Persona 5 has launched to the rest of the world last month and it’s been selling pretty well, and we gave it a really positive review. To commemorate the successful launch, Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino has left us a thank you note via Playstation Blog.
In the blog post, he opened up on how anxious he was about how the rest of the world, particularly the West, will react to the game being “a very Japanese story with some political aspects to it”. “It could’ve missed the mark completely and been criticized for it, so my anticipation and anxiety were split half and half,” he said.
Hashino also mentioned that he has now since passed down his role of Game Director, a role he held since Persona 3, to his successors. He is now helming a new RPG project set in the fantasy world. This is in reference to Atlus’ new Studio Zero that is working on Project Re Fantasy. In a video by toco toco tv, he has mentioned about it being his next project.
The Persona series began as a spin-off to the main Shin Megami Tensei series. Starting Persona 3, a new team led by Hashino took over with Shigenori Soejima on character design and Shoji Meguro as the music composer. The team established the aesthetics and tone of the “high-schooler by day, dungeon crawler by night” turn-based RPG the series is now known today.
It will be a long time until we see the next main Persona games (we have to get those spin-offs games first, obviously), but we can expect should the developer team at P Studio will work on the sequel, it has the potential to shake up the formula more than ever with new leadership in place.
As for Hashino, he set his sights to keep on delivering quality RPGs. “Be it a game set in modern day, like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, or a game set in a new fantasy world, I aim to create games that provide an invaluable experience of reflecting on oneself through a journey, while roleplaying as characters that players can deeply relate to.”