Persona 3 Reload

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Persona 3 Reload
Developer(s)	P-Studio
Publisher(s)	JP: Atlus WW: Sega
Director(s)	Takuya Yamaguchi
Producer(s)	Kazuhisa Wada Ryota Niitsuma
Designer(s)
Programmer(s)
Artist(s)
Writer(s)
Composer(s)
Series	Megami Tensei Persona
Engine	Unreal Engine
Platform(s)	PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	Q1 2024
Genre(s)	Role-playing, social simulation
Mode(s)	Single-player
Cabinet
Arcade system
CPU
Sound
Display

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Persona 3 Reload is an upcoming role-playing video game developed by P-Studio and published by Atlus. It is a remake of the 2006 title Persona 3, the fourth main installment of the Persona series, itself a part of the larger Megami Tensei franchise. As with the original game, players assume the role of the protagonist, a high school student returning to their home city a decade after his parents were killed in a fatal car crash. He soon gains the potential to summon a Persona—the physical manifestation of his inner spirit, and joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.), a group of like-minded Persona users. Together, they are tasked with defeating the threat of Shadows feeding on the minds of civilians around the city, and uncovering the mystery of the Dark Hour, an elusive period of time between one day and the next.

A remake of Persona 3 was oft-requested by fans, and was officially acknowledged by Atlus as their most requested game to revisit in consumer-oriented polls. Reload began development in 2019, while its production was first reported on in April 2023. The game was officially announced in June 2023. Reload faithfully remakes the story of the original release of Persona 3, graphically and functionally updated to be in parity with recent series releases such as Persona 5 Royal. The remake will also significantly overhaul the game's presentation, including a new English voice cast, animated cutscenes, and voiced dialogue, as well as several new story scenarios not present in either the original game or its re-releases Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable. Music artist Lotus Juice will return to supply rearranged music for the remake.

Persona 3 Reload will be released in early 2024 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5. Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Plot

Further information: Persona 3 § Plot

Presentation

The remake reproduces the narrative and gameplay content of the original Persona 3 story route, otherwise known as "The Journey" in Persona 3 FES. The game's character models and assets have been remade from the ground up to be presented as more proportionate relative to the environment design in a similar vein to Persona 5's art direction, which is also reflected in the revamped lighting engine and the number of non-playable characters that populate the playable areas of the game, both of which have been improved upon when contrasted with the original game. The game's performance has also been increased from all previous versions' 30 frames per second (FPS), to 60FPS at 4K resolution (3840x2160) on all platforms. Additional scenes not featured in the original game or any of its re-releases appear in Reload, including new party interactions, dialogue and voiced cutscenes. Every Social Link route will also be completely voiced. Exploration within Tartarus also features additional dialogue amongst the party depending on who is taken into the dungeon from the entrance. The animated cinematics from the original PlayStation 2 version of Persona 3 have also been recreated. While the Japanese voice cast will reprise their respective roles, the original English voice cast for all previous versions of Persona 3 has been entirely re-cast for Reload, including the protagonist (Aleks Le), Mitsuru Kirijo (Allegra Clark), Yukari Takeba (Heather Gonzalez), Junpei Iori (Zeno Robinson), Aigis (Dawn Bennett), Akihiko Sanada (Alejandro Saab), Fuuka Yamagishi (Suzie Yeung), Shinjiro Aragaki (Justice Slocum) and Ken Amada (Justine Lee). The extra story additions introduced in Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable, namely the epilogue chapter "The Answer" and the female protagonist story route, will not be included in Reload. With the additional voice lines and side-stories with voiced content, Persona 3 Reload has the most spoken dialogue out of any game in the Persona series.

Gameplay

See also: Persona 3 § Gameplay, and Persona (series) § Gameplay

Persona 3 Reload retains its core hybrid of traditional role-playing and social simulation gameplay, but is overhauled aesthetically, graphically and mechanically to integrate systems and features that have been introduced to the Persona series since the original Persona 3's release, specifically deriving from quality-of-life improvements first implemented in Persona 5 (2016). In addition to foundational overhauls, Reload refines numerous elements of its general user interface (GUI) to reflect the updated presentation of subsequent entries. For story-sensitive tasks, objective descriptions have been added below the display for the date, time of day and moon phase that list actions that must be performed to progress the narrative, which is functionally similar to P5's heads-up display. The map display has also been improved in function and form over the original Persona 3, having been expanded in size in addition to depicting more intricacies about the surrounding environment, and now placing markers on important locations that need to be visited for story purposes, much like Persona 5's map. The ability for the protagonist to run through areas has also been added.

New gameplay additions to the social simulation and role-playing portions of the game will be introduced in Reload. While attending Gekkoukan High School, the in-class questions from the subject teachers have been redone from scratch, with none being repurposed from the original game. Exploration both around Tatsumi Port Island and within Tartarus is now done from a third-person perspective with the camera now being positioned directly behind the protagonist, and now enables free camera control for the player to get better views of their surroundings. The overworld map is now fully rendered in 3D, and has an additional button prompt for displaying information on the protagonist's current location, or other areas they can visit. Expanding on Persona 3 Portable's fast travel function, the player is also able to immediately fast-travel to any specific location within the highlighted area directly from the map itself as opposed to within the location. A new social element will be introduced, that exists separately from the returning Social Links. It is meant to contextualize supporting characters who weren't as prominent in previous iterations of Persona 3, through the inclusion of side-story arcs that will deepen the protagonist's relationship with them., which will also extend to the male party members due to the lack of dedicated Social Link stories for them.

The structure has and progression within Tartarus has not been altered from the original game whatsoever, but has been expanded with more environmental variety to encourage exploration, and sports unique visual effects accomplished by the game's use of Unreal Engine, such as improved lighting. the fatigue mechanic has been completely removed to reflect subsequent entries, making it so that the party is unable to tire during exploration, thus no longer affecting their battle performance. Tartarus itself also contains breakable objects that contain items for the party to collect.

During battle, both the ability to take direct control over party members as in Portable, as well as enabling the CPU to dictate their behavior as in the original game and FES, are available. The battle user interface has been completely overhauled to take functional and stylistic inspiration from Persona 5, with the commands "Persona", "Item", "Guard" and "Attack" all being mapped to the controller's face buttons in a similar fashion. In addition to the returning "Analyze", "Tactics", "Target" and "Rush" commands from prior iterations of Persona 3, a "Survey" and "Assist" function have also been added. The "All-Out Attack" Skill is also now accompanied by the character-specific finisher screens, likewise carried over from Persona 5.

Development

In July 2022, Atlus Japan conducted a consumer-led survey gauging interest in potential remakes and re-releases of past games from the publisher, specifically in the Megami Tensei franchise. During a livestreamed broadcast of the poll results, Atlus revealed that Persona 3 (2006) had been tied with Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999) and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (2000) in terms of the most requested game to be remade by the publisher. By this point, the Persona 3 remake project had been in active development since 2019 as revealed in an IGN interview following the game's announcement.

In April 2023, internally screened footage from SEGA leaked online, showing footage of Persona 3 party member Yukari Takeba engaging in an encounter with a Shadow, alleged to be from an early development build of a Persona 3 remake. News publication site Gematsu later corroborated the footage, with a contributing writer stating that the firm had heard from anonymous sources close to SEGA that a remake of the game was in development, and that the build shown in the sizzle reel was sourced from 2021. That same day, a Twitter user uncovered a registered web domain named "p3re.jp", which was speculated to be connected to a Persona 3 remake due to its shorthand abbreviation potentially referencing the game, and following previously registered web domains for projects in the Persona series. SEGABits supported Gematsu's report, reporting that the sizzle reel's depiction of footage from a new Jet Set Radio game correlated with artwork leaked from a publisher survey conducted in 2022.

In early June 2023, Atlus Japan renewed the aforementioned "p3re.jp" web domain speculated to be connected to the Persona 3 remake, alongside a new web domain, "p5t.jp", surmised by gaming news outlets to be connected to a potential spin-off title for Persona 5 (2016). Shortly thereafter, Atlus West accidentally uploaded the reveal trailer for the remake, titled Persona 3 Reload, on their official Instagram account alongside the trailer for the upcoming spin-off title Persona 5 Tactica (2023), both of which were scheduled to debut at Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase event later that week as part of an arranged marketing deal with Microsoft. The trailer additionally revealed the involvement of music artist Lotus Juice, who previously contributed numerous vocal songs to Persona 3's original soundtrack, and would be returning to provide rearranged pieces for Reload.

Following the game's official reveal during the Xbox Games Showcase, Atlus shared several additional details about Reload. P-Studio chief director Kazuhisa Wada and game producer Ryota Niitsuma clarified their intentions of producing a completely faithful recreation of the original Persona 3 experience, including implementing multiple "new scenes and events" beyond the retained narrative. However, the pair confirmed that as a result of remaining solely faithful to the game as it was originally released, none of the story content integrated into either Persona 3 FES or Persona 3 Portable would be remade for Reload, such as the epilogue chapter "The Answer" or the second female protagonist and her associated content. Wada clarified following this interview however, that other story and gameplay elements first added to the main story scenario in P3FES would still feature in the game. During a separate interview published in Weekly Famitsu, Wada, Niitsuma and game director Takuya Yamaguchi also expressed enthusiasm towards introducing alterations to the existing game's controls and map design, highlighting that the game's main dungeon, Tartarus, would undergo a "particularly large change" in structure from the original game due to the increase in environmental density, as well as interactive features and landscapes within existing areas. They also discussed the intent and overall importance behind producing Persona 3 Reload at this time, asserting that while they didn't want to change the plot or characters that form the original game's foundation, they were keen on players being able to enjoy Persona 3 at a functional and graphical fidelity equivalent to recent entries in the series such as Persona 5 (2016) and Persona 5 Royal (2019), which was the stance they assumed at the start of development. Yamaguchi elaborated on the effort it took to remake all the game's original environments and artwork, exemplifying that the field had not just been expanded to be more proportionate with characters populating the playable areas, but also to "increase the density of game elements and scenery". Yamaguchi further discussed the addition of new scenarios beyond reproducing the original game's narrative, feeling it fitting for the game's nature as an "ensemble drama" so they may explore characters who weren't as prominent in the original game.

Music

Upon the game's announcement, it was revealed that rap artist Lotus Juice, who previously contributed as a feature on multiple vocal pieces for Persona 3 and its associated games, would be returning to supply new and rearranged music tracks for Persona 3 Reload.

Release

Persona 3 Reload is set to be released in early 2024 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The game will also be available from launch on Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service for Xbox consoles and Windows PCs. In addition to English and Japanese audio support, the game will be localized in Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Reception

The announcement that Persona 3 Reload would not have the female playable character from Persona 3 Portable was received poorly by some fans.

External links

• Official website

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