Better exploration of psychological theory
It's a shame that the persona and shadow references are paper thin
Few people would get the reference, but the Persona powers and shadow enemies that appear in the games are actually references to Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the social persona. Aside from the names though, previous games in the series haven’t really explored the referential nature of the concept fully. Persona 4 began to touch on it, with the characters having to defeat shadow forms of themselves in order to awaken their persona. I’d like to see this reference developed more fully in Persona 5, provided of course that it’s handled in a way that isn’t pretentious or obtrusive to the game.
More humour
Bear-sona!
The entire Shin Megami Tensei series has always dealt with dark and brooding subject matter. Never afraid to kill off a main character or plunge a world into darkness and chaos, the games have offset this with occasional bouts of humour. There is always often some kind of joke character or monster that provides comic relief and, whilst this was usually minimal in earlier games, Persona 4 gave us a barrel of laughs in the character of Teddy. With his cute and fuzzy appearance and his legion of comically terrible bear puns, Teddy was a fantastic breath of fresh air from the usually oppressive tone of the Persona series. Let’s hope we get a similarly varied mood in Persona 5.
New fusion mechanics
Same old, same old
Possibly the most enjoyable gameplay element of the Persona games is the ability to fuse Personas together. Collecting multiple personas and being able create new and more powerful ones through fusion was exciting, and the system offered a lot of depth in terms of what skills and stats carried over to your new creations. The system has been nearly identical for the past few games though, so I’d be interested to see new methods and mechanics for fusion. Newer games have added the ability to fuse anywhere between two and seven personas together, but this still just follows a simple click and choose method. I’d definitely be curious to see what crazy new features Atlus could offer in this department if they put their minds to it.
