Persona Series Director Reveals the Secret to Atlus’ Popular Games

Katsura Hashino, the man who led the successful development of Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, knows how to achieve his vision when it comes to making games. In addition to the modern Persona series, Hashino is responsible for directing Metaphor: ReFantazio, an RPG set in a brand-new universe under Atlus' new Creative Department known as Studio Zero. In a world of advanced technology, Hashino believes the people behind the games themselves are the only thing that matters. “I want something – even if it’s not complete, even if it’s really rough, even if it’s something really unfinished – to give me a glimpse of the humanity behind it. [I want to know] who created it and for it to give me a glimpse of the emotion that inspired it,” he explains. This philosophy has been at the forefront of his development technique for nearly 30 years and is one of the reasons why the Persona games have an extremely devout following. In addition to the anime art style, and attention to detail down to the UI, the characters who populate the world of Persona are what make it truly feel like a role-playing game. Each companion that joins the protagonist on the journey are so real to the point that they feel like old friends. This is intentional and is exactly what drives Hashino to want to make games, a personal approach running counter to some of his biggest projects that are meant to meet the expectations of shareholders and fans alike. Hashino has worked at Atlus for decades, with credits on several of the Shin Megami Tensei games, a series that merges occult concepts with realistic settings. In a world of traditional JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, these alternative titles have grown in popularity over time. He took the reigns of the Persona series beginning with the third core entry, following the departure of Kouji Okada, the previous director. Hashino took some of the darker themes from Shin Megami Tensei and mixed them into the pop vibe of Persona, creating a vibrant aesthetic influenced by anime with a high school backdrop. This all while grappling with mythological ideas like gods, demons, and psychology. Persona 3 was the series' transition into the modern era that made it so famous, and the divine timing coincided with North America's renewed interest in anime. Yet, despite the cartoon visuals, there is so much depth to the games and their characters. “I think the gap between the kind of realism of the characters themselves and the anime aesthetic is a really interesting and important part of the game. You might first look and see these very anime-style characters and this anime-style world, but then might be surprised and interested to see there’s a very real [world] underpinning to them. Looking beyond the anime and seeing the realism is really a wonderful part of our games.” The effort to ensure the characters feel real and memorable are what drive every decision in the design process, from broad ideas to specific dialogue. Hashino explained, “There’s this little girl named Nanako [in Persona 4] who’s in elementary school. When we were first writing her dialogue, we wrote [it] to be really, really cute. But then we took a step back and thought, ‘Wait a minute, all of her lines are so cute and they’re so well done that it doesn’t feel like any actual human girl would [talk like that] at that age’. It just felt like too much.” To make Nanako more authentic, rather than a simple game character, Hashino went back to the drawing board: “We started cutting back on those overly cutesy dialogues and tried to root it in reality instead. So even though Persona 4 is a modern fantasy game, we wanted it to feel closer to something that could be happening next door to you.” When discussing his favorite moment during the narrative of Persona 5, Hashino explained how it is when the cast of characters hang out in Cafe LeBlanc, the retro-style cafe in Shibuya that the Phantom Thieves have as a hideout. “In Persona 5, a lot of the characters don’t really have a place where they feel safe,” Hashino explains. “So I wanted to find a place where they can go and just really have that sense of security. And in Shibuya [a neighborhood in Tokyo] it’s really hard to find that location. There’s lots of roads, lots of corridors, but there’s not really a place where [you think], ‘Okay, you guys can just sit here and chill out and just use it as your base’. Finding a place [where] they’d be welcome is really difficult. So for the characters in Persona 5, I was trying to give them a place where they would be welcome. That’s when I came up with the idea of what we call in Japan a junkissa, which is an old-style cafe.” Hashino's love for characters are echoed by the fans, despite the fact that Metaphor: ReFantazio is a departure from the real-world settings of the Persona games. It still has a ton in common with the games he has developed before. In a similar manner, the characters you meet, despite being different from the Phantom Thieves, the Investigation Team, and SEES, share many of the same emotional pressures like anxiety, fear, and prejudice.

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