Back in January, 2024, someone going by the name FrostWolf acquired several debug disks that contained the prototypes of Persona 5. There were five in total, dated as being from Jun 3, 2016; May 27, 2016; Mar 8, 2016; Feb 25, 2016; and Dec 4, 2015.
The December build has always been interesting to me, not necessarily because of its contents, but more so because of the community surrounding it. The interest in datamining was intense for the first few months, and then it died off quite completely. I’m not sure if many people are still actively datamining it, although to be fair I’m not very involved in the community.
Regardless, what I’m about to say should be taken with a massive grain of salt, because I’m saying it in large part because I hope it will reinvigorate the community if I’m correct about it having died down (but I also do believe this to be true).
I think I’ve found Akechi’s Palace.
…or at least something suspiciously Akechi-shaped.
I’ll start by just posting everything here, then give an explanation as to why I think it’s Akechi’s Palace and not anything else under the cut.
【Fields】
【Objects】
【Textures】
First, let me give a brief overview of how Persona 5’s files are organized, to help explain what makes these assets suspicious. All of the locations in the game — “fields” — are referred to by a specific area code depending on what location they correspond to. For Palaces, the field codes look like this:
Kamoshida’s Palace: x51 and x52
Madarame’s Palace: x53
Kaneshiro’s Palace: x54
Futaba’s Palace: x55
Okumura’s Palace: x56
Sae’s Palace: x50 and x57
Shido’s Palace: x59
Sae has two codes for the version of the Palace in the opening (x50) and the full version (x57), and Kamoshida has two codes for… reasons. You might notice that the codes jump from x57 to x59; the unused environment file and enemy dialogue that refers to Akechi as the Ruler is labeled x58, suggesting his Palace was going to happen between Sae and Shido, or at least that it should be there in the files. However, there are no models or textures associated with code x58… but there are some files located suspiciously close to where it should be.
Please note that only the bolded parts of the asset name comprise the actual file name. Anything else is a descriptor I’ve added to give these parts more reference-able names.
【Fields】
f059_050: Early Castle Throne Room
Out of everything here, this is probably the most suspicious, because it’s 1. part of a castle 1.1 with a chess motif and 2. it’s located right at the start of Shido’s Palace before any of the assets clearly associated with the Ark appear. My gut instinct is that this is some kind of Boss Arena — maybe the chess board would be the treasure? Maybe you would meet Akechi / Akechi’s Shadow sitting on the throne? It wouldn’t be the first time in the franchise where you fight the actual person in their dungeon (re: Persona 4) and it wouldn’t be the last (re: Persona 5 Royal) — but l don’t know of any good way to determine what exactly this is.
f059_051: Throne Room Hallway
Judging by the red colouration of the floor, this asset looks like it connects to the Throne Room. Like the Throne Room and all of the following field files, these ones appear earlier than any of the rooms actually used for Shido’s Palace.
f059_040: Elevator and Sewer Room
Originally, I thought this was a concept stage for the bow of Shido’s ship, but I don’t think that makes sense because the corridor along the side would be outside of the ship if that were the case. Furthermore, I think the white hallway connects to f059_042, judging by the shape and composition of the two fields, which would be even stranger for Shido’s Palace since that walkway would be way outside the boat. I think it also connects to f059_041 along the large flat orange section on the opposite side of the elevator.
Calling this the Elavator and Sewer Room because the tall golden pipe matches a lot of the early elevator objects, and, based on my understanding of what the colours correspond to, orange is for wood/brick, yellow is for metal, black is for water, and white is for generic surfaces; I think this field / Palace has a water feature.
f059_042: Sewer Room Extension
This is a really sparse field, but I think it must be a part of this Palace complex because it looks like it matches f059_040.
f059_041: Roundabout with Chess Paintings
Funnily enough, this asset was the loose thread that caused me to dig deep and find the rest of this stuff. I was originally just looking for unused textures in Shido’s Palace, and happened to stumble on chess.dds and Chess_King.dds, and while I was trying to figure out where or if they were used… lo’ and behold: some really suspicious stuff was lying around.
Some of the white pieces from f059_050 are missing… I’m honestly not too sure what that means, but it’s notable to me that these two fields have a recurring chess motif because this isn’t something you see in any other Palace’s iirc. This is one of the main reasons I don’t think this is an early version of Kamoshida’s Palace, combined with the suspicious placement and suspicious texture names.
As an exercise for the viewer: what might be the significance of all of the pieces except the King being stained red, along with the notable absence of the Queen?
050 and 051 might also be on a different floor than 040, 041, and 042, which could explain the naming conventions?
【Untextured & Simple Objects】
〔m159_040.gmd〕 〔m159_035.gmd〕 〔m040_003.gmd〕
The spears have an animation where they lower; the security camera’s main texture references a Field x40 which, along with the following door, is one of the only references to the nonexistent Field x40.
【Textures & “Catsle” Door】
〔m040_010.gmd〕
〔f040_door.dds〕
〔f040_misc_01.dds〕
This door is probably the most interesting thing here, at least to me, because it’s clearly in the early concept stage. The images on both textures are, according to a reverse image search, from assorted Japanese and Chinese reference image sites. Furthermore, the model has been mapped such that you can easily move parts around to see what it looks like with different parts. Natively, it just uses the white door and the dark decal, but by moving around the texture map and scaling certain parts, you could easily tweak the door until it uses the golden door or lion decal, for example.
Although this particular version of the door appears as one of the three line models that reference the mysterious Field x40, it appears twice in Okumura’s Palace and thrice in Shido’s Palace (in tex056_001_00_00, tex056_101_00_00, tex059_001_00_00, tex059_040_00_00, and tex059_042_00_00). Additionally, the texture and normal map for the Greek-style etchings on the top of the door are labeled as f040_catsle_04.dds and f040_catsle_04_NRM.dds. This door was likely designed for a castle-themed Palace; however, it never appears with Kamoshida’s assets, only by itself or with Okumura and Shido.
As an aside, I think there are some oddities with various naming conventions going on. I won’t go into too much detail here because I’m working on documenting everything on TCRF (which is… reaallllly a work-in-progress). In short: it looks like the opening Palace was going to be completely different, and for some reason there are assets that look like they should be in Futaba’s Palace that are labeled as Field x50 (which is doubly strange because even the casino parts use textures with the code x57 like the rest of Sae’s Palace; nothing in the final game uses x50 for textures). Since everything seems to be in a messed up order, and since I think only like 15% of the text, dialogue, and audio from the prototype has been translated, there could very well be more than this.
Please keep in mind: this might all be confirmation bias.
I went into the datamining project knowing that Akechi had an unused Palace, so it’s entirely possible that all of this is just unused parts of Shido’s Palace. However, I think the really suspicious thing that leads me to believe it might not be is that unused door, simply because it’s textures directly reference a field that doesn’t exist and indicates that the unused field was a late-game castle Palace. Still, there’s nothing that outright confirms where any of this came from, so again: bolder sized piece of salt.
As a closing note, I’d like to point out the irony that, of all the characters it could have been, it just had to be Akechi whose Palace would end up being such a pain in the ass to find.
Where I live, people have signs in their yards that read, 'Every Family Needs A Farmer'. It makes me want to start a service where farmers go into peoples' yards, design a permaculture food forest, and work it/harvest it for the family or teach them how to do it, if they would like to learn.
got7 gives us so much. they all work so hard. i hope that one day, we’ll be able to repay them back for all the happiness and love that they’ve continuously given us. i hope that one day, they’ll get the love that they deserve.
[ SMS : Jules ] : Why... is there a Christmas tree.... in my living room...
[ SMS : Jules ] : The answer better be that the apartment was robbed and the robbers left behind a Christmas tree.
I DIDNT HAVE INSPIRATION I AM SO SORRY THIS IS SO BAD
Gintoki is lost in his thoughts on an afternoon, he is reading some dirty magazine -instead of his regular shonen jump that he has just finished earlier, some girl on a page reminds him of someone he knows.
That is when his mind loses its way to a certain blonde. Even though he would never admit it, Gintoki has always thought of Tsukuyo as a charming person, of course, she has her bad moments, like the times when she wanted to kill him after she had only drank sip of alcohol, or , the time when she wanted to rip off his skin, or yet another time when she threw kunais to his face because of some comments he had made - that now he realizes he might have deserved it at the moment. But still, he likes her, and right now he would be lying if he said he wasn’t attracted to her each time he saw her. But still, this is something he would never admit.
Today is not an unusual day as Kagura after having food, wants to go out and play and she brings him with her. What would he not do for this brat ; Well he’s bored anyway. Thing is, he always seems to bump into people he doesn’t really think about when outside as if he was in a fucking drama or something.
“Gin-chan look, Tsukki and Seita are here !” she shouts joyfully.
Oh god, why are you like this. The Yorozuya leader thinks. When he was just admitting to himself that he had a thing for the woman.
“yeah, yeah” he just replies acting like he could not careless.
“Hi Kagura, hi Gin-san” the boy says waving at him. He could not look happier and comes to Kagura’s side right away. Gintoki can’t hear anything they say to each other, that’s when he notices Tsukuyo’s eyes on him.
“hey, Tsukki…! hahahaha” he doesn’t know why he calls her that when he usually doesn’t but ..yeah he did try greeting her as normal as he could be FUCK THIS!! THIS WAS NOT A NORMAL GREETINGS AT AND WHAT IS UP WITH HER EYES. he mind shouts.
The silver haired starts to feel quite uneasy, pretending that everything is okay he tries on a smile.
“How have you been” he adds...to what she still doesn’t say anything. The man now can see how her eyes are intensely looking at him as if she is trying to pierce holes into his body.
“Well if it’s okay Gin-san, Kagura and I are going to play at the park right next to the store right there!”
“Hey Seita, wait, what’s wrong with Tsuk-..” The two kids run to the park before he manages to even finish his sentence. that left Tsukuyo and him, alone. Something is wrong, that he can tell.
That is when, all of the sudden and out of nowhere she reaches for a box behind her back.
“I’ve bought these ...sweets on the way here…I know you like sweets” she slurps in a kind of sensual and weird way, which rings dangerous territory for Gintoki. He now understands what was wrong with her. She must have eaten some just now and now her looks
“So do have a chance to run or….?” he doesn’t even know what to say, he just knows that if he runs for his life right at this instant he would make think even more worse. She IS a drunken terminator and right now she looks like death, oh GOD why are you like this ? it was a good and beautiful day why would you send an intoxicated shinigami tayuu…!?
She chuckles, almost madly. “Ahhhh, dat is sweet !! So sweet I might eat some part of you!”
In other mouths it could have been something particularly dirty talk but in that case, it was literal and Gintoki fears for his life.
“Ah come on now...Tsukki..How many did you have?”
“Enough to know there is none left ! ahahahaha” she throws the box at him which, of course, doesn’t have time to dodge. “Come and taste the sweet Gintoki!!”
She is going to end his life, oh dear. The two things the man loves more in the world are going to kill him : sweet and a certain blonde. The irony, he had thought about her being a charming person just earlier.
