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Persona saw a big presence at Anime Expo last weekend, featuring a dedicated booth, panels, and merchandise to promote the series’ 30th anniversary, as well as the upcoming Persona 4 Revival and Persona 6. The staff behind P4R was also giving press interviews, and one comment by General Producer Kazuhisa Wada has been drawing attention.
Speaking to Anime Corner, Wada discussed some changes would be made to parts of the game, particularly with regard to one specific character.
“We haven’t changed anything core about the characters,” says 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.”
“We haven’t really changed anything about the story of the characters’ thoughts or how they act,” he continues. “We’ve just … changed the way we express some of this a little bit, mostly with Yosuke really. 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.” He goes on to confirm that other hot-topic social links for characters like Kanji and Naoto will not be altered “at base.”
Yosuke has been criticized for being somewhat abrasive, with some of his comments and actions coming off to players as homophobic. While some players see his attitude and words as rather typical of a teenager struggling with themselves, others have found him to be repellent. It’s understandable why the team might want to reign Yosuke in a little.
This wouldn’t be the first time a Persona re-release toned down some more controversial material: for example, Persona 3 Reload altered a scene that was largely seen as transphobic from the original game. What makes this a bit more interesting is that fans have found unused character dialogue and voiceover on the original PlayStation 2 disc of Persona 4 hinting at the main character being able to forge a close–perhaps romantic–relationship with Yosuke. Whether or not this angle could be explored in the remake is still up in the air–Wada does confirm that some new content will be present in the game–but one thing’s for sure: If Atlus does take this step, thousands of fan-fiction writers the world over will be ecstatic.
