Thomas Gaynor Unit 3 Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industries: Script/Links

Persona

Persona 3

Persona is a massively popular JRPG. The franchise had changed massively since the first 2 games so will just be talking about the games since Persona 3. In Persona 3 you take control of the Protagonist who is a high school student who has just transferred into Gekkoukan High School, after a ‘Mix up’ at the dorm he ends up staying at the females dorm and a few nights after staying, on a full moon, the dorm gets attacked by the monsters called shadows and at the moment when someone is about to get attacked he unleashes his persona ‘Orpheus’ of the fool arcana only to end up going out of control and his power transforms to ‘Thanatos’ of the death arcana. After he defeats the shadow he finds out that there are others with this power that needs his help.

Show Orpheus summon (1:43)

He soon learns of the ‘Dark Hour’ an hour between 12am and 1am where all normal humans turn into coffins and shadows roam about. When the dark hour starts the school transforms into Tartarus a battleground of shadows, why? The reason will appear before you while you're on your journey.

Show Tartarus scene (0:30)

Persona 4

Whereas in persona 4 you take control of a new protagonist who has just move to the urban town of Inaba and starts to attend Yasogami High School where he meets three different people, Chie Satonaka, Yukiko Amagi and Yosuke Hanamura.

Show Pics

The four of them hear a rumour about the midnight channel which says that if you stare into a turned off TV at midnight on a rainy day then you would see your soul-mate. A scandalous TV announcer 'Mayumi Yamano is found dead hanging off of telephone pole and later that night they check out the midnight channel and the protagonist finds that he can travel inside the TV but can’t get in because his TV is too small to which the protagonist decides to report this to his friends and they go to the local supermarket 'Junes' to go to the big flat-screen TVs

Start TV scene (1:07)

And they find a strange bear named Teddy/Kuma. The next day the body of Saki Konishi appeared who Yosuke had a crush on. Yosuke and the protagonist return the next day and find there is a path to the someplace which resembles the shopping district which has been created from the true inner feelings of Saki,

Start Izanagi scene (1:00)

This showed how she resented Yosuke which brought out Yosuke’s true feelings and manifested as a shadow, under pressure the MC summons his persona Izanagi and fights Shadow Yosuke

Show Shadow Yosuke (1:30)

, eventually Yosuke accepts his inner feelings and the shadow turns into his persona Jiraiya. Afterwards Yosuke and the protagonist figure out that someone is throwing people inside the TV so they killed by shadows and decide to fight against the enemy to make sure no one dies.

There are 7 main characters to this game, each having a shadow which they hide

Show the pics and shadow pics

Battle style

The battle style is classic turn based fighting action where you choose between Attack, Skill, Persona, Wait, item, tactics and flee. Attacking the enemy will send your character to attack with their personal weapon, skill will allow you to use your personas skill such as a fire attack or a buff, persona will allow the MC to use his special ability called the wildcard which allows him to change the persona he has equipped which gives him a much broader range of abilities, wait just makes the characters defend which ca be useful if you play strategically, you are able to use healing items and other items just like in any other RPG, tactics can be used to change how your team mates play such as making them heal or saving MP or even giving the direct orders and flee gives you a chance to escape battle.

Show off emperor battle (1:35)

Weaknesses and strengths/Wildcard

Each character has a weakness and strengths to the elements, the elements are single target skills, fire, ice, electricity, wind, light, dark and almighty. This allows great use of the wildcard the main characters ability

Show off own characters personas (0:51)

Social aspects/Social links

One of the most unique features of persona series is the Social links, the introduction of the social links and the wildcard which said that the bonds in life will give you power, the social links gave you the ability to interact with characters and see other sides to them this was a huge part of what made the game so popular because you had to manage between social, academic, earning money and saving the world. You can see parts of characters that you never thought you would and this includes even going on trips and spending time with them on days like Christmas

Spin offs/ reception

Since the persona series had such a huge reception they also had a few spin offs such as a fighting game, a cuter chibi game and even a rhythm dancing game.

Persona 4 Arena and Ultimax both are 2D fighting games that start a few months after the story of persona 4 and includes characters from both persona 3 and persona 4 after a new dilemma happens in Inaba and involves you having to battle your friend to make your way through.

P4 A/U (0:12)

Persona Q takes place outside of space and time and brings the cast of P3 and P4 together in which they need to find a way back to their ow reality, the style of fighting is closer to how the games are

PQ (0:45)

And then there is P4 DAN starts off you helping Rise after she decides to go back to being an idle and find yourself in the middle of another problem which has a confusing concept since you don’t battle shadows anymore but you defeat them by dancing

P4 DAN (0:35)

Persona 5

New mechanics have been added such as the protagonists now use two different weapons one being a short range weapon and the other being a long range weapon such as a gun. Another new feature is something called cooperation and almost nothing is known about this but it was seen on the menu during the trailer, people speculate this to be the social link feature from persona 3/4 making its return. The dungeons are also quite different from its predecessors because new features such as jumping from roof to roof and sneaking around enemies have been added in reference to the fact that you play as a phantom thief

the biggest problem to persona 5 are the delays it started out by coming out in Winter 2014 release for PlayStation 3, it was announced for release on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in 2015 during Sony's SCEJA Press Conference held in September 2014. It is now announced for mid-2016 saying that to bring out a good game they need more time. An anime has been announced for persona 5 but almost nothing has been announced yet except that it’s coming out in 2016

(1:50)

Market Research

Since the 1996 release of the original persona game the series has sold 6.2 million units worldwide by 2015. When Persona 3 was released on the PS2 it sold 127,472 copies in the first week and 210,319 overall in Japan by 2008. During persona 4 début week it sold 137,076 units in Japan by April 2014 and 700,000 copies were shipped worldwide as of December 2013.

Questions

What do you think of the graphics in the persona series?

Which is your favourite persona game?

What do you think of the battle style of the games?

What do you think of the story of the games?

Who is your favourite character?

What is your favourite feature of the persona franchise?

What would you rate the games?

Are you looking forward to Persona 5?