“Persona 5”: The Medium is the Message (Part 3)
The Meat and Potatoes of this essay, buried here, thousands of words below sea level
Well. Here we are.
And here we must admit: we do think Persona 5, after some time, begins to craft a narrative thread that is uniquely its own.
In the final hours of the game, the thematic thrust of the story changes entirely: our heroes discover a prison deep underneath Mementos, the psychological core and collective palace of the whole Japanese nation (or at least the Tokyo metro area) which the protagonists return to and dig deeper into throughout the game. This prison at the bottom, the Prison of Regression — which, we concede, is new and thematically relevant territory for the Persona series — is home to all of the villains whom we thought had renounced their evil deeds.
For these jerks to go and turn a totally new leaf is unrealistic to expect, right? When you’re scolded for digging around in the cookie jar you aren’t just suddenly at peace with your parent, whom you know to be the arbiter of moral truth. In such a moment, the angel on your shoulder is not the dominant voice inside your head. You’re defensive! There were cookies there! What’s the point of cookies if NO ONE’S GONNA EAT ’EM, MA?!
This section of the game effectively reframes the preceding 99 hours, but in a way that’s stupid, and not cool. If those previous 99 hours did not seem to wholeheartedly support the idea that yes, you, the player, are reshaping society one bad egg at a time, perhaps this final reveal would have felt more graceful. We could not help but feel that we had only wasted 99 hours buying into a lie.
Persona 5 has (at least) three twists, and all of them are poorly executed and take up way more game time than they need to.
- the first is that Akechi is actually a bad guy,²⁶ and also that he’s Shido’s son
- the third is that deepthroat Igor is actually a bad guy and just a disguised, very rude Big Gulp hiding underneath the bizarro train station.
- this second one, revealed in the Prison of Regression: those villains you thought were the cause of society’s problems were actually just symptoms of a greater disease, and the environment that gave them their seats of power is knotted up in far-reaching social problems. The problems at the heart of Persona 5’s narrative — corruption, greed, abuse, etc. — are systemic.
The villains tell you their hearts weren’t really changed, that all you — the protagonists — really did was to push the villains into a “natural” state of rest, a state of laziness, sloth; the collective sloth of all of society, whom Shido and Madarame and Kamoshida and Kaneshiro tell you is the real “villain.”
Let us be clear: we agree with this thesis. Society’s problems are not (always) just the aftershock of evil deeds done by evil dudes. But we feel that, in a better game, this thematic frontier would have been revealed and explored 45 hours ago (or more!).
This is posed as the main theme of the entire game, and it’s relegated to a few minutes of text boxes in the final few hours of the story. The rest of Persona 5 has not been building toward this moment.
If anything, the game’s fidelity to Persona series conventions sets up another twist: we thought this was going to be like Persona 4, because it totally was for 99 hours, but then, just kidding, the game actually does have something else to say.
This kind of sequel-game-expectations-ass-pull twist works better in the first few hours of a game, so that not so much time is spent imitating what came before.
Metal Gear Solid 2, a different game whose entire premise is to turn its series conventions upside down, spends the majority of its time slowly adding ingredients to Campbell’s Primordial Soup. It does make the player eat a steaming hot bowl of codec conversations all at once and only at the very end, but the player has known all along that something’s been cooking.
At the game’s beginning, though, it gives the player one hour as Solid Snake.
Persona 5 gives you 99.
You know what this feels like. We’re several thousand words into this essay, and only now do we address the game’s greatest issue.
We wrote so many words about JRPG music!
But at the same time there is no “greatest issue” because the game is so unbelievably goddamn long and unfocused that it’s more like five games sewn together than it is one singular, unified entity.
If you are a video game with something to say and you spend 98.01980198% of your time belaboring the point, you are not allowed to claim that final 1.98019802% as representative of the rest of your goopy, soupy, hollow, tasteless, malnourished body.
And anyway, the remainder of the game after these boxes is a big boss battle that has the player smack Evil in the face and magically free everyone from their laziness. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Persona 5’s moralizing, it’s that you can solve society’s problems by fighting the evil dudes, but actually never mind, but actually yes mind because it was really just Big Daddy Yaldabaoth behind it all.
This theme that Persona 5 reveals in its final stretch may be its main interest, but by no means does it generally represent Persona 5’s story.
And whatever the story is, the player has to untangle it from a web of poorly written dialogue and boring dungeon mechanics. None of Persona 5’s problems is isolated. They’re all tied together. They’re systemic.
Ignore us while we take the piss out of the script a few more times.
Vox populi
Critics at large were not so distracted by issues with the script or story. This is a fact that, trifling as it may be, we find to be somewhat disturbing.
Obviously.
Criticism of Persona 5 has been overwhelmingly positive. Of the ninety-eight publications polled by Metacritic (the site which anyone who has looked at a video game review in the past ten years has used at least a handful of times, much as we would like to ignore the popularity of review aggregates), ninety-seven of them — that is, ninety-seven people who make money as writers — gave the game a positive review.
Now, anyone who knows anything will tell you that, look, sport, video game review aggregates don’t really matter, and all intelligent discussion about games takes place elsewhere. We know. We think this is worth talking about anyway. A guy at Slant was threatened for being the one person polled by Metacritic to give Red Dead Redemption II a 7/10. Lives are on the line vis-à-vis Metacritic. We want more negative scores! Not fewer!
Twinfinite (80/100) concedes that “The game’s core message feels weak at times,” but writes also that “Persona 5 more than makes up for that with its style, and by showing players a damn good time.” Twinfinite is saying, in no uncertain terms, that a surplus of style makes up for a lack of substance in Persona 5.
Known score-scrooge Edge Magazine (80/100) said of Persona 5, “It is, simply put, cool. Everything . . . is achingly, confidently stylish.” Again with the style points.
2017 was no slouch when it came to stylish video gaming: Hollow Knight and Night in the Woods both have wonderfully consistent visual design, but they are recognized for their other positive qualities as well.
Reviews of Cuphead mentioned its breathtaking animation and its success in recreating an aesthetic thought long dead, but the game’s tough-as-nails bosses received at least as much coverage as its aesthetics. Nier: Automata has some of the best graphic design we have seen in any video game, period, yet it seemed an afterthought in journalism which felt Nier had more substantive gifts to offer (and it does! This is a good thing!).
We cannot remember another instance when a game was so often and so highly praised for style alone. New Game Network (80/100), addressing something besides graphic design, writes that Persona 5’s level design is “serviceable, if a little archaic,”²⁷ but that it is nevertheless “full of well-realized characters.”
Writers have gone out of their way to say Hey, it’s OK, though, the game is still the bomb diggity. Issues in translation are there, and the story’s not perfect, but it’s still a great game. It looks good! We wonder how much these and all other positive sentiments expressed toward the game have been influenced by the industry’s standard practice of having writers playing and reviewing games within the span of a week or two.
The only actual less-than-completely-gaga-and-over-the-moon review, from GameCritics (65/100), says Persona 5 is only “periodically fascinating,” and implies that the game’s greatest issue is its runtime. We agree with GameCritics that a 50-hour game would have been “a much tighter, more enjoyable experience,” but we also believe that a “much tighter, more enjoyable” piece of Banana Laffy Taffy would still be Banana Laffy Taffy.
Concluding Thoughts
In an effort that is perhaps too little, too late, we will be blunt.
The dialogue in Persona 5 is laden with awkward phrasings and grammatical error. The writing is most of the game. In such a game as Persona 5, in which the writing is most of the game, it is highly improper that the localization team should have been given insufficient time (at least, we assume that was the case) to polish what is the game’s primary engine of storytelling.
Quibbles with dialogue spiral outward and weaken every structural pillar of Persona 5, affecting the game irreparably. We understand that making games is not easy, and that minor problems balloon astronomically in scope when a game is of such a size as Persona 5.
We mean no disrespect to the hard-toiling employees who slaved away at Persona 5 during its arduous, protracted development. We do, however, mean to express some amount of disrespect toward the party at the top of the food chain, who issued the order saying, explicitly, that their employees should spend hundreds of hours of their lives designing these levels, writing these lines, acting out the dialogue, animating cutscenes; but that they shouldn’t be given enough time to do any of it properly, all but invalidating their work on this ultimately mediocre video game.
Maybe, as we have said, the localization team was not given enough time, and the script’s poor quality owes to a period of terrible crunch imposed from the top-down; maybe it owes to the fact that Persona 5’s English localization team comprised six translators and eight editors, which is way too goshdarn many hands in the cookie jar (and, we assume, a concession made for time); maybe the crunch owes to the script needing to be finished promptly in order to get it to actors on time, because for some reason so many of the lines in the game are acted aloud.
Maybe Persona 5 is written this badly in Japanese.
Its levels and music placement are bad in both languages!
It largely does not matter, and we are not interested in placing blame, anyhow, because that will not solve the problem any more than it will make us feel better. The point is the end-product that is Persona 5 — specifically, in our case, the English version — is compromised.
In response to the title of Mr. Krammer’s article we say that Persona 5 is not a great game despite issues with its writing; it cannot be anything in spite of its writing. Persona 5 is its writing, and its writing is bad. Gameplay isn’t great either. We never saw it coming.
Persona 5’s characters believe themselves to be Counts of Monte-Cristo cloaked in the clothes of an Englishman, furtively and successfully disguised. They speak truth to power from behind masks because the mask frees them from the baggage of identity, and along with it, the baggage of social expectation. The makers of Persona 5 use their video game as a mask to try to speak the same truth. But rather than gentlemen thieves, we cannot help but see the game makers as the Little Rascals in a trenchcoat, choking on big, adult words while they try to speak with some degree of wisdom. Persona 5 is a child pretending maturity by wearing big boy pants, though we could also say it is too big for its breeches.
Hello. It’s me.
I’m writing directly to you, for the sake of some final transparency that I don’t think I’d achieve by referring to myself in the majestic plural. I’m taking off the mask. I want to tell you about my feelings in plain language.
I don’t want to dislike Persona 5. I anticipated its release hotly (you can probably tell Persona 4 is one of my favorite games). Against my better judgment I purchased the super duper More Cardboard And Some Of The Soundtrack edition. I played it for fifty hours before I felt the sourpuss emerge from the dark basement inside my heart.
At the end of the day, the real problem I have with Persona 5 is that I failed to feel whatever its makers wanted me to feel. I didn’t rise up to oppose the puppetmasters of a real-world society with real-world problems, I didn’t use my ingenuity to become a thief in the night and cleverly outrun and outplan my enemy, and I didn’t make any friends. I tolerated some paper-thin archetypes for one hundred and one hours while listening to the same double album’s worth of music and going through the same ten enemy encounters on constant repeat, all painted in loud and arresting black, white, and red all over. This is a joke about newspapers.
The newspapers these days sure are full of stories about cartoonishly evil old men taking advantage of and working to maintain power over young people. Persona 5 was perfectly poised to be the fantasy I needed.
Stick it to the man!
Speak truth to power!
BRING DOWN THE SYSTEM!
I suspect this might be partly why it has been so warmly received by even discerning players and journalists. That it failed to better simulate my version of this fantasy accounts for my disappointment.
Persona 5 says on the back of its U.S. box that its protagonists are “here to take your heart.” Doesn’t that mean I’m supposed to be in love with it? Maybe the developers would be happy to hear they succeeded, in a way. Playing Persona 5 definitely made me feel like something was stolen from me. My time, mostly. My trust of Atlus, too, but that was already in question after Catherine, a game which, though free of as many typographical problems, was something of a preview for the type of pretend-mature, tragically unnuanced story that Persona 5 would be. Do you like a girl for her looks or her personality? Pick one and see which ending you get! It’s such a mystery! Politicians are shitty! Ef them!
Ef Atlus, I say. Fuck ’em. Call me when you’re ready to tell interesting stories that don’t just ride on the coattails of your art and music.
Ultimately, of course, it’s my fault for playing Persona 5. It’s my fault for spending my time and money on any piece of art or entertainment. I just wish Persona 5 were more artful, or at the very least more entertaining.
It didn’t have to take anything from me. I gave my heart freely, and I feel empty.
-30-
Notes
²⁶ This takes ninety minutes for the characters to explain! The game contrives a reason for you to have had ninety-minute amnesia and not understand what happened, even though earlier the game showed the protagonist was present for Morgana and Futaba’s explanations of the plan, and just arbitrarily faded to white because it would’ve been cooler to have a twist! Or something! and! and! oh, god!
²⁷ We will not prolong this essay by going into great detail, but it suffices to say we did not enjoy most of the level designs in Persona 5. We enjoyed the pyramid palace.
Credits
some screenshots were lovingly stolen, without permission, from footage recorded by the following:
Buffmaister (Youtube): Persona 5 THE MOVIE [PART 2/2]
Ibid. Persona 4 CUTSCENES [SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER]
DecayingSun (Youtube): Persona 5 — All Cutscenes — Part 1: April
DismArchus (Youtube): Persona 5: Makoto Niijima (Priestess) Confidant Link 1–10
MahaloVideoGames (Youtube): Resident Evil 4 HD Walkthrough — Chapter 5–1 Part 1
Pain007Productions (Youtube): MGS4 Trophy ‘You’re Pretty Good’
everything else is art stolen from the game companies
we apologize for our naughtiness, and hope we are forgiven
I would like to extend special thanks to Casey Haack and Bryn Gelbart for their assistance in the writing of this article. They also talk about games, and you should check them out. They had nothing to do with the theft of these screenshots, however. That is all my fault.
Works Consulted
Atlus, dev. Persona 3: FES. 2008; Tokyo, Japan / Irvine, CA, USA: Atlus / Atlus USA. Video game, PlayStation 2.
Atlus, dev. Persona 4. 2008; Tokyo, Japan / Irvine, CA, USA: Atlus / Atlus USA. Video game, PlayStation 2.
Brownie Brown, HAL Laboratory, dev. Mother 3. 2006; Kyoto City, Japan: Nintendo. Video game, Game Boy Advance.
Infinite Fall, dev. Night in the Woods. 2017; Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Finji. Video game, PC.
Konami Computer Entertainment Japan, dev. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. 2001; Tokyo, Japan: Konami. Video game, PlayStation 2.
Kojima Productions, dev. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. 2008; Tokyo, Japan: Konami. Video game, PlayStation 3.
Nintendo SPD, Intelligent Systems, dev. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. 2007; Kyoto City, Japan: Nintendo. Video game, Wii.
Nintendo SPD, Intelligent Systems, dev. Fire Emblem: Awakening. 2012; Kyoto City, Japan: Nintendo. Video game, Nintendo 3DS.
P-Studio, dev. Persona 4: The Golden. 2012; Tokyo, Japan / Irvine, CA, USA: Atlus / Atlus USA. Video game, PlayStation Vita.
P-Studio, dev. Persona 5. 2017; Tokyo, Japan / Irvine, CA, USA: Atlus / Atlus USA. Video game, PlayStation 4.
Platinum Games, dev. Nier: Automata. 2017; Tokyo, Japan: Square Enix. Video game, PlayStation 4.
Square, dev. Final Fantasy VI. 1994; Tokyo, Japan: Square. Video game, Super Famicom.
StudioMDHR, dev. Cuphead. 2017; StudioMDHR. Video game, PC.
Team Cherry, dev. Hollow Knight. 2017; Adelaide, South Australia, Australia: Team Cherry. Video game, PC.
30 October 2019
