How were the protagonist and co. able to take out real items and money from the world of cognition?

How were the protagonist and co. able to take out real items and money from the world of cognition? - Top view of crop unrecognizable traveler with magnifying glass standing over world map made of various coins on gray background

I never played any of the previous Persona games and thus might be a bit lacking in the background knowledge, which Persona 5 didn't do much to explain (I think as is the tradition for many Japanese games, it assumed that many players would have already been fans of the series). The game only mentioned that the mother of Futaba accomplished some groundbreaking research about the world of cognition, but it never explicitly explained what those research findings actually were.

It just struck me as weird that the protagonist and co. were able to take out real items from the worlds of cognition they raided and sell them at the shop "Untouchable". Also, they were able to obtain a replica gold medal as well as the original drawing by Yusuke's mother, etc. They were even able to obtain real money from the battles!

Is there any coherent explanation for why they would be able to do so from a Persona worldview (Possibly from earlier installations of the game as well)? Or would it just be explained more as a kind of pure RPG game mechanism? Persona 5 certainly has strived to close as many plot loopholes as possible, but I'd still feel that some of the story felt a bit forced, especially the endgame part after the "recollection" of the protagonist finally ended (particularly the part for the final boss battle), which just felt a bit rushed and nonsensical. Overall it's still a quite fascinating story, of course.



Best Answer

I believe Morgana provides an explanation when it first happens. It simply works on the basis of “this is fiction deal with it” but it still has some backing too it. Pulling items out of the cognitive world would only be possible if they are there in the real world, although this cognitive world shows different properties to what we would think. If you consider persona 3’s dark hour (I won’t get into it too much incase you haven’t played the game) it’s a perfectly logical idea and totally plausible (to an extent) until you dig into it and start thinking about it more. An entire separate world simply created and controlled by our cognition that only a few are aware off? Plausible (to an extent) but when we think about it more it becomes unrealistic, like the treasure manifesting outside the world and the weather affecting mementos but for some reason not palaces.




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How were the protagonist and co. able to take out real items and money from the world of cognition? - Unrecognizable man holding wallet with money
How were the protagonist and co. able to take out real items and money from the world of cognition? - Anonymous person with magnifying glass over world map of coins
How were the protagonist and co. able to take out real items and money from the world of cognition? - Top view of miniature airplane placed on over gray world map with crop hand of anonymous person indicating direction representing travel concept





Hanno Pahl - Money and the “Metrization” of the World




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Answer 2

Its all about cognition really, you are able to take items from the metaverse into real life is assumed throughout the story as the concept of metaverse is explained to the player. The gold medal after Kamoshida's palace is the prized posession of the palace ruler, so was the painting. The metaverse after all is built around the conginiton of those that exists in the real world. The money and treasures found in the palaces might be illusions but they were there in the first place because of the real world. The fake guns works in the metaverse because shadows believe it to be real, so why should the guns found in chests in the metaverse not turn into fake guns in the real world? Of course this also adds to the RPG element very well, if everything you earned in palaces were worth nothing to you in the real world then what would be the point of spending countless hours in palaces?

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