We know you’re all desperate to find out more about Persona 5 but developers Atlus aren’t in any hurry to give too much away at this stage. Not that this stopped an intrepid writer from the Official Persona Magazine from approaching Persona Series Director Katsura Hashino with a handful of questions based on little more than the single image that Atlus has released to announce the game. Fair play to them, they managed to extract some information details from Hashino-san, even if it wasn’t explicit gameplay details.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of translator Pepsiman, he has not only translated the article from Japanese to English, but redesigned the page in the new language. You can take a look at the article here, but we’ve picked out the most exciting quotes from the interview below:
Persona 5 is a game about freedom
“In today’s world there’s no shortage of people that are bored or discontent with their lives. They’re at a dead end, chained down to a world which they resent being a part. Persona 5, in that sense, is a game about freedom.”
The shackles are a motif for the game
“They naturally represent the idea of a person’s immobility, of being unable to move ahead from their current position in life… the also simultaneously represent our intent to make a game where the players can actually take the next step and move forward”
Persona 5 is thematically red
“For Persona 3 we went with blue, with Persona 4 we opted for yellow so this time we’re painting the world red. That said, red can be a pretty hard colour on the eyes… so we’re making the interface visually palatable.”
Persona 5 will be more approachable than previous games
“The characters…are out to destroy that which suffocates people in today’s society… I want players to come away from this game feeling they have the power to take on the world around them.”
Keeping the core idea simple
“With Persona 3 and 4, the basic idea was that by banding together… you can get a sort of freedom that you couldn’t by being completely on your own. As you grow up [your beliefs] shift and change under the influence of what other people have to say. The freedom from those dynamics…was what Persona 3 and 4 depicted.”
“Persona 5… operates under its own set of thematic principles… We live in a time in Japan when teenagers and adults can’t just be idling their way through their lives. People have to be on their toes, thinking about and engaging with what is happening around them.”
Don’t sweat the philosophical stuff
“Persona 5 is first and foremost a work of entertainment and we want it to just simply be enjoyable on its own terms. It’s my hope that people will not get too anxious and worked up about how all of these things are going to pan out in the end.”
Persona 5 is a Playstation 3 exclusive that will be available from around winter 2014.
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