Considering how old Persona 4 actually is, including its revamped rerelease Golden, there’s a non-zero chance that it’s been a good long while that any of you have played it (and for the younger readers, a plenty good chance you’ve not played it at all). So you might have some rose tinted goggles on when reflecting upon it, particularly concerning certain characters like Yosuke, who was written quite insensitively back in the day. But it does seem like the remake will be modernising the character, at the very least.

For those who are struggling to remember or are just completely in the dark, the protagonist’s right hand man Yosuke Hanamura was honestly just a pretty homophobic character, on top of being quite lecherous towards the female members of the cast. There are numerous jokes he makes at the expense of another party member, Kanji Tatsumi, who is heavily implied to be gay in the original game. It’s something that’s aged incredibly poorly, but according to an interview with Persona Team general producer Kazuhisa Wada, he’ll be written a bit differently.

Speaking to Anime Corner, Wada explained that Yosuke was “a little bit insensitive in terms of how he treats outsiders sometimes,” in the original game, so the team “wanted to lighten that up and make it a little bit more fitting for the world we live in now,” for Persona 4 Revival. Wada noted that in general the remake won’t change all that much “about the story or the character’s thoughts or how they act or anything,” and that the changes were “mostly Yosuke, really.”

Overall, this sounds like they simply won’t have Yosuke being as much of an asshole as he was in the original game, and if so, that leaves me feeling a bit conflicted. I played Persona 4 Golden for the first time just last month, and really struggled to connect with Yosuke because those issues are tightly woven into his character. I would hope a remake would tackle these problems head on as opposed to just sweeping them under the rug, essentially, but I suppose we’ll find out when the game comes out next year.