Leigh Alexander at and on Kotaku

[korinna]

When I had the opportunity to play a favorite game all over again with Persona 3 Portable, I was happy to do so. I didn't realize a virtual sex change would make the experience anything but the same as before

Comments

[yhibiki]

Oh, I didn't mean it like that at all! Of course the differences should be examined, and I believe part of the reason the female main character can't be a "man eater" the way the male main character can be a "womanizer" is because of the difference in perceived acceptable behavior by both the Japanese developers and the original Japanese market audience.

The part I disagree with most is this one:

But it makes the social interactions of Persona 3 Portable inherently more complicated when I'm a female playing as a female. Swap the gender and suddenly my ideas of who I'd like my character to be - aloof, clever and a little dark, as my Persona 3 male character was - collide with my own knee-jerk reflex to conform to the sort of social expectations women are often told they should fulfill in order to be likeable. I found myself hesitating between conversation responses that would be consistent with the character I had visualized, and those that were more closely aligned with the ideals of "be attractive, sweet and likeable.

Persona, in general, is about being likeable. Conversation choices affect how the other characters feel about your main character, and the more they like you, the better personas you can build. (well, something like that.) It stands to reason that within the Persona series of games, those are the kinds of dialogue choices you would make (if you want to max out everything; if not, anything goes). And the character she wanted to create ("aloof, clever, and a little bit dark") would be very hard given the confines of the given dialogue choices.

Speaking just for myself, when this game presented me with the dialogue options, I tended to lean towards the funnier ones rather than "this is the perfect demure female figure." I can, of course, see how it would be different for the author of the article. I just never considered it a problem for me.