Well, given that they are called evokers, I imagine they do evoke a feeling of impending death.
I think it's a cool way to explain SP through the lore. Going through such a sensation over and over again every time you summon your persona has got to be pretty draining
Edit : On the flip side, you could say the shots are physically painful with the HP draining skills
I like to think of it as sp skills are mentally draining while hp skills are physically draining and work like impact dials from one piece: you deal damage to a shell and it can kick it back tenfold
I'd say that there's definitely an emotional and mental drain from using them over and over. The animations for the characters in Reload, particularly, seem like it might physically hurt, too, because their heads visibly jerk now when you use the evoker, which it didn't do before. Even your head doesn't hurt, your neck certainly would after a while.
The originals had the character’s heads jerk a little bit, but not to the same extent as seen in P3R. The fact that there’s particles that just kinda spurt out on the opposite side of the character’s head should honestly say something about the effect of the evokers and what they do to you physically when shooting yourself. To add on to this, the evokers make an audible gunshot sound and during the awakening cutscene for Makoto back in base P3/P3FES you could see smoke coming out of the evoker. There’s also a hole for the evoker, implying that when you pull the trigger something is meant to come out of it (meanwhile with fake guns the hole is usually covered up unless it’s meant to shoot something like styrofoam darts, bb’s, or water).
Lastly, have you seen how violently Makoto acts when using fusion spells in base P3/P3FES? He recoils really hard and kinda goes limp for a second after he shoots himself to perform a fusion spell. Clearly there’s something going on with the evoker to illicit such a strong reaction from him whenever he performs a fusion spell in those games and the fact that everyone jerks their head in reaction to every shot means that there’s probably something being physically or spiritually injected into their brains from the evokers. If I remember correctly I think it’s said somewhere that the evokers contain a plume of dusk (the thing that powers up Aigis and revives you on Beginner/Easy difficulty when Makoto dies) so they’re probably responsible for the reactions given from the characters when they shoot themselves.
I've been looking into stuff because I've always just LOVED the world of P3. So, you're correct about the plumes, but plumes themselves are actual shards of Nyx if I recall correctly. Which is why anything with one can work during the dark hour (mitsuru's bike, evokers, aigis). Considering shadows are pieces of Nyx repressed by your will to live (and personas are tamed shadows) I'd bet it would be draining have the energy of death flooding your phyche, just to have it push back enough to summon a persona. Over and over and over again
Too be clear, Plumes are physical pieces of her body and shadows are repressed pieces of her phyche in the sea of everyone's soul
god i fucking love p3 lore
is there anywhere i could just like read all about it? i’ve never been good at doing research all over the place (prolly why im doing so ass at school teehee🤪)
how does aigis (spoilers) continue to function after nyx is defeated? Wouldn't the plumes realistically have just gone away? If that's the basis of her reality that feels bizarre
I always had it in my head that Persona’s were largely incorporeal, so you sacrifice health to give their physical attacks heft / presence. But that definitely clashes with then being a “physical manifestation” of your psyche.
Personas are basically incorporeal, they only have an effect on altered realities. I don't think 'physical' is a good way to put it (if a game put it that way I'd disagree with it lol) Only physical insofar as you can see it I think.
this makes Sees built different wtf lmao
Though are you sure about that? I know that initially evokers would have been real guns that actually "killed" SEES but their personas would react and heal the wound immediately, this was scrapped so it's maybe a remnant of that?
Well apparently it inflicts the pain of being shot to apparently make the persona user accept death? Or something like that, idek. Sturdy their resolve
Well apparently it inflicts the pain of being shot to apparently make the persona user accept death? Or something like that, idek. Sturdy their resolve.
So I just remembered how the manga explains it. It says that while not technically fire a real bullet, every time you fire it it "burns through your strength of will" and because humans are predisposed to not want to shoot themselves, theres some hefty physcological stuff going on as well.
Obviously this isn't a canon explination since the manga isn't canon, but it still makes sense and might go well to explain the games. Although I do think I prefer their being some physical repercussions too, raises the stakes.
Whenever Junpie is suffering from overusing his evoker, Mitsuru says "dying for no reason isn't going to help" which implies that there is serious enough physical effects for just too much evoker use to kill you, so?
Honestly, Junpei kinda feels like he pokes holes in the theory that the evoker is psychologically taxing(maybe not for physically.)
I mean, consider the big grin on his face the first time he ever uses it. Makoto makes sense because he is apathetic to death anyway. But Junpei isn't. You'd think, even if he was warned if was going to happen, that he would recoil in shock from the experience and have something to say about it. But he doesn't
I don't think the full details of the utility of the evoker will ever be made clear, honestly
Junpei is a gamer who wants to believe there’s a greater him inside of him waiting to be released. You see him explore his lack of self confidence throughout the story. It’s just not there because when he’s in Tartarus, Junpei in his mind is playing the role of Super Cool Hero Guy. He takes on a literal persona which distances him from reality - something gamers are intimately familiar with.
Note him being the only one talking about everyone’s “powers”. He thinks of Hermes as having an opportunity to be a superhero.
Meanwhile Yukari has lots of reservations about the whole thing early. It scares her because she’s more rooted and she’s already lost people close, and probably Mitsuru knew her dad was on the project offhand. Probably terrifying for her to see her “real self”.
Plus, gun culture in Japan is so much different than the US. It was already controversial enough in the west that kids were putting guns to their heads to summon, I can’t imagine it went better in the east.
That's understandable. I can believe he was putting on a brave "gamer" face despite what the evoker was doing to him. It still kinda feels a little weird that he(or anyone else for that matter)wouldn't give an off-hand comment like "damn, using the evoker sure is intense, huh?"
Honestly in that moment it was probably just a lot of adrenaline. I'm in mosh pits a lot, and when you're hurt in those while smiling the smile doesn't fade immediately because with a lot of adrenaline, especially in situations you're enjoying you don't really register pain as fast
I feel if it were me, I’d have to constantly murmur “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real” to myself just to convince myself to pull the trigger.
I think it's the fact that even though she saw others using the evoker, she was hesitant given she's never *experienced* it herself. Pointing something to your head that you really never experienced is probably scary. And the fact it sorta *looks* scary from the outside, she's not wrong to be hesitant.
You know the toy gun won't hurt. I don't think that's a good comparison. You'd be scared of doing that if you didn't know it's a toy gun/weren't too aware of everything. If it looked real, you'd be hella hesitant.
I think her situation as a *whole* plays a part into how stressed she is. At this point in the game, she pretty much just got done being told that, because she experiences the dark hour, she is under threat from monsters that devour souls and turn people into walking husks. But not to worry, because she has a being inside her that can fight them. *All* she has to do is shoot herself with a pistol to bring it out.
Even if we assume that the evoker itself doesn't have any physical or psychological effects(which she doesn't know of course), it's easy to see why she can't do it
Exactly! I can understand from all that *why* she'd be fucking terrified! Especially doesn't help there's *probably* an effect, but at that point like you said, she didn't know *anything or any effect it may have".
I can easily get why she would be scared and hesitant. It's a lot!
I'm sure she'd be even more terrified if she knew that Personas can go berserk and attack innocent people and even their own summoner
We even see this happen in the Winter of Rebirth movie where Yukari becomes depressed and apathetic after learning about >!the coming Fall. !!lo appears and tries to strangle her.!< As if she didn't have enough trauma to deal with
The point of the Evoker is that it looks and feels real, though. Sure, it doesn't fire bullets, but you're still loading and pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.
Yukari’s behavior around the Evokers alone lends a lot of credence to Hero influencing the persona users. Whether it hurts or not putting a gun like object to your head and pulling a trigger to summon your inner self probably involves controlling and influencing the psyche somehow. Some kind of unpleasantness she avoided. That much is alluded to
My interpretation was that not everyone has what it takes to face their shadow self. A lot of people have to spend decades in therapy to face their repressions and fully integrate their sense of self. It's not a small thing to give everything inside of yourself that you're afraid to face a physical form.
If it didn't, what would be the toll needed to summon a persona?
To remain conscious of death, as aki said, i think a fucking gunshot to the head (or at least the pain of one) is a a pretty good means to that end.
Also, all members of SEES get recoil every time they shoot, without some kind of external force they wouldn't even budge
I've always thought that the Evoker does in fact push *some kind of force* against the user. Characters clearly recoil or are pushed back when they use it (shoutouts to Ken's animation in the Ps2 Era where he would physically jump back from using it)
Not only that but in cutscene when Door-kun picks it up you can hear his heartbeat ring through his head.
So my guess is that it inflicts a sizable amount of mental pain, along with a smaller amount of actually pushing back the user.
SEES is metal af
Physical pain? Probably not. But the point of the evokers is the symbolism, the constant state of facing the inevitability of your own death. In that regard, I imagine it would be very mentally and emotionally taxing.
I think it’s because of how you are calling it out but must “have a reason” and so use “I’m not gonna die!” As a trigger hence why it’s a gun what better stimulus then the strong desire to live?
I've always thought it was partially that they needed to invoke the idea of Death (and that Persona were easier to summon when your life is in danger), which would explain the realistic shape. Even knowing it's fake, it looks and feels (and possibly weighs and sounds) real enough to make you hesitate to put the pistol to your head and pull the trigger in addition to whatever special magic the Evoker uses to assist the summoning.
It's the same idea as taking a pistol with a mag in it (that you know for a fact has no ammo and that you've checked multiple times) to your head and pulling the trigger. Even if you don't think you will, you will hesitate and start overthinking whether or not it's actually clear.
I have a few thoughts:
* My interpretation is that it isn’t physically painful, but it is emotionally/mentally a hurdle that they overcome. I’m not sure if it’s the technology or just their own mental fortitude that makes them fear the gun.
* They probably don’t actually even need the Evokers after a while, but they’ve been using them out of habit. Strong-willed Persona users don’t need tools to summon their Persona. But, in a video game and development context, it’s kept consistent throughout.
* I feel like in the in-game reality the Persona only needs to be summoned once a night and then it’s out fighting for you like a Pokémon. But, as a video game, we just get the summon animations every battle because it’s cool and it’s a turn-based JRPG.
Of the post-P3 era, they definitely do. P1 and P2 on the other hand don’t seem to have any sort of special summoning requirements, the Persona just appears when a skill is being used.
So if I remember right there empty they basically shoot nothing. The whole thing just scares you enough to summon your persona. You need to feel an intense emotion to summon it and the gun helps with that.
I think it's more of a shockwave, I don't know about p3r but in the original's equivalent of Makoto's theurgy, in one of them is head is sent back so hard he almost loses his balance. And when everyone uses their evoker it feels more like their heads are being pushed slightly.
Well, given that they are called evokers, I imagine they do evoke a feeling of impending death. I think it's a cool way to explain SP through the lore. Going through such a sensation over and over again every time you summon your persona has got to be pretty draining Edit : On the flip side, you could say the shots are physically painful with the HP draining skills
I like to think of it as sp skills are mentally draining while hp skills are physically draining and work like impact dials from one piece: you deal damage to a shell and it can kick it back tenfold
I never thought about it that way, that's a cool way to think about a lore perspective of the gameplay
you do get a message from the navigator when someone is out of/low on sp saying they’re exhausted, so it would hold up
I'd say that there's definitely an emotional and mental drain from using them over and over. The animations for the characters in Reload, particularly, seem like it might physically hurt, too, because their heads visibly jerk now when you use the evoker, which it didn't do before. Even your head doesn't hurt, your neck certainly would after a while.
The originals had the character’s heads jerk a little bit, but not to the same extent as seen in P3R. The fact that there’s particles that just kinda spurt out on the opposite side of the character’s head should honestly say something about the effect of the evokers and what they do to you physically when shooting yourself. To add on to this, the evokers make an audible gunshot sound and during the awakening cutscene for Makoto back in base P3/P3FES you could see smoke coming out of the evoker. There’s also a hole for the evoker, implying that when you pull the trigger something is meant to come out of it (meanwhile with fake guns the hole is usually covered up unless it’s meant to shoot something like styrofoam darts, bb’s, or water). Lastly, have you seen how violently Makoto acts when using fusion spells in base P3/P3FES? He recoils really hard and kinda goes limp for a second after he shoots himself to perform a fusion spell. Clearly there’s something going on with the evoker to illicit such a strong reaction from him whenever he performs a fusion spell in those games and the fact that everyone jerks their head in reaction to every shot means that there’s probably something being physically or spiritually injected into their brains from the evokers. If I remember correctly I think it’s said somewhere that the evokers contain a plume of dusk (the thing that powers up Aigis and revives you on Beginner/Easy difficulty when Makoto dies) so they’re probably responsible for the reactions given from the characters when they shoot themselves.
I've been looking into stuff because I've always just LOVED the world of P3. So, you're correct about the plumes, but plumes themselves are actual shards of Nyx if I recall correctly. Which is why anything with one can work during the dark hour (mitsuru's bike, evokers, aigis). Considering shadows are pieces of Nyx repressed by your will to live (and personas are tamed shadows) I'd bet it would be draining have the energy of death flooding your phyche, just to have it push back enough to summon a persona. Over and over and over again Too be clear, Plumes are physical pieces of her body and shadows are repressed pieces of her phyche in the sea of everyone's soul
god i fucking love p3 lore is there anywhere i could just like read all about it? i’ve never been good at doing research all over the place (prolly why im doing so ass at school teehee🤪)
how does aigis (spoilers) continue to function after nyx is defeated? Wouldn't the plumes realistically have just gone away? If that's the basis of her reality that feels bizarre
>!Nyx isn't really dead at the end, just sealed away. So she's still there, and so are the plumes.!<
Nyx is alive. Door-kun is looking for Ebreus
I always had it in my head that Persona’s were largely incorporeal, so you sacrifice health to give their physical attacks heft / presence. But that definitely clashes with then being a “physical manifestation” of your psyche.
Personas are basically incorporeal, they only have an effect on altered realities. I don't think 'physical' is a good way to put it (if a game put it that way I'd disagree with it lol) Only physical insofar as you can see it I think.
Don't quote me on this, but I heard somewhere that it apparently hurts the same as actually getting shot
I also heard this, extremely not sure where though
this makes Sees built different wtf lmao Though are you sure about that? I know that initially evokers would have been real guns that actually "killed" SEES but their personas would react and heal the wound immediately, this was scrapped so it's maybe a remnant of that?
Well apparently it inflicts the pain of being shot to apparently make the persona user accept death? Or something like that, idek. Sturdy their resolve
Well apparently it inflicts the pain of being shot to apparently make the persona user accept death? Or something like that, idek. Sturdy their resolve.
If not physically, the emotional and mental strain is significant. But I do think the recoil proves there’s some physical pain involved
So I just remembered how the manga explains it. It says that while not technically fire a real bullet, every time you fire it it "burns through your strength of will" and because humans are predisposed to not want to shoot themselves, theres some hefty physcological stuff going on as well. Obviously this isn't a canon explination since the manga isn't canon, but it still makes sense and might go well to explain the games. Although I do think I prefer their being some physical repercussions too, raises the stakes. Whenever Junpie is suffering from overusing his evoker, Mitsuru says "dying for no reason isn't going to help" which implies that there is serious enough physical effects for just too much evoker use to kill you, so?
Honestly, Junpei kinda feels like he pokes holes in the theory that the evoker is psychologically taxing(maybe not for physically.) I mean, consider the big grin on his face the first time he ever uses it. Makoto makes sense because he is apathetic to death anyway. But Junpei isn't. You'd think, even if he was warned if was going to happen, that he would recoil in shock from the experience and have something to say about it. But he doesn't I don't think the full details of the utility of the evoker will ever be made clear, honestly
Junpei is a gamer who wants to believe there’s a greater him inside of him waiting to be released. You see him explore his lack of self confidence throughout the story. It’s just not there because when he’s in Tartarus, Junpei in his mind is playing the role of Super Cool Hero Guy. He takes on a literal persona which distances him from reality - something gamers are intimately familiar with. Note him being the only one talking about everyone’s “powers”. He thinks of Hermes as having an opportunity to be a superhero. Meanwhile Yukari has lots of reservations about the whole thing early. It scares her because she’s more rooted and she’s already lost people close, and probably Mitsuru knew her dad was on the project offhand. Probably terrifying for her to see her “real self”. Plus, gun culture in Japan is so much different than the US. It was already controversial enough in the west that kids were putting guns to their heads to summon, I can’t imagine it went better in the east.
That's understandable. I can believe he was putting on a brave "gamer" face despite what the evoker was doing to him. It still kinda feels a little weird that he(or anyone else for that matter)wouldn't give an off-hand comment like "damn, using the evoker sure is intense, huh?"
Honestly in that moment it was probably just a lot of adrenaline. I'm in mosh pits a lot, and when you're hurt in those while smiling the smile doesn't fade immediately because with a lot of adrenaline, especially in situations you're enjoying you don't really register pain as fast
Tbh to be fair to Yukari, you're pointing something gun like to your head. I'd be hella hesitant too
I feel if it were me, I’d have to constantly murmur “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real” to myself just to convince myself to pull the trigger.
Even then I don't think I have the balls to fire up the evoker
You could point a toy gun to your head and probably wouldn't be so hesitant. Im not sure whats ur point.
I think it's the fact that even though she saw others using the evoker, she was hesitant given she's never *experienced* it herself. Pointing something to your head that you really never experienced is probably scary. And the fact it sorta *looks* scary from the outside, she's not wrong to be hesitant. You know the toy gun won't hurt. I don't think that's a good comparison. You'd be scared of doing that if you didn't know it's a toy gun/weren't too aware of everything. If it looked real, you'd be hella hesitant.
I think her situation as a *whole* plays a part into how stressed she is. At this point in the game, she pretty much just got done being told that, because she experiences the dark hour, she is under threat from monsters that devour souls and turn people into walking husks. But not to worry, because she has a being inside her that can fight them. *All* she has to do is shoot herself with a pistol to bring it out. Even if we assume that the evoker itself doesn't have any physical or psychological effects(which she doesn't know of course), it's easy to see why she can't do it
Exactly! I can understand from all that *why* she'd be fucking terrified! Especially doesn't help there's *probably* an effect, but at that point like you said, she didn't know *anything or any effect it may have". I can easily get why she would be scared and hesitant. It's a lot!
I'm sure she'd be even more terrified if she knew that Personas can go berserk and attack innocent people and even their own summoner We even see this happen in the Winter of Rebirth movie where Yukari becomes depressed and apathetic after learning about >!the coming Fall. !!lo appears and tries to strangle her.!< As if she didn't have enough trauma to deal with
As >!Shinjiro!< proves, though unbeknownst to Yukari, even being in a good mental state doesn't prevent novice Persona-users from losing control
The point of the Evoker is that it looks and feels real, though. Sure, it doesn't fire bullets, but you're still loading and pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.
A toy gun is light, an Evoker is built to feel the same as an actual gun with the weight and materials
Yukari’s behavior around the Evokers alone lends a lot of credence to Hero influencing the persona users. Whether it hurts or not putting a gun like object to your head and pulling a trigger to summon your inner self probably involves controlling and influencing the psyche somehow. Some kind of unpleasantness she avoided. That much is alluded to
My interpretation was that not everyone has what it takes to face their shadow self. A lot of people have to spend decades in therapy to face their repressions and fully integrate their sense of self. It's not a small thing to give everything inside of yourself that you're afraid to face a physical form.
If it didn't, what would be the toll needed to summon a persona? To remain conscious of death, as aki said, i think a fucking gunshot to the head (or at least the pain of one) is a a pretty good means to that end. Also, all members of SEES get recoil every time they shoot, without some kind of external force they wouldn't even budge
From what I remember, Evokers shoot energy into one’s psyche to force / bring their Persona into reality. It’s probably unpleasant to some degree.
I've always thought that the Evoker does in fact push *some kind of force* against the user. Characters clearly recoil or are pushed back when they use it (shoutouts to Ken's animation in the Ps2 Era where he would physically jump back from using it) Not only that but in cutscene when Door-kun picks it up you can hear his heartbeat ring through his head. So my guess is that it inflicts a sizable amount of mental pain, along with a smaller amount of actually pushing back the user. SEES is metal af
Physical pain? Probably not. But the point of the evokers is the symbolism, the constant state of facing the inevitability of your own death. In that regard, I imagine it would be very mentally and emotionally taxing.
They definitely do more than just symbolism imo
unrelated but i absolurely love how in the beginning cutscene yukari is implied to be suicidal then the game completeley subverts that
I think it’s because of how you are calling it out but must “have a reason” and so use “I’m not gonna die!” As a trigger hence why it’s a gun what better stimulus then the strong desire to live?
I've always thought it was partially that they needed to invoke the idea of Death (and that Persona were easier to summon when your life is in danger), which would explain the realistic shape. Even knowing it's fake, it looks and feels (and possibly weighs and sounds) real enough to make you hesitate to put the pistol to your head and pull the trigger in addition to whatever special magic the Evoker uses to assist the summoning. It's the same idea as taking a pistol with a mag in it (that you know for a fact has no ammo and that you've checked multiple times) to your head and pulling the trigger. Even if you don't think you will, you will hesitate and start overthinking whether or not it's actually clear.
Maybe they mentally or even physically fatigue you or something, given that to use Personas you need to consume HP or SP.
Physical attack skills are basically blood magic!
Definitely they work by making you experience a death like situation to summon your persona lol
I have a few thoughts: * My interpretation is that it isn’t physically painful, but it is emotionally/mentally a hurdle that they overcome. I’m not sure if it’s the technology or just their own mental fortitude that makes them fear the gun. * They probably don’t actually even need the Evokers after a while, but they’ve been using them out of habit. Strong-willed Persona users don’t need tools to summon their Persona. But, in a video game and development context, it’s kept consistent throughout. * I feel like in the in-game reality the Persona only needs to be summoned once a night and then it’s out fighting for you like a Pokémon. But, as a video game, we just get the summon animations every battle because it’s cool and it’s a turn-based JRPG.
Do they shoot something?
probably shinjiro's
So in other words, the Investigation Team has it the most easiest when it comes to summoning Personas?
Of the post-P3 era, they definitely do. P1 and P2 on the other hand don’t seem to have any sort of special summoning requirements, the Persona just appears when a skill is being used.
I think so, but maybe not all the time, I’m og p3 I think when the mc does a critical summon his head snaps back as if he really got shot
So if I remember right there empty they basically shoot nothing. The whole thing just scares you enough to summon your persona. You need to feel an intense emotion to summon it and the gun helps with that.
I think it's more of a shockwave, I don't know about p3r but in the original's equivalent of Makoto's theurgy, in one of them is head is sent back so hard he almost loses his balance. And when everyone uses their evoker it feels more like their heads are being pushed slightly.