This is a follow-up to my previous post about Persona 4.

As I continue to play my way through the story of Persona 4 (it is a surprisingly long game) I find myself discovering more things about myself reflected in this little, on screen avatar.

One of the things that makes the Persona series slightly unconventional in the realms of JRPG’s is that is splits it’s time between the traditional RPG dungeon crawling and a social simulator akin to Japanese style dating sims (a bizarre genre in it’s own right).  Through these scripted interactions with a vast cast of game characters I find that the decisions I make are not simply me carting around an empty avatar from one interaction to the next.  Instead I find that I have been projecting different aspects of my own personality onto the way An Reuzakis (my avatar’s accidental name) behaves.  Not only that but I also discover that I have shaped An into the person I would like myself to become.  Strong-willed, persistent, knowledgeable, and kind.  These are not only characteristics that have assigned to my avatar but also characteristic that I work to cultivate in my own life.

They are a bit harder to develop in the real world but but playing them out in a fictional role helps in realizing how they may be played out in real society.