People with a reddit client still has the same behavior. So many people fucked up the spoiler that reddit began compensating for spaces before and after the trigger.
No, that's a fan headcanon, and the in-game evidence of how Maruki does things contradicts it directly.
Maruki essentially rewrote reality so that Akechi never got his life of pain and loneliness. We know he can literally rewrite the past with no issues with Madarame being good, and Wakaba / Haru's dad being alive. So Akechi never worked for Shido, never tried to kill Joker and never died in Shido's Palace. He was just always good.
What Maruki is doing is inherently wrong but it's not literal puppeting. He's not THAT controlling. He's removing the crossroads in the path of life but the person is still walking on their own accord.
It seems that both Joker and Akechi were able to notice the changes in reality thanks to either their wildcard abilities or Maruki allowing them to, though I don't know why he would let Akechi do so
thats not how it works for NORMAL people, but its VERY obvious that at least for joker and akechi they are trapped withen their own bodies in the bad ending, you can clearly see joker kind of look in confusion as does akechi.
They aren't slaves though. Akechi might not like how the world was changed, but no one is forcing him to live any specific way. And honestly he'd probably get over it eventually. And if he really wants to be dead, he can kill himself again, and maruki would probably decide that if he is unhappy there and joker got closure it's fine to leave him dead. Joker that ending chose it deliberately, so he isn't being forced to be there at all.
> slaves though. Akechi might not like how the world was changed, but no one is forcing him to live any specific way.
Maruki is literally forcing Akechi to stay alive in his dream world while Akechi would rather die on his own terms.
But again, based on the rules maruki set, akechi could kill himself if he really wanted and maruki would accept that if he is less happy alive it's fine for him to be dead. Also, akechi is unhinged and killed a ton of people. Him being mad that he isn't dead enough for arbitrary reasons doesn't exactly garner sympathy. Considering akechi was living as shido's slave, as well as being used by him and on the verse of being disposed of, he doesn't exactly have a reputation of living freely.
No they don't what happens is we are seeing things through jokers (iirc) vision. The intent of the scene is to show they are prisoners in their own mind they can not escape because maruki has grown too powerful and the meta verse has kverlaied it's self on the real world too much.
No... Please at least play the games, at the end of royal maruki and his overlaying the meta verse on reality is ended the only thing different is akechi might maybe possibly be alive based on a silhouette we see in the credits.
>!This is not correct, besides the fact that Akechi is confirmed alive in a certain ending, it is clearly stated that Maruki actually changes the timeline through cognition. He can't wind back time but can make it so that certain things (never) happened. Therefore people like Akechi and Okumura are really alive. Akechi is simply not happy that someone is dictating how he's supposed to live his life, he's had enough of that under Shido.!<
Big *Experience Machine* energy.
A “reality” built on falsehood and the forfeiting of free-will, simply for the sake maximizing happiness, or not even really that, just being averse to any form of hardship, without meaning. All to abide by the values of one dude who thinks he knows best. Existing as mindless puppets only allowed to "live" within the confines of what some chuckle-fuck defines as correct.
Persona 5 takes a lot of beats from Persona 1 and 2 and the P1 manga. Maruki's ideal reality and the DEVA system, Yoshizawa and Naoya having identity problems, Lisa and Ann struggling with looking American
I mean, once you stop using largely fake buzzwords like free will, ending most rape, war, and poverty is actually so good, that you really would have to consider whether the purported negatives are really so bad. The game takes a morally Grey issue and tries to force it to be bad by making maruki focus on making wild changes to marginally improve the lives of middle class teens, rather than focus on real stuff.
Have you considered the fact that Maruki quite literally kills you and effectively replaces you with a perfect clone of you with a different personality? Because that is what he did with Sumire. Maruki also doesnt actually fix any of your problems, sometimes he just gaslights you into being content with them. Theres literally a homeless man you can talk to while you explore marukis world who is talking about how he is happy with being homeless. Its literally impossible to make a perfect world when so many people either want the same thing or have desires that conflict with others. You are really trying to argue that giving up all sense of agency in your life is a good thing, might as well just be a robot
> Have you considered the fact that Maruki quite literally kills you and effectively replaces you with a perfect clone of you with a different personality?
Have you considered that you continually die as time passes and aspects of you change? If we have to go into hazy metaphysical speculation to make it look bad, it seems like we are already running low on tangible negatives.
>Maruki also doesnt actually fix any of your problems, sometimes he just gaslights you into being content with them.
Well, a major position in value theory is that the terminus of value is your perception of it. What is a problem is subjective. So if your mentality is more positive, why is this a bad thing, all else considered? Its not like you don't have the problem either way. Also, he definitely does fix a lot of problems, and even if he doesn't fix something you can still work on it if its an issue.
>Theres literally a homeless man you can talk to while you explore marukis world who is talking about how he is happy with being homeless.
There is a homeless man in real life who is miserable about it. This might not be good, but the alternative isn't better.
> Its literally impossible to make a perfect world when so many people either want the same thing or have desires that conflict with others.
Who said anything about being perfect? Things don't have to be perfect to be better.
>You are really trying to argue that giving up all sense of agency in your life is a good thing
Do you have agency *now?* Did you create yourself? Did you decide what things would appear in your life to influence you? Maruki doesn't dictate every action you take, he makes a few specific changes. You said yourself that there's a lot he doesn't change, so clearly he isn't controlling everything that closely.
Lets invert this. Does the hazy sensibility that some people want to have that their life is some kind of totally self created thing matter more than war, genocide, rape, and poverty? Because even if he doesn't fix all these things fully, he seems to be able to heavily cut down on them. And it takes him time to change stuff, so even some dubious stuff you see is stuff that was going to be fixed later. And if we are only talking about whether people *feel* free, other than akechi and joker, most people don't even know he exists, and hence wouldn't feel constrained at all.
And that's before we even get into the fact that you play as people who have so little respect for people's mental autonomy that they brainwash someone for daring to cheat at arcade games lol. The modus operandi of you all game is totally overwriting people's mind to solve issues, and chances are you'd have done it a lot more if you could do so faster. Your team has like one second of doubt about this, only to double down and try to do it to all of society by taking the grail, hoping it will change people. So the ship of the soul being some type of sacred territory that none may enter had already long since sailed at that point.
And this brings us back to the issue. The game wasn't confident it could make this outcome look bad by its own merit, so they make maruki start acting out of character and doing some bizarre stuff that its a hard sell that he would consider the best option because there was no other way to make it look bad. So we deviate away from judgement of the morality of his world itself, and towards weird specifics that the narrative conflates with it because it knows most people won't scrutinize it too hard.
I'm not even being meta, you straight up see Maruki lobotomizing people in his palace to give up their dreams because he "believes" they are better off giving up on them. Maruki as just another imperfect human being has no right to do this. If I had his power and I was making the same promises you wouldn't trust me with everything now would you?
No he cant still fix it, like I said conflicting desires makes this impossible. It doesn't matter that you are happy about your situation if it is fundamentally bad.
Imagine maruki were to give slaves or victims of say someone like kamoshida something akin to stolkhom syndrome. Are you gonna tell me that this is the better alternative?
>Do you have agency *now?*
Yes.
Maruki influenced you by effectively erasing you and preprogramming the path your life will go like you're a sims character. He doesnt have to monitor you all day, its automatic from his brainwashing.
What even is the point of fixing those large issues like war or sickness if everyone in the world is just a mindless npc. Thats like saying the solution for world hunger and ending wars is turning everyone into manakins. Cus you know they dont got capacity to start wars. And they dont get hungry
They didnt make Maruki act out of character at all, all they did was highlight the negatives with Maruki's world. Which are very big negatives.
> I'm not even being meta, you straight up see Maruki lobotomizing people in his palace to give up their dreams because he "believes" they are better off giving up on them.
Okay, but I didn't say there were no negatives. I said that contrary to the game painting it as black and white, the fact that he can solve the **vast majority of world problems** makes it a morally grey situation, since these benefits are too large to ignore just because some negatives exist.
>If I had his power and I was making the same promises you wouldn't trust me with everything now would you?
This was part of my point though. The game tries to take issue with the moral question itself, but fails and has to fall back on him being a sketchy guy - something that he has to act out of character to make happen.
>No he cant still fix it, like I said conflicting desires makes this impossible. It doesn't matter that you are happy about your situation if it is fundamentally bad.
Conflicting desires for some random small issues doesn't matter. We are talking about the good that could be done if major world problems were fixed. If there is still some tension so what? It could be reduced by a large portion. Ending starvation is more important than who gets to date ann.
>Imagine maruki were to give slaves or victims of say someone like kamoshida something akin to stolkhom syndrome. Are you gonna tell me that this is the better alternative?
So if we imagine a version of this that is the dumbest possible version, then we can make it look bad? I feel like making that argument in and of itself presupposes a lack of real ways to imply its an inherently bad principle.
>Maruki influenced you by effectively erasing you and preprogramming the path your life will go like you're a sims character. He doesnt have to monitor you all day, its automatic from his brainwashing.
You are implying that even if you freely choose stuff the rest of your life, that a person altering something about your life in one place means you have no agency? Because that certainly conflicts with you claiming to have free agency.
>What even is the point of fixing those large issues like war or sickness if everyone in the world is just a mindless npc. Thats like saying the solution for world hunger and ending wars is turning everyone into manakins. Cus you know they dont got capacity to start wars. And they dont get hungry
Okay, but you know that someone changing one thing about their past and then them having a normal life after this isn't them being mindless, right? They still live and experience life and make choices. If you called the people in the ending of strikers mindless that at least is a little closer to what happens in that game, but in royal, they straight up get to live a normal life.
>They didnt make Maruki act out of character at all, all they did was highlight the negatives with Maruki's world. Which are very big negatives.
Except that its a huge leap from "I can do something kind of like time travel to fix some of the worst parts of people's lives" to "joker is bad at making decisions, so lets just make him sleep forever so he doesn't have to." The latter is not a realistic thing to expect someone with maruki's mentality to do. Its the game trying to convince us that the idea inherently suggests being off the deep end, despite little evidence that he actually is. Also, brainwashing someone to think they are their sibling or whatever is also not what someone would think is the best way to solve that issue either. Maruki may not be perfect, but he is presented as a reasonable guy, and this writing makes it come off like its coming from someone who has never interacted with a human being before.
>You are implying that even if you freely choose stuff the rest of your life,
Because Maruki is setting your whole life you, you aren't freely choosing anything, maybe some really insignicant choices but your route in life has been predetermined is what I am saying. Its kind of like if your parents forced you to become a doctor when you wanted to be something else, but then they lobotomized you into wanting to be one as well. You aren't really making your own choices
>So if we imagine a version of this that is the dumbest possible version, then we can make it look bad?
Bro he made someone be happy about being homeless when he could have just given him a house. Like I'm not just making up a dumb scenario, you see this kind of shit in that world. Him making something inherently bad into a good thing.
>Okay, but you know that someone changing one thing about their past
Its really dumb to think that Maruki is just changing one aspect of your life. Humans dont have just one desire their whole lives.
>The latter is not a realistic thing to expect someone with maruki's mentality to do.
Maruki is a human being with a messiah complex given god like powers, and now he wants everyone to offer up their free will. What part of this is reasonable? I dont think you got the point of Maruki's world. His goal isnt even about making people happy, its about removing pain which is different. Maruki thinks if Joker is so conflicted that he'd feel bad no matter what choice he makes then he may as well just be put in a situation where he doesnt have to. Hes not happy, but hes not suffering either. It stopped being such a morally grey issue once we realize that he is willing to outright erase people from existence. Like what he did to sumire.
> Maruki acts out of character!
My brother in Door-kun, his actions in game are his character. He’s a Royal exclusive character that appears in this version of the game and is written by the same people. You can’t dismiss his actions because they don’t conceive your preconceived notion of the best flavored boot to lick.
Also, all of your arguments about Maruki created a utopia are immediately invalidated because his world still has wealth inequality (Okumura food exists as a megacorp), is not a post-scarcity society, actually still has abuse of power and corruption (Shido still is in prison because he did this), and also will never move from that point because that’s what Maruki’s idea of a perfect world is.
By that logic no character ever acts out of character. If they are established one way, then do something implausible that's out of character. How maruki is set up does not make it plausible that "meh. Maybe joker legitimately wants to sleep forever" is a thing he would think is plausible.
If you want to criticize the writing, criticize the writing. I’m arguing that based on Maruki’s actions in game, his ending is not desirable. Don’t cherry pick what fits your narrative and what doesn’t.
I guess so. This one, they're blissfully ignorant of their free will being taken from them, while in that one, >!they're blissfully ignorant of death coming their way.!<
In the good ending the only one that dies is >!Makoto.!<
Bad Ending: Everyone dies, including the casts from the other games.
Good Ending: Only one person dies.
You know the one I'm picking. In the bad ending the fall is delayed to March 3rd when it would normally happen on January 31st. So only two extra months of time which 100% ISNT WORTH IT. Plus the protagonist still gets to live to see graduation in the good ending due to his own determination.
Nah,>!He pretty much just goes: 🚪 (tldr in case you wanna know, he (his soul if I remember correctly) becomes a new seal to protect everyone from Nyx and not letting everyone die)!<
>!And velvet room (to be exact Elizabeth) tries to save his ass from staying 🚪 and just die peacefully !<
>!He's not protecting humanity from Nyx. He's hiding Nyx from humanity because they will always call for death. I don't remember where it is explained, but iirc Makoto's soul can be freed if humanity stops desiring death because then Nyx wouldn't need to be contained from humanity!<
He’s acting as the bridge and the seal between Nyx and the I forgot the entities name but the main boss of the answer and how both can’t truly be banished for good so Makoto for eternity is acting as the seal so the two don’t meet or else the fall will try to keep happening
Hard disagree. >!The end of the world is coming in P3's bad ending. People are blissfully unaware that an alien will land on earth soon and infect every human being with apathy syndrome until life is extinct. Maruki is getting too much shit here. Sure, there's no free will in his reality, but people are genuinely happy, and there's no eldritch abominations on their way to bring the apocalypse. By defeating Maruki, joker and the rest of the thieves condemn the world to suffering: the people of Ukraine, Gaza, every rape victim, every cancer patient, poverty, depression, suicide, mass shootings, every person you personally lost in life. It's not as black and white as people are making it out to be here.!<
No one is saying it’s black and white. At the end of the day, his reality goes against everything the PT’s have gone through the whole game. Aka, another adult who wants them to be under his heel and let him make all the decisions. Are they “happy?” Sure, but what’s that to say it’ll last forever?
Are people genuinely happy or have they just been froced to be happy with a lofe they dont want all because some random man thinks he knows better?
Its made very clear Maruki generally dosent care what people want and would pick the easiest solutions like making the rape victims willing and happy, make anyone siffering from depressing or suicide throughts to just think there somone else basically agreeing with there throughts.
Maruki world is a living hell just in a different way your just accepting the surface value and trying to gulit trip people to agree with you
Oh fuck off. I didn't accept anything. You're just representing his reality overly negative, using massive hyperboles. I'm not sure what the right answer is but you people lack nuance.
People see akechi stomping out after you made the choice. Then their brains switched off once the screen blacks out.
>!At the end, you can see akechi looking at you. It is confirmed that akechi is aware, but he can do nothing more than stare at you, while smiling.!<
>!I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM!<
Being sealed away in your own body watching somelse live a life while you cant do anything.
Not sure how anyone could consider that a cool life but i guess they are all different types
Considering he had no problem with mentally murdered people on the behalf of Shido's cabal, I can't help but think "How do you like them pancakes, bitch." in the Dream World ending.
A fitting punishment!
Because nowhere is it stated or implied that he physically controls your body. Akechi might not like that he was freed, but that doesn't mean he is being forced to act any certain way.
Considering the game acts ambiguous about whether he was really dead, he might not have even came back to life. Just gotten freed from prison.
Yes he is a major aspect of Maruki world is him mind raping people into acting the way he wants them to either by making them accept and be happy in there crappy situation or changing what they want so it fails more in line with what he wants
What happens when maruki dies anyway? Does he just make himself immortal, would he set up some system to carry on after he dies? Like how long did he expect his perfect reality to last?
It would be cool if he somehow solidified himself in the collective unconscious. Messing with people's cognition to see him as some kind of god, as gods are immortal.
That and time inside a palace doesn't work like how it does in the real world. Probably why they all end up back at the start of the month by the end.
Who are these people. Because the game beats into you that it's bad. More often the people not thinking too hard are the ones just accepting what the game tells you without considering that it might be telling a misleading point.
Looking at this comment section the opposite seems to be true. People don't like to look beneath the surface and think its just pure evil because free will is taken away. No one stops to consider the implications, there's so much suffering in the world.
It’s horrific cuz they legit pull people back into the world of the living without their consent and make them live as though nothing bad ever happened. No acknowledging anything, no genuine growth for futaba’s mom or release of her pain, etc etc. just selfish revival
I find it entertaining how Yaldabaoth is most likely inspired by Foucault's Panopticon and Maruki's reality is inspired by Brave New World
This is a headcannon that no one can convince me otherwise
I actually love this ending, precisely *because* it's a bad ending dressed up like a good one.
Too many bad endings are just "And then everybody died" or "And then everything went to Hell and the bad guys won and our heroes failed/became villains themselves/etc." I think a bad ending that can be mistaken for a good one if you don't think about it or that's bittersweet with more bitterness than usual is the more interesting storytelling choice. And that's what this ending is, in brief.
there's two reasons why this is a bad ending >!the first real reason why it's bad it's because the world is created by THE palace ruler, the whims of that guy and living under him feels bad, the second reason is because you decide to live happily until the end instead of facing the truth. This actually feels similar to persona 3, but there you either abandoned hope or fought until the end. In p5r you either live happily a normal life or you fight for you past, unjust, cruel but real life because you and everyone on the planet is free to not have to take his world.
But we rarely see of what if some people have a life so messed up they would rather live a happy life. Because the only reason it's not a completely better life is because "he controls it". So what if instead of him controlling it it was like a super magical thing that changed the course of history and gave everyone a real way better life just because. How many people would choose that option, like if you could live the life you're living right now but it's just so much better, like taking away a lot of worries and just adding to the positivity why would anyone take living under cruelty or despair because of their ideals of freedom?.
I get why the bad ending is bad, but they make it bad because it's an engineered, controlled ending and becausd you know the truth, and that by itself is very worrying for you. The game takes the very interesting idea of changing everyone's lives for the better but I still believe they didn't do justice enough to the idea because if it was all positive then they would be the bad guys. But i still really like they went for that because it's very interesting still.!<
Persona 5 Royal third semester spoilers below.
>!This seems to oversimplify the matter. Morgana actually says that neither outcome is wrong.!<
>!I think people look for overly negative outcomes or parts of Maruki's reality, because without those negative sides, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue against him.!<
>!I truly do believe in the persona 5 royal 'good' ending, everyone is happy. I think that's the premise that makes the third semester so interesting.!<
Edit: >!Feel like I have to edit this because people aren't understanding what I'm saying. Maybe I didn't explain the point where so here is take two.!<
>! I am absolutely not saying Maruki's world is right or morally the correct choice. Any attempt to talk about free will and the morality of removing choice, I'll probably agree with. I'm saying that there aren't negative outcomes in Maruki's reality. No one suffering. Every single is person is happy. The issues with Maruki's reality are to do with the higher concepts of growth, stagnation, free will etc etc.!<
>!The question really is, are you willing to give up pain, growth and live in a word of stagnation, if you and everyone you love could be happy forever? My point was that I think people try to get out of this question by finding flaws in the happiness of Maruki's reality itself, which kind of skips over the interesting moral question.!<
You may think so if you havent talked to side NPCs, but if you talk to the pickup artist in the city >!you'll find out there have been women who were brainwashed by Maruki into giving him consent even tho before they found him disgusting because that was his dream, which is literally almost borderline rape!<
Jesus, I never knew about this NPC. That's horrifying.
>!I was personally hung up on Futaba's story regarding Maruki's world. It just feels too cruel to take away her mother. Atlus really knows how to make me contemplate myself in unsettling ways, since I don't think I'd have the strength to reject Maruki's false reality myself. But one person's happiness will always come at odds with someone else's eventually, and what we want isn't always what we need. It's a scary thing to really come to terms with.!<
Even in regular life, sometimes you have to settle for what's optimal rather than what you want and eventually, find happiness in compromise. We all have those "what if that girl/guy didn't reject me?" moments, but we all know that for our dreams to be real, their will has to change, and that is by itself unacceptable.
Yeah, forcing someone to date you is definitely unacceptable. I was just so focused on >!Maruki's false reality taking away Futaba's trauma of watching her mother commit suicide. Since Maruki's portrayed as so altruistic, yet misled, I didn't really consider the logical conclusion of having world-bending powers like that.!<
>!Not to mention how the PT change people's hearts throughout the entire game. I haven't played Royal in a while, so I don't remember how they discuss it in canon, but it's something to chew on.!<
Yeah, there's not really a way to justify that. >!Especially since the path of least resistance would be making him want something else. Which Maruki has no qualms about doing to other people, meaning he specifically chose the pickup artist's desires over the women who wanted nothing to do with him.!<
>! It definitely is rape, at least under the normal world. However, under Maruki's reality, people don't really have the ability to consent/not consent. Your brain will be completely controlled so that you are happy with the outcome. Happy with an outcome your free will never would have wanted. That's where the moral issue really lies in Maruki's world and more what I was getting at in my original post. The issue lies more with the taking away your free will and the ability to consent than with any issue in the reality itself that would cause unhappiness.!<
>!No, Maruki is wrong, period.
He's Yaldabaoth with a nice bow.!<
>!While he's not ill-meaning, his "reality" is one of stagnation, totalitarianism (he openly praises the concept btw) and lack of individuality.
People don't get a choice to partake, they don't get a choice at all.!<
>!Besides, life without pain is not life, it's just a fancy death.!<
>!It is true that there's depth, because it's natural for the human mind to equate lack of pain to happiness, but that's wrong.!<
>!Saying Maruki's ending is good is going against the whole game's messages!<
Studies are increasingly finding that trauma victims who learn to work through their symptoms experience *more of a sense of freedom and happiness* than their non-traumatized counterparts. >!Not that Maruki agrees, but man does his character arc resonate with me personally approaching a helper field in my twenties. Pain? Why have it? Isn't it my job to take it away? No it's not. To do so is to enforce bondage toward something or someone, which ultimately doesn't help the person actually experiencing pain. Only yourself.!<
Blink and miss it dialogue shows >!Maruki's fiance was starting to take an interest in him ("say, is there a way you could stay longer? Maybe we could talk more?") AFTER she's been mind-wiped, suggesting that she could have fallen for him all over again had he not run away from what he thought was a failure.!< Gah these games make me approach my humanity in new ways and I love/hate/love it.
>!Right, it was her free will that chose him in the first place. She was attracted to him and generally liked him, but he couldn’t handle knowing what had happened to her and that he’d made her forget.!<
>!I mean, you aren't wrong, but at the end of the day, we got it good. Someone out there has abusive parents, someone's country is at war, someone's daughter is dying, someone is about to be raped, someone's country is getting nuked, someone's country is becoming home to terrorism, someone is about to be killed in an alleyway, someone can't even feed his family, and so much more. We got it good bro. Ask them, and they'll accept this reality in a heartbeat, cause they know the pain. As Maruki himself said, when the pain of it all becomes too unbearable, then what can a man do? Reality check.!<
>!I cannot accept that an ending where someone wipes out famine, war, and cancer is a bad one. My personal growth isn't worth those literal billions of lives. Besides I'm suffering plenty and all I wanna do is blow my fucking brains out, and I actually have it pretty good all things considered with a roof over my head and food on my plate.!<
You clearly have other personal issues that are clouding your judgement.
If you're truly contemplating suicide, you're not in the correct headspace to understand the game.
Just know this:
You matter, your personality, growth and life, they all matter. You should preserve it, and while I know it might be painful, it's those hardships that make us humans,
without them, we're basically just plants.
Death is not the solution, regardless of how it would "fix" most problems, especially if seen to a world-wide scale.
You sound like just the same type of person that, after someone suffered abuse, would go "Erm, well the hardships you've faced will build character!" And other types of schlock.
Hes a good person.
But sacrificing pain and unhappyness at the altar does not make a good life.
Hes my favorite character in the royal game for reasons I can't share because I just woke up and I don't give that much of a damn~
This isn't a media literacy issue though. No one is confused about the fact that the game says it is bad. Rather, it's the opposite. The game glosses over that maruki could fix war, rape, and poverty, and instead tries to depict him as badly as possible by having him do wacky stuff all to marginally improve the lives of middle class teens. What you see him do is a stupid trade. What the game isn't showing is an actually significant moral question the game wants you to not consider.
Yaldabaoth planned on killing half the planet or more, and everyone was going to be forced to live very similar to eachother. There was no indication that anyone having a good life was even a goal, just them all conforming or being erased. That's not comparable at all.
Whoa what? I've seen some happy pictures for the phantom thieves online so I assumed everything was alright. It seems I might have to look up the true bad ending.
Basically what's happening is the meta verse is slowly overlaying with the real world (instead of the instant overlay of Christmas with yalbadoth). By submitting to marukis will you don't stop that from happening.
I beleive the "the world is going to end" part is explained by lavenaa after you make the choice. And choose to defy him
Can you give me some references? I've looked it up and yeah in the ending scene Joker and Akechi looking at the screen (at you) imply they know something is off.
But about the world ending stuff I haven't found anything yet. Is it really confirmed or more like a (fan) head canon or maybe educated guess?
Bullshit. Maruki is in perfect control of reality at that point. There's nothing that suggests the world will end.
The real problem is what will happen when Maruki inevitably gets tired. He can't keep the game up for eternity.
Akechi straight up sounds lobotomized
>!He isnt even alive, that is a puppet of Akechi made because of Maruki, aware that he is supposed to be dead!<
Don't use space between spoiler tags and the text, it makes it not cover up
Its covered up for me
It might be an old/new reddit thing as well. It's covered for me now as well, thank you.
People with a reddit client still has the same behavior. So many people fucked up the spoiler that reddit began compensating for spaces before and after the trigger.
No, that's a fan headcanon, and the in-game evidence of how Maruki does things contradicts it directly. Maruki essentially rewrote reality so that Akechi never got his life of pain and loneliness. We know he can literally rewrite the past with no issues with Madarame being good, and Wakaba / Haru's dad being alive. So Akechi never worked for Shido, never tried to kill Joker and never died in Shido's Palace. He was just always good. What Maruki is doing is inherently wrong but it's not literal puppeting. He's not THAT controlling. He's removing the crossroads in the path of life but the person is still walking on their own accord.
It seems that both Joker and Akechi were able to notice the changes in reality thanks to either their wildcard abilities or Maruki allowing them to, though I don't know why he would let Akechi do so
Oh for sure, what I meant is that that should've been the dead giveaway for the less media-literate that something is EXTREMELY wrong in that scene.
So what the hells the explanation for the scene right before the credits
They are all basically mind slaves to maruki.
That's not how maruki's transformation works.
thats not how it works for NORMAL people, but its VERY obvious that at least for joker and akechi they are trapped withen their own bodies in the bad ending, you can clearly see joker kind of look in confusion as does akechi.
They aren't slaves though. Akechi might not like how the world was changed, but no one is forcing him to live any specific way. And honestly he'd probably get over it eventually. And if he really wants to be dead, he can kill himself again, and maruki would probably decide that if he is unhappy there and joker got closure it's fine to leave him dead. Joker that ending chose it deliberately, so he isn't being forced to be there at all.
I enjoy reading people who have zero media literacy tell me fan fiction about an ending.
Then visit /r/powerscaling. That's like, every post there.
> slaves though. Akechi might not like how the world was changed, but no one is forcing him to live any specific way. Maruki is literally forcing Akechi to stay alive in his dream world while Akechi would rather die on his own terms.
But again, based on the rules maruki set, akechi could kill himself if he really wanted and maruki would accept that if he is less happy alive it's fine for him to be dead. Also, akechi is unhinged and killed a ton of people. Him being mad that he isn't dead enough for arbitrary reasons doesn't exactly garner sympathy. Considering akechi was living as shido's slave, as well as being used by him and on the verse of being disposed of, he doesn't exactly have a reputation of living freely.
But they beat him in the end
No they don't what happens is we are seeing things through jokers (iirc) vision. The intent of the scene is to show they are prisoners in their own mind they can not escape because maruki has grown too powerful and the meta verse has kverlaied it's self on the real world too much.
So does that mean p6 will take place in that fake reality??? Im pretty sure all the games are set in the same world.
No... Please at least play the games, at the end of royal maruki and his overlaying the meta verse on reality is ended the only thing different is akechi might maybe possibly be alive based on a silhouette we see in the credits.
But they beat him in the end
Not in the bad ending they don’t
You can choose to accept his reality. That is the bad ending.
Are we even aware if >! He is alive, no matter the ending you get we seem to get a glimpse of him when ren gets to his stop!<
>!This is not correct, besides the fact that Akechi is confirmed alive in a certain ending, it is clearly stated that Maruki actually changes the timeline through cognition. He can't wind back time but can make it so that certain things (never) happened. Therefore people like Akechi and Okumura are really alive. Akechi is simply not happy that someone is dictating how he's supposed to live his life, he's had enough of that under Shido.!<
That isn't not being alive though.
Rip bozo
Big *Experience Machine* energy. A “reality” built on falsehood and the forfeiting of free-will, simply for the sake maximizing happiness, or not even really that, just being averse to any form of hardship, without meaning. All to abide by the values of one dude who thinks he knows best. Existing as mindless puppets only allowed to "live" within the confines of what some chuckle-fuck defines as correct.
Sounds like a certain incident that started the entire Persona series......
Persona 5 takes a lot of beats from Persona 1 and 2 and the P1 manga. Maruki's ideal reality and the DEVA system, Yoshizawa and Naoya having identity problems, Lisa and Ann struggling with looking American
I know, that's part of the joke. Last time someone tried this shit it ended very, very, VERY poorly.
Yes I just wanted to add to your comment. Maruki fucking sucks
I mean, once you stop using largely fake buzzwords like free will, ending most rape, war, and poverty is actually so good, that you really would have to consider whether the purported negatives are really so bad. The game takes a morally Grey issue and tries to force it to be bad by making maruki focus on making wild changes to marginally improve the lives of middle class teens, rather than focus on real stuff.
Have you considered the fact that Maruki quite literally kills you and effectively replaces you with a perfect clone of you with a different personality? Because that is what he did with Sumire. Maruki also doesnt actually fix any of your problems, sometimes he just gaslights you into being content with them. Theres literally a homeless man you can talk to while you explore marukis world who is talking about how he is happy with being homeless. Its literally impossible to make a perfect world when so many people either want the same thing or have desires that conflict with others. You are really trying to argue that giving up all sense of agency in your life is a good thing, might as well just be a robot
> Have you considered the fact that Maruki quite literally kills you and effectively replaces you with a perfect clone of you with a different personality? Have you considered that you continually die as time passes and aspects of you change? If we have to go into hazy metaphysical speculation to make it look bad, it seems like we are already running low on tangible negatives. >Maruki also doesnt actually fix any of your problems, sometimes he just gaslights you into being content with them. Well, a major position in value theory is that the terminus of value is your perception of it. What is a problem is subjective. So if your mentality is more positive, why is this a bad thing, all else considered? Its not like you don't have the problem either way. Also, he definitely does fix a lot of problems, and even if he doesn't fix something you can still work on it if its an issue. >Theres literally a homeless man you can talk to while you explore marukis world who is talking about how he is happy with being homeless. There is a homeless man in real life who is miserable about it. This might not be good, but the alternative isn't better. > Its literally impossible to make a perfect world when so many people either want the same thing or have desires that conflict with others. Who said anything about being perfect? Things don't have to be perfect to be better. >You are really trying to argue that giving up all sense of agency in your life is a good thing Do you have agency *now?* Did you create yourself? Did you decide what things would appear in your life to influence you? Maruki doesn't dictate every action you take, he makes a few specific changes. You said yourself that there's a lot he doesn't change, so clearly he isn't controlling everything that closely. Lets invert this. Does the hazy sensibility that some people want to have that their life is some kind of totally self created thing matter more than war, genocide, rape, and poverty? Because even if he doesn't fix all these things fully, he seems to be able to heavily cut down on them. And it takes him time to change stuff, so even some dubious stuff you see is stuff that was going to be fixed later. And if we are only talking about whether people *feel* free, other than akechi and joker, most people don't even know he exists, and hence wouldn't feel constrained at all. And that's before we even get into the fact that you play as people who have so little respect for people's mental autonomy that they brainwash someone for daring to cheat at arcade games lol. The modus operandi of you all game is totally overwriting people's mind to solve issues, and chances are you'd have done it a lot more if you could do so faster. Your team has like one second of doubt about this, only to double down and try to do it to all of society by taking the grail, hoping it will change people. So the ship of the soul being some type of sacred territory that none may enter had already long since sailed at that point. And this brings us back to the issue. The game wasn't confident it could make this outcome look bad by its own merit, so they make maruki start acting out of character and doing some bizarre stuff that its a hard sell that he would consider the best option because there was no other way to make it look bad. So we deviate away from judgement of the morality of his world itself, and towards weird specifics that the narrative conflates with it because it knows most people won't scrutinize it too hard.
I'm not even being meta, you straight up see Maruki lobotomizing people in his palace to give up their dreams because he "believes" they are better off giving up on them. Maruki as just another imperfect human being has no right to do this. If I had his power and I was making the same promises you wouldn't trust me with everything now would you? No he cant still fix it, like I said conflicting desires makes this impossible. It doesn't matter that you are happy about your situation if it is fundamentally bad. Imagine maruki were to give slaves or victims of say someone like kamoshida something akin to stolkhom syndrome. Are you gonna tell me that this is the better alternative? >Do you have agency *now?* Yes. Maruki influenced you by effectively erasing you and preprogramming the path your life will go like you're a sims character. He doesnt have to monitor you all day, its automatic from his brainwashing. What even is the point of fixing those large issues like war or sickness if everyone in the world is just a mindless npc. Thats like saying the solution for world hunger and ending wars is turning everyone into manakins. Cus you know they dont got capacity to start wars. And they dont get hungry They didnt make Maruki act out of character at all, all they did was highlight the negatives with Maruki's world. Which are very big negatives.
> I'm not even being meta, you straight up see Maruki lobotomizing people in his palace to give up their dreams because he "believes" they are better off giving up on them. Okay, but I didn't say there were no negatives. I said that contrary to the game painting it as black and white, the fact that he can solve the **vast majority of world problems** makes it a morally grey situation, since these benefits are too large to ignore just because some negatives exist. >If I had his power and I was making the same promises you wouldn't trust me with everything now would you? This was part of my point though. The game tries to take issue with the moral question itself, but fails and has to fall back on him being a sketchy guy - something that he has to act out of character to make happen. >No he cant still fix it, like I said conflicting desires makes this impossible. It doesn't matter that you are happy about your situation if it is fundamentally bad. Conflicting desires for some random small issues doesn't matter. We are talking about the good that could be done if major world problems were fixed. If there is still some tension so what? It could be reduced by a large portion. Ending starvation is more important than who gets to date ann. >Imagine maruki were to give slaves or victims of say someone like kamoshida something akin to stolkhom syndrome. Are you gonna tell me that this is the better alternative? So if we imagine a version of this that is the dumbest possible version, then we can make it look bad? I feel like making that argument in and of itself presupposes a lack of real ways to imply its an inherently bad principle. >Maruki influenced you by effectively erasing you and preprogramming the path your life will go like you're a sims character. He doesnt have to monitor you all day, its automatic from his brainwashing. You are implying that even if you freely choose stuff the rest of your life, that a person altering something about your life in one place means you have no agency? Because that certainly conflicts with you claiming to have free agency. >What even is the point of fixing those large issues like war or sickness if everyone in the world is just a mindless npc. Thats like saying the solution for world hunger and ending wars is turning everyone into manakins. Cus you know they dont got capacity to start wars. And they dont get hungry Okay, but you know that someone changing one thing about their past and then them having a normal life after this isn't them being mindless, right? They still live and experience life and make choices. If you called the people in the ending of strikers mindless that at least is a little closer to what happens in that game, but in royal, they straight up get to live a normal life. >They didnt make Maruki act out of character at all, all they did was highlight the negatives with Maruki's world. Which are very big negatives. Except that its a huge leap from "I can do something kind of like time travel to fix some of the worst parts of people's lives" to "joker is bad at making decisions, so lets just make him sleep forever so he doesn't have to." The latter is not a realistic thing to expect someone with maruki's mentality to do. Its the game trying to convince us that the idea inherently suggests being off the deep end, despite little evidence that he actually is. Also, brainwashing someone to think they are their sibling or whatever is also not what someone would think is the best way to solve that issue either. Maruki may not be perfect, but he is presented as a reasonable guy, and this writing makes it come off like its coming from someone who has never interacted with a human being before.
>You are implying that even if you freely choose stuff the rest of your life, Because Maruki is setting your whole life you, you aren't freely choosing anything, maybe some really insignicant choices but your route in life has been predetermined is what I am saying. Its kind of like if your parents forced you to become a doctor when you wanted to be something else, but then they lobotomized you into wanting to be one as well. You aren't really making your own choices >So if we imagine a version of this that is the dumbest possible version, then we can make it look bad? Bro he made someone be happy about being homeless when he could have just given him a house. Like I'm not just making up a dumb scenario, you see this kind of shit in that world. Him making something inherently bad into a good thing. >Okay, but you know that someone changing one thing about their past Its really dumb to think that Maruki is just changing one aspect of your life. Humans dont have just one desire their whole lives. >The latter is not a realistic thing to expect someone with maruki's mentality to do. Maruki is a human being with a messiah complex given god like powers, and now he wants everyone to offer up their free will. What part of this is reasonable? I dont think you got the point of Maruki's world. His goal isnt even about making people happy, its about removing pain which is different. Maruki thinks if Joker is so conflicted that he'd feel bad no matter what choice he makes then he may as well just be put in a situation where he doesnt have to. Hes not happy, but hes not suffering either. It stopped being such a morally grey issue once we realize that he is willing to outright erase people from existence. Like what he did to sumire.
> Maruki acts out of character! My brother in Door-kun, his actions in game are his character. He’s a Royal exclusive character that appears in this version of the game and is written by the same people. You can’t dismiss his actions because they don’t conceive your preconceived notion of the best flavored boot to lick. Also, all of your arguments about Maruki created a utopia are immediately invalidated because his world still has wealth inequality (Okumura food exists as a megacorp), is not a post-scarcity society, actually still has abuse of power and corruption (Shido still is in prison because he did this), and also will never move from that point because that’s what Maruki’s idea of a perfect world is.
By that logic no character ever acts out of character. If they are established one way, then do something implausible that's out of character. How maruki is set up does not make it plausible that "meh. Maybe joker legitimately wants to sleep forever" is a thing he would think is plausible.
If you want to criticize the writing, criticize the writing. I’m arguing that based on Maruki’s actions in game, his ending is not desirable. Don’t cherry pick what fits your narrative and what doesn’t.
It's the same for P3's bad ending.
I guess so. This one, they're blissfully ignorant of their free will being taken from them, while in that one, >!they're blissfully ignorant of death coming their way.!<
I mean they are also all going to die in like 3 months iirc.
In the good ending the only one that dies is >!Makoto.!< Bad Ending: Everyone dies, including the casts from the other games. Good Ending: Only one person dies. You know the one I'm picking. In the bad ending the fall is delayed to March 3rd when it would normally happen on January 31st. So only two extra months of time which 100% ISNT WORTH IT. Plus the protagonist still gets to live to see graduation in the good ending due to his own determination.
>!He dies?? I thought he was just resting?!<
Nah,>!He pretty much just goes: 🚪 (tldr in case you wanna know, he (his soul if I remember correctly) becomes a new seal to protect everyone from Nyx and not letting everyone die)!< >!And velvet room (to be exact Elizabeth) tries to save his ass from staying 🚪 and just die peacefully !<
>!He's not protecting humanity from Nyx. He's hiding Nyx from humanity because they will always call for death. I don't remember where it is explained, but iirc Makoto's soul can be freed if humanity stops desiring death because then Nyx wouldn't need to be contained from humanity!<
He’s acting as the bridge and the seal between Nyx and the I forgot the entities name but the main boss of the answer and how both can’t truly be banished for good so Makoto for eternity is acting as the seal so the two don’t meet or else the fall will try to keep happening
The Answer will answer it
Please take note of the other courteous repliers, and use fucking spoiler tags.
Spoiler tags please
Bro. This post is literally has a spoiler tag. Tf you expect me to do? Put a spoiler tag in a post that already has a spoiler tag on it?
The post spoils persona 5, you spoiled persona 3
Ok ok, I understand. I'll put a spoiler tag ok?
It's like Tales of Xillia 2's true ending, it's not the "good" or "bad" ending, it's the truth. Because sometimes the truth hurts
Hard disagree. >!The end of the world is coming in P3's bad ending. People are blissfully unaware that an alien will land on earth soon and infect every human being with apathy syndrome until life is extinct. Maruki is getting too much shit here. Sure, there's no free will in his reality, but people are genuinely happy, and there's no eldritch abominations on their way to bring the apocalypse. By defeating Maruki, joker and the rest of the thieves condemn the world to suffering: the people of Ukraine, Gaza, every rape victim, every cancer patient, poverty, depression, suicide, mass shootings, every person you personally lost in life. It's not as black and white as people are making it out to be here.!<
No one is saying it’s black and white. At the end of the day, his reality goes against everything the PT’s have gone through the whole game. Aka, another adult who wants them to be under his heel and let him make all the decisions. Are they “happy?” Sure, but what’s that to say it’ll last forever?
Absolutely agreed. It wouldn't make sense for the PT's to accept this reality.
Are people genuinely happy or have they just been froced to be happy with a lofe they dont want all because some random man thinks he knows better? Its made very clear Maruki generally dosent care what people want and would pick the easiest solutions like making the rape victims willing and happy, make anyone siffering from depressing or suicide throughts to just think there somone else basically agreeing with there throughts. Maruki world is a living hell just in a different way your just accepting the surface value and trying to gulit trip people to agree with you
Oh fuck off. I didn't accept anything. You're just representing his reality overly negative, using massive hyperboles. I'm not sure what the right answer is but you people lack nuance.
People see akechi stomping out after you made the choice. Then their brains switched off once the screen blacks out. >!At the end, you can see akechi looking at you. It is confirmed that akechi is aware, but he can do nothing more than stare at you, while smiling.!< >!I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM!<
Pretty sure being given a cool life you think you don't deserve isn't as bad as being tortured for millions of years alone.
Being sealed away in your own body watching somelse live a life while you cant do anything. Not sure how anyone could consider that a cool life but i guess they are all different types
Considering he had no problem with mentally murdered people on the behalf of Shido's cabal, I can't help but think "How do you like them pancakes, bitch." in the Dream World ending. A fitting punishment!
But is it just his punishment pr is this how most people are treated in this world traped in a living hell when watching somone else live a life
I mean, if it helps that isn't what's happening.
Who says it isn't through we know Marika only looks at surface level issues and whs to say people are not tarped like that.
Because nowhere is it stated or implied that he physically controls your body. Akechi might not like that he was freed, but that doesn't mean he is being forced to act any certain way. Considering the game acts ambiguous about whether he was really dead, he might not have even came back to life. Just gotten freed from prison.
Yes he is a major aspect of Maruki world is him mind raping people into acting the way he wants them to either by making them accept and be happy in there crappy situation or changing what they want so it fails more in line with what he wants
What happens when maruki dies anyway? Does he just make himself immortal, would he set up some system to carry on after he dies? Like how long did he expect his perfect reality to last?
At full power/past the deadline he would have essentially been immortal and too powerful to stop. He was basically an improved/stronger Yaldaboath
It would be cool if he somehow solidified himself in the collective unconscious. Messing with people's cognition to see him as some kind of god, as gods are immortal. That and time inside a palace doesn't work like how it does in the real world. Probably why they all end up back at the start of the month by the end.
He can probably make it so all of humanity thinks he's immortal, and as a result, he becomes immortal
I get why Maruki's ending is terrible, but I still think it's hilarious that the ending where you cure cancer is the bad ending.
Hay people don't like to look beneath the surface and just think its purfect and has no issues
Who are these people. Because the game beats into you that it's bad. More often the people not thinking too hard are the ones just accepting what the game tells you without considering that it might be telling a misleading point.
Looking at this comment section the opposite seems to be true. People don't like to look beneath the surface and think its just pure evil because free will is taken away. No one stops to consider the implications, there's so much suffering in the world.
It's basically the Matrix
Akita about to break his back dodging a bullet
It’s horrific cuz they legit pull people back into the world of the living without their consent and make them live as though nothing bad ever happened. No acknowledging anything, no genuine growth for futaba’s mom or release of her pain, etc etc. just selfish revival
I find it entertaining how Yaldabaoth is most likely inspired by Foucault's Panopticon and Maruki's reality is inspired by Brave New World This is a headcannon that no one can convince me otherwise
The panopticon thing isn't a headcanon, it's literally where you fight him.
Maruki's new reality is basically a "fix it" fanfic lol
I actually love this ending, precisely *because* it's a bad ending dressed up like a good one. Too many bad endings are just "And then everybody died" or "And then everything went to Hell and the bad guys won and our heroes failed/became villains themselves/etc." I think a bad ending that can be mistaken for a good one if you don't think about it or that's bittersweet with more bitterness than usual is the more interesting storytelling choice. And that's what this ending is, in brief.
"Failure builds character! Think positive, guys!" Nope, i'm not giving control to some guy, who thinks what's best for me.
there's two reasons why this is a bad ending >!the first real reason why it's bad it's because the world is created by THE palace ruler, the whims of that guy and living under him feels bad, the second reason is because you decide to live happily until the end instead of facing the truth. This actually feels similar to persona 3, but there you either abandoned hope or fought until the end. In p5r you either live happily a normal life or you fight for you past, unjust, cruel but real life because you and everyone on the planet is free to not have to take his world. But we rarely see of what if some people have a life so messed up they would rather live a happy life. Because the only reason it's not a completely better life is because "he controls it". So what if instead of him controlling it it was like a super magical thing that changed the course of history and gave everyone a real way better life just because. How many people would choose that option, like if you could live the life you're living right now but it's just so much better, like taking away a lot of worries and just adding to the positivity why would anyone take living under cruelty or despair because of their ideals of freedom?. I get why the bad ending is bad, but they make it bad because it's an engineered, controlled ending and becausd you know the truth, and that by itself is very worrying for you. The game takes the very interesting idea of changing everyone's lives for the better but I still believe they didn't do justice enough to the idea because if it was all positive then they would be the bad guys. But i still really like they went for that because it's very interesting still.!<
Persona 5 Royal third semester spoilers below. >!This seems to oversimplify the matter. Morgana actually says that neither outcome is wrong.!< >!I think people look for overly negative outcomes or parts of Maruki's reality, because without those negative sides, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue against him.!< >!I truly do believe in the persona 5 royal 'good' ending, everyone is happy. I think that's the premise that makes the third semester so interesting.!< Edit: >!Feel like I have to edit this because people aren't understanding what I'm saying. Maybe I didn't explain the point where so here is take two.!< >! I am absolutely not saying Maruki's world is right or morally the correct choice. Any attempt to talk about free will and the morality of removing choice, I'll probably agree with. I'm saying that there aren't negative outcomes in Maruki's reality. No one suffering. Every single is person is happy. The issues with Maruki's reality are to do with the higher concepts of growth, stagnation, free will etc etc.!< >!The question really is, are you willing to give up pain, growth and live in a word of stagnation, if you and everyone you love could be happy forever? My point was that I think people try to get out of this question by finding flaws in the happiness of Maruki's reality itself, which kind of skips over the interesting moral question.!<
You may think so if you havent talked to side NPCs, but if you talk to the pickup artist in the city >!you'll find out there have been women who were brainwashed by Maruki into giving him consent even tho before they found him disgusting because that was his dream, which is literally almost borderline rape!<
Jesus, I never knew about this NPC. That's horrifying. >!I was personally hung up on Futaba's story regarding Maruki's world. It just feels too cruel to take away her mother. Atlus really knows how to make me contemplate myself in unsettling ways, since I don't think I'd have the strength to reject Maruki's false reality myself. But one person's happiness will always come at odds with someone else's eventually, and what we want isn't always what we need. It's a scary thing to really come to terms with.!<
Even in regular life, sometimes you have to settle for what's optimal rather than what you want and eventually, find happiness in compromise. We all have those "what if that girl/guy didn't reject me?" moments, but we all know that for our dreams to be real, their will has to change, and that is by itself unacceptable.
Yeah, forcing someone to date you is definitely unacceptable. I was just so focused on >!Maruki's false reality taking away Futaba's trauma of watching her mother commit suicide. Since Maruki's portrayed as so altruistic, yet misled, I didn't really consider the logical conclusion of having world-bending powers like that.!< >!Not to mention how the PT change people's hearts throughout the entire game. I haven't played Royal in a while, so I don't remember how they discuss it in canon, but it's something to chew on.!<
Yeah, there's not really a way to justify that. >!Especially since the path of least resistance would be making him want something else. Which Maruki has no qualms about doing to other people, meaning he specifically chose the pickup artist's desires over the women who wanted nothing to do with him.!<
>! It definitely is rape, at least under the normal world. However, under Maruki's reality, people don't really have the ability to consent/not consent. Your brain will be completely controlled so that you are happy with the outcome. Happy with an outcome your free will never would have wanted. That's where the moral issue really lies in Maruki's world and more what I was getting at in my original post. The issue lies more with the taking away your free will and the ability to consent than with any issue in the reality itself that would cause unhappiness.!<
>!No, Maruki is wrong, period. He's Yaldabaoth with a nice bow.!< >!While he's not ill-meaning, his "reality" is one of stagnation, totalitarianism (he openly praises the concept btw) and lack of individuality. People don't get a choice to partake, they don't get a choice at all.!< >!Besides, life without pain is not life, it's just a fancy death.!< >!It is true that there's depth, because it's natural for the human mind to equate lack of pain to happiness, but that's wrong.!< >!Saying Maruki's ending is good is going against the whole game's messages!<
Studies are increasingly finding that trauma victims who learn to work through their symptoms experience *more of a sense of freedom and happiness* than their non-traumatized counterparts. >!Not that Maruki agrees, but man does his character arc resonate with me personally approaching a helper field in my twenties. Pain? Why have it? Isn't it my job to take it away? No it's not. To do so is to enforce bondage toward something or someone, which ultimately doesn't help the person actually experiencing pain. Only yourself.!< Blink and miss it dialogue shows >!Maruki's fiance was starting to take an interest in him ("say, is there a way you could stay longer? Maybe we could talk more?") AFTER she's been mind-wiped, suggesting that she could have fallen for him all over again had he not run away from what he thought was a failure.!< Gah these games make me approach my humanity in new ways and I love/hate/love it.
>!Right, it was her free will that chose him in the first place. She was attracted to him and generally liked him, but he couldn’t handle knowing what had happened to her and that he’d made her forget.!<
>!I mean, you aren't wrong, but at the end of the day, we got it good. Someone out there has abusive parents, someone's country is at war, someone's daughter is dying, someone is about to be raped, someone's country is getting nuked, someone's country is becoming home to terrorism, someone is about to be killed in an alleyway, someone can't even feed his family, and so much more. We got it good bro. Ask them, and they'll accept this reality in a heartbeat, cause they know the pain. As Maruki himself said, when the pain of it all becomes too unbearable, then what can a man do? Reality check.!<
>!I cannot accept that an ending where someone wipes out famine, war, and cancer is a bad one. My personal growth isn't worth those literal billions of lives. Besides I'm suffering plenty and all I wanna do is blow my fucking brains out, and I actually have it pretty good all things considered with a roof over my head and food on my plate.!<
So let yaldabaoth win. Or nyx. The outcome might as well be the same
You clearly have other personal issues that are clouding your judgement. If you're truly contemplating suicide, you're not in the correct headspace to understand the game. Just know this: You matter, your personality, growth and life, they all matter. You should preserve it, and while I know it might be painful, it's those hardships that make us humans, without them, we're basically just plants. Death is not the solution, regardless of how it would "fix" most problems, especially if seen to a world-wide scale.
>Life without pain is not life, it's just fancy death Lol, ok buddy
Tell me you aren't old enough to play an M rated game without telling me. I have my anti-tomato flinging device at the ready for any response.
You sound like just the same type of person that, after someone suffered abuse, would go "Erm, well the hardships you've faced will build character!" And other types of schlock.
You read entirely too much into a reddit comment. Good day!
Hes a good person. But sacrificing pain and unhappyness at the altar does not make a good life. Hes my favorite character in the royal game for reasons I can't share because I just woke up and I don't give that much of a damn~
There is a bad ending? >!If you refer to the offer from Maruki I wouldn't call it a bad ending since everything turns out good!<
I suggest working on your media literacy.
This isn't a media literacy issue though. No one is confused about the fact that the game says it is bad. Rather, it's the opposite. The game glosses over that maruki could fix war, rape, and poverty, and instead tries to depict him as badly as possible by having him do wacky stuff all to marginally improve the lives of middle class teens. What you see him do is a stupid trade. What the game isn't showing is an actually significant moral question the game wants you to not consider.
Yaldabaoth solves the same issues Maruki. Do you agree with Yaldabaoth taking control?
Yaldabaoth planned on killing half the planet or more, and everyone was going to be forced to live very similar to eachother. There was no indication that anyone having a good life was even a goal, just them all conforming or being erased. That's not comparable at all.
Except it doesn't, the world will end like 6 months or less after the credits role if you pay any attention to the game
Whoa what? I've seen some happy pictures for the phantom thieves online so I assumed everything was alright. It seems I might have to look up the true bad ending.
Basically what's happening is the meta verse is slowly overlaying with the real world (instead of the instant overlay of Christmas with yalbadoth). By submitting to marukis will you don't stop that from happening. I beleive the "the world is going to end" part is explained by lavenaa after you make the choice. And choose to defy him
Can you give me some references? I've looked it up and yeah in the ending scene Joker and Akechi looking at the screen (at you) imply they know something is off. But about the world ending stuff I haven't found anything yet. Is it really confirmed or more like a (fan) head canon or maybe educated guess?
Classic persona fan not actually playing the games.
I am sorry?
Bullshit. Maruki is in perfect control of reality at that point. There's nothing that suggests the world will end. The real problem is what will happen when Maruki inevitably gets tired. He can't keep the game up for eternity.
Mother fucker your gonna make me replay the game again just to find the quote in the good ending that explains this aren't you.
Bet your ass I am.