Speaking with attendees at the CEDEC + KYUSHU 2024 conference, Persona producer Kazuhisa Wada, explained to the audience why they usually select the main protagonist to be both male and a school student. Wada told fans at the question and answer session at Kyushu Sangyo University the following:
Wada said that games in the Persona series are coming-of-age stories focused on growing up, and the most effective setting for those kinds of stories are of students on the verge of entering adulthood. Wada added that student life is an almost universal common experience and people can easily identify themselves with it.
As for the gender of the protagonist, Wada said that the choice is related to maturity and mental age. For high school students of similar ages, it seems like female students tend to have a higher mental age than male students, Wada continued. To better depict the themes of growth, the developers decided that a male student as the protagonist would fit better. However, Wada insisted that the team doesn’t think that adults or women as protagonists aren’t a possibility to consider.
Let’s be honest, they go for male because the game is aimed at a male audience primarily. They should just be honest about that. Persona 6 would be well advised to simply have male and female character options, something they already have done previously with Persona 3 Portable.
The school setting is surely part of the identity of the series – the typical theming is kids saving a world full of corrupt adults, and attending school and doing the classes etc. feels like a fundamental part of what makes a Persona game feel like a Persona game.
Excuses, excuses.
You just don’t really care about female players, given the forced fanserivce.
Women like fanservice, and no one likes a puritanical prude.
Women like fanservice, but ATLUS prefer to use girls as the fanservice rather than, y’know, heroes. Poor Ann…
I just hope this is not some sort of excuse to avoid those stupid “woke” controversies that surround games with female lead protagonists… like the ones that are currently surrounding The Witcher 4 and the new game from Naughty Dog…
Atlus knows how to make beautiful and interesting female characters in their games, so I don’t think it’s an excuse. It’s the Western market who completely forgot how to make good female leads.
On the other hand, better safe than sorry. It’d suck for them to make an interesting female lead in a game only for the snowflakes in the West and the “gaming media” to cry out about “male gaze”, etc. People are still bashing Eve and snubbed Stellar Blade of many nominations, so it makes sense.
Anti-woke people love good female protagonists, like P3P’s protag, Nintendo Automata’s 2B, Amanda Ripley from Alien Isolation, etc.
The new Naughty Dog game looks atrocious, and Witcher 4 seems iffy but could end up okay. We’ll have to see.
Anti woke people like females with big tiddies and cute anime chicks, which I love too, but unlike anti woke people, I know that not everything should be about me. The new naughty dog game is not meant for people who like playing senran kagura, it was meant for people who like realistic characters and realistic graphics and AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO DENY IT, but if you create a realistic setting, you are going to create characters who can have some “ugly” features. Femc from p3p is not a “good” character, you just like the design cause aside from that, what is so special about her? And that whole fucking Witcher 4 discourse show how much out of touch you anti sjw are with the world, literally an older Ciri and you mfs had to complain
Not sure why you’re crapping on the FeMC here, she’s a great character.
She has some great dialogue options in P3P and is a major character in PQ2, where she’s no longer a silent protagonist and has a fleshed out personality and character arc. She’s beloved for a reason.
And just saying, the person you’re replying to named Amanda Ripley from Alien as what they consider a good female protagonist, so clearly they aren’t the type of “anti-woke” person you’re going on about here.
Maybe chill out a bit and don’t generalise people so much.
I’m not saying femc is bad but like, do persona characters above 2 have any special identity that makes them stand out, how much of a difference does femc have with makoto? Sure narukami has that chad type and ren is the misteryous one but at the end of the day, they are pretty much that you paint over it by making the social decisions the persona series offer to the player, I believe you like femc a lot cause you probably find a lot in common with her, but that’s because you played her in a very personalized way that it could be very different to another person. and look my bad, I may have sounded a bit hostile, but the term “anti woke” is pretty stupid, the word woke got absolutely abused by right wing people and they are using it for everything that they don’t like. You can agree with me that Ciri looking a bit older is not “woke” right?
I wrote a long ass reply with but this site really doesn’t seem to like it for some reason, so I’m gonna have to TL;DR it-
So basically, the Persona protagonists get their unique personalities from the spinoffs and anime/manga adaptations, the FeMC and Makoto have polar opposite personalities in canon, and I agree with you regarding the overuse of the term “woke” and about the Witcher 4 situation.
Here’s hoping this actually posts this time.
Also, haven’t played Q2 my bad, so my general knowledge is FES and P3P
A male character currently has the privilege of being a blank slate. If you’re creating a character from scratch and you make them male, then they are still a blank canvas to create whatever you want. If you’re a creating a character from scratch and you make them female… then usually something is assumed about that character (that assumption varies between groups, cultures, etc). It’s become even worse now because there are now people who see a female protagonist and assume some form of pandering is happening (whether that’s what is actually happening or not).
I’ve never played Persona so I’m assuming the MC is sort of a blank slate kind of avatar for the player (correct me if I’m wrong). Seems like the best solution would be to give the player the option of a male or female character, kind of like how Pokemon does.
At least in persona 5 it’s kinda of an in-between imo. Not a complete blank slate but also not quite a full-fledged character. You make all the dialogue decisions and he has pretty limited dialogue in cutscenes compared to the rest of the cast, but still does make some decisions independent from the player’s control based on the experiences/personality of the character.
based take CFG you are killing it, dare i say.
That wasn’t me. My account got hacked by a hedgefox.
yeah me neither, my account got hacked by link2metroid actually
Oh boy, did I get the names mixed up? Sorry.
Yes it’s me link2metroid, waaaahhh I hate Nintendo waaaaah
I really hope they do give us another female protagonist at some point in the future, or at least give us the option of playing as one. The three we’ve had so far (Maya, Aigis and the FeMC) have all been great.
The FeMC in particular added a TON of replayability to P3P, with having her own unique Social Links, story events and music. I think the many disappointed fan reactions they got to her not being included in P3R should tell the devs how beloved she is.
I’m not even saying they necessarily need to go to those same lengths with a future FeMC (having female exclusive social links and the like), just having them as an option would be nice and make the game more accessible to those who would prefer not to play as a male character.
Shin Megami Tensei if (the game which generated the Persona subseries) has a female student as the protagonist. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment has an adult female as the protagonist.
Despite their arguments, the most likely explanation is divided in two:
1- The usual romanticization of high school life, present in so many Japanese media (manga, anime, games, novels and so on). At least P5 doesn’t shy away of showing how awful and boring school life can truly be.
2- They clearly got influenced by the dating sim games which were all the rage during the 2000s and, thus, focused on making “harem” scenarios, even if an actual harem started to get severely punished in-game. Nothing inherently wrong, considering the actual audience for the game.
Nothing in your comment gives an actual explanation for a lack of female protagonist lmao. The “romanticization of high school life” isn’t a reason, there’s many anime and manga out there that do the same thing while also having female protagonists. And reverse harems are a thing buddy, it’s not only male protagonists that do this in anime and manga. And Persona 3 Portable had a female protagonist despite it being after the series was influenced by dating sim games so that arguement doesn’t make any sense either.
Please tell me this is satire…
Gaming is the biggest it’s ever been and there’s almost literally a video game for everybody. Male vs female, hardcore vs casual, shooter vs platformer… it’s all pointless now. We can all just enjoy what we want and nothing will be lost.
This comment section will be great :)
Thank you for deleting the comment from that sexist pos Sickr.
Did I get any likes? I need validation.
No, but I’ll give you a reply.
Thank you. I’ll take it.
And I hope it stays that way.