So, seeing as Persona 4 is my favourite game of all time, I'm understandably really excited about any news of Persona 5. We got a little teaser a while back, but no real tangible info was in it - the protagonist rides a train, and there's a few names of people working on the game. Recently, we finally got our first gameplay trailer, and this contains a bunch of stuff that's really interesting to me as a fan. I'm not usually one to freak out about such things, but Persona 5 is the game that might make as staunch a PC gamer as me buy a console that isn't two generations out of date.
So, I'm going to be using timestamps, and, just for consistency's sake, I'll be using them referring to this IGN upload of the trailer. Most of my musings will be about mechanics - the trailer doesn't give much of a hint about the plot outside the first few seconds - but I'll try and bring in as much story stuff as I can. Also, I've purposefully avoided translation so far - It's more fun to guess what the game is about if you don't know what everything says.
0:07-0:09 Assuming this is where the game is set, and not a location where our team'll be briefly going, it appears we're returning to a more big-city location a la Persona 3. I'm kind of glad, to be honest: As well as Inaba was pulled off, I feel a big city has more room for exploration than a small rural town, both in the gameplay and story sense.
0:10-0:30 It appears that our protagonist works as a thief, as well as being (as we'll see later in the trailer) a high school kid. This I'm iffy about: Part of what made Persona 3 and 4 work so well is that the protagonists were normal, relatable high school kids thrust into this magical world. If our party is a group of master thieves pulling off daring heists in their spare time, layering Personae and Shadows on top of that looses a bit of its impact.
0:35 onwards Oh God, I love this so much. It looks stylish, and sounds fantastic. It's that usual Persona flair, but even more refined. This seems to have made as much of an improvement on Persona 4 in terms of style as Persona 4 made on top of the already extremely stylish Persona 3. The music is going on my iPod as soon as it can.
0:54-0:57 Igor is back, surprising no one, but his assistants seem to be a pair of young twins? I'm curious as to whether they're related to Margaret and Elizabeth, or are new characters taking their role. I hope they avoid the cliche "creepy mysterious twins" trope, though knowing Persona, they most likely will.
0:58-1:00 Some kind of magical explosion on the street, or just a stylized transition? Hard to tell. In any case, the thing that emerges looks cool. My guess is it's either some sort of villain, or your starter persona (Much like Izanagi or Orpheus in the two previous games), depending on whether that was an actual explosion.
1:06-1:13 The first we see of actual in-game footage. Woot! It looks gorgeous, and appears to be from the first day, due to the train-riding (kind of a Persona tradition at this point). Your character gets a thing thrown at him by the teacher. Is this a gameplay element, a thing that happens in the story once, or the animation to initiate the "get asked a question in class" scenario?
1:14-1:20 We get to see a few characters, presumably your heist-mates. They appear to also be your school friends. You also get some sort of horrifying cat thing, much like you got some horrifying bear thing in the form of Teddy previously. You appear to goof around a bit, and then plan a heist at some sort of bar. I'm guessing this bar is what acts the same way the Junes food court did in Persona 4.
1:20-1:33 Some more of the animated stuff, showing off the side characters doing things. This is where I feel I'm most likely to make a mistake in my assumptions, because Persona is very good at wrecking my expectations of characters, but I'm guessing the male is pretty similar to Junpei and Yosuke, acting as the energetic and somewhat goofy right-hand man. The girl on the other hand appears to act like a genki-girl, leading me to suspect she'd be somewhat similar to Rise. The cat... well, is a cat, so it's hard to tell what kind of character he is, but he's obviously the team mascot a la Teddy. Note that by making these comparisons I'm not trying to say that the characters will be the same person with a different coat of paint, just following in the general archetype. After all, Junpei and Yosuke are different as can be, as well as Akihiko and his follow-up of Kanji.
1:34-1:35 Finally, the stuff I can really over-analyze! We get to see a menu, which, first off, looks stylish as fuck. However, what's interesting is the text on it. There's the typical Skill, Item, Equip and Persona menus, which are all but expected, but then there's a few interesting options. You have "Party", which seems to be there in place of the old "Status" screen. It might just be a renaming, but to me calling it "Party" implies you'll be able to switch in members, possibly at any time. This would be more convenient than having to walk up to and talk to them outside a dungeon a la previous games, but unless they revamp how XP sharing works, it isn't going to make that much difference inside dungeons. You've also got a "Co-operation" menu, which confuses me. I assume it's either a mechanic that we haven't been introduced to yet, possibly working similarly to the on-the-field commands to your field from Persona 3 or some kind of co-op element. I wouldn't be too keen on the latter (From what I saw, the co-op type stuff they put into Persona 4 Golden was fairly meh, and I prefer my RPGs to be a lonely experience anyway).
EDIT: Apparently "Co-operation" is close to what Social Link was called in the Japanese versions of previous game, and it's been brought up by other people that Social Link is missing from the menu, leading me to believe that this "Co-operation" is just the SLink menu. I'm half relieved, half disappointed: A Persona game with no SLink would just feel hollow, but I was also excited for a new possible mechanic. And yes, I am aware Persona and Persona 2 had no SLinks.
1:35-1:37 We see the equip menu, and man, do we have slots! There appear to have been two new slots introduced compared to what we had in Persona 4 - a "Gun" slot, separate from your "Weapon" slot, and a "Protector" slot, separate from your "Clothes" and "Accessory". There'a theory I have as to what the Gun does as opposed to your Weapon, which I'll bring up when the relevant bit of the trailer comes up, but it seems fairly clear you use your weapon for attacking just as you previously did in Persona - you see that weapons have two stats on them, and the numbers on said stats seem to indicate them being the old "Damage" and "Hit" from Persona of old. I'm not sure what your "Protector" and "Clothes" do. I have two theories, not based on anything else in the trailer. Number one: your Clothes act like armor used to in Persona 4, and Protectors give extra stat bonuses, like the shoes of Persona 3, but expanded to stuff beyond the limited things shoes could do. The other is that "Protectors" are your armor for combat, and "Clothes" change your day-to-day outfit that you have whilst Social Linking, be it cosmetically or for some sort of bonuses.
1:38-1:42 Looks like in-game cinematic. Some sort of creepy, pupil-less man in a uniform, possibly possessed or a Shadow, and a train (which he appeared to have been conducting) going off the rails in a station. Seems like it could act as either a dramatic start to the story, leaving a mystery behind (Like the first murder in Persona 4) or as a tense mid-game scene (Like the monorail shadow fight in Persona 3).
1:42-1:44 Woot, dungeon gameplay! Looks great, and your character appears to be quite acrobatic. The Shadows around seem to be some sort of knights, which makes me wonder whether that's a representation of the enemy that Shadow will be if you engage it in battle (which would be a pretty cool thing to have) or just a new model for Shadows. Your character also doesn't appear to have a weapon out, which makes me think they might be getting rid of the "hit enemies on the back to get an advantage" mechanic. I'd rather it still be in there, but if it goes I won't cry too much.
1:44-1:47 You appear to be jumping around on top of chandeliers, possibly during a heist. This seems quite dodgy to me: In my experience platforming in non-platformers is not a good thing. Still, it looks like it would work quite well, and I think adding more variety to dungeons can only be a good thing.
1:47-1:50 Once again, kind of worrying. You seem to be doing some sort of stealth thingy, which doesn't usually work outside stealth games. You do appear to be able to zap from cover to cover instantly, which should hopefully make it easy enough that it won't be an issue. I guess both of thse mechanics make sense in the context of you being a bunch of master thieves.
Now, time out, time out, time out. I just want to note something: All of the in-game footage that's happened so far is happening on the same day, Monday the 11th of April. If I'm not wrong, that's around the same time that Persona 3 and 4 start. Combined with my earlier theory that this is the first day of the game, this would mean that your main character is already acquainted with your first three party members on your first day of game, and you also get to do some action stuff. It'll be nice to not have another fish out of water start (not that there's anything wrong with that), and I heartily approve of shortening the overly long time before you get to play that almost put me off Persona. My guess is the story will start with you pulling off some major heist you've been planning, which'll somehow lead into you getting involved with Personay stuff. Possibly you're unknowingly stealing a magical artefact or something of that style.
1:50-1:52 I guess there's a specialized medicine shop now.
1:52-1:57 A bit of cutscene involving just hanging out with friends and the girl being slightly upset at the guy, good that they haven't left that type of stuff out: It's what made Persona 4 really stand out to me. Also an action thing where you appear to be running away, and the girl's dressed in an absolutely ridiculous pink latex suit. For burgling. Because pink is stealthy.
1:59 It appears you get caught. Perhaps you get caught and let out under the condition that you do Persona type stuff? This would be kind of like how you end up working on solving the murders in Persona 4.
EDIT 2: If you slow down the footage you can tell that this cell is in the Velvet Room, guarded by the twin assistants. Interesting, maybe you have a less smooth relationship with Igor than previous protagonists did. I do hope he isn't a bad guy though, I liked him as the sole non-evil supernatural being in the SMT universe, this kind of oddball thing. Maybe it's still somewhat similar to the Teddy contract from Persona 4.
2:01-2:10 Your main character uses a gun instead of some other weapon. Notice this for later. Also, this appears to be an all-out attack. I love the look of it, but I think the animation takes way too long. I'd get irate at the Persona 3 and 4 animations, and they were a lot shorter than this. Hopefully bits of it are skippable. Still, I love how you get to see every character do their thing in more detail. They also appear to be fighting several of what in previous games was the persona Sandman.
2:10-2:20 Not much here, but I just realized there's a lot of highway imagery in this trailer. I wonder if that's relevant. It appears First Male Party Member and Animal Like Mascot are hanging out together, much like Yosuke and Teddy.
2:27-2:36 Real interesting. Just looking at this it seems like a) the main character is not necessarily entirely good (he sure seems demonic), and b) he may be transforming into his Persona rather than summoning it. This could lead to an interesting thing gameplay-wise a la Digital Devil Saga, or it could be simply a cool cosmetic effect. My theory is that your "weapon" is what you use as your Persona, and your "gun" is what you use in human form. I doubt it's going to go full Digital Devil Saga in its mechanics (especially since the transformation mechanic was kinda useless in that game), but perhaps your persona's attack is determined using your weapon (so your Bufu or Sonic Punch would do more damage depending on your weapon, but your normal attack would do more damage depending on your gun). If it does go full DDS, then it seems like your Clothes and Protector could be armor for you and your Persona, respectively.
EDIT 3: It's been brought up that this also kind of looks like a Shadow self from Persona 4, what with the yellow eyes and the transforming into something different. There's a point there, but somehow I doubt that it's the case. Shadow selves were very much thematically tied to what Persona 4 was about, and, unless there's some major reworking of what they are in the lore, they don't really fit in to what Persona 5 has been said to be about. I'm not too fond of the idea of having them back: Whilst I thought they were one of the stronger aspects of Persona 4, I don't believe that they need to be shoehorned into more Persona games.
Whatever, I'm still fucking hyped.
So, I'm going to be using timestamps, and, just for consistency's sake, I'll be using them referring to this IGN upload of the trailer. Most of my musings will be about mechanics - the trailer doesn't give much of a hint about the plot outside the first few seconds - but I'll try and bring in as much story stuff as I can. Also, I've purposefully avoided translation so far - It's more fun to guess what the game is about if you don't know what everything says.
0:07-0:09 Assuming this is where the game is set, and not a location where our team'll be briefly going, it appears we're returning to a more big-city location a la Persona 3. I'm kind of glad, to be honest: As well as Inaba was pulled off, I feel a big city has more room for exploration than a small rural town, both in the gameplay and story sense.
0:10-0:30 It appears that our protagonist works as a thief, as well as being (as we'll see later in the trailer) a high school kid. This I'm iffy about: Part of what made Persona 3 and 4 work so well is that the protagonists were normal, relatable high school kids thrust into this magical world. If our party is a group of master thieves pulling off daring heists in their spare time, layering Personae and Shadows on top of that looses a bit of its impact.
0:35 onwards Oh God, I love this so much. It looks stylish, and sounds fantastic. It's that usual Persona flair, but even more refined. This seems to have made as much of an improvement on Persona 4 in terms of style as Persona 4 made on top of the already extremely stylish Persona 3. The music is going on my iPod as soon as it can.
0:54-0:57 Igor is back, surprising no one, but his assistants seem to be a pair of young twins? I'm curious as to whether they're related to Margaret and Elizabeth, or are new characters taking their role. I hope they avoid the cliche "creepy mysterious twins" trope, though knowing Persona, they most likely will.
0:58-1:00 Some kind of magical explosion on the street, or just a stylized transition? Hard to tell. In any case, the thing that emerges looks cool. My guess is it's either some sort of villain, or your starter persona (Much like Izanagi or Orpheus in the two previous games), depending on whether that was an actual explosion.
1:06-1:13 The first we see of actual in-game footage. Woot! It looks gorgeous, and appears to be from the first day, due to the train-riding (kind of a Persona tradition at this point). Your character gets a thing thrown at him by the teacher. Is this a gameplay element, a thing that happens in the story once, or the animation to initiate the "get asked a question in class" scenario?
1:14-1:20 We get to see a few characters, presumably your heist-mates. They appear to also be your school friends. You also get some sort of horrifying cat thing, much like you got some horrifying bear thing in the form of Teddy previously. You appear to goof around a bit, and then plan a heist at some sort of bar. I'm guessing this bar is what acts the same way the Junes food court did in Persona 4.
1:20-1:33 Some more of the animated stuff, showing off the side characters doing things. This is where I feel I'm most likely to make a mistake in my assumptions, because Persona is very good at wrecking my expectations of characters, but I'm guessing the male is pretty similar to Junpei and Yosuke, acting as the energetic and somewhat goofy right-hand man. The girl on the other hand appears to act like a genki-girl, leading me to suspect she'd be somewhat similar to Rise. The cat... well, is a cat, so it's hard to tell what kind of character he is, but he's obviously the team mascot a la Teddy. Note that by making these comparisons I'm not trying to say that the characters will be the same person with a different coat of paint, just following in the general archetype. After all, Junpei and Yosuke are different as can be, as well as Akihiko and his follow-up of Kanji.
1:34-1:35 Finally, the stuff I can really over-analyze! We get to see a menu, which, first off, looks stylish as fuck. However, what's interesting is the text on it. There's the typical Skill, Item, Equip and Persona menus, which are all but expected, but then there's a few interesting options. You have "Party", which seems to be there in place of the old "Status" screen. It might just be a renaming, but to me calling it "Party" implies you'll be able to switch in members, possibly at any time. This would be more convenient than having to walk up to and talk to them outside a dungeon a la previous games, but unless they revamp how XP sharing works, it isn't going to make that much difference inside dungeons. You've also got a "Co-operation" menu, which confuses me. I assume it's either a mechanic that we haven't been introduced to yet, possibly working similarly to the on-the-field commands to your field from Persona 3 or some kind of co-op element. I wouldn't be too keen on the latter (From what I saw, the co-op type stuff they put into Persona 4 Golden was fairly meh, and I prefer my RPGs to be a lonely experience anyway).
EDIT: Apparently "Co-operation" is close to what Social Link was called in the Japanese versions of previous game, and it's been brought up by other people that Social Link is missing from the menu, leading me to believe that this "Co-operation" is just the SLink menu. I'm half relieved, half disappointed: A Persona game with no SLink would just feel hollow, but I was also excited for a new possible mechanic. And yes, I am aware Persona and Persona 2 had no SLinks.
1:35-1:37 We see the equip menu, and man, do we have slots! There appear to have been two new slots introduced compared to what we had in Persona 4 - a "Gun" slot, separate from your "Weapon" slot, and a "Protector" slot, separate from your "Clothes" and "Accessory". There'a theory I have as to what the Gun does as opposed to your Weapon, which I'll bring up when the relevant bit of the trailer comes up, but it seems fairly clear you use your weapon for attacking just as you previously did in Persona - you see that weapons have two stats on them, and the numbers on said stats seem to indicate them being the old "Damage" and "Hit" from Persona of old. I'm not sure what your "Protector" and "Clothes" do. I have two theories, not based on anything else in the trailer. Number one: your Clothes act like armor used to in Persona 4, and Protectors give extra stat bonuses, like the shoes of Persona 3, but expanded to stuff beyond the limited things shoes could do. The other is that "Protectors" are your armor for combat, and "Clothes" change your day-to-day outfit that you have whilst Social Linking, be it cosmetically or for some sort of bonuses.
1:38-1:42 Looks like in-game cinematic. Some sort of creepy, pupil-less man in a uniform, possibly possessed or a Shadow, and a train (which he appeared to have been conducting) going off the rails in a station. Seems like it could act as either a dramatic start to the story, leaving a mystery behind (Like the first murder in Persona 4) or as a tense mid-game scene (Like the monorail shadow fight in Persona 3).
1:42-1:44 Woot, dungeon gameplay! Looks great, and your character appears to be quite acrobatic. The Shadows around seem to be some sort of knights, which makes me wonder whether that's a representation of the enemy that Shadow will be if you engage it in battle (which would be a pretty cool thing to have) or just a new model for Shadows. Your character also doesn't appear to have a weapon out, which makes me think they might be getting rid of the "hit enemies on the back to get an advantage" mechanic. I'd rather it still be in there, but if it goes I won't cry too much.
1:44-1:47 You appear to be jumping around on top of chandeliers, possibly during a heist. This seems quite dodgy to me: In my experience platforming in non-platformers is not a good thing. Still, it looks like it would work quite well, and I think adding more variety to dungeons can only be a good thing.
1:47-1:50 Once again, kind of worrying. You seem to be doing some sort of stealth thingy, which doesn't usually work outside stealth games. You do appear to be able to zap from cover to cover instantly, which should hopefully make it easy enough that it won't be an issue. I guess both of thse mechanics make sense in the context of you being a bunch of master thieves.
Now, time out, time out, time out. I just want to note something: All of the in-game footage that's happened so far is happening on the same day, Monday the 11th of April. If I'm not wrong, that's around the same time that Persona 3 and 4 start. Combined with my earlier theory that this is the first day of the game, this would mean that your main character is already acquainted with your first three party members on your first day of game, and you also get to do some action stuff. It'll be nice to not have another fish out of water start (not that there's anything wrong with that), and I heartily approve of shortening the overly long time before you get to play that almost put me off Persona. My guess is the story will start with you pulling off some major heist you've been planning, which'll somehow lead into you getting involved with Personay stuff. Possibly you're unknowingly stealing a magical artefact or something of that style.
1:50-1:52 I guess there's a specialized medicine shop now.
1:52-1:57 A bit of cutscene involving just hanging out with friends and the girl being slightly upset at the guy, good that they haven't left that type of stuff out: It's what made Persona 4 really stand out to me. Also an action thing where you appear to be running away, and the girl's dressed in an absolutely ridiculous pink latex suit. For burgling. Because pink is stealthy.
1:59 It appears you get caught. Perhaps you get caught and let out under the condition that you do Persona type stuff? This would be kind of like how you end up working on solving the murders in Persona 4.
EDIT 2: If you slow down the footage you can tell that this cell is in the Velvet Room, guarded by the twin assistants. Interesting, maybe you have a less smooth relationship with Igor than previous protagonists did. I do hope he isn't a bad guy though, I liked him as the sole non-evil supernatural being in the SMT universe, this kind of oddball thing. Maybe it's still somewhat similar to the Teddy contract from Persona 4.
2:01-2:10 Your main character uses a gun instead of some other weapon. Notice this for later. Also, this appears to be an all-out attack. I love the look of it, but I think the animation takes way too long. I'd get irate at the Persona 3 and 4 animations, and they were a lot shorter than this. Hopefully bits of it are skippable. Still, I love how you get to see every character do their thing in more detail. They also appear to be fighting several of what in previous games was the persona Sandman.
2:10-2:20 Not much here, but I just realized there's a lot of highway imagery in this trailer. I wonder if that's relevant. It appears First Male Party Member and Animal Like Mascot are hanging out together, much like Yosuke and Teddy.
2:27-2:36 Real interesting. Just looking at this it seems like a) the main character is not necessarily entirely good (he sure seems demonic), and b) he may be transforming into his Persona rather than summoning it. This could lead to an interesting thing gameplay-wise a la Digital Devil Saga, or it could be simply a cool cosmetic effect. My theory is that your "weapon" is what you use as your Persona, and your "gun" is what you use in human form. I doubt it's going to go full Digital Devil Saga in its mechanics (especially since the transformation mechanic was kinda useless in that game), but perhaps your persona's attack is determined using your weapon (so your Bufu or Sonic Punch would do more damage depending on your weapon, but your normal attack would do more damage depending on your gun). If it does go full DDS, then it seems like your Clothes and Protector could be armor for you and your Persona, respectively.
EDIT 3: It's been brought up that this also kind of looks like a Shadow self from Persona 4, what with the yellow eyes and the transforming into something different. There's a point there, but somehow I doubt that it's the case. Shadow selves were very much thematically tied to what Persona 4 was about, and, unless there's some major reworking of what they are in the lore, they don't really fit in to what Persona 5 has been said to be about. I'm not too fond of the idea of having them back: Whilst I thought they were one of the stronger aspects of Persona 4, I don't believe that they need to be shoehorned into more Persona games.
Whatever, I'm still fucking hyped.
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