Saturday, April 15th, 2023
[ Sorry for the prolonged absence! Life got complicated for both of the admins and for the time being you'll need to deal with me! ]
So, as is considered nearly common knowledge by now, data present in P5 and P5R points to the existence of a scrapped Akechi Palace for our ✨lovely pancake boy✨, but how much is known about it *really?*
Here's a data breakdown of the scraps left over!
Every field in Persona 5 has a Major and Minor Field ID, and the game is programmed to assume Major ID's between 150 and 200 are Palaces. The final game uses IDs 150 to 162 for each Palace like so:
f150 - Prologue [ Casino Duplicate ]
As you can see, there are missing Fields between 157 and 159, but how can we prove this is Akechi? We look at the dialogue for negotiating with Shadows!
When knocked down, Shadows occasionally mention whatever Palace Ruler is currently active.
This data is stored in BATTLE\TALK in various .BF ( Binary Flowscript ) files that are run based on the enemy type.
Inside the BMD ( Binary Message Data ) chunk of these files, there's some unused dialogue:
Flee while you still can! Ahahaha! It is futile
to oppose Lord Akechi!
You would do well to tread carefully.
Lord Akechi is a man possessed
of immense desire.
Hmph… I wonder if your power would even
pose a threat to Lord Akechi…
I give up… *sob* Lord Akechiii…
There are 27 lines in total from Shadows referencing "Lord Akechi", all of them localized!
Normally, this is where most investigation ends. There was a planned Akechi Palace between Sae and Shido, but all data was scrapped and any attempts to load into the Palace by force fail due to an intense scrub of all related data.
( Generally this is a sign things are not going well )
This, however is not the end of things just yet—Atlus was not entirely diligent in the data wipe.
One of the things left behind is a single .ENV ( Environment ) file. These files—among many other things—specify properties like texture color, color grading, light effects and so on for every field.
ENV\ENV0158_001_000.ENV is found in this folder, corresponding to the missing 158 Palace ID. However, since there's no meshes left over, we can only see ENV 158's effects by placing it on another field.
Here is the front hall of the Bank Palace as seen in-game normally:
Here is what Akechi's Palace would have looked like, at least the ambiance, had development continued:
( I'm sure someone can make some kind of argument about how this represents Akechi thematically, lord knows I can. )
One other aspect still remaining is found in FIELD\FTD\FLDDNGPACK.FTD, a list that specifies what encounters can be found in any Palace, along with loot in Chests and Search Objects.
Akechi's DNGPACK List is not entirely empty!
We can see by parsing this file that Akechi's Palace would have had around 21 different Fields, about the standard for every Palace in P5R, though this excludes Safe Rooms.
While the Encounter Entries sadly lead only to default Kamoshida Castle battles, his list references a unique Random Loot Table 7!
At the time of writing, it appears no other part of the game references Random Loot Table 7. While it lacks unique items found in other Palaces, the data is indicative of what could've been found inside Akechi's Palace Search Objects.
Jades and Garnets are placed at surprisingly high priority, along with the Marble Chessboard. Of note are the items such as the Marble Chessboard and Brass Pocket Watch, those specific Item IDs cannot be found in any other location in the ENTIRE Random Loot Table .FTD file.
Until more info about how Palaces function is uncovered, it seems like our Detective Prince will continue to elude us in his heavily fog-covered ways, this subject clearly needs more research to find any more remnants!
That’s all for now, see you soon!
