Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Social Links' Need for Phantom Thief Intervention

Social Links definitely number among my favorite parts of the SMT Persona series, as I’ve mentioned before.  They help immerse the player in the setting and culture of the game, exemplify and explore the games’ Tarot theme, and tell some compelling, moving stories of human nature, drama, and our connections to one another.  Some of the best moments of this series have been during the Social Link side-stories; hell, some of my best moments with RPGs, period, have been provided by these personal, poignant vignettes.  With that said, they’re not all winners.  Plenty of Social Links are boring, or tell a very cliched story that doesn’t really mean very much, or are tonally contradictory to their characters or game...hell, a few are just outright bad stories altogether.  And interestingly, in Persona 5, there’s a flaw in the overall approach that the game takes to resolving the Social Links’ conflicts, which lessens their quality overall.

While each Social Link is its own entity in SMT Persona 5, there’s a commonality to almost all of the ones for characters who are not a part of the Phantom Thieves: sooner or later, there comes a point at which main character Ren has to use his powers to induce a change of heart in someone who’s causing problems for the Social Link’s star (or, in Mishima’s case, induce that change in the story’s central figure himself).  This event, which happens late in the Social Link, is required for the tale to progress to its conclusion, and is used as a way of revealing Ren’s superhero identity to his friends, as they realize that only a Phantom Thief could have forced the one tormenting them to back down, and that only Ren knew knew the situation well enough to be that Thief.  The 1 exception to this rule is Tora of The Sun Arcana, whose Social Link progresses to its end without such an intervention.

But having this nearly universal requirement for Phantom Thief intervention to solve the problems of those Links who aren’t already a part of the group is ultimately detrimental.  Okay, sure, it’s refreshing to some degree to see it acknowledged in a JRPG that determination all on its own doesn’t always solve everything, but at the same time, making it clear that their problems couldn’t have been solved without cognitive superheroes swooping in to save the day weakens the stories of several individuals by taking the agency of their own tale out of their hands.  Now, this is fine enough for, say, Ohya’s story, where she’s genuinely an active, working participant in her tale who’s proactively resisted capitulating for as long as she can, but individuals like Chihaya and Sojiro, for example, seem less like they’ve been able to change by their own merit for the better, and more that they’ve simply been lucky enough to have Ren around to hold their hand and fight their battles for them.

I was really thrown for a loop at the point in Kawakami’s story in which she confronts the parents who have been emotionally (and also in the normal sense) blackmailing her, full of determination and conviction to pull herself out of this hell she’s been trapped in...and then they just completely shut her down, and she backs off with a whimper.  It feels like a weird narrative bait-and-switch, and inconsistent with the personal story of growth that Kawakami’s been going through in this Link, as well as contrary to the support Ren’s given to her on this matter.  The situation’s just a transparent and jarring bending of the narrative to allow Ren to settle the matter as a Phantom Thief, and the fact that he has to do so after Kawakami utterly failed to take charge of her own life within her own story cheapens that tale, as well as her development and resolution, because for all the nice sentiments and feel-good confidence in her future that comes later, at the end of the day, this Social Link is now a story in which its protagonist was tested, and she broke under that trial.  It doesn’t feel like a win that Ren helped Kawakami achieve, but a win that he handed to her because plot convenience stole her autonomy from her.

It’s not like I want Ren to be a non-participant in these Social Links, of course.  That’s just as harmful to these vignettes; the whole idea of these things is that the connections that the protagonist makes and the facets of the human experience that he observes and participates in broaden his horizons, empowering him by developing the psyche (which is the source of Persona abilities).  So Ren shouldn’t just sit there like a lump while stuff goes on around him.  But he should be the vital support in his friend’s life, a key to the confidant making positive changes for themselves and growing, NOT the crutch that they tangibly couldn’t have made it without.

In addition to robbing several characters of the agency that would fulfill their development and appropriately progress their stories, this approach is also mildly counter to a major theme of the overall game, too.  It is, after all, demonstrating these characters’ inability to successfully stand tall and solve their problems as individuals, necessitating the intervention of a conveniently benevolent acquaintance.  And yeah, normally there’s absolutely nothing wrong with demonstrating that the individual has limitations and that there’s no shame, only potential success, in allowing others who care for you to share your burdens and help you with them...but Persona 5 is an unflinching, staunch proponent of the value of the individual, arguing time after time against the knee-jerk collectivist instinct of its culture to dismiss, shun, or even punish those who stand for themselves.  And yet this game that glorifies its heroes as individuals who could be pushed no further by the injustices of the world and decided to stand against the ills of their society in spite of the meek compliance that was expected of them, insists on neutering roughly a third of its Social Link cast by having a superhero swoop in to save them from their problems, ruining their ability to embody the game’s message as they clearly should have.  It’s quite perplexing.

Not to mention, it also lessens the feeling of authenticity and uniqueness to make the Social Links so formulaic.  It’s not nearly as bad as the Rank 11s in the DLC, but still.

And what’s gained by doing this, anyway?  What benefit is there in having Ren constantly change the hearts of his friends’ tormentors?  Certainly we don’t need, by the point that you can reach anyone’s later Social Link stages, any further proof of Ren’s being a defender of justice and the weak.  We absolutely weren’t lacking for mini-boss experiences on the gameplay side.  Yeah, okay, it provides a clue to each Social Link character through which they glean Ren’s identity as a Phantom Thief, but surely there were other ways to accomplish this, at least for some individuals!  Kawakami’s had enough proximity to the events with Kamoshida that it’d be believable for her to put 2 and 2 together, Hifumi is, if not the genius she had thought she was, at least still a smart enough strategist that she could credibly figure it out herself, Ren’s pretenses for needing Tae’s services are so flimsy that it’d be less believable for her not to deduce his identity, Sojiro finds out during the main plot anyway...hell, while I actually think that Ohya and Shinya did legitimately need Ren’s intervention, she’s an investigative journalist and Shinya already knows Ren is personally tied to the Phantom Thieves, so they’d have no problem surmising his secret, either.  As Tora’s having inferred Ren’s secret all on his own shows, there’s really no need for this formulaic taking away of characters’ agency just because we want everyone in Ren’s life to know who he really is.

...Hell, with the shocking lack of effort that most of the team puts into protecting their anonymity, it’s almost surprising that it takes Ren’s acquaintances as long as it does to glean his secret identity.  Each of them is really just 1 inconveniently timed call away from hearing Ryuji hollering at Ren over the phone what the location, date, time, dress code, and parking validation policies are for their next Phantom Thief meeting.

Anyway, that’s essentially all I got on this.  It’s not a huge flaw, I suppose, but all the same, forcing Ren’s intervention to be the only viable solution to so many of the Social Links’ conflicts really takes the agency of the Links’ stars away from them, and as a result weakens what should have been their inspiring stories of growth and betterment.  I certainly think it’s safe to say that Tae, Chihaya, Iwai, Hifumi, and especially Sojiro and Kawakami,* would all have had better, more meaningful personal tales if Ren’s assistance had been moral support and advice, as previous Persona protagonists were generally restricted to, and they had been allowed to find the courage and determination to solve their own dilemmas.















* And honestly, even if the Phantom Thief intervention does seem warranted for Ohya and Mishima, an alternative for each, like Ohya finding a loophole and Mishima being reasoned out of his unhealthy mindset, would still probably have been better.

Shinya I’ll at least fully allow for the change of heart being necessary, though.  It’s a tough place to be the kid of a Karen, and it’s more believable that he needed a savior to mind-zap his mom back to normalcy than that he could convince her himself.

CrossCode's Downloadable Content

Today’s gonna be a nice, quick, short rant, which is a real thing that can actually happen, because we’re going to be looking at the DLC for the minor hit Indie RPG, CrossCode!



A New Home: And the reason it’s gonna be a short rant today is because, predictably, CrossCode’s downloadable content package is a good, solid piece of work.  More Lea, more words for Lea to say, more story to the Crossworlds experience as the game-within-the-game is finally completed, more actual plot with Lea as Evotars are eased into a new existence, more exploration and involvement of major characters like Shizuna, the Evotar Schneider, and C’Tron, more dungeon-racing with Emilie, more expertly-crafted puzzles that I respect and hate, more dueling with Apollo, and, of course, more Lea-hugs.  A New Home is very much what a fan wants from an RPG, a true-to-form continuation of the world, characters, and adventures that they liked in the first game.  At a price of $9, A New Home fairly charges for the amount of play-time you’ll get out of it, and it’s a good time overall.  Recommended!

...

Yup, that’s it.  That’s all I got.  Short rant today; I told you as much just a couple paragraphs ago.  Go on, now.

...

...

Well
I mean
I guess I sort of have a minor gripe I could talk about.

Okay, A New Home is good and all, right?  Just want to make sure that’s clear.  It’s good and I like it and it’s a good deal if you like CrossCode, which most people do.

Buuuuut, it does kind of feel like maybe the developer shortchanged the main game a little bit with the intention of selling that content later in this DLC.

I mean...a ton of A New Home is basically just completing the unfinished business and tying up the loose threads of the main story of CrossCode, most of which didn’t need to be delayed.  I mean, sure, the in-game developers’ completion of the Crossworlds adventure conveniently and elegantly fits into the after-game timeframe, but it could have fit just fine into the main story of CrossCode, with the Crossworlds adventure just being complete from the start, or even having its final parts released during the main game’s course.  Likewise, C’tron’s secret could have been revealed and worked through in the game proper without over-stuffing the main narrative (particularly with the extra time potentially provided by adding the final parts of Crossworlds).

Or, well, he could’ve just been on the level, a dorky player who was a good friend to Lea and Emilie.  Certainly nothing about C’tron’s plot twist feels like it’s necessary, nor does it develop the villain it involves to any meaningful degree.  So little would really have been lost had the entire secret nature of C’tron been cut, that, when I think about it, it starts feeling like a hasty addition created specifically as a tease to entice players to purchase the DLC, rather than a strong story beat genuinely intended to be a part of the plot’s course.  Hell, I feel like the type of human drama that C’tron’s story invokes is close enough to that of Evotar Lukas’s that all the DLC really needed would’ve been a better exploration of the latter,* and Evotar Lukas’s story actually did have in-story reason to be delayed until a post-game adventure.

Most significantly, it kinda feels like the developer decided to hold the ending of CrossCode ransom with the DLC.  Sure, CrossCode HAS an ending, but that ending’s basically just a placeholder--the villain’s been stopped, the adventure’s done, but the consequences of the adventure are left up in the air, as Lea’s put to sleep and her friends prepare to bring the existence and question of Evotars to the executives in charge of Crossworlds.  If you didn’t follow through on the right sidequests, then you can see the bad ending no problem, but if you did everything you should have, then the only way to see the fate of Lea and her kind is to buy the DLC.  Otherwise, what happens with Lea and the Evotars, the most important character and arguably the biggest issue in the game, is left up in the air.

I mean, I’m not crazy that this is a problem, right?  Surely it can’t just be me.  Like, if a major game publisher tried this--oh what am I saying, when major game publishers have tried this--you can expect a sizable public outcry, with customers and prominent Youtube gaming journalist personalities pointing out that this isn’t fair to the consumer who paid full price for an incomplete product, justly decrying the act as paywalling the ending of the game behind microtransactions.  But CrossCode is an Indie RPG, and very likable, and the DLC is enjoyable and satisfying, so...what, we’re just okay with it, then?  Not going to point out the fault in something we’d be crying for blood over had the crime been committed by the usual suspects?  I am, and long have been, inclined to treat Indie RPGs with kiddie gloves, but that’s far away from just giving it a free pass when a game pulls something that you’d expect from Activision-Blizzard or Ubisoft.

So I’m just gonna say it.  I think this DLC is scummy.  I think that the developer for CrossCode made a scummy, greedy decision that took advantage of its customers when it paywalled an adequate ending to the game.  A New World is satisfying, engaging, on-brand fun at a reasonable price, and it’s scummy.  CrossCode is pretty universally loved, so that’s probably quite a hot take, but it won’t exactly be my first, and this is how I see it.  Good work on the great DLC, Radical Fish Games, and in the same breath, shame on you.














* I feel like Evotar Schneider’s existential quandary is fixed weirdly quickly in A New Home, and it’s even weirder how all his friends seem to prioritize the fun of finishing the raid over helping him deal with it.  Like, yeah, Luke, could you put a pin in that whole thing of grappling with the horror of existing as a computer program when all your memories are that of a physical being until we’re done with our Leroy Jenkins reenactment?  You’re bringing the mood down!  So inconsiderate.

Septerra Core's Connor's Death Scene

What was the point?

Really.  Seriously.  What purpose did the scene in Septerra Core in which Connor finally meets his end actually serve for the game’s narrative?

Alright, so, because Septerra Core came out in 1999, most of you who have played the game could most likely use a quick Previously On X-Men refresher on the subject of today’s rant.  And if you’ve only just finished playing the game a couple days ago, like me, you could still probably use a reminder, because I’m sorry but this game does not leave much of an impression in the modern age.  Here’s the deal: our protagonist Maya and her crew have found their way into Marduk’s lost city, and navigated its bland, nigh-featureless dungeon expanse filled to the damn brim with bland, nigh-featureless disposable enemies, because Septerra Core loves grinding more than a lesbian pepper mill doing skateboard tricks while eating a hoagie and listening to punk/heavy metal hybrids.  Maya’s taken this stroll down Slow, Clunky EXP Fodder Avenue in the hopes of gaining entrance to the temple in which legendary hero Marduk enshrined his 2 daemon swords, because they’re the only way to counter main villain Daskias’s special glowy ultra-sword, in spite of the fact that Maya’s standard armament is an automatic rifle, which is already more than a match for Daskias’s ultimate unstoppable blade because it’s a fucking gun.

Anyway, she’s been warned against committing any act of violence inside the temple, because that would be sacrilegious and whatnot.*  So she finds the place, goes in, sees the swords, and suddenly her buddy Lobo runs in to warn her that he’s detected the pirate warlord Connor** in the area.  Right after he finishes telling her, and I do mean 2 seconds afterward, Connor arrives and demands the swords.  Why even have Lobo show up at all?  2 seconds’ lead time doesn’t give Maya any chance to formulate a plan, nor does it allow any narrative benefit of rising tension.  All it does is take a little away from whatever potential surprise there is in Connor’s showing up, and put Lobo on the scene, which does absolutely nothing because Lobo does and says nothing that anyone else couldn’t have.  I get that Lobo and Connor are personal foes, but that individual enmity has no effect whatsoever on how this scene plays out.

So Maya and company invoke the law of Finders Keepers, Connor keeps threatening, Lobo warns him that they’re not supposed to fight in the temple, and Connor makes it clear that he doesn’t buy into all that mumbo-jumbo, which doesn’t pan out for him when a holy spirit thing shows up a moment later and explodes him.  Yeah, you show’im, ghost guy!  A temple dedicated to housing weapons that demands absolutely no violence within its premises and enforces that law of pacifism by causing a guy who merely spoke threateningly to literally explode--absolutely nothing confusing about that message, no sirree!

Why is Connor the first guy the ghost of Megumin targets in this scene, for that matter?  Yeah, sure, he’s the aggressor here, but Lobo’s the one who keeps taking aggressive steps towards Connor and forcing him to keep backing away in this situation.  Not to mention that of everyone in this room, Lobo’s the only one who’s perpetually got his giant sci-fi rifle up and at the ready like he’s trapped in a 90s Image Comics cover.  If I were an anti-violence demolitions phantom first responder, my initial instinct would be to neutralize the guy whose finger is literally on the trigger.

More importantly: why is this scene happening, really?  What purpose is served to the story of Septerra Core, its characters, its plot, its themes, player immersion, anything?  First of all, why make this the moment that Connor meets his fate?  Connor wasn’t a big or dangerous enough villain to require a splashy deus ex machina death.  The guy can only barely be considered a secondary villain, and he’s had his ass kicked twice before this moment, so it’s not like the player is under the impression that Maya and company aren’t capable of defeating him by their own efforts.  Frankly, the last time we saw him was recently, and the way the fight ended seemed laughably stupid--once Connor had been stomped adequately, his escape from the situation was basically just to quietly exit the room, which required him to stroll right past the heroes on his way out, as they just wordlessly watched him do so.***  Adding Connor to the scene here doesn’t really raise the stakes or tension because he’s not a major threat, and even if he were, the whole affair is over and done with so fast that there’s still no benefit to having a villain present to challenge the no violence edict.  Neither Lobo nor Maya give any indication that seeing Connor’s end is particularly cathartic or otherwise emotionally significant, and if the player has any strong feelings about Connor getting his comeuppance, then he or she would almost surely have been more satisfied with simply having disposed of the nuisance by their own efforts in their previous encounter, rather than simply seeing Connor magically exploded because The Plot Someone On The Development Team Demanded It.

There’s no player involvement, so it’s not like this is some test of the player’s memory or commitment to heroism.  Connor’s arrival and demands, Lobo and Maya’s refusal, and finally Connor’s death, it’s all done via cutscene.  It’s not like the player has some agency in choosing to do the “right” thing and not attack in combat, like Cecil vs. Dark Cecil in Final Fantasy 4, or choosing pacifist combat approaches in Undertale.

There’s no lasting lesson that Maya takes from this scene about the dangers of resorting to violence too hastily.  The lore isn’t expanded from the temple being a Nanako No Fighting Zone.  Since it’s wrapped up immediately thereafter, Connor’s arrival and threat presents no wrinkle to the plot.  Nonviolent conflict resolution isn’t a theme of Septerra Core by any stretch of the imagination, at least no more than it might be for virtually any other RPG.  None of the heroes have the slightest difficulty adhering to the temple’s rule (Lobo’s constantly being prepared to shoot a hole in the roof notwithstanding), so there’s no character development here.

This is just a scene that happens, and it’s done, and you go about your business as if nothing had occurred.  Maya could easily have just gotten the swords and been good to go, and nothing about the game going forward would have been changed whatsoever.  What was the point?

















* Which, by the way, seems a little strange to me.  There’s no violence permitted in the temple that specifically serves as the shrine and home to a couple of swords?  Swords are notorious for being linked to violence, and very, very little else.  They’re weapons, they are made explicitly and entirely with violence in mind!  That’s like having a holy cathedral dedicated to housing the ultimate stapler, while also possessing the viewpoint that the act of collating paper is an unforgivable sin against God.


** Look, I have tried to train myself in the last decade to not make fun of names because it’s ultimately a completely arbitrary matter, but all the same, I have to ask: how the fuck am I supposed to take someone seriously as an evil, murderous pirate when he’s named fucking Connor?


*** The Septerra Core cast has a really, really bad habit of just letting bad guys wander off after battle.  Like, I get that sometimes you need the heroes to win a fight, but you’re also not done with the villain in your story just yet, but there are ways to believably extricate your baddie from the situation!  Maya and company just silently, motionlessly gawk as foe after foe hop along on their merry way after a fight, and it starts to get annoying before long.  Finish’em off or attempt to detain them, guys, just stop STANDING there and watching the pirate warlord slowly make his way out the very door you came in through, practically bumping into you as he goes!  I’m almost surprised that Maya didn’t politely give him the “after you” motion!