“We’ve done a lot of surveys with users and fans, and whenever we did a survey on what people wanted to see as a remake for the Persona series, the number one answer was always Persona 3,” P3R Producer Ryota Niitsuma told me. “After Persona 5 Royal came out, the Persona team was ready for another project and we were trying to think about what to do. We were saying, ‘Hey, a remake could be pretty good. Everybody wants to see Persona 3, so this is the right time.’ The stars have aligned.”
Respecting the impact that the original had on players, the team wanted to preserve the core of Persona 3, while also bridging the 15 year plus gap since it released, and all of the technological advances in that timeframe.
“When [the original Persona 3] first came out, I really thought that both then and now that this game is just incredible, something that, even though many years have passed in the interval, the colors of them haven’t faded,” shared Game Director Takuya Yamaguchi.
“I wanted to leave all of the parts that made Persona 3 what it was, all the parts that made up the core of how beautiful it was, as-is, but then try to address the things that have changed in the interim… I wanted users to think that when they played this game. ‘I’m playing, not a remake of something old, but I’m playing something that is the newest entry to the Persona series.’”
