What better way to start the new year than with another Persona 5 analysis post? I realized I’ve never really looked too far into Hashino’s interview that came out during TGS, even though it has some gameplay footage with some neat little details! There’s nothing too ground breaking, but I still thought were were some interesting points. (take the dates with grains of salt; they’re probably place holders)



Soooo here we go.

First we have some nice looks at Shujin High School, right outside of classroom 2-D. The school is looking nicer and nicer with each peek we get. You can even see the two boys in track suits who have more details than other npcs. They and a girl further down the hall with glasses have black speech bubbles above their heads.

Another shot of Shujin, from the opposite end of the hallway. You can see the girl with glasses and the speech bubble better, as well as the track boys back further down the hallway. If you look carefully, you can even see a bit of our UI for menus and stuff at the bottom of the screen.



Next, we’re heading into a Dungeon!

The dungeon featured in the interview is the Old Castle; you can tell both my appearance and it straight up says it in a later screenshot. The picture is blurry and bad quality, but dear god it looks so beautiful. There’s an enemy hanging out just down the hall and you can see the UI at the bottom again (it seems to only show when you’re standing still?)

We see a meter at the top- it’s at 0%. Maybe this is a track of completion for the dungeon or something? Idk, but I wanna talk about-

this guy. If you look carefully enough, we know we’ve seen this fellow several times before.

I have like NO doubts now that this guy is the Corrupted Heart target for the Thieves within Old Castle and is its boss…you know, this guy

quick note about this guy- I think things are a lot more messed up with him being Ann’s stalker/harasser than we thought. As if her even having a stalker/harasser wasn’t bad enough, I think this guy is a teacher. Considering the themes of rebelling against society and shitty adults etc., it wouldn’t make sense for him to be a teenager- not to mention he looks considerably older than the squad.



I think he’s a coach or athletics director at Shujin. We see him spiking a volleyball, in the screenshot above it looks like he’s holding a wooden sword? And the figures behind him are wearing modified versions of a form of Japanese female gym uniforms. ANYWHO I’m getting too far off topic. Back to the interview screenshots.



Morgana significantly lags behind the rest of the group at this point. She’s all the way at the bottom of the stairs while protag, Ann and Ryuji are nearly at the top

the next two screenshots are very interesting

After reaching the top of the stairs, our Thieves run across an enemy. As they’re starting to go by it, green text that says; “Free Camera” pops up above protag’s head.



Also, instead of fighting the enemy, protag runs right by it. He extends his hands and points them towards the enemy, making his gloves{?} glow for some reason as well as giving an option to attack. The glowing starts right around the time the “Free Camera” text pops up.

OK so this helps my theory along that the boss guy of Old Castle might be a gym teacher or athletics director. We know we’re still in Old Castle, and this section looks so different from the rest of it. It actually looks a bit like a gym storage room to me but idk

puzzles!



Then we’re in a new area of the- WOW look at what dungeon it is!

ka-ching ;D

You can also see the UI a bit better here, but I have no clue what the commands for each button are

The meter with mr boss/stalker man is up to 8% here- Morgana is also saying something up in the corner

Ryuji also talks at this point- he and Morgana are both saying things along the line with; “be careful” and “watch out there’s danger” or something like that

moments later we’re hiding behind chairs and using indicators to sneak up on an enemy hanging out down the hall. There’s also a green symbol on the map-

I thought for a moment it was indicating stairs, since it looks like an S, but the stairs are shown on the map. So maybe it’s a save point? Kind of like how the cherry trees in Persona1 were shown on the map!

And that;s basically everything….here’s hoping we get new details and trailers soon ‘cuz IM RUNNING OUT OF STUFF TO ANALYZE

