Yesterday, 08:45 AM
The reason why I started playing the Persona series was because of some of the mysteries surrounding the series, much like SMT there's quite a few unexplained things in the games, the one I'm going to be talking about is the original Persona 4 on the PS2, this mystery has been talked about a few times on message boards and was featured in an episode of Pop Fiction by GameTrailers, the mystery of the blinking, purple eye. There's going to be a few spoilers here also for the story of the game.
The reason why I mention the original Persona 4 specifically instead of Persona 4 Golden on the Vita or Steam is due to the fact that this mystery does not appear in the later versions of the game, sometimes it doesn't even appear on the PS2 version, it seems completely randomly at first glance. I should probably explain what this mystery is first before going any further, to put it simply, sometimes, just sometimes when playing Persona 4 and checking the persona of certain characters such as Yosuke, Chie, and supposedly Kanji there may be a blinking eye on the status screen of that characters persona. The eye symbol is animated, it blinks, it's black in color but the reason why people call it purple is because there's a particle effect around it that has floating squares that look like a mix between purple and cyan with transparency, that's how I see them anyway in regards to the color.
There's something about this symbol, how it blinks and the fact it appears at seemingly random which is pretty eerie, this is the kind of creepy stuff in games that I love. To further add to this mystery, the eye apparently does not appear in the Japanese version of the game, there's also discussions of whether or not it appears on PAL version while it's confirmed to exist on NTSC versions. If this was a glitch, bug or any other kind of oversight you'd think that it would have been fixed in versions of the game outside of Japan, typically when a game is released in Japan first all other regional versions have updates to the game that fix glitches with the game as those other regional versions are made at a later date. I'm not saying it isn't a glitch or a bug as it definitely appears to be some kind of unfinished feature, it's just odd that it would only be in one regional version of the game. Here's some details, discoveries, myths and rumors on the eye.
1. The blinking eye has been confirmed to appear on Yosuke and Chie's personas as well as glitched personas found on emulators, I do not condone the use of emulators or game emulation, I'm simply mentioning this for documentary purposes. It may or may not appear on Kanji's persona.
2. It was thought to appear on a characters persona on each of their respective birthdays, or more specifically with Yosuke on his birthday. The characters birthdays are not mentioned in the game itself but a guidebook for the game, this has been tested and doesn't seem to be the case but further testing may yield different results.
3. As mentioned, the eye supposedly only appears in the original PS2 NTSC version of the game, there was a comment under the above mentioned Pop Fiction video of someone claiming to have witnessed the eye in Persona 4 Golden on the Vita, this comment was made four years ago and the user has not responded to the one other commenter asking for proof, the one claiming to have seen the eye on the Vita could be thinking of something else in the game.
4. GameTrailers had an anonymous source who was supposedly related to Atlus who claimed that the eye was a bug in the game, they sadly did not say what the eye was going to be used for. This is a bit strange to me, the fact someone who assumedly worked on the game or at least knew about the development of it went as far as to respond to GameTrailers to tell them it was a bug in the game but didn't bother explaining what it was meant for. I'm a fan of mysteries so I do appreciate their choice of not telling them and in extension, us.
Speaking of commenters under the Pop Fiction video "Yosuke's Eye" there was also another comment from four years ago which I also responded to around the same time, I often come back to their videos as they are very cozy and I like seeing new comments on them, this comment I saw and responded to stated that they found a way to replicate the eye glitch every time they played through the game. According to this user it appears after you save Nanako and the player is alone at their home, or rather the Dojima residence, Yosuke's social rank has to be at the max rank as well, once all of this criteria is met you can check Yosuke's persona, Susano-o, and supposedly see the blinking eye symbol. The mentioned user claims to have replicated this on five different copies of the game. Another user on a different online forum saw this comment and stated that he tried to meet these conditions but did not see the eye and suggests there's another trigger that has to be met.
Something I haven't mentioned yet is the internal name for the eye, the "Awakening Eye", there's been a few theories that this eye was supposed to appear on the final form of each of the main characters personas for a while after they change form. Aside from that, that appears to be all that can be said about the eye unless some new discoveries are made about it, this is another mystery that may just remain as such...
The reason why I mention the original Persona 4 specifically instead of Persona 4 Golden on the Vita or Steam is due to the fact that this mystery does not appear in the later versions of the game, sometimes it doesn't even appear on the PS2 version, it seems completely randomly at first glance. I should probably explain what this mystery is first before going any further, to put it simply, sometimes, just sometimes when playing Persona 4 and checking the persona of certain characters such as Yosuke, Chie, and supposedly Kanji there may be a blinking eye on the status screen of that characters persona. The eye symbol is animated, it blinks, it's black in color but the reason why people call it purple is because there's a particle effect around it that has floating squares that look like a mix between purple and cyan with transparency, that's how I see them anyway in regards to the color.
There's something about this symbol, how it blinks and the fact it appears at seemingly random which is pretty eerie, this is the kind of creepy stuff in games that I love. To further add to this mystery, the eye apparently does not appear in the Japanese version of the game, there's also discussions of whether or not it appears on PAL version while it's confirmed to exist on NTSC versions. If this was a glitch, bug or any other kind of oversight you'd think that it would have been fixed in versions of the game outside of Japan, typically when a game is released in Japan first all other regional versions have updates to the game that fix glitches with the game as those other regional versions are made at a later date. I'm not saying it isn't a glitch or a bug as it definitely appears to be some kind of unfinished feature, it's just odd that it would only be in one regional version of the game. Here's some details, discoveries, myths and rumors on the eye.
1. The blinking eye has been confirmed to appear on Yosuke and Chie's personas as well as glitched personas found on emulators, I do not condone the use of emulators or game emulation, I'm simply mentioning this for documentary purposes. It may or may not appear on Kanji's persona.
2. It was thought to appear on a characters persona on each of their respective birthdays, or more specifically with Yosuke on his birthday. The characters birthdays are not mentioned in the game itself but a guidebook for the game, this has been tested and doesn't seem to be the case but further testing may yield different results.
3. As mentioned, the eye supposedly only appears in the original PS2 NTSC version of the game, there was a comment under the above mentioned Pop Fiction video of someone claiming to have witnessed the eye in Persona 4 Golden on the Vita, this comment was made four years ago and the user has not responded to the one other commenter asking for proof, the one claiming to have seen the eye on the Vita could be thinking of something else in the game.
4. GameTrailers had an anonymous source who was supposedly related to Atlus who claimed that the eye was a bug in the game, they sadly did not say what the eye was going to be used for. This is a bit strange to me, the fact someone who assumedly worked on the game or at least knew about the development of it went as far as to respond to GameTrailers to tell them it was a bug in the game but didn't bother explaining what it was meant for. I'm a fan of mysteries so I do appreciate their choice of not telling them and in extension, us.
Speaking of commenters under the Pop Fiction video "Yosuke's Eye" there was also another comment from four years ago which I also responded to around the same time, I often come back to their videos as they are very cozy and I like seeing new comments on them, this comment I saw and responded to stated that they found a way to replicate the eye glitch every time they played through the game. According to this user it appears after you save Nanako and the player is alone at their home, or rather the Dojima residence, Yosuke's social rank has to be at the max rank as well, once all of this criteria is met you can check Yosuke's persona, Susano-o, and supposedly see the blinking eye symbol. The mentioned user claims to have replicated this on five different copies of the game. Another user on a different online forum saw this comment and stated that he tried to meet these conditions but did not see the eye and suggests there's another trigger that has to be met.
Something I haven't mentioned yet is the internal name for the eye, the "Awakening Eye", there's been a few theories that this eye was supposed to appear on the final form of each of the main characters personas for a while after they change form. Aside from that, that appears to be all that can be said about the eye unless some new discoveries are made about it, this is another mystery that may just remain as such...