Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Peer review/Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Opening comments

Having worked on this article for almost a month now, I feel it's ready to be looked at by the community. What I think needs to be examined most closely are the plot summaries of both the original game and the plot of FES. I know they have a number of issues. To people who haven't played the game, I need to know if the story makes sense. And to people who have, I need to know if I've gone in detail enough. Considering other RPG articles reach five paragraphs of summary, two sure isn't a lot. What I found is that, in the first few months, the game is leading up to the reveal of where Shadows came from, the experiments, the twelve Shadows, Nyx, and how all that intertwines. Thus, there is a large chunk of narrative I can just skip on explaining. This includes most of the full moon missions, as well as the development of characters. It's not necessarily important to understanding the story. But, in skipping over the development of individual characters, I skipped over the development of Aigis's character. She's integral to the plot in a few ways, but would an explanation of how her personality changes be something worth including? It's hard to discuss the end scene on the roof, when Aigis is thanking the Protagonist for giving her a cause in life, because there's no context given about how she used to be. Her decision to "live" also relates to the plot of The Answer, which is covered farther down in the page. I'm going to work on trimming down the length of some script sources. In some cases, I felt the amount of context given was important, but in other cases, I'm seeing where I can cut out lines of dialogue and the reference still be appropriate. Citing parts of the plot were tricky (and some parts still aren't), in part because not everything can be explained by citing the script, and in part because no character references the Protagonist by name (this problem is even worse in The Answer). At the same time, I'm curious to know how articles like Final Fantasy X get away with having so few references in such a long plot summary. (Wikipedia:When to cite cleared some of that up for me) Also, there are parts of the story that ask you to put the pieces together yourself, and stuff like that I can't bring up (ie the relationship between Pharos and Ryoji). Do point out if there are Original Research-ey bits in the plot summary. ...I didn't mean for this to be an essay, but I want this article to be good, so thanks in advance for the comments. --gakon5 (talk) 01:43, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Expand the above box to read my overly-long essay. My current concerns are:

• If the plot makes sense, or if it's missing any details
• If the whole article is getting too long

But, of course, I'd love advice on how to improve any aspect of this article. Thanks. --gakon5 (talk) 23:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• "Most people are enclosed inside coffins" - This seems a little strange, especially since coffins aren't mentiond for the rest of the article. I assumed the company makes them sleep in coffins for some reason, but readers might think they're vampires or something.

• According to the game, people who are not aware of the Dark Hour transmogrify into coffins, and are more or less unconscious. The people who don't are the ones who get devoured by Shadows, if they have no Persona to protect them. The traits of the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus have nothing to do with the Kirijo Group, the company that carried out the Shadow experiments. I'll clarify that. --gakon5 (talk)

• Clarified that people literally transform into coffins. At some point a character makes reference to people "sleeping" "inside" their coffins, although the manual, and most other parts of the game, reference the process of transformation. So that's what it is. --gakon5 (talk)

• The last sentence about the roof sounds like an interesting end to the story, but it's a little too short and vague to understand. Did they promise each other to meet on the roof before they lost their memories, so that on graduation day it would come back to them? It might be worth including some information about Aigis, because that last sentence leaves more questions than it answers.

• That's exactly what it is. Two problems, though: (1) When they're discussing where to meet, they don't actually come to a conclusion on where to do so. (2) This reunion scene on the roof is not played out; the game ends with you and Aigis on the roof, waiting for the others. A little hard to reference with just the script, but we'll see. --gakon5 (talk)

I've expanded on the ending, and especially Aigis's resolution to protect the Protagonist, giving her a purpose in life. As a plot element, it brings the development of her character full circle (if that's even the right term to use), and it sets up part of the plot of The Answer. --gakon5 (talk)

• About the major arcana wikilink: are the 12 shadows represented by actual tarot cards in the game, or some version of whats depicted on them? Maybe explain this further with "Major Arcanum Tarot Cards" or "Major Arcanum Symbols".

• Shadows are just monsters, but they are categorized into one of 13 arcana (Magician through Death) in-game. These classifications have little bearing on the gameplay, but whenever you scan an enemy, you can see its arcanum. I'll see what I can do. --gakon5 (talk)

• I wrote that each of the greater Shadows are affiliated with one of the Major Arcana. Does that sound less ambiguous? --gakon5 (talk)

• "use the power of his Social Links to seal away Nyx from the world". Based on how Social Links are described in the gameplay section, I'm assuming he uses his friends to help defeat Nyx. Mabye describe this without the term "Social Links", since it's not explained what that term means until the next section.

• What happens is, you're brought to the Velvet Room, and you hear the voices of your Social Link friends encouraging you, which creates a special Persona card (your Personas are represented as cards in the game). This card allows the Protagonist to seal Nyx, during a scripted combat sequence. I'll expand on that. --gakon5 (talk)

• I described this scene in the Velvet Room, how the player hears the voices of his friends, and how it grants the Protag. his power. --gakon5 (talk)

Overall, the whole story did make sense to me on the first read through. Those were just a handful of things that confused me. Sebquantic (talk) 16:32, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem with describing the plot of this game is that sometimes everyone is very vague and mystical about everything. I think I will expand the story, and go into how SEES first meets Aigis, her unexplainable attraction to the Protagonist, and when you learn why she feels the need to protect him. Also, her resolution at the end of the story, which ties into the plot of The Answer. I might also get into a description of the Velvet Room, and Igor's encouragement of the Protagonist to form Social Links, because they are key to how the game ends.

Thanks a lot for the comments. --gakon5 (talk) 20:38, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Somehow, I expanded the plot summary to five paragraphs. It now covers the joining of new SEES members, more of Aigis's history and character development, and some of the issues brought up. There are still things I skipped over, but everything needed to understand the plot is there, and then some.

With this update, the article is now longer. We're sitting at a solid 72kb right now. Part of the reason it's that size is because some of the citations are pretty long, though. I'm positive that's as long as this article will get, although I'd like to add another paragraph to Reception, to cover the game's graphics and the reviewer response to the Evokers. To my knowledge, this game didn't generate much controversy over it, so there isn't a lot on that front. This ain't no GTA. --gakon5 (talk) 23:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I does seem like a lot a first glace, but I've noticed the FA articles about games with complex stories have comparatively long synopsis sections, so you're probably good there. According to the prosesize tool the whole article is only 27 kB (4698 words) of actual prose. I know what you mean about vague plot explanations. Anarchy Online's synop could easily be three paragraphs longer describing what happened on Earth, but that stuff's connection to the actual game is vague at best, and wouldn't help explain what's going on.

The sentence about the major arcana does make sense, it just takes a little bit of processing. At first glance (if you've never heard of the Major Arcana before), they sound like another gameplay element or story character. The wikilink explains that they're tarot cards with images on them; so only after reading that did I understand that the shadows must be affiliated with those cards or the images on them, and not something in the game called a "Major Arcana". Sebquantic (talk) 04:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I suspected this article was not overly-long in terms of prose; thanks for pointing out that length. This series pretty much has its roots in occult concepts (including Tarot), so I suppose if you were unfamiliar with it, it would confuse you. Although the player's Personas are represented as cards, the Major Arcana are used more as a concept to categorize things. Every enemy and Persona is one of the Arcanum, as is every Social Link. --gakon5 (talk) 22:51, 4 September 2009 (UTC)