The Persona series is in an interesting position right now. Since the release of Persona 5 in 2016, the series’ popularity has grown exponentially. As early as December 2023, Atlus confirmed that sales of the “Persona 5” series (including the original game, “Royal”, “Strikers”, “Tactica” and “Starlight Dancing”) have exceeded 10 million copies. After its launch earlier this year, Persona 3 Reload sold more than 1 million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling Persona game to date. Compare that to Persona 4’s 2.5 million copies sold (1 million of which were last year), and you can see the series’ incredible momentum.
Arguably, the Persona series is receiving more attention than ever before, which makes the studio’s current transformation and trajectory particularly interesting. Over the past eight years, the studio has only released remasters, ports, and add-ons related to existing entries in the series. More notably, however, the team working on these projects (Atlus’ P-Studio) also saw the loss of long-time Persona developers, including Katsura Hashino, Shigenori Soejima, Yuichiro Tanaka, Azusa Kido, Yujiro Kosaka, and Yasuhiro Akimoto Akimoto have all left the Persona series to form a new team and work on the upcoming fantasy RPG Metaphor: ReFantazio. I can’t help but wonder, what’s next for P-Studio and the Persona series?
I recently had the chance to dive into this issue with Atlus’ Kazuhisa Wada, the studio’s longtime producer and director who now leads P-Studio following Hashino’s departure. While the conversation was focused on the studio’s next release, Persona 3: Remastered: Aigis, I also got some insight into the future of the Persona series, and if we ever get a remake one day Persona 1 and 2, and why our team can’t seem to stop releasing deluxe editions of their games.
GameSpot: Why did the team decide to release Episode Aigis as DLC instead of incorporating it into the base game like Persona 3 FES?
Hotan: FES was released a few months after Persona 3, ultimately becoming the “complete” version of the game. The Aigis episode itself is a separate piece of content that you can select from the main menu screen, even though it’s included in the base game. Part of the reason is that we thought it would make sense to release it as a standalone DLC rather than as the full version of Persona 3 Reload. However, the bigger reason is that we simply cannot plan Aegis Set in advance. Late in the development of P3R, we found ourselves in an extremely difficult position – we still wanted to make Episode Aigis a reality, but we didn’t have the appropriate resources to make it happen. Thankfully, last year we got the team we needed to do that. But even so, we haven’t decided on the overall team structure for the project. Although we weren’t sure we would cross the finish line at the time, I was determined to see Aigis see the light of day. So, I stuck with it and we were able to develop it as DLC.
I’ve always felt that The Answer was an extended metaphor for grief – it explores how the world seems to be at a standstill and we find ourselves pushing away emotions rather than processing them. What was it like revisiting these themes after all these years and with more life experience?
quite [than the team’s thoughts]I’d love to know how you and others who felt the same way at the time feel about these themes today, all these years later, as well as those who lived through it. The essence of Episode Aigis is crucial to fully conveying the overall meaning of P3, so if we can help people understand it better, that might be the answer.
In fact, we’ve tried to make some adjustments to the game to help players better understand these topics and ultimately help them move forward from 3/31. We reviewed the script, analyzed the various opinions of fans at the time, and singled out the “controversial” parts of the script that were outside the main storyline. In the original work, we felt that the limited description of each character’s actions and decisions made it difficult to convey the necessary emotional premise, so we made some subtle adjustments around this. I’m sure there are a lot of different opinions on how this will impact the game, but I’d like to ask you to play the game and see for yourself, and then give us your honest feedback.
What are the most meaningful changes to Episode Aigis, story-wise and gameplay-wise?
In terms of story, the dialogue in the main plot has been adjusted according to the strategy described in your second question, while the missing information on emotions and friendships has been filled in through serial plots and dungeon dialogue.
In terms of gameplay, according to the design specifications of “Reload”, new magic, transformation, and special skills have been added to eliminate the pressure of the FES era and make dungeon attacks and battles more enjoyable. Additionally, there are five difficulty levels available here, allowing for a variety of play styles. The highest difficulty level is also very challenging, but rewarding at the same time.
Finally, not only is the Persona Compendium included, but any compendium progression can be carried over from the base version of P3R using existing save data, so we hope fans enjoy all these changes.
What’s the most challenging aspect of remaking a game nearly 20 years later?
The most difficult tasks were creating the production structure and drafting and approving the project. From there, we had to figure out the best way to convey the nature of the content that was divisive at the time, and how to tweak it to make it better. Finding a way to portray Métis characters and game themes that hadn’t been seen in nearly 20 years in an engaging way was equally challenging, but equally important and rewarding.
With the addition of Persona Aigis, Persona 3: Reloaded feels like a deluxe version of Persona 3: Reloaded. The game lacks one important quality: a heroine. why she is exclude? Will we see her again one day?
Unfortunately, there will be no heroine in P3R. We considered adding a female protagonist early on when we were planning Aegis, but the more we thought about how we could make that happen, the less likely it seemed. Development time and costs are unmanageable and due to the nature of the content it is difficult to delegate it externally. Even if we were able to move forward, an actual launch would be far in the future.
On top of that, we’re not just building a remastered game, we’re building an entirely new game, so we need to dedicate limited development resources to it. I apologize to our fans who have supported us for so long, but it’s the same reason we made Episode Aigis: we couldn’t make any additional content for P3R, like for P3R, unless we created and released it at this moment Creating a Female Protagonist People are most interested in P3R.
But since it’s impossible for us to release a P3R with a heroine as the protagonist in this window, we can’t do that. I’m so sorry to all the fans who got their hopes up, but this may never happen.
Atlus tends to return games and fairly release new versions with new features often. why is that? When do you decide to reach your stopping point?
Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal add many expansions that cannot be included in the DLC format, so we must treat them as entirely new games. This time around, we’re keeping this in mind with Episode Aigis, so we’ve made sure that the expansion content only functions as DLC. Going forward, if content doesn’t significantly expand on the base game, then we want to make that content available in an appropriate format.
With the end of Persona 3: Reloaded, are there plans to remake Persona 1 and Persona 2?
It’s not on my agenda right now. I hope to do that one day.
I know some team members have already switched to Metaphor: ReFantazio. How does this impact the future of the Persona series?
Many years ago, one of the problems we wanted to solve as a company was improving the development capabilities of the organization. Fortunately, as of today, very talented young people and mid-career people are growing steadily through programs like P3R and P5R, so if we are asked about the future impact from now on, the answer can only be “becoming better”.
We game developers, myself included, have a lot of problems to solve in order to cope with the long and extended game development process. I believe one of the most important things is passing on the spirit of the game to the next generation. One of the most important things is to build an organization that allows this transformation to happen naturally.
In order to develop and maintain a sustainable, high-quality series of works, I believe that organizational reform and generational change methodologies at that time were inevitable and very necessary. That said, I believe we can point to the fact that the Persona series has evolved from then to now as the best proof that we’re on the right track. So we’d be very happy and encouraged if you all have greater expectations for us and the games we make in the future, so keep up the good work.
