sexualized female object versus the reality of the extremely sympathetic and human girl we are about to meet.
That's kind of a shallow moral though, it's been made better in more clear terms in other works. It's dropped right afterward to focus on the player's character.
Well yeah, but I get the sense they're really just setting the tone. I'm half tempted to believe we might get a serious and nuanced discussion of sex and gender in a video game.
Okay, you stay on the look out for that, I'll focus on the narrative. By the way to get you caught up we just got off a mystery train and are wandering around a forest of coffins... and now what I can only assume is the devil is asking us to sign a contract. Oh, that's a clever way to get the player to put in his character name, and I'm guessing this contract is going to come up later in the story, so we're kicking things off with a firm integration of story and game play.
I got distracted writing things down after the PA on the train told us we were going to die, what exactly is this contract about?
When did the PA tell us we were going to die? I didn't hear that. The contract was just about "taking responsibility for our actions," by the way.
It was real quick there, at the end of the station announcement.
I think you hallucinated that.
I think that's what the games wants me to think.
So the game made me not hear the PA say that?
Probably, it's a very good game, that's real immersion right there. Anyways what are we going to name this guy?
[After some pretty boring discussion we settle on Quinn McQueen some how].
Ah, one of those in engine cut scenes where you have to press X in order to advance the dialogue, I'm actually a big fan of these provided the information they're giving you is actually relevant. They keep you in the game world, the same space where you play is where narrative elements occur as well, you can see your characters effect on the world without having to shift into some other medium.
So do you think the anime intro on a train takes us out of the game? I felt it really established the tone and style of the game and gave us a lot of important plot information in a fun aesthetically pleasing way.
I'm of mixed feelings about it really, I understand the desire, perhaps even the need to show important events in a punchier style than in engine renderings. It makes sense to get the exposition out of the way as painlessly as possible and these lavishly drawn animations can make some of it down right enjoyable to watch. On the other hand, there is no reason we as the player couldn't have wandered around the forest of standing coffins after getting off the train, in fact it was the perfect opportunity to hand over control to the players. Considering everybody has been transformed into coffins and nothing was working, then the player would have no choice other than to make their way to the dorms to advance, getting a chance to wander around in this weird twilight existence, perhaps being menaced by the lurking shadow creatures to give a real taste of the dread they were trying to get across in the animation. They did a good job getting the feeling of creeping fear across in the cut scene as is, but if we were controlling the character just then, the horror would've been a lot more personal.
Maybe, but there is a lot of material for the player to cover already. Keep in mind we're at the beginning of a ninety-hour epic and some people just want to cut to the chase already. Speaking of which let's actually advance the in game dialogue.
Ooh, hey a red headed girl.
What was all of this about a nuanced exploration of sex and gender?
Well no, I didn't mean it like that, it's just that it's the title the game gives to her. It also called this other girl we're talking to, "Brown Haired Girl." It sort of seems to me that this is how the main character thinks of women, by their physical traits. Not that this is necessarily an indictment of the game, but rather just characterization of the main character.
I've got two issues with that idea Eddie, one that it's just a stand in title until we get their actual names. See now that they've introduced themselves the red haired girl is Mitsuru and the other is Yukari. Secondly the main character is definitely just a blank slate everyman who the player(s in this case), project themselves onto. I mean look at him, his color palette is equal parts black and white.
I stand by what I said, I'm willing to bet that if we meet a male character we don't know yet they will not be characterized by a physical attribute, but rather as "nervous man" or "smart student." As to your second comment, I wouldn't say he's not characterized at all, you can tell by his posture that he doesn't at all care to be here, he's drawn with a small mouth relative to the others meaning he isn't going to be saying much of anything and he's perpetually wearing ear buds, a sure symbol of social isolation in modern life.
I'd take that wager if I were a gambling man, also I think those visuals are meant to convey that Quinn here isn't being influenced by his surroundings, and it's just our input that affects what he does.
He might not care about what's going on around him, but this seems pretty interesting to me and to an extent I am him. If he's a silent protagonist then his expression should be more neutral.
We'll see if he's characterized any more down the road then, but I doubt it. Speaking of, how are we going to play this guy?
Good question, at the end of this cut scene I really want to rifle through other characters stuff. There's been so much plot so far that I really want to stretch my legs by invading other peoples privacy. How about you, how do you want to play him?
I don't know, from the few dialogue choices we've made so far, he seems like kind of a jerk or at the very least kind of arrogant, maybe the implicit characterisation you mentioned earlier is bringing that across. I also want to leave no stone unturned here, but more for practical reasons. They say this game is really hard and we're probably going to need every advantage we can get.
Yeah, I sort of limited myself to cursory knowledge of the game so I wouldn't stumble across spoilers. What exactly are we getting into here? What's game play like, you've got the box and manual over there.
The basic premise is you play through a standard school year as this kid. During the day you go to school and investigate the town, having conversations with people and stuff, while at night you can explore this dungeon fighting monsters and getting treasure, experience, you know the regular RPG stuff.
So does the day time game play cross over with the night time game play?
Well these Persona's the game's about get stronger based on the "Social Links" you make, and having the right Persona's equipped will help you make Social Links, at least that's what the manual says. Basically the daytime game is like a visual novel and nighttime game is a dungeon crawl.
Huh, it's cool that both modes of game play influence each other we'll have to see how they balance each other out. There seem to be a lot of juxtaposed elements in this game, the different play styles for day and night, the light tone clashing with the heavy subject matter, and I'll bet we hit a few more as we go.
Your starting to develop a gambling problem Eddie, I think it's about time for an intervention. Anyways, we're basically just manipulating peoples emotional attachment to us for our own personal gain.
That seems to be the long and short of it.
So basically we're a pimp.
Er...
I mean we should play him like he's one. Always taking emotional advantage of others and is just an entirely irredeemable jerk who insincerely plays to peoples emotions for his own good.
That's awful, but probably consistent with how he'll come across anyways, and it's not likely were aren't going to keep coming back to it even if decide on something else now that you've said that. Who knows, we might learn something from this.
I doubt it though. That school uniform sort of reminds me of a track suit, I'm imagining this guy as like one of those big hairy mafia guys with a cheesy gold chain who owns several, "gentleman's clubs," and dabbles in human trafficking.
I hope he's not above a few B and E's because we are kicking in the doors of any room that doesn't belong to us and stealing their stuff.
Go for it man.
What the hell is this crap? Most of these rooms are empty except for their furnishings, with nothing to take.
If I had to guess I'd say these are the rooms that other party members move into after you've recruited them.
Still though, there was literally nothing to steal, we actually lost money exploring the dorm by buying a soda. The rooms that weren't unoccupied were locked, they wouldn't even come to the door.
Well those two girls are still down stairs, I guess the dorm rooms have their own keys or card access.
Yeah, but that Akihiko guy didn't even come to the door, and I know he's in there.
What if there are not items to be had in the overworld except by buying them in shops or the like and you have to get everything else and the money to pay for them by killing monsters and exploring dungeons?
Whoa, that possibility hadn't really crossed my mind. I'm just so used to getting items right off the bat that it didn't really occur to me that was an option.
Maybe the game developers have enough faith in the world they made that they assumed you'd want to explore it for it's own sake rather than incentivize exploration based purely on mechanical gain?
A novel idea, let's see if this bears out.
Hey look, we're finally done with the first day, which we started in the extremely late evening. It takes the game a long time to get anywhere, huh?
Maybe it's just the plot parts that drag, I'm sure once we get into the game play the pace will pick up.
Whoops, spoke too soon, we got a cut scene. Looks like everybody in this dorm is part of a massive conspiracy to surreptitiously videotape us sleeping.
It's over now, that was basically just boiler plate "he's the chosen one," dialogue anyways, they had to get it out of the way early and by making it all conspiratorial it builds suspense. Now it's the first day of school, apparently Yukari is going to be acting as our Navi, telling us where to go every ten seconds. Oh hey, she actually left us, that was kind of rude.
You don't appreciate what you have until it's gone man. Now we've got to find the board with the class list on our own, times like these are when you wish you did have the annoying tutorial character to point the way. On the plus side, we've already raised a few eye-brows by walking to school with Yukari. Already building up our reputation.
I don't remember everybody being this childish about these sorts of things when I was an anime character enrolled in a Japanese high school.
Those were the days. Okay, we've got our class schedule, now we've got to check in at the office. FYI I tried robbing other peoples shoe lockers and nothing. Also of note is that we can't intentionally avoid going to the office, If I try to go up the stairs it says, "I should really go to the Administrative Office."
This does not bode well for my RPG kleptomania. Let's see what the home room teacher has to say.
Apparently we're an orphan, our parents died ten years ago. I'd like to think that after that we were left to learn hard lessons on the street and began our slide into the depths of crime.
And I'd like to think that we're the one who killed them, we're a self made orphan.
Wow, I'm just going to go ahead and pay attention to this school assembly. The principle is telling us that anything worth doing is worth doing well and to take the time to yada-yada. He also had something about responsibility in there, which has come up a couple of times earlier, seems to be an important theme.
I wonder if that'll come up in game play, maybe you get chewed out if you take on a boss monster you aren't ready for and you leave one of your party bleeding out on the floor.
Back at the dorm, we're still being railroaded with my all time favorite RPG plot advancement line, "Why don't you go get some sleep?" Because at midnight the world is going to shift into a day for night filter and demons will swallow my soul. Also because Yukari, the person telling me to get some sleep is visibly carrying a gun in an ankle holster. Despite all this I have no choice but to go to sleep and get murdered at worst, spied on at best.
Huh, I didn't think they'd show him being spied on a second time, although they're mostly just throwing around some plot words like Shadows, Persona and the Dark Hour.
School time and two girls gossiping about something called Apathy Disease, whose symptoms sound exactly like severe depression. Why they would call it a disease and not a disorder or syndrome is beyond me, let alone why they wouldn't classify it as a form of depression. However I'm fairly sure it's just what happens when Shadows eat your soul or whatever it is they do to you.
Maybe there are other symptoms, like a slight fever? Crippling melancholy and a temperature in the low 100's. More importantly who the hell is this Junpei kid and why should we give him the right answer to the question the teacher just asked?
Look at his bugged out eyes man, he's almost definitely the drug hook up at this school. On a more practical level we have to worry about getting those Social Links, but the I'm going to justify it as him being a weed hook up.
Well it gave us a Charm increase, which is cool, but I mean seeing how we correctly answered an academic question, shouldn't we get Academics points too?
Eh, that wasn't so much book smarts as pimp smarts.
Is there a difference between street smarts and pimp smarts?
Pimp smarts are smarter.
Okay after skipping through the rest of the "day," I think we're finally to some combat here. Evil monsters are assailing the dormitory and just about to batter down the door. Yukari and me are told to make a run for it, but I can just tell we're going to run into trouble. The backdoor is blocked off so we're heading for the roof, Yukari is trying to explain what exactly is trying to kill us, but following the first rule of horror movie exposition, no one ever starts to explain something in daylight, when it's safe.
Yes Yukari, let's do climb to the roof, that way we'll be cornered by the evil monsters for sure. Well at least we get into some combat here after another cut scene, I don't know why he thought it was a good idea to shoot himself in a head, with that device they made look like a gun for some reason. I mean I get the symbolism, but I wish they'd explain why it looks likes a gun in game.
Maybe they will, but right now we're stuck in a can't lose, "a slime approaches," encounter, it doesn't really show off the combat system in full, although from what I'm seeing it's all about summoning Persona's, rather than have them be a game stopping cinematic attack like in a Final Fantasy.
Annnd now we're in a coma, goodnight everybody. Hey, this Igor guy looks cool, I respect him as a pimp contemporary.
He does have a pretty sweet pad, and at least we're getting some straight answers out of him. I trust this trans dimensional, horribly deformed Fae creature implicitly. I get the feeling he deals on the square.
He respects our game is all. Wow, we were out for a week, after experiencing a few days in game, being out of commission for a week is really put into perspective, I feel like we lost something there. The passage of time appears to be a big deal in this game, with important story events tied to certain days, you really get the feeling that you should be making the most of your time.
Yukari is at our bedside when we woke up, I guess she just likes watching us sleep.
It's nice to have a hobby.
It's quality viewing, you know this show is just getting off the ground, but I think this snoring sub-plot is going places, but I hope they don't go a really corny route and write in night terrors for Sweeps just for the ratings.
I'll wait until they collect the whole season on Netflix, make a weekend out of it.
Okay finally getting the full story here. Apparently we are now part Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad. I'm sorry, Extracurricular? This is a complete joke of a shadow government.
It's a shadow student government. They rig student elections by using their mob connections to stuff the shoe box with a hole cut in the top with fake ballots.
Shake down the school choir bake sale for protection money, flipping over the table with the sugar cookies when they try and welsh on us, and not soft sugar cookies, but those hard ones with the overly granulated colored sugar sprinkled on the top that taste awful. Then we're off to put in the fix on the cake raffle.
Declaring war on Riverton Vocational without informing either house of the PTA.
We are going to abuse this power for all it's worth. Speaking of abusing power, I'm a little disappointed we couldn't call a nurse from our hospital bed just for the fun of it like Yukari recommended. There haven't been a lot of options so far.
It'll open up when we get to the game proper, we'll certainly appreciate all the choices a lot more after not having them for awhile, another intentional contrast I think.
I don't know, I think maybe they just didn't have the resources to make all these options available. By way of resources, I'm calling it right now that somebody else will end up in this exact same hospital room because it's too elaborate of a set to just use once.
Along with genre savvy, we seem to have the super power of rapid healing, because the same day we get out of a coma, we are back in school. Mitsuru is of course elected student body president, her opponents having mysteriously disappeared in weeks prior. Also Yukari seems to be pretty passive aggressive about Mitsuru being team leader, I smell a cat fight.
Nah, it's just a way to get back story in, explaining how her dad died ten years ago in an accident involving the company Mitsuru's dad owns. So much for your genre savvy.
Hey, ten years ago is when our parents bought the farm.
You think we killed them too?
No, I think they were all involved in the same conspiracy or whatever and we're inheriting their problems, seeing how they're all lousy parents. How's that for genre savvy?
I'd say that's not genre savvy enough, Yukari mentioned they never found her dads body afterward, right?
Oh, so you think he's still alive and just a dead beat? No pun intended.
No, my theory is that our character is actually Yukari's dad hurled backward through time and somehow reverse aged and we have amnesia. It explains our characters lack of back story completely.
I think you're being too genre savvy. And Junpei continues to just barely get by in school, by virtue of our residual pimp smarts. Oh and the on screen narration afterward is priceless, "You go home with Junpei, laughing loudly at inappropriate jokes." It's official, we're all kinds of spliffed up right now.
Any other 1950's jazz musician slang you want to throw at us?
Shh, plot is happening, there is a new member on the team, oh hey it's Junpei! Whoo, now I don't need to leave the dorm for weed. Although I'm kind of mad they just let him in instantly after discovering he can stay awake during the Dark Hour when they spied on us for the better part of the week.
Speaking of, I don't remember ever agreeing to be part of this organization, they're pretty much responsible for putting us in a week long coma and driving us to attempt suicide, we had no idea that the weird gun like device summoned our Persona, we were just trying to end it all before we got devoured by a shadow monster. That first time on the roof was self defense, but I'm not about to intentionally risk my life fighting these monsters, I'm transferring out of this mad house.
Come on man, if we sign up we get one of those cool guns and also we really don't have a choice in the matter, this Ikutski guy is pretty much pulling our strings here.
That guy with his lame puns, "The early bird gets the bookworm." Then later he says, "Please forgive the lame pun." No Ikutski, I will never forgive that pun, you knew it was a bad pun and went through with it anyways. I will see you dead by my hands before this thing is over.
Pimp justice is harsh, but fair. Anyways, let's get ready to dungeon crawl! Apparently Tartarus is the only dungeon in he game, it's just a matter of how high you go in the tower. Save up real quick and let's start killing monsters.
Well at least there's stuff to loot here, but the monsters are the same ones from the roof, no real variation. These fights do an admirable job explaining the basics of combat, but we're two hours in here. Also Mitsiru is a total spoil sport only letting us explore the first level of Tartarus. Just run us through the tutorials and let us at it for crying out loud. As much as the support character who always butts in and tells you way more than you want to know annoys me as a matter of practice, as a regular character Mitsuru is actually pretty compelling from what we've seen so far. She comes off as knowledgeable and capable, while projecting an air of authority, without becoming a stereotypical "ball buster," female commander.
And she drives a motorcycle... in a skirt for some reason. Although having her sit this first mission out makes her seem like kind of a coward, although it makes Akihiko look even worse by comparison, at least she's providing field support, he's doing a whole lot of nothing. Poor Akihiko, legendary ass-kicker got hurt fighting the shadows a week ago and is still too banged up to go on the mission. I was in a coma for a week and just got out yesterday you wimp. Does he have some kind of hemophilia or something?
That would explain why he's always wearing that band-aid.
Mission accomplished and Junpei picked up an item for us without us even telling him to, I officially declare him awesome. Okay back to school, whoops there's some kid who wants to talk to us.
Hah, you owe me a nickle, he's called "Kid in Striped Shirt," and not distinguished by any of his physical characteristics whatsoever in his title.
I totally didn't take that bet. Okay, stay awake in class for pimp smarts. Ooh hey, we can actually, like do stuff now, join clubs talk to people, wander the city, the works. But first Akihiko wants to meet him at the police station, after breaking the hearts of every young thing in the school yard. He is challenging our status as top pimp.
Hopefully we aren't going to the police to turn me in for the murder of my parents.
Well after trying to go everywhere other than the police station and having Junpei drag me away each time, it turns out it's this games equivalent to a weapons store, that's actually pretty clever, a store selling weapons to teenage kids wouldn't make any sense at all really. That and having the police on your bank roll really adds legitimacy to what was formerly a pretty sorry excuse for a conspiracy.
I don't know, it actually makes the SEES seem even more lame, this just one police officer, not the whole force, and he found us out on his own, we didn't like flip him or anything. It's not so much suborning the cops into our massive bootlegging operation, and more one cop who bought his nephew some booze at the package store to drink out in the woods.
I'll agree with that assessment on the grounds that it makes Akihiko look like a chump. Anyways now we're free to do whatever for real. Let's go watch a movie at the theater, by ourselves, like a total creep.
Sitting right behind one family, smoking a huge cigar and laughing really, really loudly I hope.
Naturally, also to make this even more pathetic, it's a film festival, we saw three films back to back without any friends, even Junpei wouldn't hang out with us.
Evening consular...
The games telling us to go back to the dorms now. Apparently we should to to Mitsuru if we want to go to Tartarus, or we can do our own thing, the curfew is lifted.
Huzzah, but we're just about out of time! My how three hours fly. Next time we'll have a crack at actual combat and revel in our freedom.
As all good pimps do.
Thanks for coming out Joe. We'll have to do this again sometime.
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