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Shin Megami Tensei and Persona

How in the absolute hell is anything in Dark Souls applicable? I can get thematically rich, though to be fair, Persona 4 does a lot with its theming and the presentation is nice. However, how is Persona 4's core message about digging for your own personal truth and accepting others and events less applicable than Dark Souls?

As far as being an adventure goes, Persona 4, and most of hte Persona games, take place in far more contained environments. Odin Sphere and Fire Emblem DON'T. they have the room to be more grand and go where they please, but in a game like Persona 4, which is able to create nonsensical environments, but chains them to a limited world to explore outside the dungeons, I don't feel its a fair comparison. I can understand your opinion, but I think you're trying a bit too hard here to knock it down because it wasn't as good in certain areas compared to other games that are very different to the point of comparing them being difficulty. Persona 4 had to have explicit and big reasons behinds the environments they put in the and when they put then. Each character that created a dungeon had to have a reason for that dungeon, and how they turned out after that and who they were affected the rest of the story and how the creators could go about creating the next dungeon all while keeping these characters contained to a small town. From my standpoint, P4's story is more meh in a lot of areas, and the message could certainly have been deeper and the final boss done a bit better, but I felt it was a decent romp. There are times, in order to appreciate a game or story, when you have to take away the other things you're actively comparing it too. By comparison, you could nitpick about a thousand or more other games that do parts of Persona 4 better, but you could do that with most games. Have a cliche' message with a unique setting and world I feel is what sells Persona 4. It may not be a masterful story, but the entirety of the cast s at least likable (depending on how you feel about Teddie) and the game isn't too serious. It's something you'd normally take at face value, as with many heavily anime shows that rely on that brand of senseless or random humor to get a laugh, but Persona 4 actually leaves you with things to think about. Its one of the few games out that of its kind that can preach an obvious and overdone message and actually have it get across and mean something to the player. Instead of setting your bar too high with the comparisons to other games, maybe its better to view the game as is? I know of about a hundred other games that I feel do what Dark Souls does in many areas better, but by taking Dark Souls as it is and not comparing everything it does to games with so little related to it, I can actively enjoy what it tries to do and feel that the whole package it presents is worthwhile and one of the better experiences I've had in the long run. If I did nitpick it, I'd find myself wanting to play quite a few other games quite a bit more and hampering my opinion of what is honestly a great game.

EDIT: Sorry for the text wall. I'm just tired of ppl using other games to justify how a game did singular aspects better instead of how other games did singular aspects and how it tied into the game's actual genre better. DS's world fit the gameplay style and way it did its theming. An RPG with so little cues on what to do, where to go, what any of what you're doing means, and how to properly play the game would create more of an anti-player experience, so I feel any comparisons to things like DS are unfitting for the most part.
 
North888 said:
How in the absolute hell is anything in Dark Souls applicable? I can get thematically rich

Applicability and thematic depth are kind of the same thing.

Applicability means how much the theme is relevant to or can be interpreted to fit.

IE I've always liked mainline SMT because the order vs neutral vs chaos theme is applicable to everything from religion, to ethics, to politics, to history, to personal life.

In the same way, Dark Souls ambiguous story is applicable to a great many ideas and interpretations, including entropy/mortality, cyclical world/history theory, religion and spirituality, the nature of humanity (barbarous or compassionate?), cosmology (where did the lord souls come from? was everyone hollow before? it can start to sound like a religious argument if you think about it long enough), etc. etc.

North888 said:
However, how is Persona 4's core message about digging for your own personal truth and accepting others and events less applicable than Dark Souls?

Because Dark Souls leaves you thinking about all the things previously mentioned. Persona 4 tells you something you already know, that acceptance is good when it's good and that searching for the truth is for the best. Just like Persona 3 doesn't tell you anything you don't know about mortality already if you're over 5 years old.

To go back to the previous Ray Bradbury example, Frost and Fire is a brilliant memento mori because it doesn't just tell you to be aware of your mortality and enjoy life, which is kind of preaching to the choir for most human beings. It uses science fiction and fantasy to make you think about what mortality means from a completely different and alien angle.

North888 said:
H
EDIT: Sorry for the text wall. I'm just tired of ppl using other games to justify how a game did singular aspects better instead of how other games did singular aspects and how it tied into the game's actual genre better.

Believe me, I'm not saying SMT should in anyway be like Dark Souls. It was just a notable example of a game that truly impressed me thematically, which is VERY, VERY rare in this medium.
 
I get ya, I just feel that the Dark Souls examples are a bit...weak? I feel that if you're going to throw around Dark Souls as a great example, maybe support it with other games as examples so you're not just throwing around game as the end all be all for theming. Its really not. There are tons of games that do their own unique theming without being as vague or open-ended as Dark Souls.

And I get what you're saying about the game not telling you anything you don't already know, but at the same time, the message is accompanied by direct examples of people overcoming and becoming examples of the obvious message. It doesn't have to be super deep or thematic, it has to be true and something you can learn from. It may come as a bit of a shock, but despite how much we "know" that finding ourselves and accepting others is important, you'd be surprised ho hard it really is to do such a thing. Seeing a character you may be able to relate with go through a trauma you can relate with or can understand, and seeing them overcome it is still a strong force and strong symbol. It's more obvious and in your face, but at the same time, that's partly what makes it excellent. Think of it like this. Playing through Dark Souls, the world is intriguing and paints a huge swathe of possible meanings to its vagueness, but it doesn't really give you much to get attached to aside from your created character. The world? Making your world fleshed out and immersive is a must in such types of games, they just did it better than most. But still, you, as the player, aren't really attached to anything. There isn't any direct urgency from others to push you forward, no allies that fight beside you the whole game, no great characters to grow attached to and grow on. Persona 4 has these. The characters, while maybe not the best characters ever written, are meant to be sympathized with and help the player grow from that example. Its more direct, but showing a character YOU directly help grow into someone better and overcome a sympathetic trial in their life is being pretty thematically applicable. And they have plenty of characters, attempting to appeal to a wide variety of issues, and just spread of feeling of hope that you can still grow and become someone above whatever problems you face and accept it and grow. Dark Souls is far deeper, but you have to dig deep to get there. Persona 4 presents its obvious message well, and attempts to actually make the message people should "know" one that they actually take to heart using the characters. Its about how it uses the message and gives it to you, not about how philosphical or vague it is.

EDIT: to clarify, I do get what you're saying, and your opinion is fine, but I'm basically just debating as to why maybe holding it up the standards of the way games like Dark Souls do their theming isn't very fair given that the two of them try to spread their messages differently. Dark Souls makes it open ended and vague, while allowing for multipe interpretations and discussion, while Persona has an obvious theme and some more kinda subtle ones, and attempts to ingrain them with you through the characters and making their situations sympathetic and using said themes and message to grow and improve, all the while making sure you, the player, remember them. Theming is more than debating philosophy and religion.
 
North888 said:
I feel that if you're going to throw around Dark Souls as a great example, maybe support it with other games as examples so you're not just throwing around game as the end all be all for theming.

As I mentioned before, I don't really care too much about the themes in most games. I'm a bit spoiled by the classics. Great games thematicly to me are maybe Dark Souls, SMT, maybe Majora's Mask? All that really comes to mind. The rest is mostly fun adventure stories with lovable characters. No shame in that, but it's not quite the same thing. My original complaint about P4 was more that it drops the ball on plot and characterization, which ILOLI tried to defend based on the theme of the story. I don't feel that one justifies the other in this case (Hamlet's rushed finale and earlier deus ex machina might be justifiable due to this argument, but nothing in p4 is interesting enough to have that luxury IMO).

North888 said:
And I get what you're saying about the game not telling you anything you don't already know, but at the same time, the message is accompanied by direct examples of people overcoming and becoming examples of the obvious message.

That would be fine, but as I mentioned, I simply didn't like the social links or character development all that much (I thought they were decent). It was good, better than average, but nothing I'd write home about or that made me keep thinking about the characters when the game was over.

North888 said:
Playing through Dark Souls, the world is intriguing and paints a huge swathe of possible meanings to its vagueness, but it doesn't really give you much to get attached to aside from your created character.

I grew really attached to npc's like Swamp Fireman, awesome blacksmith, spider lady, and Sunbro. Almost wanted to hank them for all the kindness they had shown me and apologize to them before potentially dooming them and the world (or save it? only time will tell)

North888 said:
EDIT: to clarify, I do get what you're saying, and your opinion is fine, but I'm basically just debating as to why maybe holding it up the standards of the way games like Dark Souls do their theming isn't very fair given that the two of them try to spread their messages differently. Dark Souls makes it open ended and vague, while allowing for multipe interpretations and discussion, while Persona has an obvious theme and some more kinda subtle ones, and attempts to ingrain them with you through the characters and making their situations sympathetic and using said themes and message to grow and improve, all the while making sure you, the player, remember them. Theming is more than debating philosophy and religion.

Yes I know, but as I said a few times, while I enjoy P4 to an extent, I do feel it dropped the ball in some ways both in terms of having a fun adventure plot (which it did fairly well for the first half) and some elements of character development. That's just my personal opinion though.

Believe me, I'm not saying P4 is bad or even mediocre in terms of writing. It's pretty good and well above the genres standard. It's nothing world shaking or classic though, IMO.
 
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Offtopic in the spoiler

iLoli said:
Can we talk about how hard Latooni can and will hold a nigga down?

IN A MOTHERFUCKING FIGHTER JET?

Latooni actual best girl.
Can we talk about how Katina is completely worthless as a character AND as a unit. And that Russel has to bail her out everytime because Russel is baller as FUCK

Anyways about the idea of characterization and plots being summarily weak in relation to the theme, I do agree with that but for probably(maybe) different reasons

Persona 4 does talk about truth but like ILoli I believe it has greater ties to acceptance. The problem therefore lies on the fact that the game puts so much emphasis on truth when it's not exactly the best overarching theme in relation to what's actually going on.

Each member of the investigation team has different values/ideals. And the acceptance of their issue may not seem so hard to us it IS however hard for them. That is what they feel has the biggest impact on who they are as a person and it shows through the process of social links.

When the game shouts TRUTH at you constantly when the real theme seems to revolve around a concept with vague ties to it weakens the impression of the game as a whole since it feels like the team, and the rest of Inaba, is avoiding the actual issue that people are supposed to be struggling with.

Persona 3 thankfully didn't do that. Everyone had to struggle with their emotions, responsibilities and consequences of death, whether the death was past, present or future as well as figurative, literal, death of a physical person or death of an ego. The game made sure that the theme was constant and that everyone was actually wrestling with the topic the game thrusts forth.
 
Ruin said:
honestly i just wish that P4's social link development for the Investigation team was in the main story and not
you know
social links

Just do it like they did in P3 again ya dig
 
Ambiguity said:
Each member of the investigation team has different values/ideals. And the acceptance of their issue may not seem so hard to us it IS however hard for them. That is what they feel has the biggest impact on who they are as a person and it shows through the process of social links.

This is probably where the characters lose their hold on me a bit, because I think it absolutely should seem hard to us. I think the viewer should relate and empathize with the characters as much as possible, and the issues they face should impress the viewer. I personally feel the script/characterization/character development just wasn't strong enough to do that in many places. And one of the biggest things for me that drops P4 down from "great" to "good".

Also as I said, I don't want to come off as some grump telling people not to like it. If the writing resonated with you, that's cool. No reason why you shouldn't love it. It's just not to my taste entirely.
 
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Maybe I'm the weirdo here, but my appeal in “relateable characters” has been plummeting lately. Sure, I of course understand the appeal, but to me, characters that are designed to be relateable nowadays seem more and more boring and derivative. I've found that many of the characters I personally enjoy the most in fiction, regardless of the medium, are the ones I can't find that much in common with. It's not about being the most disagreeable in terms of opinions, but I don't feel I learn or experience that much from characters who are more similar to me, and I suppose that means that fiction to me means gaining new perspectives.


Granted, though, I don't exactly find any of the characters in Persona relateable at all. For one obvious thing, they all have personas and go on supernatural adventures. I understand I'm supposed to relate and project myself onto how they react to said adventures and how that affects their personal/social lives, but that's just speculation. I'm imagining that I might be in similar shoes so to speak, but who knows how any real human might be if put into Tartarus or the TV world, or discover personas and shadows. Aigis and Ken (oh, and Koro-Chan) are my favorite characters from P3, not to mention Naoto and Kanji and Nanako from P4. And I can't really relate to any of them. Maybe some/most/all of them (except for maybe the dog, because dog) have traits I respect or would want or believe I want or have, but ultimately I just can't say I can feel like I can understand the struggle or plight of certain characters, particularly Ken/Naoto/Aigis. I agree their struggles should impress, which is what the characters I listed did to me, but I didn't find myself capable of empathizing amongst my sympathy.


It could just be that I'm not a fan of solipsistic introjection as a phenomenon in general, to be honest. I definitely sense that this is a minority opinion, but it's something I've been coming to terms with in the past years. Relateable characters to me seem more....predictable? Stale? Something like that. It's pretty subjective.
 
^^^Perhaps "relating" was the wrong word. More I think that ideally one should care about the characters in a story and their struggles, even if one doesn't "relate" to them.

Of course, one could go onto all sorts of semantic and philosophical arguments about the difference between caring and relating, if any.

"Relateability" in the sense of having an everyman background or personality, is something completely different though from what I meant. I'm more neutral to those elements. I'm more interested in the more emotional sides of characters. The sweet and compassionate moments, basically.
 
Alright yeah, that sounds more in tune with what appeals to me. Generally though, people use relateable to really mean those that possess similarities, not just capacity for sympathy or emotional/spiritual/intellectual elements.
 
I always considered relateable characters to mean characters that don't jar with the sense of reality. Characters that act like real people and react appropriately to certain topics. You don't need to Feel their pain but you should feel that if they were a real person they would act more or less the same.

Which is why Yukiko made me lose interest in her as a person within the first 2 hours.
 
While P3 and P4 had characters I really liked, both games had some really bland, uninteresting archetypes for characters. Yukiko, Yukari and Junpei were my least favorites.
 
Yukiko just gives you the runaround
But when she cursed out those reporters that was cool I guess
 
I think the main issue with Junpei isn't that he lacks character growth, but that most of it is all crammed into the second-half(last-third?) of the game. Junpei just stays as a dude who is jealous of you and self-loathes for too long to really show who he is, and by the time you reach the end of the game his appeal is lost because he stayed stagnant.

Yukari just straight up lacks any character development period.
 
I will say that Yukiko did get better for me as the game went on. Now that I'm thinking about it, I really didn't like Yosuke very much either.

Junpei had his moments near the end game, I honestly did respect his subplot with his waifu, but that really came off to me as a 5 minutes of fame type of situation.

I don't have much to say about Yukari. She felt like she was just designed to be the generic waifu loadout who has some stakes in the main plot of the game because of her baggage with her father. Rise's social link had the same problem for me: “You don't know which girl to go with? Don't worry, just pick our prefabricated Lovers arcana.”
 
Junpei, Chie, and Fuuka was annoying with their development. Maybe Rise too.

Yukari development was weak, but they kind of made up for that in The Answer.
 
I think she shows some maturity in P4A Climax as well, but I could be wrong since most of what I remember is eclipsed by best botgirl, Labrys.

Also, unelated, but I really, REALLY hope that we can have this song in DAN now that Cabbage Killer is in

 
Double post!

English VA trailers of Yu and Rise
"No one hurts or gets hurt, that is the rule here. So we must show how we feel with DANCE!"

Famitsu has scans of GIRFE (http://imgur.com/a/8blvI for full album). It looks like only FE characters from Shadow Dragon and Awakening will appear. Should there be a new thread for this?
 
but... Cain is Toma's Performa.
and Cain is from Sacred Sword is he not?
 
Cain is from the very first fire emblem you fucking putz
learn some history why don't you
 
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dammit, I've been mixing up Cain with Kent this whole time!
I haven't played rekka no ken since like, middle school.
you gotta admit, they're both very similar, and it doesn't help his best friend is named "Sain"
so all kinds of things are mixed up for me.

speaking of Toma though, anyone catch the name of the show he wants the lead role for?
hint hint, wink wink
 
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The final nail in the coffin of my excitement for the crossover is that they're only putting in FE characters from FE1 and Awakening. That is really disappointing.
Also, yeah, there should be a new thread for this.
I'll make one if someone hasn't already.
 
What kind of fucked up DLC is this

CJeQHFbUAAAFw0e.jpg
 
Once again I stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at me, with multicolored eyes. The horror
 
Either eye color customization or contact lenses. At least Shadow Nanako can be a thing now.
 
So it's been a slow news week for Persona. We do have more information on #FE for anyone who is interested.
http://personacentral.com/new-genei-ibun-roku-fe-information-and-screenshots/
Big things to take away from this is that
  • Three person party is confirmed as the hard-limit. But guest characters can step in for attacks.
  • All Mirage characters (with the exception of Tiki) have a mechanical appearance. There is an unknown reason for this.
  • Game is in Shibuya (already confirmed during Nintendo Direct), but will also take place in Harajuku
  • WiiU Gamepad will have a function that is similar to the LINE communication app. This will include a chat program that characters will use.
Aside from that just staff credits and announcing new members.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also worth pointing out are some more translations of old Atlus interviews avaliable thanks to the efforts of Pepsimangb on Tumblr. One of his satelite pages is called the "AtlusAtlas".
Two articles to note are an interview with Cozy Okada, Tadashi Satomi, and Kazuma Kanedo on the development of Persona 1
http://atlusatlas.tumblr.com/post/111724547998/here-we-are-at-last-about-two-months-in-the

and a look at some of the earlier builds for the Persona 3 combat system.
http://atlusatlas.tumblr.com/post/112010767518/repost-from-my-personal-blog-of-footage-atlus
 
yo, that last match of the top 64 was fucking hype!
AKIHIKO AND RISE BROUGHT THEMSELVES BOTH DOWN TO 1 HP AND EVERYONE JUST LOST IT AT THE END!
IT WAS AWESOME!
 
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It begins. I think she looks really good here. Shigenori Soejima can make any character feel at home in Persona.
 
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I thought it was just a costume for Rise at first...
 
Now I want to see Kanji & Akihiko make a cameo in the next Yakuza title.
 
Oh, dear. I really doubt she was necessary. I'm tired of seeing Miku everywhere.
She looks a bit off, though. Her design is really ugly-looking, and the artstyle is not very fitting for her.
 
its the same artstyle that's been used for Persona 3 and 4.
also, I like the new look solely because it's not the same one we see over and over. if you gonna cameo somebody make them distinguishable but try to not just slap the actual character in.
tbh, Soejima is my favorite regular artist they have right now.
plus, considering Sega is the one pumping money to Atlus and Atlus would probably be dead without them, this is perfectly fine.
she has no major story relevance, she's entirely DLC, and she comes with a remix done with Miku herself.

this is like if Ginei Ibun Roku had like, EXILE pop in as a DLC summon you can get or something because Avex wanted them to do it.
it's fine.
 
I prefer Doi a bit more, since their style is a bit more down to earth
but I mostly miss Kaneko ;-;
Soejima's inoffensive though, not poopy butts tier like Yasuda, at least
 
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