Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post

Yes, but the reasons for the threats and the entire setup was "it fed into the design", rather than "it felt natural for the characters".
I felt it was pretty logically consistent and not simply game design. Akihiko and Ken have both dealt with death before and Shinji's death in P3 hiot both of them harder than the rest of the cast but they both resolved to move forward and not dwell in the past. It was pretty much the speech Akihiko gave to Yukari when the group fought about it. This is still very consistent with both of them especially since they were the closest.

Yukari is pretty devastated about Minato's death but this is obvious because the game really pushed these two to be together unlike the other protagonists whose romantic leanings are really ambiguous (Though the series character designer is pushing for Yu and Yusuke pairing). Mitsuru explains why she sided with Yukari, because of the help and support Yukari gave to her after Mitsurur was left devastated from her father's death. She promised to stand by Yukari as thanks for this even though she knew Yukari's decision was wrong. Junpei is the most easy going party member so it makes sense he would be the one against the group fighting along with Aigis and Fuuka. Besides after all the crap he pulled in P3, you want to deny the fans the chance to punch him the face with Mara?

Granted the Junpei/Koro group is the weak link here and I concede that but the other two made perfect sense and it made sense that the other cast members had no reason to side with either faction so thus we had a third group.


I hate the way they changed the ending. The ending of Persona 3 was ambiguous, and deliberately so. Minato's fate was never declared. There were indications feeding both way, that he survived, that he died. You could take it any way, and have plenty of evidence supporting you (Ryoji: "Don't worry, time will continue for you, and for him". FRELLING LIAR!). It did, in fact, feed back into the entire theme of the game and the series: Hope versus despair, with freedom to choose being the determining factor between which fate awaits in the end.

The original ending was nearly perfect. The battle was one, but at the cost of the team's memories and friendships. Only Minato and Aegis remembered. Until the day of the promise, when they all remember, and join together. It was upbeat and hopeful. The Answer renders THAT reunion kind of pointless, since they just meet back up to beat the crap out of each other for contrived reasons.
I'm going with Scott_ffgamer here and say that the ending really paints the fact that Minato is not doing well in the ending so I have a harder time interpreting the "happy" ending you envisioned. Granted I didn't pay attention very well my first time through and thought the same as you, but after playing the game a second time through I caught the more sinister implications of the games ending. The Answer simply confirmed my suspicions and I honestly feel its grown into one of the more intriguing subplots for the series, though I'm still waiting for IS Tatsuya's parallel world to come back and bite the series in the ass as well but that may never happen. I alos feel that Minato's death works for the cast of P3 because they relied so much on him that when he was gone they were left to finally make the hard choices themselves and that to me represents that we the player are suppose to also walk away from the game and apply its message of making the most of our lives everyday.