One of the games industry's many badly kept secrets broke cover yesterday when Atlus finally came out and itted that, yup, it sure is remaking Persona 4. In a trailer operating at the very limits of 'telling us nothing at all,' we got a glimpse of good ol' Inaba in scintillating ultra-HD.
Hey, I'll play that when it comes out, but at least a few people were a tad disappointed. Remakes and spin-offs aside, the last wholly new Persona game we got was Persona 5 all the way back in 2016, when dinosaurs walked the Earth. The fact that the next game in the queue was yet another remake had some folks in low spirits. I reckon Atlus anticipated that, which is probably why it accompanied Persona 4 Revival's announcement with a statement from P-Studio director Kazuhisa Wada.
Cue the usual stuff about how excited the devs are about P4R. But there, at the end, is a faint ember of future possibility: "Additionally, we are actively preparing for the future development of the Persona series as a studio. We are working hard to meet the expectations of fans around the world and our work is progressing well."
Which I reckon you can only interpret one way: as a roundabout statement that, yes, the studio does actually how to make a brand-new Persona game and some kind of work is already under way on that. Either that or the team is remaking Persona 5, which would almost be funny enough to be forgivable.
Of course, it's worth stressing that whatever Atlus has in the tank is absolutely gonna have to wait until P4R is safely out and in our hands, and with Wada saying the studio is "actively preparing for" future development, that sounds like any kind of hypothetical Persona 6 isn't even in pre-production yet. Still, if Wada is willing to even gesture at a possible P6, I'd tentatively be willing to bet that it's what's next on Atlus' agenda after P4R.
With long-time Persona director Katsura Hashino ensconced over at Studio Zero making games like Metaphor: ReFantazio, it'll be the first mainline Persona since 2 not to have his hand at the helm. Are we ready for a world where that's true? Probably not. Maybe it’s better if Atlus just puts out another dancing game or something.
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