News about Atlus’s Persona 5 has been scant lately. Thankfully, Persona series director Katsura Hashino has opened up to Official Persona Magazine about the upcoming sequal. Although he doesn’t reveal any specific details, he delves into its major themes. But first, about that teaser trailer.
“I feel that in today’s world,” Hashino says, “there’s no shortage of people that are bore and discontent with their lives. They’re at a dead end, chained down to a world of which they resent being a part. Persona 5, in that sense, is a game about freedom, the kind that those sorts of people haven’t had living in the real world.” Turns out the ball and chain we see is far more symbolic than we thought. Hashino continues. “They naturally represent the idea of a person’s immobility, of being unable to move ahead from their current position in life.”
It goes without saying that freedom and liberation will be the biggest theme of Persona 5. “The characters in this game, through sheer force of will, are out to destroy that which suffocates people in today’s society and, again, keeps them chained down in place. I want players to come away from the game feeling like they have that power to take on the world around them and keep going in life.” Despite the heavy themes, it’s still just a game. “Persona 5 is first and foremost a work of entertainment and we want it to just simply be enjoyable on its own terms as well.”
Fans of the series should notice that both Persona 3 and Persona 4 each has their own central color theme, blue for 3 and yellow for 4. That leaves one primary color left. “This time we’re painting the world red in Persona 5. That being said, red can be a pretty hard color on the eyes, so it’s not without some trouble in making things such as the interface visually palatable when people play the game.”
Persona 5 will be released in Japan sometime in Winter 2014 and the US in 2015 on the PS3.
