The Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series was started as an exploration of psychology. This is why it was called Persona, after the mental mask people wear as theorized by Carl Jung. The first few games, however, didn't really stand apart in this area. Certainly, they dealt with some psychology, but except for the world lore, I felt it never really grappled with psychological issues. The events and powers may have a new name, a new mask, but they are still the same sorts of things that would happen and occur in the standard series. We face Philemon and Nylarthotep, but we don't really get a grasp on the true nature of their conflict.
Persona 3 shattered this, utterly. It is a psychological thriller almost all the way through. The Social Links, mechanics largely cannibalized from dating sims, were used to allow for relationship and psychological exploration with each character. Personas are summoned by placing a gun to one's head. The standard zombies and demons were replaced with Shadows, another term stolen from Jung's psychology, and the shapes and forms of the Shadows were imbued with incredible meaning and symbology.
Perhaps more importantly, the entire central conflict of the game takes a massive shift towards psychological exploration. From the opening minutes of the game, we are given the core of the work.
Memento Mori
Remember that you are mortal, and that you will die. This theme resonates throughout all of Persona 3. Every character in your party is touched by death. Yukari's father. Ken's mother. Junpei and Chidori. Shinjiro and Akihiko (or Akihiko and Miki, take your pick). Mitsuru's father. Koromaru's owner. Aegis and Minato's parents. Every character has to work through it and come to terms with it. The psychological question of how to accept death as a natural part of life is the very core of the game. From the opening words to the final, drifting departure of Minato, death is everywhere in this game.
This game was a radical shift from Persona 2, and not just in terms of the Social Links and gameplay. This was when Persona actually came into its own and became a series about psychology, which is what it was always meant to be. We finally see just what the conflict between Nylarthotep and Philemon really is, when we see aspects oh humanity's collective psyche taking form and fighting itself.
Persona 4 continued this. The theme is, again, given to us in the opening.
I reach out to the truth.
This game is full of the psychological questions of understanding oneself. My biggest problem with the title is that the main plot doesn't actively address this question until the very end.
Yet that is, in a way, oddly fitting. The entire game is a study of not accepting things at face value, of not taking the easy way out. To look past the mist of lies and see what is really there. Why then would the question of the plot be easy to see?
It is undoubtedly there. This game deals with it in nearly every Social Link, and every dungeon. The entire way a Persona is awakened in this game is by accepting what is truly there, what one truly is.
Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. They are fantastic games, no doubt. But they never really fulfilled the goal the games had from the beginning of being a study of psychology. There wasn't enough there to differentiate them from Devil Survivor, Digital Devil Saga, or any of the other spinoffs. It wasn't until Persona 3 that I feel the series became its own series, rather than a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei.
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