Persona 4 Revival producer and Persona series veteran Kazuhisa Wada says "we have to do" Persona 1 and 2 remakes at some point.
Speaking with GamerBraves, Wada maintains his position as the patron saint of the very few people who still remember that Atlus' most popular JRPG series did not begin with Persona 3, but rather with Revelations: Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
Asked about remakes of the original Persona games, Wada responds, "At this point, I can't say for sure, but personally, I think it's something we should definitely do. I think we have to do it."
Wada has worked with the Persona series and its origin, the Shin Megami Tensei series, for decades. Persona 4 Revival is his latest project, though after his lead role in both Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royal, he's also expected to be part of Persona 6. Here in the post-Persona 5 Royal era of Atlus, which has seen Persona grow into a global hit, Wada has helped lead the charge on modernizing Atlus' classic JRPGs.
Giving the original Persona and the Persona 2 duology the Royal, Remake, or Reload treatment raises a few unique challenges. Firstly, we've got to come up with some more words that start with R for the titles. I hear Revelation and Resonant are in fashion this year.
Secondly, there's a reason most people only know this series from Persona 3 onward, and it's not just because it can be hard to even find a way to play the original games today. Persona 3 and its follow-ups introduced pretty major changes both mechanically and thematically, framing the loop that's become the bedrock for modern installments. The original games feel quite different, in some ways closer to early Shin Megami Tensei entries, which could make them difficult to update.
So far, Atlus' remake strategy has basically boiled down to making games more like Persona 5 Royal, from presentation to quality-of-life features. Persona 5 was basically the evolved form of Persona 3 and 4, so that approach worked for those games.
But trying to do that with Persona 2, for example, feels like telling someone to wear shoes as gloves. If Atlus did take on this challenge, I'd love to see how it balances the old with the new. Do you stay faithful to the oddness of early Persona and trust modern fans to adapt, or do you just keep the setting, cast, and story and view them through the lens of today's mechanics?
And for that matter, do you combine Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment into one big Persona 2 Revisited? There you go, Atlus; you can have that one for free.
As Persona 6 drives hype, Atlus' JRPG series sold another 1 million copies over Sega's last quarter.
