The fog of lies deepens

Corner of Memory

Having just finished Persona 4 Golden after roughly two years since I first picked it up, I'm off on a little bit of a binge of seeking out the obfuscated truths within the world. Which is a very apt topic when we look about the world of today as the vines of mistruths grow thicker, tightening around all of us. I wouldn't be surprised at this rate if Persona 6 doesn't end up being a tie-in direct sequel to Persona 4, as the world seems absolutely prime to facilitate it. What with all the lie-driven facets of media, both in the serious world and the irreverent one we inhabit, and the broadening tools for the aspiring liar to exploit practically falling at their finger tips, digging our way to the innermost truths is becoming more and more of a skill. I've done all I can to be on the ball myself, but how do you teach someone new coming into this world what's real and what's not? What value do those terms even have in a world where both are used as tangible and actionable currency? When is Persona 6 coming and why don't I have it yet? All pertinent questions.

Of course this is yet another topic that veers it's way towards the tools of misinformation, which unfortunately isn't a giant submarine with a giant server farm that mechanically filters all the world's flow of information in order to spit out altered results that subtly manipulates humanity into developing the way that a shadowy cabal of war-era elitists want. Although given the rise of ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, I'm beginning to think that such a world isn't exactly far off. (We just need someone entrepreneuring enough, with near limitless funds who is a closet wierdo and a rapid Hideo Kojima fan- wait... someone check on Elon Musk right now!) Given that these tools have been thrust into the hands of the everyday man, one would be forgiven for believing this is the downfall of truth and trustworthiness within society, which is a bit of a hyperbole to be honest- but one can't deny the fact that AI is certainly having a serious part to play in the pollution of the Shadow World within Humanity's heart.

With Search Engines and lazy customer support centres adopting writing algorithms into their daily operation, we've been able to see the breakdown of reliability across already shaky infrastructure. Bing, for instance, showed off how their new AI search assistant will confidently pull it's data from any old source on the Internet it can find, irregardless of corroborating evidence or stronger differing facts. Only the AI picks these half-truths and straight lies out and presents them without the alternatives that a faceless search engine would- essentially thrusting the onus of discovering the truth onto the searcher who, most of the time, isn't a trained journalist who does this regularly. And the rise of AI image generation has led to tons of paid art boards being flooded with low effort, easily identifiable, computer composites that lazy creator's charge pretty pennies for- covering up the true heartfelt passion of the traditional artist hidden underneath.

But of course, this culture spreads back a little further, doesn't it? Who remembers that leak for 'Spiderman: No Way Home', showing off Andrew Garfield way before his inclusion with the project was a known definite. (I mean we all kind of knew, but we didn't know yet) Mr Garfield, thinking quick on his feet, thrust the excuse onto the image generation boogey-man of the day- Deepfake tech. And for the moment it was a convincing misdirect. Deepfake technology is capable of compositing images together to startlingly realistic ends, such to the point where rumours persist Russia employed deepfake videos of Zelenskyy surrendering Ukraine at the beginning of their conflict as a befuddlement tactic. Now for the moment there are still lighting and movement giveaways that the human eye is capable of detecting; but the tech is improving so fast that for the Spiderman lie at least, there was a genuine moment where the Internet wondered if they were being misled or if they were, indeed, looking at the single most impressive Deepfake ever made. That is scary.

Of course Deepfake tech has slightly more, just as eyebrow raising, applications; such as when specialised adult sites starting using it for their own goals. Already questionable until a site which targeted popular internet personalities, without their consent, came roaring into the forefront of news very recently. With tech like this, suddenly our own likenesses can be turned into algorithms and formatted without anyone being the wiser. For the moment it requires a steady stream of face pictures from various angles in order to make a convincing composite, but how many pictures of your face exist online already? Really? Check your Instagram, or your Twitter; you may have the tools to be made into the next AI fabricated storyline already out in the ether without even realising it!

Which brings me back around to the story which inspired all this pontification to begin with, and believe it or not this actually comes back around to Persona! (I know!) Because as ATLUS stubbornly refuses to let anyone in on the details of their next mainline, non gatcha, entry to their beloved universe; stories have started to pour out on their own. Some speculation, some outright confident fabrications, and one in particular an apparent leak. Maybe you've seen it, a five second snippet of what looks to be a high-poly remake of Persona 3, or one of Persona 3's main characters at least, casting 'Myriad Arrows'. (I think.) It's a frenetic looking scene, much more so than the footage of Phantom X we've already seen, leading people to believe that this is the very first look we're received of a full blown Persona 3 remake on the horizon.

Now I don't believe any outlet has confirmed the footage, but they have talked about a Persona 3 remake being apparently in development for several years now: which creates a dilemma. If this information was already publicly accessible, who's to say that what we're seeing here isn't the high quality animation of a fan imaging what a Persona 3 Remake would be using the tools available to them? Think about it, the Internet if full of talented individuals who can create incredible 3d and 2d animation without the tools and staff of a major studio. Just within the past couple of weeks we've seen the debut of an incredible looking animated pilot on Youtube with 'Lackadaisy'; is a 5 second snippet of a Persona game really beyond the realms of fabricated possibility?

We've reached the very special point in life where it seems nothing is true and everything is permitted, for the tools of reality have been passed into the hands of everyone. But in a world where an convenient lie is certainly more palatable than a rough truth, who's going to opt to see the ugliness of reality in the eye? 'A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has put on it's pants', posited Mark Twain, but I rebut that the real problem of today is the fact that lies and truth move at the same speed and wear the same pants. You no longer need to find minute reporting suspicious and even verified reporting can turn out being wrong down the line. If Izanami-no-Okami truly believed she would return to the world when she was wished for in men's hearts, well I'd say it's looking like she's prepped for a round two!

The strange appeal of School-based games

Saved by the bell

When you're the one in School, the only thing you can possible think about is getting the hell out of there as expediently as humanly possible, but the second you're spat out the otherside of education into the harsh and unforgiving world, it is that very comfort of scholastic structure that you find yourself longing for. Which may lead into one of the reasons why so many out there find the school-based style of video game so very appealing to their sensibilities; because it reminds them of a time where it felt like anything was possible and the world was boundless. Both things which, as anyone above school age will tell you, are not preeminent truths of the world. But to the point; isn't it strange that such a theme is present in some of the most popular and/or beloved games of their genre; is there something transcendent, or simply just profound, hidden in the formula of the school system? And no, when I'm talking about this style of game I'm not lauding up games like 'Yandere Simulator', I'm more talking classics like...

Life is Strange. I know I have my issues with DONTNOD and every single one of their games, and the original Life is Strange is no exception to that rule, but I would have to be delusional not to see the profound effect that series has had. Heck, it's got three games and a spin-off related to it's characters; that has to count for something! Only the first Life is Strange, and the spin off, is school based, but it remains a favourite in many people's eyes for it's characterisation of a young girl going through the year of her Art School university whilst struggling with fantastical powers and the doom their coming has hastened. DONTNOD made heavy use of the typical power tropes that arise around School structures in order to explore sensations of being outcasted and popularity dynamics in a lesser sense, and explore relationships and how younger people connect on a deeper, and consequentially more painful, level to one another. I think they didn't really did anything meaningful with that position; but I am in the vast minority, it would seem.

One such game I have a much easier time getting behind is the Rockstar classic Bully, because of course. Bully is a game that takes the typical open world formula of Grand Theft Auto, completing missions across a slowly expanding world as your social prestige and means increase, and shrinks it into a tightly packed town dominated by Bullworth Academy. Here Rockstar explores the tropes of school society again, although through their typical hyper exaggerated lens that blows up this image into school factions defined by their tropey identity, which are toyed about with throughout the narrative as hardcore competitive gangs might in other Rockstar games. Bully painstakingly goes through each aspect of School life to make it work as an open world game, from having a time-table for which ignoring it earns you the ire of School Prefects that will hunt you down as Police would, to attending lessons that present you with minigames which award abilities that upgrade the open world exploration experience for completing them.

Bully presents a fantasy where the player, a delinquent who has been kicked out of every school they've ever been to, is a scrappy underdog in a world of liars and cheats where School is an extension of the hard streets outside. It feeds into that fantasy of school life that some like to indulge in, which mixes the comfort of living in a world of structure with the thrill of being that wrench in the system who stands up to the motes of power and 'breaks the wheel' to quote that one series. There's less an examination of actual School life in Bully, and more a use of it as a blanket on which typical GTA worlds are projected; but given how attractive those worlds of crime already are, the translation prints out perfectly and then some. There's something honestly a little insightful about portraying the social hierarchy of school-life as a literal microcosm of adult society which helps make the Bully package just infectious with it's charm. That's probably why people have been eager for a sequel for so very long now.

But of course, this idea could not exist in my head for a whisper of a second without Persona soon following suit. The ATLUS spin-off from their much more existential JRPG franchise, Persona has blown up into their main money maker on account of the premise and execution being just so darn approachable. You don't have to get into some strange new universe where people have cat ears on their heads, or it's entirely acceptable to have half your body covered in blue paint; instead you're lured into a seemingly normal scholastic world that is slowly turned on it's head by the introduction of over worldly elements in a manner not so dissimilar to the set-up for 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure'. Which is fitting, because apparently Persona was inspired for some of it's choices by the good work of JoJo. Which makes sense; the way these games use Personas is actually quite similar to how Araki uses Stands.

It's the school setting in particular which is perhaps the biggest hallmark of Persona in it's distinction from Shin Megami Tensi; because whereas you can expect your big JRPG battles to play out with the very familiar and fun 'weakness'/'strengths' elemental combat system which ATLUS rock, the downtime for these games are almost just as, if not more, important than the action. You attend school on the daily, plan out your extra-curricular activities, work on building yourself as a person, and grow closer to the community all around you. It's a recipe for self improvement that feels utterly idealised when read out as a laundry list, but when gamified like ATLUS does it, that concept becomes approachable and heartfelt. The terrestrial school-kid setting of Persona humanises the setting and the characters so that they feel real and their struggles become just as real. Identifiability is really the key here.

By and large we keep coming back to this sense of 'grounding' that the school trope brings to the stories it's implemented in. Because attending and learning at school is a sort of experience that most everyone can relate to, and thus requires less of a investment to become attached to. If you want to then use that setting to tell some mundane story about school life or an exaggerated commentary on societal cliques; the way forward has been smoothened by the intrinsic personal connection that the player has immediately established with their setting. Of course with that comes risk, as some people find the setting to be too mundane or pastiche; but for the moment it would appear that the general winds of fandom have blown to favouring these styles of story for the moment; which is why even as companies like ATLUS expand their horizons with other styles of games, it's the tantalizing promise of a Persona 6 which has most of their western fans frothing at the mouth.

There's definitely an art to nailing this style of presentation and a balancing game stringent on the genre you're working with. I happen to think that the Bully version of this trope is perhaps a tad annoying with the whole 'truancy' system, and I think Life is Strange is just generally hammy in most of it's significant direction choices (particularly the supernatural stuff; but Max being a cookie-cutter 'not like the other girls' protagonist didn't help things) and Persona is my Golden boy because of course it is, I love that thing. But everyone who is a fan of school-set games have their own compunction, whether because it reminds them of the structure of school life that they love, or see games as a wish fulfilment for how they wished a personally turbulent part of their lives would have gone; there is something special here for everyone. Unless you hate school-based games and wish ATLUS would spend their efforts on literally anything else. Those people exist too. I see you.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

 Warning: This blog is 98% whining

Okay, which one of you lot cursed me? Out with it, I wanna hear it straight. Which one of you sick people thought it would be funny to imbue me with an unrequited love for a video game series that just seems to hate me for some insane reason? And while we're at it, who tasked ATLUS with porting out every bloody game in their back catalogue apart from Persona 5 Royals? Why does this Japanese company want to conspire against me and exactly me? What have I done to them? ATLUS have been toying around in what feels like a personal slap in the face competition against just me for actual years now and I can't wrap my head around it. No one can come up with a good explanation for why we're being strung along, only die hard Playstationites seem happy with the idea of Persona 5 being a console exclusive until the seven rings of Hell collapse and reality comes to an end, Persona 4 Golden actually sold pretty well on Steam, what could possibly be the hold-up next?

I know this is a story that I've told before, but it honestly bears repeating, because I was actually there when this new Persona game was announced. I was watching the game awards Pre-show, if you consider the act of 'watching' to consist of allowing it to play in the background whilst I was playing Hollow Knight. Thus I was hardly paying attention when the presenter claimed that the next reveal was one we 'didn't see coming', and just off-handily joked that it was Persona 5 Royals for PC. And then the ATLUS logo dropped. When I say you've never seen a controller dropped faster in your life I mean that the final ravens in the London Tower were finally scared off by the force of the impact. London is currently undergoing it's apocalypse consequentially. (Which is either a zombie invasion or an infestation of Edo Period Japanese spirits, depending on which historical document you prefer out of ZombiU or Nioh.) And the payoff? Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Good god- the song that announcer was referencing 'Last Surprise' wasn't even in existence at that point, it was created specifically to be the title for Persona 5. Someone delights in jerking me around and I can't take it anymore!

So then what is this game that is coming our way if not a PC adaptation of one of the finest RPGs of all time? (Or at least that's what I'm told. I'd be able to back that up if I could actually play it.) Well, Persona is never the sort of series to keep things constrained to a single box when they can multitask and try to be every genre at once, or at least that's what I think the reasoning behind the spin-off games in the series is. Think the kind of stuff that Yakuza always sticks into their gameworld, just cut off the main game and fleshed out into their own fully fledged title. (Actually, I guess there's a lot of Japanese series' that do that, huh? Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball comes to mind) This iteration is a fighting game in the traditionalist sense, with a flat 2D arena space, combo moves and summonable Persona's to make the Jojo comparisons simply unavoidable. (This port will make for a good place to store all those ripped Eyes of Heaven models that people seem to love so much, if nothing else.)

Now I'm not much of one for fighting games, the only one I've ever really given the time of day was Killer Instinct, and that's only because that game has a special mode which allowed me to do combos without having to move. (Seriously, someone explain to me how you're supposed to move and keep the target infront of you if that deviation instantly breaks the combo: it makes no sense!) Visually I will admit that what I'm seeing is actually pretty cool, characters seem to have an almost cellish look to them that faintly reminds me of the guilty gear games, so I already want to see more of the game at the very least. As for whether or not I'm going to like the controls, well that remains to be seen but these sorts of games tend to be decently well received by fighting games fans which bodes mildly well. (If they love it then it means the skill ceiling is too high and I'll never get into it.)

So I'll be honest then; as a fan of Golden, there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance when I glance upon this mere concept for a game. As you've likely picked up from the many thousand times I've droned on and on about Persona and what I love about it, the key is the laid back atmosphere and the juxtaposition between RPG death battles and figuring out what you want to do at school for that day. I find all of that super laid back depth to be relaxing yet somehow invigorating to balance, so a part of me feels like there's an essential missing piece of DNA in the Persona formula with a straight arena game, but then I suppose that's just what spin-off games are for, isn't it? Changing things up so drastically you find yourself wondering if this was a good idea at all. Also, the Boxart of the protagonist ripping his shirt off like a Yakuza protagonist is just weird, it has to be said.

At the very least is can be said that the Persona library is making it's way to the PC, albeit slowly. At this rate ATLUS will literally have no choice by to get to Persona 5. Except there's the dancing game inbetween. And then they'll probably go back to 3, first. Let's be honest, the only point at which they'll port 5 to PC is going to be the sameday that they announce Persona 6 to the world so that they can ride that hype. I've tired to convince myself that won't be the case, but it's basic logic. So that's, what, an entire year away probably? Is this fighting game really going to keep people satiated in the mean time, knowing that we're gnawing off limbs for an RPG? Hell, are fighting game fans even going to be satisfied considering the sheer amount of other fighting games out there in the world? Am I going to buy it anyway? Probably. But I'm a rube, of course I'll buy anything with Teddy on the box.

But I'm having a hard time reconciling all of this... I wonder why- oh, maybe it's because Persona 5 Strikers was released on PC months ago. Strikers. The sequel to 5. Comes out before 5 does. It hurts me to have to ask this, but is everyone over at ATLUS okay? Like- they haven't all had suffered a simultaneous psychosis and are trapped in a hellish upside down world of insanity, are they? Because I feel like I'm inside of that world right now, and it's making me queasy. I'm half waiting for the NFT series of the 5 cast to drop around the corner, just to really drive that shank into the ribcage, you know? I may scour the ends of the earth, down it's deepest recess and up it's shimmering peaks, through the veil of reality and atop those waving golden shores of dreams, and some super-deity might meet me and grant the world's wisdom in the pinprick of a needle, and the ATLUS PC port release schedule will still remain life's tormenting mystery.

And you know at this point I don't even care about Persona 6. Seriously, I don't. They could announce the game tomorrow and my response would still be "Cool- where's my 5 port?" Because here's the thing, I've been kicking around this block long enough to know that in this industry, it doesn't matter how big you are, how many hits you've made, how stellar that game record is, one day you're going to take the biggest turd in your career and it'll stink worse than most of your successes. The way I see it, the more great games you make, the more you're just building up bulk and that almighty, world-ending, dump is somewhere along the way. That Doom Clock ticks ever closer to midnight. And the Persona games have had 3,4 and 5 be labelled as classics, so as far as I'm concerned 6 is radioactive material to me. Once more ATLUS, in as much energy as I can still generate in this flabby failing frame: just give us that port we want to pay you money for: Please.

Should action games have quiet sections?

Does the boom boom go well with the shush shush?

Games are all about action, right? Swinging in to save the day, blasting through rooms of waist-high objects, murdering hundreds yet still calling yourself the goodguy and maybe even looking a little bit over your shoulder for the front cover. (But not too much over your shoulder, you have to maintain the plausible deniability that you don't care about the attention) But of course, not all games are about constant action and, in fact, even the one's that are sometimes might not show action all the time, sometimes there are careful balances to be struck between when a game goes full violence and when it lets the tempo rest up a bit. And when we're talking about games, with their length, we leave enough room for these experiences to be more flexible with their pacing than one might expect an all-out shooter to typically be at first glance. But should a game that is dedicated to action allow for moments of quiet and calm, or does doing so detract from the package of the game in general? And whilst acknowledging that every game is obviously going to be it's own case-by-case scenario: what effect does action and it's proliferation have on the experience of the player?

To provide an example of such an 'effect' as well as demonstrate the difference in approach I'm talking about; I want to touch on two great open world games. Sleeping Dogs and... well, any Rockstar game can go here, although I should probably stick to just the open world ones, as they all share the trait I'm about to discuss. Rockstar allows their open world games to have times of action and times of characterisation, either for the city or the starring characters, whereas Sleeping Dogs sets a mandate of at least one action scenario in every single mission. I find this keeps things moving for the easily bored, but conversely makes things incredibly predictable. In GTA you can genuinely have a mission where you are introduced to an area and important people you'll need to get to know, such that you could spend a whole mission talking or listening to exposition. In Sleeping Dogs, you cannot have a mission without either a car chase (or race), a gun fight or a fist fight. (Usually more than one of those, but it's always got to be at least one.) What this means is that it becomes really hard for the story to surprise you at any point with any development, because as soon as someone says "Can you take me shopping?" or "Would you like to attend my wedding?", you know straight away that something is going to happen that will turn everything on it's head. Predictability robs all power from spontaneity, which I think hurts the lingering appeal of a story. 

I pulled back on saying 'all Rockstar Games' because of the follow-up example of a game that is even more full throttle than Sleeping Dogs. Because you see, as an Open World game, Sleeping Dogs needs to not be throwing death and suffering at you at some points, there has to be open world no-action driving sections for the sake of simply going places. But an action shooter like Max Payne, nah that can be as action packed as you want. (Just as most action shooters are.) Barring cutscenes, you're pretty much always spraying lead at someone whilst diving slow-motion through the air and it captures a very action movie-esque sort of atmosphere. I personally always looked upon Max Payne 3 as the Die Hard video game we never got (that top-down abomination does not count.) The toss up is that it can make you desensitised to the explosion that is action, requiring the game to use other methods to keep players interested. Something which most games achieve by changing up the challenge (new enemy types, harder sections, increased stakes), and others fail at.

Then, to shift gears once again, we have a sort of game which is built around action but could contain plenty of other content in it as well. I've picked Fallout for this example, but pretty much any RPG title could fill this space. We're talking games wherein it's just as likely that you'll spend a play session chatting or walking to places, as you might spend it gunning down bandits in the wasteland. These games can, when handled right, still maintain that adrenaline which action brings even to the last stages of the game, just from how segmented the action moments are. A title I'm playing right now which is wonderful for managing this balance would be Death Stranding, which normalises it's robust delivery framework so much that when you go awry and bump into a Beached Thing, it's never a comfortable encounter that you're familiar with. And in entertainment being uncomfortable is preferable to being bored. 

But what about games where action is the very last thing you manage, and not in the way that Death Stranding does it (where action is a surprise which could be lurking around every misstep) but in such a manner that approach the conflict gameplay willingly but sparingly? Of course, I'm talking about the Persona games here, wherein most of the game is spent living the life of the protagonist and choosing where they develop their skills and whom they kindle friendships with. The latter half of the game is the RPG fighting, and though much of what you do on the outside does improve those duelling skills, the draw of the audience is more towards living these lives and getting closer to these fictional people. The drawback of games like these is that the core spine of the gameplay, the actual RPG fighting, can start to feel like a mere obstacle between you and progression, because that's just not what you signed up for. Balancing this with making combat fun and varied becomes even more of an issue than it is for the full action games.

When it comes to the genre called 'action', I feel it's always important to maintain and develop the core of the action gameplay, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as important to have other dalliances too. The sorts of games that aren't focused on creating rounded experiences like that need to really nail their action premise in order to not feel vapid and empty, something which the Far Crys of the world can fall short of. I think that might be why we can have a game as beautiful and pulsing as Cyberpunk 2077, and still feel like we're walking around an unfinished Alpha. Life is more than just constant conflict, and though games are an embellishment of the life experience, avoiding the calm before and after the storm is an easy way to disconnect the audience from the world you've built. Again, unless the game is specifically designed to meld around that design, such as with your average FPS game. 

That being said, I do understand people who don't like any deviation from the straight action of the game as they feel it's just a waste of time. Red Dead Redemption 2 has it's detractors for that very reason, where time spent not shooting things and rocketing through the storyline can be aggrieving when the game is asking you to soak in atmosphere and enjoy the arcade-simulation of cowboy life. As such it largely comes down to taste, and that can be different for everyone. Some people like to spend as much time in these fictional worlds as humanely possible, whilst others want to power through at a break-neck pace so that they can onto the next one in no time flat. The only question is which kind of gamer you want to be.

I think there's always a place for quiet in action games, as the very concept of disparity is inducive to competent pacing. Even all out action first person shooter games, with all their chaos and explosions, can sometimes be best served with their moments of peace, or even just quieter variations of that action. (Such as how in 'Halo: Reach' one of the best missions is the stealth one) For me, the ability to take your audience on a journey is the prerequisite to all great entertainment and pacing is the key instrument through which you can work this magic, which is why no matter where I am in life, how busy everything else is, how little free time I personally have, I'll always make space for the Death Strandings and Red Dead Redemptions on my play docket.

Persona come back

 Patience isn't my strong suit

Okay, so I inherently know that I'm going to sound a little whiney saying this; but when's the next game, ATLUS? I'm dying out here! Recently you may have remembered that long tradition broke when ATLUS, kings upon kings, decided to do the unthinkable and put a JPRG on computer. (What madness it this!) Yes, a game genre that typically demand hours of one's time pouring over incremental stat increases, strategizing over exact move orderings and combos, all whilst juggling packs worth of regenerative items. Why should that experience ever make it the PC? Of course, I'm being an ass; JRPGs were made for the PC audience and it's crazy to think how long it's taken things to actually catch on. When Persona 4 Golden finally made the jump, however, there was none of that early stigma of 'Will this work out', 'ain't this more of a Playstation thing', it was all just "Please god, let me have Persona I've waited for so very long." (Or at least that was me, I imagine others were a bit more muted.)

And it worked out! Heck, I couldn't have made Persona 4's PC launch a success on my lonesome, so that's proof there's an audience on PC that's dying to have more of this world! Just recently it was surmised that Persona 4 was one of the top games of the year to be played on Steam with a controller, which seems a little odd given that it is a turnbased game, but I was actually one of that number so I guess I can't really talk, can I? So we're talking about a game that smashed sales, challenged some records, and had folk literally begging for more. So are we actually getting that more? I feel like this is something that we need to know because... well... I hate this annoying limbo of never knowing enough! Capcom are kind enough to let us know what we can expect out of Yakuza's PC ports, and that's ten times more kind to us than letting fans longue around all year and wither. I remember several times seeing that glimmer of home in a trailer and jerking upright, only to see that it's just Persona Strikers, or an AFK arena crossover. (AFK Arena? Seriously!)

I suppose the reason this really digs at me goes back to the very first moment I heard of Persona, because I can actually pinpoint that. It was during the lead-up to 'Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain', and I had been scouring Youtube for videos in any language that would tell me more about the game. Now I cannot say if watching all those Japanese videos had a hand in influencing my slice of the recommendation algorithm, but that certainly doesn't seem completely out the realms of possibility, does it? Either way, I found myself with the announcement trailer for Persona 5 in my feed and just ended up clicking on it. I kid you not, by the end of that trailer alone I was sold. It looked vibrant, exciting, kinda crazy, brimming with personality and just a hint of these great anime cutscenes; I was hooked. From that moment I've been constantly looking for a way to get my hands on the game, but it's always been just out of my reach. First it was because the game was destined to be a Playstation exclusive, and then because- no wait, every bit of my waiting has been because this game is a Playstation exclusive. Damn it Sony, why won't you share the love?

Now don't get me wrong, I understand why the Xbox hasn't exactly seen it's share of Japanese titles. Sony is a Japanese company with ties to all studios from that side of the world, so when it comes to exclusivity talks you can't really blame these devs for going with what they know. But what's the excuse for PC? Ya'll making these games on personal computers, are you not? Why can't they be for them? Yes, I'm getting to the point where my arguments are as simple as that, because do they really need to be any more complicated? How often is it necessary for a game to be made for consoles and then ported to PC; does that ever make more sense than the inverse? I doubt it. And if Sony are worried about losing market ground, that's fine, but what the heck do PC players have to do with that argument; we don't care about this whole 'company loyalty' nonsense, we just want to buy the games! Let us buy the games, Sony, you avaricious gold-hoarding flying lizards. (Yes, this rant is slightly inflamed by Final Fantasy XVI too, can you blame me?)

So why am I writing this blog? Because now that I've actually had the chance to sit down and play the heck out of Persona 4, I'm hopelessly in love with this franchise. I mean, head over heels, can't live without it, need more in my system, addicted to the thrill, lost in the beat, addicted to the pain, insert analogy here, kind of fascination with these games, and I need more. Seriously, I've played a great many RPGs in my time of all different shapes and sizes, including a recent spat of old school western isometric-style games, and I've never seen one that so frankly nails the juggling of life and combat. Even fully blown open world RPGs like Skyrim and Fallout, that literally make you play ever waking second of your character's life, don't make me feel like I've inhabited the mundanity and humanity of the character in question. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say, I feel less an avatar in a new world and more a person from that world in Persona.

Yes, I know it sounds weird to say; but I adore all of those times when I'm just interacting with the inhabitants of the game world and getting to know the regulars and finding out what makes everyone tick. It's a perfectly natural way of establishing personal attachment to the personalities of the game world and I haven't seen anyone pull it off as neatly as the Persona franchise does. Which isn't to say the combat isn't great, because the very act of getting to know people actually contributes, even in those little ways, to the combat experience, and that's another layer of ingenuity in the formula. I knew from the start that Persona would be a game right up my alley, but I had no idea how much it would end up rubbing off on me and now I need my next fix, gosh darn it! When are ATLUS going to get to it?

Right now I'm at an impasse; I've reached the point where I want to experience the whole series, from the beginning if I have to. (Well, maybe not 1 and 2, I don't know what they're like, but certainly 3 onwards.) And this isn't a case of wanting to see the whole story, like many other Japanese RPG titles each entry is independent of the last one, I just love the premise so much that I want to experience it as much as possible. It's the same sort of addiction that struck the world after Metroidvania became a thing, or Souls-likes, I'm not calling Persona's playstyle it's own genre by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm hooked to them as though it were. I'm sure that a few years down the line I'll be picking two-bit demos on Steam that so much as resemble what these games do. But the more content ATLUS provide me, the longer I can stave off that dark eventuality; so hit a brother up, guys!

Were I to make a wild prediction into the future, I would predict that 'Persona 5 Royal' will hit us in April, as a surprise. (Of course, I can't say whether that's April 2021 or 2025) April, May or June, I say, because that's around about the start date for each Persona game and that would make a nice bookend. ATLUS have, for their part, commented on wanting to port more of their games over after the success of Persona 4 Golden, but I'm slightly worried it's going to end up being Shin Megami Tensei. (I'm sure that series is great too, but it's not what I want, ya know?) So thank you for coming to my TED talk where I whined about wanting to play more Persona; I know, I'm bored too.