I saw thematic symmetry mentioned a few other places around the forum, so I thought I'd turn it into a topic since I find it interesting, whether the game developers were doing it intentionally or not.

Specifically, I've seen one main example of thematic symmetry/mirroring brought up:



On a more general level, we see themes of trust and betrayal between friends - to the detriment of those involved - in 5-3 and again in 5-5.

And this might be stretching it, but:



Any other examples you guys can think of?

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Thematic similarity isn't anything especially new for the franchise. In 3-3, they directly stated that they were mirroring 3-1 in a required piece of inner monologue. I think there are others in T&T and AJ, but I'm a bit tired, so I can't come up with them right now.

If you wanted to, you could even say that some cases in this game are thematically similar to cases in earlier games.

That's true, and I sort of realized that as I was typing my post up...haha. I'm not necessarily saying that DD's symmetry was deeper or better than in other games, but I felt like focusing on it since it's freshest in my mind.

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I believe there is quite obvious symmetry between Shadi's and Olga's plan in 4-1 and events that took place 7 years ago.

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While the older games had thematic symmetry the thing that made me think it was cleverly done in DD was that 5-2 was basically irrelevent to the overall plot outside of Athena being introduced and Blackquill, but it was cool how a filler case shared themes with the final case since otherwise the two cases wouldn't have any relevance to each other...

...but then again, it doesn't really add a whole lot to the story just because there's symmetry and besides I hate the mask idea in 5-5 which is the part that had the same thematic element as in 5-2, so maybe it was a bit forced now that I think about it.

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With Apollo already there, and how Juniper compares him to the sun and Phoenix thinks she's talking about him as if he were some sort of god ("oh wait..."), and the inclusion of Athena, and Metis, and Simon referring to crossing the river Styx, all referring to Greek mythology, although it has little to no bearing on the actual story. The reason I even noticed, however, is because I felt like there was some emphasis on catharsis throughout the game, although probably more in the modern, therapeutic sense of the term ("The term catharsis has also been adopted by modern psychotherapy, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis, to describe the act of expressing, or more accurately, experiencing the deep emotions often associated with events in the individual's past which had originally been repressed or ignored, and had never been adequately addressed or experienced." - Wikipedia) than the dramatic.
To a certain extent this could apply to situations in previous games as well, but I felt like there was more of an emphasis on it here with Athena's "therapeutic sessions" with the Mood Matrix and how they keep talking about the validity of emotions and the importance of being allowed, and allowing oneself, to have them. The most notable examples would be Simon's 5-5 Mood Matrix-segment along with Athena's black psyche-locks in the same case (And some points they try to make in the speech to Phantom, but things just went straight to hell when he started recognizing emotions) and the secrets the friendship trio of 5-3 keep from each other in fear that it will ruin their friendship, which "ironically" puts a strain on it in itself, and how the frinedship comes out stronger once they start being honest to themselves and each other.

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Athena and the Hope Probe. Both leave the Space Center after the UR-1 incident and return 7 years later carrying "hope" in the form of the moon rock.

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Ooooh, nice one. I never thought of that.

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