In Persona 3 and 4, sometimes the wrong answer is right

Have you ever done a test to find out what kind of learner you are? Though I can’t vouch for their scientific credibility, the tests I did in school (along with a few I just did online) suggest that I’m an auditory learner: someone who learns best through listening.

So just imagine my surprise when my fiancée called me a terrible listener. But apparently I’m a born listener!

Listening, however, isn’t always as literal as absorbing and processing sound. Often it’s as much about how you respond to the information — a skill that’s underused in video games, and one that Persona 3 and 4 put to the test.

Note: this article is the first in a two-part series on listening in video games. You can also read the second part, ‘Decluttering the HUD: the case for audio-driven navigation.’

Persona 3 and 4 are undoubtedly role-playing games, featuring quests, exploration, character development and combat, but these staples play second fiddle to the emphasis on interpersonal relationships. Spending time with classmates and colleagues and slowly getting to know them better is the core of the experience, and the RPG elements sometimes feel like a plot device to get you to that next milestone in friendship. Strange as it may sound, I fought through many a dungeon just to form bonds with the games’ colourful casts.

While clever strategising and a bit of *sigh* grinding are the keys to success in battle, listening is paramount to building your relationships with the townspeople. This isn’t simply because the protagonists of both games are speechless avatars — it’s because the residents of Persona 3’s Iwatodai and 4’s Inaba have been designed as human beings, and not just in appearance. They have personalities, issues, fears and hopes. Getting them to open up to you is the sidequesting, and learning about their pasts and helping them take control of their futures might be more fulfilling than any ‘kill this monster to get that item’ mission. Furthermore, cultivating your relationships unlocks new abilities and monsters for your party to use in battle, meaning triumphant RPG-ing is ultimately reliant on your social connections.

Getting through these sidequests, or at least doing so while making good time, requires the skill it turns out I haven’t always been too good at in real life: really listening, or to put it another way, understanding. I’m about to sound like a total numbskull, but I guess I didn’t always know that listening to someone talk about their problems doesn’t mean trying to give them a solution — it means empathising with them. So when my fiancée rants about her frustrations with work, she doesn’t need me to offer quick fixes (she’s smarter than me anyway, so I’m sure she can think of them herself); she simply wants me to let her rant and get her situation. Honestly, this is something I’m still trying to be better about.

Though I’ve been a Persona player for a few years, it was only after coming into this knowledge (which is probably painfully obvious to a lot of people) that I realised how deeply the series is built upon being understanding. In some ways it’s obvious: Persona 3 deals heavily with depression, death and motivation, while 4 focuses on identity, fear and self-worth — all themes and motifs that demand compassion from the user to be appreciated. But reaching past plot points and into the meta-game, the titles ask players to put themselves in other people’s shoes and reward them for doing so.

Your relationship with each character is tracked on a 10-point scale — one meaning you’ve only just met; 10 meaning you know each other deeply. While moving a friendship up a notch is guaranteed to eventually happen as long as you spend enough time with a person, you can become closer quicker by being receptive to their needs during conversation. It’s here that the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ responses become muddy: while some people prefer brutal honesty at times, others simply look for support and validation. There’ll be times that it’s best to bite your tongue or even tell a white lie for the sake a someone’s feelings, and you’ll hopefully know when to do so not because of any in-game prompt, but because of an in-brain prompt — you imagine what your friend is going through and are conscious of what they need to hear.

In these sequences, Persona 3 and 4 seem to throw game logic on its head, which would generally be a no-no to designers. Knowing that option A will lead to outcome A and not outcome B is an essential component of a game because it helps the user explore a path of their choosing. Any variation from the formula can result in frustration — you needn’t look any further than point-and-click adventures like the Ace Attorney series to see how leaps in logic can cause the ‘right’ answer to be impossible to determine with pure reason; instead, a walkthrough or trial and error are needed.

But straying from conventional design wisdom is what makes the Persona series’ replica of high school life more than just superficial. ‘Logical’ answers aren’t necessarily ‘right’ answers because there are people and feelings involved. In a very un-game-y twist, players are discouraged from solving a problem — instead, they’re asked to appreciate it. This certainly isn’t bad design; really, it’s just another kind of game logic that asks for a different type of skill — solving issues not with pure reason, but with empathy.

Technically speaking, being a good listener isn’t actually vital to completing Persona 3 and 4. There are countless extensive walkthroughs available for both games, and with their help, you can flawlessly fulfill every character’s emotion needs without trying to connect with them or bothering with the delicate dance that is relationships. This, however, wouldn’t be in the spirit of the series. Fundamentally, the games want you to learn about others (and maybe even yourself), and they try to make that process more satisfying than watching the credits roll. And just like in my real life, learning comes from screwing up and trying to be better.