Much to the chagrin of fans of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, Katsura Hashino, head director and producer of the games announced during the Tokyo Game Show that the latest installment of the Persona series would be further delayed until the third quarter of 2016.
Ever since its first official gameplay trailer was teased in early February, it felt certain that Atlus was en route for a late 2015 release. However according to Hashino he intends to use this extra time in order to “tune up the gameplay” and “meet fan expectations,” and in all fairness – who could blame him?
The last major release within the Persona franchise was Persona 4, way back in 2008 and on the PlayStation 2 for that matter. Both Persona 3 and 4 were met with critical acclaim, lauded for its innovative combination of the classic JRPG genre we’ve known to love for years, along with the liberating and world-building elements of social simulation; being quite literally the first of its kind. Since then, both games were re-released on the PSP and PSP Vita respectively and were subjects for several spin-off titles such as Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth on the Nintendo 3DS, Persona 4 Arena/Arena Ultimax on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and lastly Persona 4: Dancing All Night on the PS Vita that’s slated for a September 29th release in North America. Having been teased with this many spin-offs for the better part of a decade is probably more excruciating than it is relieving.
That being said, Hashino guarantees that Persona 5 will definitely be the grandest in scale among the whole franchise to date and promises to absolutely wow fans with the level of depth and detail put into every aspect of the game, far beyond just dungeon crawling. In addition to his apology, Atlus released another gameplay trailer revealing even more of what the forthcoming game could offer and believe me, it doesn’t fail to impress:
If Hashino wants to take a few more months to make something like that even better, then I’m willing to wait.
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[button type=”link” link=”http://www.siliconera.com/2015/09/17/persona-5-director-shares-a-message-about-the-games-development-and-delay/” variation=”btndanger” target=”blank”]Source: Siliconera[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
