After a long period of not knowing much about the upcoming remake, Persona 4 Revival,, we last month finally learned that Atlus’ re-do of one of its most popular games is launching on 18th February on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. But the game isn’t a straight one-to-one remake of the 2008 RPG. Similarly to Persona 3 Reload, it will see differences to the source material.
At Anime Expo last weekend (where we also got our first look at Cyberpunk Edgerunners Season 2), Anime Corner managed to chat to P4R’s general producer, Kazuhisa Wada, who revealed what flavour some of the game’s changes will take.
“We haven’t changed anything core about the characters,” noted Wada. “But we’ve just sort of brushed up the kind of corners, to make sure it all fits and really is appropriate for the characters and for the age that we live in now.”
He goes on to say that Atlus “[hasn’t] really changed anything about the story of the characters’ thoughts or how they act,” but rather that the team has “changed the way we express some of this a little bit, mostly with Yosuke. “He’s a little bit insensitive in terms of how he treats outsiders sometimes. We wanted to lighten that up and make it a little more fitting for the world that we live in now.”
Hmm. What could this mean? If you’re familiar with the base game, you’ll know that Yosuke is, at times, quite difficult to like: he’s conservative, judgemental, and quite often plays up to the ‘teenage pervert’ stereotype. Certain interactions the party member can have with the player character and one other support character can also make him seem intolerant and homophobic – which is ironic, given that in the original game there were unused voice lines indicating he was a potential romance option for the male protagonist.
We can already see one such change thanks to the gameplay trailers Atlus has released: there’s a line in P4 and its re-release, Persona 4 Golden, in which Yosuke sheepishly notes that protagonist Yu is “good with his hands”. Internet sleuths have determined this line is now “actually, you do strike me as someone who’d be good at that” – before anyone cries censorship or ‘straight-washing’, it’s worth noting that this is actually closer to what is said in the original Japanese script.
If you’ve dipped your toe into any of the technically non-canon Persona spin-off universe (Persona Q, Persona 4 Arena, Persona 4 Dancing All Night, and so on), you’ll know Yosuke has grown up a bit since the events of Persona 4: he is often a bit embarrassed and humbled by his past behaviour, and exhibits maturity and self-reflection outside of the title’s main storyline. I quite like this; it offers him a redemption arc and shows that ‘hey, look, we can all be idiots when we’re teenagers’. I hope the changes Atlus makes don’t sand off too many of Yosuke’s rough edges – I think, in many ways, they define him.
This isn’t the first time Atlus has opted to change legacy lines to be more appropriate in today’s climate: in Persona 3 Reload, the developer took out and altered lines that were transphobic – opting to make the NPC at the center of the controversy a conspiracy theorist, doing away with the trans panic aspect of the interaction altogether. For my money, this was a good thing: it’s a tiny change that doesn’t alienate anyone, and has very little bearing on the overall story. Atlus also edited out homophobic elements from Persona 5 by the time Persona 5 Royal hit the shelves. Again, I see this as a net benefit.
So I trust Atlus when it comes to these Yosuke changes. The studio knows how to balance editing a script for a modern audience whilst retaining the bite and edge its characters have become known for. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in Persona 4 around gender identity and perceived homosexuality, and to sanitise that too much would be to undercut key themes in the game. I trust Atlus will keep P4’s much-loved spirit intact.
