New Persona 5 plot points differentiate it from previous games

Active not reactive

Game Informer has new Persona 5 details you won’t find anywhere else, well, except for here, or any other place you’re reading them in summation, thanks to an interview with director Katsura Hashino.

Hashino explains how the Persona 5 crew, all of whom feel like they lack a place in this world, “throws themselves into the fray,” versus past games’ teams getting wrapped up in some shady business, “when they get a hold of the Isekai-Navi [Japanese version] which allows them to enter another world and steal the malicious intent from others’ hearts.” They become “phantom thieves,” “and throw themselves headlong into helping others and reforming society with their own hands.” Largely this against adults, the frequent bane of teens, but “they draw the attention of an even greater enemy.”

The team has, “added a nuance of brash audacity” to the new protagonist who is otherwise Mr. Calm, Cool, & Collected from the past two games, “since he’s something of a roguish antihero.”

Ryuji meets the protagonist in April, on the first day of school, and ends up a crucial part of starting the group of phantom thieves. With a shared secret, and their loyal reliance on each other, he and the protagonist make great partners in crime. He has kind of a mischievous personality, and through their exploits as the phantom thieves, he wants to reform society and make their names infamous around the world. Ann is one of the game’s heroines. Since she’s lived abroad, she has a distinct, foreign air about her that draws people’s attention. However, they also tend to keep her at an emotional distance because of it. Yusuke has great artistic talent, and he’s seen as an oddball who thinks differently than most people. Lastly, there’s Morgana… At first glance, you might assume [he or she is] merely the mascot character of this title, but [he or she is] quite well-informed on the strange ‘other world’; more so than the protagonist and his team.

Morgana, the protagonist’s gender-less (so far) live-in cat, doesn’t understand its own origin, and is seeking answers. It seems like Persona 5 is trying to raise more questions in general, versus cobbling together a feel-good group (not that the series doesn’t get grim). “Picaresque heroes are fun, and you might enjoy their exploits or admire them in a work of fiction, but whether you’d actually want to be like them is a whole different story, isn’t it?” Hashino asks.

“That’s our stance in this game. A group of high school kids, dreaming of becoming masked vigilantes, try to cause a big stir in society. It’s quite different from the previous games’ protagonists who had no choice but to solve the mysteries they were confronted with. We think that sense of agency is one of the charms of this title.”

Party members’ Persona’s appearance are meant to reflect the characters’ personality, though the protagonist isn’t a French crime literature nerd though his Persona, Arsène, comes from the French literary tradition that Lupin the Third comes from. “The general public’s love towards famous, fictional picaresque heroes manifest as Personas for the team,” Hashino said.

Basically everything Hashino says about Persona 5 leads me to believe we’re in for the appropriate post-Catherine turn for the series despite the familiarity and high school setting. I mean, check the theme, something so many games seem to lack entirely: “mankind’s tendency to each view the world through their own individually distorted sense of reality – and its consequences on society and relationships.” Dope! I am jazzed to play this for 14 hours a day at the exclusion of all else, including friends, family, and hygiene, as I did with Persona 4: Golden.

New Persona 5 Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else [Game Informer]