Earlier this morning, after nearly a year and a half of torturous teasing, Atlus finally blew the lids off of its eagerly anticipated Persona 5, the next installment in its flagship Persona series, and the sequel to what is widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made. And damn that trailer was amazing. It was stylish, slick, and it amped the hype for the game to eleven.
If it left you wanting for more information, however, you are in luck, since Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino finally shared some more information about the game, both on the official Persona website and in an interview with Famitsu (thanks for the translation, Gematsu).
“In a nutshell, if I were trying to explain what this game is trying to evoke, I’d say it’s like if you took something like a picaresque novel and then threw in, for lack of a better word, realistic, down to earth “academy juveniles,”” he said on the blog.
“In previous Persona games, the stories revolved around pretty traditional heroes going after villains that most anyone one would be loath to associate themselves with; they pursued the bad guys for the sake of justice, essentially. This time around, though, the protagonists of Persona 5 themselves are on the run for doing what they think is right after something happens completely out of the blue. That mixture of thrills and not-so-larger-than-life cast of characters is what composes the idea of “academy juveniles” for us. We think that these characters that are going to be a little rougher around the edges than those who have come before them in the series, coupled with the strides we’ve made in visual and sound design we can pull off something really special here.”
That already sounds so hype, so when do we get to play it? Atlus continues to insist that the game will be out in Japan and in the US this year, but they are still refusing to commit to a release date.
“Things are really coming along and we’re starting to hit our quality benchmarks in terms of what goes into the game, so at this stage, we’re hard at work building the game and fleshing it out. We’re just as eager to bring this game out finally so they can enjoy what all we’ve been working on and day by day, we’re getting closer to the finish line. It’s just going to be a little while longer now before it’s here,” Hashino said.
On the one hand… I want them to take their time, and make this the absolute best game of all time that I know it can be. On the other… goodness, I need it now!
Persona 5 will launch exclusively on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 some time this year.
