ThePersonafranchise’s 25th anniversary falls in 2021, and although Atlus has been pretty quiet so far, fans are still holding out hope that there’s bigPersonanews on the horizon. After all, Atlus did tease significant plans for this high school JRPG franchise last year.Rumors about aPersona 5fighting gamestill circulate. A spinoff like that would seem perfectly appropriate for celebratingPersona’s birthday as well as the entry that greatly boosted the franchise’s popularity, but there’s no sign of the game yet. Another title that some fans think might get announced this year isPersona 6,which would open the door to another new era ofPersona.
Strictly speaking, Atlus hasn’t even confirmed thatPersona 6is on the way, but it seems probable that it’s at some stage of development, if not imminently releasing. At the very least, Atlus has to be planningPersona 6to some degree, analyzing the success ofPersona 5and looking for new themes to explore in the next game. IfPersona 6focus on a ‘modern-day’ high school like the games traditionally do, then there’s definitely some interesting and relevant themes that the game could look at.Personafans could get a new game that’s much more heavily focused on technology, social media, and online personalities than ever before.
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Persona’s Relationship With Technology
Personaalready makes frequent use of technology.Persona 4wouldn’t be possiblewithout the TVs that the protagonists use to enter the Midnight Channel. Similarly, the Phantom Thieves' heists in the Metaverse are made possible with smartphone navigation apps that open up gateways into Palaces and Mementos.Persona 5puts an additional emphasis on technology thanks to Futaba Sakura, the master hacker of the Phantom Thieves. An entire arc of the game is devoted to the threat of hacker group Medjed exposing the Phantom Thieves' identities, and it’s only resolved when Futaba hacks Medjed instead to rout the threat.Personahas never been afraid to make technology relevant.
One wondersifPersona 6will lean on technologymore heavily, though. If Atlus sticks with a high school setting, then there might be a greater emphasis on technology in school and how it affects the protagonists' lives. Online interactions with fellow students could be more prevalent than interactions during school. Computers or the internet itself might be the gateway to the world of Personas and Shadows this time, with protagonists using a cryptic search engine to delve into specifics parts of this other world. If Atlus opts for a darker theme, a story about surveillance or addiction to technology could come to the forefront ofPersona 6.Maybe Atlus could find a new spin on its ideas inPersona 5 Strikersand investigate how supernatural forces and the Internet might blend.
Social Media’s Potential in Persona 6
Social media would be a really rich area forPersona 6to focus on.Persona 5already made some use of social media thanks toMishima’s Phansite for the Phantom Thieves, but that forum only depicts one slice of the internet. Atlus could cast a wider net by putting social media in the spotlight, involving facsimiles for Facebook, Instagram, and others in the plot. After all, these sites are very popular and influential with high school students. It’d be interesting to see Atlus explore how social media affects the ways teenagers perceive each other in aPersonagame.
Personais a franchise about identityat its core. Each protagonist’s Persona represents their true selves and their inner willpower. Only when they accept the deeply held ideals that the Persona represents do Persona users unlock the incredible powers that these beings let them wield. Social media is often criticized as a place where people present false identities and lives to impress others, soPersona 6could easily explore that area to some degree. The protagonists might contend with social pressure that comes from being on social media and struggle at greater length with their identities. A digital Velvet Room presented similarly to a blog or a Twitter feed could be a good way to represent crafting new Personas with Igor’s help too.
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Persona and the Power of the Internet
One specific type of Internet user that could come to the forefront ofPersona 6is the social media influencer.Persona 5 Strikersalready dabbled in this areathanks to the mysterious EMMA app at the heart of the game’s plot and several of the Jail Monarchs that use it. Alice, the first antagonist ofPersona 5 Strikers,is a particularly good example of a social media influencer using the Persona world through social media.Persona 6could return to this idea but look at it from a different perspective. To be specific,Persona 6might focus more closely on how high schoolers respond to influencers and how that would define the protagonist’s school life.
If online personalities become a central part ofPersona 6’s plot, they could serve as antagonists similar toPersona 5’s Tokyo-based villains. However, they could play a unique role by interacting with the game’s characters through the Internet exclusively. Real-life influencersfrom Twitch streamers to YouTube vloggershold a lot of sway over the lives of young people, soPersona 6could choose to explore what happens when these kinds of people abuse their power.Persona 6would have some compelling, relevant antagonists on its hand if it pitted the player character against fictitious Internet personalities corrupted by greed and pride who manipulate young people through their platform. Such people might have an awareness of and control over the world of Shadows, leading to a secret war between Persona users and online celebrities.
Admittedly, Atlus might not want to focus on the Internet because ofPersona 5.It dabbled in a lot of these ideas already, both in the originalPersona 5and inthe high-action spinoffPersona 5 Strikers.However, these games definitely didn’t explore the width and breadth ofPersona’s potential relationship with the Internet and modern technology. Considering how important being true to oneself is in thePersonagames, it’d be great to seePersona 6think more deeply about how the Internet impacts one’s identity and find new ways to connect aspects of modern culture to supernatural forces.Personais an IP full of potential, so it’s no surprise that fans are so desperate to learn what Atlus has to say about it in 2021. IfPersona 6is really what it’s planning to talk about this year, then it’ll be interesting to see what themes lie at the new game’s heart.
