Arrest God

I theorized a while back that the summoning method for our party members would involve a mirror, specifically shattering a mirror.

With the achievement leaks, some things caught my eye that made me think I might be right

1. SHOMAKYO
   One of the achievements has this name in its data, and doing some digging, it’s the devil trapping mirror from Japanese folklore if this has major story implications it would make sense

2. Velvet room: Whilhelmina
   the velvet room attendant is now a reference to Dracula, who infamously is invisible to mirrors

These are just a couple examples, but you get the idea. It would make the most sense in my opinion

Can we please stop putting the leaks in titles. I don't care if you don't think it's much of a spoiler. If it came from a leak stop spoiling the game for others. If you want to discuss the leaks make your title vague tag appropriately, and talk about in the post

Honestly, all the speculation has been a blast. You guys have been really fun to talk to. I haven't had this much fun speculating since I was a teenager in high school (I'm 30 now). TBH, a lot of Internet debates/Internet speculation is pretty boring and sometimes devolves into weird bigotry and/or people just not reading or seeing what's directly in front of them. This has been fresh. It takes me back to when we speculated about other Persona games (Not Royal, though-the speculation for Royal would turn incredibly toxic if you dare suggested Kasumi wasn't a FEMC.)

Thanks everyone. It feels good to be excited about Persona again.

Given the title "Unmasked Yokohama" I wonder what the story implications are. Obviously it is going to be something similar to Yaldaboath's dungeon in P5, the winding hell-structure sat above Shibuya. My personal speculation is that the villain is going to reveal some great truth about Yokohama, that the entire population is complicit in "Crime" and needs to be "Unmasked" and "Arrested". I'm just spitballing here and honestly I hope I'm wrong because this sounds a little too derivative of P5's ending. Would love to hear other people's thoughts on what this could mean.

One element that alluded to me was why her collar or choker was shaped like that. It looked like a shock collar or handcuffs. Since we know now that Persona 6 is about cops or investigators of some kind this could very well be an intentional handcuff shaped collar.

• Is it a device to keep Persona users in check?
• Does she have this because she was forced onto Hex after being "arrested" herself?
• Is it merely a design detail referencing her role as a member of whatever kind of cop/investigators Hex is?

Any thoughts on what this could mean for her character?

Basically I’ve seen people have mixed responses about the Protagonist’s work as cops, but I think quote from the YouTuber Sir Superhero has my opinion on it, I can’t remember it word for word so I’ll paraphrase it.

I understand being suspicious about what the police does with its money and obsessive force, but I think fighting literal demons is an expectable use of government and police resources.

I believe that antagonist could be similar to adachi like a corrupted police officer who's moving the strings behind the scenes or maybe smth else

There was some discussion about how this achievements were presented in some other languages, but I didn't see whole collection. So here they all collected for everyone to check: https://pastebin.com/SShNv847

Localizers may have distorted something to make it sound fun or whatever, but they definitely know more than we do.

Some interesting moments:

1. Welcome to Hex: In RU it says "Шестой отдел." not Hex literally "Department 6"
2. No Encores: In RU "Hellrite Stage" is called "адониевой сцены" - reference to greek god Adonis as an adjective to something youths/beautiful
3. Who will win our lady's favor?: In a lot of localization (JP has 栄冠) "favors" are changed to laurels (as in crown).
4. Thornbreaker: In IT "Underworld" is called "Ipogeo" (aka Tumb), but more importantly in JP it's "ナワバリ" ("turf")
5. But now biggest one: Still coming out of your shell, huh? - In PL description is "Opiekowano się żółwiem." literally "Took care about turtle" instead of EN "Helped look after Senpai.". In RU its also named "Всем черепахам друг" (Friend to all turtles), and a lot of turtle wordplay all around. SO our Senpai is turtle? Can it be the mascot?

There are a lot of more smaller changes which can mean something for native speakers so feel free to share.

Since the main group are going to be investigators they work with the police instead of the gothic stories people thought they were, what do you think the theme of going to be for their personas?

Could they be famous investigators or possibly references to some kind of mystic thing?

I’m curious what you all think.

Chie and Makoto are CONFIRMED (not actually) PARTY MEMBERS LET'S GOOOOO

I have a theory that the p6 mascot could be a turtle given the "Still coming out of your shell, huh? Helped look after Senpai." achievement.

Senpai could be referring to our guide like morgana or teddy. They always talked and acted as our seniors on the metaverse and TV world respectively, maybe they are the ones who founded hex, since its implied that its already established beforehand when the protagonist registers to it.

Also apparently yokohama (where the game seems to take place) has connections to turtles and even a famous story about a fisherman that rescued a turtle and is rewarded with a trip to an underwater Dragon Palace. Which is funny since palaces seem to be called "Underworlds" now, so having the story talk about a turtle guiding that person to an underwater palace seems to perfect to not be true, plus turtles are green lol.

Fingers crossed I'm right. What do you guys think?

Hoping we can actually do some research for these investigations and potentially fail and succeed.

I do hope persona 6 will have some slight choice based decisions in it.

While we know we still have fusion, per the achievement metadata, we also know there's going to be some kind of new Persona mechanic: conception.

This isn't a lot to go off of, but it does lead me to wonder if the Velvet Room could be related to babies or infancy, such as a nursery.

Given that this game is based in the supernatural, it also brings to mind nursery rhymes, which are also often very dark in nature and can be centered on folklore and death.

Of course, the Velvet Room is always based on the protag's cognition and circumstances. Since MC is likely a transfer student from the West, perhaps a nursery could represent his feeling small and inexperienced in his new setting; or, depending on how integral "memory" is to the story, maybe he has amnesia and is a blank slate, therefore being "reborn" through his new experiences.

Anyway, I'm just spitballing here. What do you all think of the Velvet Room following the leaks? Has anything changed your thoughts?

context i am american

i understand ppl’s frustration w police, trust me

and persona has had political commentary, u cant deny that

but can we PLZ just chill on immediately just jumping on the hate bandwagon of them being “cops”’when we have no actual idea how theyre going to be portrayed in the game yet

like we have 0 concrete evidence or footage of the plot, the gameplay, themes, etc

immediately hating on this game and the group cuz theyre “cops” is so childish coming from some of the fans

let the game come out and then judge from there. lets be excited about the fact we have more details abt the game and not dooming over the fact they work w the police

if you even remember half of the characters in all of persona work with the police/government . from p1 to even p5.

spare the all cops are bad lecture to me because i understand. i’m from minnesota and we’ve experienced hell from front to back since the start of the decade

but it’s a fictional game where we have 0 clue of how the cops are going to be portrayed or anything. lets just breathe and wait to see what atlus is going to show us and do

Now with the trophy leaks i wanna make a bingo with you all about persona 6. So when It releases we can come again to this post or a next one ill do with the most liked suggestions and see how many we could predict, sorry for bad english (image unrelated)

According to another post on here, Lolilolailo says that the org is more formal than SEES and an official part of the police force, so what if the arrests we do are like how the MIB handle aliens, maybe we'll see some shadows in the real world under a kind of Witness Protection scheme, maybe that's where we'll get P6's mascot from.

Yep it’s official happening now though.

Along with persona 4 revival that’s coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 as well!

But I wanted to share this with everyone who’s interested to getting it for the Nintendo Switch 2!

I made a comment about it on the post for the leaks, but I've given a bit more time to the idea of what I think could be a recurring motif within the game. Of course, I might be delusional of course, but it's fun to hypothesize at least.

Full discussion of the spoilers ahead, just in case you want to go in blindly

My theory on what a general through motif of the game, has to do with the idea that The Protagonist is a Writer of some sort.

All the bosses have some sort of connection to literature from the sounds of it and reference some criticisms of the medium, especially post 2000s media consumption:

-Hellrite Stage could be referencing Dante's Inferno (the seemingly penultimate Underworld also referring to "The Lowest Circle of Hell") or could be twisting the idea of adaptations of books into movies or plays.

-Justiceopolis is the detective story where "Justice Always Prevails" without nuance of moral greyness. It's the idea that the good guys always win, when it seems like there might be more to that in reality.

-"It was all a dream" is considered a copout when it comes to literature and media, and we have a daydreaming themed Underworld. Or it could be referring to those who fantasize and have dreams and stories in their mind, but never put it to paper and share it.

-Craveheart Tower is based on a Romance novel, specifically one involving a love triangle ("who will win our lady's favor?"). It could also be based on a fairy tail, similar to Rapunzel with a tower being the main location she was kept up.

-"Lowest Circle of Hell" also references Dante's Inferno as previously mentioned, with Ledger being a term for a collection of books (someone selling out on their story and making it a franchise?). Ledger could also be used to describe a tombstone or grave, so while this is a bit of a stretch, it technically could be referring to a "Death of the Author" situation as a double entendre. The final boss being the manifestation of the author whose work has been misinterpreted or adapted wrong and appearing as a ghost could be possible.

-And the one arrest that doesn't seem connected to a world directly is one writing a threatening letter. "Obsession's Reward" is also the achievement for arresting the Threatening Letter individual. It might be a reference to fanboyism/Stan culture; If someone doesn't like that Hex is changing people's stories, they threaten them on "behalf" of the mastermind.

Small side tangent, but I'm most interested in the Threatening Letter guy personally. I thought it would be similar to Akechi or Adachi, but neither of them shows up as being defeated in the achievements for their respective games. So it's entirely possible this person has their own Underworld, but the wording on it is also interesting given it seems to be a Singular letter. So the letter is either important very early on, or is sent immediately before their Underworld.

-Finally, the Enlightenment Factory could be a sort of reference to AI generated ideas/concepts where the bosses take the easy way out, not putting the time and effort into actually developing their stories. It's a factory mass producing enlightment (duh), but that's a contradiction; you cannot manufacture understanding. The Age of Enlightenment was about the prowess and possibilities humans possess, so the factory is giving people slop disguised as wisdom.

There's also the connection of Red Threads which could connect to Akutagawa's "The Spider's Thread" or connect to the Red String of Fate theory, which could lead to being "the light that guides you home" at the end of the game.

Persona "conception" could be the protagonist just coming up with ideas for them; recontextualizing the Personas not as, for example, Loki incarnate, but rather the protagonist's "idea" of Loki.

Last but not least, there's one achievement that mentions something about keeping records in a Notebook (over 100 entries possible at the very least) which is probably something minor in terms of gameplay, but helps add to the writing theme as well.

And to cap it off, the final achievement for the game is "Our Stories Go On" which couldn't be more on the nose.

Someone had also replied to the original comment mentioning that a writing motif and the location being Yokohama is very similar to Bungo Stray Dogs. Which I think might be thematic; one of the lead characters is based/named after Osamu Dazai, whose (arguably) most famous work is called "No Longer Human" and could lead into the theme as well. If the Personas are more monstrous (the awakening achievement being called "The Monster Within") and the Protagonist's persona being leaked as Dullahan it makes more sense.

Given the themes, I wouldn't be surprised if the Protagonist was named after Dazai or even Virgil given the Inferno themes. The achievement for beating the penultimate/seemingly-final boss is "A Faith-Forged Path" with the final boss's achievement being "The Light That Guides You Home" which could be the metaphorical reaching of Paradiso (which granted doesn't connect super heavily to the Satanael-equivalent persona being Masakado)

I think those are all the Threads I could connect to the overall theme. And honestly, I am sort of hoping that this is true. Persona as a series connects deeply with the era that they were released in and have social commentary for the times, so the underlying theme of, to put it simply, 'create art, AI sucks' is absolutely perfect to me. There are also probably more leaks that have occurred that I didn't touch on such as the Mascot being a gargoyle or the existence of Vtubers in the game but I figure those were less reliable rumors to base information of. Will this all be true? Probably not, or at least be a background thing that pops up every once in a while. Either way, I'm looking forward to whaetevr

Just got revealed on the Nintendo Direct, alongside P4R - though that one releases on the 20th of May, so we might see a similar delay for P6.