Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Moments of Crappy Cliched Comedy

As I’ve mentioned before and will doubtless say again, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 is, in many regards, an excellent refinement of the methods and qualities of its predecessors, Persona 3 and 4.  In general, Persona 5 takes what worked for its forebears, and leaves or improves upon that which didn’t, to create a tighter, better product.

In general.

But there are still some (ironically) noticeable blind spots in the Persona formula present in this title, and probably the most outright annoying is a certain, sadly familiar style of humor that still pops up now and then.  Because while Persona 5 is leaps and bounds ahead of its immediate predecessor in this regard, there are nonetheless times in which its comedy is the same kind of brainless, dead-on-arrival tasteless try-hard cliches that plagued Persona 4’s attempts at humor again and again.

If you’ve played a few JRPGs or watched an anime or 2, you’ve definitely encountered this kind of stupidity before.  Whenever a talentless writer needs to inject some comedy into their creation but lacks the capacity to actually write a joke, they reach for any the following 4 sacred tenets of anime humor:

1. Males have sexual urges
2. Females can be pressured into being sexual*
3. Homosexuals were created by God to entertain us; that’s all we know, Rick
4. A woman who can’t cook is an abomination that should be ostracized, exiled, and possibly drawn and quartered

And so, because a few incompetent jerks in the formative days of manga decided that they wanted toxic masculinity to be the comical backbone of their art form, lazy “writers” have been able for decades to just hastily slap any of those 4 ideas onto their work and pretend it’s a punchline.  If you’ve played a few JRPGs, chances are that you’ve encountered at least 1 kind of this stupidity before.  Maybe you’ve noticed Fire Emblem’s love for reducing entire interpersonal character arcs down to Number 4 on that list, or you rolled your eyes with impatience at the “amusing” gay merchants of Shadow Hearts born from Number 3.  Hell, I know you’ve encountered 1 of those godawful hot spring scenes at some point inspired by Point 1 up there.

And if you’ve played Persona 4, well, you’ve encountered the whole gamut, multiple times, because between things like Yosuke’s recurring need to diminish Kanji with wisecracks about being gay, and Teddie trying to be the world’s first restraining order collector, SMTP4 is just choking itself on cheap, stale gags.  In fact, Persona 4 contains within it the Holy Grail of anime non-humor comedy: an episode of the story which crams all 4 anti-jokes together into 1 distasteful, humor-murdering miracle.  The school camping trip in Persona 4 manages to combine Kanji getting beaten up while trying to prove he’s not gay, the girls being shitty cooks, Yosuke demanding that women wear swimsuits for him, and the girls actually unhappily doing so out of some feeling of debt for having cooked badly. The total tetrad of terrible tenets tied into 1 tidy, staid sack of trash.  And to think they even managed to work in a vomit gag to garnish it!  Truly masters at their fucking craft, the writers of Persona 4.

But even though it never reaches anywhere near the same quantity or extreme of unfunny, off-putting indignity that it did in Persona 4, the use of this style of crappy cliche non-humor is even more grating when it does occasionally arise in Persona 5.  How, you might wonder?  Because even by the metric of the kind of mentally listless loser who laughs at “guys liek boobeez and grls has them” because he’s been told it’s a punchline, these dull shenanigans are completely unnecessary!  Though it’s hardly an excuse, let’s face it, SMT Persona 4 really just didn’t HAVE much else it could fall back on for comedy beyond these sad tropes; there’s only so much mileage you can get from Adachi being hapless and unmotivated, Yukiko’s laughing fits are so fucking cringe it should be considered a sin, and Jesus, Yosuke, just fucking hold it IN already.  But by contrast, Persona 5 is, most of the time, actually really good at creating levity!

The overall conversations and group dynamics of the Phantom Thieves are entertaining and naturally lend themselves to chuckle-worthy banter and scenarios.  Persona 5 doesn’t need to resort to using gay people as punching bags, or fixating on a high school girl being pressured into nude modeling, or reminding us that teenage boys have hormones as they Doordash a maid fetish, or any of the other “humor” of idiot perverts who both never grew out of the, and are currently in their, 80s!  The game already naturally finds its appealing comedy groove with Ann and Ryuji’s back-and-forth partner-in-crime banter, Sojiro’s delusions of suaveness, the disaster that is Yusuke’s finances, Yoshizawa’s athlete appetite, and much more.  The game can already seemingly effortlessly create dialogues and situations in which it’s the actions, personalities, and quirks of its characters from which the comedy is created; it doesn’t NEED to resort to generic “hurr hurr” jokes clumsily pasted onto it!

Great example: at a certain point in the story, the Phantom Thieves are visiting Shinjuku, as a step in their efforts against Kaneshiro.  During this scene, a couple of gay stereotype NPCs show up, and it goes something like this:

“Oh look, a couple of people whose sexual proclivities differ from those of the writer!  Surely they exist only to be wacky clowns for our entertainment.  Let us simply walk off, and leave our friend Ryuji alone with them so that they may effect their Gay upon him, to his great dismay!  What truly ribald jocularity!”

It’s an off-putting joke with no payoff, but more than that, it’s made superfluous by the basic, natural humor and comical chemistry that the game already has in play!  At the beginning of this section, you’re able to, in the course of Morgana’s posturing as he tells Ren about Shinjuku, select an option to casually tell the uppity cat that he can be Ren’s escort.  It sends Morgana mentally scrambling to figure out how Ren even knows about that sort of thing, and boom, there you go, a little moment of levity born from the natural back-and-forth between the game’s characters!  Mission accomplished, chuckle had!  There’s even the bonus guffaw of Ryuji having come to explore the red light district without changing out of his school uniform!  The comedy checkmark was already there for this brief arc, with no need for some try-hard, grandiose gesture of cliched comedy that comes out of nowhere and has no connection whatever to anything else.  Honestly, it’s just baffling that the writers think that they have to throw in this shit, when they’re already doing a great job of entertaining the player with the moments of mirth that organically exist in the story and its cast.

And to be clear, SMTP5’s actual, genuine comedy chops aren’t just limited to dialogue-based quips and bits.  You might assume that the game only resorts to the crappy anime cliches as a way of rounding its levity out to include situational humor in motion, but no, it’s perfectly capable of being quite funny with its setups and events in its own right.  When investigating Futaba, for example, there’s a scene in which the lights go out, and Makoto, startled, panics and begs Ren to hold her hand for reassurance.  And Ren just stands there, all “Sorry babe, I’m just too cool to take my hands out of my pockets, can’t help you.”  Makoto’s losing her goddamn mind here, and the absolute most this Arms Akimbo motherfucker’s willing to do is offer her a goddamn elbow to cling to, and she hangs onto that thing like she’s on a subway train being driven by Mr. Magoo at rush hour.  Whether you’re chuckling at the calm and collected Makoto having a meltdown over the mildest spooky situation ever, or, more likely, at Ren’s adamant refusal to compromise his aloof anime vibe, it’s a great example of Persona 5 being able to have a funny situation with humor in motion.  So again, the game’s clearly capable of hitting its comedy quota without lowering itself to the shitty tropes.

Using this kind of anime cliche comedy is also stupidly contradictory to the story and spirit of the game.  Isn’t the biggest, most major purpose of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 to sharply criticize the crippling culture of cultish collectivism that curses the country of Japan?  The story of Persona 5 takes pains to show how wrong, unfair, and damaging it is to look down on others simply for being outside the norm in some way again and again.  Ren as a supposed delinquent on probation, Sojiro as an adoptive guardian to Futaba instead of a biological family member, Ryuji as a problem student, Futaba as a person whose trauma and anxiety necessitate special considerations, Ann having few meaningful relationships in her life because of her visibly different ethnicity...the game provides many examples of admirable people who suffer because of a society that dismisses, shuns, or outright punishes them for being different from what’s expected.  They’re judged on what they are instead of who they are, their potential determined by scorn of their difference instead of measure of their character, and the intense, burning wrongness of this mindset is held up again and again by Persona 5 in its passionate plea for a change.

And yet, in the midst of this noble ambition, even as the writers deftly prove their point with other characters...they resort to a cheap, lazy, mindless gag about gay stereotypes!  The game has introduced a couple of NPCs whose only, single purpose is to play up a shallow view that those with a sexuality outside the norm are defined solely by that trait, weird and undesirable to be around, and if they get you alone they’ll try to turn YOU gay, omg ewwwww amirite lol???  This moronic comedy trope is obviously, violently counter to possibly the biggest theme of the entire game!

And when these stupid comedy cliches don’t contradict Persona 5’s ideals, they clash with its characters, story, and direction.  Why exactly is the game telling us to giggle over the idea of Ann being put into an uncomfortable situation regarding being a nude model?  Isn’t the major, instigating injustice inflicted on Ann a matter of sexual harassment?  Isn’t the most defining quality of Ann’s heroism the anguish she’s experienced over the sexual abuse that her Shiho suffered?  Why the actual FUCK are we making a JOKE of sexualizing the character whose greatest motivation is the lingering trauma and tragedy of SEXUAL ABUSE!?

Thankfully--so goddamn thankfully--these shitty comedy tropes make far fewer incursions into Persona 5’s narrative than they did into 4’s.  SMTP5 is a diverting, amusing game rich with quips and jokes, but most of its comedy is born of the characters and situations organic to its narrative course, rather than manufactured and clumsily tacked on for a cheap supposed laugh.  Sure, not EVERY joke lands, and some of the recurring ones do get overplayed, but by and large, SMT Persona 5’s comedy scene is a huge improvement over its immediate predecessor’s.  Still, the game does sprinkle in some of these exhausted, unfunny, braindead tropes here and there, clearly out of unthinking reflex, and it’s annoying, because they’re totally unneeded in a game that’s already got enough real, fitting humor, and they often ignore or even undermine the game’s better content.










   




* Caveat: Unless they’re uggos, then of course they’re too sexually forward for comfort, because it’s just so fucking funny.

CrossCode's Puzzles

A worthwhile RPG by virtue of its characters and story, CrossCode is also a solid game in just about every facet of its gameplay.  It’s 1 of those Indie RPGs that shows off the fact that games made by smaller developers can be just as tight, polished, and multi-faceted mechanically as those made by any larger game studio--considerably more so, in fact, given what the modern-day so-called AAA RPG experience looks like, with sloppy, embarrassing garbage like Starfield and Babylon’s Fall as representatives.  And of special note among these gameplay virtues are CrossCode’s puzzles, enough that I’d like to take a moment to just appreciate them with today’s rant.

First of all, the puzzles in CrossCode are pleasingly creative.  While at their foundation they generally come down to either a game of billiards, hitting the right targets at the right moments with precision and careful, analyzed positions, angles, and ricochets, or simple platforming, CrossCode’s creators keep finding new ways to dress up their fundamentals to keep them fresh and different from the start of a 40-hour game right to its end.  They’re always adding and refining new objects and mechanics to the puzzles in ways that build off of the player’s hard-won practical knowledge, but also add new wrinkles and complications to it, and evolving the forms of the player’s billiards-ricochet projectiles with elemental upgrades as the game continues enhances the puzzles’ versatility again and again.  It reminds me of puzzle-heavy RPGs based around player tools, like Wild Arms 1, only unlike WA1 and most of its brethren, there never came a point when this continued introduction and exploration of new tools and mechanics started to feel overplayed or annoying.  In fact, CrossCode’s ability to offer refreshing new spins on its puzzles that walk a skillful line between overuse of the same fundamentals and annoying over-complication is so great, that my favorite puzzle device in the game turned out to be the twist introduced in the final dungeon from the post-game DLC!

But then, walking tightropes is something CrossCode excels at.  In the midst of paying homage to and incorporating aesthetics from its inspirations like classic Phantasy Star, the Playstation 1 era, Final Fantasy, Metroid, and of course several MMORPGs, plus throwing in easter eggs and references to a wide variety of geeky stuff like Hololive VTubers, Temmie-chan, and goddamn Marauder Shields, CrossCode somehow still manages to find a sweet spot of its own, strong identity.  In an era where audiences have started catching on to the fact that simply lampshading a flaw or trope isn’t any better than using that flaw/trope in earnest, CrossCode manages to design a scenario of a game-within-a-game that allows it the adequate wiggle-room to both incorporate and poke fun at the silly parts of video games.  Even its soundtrack is an exercise in finding a positive middle ground, as it incorporates signature bits and pieces of music from foundational games like Secret of Mana, Phantasy Star, and the Kirby series, but transforms them into a new musical entity as a whole.

And the second way in which CrossCode’s puzzles deserve recognition is yet another case of the game managing to hit a very difficult bullseye: their level of challenge.  Typically in an RPG, puzzles lean into an extreme on 1 side or another.  Either they’re by and large a bunch of color-coded, shape-recognition baby stuff, which makes the puzzle element of an RPG much more akin to a chore than a gameplay feature, or it’s a bunch of Alundra 1 or “Palm trees and 8” shit, which quickly becomes frustrating to such a degree that the natural instinct is to simply lose interest in the game.  Or it’s a Legend of Zelda title, and it’s somehow both extremes of ease and difficulty at the same time, with the unpleasantness of each.

Finding that key spot between too easy and the far worse too hard is tricky to pull off even a few times in an RPG...and yet CrossCode manages to do it again, and again, and again, over scores of hours, tons of quests, and more than a dozen areas and dungeons, all of whose content is predominantly made up of puzzle-solving.  Nearly every puzzle in the game held some degree of challenge to figuring out its solution, and yet I almost never felt like I was out of my depth with it.  The solution to any of CrossCode’s puzzles always seems to be within your grasp with a bit of experimental trial-and-error and rational planning, and until you grasp it, you generally never feel completely lost, but rather a sense of expectation that you’re going to be able to figure this out.*  And keep in mind, it’s not like the difficulty of the puzzle element of CrossCode stays static from start to finish; its brainteasers grow in complexity and requisite cleverness as you progress through the game.  So that means that not only does CrossCode know how to walk the line between ease and challenge, it also knows how to do so while scaling itself accurately to the player’s growing experience and ability to parse out solutions as she/he plays.

So yeah, between managing to incorporate exactly as much creativity to stay fresh without getting carried away and tiresomely over-complicated, and striking that happy balance between always being reasonably within a player’s reach but never tiringly facile, CrossCode might very well carry the distinction of being the greatest RPG I’ve ever played in terms of its puzzles.  It’s not an element of the game that I particularly care about, admittedly,** but it’s still clear just how much skill and work has gone into perfecting this part of CrossCode, and kudos to its creators for their efforts in crafting arguably the best puzzle RPG out there!











* Now, whether or not you have the skill and reflexes to actually carry the solution out, that’s sometimes a different matter.  If I ever meet any of the developers of CrossCode in person, the first thing I’m doing after shaking their hand and thanking them for a good, fun game, is slapping them across the face for that final puzzle in Vermillion Tower.


** Brutally honest truth be told, I have to admit that even CrossCode’s masterful suite of puzzles annoyed and bored me.  But that’s because I’m me, and “me” is a person who only cares about the storytelling elements of an RPG and sees all gameplay stuff, from minigames to puzzles to combat, as mostly extraneous filler.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t still recognize, objectively, when 1 of these elements is extremely well-done, even if I don’t myself enjoy it.

A Dragon's ReQuest

So, I've recently played a brand-new Indie RPG, called A Dragon’s ReQuest, which was made by 1 of my favorite developers, Large Battleship Studios (headed and predominantly populated by a gentleman going by Saint Bomber).  As expected, I loved it, and so, although the game did figure heavily in my last rant about the developer in a more general sense, I want to write a rant more specifically recommending ADRQ to you all.  

A Dragon’s ReQuest is a mostly linear adventure which uses the framework, narrative style, and tropes of 16-bit JRPGs, paying homage to the classics of that most formative of eras for the genre (as is probably obvious from the name),* but also standing as a save-the-world adventure in its own right.  This means that the game is a fairly large departure from Large Battleship Studios’s first couple offerings--Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle was a non-linear and very personal story of life, love, emotional growth, and hope for its protagonist, while Quantum Entanglement is a love story minoring in psychology set against a survival-horror.  Great games, and much of what one might expect from a dedicated Indie creator (hell, EoWC was fairly formative to the very development of the Indie RPG scene!), but certainly not the classic, save-the-world fantasy ventures signature to the RPG genre.

But happily, the best traits of Saint Bomber’s style and purpose as a creator translate well to the classic RPG style.  In fact, it transitions so well to the standard adventure format that most of what I can say to praise the game is really just a rehash of the praise I’ve given to Saint Bomber’s first couple creations.  In no small part due to his remarkable tenacity for party member banter and character development, the cast is interesting, quirky, and engaging throughout, and each member maintains relevance to the story and group dynamic through to the end just as naturally in this 40-hour-game as did the casts of LBS’s previous small ventures.  The constant tongue-in-cheek RPG humor that endears Saint Bomber’s narrative style to a genre enthusiast like myself is on full display, as always, and has only all the more material to work with in a longer adventure like this.  As ever, there’s the extremely poignant emotional moments, the involving, touching, and genuine development of friendship and romantic love, and the ever-present weight of past traumas that we all carry with us in 1 form or another, signature elements that make Saint Bomber’s casts so real and fascinating.

And throughout the game, there’s that peculiar, fascinating, haunting weight in the way that its major heroes and villains interact, which is something that seems very nearly unique to Saint Bomber’s approach to writing and describing the human condition.  Something careful and subtle in the way that his creations’ words and thoughts mingle with the feelings they show.  It’s always been hard to describe this quality of this developer’s games, because it’s a certain emotional heaviness that looms over all that transpires in the game, but it’s not simply the recurring theme of psychological trauma.  Related, perhaps, but not the same thing, not strong or clear enough.

But I think I’ve finally figured out what it is that seems to forever be present in the stories that Saint Bomber weaves, and the characters that color them.  There’s a certain moment in the show The Good Place, in which protagonist Eleanor Shellstrop describes the human condition in terms of how people carry on in the face of mortality, that has stuck with me: “All humans are aware of death.  So we’re all a little bit sad, all the time.”  And that seems like a good way to describe the characters that Saint Bomber creates, only I feel like it’s not the ever-present understanding of one’s own impermanence in this case, but rather, the sad knowledge that those around one will not be there forever.  With the smiles beneath characters’ eyes that always look ever so slightly wistful or reserved, and humor and emotional earnestness always tinged ever so slightly with the echo of hurt, Large Battleship Studios titles are stories told with that tiny little sadness present because the ones that we love will inevitably be parted from us someday.  And A Dragon’s ReQuest is no exception to this signature pervading ambiance.

So anyway, yes, A Dragon’s ReQuest is great, mostly for the same reasons that Embric of Wuflhammer’s Castle and Quantum Entanglement are great.  The transition to a more traditional long, semi-linear RPG adventure format did not hinder Saint Bomber’s style at all.  And it’s a solid RPG adventure in its own right, too, with all the world-saving fanfare, complex magical lore, plot twists and complications, obstacles to be surmounted, ancient legends and heroes and villains, and other such favorite tropes of the classic JRPG.  

The game uses these conventions as a means to be a light deconstruction of the genre, too, which I also like; it makes ADRQ feel like an homage with a purpose.  ADRQ’s actually working the technical advancement of the RPG genre from its humble beginnings 8-bit beginnings to its current state into the game and lore, with protagonist Hinoki remarking at times about how simple and unremarkable the tools and abilities of ancient heroes can seem compared to the advanced abilities and resources of present-day adventurers.  Much of the game’s background and lore is eventually revealed to be a symbolic representation of the manner in which games become larger, more complex, and more impressive by building upon the innovations of their predecessors.  A Dragon’s ReQuest is not only an homage to the early days of RPGs, it’s also a tribute and light examination of the way RPGs have grown over time, which makes it especially appealing to a long-time fan who’s watched that happen firsthand, like myself.  But it’s also done with a light enough touch that a player doesn’t have to be in her/his 40s to enjoy and appreciate the game’s many best qualities, too, so that’s another point in ADRQ’s favor.

Now, as always when recommending a Large Battleship Studios title, a heads-up is in order: A Dragon’s ReQuest contains some explicit sexual content.  But you ARE given the option at the start of the game to have that content turned off, so, as with previous titles, that shouldn’t necessarily discourage you from playing ADRQ if you’re not comfortable with such things.  With that said, although explicit stuff can be turned off, the subject of sex is very pervasive (perversive?) throughout the game, far more than it was in Quantum Entanglement and Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle--it's meant to be a part of the game's discourse. Sex is a part of the way characters express friendship, care, and love in ADRQ, as well as a way to deal with the tension and find enjoyment in the journey.

Well, why not, really? Isn’t that somewhat realistic? If we so frequently accept the ludicrous notion that all these other RPG adventuring parties go about chastely denying themselves for months on end, even as they develop crushes on each other and indulge in romance and put themselves under the most intense psychological stress of their lives, surely we can allow for a rare example of the other side of things with a much more open, and frankly probably far more healthy, embracing of sex.  Some of the most meaningful and moving scenes in ADRQ involve the characters expressing themselves sexually, in fact.  And even when the game’s being more ribald than insightful, its fanservice and indulgence usually doesn’t feel insulting or especially crass, because the characters aren’t treated like objects and it’s not being used as part of the narrative stable of tricks to entice your base human instincts into spending money.  If you ask me, an outright, explicit sex scene in A Dragon’s ReQuest just for the fun of it is still far less tawdry and demeaning to its cast and audience than some cheap PG-13 hot springs gag in a Tales of game, or the girls being harassed into putting themselves on display in bathing suits during SMT Persona 4’s camping trip, because the ADRQ girls are treated by their creator like actual human beings, who are having a good time for their own sake.

At any rate, Saint Bomber once told me that, with Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, he set out to make a sexy game with heart, and wound up creating a heartful game with sex--A Dragon’s ReQuest seems to be a more successful stab at that first ratio.  It rarely bothered me while playing,** and I’d encourage an open mind because it would be a shame to limit oneself enough to miss a really good RPG, but nonetheless, you’ve been forewarned on this matter.

In a related matter, I DO have to, for the sake of fairness, also make note that most of the women involved in the game’s big, encompassing romance are, well...blood-related.  Reasonably distantly, mind you!  The protagonist’s grandmother was also the great-grandmother of 2 of her love interests, which...I mean, I can’t say I love this fact, but on the other hand, second cousins and first cousins once removed (which is what this apparently is; on the plus side, I’ve finally figured out who the fuck The Great Gatsby’s Daisy is to Nick thanks to my pre-rant research for this game) are fairly safely genetically separated.  And the romances in this game, and the way they develop the characters involved therein, are really genuine and good, more than enough to warrant some open-mindedness, I’d say.  I’ve seen far more closely-related, far less worthwhile romances from certain other RPGs, that’s for sure.  Hell, considering that the game’s a big love letter to classic RPGs stuffed with references and such, the fact that these girls are mildly related might merely be A Dragon’s ReQuest’s way of paying homage to Fire Emblem.

Still, if I’m going to make fun of FE’s absolute, insatiable need to fantasize about brothers and sisters porking and make that a part of its narrative, and beat that dead horse every time the subject comes up, it’d hardly be honest not to acknowledge that there’s a hint of incest (a hintcest?) just because I happen to like this game developer better.  It didn’t particularly bother me past an initial raised eyebrow, and again, the game and the romantic interactions contained therein are great enough that I’d continue to recommend open-mindedness, but if moderately distanced relations being in love is a line you don’t cross as an audience, then A Dragon’s ReQuest won’t be your game.

Those are the biggest caveats to my recommendation, though, and I think that they won’t be stumbling blocks for, like, 95% of RPG fans.  Really, I found the fact that the sound effect for canceling out of menus is some woman saying “No” to be way more of a distracting matter than any of the adult elements, and that’s about as tiny a nitpicky complaint as they come.  A Dragon’s ReQuest is another thoughtful, emotional, fun example of Saint Bomber’s creative talents, sure to provoke wholehearted chuckles, heartful yearnings, and teary-eyed sniffles in you, that pleasantly pays homage to and even lightly deconstructs the classics and tenets of its genre.  And it’s free, to boot!  While SquareEnix and Bethesda and their like will charge you $70 for slipshod narrative trainwrecks and lazy unexamined dumpster-fodder, Large Battleship Studios is not just offering you an RPG that’s actually really good, but cheerfully giving it away!  I heartily recommend A Dragon’s ReQuest; go grab it and give it a try!
















* Although I’ll say right now, if Saint Bomber’s aim was to pay respects to and create a game inspired by Dragon Quest, then the man failed utterly and completely.  ADRQ is an RPG whose well-written cast of memorable individuals has great and perceivable depth and development, as well as constant relevance to and interaction with the plot--a plot which is thoughtful, interesting, and fun.  I can’t think of a game less like the average Dragon Quest.


** Although the giant-climbing part felt like maybe a bit much, if I’m being honest.