#((Atlus I need emotional compensation from you

[epitomees]

((I can't even go five minutes into scanning through the P3 manga and screenshotting for icons WITHOUT CRYING!! ALL OVER AGAIN!!))

[arcplaysgames]

And the biggest problem I have with P4G...

The main character.

I think the main character of Persona 4 is actively bad. And I think the game paints itself into a corner by making him so fucking boring and non-emotive and non-reactive. He is the opposite of a catalyst in a game that needs forward momentum.

This becomes painfully obvious in the mid-to-late game, around when the entire Namatame thing happens, but it's present for the entire thing. All of the emotional pushes come from other characters. Chie and Yukiko worried about each other, Kanji worried about Naoto, Teddie and Rise driving their arc forward. Because the P4MC can't drive anything everywhere. They are purely reactive in a plot structure that doesn't deal well with reactive protagonists.

(For comparison, see how P3P is structured.)

Yosuke is the real protagonist of P4G. And yes, in universe, I love how this manifests, how you can feel Yosuke taking on more and more responsibility through the game. He takes in Teddie, he leads the team to Namatame, he works with Naoto to solve the case. His anger is one of the primary thrusts of the plot, and if you removed him, the ENTIRE story would fall apart because the MC has nothing.

I am an unabashed stan of FeMC in P3P. I thought she was the perfect balance of a proxy for the player while also having a lot of forward momentum. Also!!! As mentioned in the last post, having the people around her in SEES having their own shit going on frankly alleviates the need for her to carry the whole story!

I appreciate that P4G let me have fun as the MC and gave me some fun chaos options. But the dull void of the MC has bothered me for literally half the game.

Like, compare Yosuke and P4MC with Junpei and FeMC. It's stupid, but I felt real fucking camaraderie with Junpei! I cared about him and I felt like he was my fucking wingman in all things! Which let the game pull that masterful trick when Junpei gets his crisis of self-esteem and turned his back on me for several in-game weeks, I really felt that! But as much as I like Yosuke and P4MC, that exact same plot would not work with Yosuke because P4MC is just not enough of a character to pull it off.

Also, I will be a total asshole for a second. Why the fuck are you only allowed to be a boy in P4? It's actively asinine and if you are gonna make the MC such a blank slate, you can at least give me a blank slate with different fuckign pronouns. Nothing is gained from making P4MC a boy except to reaffirm the idea that Boys Are Default.

In a perfect world, Atlus would make the Persona 6 protagonist gender neutral. Just don't use gendered terms at all! Let the player decide who the fuck they are!

(MAN i am sad thinking about Junpei talking to FeMC like she's One of the Boys. I literally loved that shit so much.)

But yeah, I... did not like the P4MC and as a writer, I can feel the way the story struggles against the void of his existence and presence and how other characters have to compensate for those deficencies. Which becomes even more galling when the game tries to convince me what a cool and excellent guy he is.

SIGHS

Anyway. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time with P4G despite all my complaints. Persona 3 Portable Girl Route is just the better game.