Highlights courtesy of Personacentral.com

Protagonist

• The protagonist is a second year high school student who has recently moved to the big city, and lives with his parents’ friends at a coffee shop.
• The protagonist’s unique Persona is called “Arsene”, presumably after the fictional gentleman thief “Arsène Lupin.”

Story

• “Unlike the heroes of Persona 3 and Persona 4, the protagonist ofPersona 5 has a problem of some sort that, if not faced down, could spell big trouble in the future.”
• The protagonist meets the characters featured in the preview trailer at the beginning of the game.

Theme

• “In previous titles, the Persona summoning scene had the Japanese onomatopoeia of “カッ” (kka) which is something often used to depict a flash or clicking sound. In Persona 5, it’s “ブチッ” (buchi) which is a snapping sound (either physically or mentally).”

Animation Studio

• The animation studio that is handling Persona 5‘s anime scenes is Production I.G, and that studio’s anime director is the one who suggested the character figure skating scenes in the trailer.

Production

• Because it is the first time Personas are being made for high-definition platforms, the development process was particularly arduous on that front.

Combat and Exploration

• The game starts in Shibuya, but takes place in various parts of Tokyo as well.
• The battle system will be turn-based, with improvements to previous Persona games.
• There will be randomly generated elements in the game, however major places in the story will be structured to emphasize the burglary theme.
• Each character has their own distinct firearm for long distance weapons, however they aren’t actual guns, yet are still effective in combat.

Social Links

• A “cooperation” aspect of the game will involve helping sympathizers around the town, which will somehow be beneficial in battles.
• Social Links—or a mechanic like them—will have new twists, while also pertaining to their traditional elements of increasing various strengths/abilities.

Shigenori Soejima (Character Designer)

• “The protagonist’s seemingly docile nature is a profound ruse.”

• Persona 5‘s logo is meant to emphasize the youthful nature of the plot and characters; “conveying a sense of speed and dynamism.”

• The protagonist’s Persona, “Arsene”, is designed with a more old-school penchant.

And also, regarding the music, the trailer music is an instrumental version of the title theme of the game, as many people suspected.

Wow, sounds pretty good, thanks for posting this. Definitely a relief that S-Links still will be a key mechanic in the game.

The Ghost in the Shell studio is doing Persona 5's anime scenes? GOTY.

Already posted this in the other thread, but there are some more tidbits below...

Another siliconera post says that it's hinted that MC and friends have lost their homes in the past and according to this, MC lives in the cafe from the trailer, which is run by a friend of his parents.

Bummer. While I liked P3FES and P4, the combat was clearly the weakest point of the games.

• Persona 5‘s logo is meant to emphasize the youthful nature of the plot and characters; “conveying a sense of speed and dynamism.”

So it looking like a racing logo was on purpose.

A turn based JRPG on consoles? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?!? And can we have more, please?

So much hype. I hope the protag is a bit more bad ass like the beginning of the trailer showed

@kestrelpi said:

So, the end of the world and a serial killer aren't things that are considered big trouble?

Wow, this all sounds cool. Hopefully P5 will maintain the " teenagers life sim" in amongst all the burglary.

I imagine this is in reference to a more personal problem.

@charlie_victor_bravo: Disagree wholeheartedly. The combat is one of my favorite things about this series. Any attempt to make it an action game would be a huuuuuge turn off.

Besides, I am not confident they could pull of a great action combat system even if they wanted to. The Raidou games were their last notable attempt and I thought the combat was most definitely weaker than its turn based counterparts.

I also enjoy the combat, mostly because it's fast, with the possible exception of boss battles. Once you've fought an enemy a couple of times and figured out its weaknesses, it's pretty easy to arrange an all out attack to finish everyone off, in a way that feels satisfying, at least early on. Later on it starts to make sense to use things like buffs and debuffs, but the basic flow of exploit enemy weaknesses to take them down in the most efficient way while avoiding damage yourself keeps the battles pretty snappy, in comparison with other turn based systems.

@kestrelpi: To be honest, I hope they slow it down just a tad in P5. It's nice that it's not too drawn out, but all-out-attacks need some more risk/reward to them. AoAs shouldn't be the go to strategy for every encounter.

Maybe make AoAs not Almighty damage but instead all 3 physical damage types? But they have to be resistant/immune to all of them or it goes through as normal?

@corevi: That would be alright, but I was thinking more like some kind of resource that you had to build up and use. Something that builds fast enough that you don't have to just save it for emergencies, but not so fast that you can use it every fight. That or maybe it just consumes a portion of your team's HP/SP.

They could also just follow Q's example and make it randomly activate if you knock enough enemies down in one turn, but I think leaving that up to the player would probably be better.

• “The protagonist’s seemingly docile nature is a profound ruse.”

I really, really like that. It seems like he'll have more of a personality in the beginning of the game compared to the last two. 'Aloof kid that shows little emotion' was getting a bit played out.

I'm relived to read that the combat will continue to be turn-based and therefore tactical. I always loved micro-managing each combatant through each round in P3 and P4.

More tidbits from another Japanese magazine article, as well as a few new screenshots here: http://personacentral.com/new-persona-5-screenshots-via-famitsu-dengeki/

Protagonist

• The main character gains his Persona after a certain incident, and is set to battle against a “great darkness enveloping the city.”

Setting

• The game’s atmosphere is designed to evoke the feeling of a big city, through elements like “packed train platforms full of commuters.”

Awakening

• The scene at the end of the recent Persona 5 trailer, with blue flames enveloping the protagonist, represents the protagonist’s awakening to his Persona, and “another side of himself that’s greatly different from his public demeanor.” It’s also stated that the blue flames are believed to transform into masks.

Lesson

• The student life aspect of the game from Persona 3 and Persona 4makes a full return, and the calendar and weather systems are back as well.

Student by Day, Thief by Night

• Dungeon crawling occurs during the night, with the main characters donning their masks and searching for specific items to steal.

Sneak

• “As in Persona 3 and Persona 4, battles use a symbol encounter system, meaning you can see enemies on screen and engage in battle by colliding into them. Players can avoid enemy contact by sneaking around in order to proceed, though.”

All-Out-Attack

• The scene in the recent trailer where the characters simultaneously attack their enemies is confirmed to be the return of the “All-Out-Attack” mechanic, which still involves exploiting enemy weaknesses to perform.

Mask

• The masks the characters wear in dungeons are a key part of the story during those segments.

Cooperation

• Dengeki “speculates” that this menu option is replacing Social Links, but still involves getting closer to allies in some capacity.

Production

• The recent trailer and screenshots for Persona 5 are from the PlayStation 3 version of the game

How slick is that trailer??!

Man, Atlus have their aesthetics down pat.

My understanding is he has an inanely toxic twitter feed.

Thanks for the info though Kestrelpi, nice to hear social links aren't gone and combat will see some improvements without losing it's turn based nature. Also the fact that the recent clips look that good on PS3 says only good things about the PS4 version! Very happy Atlus is finally going to be current gen.

@charlie_victor_bravo: I also don't like the combat in P3/P4 but that doesn't mean Persona combat can't be good. Persona Q is basically a persona game that is 85% combat and the combat in that was fantastic.

How am I just now reading this? Can't wait for this game

EDIT: Has there been any rumors on a release date or if it will release world wide at the same time?

Awesome! I was worried they'd go with a real-time combat system. Happy to be proven wrong.

Persona Q is basically just an Etrian Odyssey game, I doubt they'd use that combat in Persona 5.

It has elements of persona combat in it as well though. In fact the combat is more Persona than Etrian.

Looking forward to playing this! Glad to hear the social link aspect is still going to be part of the game in some way. Would have been weird not to be forming bonds with folks in a persona game.

There are some elements of Q's combat I would like to see them take some notes from, but Q's combat was also kinda broken in some bad ways, so they have to be careful how they implement them.

I really like what I am seeing and hearing here.

"Each character has a gun, but it is not a gun, but it works exactly like a gun."

That's right folks. Just remember when you are shooting your gun in P5 that it really is not a gun because then we would have high-school kids shooting guns, which is bad.

Awesome, I continue to love everything I hear about this game.

I suspected cooperation would be about criminal links or sympathisers. "Benefit in combat" sounds like the XP bonus from fusing levelled arcana before - probably some similar if not identical passive from levelling up links/cooperation.

@memu: I figured that was more of a "We want guns like SMT/pre-P3 Persona, but Japan+highschool students+guns makes literally zero sense. Fuck it they aren't guns."

Oh thank god it's still turned based. I was slightly worried P5 would change it up to something more actiony.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep listening to this extended cut of the trailer music. It's so great. The soundtrack alone may be most of my hype for this game.