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With Persona 4 Revival giving my favourite game a modern-day makeover, I was hoping Atlus would use it as an opportunity to reintroduce features that didn’t make the cut the first time around. You know, like a certain romance between protagonist Yu Narukami and his bestie Yosuke Hanamura.
Both English and Japanese voiced dialogue was found in the original game which heavily implied a planned romance between the two, though it never made an appearance in either Persona 4 or Persona 4 Golden. Revival’s announcement had fans buzzing in anticipation of its addition, but unfortunately that isn’t happening.
I had the opportunity to sit down with producer Kazuhisa Wada and art director Akane Kabayashi at Gamescom 2026, where the former told me that Yosuke will once again remain in the friendzone for Persona 4 Revival. “We heard rumours of all the people wanting the Yosuke romance, and we were thinking about doing it.
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“But then we were like, if we do Yosuke we kind of have to do it for all the guys. And if we did all the guys, that would be so much additional content that would be a lot of work. We gotta keep things fair, right? So we ended up being like ‘Ah, this might be a little bit much, so I think we’re gonna have to pass.'”
I think I might actually have to disagree with Wada here. While I think it would be cool to see a full protagsexual ensemble, I also would have really liked to see Yosuke’s previously cut romance implemented in a meaningful way. It also does a lot of legwork in reframing who Yosuke is and why he behaves the way he does—he frequently makes homophobic remarks in the original Persona 4, but redefining it from the perspective of someone who also has feelings for the protagonist adds a helluva lot of depth to his character.
Of course, I do expect Atlus to be pruning and tweaking some of Yosuke’s more out-of-pocket dialogue in Revival, though I think it would’ve better served his character to retain it with the additional framing of his queerness.
Though if Atlus had made every man romanceable in the game, would that have included Teddie? Well, as Kabayashi put it: “Does Teddie count as the guy? Yes, of course he does.” Look at what we’ve lost.
