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It's Tuesday, and I'm getting the impression that I ought to be doing something with my time, when I happen to have it. I got a library card and read What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami and I've got a game again today, so first half of the evening is Mage and the second half is inevitable alcohol poisoning for someone in the apartment. Like a game of spin the bottle, it seems random but always seems to be the one that plays the game the hardest.
So, instead of fine tuning my game, I'm going to finish this up because you're not interested and I don't feel obligated to do it anymore, and that's when I'm most productive.
In the last Persona post, you got to see me struggle desperately to explain why I love a game - an entire series, really - that's best played with a spreadsheet and colored pencils on hand, which may explain my loves of both Dungeons & Dragons and data entry. In this case, I think it can be summed up by saying that you summon modern-art gods from Tarot cards and go around making friends with NPCs in order to acquire power like only a dysfunctional corporate executive can expect to. Aside from the almost Civilization-like "just one more day" game play, all you have are the themes which, in all honesty, are significantly deeper then probably 95% of video games in existence.
I may be damning Persona with faint praise, because it's not exactly Tolstoy, and most games aren't exactly Silent Hill 2 or Planescape : Torment, but I really don't want to sell it too short. What you lose in pages of description, you can occasionally make up for by repetition of certain memes - you're basically fighting with these characters, looking for the truth of the situation, for hours and hours. Somewhere around the first third of the game, the protagonists think they've wrapped the whole business up, which you know isn't the case because you don't even have all the characters on the box in your friggin' party. So when they cheer and pump their tiny animated fists, I was just shaking my head and assuming that they'd only learn the truth when someone else's corpse was hung upside down on a television antennae.
Which surprises me only in that people still have television antennae.
There are, I think, three things I want to get into specifically - with a few outliers that speak more about me then the game, probably. Number 1, and something I'm not 100% on, is that I feel like the game is going for an almost retro or nostalgic appearance. Naoto dresses slightly anachronistically as a throwback to another franchise, the opening scene uses CRT televisions prominently, and it's intentionally set in the middle of a nowhere town where progress isn't as up-to-the-moment. It made me wonder about this clash with the brightly colored menus, the predominance of usually-unnecessary horn rim or librarian glasses, and the recent J-Pop soundtrack (different then Persona 2's techno and Persona 3's Japanese-style hip-hop styling). It says 'mod' or 'scene' to a guy like me, and it makes me wonder what the reception to those styling is like in Japan. I'm not weighing in one way or another, but I might look into it. It's got a distinctive, bright, and clean look. Especially for a game where the town is suffering a bad case of Silent Hill-itus.
That is, the whole town seems to be suffering from a weather anomaly which the protagonists discover early on is linked with the killings that start plaguing the town right after you move for the year in a coincidence that isn't suspicious at all. The designers like their metaphors, but sometimes possess all the subtlety of a pack of angry jackhammers - probably because they're afraid that someone, somewhere won't quite get it. I'm not sure if I can blame them, but it gets tiring. It's kind of like reading Lord of the Rings, and on the boats, near the end, someone who's already failed comes back and burns the Shire to the ground while someone yells, "It's about industrialization!" Urm. Anyhow.
The game is, ostensibly, about the search for truth in an environment where it's difficult to perceive and easy to substitute with something more palatable and the game does a reasonably good job with its big two metaphors of fog and televisions without making the cause overt until late in the game (where it decides to adopt the bullhorn approach). Each individual sub-story with NPCs involves your interactions with someone who's your friend, or becomes your friend, and as the relationship deepens, they come to understand a truth about themselves. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's difficult, and sometimes the truth ends up being that the NPC wants to bone the protagonist. If the latter is your goal, just follow the advise of another elderly game NPC - just tell them exactly what they want to hear then select the obvious choice near the end of the relationship track. Whatever you pick, your female dating options are afraid to even be seen in swim suits, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
Here's where things decompose a little bit, in my opinion. I don't want to compare it to previous games too much, but previous Personas did a good job of making things personal for our silent protagonists. Even in Persona 3, where your character is more or less a cipher, his history and reason de etre become manifest in the story itself. This isn't really true for Persona 4, where each and every one of your party members learn to face terrible and difficult aspects about themselves and, in keeping with the theme, dedicate themselves to living in good faith while nothing like that ever happens to the main character himself. The protagonist has no faults, no secrets, and no problems unless you count everyone loving him so damn much. He's athletic, good looking, brilliant, the de facto leader, and extremely popular, with girls tripping over themselves to be with him.
I guess I just can't bring myself to care about him and when the NPCs cry themselves to sleep when he leaves, I can't help but wonder why. In a country with the highest volume of cell phone users with access to Facebook 24 hours a day and a terrific public transportation system, I don't know if I buy the weeping. Still, not only are there lots of other characters to like, but even generally unsympathetic characters are made sympathetic over time, which I think is impressive. Almost every NPC, no matter how minor, has a story that progresses over the entirety of the game where the larger story impacts their lives in ways that are small at first, but very large later on. Really, it's these dozens of stories both big and small that become a kind of gestalt that gives the game its sense of size and verisimilitude while engaging you as much as you're willing to be engaged - there's nothing that's required in the protagonists fevered sprinting across the city every time you defeat a plot arc, after all.
It has its hits and misses.
There's one thing that's a bit of a disappointment, and I guess it's that they didn't take things as far as they could have. Innocent Sin is rumored to have been held back from the US because of either some weird resurrection of Hitler plot combined with a potential (or maybe canonical) homosexual love interest (the horror!), and I feel like the attitudes of the 4th iteration of the series have backslid somewhat.
Kanji, for example, has intense self-image issues and fears that he's gay, so adopts a persona that's too tough and masculine (not to mention extremely violent) for anyone to question while, at heart, he's shown to have a kind heart. There are a lot of jokes made at his expense, but what really messes with his head is that he obviously develops feelings for the androgynous Naoto Shirogane who, at the time, is masquerading as a boy because of her self image issues. I feel like the game misses an opportunity to really discuss issues of gender and sexuality by building up seriously then copping out later to play those issues for cheap laughs. Kanji, for example, has an extremely homoerotic sequence in his dungeon (a steamy bathhouse) while Naoto's industrial military lab cumulative in a machine designed to change her from female-bodied to male-bodied.
The game, however, explicitly notes that Naoto doesn't really want to be a boy while Kanji is supposed to breath a sigh of relief because he's actually attracted to a girl. I think it's plain when I say that I feel this is kind of a cop out. When you get into the characters personal stories, the issue of attraction and sexuality and body image doesn't come up, and when Naoto develops attraction to the protagonist, the answer affirming their romantic relationship explicitly favors a feminine identity.
Meanwhile, Youske is a blatant homophobe and at no point comes to terms with that, nor is called out about it by his peers, which leaves me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It seems clear to me that the designers started considering these things, then got cold feet.
Well, I'm sorry to leave it on such a down note, since on the whole, it's an enjoyable game. I felt like it could have been great, and fell short, which is more then most games allow for and, well, there's plenty of room for shippers (I feel like there are an assortment of arguable canon relationships). Just for trying and doing ok, I'm apt to give it points, and it's a lot more then the sum of its parts. I feel like if you can handle the fairly repetitive game play itself, it's got a lot to offer.
So, instead of fine tuning my game, I'm going to finish this up because you're not interested and I don't feel obligated to do it anymore, and that's when I'm most productive.
In the last Persona post, you got to see me struggle desperately to explain why I love a game - an entire series, really - that's best played with a spreadsheet and colored pencils on hand, which may explain my loves of both Dungeons & Dragons and data entry. In this case, I think it can be summed up by saying that you summon modern-art gods from Tarot cards and go around making friends with NPCs in order to acquire power like only a dysfunctional corporate executive can expect to. Aside from the almost Civilization-like "just one more day" game play, all you have are the themes which, in all honesty, are significantly deeper then probably 95% of video games in existence.
I may be damning Persona with faint praise, because it's not exactly Tolstoy, and most games aren't exactly Silent Hill 2 or Planescape : Torment, but I really don't want to sell it too short. What you lose in pages of description, you can occasionally make up for by repetition of certain memes - you're basically fighting with these characters, looking for the truth of the situation, for hours and hours. Somewhere around the first third of the game, the protagonists think they've wrapped the whole business up, which you know isn't the case because you don't even have all the characters on the box in your friggin' party. So when they cheer and pump their tiny animated fists, I was just shaking my head and assuming that they'd only learn the truth when someone else's corpse was hung upside down on a television antennae.
Which surprises me only in that people still have television antennae.
There are, I think, three things I want to get into specifically - with a few outliers that speak more about me then the game, probably. Number 1, and something I'm not 100% on, is that I feel like the game is going for an almost retro or nostalgic appearance. Naoto dresses slightly anachronistically as a throwback to another franchise, the opening scene uses CRT televisions prominently, and it's intentionally set in the middle of a nowhere town where progress isn't as up-to-the-moment. It made me wonder about this clash with the brightly colored menus, the predominance of usually-unnecessary horn rim or librarian glasses, and the recent J-Pop soundtrack (different then Persona 2's techno and Persona 3's Japanese-style hip-hop styling). It says 'mod' or 'scene' to a guy like me, and it makes me wonder what the reception to those styling is like in Japan. I'm not weighing in one way or another, but I might look into it. It's got a distinctive, bright, and clean look. Especially for a game where the town is suffering a bad case of Silent Hill-itus.
That is, the whole town seems to be suffering from a weather anomaly which the protagonists discover early on is linked with the killings that start plaguing the town right after you move for the year in a coincidence that isn't suspicious at all. The designers like their metaphors, but sometimes possess all the subtlety of a pack of angry jackhammers - probably because they're afraid that someone, somewhere won't quite get it. I'm not sure if I can blame them, but it gets tiring. It's kind of like reading Lord of the Rings, and on the boats, near the end, someone who's already failed comes back and burns the Shire to the ground while someone yells, "It's about industrialization!" Urm. Anyhow.
The game is, ostensibly, about the search for truth in an environment where it's difficult to perceive and easy to substitute with something more palatable and the game does a reasonably good job with its big two metaphors of fog and televisions without making the cause overt until late in the game (where it decides to adopt the bullhorn approach). Each individual sub-story with NPCs involves your interactions with someone who's your friend, or becomes your friend, and as the relationship deepens, they come to understand a truth about themselves. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's difficult, and sometimes the truth ends up being that the NPC wants to bone the protagonist. If the latter is your goal, just follow the advise of another elderly game NPC - just tell them exactly what they want to hear then select the obvious choice near the end of the relationship track. Whatever you pick, your female dating options are afraid to even be seen in swim suits, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
Here's where things decompose a little bit, in my opinion. I don't want to compare it to previous games too much, but previous Personas did a good job of making things personal for our silent protagonists. Even in Persona 3, where your character is more or less a cipher, his history and reason de etre become manifest in the story itself. This isn't really true for Persona 4, where each and every one of your party members learn to face terrible and difficult aspects about themselves and, in keeping with the theme, dedicate themselves to living in good faith while nothing like that ever happens to the main character himself. The protagonist has no faults, no secrets, and no problems unless you count everyone loving him so damn much. He's athletic, good looking, brilliant, the de facto leader, and extremely popular, with girls tripping over themselves to be with him.
I guess I just can't bring myself to care about him and when the NPCs cry themselves to sleep when he leaves, I can't help but wonder why. In a country with the highest volume of cell phone users with access to Facebook 24 hours a day and a terrific public transportation system, I don't know if I buy the weeping. Still, not only are there lots of other characters to like, but even generally unsympathetic characters are made sympathetic over time, which I think is impressive. Almost every NPC, no matter how minor, has a story that progresses over the entirety of the game where the larger story impacts their lives in ways that are small at first, but very large later on. Really, it's these dozens of stories both big and small that become a kind of gestalt that gives the game its sense of size and verisimilitude while engaging you as much as you're willing to be engaged - there's nothing that's required in the protagonists fevered sprinting across the city every time you defeat a plot arc, after all.
It has its hits and misses.
There's one thing that's a bit of a disappointment, and I guess it's that they didn't take things as far as they could have. Innocent Sin is rumored to have been held back from the US because of either some weird resurrection of Hitler plot combined with a potential (or maybe canonical) homosexual love interest (the horror!), and I feel like the attitudes of the 4th iteration of the series have backslid somewhat.
Kanji, for example, has intense self-image issues and fears that he's gay, so adopts a persona that's too tough and masculine (not to mention extremely violent) for anyone to question while, at heart, he's shown to have a kind heart. There are a lot of jokes made at his expense, but what really messes with his head is that he obviously develops feelings for the androgynous Naoto Shirogane who, at the time, is masquerading as a boy because of her self image issues. I feel like the game misses an opportunity to really discuss issues of gender and sexuality by building up seriously then copping out later to play those issues for cheap laughs. Kanji, for example, has an extremely homoerotic sequence in his dungeon (a steamy bathhouse) while Naoto's industrial military lab cumulative in a machine designed to change her from female-bodied to male-bodied.
The game, however, explicitly notes that Naoto doesn't really want to be a boy while Kanji is supposed to breath a sigh of relief because he's actually attracted to a girl. I think it's plain when I say that I feel this is kind of a cop out. When you get into the characters personal stories, the issue of attraction and sexuality and body image doesn't come up, and when Naoto develops attraction to the protagonist, the answer affirming their romantic relationship explicitly favors a feminine identity.
Meanwhile, Youske is a blatant homophobe and at no point comes to terms with that, nor is called out about it by his peers, which leaves me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It seems clear to me that the designers started considering these things, then got cold feet.
Well, I'm sorry to leave it on such a down note, since on the whole, it's an enjoyable game. I felt like it could have been great, and fell short, which is more then most games allow for and, well, there's plenty of room for shippers (I feel like there are an assortment of arguable canon relationships). Just for trying and doing ok, I'm apt to give it points, and it's a lot more then the sum of its parts. I feel like if you can handle the fairly repetitive game play itself, it's got a lot to offer.
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In Persona's case, the games are typically surprisingly misanthropic. In 3 and 4, the vast majority of people are shown to basically subconsciously facilitate the drive towards obliteration while your cabal and the NPCs you've chosen to associate with strongly are the ones that are worth saving - ostensibly by virtue of being involved with the player character.
The self-realizations that I came across first hand in game aren't typically very toxic. I just feel like they're not as good as they could have been, and that it could have been more subversive of typical expectations. I've been pleasantly surprised in the past, so I guess I'm complaining that I'm not pleasantly surprised *enough* this time.