Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Haru Sure Does Get the Shaft

Man, Haru kinda gets screwed by Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5’s writers, doesn’t she?

I mean, to start with, there’s the most obvious and glaring way that the game fails her: she’s only recruited about halfway through the game’s story--and that’s only if you include the post-game adventure with Maruki that the rerelease adds.  That’s not necessarily an insurmountable hurdle for a character to overcome when trying to fit into a group’s dynamic and endear themselves to the player, but in a game which is so strongly motivated by and reliant upon its main cast and their personalities to stay in motion and invest the player, it’s a tough obstacle.  Being introduced at something like 2/3rds of the way through the main game means that Haru’s having to break into an established friendly group dynamic more than be adopted into it, and she doesn’t have the shared history of the rest of the party that provides opportunities for in-jokes and friendly banter.  Hell, she even suffers for this timing as a romantic option; practically half the love interest scenes in the main game occur before Haru's even present to be romanced.

Now, the timing of Haru’s recruitment is an almost universally agreed-upon weakness of Persona 5, so this isn’t news, but I do want to point out something that I don’t see mentioned too often when people complain about this failing: it’s not just the lack of time and opportunity she has to become a part of the team dynamic and establish her character to the player.  It’s also the nature of this lacking period of time.  The time remaining to Persona 5’s main narrative after Haru’s introduction is not like that which has preceded it--the following arcs of the game are those of Sae, Shido, and the dumb Holy Grail thing.  Essentially, immediately following Haru’s joining the team, the main story suddenly comes a-knocking, things start heating up, and the Phantom Thieves’ efforts are dedicated to events and threats whose stakes are ever-increasing.  The arc of stopping Haru’s father is the last business-as-usual chapter of the game, and the tension and focus on the Thieves’ surviving the traps laid for them, discovering and overcoming their true enemy, and facing off against some superfluous supernatural mastermind semi-deity keeps the party too busy, too focused on the necessary here and now, for the same kind of character-building moments and asides that the rest of the cast benefited from earlier in the game.*  Not only is Haru given very limited time to really establish herself as a true part of the Phantom Thieves, but the quality of that time provided to her is unsuitable for that purpose--the time for establishing the cast has clearly just expired at that point, and the game is expecting the player to be fully engrossed in the major events of the plot’s climax.

Another problematic angle to this lack of development time: Haru has a singular style and personality, but that great character is subtle in almost all facets, and needs time for it to really shine.  You can’t immediately tell that her personality’s seemingly plain exterior is hiding a hardcore warrior goddess with just the faintest touch of bloodlust that she has fully in control, nor appreciate her being an earnest, real-life heroine who wants to share the bounties of this world with all its people.  While most of the cast’s shticks and personalities are overt and easily recognizable, Haru’s qualities and persona are less forward, subtle.  Spinoffs like Q2 and Strikers have thankfully provided the extra time that a lighter touch character like Haru needs, and helped audiences realize after the fact just how cool she is, but the original game gives barely any time to really get a feel for her, and of the entire cast, she’s the one who most needs that time!

Worsening this problem is the fact that what parts of SMT Persona 5’s narrative ARE dedicated to Haru, frequently treat her as an afterthought.  I mean, look at the way she enters into the game’s narrative and joins the Phantom Thieves!  Yusuke, Futaba, Makoto, each of their introduction arcs had a clear and undiluted focus on them--who they were, why they were Phantom Thief material, how they awoke to their spirit of justice and rebellion against the ills of society, what made them tick.  From the start of the Madarame portion of the story to its finish, there’s never a doubt that the emotional and spiritual lynchpin character is Yusuke.  Makoto’s internal war between the docility expected of her in response to the impossible expectations the world makes of her and her burning need to see right done is the only major relevant character development during the events with Kaneshiro.  And the entirety of the Medjed arc is dedicated to establishing and exploring Futaba’s character (not to mention much of the intermission that follows it).

But Haru?  Haru has to share her introduction to the Phantom Thieves with Morgana’s pity-party arc.  And “share” is a generous way of putting it, because Morgana’s little hissy-fit** is the primary motivating factor for the Phantom Thieves’ entry into the Okumura part of the story; Haru’s first introduction is basically as a tool that Morgana’s using as a way of flaunting how little he needs his former comrades!  Yes, to be sure, past the early phase of the Okumura arc, it’s Haru whose character is (rightly) the focus as the team works to correct her father’s evil ways...but that introduction of a character as a rebel for justice is a pivotal, crucial moment for each Phantom Thief, and Haru’s had to play second fiddle to an entirely different character’s development, one who’s already had the entire game’s time to establish and advance himself!***  Haru’s introduction, induction, and awakening are rushed through, sideshows to Morgana’s Self Esteem bit.  The writers treat Haru as an afterthought in the introduction of her own main arc of the story!

And then there’s her Social Link.  While it’s not a 1:1 copy or anything, and it’s fine enough in its own right I guess, it’s kind of hard to not to notice, as I’ve mentioned previously, that Haru’s Social Link’s story has the same foundations as Persona 3’s Mitsuru.  It’s a tale of a high-class woman out to experience new things, stressing out about what her and her company’s future will be, engaged for political reasons to a self-important asshole, who will learn the self-confidence she needs to take her future in her own hands and ditch her shitty fiance thanks to the protagonist’s encouragement--sound familiar?  Persona 5’s writers thankfully didn’t just do a copy-paste, at least, Haru takes this in a different direction than Mitsuru and with a different perspective, but there’s no denying that even if they didn’t completely plagiarize themselves, Atlus did, at the very least, reuse the same narrative template for Haru as they had used for Mitsuru.

And not for nothing, but this whole timing situation kind of sucks for her even from an in-universe perspective.  Because man, did Haru ever miss out on the fun days of being a Phantom Thief.  I mean, the poor woman’s experience with being a crusader of underground justice has been finding out that her father is 1 of the more evil people on the planet, with an overlap of her being sold off as sexual property solely to further his own interests, then watching her father die horribly on national television in what should have been her first big moment of victory as a Phantom Thief.  She then becomes Public Enemy #1 along with the rest of her new friends after having been promised that everyone in the world would think she’s awesome, because she just so happened to join up with the gang at the moment that public opinion swings a hard fucking left on the Phantom Thieves.  

Yeah, so after finding out that her parent’s a monster and her existence was designed solely to be used for his benefit, Haru gets to split her shifts at the Stress Factory between being terrified that she got into the Phantom Thieves just in the nick of time to be arrested and put on trial, and being forced to learn on her feet how to lead a multinational corporation while completely changing it to the point that it’s actually ethical.  Ryuji’s over here complaining a few chapters ago about having to do some homework when he’s trying to concentrate on being a loved pop-culture phenomenon, and meanwhile Haru’s trying to juggle 80% of the shitty parts of being Batman!  Dammit, all the girl wanted was to get to dress up like a fancy tea-time musketeer while she put some good into the world!  

This is the shit that makes supervillains.  I legit would completely understand and even forgive Haru if she’d turned full-on evil just as a result of how shitty her life became the moment she tried out fighting for justice.

Just...damn, Persona 5 writers, what is your deal with this girl?












* And for the record, the extra time in the rerelease’s post-game adventure doesn’t help all that much, either.  It, too, is largely fixated on the events and ramifications of Maruki’s bid to (benevolently) control the world, and what time it has for focusing on characters and interrelationships is largely given to Yoshizawa and, unfathomably, fucking Akechi of all people.


** Goddamit I’m so masterfully clever.


*** And, for that matter, isn’t even all that interesting to begin with.  Look, I’m sorry, I like the guy and he does, to be sure, serve a very important function to the heart and atmosphere of Persona 5, but...Morgana is a pretty mid character, at best.

General RPGs' Shelter Items

You know those items in RPGs like Shelters, Tents, Cottages, etc.?  The ones that fully restore your entire party so long as you’re at a save point?  When you get down to it, they’re kind of a dumb waste of time.

Oh, sure, your knee-jerk reaction is that I’m being an idiot.  The utility of these items seems obvious!  After you’ve been slogging through a dungeon full of random encounters, wearing down your characters’ health and magic, you absolutely want to be able to restore your weary adventurers to their peak fighting capacity before the next boss, or even just a new branch of the dungeon.  And who the heck wants to take the time to use a dozen or more curative potions to achieve that?  Not to mention that those things can be needed in difficult battles, so you may not want to waste them.  A save point restorative seems the perfect tool for extended, thorough, and safe dungeon exploration.

And sure, that all makes sense.  While some RPGs are designed without such options, presumably either with the intent of creating an economy of careful resource budgeting or just because they were created before the feature had even been invented (or, in a few cases like Live-A-Live and the Loathing and Romancing SaGa series, because the party’s HP is fully restored after combat anyway), generally speaking, the capacity to fully heal up at significant intermissions and turning points in a dungeon is a pretty important feature.  Knowing you’ll be able to do so at a certain point during your exploration means that you feel comfortable with using at least some of your special abilities during regular battles, which makes combat substantially less boring than it has to be, you don’t have to grind money to afford an ocean of jarred elixir before you feel comfortable about your chances of making it through the next combat zone alive, and having your fighters at full capacity means you can go all-out against bosses.  Without the ability to heal up at save points, you’re looking at an RPG where 90% of your battles may just be using Attack over and over, and you’re either starving for every coin to fill your inventory with mana potions, or your crew can only ever give a fraction of their all to boss encounters, lowering what dramatic weight the conflicts have.  Save point healing is definitely a positive and important function of the average RPG.

But ever since I first played Grandia 1 and enjoyed the benefits of those delightful little rainbow cone save points, I’ve wondered: what is the damn point of Shelter items when you can just have the save point itself heal the heroes?

I mean, think about it.  If the developers wanted the option to fully restore the party while in a dungeon to be on the table at all, then why add the extra steps of having to purchase a Tent, and then open up the item menu and use it?  Sure, it’s not some great inconvenience, but it’s still a step that’s entirely unnecessary when games like Grandia, Undertale, and Final Fantasy 10 prove that the save point can just do the healing itself.  Hell, Ys, 1 of the oldest RPG series in existence, proved this before Shelter-type items even existed!  You’re just adding the extra steps of purchasing and then using an item to do what could just be included in the save point’s function.  It may only be a very tiny inconvenience, but it IS a tiny inconvenience that doesn’t have to be there at all.

I suppose you could try to make the point that budgeting for healing is a part of the overall economy of RPG gameplay, and thus having to purchase/find Shelter-type items contributes to that.  But that argument doesn’t really hold much water--it’s pretty rare that such items have a high enough price tag at a merchant that they affect the economy of playing the game at all.  About the only time in an RPG where your buying choices might be affected by the cost of having a Tent or 2 on hand would be right at the beginning, when you have the smallest capital flow, and that, ironically, is the time in the game where you usually will need such an item the least, since you don’t have much HP and MP to restore to begin with (making basic potions an easy option), and have fewer MP-draining skills and spells to utilize in combat anyway.  By the point at which you’ve got enough HP, MP, and battle options that the Shelter family is indispensable, you’ll also have enough money that keeping a tidy 10 of the things in your inventory at all times won’t have any noticeable effect on your wallet.  If the developers’ aim was to make 1 of money’s uses in their game the capacity for save point healing, then a system like what you often find in Shin Megami Tensei would be a better method, in which the cost of the healing increases according to just how much HP and MP need to be recovered.  This kind of system is still generally outpaced pretty easily by adventuring income even as the costs get more substantial, but it’s at least a way better attempt at creating a heals-for-cash economy than just charging 150G for a Shelter in a game where you can be making more than that in a single battle less than a quarter of the way through the adventure.

And I know that these items ain’t there for the sake of immersion.  Exactly how realistic is it that in the middle of a military facility within the enemy capitol, one filled with enemy soldiers, hostile robots, guard dogs, and violent mutants, the heroes can just pitch a tent in the middle of a random room, crawl inside, and every single foe will politely tiptoe around them so they can get a healthy, recommended 8 undisturbed hours of rest?  Are you going to make the case that it’s believable for an other-dimensional horror of teeth and claws and teeth with claws floating in the midst of a temple built to worship a god of torment and destruction to happen across the 4 heroes trying to kill its boss as they’ve snuggled up for a nap, and choose to let them be simply because it’s too shy to unzip the tent flap?  Lemme tell you, the giant, hulking, vicious razor-horned Behemoths of Final Fantasy became a hell of a lot less intimidating when I realized that they were powerless before a Do Not Disturb sign!

Not to mention cases where the overnight stay that a Tent item implies should actually just outright kill the heroes in and of itself.  I’m pretty sure that if you decided to conk out for the night in the heart of an active volcano next to a pool of magma, snoring in 1 lungful of volcanic aerosols and ash after another, you’d be waking considerably less healthy than when you went to sleep.

Also, exactly how realistic is it that these things are consumable, single-use items?  Look, I don’t know which Dick’s Sporting Goods the developers of Cris Tales have been shopping at, but tents are not tissue papers; you’re supposed to be able to pitch it up more than once before you pitch it out.  Who is the absolute madman in the party of Final Fantasy 4 who is purchasing and then throwing entire COTTAGES in the trash after a single nap!?

If these games wanted to realistically employ the idea of a Shelter item, they’d do it like Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.  In those games, you can bunker down for the night in an active danger zone with the camping equipment that your party carries and doesn’t throw out, so long as you have the space to set it up, and there’s an entire game mechanic devoted to determining whether the sentries you post to watch over the camp will be able to keep the rest of the party safe from the enemies in the area as they sleep.  It still requires a good bit of suspension of disbelief to accept that’d be enough to allow for a decent night’s sleep in the middle of the war zone of a demon invasion, but they’re at least trying a hell of a lot harder than the developer who thought it’d be totally reasonable for a Shelter to guarantee complete, unbroken safety for over half a dozen hours in the middle of Magus’s Lair.

So these items don’t provide any real effect on the ebb and flow of money in the game, and they sure as hell don’t add to the immersion.  Well, if Shelters have no secondary meta-function, and their primary function can be accomplished exactly as well by simply programming save points with the ability to heal your party,* then what purpose is served by these items besides just wasting the cumulative time it takes to acquire them and navigate menus to use them?   Save point restoration items are dumb.












* Hell, this actually provides the creators better potential control over how the game is played.  Some RPGs have 2 different kinds of save points, ones that just save your game and others that can both save AND heal you, allowing the developers better options for balancing their dungeons and bosses the way they want to, since they have the option to provide or deny the player full restoration, and thus create situations and dungeons of MP-budgeting and adoption of endurance tactics.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 Stray Thoughts: Characters

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 is pretty awesome, and as you may have noticed, I have a lot of thoughts about it.  Thus far I've been sharing the more developed ones, but there are plenty of little minor reactions to and considerations of the game that I had as I played, and "lucky" for all of you, I basically used poor Ecclesiastes as a notebook/cruelly abused test subject for all these stray thoughts as I played, so I've still got pretty much all my notions and perceptions, clever or distinctly otherwise, on hand to share.  And share we're going to--more than once, in fact, because there's way more of these things than can or should reasonably fit into a single rant.  So for today, we're doing a themed Stray Thoughts rant, about the characters of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5!



THE HOMIES

- I like the fact that Ren actually has something of a character in this game.  I mean, sure, the guy suffers the same stunted growth as a human being that all silent protagonists do, and obviously shouldn’t be one.  That’s pretty standard.  But there are a few moments, here and there, where Ren betrays a humanity that Yu, Makoto, and Kotone lacked, like when he has a little ‘Nam flashback at hearing Shido’s voice at the hotel elevator, and these moments make him feel a hell of a lot more real.

I don’t know why game developers think that blank slate silent protagonists are somehow more easily relatable or help immerse the audience in spite of literal thousands of years of cultural evidence to the contrary.  I like the fact that Ren’s internal monologue occasionally betrays character depth!  Like, whilst Morgana's pulling his little running-away-from-home stint, if you sit on Ren's thinkin' couch, he'll thought-bubble, "Why didn't I notice something was bothering Morgana?" That's a simple and normal thought for a character to have, but the fact that the silent and aloof Persona protagonist is having this regretful self-critique somehow just means volumes to me.  SMTP3’s Makoto might be able to just barely manage to make the aloof silent protagonist thing work thanks to his symbolic role as a Messiah figure reinforcing his position as The Fool, but similar mild, subtle characterization certainly wouldn’t have hurt him at all.  And Yu needed it.


- For the record, I tried very hard not to burst out laughing when I saw what Makoto's evolved Persona looked like.


- I did not extend that same courtesy to Akechi's Phantom Thief outfit.  The man looks like a mosquito decided he wanted to lead a marching band during Mardi Gras.


- You know what?  Seeing Yoshizawa catch that kid’s balloon during her initial Social Link scene was a dozen times more cool and impressive an introduction to her skills than that entire try-hard, embarrassingly over-the-top fight sequence that we see in the game’s opening.  Seriously, creators, it’s not the 1970s any more, the world has grown past thinking that effortlessly beating a handful of hench-goons is some impressive feat.  This chick just leapt 8 feet straight up and had the casual gall to tell Ren that it was just a simple acrobatics maneuver that anyone could do!  Atlus’s writers really assume I’m gonna pump my fist and gasp in delighted shock that half a dozen literally faceless minions got their asses kicked, but then just brush off the fact that this high school freshman is actually a Super Mario?


- Why do the others give Ryuji shit for not bringing enough stuff with him for the Hawaii vacation, when the backpack he’s carrying is larger than any of their suitcases?


- Let's be honest, most of the designs for the team's individual Personas are pretty bad...but MAN, Haru's second one is just something else.  All the goofy abstracts you've encountered before it can't quite prepare you for the moment you realize that Haru's new, upgraded Persona is some croissant-headed chick stuck to a Mexican candy skull.

When I saw it, I actually began second-guessing my decision to choose Haru to be Ren's girlfriend, just based on how incredibly stupid her Persona was.  Makoto, Hifumi, Yoshizawa, hell, I even momentarily considered Futaba as an alternative paramour, just so Ren wouldn't have to go to Persona-User parties and be like, "Yeah my arm candy tonight's the actual fucking candy."


- Speaking of, I am both delighted, and utterly repulsed, to announce that after over a decade of searching, I have finally found the perfect, iconic poster couple for Since We're Not Related It'll Be Okay Syndrome.  So thank you and fuck you, Persona 5, in equal measure, for allowing Ren to romance Futaba, the girl that Ren even outright acknowledges in 1 scene (a meetup with Iwai) is, and I quote, "Basically my sister."  Jesus Christ, I am somehow way, way more comfortable with Fire Emblem obsessing over actual, biological siblings fucking than I am with what's possible in this game.

And as if her social and emotional dependence on Ren precluding them from ever being peers and thus creating an inherent power dynamic between them that's extremely unhealthy for a romantic relationship wasn't enough...I love the fact that Sojiro, their shared adoptive father, outright and in no uncertain terms requests that Ren avoid hooking up with Futaba.  That's about as close to a cry for help to the tune of "Corporate forced us to make your sister a romance option, we didn't want to do it, WE know it's icky, too, it's not our fault we swear!" as you're likely to find from a group of writers.



THE LINKS

- Much though I do like the man, I really hope Persona 5 didn’t actually want me to take Sojiro’s posturing and attempts to talk big about being a ladies’ man seriously.  I mean, my God, man, look at yourself.  You’re out here bitching about the notion of having a man in your passenger seat when your idea of an out-on-the-town outfit is what a 90s direct-to-VHS movie would’ve dressed a pimp in as a joke.  Yeah, I’m sure you’re just fucking slaying pussy all day long, Sojiro, dressed like you’re just getting off the ferry from Nantucket in your search for a worthy croquet rival.  No doubt the ladies are just stacking themselves like a fucking Jenga tower on that passenger seat normally.

I really wanted a scene following this implication of how much action Sojiro’s getting with passenger-seat floozies, where Ren opens the door of the car and a cascade of dust comes pouring out, like the cocaine from Joey’s car in that 1 scene from Mafia.  I wanted Ren to sit down, realize something felt off, look down, and see Indiana Jones hunched down under the floor mat, searching for long-lost artifacts.


- “There are two possibilities: either you’ve simply been trying to confuse me with your lies...
...Or everything you’ve stated is true.”

Very good, Sae!  Yes, you’re right, that IS the case with literally everything anyone says, ever!

Man, I just can’t imagine how mobsters like Kaneshiro have managed to evade the law when we’ve got sharp, insightful prosecutors like Sae protecting Japan.


- By the time of the school trip to Hawaii, Mishima's obsession with the Phantom Thieves has reached a point at which Ren's having to room with him feels unsafe.  It's like, Jesus, dude, just hurry up, cut off a lock of Ren's hair, and be done with it so we can move on to the stage where Ren finally gets some fucking rest because you want to stay up all night and watch him in his sleep.  To quote the good Sir Ecclesiastes, "It's not for no reason that you can treat Mishima like a piece of shit and it will not hinder the Link's progress; guy is a five star parasocial creep, which is remarkable given that he's a real life acquaintance."


- Seriously, though, Akechi's metaverse outfit looks like he got confused while getting dressed and couldn't remember whether he was going to a costume party hosted by a bored middle-aged suburbanite in her backyard, or tryouts for a local just-for-fun figure skating club.


- So, Ohya, let me get this straight.  Someone accuses you of pursuing a separate investigation, rather than working the assignment you were given...and the defense you choose to go with is, "No, no, I wasn't working on the wrong story for my job!  I was IGNORING my job altogether!  So that I could date a minor!"

Brilliant.  Fuck those losers over in Suikoden; Ohya's clearly the true master tactician.


- Of all the Social Link characters to give Ren a boost to his Kindness stat from hanging out with them, Atlus chose Shinya.  Oh, yeah, sure, checks out.  You bet.  I mean, nothing will hone your empathy and magnanimity toward others better than engaging with a cursing preteen Call of Duty player who feels you're not contributing your proper share to the team, right?

Maybe hanging out with Shinya is teaching Kindness to Ren in the sense that he's not lifting the little shit up and drop-kicking him into the crane machine, so Ren's benevolence muscle MUST be getting a hell of a workout.



THE BADDIES

- Madarame is kind of small potatoes in the plot as a whole, essentially just existing as an initial practice run for the established Phantom Thieves and as a way to work Yusuke into the story...but I gotta say, in a petty, personal way, he’s a more twisted and compelling villain than even Shido himself.  You wouldn’t think that a mere plagiarist could really stand shoulder-to-shoulder with bad guys like extortionists, rapists, mass-murdering conspiracists, and worst of all, corporate CEOs, but Madarame manages it.  The thefts he makes are of the creativity and talent of students who look up to him as both a teacher and a parental figure, trusting him until the moment that it’s too late and their capacity to convey beauty and truth through their craft is forever tainted by the betrayal.  The truth of the Sayuri genuinely impressed me with just what an evil bastard Madrame truly was.  Sure, Shido eliminating everyone in his way and seeking to corrupt his nation into his own twisted view of an elitist paradise is a grander form of evil that creates far more misery by quantity of those harmed by him.  But Shido’s atrocities don’t feel as viciously, personally vile as Madarame’s letting a woman die in front of him rather than getting her help, so that he could deface her masterpiece expressing her love as a mother, claim and sell it as his own work, and take her son to raise as his own, just in case the son inherited any talents Madarame could someday take advantage of.  What a sick fuck.


- I like the moment in the game in which Kaneshiro tells the gang (at the time consisting of Ren, Ann, Ryuji, Yusuke, and Makoto) that they can beg their mommies and daddies for the money he wants from them.  Dude, you have no idea how ineffective that strategy will be with this bunch; they don’t have a complete mother-father set present between the 5 of them.


- And yet somehow Akechi's true outfit manages, shockingly, to be even dumber than his first one.  Guy looks like he was so excited about his cosplay that even though he's changed into his jammies, he still wants to wear the helmet to bed and keep pretending that he's Final Fantasy 4's Kain.