Since 1996, ATLUS has been releasing games in the critically acclaimed Persona series. But what if I released one? I think that would be really cool, and you should also think it would be really cool. Let me convince you.
This is a document I've written up to explain why my future fangame, Persona i, rules and is awesome.
The Persona series has long been built around tarot, with each main character and most side characters being assigned one of the Major Arcana. The Major Arcana in tarot represent the individual steps of The Fool's Journey, which is a metaphor for the stages of life we go through as we grow into self-discovery and personal fulfillment. This is why the modern mainline games always assign the protagonist The Fool (the one beginning their journey).
However, that hasn't always been the case. And Persona i is not about the beginning of a journey—rather, it's a story long since set in motion. (Not only is it exploring the aftereffects of Persona 3, but this game also starts with the recruitment of the team's final member, an event that usually happens midway through a Persona game).
So in Persona i, none of the main cast are assigned The Fool. But the assignments that do exist are interesting for two reasons:
Persona teams tend to be made up of the early cluster of Major Arcana—an insecure male best friend and casual rival as The Magician, a feminine high school girl as The Lovers, and usually The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, and The Hierophant (0-7). But this isn't the story of a group of kids starting their journey of self-discovery together; this is about a mixed-age cast, all from different walks of life, cleaning up the consequences of a mess they hardly understand.
The Lovers is, for once, not a high femme highschool girl and love interest. Instead she's Nobuko Teragaki, a 67-year old grandmother from a hunting family. She's strapped with guns and isn't afraid to use them. She's an action grandma.
Who else is on the main team? Death, who is an eleven-year old girl. The Tower, aka the card that describes destruction and ruin (this is the main healer). The Hermit is the navigator character, AKA the support who connects the team... which I'm sure is fine. And also The Magician is there as usual, but instead of being jealous or insecure like in most mainline games this guy is actually a perfect leader with everything going for him... huh, weird. I bet he's normal and not hiding any secrets.
Some Persona games have included a mechanic where you can "reverse" your social links, which mean you've fucked up your relationship and need to repair it. But I want to use reversals not for social links, but for the Arcana assignments themselves.
In tarot, drawing a card in reverse (upside-down) changes the reading of that Arcana. For example, while drawing Death might mean you are going to experience changes in your life, drawing Death in reverse might indicate you have been resisting change. They often show the inverse or maladaptive sides of each respective stage of the Fool's Journey, and the lessons that come with them are different because of it.
In Persona i, every character is manifesting their Arcana in reverse.
As any Persona fan will know, characters fight by summoning their persona, a manifestation of their true self. Personas take the forms of characters from myth, legend, folklore, and fiction, famously ranging from religious figures and historical icons to the titular protagonist of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland."
The main cast of Persona i all have personas that fit a certain theme:
The core theme of this game is self-worth, primarily through the lens of "deserving to live as you are." In a society where your existence can be seen as too much, not enough, expendable, or shameful, you might be convinced that the world would be better off without youâbetter off if you were replaced by a 'better' version of you. The main cast is full of flawed people, people who have been let down and left behind; their personas reflect those scars, but they are framed within narratives that deem their loss as 'tragic.'
They exist to push against those doubts of worthiness, to question society's narrative. They exist to say "I died, but I shouldn't have. I should have lived. I want to live."
Modern mainline games have a dedicated navigator character: Fuuka in P3, Rise in P4, and Futaba in P5. Persona i's example is literally named Navigator, an artificial soul built into a Hi-Tech dormitory building called the Complex. And Navigator's persona is the windmill from Don Quixote...which, if you know the story, is just a regular windmill. (Something mundane and inanimate only given importance by external forces.)
Savvy readers may have already noticed that Don Quixote is not a tragedy, but a comedy. And while the protagonist attempts to "slay the monster" that he's made of the windmill, it's actually him who dies in the end. So why is Navigator an outlier to the aforementioned pattern of tragic personas?
Well, Navigator is The Hermit reversed. It's isolating, it's stuck in it's own head obsessed with analyzing the ways in which it differs from everyone else, all while trying to convince itself it's the same. Navigator's entire arc is about being an outlier, being fit into a narrative it doesn't naturally belong to.
And this is just one of the many awesome narratives that Persona i explores.
Modern fans will know about the Dark Hour, the TV World, or Momentos and Palaces. But Persona i isn't leaning on some extra-dimensional space to fight shadows— instead, we're harkening back to the days of P1 and P2. Shadows are in the real world, unrestricted by place or time, and personas are summoned whenever necessary.
In 2025, the musicians Breeton Boi and V!CE created an album of Persona inspired music made to emulate the sound of a hypothetical Persona 6. That album is called Persona-fication and they absolutely hit it out of the park.
(Now would be a great time to scroll back to that music player up top if you haven't clicked it yet.)
If this game ever gets to a point where it becomes vaguely playable (meaning: character designs done, because some scripting and coding is already in the works), I'm going to ask for the rights to use these songs and their instrumentals in the actual game. Assuming they say yes, that would make this game's OST extremely cool.
Did you know the Persona series' worldbuilding is based around Jungian Psychology? Are you familiar with Mitsuru Kirijou's combat maid that helps her start the Shadow Operatives and flies a helicopter full of weapons? Do you know about the Strega-focused light novel "Shadow Cry?" Have you actually played Persona 1?
I have. I am the keeper of the deep lore. And I'm continuing to do research so Persona i can have as strong a foundation in canon as possible—I'm reading manga adaptations, I'm scrolling wikis, I'm studying psychology and tarot. I've even watched Trinity Soul.
You would not believe how badly I want this game to be good. (ATLUS hire me)