With the explosion of interest from many people due to the announcements of Shin Megami Tensei V and III, this is a thread of lore and info you should know about the series, especially for people who have started with only Persona!

#SMTV #Persona #P5 #SMTIII

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The series has a very long history, its first entries being a trilogy of books by Aya Nishitani named "Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei" in 1987. The first game ever made in the franchise was a loose adaptation of the third book on NES, and the first book has an anime OVA.

All Megami Tensei games and media generally take place in the same universe, but are seperated via splitting timelines. The best example being "SMT if...", aptky named for being a "what if" scenario to SMT 1 where events are altered, causing many splits in time for further titles

While the male protag from SMT if..., Nobu, has a future that leads to a manga series named SMT Kahn, the female protag, Tamaki, leads into the Persona series we all know well, making her appearance in both P1 and P2 as a minor character.

So as explained, "if...", Persona and SMT Devil Summoner series all take place in the same timeline. While there are many other timelines in which some games are paired up, but generally speaking most of them are seperate and there isnt a bundle of titles as connected as Persona.

On to foundational lore: The space known as the Collective Unconscious/Metaverse in Persona is the very same as the Expanse/Underworld/Makai accross the series, as its been proven many times in the past. All things from demons to shadows come from here, and also the afterlife.

A common question is whether demons and shadow are the same thing? The answer is no, but they both do come from the Expanse, while gods and demons are born from a collective belief in a concept, shadows are accumulations of mental energy that can take the form of (1/2)

-archetypes, which is why they are able to look identical, the shadows need to take shape somehow. Also, Gods as we understand them, such as YHVH, Izanami, and Philemon all fall under the classification of "Deity", which in essence, also falls under "Demon" (2/2)

You may have noticed we are getting the Raidou version of SMT III instead of the Dante version for western audiences. This is canon version as SMT:DS:Raidou is set in the 1920's and Raidou 2 has a multiple ending system, one of which leads into III, allowing Raidou to be there.

It's important to note the impact Persona and SMT have had on eachother's world building, as P3 explains the origin of all things, which is likely something that goes over everyone's head since it is mostly explained in the P3 Club Book, a lore guide exclusively in Japan (1/3)

Nyx is an alien who crashed into Earth when the planet only had single-cell life, the impact caused her consciousness to fall to the planet, creating the Collective Unconscious. As life developed, it gained an Ego, and Nyx's body is now what we know as the Moon. (2/3)

This is why the moon phases affect Magnetite, the mental energy that sustains the physical forms of demons, as well as the emotional state of demons themselves. This is also why the Kirijo group studied the effects of the Plumes of Dusk, which are rock fragments from the Moon 3/3

While Persona is often looked as a seperate "spin-off" series, it is merely one of the many branches in the franchise, in which a variation of the name Megami Tensei was use, its full name being Megami Ibunroku Persona. Others examples of are Majin Tensei & Giten Megami Tensei

LAST THING i forgot to mention, you can litterally start anywhere!! The stories are always self contained so play whichever one catches your eye! Have fun, and know that there is a huge variety within this series, so look for what suits your tastes!

The only exceptions to this are games that have a direct sequel such as P2IS and P2EP, P4A and P4U, DDS1 and DDS2, as well as SMT IV and SMT IV Apocalypse.

Ok so with this thread being a huge success, I'm gonna add some more things so that this thread can help archive as much info as possible so that you can always come back to it as a refresher of the lore!

On the subject of Magnetite and other substances: MAG is one of the many types of mental energies which can be used for a multitude of things, MAG is what demons use to manifest into their physical forms IRL, which is why you have to pay MAG to summon demons in most mainline 1/3

MAG can also vary in quality, more refined MAG is known as Aether which appears in both IV and Dx2. There also other equivalent mental energy substances, such as Kegare (P2), Magatsuhi (SMT III), etc. The distinction is what kind of emotions and thought manifest them (2/3)

Lastly, MAG is what makes the matter of the Demon disease in Digital Devil Saga. You need to eat others to consume their MAG and survive, otherwise you lose control and your demon form will do it for you, with no discretion to who you attack. (3/3)