Although most of the corePersonagames aren’t connected narratively and can all be played as standalone games, anyone who plays more than onePersonagame will find that they have a lot in common.Personais a franchise steeped in its own traditions. Not only dothePersonaJRPGsshare combat mechanics and social sim elements, but they go as far as sharing broad plot structures, breaking up their overarching plots into story arcs that each take about an in-game month to complete.Persona 6is bound to carry over this general approach to plot, which means its playable characters will probably be distributed in a familiar way.
WhilePersona’s traditions have helped carry the franchise to success,Persona 6would be wise to differ in a few ways, since that’s one big reason thatPersona 5was such a big success.Persona 6should put a particular emphasis on introducing fans to its main characters in a new way. The last fewPersonagames have added character to the player’s party in a very specific way that puts certain characters at a disadvantage.Persona 6needs to find a creative way to introduce fans to their party members more quickly without immediately making them all playable.
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Persona’s History of Character Introduction
Just about every JRPG with a party system slowly introduces new members as players advance through the plot, andPersonais no exception.Personaplayers usually start out with a bare minimum party, then pick up additional Persona users every time they complete a story arc. Each game does so uniquely. InPersona 4,the protagonist’s friends face their true selves once they’re rescued from a dungeon, whereas inPersona 5,characters find their will of rebellion during confrontations with the antagonist of an arc.These unique Persona awakening sequencesshow off the versatile themes used both in individual games and the franchise as a whole.
However,Persona’s party member distribution doesn’t shake out perfectly. BecausePersonagames introduce a single party member every month, certain characters inevitably get the short end of the stick. For instance, inPersona 5,Haru Okumura gets very little screen timebecause she makes virtually no appearances until she joins the Phantom Thieves some 50 or 60 hours into the game. Because of this, players get precious little time to enjoy Haru’s mechanical niche, and she feels woefully underdeveloped compared to early party members like Ann and Yusuke.
Personagames are clearly aware of the impact that long story arcs that only promise a single party member have on mid-game and late-game characters.Persona 5tries to make up for Futaba and Haru’s late appearances by designing Palaces that are extremely personal to each of them, whilePersona 4does its best to give Naoto early-game appearances to make up for her only becoming playable after the fifth dungeon is completed. Still, these characters occasionally struggle to feel like a core part of their parties because they take so long to join the story.Personagames are famously long, and since they’re composed of large story blocks that sometimes focus on a single character for 10 or more hours, late game characters don’t feel as well integrated as early ones do.
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Persona 6 Needs to Introduce Characters Early
In order to avoid making playable characters feel like stragglers,Persona 6ought to give players a chance to get familiar with them early on in the game, even if they don’t become playable until halfway through the story. For instance,Persona 5players might have felt more attached to Haru if her first few Confidant levels were accessible in the first half of the game, allowing players to get some hints about her eventual story role while getting more mileage out of her handy rooftop garden.Akechi’s Confidant arconly revealed his bonuses as a playable character during Sae’s Palace, so Haru’s Confidant arc easily could have done the same thing.
Ideally, though,Persona 6will be a little more broad than that. For instance,Persona 6might establish relationships between all of its playable characters at the very beginning; even if the protagonist isn’t friends with every eventual party member right away, the protagonist and their starting party could all personally know the eventual party members somehow, whether they’re closely connected or distant acquaintances. Establishing a little more intimacy betweenPersona 6’s party memberswill not only help prevent the plight of late-game characters like Haru and Naoto, but it could help mid-game characters like Rise and Futaba feel a little less unexpected. Makoto and Teddie provide great blueprints for howPersona 6could do this, since they both have an ongoing relationship with the party for multiple arcs before they gain Personas.
Persona Needs a New Party Angle
It’s understandable thatPersonagames don’t introduce every party member right away; that would make the early game of any JRPG difficult to balance. However,Personahas a history of creating imbalance in its own narratives because of how long it takes some characters to enter the Shadow world. IntroducingPersona 6’s entire party early on could result in a more even-keeled narrative that builds suspense around each character’s future, rather than only spotlighting them during a certain story arc.
A major narrative shift like this could servePersona 6well. Atlus may want the game to be better thanPersona 5,but in order to do so,Persona 6needs to be different.Persona 5 Royalalready honedPersona 5’s core mechanics excellently, so a newPersonatitle that merely tries to refinePersona 5’s contents further would feel awfully repetitive. Bold changes to social sim elements, combat, and the overallPersonaaesthetic ferriedPersona 5success, soPersona 6needs to follow its lead by taking more leaps, rather than literally copyingPersona 5’s innovations.
The pace of party member introduction is perhaps one of the best placesPersona 6can innovate. Haru’s limited place amongthe Phantom Thieveswas one of the biggest criticisms levied towardsPersona 5,soPersona 6could one-up its predecessor by giving every party member lots of screen time. Atlus will definitely have a lot of hoops to jump through if it does this, since it would risk givingPersona 6a very dense beginning with lots of character introductions, but with the right pacing, early character introductions could makePersona 6’s cast more gripping than any other.
