Persona 5 Royal: the first 10 minutes

[khedron]

Here's the first 10 minutes of Persona 5 Royal. No spoilers here, it's literally the beginning of the game. Very, very in media res here - you start in the middle of some heist, with unknown people talking at you, and magical monsters, and a mix of anime cut-scenes and real gameplay (without all the various gameplay options, it's on rails).

Watch on YouTube

Commentary in the comments.

Comments

[khedron]

So, there's a lot of weird stuff going on here. But, maybe it's just me, I didn't realize how weird it was until I was quite a ways into the game. Specifically (https://rot13.com/):

Vg gbbx zr n ernyyl ybat gvzr gb jbaqre, ubj jnf vg gung gur znva punenpgre jnf va uvf "Wbxre" trghc jvgu zntvp cbjref, svtugvat zbafgref, jvgu n gba bs abezny crbcyr va gur pnfvab? Ubj qvq gur Zrgnirefr-crefbanyvgl trg neerfgrq ol gur erny jbeyq cbyvpr?

It turns out there are answers to these questions, and the game goes out of its way to answer them, but it's something that I didn't even know was wrong at first.

[khedron]

The framing for the main portion of the game is interesting, perhaps unique in the games I've played. The current time follows the events of the video here - you've been arrested, and you're being held in police lockup. Some detectives rough you up, and inject you with some kind of drugs - truth serum, perhaps? You're not completely coherent. Then a Special Investigations Unit prosecutor gets you away from them for a one-on-one interrogation. It turns out you know her, and she's been following you while hunting your alternate identity for months. She asks you to explain what the hell is happening, and start at the beginning of the story. From then on it's flashbacks to the previous April when you've moved to a new town for [reasons], and that's where the all the gameplay and plot happens, and then key events (chapter markers and key character introductions) pull you forward into the story frame so she can comment on them.

I'm kind of a fan of an in media res intro to start with, and this certainly hooked me. I always knew I was getting somewhere when the entire screen would freeze, and then stutter a few frames like a film strip, and then the calendar would flip forward from the current day into December and the interrogation room again.