Persona 5 opens in media res: our hero and playable character, Joker1 attempting to escape a glitzy casino. Joker appears to be some sort of flamboyant master thief, and the pursuing guards appear to be monsters in human suits.
As Joker ducks more guards and works his way through the casino, he walks straight into an ambush. Guards swarm around him, only for a young woman with no pants to walk in. She takes out the guards in acrobatic fashion, before mentioning that:
1) She and Joker have fought side-by-side before, but
2) She isn't a member of the Phantom Thieves (who?)
3) She wants Joker to keep the "promise" he made to her
This entire scene is only in Royal, and I liked it as someone who played the original release of Persona 5 and was curious at what curveballs the enhanced edition had for me.
Turns out her save was pointless though. Joker goes outside and immediately gets ambushed by more guards, beaten down and captured. Cops haul Joker away, and one whispers in his ear that a teammate sold him out.
I don't know what's going on here but there sure are a lot of flashing lights! It makes me want to spend an irresponsible amount of money.
This is a fast-paced sequence that throws huge amounts of both information and stimuli at the player. The game is writing a mountain of checks it will pay off later: promises to learn who the Phantom Thieves are, what they were doing, why they were robbing this casino, why the guards turned into monsters, who was that girl and why did she save Joker, and who betrayed Joker and why.
This cold open always felt like a response to Persona 4's (rightfully) criticized slow start. It's hours before the first real dungeon in Persona 4, and Persona 5 takes almost as much time to set the table. Giving us a fast-paced escape sequence followed by our protagonist being thrown in prison gives us a taste of the high-stakes story to come.
While imprisoned, Joker is drugged, beaten, and forced to sign a confession to his crimes by a dead-eyed cop. There's a video camera, but the cop laughs off the notion he'll face consequences for viciously beating a teenager. He even tells Joker "don't expect to walk out of this in one piece".
This scene is nasty, in a good way. The dingy claustrophobic room really sells a desperate situation, as Joker is robbed of all his agency and power2. The audience doesn't need to know what's going on to sympathize.
Of all the times to get an awkward teen boner, this would be the most awkward.
A prosecutor, Sae, comes to interrogate Joker against the protests of her superiors. She's suspicious, perceptive, and aloof, although even she's disgusted at how the police treated a minor. She offers Joker the best deal he's going to get: cooperate by answering her questions and she'll shield him. Joker is a silent protagonist, but he seems to agree. A butterfly appears in some sort of vision, telling Joker that the "game" is rigged against him, and that this will be his last chance to avoid "ruin". Let's throw a few more unanswered questions on the pile.
Nitpicks aside, I think this opening is highly effective. We seamlessly move between tones (fast-paced triumph in the colorful casino to uncomfortable brutality in a dimly lit underground room), establish some key players, give the audience plenty of things to chew on for later, and provide the next 75 hours of play with a framing device: most of the game will be Joker recounting to Sae the events that led to his capture.Â
The Actual Opening
We flash back to Joker's arrival in Tokyo a half-year earlier. He's moving from his small hometown to Tokyo for "rehabilitation", because he's a convicted criminal who was expelled from his high school. A Tokyo school called Shujin Academy accepted him instead, but if Joker messes up again, no other school will take him 3.
A family friend has agreed to be Joker's caretaker: Sojiro Sakura, who owns a hole-in-the-wall cafe called LeBlanc4. Sojiro treats Joker like he's slightly better than dirt, and has him sleep in the filthy attic above LeBlanc.Â
It's not complicated, but watching Sojiro go from treating Joker like trash to the close, father/son bond they have by endgame is always heartwarming.
In fact, every single adult mistrusts Joker. Anything less than total submissiveness is met with verbal abuse and warnings. This section doesn't last long, but it's really, really effective at communicating Joker's plight: everyone he meets already thinks he's scum.
It gets worse when we learn the details of his crime: Joker saw a drunken man trying to force himself on a woman. He went to help the woman, the man tripped and fell 5 and then claimed Joker assaulted him. More unanswered questions: why did the police and courts side so readily with the man? Why didn't the woman speak up on Joker's behalf? For now, it seems that it happened because Joker is a teenager and the man was an adult- and this is a world where adults have all the power.
It's really frustrating, in a good way. You want to take hold of Sojiro and the other adults, shake them and scream "THIS GUY DID NOTHING WRONG" - but why would they believe a convicted criminal's version of events? We understand Sojiro's prejudice all-too-well, but we still feel for Joker.
Joker also starts to have weird hallucinations of time freezing. This eventually leads to him being sucked into the Velvet Room.
I love the Velvet Room. The deep blue color, mystical operatic theme song and lovably alien inhabitants make visits feel like an ethereal respite.
The Velvet Room is a recurring location in the Persona series, and is the main throughline between games. It's a bit different each time, but some aspects always recur:
It's a place "between mind and matter". That means it's neither in the real world nor the Metaverse. Time doesn't seem to pass inside, or at an unusual rate.
The protagonist can access the Velvet Room through doors only they can see. These doors appear both in the real world and the Metaverse.
The actual appearance reflects the game's motifs. In Persona 3 it was an elevator at the base of the enormous tower you spend the game climbing, while in Persona 4 it was a limo moving through the same impenetrable fog you spend the game investigating. In Persona 5, it's a prison.
It serves as a sort of mission control for the protagonist to create new Personas, the main method of growing stronger. In gameplay terms, it's where fusion (the process of creating a new Persona from two existing ones) is done, along with many other related activities.
The Velvet Room is overseen by Igor, who frames himself as the warden in charge of Joker's "rehabilitation". He's also the one who put the Metaverse app on Joker's phone.
He's a weird character: his design screams villain with his bulging eyes and comically long nose, but he's a benevolent sort of deity who helps the protagonist through advice and indirect assistance. In Persona 5, Igor is a bit darker and more mysterious than his previous appearances.
Emotionless Justine on the left, hot-headed Caroline on the right. Still no clue what the letters on their hats mean.
Igor always has at least one attendant. They appear human at first glance but aren't: they always have white hair, yellow eyes, blue outfits and a ethereal personality. They seem to be both immensely wise and curiously naive, especially when it comes to humans. They're loyal to Igor and refer to him as their boss or master. They always form a stronger bond with the protagonist than Igor does.
Persona 5's Velvet Room attendants are twins named Justine and Caroline. Justine is unsettlingly aloof, almost robotic. Caroline is violent, aggressive, easily angered and demanding. They're a lot meaner to Joker than past Velvet Room attendants were to their "guests".
Next week we’ll get into the actual inciting incident of the game, and the first Palace.
The character has a lot of names, and the player can even name him later- but Joker is what he's called in Smash Bros, so that's what most people know him as.
