this is the type of competently written dialog that is forever gone from the persona series. the dialog in the images you are about to see are from persona 1 and 2, original psx, and while by no menas is this shit high art, or hell, even basic literary; they are however full of wonderful and seemingly EFFORTLESS characterization of every single character you meet in the game and of course that includes the main casts most of all. Everyone in persona 1 and persona 2 is simultaneously nice, comedic, cryptic, mysterious, and forever straddling the line between "serious business story" and "satire? no... is it parody? i don't know. tongue-in-cheek it's not, however". that is a fine line but they managed it!
from persona 1:
just your average comment from the school's student president being interrogated on suspicion of demonic activity by our intrepid heroes.
from persona 2:
your run-of-the-mill high school principal harassing our fearless silent protanist. notice how not only is there usage of very mild profanity but how this simple dialog from hannya shows he might be a royal dick but he also has a sense of humor. except he's a total dick.
from persona 1:
...ok, these two images are loaded. on the left Alana is complaining about having to go see the school doctor after the demon outbreak in the beginning of the game leads to the school forcing its students to receive medical examinations to see how they are holding up and if they are being affected. Alana is a sexualized stereotype of a character but she has probably the absolutely funniest lines in the entire game simply because she DGAF and she's dumb as a brick. it's perfect!
in fact, Alana's contract-negotiations with demons are almost exclusively comprised of alana saying mildly alarmingly stuff like promising zombies that she likes to rub night-cream on her chest before going to bed if answering a question about herself from the demon. she also mentions how she always forgets to wear underwear. sure, it's absolutely and completely juvenile but it's all in the EXECUTION, and throughout the story Alana does receive a character arc where she ends up much wiser person. plus it's never down to a level of "fan service". she is just being herself. again, CHARACTERIZATION.
...ok, now to the right-side picture. That's... actually i completely forgot her name. Anyway, after the demonic outbreak and subsequent rampage and domination of the persona 1 heroe's town by these things the place has gone into complete lockdown with the national guard on the streets, families huddles inside their homes in sheer terror of the things bumping outside in the night and in that picture she has finally made her way back the High School after having gotten seperated and the students have posted guards on the school gates and demand a password as proof of both humanity and also to be given access to the school itself.
first, the good: everything I just described sounds really fucking cool doesn't it? yes, yes it does. it's like... oh my god, it's like THE GAME'S STORY IS ACTUALLY COHERENT AND COMPETENTLY MADE!!!!! Imagine that... right? Now, to be fair, everything I just described is also a complete rip-off of the shin megami tensei games... they do the same thing. example: go play Nocturne on PS2.
the bad: LOOK AT THAT MOTHERFUCKING RACIST AS FUCK POEM THE JAPANESE WRITERS CAME UP WITH!!!!!!!!!
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLOLOL
and you know of COURSE that it was censored and removed in the psp remake.
to finish this, below you will see persona 1's Mark arguing with Brad about the danger of playing an occult game like "Persona", while Brad tries to bully mark into playing. The character of Mark is steadfast friend and protector but with a heart of gold, etc, and the character of Brad is the insecure narcissist with ego-problems and a burgeoning desire to control and manipulate people. Yes, both of them accomplish the fulfillment of such character traits in a mildly juvenile manner because they are, of course, juvenile high school students.
mark challenges brad and blatantly insults him. I wish you to know that this dialog was censored/edited int he psp remake. He does not exhibit any sort of human-like character in the remake and instead speaks only in generic placeholder dialog that is only there to hammer home to the psp player every "important" plot point because while at the same being completely neutered so as not to offend, in even the smallest way possible such as censoring the motherfucking word 'stupid'.
below, brad responds. Brad is an emotoinally stunted teenager who lashes out and is highly narcissistic. on the left is his ps1 response to mark, and on the right the PSP response. I will leave it to you to decide which is more I N T E R E S T I N G. no, not which is more literary, and no, not which has better grammar: but rather which of two serves the caracter better?
for those who have played persona 1 they know that mark is incredibly sensitive about people thinking he is not intelligent because he continually flunks classes. Mark's usage of the word 'stupid' was 100% intentional. And sadly all of this subtext is completely absent in the remake. Also, i'd like to point out the psp remake's need to label brad, LITERALLY label him as "Smug Student", as if they themselves have so little faith in their script that they do not feel confident that their dialog by itself will be able to convey proper characterization, and thus they decided to label each character so that the poor, poor person playing the psp remake doens't have to wonder about the mystery of any of these character for even one second as it is all laid out already. BADLY.
