Persona is one of those series that goes dormant for years at a time, only to suddenly reappear and drive everybody absolutely insane. Atlus has always been tight-lipped about each series entry before release, only teasing fans with confusing trailers and short snippets of gameplay. The studio is continuing that tradition, as it just released the first major trailer for Persona 5.
Fans still know next to nothing about the game: basically, all gamers know is that Persona 5 is coming to the PlayStation 3 and 4 sometime in 2015, and the main character wears glasses. Even after watching the new trailer, there are still plenty of unanswered questions...if anything, there are more questions than ever.
First and foremost, it seems as if Atlus has revealed that the new main character isn't just an ordinary high-school student. The first section of the trailer is entirely dedicated to showing the main character - in his new thief getup - getting caught by the police, presumably following some sort of theft or infiltration. There's no other real context - will heists be a part of the game, or is all of the thieving and sneaking merely backstory?
From here, fans get their first real glimpse at the other two main characters (and their cat). There's a lot of high-energy acrobatics on display, and it appears as if everyone is wearing costumes akin to old-school Japanese superheroes. Judging from the brief glimpses of gameplay, it looks like these costumes will have an impact on the game's turn-based combat as well, though what exactly that impact could be is still unknown. Could these be the manifestations of the series' iconic Personas themselves, or is it just a part of the game's new style? There's no way of knowing, but it's easy to assume the former - after all, the Personas always seem to take on new forms for each new game in the series.
The Persona series is typically split into two major gameplay categories: school days and nighttime. School days are for forging relationships, building stats and are generally the more relaxed sections of the game. Nighttime is dedicated almost entirely to combat, and both have received a major upgrade. The 'normal' world may not have changed that much from a gameplay perspective, but even in the short glimpses here, it feels more interactive and cinematic. Camera angles are more interesting, and the world feels more vibrant as a whole.
It's not the longest of teasers, but the Persona 5 debut trailer is full of new info. Of course, at the same time, it's full of unanswered questions: what are those costumes? What's up with the main character? Why is there a transforming cat?
The worst part is, there's no way of knowing when players will get those answers: Persona 5 has no specific release date aside from sometime in 2015.
