I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RELOAD AND WHATNOT BUT I DIDN'T WANT TO PUT THEM IN THE VIDEO. IF YOU ARE CURIOUS AS TO WHY I USED RELOAD FOOTAGE INSTEAD OF ORIGINAL READ THIS BELOW MEOW MEOW (SPOILERS FOR P3R): So the original intention of the video was always geared towards talking about Persona 3 by itself, I've been working on this script for 2 years-ish, the remake wasn't even announced when I was writing this. Ultimately, I had been recording footage of the original and P3P versions of the game to make this video, but my hard drive died and with it all of that footage. I knew that I had to play the remake to make sure there wasn't something super relevant to bring up in the video, and that I needed to finish making this in February. I found myself needing to source footage of key moments from the original/FES versions on youtube and have the bulk of the b-roll be from P3R. Luckily Persona 3 Reload is really pretty (I don't know why my OBS makes everything pixel hell meow meow). Do I have thoughts on P3R? Yes, many, but they weren't really important enough to stop this video to really dig into them. Overall P3R works really well and most of my complaints are weird purism. Here they are: I think that the move from the kind of hazy, blurry aesthetic of the original, exemplified in the animated cutscenes, to the precise, detailed modern animation loses a lot of the murky ambiguities that help to really set you into the tone of the game. I think a lot of the main plot rewrites skew things in a weird way, it's gotten more literal and wordier in some places, and it upsets the energy in a bunch of small ways. I think the opening sequence is notably worse in the remake, I think Shinji's death doesn't hit quite as hard, I don't like that they kept Koromaru howling over Ken's scream, especially since his scream in the original is so gut wrenching and potent. I think how they've decided which parts of the social links needed rewrites and which didn't is weird. I like that there are friendship routes in all the potential romances, sure, but there's really nothing meaningfully lost in rewriting it so that, for example, your homeroom teacher developing a crush on you. That being said, I think overall my complaints are small potatoes. The game feels excellent, and its biggest triumph is in Tartarus. They had a terrible burden, because I think Tartarus should still kind of suck to go through, for thematic reasons stated in the video. And for them to have Tartarus feel this alien and creepy and the camera keeping you in it way more fully than the kind of pseudo isometric perspective from the original AND it is still a little bit of a drag as the game goes on? Perfection. There are moments in Tartarus where I just had to stop and take in the space. It's easily the best parts of it. Finally, I think that the moves to try and flesh out Strega a little more are kind of a neutral ground. I don't think it was necessary to try and make Takaya feel more directly like your dark reflection since his opposition is more interesting thematically than interpersonally, but the moves made weren't super egregious and culminated in the same places. I feel like I should have an opinion on them pushing an implied romantic relationship between Jin and Takaya but I just don't? I also like that they really Orpheus'd us with Shinji. So many things that were stacking up to imply that maaaaaybe this time in the remake they'd keep him alive, but they didn't, and it hit hard. My pettiest complaint is that it's a little arbitrary that they built all this press around it being a remake strictly of the original, when they just meant "we didn't include the female protagonist or The Answer" but included every other mechanical change FES and P3P implemented, down to, bizarrely, making a pseudo social link with Ryoji so close to the original that it really seems like Ryoji wants to pursue an intimate relationship with you. I'm all for it, but it's really funny how transparent it all felt. But they have walking Koromaru, they have the Aeon social link, they have the people wandering into Tartarus, it just feels a little nefarious that they'd make all that guff when they could've just broken the news more accurately. But that's probably just publicity stuff for you. Overall, my impressions are positive, I think it slaps, and my complaints are more for me and purists like me. Enjoy P3R you sick freaks.
Very heavy video, Vivian. But I suppose it's fitting considering the game in question. I can relate to the feeling you shared about seeming like a side character in your own life.
Oh boy am I glad that I stumbled upon this channel. I never thought that I would hear someone outside of myself put words that describe this feeling I've had all my life. I've had many attempts to end stuff in my younger years, until the big one happened and I had to stop after seeing the damage it did to me and everyone around me. Thankfully, I've gotten help over the years (therapy/genuine people) and have put effort to improve my life. However, 10 years after that big event and I still have this voice/feeling that I should've been gone way back, and I'm not worthy of this life, this story, it isn't mine... All that to say, thank you for being a brave soul, in putting something so vulnerable out there on the internet. Much love
thanks for this, this game has always been really special to me. i first played p3p at a hard time in my life, right before things got a lot worse and stayed that way for a while, and it took 10 years of *living through* the aftermath with very little control over anything to finally reach a point where the misery doesn't hang over every moment of every day. i hadn't thought to connect the way this game uses time to that experience, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to look at it that way after you pointed it out
Thank you so much for this, Vivian. You really put so much thought, love, genuine and real feeling into this and it shines through so brightly. This video really gave me a lot to think about. I think a lot about how I'd make the case that P3 does a better job at discussing systemic injustice than P5 did (save for the amazingly imperfect but nonetheless strong start with Kamoshida that just gets abandoned) but that's a topic for another day. ===CW: (Discussion of Self-Harm Below)=== - - - - The fact that Persona 3's plot isn't a natural occurrence--every challenge you're facing is ultimately the result of exploitative and unethical abuse and exploitation from wealthy people in positions of power. Researchers with no regard for others. The Kirijo group is responsible for pretty much everything that goes wrong in the game. Yes, death is an inevitability and a part of life, but the entire conflict, the source of so much of the trauma played out in the game's text comes back to the many forms of exploitation and lack of consideration for life by the Kirijo group. Yukari is consistently one of the most vocal agents toward this, especially having been a victim of the group herself. You open the game with the SEES crew spying on you, digging up information on you and your past without your consent, and they lie to you about your housing situation that they never elaborate on you, and withhold extremely significant information about the dark hour (like the fact that their group is responsible for it) which creates a situation that makes every agreement to join from a SEES member a form of manufactured consent. There's also everyone in the group being child soldiers. Strega complicates things even further, outright killing one of your party member, injuring another, killing several people and starting an actual death cult, on top of the unnamed people they murder and they are the result of further exploitation from the Kirijo group. It can be very easy to individualize a lot of our traumatic events but it's also important to remember that this doesn't happen out of nowhere. Even in Mitsuru genuinely trying to do right by setting the wrongs of those before her, she still is in many ways still as exploitative and unethical in how she recruits people and how she conducts operations. I kind of feel mixed about some of the new content options because they're great mechanically, but it also changes the dynamic with Mitsuru specifically in how she's well-meaning but still very distant and at times very unethical. The new content I feel can make her seem much closer and more open than I feel works for the broader story. The protagonist ultimately had to make the sacrifice they did not necessarily because of some natural fact of life and me being a young Black, disabled, queer person first playing this game that can simultaneously empower you and give you a blatant power fantasy yet also makes you powerless and entirely at the mercy and exploitation at the hands of the privileged who have effectively robbed everyone of their freedom and lives, making the many burdens they face almost entirely manufactured and avoidable ones, it really meant a lot. It all especially hits different playing this game in the context of a pandemic, especially with the institutional commentary in mind. This isn't something I want to share casually, but I have a million thoughts about Chidori's portrayal especially because I was self-harming a fair amount at the time I got into P3 and Chidori specifically and empathizing with her storyline was part of what helped me stop. I still have a lot of issues with how they portray her (god I hate the bathhouse scene as well as how this series treats anyone who dares be a woman/girl, a minor, fat, queer, etc and all the phobias tied to them) but Chidori means so much to me even if I feel parts of the story had its share of issues. I still find myself hanging off her talking about how she's not afraid of death and more specifically fears the idea of attachment. I struggle to think of any other boss fight where the boss is in a panic because they're terrified of death at having gotten attached to someone and having their perspective on life changed so much. On a brighter note: Reload also made Koromaru even better and now he's one of the most broken party members on top of it. The story could just be "will you fight for only Koromaru's future" and I would have gladly died for that dog without a second thought. Thank you again for putting so much care and thought into your work because the story you shared especially resonated strongly. It shines through how you can recognize the issues with something that was still genuinely so touching to you.
I want to thank you for sharing your personal emotions and experiences in this way. You've given me words to my own experiences that I lacked words for until now. I grew up with autism/ADHD and people and experiences that gave me profound feelings of wishing not to be me and a yearning to just cease to exist. This yearning to not exist is not directly tied to thoughts of ending myself, but rather a yearning to be engulfed in a void where I don't have to suffer anymore. My life has been materially good, but these feelings of resentment towards myself and idealization of others have been with me since as long as I can remember, my feelings always seeming overblown to what's happening according to others around me, yet to me deeply invested in a way where I cound not feel any other way. I still struggle with making friends/maintaining them and forge real intimate connections, I have no apparent purpose with my life and wonder why I'm here most of the time. And at the same time I'm growing faster than ever through my therapy, I'm figuring out my coping slowly but surely even if I still fail to do them, and I keep going even with these feelings eatining me from the inside. I don't know if they will get better or if I will have to live with them, so I do my best to recognize them when they come up and embrace my wish for oblivion. It is not a side of me I wish was there, but it is my companion none the less, and I want it to feel safe and welcome so we can make peace someday perhaps.
P3 is one of my favourite games ever and this is an unbelievably good video that expresses so many things about this game and this series that I love (and hate). got about 15 minutes into it and expected to look down and see at least a couple hundred thousand views based on how coherent and well argued and passionate it is. I truly hope this takes off like it deserves to, you did a fantastic job
I am very glad I watched this, I really appreciate you making this video. I resonated with the more personal parts of it. And I am thankful I could see another perspective on a life similar to mine. Feeling less alone in my own feelings and in what life can be to anyone. Thank you
I am compelled to compliment you on your other worldly ability to relate the depth's of your emotions so eloquently. I was not expecting to have this amount of emotions stirred up from a damn RUclips video but this game is definitely the perfect prism for thesse types of conversations. I can relate in my younger years of yearning to shed this mortal coil so to speak and i still struggle trying to not feel like a ghost of a man as it were at times. This game truly gives a hopeful perspective to me about life in the way of understanding that finding a way to live life is paramount. We exist yes but so many of us waste our time trying to do what we think we "should be doing" as oppose to just doing and then tally what makes us happy. I truly hope you find piece for yourself in whatever capacity that looks like for you. You truly touched me with your story. Ps. I really enjoy your videos and your specific style so keep up the great work.
I usually don't comment on videos ever; I mostly just have nothing to say to them. You videos make me want to comment, even if I don't have anything specific to say still. Maybe you pouring your soul and heart into these videos compels me to do some of the same. Maybe I'm not used to seeing art on a platform overrun with content, and having something to say is a normal thing. You talk about *your* experiences in life and how the games you play affect you, and that is worth so much more than a generalised "review" or whatever it is you do could be categorised as. I relate to what you are saying. I don't relate to what you are saying. I know I am whatever I am now, and that I'm not normal; I've known that since I was ~14. I'm grateful I knew -- I was set up to have crashed and burned, loathed and despised myself just for existing otherwise. But I knew. And I loved myself. Yet your words still ring familiar -- maybe my brain's just fucked up in similar ways. Your videos make me think and reflect and feel things. RUclips was made for this -- art -- and if it wasn't it should have been! Much love for all that you do
I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT RELOAD AND WHATNOT BUT I DIDN'T WANT TO PUT THEM IN THE VIDEO. IF YOU ARE CURIOUS AS TO WHY I USED RELOAD FOOTAGE INSTEAD OF ORIGINAL READ THIS BELOW MEOW MEOW (SPOILERS FOR P3R):
So the original intention of the video was always geared towards talking about Persona 3 by itself, I've been working on this script for 2 years-ish, the remake wasn't even announced when I was writing this. Ultimately, I had been recording footage of the original and P3P versions of the game to make this video, but my hard drive died and with it all of that footage. I knew that I had to play the remake to make sure there wasn't something super relevant to bring up in the video, and that I needed to finish making this in February. I found myself needing to source footage of key moments from the original/FES versions on youtube and have the bulk of the b-roll be from P3R. Luckily Persona 3 Reload is really pretty (I don't know why my OBS makes everything pixel hell meow meow).
Do I have thoughts on P3R? Yes, many, but they weren't really important enough to stop this video to really dig into them. Overall P3R works really well and most of my complaints are weird purism. Here they are:
I think that the move from the kind of hazy, blurry aesthetic of the original, exemplified in the animated cutscenes, to the precise, detailed modern animation loses a lot of the murky ambiguities that help to really set you into the tone of the game. I think a lot of the main plot rewrites skew things in a weird way, it's gotten more literal and wordier in some places, and it upsets the energy in a bunch of small ways. I think the opening sequence is notably worse in the remake, I think Shinji's death doesn't hit quite as hard, I don't like that they kept Koromaru howling over Ken's scream, especially since his scream in the original is so gut wrenching and potent. I think how they've decided which parts of the social links needed rewrites and which didn't is weird. I like that there are friendship routes in all the potential romances, sure, but there's really nothing meaningfully lost in rewriting it so that, for example, your homeroom teacher developing a crush on you.
That being said, I think overall my complaints are small potatoes. The game feels excellent, and its biggest triumph is in Tartarus. They had a terrible burden, because I think Tartarus should still kind of suck to go through, for thematic reasons stated in the video. And for them to have Tartarus feel this alien and creepy and the camera keeping you in it way more fully than the kind of pseudo isometric perspective from the original AND it is still a little bit of a drag as the game goes on? Perfection. There are moments in Tartarus where I just had to stop and take in the space. It's easily the best parts of it.
Finally, I think that the moves to try and flesh out Strega a little more are kind of a neutral ground. I don't think it was necessary to try and make Takaya feel more directly like your dark reflection since his opposition is more interesting thematically than interpersonally, but the moves made weren't super egregious and culminated in the same places. I feel like I should have an opinion on them pushing an implied romantic relationship between Jin and Takaya but I just don't? I also like that they really Orpheus'd us with Shinji. So many things that were stacking up to imply that maaaaaybe this time in the remake they'd keep him alive, but they didn't, and it hit hard.
My pettiest complaint is that it's a little arbitrary that they built all this press around it being a remake strictly of the original, when they just meant "we didn't include the female protagonist or The Answer" but included every other mechanical change FES and P3P implemented, down to, bizarrely, making a pseudo social link with Ryoji so close to the original that it really seems like Ryoji wants to pursue an intimate relationship with you. I'm all for it, but it's really funny how transparent it all felt. But they have walking Koromaru, they have the Aeon social link, they have the people wandering into Tartarus, it just feels a little nefarious that they'd make all that guff when they could've just broken the news more accurately. But that's probably just publicity stuff for you.
Overall, my impressions are positive, I think it slaps, and my complaints are more for me and purists like me. Enjoy P3R you sick freaks.
Very heavy video, Vivian. But I suppose it's fitting considering the game in question. I can relate to the feeling you shared about seeming like a side character in your own life.
Oh boy am I glad that I stumbled upon this channel.
I never thought that I would hear someone outside of myself put words that describe this feeling I've had all my life.
I've had many attempts to end stuff in my younger years, until the big one happened and I had to stop after seeing the damage it did to me and everyone around me.
Thankfully, I've gotten help over the years (therapy/genuine people) and have put effort to improve my life.
However, 10 years after that big event and I still have this voice/feeling that I should've been gone way back, and I'm not worthy of this life, this story, it isn't mine...
All that to say, thank you for being a brave soul, in putting something so vulnerable out there on the internet.
Much love
The time to be is always now. It feels good to try and fail and make mistakes while being relentlessly me.
thanks for this, this game has always been really special to me. i first played p3p at a hard time in my life, right before things got a lot worse and stayed that way for a while, and it took 10 years of *living through* the aftermath with very little control over anything to finally reach a point where the misery doesn't hang over every moment of every day. i hadn't thought to connect the way this game uses time to that experience, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to look at it that way after you pointed it out
Thank you so much for this, Vivian. You really put so much thought, love, genuine and real feeling into this and it shines through so brightly. This video really gave me a lot to think about. I think a lot about how I'd make the case that P3 does a better job at discussing systemic injustice than P5 did (save for the amazingly imperfect but nonetheless strong start with Kamoshida that just gets abandoned) but that's a topic for another day. ===CW: (Discussion of Self-Harm Below)===
-
-
-
-
The fact that Persona 3's plot isn't a natural occurrence--every challenge you're facing is ultimately the result of exploitative and unethical abuse and exploitation from wealthy people in positions of power. Researchers with no regard for others. The Kirijo group is responsible for pretty much everything that goes wrong in the game. Yes, death is an inevitability and a part of life, but the entire conflict, the source of so much of the trauma played out in the game's text comes back to the many forms of exploitation and lack of consideration for life by the Kirijo group.
Yukari is consistently one of the most vocal agents toward this, especially having been a victim of the group herself. You open the game with the SEES crew spying on you, digging up information on you and your past without your consent, and they lie to you about your housing situation that they never elaborate on you, and withhold extremely significant information about the dark hour (like the fact that their group is responsible for it) which creates a situation that makes every agreement to join from a SEES member a form of manufactured consent. There's also everyone in the group being child soldiers.
Strega complicates things even further, outright killing one of your party member, injuring another, killing several people and starting an actual death cult, on top of the unnamed people they murder and they are the result of further exploitation from the Kirijo group.
It can be very easy to individualize a lot of our traumatic events but it's also important to remember that this doesn't happen out of nowhere. Even in Mitsuru genuinely trying to do right by setting the wrongs of those before her, she still is in many ways still as exploitative and unethical in how she recruits people and how she conducts operations. I kind of feel mixed about some of the new content options because they're great mechanically, but it also changes the dynamic with Mitsuru specifically in how she's well-meaning but still very distant and at times very unethical. The new content I feel can make her seem much closer and more open than I feel works for the broader story.
The protagonist ultimately had to make the sacrifice they did not necessarily because of some natural fact of life and me being a young Black, disabled, queer person first playing this game that can simultaneously empower you and give you a blatant power fantasy yet also makes you powerless and entirely at the mercy and exploitation at the hands of the privileged who have effectively robbed everyone of their freedom and lives, making the many burdens they face almost entirely manufactured and avoidable ones, it really meant a lot. It all especially hits different playing this game in the context of a pandemic, especially with the institutional commentary in mind.
This isn't something I want to share casually, but I have a million thoughts about Chidori's portrayal especially because I was self-harming a fair amount at the time I got into P3 and Chidori specifically and empathizing with her storyline was part of what helped me stop. I still have a lot of issues with how they portray her (god I hate the bathhouse scene as well as how this series treats anyone who dares be a woman/girl, a minor, fat, queer, etc and all the phobias tied to them) but Chidori means so much to me even if I feel parts of the story had its share of issues.
I still find myself hanging off her talking about how she's not afraid of death and more specifically fears the idea of attachment. I struggle to think of any other boss fight where the boss is in a panic because they're terrified of death at having gotten attached to someone and having their perspective on life changed so much.
On a brighter note: Reload also made Koromaru even better and now he's one of the most broken party members on top of it. The story could just be "will you fight for only Koromaru's future" and I would have gladly died for that dog without a second thought.
Thank you again for putting so much care and thought into your work because the story you shared especially resonated strongly. It shines through how you can recognize the issues with something that was still genuinely so touching to you.
this video hit me hard. it made me realize things about myself that id buried deep. thank you so much for this. thank you.
I want to thank you for sharing your personal emotions and experiences in this way. You've given me words to my own experiences that I lacked words for until now. I grew up with autism/ADHD and people and experiences that gave me profound feelings of wishing not to be me and a yearning to just cease to exist. This yearning to not exist is not directly tied to thoughts of ending myself, but rather a yearning to be engulfed in a void where I don't have to suffer anymore. My life has been materially good, but these feelings of resentment towards myself and idealization of others have been with me since as long as I can remember, my feelings always seeming overblown to what's happening according to others around me, yet to me deeply invested in a way where I cound not feel any other way. I still struggle with making friends/maintaining them and forge real intimate connections,
I have no apparent purpose with my life and wonder why I'm here most of the time. And at the same time I'm growing faster than ever through my therapy, I'm figuring out my coping slowly but surely even if I still fail to do them, and I keep going even with these feelings eatining me from the inside. I don't know if they will get better or if I will have to live with them, so I do my best to recognize them when they come up and embrace my wish for oblivion. It is not a side of me I wish was there, but it is my companion none the less, and I want it to feel safe and welcome so we can make peace someday perhaps.
Great video! You always manage to beautifully convey how these games (or music, etc) speak to you.
P3 is one of my favourite games ever and this is an unbelievably good video that expresses so many things about this game and this series that I love (and hate). got about 15 minutes into it and expected to look down and see at least a couple hundred thousand views based on how coherent and well argued and passionate it is. I truly hope this takes off like it deserves to, you did a fantastic job
I am very glad I watched this, I really appreciate you making this video. I resonated with the more personal parts of it. And I am thankful I could see another perspective on a life similar to mine. Feeling less alone in my own feelings and in what life can be to anyone. Thank you
I related to and resonated with so much of this that I was choked up by the end. Thank you for sharing your story.
I am compelled to compliment you on your other worldly ability to relate the depth's of your emotions so eloquently. I was not expecting to have this amount of emotions stirred up from a damn RUclips video but this game is definitely the perfect prism for thesse types of conversations. I can relate in my younger years of yearning to shed this mortal coil so to speak and i still struggle trying to not feel like a ghost of a man as it were at times. This game truly gives a hopeful perspective to me about life in the way of understanding that finding a way to live life is paramount. We exist yes but so many of us waste our time trying to do what we think we "should be doing" as oppose to just doing and then tally what makes us happy. I truly hope you find piece for yourself in whatever capacity that looks like for you. You truly touched me with your story.
Ps. I really enjoy your videos and your specific style so keep up the great work.
I usually don't comment on videos ever; I mostly just have nothing to say to them.
You videos make me want to comment, even if I don't have anything specific to say still. Maybe you pouring your soul and heart into these videos compels me to do some of the same. Maybe I'm not used to seeing art on a platform overrun with content, and having something to say is a normal thing. You talk about *your* experiences in life and how the games you play affect you, and that is worth so much more than a generalised "review" or whatever it is you do could be categorised as. I relate to what you are saying. I don't relate to what you are saying. I know I am whatever I am now, and that I'm not normal; I've known that since I was ~14. I'm grateful I knew -- I was set up to have crashed and burned, loathed and despised myself just for existing otherwise. But I knew. And I loved myself. Yet your words still ring familiar -- maybe my brain's just fucked up in similar ways. Your videos make me think and reflect and feel things. RUclips was made for this -- art -- and if it wasn't it should have been! Much love for all that you do
This is an excellent video, I think your best yet, which is a hard bar to pass.
is not about death, is about accepting it
Thank you.
Good video
Does the warning for child abuse cover CSA? Thanks
I do not bring up CSA in this video