Persona Series Production Manager Kazuhisa Wada Talks About Difficulties in Improving Persona 3 Reload While Remaining Faithful to the Original

Prior to the much anticipated launch of Persona 3 Reload, we got the golden opportunity to speak with Kazuhisa Wada, the Production Manager of the Persona series in an interview regarding the upcoming remake.

Kazuhisa Wada

Kazuhisa Wada is a prominent figure within the Persona community, having several key important roles in various ATLUS games, notably the Persona series. 

Wada’s most known roles include being the Chief Designer for Persona 3, Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden, the Director for Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, as well as being the Producer for Persona 5 Royal, and Production Manager for the upcoming Persona 3 Reload, among many other key roles in the Persona series.

[Interview is edited for clarity]

Time Taken for Persona 3 Reload

More often than not, it takes a lot of time and effort to create a title, even if it’s a remake of an already existing game as there are a lot of moving parts to take into account to ensure its quality.

Taking that into consideration, it wouldn’t be a surprise if it also took Persona 3 Reload a long time for the developers to rebuild the game from the ground up, especially in terms of its gameplay, which is considerably more streamlined from our time with the preview. 

Wada mentions that the team started off Persona 3 Reload from 2019 up until the Summer of 2023, which approximately took around 4 years, and within those years, they dedicated a year on building the game for multiple platforms and support for more languages. 

“We looked into the hardware aspects as well as adjusting it for the different platforms they would go on.” 

New Character Designs

Among the many improvements in Persona 3 Reload, from gameplay to visuals, one aspect that had gotten a fresh coat of paint was the cast of characters from the original Persona 3 game getting new designs. We were curious if there were any extensions towards a character’s new design to their background story. 

To which, Wada replied by saying that the background story is there to increase the overall appeal of the characters themselves, as well as tying in some story that is linked to the future title Persona 4 Arena Ultimax series. 

“This is also related to how the story sort of ties with the future games, and the background story for Strega is also being explored including day-to-day life in the Dormitory.“ 

Bringing Back the Tunes

One of the many aspects that fans look upon the original Persona 3 title is definitely its iconic soundtrack, which houses some of the most memorable OSTs in the Persona franchise, with songs such as When The Moon’s Reaching Out Stars, Mass Destruction, and much more reproduced for Persona 3 Reload. We asked Wada if he could share with us the work behind reintroducing the popular tunes in Persona 3 Reload. 

Wada mentions that there had been elements that he and the team really enjoyed and looked forward to, such as the nostalgic feeling from the popular tunes they’re bringing back, as well as the addition of Azumi Takahashi being the new vocalist, which Wada mentioned to be a very refreshing spin to the original songs. 

Quality-of-Life Features

As a remake of the original title, Persona 3 Reload comes packed full of quality-of-life improvements, especially in Tartarus, where auto-recovery and dashing can help give players a more streamlined and enjoyable experience traversing this lengthy dungeon. Coincidentally, we wondered if Wada could talk more about other quality-of-life features that had been added to the game. 

“Quality of life is really important to us. We aim and strive to have better usability and better quality of life overall from Persona 5 Royal to have a better improvement since that title.” 

One of the features Wada brought up is the rollback system, which allows players to have different forms of auto-saving, as well as rewinds that allow players to go back to certain parts with a bit more ease, as opposed to reloading a game from an auto-save file. Another use for that is within Tartarus, where players can go back to the floors that they’ve already explored without having to map it again to ease exploration. 

“Then finally there is a mailing system within the game. So, traditionally I think you would have to go back into the menu and traverse to a certain location. However, within the new system, you can easily go to that location to allow you to have a smoother transition within the game as well as the story.” 

Combat 

Combat is one of the aspects in Persona 3 Reload that has seen a lot of improvements, as opposed to the original, such as the addition of new features such as Shift, Theurgy, and even new spells. That being said, there are bound to be some adjustments that the team had to make in terms of combat to accommodate all of these new additions. 

Wada talked about wanting to use the combat system that will be useful to the story, and give the characters additional sides to make it more interesting. One example he brought up was bringing back Armageddon as a Theurgy skill, which can be used over and over, but there’s also that risk where players can lose all their HP and SP when using the skill, which presents players with a sense of risk versus reward. 

He continued by saying that the combat system in Persona 3 Reload had used Persona 5 Royal as a basis and improved it from there, which he and the team hope that this new turn of development will bring out the story and characters of the game. 

Everyone’s Favourite Good Boy

One of the newest, and arguably the funniest aspects of Persona 3 Reload was the addition of a dedicated voice actor for Koromaru, Shinya Takahashi. We asked Wada if he could tell us the decision to have a voice actor for Koromaru, and how it impacted the character’s portrayal, and if he could share with us any funny stories during recording sessions where Takahashi had to growl and bark for the scenes.

Wada explained that Shinya Takahashi was actually really well-received when voicing Koromaru in the anime movies, so the team wanted to have that voice in the game as well. 

“As for Koromaru’s voice and the impact that it has, the Director is actually a huge dog fan. So they want to have a dedicated voice for Koromaru with the aim to give something very special to dog lovers everywhere.” 

Wada continued saying that during the recording, having the voice actor have very specific forms of voice acting such as barking to fit the situation and scenario in the game is something very unusual for video games, but it was something that he and the team had enjoyed. 

Challenges In Developing Persona 3 Reload

It goes without saying that developing a game on a scale such as Persona 3 Reload would have its road bumps during the development process. Wada mentions that one of the biggest challenges that he and his team faced was the fact that they were aiming for a global multi-release, including 13 different languages across all platforms. 

Wada also stated one thing that shocked him was that the development budget as well as the cost for the remake was so much higher than the cost of the original title. It would make sense given how much polish and effort was put into this title. 

Another hurdle that Wada and his team had to overcome was deciding which aspects of the original Persona 3 game had to be changed, and what should be kept in the remake. There were a lot of debates internally to move forward with certain changes, and it took them a lot of time to get the right balance. 

“It was very difficult to try to improve the game without having to change the original and the elements that were already very well received. There are certain parts that were kind of disputed at the time when it came to the series, but this one there was a lot more effort to face those uncertainties and push out the game in a way that will be faithful.” 

Persona and The SEA Community

Given the recent success of the Persona series, it has definitely received a cult following even outside of Japan and the West, notably in Southeast Asian countries with many fans of the series ranging from Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia, to name a few. 

Wada expresses that the Persona series, Persona 3 in particular, has been a huge turning point for them, so it’s considered to be a very special title for ATLUS. He mentions that Persona 3 Reload has input from people who had previously played Persona 5 Royal, and that he and his team were aiming to make sure this remake in particular will outperform Persona 5 Royal in terms of comfort.  

Furthermore, Wada also confidently mentioned that in addition to the QoL features, visuals and combat improvements that were onboarded from Persona 5 Royal, Persona 3 Reload provides the same feel as the original that was released 18 years ago.

Finally, Wada ended the interview with the below message to the fans of the series:

“Currently, we are not considering a huge version change like that of Persona 5 to Persona 5 Royal that involves major changes and additions to the entire series. So, fans can have peace of mind knowing that Persona 3 Reload offers a full experience. With this title, we put in a lot of effort so that fans all over the world, including Southeast Asia, have simultaneous access all at the same time. As such, we truly hope that users and fans all over the world can enjoy Persona 3 Reload and have lots of fun.”

We would like to extend our thanks to Kazuhisa Wada for taking the time to answer our questions in this interview. 

Persona 3 Reload will be released on 2nd February for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Persona 3 Reload

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Atlus

Release Date: 2024-02-02

Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Dive into the Dark Hour and awaken the depths of your heart. Persona 3 Reload is a captivating reimagining of the genre-defining RPG, reborn for the modern era with cutting-edge graphics and gameplay.

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