/pg/ - Persona General

personacentral.com/persona-5-demo-gameplay-impressions/

Via Hinoyukito:

>I don’t think we’re able to see the full maps, the small map on the corner of the screen is kinda inconvenient to me. I mean if you have no sense of directions like me, you’d probably get lost.

>I suppose that the siren we heard in the velvet room in live streams is the sound to put protag back to sleep, although I didn’t have chance to go to velvet room many times.

>The attitudes of Justine and Caroline are almost like how I felt they are from the live streams, and they don’t really consider protag an enemy. Btw, Justine is responsible for paperworks and Caroline is guarding the velvet room.

>The dates are shown exactly the same like how they are in previous PVs.

>There’s a memo on the fridge says “feel free to check the fridge!”. Speaking of which, the objects are really detailed! When you close the fridge door, it would shake because it’s an old one. And when you make coffee, the coffee machine shakes too.

>Arsene talks like a kind gentlemen.

>After the 18 mins prologue, I was able to start controlling protag after getting off the train. It’s exactly the part that Hayashi from Famitsu played in the livestream. When I was leaving from the platform, I saw both stairs and escalators, it’s so realistic! Getting out from Yongenchaya Station, I have to start looking for Sojiro Sakura’s house. I almost got lost even if there’s a map. However, the map would show your steps so you know where you’ve been to. Something noticeable is that Sojiro’s house is at a different location with Café LeBlanc! I was surprised, I thought it would be something like café at 1F and their home at 2F.

>Protag’s room seems bigger than what we saw from the PVs, and there are lots of random things in there, very detailed and realistic. Sadly the window view of the room is a wall of another building, this is exactly how Tokyo is.

Cont :
>I was able to see the part when protag goes to bed too, and he plays with his smartphone before sleeping!! He’s such a “kid nowadays”.

>Everytime I play persona games, I’m always amazed by the pace of the stories. Like Sojiro brings protag to school right away and how fast the train incident happens. Shujin High is located at Aoyama. Also I’m surprised that even if protag has a criminal record, he’s still able to go to a high-ranked school like Shujin. (I think it’s high-ranked because there are tons of trophies in the school and it seems that Shujin wins a lot in national sports competitions too.)

>Then protag meets Kamoshida, his personality is a bit different from how I imagined. Protag also hears about rumors regarding Ann. The encounter between protag and Ann made me feel “huh?!” though, am I the only one who feels this way?!

>Protag actually got that drunk man injured(the guy who was harassing the woman), and Sojiro has a pretty sharp tongue when he talks about this incident. However, he seems like a person who’s just hard on the outside and soft on the inside since he cares about protag. Also through a conversation with Sojiro, if you choose a certain reply, you can see that protag sort of admires Sojiro. Also it looks like the two aren’t relatives, and Sojiro isn’t protag’s probation officer either.

>Regarding the replies which you can choose in conversations, there are goofy type, handsome guy type and rebellious type of answers. There are also ones like how you can be like “…..”(speechless) when the guy who beats you in prologue asks you to sign the document. I actually chose that answer because I wanted to see what would happen, but poor protag just got beaten again and he still had to sign it.

I haven't seen the first 3 either
/pg/ should marathon all of them

>Regarding the replies which you can choose in conversations, there are goofy type, handsome guy type and rebellious type of answers. There are also ones like how you can be like “…..”(speechless) when the guy who beats you in prologue asks you to sign the document.

Glad to see Telltale is branching out past their comfort zone and collaborating with atlus.

Cont:

>I got lost in Shibuya Station on protag’s first day to school. I followed the directions in the station but I felt like I got tricked by those!! So I had to ask a station staff, and finally transferred to the right station. I suppose protag has a railroad pass because sometimes when he takes the train, it doesn’t cost him anything. (like when he goes back home from school)

>It’s about the same time when protag meets Ryuji and Ann. I haven’t notice anything special about the relationship of protag and Ann, but Ryuji talks a lot ever since the beginning of their encounter, and it really subverted my impression on him! I think he’ll probably become one of the most loved characters after Persona 5’s release.

>The encounter with Morgana happens in Kamoshida Palace. Morgana seems really used to fight with shadows, she’s totally different from how Teddie is in Persona 4.

>There are many reasons why Ryuji became a problem child, I got to know some of the details after finishing Kamoshida Palace.

Via Mirai Stereo:

>While moving between different maps it would load but it doesn’t take long on PS4.

>There’s almost no loading between battles and dungeons.

>If you press “dash” in dungeons, not only you’ll speed up, the way protag runs becomes very stylish too.

>Because you’re phantom thieves, it’s really important to do stealth in dungeons, if you don’t hide yourself properly, it would influence the battles and your exploration.

>This time they added “pollen alert” in the weather system, it has special influence to the game.

>Persona 5’s storyline is different from past games, in the beginning protag goes back to the past, and then later on the storyline jumps to the future again. This makes the story pretty intense. There’s no doubt that Persona 5 will be one of the best games on PS4!

>I suppose protag has a railroad pass because sometimes when he takes the train, it doesn’t cost
>sometimes
wait, so you actually have to pay for that?
>This time they added “pollen alert” in the weather system,
wwwwww

>The encounter between protag and Ann made me feel “huh?!” though, am I the only one who feels this way?!

What a worthless worst girl slut.

>Also it looks like the two aren’t relatives, and Sojiro isn’t protag’s probation officer either.
Then who was phone?

>in the beginning protag goes back to the past, and then later on the storyline jumps to the future again.
So flashback confirmed?

>The encounter between protag and Ann made me feel “huh?!” though, am I the only one who feels this way?!
literally what did they mean by this?

>>Also it looks like the two aren’t relatives, and Sojiro isn’t protag’s probation officer either.
>Then who was phone?
One of the first thing we learned about the game is that Sojiro is Phantom's parents' friend.

>So flashback confirmed?
Anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together could tell it was going to start in media res and the final act would be after Phantom was captured.

As in
Chronologically
1 -> 2 -> 3
but we experience it
2 -> 1 -> 2 -> 1 (etc. etc. however many times they go back to interrogation) -> 3

I know but he is his legal tutor/guardian, right? That line saying he isn't Joker's probation officer confuses me.

>Arsene talks like a kind gentlemen.
Didn't get this impression from PV02 at all but maybe it was misleading

For some reason the game being a flashback feels really wrong to me

I have mixed feelings about in media res, but I'm cautiously optimistic that Atlus won't make it too convoluted.

Even though you are in control of everything, it still feels like everything has been predetermined. You are not actually doing anything new, just backtracking. Yeah, I hate this kind of shit too. Also reset endings. I swear to god if they pull a reset ending, I'm nuking Tokyo.

Hashino just watched The Usual Suspects and he was like "let me do that but with Personas."

It definitely won't be cutting back to the interrogation after every month or dungeon. That's pointless and doesn't do much for the story when it can just jump forward one time as soon as you reach the beginning of the casino heist during your playthrough.

It feels like putting the cart before the horse in terms of persona's narrative strengths

That's the ultra long report filled with own speculations and impressions I tried to translate last thread. It's so convoluted I couldn't tell most of that stuff. I still have a long way to go with Japanese.
There's a few things I managed to understand like how you don't pay the train to go to school, but as I wasn't 100% sure back then I didn't write about it.

Also with how they push Ryuji and avoid spoilers, I'm really starting to think all these bloggers were paid by Atlus to write their report or something. As Ryuji was the least popular character on the nico nama, so they're pushing him now.
The game isn't a flashback. PV4's interrogation dialogue with Sae is different than what they showed from the beginning of the game. MC acts smug too in PV4 while he doesn't at the beginning of the game.
It's a timeloop and after some point MC probably remembers about the previous loop, or this time he just got better prepared and let himself get caught in purpose for some reason.

But that's a pretty common trope for things in media res involving a possibly unreliable narrator telling a story. It will allow the interrogator to act as the guide for the story by asking questions about "what happened next?"

>persona
>narrative strengths
persona's strengths are in theme and character interactions. i think you guys are worrying about this too much

They probably just signed some limited NDA or have informal limits on what they can explicitly talk about, like any closed-door press preview. Don't get into idiotic conspiracy theories yet.

There are problems with that. First this narration is reliable, since it's just Igor helping you remember what you already did. Second, we don't know what MC will actually tell Sae, both to hide it from the player, and also because she doesn't have the whole story.

I'm not convinced that the casino heist isn't just a flash-forward or premonition. When these impressions talk about moving forward or backward in time, I don't think that necessarily means time travel.

It's common but doesn't really fit with the calendar system, it seems really pointless and cheap to just flip back and forth between months like that just so Sae can ask "OK who was the next member you recruited?" It doesn't add anything.

You'll just play through the six months as if its' present time, then it'll cut to black when they head to the casino and pick up back in the room.

>This time they added “pollen alert” in the weather system, it has special influence to the game.
Hayfever confirmed.

That's what I meant, I just phrased it poorly.

WOAH THERE KIM

>PV4's interrogation dialogue with Sae is different than what they showed from the beginning of the game.
PVs and CMs sometimes have different voiced lines, or even lines that are only recorded for them and aren't even in the game/movie. It happens
>MC acts smug too in PV4 while he doesn't at the beginning of the game.
This might be from when you are finally done with the flashback and he finally remembers whatever the Lolifly told him to remember.

> I'm really starting to think all these bloggers were paid by Atlus to write their report or something. As Ryuji was the least popular character on the nico nama, so they're pushing him now.
That might be the case, though I'm not sure why they're pushing him or even expect him to be popular. He seems to be a mix of Junpei and Kanji, characters that weren't all that popular in the first place. It was obvious he will be overshadowed by Goro, Yusuke and obviously Phantom. I'm more surprised they aren't pushing Anne instead.

It's more than just "who was the next member you recruited" though. It's an opportunity to advance Sae's character in the meantime and give framing to each individual dungeon/month/whatever. I agree it doesn't really work for a video game when there will be long stretches of time inbetween each flashforward but it's better than what you suggested which just makes it pointless in the first place to do an in media res type narrative to begin with. If they're just going to show him in the room, do the whole story, and then show him in the room again, why not just start from the beginning?

Because it makes the entire focus of the first six months "OK, who's going to betray me? Are there any clues I can look for, etc". It accomplishes that and sets a unique tone.

If you just played through it unspoiled from the beginning, you wouldn't have any idea anything like that would happen and it would make it a completely different 6 months. They wanted to stress the traitor plot point and they did that.

At the bare minimum it's an excuse to give the player a taste of gameplay and build intrigue immediately (P4's dream sequence isn't comparable at all). They already experimented with this in Catherine, with the game starting in a tutorial for the nightmare section then flashing back to the night before. They definitely weren't happy with P4 taking so long to get started up, and it sounds like it takes just a little longer than P3 to get going after the prologue.

They said that the story is supposed to be like an omnibus, didn't they? It makes sense for it to be a flashback where Sae asks him about certain events and you are playing through whatever she asked you about.
The co-ops would be a mess though.

>They definitely weren't happy with P4 taking so long to get started up
I don't think anyone was happy with that. It was three hours of expostion, and vanilla didn't even let you save at any point until after the tutorial fight.

The omnibus structure makes me think that flashing forward to Sae could be used to define the start and end of each arc. The other playtester mentioned you meet Sae fairly early on (past the prologue), so I wonder if she's involved in your parole at all.

Just watch the start of PV4 then watch the Sae part of the 18m video. Even if you don't understand Japanese you can tell she doesn't say the same things at the same time.

Start of PV4: Sae: When and where did you learn about that world? If you don't accept the deal blablabla

18 min intro vid, at 13:55: Sae: when and where did you learn about that world? How do you steal people's hearts blablabla

She doesn't say the exact same lines. It can't be a flashback.

Plus. In PV4, when Sae approach MC, MC is sitting with his legs crossed. In the 18m intro vid, he's resting his upper body on the table.

Do you honestly think Atlus made that animation video of Sae's interrogation just for PV4?
At the start of the game, the scene is with the 3D models, as we seen in the 18m intro video.
Then when you actually get to that part in the game, this time it'll be in 2d animation, and what they showed us in PV4.

It's a time loop, or something similar.
At the very least it's definitely not a flashback.

I want to fuck Sae

'Sup Goro?

I want to play Persona 5 before February but some things aren't ever going to happen.

Goro is gay.

>Do you honestly think Atlus made that animation video of Sae's interrogation just for PV4?
No, I'm saying that the line you hear in the animated part in PV04 isn't necessarily from that exact moment. It could've been recorded solely for the PV or be from a different scene altogether.

>he's not gay he's just phantomsexual xDD

>last month on Veeky Forums until February

he fucks bread?

>time travel
please god no

he's at the very least bi, and at the most hella gay

How do you explain that there's 2 versions of the same scene existing?
Not the sound dialogue, the scene itself.
And there's other arguments you haven't rebuked like MC being positioned differently.

And Sega and Atlus would never use money to make a 2D animation and only use it for a PV.
Anyway I'm going to sleep.

both options are shit, desu senpai
whatever it ends up being, we lose
I appreciate that they're trying something new, but we all know P-Team isn't that good with storytelling

Were gonna make it.Right? r-right?

So he's the Kanji of Persona 5?

We don't know yet. Goro might be into femdom considering he lets himself get bossed by Sae and also might end up having homolust for Phantom.

>bisexual into femdom and bishounen fuckbois
Thanks to Atlus for creating a character that is literally me.

yeah i'll admit i'm being pessimistic here, but these kinds of storytelling devices and narrative focuses seem like they'll do nothing but clash with the way the whole mechanical pace of the game is designed to de-emphasize narrative

well not THAT gay

the animated one is from after he's done reminiscing and remembers whatever the Lolifly wanted him to remember. I said that in the first post.
In that cutscene where he's smug, you don't see Sae, you don't see her talking. It's only Phantom, someone approaching him, and then Phantom smiling like the smug fuck he is because he found a way out.

Well at least the interrogation scene is not the endgame so theres that

>The encounter between protag and Ann made me feel “huh?!” though, am I the only one who feels this way?!
Worst girl confirmed

Worst girl from the moment she was shown. Persona 5 is gonna be shit.

>Anne will never laugh at my BCC

>The encounter between protag and Ann made me feel “huh?!” though, am I the only one who feels this way?!
Seriously, what did they mean by this?
Is it a positive huh, a negative huh, a surprised huh or what?

I don't understand,What so bad abot this?

>Anne is sweaty!
>Anne is buxom!
>Anne is beautiful!
>Anne is cute!
>Anne is flexible!
>Anne is lewd!
>Anne is silly!
>Anne is awesome!
>Anne is pure!
>Anne is amused!
>Anne is Lovers!
>Anne is an actress!
>Anne is best girl!

No bully

seriously, is it something lost in translation or is it just that vague?

Atleast it's better than them trying to force some Lovers Arcana meme again. From the demo, players said there was nothing special between Anne and Phantom so atleast we can say Atlus is trying to be less predictable. Maybe.

The Player likely believed Anne was going to be popular? I dunno, there are tons of ways to read that.

Anne gets a trashcan appearance like Yosuke at the start of P4

I thought they met when they were both hiding from rain.
What's so huh-worthy in that?
Did Phantom call her a white pig and told her to go home after what we've seen?

It's just vague. The player said the encounter between Anne and MC felt weird but they never say why. The entire summary is very vague in detail.

the player noticed anne's queen of spades tattoo

>tattoo
>on a girl

SLUUUUUUUUUUUUT

Is that why she couldn't go to the bathhouse with the guys?

I love how this Anne shitposting is basically just setting yourselves up as the most obnoxious P5 waifufags yet. Before the game even fucking released. That's pretty impressive.

>get out of my face, you stupid white cunt. you western women are all degenerate whores, I never want to see your disgusting pig ass around this place ever again
Seriously, what the fuck is this guy's problem?

>no talk of best girl Chihaya-chan
Let's fix this. I want to fuck the silliness out of this cutie. I want to have her blow me in a back alley behind her table. I want to hold hands with her while she bounces on my cock, fully clothed and filled with semen. I will make this woman my queen.

The fact that there seems to be two versions of the same scene still doesn't prove that there's time travel, in my mind. I'm thinking that you will be warned of the future and spend the rest of the game working on your relationships while knowing that one of these people will betray you if you don't. From a game design perspective, a new player isn't necessarily going to understand the value of doing co-ops straight away since they're a unique element of the series. So rather than being explicitly told "go make some friends, you'll be rewarded!" like in P3/P4, P5 warns you to pay attention to your relationships or there will be consequences.

I think it's easy to explain why there's two versions of the same scene then: the betrayal will still happen no matter what. (Being arrested is good drama, after all, and the plot is probably on rails.) My theory is that at some point the same scenario from the beginning of the game plays out, and just as you're thinking "aw fuck" you'll notice that the details have changed and learn that even though you ended up back in a situation that seems like a dead end, your actions changed your fate. It's thematically relevant and stuff.

>I haven't played P4 in forever. What happens when you run out of time to save a main character?
>Protag drops his phone and his vision starts blurring and you get a Game Over.
>I don't know if it's implied you die if you fail or if Yu's just being really dramatic.
You don't get a Game Over and he isn't being dramatic.
Igor summons him to the VR, calls him a retard and asks if he wants to redo the last week or just end everything.

>Phantom is smug!
>Phantom is quiet!
>Phantom is a Joker!
>Phantom is fast!
>Phantom is handsome!
>Phantom is battered!
>Phantom is smart!
>Phantom is edgy!
>Phantom is a cheater!
>Phantom is literally me!

I love how Fuuka dresses. The shawl, the cardigan, so warm and cozy. I wish girls in real life dress like her.

You forgot
>Phantom is Intelligent!
>Phantom is a nihilist!
>Phantom has a wicked sense of humor!

nice trash bag

>I wish girls in real life dress like her.
They do but since you don't leave /pg/, well

Chihaya is pure.

there are a lot of ladies that dress like fuuka, you can typically find them at public parks, pushing a shopping cart filled with trashbags

Odds of P5's villain having complex motives?

>"The key to reverse your fate is the bondings of your memory...the revived truth you grasped with your friends"
>"Please bring back your memories..."
For and Sexual explicitly mention memories and that he already had relationships. In my opinion that sounds more like a flashback than time travel or forewarning

~0%

Fucking Chihaya so hard she becomes addicted to sex and her arcana changes to devil!

>DUDE THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS LMAO