Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Persona 5 Royal ahead. Proceed at your own risk.
Summary
Persona 6’s narrative will have much to live up to whenever it gets released. One of the primary reasons audiences have been able to latch onto the games is their varied vast of fun and interesting characters, namely ones in the main cast with some side characters gaining some notoriety.
This is arguably the truest withPersona 5 Royalsince, despite its inconsistent villain quality, it has arguably the most popular set of characters in the entire series.Persona 6will no doubt include many new features and improvements that add to what made its predecessors great, but there is one thing that it should take from the previous mainline game.
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Persona 6 Should Have a Complex and Sympathetic Villain
Having outwardly evil antagonists whose interests begin and end for their gain in a game is always fun to thwart, and many ofPersona 5 Royal’s best villainsfit into this perfectly. Individuals like Kamoshida or Shido have practically no redeeming qualities as people, making it all the more satisfying to take them down several notches and have them lose all of their power, but not all the game’s villains fit this mold.
The most notable and powerful example of this isTakuto Maruki, a therapist introduced early inPersona 5 Royalwhose kind demeanor and genuine care for his patients make him a comforting presence to be around. When it is eventually revealed that he is seeking to use his Persona’s power to change reality to suit everyone’s deepest wishes, the game goes out of its way to show that he is not doing this for some nefarious intent. Rather, he wants to ensure that nobody ever has to go through anything like the horrific incident that split him and his fiancee up.
Maruki works asPersona 5 Royal’s third-semester antagonistbecause although the most powerful foe the Phantom Thieves face, he is always shown to be someone grieving the loss of his relationship due to circumstances outside his and his fiancee’s control. The other characters recognize this as such while openly disagreeing with his methods and have to come to terms with how their pain made them the people they are despite wishing for things to have gone better.
What makes Maruki so refreshing as a villain is that his pain is real, and his Persona Azathoth is preventing him from dealing with it in any healthy way. It would have been easy for his development earlier in the game to have been undermined with this reveal, but despite his shift in roles by the third semester, his characterization as a kind soul who genuinely wishes for the happiness of everyone remains core to his being.
Whatever themePersona 6attempts to tackle, Atlus would miss out on not exploring another complex antagonist whose heart is genuinely in the right place even if they have gone severely astray.Persona 5 Royalis known for its memorable characters that players have grown attached to, with its antagonists ultimately being its most inconsistent quality. In a game where Kamoshida can be memorable as a monstrous individual that constantly abuses his power as a high-school coach, there is also Kaneshiro, whose shallow characterization makes him completely forgettable. It would be a shame ifPersona 6kept this inconsistency.
It would be interesting ifPersona 6’s story gives every character valid reasons for choosing their alignment, with one potentially being deeply blinded to their ideology’s fatal flaws. The game’s antagonists could go in any direction, but ifPersona 6is going to be a big changefor the series, one thing that it should carry over from the previous game is a character as well-realized and written as Maruki.
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