One of my favourite parts of Gamescom was seeing my boy all glowed up in Persona 4 Revival. No, not Yu. Teddie! Seeing my beloved bulbous-headed bear toddling around in glorious, sleek modern graphics was everything I dreamed it would be.
Persona 4 Golden has long been my favourite in the series, so I have been excited ever since Revival was announced. Experiencing first-hand how much new life has been breathed into it and being able to marvel at the details in Inaba, looking at posters and items in store windows, my favourite cast all crisp and clean with new voice-overs, and the gorgeous new title menus were a real delight.
After getting a taste of the gameplay myself, I spoke with general producer Kazuhisa Wada and art director Akane Kabayashi, and they told me that Revival isn’t just about a new look. Fans can expect brand new content, so those who already know the truth of the mystery will have something fresh to look forward to.
“For people who are familiar with it and want to experience something new, and for people who like the series, you want to give them an extra reason to buy [the game],” Wada tells me about the story content. Of course, everything in the game has been given a lot more care, attention, and detail, too. “We want to make it feel like the town is a place that you really want to live in. We want to add things that will make you like the town even more, that will let us deep dive into the characters and their history more to give you more information about it. Really, the goal is to keep the original as it is but then add a new layer of polish on top of it.”
Kabayashi adds, “We also took some of the ideas that were in the anime, and then we tried to bring those back in to help enhance the animation.
“When we were making the town, the town itself is this kind of very nostalgic, very sleepy town. That was one of our key parts: how do we recreate this? We did a ton of research, and initially we created that whole main street of the town, and we went into each and every detail.” Kabayashi says, giving an example of how they looked at the smallest details, such as whether the curtains should move in the wind. “By the time of the day and the weather, the feel, we wanted to make sure it all felt right. We looked at all these exact examples of that.”
Persona 4 first launched in 2008, with the expanded Golden version launching in 2012. When you’re dealing with a game that old, there are, naturally, some dated elements and imperfections, but how does the team decide whether the old quirks have become part of the game’s identity and should remain? “The way that we decide to make changes to something is when there's something that doesn't quite get across,” Wada tells me. “A little mistake is fine, but something confusing or causing issues, we want to move that out.”
Persona 4 has the cast confronting part of themselves that they’d rather deny, and Wada tells me that these issues are still “valid now” and that working on the character arcs “hit even stronger” for the team this time around. “I really dive deep with these characters' personalities and their emotional base for their individual personal issues. Especially the scenes when you confront the shadows, we’ve updated it so that it can hit you more emotionally.”
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/persona-4-revival-gamescom-interview-anime-spin-off-inspiration/
