"You've gotta admit, all guys love games..." "And all girls love Teddie!"
Sorry for the non-postage over the past couple of days...I had to go in for a colonoscopy today (thanks to iowayehudit for being my designated driver!), which meant I couldn't eat anything for almost 48 hours and also had to take 1 1/4 gallons of laxatives (no joke, they want your colon clean enough to eat out of), so I was hungry and not in the mood for doing much but playing lots of Persona 4 and listening to my stomach grumble.
Needless to say, food has never tasted as good as that Airliner pizza did this evening. OM NOM NOM~
And for those of you who have played P4, your daily dose of brain-breakage.
OMG SUMMER CAMPING TRIP, SO AWESOME. Yosuke's gay panic at Kanji in the tent with them was hilarious ("OHNOES AM I GUNNA GET RAPED"), especially compared to his offended shock when Chie and Yukiko similarly warned him not to try any funny stuff with them in the middle of the night (and after Kanji "fainted," he probably had reason to be worried).
And then the next day, EVEN BETTER. Yosuke's such a perv, pressuring Chie and Yukiko into the swimsuits, and Kanji's nosebleed (which it's left up in the air as to whether it's from the girls or the guys, but he IS looking at the guys when we see it), and Chie and Yukiko knocking all the guys into the water, and THE VOMITING
Also, I'd seen pics of Shadow Rise's boss form, but I hadn't expected it to be quite so...erm. And I thought Kanji's final boss was unsubtle. The motions and sound effects were especially disturbing, with the humping the pole and the moaning and the squelching and WHYYYYYYY
For the curious, a video of the fight with Shadow Rise - who is a gigantic rainbow-colored woman with a satellite dish for a face hanging from a stripper pole - can be seen here. Spoilers, obviously. Skip to about 7:30 to the point where she uses her special move, "Supreme Insight," to see what is basically the biggest reason this game got an M rating.
Shadow Teddie, on the other hand, was deeply disturbing in an entirely DIFFERENT way. Seeing adorable Teddie's dead-eyed Christopher Lee-sounding counterpart may have creeped me out even more than Shadow Rise.
And then Teddie's "next level"...OMG SPARKLY RUFFLY-SHIRTED BISHIE PIMPMASTER TEDDIE IS THE BEST THING EVAR, BAR NONE. Also is just me or did Yosuke try to set Kanji up with Teddie? "Here's 1000 yen, buy some ice cream and share it with Teddie while the rest of us go over to see Rise." YOSUKE THE SLASH YENTA, LOLLLLL
He secretly just wants to get Teddie and Kanji out of the way so he has the main character all to himself, amirite
In COMPLETELY UNRELATED news, apparently I am "special" to Yosuke hurhurhur
Sadly I made the wrong choices to get the option to hug him, but HAY LOOK AT THIS (from jokersama) \m/
And is it just me or does human!Teddie look kind of like the Little Prince? I realize it's a mostly different staff from P2, with its more explicit reference (the lighter), but it is a book that I think seems to embody a lot of what the awesomeness of the Persona series is all about, so it is kind of a nice touch.
Another thing I like about P4, and a direct contrast to P3, is the sense of real friendship you get between the characters. The P4 characters seem like real friends to each other, to the point where even once the mystery's over you feel they'd still be good friends, while the P3 characters always felt like they were mostly just being held together by SEES and the Shadow-fighting. I mean, everyone was close to the main character, but the ending kind of made that moot; and with a few notable exceptions (Akihiko and Mitsuru), they didn't seem that close to each other. Whereas in P4 everyone seems to be good friends with everyone else, in a more lasting way. Part of it may be the general homogeneity of P4's characters; it's going to be difficult to get that kind of sense of shared commonality in a game where a good portion of your team is made up of a dog and a grade-schooler and a robot. (At least Teddie in P4 can become a reasonable facsimile of a regular high school student, if a bit sparkly and pimpified.)
Really, what P4 reminds me of most is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arc 4 (which nemissa has also pointed out): small-town teenagers with special powarz have to join together to stop a mysterious serial killer with a distinctive and paranormal method of killing his victims. (Though that does bring up some hilarious potential Yukiko/Yukako parallels.) In fact, the Persona series and JoJo generally line up quite well for me, with some definite parallels:
1 - Starts it all, introduces idea of Personae/Stands, kills off mentor figure (Zeppeli/Alfred), introduces recurring series villain (Nyarlathotep/Dio) and hints at the forthcoming epic battle between two factions (Joestar/Brando v. Philemon/Nyarlathotep)
2 - The most awesome chapter (or chapters in the case of P2), featuring an awesome older female maternal figure who helps the younger leads (and is connected to their younger selves through some revelation late in the game), and they fight against Aztec vampires (in JoJo) or Mayan aliens (P2). Also the two main young male characters, who are both like children of the maternal figure, in a way, are totally gay for each other.
3 - The one that really gets wildly popular and gets mainstream attention and appeal. A large group of disparate people, and a dog which happens to have the same special abilities, join together to save the world through repetitive battling. (Much as I enjoyed both JoJo pt. 3 and P3, I don't think anyone can claim either the enemy Stand users or Tartarus didn't get at least a LITTLE repetitive.) Orpheus even looks a little like Star Platinum.
And I've already mentioned 4. This shouldn't really be TOO much of a surprise, as the Personae are clearly modelled on JoJo's Stands (I think this has been explicitly acknowledged in some interview or other). As with JoJo, my favorite part is 2, followed closely by 4. Predicting from this, Persona 5 will involve the protagonist become involved with the Yakuza, and possibly wearing a purple suit with gold ladybugs on it.
Why will Kaneko and Araki never collaborate on character design for something, it would totally be the MOST CRACKED-OUT THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN
I'm still working on my massive Forsyte Saga post, and trying to muster up the volition to finish Marco Polo on audio to continue my Doctor Who Viewing Project, so expect those in the near (hopefully) future!
Needless to say, food has never tasted as good as that Airliner pizza did this evening. OM NOM NOM~
And for those of you who have played P4, your daily dose of brain-breakage.
OMG SUMMER CAMPING TRIP, SO AWESOME. Yosuke's gay panic at Kanji in the tent with them was hilarious ("OHNOES AM I GUNNA GET RAPED"), especially compared to his offended shock when Chie and Yukiko similarly warned him not to try any funny stuff with them in the middle of the night (and after Kanji "fainted," he probably had reason to be worried).
And then the next day, EVEN BETTER. Yosuke's such a perv, pressuring Chie and Yukiko into the swimsuits, and Kanji's nosebleed (which it's left up in the air as to whether it's from the girls or the guys, but he IS looking at the guys when we see it), and Chie and Yukiko knocking all the guys into the water, and THE VOMITING
Also, I'd seen pics of Shadow Rise's boss form, but I hadn't expected it to be quite so...erm. And I thought Kanji's final boss was unsubtle. The motions and sound effects were especially disturbing, with the humping the pole and the moaning and the squelching and WHYYYYYYY
For the curious, a video of the fight with Shadow Rise - who is a gigantic rainbow-colored woman with a satellite dish for a face hanging from a stripper pole - can be seen here. Spoilers, obviously. Skip to about 7:30 to the point where she uses her special move, "Supreme Insight," to see what is basically the biggest reason this game got an M rating.
Shadow Teddie, on the other hand, was deeply disturbing in an entirely DIFFERENT way. Seeing adorable Teddie's dead-eyed Christopher Lee-sounding counterpart may have creeped me out even more than Shadow Rise.
And then Teddie's "next level"...OMG SPARKLY RUFFLY-SHIRTED BISHIE PIMPMASTER TEDDIE IS THE BEST THING EVAR, BAR NONE. Also is just me or did Yosuke try to set Kanji up with Teddie? "Here's 1000 yen, buy some ice cream and share it with Teddie while the rest of us go over to see Rise." YOSUKE THE SLASH YENTA, LOLLLLL
He secretly just wants to get Teddie and Kanji out of the way so he has the main character all to himself, amirite
In COMPLETELY UNRELATED news, apparently I am "special" to Yosuke hurhurhur
Sadly I made the wrong choices to get the option to hug him, but HAY LOOK AT THIS (from jokersama) \m/
And is it just me or does human!Teddie look kind of like the Little Prince? I realize it's a mostly different staff from P2, with its more explicit reference (the lighter), but it is a book that I think seems to embody a lot of what the awesomeness of the Persona series is all about, so it is kind of a nice touch.
Another thing I like about P4, and a direct contrast to P3, is the sense of real friendship you get between the characters. The P4 characters seem like real friends to each other, to the point where even once the mystery's over you feel they'd still be good friends, while the P3 characters always felt like they were mostly just being held together by SEES and the Shadow-fighting. I mean, everyone was close to the main character, but the ending kind of made that moot; and with a few notable exceptions (Akihiko and Mitsuru), they didn't seem that close to each other. Whereas in P4 everyone seems to be good friends with everyone else, in a more lasting way. Part of it may be the general homogeneity of P4's characters; it's going to be difficult to get that kind of sense of shared commonality in a game where a good portion of your team is made up of a dog and a grade-schooler and a robot. (At least Teddie in P4 can become a reasonable facsimile of a regular high school student, if a bit sparkly and pimpified.)
Really, what P4 reminds me of most is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arc 4 (which nemissa has also pointed out): small-town teenagers with special powarz have to join together to stop a mysterious serial killer with a distinctive and paranormal method of killing his victims. (Though that does bring up some hilarious potential Yukiko/Yukako parallels.) In fact, the Persona series and JoJo generally line up quite well for me, with some definite parallels:
1 - Starts it all, introduces idea of Personae/Stands, kills off mentor figure (Zeppeli/Alfred), introduces recurring series villain (Nyarlathotep/Dio) and hints at the forthcoming epic battle between two factions (Joestar/Brando v. Philemon/Nyarlathotep)
2 - The most awesome chapter (or chapters in the case of P2), featuring an awesome older female maternal figure who helps the younger leads (and is connected to their younger selves through some revelation late in the game), and they fight against Aztec vampires (in JoJo) or Mayan aliens (P2). Also the two main young male characters, who are both like children of the maternal figure, in a way, are totally gay for each other.
3 - The one that really gets wildly popular and gets mainstream attention and appeal. A large group of disparate people, and a dog which happens to have the same special abilities, join together to save the world through repetitive battling. (Much as I enjoyed both JoJo pt. 3 and P3, I don't think anyone can claim either the enemy Stand users or Tartarus didn't get at least a LITTLE repetitive.) Orpheus even looks a little like Star Platinum.
And I've already mentioned 4. This shouldn't really be TOO much of a surprise, as the Personae are clearly modelled on JoJo's Stands (I think this has been explicitly acknowledged in some interview or other). As with JoJo, my favorite part is 2, followed closely by 4. Predicting from this, Persona 5 will involve the protagonist become involved with the Yakuza, and possibly wearing a purple suit with gold ladybugs on it.
Why will Kaneko and Araki never collaborate on character design for something, it would totally be the MOST CRACKED-OUT THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN
I'm still working on my massive Forsyte Saga post, and trying to muster up the volition to finish Marco Polo on audio to continue my Doctor Who Viewing Project, so expect those in the near (hopefully) future!