Persona 3 Reload, the remake of Persona 3 in a similar visual style to Persona 5, will only include content from the original Persona 3 release. That means that content from Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable won’t be included in this release. Atlus says that they wanted to remain faithful to the original release on the PlayStation 2 console. Other platforms outside of Xbox and PC have not been announced by Atlus, but no doubt they will eventually arrive. Here’s what Persona 3 Reload producer Ryota Niitsuma and chief director Kazuhisa Wada said to IGN :
“So first I’d like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don’t have the FES and Portable contents included,” Niitsuma said. “We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience.”
Persona 3 originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2006. Persona 3 FES is a 2007 add-on disc with updates to the original game, while Persona 3 Portable is a PSP release that added features like directly controlling party members beyond the main character. The female protagonist also first appeared in Persona 3 Portable, but it seems players won’t have the choice to play as her in Persona 3 Reload.
“So we can’t really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version,” Niitsuma said. “So we have newly recorded voices, we have new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We’ll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that.”
“So the basic concept of recreating the Persona story was that we wanted to keep everything from the original version, but update everything to the modern day,” Wada said. “So at the same level of Persona 5, basically. So we have the newest graphics, we have updated the system to the newest usability… We have the voice lines in [both Japanese and English.] We also have the text available in 13 languages. So you should be able to have similar experiences to that of Persona 5.”
Kind of lame that they’re not remaking the definitive version, I can only assume that given the recent release on Persona 3 Portable on many platforms, they want people to buy both.
Kinda getting Pokemon BDSP vibes here..
…Yep, this was exactly what I was worried about.
It doesn’t surpise me at all that they went the lazy route with this, just disapointing. Huge Atlus moment.
I’d love to delude myself that the FES and Portable content would come to the game via DLC eventually, but I’m not that optimistic of a person.
Another thing to mention about the remake: for some idiotic reason Atlus West have decided to completely recast all the VAs for the main party members (at least). They apparently thought it would be a good idea to replace well-known veteran voice actors like Yuri Lowenthal, Tara Platt, Michelle Ruff and Karen Strassman, who’ve been voiceing these characters since 2007, and replace them with people who most of which I’ve literally never heard of before.
This isn’t the case for the Japanese VAs btw, they’re still the same people who’ve been voicing these characters since 2006.
Honestly if I were to guess, I would say that they were recasting because they don’t want to pay the known actors, probably the higher salary that they would be asking. And that’s ridiculous. so what they’re going to do probably is just go with a cast that they can pay lower, and they just do sound alikes. Pretty much kind of what they did The Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition where they had new scenes that needed voiceovers and they ended up hiring other people to do it.. And you had people like Troy Baker saying that he wasn’t even asked to reprise his role. So in that game they have the new scenes inserted in the game voice by different actors than the rest of the game, for some of the characters. 🤦🏻♂️
You’re probaby right about it being a money saving thing, it’s exactly the kind of scummy corporate thing I’ve come to expect from Atlus West. These VA’s did a great job voicing these characters throughout all the various Persona games and spin-offs since 2007, yet Atlus West don’t have a single care about dropping them for some D tier VAs just to save a bit of money.
I’ve been wanting a proper P3 remake for years, but didn’t have much faith in Atlus to do it properly. Yet despite how low I kept my expectations for it, they’ve somehow managed to disappoint me even further.
It’s a good job it’s coming to Xbox Game Pass, which I already have, because from what I’ve seen I don’t think it’s worth anybody picking it up.
Wait! What?! What scenes 😂 I swear I played the definitive version twice, and I never noticed.
I mean people wanted a remake therefore getting their wish… monkey paws wish that is. BDSP and Dunsparce’s evolution are both monkey paws wishes, everyone wanted a remake of Diamond and Pearl and an evolution, they get their wishes granted but not exactly what they wanted. Honestly Atlus is not to be blamed, the blame goes to the fans and their monkey paws wishes.
Congratulations on posting the stupidest comment I’ve read in months.
The fans of Persona 3 were asking for a DEFINITIVE remake of the game, not just of the original PS2 game.
A version of the game that combined the best parts of FES and Portable while adding visual and QoL updates. I’ve been part of the Persona fandom for many years now, I’ve literally seen them asking for this.
This is 100% Atlus’ fault, they got lazy and did the bare minimum for this remake, and the reaction to it has shown how unhappy people are about it. The fact that they even had the producer and director make a statement about it on the same day as it’s official reveal shows that they were fully aware of what people wanted from this, but just didn’t care enough to actually do it.
Same with Pokémon BDSP, people wanted it to be a remake in lines with HGSS and ORAS, yet all we got was a soulless 1:1 rehash that didn’t even include half the improvements Platinum made over a decade prior.
People like you, who blame the fans for these lacklustre games rather than the companies who actually make them, are the reason why they keep getting away with stuff like this. You are literally part of the problem.
Try actually using some critical thinking in future instead of shilling for these multi-million/billion-dollar companies.
Who started this asinine trend of remaking inferior versions of a game, and how can it stop?
From what I’ve heard of the remakes, I really want to say GameFreak with PKMN BD/SP. (Ugh… I really, really, REALLY hope it started with them!)
As someone who never played the first game I am very much looking forward to this. Sounds like it has all the content that the original base game had.
Most people think about FES is just The Answer but there is a lot of other things that got added like the new Chidori scene, Aigis social link and the camera events on the top of the dorm (these are just on the top of my head, there is a lot more).
I really really hope we don’t lose these features but the messaging makes you think there is no FES/Portable content at all in the remake…
The devs have confirmed that the various changes FES made to the main game will be in this remake (so the Aigis SL, Chidori scene etc will be there).
Really though that stuff should be considered the bare minimum for a remake, otherwise it would’ve been just like BDSP not having the improvements Platinum made to the originals over a decade ago.
Atlus have still been extremely lazy with this.