Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
P3 certainly deals with death but it's theme in my mind is really more about the choices we make in being aware of our mortality and realizing we can't take them back once they are made, which is beautifully portrayed by the game's calendar system. Death is a catalyst for the choices some characters make but in truth it's now how the characters handle the death that is the problem as it was losing their reason to fight or shaking up the issues of it. P3 does a great job but I feel it was more subtle than it's companions in really exploring it's psychological themes whereas the rest of the series is not.
So, because it's about analyzing people's choices and coping mechanisms with death, it's less psychological? I'm not sure that argument really makes sense. It's a psychological exploration because it's about how the characters cope with death and mortality.

It may be more "subtle" in its psychological exploration, but I also feel it is far more thorough. Yes, it is more "subtle", if that's how you like to term it. I prefer to think of it as grounding the setting a bit more in reality. You don't get a sudden cataclysmic shift to the entire world (again, a standard SMT trope, probably one of the single defining traits of the series). Instead, we catch sight of a war that has been going on for the duration of human existence. The characters are stepping into worlds that run parallel to ours, but are apart. We see them coping with an expanded view of reality, rather than a complete reshaping of it.

For me, the issue I do have with P3 and especially P4 is that I feel the games have made the series much too soft in comparison to their predecessors. The games spend too much time in the light of the social masks that people wear whereas the earlier games were more about making the uglier side of humanity a physical thing that has to be dealt with, and then showing that the fight is an eternal one. This is partly why I do like The Answer for instance cause I felt it really brought P3 full circle inline with P2's themes. P4, as I said, has just become too soft, I prefer the series to stick to it's darker roots, it's why I prefer the more melancholic P3 to the overly idealistic P4.
I think that the later games did a better job of embodying the negativity of humanity, and portraying the psychological powers at work. While there is still a supernatural element, almost everything is expressed in terms of the psyche. The realms of human thought and emotion, bleeding into our own. Rather than monsters overrunning and ravaging the world, we see Shadows, our own negativity, and how that literally tears humanity apart from within. It doesn't destroy the world around us, it eats away at us, at our minds and souls. Persona 3 does, I think, the best job of expressing this with the way Tatsumi Port Island is consumed by the Lost and gives in to despair as the game progresses further along, or how the Lost ebb and flow as you fight the Shadows. It's not humanity's negativity destroying the world with magic, it's humanity's negativity consuming that which makes us human. The fight between Philemon and Nylarthotep isn't some cosmic wager between gods (which is what I feel you get from Persona 2), it is a literal manifestation of the psychological struggle between two disparate halves of human nature. The positive and negative aspects of our souls at constant war with each other, merely by nature of their own existence.




Yes, it's a more "subtle" analysis, because it's actually an exploration of the psychology of the situation. It's a study in how characters act and react, how opinions change and how emotions drive and shape us. How we cope with death, how we change and relate to it when we see it. When we face it, and how we hide from it. When we explore the Midnight Channel, we're exploring the layers of the human psyche. When we fight the Shadows, we're facing off against the negative aspects of humanity. Just from the shapes and names of Shadows and Personas, you can perform a character analysis of the individuals who bear them. Every Social Link, every character interaction, carries weight and looks at the themes in different ways. It's a far more complete look at the human psyche.

Persona and Persona 2 were great, but I still feel like they were just more Shin Megami Tensei games with a new name. Most of the SMT series dealt with exactly the same sort of questions as they did. The plot may have a new cause, be driven by a new force, but that's about it. You can find psychological statements and points to analyze everywhere in any of the SMT games. ATLUS has never shied away from addressing such things. But I feel that it isn't until Persona 3 that the game does a good job of making that the core of the experience.