We have an interesting new rumor about Persona 6, which is more loaded than it looks at first glance.
Midori, the ever reliable leaker of Atlus titles on Twitter, who has also started sharing rumors about their parent company Sega, has a new leak to share. She said:
“The color theme for Persona 6 is green.”
Doesn’t sound like much, does it? If you aren’t really a Persona fan that probably doesn’t mean anything to you. But it means the world to the Persona faithful.
As this GameRant article explains, Atlus loads a lot of meanings and themes to their video games. Every Persona title has had a color theme, and those themes have meant something that was part of the game’s overall themes. In fact, as obtuse as this leak sounds, we may have just learned details that were intrinsic to Persona 6’s game design.
Let me give a few examples here, so that you, the reader, get a clearer picture of what we’re talking about here. Persona 3’s color theme was blue, and you can see this blue theme in a lot of that game’s imagery. It’s all over its UI, key art, even the characters seem to be rendered in shades of blue.
In color theory, as used in psychology and art, blue is a cool color, but it is also associated with low moods. In particular, depression and melancholy are associated with blue. And this is reflected in Persona 3’s story as well – its characters have tragic backstories, and emphasis is placed on the creepy mystery of the Dark Hour phenomenon.
In contrast, Persona 2 and Persona 5 use red as a theme. We’ll focus on Persona 5 here, as the more commonly played game, and that title mixes its red with black. And so, you may note how Persona 5 has a lot of red and black in its palette, all over its key art, UI, and overall aesthetic.
Red is associated with romance and nostalgia, while black is associated with darkness and shadows, and true enough, Persona 5 ‘ssecret society is literally called The Phantom Thieves of Hearts! Atlus also makes use of red’s associations with passion and anger, and so this game features the most passionate, angriest tropes in literature: criminals and vigilantes.
If you’re a Kieślowski fan, you may already have some ideas yourself of how deeply color can be used to theme a work of art, as two of his three movies in his Three Colors trilogy makes heavy use of the color themes of blue for depression, and red for passion.
But we can’t end this without talking about what green could possibly mean for Persona 6. Green has its positive and negative associations alike. Green is commonly found in leaves, and that immediately associates it with nature, healing, and the holidays. But green is also the color of jealousy and materialism.
It seems we also have to point out the Dark Hour from Persona 3 is itself a phenomena that runs green the whole way through. And a certain video game console brand is also closely associated with green, but that’s just us speculating at this point.
So you can see how Persona fans can drive themselves wild finding out about a color, but it’s certainly fun to think about. If Midori already knows about the theme this early, we may not have to wait that long for an official reveal.
