Persona 3
A few comments about the ending:
This is a post on GameFaqs boards regarding the ending:
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"Then there's no reason to claim the MC's death was just "tacked on". Whether or not you like it is one thing, I'm not arguing with you about the quality of the ending, but it's obvious they had intended to have him die from the start."
My complaint isn't simply that they decided to kill off the main character. I suppose I should have tried fleshing out my reasoning instead of just typing, 'the ending is teh suc'.
All right, yeah, there's a clear sense of inevitability from the get go. Society is embracing apathy, so much so that it's becoming disease like in nature, and it'll lead to mankind's downfall unless you intervene. Of course, and they let you know this within the first 5 minutes of the game, you'll have to accept responsibility for your actions. All right, it's clear you're going to have lose your own apathy (or at least ambivalence) towards life/society, and make the ultimate sacrifice for a society that won't recognize or even appreciate said sacrifice. It's a pretty common theme, though I like the ironic contrast, but how is it carried out?
I don't want to say the game throws some red herrings at you but the game started interjecting dialog and and subplots that made me doubt your supposedly 'inevitable' fate. The emphasis on teamwork, overcoming hardships together blah blah blah, you know. And I'm not going to do a breakdown but Aegis's character development and the Junpei/nihilistic Chidori side plot had me second guessing. Are they saying there is hope? Things aren't set in stone?
So you reach the game's conclusion and you have to use a move that depletes all your hp. Okay, fine. So how does the story play out from there?
Here's why I think the ending was poor and, potentially, a cop out.
Do you die instantly? Or give a passionate speech or embrace with your friends for a 'bittersweet' death scene? Nope, everybody goes home happy...... after a thorough brain scrubbing. Seems like friendship prevailed and blah blah blah same old same old.
So you're perfectly fine months later. You attend school and besides the, ominous in hindsight, 'you're tired' messages when you go to the dorm everything appears normal. Graduation and 'click' the power of friendship and all that rot prevails, people's memories are restored, lets all get together like we promised we would. Aegis gives a heart felt speech, your heads in her lap.... ooooooookay. So I'm left thinking, 'yeah he's a player, I guess that's fine'. Aegis promises to always watch over you, which really isn't much of a commitment considering you're only going to live for another 5 minutes. Your allies rush up to meet you but hey, turns out you died a minute before keeping your promise of meeting with them. Guess the jokes on you! (Or you could view this as the fulfillment of your promise, surviving the extra months just out of devotion and love of your friends, it's still a bit too cliche and tacky for me). After seeing you survived post boss fight the sudden death surprised the hell out of me. I knew something was going on, and there was a lot of unspoken meaning behind Aegis's speech, but the death sequence seemed so sudden and unnecessary
So why I didn't like it summed up.
1 They threw in some interactions and sequences that lead you to believe, 'hey! maybe sacrificing myself isn't inevitable!'
2 They don't kill you the night of the confrontation, huh?
3 Amnesia, omg! (this is more just my own personal gripe and really doesn't . I despise mind wipes in games/stories/shows what have you. I can't think of any exceptions off the top of my head).
4 You survive just long enough to fulfill a corny promise, wooo
5 It seemed so unnecessary because of points one and two.
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I agree with the lengthy CyricsServant post above. However, I'd like to offer this suggestion:
I prefer to treat games like this as self-contained realities. That is, confine your interpretation to *this game only,* don't pull in external interpretations from FES and the like. There can be a "hierarchy of canonicity" with things like this. So I ask, if you had only Persona 3 to go on, how would you interpret the good ending?
It seems that the game is deliberately ambiguous about the fate of the MC in that case.
I don't think it's wise to make these characters overly metaphysical. MC was just a regular kid listening to his headphones before this started. Resist the urge to turn him into a pseudo-god at the end. A full treatment of this topic would have to include:
1) The nature of Nyx; the Harbinger of Nyx, Death; the shadows; and their relationships to each other.
2) The nature of the characters' Personae, and their relationships to (1).
3) The nature of the Velvet Room, Igor, and Elizabeth.
The game just does not give us satisfactory resolution of these things. There can be theories, and I know there are plenty, but just looking at the game, they don't develop these things to their logical conclusion.
Nevertheless, Igor says to MC at the end, "In addition to Death, it seems that Fate has dealt you the Wild Card." "Death" could mean that MC is destined to die in the ending; or, it could refer to the fact that MC was forced to carry the sealed arcana "Death' within him throughout his childhood. The meaning of "Wild Card" means that MC has the ultimate trump card, if you will. He can even beat the "unbeatable" death card. He does this not alone, but through the power of his companions in the final battle. I like to imagine an unbeatable royal flush (Death) being beaten by five of a kind. Five of a kind would not normally be possible. But his friends have given him four of a kind, and the MC's "wild card" finished off death. This also plays well into the "Messiah" persona theme. It has been pointed out above that Messiah suggests that the MC will sacrifice himself to save the world. This is only partially correct. "Messiah" in general suggests only a hero and savior. It is the specifically Christian understanding of Messiah which understands Jesus as the messiah who dies for the salvation of the world. But it is also crucial to this understanding that Jesus then rises from the dead: the gospels and early theologians say that the sacrifice is meaningless without the resurrection--the hope would be unreal. They use the language of batle: the resurrection "defeated Death." This seems to me exactly what happens in the battle ending. MC "kills himself" to defeat Death, but rises from death to show that the victory is real.
"Memento mori" only reminds one of one's own mortality. Certainly, MC will die some day, as all living creatures will die some day. Yet I see no causal connection between this phrase, an exhortation to make your actions count and not to think of yourself too highly because one day you'll be dead; and between the thesis of MC's death on Graduation Day."
Death said at the end "I will sleep," and he also said to the party that "You all will live on, and so will he." Again, Igor said that "This is not the afterlife: you are still alive!" I understand that this all occurs before the "sleep" event on Graduation Day, but all of the game's internal evidence, in my opinion, points to MC's life, not his death. I think that the "sleep" event was superimposed to this framework to add deliberate ambiguity, and to add the possibility for further gameplay, which has clearly occured.
Anyway, take it or leave it. I have tried to interpret this game's plot entirely within what this game gave us. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, but I think it more decisively points to MC's survival.
I loved this game. I have always adhered to the theory of "hierarchy of canonicity in works of serial fiction." (In fact, put me down as having invented it. Hierarchy of canonicity.) So I'm not really affected by the purported plot amendments of the Japanese sequals. Still, I think the project could have been executed *slightly* better.
This is a post on GameFaqs boards regarding the ending:
---
"Then there's no reason to claim the MC's death was just "tacked on". Whether or not you like it is one thing, I'm not arguing with you about the quality of the ending, but it's obvious they had intended to have him die from the start."
My complaint isn't simply that they decided to kill off the main character. I suppose I should have tried fleshing out my reasoning instead of just typing, 'the ending is teh suc'.
All right, yeah, there's a clear sense of inevitability from the get go. Society is embracing apathy, so much so that it's becoming disease like in nature, and it'll lead to mankind's downfall unless you intervene. Of course, and they let you know this within the first 5 minutes of the game, you'll have to accept responsibility for your actions. All right, it's clear you're going to have lose your own apathy (or at least ambivalence) towards life/society, and make the ultimate sacrifice for a society that won't recognize or even appreciate said sacrifice. It's a pretty common theme, though I like the ironic contrast, but how is it carried out?
I don't want to say the game throws some red herrings at you but the game started interjecting dialog and and subplots that made me doubt your supposedly 'inevitable' fate. The emphasis on teamwork, overcoming hardships together blah blah blah, you know. And I'm not going to do a breakdown but Aegis's character development and the Junpei/nihilistic Chidori side plot had me second guessing. Are they saying there is hope? Things aren't set in stone?
So you reach the game's conclusion and you have to use a move that depletes all your hp. Okay, fine. So how does the story play out from there?
Here's why I think the ending was poor and, potentially, a cop out.
Do you die instantly? Or give a passionate speech or embrace with your friends for a 'bittersweet' death scene? Nope, everybody goes home happy...... after a thorough brain scrubbing. Seems like friendship prevailed and blah blah blah same old same old.
So you're perfectly fine months later. You attend school and besides the, ominous in hindsight, 'you're tired' messages when you go to the dorm everything appears normal. Graduation and 'click' the power of friendship and all that rot prevails, people's memories are restored, lets all get together like we promised we would. Aegis gives a heart felt speech, your heads in her lap.... ooooooookay. So I'm left thinking, 'yeah he's a player, I guess that's fine'. Aegis promises to always watch over you, which really isn't much of a commitment considering you're only going to live for another 5 minutes. Your allies rush up to meet you but hey, turns out you died a minute before keeping your promise of meeting with them. Guess the jokes on you! (Or you could view this as the fulfillment of your promise, surviving the extra months just out of devotion and love of your friends, it's still a bit too cliche and tacky for me). After seeing you survived post boss fight the sudden death surprised the hell out of me. I knew something was going on, and there was a lot of unspoken meaning behind Aegis's speech, but the death sequence seemed so sudden and unnecessary
So why I didn't like it summed up.
1 They threw in some interactions and sequences that lead you to believe, 'hey! maybe sacrificing myself isn't inevitable!'
2 They don't kill you the night of the confrontation, huh?
3 Amnesia, omg! (this is more just my own personal gripe and really doesn't . I despise mind wipes in games/stories/shows what have you. I can't think of any exceptions off the top of my head).
4 You survive just long enough to fulfill a corny promise, wooo
5 It seemed so unnecessary because of points one and two.
---
I agree with the lengthy CyricsServant post above. However, I'd like to offer this suggestion:
I prefer to treat games like this as self-contained realities. That is, confine your interpretation to *this game only,* don't pull in external interpretations from FES and the like. There can be a "hierarchy of canonicity" with things like this. So I ask, if you had only Persona 3 to go on, how would you interpret the good ending?
It seems that the game is deliberately ambiguous about the fate of the MC in that case.
I don't think it's wise to make these characters overly metaphysical. MC was just a regular kid listening to his headphones before this started. Resist the urge to turn him into a pseudo-god at the end. A full treatment of this topic would have to include:
1) The nature of Nyx; the Harbinger of Nyx, Death; the shadows; and their relationships to each other.
2) The nature of the characters' Personae, and their relationships to (1).
3) The nature of the Velvet Room, Igor, and Elizabeth.
The game just does not give us satisfactory resolution of these things. There can be theories, and I know there are plenty, but just looking at the game, they don't develop these things to their logical conclusion.
Nevertheless, Igor says to MC at the end, "In addition to Death, it seems that Fate has dealt you the Wild Card." "Death" could mean that MC is destined to die in the ending; or, it could refer to the fact that MC was forced to carry the sealed arcana "Death' within him throughout his childhood. The meaning of "Wild Card" means that MC has the ultimate trump card, if you will. He can even beat the "unbeatable" death card. He does this not alone, but through the power of his companions in the final battle. I like to imagine an unbeatable royal flush (Death) being beaten by five of a kind. Five of a kind would not normally be possible. But his friends have given him four of a kind, and the MC's "wild card" finished off death. This also plays well into the "Messiah" persona theme. It has been pointed out above that Messiah suggests that the MC will sacrifice himself to save the world. This is only partially correct. "Messiah" in general suggests only a hero and savior. It is the specifically Christian understanding of Messiah which understands Jesus as the messiah who dies for the salvation of the world. But it is also crucial to this understanding that Jesus then rises from the dead: the gospels and early theologians say that the sacrifice is meaningless without the resurrection--the hope would be unreal. They use the language of batle: the resurrection "defeated Death." This seems to me exactly what happens in the battle ending. MC "kills himself" to defeat Death, but rises from death to show that the victory is real.
"Memento mori" only reminds one of one's own mortality. Certainly, MC will die some day, as all living creatures will die some day. Yet I see no causal connection between this phrase, an exhortation to make your actions count and not to think of yourself too highly because one day you'll be dead; and between the thesis of MC's death on Graduation Day."
Death said at the end "I will sleep," and he also said to the party that "You all will live on, and so will he." Again, Igor said that "This is not the afterlife: you are still alive!" I understand that this all occurs before the "sleep" event on Graduation Day, but all of the game's internal evidence, in my opinion, points to MC's life, not his death. I think that the "sleep" event was superimposed to this framework to add deliberate ambiguity, and to add the possibility for further gameplay, which has clearly occured.
Anyway, take it or leave it. I have tried to interpret this game's plot entirely within what this game gave us. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, but I think it more decisively points to MC's survival.
I loved this game. I have always adhered to the theory of "hierarchy of canonicity in works of serial fiction." (In fact, put me down as having invented it. Hierarchy of canonicity.) So I'm not really affected by the purported plot amendments of the Japanese sequals. Still, I think the project could have been executed *slightly* better.