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I’m generally liking the writing a little more in the Royal segment so far but there is one thing about it that sort of exacerbates a complaint I had about the game generally: I think it’s lame that Joker is basically perfect. I know he’s supposed to be a sort of cipher for the player to mold into the Joker of their choosing but it ends up really making the relationships in the game so one-sided. You go and fix some deep personal problem for all of your confidants and in return they can’t actually help you out person to person because you’re basically not a human, so they offer up stuff. I imagine it would be very hard to actually write in good character building over a game where there are so many conversations that may or may not happen, but the dynamic is such that occasionally he’s borderline messianic. Royal exacerbates this because after you finally get to hang out with your friends during your free time they each approach you, one after the other, on consecutive days, and basically prostrate themselves in front of you for the very understandable offense of buying into this manipulation to give them everything Maruki thought they wanted. (Edit: I wish so bad that instead of apologizing for wanting to spend time with her sister and her dead dad, Makoto had been like “motherfucker I slept in your bed in Christmas Eve and you went on what Kasumi clearly thought was a date on New Years Day and I caught you red handed what is wrong with you”) And you can sit there like an rear end in a top hat and say “yeah well don’t do it again” or you can be empathetic but what you can’t do is commiserate because you’re mister special and immediately saw through it with your psychopath rival. I want to know what sort of impact these people have on Joker as a person beyond hidden abilities and “The Power of Teamwork”. I want to see what Joker’s actual perfect life would be beyond “not under imminent threat of arrest”. I would have loved to see Akechi’s too, and I’m early enough that it’s still possible that there could be some heartbreaking scene of Akechi not driven insane by his upbringing. Edit: I would love to know what the people at the darts bar think of the weirdo who comes in to play darts with his cat and wrecks everyone even at the highest level DC Murderverse fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 07:53
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Joker's flaw is his awful taste in men.
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Mar 29, 2021 08:17
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Acerbatus posted:1/Magician: Initiative and confidence   The P5 High Priestess is La Papesse, the Popess, and again the P5 depiction copies the Marseilles deck. The female pope is of course Pope Joan. The association is with purity, and a paradoxical simultaneous struggle for spiritual union and physical asceticism, or desire and denial. Modern decks usually associate this card with the Shekhinah, the kabbalistic concept of the imminence of the divine which is (theoretically) the end goal of religious study. And so on.
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Mar 29, 2021 08:27
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Man, I will never not enjoy the 'evil' tarot theme going on with P5. I liked P3 and 4's tarot pictures too but the P5 ones are just so much better.
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Mar 29, 2021 08:31
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Reminder to everyone playing Royal to save your compendium personas now and then. Don't be like me and sac your 99 magic Satan only to remember the one you have saved has 60.  SubG posted:All of the P5 major arcana follow the French naming conventions of e.g. the Tarot of Marseilles, and many of the readings are straightforward interpretations of them: The Magician is Le Bateleur, which is explicitly a street performer performing stage magic (the depiction in P5, as in the Marseilles deck, explicitly depicts the cups and balls illusion) and so refers to someone not with arcane powers or anything like that, but someone who is faking it/conning people to get by. Interesting, I don't know much about the Marseilles deck! Like I said for Makoto though, I do get how the P5 card shows a corruption of the original (or at least inferred it), just not how goofing off/looking at porn instead of studying describes Makoto in any way. Hellioning posted:Man, I will never not enjoy the 'evil' tarot theme going on with P5. I liked P3 and 4's tarot pictures too but the P5 ones are just so much better. Me too, I just wish that they tied into the characters a bit better.
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Mar 29, 2021 09:13
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Acerbatus posted:Reminder to everyone playing Royal to save your compendium personas now and then. Don't be like me and sac your 99 magic Satan only to remember the one you have saved has 60.
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Mar 29, 2021 09:34
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If the people in charge of Royal are making future Persona games I know everyone will at least look good. Maybe my love of long winter coats makes me biased but I feel like all of the outfits look way better, and even your party members’ personas get in on the action. I love the 50’s Americana vibe I get from a lot of the third stages even if I don’t quite get how it works thematically. Haru’s looks like a Hollywood starlet with the hair wrap and big sunglasses, Yusuke’s has a pompadour and a big-rear end cigar, Ann’s is blowin’ bubbles with a rose-painted jacket (and the men she’s using are wearing fedoras), and Morgana’s has that same rose design on the rolled up sleeves. On the other hand, Ryuji’s is straight up early 2000s sci-fi, Futaba’s is just a star destroyer (or any number of triangle-shaped battleships) and Makoto’s is... the Batmobile? Maybe they didn’t want to follow trend and turn it into a Harley or a Ford Firebird or what have you.Acerbatus posted:Reminder to everyone playing Royal to save your compendium personas now and then. Don't be like me and sac your 99 magic Satan only to remember the one you have saved has 60. On this note what’s the best way to get that award for raising all of a persona’s stats to 99?
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Mar 29, 2021 09:45
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Acerbatus posted:Like I said for Makoto though, I do get how the P5 card shows a corruption of the original (or at least inferred it), just not how goofing off/looking at porn instead of studying describes Makoto in any way. It's totally the hermeneutic version of the anime ice queen that you have to max your academic stat before you can date.
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Mar 29, 2021 09:48
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Acerbatus posted:Interesting, I don't know much about the Marseilles deck! It doesn't. EDIT: although people obviously disagree based on posts above. I don't really agree, but those seem valid points. The uncanny valley tarot deck is a general stylistic choice to underscore the fact that Joker has been Screwed by society at large and must band together with other in similar situations, to give returning players a general sense of unease, and (vanilla endgame spoilers) as another hint that the Wild Card supernatural support network is not being run by Igor this time. Omobono fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 10:04
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DC Murderverse posted:On this note what’s the best way to get that award for raising all of a persona’s stats to 99? 1. Fuse two cheap Personas during a Fusion Alarm 2. Strengthen another Persona (doesn't matter which) with the Gallows, also during an alarm. 3. Use the Persona you fused in step 1 as the sacrifice, this will always result in a Gallows Accident, which raises the Persona's stats without leveling up. 4. Repeat until your chosen Persona is at all-99.
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Mar 29, 2021 10:24
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The whole deck: anakha posted:Yeah I was gonna say Kanji doesn't fit in too well under the Emperor arcana given that description. Another thing The Emperor is about is masculinity in general, and that's of course extremely relevant to Kanji's arc. Yusuke OTOH is a much bigger reach.
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Mar 29, 2021 10:30
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Persona 5 Moon fits Mishima incredibly because he is definitely the kind of person to get his rear end kicked by a lobster.YaketySass posted:Another thing The Emperor is about is masculinity in general, and that's of course extremely relevant to Kanji's arc. Yusuke OTOH is a much bigger reach.
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Mar 29, 2021 13:26
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Yusuke should have been Empress, and Haru Emperor.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:09
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Acerbatus posted:
if you've noticed the Death card in P5 has no text on it, that's also true of XIII in the Marseilles deck, by the way
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Mar 29, 2021 14:26
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DC Murderverse posted:I’m generally liking the writing a little more in the Royal segment so far but there is one thing about it that sort of exacerbates a complaint I had about the game generally: Well, the Persona 3 protagonist's ultimate Persona is literally called Messiah so this kind of thing has been going on for a while  But yeah, it's a weakness in the story how often modern Persona protagonists are just perfect, wise, mature people who always know what to do. To a degree that's because of their status as silent protagonists whose dialogue is most often chosen by the player--it's hard to show character flaws in that case without putting the player in a situation where they're like "I only have bad options to pick from, this sucks," and if you offer a good option, well, people will just pick that one unless they're on NG+ and just want to see what happens. This is one of the reasons I love the Persona 4 anime so much. It does a lot to make Yu Narukami an actual character, and while he's still the best fighter and wise, kind, and mature beyond his age, he also has some extremely deep insecurities and loneliness that lead to him (anime ending spoilers) endangering the entire world because he can't stand the thought of leaving his friends. DC Murderverse posted:If the people in charge of Royal are making future Persona games I know everyone will at least look good. Maybe my love of long winter coats makes me biased but I feel like all of the outfits look way better, and even your party members’ personas get in on the action. I love the 50’s Americana vibe I get from a lot of the third stages even if I don’t quite get how it works thematically. Haru’s looks like a Hollywood starlet with the hair wrap and big sunglasses, Yusuke’s has a pompadour and a big-rear end cigar, Ann’s is blowin’ bubbles with a rose-painted jacket (and the men she’s using are wearing fedoras), and Morgana’s has that same rose design on the rolled up sleeves. On the other hand, Ryuji’s is straight up early 2000s sci-fi, Futaba’s is just a star destroyer (or any number of triangle-shaped battleships) and Makoto’s is... the Batmobile? Maybe they didn’t want to follow trend and turn it into a Harley or a Ford Firebird or what have you. Yeah, everyone's midwinter outfits are fantastic, and the third-tier Personas are some of my favorite Persona designs ever. I also really love Joker's evolved version of Arsene, Raoul, just one of the coolest-looking Personas in the series... and it's DLC, which sucks. I caved and bought it anyway, of course.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:39
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p5r is a story about therapy and meds being evil and the hosed up thing is its still a more interesting story than vanilla p5's ending
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Mar 29, 2021 14:40
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Endorph posted:p5r is a story about therapy and meds being evil and the hosed up thing is its still a more interesting story than vanilla p5's ending I feel like it's not actually saying meds are evil, Maruki isn't offering medication, he's offering to undo the existence of trauma entirely, he never actually makes any efforts to medicate or properly do therapy at all. I guess that I can see the argument though, and it's a bit of a garbage message through that lens no doubt.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:43
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well that's an uncharitable reading actually maruki's idea that Sumire should simply go with her delusion that she is actually her sister irl is probably more in line with antipsych doctrine than anything else
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Mar 29, 2021 14:44
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^ I edited in spoiler tags fyiEndorph posted:p5r is a story about therapy and meds being evil and the hosed up thing is its still a more interesting story than vanilla p5's ending I feel like that's a bit of a leap? The actual therapy Maruki does is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing. It's only when he starts forcing his will on other people through supernatural means that anything bad starts happening. I guess I'm having a hard time following the jump from "researcher uses magical mind-rewriting science to alter reality so nobody ever feels anything bad ever" to "this is about medication." It doesn't read like allegory to me at all.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:45
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Feels Villeneuve posted:well that's an uncharitable reading He's all about avoiding pain/trauma instead of confronting it (either through therapy or medication for the mental after-effects). Of course confronting it is perhaps a bit harsh too.
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Mar 29, 2021 14:46
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Lord_Magmar posted:He's all about avoiding pain/trauma instead of confronting it (either through therapy or medication for the mental after-effects). Of course confronting it is perhaps a bit harsh too. his doctrine also seems to be that all trauma and mental illness is via external effects so simply making everything nice will fix everything, which is like textbook anti-psych lol. he's basically the guy who says if we have full communism than your panic disorder will go away
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Mar 29, 2021 14:49
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P5 is anti-therapy, P4 is pro-subsuming yourself to the collective, P3 is pro-anti-"lay down and die you miserable fucker".
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Mar 29, 2021 15:06
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Commander Keene posted:Strikers will offer to register the Persona if it's higher level than the one you have registered when you fuse. It'll also tell you if you're trying to manually register a lower-level version if you use the "Register All" button in the compendium and offer to only register higher-level Personas and those are things I desperately hope stay in for Persona 6. The biggest holdover I hope carries over from Strikers to P6 is how ridiculously easy it is to relearn skills not only for your own Personas but for your party members as well. I know they technically have those systems in P4G and P5, but they take up time and honestly I've never bothered. Being able to swap in things like Diarahan or Dekaja for Ann as needed is extremely nice.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:22
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DC Murderverse posted:Royal exacerbates this because after you finally get to hang out with your friends during your free time they each approach you, one after the other, on consecutive days, and basically prostrate themselves in front of you for the very understandable offense of buying into this manipulation to give them everything Maruki thought they wanted. (Edit: I wish so bad that instead of apologizing for wanting to spend time with her sister and her dead dad, Makoto had been like “motherfucker I slept in your bed in Christmas Eve and you went on what Kasumi clearly thought was a date on New Years Day and I caught you red handed what is wrong with you”) And you can sit there like an rear end in a top hat and say “yeah well don’t do it again” or you can be empathetic but what you can’t do is commiserate because you’re mister special and immediately saw through it with your psychopath rival. I want to know what sort of impact these people have on Joker as a person beyond hidden abilities and “The Power of Teamwork”. I want to see what Joker’s actual perfect life would be beyond “not under imminent threat of arrest”. I would have loved to see Akechi’s too, and I’m early enough that it’s still possible that there could be some heartbreaking scene of Akechi not driven insane by his upbringing. One of the things about this is Joker didn't break free of the illusion on his own merits. Instead Lavenza (at least I'm pretty sure that butterfly wasn't Philemon) lead him out in the school dream sequence - the way he was special was by having someone else help him. And then he spent time depressed and barely able to get out of bed. Also and speculating on the final month that wasn't the real Akechi; it was the Akechi from Joker's better life. Unhinged, a friendly rival, and whose bark was much much worse than his bite.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:36
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neonchameleon posted:Also and speculating on the final month that wasn't the real Akechi; it was the Akechi from Joker's better life. Unhinged, a friendly rival, and whose bark was much much worse than his bite. The way I read this is that the third semester Akechi is the real Akechi, based entirely on the glimpses of the real Akechi we see during his confidant during the main game. That's, I think, the point of having that new confidant for him: to show us glimpses of who he is beneath the surface, so that when he shows up in the third semester, we understand where he's coming from. The version of Akechi we see during the Maruki arc at the end is the one who insisted on dueling Joker in Mementos, admitted he hated him, and threw down the gauntlet. He's also the one who sacrificed himself so the Phantom Thieves could escape the Shadow ambush in Shido's Palace. I think that actually is who Akechi is beneath the surface. Not an idealized model of him made by Maruki, but the version of himself that he can be when he isn't pretending to be the detective prince and isn't driving himself psychotic with Loki so he can finally beat his overpowered rival. Harrow fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 15:44
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Harrow posted:The way I read this is that the third semester Akechi is the real Akechi, based entirely on the glimpses of the real Akechi we see during his confidant during the main game. That's, I think, the point of having that new confidant for him: to show us glimpses of who he is beneath the surface, so that when he shows up in the third semester, we understand where he's coming from. The version of Akechi we see during the Maruki arc at the end is the one who insisted on dueling Joker in Mementos, admitted he hated him, and threw down the gauntlet. He's also the one who sacrificed himself so the Phantom Thieves could escape the Shadow ambush in Shido's Palace. Also I’m guessing he’s alive too, the biggest hint to this is that when rejecting Maruki’s reality everyone else has their wishes for thing disappear as the illusion shatters, Akechi remains. My guess is he survived but would have been comatose/lying in a ditch dying, and Maruki’s reality saved his life somehow. That’s why he’s walking past the train right at the end.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:49
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Lord_Magmar posted:Also I’m guessing he’s alive too, the biggest hint to this is that when rejecting Maruki’s reality everyone else has their wishes for thing disappear as the illusion shatters, Akechi remains. My guess is he survived but would have been comatose/lying in a ditch dying, and Maruki’s reality saved his life somehow. That’s why he’s walking past the train right at the end. Oh poo poo that's true. I assumed he was alive as well just because of the "Akechi lives!!" post-credits stinger but yeah, that actually makes sense. It's telegraphed a lot earlier than that.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:50
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Akechi is actually pissed because Maruki took him away from his new career as a professional darts player to be in Joker's lotus eater happy fun time.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:59
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Harrow posted:Oh poo poo that's true. I assumed he was alive as well just because of the "Akechi lives!!" post-credits stinger but yeah, that actually makes sense. It's telegraphed a lot earlier than that. Yup, I believe the false cognition is that Maruki brought Akechi to Joker and Akechi saved Joker from imprisonment, Akechi surviving Shido’s palace is something Maruki has no knowledge of, he simply is presenting the possibility that Akechi is here because that’s Jokers deepest wish. Akechi also has no knowledge because he is being in part modified by Maruki’s reality, to have been brought back by Maruki, similar to what we see of Mr Ushimaru in school no longer being a jerk. However because Akechi remains Akechi and Joker never accepted the reality in the first place they both are fully prepared to fight back, it’s only Joker choosing Akechi/the false reality over freedom that leads to Akechi himself being mellowed out. Likely in the real timeline Akechi either hid after his near death experience, or ended up disappearing with mementos because he was capture by Yaldabaoth alongside Shido’s Shadow when Shido’s palace collapsed. Which because mementos survived after Yaldabaoth’s prison collapsed meant Akechi survived and is now in the real world ready to continue his hated rivalry, Maruki’s reality having given him the chance to recover that he did not have in the original Persona 5. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 16:07
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Speaking of Aketchi, there is apparently cut content showing him ending up at a rehab center obviously, massive potential spoilers in the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ2QIwZqosQ Somebody fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 16:19
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I feel like P5R can only be read as anti-therapy if you already have a negative view of therapy. It's anti a particular therapist because his methods are non-consensual and also self-centered. Not as in he's being greedy, but he's fixing everyone's problems the way he would want them to be fixed if he were them. Based on his own palace we know that if you disagree with his method of treatment, he thinks not only that you are wrong but that you are mentally defective. If you came into the game already thinking all therapists were like that then yeah I guess you'd just see it as confirming your priors but I've had positive experiences with therapy and so I saw Maruki's methods as very disturbing because they were basically the opposite of how therapy is supposed to work.
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Mar 29, 2021 16:47
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Badger of Basra posted:I feel like P5R can only be read as anti-therapy if you already have a negative view of therapy. It's anti a particular therapist because his methods are non-consensual and also self-centered. Not as in he's being greedy, but he's fixing everyone's problems the way he would want them to be fixed if he were them. Based on his own palace we know that if you disagree with his method of treatment, he thinks not only that you are wrong but that you are mentally defective. I agree with this. I've had years of therapy and I didn't see Royal as anti-therapy. The problem with Maruki, as already discussed is his method of treatment is applied too broadly, to literally the entire population of Tokyo (or Japan?). Like his method of therapy may work wonders for someone suffering PTSD (such as Kasumi) but it needs to be done with their consent. Also some people need to face their fears or reality in order to better themselves. I think Maruki realized this in the end, that he just went too far
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Mar 29, 2021 17:51
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Badger of Basra posted:If you came into the game already thinking all therapists were like that then yeah I guess you'd just see it as confirming your priors
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Mar 29, 2021 18:02
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maruki is also exceedingly sympathetically portrayed, and not in the "bad guy has a sad backstory" way but in the "it isn't even clear that he's wrong, and this comes off as a deliberate writing choice" way. it's completely legitimate to say your reading comes off as being biased by preconceived notions, that's not "telling you how you think"
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Mar 29, 2021 18:39
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arguably the most anti-therapy message is actually the idea that maruki's idea that Sumire should simply live out her delusions because treating them would make her sad is at all a good idea
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Mar 29, 2021 18:42
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Feels Villeneuve posted:arguably the most anti-therapy message is actually the idea that maruki's idea that Sumire should simply live out her delusions because treating them would make her sad is at all a good idea Particularly since she never gave her consent to said therapy
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Mar 29, 2021 19:25
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Feels Villeneuve posted:arguably the most anti-therapy message is actually the idea that maruki's idea that Sumire should simply live out her delusions because treating them would make her sad is at all a good idea Solaris 2.0 posted:Particularly since she never gave her consent to said therapy Yeah, this is the big one for me. Maruki took people wishing that things could be better as them giving consent for someone to make that happen by any means necessary, when that wasn't really the case. He's not at all a bad person, but he's so lost in his own pain that he can't understand not wanting to do anything it takes, give up anything at all to erase it.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:28
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I genuinely appreciate everyone's judicious use of spoilers  nearly done with the bank heist. game's good
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Mar 29, 2021 19:49
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Feels Villeneuve posted:maruki is also exceedingly sympathetically portrayed, and not in the "bad guy has a sad backstory" way but in the "it isn't even clear that he's wrong, and this comes off as a deliberate writing choice" way. it's completely legitimate to say your reading comes off as being biased by preconceived notions, that's not "telling you how you think" like seriously, im saying you can disagree with the take. i just dont get where the hell 'biased by preconceived notions' comes in.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:53
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ApplesandOranges posted:The biggest holdover I hope carries over from Strikers to P6 is how ridiculously easy it is to relearn skills not only for your own Personas but for your party members as well. I know they technically have those systems in P4G and P5, but they take up time and honestly I've never bothered.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:54
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