Game is a murder mystery

I didn't even get to this part. The little girl almost died and the mayor was the killer or something. I know I did something wrong but I'm not about to do another 40 hour playthrough to figure it out.

I lost interest in this game around the time of the retro vidya dungeon, it was so dull.

The game literally tells you to save before that part, what are you retarded?

You didn't miss much, everything just gets more convoluted and somehow less believable from there.

I did. All it puts you through is the last question scenes. I tried it three times and got the same ending. That's just where the game ends for me.

Not the user you're responding to, but since you brought up meta-narrative, it's worth mentioning that P4 spoiled Adachi for me way ahead of time simply because I paid attention.

I don't remember when this scene happens, but there's a moment relatively early on where you're sitting around the Junes with the investigation team. Maybe it was after Yukiko's dungeon, or possibly Kanji's. Either way, I remember that the growing group was sitting around pondering the case, throwing out tons of ellipsis bubbles and scratching their chins and whatnot. One of them made some comment along the lines of "well how are we ever gonna find out who it is? It could be anyone." Something along those lines.

>CUE ADACHI STROLLING UP TO THE GROUP TO BE WHACKY COP BUDDY

>me: "oh. Oh, that was supposed to be a cute thing people notice on replay, not initial playthrough. The fact that the killer shows up when prompted and all but says "you rang?" complete with studio audience applause, Okay. Fuck you, video game. Now I know who did it because you wanted to have your stupid tongue-in-cheek gag so badly that you didn't care if anyone noticed that you were spoiling the ending.

seething

All you need to do is navigate the dialogue correctly, nothing you do before that can possibly lock you out of getting past the bad end

I'm glad I don't pay attention to that sort of stuff
makes it more fun for me when reveals happen in these kind of games

You can discard most people based on the game plot and interactions with them. Remaining one is the culprit.

This. You've got to deduce, not induce. Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains - however improbable - is the truth.

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Why do people keep saying the game was rewritten shortly before release and that someone else was supposed to be the killer instead of Adachi?

Is there any soruce for this claim?

Bullshit. Whatever reasoning you use to eliminate others must be loose enough to warrant finding a way to eliminate Adachi. The game gives you literally zero way to make this deduction.

I missed that on P4 but that reminds me of a scene with Akechi, it was way more obvious than that one so it's way worse.

I mean, yeah, user, it was frustrating that their spoiled their own game's ending like 30+ hours before I would hit it. That's validly frustrating, like if in The Sixth Sense the main character had said "well golly gee, it sure would be a right twist if I turned out to be one of these ghosts you tend to see, little boy! Wouldn't that be something?" It ruins the flow of the plot for no reason, which is justly frustrating.

I'd turn that shit off if I could, trust me. I have a bad habit of ruining horror stories for myself by figuring out what's going on too early on due to context clues.

They're using meta-narrative reasons. Adachi fits just as well as Dojima, Nanako, or any random NPC in the game. You just can't name an NPC because the dialogue box doesn't let you.

I remember it perfectly and I've only ever played it once 9 years ago, I think the problem's with you

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When i was talking about the game with my brother i couldn't believe he missed that shit.

The story is a murder mystery
The game is a dungeon crawler, retardo

Adachi is always hanging around letting information "slip" when he talks to a bunch of kids.

His introduction is Dojima telling him to stop "acting" like a rookie, because he isn't one. He's just new to town, he used to work in Tokyo or some other city. He's been a detective for years and only started acting on his sociopathic tendencies after he got handshake powers.

I missed it too

adachi's social link makes it obvious he's a resentful incel

>Why do people keep saying
Is there a source for this claim?

I decided he was guilty the moment he was revealed on screen so I wasn't really looking for proof my heart had already decided

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You have to go back.

>Adachi is always hanging around letting information "slip" when he talks to a bunch of kids.
I always took that as just him being a bro helping us out
really gave me a shock when I found out.

me too, I don't know if I am retarded or something because I miss too many things that people think it's obvious.

I recognized this scene and was really confused why akechi was even in it, i dont think i realized he shouldn't have been able to hear morgana talking, i'm not sure if that was intended to be like that or not

Why would he be helping you out? You're a bunch of kids.
Unless he knew you had magical tv powers and wanted to see what happens, and the only way he'd know that is if he also had those powers, which regardless of his morality would him a suspect in some regard.

My only problem was, if it wasn't going to be Namatame I would have rather it have just been some actual random NPC in town you pass on the streets. Adachi being the murderer was so fucking video game-y

>Why would he be helping you out? You're a bunch of kids.
Cause at the time of playing it I wasn't thinking like that

That's your fault.
My point was, the idea that you "can't figure it out" with the events and clues in the game is preposterous.

I mean im and I figured it out on my second pick, my first one was I think was Yamano cause I couldn't remember who she was.
I can't remember the details the game gives you but adachi fits all the criteria the game gives you before you choose
I even went "theres no way it could be him though he helped me so much" before picking him

Didn't P4G have the final boss of the new dungeon be the guy you meet at the gas station?

>guy
And the original game had Izanami as the final boss unless you left town early and didn't get the actual ending

P4G added a new dungeon as part of Marie's S Link, not a new final boss.

Ah, ok.

Adachi's route was the only good part of the P4G anime.

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I knew he was the killer because there's no way MC's family and friends were the killers.
Also he was quick to conclude that mitsuo was the killer.

That's retarded

It was in the vanilla game too. After beating Adachi and before you leave town, without all the Marie stuff that would be there in Golden, you get told in the Velvet Room about something strange that happened at the start of the journey and before you go say goodbye to everyone you can talk to the gas attendant and do the whole battle with a God thing against Izanami

iirc, early on in the game you can find Adachi drunk and he blurts out info that he shouldn't know before the police, but thats like a single instance and you can miss it

Maybe, but to me there was just nothing satisfying about finding out it was Adachi. If it wasn't in some small town and instead a regular city/suburban setting, then maybe it would be cool but the Adachi thing and then the further add on of Izanami and the gas attendant really took out the satisfaction of the game's whole plot setup. I'd unironcally like everything a lot more if the gas attendant took the place of Adachi and there was no Izanami

Was P4 your first entry in the series? That's not an accusation, I'm genuinely curious and trying to work out your perspective here.

It was my "last", as in I haven't gotten around to 1 and 2 because they look weird. Started with 5, went to 3fes and then 4 vanilla

That's interesting, most of the time when I hear people complaining about the ending it's from more of an outsider's standpoint rather than someone already reasonably used to the series' internal logic.

part of the reason the small town aesthetic works so well is because the threats come from outside, Adachi is from the city and Izanami isn't even human
All the problems come from outside influence, like the protagonist's involvement
Namatame is from Inaba and ends up not being a villain, but having spent so much time away from his hometown as a politician made him corruptible, though after the story is over he moves back to town and becomes a delivery truck driver

Atleast p4 gang weren't cucks and actually wanted to kill the killer
>p5 cucks really entertained the thought to let a killer join them
cringe

Yeah, couldn't disagree with you more
The villain needed to be an actual character, someone present in the story
Finding out in the end it was just some rando, with no connection to you or the story that you actually experienced, not just out of shot/behind the scene, would have been extremely dissatisfying
Even Izanami only works because she's essentially an impersonal "force of nature"

yeah i caught this early on, so much so that it fucked up my interview with Sae.

>who did this? was it you?
no, it was fucking Akechi
>oh, you're gonna rat on your friend huh? here's a nice bullet sandwich for you

it would have been nice to have a dialogue option in there for people who got it ahead of time

That was way too obvious, did anyone miss it?

Pancakes was the dumbest shit ever and anyone that didn't instantly know it was him after that is retarded.
There's also making him the fucking justice node. Like yea okay justice isn't going to have a persona in the game whose theme is basically justice? As if.

That means literally fucking nothing. Under retarded loose ass logic like that you can make a case for anyone being the killer.
You're just fucking stupid and autistic as hell and working off hindsight. Seriously.

Somewhat similar stupid thing spoiled the killer for me in P5, when you see the black outline of the killer, you can tell that it's one of two people by the height and way they walk.

Lmao

This. This is the problem here, and I'm pretty sure this was what OP was going for.

I got it right on the first try too because that's just how murder mysteries work, but it's pretty unrealistic all the same. A lot of the time you have a situation where there's a plot explanation for the number of suspects being limited to a certain group of people (e.g. locked on an Island like in Umineko or And Then There Were None). In Persona 4 there's nothing.

It could literally have been anyone from the city. Anyone. But it had to be someone you know because it's a murder mystery.

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How is that different from the mystery man in P5 who kills people with arrows while the game repeatedly beats you with the knowledge that Sae/bad guys is being fed information that only the thieves would know?

Now who else uses arrows who just happens to be on your team, makes incredibly snide comments behind a character's back and is intentionally hidden by every pr- release media like he was only meant to be in your party for a month? Oh right Ryuji.

I'd argue that the twist in P5 isn't the fact that Pancakes is the traitor, but that your party was playing him like a fiddle all along.

>make a guess
>you could be right but you're supposed to pick someone else
Nice "mystery"

Based amnesiac

She sent Adachi to the chair...

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>character x fits all the clues
>but that'd be too mean, so try again

I took it as him being incompetent he did get transferred there for being a fuck up and the first scene he appears in he's puking his guts up which is a trope used to denote rookie cops

I forget if it's pure Yea Forums headcanon that he was punished as a scapegoat or if it was ever actually confirmed in any way, it's been years since I played it

What about crying?

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But then they had to have their cake and eat it too by trying leave the player out of the loop the entire time even when they made it obvious he was the traitor. P had a bad habit of treating the player like they're retarded

But that is the twist.
> leave the player out of the loop the entire time even when they made it obvious he was the traitor.
They never tried to hide it though.

They hid the party knowing he was the traitor from the player even if they caught on early

>His introduction is Dojima telling him to stop "acting" like a rookie, because he isn't one.
You know that spending a long time doing something doesn't actually make you competent at it, right? He was acting like a rookie because he was incompetent.

pic related

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>They never tried to hide it though.
That's why they didn't need an hour long sequence where all the characters go over how they fooled Akechi because all of those scenes were completely skipped by the game at the time they actually took place and thus there was no way for the player to know what had actually happened because the information had been hidden from them.
Oh wait.

>an hour long sequence where all the characters go over how they fooled Akechi
Yeah they explained the plan they made in order to outsmart him. I don't understand your post.

It's pure speculation.

They had considered making both Dojima and Yukiko the killers but it was considered too dark.

It was in some interview, maybe Gamasutra? I don't remember

Persona games have fucking terrible stories that manage to make FF15 look emotionally engaging.

No it's just Persona 4.

>uuhhh you can't actually deduce the culprit
tay.kinja.com/spoilers-finding-the-villain-in-persona-4-using-deduc-1823720798

I'm not sure why you found it hard to understand that I was having a go at you saying that they didn't try to hide it. The only reason I can think of that you would not understand that is if you misunderstood to begin with and thought he was saying they were leaving the player out of the loop about Akechi being the traitor.

>What are tropes
How is it being retarded user? I can pick some random ass shit fantasy manga and predict like 80% of the plot because these retards live and breathe tropes and cliches. There are literally dozens of horror movies where what the guy describes happens

That doesn't make any better

Are you going to actually refute it, or remain steadfast in your idiocy?
You can figure out the killer logically from the information in the game. This entire thread is pointless.

Persona 5 is even worse mate. The Megaten franchise in general is perhaps the greatest meme ever created by Yea Forums. Asides from DDS it's hot garbage.

>created by Yea Forums

Gameplay in some of them is decent. Atlus has always had terrible writing though

No it isn't.
Persona 4 is the worst game in the series.

>game is a murder mystery
>the only character who's actually not retarded gets introduced near the end of the game when the mystery is almost solved

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5 is worse, sorry

Persona 3 was shilled on Yea Forums extremely hard back in the day (gods I was strong then)

Persona 5 is just Persona 4 with a sloppier plot.

>not retarded
>could've easily ended the game if she set up security cameras
Naoto is dumb and useless.

>introduced near the end of the game
That's wrong.

The question is "who could have gone up to the house without it looking odd" and you're given enough evidence to rule out Dojima, Nanako and all your friends.

That's just normal process of elimination shit. Again, any random person could have been the culprit.

>make FF15 look emotionally engaging
Let's not say things we might regret later user

Persona 4 doesn't even have a plot so i know you're bullshiting.

If murder mysteries were realistic, they'd be boring as sin. Of course in real life the killer could be someone you've never even heard of. In fact, it's probably likely. But murder mystery is a genre of fiction. The killer will always be someone you've at least heard of at some point, no matter how negligible their presence. The attempt at misdirection and red herrings is supposed to inevitably leave you wondering who really did it at the end. I can't claim to be an expert of the genre, but it seems pretty simple. No one is going to go through a murder mystery and find out it was some nobody who is only being brought up just now and think "Wow, that's incredible, they handled this mystery so well by making the murderer someone we NEVER could have guessed."

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>Killer doesn't confess their motive until they're known to be the killer by the rest of the cast of characters
Is everyone in this thread just fucking stupid or what.

It could have hypothetically been anybody other than the characters we know, but that's hardly a criticism, considering they give you a finite list so that the mystery actually has an interesting conclusion.

No we just don't give a fuck about P4 and it's boring ass story

>GAS STATION ATTENDANT

This isn't a counter to my point. If you don't care, then don't waste your time in the thread. If you choose to be here, then you must care. It's one or the other. No need to get butthurt because you don't understand how storytelling works.

Picking from the list is exactly why it isn't an interesting conclusion. A mystery is only interesting when you have enough information to figure out exactly who the culprit was and how they did it. If the characters in the story can do that but the viewer can't because information was hidden from the viewer, or the viewer can't actually figure out that information but is able to tell who the killer is simply because no one else is a viable suspect, that's a shit mystery.

Yeah, it'd be retarded. The only issue is that in this case there was nothing in the plot to make it more reasonable for it to be someone you knew, specifically, it was just a coincidence from the point of view of the plot.

It's a seething 5fag

It's certainly not the best murder mystery out there by any means. The game is constantly steering you towards the culprit and basically hands you the answer on a silver platter at the point depicted in the OP. I'm just saying, inherently, to argue this particular point, that it's always going to be a name you've heard in the story at some point. P4 doesn't really bother with the misdirection in the case of Adachi. You could argue that he himself, though, serves to misdirect you from the attendant.

Knox rule 1:
>The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
Van Dine rule 1:
>The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story--that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest. For a writer to fasten the crime, in the final chapter, on a stranger or person who has played a wholly unimportant part in the tale, is to confess to his inability to match wits with the reader.

The problem is that Adachi wasn't particularly important, and you interacted with tons of other characters early on. This would have worked if it was a snowy cabin or an isolated island that limited the number of characters you talk to, but P4 is not like that. Following the rules Dojima makes a lot more sense.

These: Fair enough if you want to criticise the genre itself for its holistic approach to who can be the killer, but within the context of the game, you're given enough information to solve the mystery.

Why is that an issue?

>The killer will always be someone you've at least heard of at some point, no matter how negligible their presence.
G-Senjou no Maou

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This. This pissed me off so much. We could've narrowed down the list of suspects so fucking quickly if any point prior to OP's pic, Yukiko actually fucking mentioned that shit.

That's what happens when you completely ignore mystery rules. P4 at least tried, even if it was done badly.

I'm not gonna lie this went right over my head until I was talking to someone about the game and they pointed it out, before the reveal. Felt dumb after but in my defense there's hours upon hours of cutscenes and dialogue before that moment of just the cast talking to the cat with nobody else around that wouldn't hear it.

Something about Nanako being a demon in disguise manipulating Dojima to do the murders, I think?

if you didnt think it was at all suspicious how Adachi kept showing up literally everywhere, you have autism.

>It could literally have been anyone from the city. Anyone.
Not really. The warning letters and the fact that several of the victims had dealings with the police shortly before being thrown in the TV narrows it down.

Tecnically, a literal nameless NPC is the true end final boss.

>kiddyguides.com

Doesn't the game use profanity, sexual innuendos and has explicit violence? It's anything but for kids.

Knox's "Ten Commandments" (or "Decalogue") are as follows:

The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No Chinaman must figure in the story.[Note 1]
No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
The detective himself must not commit the crime.
The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

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>All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
One of the main reasons Izanami is so lame.

>No Chinaman
Was Knox, dare I say it, /ourguy/?

The "No Chinaman rule" was a reaction to, and criticism of, racial cliches prevalent in 1920s English writing. Knox explained, "I see no reason in the nature of things why a Chinaman should spoil a detective story. But as a matter of fact, if you are turning over the pages of an unknown romance in a bookstore, and come across some mention of the narrow, slit-like eyes of Chin Loo, avoid that story; it is bad."

I never got to this izanagi boss

i killed divine goofy angel, killed THE ALMIGHTY, and then killed Maria, i never knew there was something else

youtube.com/watch?v=fV7DahJVudI

I sure as Hell did. In my defense I couldn't have been less interested in the scene as they talk about food and I always zone out when that fucker Morgana talks.

I missed the pancakes line but still knew that brat was the Judas.

Cause kid power! and kids rule! is thrown at you in P4. I could see how this user took it that way.

>i dont think i realized he shouldn't have been able to hear morgana talking
Because you're a retard and didnt realize that was retroactively added in

Personas aren't real, they're all just a trick.

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Wasn't that because, at the time, if you see a chinese person he was 100% the killer who's evil just because he's yellow?
Or even then, making you think he was the evil killer and then subverting your expectations in the most predictable way imaginable since the chinese guy was always the killer?

I didn't pick up on pancakes, but I knew it was him guaranteed the second he stepped into frame for the first fucking time. It's like they couldn't make that shit anymore obvious, of course he was the bad guy.

Yes, back in 1920 it's not racism, it's just living in the 20s.

I wasn't paying enough attention to realise that Morgana was the only one who said pancakes since there were a few other lines after that. But even then I still thought Goro was the villain because everything about him was too suspicious.

I've watched so many detective shows, I've become blind to all the incompetent sidekick characters. Making him the culprit was an illegal move

What? It's not like she was the killer or compelled Adachi to kill or anything

Seems like you're not experienced enough, from the player's perspective, Yu is the detective and everyone else a suspect. Though you could consider the SEES sidekicks.

Not only did I miss it, but I actually thought that someone else was the traitor instead of Akechi. Even without the pancake thing they make him look so fucking shady that I thought the game was dangling a red herring in my face while I was missing some critical clue.

I played myself and felt like a dumbass at the reveal.

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I asked a friend (who hasn't played a Persona game in his life, and had no interest in or knowledge of P5) to guess who the culprit was, just from the game's front cover.
He instantly narrowed it down to Akechi and Yusuke, but unfortunately picked Artboi as his first guess.

My man.

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I haven't actually played P4, but wasn't the damning evidence pointing to Adachi the fact that Nanako was abducted without any forced entry despite being home alone, therefore she must have opened the door for the killer, therefore the killer must be someone close to the Dojimas?

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No, the damning evidence was a letter he sent to the MC and him slipping up when Dojima got into an accident chasing after someone.

From a narrative standpoint this is a problem inherent in all murder mystery plots. You want the reveal of the killer to be a surprise, yet the culprit generally can't be a character the audience doesn't know, because that wouldn't have any impact. That means that the possibility of every k character being the culprit is on the mind of the audience, though. It's a dilemma for the writer. You throw in some red herrings but usually an attentive reader/viewer can narrow the identity of the killer down to 3, 2 or even one person just by narrative structure alone without any actual clues.

I had akechi spoiled by the fucks of Yea Forums, but really it was obvious from the first moment.

>ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS SOLD YOU OUT, WHO COULD IT BE?
>Akechi wasn't in any of the promo art, trailers or anything else introducing the team, but suddenly appears on the box and everything else
>He shows up to hang out in the cafe and your only options are super friendly or calling him a dick

The pancake scene was just additional damning proof, but by far the worst was

>Akechi confesses to seeing the black murdering figure
>game cuts to his interpretation of it
>It's literally Akechi's metaverse outfit but in black

The only surprise about him was when you have his battle. Genuinely didn't expect him popping out of nowhere on that ship.