The Queue: Red sus

But I mean, come on: Purple is clearly the culprit. He has an alien-like tongue that lashes out at his enemies. And several large, pointy teeth. And he makes some… strange noises, that no other crewmate makes. Yet people still blame it on poor Red!

This is The Queue. There are vampires in space?!

I honestly feel like the reason there was no profession catch up mechanism is that Blizzard hadn’t fully decided what to do with professions moving forward. The Dragonflight iteration of the profession system hasn’t been met all that warmly by the playerbase at large — it’s been called everything ranging from “kinda complex” to “very convoluted,” and I feel like the developers don’t want to invest precious resources and time into a system that might get revamped (at least to some extent) in the next expansion.

Personally, I really hope it gets simplified — but not completely dialed back to how it was in Shadowlands and before. Surely there’s a sweet spot in the middle.

Stealing this question from Monday’s Queue!

I was pretty sure that Galakrond would be the final boss of Dragonflight. I mean, he featured prominently in the pre-expansion animated shorts. He was the progenitor of dragonkind, and the other antagonists of the expansion were all dragons who didn’t really fit into the Titan-ordered five Aspects — it would make perfect sense for the fight against those Primal Incarnates to culminate into a confrontation against Galakrond, resurrected and ready to claim the legacy of all dragons for himself.

I’m still positive that Galakrond will become an important antagonist — but it’ll happen three expansions from now, in The Last Titan. Because in that expansion, we’re going to Northrend, where Galakrond’s remains happen to rest, and Iridikron — who’ll likely still be a threat by then — has two things: Galakrond’s “essence,” which he acquired during the events of the Dawn of the Infinite mega-dungeon, and a massive vendetta against the Titans. It all adds up too perfectly, in my opinion.

The truly good times are yet to come.

Based on the very few bits of information we have about it — much of it being just unconfirmed rumors — we “know” that Persona 6 is being developed by a different team than the one that developed Persona 3-5, since the latter is focused on a different game, Metaphor: ReFantazio. We’ve also heard (but have no confirmation) that it’s going to be “larger in scope” than the previous three games, and that there’s a “larger jump” between 5 and 6 than there was from 3 to 5 — we assume this is talking about how much the core systems will change.

There’s also the element of colors, which have been linked to the general tone of the games. Persona 3 featured the color blue, and it was a melancholy game centered around the concept of Memento mori — “remember that you’re mortal.” Persona 4 featured the color yellow, which was meant to represent hope, like a sunbeam amidst a dark, foggy world of mystery. And Persona 5 featured the color red, which vibed very well with its main theme of rebellion against authority and a fight against injustice.

For Persona 6, some art from the recent Persona 25th Anniversary seemed to imply that the sixth game will feature a green color scheme. Internally, the game is supposedly being called “Carbon” — the sixth element of the periodic table. This might be relevant, since the code name for Persona 5 was “Masquerade” — which turned out to be a good hint of its themes.

So, we have: new development team, bigger in scope, bigger jump in gameplay systems, green color scheme, carbon. What does all of that hint at?

I think the game will not be confined to a single city, and the characters will be able to travel across a region with multiple cities. I think it might feature a theme of harmony between people; of conflicts and polarization, and how to navigate those pitfalls and find common ground. Not to pull a page from Mists of Pandaria, but it may also have something of a “slow down” theme, talking about how hectic and vapid modern life has become, and how harmful that is — people form relationships that aren’t as deep or meaningful, everything is fleeting and “liquid,” and it’s become harder to make real connections and lay down roots.

Persona 5 Tactica! Technically I started it in November, but all I played then was the first mission; I only decided to really invest more time into the game this December. I’m still far from finishing it, but I love the gameplay, and it already feels like something truly special.

Honorable mention to the latest Vampire Survivors DLC, Emergency Meeting, which is really, really good. (But not technically a game.)

We’ve concluded our investigation, and we must report that no vampires have been found in space. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

While we keep traveling the cosmos searching for that vampire, and this mystery remains, we want to wish you a good day. Team up with your friends to fight vampires, or aliens, or dragons; hug a loved one, and leave lots of questions!