Friday, August 28, 2020

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q1 and Q2's Primary Persona Teams

Warning: This rant has sort of a spoiler about the main plot focus of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q2. I mean...the main theme of the game is not exactly hard to suss out from fairly early on, so it’s not “Rosebud was the name of Luke Skywalker’s father!” level of secrecy, here, but for the sake of being responsible, consider y’allselves warned.



Although I freely acknowledge that several others in the Shin Megami Tensei series are superior offerings, I must confess that my second favorite game in the franchise is SMT Persona Q1. While admittedly the significant majority of the work is just fun, mildly fanservice-y fluff, the twist that comes 75% of the way through the game turns it into a powerfully emotional, gripping tale about finding purpose in one’s life, and I absolutely loved it. I still remember weeping openly at Persona Q1’s ending (a somewhat embarrassing incident, because I was playing it while waiting for my car to get fixed at the local dealership, and it wasn’t long after the credits began rolling that an employee approached me to let me know that my vehicle was ready to go).

What never made much sense to me about SMTPQ1, though, was that the game gave you an option to play from the perspective of the cast of either Persona 3, or Persona 4. Both casts would eventually meet up and join forces either way, of course, but you were still given the option of clearly making this adventure the property of 1 group or the other. But why give the option at all? This game’s purpose and message were clearly in line with Persona 3’s, not Persona 4’s. While the question of what it is that makes life worthwhile and meaningful is not absent from SMT Persona 4, it’s inarguable that Persona 3 is far more focused upon it--the main story, the plots of many of its Social Links, the character arc of its most iconic party member Aigis, the interactions with an incarnation of Death, Minato’s status and purpose as a messiah, even the gimmick of referencing suicide through the Evoker guns, it all comes back to Persona 3’s intent to explore and speak about our search as human beings to find a reason to live. As Persona Q1 is essentially a game-sized Social Link about exactly that idea, it makes no sense to have Persona 4’s Investigation Team spearheading the adventure--this is SEES’s territory.

But SMT Persona Q1 at least offers the player the choice of selecting the thematically right team for the job. You can’t say as much for its sequel.

I’m a big fan of Shin Megami Tensei Persona Q2, make no mistake, but it shouldn’t have railroaded the player into having to play the game from the perspective of the Shin Megami Tensei Persona 5 cast. At the very least, players should have gotten the same kind of choice that they did with SMTPQ1 of which Persona cast to put into the spotlight--or better yet, Q2 should have forced the player into the perspective of a single cast, but that cast should have been Persona 4.

Because, see, SMT Persona Q2 is much like Q1 in that it is, again, sort of an entire game made out of a Social Link. There’s a single character (Hikari) whose personal history, issues, and needs, as well as the process of bringing her to a better personal state, define the vast majority of the plot of SMTPQ2. And what that’s all about is reminding Hikari of who she is inside, working her through key moments in her life which convinced her to bury her personality beneath a more bland, socially-safe facade, convincing her that suppressing herself for fear of others’ negative reactions isn’t the right course of action, and reassuring her that there are people who will and do value Hikari for who she really is. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Q2 is, in summary, a story of the importance of having the courage to be true to yourself.

Which isn’t unrelated to Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5, of course. There’s plenty about SMTP5 that does tie into that idea, as I understand it. And, for that matter, SMT Persona 3 also has plenty of aspects in its story, Social Links, and characters that touch upon and incorporate the concept of self-honesty. But it’s not the major, important focus of either of them. Just as Persona 3 is unequivocally about finding meaning in life, and the importance of doing so, so too does Persona 5 have a different primary intent. Persona 5’s main thematic focuses are of teenage rebellion, and standing up to the corruption of the system and those who run it. Does that overlap with a “to thine own self be true” thing? Absolutely!

But the idea of personal, internal acceptance and truth isn’t just something that Persona 4 occasionally overlaps with--it’s what SMTP4 is all about. The whole point of that game is a search for the truth, an unwavering journey to clear away distractions, misconceptions, and denials to face the cold truth of reality. Its main characters each gain their powers only when they confront the shadows of things about themselves they’ve been trying to deny, and accept them as true. Its villain is an embodiment of the idea that the world prefers to see a clean, likable surface than to delve deep enough into a person or profession to know the absolute truth. Replacing SMTP3's evoker guns in SMTP4 are glasses that each character must wear when in dungeons and battle, glasses being symbolic of the ability to clearly see what could not have before been perceived. Accepting easy appearances as all there is to a matter is how you get SMTP4’s haunting bad ending.

The idea of truth and the importance of not conforming to what the world expects of one when it’s irreconcilable with one’s own true nature is a repeating concept in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. Just as SMTPQ1’s intent of finding purpose to one’s life perfectly aligns with Persona 3, making SEES the right team for the job, so, too, does SMTPQ2’s story of unearthing and accepting the suppressed truth of oneself integrate seamlessly with Persona 4. Just as The Investigation Team should be guests to SEES’s adventure in Q1, SEES and The Phantom Thieves should have been attendees to The Investigation Team’s adventure in Q2.

And yeah, I get why Atlus decided to force the Persona 5 crew into the spotlight for Persona Q2. Persona 4 is pretty old by this point (I should probably be grateful that Persona 3’s cast was even invited at all), while Persona 5 is the shiny, new, and quite successful inheritor of the franchise. The company stood the most to gain from having The Phantom Thieves of Hearts in the driver’s seat, using the new and bright recognition of SMTP5 to help sell Q2, and retroactively use Q2 to help sell Persona 5--which is definitely a thing; Q2 is my first time experiencing the Persona 5 gang, and I can’t be the only one who isn’t going to buy their main title until it comes out on a real gaming system. And I can’t help but think, much though I may like Persona Q2, that Atlus wasn’t willing to work quite so hard on it as they were Q1--a few bits and pieces of its system aren’t as polished as they should have been, and it’s telling that they weren’t willing to spend the time and money on voice acting to localize it (which is a little upsetting, because I really enjoy a lot of the vocal performances in the Persona series--not getting to hear Aigis, Yosuke, Elizabeth, Mitsuru, or Rise’s English actors again is a lost opportunity, although it is admittedly balanced a little by also not having to hear Teddy in English). So in light of that, it’s not surprising that they wouldn’t give the player a choice of which cast to choose this time around, given how much more effort that would have taken to set up. It’s just too bad, is all; if they were going to make the SMTPQ series disallow the player to choose which cast to make the game’s protagonists, they should’ve done so earlier and tied Q1 and Persona 3 together, and they should’ve opted to go with Persona 4 instead of 5 with Q2.

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