During this year’s Anime Expo, we had the opportunity to speak with members of the staff behind Persona 4 Revival, including Kazuhisa Wada (General Producer for the Persona Team) and Shigenori Soejima (Character Designer / Illustrator at ATLUS). Persona 4 Revival is the second remake of Persona 4, originally released in 2008 for the PlayStation. ATLUS would go on to release a first remake, Persona 4 Golden, in 2012. Persona 4 Revival is an even more modern rendition of the fan favorite game, incorporating updated character models (the older games used a more chibi style for characters), an overall improvement to graphics and art, new English voice actors, new music, and tons of gameplay and quality of life improvements.
During the interview, we spoke about all of these things with Wada-san and Soejima-san. We asked them about the kinds of changes that are planned for Persona 4 Revival and got some key insight into how the team is approaching those changes. If you would prefer to consume this interview in video form, check out the full recording on YouTube below. Otherwise, read on for a transcript of the interview.
This interview was conducted with the assistance of an interpreter.
Q: With any remake, there are improvements to graphics and visuals. What specific elements of Golden did you look toward as areas to improve for Revival?
Wada-san: So this applies to both a trend from both Persona 4 and for Persona 4 Golden, but we really focused on the dungeons and the battles as things to upgrade.
Q: There are numerous improvements to the battle system, including new ways to knock back enemies, guard, or launch powerful attacks. How do you balance adding new elements to the game without making it too easy or too complex?
Wada-san: When we had the idea, we had no idea how it would really kind of work out. So we did a lot of test playing, and we’re still working on making sure that balance really hits right. It was really fun.
Q: During the panel we saw a sneak peak of Rise and learned her English voice actor. Rise has numerous abilities that help the party, and it seems she may have some new abilities. Can you go into detail on what those abilities might be?
Wada-san: She was always kind of a really powerful character as a support character. I’ll have to double check with the other game designers, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been brushing her up just a little bit. She might have been a little bit too powerful before, so maybe toning that down.
Q: The character models are very impressive. What was the process like creating those new versions of the characters?
Soejima-san: Over the years we’ve had things like Persona 4 D, the dancing game, and in those we started working on and developing more full size characters. And for this game, we’ve taken the original looks of the characters, which looks were simpler, were shorter and had kind of slightly different proportions, and we’ve brought them into fully shaped, fully formed human proportions. And when you’re doing that, there’s a lot more detail you can add. There’s a lot more expressions that you can work on. There’s a lot of difference in the vibe of the characters, a lot more coolness that you need to work on. And we took a lot of effort to really brush that up and to make those models really hit strong. I think it feels many, many times different and improved from the originals. In the All Out Attack scene, when Chie came in with a kick, in the old game, there wasn’t much to it. But now she’s really going for it. And when I saw that I was just moved.
Wada-san: Of course, for something much more detailed it’s also that much more harder to make.
Q: During the panel, it was announced that MAPPA will be handling all animated cutscenes and that the animation director even played Persona 1 through 4 before starting work. How did this collaboration come about?
Wada-san: When we were looking around for studios to help us with the animation cutscenes, we asked a bunch of different people, but MAPPA was really positive about it. They were really excited. They were like, “Please let us do it.” And I think that was probably one of the major reasons why we decided on MAPPA.
Soejima-san: MAPPA handled the Persona 5 Royal opening animated video. And the quality that they developed for the Royal opening video was just so high, and the way they handled the human expressions of the characters felt so good that we were really happy to have another chance to work with MAPPA.
Q: Some characters have had elements of their dungeon or storyline adjusted, such as Kanji’s Shadow holding different gender symbols or the beauty pageant being adjusted. What was behind those adjustments and can you share the general strategy for those changes?
Wada-san: So it depends on how deep you want to go, but I know that there are some parts of Persona 4 during which we cover very sensitive issues for some of these characters. I mean, it’s kind of delving deep into people’s fears and apprehensions and kind of going to that core of that. It’s a really delicate issue to handle. I don’t want to go to into the details because it’d be spoilers. But I guess the final message is that we haven’t changed anything core about the characters. We’ve kept everything as is, but we’ve just brushed up the the kind of corners of that to make sure it all fits and really is appropriate for the characters and for the age that we live in now.
Q: Have any controversial scenes been re-written because of changed audience expectations for this era?
Wada-san: So at base, we haven’t really changed anything about the story or the characters’ thoughts or how they act or anything. All that’s kept the same. We are keeping that as is and we’ve just maybe changed the way that we express some of this a little bit, mostly with Yosuke really. He’s a little bit insensitive in terms of how he treats outsiders sometimes. So we wanted to lighten that up and make it a little bit more fitting for the world that we live in now.
Q: Can we expect any changes to Social Links, especially those of characters like Kanji or Naoto that have driven fan discussions for over a decade?
Wada-san: So at base, no. But because we have full voices now, there’s going to be a lot more expressive emotion in the voice deliveries. That will give you a little bit more of a clue into the internal struggles and the kind of the thoughts and emotions that the characters are experiencing.
Q: Beyond the enhancements, can we expect any content in Revival that did not appear in Golden at all?
Wada-san: Yes, but we can’t really talk about it just yet (laughs).
Q: Which location(s) benefited the most from modern hardware?
Wada-san: So really everything has been updated quite a lot. But if I had to maybe pick 1 or 2, it would maybe be Nanako’s dungeon, Heaven. I think it’s way prettier than it used to be. We were able to add a lot more detail. And on a similar note for Yukiko’s dungeon as well, there’s been a lot of detail that we’ve added to the entire thing, but as you go up in levels of it, the feel of the dungeon changes, and that’s something I think that’s really benefited from modern hardware.
Q: Some areas like Junes appear to be completely modelled in this game. Will there be any locations that were unexplorable in Golden that are explorable in Revival?
Wada-san: We haven’t really added any new locations, but like Junes, there are a couple other places where we’ve made changes to the camera work and everything. One of them that I can think of is Okina City. It used to be a single fixed camera and now it’s a full 3D walk around that you can do. So we hope fans are excited for that.
Q: What was the process on the production side for selecting new English voice actors and a new main vocalist?
Wada-san: For the English acting actor voice actors, we definitely went through a really detailed audition and casting process. We made sure that we selected actors that would really bring out the emotions of the characters that they portrayed. And because we’re Japanese folks, we don’t really know how good an English voice actor’s acting can be. We had the SEGA of America team involved in every step of the way, making sure that the actors are really kind of expressing the characters in an accurate way. This is something that we did for Persona 3 Reload as well, where we changed the vocalist for a number of the songs. And the reason why we did that was we wanted the music, the songs to feel both nostalgic but also new at the same time. Since we’re making a remake, we want it to have something for both people who are familiar with this series and new to it. Something new, a new spin on it.
And this time our new vocalist was somebody whose name is Sasaki. And they were just really, really great at just singing, obviously in general, but their English pronunciation was really good. So the English sections of the song, they were able to bring that out with a very native pronunciation. And our sound composer worked really close with Sasaki to make sure that the songs really, really fit the vibe and the emotion, and that are something that fans of the game can jump in, play, and really enjoy. The original sound composer for Persona 4, Shoji Meguro, his work is absolutely incredible. But we’ve worked to find a new spin on it and found a way to remix it a little bit, to make it feel more fresh and new. For the new songs that we’ve added as well, we’re hoping they really fit in with the world and make it come out and feel alive for all of the players.
Q: Is there any additional news you’d like to share about Persona 4 Revival or the series in general?
Soejima-san: For this kind of creation, Persona 4 Revival, we’re sure that there’s all sorts of really interesting things that we’ve brushed up and added, and we’re confident that anybody who has never played it before will really enjoy it and find it really compelling. At the same time, we know that our old fans are really excited to play on Persona 4 again. We’ve added new and fresh tastes and touches to it so that they can find something new and we think it’ll be great. So we really hope you like it.
Wada-san: So this is something I said at the panel as well. But when we started working on Persona 4 Revival, we got a chance to really look back at Persona 4 in detail, and it really made me realize
that this game is such a gem. It’s just such a beautiful kind of game, but we wanted to make sure that people who live in the modern era can access and and play it in a way that kind of fits modern RPG expectations. So we worked really hard on adding quality of life improvements and making it so that you can play it without getting stressed by parts of the game. And really, I think the team who worked on it did an incredible job, and it’s going to exceed all of your expectations, and I hope you look forward to it.
We’d like to thank Kazuhisa Wada and Shigenori Soejima for taking the time to speak with us about Persona 4 Revival. The game launches on February 18, 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X + S, Xbox PC with Xbox Game Pass, and PC and is available for pre-order now.
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