Persona 25th Anniversary
On September 20th, 1996, Atlus, a video game publisher, published the game Revelations Persona. Their previous list of games included Friday the 13th and The Karate Kid on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and a series of Japanese Role-Playing games under the title of Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei, which translate to Rebirth or Reincarnation of the Goddess, and True Rebirth or Reincarnation of the Goddess. The series would undergo several name changes from Revelations Persona to Shin Megami Tensei - Persona, then shortened to Persona.
Today, I will be diving into the series I love, which has significantly impacted me as a writer.
The stories of all the games center around a protagonist and a group trying to unravel a mystery. Nothing special so far, but stay with me; this is about to get good. Each game is different, but they all follow a similar layout. The group encounters a character names Igor, who acts as a guide for the protagonist and helps to awaken the powers of Persona, which are the manifestation of the actualized self, made manifest. The protagonist and their friends use these personas to fight Shadows, which are the manifestation of malevolent thoughts and energy made manifest.
A person obtains a Persona by overcoming a specific hardship in their life, and what was once a Shadow becomes a Persona. As the main character develops more profound bonds with his friends and others he meets, he strengthens himself and his ability to use more Personas. Each character's backstory is never a throwaway. Each story is a long, winding complex of emotions that they undertake, and the main character is along for the ride to help his friends through whatever personal issues they are struggling to conquer. Upon completing your friend's backstory, the character is fulfilled in life and awaken their Persona’s ultimate form.
If all of this about Personas, Shadows, actualizations, etc., sounds familiar, well, that’s because it is. You see, the creators of the game, Kouji Okada and Tadashi Satomi, looked to psychologist Karl Jung and his principles of the self and growth heavily throughout the series, with the first series also borrowing heavily from Sigmund Freud's concept of Id, Ego, and Superego.
That is what makes these series such a delight to play and immerse yourselves in. Not only does each game have intricate stories about the growth of friends to overcome enemies, but they also have deep subtext into psychology, the concept of self, and the meaning of our existence in the grand scheme of things.
Often in these games, you will find several people and beings with divine machinations for unbridled play, all to become something greater than what they already are.
Another thing which I love about the series is the bosses of each section of the games are not all bad people. The concept of inherently good and evil is replaced with an ambiguous layer of gray where the bad guy may be doing things for reasons that he believes are altruistic. Only towards the end, when you get to the main boss, do you have a character who is primarily evil, and I say primarily evil because they are usually a byproduct of some corruption that made them that way. Each character’s story is intricately laid out before you, so you learn why they are the way they are. You may disagree with them, but a part of you can sympathize with why they are doing things, and it leaves you with struggling decisions to make on how to approach each situation.
I do not want to go into too much detail about any one specific game. I will leave that for another entry, especially as we approach the 25th-anniversary deadline. However, I want to give you a taste of what is to come from my favorite video game series.
I hope you enjoyed this mini dive into the series.